1 8 DEFECT, DISORDER, AND DEGENERACY OF MIND IN MAN. 



ness, fox-like cunning or craftiness, and cat-like treachery. 

 John Stuart Mill points out, in his volume on c Nature,' that 

 there are persons ( who have a real pleasure in inflicting or 

 seeing the infliction of pain. This kind of cruelty is not 

 mere hard-heartedness, or absence of pity or remorse. It is 

 a positive thing, a particular kind of voluptuous excitement.' 

 It is more also, for it is too frequently a symptom or feature 

 of what is known to medico-psychologists as moral insanity. 

 In another chapter it is shown that such qualities are less 

 characteristic of other animals, however, than of man him- 

 self, and that it would be more correct to speak of these 

 human peculiarities as occasionally marring the nature of the 

 nobler ' lower ' animals. 



There is always a bestial tendency in man, however 

 civilised, a liability to the development of theroid instincts, 

 an aptitude for reversion or degeneration, in morals and 

 intelligence, in passions and appetites, in general habits, and 

 even in respect to that 6 instinct ' which is, or is supposed to 

 be, typical of the character of zoologically lower animals. 

 This proclivity is illustrated by all the mental phenomena 

 we have been considering in this and the preceding chapter; 

 that is, by the intellectual and moral conditions or pecu- 

 liarities of 



1. Infancy and childhood. 



2. Old age. 



3. Savage, or primitive man. 



4. The human idiot and lunatic. 



5. The uneducated, criminal, and other classes in civilised 

 communities. 



