will appear to arise in a sort of insulated manner, since their original connexion with recognised sensations may have been long since forgotten. Accordingly this was the case when certain of Nicolai's ideas met with an unexpected renewal of their long-lost vividness; they appeared to be totally unconnected with the regular train of his thought. "I must observe," says this author, "that when I either think deeply on a subject, or write attentively, particularly when I have exerted myself for some time, a thought frequently offers itself, which has no connexion with the work before me, and this at times in a manner so lively, that it seems as if expressed in actual words.”

We have next to consider, that the faded ideas of Nicolai's mind, when again becoming the subject of consciousness, had acquired such an extreme degree of vividness as to frequently induce the illusions of phantasms; when, therefore, all knowledge was lost of the original sensations that corresponded to such spectral impressions, no wonder that this writer should express himself after the following manner :"None of the phantasms of my illness were of known places, objects, or persons." And, lastly, when the same metaphysician conducted his inquiry on the principle, that no ideas but those of which we are conscious were subject to the law of association, no small share of disappointment could fail to ensue, when he found himself unable to trace the origin of his phantasms to former impressions made in the usual manner upon his senses.

SECTION II.

The Influence of vivifying Causes upon Ideas of which we are conscious.

In the last section I endeavoured to shew, that an exciting cause may commence its influence after the ideas which composed the concluding part of an uninterrupted train of renovated feelings had ceased to become the object of consciousness; and that the effect of such an influence might be to revive the remembrance of long-forgotten ideas, and, as in Nicolai's case, to conjure up phantasms which the perplexed metaphysician could not refer to the law of association.

My next object is to point out other circumstances, under which a cause of mental excitement may vivify ideas. I have stated, that it may commence its action more prematurely, or before a train of ideas has so much decreased in vividness as to cease being the object of consciousness. But this circumstance of mental excitement has been so frequently illustrated in the course of this dissertation, that it requires little comment. The effect must be, that the order in which phantasms occur will be traced to the order of association in which ideas arise.

It is almost unnecessary to illustrate this vivifying action by the tabular view which is annexed.

But Nicolai has conceived, that the circumstances under which phantasms arise are not referable to the law by which past feelings are renovated.

Other philosophical seers, however, as I have shewn, have been more successful in tracing their phantasms to ideas vivified in the natural order of their association; and, in this case, it is almost unnecessary to repeat a remark I made, that such spectres could have been nothing more than highly-excited ideas, which had not antecedently ceased to be objects of consciousness. Indeed, Nicolai himself affords us a curious narrative of a gentleman, whose vivid recollections of the conversation which he might have heard in the course of the day, were morbidly revived in the evening, but in states of intensity far exceeding those of the original impressions. "My much-lamented friend, Moses Mendelsohn," he observes,

had, in the year 1792, by too intense an application to study, contracted a malady which also abounded with particular psychological apparitions. For upwards of two years he was incapacitated from doing any thing; he could neither read nor think, and was

rendered utterly incapable of supporting any loud noise. If any one talked to him rather in a lively manner, or if he himself happened to be disposed to lively conversation, he fell in the evening into a very alarming species of catalepsis, in which he saw and heard every thing that passed around him, without being able to move a limb. If he had heard any lively conversation during the day, a Stentorian voice repeated to him, while in the fit, the particular words or syllables that had been pronounced, with an impressive accent, or loud emphatic tone, and in such a manner that his ears reverberated."

CHAPTER VI.

THE EFFECT OF MORBIFIC EXCITEMENTS OF THE MIND WHEN HEIGHTENED BY THE VIVIFYING INFLUENCE OF HOPE AND FEAR.

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Spem mihi nescio quam vultu promittis amico."-QVID.

"Thou to whom the world unknown

With all its shadowy shapes is shown;
Who seest, appall'd, the unreal scene,
While Fancy lifts the veil between,

Ah, Fear! ah, frantic Fear!
I see, I see thee near."

COLLINS.

OUR inquiry into the effect produced on mental consciousness by strong excitements of the mind, is at length so far advanced, that a fit opportunity occurs for noticing the phenomena attending other occasions besides those which are morbid, on which various degrees of vividness are imparted to our feelings.

In the last chapter I took occasion to remark, that when any sensation is renewed, it has a tendency to become on each occasion of its repetition less vivid, and when followed by a revival of the feelings with which it was before associated, such revived feelings evince a similar tendency on each occasion of their re