History, properly so called, though written in prose was in the Middle Ages no less fabulous and full of fantastic absurdities and puns than poetry. Troyes was derived from Troy, Nuremberg from Nero, the Saracens from Sara; Mahomet was a cardinal; Naples was built on a foundation of eggs; after certain victories of the Turks there were children born with 22 or 23 instead of 32 teeth. Turpin, the Macaulay of those times, relates in his chronicle that the walls of Pampeluna fell as soon as the followers of Charlemagne had begun to pray. Ferrante was 20 cubits in height, and had a face a cubit in length. In short, the history of those days was the same as the fairy tales still told at rustic firesides, from which we can gather nothing but the uniform quality of human imbecility which becomes more fantastic the more ignorant it is.
A tendency to revert to ancestral conditions appears even in the prose of the mattoid or insane. Thus Tanzi and Riva,[305] speaking of some works by monomaniacs write as follows:—
“For the demonomaniacs of a hundred years ago—belated representatives of mediæval mysticism, who typify the ancient form of paranoia—are now substituted the modern paranoiacs; new alchemists who, with their pseudo-scientific delusions, and their vainglorious phrases, revive in our day the style and thoughts of Trithemius, Agrippa, Paracelsus, and other men of the sixteenth century who were strange, but learned and venerated students of occult science and magic. Paranoia follows the path of humanity through the centuries, undergoing, with a certain delay, all its changes, though often separated from it only by a slight interval. As an example of this latter kind we may take the following passage from an extremely long autobiography, written by a paranoiac, in which the acute and accurate account of his own adventures is found in company with insane statements like the following:—
“ ‘It ought to be known that the aristocracy, or persons descended from them, secrete a certain, as yet undefined, substance which produces electricity. In this way it is easy to understand how there can be communication between one nobly-born person and another—if one thinks for a moment of the telegraph and its electric batteries. In this manner two nobles, being placed in communication, act upon each other as electric batteries, transmitting every movement and thought by means of a thread, as if the idea and way of thinking were so many strokes on the part of the manipulator of the telegraphic instrument. The system, as may be understood, is infinitesimal, for thought, transmitted from one side, forms on the other as many infinitesimal points as there are atoms forming the idea.’ ”
MM. Riva and Tanzi observe that many of the ancient alchemists expressed themselves in precisely the same way.
“So,” they continue, “nothing could be easier than to recognize a born paranoiac in the King of Bavaria,[306] misanthropic, vain, ambitious, mystical, romantic, voluble, subject to hallucinations, eccentric in his acts, his habits, his judgment and his conduct, perverted in his æsthetic tastes, in love, in the ethical sentiments, exaggerated and unbalanced in everything. He was so profoundly impressed with the stamp of mediæval atavism that political journalism—hitting the mark with unconsciously scientific correctness—designated him as a Sir Percival come to life again.”
The pathologic and atavistic origin of many of the literary productions of the insane explains the frequent inequalities of the style, which is as feeble and slovenly when the excitement ceases, as it was at first splendid and vigorous, and the abrupt transition from stanzas worthy of a classic author to the scribbling of an idiot. This origin also accounts for the extreme contradictions to be found in the writings of one and the same author—as is seen in Farina and Lazzaretti—their fondness for aphorisms and detached periods, the abrupt and disconnected character of their style—which is both primitive and childish—and the monotonous repetition of certain words or phrases, recalling the verses of the Bible or the suras of the Koran. It also explains their propensity for continually dwelling on the same subject, nearly always connected with matters out of the line of their own studies, and (what is more important) of no advantage to themselves or others. Their works are nearly always autobiographical.
Conclusion.—Summing up what has been said, there is a special organization in all the writings of madmen, even the absurdest—a true finality, as Paulhan calls it.
“I understand by this,” he says, “that, as soon as one psychic element exists, it tends to call forth others. It is not the totality of the mind—if it is not itself co-ordinated—which determines the appearance of phenomena, but the elements. That is to say, what is already systematized in the mind tends to acquire a more complete systematization. If it is a sensation, it will tend to awaken particular, precise, and appropriate ideas or acts; if it is a general tendency—a pre-established mental organization—it will tend to make the mind interpret in such or such a manner the sensations which reach it.
“As every psychic element is systematic, and as, when finality is not to be found in the totality of a psychic organism, or of a series of actions, or a theory, or an argument, or a passion (and in this case all these facts are not really psychic elements), it exists in the elements. This tendency on the part of the elements to systematic association, exercising itself without higher control, without general direction, ends in producing numerous discords in the totality of psychic operations. The result is somewhat as though all the musicians in an orchestra were to play different tunes in as many different keys.