The Philosophy of Mystery · 29 of 35

Abstraction of Intellect

“I love to cope him in these sullen fits,

For then he’s full of matter.”

As You Like It.

Astr. So that in these cases it is one faculty only which is interrupted, and not the combined intellect. But all the faculties but one may be deranged, may they not?

Ev. Yes. When the patient is insane on all points but one, we term it, “Folie raisonnante.”

The very idiot, indeed, is often fond of most exact arrangement. The savage of Aveyron instantly put things in order when they were deranged.

White, in his “History of Selborne,” records the propensities of an idiot, who, he says, was a very Merops-apiaster, or Bee-bird. Honey-bees, humblebees, and wasps, were his prey: he would seize them, disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Except in this adroitness, he had no understanding.

Pinel states the case of a mechanical genius, who became insane, believing his head to be changed. Yet he invented mechanism of the most intricate combinations. We are informed, too, of a clergyman, who was ever insane, but when delivering his discourses from the pulpit.

I believe some parts of a national establishment were constructed from the plans of one of its inmates, who was to all other intents and purposes a madman.

Dr. Uwins once told me, that some of the lines in his biographical work were written by a maniac in the Hoxton Asylum, who was ever aware of the approach of his mania. These lines were thought to be among the best in the work.

Nay, idiots will sometimes reason, and work out a syllogism. I think Dr. Conolly relates a story of two, who quarrelled, because each asserted that he was the Holy Ghost; at length, one decided that the other was the Holy Ghost, and that he could not be, because there were not two.

From this “folie raisonnante” there is an easy transition to that eccentricity which seems to be a set-off against the strength of mind of the deep thinker. The permanent derangement, however, we term insanity; the transient, eccentricity.

Marullus informs us that Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian Lake, and at last inquired where he was. Archimedes rushed into the street naked from the bath, in an ecstacy at having discovered the alloy in the crown of Syracuse. Pinel tells us of a priest, who, in an abstract mood, felt no pain, although part of his body was burning.

“Viote,” says Zimmerman, “during his fits of mathematical abstraction, would often remain sleepless and foodless for three days and nights.”

And Plato thus records an instance of the abstraction of Socrates:—“One morning he fell into one of these raptures of contemplation, and continued standing in the same posture till about noon. In the evening, some Ionian soldiers went out, and, wrapping themselves up warm, lay down by him in the open field, to observe if he would continue in that posture all night; which he did until the morning, and as soon as the sun rose he saluted it, and retired.” This is mental abstraction with a vengeance!

Astr. I will laugh with you at these oddities, Evelyn; yet not a whit less ludicrous are some of the vagaries of the learned Thebans of modern times. The abstractions of Newton were proverbial. It may not be true, that he once inserted the little finger of a lady, whose hand he was holding, into his pipe, instead of a tobacco-stopper; or that he made a small hole in his study-door for the exit of a kitten, by the side of a large one for the cat: it is certain, however, that he was once musing by his fire, with his knees close to the bars, when, finding his legs in danger of being grilled, he rang his bell, and, in a rage, desired his servant to take away the grate.

Dr. Hamilton, author of the acute “Essay on the National Debt,” visited his college class in the morning with his own black silk stocking on one leg, and his wife’s white cotton on the other; and would sometimes occupy the whole class time by repeatedly removing the students’ hats from his table, which they as often placed there. He would run against a cow, and beg madam’s pardon, hoping he had not hurt her; and he would bow politely to his wife in the street, without recognition. Yet with all this he would, at any time, directly converse on a scientific subject beautifully and eloquently.

Bacon, the sculptor, in a rich full dress was finishing Howard’s statue in St. Paul’s, and, being cold, put on a ragged green and red shag waistcoat. In this trim he walked out to call on some ladies in Doctors’ Commons. On his return he told his son that they were sadly disposed to laugh about nothing. On being convinced, however, of his condition, he remembered the people he passed also giggled, and cried out, “He does it for a wager.”

