At the sight of such works, and such great results, obtained by such superior minds, who will persist in comparing their hallucinations with those of the individuals who come under our daily notice?

We have already said that pure hallucinations, without the complication of any one of the forms of insanity, appear to us to be as rare as real monomania. For our part, we have never met with any one suffering from hallucination, whose error was so circumscribed that, in giving way to their idea, we have found them rational on all other points. All whom we have known, and all of whom we have read in the works of modern authors, have given tokens denoting a confusion in their ideas, howsoever they might endeavor to conceal the state of their minds from others. Alternately unsteady, strange, eccentric, gloomy, misanthropical, apathetic, frivolous, incapable of carrying out the least project, holding extraordinary conversations, or committing inexplicable actions, they have vainly endeavored, by acts and words really rational, to escape the watchful eye of the investigator. The wound was always perceived, like that indelible stain of blood which the experienced eye can detect notwithstanding all attempts to obliterate it. Some very rare instances may be cited of individuals who, with a false idea, have, nevertheless, fulfilled very important functions. We do not dispute it; but those in this state have been more or less conscious of their infirmity; they watched themselves, redoubled their precautions, and did nothing to betray the train of their idea. Their general conduct resembled that of others; and they rather drew along the idea than allowed themselves to be enslaved by it. Let us also observe that these hallucinated persons were not the expression of any need, the representatives of any idea, or the promoters of any object useful to their kind. The greater number, wrapped up in themselves, believed they were called on to reform mankind, by means either ridiculous or dis-proportioned to the end. It was in vain that they developed their projects with address; they only succeeded in exhibiting their own weakness; and howsoever artfully they may have draped themselves, pride, vanity, and folly were seen through the rente in the mantle. In the very presence of these differences, how can any one establish a parallel between the powerful, creative, and animated organizations of the former, and the weak, sickly natures of the latter? We do not deny that both these classes of persons were hallucinated; but the hallucinations of the former, consequent on the times, were compatible with reason, whilst those of the latter were always in a greater or less degree combined with insanity.

If the observations that we have made be conclusive, and the reasonings that we have deduced therefrom be just, then the opinion ought to be rejected, which has made of Socrates, Plato, Numa, Pythagoras,* Pascal, and many other illustrious personages, so many hallucinated madmen. These conclusions are so natural that a learned physician and philosopher, whose character and talents have won for him universal esteem, after having converted all these celebrated persons into visionaries, who would now be confined, adds the following words, which will excite much criticism: "In order to act on the multitude, to seize on the people, to overturn or change beliefs, and to imprint a furrow on the face of nature that ages will fail to efface, it is necessary to think, speak, be deceived and grow frenzied with the masses; to believe with them, and beyond them; to be their messenger and their prophet, in order that they may think you the prophet of God, and yield a belief that you possess his power." And he terminates the passage thus: "They were not madmen, but they were hallucinists; such as neither do nor can exist again; hallucinists whose visions were visions of reason."*

* Consult a very curious work, entitled Apologie pour let grands hommes soupponnes de Magie, par M. Naude, Parisien, Amsterdam, 1722, 1 vol. 12mo. p. 136.

The objections which we have offered in the name of science and literature, so unhappily tarnished by the stigma of madness, had already fallen under the notice of others than ourselves; it had been said, the visionaries of old must not be classed with madmen; they were deceived, but it was with the ideas of their age; and it would be absurd to tax all the generations which have preceded us, with madness. It was, if you will, an error of the human mind, but not a disease.

Leuret, in his Fragment Psychologiques sur la folie, a work equally interesting, and well written, but whose doctrines cannot be embraced by those holding religious convictions, has endeavored to refute these objections. "We must here draw a distinction," he says, "between those who had visions and those who had faith in them. For the latter, they were in error, and in error only, I readily admit it. As for those who had visions, they were deceived like the others, but they were also deranged, because they had within themselves an invincible cause of error; they experienced unusual phenomena, which made them distinct intelligences, exempt from ordinary rules; or rather without rules, living in a world of fancy, out of which no reasoning could entice them. Amongst our ancestors, no doubt, the condition of the human mind powerfully concurred in the frequent production of visions; but it does not cease to be a disease because it is dependent on a general cause; and, as there is no essential difference between the visionaries of our own day and those of former times, both should be placed in the ranks of lunatics."

Without pausing on the difference of opinion between the two authors as to the psychological state of these individuals, whom the first looks on as such hallucinists as will no more be seen, whose sensorial errors were compatible with the most perfect exercise of reason; and the second views in the light of insane persons resembling those of the present time; whom the one proclaims to be messengers, the expression of the people; and the other, on the contrary, regards as diseased persons, imposing their visions on the multitude; we will reply that the hallucinations of those distant times were not a disease, bat a belief, no doubt erroneous, like many others in physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc., which did not hinder men from properly fulfilling their duties. As to those superior minds, to whom the imputation of insanity has been more particularly addressed, the condition in which they were, being that of the four personages of whom we have spoken, we will not reproduce the arguments on which we have laid stress, to prove that they were not insane.