[350] Dr. A. Marie, Études sur quelques Symptômes des Délires systématisés et sur leur Valeur; Paris, 1892, chap. ii.: ‘Eccentricities of language. Neologisms and conjuring incantations.’ Tanzi cites, among others, the following examples: A patient used continuously to repeat, ‘That is true, and not false’; another began every phrase with, ‘God’s Word’; a third said, ‘Out with the vile beast!’ making at the same time a sign of benediction with the right hand; a fourth said unceasingly, ‘Turn over the page’; a fifth cried, in a tone of command, ‘Lips acs livi cux lips sux!’ etc. One of Krafft-Ebing’s patients (op. cit., p. 130) constructed, among others, the following words: ‘Magnetismusambosarbeitswellen, Augengedanken, Austrahlung, Glückseligkeitsbetten, Ohrenschussmaschine,’ etc. Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., pp. 130, 131.
[351] Vicomte E. M. de Vogué, ‘Les Cigognes,’ Revue des deux Mondes, February 15, 1892, p. 922: ‘Ibsen would have won our trust, were it only by certain axioms [?] which appeal to our actual distrusts, such as this ... in Rosmersholm: “The Rosmer view of life ennobles, but it kills happiness.”’ I am convinced that, unless previously told that they emanated from confined lunatics, these ‘comprehensives’ would, without difficulty, understand and interpret the expression ‘little-cupboards-of-appetite-of-representation’ (Vorstellungs-Appetitschränkchen), freely used by one of Meynert’s lunatic patients, or the words of a patient under Griesinger’s care (op. cit., p. 176) that ‘the lady superior was establishing herself in the military side-tone and in the retardation of her teeth.’
[352] Tanzi, I Neologismi in rapporta col Delirio cronico. Turin, 1890.
‘Vi vil gjöre det om igjen raditalere,
Men dertil sordres baade Maend og Talere.
J sörger sor Vandflom til Verdensparken,
Jeg laegger med Lyst Torpedo under Arken.’
Observe the purely mystic vapours of this thought. The poet wishes to destroy everything, even the ark which shelters the saved remnants of terrestrial life, but sees himself placed beyond the reach of the destruction, and hence will survive the annihilation of everything else on earth.
[354] Georges Brandes, op. cit., pp. 431, 435, 438, etc.
[355] J. Cotard, Études sur les Maladies cérébrales et mentales; Paris, 1891. In this book the délire des négations is for the first time recognised and described as a form of melancholia. The Third Congress of French Alienists, which sat at Blois from the 1st to the 6th of August, 1892, devoted almost the whole of its conferences to the insanity of doubt. In a work by F. Raymond and F. L. Arnaud, ‘Sur certains cas d’aboulie avec obsession interrogative et trouble des mouvements’ (Annales médico-psychologiques, 7e séries, t. xvi.), we read, p. 202: ‘The invalids occupy themselves with questions intrinsically insoluble, such as the creation, nature, life, etc. Why the trees are green? Why the rainbow has seven colours? Why men are not as tall as houses?’ etc.
[356] Lombroso and B. Laschi, Le Crime politique et les Révolutions par rapport au Droit, à l’Anthropologie criminelle et à la Science du Gouvernement. Traduit de l’Italien par H. Bouchard. Paris, 1892, t. i., p. 195.
[357] Auguste Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 412: ‘He [Ibsen] assigns himself a rôle to acquaint us in a direct manner with his own disillusionings.... He presents himself in the fantastic and tormented character of Ulric Brendel. Let us not be deceived by the disguise in which he veils himself. Ulric Brendel, the fool, is no other than Henrik Ibsen, the idealist’(?).