264 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



conditions in social life which determine these morbid pheno- 

 mena are increasing in intensity. And if the conditions which 

 affect more particularly the social organism as a whole are 

 unhealthy, the result brought about is the same as if the more 

 particularly individual conditions are unhealthy. An increase 

 in the intensity of the pathogenic social factors which determine 

 the increase of the suicide-rate is as harmful for the life of society 

 as an increase in the number of individuals tainted by some 

 specific hereditary mental disease. 



We speak of mental disease as if it were mainly a phenomenon 

 of individual pathology. And, as a matter of fact, we have the 

 authority of Dr. Paul SolUer, the eminent French psychiatrist, 

 for affirming that individual predisposition is, indeed, the main 

 factor in this disease. But even if mental disease were ex- 

 clusively a phenomenon of individual pathology, the multi- 

 plication of diseased individuals and the social danger which 

 results from such multiplication would in themselves justify 

 our considering this disease under the heading of social pathology. 

 Dr. SolUer, however, has himself expressed to us his behef that 

 alcoholism and syphilis may be regarded as the chief agents in the 

 increase of insanityni and this conclusion will be amply confirmed 

 by our statistics. BuL alcoholism and syphilis are undoubtedly 

 to a certain extent social phenomena ; it is not <mly the medical ._ 

 man who has to examine alcoholism and syphilis in their clinical 

 aspects — the sociologist has also to interest himself in these 

 diseases, since they constitute a menace to the stability of social hfe. 



To sum up : Although the individual factor is more important 

 in mental disease than it is in suicide, yet, in considering the 

 statistics of mental disease a s- we have considered those of 

 suicide, we find the social factor entering upon the scene as a 

 determining pathogenic factor of both. If the intensity of 

 economic life and the philosophic nihilism of the present day 

 are chiefly responsible for the augmentation of the suicide-rate ; 

 alcoholism and, in a lesser degree, syphilis are chiefly responsible 



