y are creatures of the moment,
possessing no inhibitory check upon their desires and emotions, which
drive them headlong hither and thither.

Madness is often associated with epilepsy; in all cases it is a
frightful and hereditary disfigurement of humanity, which appears,
from the upshot of various conflicting accounts, to be on the
increase. The neurotic constitution from which it springs is however
not without its merits, as has been well pointed out, since a large
proportion of the enthusiastic men and women to whose labour the
world is largely indebted, have had that constitution, judging from
the fact that insanity existed in their families.

The phases of extreme piety and extreme vice which so rapidly
succeed one another in the same individual among the epileptics, are
more widely separated among those who are simply insane. It has been
noticed that among the morbid organic conditions which accompany the
show of excessive piety and religious rapture in the insane, none are
so frequent as disorders of the sexual organisation. Conversely, the
frenzies of religious revivals have not unfrequently ended in gross
profligacy. The encouragement of celibacy by the fervent leaders of
most creeds, utilises in an unconscious way the morbid connection
between an over-restraint of the sexual desires and impulses towards
extreme devotion.

Another remarkable phase among the insane consists in strange views
about their individuality. They think that their body is made of
glass, or that their brains have literally disappeared, or that
there are different persons inside them, or that they are somebody
else, and so forth. It is said that this phase is most commonly
associated with morbid disturbance of the alimentary organs. So in
many religions fasting has been used as an agent for detaching the
thoughts from the body and for inducing ecstasy.

There is yet a third peculiarity of the insane which is almost
universal, that of gloomy segregation. Passengers nearing London by
the Great Western Railway must have frequently remarked the unusual
appearance of the crowd of lunatics when taking their exercise in
the large green enclosure in front of Hanwell Asylum. They almost
without exception walk apart in moody isolation, each in his own way,
buried in his own thoughts. It is a scene like that fabled in
Vathek's hall of Eblis. I am assured that whenever two are seen in
company, it is either because their attacks of madness are of