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I believe, and I think I may venture to say, that originally commissions of this sort were of two kinds; a commission aiming at, and enquiring whether, the individual had been an idiot ex nativitate, or whether, on the other hand, he was a lunatic.

It seems to have been a very long time before those who had the administration of justice in this department, thought themselves at liberty to issue a commission, when the person was represented as not being idiot ex nativitate, as not being lunatic, but as being of UNSOUND MIND, importing by those words, the notion, that the party was in some such state, as was to be contra-distinguished from idiotcy, and as he was to be contra-distinguished from lunacy, and yet such as made him a proper object of a commission, in the nature of a commission to inquire of idiotcy, or a commission to inquire of lunacy.

"It seems to have been a very long time before those who had the administration of justice in this department thought themselves at liberty to issue a commission, when the person was represented as not being idiot ex nativitate, as not being lunatic, but as being of UNSOUND MIND, importing, by these words, the notion, that the party was in some such state, as was to be contra-distinguished from idiotcy, and as was to be contra-distinguished from lunacy, and yet such as made him a proper object of a commission in the nature of a commission to inquire of idiotcy, or a commission to inquire of lunacy."

'It is on this account, as father Damien observes, 'that Mary, who introduced this illustrious day diffused a brightness over the morning by her nativity Maria, veri proevia luminis, nativitate suâ mane clarissimum serenavit. Hasten then, brethren, hasten with joy to behold the beginnings of this new day: we shall see it shine in the attractive light of an untarnished purity!"......Bossuet's Sermon.

By the common consent of philosophers and physicians, mental imbecility in the extreme degree is termed idiotcy; and this state may exist "ex nativitate," or supervene at various periods of human life.

"Agnovit bos et asinus Quod Puer erat Dominus!" In some of the earliest pictures the animals kneel, "confessing the Lord." One of the old Latin hymns, De Nativitate Domini, describes them, in that wintry night, as warming the new-born Infant with their breath; and they have always been interpreted as symbols, the ox as emblem of the Jews, the ass of the Gentiles.