MODERN LIFE AND INSANITY. 435 



terize the class ; and no wonder that from such a source spring the 

 hopelessly incurable lunatics who crowd our pauper asylums, to the 

 horror of rate-payers, and the surprise of those who cannot understand 

 why the natives of Madagascar, though numbering about 5,000,000, 

 do not require a single lunatic asylum. We may add that they do 

 not destroy the few insane and idiots which they have. 



It is constantly forgotten that while there is nothing better than 

 true civilization, there is something worse than the condition of cer- 

 tain savages, and that almost anything is better than that stratum of 

 civilized society which is squalid, and drunken, and sensual ; cursed 

 with whatever of evil the ingenuity of civilized man has invented, 

 but not blessed with the counteracting advantages of civilization. 

 The conclusion, so far from damping the efforts of progress and mod- 

 ern developments of science, should stimulate us to improve the 

 moral and physical condition of this class, and so lessen the dangers 

 to mental disorder among them. The belief that savages are free 

 from some of the insanity-producing causes prevalent in modern civil- 

 ized England, is quite consistent with the position taken in this arti- 

 cle, that education, ample mental occupation, knowledge, and the reg- 

 ularly trained exercise of the faculties, exert a highly-beneficial influ- 

 ence upon the. mind, and thus fortify it against the action of some of 

 the causes of insanity. 



The relative liability of manufacturing and agricultural districts 

 to mental disease has excited much discussion. This has partly arisen 

 from the assumption that the latter may be taken as the representa- 

 tives of savages. As we have shown this to be false, the comparison 

 between these two districts does not, from this point of view, possess 

 any value. On other grounds, however, it would be very interesting 

 to determine whether urban or rural lunacy is most rife. Here, how- 

 over, the worthlessness of mere statistics is singularly evidenced, and 

 the difficulty of actually balancing the weight of various qualifying 

 circumstances becomes more and more apparent. An agricultural 

 county may be found here and there with less lunacy than a manu- 

 facturing county, but if a group of counties be taken in which the 

 manufacturing element is greatly beyond the average, and another 

 group in which the agricultural element greatly preponderates, we 

 find one lunatic to 463 of the county population in the former, and 

 one to 388 in the latter, showing an accumulation of more insane 

 paupers in the agricultural districts. But it is very possible that, if 

 we knew how many become insane, the result would be very different 

 indeed. This, in fact, has been found to be the case in Scotland, 

 where the Lunacy Commissioners have taken great pains to arrive at 

 the real truth. In a recent report it is shown that while three High- 

 land counties have, in proportion to the population, a decidedly 

 heavier persistent burden of pauper lunacy than two manufacturing 

 counties which are chosen for comparison, the number of lunatics re- 