Hogarth paid a visit, in his new carriage, to the Lord Mayor, and, after his audience, walked home in his state clothes, leaving his carriage at a private door of the Mansion-House.

Dr. Harvest, of Ditton, a very learned man, would unconsciously allow his horse to be loosened from his grasp, and walk home with the bridle on his arm. He would walk into his church on Sunday, with his fowling-piece. He would write a letter, address it, and send it to three different persons. He lost a lady, the daughter of a bishop, as his wife, by going out to catch gudgeons, forgetting that it was the morning of his marriage ceremony; and he once threw a glass of wine at backgammon, and swallowed the dice!

After this we can no longer call caricatures the abstract philosopher who boiled his watch, and held the egg in his hand as the time-keeper; or the American, who put his candle to bed, and blew himself out; or the lady, who believed herself to be a post-letter, but waited patiently until the letter-sorter had examined her, to ascertain if she was single or double.

Ev. There is some hope of you now, dear Astrophel, for you are returning to matters of fact.

From the deep interest of dramatic scenes may spring the same apathy as that which you have illustrated. Dr. Fordyce writes of one who forgot he was sitting on a hard bench, when Garrick brought in his dead Cordelia in his arms. And even the impression of fatigue and pain will often, for a time, leave us, when we are gazing on architectural or picturesque beauty.

Ida. Are not those minds which are easily influenced by morbid sensibility, the minutiæ of existence, often thus depressed into a condition somewhat resembling the moroseness of these half-idiots?

Ev. Ay, even the mighty minds of heroes and of monarchs. Queen Elizabeth was often wont to sit alone, in the dark, in sorrow and in tears. We know not if the fate of Essex or of Mary were the cause, but the marble mind of Elizabeth was dissolved before she died. In Sully’s “Mémoires,” also, we read that the solitude of Charles IX., of France, was saddened by remorse, for his memory was ever pealing in his ear the shrieks and groans of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. During this influence we may often find that the features or actions are so deeply expressive as to prove an involuntary, though correct, index of the thought. According to the passions or subjects which occupy the mind, will be the play of feature or the movement of the body.

“We might almost suppose the body thought.”

This “brown study” is the slightest form of that state which the French term ennui, in which the mind too often is left to prey upon itself, having, as it were, no sympathy with the world. Its more severe symptoms are those of misanthropy, melancholy, and hypochondriasis, inducing but too often that extreme tedium vitæ, the climax of which is suicide. Out of the first, which is but the mere ripple of derangement, we may be laughed or coaxed; nay, it may yield to the positive suffering of the body. The second is like the deep still water, the awful calmness antecedent to a tempest. In the words of Lord Erskine, “Reason is not driven from her seat, but distraction sits down on it along with her, holds her trembling on it, and frights her from her propriety. And then comes often o’er the mind a very coward sentiment, echoing the demoniac resolution of Spenser’s “Cave of Despair”:

“What if some little payne the passage have,

That makes frayle flesh to fear the better wave?

Is not short payne well borne, that brings long ease,

And layes the soule to sleep in quiet grave?”

Ida. Despair will often rouse even the most sensitive beings to the most patient fortitude. How is this?

Ev. Not rouse, but depress—not fortitude, but apathy. I could excite your deepest sympathy and wonder, Ida, by the history of the young and beautiful Ann G——n, who was hung for child-murder; in whom the convulsive agony which followed her sentence at length ended in a resignation which some would term heroism. During the nights in which I myself watched her slumbers, both from deep scientific interest, and the request of her judges, her actions were automatic; her existence was one perfect trance; and she met her fate as if life and its consciousness had long been parted.

Even an intense blow will sometimes, as it were, annihilate sensibility, creating an icy apathy to all subsequent inflictions; which was the effect on Mandrin, during the tortures of the wheel; for he smiled at the third blow, to find that it hurt him so little.

