Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/187

172 succour nigh, the emotional state has changed into one less painful, yet indicating more profound disease. The proud and passionate king is now wild and gay, singing aloud, crowned with wild flowers; his incoherence is some times complete, and no idea rests in his mind with sufficient

tenacity to be called a delusion. This new phase of mania is as wonderfully and exactly true to nature as the one

which it follows in consistent development. The more perfect incoherence is now dissociated from formal delusion. The emotional disposition natural to the man, and hitherto exaggerated by the wrongs he has suffered, is now com pletely lost and perverted by the progress of disease. Though he forgets that he is no longer a king, the regal deportment is altogether lost; though he does not forget his

daughteº

injuries, and can compare their conduct with that of Gloster's bastard, the fierceness of anger is quenched. The state of mind in which a delusion is suggested by a casual circumstance, just as a dream is suggested by casual sensa tions, in which the false idea thus originating is dwelt

upon and examined in its various bearings as if it were the representative of truth in a sane mind; this intel lectual state has given way to the one of more profound injury called incoherence, in which false mental associa tions and false ideas arise and fade too easily, too transiently to be called delusions.

A dozen false ideas chase each

other in half as many minutes.

Strictly speaking, perhaps

each of the false idea—images of incoherence deserves the

name of delusion, although it is not usually given. The simple and important fact may be stated with regard to Lear thus: that in the first phase of his mania the false ideas were few, and had some consistency and duration; in the present phase

they are numerous, disjointed, and transitory. “Edg. The safer sense will ne'er accommodate His master thus.