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HOME-LIFE. 129 



absorbs the whole attention. Not only is this 

 excessive concentration on the family life an evil 

 in itself and a source of unhappiness to young 

 I)eoi)le, but it is also, in the long run, productive 

 of serious mental troubles, hysteria, and even in- 

 sanity. Madness, as Doctor Maudsley, the great 

 alienist, has admirably pointed out, is essentially 

 a disease of tlie social faculties. Man is and ought 

 to be a social being ; but, when proper social 

 intercourse is for any cause denied him, when he 

 is debarred from due intermixture with his own 

 kind, when his mind is turned in entirely upon 

 itself, the balance of his faculties is soon upset, 

 and insanity sui)er\"enes. Everybody knows that 

 solitary confinement very frequently ends in mad- 

 ness. Just in the same way, though of course to 

 a less degree, intense restriction to the narrow limits 

 of the house and the household, too great concen- 

 tration of the ideas and interests on the family 

 alone, help in the end to fill our lunatic asylums 

 with what one may fairly call manufactured mad- 

 men. A free, expansive, natural intercourse with 

 men and women, wide interests in politics, litera- 

 ture, science, art, a taste for outdoor exercise, 

 games, rowing, bicycling, — these are the best 

 safeguards against such evil results of our painful 

 national overcrowding. 



But how is the remedy to be practically applied ? 

 That is indeed the central crux and grand difficulty 



