472 INTEMPERANCE AND INSANITY 



sure conclusion. In any case, however, the number of the insane 

 is so large that their existence is a source of vast misery and 

 hardship to very many people and a considerable and constantly 

 growing burden to the State. 



773. The problem of the causation of insanity of the causation 

 of its first appearance in a line of descent has been much debated. 

 Both imbecility and lunacy are so often reproduced in families in 

 which they have once appeared, that it is certain that there is 

 present, in some instances at least, an ' innate and transmissible ' 

 weakness, a predisposition to one or other form of mental unsound- 

 ness. 1 Since lunacy is due to wrong learning, since the individual 

 is a lunatic because he receives wrong impressions from his 

 surroundings, the direct influence of the environment must 

 necessarily, in a sense, always play a part in its causation. But, 

 since imbecility is due to no learning, or a lack of sufficient learn- 

 ing, since the individual is an idiot or an imbecile because he does 

 not mentally acquire anything or enough from his surroundings, 

 the environment need not play a part in the causation of his 

 weakness, 2 for he may be defective through a spontaneous 

 variation which occurred in him or in a progenitor, and which 



and crime are now paid for by the ratepayer, and any method of diminishing these 

 at reasonable cost must be to his benefit. 



" In the ruder state of society which has passed away little heed was taken 

 of these unfortunate children, and many of them, no doubt, died comparatively 

 early in the struggle for existence. But we have learned to think more tenderly 

 of the inferior members of our race, and we seek to protect them from the 

 calamities and sufferings to which they are naturally exposed, and to preserve 

 their lives to the utmost. But in so doing, and in so doing rightly, we incur, 

 as it appears to me, another responsibility, namely, that of preventing, so far as 

 we reasonably can, the perpetuation of a low type of humanity, for otherwise 

 the beneficence of one generation becomes the burden and the injury of all succeed- 

 ing ones. The past increase in the number of lunatics in the country, to which 

 I have already alluded, demands our most serious consideration of every means 

 which can be legitimately used to protect the race from physical and mental 

 degradation, and I regard the segregation of imbeciles, first in childhood and in 

 youth, and subsequently throughout life, as one of the means which is most open 

 to us" (Sir James Fry, Evidence before the Royal Commission on the Care and 

 Control of the Feeble-minded, vol. i. p. 312). 



1 " Undoubtedly those who have great experience in the care and supervision 

 of persons suffering from mental defect in these forms, such as ' idiots ' or 

 ' imbeciles ' . . . state that in a very large proportion these persons are the 

 offspring of mentally defective parents or are members of families in which other 

 nearly related members are mentally defective. Op. cit., vol. viii. p. 181. 



2 The reader must bear in mind that by the direct influence of the environment 

 we mean such influence as causes change in the individual or the germ-plasm 

 by acting directly on them. By indirect action we mean selection or cessation 

 of selection. 



