An irresistible impulse to write to a friend, or make an unpremeditated visit, or to postpone an intended journey, because something seemed to say, "You must not go," we have all experienced. To illustrate my meaning, I will relate a true occurrence. A gentleman, after engaging his stateroom for an ocean voyage, postponed his journey for a fortnight, because he had a startling impression that he should not sail in a certain vessel. The ship was run down by a tramp steamer and nearly all on board perished. A week later he set sail on another ocean liner and landed at Havre in safety. But why did not all on the doomed boat have a similar warning?
During the great Centennial Fair I started with my sister one morning for the Quaker City. An irresistible impulse to return home, after we had reached the station and were just stepping into the car, caused my sister to exclaim: "Stop! I must go home! We will take the next train." It was vain to urge her to go then, and she went home. As she entered the house the maid handed her a valuable ring which she had found on the breakfast table, and said: "I was afraid you would come back for it and lose your train." "Yes," said my sister, "there it goes now, but we will take the next one."
We went back to the station and the agent said: "It was fortunate that you did not take the early train, for it was wrecked at G_____, a dozen miles below us, and many of the excursionists were killed and wounded."
"Now I know why I had to go home," said my sister; "it was truly a Providential impression which caused our delay this morning, for everything was all right at my home."
We reached the city of Philadelphia in safety, thanks to an over-ruling Providence. But the wreck of the morning train was the worst during the Centennial Exposition.
Martin Luther felt an irresistible impulse to fling his inkstand at the devil. Did he see the devil with his mortal eyes? Does everybody experience such sensations? What is irresistible impulse? Is it a temptation from the evil one—or a germ of latent insanity? Or of suicidal mania? Or the whisper of a spirit?
Scientists have failed to give a lucid explanation. Mental philosophy does not clearly explain why a man will yield to an uncontrollable desire to place his hand under the falling hammer on an anvil or jump from the Brooklyn Bridge. I have never been able to explain why I cannot stand upon the deck of a ship or in front of a coming steam engine, or above the rapids of Niagara, on a high tower, or above the roaring machinery in the iron rolling mills, without feeling an almost irresistible impulse to fling myself down. And this desire is always without any known motive. If there is a latent desire to experience the awful sensation of falling, of being ground to atoms beneath ponderous machinery, or of being hurled by a boiling maelstrom of relentless, hungry waters into eternity, and in one breathless moment to realize a waking nightmare, I know not; for I cannot analayze my feelings at such a time. My whole being seems to be wrapped up in the sublimity, of the awful height, or power, or grandeur of the scene beneath my eyes. Fear is for the time dead. A sort of fiendish exaltation holds possession of my mind, nerves and brain; yes, every particle of my flesh is alive with this awful longing to make the fatal plunge. Did Christ experience this desire to fling himself down, I wonder, when he was tempted by Beelzebub on that high mountain? Or did he see the tempter in person? Is this desire the origin of suicidal mania? Again, where does this unnatural impulse end? Medical experts tell us that it is not insanity, for every one is, at times, subject to such impulsions, and they reason that if it is a mania, then that all men are monomaniacs, more or less; that it would be impossible to draw the line between the sane and insane. But, be this true or false reasoning, I ask again, where does this so-called irresistible impulse end? Do you answer, In self-destruction? Do you remind me of the recent case of the boy murderer who, when on trial, declared that his desire to kill was too strong for his powers of resistance— that he "had to kill" his victims—that he took their innocent lives because, in his own words, he "had to do it?"
A few months ago a man leaped from the top floor of a foundry into a caldron of burning or liquid iron, in my native State.
From the Trenton Advertiser, October 5, 1884, I copy the following extract of a letter from Bradford, Pa., dated October 4, 1884. It says: "A day or two ago a tall, handsome woman got into the ladies' car at Dunkirk. With her was a bright little boy, some two years old. The child laughed and played with the passengers. When the train left Cataragus the woman who seemed nervous, got out of her seat, picked up the baby and started for the rear of the car.
