i$8o.] Insanity and its Difficulties . 355 
among these Negroes : there is no functional nervous disease 
or symptoms among them of any name or phase ; to suggest 
spinal irritation, or hysteria, or hay-fever, or nervous dys- 
pepsia among these people is but to joke. ... Of nervous 
diseases, from insanity down through all the grades, they 
know little more or no more than their distant relatives on 
the banks of the Congo.” These people, it is added, are 
** types of all Central Africa, of South America, of Australia, 
of our not so very distant ancestors in Europe.” So much 
for the alcohol and general excess theory ! 
Another school of thinkers trace the modern increase of 
mind-diseases to the decline of religious faith and the spread 
of indifferentism, or even of what is conventionally known 
as scepticism. It has even been said that insanity is not 
so much disease as sin, and that no one who retains a firm 
trust in God need fear becoming its victim. It has further 
been declared that mental alienation is less abundant in 
Catholic than in Protestant countries. The table of Dr. F. 
R. Lees, referred to above, lends quite as much support to 
these views as to the alcohol theory. Take the two most 
decidedly Catholic countries in Europe, Spain and Italy. 
The former has only i lunatic in 7181 persons, and the 
latter — where scepticism has made some progress among 
the upper classes — 1 in 3785. The northern provinces of 
France, where anti-clericalism and irreligion have their 
stronghold, number 1 insane person per 1000 ; the more 
Catholic south, 1 in 1500; and devout Bretagne, only 1 in 
3500. But Ireland, also a Catholic country, with its 1 in- 
sane person in 500, is a fa< 5 l in opposition which cannot be 
overlooked. Nor can we ascribe to religious faith that im- 
munity from mental disease which savage and semi-savage 
races — such, for instance, as the Sea Island Negroes above 
mentioned — evidently enjoy. 
We come now to Dr. Beard’s own theory, startling and 
perhaps exaggerated, but containing at any rate such a basis 
of truth as to constitute the most tremendous impeachment 
of modern civilisation ever conceived. If we survey the 
whole world we shall find that just in proportion as a nation, 
instead of working to live, lives to work; just in proportion 
as life becomes a struggle, a race, a scurry ; as the margin 
which separates the individual man from adtual want is 
narrowed, and as anxiety becomes the normal frame of mind 
of the community, in that same proportion does insanity, 
and indeed the entire class of nervous diseases, increase. 
Dr. Beard asserts that “ no climate, no institutions, no en- 
vironment, can make insanity common except when uqited 
