12 ALFRED T. SCHOFIELD, M.D., ON CHRISTIAN SANITY. 



constitutes " an ordinary manner certainly requires explana- 

 tion. And this is the best America can give us ! 



The Century Dictionary defines sane as " mentally sound/' 

 which we knew before, and is irritating rather than illuminating. 



I think we may fairly conclude that to the most highly trained 

 minds the word is indefinable. It seems, however, to the com- 

 paratively untrained mind of the writer that some better results 

 might be obtained by considering the subject from the point of 

 view of "balance.'' A balanced mind is a familiar term for a 

 sane mind, an unbalanced for an insane. " He has lost his 

 balance " or (in common speech) " has a screw loose,'' graphic- 

 ally describes loss of reason. The very simile, however, popular 

 as it is, suggests instability, and gives no absolutely fixed point 

 of solid sanity, but a trembling round a perfect poise — at first 

 sight a precarious position for all of us. The matter, however, 

 is not really so bad as this. 



We may picture the mind as a pair of scales with two 

 opposed weights, consisting, I suppose, in the main of reason 

 and emotion. As one of the two preponderates by will force or 

 other agencies, the scale sinks on that side, and the perfect 

 balance is lost. The mind continually oscillates thus between 

 opposite forces ; but this no more shows it is unsound than the 

 swinging of a compass needle shows it unreliable. The point is, 

 where are both when at rest ? If the needle points then to the 

 pole and if the scales are even, however violently the needle may 

 swing, or the scale may be depressed at times, the compass is 

 true and the mind is sane. 



If, on the other hand, this be not the case, and the compass 

 steadily points in any other direction than the magnetic north, 

 it is to that extent in error, and if either side of the mental 

 balance be depressed ivhen quite at rest, the mind is to that extent 

 unbalanced ; and if the condition be fixed and well marked is 

 insane. I do not know w^hether scientifically this view may not be 

 destructively criticized, but at any rate it enables us to visualize 

 what is meant by sanity, which would thus be defined as "a 

 balanced mind," and this gives us something a little more helpful 

 and lucid than the dictionary definitions. 



Before leaving our suggested illustration, we may add that 

 jf the loss of equilibrium in the balance is not great, the mental 

 aberration may be slight and harmless (at any rate to others). 

 Such cases abound, and are classed as eccentrics, faddists, extrem- 

 ists, or perhaps as obsessed, ill-balanced or even "not all there." 



