Show WHAT IS INSANITY tha increase of insanity has naturally drawn a great deal of public attention to a very serious question eminent scientists are not only asked to find a remedy which they cannot possibly do not being dictators but they are also asked to define insanity and this is perhaps the most perplexing task of the two there are indeed nearly as many definitions as there are scientists and it cannot very well be otherwise insanity Is a disease of he mind or of consciousness and un we are agreed as to the nature of mind we can hardly expect any great anamin afy of opinion as to its maladies the awakening voice of materialism still tries to echo the famous formula that the brain secretes bought as the liver secretes bile but there Is now another science with such representatives as professor oliver lodge and professor crookes that claims to report the mind as the mere temporary tenant of the body and ca pable of independent life and activity with such divergent views as to the that mind occupies in the baturo etiman we can hardly expect to find precision in any subsidiary problem such as that of insanity the conclusions of such men as max nordau and lombroso seem to help us very little max nordau is essentially the apostle of the commonplace and perhaps of the vulgar wherever the slightest departure from tha normal there he detects the de gan cration that ho ichards as the enemy of progress it does not matter if the departure is upward from the normal into high realms of poetry or of art of religious fervor or downward into the domain of the bestial or the repulsive for max nordau departure from the normal from the commonplace is degeneration and he preacher his doctrine with a force an enthusiasm and an eloquence that must surely give him a pace in his own categories max nordau Is intensely amusing and lombroso is intensely instructive but it mav bo doubted it the conclusions of either of these very eminent and very learned men wil greatly affect the thought of the future insanity is perhaps induced by mora causes tar more than by physical although it is to suppose tha there are as many ari etlea ot mental maladies as there are of badaly sometimes even materialistic science forced unwillingly to recognize the moral cause where it obstinately refuses to be hidden we thus find a great english expert declaring that ex amo e in parents Is likely lo 10 produce idiocy in the offspring while tt Is almost common that a return to sanity is usually marked by an awakening interest in the affairs of others some such conclusion seems to be reasonable man is placed in the midst of the universe and bis evolution consists in adapting himself thereto to tha animal man tho universe is very narrow and he is hedged in by his appetites and his passions As our vision becomes more exalted so we prec eive more and more of the immensity of the universe and the great spiritual forces that lie beyond ane normal vision to these also we must adjust ourselves even though the adjustment implies the destruction of personal desire and the enslavement of passion the wise man the sane man strives ceaselessly to adjust him belt to the greatest laws of which he can conceive and he does so at the expense of the lower and the personal stages of individual evolution are therefore marked by the breadth of the mental and spiritual horizon and the conscious effort toward adaptation now when wo say that the struggle for existence the congestion of cities the of modem life induce insanity we surely mean that these things compel men to rivet their attention not upon the wider and spiritual circles ot force that continually claim our conformity but rather upon he narrow nesses and personal issues that seem to be threatened and that demand our whole energies in other words the mind is growing inwards and not outwards we have seen the hohf but we are constrained by imaginary interests to seek the darkness IB to bay we are becoming in fane insanity is then the fruit of selfish nei noi of the animal but the selfishness that Is a retrogress sion observed fads certainly seem to bear out such a mew and it can hardly le that immediate i advantage result to tho I 1 icat stage of insanity it the victim could be induced to take a personal and benevolent interest in others the way toa avoid insanity ie then to cultivate broad enthusiasms and al truisms to force the mind to look away trona gelfand sel fand the world with practical sympathies and helpful nesses and here too we soam to have the confirmation even of materialistic ia science |