COLEGATE D. OWINGS' CASE.—1 BLAND. 365

considered as a distempered condition, occasioned by disorder or
accident, from which the recovery of the patient is deemed possi-
ble and probable; and therefore he and his property are always
disposed of with a view to a recovery. 1 Coll. Id. 33; Beverley's
Case, 4 Co, 124; Donegal's Case, 2 Ves. 408; Attorney-General v.
Parnther, 3 Bro. Ch. Ca. 441; Fitzgerald, a lunatic, 2 Scho. & Lefr.
437; Shelf. Lun. 36.

Dotage is that feebleness of the mental faculties which pro-
ceeds from old age. It is a diminution or decay of that intellec-
tual power which was once possessed. It is the slow approach of
death; of that irrevocable cessation, without hurt or disease, of
all the functions which once belonged to the living animal. The
external functions gradually cease; the senses waste away by
degrees; and the mind is imperceptibly visited by decay. The
inert and dull senses transmit the passing occurrences so imper-
fectly to the sensorium, that they leave none, or but a very transi-
tory impression there. Hence long past transactions are often
remembered with much more exactness than those which have
taken place recently. In the second childhood, as in the first,
all the present makes but a faint and fleeting impression upon
the mind. Hence the judgment in both stages, is weak, and the
conduct unsteady and frivolous. (m)

* But a man in his dotage is evidently distinguishable from
an idiot, who has no mind at all; a patient in delirium, whose 390
mind is ungoverned and ungovernable; or a lunatic, whose mind is
in ruins, broken up, and the component parts of which are at vari-
ance with each other. The old man has a mind, worn and in a
state of decay, it is true, but still, so much of it as remains, is
feebly governed upon the principles of its former sound condition;
its conceptions are not impertinently mixed; nor is it grossly mis-
guided in any of the feeble operations of which it is capable.
Perhaps the most striking peculiarity of dotage is its imbecility
of perception. The senses not supplying the mind as usual with
matter for exertion, it decays for want of use; and becomes inca-
pable of receiving any additional ideas, or of following through
any unusually catinated, or long combination of thought. Hence

(m) "The soul in all bath one intelligence;

Though too much moisture in an infant's brain,
And too much dryness in an old man's sense,

Cannot the prints of outward things retain:
Then doth the soul want work, and idle sit;

And this we childishness and dotage call." Davies.

Or, aB has been said, it is that decline of all the powers of the man, when
Nature, as it grows again towards earth
Is fashion'd for the journey, dull, and heavy. Cowper.

Shakspeare's As You Like It, Act 2, B. 7, and second part of Henry 4th, Act
1, s. 2.