A philosophical physician said, in speaking of the first edition of this work: "If the author had been satisfied to treat the vast question of hallucinations as medical men usually treat a question of pathology, the medical press would have announced his monograph according to custom, with simple praises and very inoffensive criticisms; medical science would have numbered one more good work, and so the matter would have ended. But such has not been the case. M. Brierre de Boismont, in giving a less scholastic turn to his treatise, and introducing questions of historic psychology, has succeeded in electrifying both the press and the public. Thence have arisen those warm eulogies which have appeared in excellent journals, unconnected with medicine; thence those keen, but polite criticisms which have been impartially received in a scientific magazine. It appears to me that this is a great triumph. It is no easy matter to make the chords of contemporary criticism, in general so slack, thus vibrate. The success is still greater, if a similar result has been obtained in defending the cause of truth and common sense."*

This opinion strikes more forcibly as emanating from one whose judgment on such points is incontestable, and as being an immediate reply to attacks directed against our opinions in two highly esteemed journals. Let us, then, assert that if the identity of lunacy and hallucination has been contended for by eminent doctors, the doctrine that we have advocated, of the coexistence of reason with hallucinations, has been embraced and defended by very celebrated writers of the medical press - Messrs. Reveille, Parise, Carriere, Cerise, Amedee Latour, Dechambre, Gouraud, Tardieu, Fuster, Miguel in France, Sig-mond in England, Ideler in Germany, etc. Two authors, Messrs.

* Cerise, Examen des Hallucinations.

Michea and Szafkowski, who have published, since myself, excellent works on hallucinations, have also acknowledged that they might exist with sanity. Finally, M. Falret has expressed a similar opinion in his course of mental maladies. To these scientific authorities may be added the names of Victor Cousin, George Sand, and Lamartine, who have maintained similar opinions.

The first position then of this book is clearly established. We have protested against the hypothesis which would make hallucination a constant symptom of lunacy; and have demonstrated by the axioms of science alone that, in certain cases, it may be considered as a phenomenon purely physiological. Attacking the very heart of the subject, our object has been to combat the doctrine that would refer intellectual and moral acts to the pathological state of the organs.

We have been blamed for introducing philosophy into medicine. "A vast abyss, it is said, separates philosophical questions from those of practical and experimental medicine; the understanding, the mind, the soul, must be left where this principle should rest. The physician who would be useful and practical, must only study the organs, their functions, the laws or the forces which regulate or disturb their action; in short, there is no advantage in introducing spiritualism into medicine; because spiritualism, the object of faith, of feeling, of internal conviction, can neither be understood nor proved by human reason, and it is imprudent to submit it to such a criterion."

If a preface offered a field for discussion, I should inquire what is meant by laws and forces which regulate or disturb the action of the organs; but the question has too vast a range. To us, as to millions, man is an intelligence served by organs; to account only for the latter, would be to tear a quill from the pinion of spiritual activity. If there be one branch of medicine in which this opinion would offer the strangest paradox, without doubt it is that of mental diseases. They incessantly oblige the physician to resort to the most difficult metaphysical problems, unless, like a celebrated scholar, he masters the difficulty of psychological facts, by considering them as a secretion of the brain. Have the consequences of such a doctrine been well considered? If man be but like other animals, this doctrine does not alone apply to derangements of mind; it has results which touch closely on the general interests of society. But these consequences, says an esteemed writer, lead to such deplorable extremes, that one is sometimes tempted to doubt the power of human reason, and involuntarily to inquire if the first of animals be not destined, like all the others, blindly to obey a superior force, instead of endeavoring to found for himself his laws of conduct and his institutions.

We therefore consider ourselves following out the truth, in maintaining the necessity of allying philosophy and medicine, especially in mental maladies. Acknowledged partisans of the principle of human duality, we reject the opinion which can only see in lunacy a pure and simple nervousness, like chorea, hysteria, and epilepsy; and in reason the product of a physiological action entirely material. To us, ideas have a different nature from sensations. Psychological facts cannot be placed on the same line with those that affect the senses. Although the brain may be the seat of intellectual operations, it is not the creator of them. The notion of the idea exists before that of its representation, which we think M. Ferdinand Berthier has clearly proved in his analysis of the faculties of the deaf and dumb.

The intervention of philosophy in medicine is incessantly observable. See how a false idea wanders on the confines of reason and madness; and although its true nature may be appreciated, does it not involve the most interesting and delicate questions on the existence of hallucination with the integrity of the faculties, on its proper position in the production of mental diseases?

Does not the analysis of the different kinds of delirium present a solid and experimental foundation to metaphysics? Is not the study of mysticism an indispensable preparation to the study of derangement, by tracing in a picturesque and special style the most delicate changes in the understanding and in the heart? Do not the enchainment of laws and ideas, the various evolutions of the operations of mind, its sudden increase of power, the awakening of unknown faculties, the return of reason in many lunatics on the approach of death, presentiments, foresight, known facts of magnetism and somnambulism, border on most profound mysteries of the soul? And what have the organs to do with these curious phenomena, if not to serve as their theatre? But what would they be if the workman did not direct all the threads?