t in other respects it was less
hopeful. I was consulted by a young student of a very delicate physical
frame, of great mental energies, and consumed by an intense ambition.
He was reading for university honours. He would not listen to me when I
entreated him to rest his mind. I thought that he was certain to obtain
the distinction for which he toiled, and equally certain to die a few
months after obtaining it. He falsified both my prognostics. He so
overworked himself that, on the day of examination, his nerves were
agitated, his memory failed him; he passed, not without a certain
credit, but fell far short of the rank amongst his fellow competitors
to which he aspired. Here, then, the irritated mind acted on the
disappointed heart, and raised a new train of emotions. He was first
visited by spectral illusions; then he sank into a state in which the
external world seemed quite blotted out. He heeded nothing that was said
to him; seemed to see nothing that was placed before his eyes,--in a
word, sensations became dormant, ideas preconceived usurped their place,
and those ideas gave him pleasure. He believed that his genius was
recognized, and lived amongst its supposed creations enjoying an
imaginary fame. So it went on for two years, during which suspense of
his reason, his frail form became robust and vigorous. At the end of
that time he was seized with a fever, which would have swept him in
three days to the grave had it occurred when I was first called in to
attend him. He conquered the fever, and, in recovering, acquired the
full possession of the intellectual faculties so long suspended. When I
last saw him, many years afterwards, he was in perfect health, and the
object of his young ambition was realized; the body had supported the
mind,--he had achieved distinction. Now what had so, for a time, laid
this strong intellect into visionary sleep? The most agonizing of human
emotions in a noble spirit,--shame! What has so stricken down your
Lilian? You have told me the story: shame!--the shame of a nature
pre-eminently pure. But observe that, in his case as in hers, the shock
inflicted does not produce a succession of painful illusions: on
the contrary, in both, the illusions are generally pleasing. Had the
illusions been painful, the body would have suffered, the patient died.
Why did a painful shock produce pleasing illusions? Because, no matter
how a shock on the nerves may originate, if it affects the reason, it
d