A step beyond this, and we have the spectres of the delirium of fever: the wanderings of typhus, in which the victim either revels with delight in the regions of fancy, a midsummer madness, or is influenced by gloom and despair, in which, with a consciousness of right and wrong, he is driven headlong to acts of ruin and devastation. IDA. In this illusive condition of the intellect consists even the monomania of suicide; and the phrenologist will declare that torpor or excitement of the “organ of the love of life,” will incite or deter from such an act. But surely this is error: it is certain that there was a _fashion_ among the Stoics for this crime; and even in the early history of Marseilles, suicide was sanctioned, not only by custom, but by authority. EV. It is a truth of history, but the _essence_ of the crime is the predisposition in the brain. You will think to confute my position, Astrophel, by adducing Brutus and Cassius, and Antony and Cato, and a host of Roman heroes, in proof of the sanity of these suicides; but even in the case of Cato, if we read Plutarch and not Addison, who with Rousseau, Montaigne, and Shaftesbury, leaned toward a _sanction_, we shall believe that Cato was indeed a monomaniac. I speak this in charity. And to all these morbid states we may still offer analogies. Such are the effects of opium. The brilliancy of thought may be artificially induced, also, by various other narcotics, such as the juice of the American manioc, the fumes of tobacco, or the yupa of the Othomacoes on the Orinoco. To this end we learn from a learned lord, that even ladies of quality are wont to “light up their minds with opium as they do their houses with wax or oil.” Indeed a kind of inspiration seems for a time to follow the use of these narcotics. The Cumean sybil swallowed the juice of the cherry laurel ere she sat on the divining tripod; and from this may have arisen those superstitious fancies of the ancients regarding the virtues of the laurel, and the influence of other trees, of which I remember an allusion of the excellent author of the “Sylva.” “Here we may not omit what learned men have observed concerning the custom of _prophets_ and persons inspired of _old_ to _sleep_ upon the boughs and branches of _trees_, on _mattresses_ and _beds_ made of leaves, _ad consulendum_, to ask advice of God. Naturalists tell us that the _Laurus_ and _Agnus Castus_ were trees which greatly composed the _phrensy_, and did facilitate true _vision_, and that the _first_ was specifically efficacious, προς τους ενθυσιασμους, to inspire a _poetical_ fury: and _Cardan_, I remember, in his book _de Fato_, insists very much on the dreams of _trees_ for portents and presages, and that the use of some of them do dispose men to visions.”