An inordinate cultivation of any one faculty of the mind, but more particularly the imagination, will tend to produce the peculiarities which have been illustrated in this chapter. A person who accustoms himself to live in a world created by his own fancy—who surrounds himself with flimsy idealities—will, in the course of time, cease to sympathize with the gross realities of life. The imaginary intelligences which his own morbid mind has called into existence will exercise a terrific influence over him. A German poet commenced writing a poem on the Deity. He allowed his mind to dwell so intensely on the subject, that he fancied he was commanded to “flee from a world of sin and iniquity;” to effect which, he cut his throat, and was found dead in bed, with the razor in one hand and a portion of his poem in the other. The apparitions which the monomaniac fancies to haunt him are as real and sensible existences to him, as objects are to persons who have a healthy use of the media through which ideas obtain access to the mind. Mr. Calcraft, the late member of parliament, committed suicide. He imagined that a strange unearthly-looking being sat night and day perched at the top of his bed, watching with earnestness his every movement. This, which to all around him was an hallucination, to him _was_ a reality. It is possible for a person of vivid imagination to conjure into apparent existence the most grotesque images of the fancy, by allowing the mind to dwell with intenseness on a particular train of thought, and by perfectly abstracting the attention from all materiality. CHAPTER VIII. PHYSICAL CAUSES OF SUICIDE. Influence of climate—The foggy climate of England does not increase the number of suicides—Average number of suicides in each month, from 1817 to 1826—Influence of seasons—Suicides at Rouen—The English not a suicidal people—Philip Mordaunt’s singular reasons for self-destruction—Causes of French suicides—Influence of physical pain—Unnatural vices—Suicide the effect of intoxication—Influence of hepatic disease on the mind—Melancholy and hypochondriasis, Burton’s account of—Cowper’s case of suicide—Particulars of his extreme depression of spirits—Byron and Burns’s melancholy from stomach and liver derangement—Influence of bodily disease on the mind—Importance of paying attention to it—A case of insanity from gastric irritation—Dr. Johnson’s hypochondria—Hereditary suicide, illustrated by cases—Suicide from blows on the head, and from moral shocks communicated to the brain—Dr. G. Mantell’s valuable observations and cases demonstrative of the point—Concluding remarks.