they two marry, the result might conceivably be as bad as if brother and sister married; but if the two were as unlike as two persons who were not in the least akin to one another, by reason of their representing different lines of the ancestral pedigree, then there might be little or no risk. Even in that case, however, it is proper to remember what has been said concerning the latency of qualities in the individual of one generation which may nevertheless blossom in his offspring; and the possibility that the union of two unlike cousins might chance to issue in the development of some of these latent like qualities. Prudence would dictate the avoidance of intermarriages of neara-kin in all cases, and particularly so in those cases in which there is not distinct evidence of radical differences so great as those which there are between persons not in the least related to one another.

This theory of the mode of operation of interbreeding agrees with what was previously said concerning the sexual union of unsuitable natures who were not related to one another by kinship. When two persons of mean, suspicious, and distrustful character marry they are likely to intensify the antisocial peculiarity, which may culminate in such a want of balance in the offspring that he cannot mix at all with his kind, is a complete discord in nature. In like manner when marriage takes place between two persons of an intense but narrow artistic or poetic temperament, whose thin idealistic aspirations, miscalled great imagination, are not informed by that sincere and wholesome converse with realities which lays up a capital of sober sense-in whose minds the emotional element has, so to speak, run to seed-they are likely enough to breed an unstable product, which may be looked upon as a pathological evolution of their natures. The further misfortune is that the natural tendency to an intensification of the neurotic type, declaring itself by a sympathy of feelings, tastes, and pursuits, draws such persons to cultivate each other's society and so to fall in love and marry. Or if a person of this temperament should marry a woman of sounder and more sober temperament who takes a wholesome view of the exigencies and enjoyments of life, his narrow self-feeling will be much hurt, he will wail at what he

suffers from want of sympathy and of appreciation, and will perhaps separate from his wife on the ground of incompatibility. Then again these persons choose by a natural affinity those external circumstances of life which are suited to foster rather than to check the special tendencies of their natures, not enduring repugnant circumstances and getting the benefit of them in wholesome discipline and self-culture, as a sounder and wiser nature would; they solicit not differentiations but intensify peculiarities of nature until these become pathological. They do consciously, in fact, what is done blindly when family peculiarities are intensified by intermarriages of near of kin. Lastly, they mismanage their children as they mismanage themselves, training them, wittingly or unwittingly, along the lines of their abnormal tendencies. No wonder, after such preparation and training, that a being is developed eventually of so irregular and unstable a nature that he is practically a morbid element and can take no part in the functions of the social organism.

Those who have made a study of the causes of deaf-mutism are satisfied of the ill effects of blood-kinship of parents. Some affirm that there are more cases of congenital deafness from the marriage of first cousins than from all other causes put together; while others think congenital deafness in one or both parents a more fruitful source of congenital deafness than any other. Certain it is that it is a common thing, when enquiring about the relatives of pupils in the different institutions for the deaf and dumb, to hear that a parent, or an uncle, or an aunt, or a cousin was congenitally deaf. It is obviously in those cases in which there is a tendency to deafness in the family that the marriage of first cousins will be most injurious, because it will be likely to intensify the defect, but why such intermarriage by itself, when there was no tendency to deafness in the family, should occasion it, we know not any more than we know in the least why blue-eyed cats should be deaf. There are correlations of organic structure and function, physiological and pathological, which we must be content to observe and note for the present without being able to give the least explanation of them. Deaf persons are prone to marry

those who are similarly afflicted; being unable to mix comfortably with persons who can hear, they are drawn to others like themselves with whom they can converse on equal terms, and so intermarry, propinquity and sympathy breeding love, and transmit the evil from generation to generation. The advocates of the "German" system of teaching and training the deaf and dumb-the system which is based upon articulation and lip-reading-claim one advantage of it to be that it tends to prevent such intermarriages, as it enables the deaf to apprehend what is said by perception of the movements of the lips, and so to mix better with their fellow-creatures. manner, it is a right training to remove a person of an insane temperament from habitual intercourse with a person of a similar temperament, and to subject him to quite other external influences, inasmuch as the change is fitted, by fostering variations of character, to produce a more stable nature, and, by widening his circle of social intercourse, to lessen the probability of marriage with a similarly constituted person.

In like

With these remarks concerning consanguineous marriages I pass from the consideration of the antecedent conditions which lay the foundation of a predisposition to insanity in the individual, and go on to consider the conditions of life which favour its development. One may take it to be broadly true that the circumstances which augment a predisposition to insanity, so that the disease ultimately breaks out, are just the circumstances which are calculated to generate it de novonamely, all those things which help to put an individual out of healthy relations with his social and physical surroundings.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAUSATION AND PREVENTION OF INSANITY (continued).

Conditions of Life.—In dealing with the subjects which may be brought under this comprehensive heading it will be necessary to be as brief and concise as is consistent with clearness.

A question has been much discussed, and is not yet settled satisfactorily, whether insanity has increased with the progress of civilisation and is still increasing in the community out of proportion to the increase of the population. Travellers are agreed that it is a disease which they seldom meet with amongst barbarous peoples. But that is no proof that it does not occur. Among savages those who are weak in body or in mind, the sick and the helpless, who would be a burden. to the community, are often eliminated, being either killed. or driven into the bush and left to perish there; certainly the weak units are not carefully tended, as they are among civilised nations. In this way not only is the amount of existing insanity rendered small, but its propagation to the next generation is prevented. Admitting the comparative immunity of uncivilised peoples from insanity, it is not difficult to conceive reasons for it. On looking at any table which sets forth the usual causes of the disease, we find that hereditary predisposition, intemperance, and mental anxieties of some kind or other cover nearly the whole field of causation. From these three great classes of causes savages are nearly exempt. They do not intermarry, the prohibition of marriage extending among them to distant blood-relations, and, as I have just pointed out, they do not much propagate the disease from one generation to another,

because it is got rid of to a great extent among them by natural or artificial means of elimination. Secondly, they do not poison their brains with alcohol, at any rate not until the white man brings it to them; when they do obtain it, they no doubt abandon themselves to great debauches, but they cannot obtain the regular supply which would enable them to keep their brains day after day in a state of artificial excitement ; and it may fairly be questioned whether alcohol, however and in whatever quantities it may be taken, is so likely to produce mental derangement in the undeveloped brain of a savage, which has so little mental function to perform, as in the more complex and specialized structure of a civilised brain.1 Lastly, the savage has few and simple wants springing from his appetites, and them he gratifies: he is free from the manifold artificial passions and desires which go along with the multiplied industries, the eager competitions, the social ambitions of an active. civilisation; he is free too from the conventional restraints upon his natural passions which civilisation imposes, and suffers not from a conflict between urgent desire of gratification and the duty to suppress all manifestations thereof, a conflict which sometimes proves too great a strain upon the mind of a civilised person.

On the other hand, it may be thought that the savage must suffer ill consequences from the unrestrained indulgence of his fierce sensual passions. But it might not be amiss to consider curiously whether savage nudity provokes sensuality so much as civilised dress, especially dress that is artfully designed to suggest what it conceals. There is no scope for the imagination where nothing is concealed and suggested, and it may be that clothing is sometimes a stimulus to immodest thoughts, and that, like the conventional covering of the passions, it inflames desire. Be that as it may, the savage is not disquieted by fretting social passions with him there is no eager straining beyond his strength after aims that are not intrinsically worth the labour

1 Cameron, in his Journey across Africa, says that he met with one man only who was suffering from delirium tremens: it was the only instance of this disorder which he saw in Africa, though drunkenness was common. The supply of pombé, the intoxicating liquor, often falls short, because the corn from which they make it is not abundant.