volitional theory. We are glad to observe, too, how fully he has adopted our own views of the emotional nature of insanity, and of the genesis of intellectual delusions or perverted emotions. These opinions, first advocated by us in the twelfth volume of the Medico-Chirurgical Review, in 1853, appear since that time to have been generally adopted by mental physicians, and it is now gratifying to obtain the concurrence of a great physiologist and philosopher.
The modes of disturbed emotion which tend to the production of insanity are not, according to our observations, the various forms of angry passion which are commonly called quick or bad temper, and the author has probably accepted, in too serious a sense, the remark made to him by Dr. Conolly on this point.
"The writer well remembers, when going with Dr. Conolly through one of the wards on the female side of the lunatic asylum at Hanwell, Dr. Conolly remarked to him, 'It is my belief that two-thirds of the women here have come to require restraint through the habitual indulgence of an originally bad temper'" (p. 663).
Conversational remarks of this kind are often made with little intention of their being taken accurately in support of scientific theories. Probably the doctor had just then been vexed with some extraordinary display of female temper, but we think that if questioned he would have admitted that insane women as a class have scarcely worse tempers than other women, and that angry feelings do not constitute the modes of emotion which more frequently lead to the evolution of insanity. Grief and pride, and that compound of hope and fear we call anxiety, these are the modes of emotion which are the frequent groundwork of mental disease.
In conclusion, we can strongly recommend this interesting and erudite work to our readers. If we think the automatism of the mental functions which physiologists are compelled to recognize is opposed adversely to the methods of strict science, by the much-debated and certainly unestablished doctrine of free-will, it must not be forgotten that the author, in his belief in the freedom of the will, has on his side the support of widely-spread opinion, and that it is somewhat unfortunate that his conscientious labors to prove and establish the physiological importance of free-will have fallen in this instance for review into the hands of one who, with Jonathan Edwards, believes that there is no such thing. The scope of the work is far larger than the comments which our space permits us to make would lead our readers to expect. It is replete with information, and remarkable for clearness of statement and of thought. Disagreeing, as we do, with its main purpose, we cannot avoid the expectation and the hope that it will provoke rivalry, and yet it richly deserves, and will no doubt occupy, a place in medical literature, the vacancy of which has been much felt, as a text-book on Mental Physiology.—Journal of Mental Science.
