"'It may well be taken for _granted_, that a sound _understanding_ and _reason_ (_mens sana in c. s._), _next_ to a clear conscience, holds among the prizeworthy goods of life the _highest_ place,--a proposition which I venture to assume as an axiom with the readers of this paper. As to what may further be said on the subject, as well by as against Kantners, (so Campe writes it, and much more correctly, instead of _Kantians_,) it does not certainly belong to an entirely _popular paper for the people_ like this present. The undersigned is now in the _sorry_ case that he is obliged here to consult the physicians of Germany and foreign parts. Have sympathy for suffering; send in your answers; say _when_ he is to be (out with it before all Germany!!) completely insane, for as to the beginning thereof the fact has already answered. "'The _when_, but not the _whether_, it now lies with and upon noble philanthropists to answer. Here are my reasons, Germans! Leaving out of sight that many a reason might be deduced from the very publication of this request,--which, to be sure, decides little,--the following items are noticeable and sure:--1. The motley style of the author itself, which is to be known less from this insertion (composed at very considerable intervals) than from the similarity between his style and that of a very favorite and tasteless writer,[114] which, denoting a gay exuberance of the most wild and strange images in the head, betokens an approaching _crack_, as does a motley play of colors upon glass; 2. The prediction of a scamp,[115] of which he is always thinking,--a circumstance which must have bad effects; 3. His love and study of Swift, whose madness is no novelty to the learned; 4. His complete loss of memory; 5. His frequent bad trick of confounding things dreamed of with things really experienced, and _vice versa_; 6. His misfortune not to know what he writes till he has read it over afterward, because he now leaves out something bearing upon his subject, or again puts in something that has nothing to do with it, as the crossed and blotted manuscript unfortunately best proves; 7. His whole previous life, all his thinking and joking, the details under which head it would be tedious here to specify; and, 8. His most unreasonable dreams. Now the question is, _when_, in such circumstances (that is to say, if no fevers, or cases of love intervene), complete distraction (_idea fixa_, _mania_, _raptus_) comes on. With Swift it fell very late, in old age, when he might already, besides, have been naturally half foolish, and only showed it more afterward. When one considers that Professor Busch once reckoned that his weakness of sight might very well grow upon him from year to year without any serious consequence, because the period of complete blindness fell quite out beyond the end of his whole life, merely upon his grave, so must I assume that my infirmity might swell so gradually, that I should have