536 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



the unconscious mind plays a great part in the conscious ; and that certain 

 definite sensations or experiences may determine certain attitudes of mind long 

 after the memories of them had faded, and that such memories of past experiences 

 are always potential agencies, at any later period, for determining mental states. 

 Even the lay mind appreciates the story of the maid who, during the delirium of 

 a fever, spoke excellent Greek and Hebrew, because in her girlhood she had 

 waited upon an old professor who read his classics aloud. Further, the records of 

 every alienist physician can testify to the horrible vocabulary and the shocking 

 indecencies indulged in by young girls suffering from adolescent mania, or young 

 mothers suffering from puerperal insanity — utterances which no decent person 

 could have imagined had ever been heard by ears trained and brought up in 

 refined and delicate circles. It is certain that these words— accidentally heard on 

 one occasion — have by some association in the unconscious mind been dug out of 

 the obliterated memories of past experiences ; and based upon this surmise, it is 

 truly asserted that submerged in the brain cortex of each of us there exist enough 

 bad words to horrify the most profligate and debased ! At any rate it is a well- 

 known fact, as Freud has pointed out and as Dr. Stoddart repeats, that in the 

 education of children many incidents are remembered, although more are for- 

 gotten ; that many of these incidents, although forgotten, remain engraved upon 

 the tablets of the unconscious mind, which is "wax to receive and marble to 

 retain." The great trend of social and ethical education proceeds also in the 

 direction of repressing natural tendencies, suppressing feelings and passions, 

 inhibiting personal wishes and sentiments, as is pointed out in these lectures, until 

 the pupil after constant effort eventually succeeds in controlling them. These 

 tendencies, thus repressed " like steam in a boiler," as Bergson states, may at any 

 moment, when the conscious control is loosened, become uppermost in the mind, 

 and when this state of diminished inhibition has occurred, then arise the dreams, 

 longings, perverted desires, and delusions which constitute insanity. 



These pathological states are, it must be insisted, not alone, as Freud and the 

 author assert, the result of unpleasantly painful or shameful events in the past 

 history of the sufferer. Insanity and other forms of mental perversion are indeed 

 not chiefly even the consequences of uncleanness of mind, of sex perversion, 

 lustful covetousness, and base desires. Those physicians who have devoted their 

 lives to the investigation of mental phenomena assert that the abnormal conditions 

 described as insanity are the result of environmental influences, fatigue, and 

 exhaustion ; they occur through inheritance or from various poisons — some gene- 

 rated within the body and others introduced into it from without. Mental diseases 

 are complex factors caused partly by bodily disorders, such as are associated with 

 alcohol, syphilis, tuberculosis, or organic diseases of the brain, partly also through 

 disturbed mental effects, such as worry, grief, anxiety, bereavement, and losses, 

 but not, as the Freudians maintain, chiefly through the effects of libidinous desires, 

 suppressed sexual longings, or unjustifiable affections. 



The first lecture of the three under consideration deals with the fundamental 

 psychic instincts, and here the Freudian School is seen at its worst. Dr. Stoddart 

 suggests that " Freud is right that breast-sucking for the purpose of nourishment 

 (in babes) is partly of sexual import " ; that the pain of constipation is accom- 

 panied in children " by a pleasurable sensation which the child seeks to experience 

 again. It is a variety of masturbation," and he further adds " the desire to retain 

 fseces becomes sublimated into the desire to retain money, and those who have 

 had experience of psycho-analysis know how commonly in the neurotic 'faeces' 

 symbolises ' money ' ! " This is Freudism to the extreme limit of disgust, and the 



