On hallucinations consistent with reason / by John Ordronaux.

  • Ordronaux, John, 1830-1908.
Date:
[1861]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On hallucinations consistent with reason / by John Ordronaux. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    pie and single abnormities of function, in relation to particular thoughts, feelings, or acts. As such, they do not invalidate a will or a contract, unless they are found infecting its subject-matter; because a rational act implies a rational agent, and with degrees of under- standing, or complexions of understanding, the law does not concern itself. If there be understanding and no fraud, the act will be valid. My subject then will be limited to the consideration of hallucinations consistent with reason. Hallucination, as I have elsewhere shown, differs from illusion in that it involves disturbance of the sensorium, as well as of the sen- ses. If I see an object distorted, it is simply an illusion, because a thing may be objectively true, and yet subjectively false. If I am pursued by sights, sounds, smells or tastes, for which no objective cause exists, this is an hallucination. Again, if I am conscious that the impression or idea is unwarranted by physical facts—that no sights, sounds, smells or tastes exist outside of myself—then the mind, by its competency to correct itself, proves the persistence of a state of health, equal at least to the behests of the will. If, on the contrary, I can not reason myself out of the falsity of an hallucination—if I can not dispel this daimon of the imagination—if I can not dissever it from surrounding phenomena, as the creature of the heat-oppress- ed brain—then the mind, permeated by this cloudy error, no longer obeys the will, and its faculties are completely swallowed up by the spectre before it. Horace has well depicted the character of this form of mental cloudiness, in the person of the citizen of Argos. “ At Argos lived a citizen well known, Who thought he heard the accustomed tone Of deep tragedians, on an empty stage, And sat, applauding with ecstatic rage.” And in Shakspeare’s comedy of “ Taming the Shrew,” a striking illustration of disordered idealization, is afforded in the person of Christopher Sly. The frolic consists in intoxicating Sly, and allow- ing him to recover himself in the midst of splendid surroundings, so that a true momentary hallucination is developed in him, and he im- agines himself “ a Lord, indeed.”