Insanity is a disease at once so interesting, and so important, that it is not surprising that the subject should have been chosen by some who have preceded me in delivering the Croonian Lectures. In 1832, Dr. Seymour lectured upon the Medical Treatment of Insanity; in 1848, Dr. Conolly referred in his Lectures, more particularly to the Moral Causes and the Moral Treatment of the Disease; and in 1853, you, Mr. President, delivered your valuable Lectures on Medical Testimony and Evidence in Cases of Lunacy.

Since the following Paper was commenced, the appearance of the “Report from the Select Committee on Lunatics, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 27th July, 1860,” of which Committee Mr. Walpole is the respected Chairman, has, in a considerable degree, relieved the minds of physicians practising in the department of insanity, from the apprehensions occasioned by the draft of a Bill ordered to be printed in February, 1859. It would seem that the evidence brought before the Select Committee in disparagement of the proprietors of asylums for the insane, and in support of the alleged fact of the improper detention of persons in a state of sound mind, was deemed insufficient to warrant the meditated additions to stringent restrictions already existing. All the obnoxious clauses relative to the appointment of Medical Examiners, a kind of unqualified auxiliaries to the Commissioners in Lunacy, and who were to make secret reports, have been abandoned; as well as some other clauses, which had been the source of great and just dissatisfaction.

The Sixteenth rule of our Association as amended at the Annual Meeting in July 1855, is to the following effect:—

“That to insure a correct comparison of the results of treatment in the several institutions, it is strongly recommended to those Members who have the superintendence of public asylums to keep registers of the cases admitted, according to the form agreed on, at a meeting of the Association held at Lancaster in 1842; and to append to their respective annual reports, tabular statements on, as far as possible, a like uniform plan.”

Prefatory Remarks. It is necessary to preface the part which here commences, by stating that we must suppose that the reader has acquired an ordinary knowledge of the technicalities of logic, and has some acquaintance with the speculations of modern logical writers, especially with those of the late Sir W. Hamilton, and those of Mr. J. S. Mill. To be obliged to explain all the terms which we shall have occasion to use, would be inconvenient and irksome, and not at all in consonance with the brevity which it is necessary to observe in this place, and especially with that distinctness which is so needful to the successful exposition of what we have here undertaken. And why should we exercise our ingenuity in varying descriptions of mental processes already expressed with such abundant variety in the works of able logicians? Since then we do not seek to afford a systematic account, but merely to record the leading results which we have yet obtained from examining the landmarks on ground not recently explored by the investigators of logic, much minuteness will not be demanded from us. And we desire to state that all that is peculiar in these contributions arises from adopting this separate course.

Dr. Laycock's volumes present a formidable aspect. The correlations of consciousness and organisation is a sufficiently puzzling title. Open either volume where we will, we meet in the head lines such expressions as “mental dynamics,” “cerebral differentiation,” “teleotic homologies,” “correlations of the will,” “unifying functions of the brain,” and other hard words enough to make the hair on the head of him who is to read by compulsion, stand on end. Nevertheless the book is a readable book. Dr. Laycock, beyond doubt, has a metaphysical turn. He deals with the most abstruse topics with the easy air of a man whose life and conversation have been spent in speculation. We say this without prematurely pledging ourselves to the belief that he is even only for the most part sound in his opinions; for such is the nature of metaphysics, that a man may be a prodigious genius in that line, and yet it may be the fortune of the age in which he lives, never to discover that his works rest on some wholly baseless principle.