90 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



and right-minded man or woman to such a fate. These 

 people are actuated by pure selfishness, as is another 

 class, the quasi-religious, who throw all responsibility 

 upon Providence ; canting blockheads who forget that 

 God helps those who help themselves, and who refuse 

 to understand that Providence, having established be- 

 nign laws for the government of His creatures, will 

 not stultify Himself by staying those laws in answer 

 to the whine of those who have wittingly disregarded 

 and violated them. In all these cases, high and low, 

 selfishness pure and simple is the motive power, and 

 the strong arm of the law should be invoked to pre- 

 vent, so far as is possible, such selfishness saddling the 

 community with a helpless, worthless offspring. 



Still, in the great majority of cases among the 

 middle classes deception is practised. Eightly or 

 wrongly, people look upon insanity or epilepsy as a 

 stigma upon the family, and use every endeavour to 

 preserve its existence unknown to the world. The 

 answer to the question, " Is there any insanity in your 

 family ? " even from those whose word upon any other 

 question might be implicitly relied on, is often not 

 worth the breath which gives it utterance. Only the 

 other day I asked a lady, whose daughter was insane, 

 whether any other member of the family had ever 

 suffered from any mental or nervous disease of any 

 kind, and she hastened to assure me that such a thing 

 was unknown to the family. Having had a different 

 family-history from the insane daughter's unfortunate 

 husband, I was rather taken aback at the reply, but 



