6o2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mental and physical states. We find the morbid ideas more fixed 

 in the sane than in the insane, frequent repetitions of the morbid 

 impression tending to its final organization, so to speak. We also 

 find that the morbid idea is usually more elaborated in the insane 

 than in the sane state, although instances of the greatest elabora- 

 tion are sometimes met with, especially where the element of some 

 external foundation is large. It is probable, however, that the 

 elements of fixity and elaboration of the persecutory idea are after 

 all dependent upon and in proportion to the intensity of the under- 

 lying brain and mind states. In other words, that to increase a 

 given intensity of these states is to increase the fixity and elabo- 

 rateness of the " sense of injury," is to prevent the correction of 

 the morbid idea, until finally exploited in conduct, which is the 

 debut of the insanity. 



Thus the relativity of insanity which has all along been main- 

 tained is clear on the line here pursued. It would be equally so 

 in following other lines of morbid psychology. It has, though, 

 received but little general recognition, and writers still treat in- 

 sanity as an entity apart from its bearings on the average mind 

 and its evolutionary history. The word " insanity," or " lunatic," 

 is no doubt largely responsible for this, suggesting popularly, as 

 it does, a distinct class of persons — a type of being as unlike our- 

 selves as a Martian might be fancied to be. Nature or science, 

 however, has set no line between the morbid mental manifesta- 

 tions which constitute sanity and those which constitute insanity, 

 that being an arbitrary, however practical, distinction which sci- 

 ence has had rather to descend to meet. Nothing so stands in the 

 way of the best welfare of the insane than this abysmal ignorance 

 which still prevails in regard to them — an ignorance which still 

 clings to the mediaeval idea of insanity, the classical portraiture, 

 as in the pictures of Hogarth, or on the stage, or in fiction; an igno- 

 rance which is ever hearkening for the maniac's shriek or the clank- 

 ing of his fetters, which recog-nizes nothing short of " furious mad- 

 ness " as sufficient ground for committing a brain-sick man to the 

 tender therapy of the hospital ward. 



But those who know best tell us that the insane are very much 

 like other people, that there is wonderfully little difference be- 

 tween them and ourselves; and sometimes but a slight circum- 

 stance, a mere accident of environment, determines which side of 

 the hospital wall we shall be on. 