Ida. Then we are to contrast the state of the unhappy girl with the voluntary endurance of heroism depending on the power of concentrating mind? The almost superhuman endurance of pain is finely displayed among the North American Indians, who even chant their own death-song calmly amidst worse than the tortures of the Inquisition, or sustain with a smile those probationary trials for the dignities of a chief, or the admission to the class of warriors, that are modelled with all the refinement of cruelty. On the banks of the Orinoco, especially, (if Robertson be right, or Gumilla, his authority, to be believed,) the ordeal begins by a rigid fast, reductive of the body’s energy; then commences a flaying of his body by lashes as dreadful as the knout, by the hands of the assembled chiefs, and then, if the slightest sensibility be evinced, he is disgraced for ever. His raw and reeking flesh is then exposed to the stings and venom of insects and reptiles, and again suspended over the scorching and suffocating flames of herbs of the most disgusting odour; and, to close this tale of torture, it is not seldom that the victim sinks in mortal agonies beneath the dreadful ordeal.

Ev. The two great springs of voluntary endurance of pain are religion and honour. Thus, among other heroic acts of England’s martyrs, Cranmer held the apostate hand which signed his recantation in the midst of the flames until it was wasted. And the unyielding fortitude with which the victim bore the rack and other excruciating tortures of the popish Inquisition is almost beyond belief.

The fanaticism of the wild enthusiasts of the east it were profanation to call religion; but with the hope of rejoining her husband in the realms of bliss, the Hindoo widow clasps his corpse in her arms, and, without a sigh, sets the torch to his funeral pile. And, to inherit the paradise of Brahma, the Fakir or Yoghee keeps his fist clenched for years, until the nails grow through his hand; or forces the hooks between his ribs, and whirls himself aloft until he expires, or throws himself prostrate beneath the crushing wheels of Juggernaut.

It is written that Cardan rendered himself by great efforts insensible to external irritants.

And analogous to this, was the almost superhuman effort of that determined action of Muley Moloch quoted in the “Spectator,” from Vertot’s “Revolutions of Portugal:”—“In a condition of extreme prostration he was borne in a litter with his army. On the sounding of a retreat, although in a half-dying state, he leaped from the litter, and led his quailing troops to a charge, which ended in victory. Ere this was accomplished his life was fast ebbing, and, reclining on his litter, and enjoining the secrecy of his staff, with his finger on his lip, he died.”

But my analysis will be incomplete, if I do not revert to a point that I had almost forgotten. These abstract moods have often been confounded with the visions of slumber, being adduced as proofs of the perfection of mind during sleep.

You reminded me, Astrophel, of the brilliant parody composed by Mackenzie, of the versification of Voltaire and La Fontaine, of the solution of the difficult problem by Condorcet, of the discussion of abstruse points of policy by Cabanis. You might have added Condillac, who asserts that when he was composing the “ Cours d’Etudes,” he often left a chapter unfinished, but had it all in his mind when he awoke. And Franklin assures us, that he often dreamed of the issue of important events in which he was engaged, believing the vision to be the influence of inspired prophecy. Dr. Haycock, of Oxford, too, is said to have composed and preached sermons in his sleep, in despite even of buffetings.

These are not dreams, but the reveries of philosophers and poets. The faculties of perception are suspended: one only object occupies the mind, and the impression on the memory is vivid and permanent. Of this reverie I do not recollect a more interesting illustration than the “ Dream of Tartini,” and its exquisite product, “La Sonata di Diavolo.” This admirable violinist and once esteemed composer, relates the following anecdote as the origin of his chef-d’œuvre, the “Devil’s Sonata.” “One night, it was in the year 1713, I dreamed that I had made over my soul to his satanic majesty. Every thing was done to my wink; the faithful menial anticipated my fondest wishes. Among other freaks, it came into my head to put the violin into his hands, for I was anxious to see whether he was capable of producing anything worth hearing upon it. Conceive my astonishment at his playing a sonata, with such dexterity and grace, as to surpass whatever the imagination can conceive. I was so much delighted, enraptured, and entranced by his performance, that I was unable to fetch another breath, and, in this state, I awoke. I jumped up and seized upon my instrument, in the hope of reproducing a portion, at least, of the unearthly harmonies I had heard in my dream. But all in vain: the music which I composed under the inspiration, I must admit the best I have ever written, and of right I have called it the ‘Devil’s Sonata;’ but the falling off between that piece and the sonata which had laid such fast hold of my imagination is so immense, that I would rather have broken my violin into a thousand fragments, and renounced music for good and all, than, had it been possible, have been robbed of the enjoyment which the remembrance afforded me.”

