INCREASE OF INSANITY 265 



for the augmentation of the rate of insanity. The individual 

 factor comes more into evidence in mental disease, because we 

 are here dealing with clinical forms of disease, each with its 

 recognised and differentiated symptomatology ; whereas the 

 phenomenon of suicide does not appear to be bound up with 

 any distinct form of nervous disease, but to rest only on an 

 indistinct general background of degeneracy. The clinician 

 called upon to examine an individual case of suicide or mental 

 disease will endeavour to lay bare the individual aspects of the 

 particular case. The role of the sociologist is, not to examine 

 the individual suicide or the individual maniac, but to collect 

 the evidence afforded him by cliuical research in order to arrive 

 at a diagnosis of both phenomena considered ia the aggregate 

 as social phenomena. When we come to consider the suicide- 

 rate, or the rate of mental disease in general, we shall find both 

 suicide and insanity to be determined, in their general aspect, 

 by laws outside of the biological individual and belonging to the 

 doma.in of sociology proper. 



II. 



That the rate of mental disease is increasing, and increasing 

 fast, is proved by the statistics of all European countries, and 

 is universally admitted. As Oettingen remarks : " The relative 

 increase in the number of mentally diseased persons is, especially 

 in the most recent times, so constant and so extraordinarily 

 great in every country which has been brought under observa- 

 tion, that a real increase of the malady can be as little doubtful 

 as the increase of the suicide-rate." ^ And Dr. Paul Gamier, the 

 distinguished chief of the infirmary of the Prefecture of Police 

 in Paris, who was prematurely carried off by death in 1905, and 



1 Oettingen, Moralstatistik, p. 671. Erlangen, 3rd edition, 1882. 



