"As the semen in the natural commerce with the woman, produces a child, so, having its vitality conserved by the spirit, it becomes capable of forming a _sprite_; a term, obviously derived from the spirit in which it had been infused. The ear is the most convenient nidus for hatching these vital particles of the semen. The effects produced on the individual, during the incubation of these seminal germs, are very disagreeable; they cause the blood to mount into the head, and produce considerable giddiness and confusion of thought. In a short time, they acquire the size of a pin's head; and then they perforate the drum of the ear, which enables them to traverse the interior of the brain, and become acquainted with the hidden secrets of the person's mind. During the time they are thus educated, they enlarge according to the natural laws of growth; they then take wing, and become invisible beings, and, from the strong ties of natural affection, assisted by the principle of attraction, they revert to the parent who afforded the semen, and communicate to him their surreptitious observations and intellectual gleanings. In this manner, I have been defrauded of discoveries which would have entitled me to opulence and distinction, and have lived to see others reap honours and emoluments, for speculations which were the genuine offsprings of my own brain." By some persons, madness has been considered as a state of mind analogous to dreaming: but an inference of this kind supposes us fully acquainted with the actual state, or condition of the mind in dreaming, and in madness. The whole question hinges on a knowledge of this _state of mind_, which I fear is still involved in obscurity. As it is not the object of the present work to discuss this curious question, the reader is referred to the fifth section of the first part of Mr. Dugald Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, and to the note, o, at the end; he will also find the subject treated with considerable ingenuity in the eleventh section of Mr. Brown's Observations on Zoonomia.