Dr. Browne also informs me of the case of an epileptic idiot, incapable of independent movements, and who spends the whole day in playing with some toys; but his temper is morose and easily roused into fierceness. When any one touches his toys, he slowly raises his head from its habitual downward position, and fixes his eyes on the offender, with a tardy yet angry scowl. If the annoyance be repeated, he draws back his thick lips and reveals a prominent row of hideous fangs (large canines being especially noticeable), and then makes a quick and cruel clutch with his open hand at the offending person. The rapidity of this clutch, as Dr. Browne remarks, is marvellous in a being ordinarily so torpid that he takes about fifteen seconds, when attracted by any noise, to turn his head from one side to the other. If, when thus incensed, a handkerchief, book, or other article, be placed into his hands, he drags it to his mouth and bites it. Mr. Nicol has likewise described to me two cases of insane patients, whose lips are retracted during paroxysms of rage. Dr. Maudsley, after detailing various strange animal-like traits in idiots, asks whether these are not due to the reappearance of primitive instincts—“a faint echo from a far-distant past, testifying to a kinship which man has almost outgrown.” He adds, that as every human brain passes, in the course of its development, through the same stages as those occurring in the lower vertebrate animals, and as the brain of an idiot is in an arrested condition, we may presume that it “will manifest its most primitive functions, and no higher functions.” Dr. Maudsley thinks that the same view may be extended to the brain in its degenerated condition in some insane patients; and asks, whence come “the savage snarl, the destructive disposition, the obscene language, the wild howl, the offensive habits, displayed by some of the insane? Why should a human being, deprived of his reason, ever become so brutal in character, as some do, unless he has the brute nature within him?”[1012] This question must, as it would appear, he answered in the affirmative.