ly of small children to solicit
his attention, the prognostic is very unfavourable; as it shews the
maniacal hallucination to be more powerful than those ideas which generally
interest us the most.

2. _Studium inane._ Reverie consists of violent voluntary exertions of
ideas to relieve pain, with all the trains or tribes connected with them by
sensations or associations. It frequently alternates with epileptic
convulsions; with which it corresponds, in respect to the insensibility of
the mind to the stimuli of external objects, in the same manner as madness
corresponds with common convulsion, in the patient's possessing at the same
time a sensibility of the stimuli of external objects.

Some have been reported to have been involved in reverie so perfectly, as
not to have been disturbed by the discharge of a cannon; and others to have
been insensible to torture, as the martyrs for religious opinions; but
these seem more properly to belong to particular insanities than to
reverie, like nostalgia and erotomania.

Reverie is distinguished from madness as described above; and from
delirium, because the trains of ideas are kept consistent by the power of
volition, as the person reasons and deliberates in it. Somnambulismus is a
part of reverie, the latter consisting in the exertions of the locomotive
muscles, and the former of the exertions of the organs of sense; see Class
III. 1. 1. 9. and Sect. XIX. both which are mixed, or alternate with each
other, for the purpose of relieving pain.

When the patients in reverie exert their volition on their organs of sense,
they can occasionally perceive the stimuli of external objects, as
explained in Sect. XIX. And in this case it resembles sometimes an
hallucination of the senses, as there is a mixture of fact and imagination
in their discourse; but may be thus distinguished: hallucinations of the
lenses are allied to delirium, and are attended generally with quick pulse,
and other symptoms of great debility; but reverie is without fever, and
generally alternates with convulsions; and so much intuitive analogy (see
Sect. XVII. 3. 7.) is retained in its paroxysms, as to preserve a
consistency in the trains of ideas.

Miss G----, whose case is related in Sect. III. 5. 8. said, as I once sat
by her, "My head is fallen off, see it is rolled to that corner of the
room, and the little black dog is nibbling the nose off." On my walking to
the place which she looked at, and returning, an