54 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



So, too, that love of art existing now as only a dream, and tliat 

 egotistic good nature wliich enjoys the advantages of a mother's care 

 without gratitude, those short accesses of genial eloquence followed 

 by fury which burst out from the midst of apathy, and which are 

 drowned in the intoxication of alcohol with a complete, immediate 

 forgetfulness of everything, are specific traits of paralytic dementia. 



Ibsen, in Hcdda Gabber, describes to us a neurotic woman who, 

 being pregnant, and therefore suffering more acute attacks, avenges 

 herself, though married, upon her former lover, who had left her, by 

 burning the manuscripts which he expected to make him famous. 

 Virile, like all criminals, she nursed her resentment from youth. 



In the Pillars of Society the great political characters are rogues 

 and neurotics. 



In Berkmann the true criminal banker comes into play. He does 

 not kill or ravish, but appropriates the money belonging to his bank 

 under the illusion that he will be able to make great gains with it 

 through the accomplishment of wonderful things that will secure to 

 him his single joy — ^power; and that he can then restore the sum 

 with redoubled interest. 



This case is of a kind of very frequent occurrence, and shows a 

 complete absence in the banker of affection and of moral sense. He 

 sacrifices the woman who loves him to further the desires of an accom- 

 plice. He has a faithful friend who, robbed by him, continues to 

 visit him every day and give him the solace of admiration even when 

 all despise him ; and he repels him when he fails to absolve him and 

 to believe in the possibility of his return to power. Later the de- 

 faulter pretends that he has studied his own. case, and has probed it in 

 every way, with the result of a complete acquittal of himself. And 

 why all this? Because he has used the money of others for gi-eat 

 purposes : to connect seas, to excavate the millions that are shut up in 

 the bosom of the earth and are crying out to be brought into the 

 light. Thus it is that with the combined genius and delii'ium of 

 megalomaniacs he hears the call of the minerals and the groaning 

 of the ships longing to be set free. Conscience, duty, and probity do 

 not exist for him. He believes that his quality as a man of genius 

 permits him everything; therefore he sacrifices to his chimeras the 

 beings who love him most. " I am," he says, " like a ISTapoleon dis- 

 abled by a shot in his first battle " ; and he does not perceive that he 

 has grown old, that he has a mortal heart disease ; and he dreams of 

 returning to power and of hearing men ask the benefit of his advice, 

 and no longer talks with anybody, because there is nobody but his 

 old lover who does not believe him guilty. 



Finally, repulsed by all, he plunges into the whirl of life and the 

 torment of the mountain, and dies at last of syncope; while his equally 



