ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. H. W.; J. T.; H. S. C. H.; E. M. B.; DELTA; J. H.; EDINENSIS G.; W.; J. S--H; and LAICUS; are under consideration. The important measures, to which several of our correspondents allude having now passed into a law, we see no benefit likely to arise from a protracted controversy on the subject.. We are much indebted, not only for the kind and cordial communications of several who concur in our views, but for the candid and Christian remarks of some who differ; and as for two writers who have thought they were doing God service by the display of a very different spirit, we only lament they should have written what, in their cooler moments, they will regret. SUPPLEMENT TO RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY. The information in the Extracts, especially that from Germany and South America, is very interesting, but too miscellaneous to admit of analysis. ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. The Reporter contains a powerful and most convincing reply to the objections which have been urged against certain of its former statements, in respect to the proceedings of some of our church societies connected with the West Indies. We should but weaken the argument by attempting to abridge it. It narrates also another most afflicting instance of West-Indian cruelty perpetrated upon a poor slave-woman, which terminated only with the death of the victim. Is it possible that any humane or Christian man can any longer identify himself, directly or indirectly, with a system which, besides its incurable injustice, even in the most lenient hands, is the ever-ready minister to atrocities like this? REFORMATION SOCIETY. The impression of a third edition of this month's Extracts evinces the eagerness with which British Protestants are turning their attention to the religious welfare of their Roman-Catholic countrymen. We look however, under the blessing of God, to a wise and persevering system, rather than to any momentary ebullition of zeal, for the best welfare of Ireland; and we would especially urge the friends of our various societies to continue to conduct their measures with that meekness of wisdom which Mr. Wilson has so justly pointed out in a preceding page. We observe that the name of one of the vice-presidents of the Reformation Society no longer appears in the list a circumstance equally honourable to all parties; but this Christian test of sincerity having been given, we should rejoice to see a highly respected name again in its place. We do not quite comprehend the observations of one of the Society's correspondents, page 2 of the subjoined Extracts. If any friend of the Society wishes so to modify or enlarge its original object, which we always understood was to promote the principles of the Reformation among Roman Catholics, as to make it a Home Missionary Society twenty-one millions of fellow-Christians, to appeal to Protestants as well as Romanists," it were better that that object were distinctly specified. to IRISH SUNDAY-SCHOOL SOCIETY. We feel most anxious again to remind our readers of the importance of supporting the religious institutions connected with Ireland. Appended to the present and several of our recent Numbers, they will find the latest notices relating to the Reformation Society, and the Hibernian Society. We now lay before them the Report of another institution inferior in importance to none; the Sunday-School Society for Ireland, on the merits of which we need not now expatiate, as we have so often and cordially done so in our former volumes. The Report is printed in Dublin, but a sufficient number of copies have been imported to append to our publication; in the hope, which we trust will not be disappointed, that the powerful claim of this Society to the public patronage needs only to be more fully known to be duly appreciated, especially at the present moment. We must refer our readers to the document itself, for its important and interesting details. COMMITTEE FOR THE GIPSEYS. We have inserted in our volumes numerous papers and inquiries respecting that anomalous and neglected class of persons the Gipseys. Their cause is, we are rejoiced to learn, beginning to be taken up with affection and zeal, and we earnestly recommend our readers to weigh with care the truly interesting notices in the paper appended to our present Number, and to use their zealous efforts to promote the benevolent and Christian object of the Committee. Our publisher would receive and transmit any donations to further the object. ESSAY ON SUPERSTITION*. (Continued from p. 210.) HE next step of our investiga TH tion is to consider the pheno mena of disordered brainular function. A great error has arisen, and has been perpetuated even to the present day, in considering cerebral disorder as mental; requiring, and indeed admitting, only of moral remedies, instead of these forming only one class of curative agents; whereas the brain is the mere organ of mind, not the mind itself; and its disorder of function arises from its ceasing to be a proper medium for the manifestation of the varied action and passion of the presiding spirit. And strange as it may seem, this error has been consecrated by a desire to escape from the fallacies of materialism. Yet it is manifest that they alone are guilty of the charge of attachment to materialism, who consider the disorders of the cere bral function as mental; for then, indeed, the brain must be mind itself, and not simply its organ. When the stomach, or the liver, or the lungs are affected with disease, some term is employed which at once leads the attention to the suf • Our correspondent's valuable series of papers would fall more correctly under the head of Miscellaneous Communications;" but, in truth, we are not always able to keep the departments of our work as distinct as might be wished. CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 329. fering viscus, and to the mode of its sufferings. But when we speak of disorder of the cerebral function, mental alienation, fatuity, and vapersons currently employ the terms rious others which describe the symptoms of cerebral disease; but which do not lead the mind on to the affection