CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF INSANITY. 105 



have come across the result of some big educational blunder, owing 

 either to the system in vogue or else to those who execute it." (See 

 Steps toward Insanity, New York Medical Journal, August 14, 1897.) 



There is one fact about heredity which seems not to be commonly 

 considered namely, that each individual is really the descendant of 

 not only his immediate parents, but of the two lines of ancestry in- 

 definitely far back and widespread. Thus, in many instances, the 

 dominating characteristics are not those of father and mother, but of 

 grandparents, or of some other antecedent or collateral relatives in- 

 stead. In fact, each individual in its development from the germ 

 to adulthood passes through not only many animal forms, but through 

 many ancestral phases of character as well. And, as in the first case, 

 the size and strength of adult physical features depend on the stage 

 at which growth becomes abnormally extended, perverted, or arrested, 

 so, with regard to mental and moral qualities and their persistence 

 under stress, the outcome mostly if not entirely depends upon the ex- 

 tent to which they are allowed or constrained to develop, or the reverse. 

 Here we often see the absolutely limiting influence of " atavism," or 

 what is characterized as " reversion," to generations further removed 

 than the parental, but which really is the result of an exaggeration 

 or a stoppage, or a perversion of development before the stage of 

 parental dominance is "finally reached. In this way the f eatural and 

 mental characteristics of relatives as far removed as great-grand- 

 parents or great-granduncles, as well as grandparents and uncles, are 

 seen to appear in children even when young, to be finally either accen- 

 tuated and made prominent, or else possibly outgrown or otherwise 

 overcome as the years go by, and as the later parental determining 

 powers and the corresponding environment come to manifest their 

 influence. 



With this view of heredity in mind, it is easy to see how the real 

 basis of every mental breakdown may be and probably is simply an 

 overdoing or perversion or other irregularity at some premature or 

 "atavistic" stage of development; and that anything and every- 

 thing which may have had to do in causing this should be considered 

 as a primary step toward the insanity itself. But easy as it is to see 

 this theoretically, it does not necessarily follow that it is easy to get 

 hold of the real facts or to help the matter in any given case. Many 

 times families are loath to reveal things which might indicate such a 

 basis of the dreaded disease. Many times they do not recognize the 

 necessity of telling what they would otherwise be willing enough to 

 reveal. Many things are absolutely forgotten or have been at best only 

 vaguely comprehended. Sometimes conscious deception is practiced ; 

 at others, the party who really has known the facts is dead or is other- 

 wise inaccessible. But more often, and more interfering still, is the 



