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den interruption to the mental actions or the emotions in a high state of excitement, as when ardent hopes or earnest and fond expectations are instantaneously cut off, or when one is disappointed in love, in ambition, or in the confident anticipation of fortune or success, there is depression and disturbance. Likewise, when any unexpected burden is thrown at once upon the brain, as when terrible danger, whether real or imagined, suddenly presents itself and causes fright, or when distressing tidings are communicated, as of the death of friends who were supposed to be in good health, or of some other great calamity which had not been anticipated, the violent sorrow sometimes leaves the mental actions in a state of protracted or permanent disorder. In these cases, the mental disturbance comes not from the weight of the distress, but from the suddenness of the impression. Its swift impulse gives it power more than its due. Whereas if the brain had been prepared by anticipation for the painful event, if the mourners had watched over their friend through days and weeks of sickness, and the catastrophe had been foreseen and expected, if death had visibly approached, through the gradual increase of disease and danger, they would have been ready to meet the affliction, if not with less sorrow, at least with greater power to bear it, and the mind would not have been overthrown.

From errors in the use of both the physical and the intellectual powers there proceed all grades of disorder, from the slightest languor or irregularity to positive and severe exhaustion and disease. All the organs and their functions are subject to these gradations of disturbance, and none more than the digestive and the nervous systems. The Protean forms of dyspepsia, almost infinitely varied, and their numberless degrees of intensity, are equalled by the manifold phases and degrees of mental unsoundness and perversity.

Between the well-balanced and healthy mind and recognized insanity, there is a broad middle ground which neither occupies exclusively, but in every part of which the elements of both, in various proportions and complications, may be found. Here is every grade of mental obliquity and defect, resulting from perversion, or excessive labor, or neglect. Between the mind of average power and dementia, there are those who have

every measure of weakness, the dull, the simple, and the imbecile. Between intellectual soundness and mania, there are all the varieties and degrees of vagary, perversity, and disproportioned and inharmonious qualities and powers. In some, one faculty or element is too active or too sluggish, and in others a different one is exuberant, or comparatively or positively dormant. Some are unbalanced, some are easily excited or disturbed, others are passionate; some, without ordinary motive or reason, adopt new opinions, or engage in new projects; others are odd, eccentric, whimsical, or capricious. In the formation of their principles, and in the conduct of their lives, some are governed by their impulses or by their first impressions rather than by reflection or reason. Some are volatile in their habits, fickle in their affections, untrustworthy in their judgment, wild in forming their schemes, or unstable in the execution of their plans. Others are victims of indecision of character, and come to their conclusions with various degrees of hesitancy and difficulty, if they reach them at all. Some lack firmness of purpose, and are irresolute in action. Others, on the contrary, are wilful and obstinate, and adhere to opinions and purposes once adopted, whatever new reasons or circumstances may be presented for a different course. some, self-esteem is so large and powerful as to make them disregard the usual common sense of mankind, and to prevent their harmonizing with their fellows and profiting by the wisdom of the world. Through all these and many others there runs a vein of unsoundness, of greater or less extent, due to the measure of the misappropriation of their cerebral forces, the mistakes in the use of their mental and moral powers, and their indulgence in, and cultivation of, unhealthy and perverse habits of mind or of action.

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As in the administration of financial affairs every wrong appropriation of funds or credit, every wrong purchase or sale, is attended with loss, and every excess of expenditure, however small, over the income, however large, is charged to the pecuniary capital; so in the management of life and its powers, every waste through misappropriation of vital force, however slight, every over-draft and excess of expenditure, is charged to vital capital.

