which under other
circumstances I should not have wished to touch upon, I now approached
fearlessly and boldly, and felt, in the very moment of speaking, that
they became clearer and clearer to myself. Theories and hypotheses which
were of old and acknowledged acceptance I glanced hurriedly at as I went
on, and with a perspicuity and clearness I never before felt exposed
their fallacies and unmasked their errors. I thought I was rather
describing events, things actually passing before my eyes at the
instant, than relating the results of a life's experience and
reflection. My memory, usually a defective one, now carried me back to
the days of my early childhood; and the whole passages of a life lay
displayed before me like a picture. If I quoted, the very words of the
author rushed to my mind as palpably as though the page lay open before
me. I have still some vague recollection of an endeavour I made to trace
the character of the insanity in every case to some early trait of the
individual in childhood, when, overcome by passion or overbalanced by
excitement, the faculties run wild into all those excesses which in
after years develop eccentricities of character, and in some weaker
temperaments aberrations of intellect. Anecdotes illustrating this novel
position came thronging to my mind; and events in the early years of
some who subsequently died insane, and seemed to support my theory, came
rushing to my memory.

'As I proceeded, I became gradually more and more excited; the very
ease and rapidity with which my ideas suggested themselves increased
the fervour of my imaginings, till at last I felt my words come without
effort and spontaneously, while there seemed a commingling of my
thoughts which left me unable to trace connection between them, though
I continued to speak as fluently as before. I felt at this instant a
species of indistinct terror of some unknown danger which hung over me,
yet which it was impossible to avert or to avoid. I was like one who,
borne on the rapid current of a fast-flowing river, sees the foam of
the cataract before him, yet waits passively for the moment of his
destruction, without an effort to save. The power which maintained my
mind in its balance had gradually forsaken me, and shapes and fantasies
of every odd and fantastic character flitted around and about me.
The ideas and descriptions my mind had conjured up assumed a living,
breathing vitality, and I felt like a necromancer wavin