Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/279



Section VI
IMPERFECTIONS IN THE RATIONAL FACULTY.



persons differ from others, in that they judge wrong of past or future facts of a common nature; that their affections and actions are violent and different from, or even opposite to, those of others upon the like occasions, and such as are contrary to their true happiness; that their memory is fallacious, and their discourse incoherent; and that they lose, in great measure, that consciousness which accompanies our thoughts and actions, and by which we connect ourselves with ourselves from time to time. These circumstances are variously combined in the various kinds and degrees of madness; and some of them take place in persons of sound minds, in certain degrees, and for certain spaces of time: so that here, as in other cases, it is impossible to fix precise limits, and to determine where soundness of mind ends, and madness begins. I will make some short remarks, deduced from the theory of these papers upon the following states of mind, which all bear some relation to one another, and all differ from the perfection of reasoning natural to adults, according to the ordinary course of things, viz.


 * 1) The erroneousness of the judgment in children and idiots.
 * 2) The dotage of old persons.
 * 3) Drunkenness.
 * 4) The deliriums attending acute or other distempers.
 * 5) The frequent recurrency of the same ideas in a course of study or otherwise.
 * 6) Violent passions.
 * 7) Melancholy.
 * 8) Madness.

The Erroneousness of the Judgment in Children and Idiots.

Children often misrepresent past and future facts; their memory is fallacious; their discourse incoherent; their affections and actions disproportionate to the value of the things desired and pursued; and the connecting consciousness is in them as yet imperfect. But all this follows naturally from the observations made above concerning the methods in which we learn to remember and relate past facts, to judge of future ones, to reason, and to express ourselves suitably to each occasion; also in which our hopes and