In the cases of precocious children, who are said to have “lisp’d in numbers,” I do not doubt that the secret may be referred to this concentration of genius. Mozart composed a sonata at the age of four. The precocious little girl, Louisa Vinning, who was called the “ Infant Sappho,” has yet eclipsed Mozart in this; that at the age of two years and eight months she sang repeatedly a melody perfectly new, and so perfect, that it was written down from her lips, and entitled, “The Infant’s Dream.” During all this, the little creature was in such a state of apparent abstraction, that it was believed by all around her that she walked and talked in her sleep.

These mental concentrations can, by some enthusiasts, be produced at pleasure. The paroxysm of the improvisatore, for instance. But it is an effort which, like the dark hour of the Caledonian seer, is not endured with impunity: it points, indeed, emphatically to the limit beyond which mind should not be strained.

The Marquis de Moschati expressed himself to us, as experiencing excitement like intoxication when he sat himself to compose, and threw his whole soul into his subject. It commenced with irregular and laborious breathing, excessive palpitations, vertigo, tinnitus aurium,—the perception of objects being lost. Then came romantic fancies, like the visions of opium, “thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” At the conclusion was felt excessive exhaustion, and a state of mild catalepsy ensued for five or six days together. This excited talent, therefore, is an evanescent madness.

Cast. Another fling at poesy. Were I an improvisatrice, you would not so libel my inspiration. “Listen, lords and lady gay.” In the summer of 18—, after the Eisteddfod at Cardiff, we wandered over the hills to Caerphilly, the gigantic towers of Owain Glyndwr.

As I lay under the celebrated Hanging Tower, which is projecting eleven feet beyond its base, I reflected on the strange circumstance of the arrest of so gigantic a mass in its progress to prostration. “What,” I exclaimed, “is the power by which it is suspended?” My imagination heightened my reverie, and placed before me the image of the Destroyer, with his emblematic scythe and glass, and he answered me thus: —

“Half-dreaming mortal, listen! It is I,

Time, the destroyer, whose gigantic arm

Lifted this pond’rous ruin from its base.

Why hangs it thus, arrested in its course,

In bold defiance of attraction’s law?

Why, like its once proud lord, renown’d Glyndwr,

Sinks not its mouldering grandeur to the ground?

Behold an emblem of vitality!

A type of mortal man, of thee, of all!

Like this grey wall, thy tott’ring steps are staid,

And on a thread thy fragile life is hung;

Yet leaning, ever leaning, to the grave.

One moment more, an atom of an age,

This mould’ring ruin, trembling on its base,

May, like the marble shafts of lone Palmyra,

Be hurl’d to earth, and crumble into dust;

And, like the ruin, thou!”

And yet I was not mad.

Ev. I talk not of a gentle heart like yours, fair Castaly; but of that extreme, when ideas are received by a mind nearly exhausted, and lie for a while dormant. As sleep and fatigue wear off, and consciousness returns, these images are suddenly and brilliantly lighted up. If intense impression shall have been made on the heart or mind, intense will be the abstraction of the enthusiast. Until one thought is touched, the patient is sane; but, when the chord vibrates, then, as in the pathetic episode of Sterne’s Maria, the paroxysm is expended in a flood of tears, or in a mad fit, or in a gush of wildest music.

To the latter cause, we owe many beauties of composition. Demarini, the Italian tragedian, acted a prison-scene before Paganini, in which, with the pathos of deep distress, the victim prayed for death. The maestro retired to bed, but not to sleep; his excited brain relieved its painful sympathies by the composition of the “ Adagio apassionato.”

