Diseases of the Internal Senses. 739 



sympathetic and benevolent, mindful of the rights of others and imbued 

 with an instinct to put themselves into co-operative harmony with their 

 fellows ; others whose ancestry have lived apart and relied upon them- 

 selves, and especially those whose ancestry lived in conditions of antag- 

 onism, as banditti, pirates, soldiers, adventurers, &c. , have inherited a 

 less social and co-operative spirit. Very few people can trace their ped- 

 igree more than five or six generations, and it is seldom practicable to 

 tell what sort of blood underlies the mild and civilized behavior which 

 appears upon the surface of modern society. When atrophy occurs 

 from any cause in any family, the polish lately put upon the surface by 

 the attrition of social intercourse is quickly lost and some of the ances- 

 tral conditions are laid bare. These conditions may be immoral or anti- 

 social to a greater or less degree ; or the effects may involve deeper 

 strata and more remote ancestries, taking us back to the infancy of the 

 race. Maudsley tells of such a case. A boy of eight years, who, though 

 quick of perception, was unstable and unable to fix his attention long 

 enough to learn anything even a game of hoop. He was ingenious in 

 mischief and delighted to talk of playing malicious tricks, in the imag- 

 inative description of which he exulted in a braggart and grotesquely 

 dramatic fashion, chattering incessantly and running from one thing to 

 another. He had a minute memory of past events, but no regard for 

 the truth in relating them, lying simply for its own sake. He was fond 

 of talking in a ludicrously fierce and boastful tone of killing persons or 

 animals by whom he imagined himself offended. His father had been 

 insane and his paternal grandmother demented. There was also insanity 

 on his maternal side, and his mother was an unstable, excitable and in- 

 sincere person. 1 The stock had evidently backslid in some lines, and 

 this boy was no doubt very monkey-like in some of his cerebral char- 

 acteristics. 



But if we repeat in individual life the steps in progressive develop- 

 ment that have been taken by our ancestral line, there is a period in the 

 life of each when the character is of the anti-social, selfish and unmoral 

 nature, attributed to the brutes, although it is also true that the rudi- 

 ments of social and moral restraint are laid in brute society. 



Children are, as "La Bruyere described them, naturally boastful, 

 scornful, passionate, envious, curious, selfish, idle, prone to steal, apt 

 to dissimulate, easily moved to immoderate joy, or thrown into excessive 

 grief by trifles, not willing themselves to suffer, but eager and pleased 

 to inflict suffering. " This description applies also to some savages, but 

 not in all respects to all, nor to all the children of civilized races. But 

 the unselfish and moral traits, which owe their cultivation and develop- 

 ment to the social habit, are, as a rule, quite wanting in children, how- 

 ever civilized. 



"Body and Will, 249. ' 



