he was of an extreme imbecility of mind, that he has an inability to manage his own affairs; if they will not proceed to infer from that, in their finding upon oath, that he is of _unsound mind_, they have not established by the result of the enquiry, a case upon which the Chancellor can make a grant, constituting a committee either of the person or estate. All the cases decide that mere imbecility will not do; that an inability to manage a man’s affairs will not do, unless that inability and that incapacity to manage his affairs amount to evidence that he is of unsound mind; and he must be found to be so. Now there is a great difference between inability to manage a man’s affairs, and imbecility of mind taken as evidence of unsoundness of mind. The case of Charlton Palmer in which this was very much discussed, was the case of a man stricken in years, and whose mind, was the mind of a child, it was _therefore in that sense_, imbecility and inability to manage his affairs which _constituted_ unsoundness of mind.” This is the law, the principle established for the regulation of medical opinion; and it will be immediately perceived, that the burthen of this ponderous machine, turns on the explanation which may be given to the term unsoundness of mind. As far as the term unsound is employed and understood by medical persons, it signifies a morbid condition of the human constitution, or a morbid state of some particular organ, and this state of unsoundness is inferred to exist from particular and well marked symptoms, which experience has detected to indicate, constitutional or local morbid affections. If this term be transferred to mind, it is equally incumbent on the person who employs it, to point out the particular symptoms or mental phenomena which characterize this unsoundness of the individual’s mind. It ought to be well considered that our knowledge of the intellectual faculties, and of their operations is very limited, and that the progress of the philosophy of mind, has borne no proportion to the rapid advances which have been made by Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology, in the structure, offices and morbid alterations of the body. All that we can know of the mind of an individual is from the communication of his ideas in terms or signs which are conventional between us, in order to be intelligible, or from his actions. Thus by discourse, which is imparted to the ear, or by intelligible characters presented to the eye, which convey his thoughts, and by his conduct, we are enabled to estimate the character of his mind. The lawyer has been accustomed to receive mental phenomena as the only evidences of the state of an individual’s intellect: he would be dissatisfied, and in my own opinion, properly, with any bodily symptoms, such as peculiar conformation of the head, excessive determination of blood thereto, protrusion or glistening of the eye, increased pulsation of the Carotid arteries, &c.—these may be indications to medical persons in the