The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-05-31
THE VISIONARY TEMPERAMENT.

common among some people than is generally
suspected. The child distinguishes with
difficulty between the real and the visionary
world. His fantasies are laughed at, their
incongruities noted and the vision found
out and discredited; it is blunted by repres-
sion. But the visionary tendency remains
through adult life, and when the conditions
are favorable to supernaturalism, the seers
of visions and dreamers of dreams come to
the front. 1t is not so much the
evoking Of faculty before non
existent as it is the appearance of one
long smothered, and which is suddenly
allowed expression and development without
the safeguards of health and reason-a sound
mind in sound body. That Mrs Wood
worth can exercise over her audiences such
marvellous power as the records show is an
illustration of the universally of the vision
airy temperament, which has manifested itself
SO widely in certain periods of history, and in
epochs of church and of national life.
More or less remotely the condition which
leads to trance and vision is physical one;
hence it is only incidentally related to degree
Of culture or knowledge, to any age or belief.
Fasting, want of sleep, solitary musing, suffer
ing, mental excitement and nervous irritation
are among the exciting and melting causes.
The spiritual discipline undergone for pur-
poses of self-control and self modification has
often led to trance and vision. The great do
not escape. Napoleon had his star. '1tis be-
fore me, brilliant; it has never abandoned me;
see it on all great occasions; it commands
me to 60 forward; it is constant sign of good
fortune to me-" Not few persons of emf
hence formerly entertained an equally firm
belief in astrology. The eccentricity that
borders on madness develops in the over
wrought brain. 1t comes, in part, by their in
tellectual isolation. Napoleon could have had
no intimate associations. The philosophers
who explore thought ahead Of their contempt
raries live in world apart. Their ideas haunt
them until much thinking makes them mad.
The damon of Socrates was an audible ap-
pearance, rather than visual. His standing
all night in rigid attitude is best interpreted
on the ground of cataleptic seizure. Several
great men have been epileptic-Casar Ma
homet, Petrarch, Newton, Peter the Great,
and probably Byron and Napoleon. Canon
Liddon maintains the probability that the
Apostle Paul was subject to epileptic attacks.
The human mechanism is harp of many
strings. 1t is easily thrown out of tune.
These states of trance, of ecstacy, of epilepsy,
and the like, are to be classified as temporary
insanity, and, if prolonged or often recurrent,
develop into downright insanity. 1t is the i'll
organized or the overorganized brain which
is at fault, and this again depends upon the
general health, upon the lower animal func
tions. It is the highest teaching of modern
physiology that well-conditioned nervous
system lies at the base of healthy mental
action and repose of spirit. There u.s. to be
sure hierarchy of organs and functions in
the individual animal body as there is in the
the brain and ideation standing at the head.
A healthy brain, with perfect cerebration,
cannot exist without the maintenance of all
the subordinate relations which intervene in
the descending scale between this highest
organic tissue and the inorganic world upon
which it depends
Mental life, in which moral life is centered
and founded, is like physical life-a continu-
Gus adaptation Of internal to external condi-
tons. Like physical health, mental percep-
tons and moral relations are dependent upon
the proper maintenance of all the relations of
being. There are mental and physical organ
izations so delicately poised and balanced that
the slightest occasion or incident will throw
them from the path of reason and normal life.
Among these we are to look for our seers and
Missionaries. our cranks and eccentrics, in So
cial, political and religious life. Here, too,
alas! as has been already intimated, are to be
found the greatest in genius and philosophy
among them poets, scientists and inventors,
whose minds were too great for their bodies;
those to whom it becomes madness to drink
in this terrible, burning oxygen at every
breath, and to whom the atmosphere that in
folds them is like the flaming shirt of Nessus."
GUM-CHEWING.
With all the cutlery against theaters, roller