CHAPTER IV.
Tyranny of Cambyses, terminating in madness—of Caligula—of the Emperor Paul.
No questions which can become the subject of judicial examination are more delicate and difficult than those which depend upon a man’s mental sanity, whether the case be of a civil or a criminal nature; whether it regard his competence to manage his own affairs, or his possession of that moral feeling of right and wrong in the absence of which he cannot be justly punished as a responsible agent. In the first instance, daily experience shows us that general eccentricity, and even delusion upon particular subjects, may exist in union with the most acute perception of personal interests; in the second, it is equally clear that the moral sense may be perverted upon one or more points without being destroyed, and indeed without any other indication of mental disease. We may take as an example of this the burning of York Cathedral some years ago. Martin believed this to be morally a meritorious act, and herein lay his madness: on a case of murder, robbery, or any other infraction of the laws, he would have judged aright. But though he believed it to be meritorious, he knew it to be illegal; he knew that he was subject to punishment, and fled from it accordingly: and upon this ground the question might be raised, whether his madness should have protected him from the penalty affixed to his act. But exclusively of those more strongly marked cases, which alone are likely to become subjects of judicial inquiry, no man can converse extensively with the living, or, through the medium of books, with the dead, without continually asking himself whether the eccentricity, perverseness, intemperance, and extravagance which he sees on all sides are compatible with a perfectly sound state of mind. Mental as well as bodily illness may assume all shapes, and be of all degrees: and both reflection and observation lead us to conclude that excessive indulgence of the passions will impair the understanding, as surely as sensual intemperance injures the constitution. It would not be difficult to enumerate a long list of causes tending more or less to unsettle the reason; indeed, no pursuit, however unexciting it may seem, can be exclusively followed without risk of this result. Science has its dangers as well as love: the philosopher’s stone and the quadrature of the circle have probably turned as many heads as has female ingratitude, from the time of Orlando Furioso downwards. At present, however, we mean to confine ourselves to one particular manifestation of insanity, or something nearly allied to it, with the view of illustrating, in some degree, that large portion of history which is occupied by the crimes and follies of absolute monarchs.
In reading such narratives as the following, we naturally wonder how it is that anything human can have been led to play a part so entirely at variance with all the kindly feelings of human nature. To believe that Caligula and Nero came into the world fully prepared for the part which they were afterwards to play, would be as unreasonable as to adopt the other extreme, and maintain, as some have done, that the tempers and abilities of all men are originally similar and equal. But “the child is father of the man.” The work of education begins at an early period, and circumstances seemingly too trivial to notice, may exert a powerful effect in fixing our future destiny for good or evil. There are few persons whose patience has not been more or less tried by spoiled children, and who cannot point out examples where the temper of the mature man has been seriously injured by early injudicious indulgence; and many must know cases in which the paroxysms of a naturally bad temper, exasperated by uncontrolled licence and habitual submission, have amounted almost to occasional insanity. Causes closely analogous to those which render one man the dread of his domestic circle, may render another the terror and the scourge of half the earth. The same spirit which vents itself in ill–humour for a broken piece of china, or execrations for an ill–cooked dinner, if fostered by power, might correct breaches of etiquette with the knout, and deal out confiscations and death as unsparingly as oaths. We may observe that, bloody and unfeeling as their administration may have been, it is not among the adventurers who have carved their own way to a crown that the wantonness of tyranny has been most developed; it is rather among their descendants, men nurtured among parasites, with the prospect of despotism ever before their eyes. Surrounded from infancy by those whose interest it has been to pamper, not to repress their evil passions, taught, in Pagan countries, to regard themselves as gods, and worshipped as such by a servile and besotted multitude, what wonder that they tread under foot those who bow the neck before them, and scorn to sympathise with a confessedly inferior race? In private life, however, the regulation of the mind may be neglected, the supremacy of law, and the knowledge that excess, beyond a certain point, cannot be committed with impunity, exerts a salutary restraint over the wildest spirits. But he who is above the influence of fear, whose angry passions have never been checked, nor his desires controlled, and who is harassed by the craving after excitement consequent upon satiety of sensual pleasures, is prepared for any caprice or enormity which the humour of the moment may suggest. The mind can hardly be thus morally depraved without becoming intellectually depraved also: as the animal man is cherished, and the reasonable man neglected, the former will assume the guidance due to the latter, and human becomes little superior to brute nature, except in its greater power to do mischief. In this state of degradation
Even–handed justice
Condemns the ingredients of the poisoned chalice
To our own lips.