"A short distance east of Cataragus is a long, deep gulf, over which the cars run over a high trestle. The distance from the top of the trestle to the wagon road below is perhaps one hundred feet. A sharp and short curve leads to it. As the train rushed over the gulf a woman's piercing shriek was heard. 'I looked,' said the brakeman, 'and saw an object leap from the platform into the rocky gulf. That object, sir, was the lady passenger; and in her arms, closely pressed to her breast, was her infant. I pulled the bell cord and the train came to a halt. How it happened I cannot say, but at the time the woman jumped a load of hay, drawn by a pair of oxen, passed under the trestle. Mother and child landed squarely in the centre of the hay and were thus saved from a horrible death. The woman, who was not hurt in the least, said her name was Mrs. Adam Schell, and her home was in Michigan. She was on her way to visit friends in the oil country.' Mrs. Schell said that she could not explain her action. When near the car door she was seized with an insane desire to jump from the train." I should call the above an excellent illustration of irresistible impulse.
Is not the suicidal mania an irresistible impulse?
I have somewhere seen a painting by a celebrated artist, in which the central figure was a noble-looking youth. On his right was an angel whispering in his ear, on his left a fiend endeavoring to lead him astray. Is the old artist's idea true? Are these morbid impulses the suggestions of the evil spirit, and do our good impressions and desires and monitions come from our guardian angels? Are conscience and desire, which sway us like reeds in the gale and lead us into good or evil against our own will power, only suggestions from guardian angels or lost spirits? Again, has not the Holy Spirit been sent into the world since the age of prophecy and miracles "to reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment," also, to "guide" us "into all truth?" And will not this Holy Spirit save us from self-destruction, from the suggestions of the soul's worst enemy, if we open the ears of our hearts and receive His teachings?
May irresistible impulse belong to, or be a product of, habit? Habits of unbridled thoughts and actions and idle day dreams may lead the soul astray. Habit cannot be classed among the natural attributes of individuals. It is always something acquired.
Our spiritual, intellectual and physical natures form a trinity. Give the first, or emotional, full reins, and it runs into melancholia, or religious mania. Allow the second full sway, and we have insanity. Leave the third, or animal, tendency unchecked by conscience, reason, human laws or Divine love, and lo! instead of the noblest work of God, behold a brute—an orangutang or chimpanzee!
We are all monomaniacs to a greater or less degree. Is not habit itself a sort of mania, a species of insanity? May not the practice of drinking spirituous liquors, of chewing, smoking or snuffing tobacco, drinking tea and coffee to excess, as well as eating morphia, hashish, quinine, camphor, caffeine, arsenic, and using chloral, be classed with other kinds of mania?
Cannot an unnatural craving for certain beverages or edibles be called a habit? The practice of contracting debts, of gambling, betting, using profane language, of carelessness in dress, or in speaking one's mother tongue, also of indulging in slang phrases and obscene expressions, has, in all instances, been acquired, and may consequently be classed with the manias or bad habits.
It is always easier to fall into a habit than to correct it. Personal habits, like evil thoughts, run in certain grooves or brain cells. "Doing good deeds, aiding the poor, visiting the sick, praying or attending church regularly, may," says a writer on psychology, "be classed as habits."
Some have a penchant for making collections of plants, insects, marine curiosities or minerals; birds, pictures, china and bric-a-brac; stamps and autographs, or rare books, Indian relics and implements of warfare. Sleeplessness, soliloquizing, somnambulism, loquacity, gossiping, exaggerating, as well as seeing spectres and being subject to singular hallucinations or victims to suicidal mania, kleptomania or irresistible impulses, may, I should suppose, be classed as habits.
Imagination, glorious and indispensable gift to mortals, may be so unduly cultured that its possessor may be accused of drifting into all kinds of absurd isms, if not dementias.
May not the various forms of insanity, also of seeing ghosts, be attributed to diseased or overtrained imagination? Or, does the victim of superstition allow his thoughts to dwell upon the unknown until, like the Witch of Endor, he can summon at will all sorts of hobgoblins? Were those who were possessed of evil spirits in Christ's time simply insane, or were they suffering from diseased imaginations, or were they really possessed of devils? Is that the case of the insane to-day? And if devils or evil spirits can enter the minds of human beings still, what is to hinder spirits, good or bad, from appearing in visible form in the twentieth century?
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