IV VIEWS OF VON KRAFFT-EBING 195 



I brought forward this case because I followed it carefully 

 with great interest. Insanity doctors doubtless know numerous 

 others of a similar character. 



It is, moreover, a fact generally known, that just such defi- 

 ciencies in the power of will in respect of various but definite 

 actions, in other words, of claims of human life, have helped 

 to determine the character of individuals and their descend- 

 ants, the character of whole families and peoples — that such 

 deficiencies are hereditary. 



And because these deficiencies, because also the nerve- 

 cells of the brain in which they have their seat, owe their 

 origin to relations to the outer world, therefore they must 

 have been acquired. 



The following, as an irrefragable proof of the inheritance 

 of mental diseases as diseases acquired through relations 

 to the outer world, I give in the words of an authority in 

 psychiatry, Dr. von Krafft-Ebing. 



It is a 'priori a probable supposition that the doctrine of 

 inherited sin, which still finds place in the Christian religion, 

 especially in the Catholic Church, is derived from a knowledge 

 of the facts of heredity, just as the Mosaic and Moham- 

 medan prohibition of the eating of swine-flesh j^robably has 

 its ultimate cause in the experience of possible injurious 

 effects of that food, although trichinae as the cause of disease, 

 leaving tapeworms out of the question, could not have been 

 known. 



But this view of the origin of " sin " is strongly supported 

 by the following record of facts concerning heredity as one of 

 the causes of insanity. Dr. von Krafft-Ebing says in the 

 section on this subject in his Textbook of Psychiatry : ^ — 



1 E. V. Kraift-Ebing, Lehrhuch der Psychiatrie, 1879, Bd. i. p. 153, seq. 

 Cf. Prichard, Treatise of Insanity, p. 157 ; Lucas, Traite jihilosophiqxie et lihysio- 

 logiqxLe de Vheredite, Paris, 1847 ; Morel, Traite des Degenerescences, etc. Paris, 



