Hence an indefinite series of consecutive judgments and reflections, varying infinitely according to the nature of the soil in which they are evolved ; hence all those forms of delirium by which the emotions of the per sonality reveal themselves, and which all have this common basis which unites them one with another, that the morbid conception implanted in the mind as a homogeneous element, and to some extent as a con ception contrary to nature, only reveals itself outwardly in a vague and cloudy manner, yet logically, notwith standing. The person under hallucination, who has vaguely conceived a suspicion in consequence of a low auditory impression which has affected his sensorium, outwardly expresses this state of indecision and vague information in the same vague manner ; and in this we still find the ordinary methods according to which the processes of the judgment manifest themselves in us. The person under hallucination is vague in his expres sions, because the impression which excites his per sonality is similarly vague and confused. He does not clearly express what he does not clearly understand. He uses only indistinct forrnul e to express the con ceptions that pass through his mind, always impersonal phrases ;—some one has told him so and so ; some one has warned him of so and so ; his expressions never being descriptive nor vivid, nor possessed of those distinct outlines that characterize impressions really seen and really heard.
Thus, in fine, we see to what an extent the morbid processes of however wide apart be the different forms they assume, obey the same •eneral laws as the regular processes of the judgment.
They pass through the same phases in their operation, by means of the same automatic machinery ; they follow logically the same routes ; and when they are at dis cord with reality, when, in a word, their operation has failed, it is because it was badly prepared as regards the arrival of the sensorial impression, and because the phenomena of perception have been disturbed in their essential connections. The human personality, carried away into this fatal cycle, obeys automatically, and inevitably becomes involved in the pathological dis orders that occur in the sensorium. It is incapable of resisting the strain ; and when it comes to its senses, and the disease is cured, it is rather owing to a calming down of the regions primarily affected, than to any action of the conscious volition. The mental condition improves with the physical, and if the divagation dis appears, and the individual ceases to be delirious, it is less by a spontaneous effort of his will, by virtue of which he abjures his false convictions and yields to the judgment of others, than because his brain becomes permeable by the surrounding reality, and because he absorbs sensorial impressions, and elaborates them as the generality of mankind do.
We know, indeed, how refractory to all sane reason are men with false ideas, and what a'waste of labour it is to endeavour to treat a partially delirious individual by means of logical reasoning.