The subject which I am permitted to-night to bring before this Society is one I have long had at heart, and one which the daily experience of my practice at Hayward's Heath prevents my passing by merely on account of the difficulties which evidently attend the realisation of my hopes, should such an issue be granted to them. I refer to the want in our county of an asylum for the care and treatment of the insane of the middle class–a class with which, while separated by education and calling, we, in our profession, are, on the other hand, too often linked by the cominoli bond of narrow means and pressing daily cares.

Although the axiom ex nihilo nihil fit may unquestionably in strict logic be pronounced to be a pure assumption, for as much as it is not impossible that an enlarged experience may sometime furnish us with an instantia contradictoria, yet it is plainly necessary within the compass of human knowledge to consider it an established truth. Within human ken there is, indeed, no beginning, no end; the past is developed in the present, and the present in the prediction of the future; cause produces effect, and effect in its turn becomes cause. Dust is man, and to dust he returns; the individual passes away, but that out of which he is created does not pass away. The decomposition of one compound is the production of another, and death is an entrance into a new being. This is no new truth, although modern science is now for the first time making good use of it; the earlier Grecian philosophers distinctly recognised it, and it has many times been plainly enunciated since their time. “All things,” said Empedocles, “are but a mingling and a separation of the mingled, which are called birth and death by ignorant mortals.” Plato expressed himself in like manner; and the plain statement of the truth was one of the heresies of the unfortunate Giordano Bruno. The imagination of Shakspeare, faithful to the scientific fact, traces the noble dust of Alexander till it is found stopping a bung-hole, and follows imperious Caesar till he patches a hole to keep the wind away. The immortality of matter and of force is an evident necessity of human thought.

Two recent numbers of the ‘Journal of Mental Science’ contain two communications, respectively entitled—

1. 1. On the Principles and Method of a practical Science of Mind. By Dr. Thomas Laycock. (Journal, January, 1862.)

2. 2. On the practical use of Mental Science. By Dr. J. Stephenson Bushnan. (Journal, April, 1862.)

At the close of our last paper on personal identity we had just turned to the consideration of those apparent morbid divisions of the unity of consciousness which are sometimes, though happily rarely, brought under the notice of medical psychologists. Double consciousness, as we have already hinted, is essentially a result of diseased action, and comprehends a variety of conditions, distinguished from each other by differences in the mental symptoms, and by the relations to each other of the lucid and insane or of the two insane “oscillations.” In all of them, however, there is, for the time, a change, a perversion, or an exaltation, of the mental identity of the individual, of that principle which is, as it were, a centre round which the other faculties of mind revolve, and about which memories cluster. In the intensest forms of double consciousness, so called, mental identity is separated or multiplied into two distinct parts, so that two identities reside in the same individual, while in the milder manifestations of this condition there is a partial division of the same principle, a confusion of two natures in the same person. Where two alternating, though altogether unconnected, lives are lived by the same being, there is afforded, we think, a proof that mental identity is something more than consciousness, and so far independent in its affections. Indeed, it appears to us that the morbid states at present under examination would have been more aptly described as instances of double identity rather than of double consciousness. The phrase double consciousness is a contradiction in terms, for it is manifestly absurd to suppose that the mind can exist in two different states at the same moment. It is also a misleading expression, for this is not, of course, the meaning which it is intended to convey, nor is it at all descriptive of the conditions to which it is applied. These conditions are not necessarily characterised by any alteration of consciousness; that is to say, if consciousness is regarded as having reference simply to the present existing operation of the mind, for the man who inhabits alternately two distinct mental spheres may be perfectly conscious in both of them. In both of them his eyes, his ears, and all his organs of sense, may be normally active. In both of them, with equal accuracy, he may appreciate his surroundings, govern his movements, and express his ideas. In both of them he may be equally conscious, but he is not similarly conscious. The same world is inspected from different points of view in each. In the one it may be the real world, as it is to the perceptions of ordinary people; in the other, the world clad in the unsubstantial figments of a feverish fancy; or in both, a shadowy world, made up of metamorphosed realities. But whatever the metamorphoses may be, they arise, not from errors of perception, but of the personality—perceiving. A man who has passed into the abnormal phase of double consciousness sees all the familiar faces that surround him, but he does not recognise them; he hears loved and well-known voices, but they fall upon his ears as strange sounds; he beholds his household gods, but these do not, as they were wont, awaken emotion in his mind; in short, he regards everything in a new light and apart from former associations. The mind, shorn of its past, begins to learn the lessons of life anew, and perceives every object in relation to its new condition, the result of internal changes. The outward creation becomes subordinate to the inward idea, and is regarded only as it harmonises with the reigning delusion.

The system of exchange with other journals has enabled us to increase the number of periodicals from which we may cull matter for these excerpta, and may hope to maintain and to increase their interest and usefulness among our readers. Moreover, we shall not restrict our choice of extracts to the contents of foreign journals only, but extend it also to essays, brief memoirs, and to the summaries of the contents of works of more considerable magnitude which come before us, with the intention of more fully representing the state of opinion and practice prevailing on the Continent and in America, with regard to whatever concerns the pathology and treatment of insanity and the management of asylums. And it is another portion of our design, when detailing the opinions and labours of our fellow-workers in psychiatry in other countries, as far as practicable, to form an estimate of them by the light of, and in comparison with, those of our own countrymen; in other words, to attempt a critical examination of their value and importance.

From this acceptable contribution to medical literature, the faithful record of good work, communicated in a style as lucid as the matter is replete with careful observation and philosophic reflection, we shall venture to pillage a long extract, which will prove that the specialist also may refer to it with satisfaction and profit:—