276 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



their mental machinery works in a defective, " mad " way 

 as to one or more subjects often only as to one subject 

 or class of subjects. They exhibit in different individuals 

 a vast variety of illusions and propensities which may be 

 merely unreasonable or may be dangerous to themselves 

 and to others. 



It seems that the idiotic and feeble-minded are devoid 

 of, or defective in, general mental receptivity, although in 

 regard to a few things they may have retentive but unin- 

 telligent memory. Even the less afflicted among them 

 are incapable of " thinking " at all, because their defective 

 memory or receptivity gives them nothing to think about. 

 On the other hand, the lunatic exhibits the ordinary 

 receptivity of a healthy human being, but thinks wrongly 

 or absurdly upon one or a few lines, though normally and 

 soundly upon every other. 



The State in civilised countries has long since made 

 provision for the proper medical care and restraint 

 of lunatics and of the extreme cases of the other class, 

 the idiots. But by an oversight in this country, which the 

 gravedigger in Hamlet would consider very natural, the 

 less extreme cases of idiocy the so-called feeble-minded 

 have been left without State guardianship. It is a fact 

 that these cases occur both in the wealthiest and the 

 poorest class of the community, though they are put 

 away under medical care by well-to-do families, and are 

 left by the very poor to wander about and get into terrible 

 mischief. Hence there has grown up a belief that feeble- 

 minded offspring are more frequently produced by 

 mentally sound parents who are very poor than by 

 those who are rich or well-to-do, though there are not 

 facts or figures which establish that conclusion. It has 

 further been maintained that this supposed large pro- 

 portional rate of production of feeble-minded among 

 the poorest, ill-fed, ill-housed, and vicious dregs of the 



