240 MOEAL CAUSES OF 



if they are not universally, associated with each other, often 

 acquire the force of violent and uncontrollable passions, that 

 pass into either murderous mania, monomania of suspicion, 

 or suicidal melancholia (Pierquin). 



In other animals, just as in man, there are no more power- 

 ful and frequent causes of mental disorder than anxieties or 

 worries of all kinds, the result usually, in the cases equally 

 of man and other animals, of the exigencies of the great 

 struggle for life. These anxieties and this struggle are of 

 course greatest in animals systematically persecuted by man, 

 and least in those protected by him, though the latter are in 

 their turn, as has been already seen, subject to disturbing 

 influences of a different kind. Hence this class of factors of 

 mental disquietude and upset is to be looked for in such 

 animals as the poor hunted hare, the fox and wolf. The 

 incessant cares connected with the necessity for the avoid- 

 ance of man's multiform snares, or of more numerous and 

 powerful predatory animals the anxieties of war, of famine 

 or destitution, of homelessness and exile, of a wandering, 

 uncertain life, of man's cruelty in a thousand different 

 forms the excessive solicitude of the mother for her eggs 

 or young, of the father for the safety of his mate and their 

 offspring, of both parents, or of animals that have no ma- 

 ternal or paternal cares of their own all tell on the animal 

 mind as powerfully as parallel conditions do on man's. 



As in the case of so many other causes of mental de- 

 rangement, the influence of anxiety is determined probably 

 not so much by its character or source as by its duration its 

 long or short continuance on the one hand, and its intensity 

 on the other ; which latter, again, will depend very much on 

 the natural temperament of the animal, or on the presence 

 of the co-operating influence of predisposition. 



Vexations or disappointments of all kinds in love or 

 affection, in hope or desire are scarcely separable in their 

 influence from anxieties which, in truth, they directly pro- 

 duce. Wounded feelings of pride, ambition, self-esteem, 

 love of approbation, longing for attention; slights, affronts, 

 neglect ; the sense of ill-usage or injustice ; the severance of 

 attachments in bereavement ; the rupture of old, cherished 



