anything to do with the matter; for it is a fact, that the bodily condition immediately preceding death generally produces, or at least is accompanied by, such a quiescence of mind, that volition itself seems to slumber or consent to death, and there is almost always, after long and great debility, a peaceful anticipation of the coming event, as of a sleep from which the soul shall awake with reinvigorated energies for the activities of a better world.

Those who fear death would resist the coming event if they could, but in reality very few who are approaching their dissolution have any dread of it; and as Sir Benjamin Brodie observes, in his 'Psychological Enquiries' (part I. p. 152), 'It seems to me that the Author of our existence, for the most part, gives to us the fear of death when it is intended we should live, and takes it away from us when it is intended we should die.'

CHAPTER V.

MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND.

THE foregoing facts forcibly teach us, as indeed does every man's experience, that rest is as necessary as action, and that neither body nor mind continues fit for the business of this life without an occasional withdrawal of the will, either in sleep, or in a little quiet castle-building, or brown study.

The understanding takes repose

In indolent vacuity of thought,

And sleeps, and is refreshed.-COWPER.

Or as Burton, the Democritus of melancholy, says :— When I goe musing all alone,

Thinking of diverse things fore-known,

When I builde castles in the aire,

Voide of sorrow and voide of feare,

Pleasing myself with phantasmes sweete,
Methinks the time runs very fleete.*

The mind thus proceeds dreamily, or without effort, and therefore without that determination of blood to the brain which the continued exercise of volition and desire always occasions; for the will demands a large supply of blood, and calls up the heart in order to evolve nervous power for the energising of the muscles, as volition is peculiarly associated with muscular function, proving that healthy will is necessarily connected with bodily activity. This indolent vacuity, however, may

* Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1628. The Author's abstract.

become habitual, and then a legion of evils of the worst kind crowd in upon the soul; for irritability takes the place of natural action when the body is not duly employed.

Neglect of education often causes permanent inability to maintain attention. If the faculties be not strengthened by occasional exercise, under proper teaching, the soul becomes at length the slave of imagination, and is apt to dally with any empty fancy that may attract it. Some ignis fatuus, some foolish glitter of false light, is the only object likely to be pursued by a person who has not been taught from childhood the use of reason, or who has not enjoyed the blessing of high motives and encouragement imparted by example. If such a one read, it is for amusement, without the smallest power of grasping argument; and he being, from the idle habit of the brain, at the mercy of vulgar or ludicrous associations, the most serious subjects provoke loose ideas, instead of conducting to thoughtfulness and improvement. This kind of madness is very common with illeducated young persons, before the trials of life correct their vagrant fancies. Frivolity of mind sometimes settles into permanent insanity in such persons, and a multiplicity of unmeaning, unprofitable, unapplied thoughts succeed each other with ungoverned rapidity; for imagination must act when the will and judgment decline their duty; and thus, at length, the poor imbecile trifler, by the abuse of his nervous system, has his life converted into a miserable dream, and he becomes visibly a fool; for his form and features, action and expression, correspond with his mental imbecility. The pursuit of sensual, exciting, and enervating pleasuresanother turn which the mind not intellectually employed is apt to take speedily conducts the giddy youth, as many such cases testify, to the worst cells of the madhouse. Tho stock of enjoyment being soon exhausted,

the brain becomes useless; and, worn in body and debased in mind, the wretched victim of imaginative sensuality is early subjected to every species of morbid sensation and desire. Having neither taste nor energy for rational pursuit, without resource in intellect, affection, or religion, he becomes at length the prey of a terrible despair, which terminates only in idiocy or death.

Sentimentalism, and all other mental extravagances, are but the different directions which uncultivated minds are accustomed to take, and unhappily these dispositions are highly contagious. There is nothing so absurd, false, prodigious, but, either out of affection of novelty, simplicity, blind zeal, hope and fear, the giddyheady multitude will embrace it, and without examination approve it.'* All these are evinced by bodily peculiarities and disorders in keeping with their mental causes, and thus men's creeds and fancies are almost expressed in their bodies. The contagion of folly, moreover, spreads widely and rapidly, because the physical constitution of fallen man is in direct sympathy with those passions which most readily manifest themselves in the features, the attitude, the action, the language, the tone of voice, the turn of a hand. Those addicted to sensational reading, and who from this habit cannot be sufficiently stimulated to think and feel without a strong spice of horrors, are apt to be haunted in their day-dreams as well as their night-visions with the fancied faces of their vicious heroes. They cannot live without the excitement of novels or of gay companions, and are as much afraid to be left with their own dark minds as ill-trained children are to sleep alone. Those who are accustomed to this intellectual dram-drinking are liable to a moral delirium tremens, and are incapable of taking a practical view of life and its demands; becoming as fretful and restless as a confirmed smoker

* Burton.

without his pipe, or the habitually fuddled without access to stimulants, they perish as to all good use of this life, and can be recovered only by the Spirit that puts selfish indulgence to death, and thus prepares for a life to come.

We are all more or less moved by what we witness of feeling in others; and as, when the body is weakened by fatigue, nervous disorders-such as hysteria, convulsions, and epilepsy-may be communicated to multitudes by their compliance with the instinct of imitation; so the powerful exhibition of any passion or enthusiasm is apt to impress all those who witness it with a potency, proportioned to the vigour of their nerves and the degree of control which their reason is accustomed to exercise over their sensations. We may thus readily

account for the wide and almost universal diffusion of the dancing mania, and other maladies, partaking both of a moral and a physical character, during the dark ages and amongst people unblest by the restraining habits and elevating associations of rational and religious education. All history is full of evidence that ignorant minds yield at once to the force of sensual impressions; because the brain and nerves, when not governed by indwelling intelligence, are predisposed to obey whatever impulse from without may demand their sympathy. Hence, also, every species of violent emotion is irresistibly propagated amongst the ignorant; for insanity, and the most obstinate forms of nervous disorder, thus become epidemic; and, like the swine possessed by the legion of demons, those who are not fortified by truth rush one after another over the precipice to destruction. Thus great crimes are often propagated by imitation, and public executions are frequently followed by suicidal hangings. When considering the influence of sympathy, we shall find further illustrations of this subject. But not only are such thoughtless, ill-trained persons apt to suffer in