of the organ which occasions them. This cause is generally very little understood, and often mistaken. But we must re collect, that the spiritual principle is not susceptible of disease-except fore, we must refer the symptoms of speaking metaphorically; and there morbid mental manifestation to their organic cause. And if these mental dered in a morbid condition of the manifestations always become disorbrain, it is not too much to ask that other analogous phenomena should be referred to this cause, which have sometimes been ascribed to spiritual agency, because the altered manifestations have not been contemplated as a consequence of disease of the manifesting organ: and if this be granted, it will not be too much to ask further, that those morbid manifestations of mind, which can be traced to disease of the ma terial organ, should be permitted to guide us into the same route of explanation as respects other deviations from healthy mental agency, which may not so clearly be associated with disease of structure. Cerebral disorder is characterized by certain symptoms, which, in 2 N prosecuting this inquiry, it is important to consider. We will first take an example of the simplest form of disturbance; namely, slight tendency to congestion in the vessels of the brain. The patient wakens with difficulty; he is desirous of sleeping beyond his usual time; he dresses with an oppression upon his brow, which constitutes that operation a burden; he remains languid and feeble all the morning; there is a sense of weight in his head, which he cannot shake off; he is still drowsy and indisposed for exertion: the hour of dinner arrives -and the stimulus occasioned by this meal drives the blood through the congested vessels; reaction is produced; the sense of weight is lost, and it is superseded by head ache of a more or less acute character; by restlessness, and a variety of fidgetty sensations; and if the pain should subside (as it very commonly does) towards evening, still there is a great degree of irritability, and the patient retires to rest in a state of morbid wakefulness, which is not overcome for hours; and he then falls into the same heavy, unrefreshing sleep, which occasions a repetition of similar congestion; to be again removed by the same reaction, and to return in a similar circle till the morbid condition has been relieved. But what is the effect of this state upon the manifestations of mind? All the morning the subject of brainular alternation is incapable of intellectual exertion; his spirits are depressed, and his powers of thought inadequate. To this mental cloud succeeds a transient brightening of the faculties, which is suspended by acute pain, and is afterwards characterized by an impossibility of fixing the attention, until towards evening, when a greater degree of serenity is produced, and the patient probably conduces to his approaching wakefulness by mental occupation; which now, no longer a burden, goes on cheerily. Now unless we are wilfully blind, do we not see that the manifestations of mind are under the influence of this peculiar though most simple cerebral disorder? and if so, may there not be other morbid conditions of the brain, perhaps unknown or unexplained, and with our present knowledge, inexplicable, which may give rise to other deviations from healthy mental manifestations, to visions, spectral illusions, hallucinations, apparitions, and similar phenomena. The infinite wisdom of the Creator has so appointed, that the brain can bear much injury with impunity. And it is astonishing to contemplate the degree of mischief which will sometimes go on in its structure without being rendered very obvious by bodily or mental symptoms. By what constitution of the organ this has been effected is beyond our knowledge, and we seek not to explain it but we see the fact; and we would derive from it a lesson of adoring gratitude to that Holy Being, whose infinite knowledge has prepared for the operations of mind an organ of such exquisite delicacy and susceptibility; and yet one which could bear with comparative impunity a greater degree of lesion than many other less important viscera. But although this is sometimes the case, yet cerebral disorder is generally marked by some of the following appearances. 1. Feebleness, or suspension, or perversion of the intimations afforded by the organs of sense. Mere mental emotion will occa. sion the tongue to be furred in a few minutes; vision will be rendered indistinct, and the hearing obtuse; an emotion of a more powerful kind will suspend the action of the senses altogether: while,under other circumstances, it will so completely pervert them, as that the taste shall be depraved; the ear shall be assailed by a thousand forms of unreal impression; spectral images shall float before the eye; the nose shall be occupied by odours which do not exist, and relative feeling shall be disturbed. Precisely similar effects will often be produced from an impression of primary disease of the brain; so that in either case of disorder of that organ, whether it may claim a physical or mental origin, we are prepared for perverted manifestations of mind. 2. We notice, in the next place, the extreme susceptibility of these organs. The taste becomes developed in an unusual degree; so that the simple contact of many bodies with the tongue will instantaneously produce sickness, and bring on all those associated actions which have primarily commenced in irritation of the brain: hearing will be rendered so acute that the slightest vibrations of the atmosphere will seem to the patient as thunder, and he will be incapable of listening without pain to the gentlest movements in his room: the eye will abhor its usual grateful stimulus light, and will court the completest obscurity while both these senses will be rendered so irritable, that voices will be heard, and forms will be seen, while neither the one nor the other ever existed. The sense of smelling will be offended by odours which are not in themselves disagreeable; and the skin will be so irritable, that it will feel soreness and pain from the slightest impressions; its function will be interrupted; it will be chilled by cold or fevered by heat, or unnaturally perspiring; while it will cease to convey correct impressions, from the morbid excitability of its surface. Can it be surprising that, under many circumstances of invading disease, and while the brain is suffering from its oppression, this extreme susceptibility should operate in producing illusions? For we are frail and feeble creatures, composed of body and mind; and we have no access to external circumstances for the latter, except through the intervention of the former. 