MODERN LIFE AND INSANITY. 445 



a strong argument would have been afforded, and would probably 

 have been employed, against the extension of education at the present 

 day to the working-classes. Nothing, however, in our facts or figures 

 supports such an anti-progressive view ; and, if the educated classes 

 did not sin against their mental health in so many ways, they would 

 doubtless compare more favorably than they do, in fact as well as in 

 mere figures, with tht uneducated poor. So again with regard to in- 

 temperance, and all that it involves, in spite of the difficulty of dis- 

 criminating between the many factors which often go to make up the 

 sum total of causes of an attack, we have no doubt of the large influ- 

 ence for mental evil exerted by drink always admitting that where 

 the constitution has no latent tendency to insanity, you may do almost 

 what you like with it, in this or any other way, without causing this 

 particular disease. A man will break down at his weak point, be it 

 what it may. 



Again, the lessons are taugnt of the importance, not of mere edu- 

 cation, but a real training of the feelings ; the evil of mental stagna- 

 tion, not simply per se, but from the train of sensual degradation in 

 one direction, and of gloomy fanaticism in the other, engendered, and 

 the danger of dwelling too long and intently on agitating religious 

 questions, especially when presented in narrow and exclusive forms, 

 which drive people either to despair or to a perilous exaltation 

 of the feelings. To true religious reformers, the physician best ac- 

 quainted with the causation of mental disease will award his hearti- 

 est approval. Only as the high claims of duty, demanded from man 

 by considerations of the dependence of his work in the world upon 

 mental health, of what he owes to his fellow-men, and of what he 

 owes to God, are fulfilled as well as acknowledged, will civilized man 

 benefit by his civilization, as regards the prevention of insanity. TTn- 

 preventable lunacy will still exist, but a great saving will be effected 

 for British rate-payers when that which is preventable shall have been 

 reduced to a minimum by the widest extension of a thorough but not 

 oppressive and too early commenced education, by the practical ap- 

 plication of the ascertained truths of physiological and medical sci- 

 ence, and by the influence of a Christianity, deep in proportion to its 

 breadth, which shall really lay hold of life and conduct, and mould 

 them in accordance with itself. Macmillan's Magazine. 



