li^SANITY IN ROYAL FAMILIES. l8l 



of the reigning houses in hereditary monarchies. This is 

 specially true in regard to the diseases of the mind pre- 

 viously mentioned. It is in reigning families that mental 

 disorders are hereditary in an unusual degree. Thus Esquirol, 

 distinguished for his knowledge of mental diseases, proved 

 that the number of insane individuals in the reigning houses 

 was, in proportion to the number among the ordinary popu- 

 lation, as 60 to 1 ; that is, that disorders of the brain occur 

 60 times more frequently in the privileged families of the 

 ruling houses than among ordinary people. If equally 

 accurate statistics were made of the hereditary nobility, 

 the result would probably be that here also we should find 

 an incomparably larger contingent of mental diseases than 

 among the common, ignoble portion of mankind. This 

 phenomenon can scarcely astonish us if we consider what 

 injury these privileged castes inflict upon themselves by 

 their unnatural, one-sided education, and by their artificial 

 separation from the rest of mankind. By this means many 

 dark sides of human nature are specially developed and, as 

 it were, artificially bred, and, according to the laws of trans- 

 mission by inheritance, are propagated through series of 

 generations with ever-increas'ng force and dominance. 



It is sufficiently obvious from the history of nations how 

 in successive generations of many dynasties, for example, 

 of the princes of Saxon Thuringia and of the Medici, the 

 noble solicitude for the most perfect human accomplish- 

 ments in science and art were retained and transmitted 

 from father to son ; and how, on the other hand, in many 

 other dynasties, for centuries a special partiality for the 

 profession of war, for the oppression of human freedom, and 

 for other rude acts of violence, have been hereditary. In like 



