MODERN LIFE AND INSANITY. 443 



would wish to do ; the former does injury, and the latter causes dis- 

 satisfaction. 



Of mental stagnation among the poor we have already spoken ; 

 an analogous condition among the well-to-do classes, not to be con- 

 founded with that of the young lady already described as seen in the 

 London physician's consulting-room, deserves a passing observation. 

 Excessive activity and excessive dullness may lead to the same dire 

 result. Hence both conditions must be recognized as factors in the 

 causation of mental disease. We have said that the indirect action 

 of the latter it more powerful than its direct action, but there are no 

 doubt cases of insanity which arise from the directly injurious influ- 

 ence of intellectual inactivity. The intelligence is inert ; the range 

 of ideas extremely limited ; the mind broods upon some trivial cir- 

 cumstance until it becomes exaggerated into a delusion ; the mind 

 feeds upon itself, and is hyper-sensitive and suspicious, or it may be- 

 come absorbed in some morbid religious notions which at last exert a 

 paramount influence and induce religious depression or exaltation. 

 From the immediate surroundings of the individual, whether in con- 

 nection with parental training or from ecclesiastical or theological 

 influences, or perhaps a solitary condition of life, there may be a dan- 

 gerously restricted area of psychical activity. Prejudices of various 

 kinds hamper the free play of thought ; the buoyancy of the man's 

 nature is destroyed ; its elasticity broken ; its strength weakened ; 

 and it is in fine reduced to a state in which it is a prey to almost any 

 assertion however monstrous, if placed before it with the solemn sanc- 

 tions which, from education, habit, or predilection, it is accustomed 

 to reverence. Fantastic scruples and religious delusions frequently 

 spring up in this soil. Such persons have been saved from the evils 

 of drunkenness and vice ; they have also been sheltered from worry 

 and excitement, yet, to the astonishment of many, they become the 

 inmates of a lunatic asylum. They have in truth escaped the Scylla 

 of dissipation or drink, only to be shipwrecked on the Charybdis of a 

 dreary monotony of existence. On this barren rock not a very few 

 doubtless perish, and if parents they transmit, to a posterity deserving 

 our sincerest pity, mediocre brains or irritably susceptible and unsta- 

 ble nerve-tissue. 



On the dangers arising from waves of religious excitement, it 

 would be easy to dilate, but we shall content ourselves with remark- 

 ing that, if they have been exaggerated by some, they have been im- 

 properly ignored or denied by others. They are real ; and frightful 

 is the responsibility of those who, by excited utterances and hideous 

 caricatures of religion, upset the mental equilibrium of their auditors, 

 whether men, women, or children. 



One remarkable feature of modern life spiritualism has been 

 said to produce an alarming amount of insanity, especially in America. 

 It has been recently stated by an English writer that nearly 10,000 



