Our path towards the pathology of the subject is already marked out. We have, first, the semi-morbid forms which have been called the monomania of power. Place a man in conditions where this tendency to unlimited expansion meets with no obstacle, and it will go to any extreme. This is the case with absolute power. No doubt this unique and, so to speak, superhuman position is not of itself sufficient. The madness of power (folie du pouvoir) is the resultant of two factors: first, the character, i.e., the violence of the egoistic appetites, which, continually satisfied, continually increase; while the will, the antagonistic, inhibitive force, keeps on diminishing; and next, external circumstances—the absence of all restraint, of any equal power which might overawe by threats. A religious sanction, or the fear of a political catastrophe, has restrained more than one, and limited that unbridled tendency which is only the ego’s feeling of its own power carried to the acute stage. It is needless to give examples from history, for they are known to every one.[[153]]
Self-feeling, under its positive form, has its ultimate incarnation in a well-known pathological manifestation—the delusion of greatness, or megalomania. Perhaps, indeed, in this case, the exaggeration produced by disease shows itself most clearly and without altering the original.
Megalomania is met with in general paralysis of the insane as a transitory phase; but especially in systematised chronic delusions (paranoia). We may pass over the period of incubation, which is often melancholic; thus, in a case of persecution-delusions, the patient is at first tormented by vague suspicions; he accuses no one in particular, he has as yet no accredited enemies; but one day he discovers them, and nothing will ever divert his thoughts from them again. Then, in some cases, the disease passing through another evolutionary stage, he arrives, by logical deduction, at the conclusion that it is his great merit, his high position, which are exciting jealousy. Thenceforth megalomania is fully developed; the subject thinks himself a millionaire, an unrecognised genius, a great inventor, a king, the pope, or even the Deity.
There is nothing more characteristic than such a description as the following, which has often been drawn up, and is yet another proof that emotion, its expressive and its physiological bases, are but parts of the same phenomenon. “He walks with head erect, with assurance; his speech is laconic and imperious, he seeks solitude, and is full of contempt for the society which surrounds him. His style of dress is in accordance with the tendency of his aberration. Like the maniac, he is restlessly active; but, in him, no movement is fortuitous or without a motive; his will is always active, his actions have a definite aim; if he shows violence, it is in order to ensure the execution of his commands, to show that he has strength sufficient to annihilate everything; it is not a destructive spirit which animates him, but the necessity for showing his power. The functions of the assimilative life have undergone no alteration; they take place, as a rule, with perfect regularity. It seems as if the expansive form of their feelings, their contentment with themselves, the extreme and unbroken satisfaction surrounding their life, imparted to the organic vital apparatus a surplus of activity, resulting, in a manner, in an excess of health.” Frequent cases of longevity among megalomaniacs have been noted. Finally, the following observation has its value, on account of the change—at once organic and psychic—there recorded:—"We have watched a patient who, after having suffered from melancholia for several years, suddenly became megalomaniac. His constitution had undergone great alterations, and his health was much weakened, so that he became a chronic melancholic; but so soon as his mental affection took on the character of megalomania he was not long in acquiring new vigour."[[154]]
We might add that the tendency of men is rather to pride, of women to vanity, which favours the views of those who maintain that madness is often only the exaggeration of the habitual character: it is sufficient to have shown that the feeling (though illusory) of personal strength in an extreme degree is only the normal state amplified, but not changed.
III.
It may seem strange to close this chapter by some remarks on a phenomenon which, both by its internal and external characteristics, belongs to the class of irresistible tendencies—the fatal impulse to suicide. Its affinity with homicidal obsession is undeniable, as is proved by the persons who are tormented, in turn, by the craving to kill others and to kill themselves. However, if self-love, in its positive form, reaches its culminating point in megalomania, it seems to me quite legitimate to maintain that self-feeling, under its negative form, attains its supreme negation in suicide.
Without insisting on a merely accessory point, it is certain that suicide, as a manifestation of emotional life, brings us face to face with a psychological problem as yet insufficiently noticed. If there is an incontestable fact—one which, even among the ancients, was familiar to triteness—it is that in every animal the fundamental, ineradicable instinct is that of self-preservation, of existing, and persisting in existence. Now, suicide, whether voluntary or unreflecting, deliberate or impulsive, is the negation of the fundamental tendency, not a theoretic or partial negation, or one in word only, but in deed and absolute. And the sacrifice of life is not subordinated to some other end which acts by superior attraction, such as devotion to a belief, to friends, to humanity, to one’s country, it is a suppression pure and simple, a liberation desired in and for itself.
The ethnological, moral, and social study of suicide does not form part of our subject, having already been fully worked out.[[155]] Our aim is merely the psychological problem, which we must now define with more precision.
The act of suicide results from two very different mental states, that of reflection and that of impulsion.