3. But, thirdly, another expression of cerebral disorder consists in hallucination. This manifestation of mental operation very frequently arises from the former: a perverted image is conveyed through the senses, and represented to the mind; in consequence of the high degree of susceptibility of the brain, this impression is brooded over it is frequently recalled even during sleep: it is associated with other impressions, and grouped with them in some fancied order of perverted and fantastic arrangement, and it becomes so overbearing a sensation, that the patient is convinced of its reality, and carried away by its reiterated impulse. At another time, the brain forms for itself these delusive images from the involuntarily recollected frusta of previous impressions, and their very natural, but not always coherent, associations; and thus its action becomes perverted: it ceases to listen to the notices conveyed by the external senses, by means of which its internal impressions might have been compared and adjusted the voice of judgment is not heard, and the patient is absorbed by the certainty of his erroneous impressions, and verily believes in the existence of the fancied offspring of a disordered imagination. In this state actual feelings are disregarded; the morbid images supply their place, and are contemplated as the positive results of sensation. The natural laws of intellect are now superseded; the brain is no longer the obedient servant of the mind; but, in the tyranny of its usurpation, subjugates the reasoning powers, and compels them to yield to that human infirmity, which attaches itself to the grand prevailing cause that has marred the most perfect creation of Omnipotence, and has rendered that which was originally "very good," now very far gone from original righteousness." These hallucinations may be very fugitive, especially at the commencement of cerebral disease; and a pow erful appeal to the mind, judiciously applied, may recal it to the influ ence of right reason. But if disease should continue, it will soon relapse into the same or similar trains: and if it should advance, or increase in intensity, this hallucination may be come permanent, and it will then form delirium or insanity. These hallucinations will frequently commence during sleep, and the patient, on rousing from that state, cannot be convinced of their illusion; they remain with the energy of waking impressions, and often become motives to conduct; and at all events form the groundwork for morbid reasoning. Here, however, we are treading too closely on the subject of visions, which will come to be considered more especially hereafter. how easily this same state would be induced by a degree of the same cause, existing for any length of time, but not so great as to be called disease,-escaping attention under the terms of "restless nights," and of a "bad sleeper," till the morbid results have so far accumulated as to be uncontroulable. This form of great excitement may be followed by collapse, and destruction of the brain; or it may be rapidly succeeded by congestion, and by a tendency to heavy sleep from which the patient can scarcely be aroused; and from which, if left to himself, this very congestion may terminate in lethargy, apoplexy, or other of the deepening shades of cerebral disorder. 4. Another result of cerebral disorder, is that of unconquerable wakefulness. A ceaseless vigilance attacks the patient, and sleep seems to have fled for ever from his eyelids. It is astonishing how long a period will sometimes be passed without repose; and so great are the restlessness and irritability, that they are often beyond the controul of medicine: nay, more, the primary stimulus of opium seems to increase them in a degree far greater than can be quieted by its subsequent sedative effects; while the application of an ice-cap to cool the fevered brain, will prove the most efficacious remedy. For days and weeks together the patient will never sleep, and, during the whole time, will talk in cessantly. And yet, such is the wisdom of the Almighty Architect in protecting this organ of the mind, that it will not have eventually suffered from this protracted irritation in a degree at all commensurate with that which would have been produced by the same excited action in other organs of the body. It must be seen, however, at a glance, how favourable must be this state of irritability, to the production and indulgence of morbid sensorial and intellectual impressions; and then it may be inferred 5. But there are other indications of brainular malady, which we must mention particularly, as they affect the intellectual and moral manifestations. One of the first symptoms to be remarked, is an inaptitude for intellectual employment; the patient requires a frequent change of pursuit; he cannot turn his attention steadily to one object; he cannot reason or think consecutively; he finds it impossible to fix his thoughts upon the reasoning of others; his desk and his books are neglected; and he himself is occupied with the veriest trifles, rendered important in his estimation, by their association with some perverted images. Moreover, if he has contrived to fix his attention, he soon becomes fatigued; thus shewing, that however the brain may on some occasions be disposed for over-action, it has not the power of supporting it, but rather that it exhausts itself by attempting to accomplish that to which it is utterly inadequate. Again, there is a susceptibility to moral impression, and a disposition to impulsive action, which shew that the patient is not to be depended upon. Reason with him, convince his judgment, see his resolution fully taken, apparently with all the immoveable determinativeness of conscious right; |