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In both business and life the consequences of repeated errors, of the waste or loss of money and of living power, are cumulative. The effect of each, be it ever so small, is added to that of the preceding; and the loss, injury, or impairment gathers weight with each successive transgression. This accumulation of weakness, or disorder, is often very slow and imperceptible in its progress, and it may be long before the evil is recognized. A man may indulge his appetite with food of such kinds, or in such quantities, as require but a little more than his usual and average digestive power to convert it into chyle. He may repeat this through months, perhaps through years, before the over-draft upon his gastric force produces a sensible weakness or pain, and even then the cause of the digestive trouble, the waste of power, and the accumulated disorder are overlooked; for it is not easy to understand or believe, that an article of diet or gastronomic indulgence, which had been so long not only harmless, but, on the contrary, comfortable, should at length become injurious. A man may labor daily somewhat beyond his average muscular strength, and yet make so small an inroad upon his constitutional vigor, and so small an excess in the expenditure of force, that it may be years before he becomes conscious of the depreciation of power; but the effect of persevering waste ultimately manifests itself, and if not then arrested by change of habit and more moderate exertion, the waste goes on, and the weakness increases, until decrepitude is prematurely established. The same law holds in regard to the brain. It is seen in the growing effect of repeated waste and perversion of the cerebral forces, in the increasing consequences of continued neglect or misuse of the moral and intellectual powers. The evil result of each individual error may be extremely small and imperceptible; yet each, however minute, is charged to, and deducted from, the mental capital, and all of the same kind that come after are added to those that have gone before, until their accumulated weight becomes manifest in some weakness, or fixed peculiarity or perversity, or even grave disease of the mind.

Any error or mistake in self-management once committed, opens the way for another of the same character to follow, more easily; and the consequent loss of power lessens the means of

resistance. The temptation and the facility of commission increase, while the protective and recuperative force diminishes with the repetition. Whoever allows in himself any excessive expenditure or misappropriation of mental force, or any indulgence in passion, caprice, oddity, impulse, or perversity, and takes but a single step from the path of discipline, propriety, or reason, finds the second step easier than the first, the third easier than the second, and each succeeding one less difficult than that which went before. Whatever of wrong or loss is established by the first, is treasured up and increased by the second and the third, and this, if not resisted, may go on, slowly but surely, until it becomes strong enough to influence, perhaps to control, the mental actions of the emotions. Whatever any one may sow within himself, whether it be good or whether it be evil, will grow almost insensibly, by repeated indulgence and persevering cultivation, and sooner or later become, in greater or less degree, an element of his character. Ever-watchful Nature, although generous in her provisions for and bountiful in her gifts to her children, is yet inflexibly just and rigorous in her dealings with them. She requires of every one the complete fulfilment of the conditions of life. She gives to each his due and sure reward for every instance of faithfulness, and exacts from each the penalty corresponding to every disobedience, in the use of all the organs, and all the powers, whether of body or of mind, that are bestowed upon man. There is no forgiveness in these matters. All the consequences of neglects and violations of the law are gathered, in every instance, and charged to the vital capital; and their sum, in every succeeding period, may be found, according to its extent, in mental or physical disorder, in reduction of strength, in the vitiated constitution.

ART. III.-1. On the Probable Fall in the Value of Gold:
the Commercial and Social Consequences which may ensue,
and the Measures which it incites. By MICHEL CHEVALIER,
Member of the Institute of France, etc. etc. Translated
from the French, with Preface, by RICHARD COBDEN, Esq.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859.
2. The Principles of Political Economy applied to the Condi-
tion, the Resources, and the Institutions of the American
People. By FRANCIS BOWEN, Alford Professor of Moral Phi-
losophy and Civil Polity in Harvard College. Boston: Lit-
tle, Brown, and Company. 1856. 8vo. pp. xxv. and 546.
(Chapter XXII. The Decline in the Value of Money.)
3. The Ways and Means of Payment: a full Analysis of the
Credit System, with its various Modes of Adjustment. By
STEPHEN COLWELL. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
1859. 8vo. pp. xii. and 644.

WE have placed at the head of this article the titles of three books, all of which are valuable additions to the department of science of which they treat. We propose, however, to examine only the first of them. We have deemed it a duty to mention also the other two, though one of them has already been reviewed in our pages, because the chapter of Mr. Bowen's book to which we especially refer anticipates, by a period of nearly two years, some of the most important statements and conclusions of M. Chevalier; and from the very recent and elaborate treatise of Mr. Colwell we have derived some valuable facts, for which we desire to give the proper credit. This latter work is worthy of more than a passing notice. Its author, who is intimately connected with one of the great producing interests of the country, is also known as a veteran in the science of Political Economy, and has hitherto, by his pen and by his editorial labors, made valuable contributions to its literature in this country. We have now, however, to speak of M. Chevalier's treatise on the Fall in the Value of Gold, a work which is destined, we think, to produce more impression than any on a kindred subject which, in this age teeming with discussions of credit, currency, and money, has recently

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