Carl Maria Von Weber witnessed the waltzing of his wife with a gallant cavalier. He retired in a mood of jealous frenzy, and expressed the ideas which rankled in his heart by the “ Invitation à la Walse.”

Astr. Well, is there not something special in all this?

Ev. Yes, truly,—a power imparted to some, withheld from others,— genius.

Astr. Yet, in explanation of this abstract reverie, the phrenologist will, I dare say, satisfy himself by merely deciding that the organ of concentrativeness is strongly developed.

Ev. It is clear, at least, that the deep interest of the subject of reflection overbalances the influence of the external senses. The impression of objects is either too slight, or rapid, to produce perception, or (in other words), however the impression may be imparted to the brain by the nerve, the brain is not sensible of it, and there is therefore no perception.

So intense indeed has been this influence, that Pliny contemplated the volcanic philosophy amidst the ashy cloud of Vesuvius by which he was destroyed. And Archimedes was so intent in solving a problem, during the siege of Syracuse, that no sense of danger impelled him to avoid the storm, or fly from the dagger of the assassin.

While Parmegiano was painting at Rome the “Vision of St. Jerome,” which now adorns the National Gallery of England, the famous siege of that city was concluded by its spoliation. Yet Parmegiano (absorbed with his painting) was unconscious of the tumult, until his studio was burst open by some of the soldiers of the enemy. A similar story is told, also, of Protogenes, when Demetrius was laying siege to Rhodes.

Cast. The flappers of Laputa would soon have dispelled this reverie.

Ev. But if they had thus flourished their official bladders, perhaps the “Principia Mathematica” had not been written; for Newton explained the extent of his discoveries by his “always thinking unto them.”

Somewhat like the effect of intense study on the mind, the muscles of the limbs will be influenced by one long-directed habit. Paganini was observed, on board a steam-boat, constantly to repose on the sofa. During this state of reverie, his left arm assumed the peculiar attitude in which he held his violin, until he saw that he was noticed, when he altered its position.

The right hand of Benjamin West, of which I saw a posthumous model at Lord de Tabley’s, appeared to have taken that form in which he was wont to hold the pencil.

By this concentration, this full possession of the mind, the wildness of fancy in the dark is often the source of terror; but this is ever lessened or dispelled by any sound or sight which presents a subject to the perceptive faculty. Such is the sudden glimmer of a light, the barking of a dog, or the almost instinctive effort of the school-boy,

“Whistling aloud to keep his courage up.”

All these cases, then, indicate concentration of mind. “Mental conception is uninfluenced by conscious perception.”

I may add, that, in the heat of engagement, soldiers and sailors are often unconscious of being even seriously wounded. In the battle of Lake Thrasymene, the armies of Rome and Carthage were so absorbed in the tumult and din of war, that an earthquake, which spread desolation around them, was unheeded by these determined soldiers.

Ida. I have gleaned enough from your illustrations, Evelyn, to believe that we may explain by them that solemn and last reverie of the dying, when all other ideas have ceased to influence, but the most impressive —

“The ruling passion strong in death;”

when earthly life is on the wane, and the spirit, in this expiring thought, takes its last farewell of the flesh. I remember some beautiful evidences of this influence.

It was observed that Porson, after a paralytic fit, scarcely uttered a word of English; but to the last moment spoke Greek fluently.

Dr. Adam (a master of Sir Walter Scott), on the subsidence of delirium, exclaimed, “It grows dark—the boys may dismiss;” and instantly expired.

The last words of Dr. Abercrombie were addressed to an imaginary patient, regarding the care of his digestive functions.

Some time after the trial of the Bristol magistrates, Lord Tenterden lapsed into a stupor from exhaustion. A short period before death he rallied, and, after conversing with his friends for a few minutes, he raised himself on his couch, and said, “Gentlemen of the jury, you may retire;” and then fell back and expired.