The dominion of the passions is worse than external oppression, and conscience exasperates, after it has lost its power to reform. Misery may then complete the ruin which intemperance began, and cruelty, from being only indifferent, become congenial.
If a man deprives himself almost of the common necessaries of life, for the purpose of accumulating money which he will never use or want; if he sleeps all day, and wakes all night; if he chooses to wear his shoes upon his hands, and his gloves upon his feet, or indulge in any other such ridiculous fancies; we call him odd, eccentric, a madman, according to the degree of his deviation from established usages: and justly, for in all these things a sound mind is wanting. Yet that man may be perfectly able to foresee the consequences of his actions, perfect master of his reason upon every subject; and therefore be both legally and morally responsible. It is a state of mind strictly analogous, as we believe, to this, which has produced the worst excesses of the worst oppressors; and one which has sprung from the same cause—habitual submission to the will instead of the reason. From the childish passion of George II., who manifested his displeasure on great occasions by kicking his hat about the room, to the superhuman crimes of Caligula, we find this disease, if we may call it so, manifested in every variety of degree and form. In Henry VIII. of England, we trace it in the contrast between the early and later years of his reign, in the increased violence of his passions, and in the capriciousness and cruelty ingrafted on a temper not naturally ungentle. We ascribe to it the ungovernable fury which obscured the brilliant qualities of Peter of Russia; and we find it still more strongly marked in the extravagances which are ascribed to Xerxes. His very preparations for invading Greece, on a scale so disproportionate to the value of his object if attained, show how subordinate was his judgment to his inclinations; and no one can read the narration of his chastisement of the Hellespont, without recognising the weakness of a mind unsettled by extravagant presumption. “When Xerxes heard that his bridges were carried away, he was much vexed, and ordered three hundred lashes to be given to the Hellespont, and a pair of fetters to be cast into it. And I have heard that he sent men at the same time to brand the Hellespont. Moreover, he commanded those that inflicted the stripes to use unholy and barbarian language, saying, ‘Thou bitter water, thy master inflicts this punishment upon thee, because thou hast wronged him, having received no injury at his hands. And King Xerxes will cross thee, whether thou wilt or no: and, as is fit, no one sacrifices to thee, because thou art a salt and crafty river.’ So he ordered them to punish the sea thus, and to cut off the heads of the Grecians who had charge of the bridge.”[132] This is as downright frenzy as the walls of Bedlam ever witnessed: a paroxysm of temporary insanity, produced by disappointment acting on a vain, ungoverned mind.
Before proceeding to relate in detail the lives of some remarkable persons which bear upon the point in question, we wish briefly to allude to the very singular and striking history of Nebuchadnezzar, though with no view of resolving that preternatural visitation, which is expressly stated to have been from God, into a natural consequence of his intemperate pride. From the few notices of him preserved in the Bible, he seems to have been a man cast in no ordinary mould; to have been endowed with powers and capability of excellence commensurate with the exalted situation which he was appointed to hold. It is evident, however, that he had drunk deep of the intoxication of despotism. His intended massacre of the wise men, and the Chaldeans, in point of wisdom and justice is on a par with the anger of a child who beats his nurse because she will not give him the moon to play with; and his conduct with respect to the image of the plain of Dura, if less preposterous, is not more creditable to his notions of toleration or humanity. In fact, he appears to have been in a fair way to become as truculent a tyrant as Cambyses or Caligula, when that awful vision, related at length in the fourth chapter of Daniel, was presented to him, which foretold his banishment from the throne and from men: and we may infer from the warning of the inspired interpreter, and from the course of the narrative, that his overweening pride and hardness of heart, the food and origin of that mental alienation of which we have been speaking at such length, were the vices against which Divine anger was especially directed. “This is the decree of the Most High, which is come upon my lord the king: They shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.... Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor: if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity.... At the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king spoke and said, Is not this the great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; the kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.”[133]