COLEGATE D. OWINGS' CASE. 387

understand and make use of language; or judge or reason to any
tolerable degree; but only a little and imperfectly about things
present and very familiar to their senses. The defect in idiots
seems to proceed from want of quickness, activity, and motion in
the intellectual faculties, whereby they are deprived of reason;
whereas madmen seem to suffer by the other extreme: for they do
not appear to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined
together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths,
and they err as men do who argue right from wrong principles.
For, by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their fancies
for realities, they make right deductions from them. In short,
madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong proposi-
tions, but argue and reason right from them; but idiots make very
few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all. The erroneous
perception of some of the mental faculties, uncontrolled by its
comparing faculty, often becomes exceedingly extravagant, and
extends to the whole conduct of the individual. In such cases,
lunacy is so strongly marked as to be obvious at first sight, or upon
a single interview with the unhappy sufferer. The most strange,
whimsical, and incongruous associations are made of thoughts and
objects; matter and impertinency are mixed; and the mind is
involved in the most obstinate and unaccountable mistakes. During
these hallucinations, however, the perceptions seem to be, in many
respects quickened, and the maniac becomes exceedingly suspi-
cious, watchful, cunningj and adroit, (i)

(i) I Zoonomia, sec. 34, 2, 1; 2 ibid. Cla. 3, 1, 2; Rees' Cyclo. ,ver. Mental
Derangement; Locke Hum. Und. b. 2, c. 11, s. 12 & 13; Con. Ind. Insanity, 114,
300; 1 Coll. Id. 8, 36; 1 Par. & Fonb. 302, 311, 318; Rush Mind, 72,133,14, 257;
Shelf. Lun. cha. 3.

" Oh matter and impertinency mixt!

Reason in madness!" .Lear, act 4, ». 6.
" My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,

And makes as healthful music: It is not madness,

That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,

And I the matter will reword; which madness

Would gambol from." Hamlet, act 3, B. 4.

Sir Henry Halford, a celebrated English physician, relates an instance in which
this test, appealed to by Hamlet, was applied to a patient of his, who desired to make
his will. The sick man was requested to give directions how his will should be
made, and it was accordingly drawn, read to, and signed by him; but being suspected
to be of unsound mind, after a short interval, he was requested to repeat the direc-
tions he had given, "to reword the matter," but in endeavouring to do so, his mind
gambolled from it, and wandered so materially from his first directions, that he was