FORMS OF MENTAL DEFECT AND DERANGEMENT. 57 



them ; who repay attention with ferocity or indifference, or 

 whose character is made up of a combination of bad qualities. 

 The human parallel to these unfortunate animals is a class 

 familiar to the physician engaged in lunacy practice a class 

 made up largely of youths who are the betes noires the black 

 sheep, the ne'er-do-wells of their families, the heart-breaks of 

 their parents, the shame of their friends given to lying, 

 theft, drink, indolence, or debauchery, or to all of them ; in- 

 corrigibly vicious in short, utterly unfit to occupy or main- 

 tain a respectable or self-supporting position in the world. 

 Such human waifs are, or should be, pitied, not punished ; 

 they are, or should be, dealt with gently as not themselves 

 to blame for a faulty moral organisation. 



It is scarcely surprising that the incorrigibility of moral 

 defect or perversion in other animals is utterly misunder- 

 stood by man. The most mischievous attempts are con- 

 stantly made to ' drive the devil out of them ' by cruelties 

 the most refined. The supposed mere vice an hereditary 

 vice, however, of organisation becomes more and more 

 serious, and the animal more and more useless or dangerous, 

 more burdensome and troublesome, until its career is put an 

 end to by the gun, the pole-axe, or poison. 



Morbid or exaggerated self-esteem amounting to what 

 in man is called the monomania of pride what Pierquin terms 

 a monomania of ambition, is common according to him in 

 Arab horses, fallow deer, and apes. The kind of ambition, 

 however, to which in some cases at least he applies the term 

 ' monomania,' can scarcely be regarded as morbid in its na- 

 ture. It is, in fact, a mere natural desire for leadership, 

 which urges the horse, for instance, to attack other animals 

 of superior rank, and carrying the costume or badge thereof. 



Morbid or exaggerated alarm or timidity, amounting to 

 what is called in man the monomania of fear, is indubitably 

 much more common than the morbid exaltation of self- 

 esteem, pride, or vanity. Morbid fear is apt to be associated 

 with, or to give rise to, delusions of fear or suspicion, and to 

 melancholia, sometimes even to suicide. The relation of fear 

 to suspicion or suspiciousness, and to delusion, is most im- 

 portant in relation to the genesis and development of a whole 



