310 WISCONSIN STATE AGmCULTURAL SOCIETY, 
success in life? It is not likely the position can be maintained; 
but if it can, it is not the fault of education, but of the individual 
in whom it engenders unjustifiable expectations. He has put on 
his education as a badge of distinction, and so is distinguished for 
his folly. The remedy is in making higher education so common 
that it will cease to be a badge of distinction. 
There is another feature of the subject properly belonging to 
mental health, upon which the writer enters with some hesitation; 
not because his suspicions of the truth of what he may say fall far 
short of profound conviction, but because he has not the statistics 
at hand to fully verify them, viz.: That insanity comes mainly as 
a consequence of disuse, instead of overuse of brains. Any careful 
observer who walks through the wards of a hospital for the insane, 
will be impressed with the apparent want of intellectual develop¬ 
ment of the great majority of its inmates; and on inquiry, he will 
find that the proportion of those not possessed with the rudiments 
of a common education is very large. He will also learn that the 
proportion of those tolerably well educated is very small; of those 
who enjoy books, still smaller, and of those whose mental disci¬ 
pline had at any time of life been thorough, very few indeed. Doc¬ 
tors and lawyers and preachers will be there, but to be either or all 
is not a sufficient guarantee of having had either a sound mental or 
moral training. But the inquirer will be more surprised when he 
learns the occupations of the great mass of inmates. The propor¬ 
tion of farmers is enormous. Indeed, farmers and housewives, and 
housekeepers and laborers furnish the great mass in many of our 
great hospitals. Of course the proportion varies as the agricultural 
or other interests obtain in different states and localities. But 
what is especially noticeable is this, that those avocations common¬ 
ly understood to be, and which are in fact specially healthful, are 
furnishing so large a proportion of the insane; and this is still more 
remarkable when we reflect that insanity is now, almost without 
exception among specialists, believed to be a consequence of phys¬ 
ical disorder. Statistics make the conclusion almost inevitable, 
that those avocat^ions requiring the least intellectual development, 
although they are healthful, furnish more than their proportion of 
the insane. Even intellectual activitv, in a limited number of di- 
*/ * 
rections, seems a partial bar to insanity. Even the poor sewing 
girls, whose daily toils press sorely upon their physical constitutions, 
