[4] Quere. Why should the most _active_ characteristics of our nature be termed _Passions_? The word seems properly employed in _Passion week_, the period commemorative of Christ's suffering or _Passion_. But we are said to _fly_, or _fall_ into a passion, and then passion _gets the better of us_. For the softer sex we conceive the most delicate, refined, and honorable _passion_, yet every one allows the dreadful consequences which ensue from an indulgence of our _passions_, and most persons agree that _passion_, carried to excess, constitutes madness--we live in a world of metaphor. [5] In many instances, although it is far from being general, pain of the head, and throbbing of its arteries precede an attack of insanity; sometimes giddiness is complained of as a precursory symptom. Those who have been several times disordered, are now and then sensible of the approaching return of their malady. Some have stated, a sense of working in the head, and also in the intestines, as if they were in a state of fermentation. Others observe that they do not seem to possess their natural feelings, but they all agree that they feel confused from the sudden and rapid intrusion of unconnected thoughts. [6] To illustrate how necessarily our sensations, or ideas must become confused, when their succession is too rapid, the relation of some experiments on that subject will sufficiently conduce. "But by the able assistance of Mr. Herschel, I am in a condition to give some approximation, at least, towards ascertaining the velocity of our audible sensations. For having, by means of a clock, produced sounds, which succeeded each other with such rapidity, that the intervals between each of them were (as far as could be judged) the smallest posible; he found he could evidently distinguish one hundred and sixty of them to flow in a second of time. Now as each interval must in this case be reckoned as a sensation likewise, as it might be filled up with a sound thereby making it a continued one; it follows, that we are capable of entertaining at least three hundred and twenty audible sensations in that period of time."--_Vide a Treatise on Time, by W. Watson, Jun. M. D. F. R. S. 8vo, 1785, page 32._