Monomania is sometimes simply the exaggerated regard to one side of many-sided truth. It is not absolute, but only relative delusion. It is in its degree true; but by affecting to be the whole truth, it becomes untrue. Philosophic reflection shews, that if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, 'the truth becomes distorted, and not itself, but falsehood;' and may be compared to the air, which is our natural element, and the breath of our nostrils; 'but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death.' 'How wearisome,' exclaims Emerson, 'the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or, indeed, any possessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic! It is _incipient insanity_.' The bore of society is constituted by his one-sidedness. His ear is deficient in the sense of harmony, and he deafens and disgusts you by harping on one string. The retired nabob holds you by the button, to hear his wearisome diatribes on Indian economics; the half-pay officer is too fluent on his worn-out recollections of the Peninsular War, and becomes savage if you broach a new theme, or move to adjourn the debate; the university pedant distracts you with his theories on philology and scansion--with his amended translation of a hexameter in Persius, and his new reading of a line in Theocritus; the bagman is all for 'the shop;' the policeman is redolent of the 'lock-up house 'and 'your wertchup;' the tailor is profoundly knowing on the 'sweating system; 'the son of Crispin vows and protests there's 'nothing like leather.' All these _minus_ signs have a tendency to cancel each other: and thus the equation of life is worked out. Society has been said to have at all times the same want--namely, of one sane man, with adequate powers of expression to hold up each object of monomania in its right relations. 'The ambitious and mercenary bring their last new Mumbo-Jumbo--whether tariff, railway, mesmerism, or California--and by detaching the object from its relations, easily succeed in making it seen in a glare, and a multitude go mad about it; and they are not to be reproved or cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this particular insanity by an equal frenzy on another crotchet. But let one man have the comprehensive eye that can replace this isolated prodigy in its right neighbourhood and bearings, and the illusion vanishes--the returning reason of the community thanks the reason of the monitor.' There is perhaps nothing which more urgently calls for such a controlling and overseeing mind, to curb eccentric excesses, and to restore equilibrium of action, than philanthropy itself. In the enthusiasm of its impulses, it thinks it can afford to sneer at political economy, and that it is right to wander at its own sweet will, benevolently defying the remonstrances of all who have a method