individual, unless it be Apemantus. The misanthropy of reality is individualized ; it points to all persons in turn, but to one only at a time.
This form of misanthropy may, and indeed often does exist, with none of the attributes of Insanity, but as the expression of that misleading influence, which evil dispositions exercise over the judgment. In not unfrequent instances, however, it passes the limits of sanity, and presents all the features of mental disease. Hate and suspicion become constant and uncontrol able emotions; belief in the misconduct of others develops into delusions, representing the commission of actual crimes; and with these mental symptoms the physical indications of brain disease are not wanting. No task of psychological diagnosis, however, is so arduous as that of determining the point at which exaggerated natural disposition of any kind becomes actual disease ; but as the boundaries of sane mind
are left behind, difficulty and doubt vanish. When sane malignity has developed into insane misan
thropy, a remarkable change is sometimes seen in the habits of the man, resembling the self-inflicted miseries of Timon. I once knew a gentleman whose educated and acute in tellect occupied itself solely in the invention of calumnies against every person with whom he was brought into contact.
This habit of mind was associated with utter negligence of the proprieties of life, and indeed of personal decency, so that it became absolutely requisite for his own sake, that he should
receive the protection of an asylum. A more close approxi mation to the misanthropy represented by the dramatist, because more general and uninfluenced by malign feeling, was, however, presented in the case of a poor creature in whose
expulsion from that which served for his Timon's cave, I took some part. For several years I had frequently passed by a desolate-looking house, which I believed to be uninhabi ted. Any strange thing, accompanied by change, strikes one's
