Is a given prisoner fit, so far as his mental condition is concerned, to undergo the discipline to which his sentence of imprisonment commits him?

The relationship existing between the mental constitution of prisoners, and the active and passive penalties which go to make up their prison experience, requires some notice before we can recognise how a special class of weak-minded criminals arises apart from those who are positively insane.

It has been a question for curious speculation since man began to reflect on the origin of knowledge and the nature of his own faculties, what would be the character of a human being growing up without any intercourse with his kind, and having no ideas and no knowledge save those derived by his own unassisted intellect from his observations of the external world. Man's acquired knowledge being evidently the combined product of his own innate capacities, tastes, and sympathies, and the suggestions and customs resulting from his contact with other beings, it is only by a very difficult and somewhat doubtful process of analysis that philosophers have been able to distinguish what is innate and what is acquired; and, as every one knows, great discussions have taken place as to the line of demarcation between those ideas which are the result of education, and those supposed to be of spontaneous growth. The experiment said by Herodotus∗ to have been performed by King Psammitichus is one likely enough to have been made by an eastern prince addicted to those speculations on the origin of ideas which so naturally present themselves to human curiosity. In order, as the priests of Memphis told the great father of history, to decide the important question:—Which was the most ancient of nations?—the king gave two newborn children to a shepherd to educate. They were nursed by goats and separated from all human beings.

All the forms of insanity we have hitherto been considering have been more or less connected with the sexual organs or sexual functions and conditions, with the exception of the first and last—the epileptic and phthisical insanity. The forms which follow are mostly connected with disease of the body, affecting the brain sympathetically, or disease of the brain acting on its functions directly.

Everything that Mr. Browning writes has claims upon the attention of those who study the philosophy of mind. There may be some difference of opinion as to Mr. Browning's position as a poet; it may be argued that, simply regarded as possessed of poetical faculty, he must be looked upon as inieriorto many other writers of poems in these fecund days; that much that he has written in rhyme would have been as readily communicable in prose; but there can be no difference of opinion as to Mr. Browning's exceptional mental vigour and calibre, nor can it be denied that very few men of equal capacity have either in this or in other ages devoted themselves to imaginative literature.

According to the promise made in our last number, we shall endeavour to give a brief abstract of the chapter on Treatment in the third edition of Drs. Bucknill and Tuke's “Psychological Medicine.” The chapter in question, as our readers are aware, is by Dr. Bucknill, and contains not only his own views, but those of various other writers on many questions connected with the treatment of the insane.

This little volume is in great part a reprint of papers which appeared in the “Lancet.” The object of its author is to describe simply and concisely the clinical characters of certain nervous disorders which he believes to be of a syphilitic nature. It consists of four chapters—the first treating of the diagnosis of syphilitic nervous affections, the second dealing with the pathology and morbid anatomy of them, the third containing illustrative cases, and the fourth devoted to a consideration of prognosis and treatment.