THE EVOLUTION OF THE MIND. 275 
acters of insanity. The phenomena of hysteria, faith 
cure, openness to suggestion, subjective imagery, mys- 
ticism, are not indications of spiritual 
strength, but of decay and disintegration 
of the nerves. The ecstasy of unbal- 
anced religious excitement and the stupor of a drunken 
debauch may belong to the same category of mental phe- 
nomena. Both point toward moral and spiritual decay. 
There are no occult or “latent powers” of the mind ex- 
cept those which have become useless in changed con- 
ditions, or which belong to the process of disintegration. 
If a man crosses his eyes and is thus enabled to see ob- 
jects double, we do not regard him as having developed 
a “latent power” of vision. He has simply destroyed 
the normal co-ordination of such power. One does 
not increase the strength of a rope by untwisting its 
strands. The effectiveness of life depends upon the co- 
ordination and co-operation of the parts of the nervous 
system. Its strands must be kept together. To move 
in a state of revery, “to live in two worlds at once,” to 
be unable to separate memory pictures from realities, 
all these are forms of nervous disintegration. Every 
phase of them can be found in the madhouse. The end 
of such conditions is death. The healthy mind should 
combat all tendencies toward disintegration. It can be 
clean and strong only by being true. 
In like manner the influence of all drugs which affect 
the nervous system must be in the direction of disinte- 
gration. The healthy mind stands in 
clear and normal relations with Nature. 
It feels pain as pain. It feels action as pleasure. The 
drug which conceals pain or gives a false pleasure when 
pleasure does not exist forces a lie upon the nervous 
system. The drug which disposes to revery rather than 
to work, which makes us feel well when we are not well, 
Phenomena 
of hysteria. 
Effect of drugs. 
