Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.
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Motives imply weakness, and the existence of evil and temptation. The angelic nature would act from impulse alone. A due mean of motive and impulse is the only practicable object of our moral philosophy.
May 23. 1830.
CONSTITUTIONAL AND FUNCTIONAL LIFE.—HYSTERIA.—HYDRO-CARBONIC GAS.— BITTERS AND TONICS.—SPECIFIC MEDICINES.
It is a great error in physiology not to distinguish between what may be called the general or fundamental life—the principium vitae, and the functional life—the life in the functions. Organization must presuppose life as anterior to it: without life, there could not be or remain any organization; but then there is also a life in the organs, or functions, distinct from the other. Thus, a flute presupposes,—demands the existence of a musician as anterior to it, without whom no flute could ever have existed; and yet again, without the instrument there can be no music.
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It often happens that, on the one hand, the principium vitae, or constitutional life, may be affected without any, or the least imaginable, affection of the functions; as in inoculation, where one pustule only has appeared, and no other perceptible symptom, and yet this has so entered into the constitution, as to indispose it to infection under the most accumulated and intense contagion; and, on the other hand, hysteria, hydrophobia, and gout will disorder the functions to the most dreadful degree, and yet often leave the life untouched. In hydrophobia, the mind is quite sound; but the patient feels his muscular and cutaneous life forcibly removed from under the control of his will.
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Hysteria may be fitly called mimosa, from its counterfeiting so many diseases,—even death itself.