Glass JiErp. 
 Book Ji£ — 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/humandiscordsOOhoad 
 
/ 
 
 human discords 
 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS 
 
 A 
 
 STUDY IN MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 WITH DESCRIPTIVE CASES 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 F. H. H. 
 
 
 'Published for "Private Distribution 
 
 
 ' C^ 
 

 Copyrighted, 1892, by 
 F. H. HOADLEY, M. D. 
 
 fk A I 
 
 • 
 
Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, says : " It is 
 my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony. * * * 
 for there is music wherever there is harmony, order or pro- 
 portion; and thus far we maintain the music of the spheres ; for 
 these well ordered motions and regular paces, though they give 
 no sound to the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a 
 note most full of harmony. * * * It is the hieroglyphical 
 and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of 
 God ; such a melody to the ear, as the whole world well under- 
 stood, would afford the understanding." 
 
 Was ich soil? Wer lost mir je die Frage ? 
 Was ich kann ? Wer gonnt mir den Versuch ? 
 Was ich muss? Vermag' ich's ohne Klage? 
 So viel Arbeit fiir ein Leichentuch ! — Platen. 
 
 " It is only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, 
 can be said to begin." — Goethe. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 The meditations of the philosopher cannot be unin- 
 fluenced, nor the heart of the philanthropist unmoved, 
 by the facts, which statistics prove, that there are, at the 
 present moment, in the United States alone, more than 
 106,000 people who are deprived of all their active 
 rights as human beings, and made, as far as possible, 
 nonentities in the world.* About 52,000 of these are 
 actually shut up in lunatic asylums, and of that number 
 but very few are ever likely to leave their undesired 
 abode, until they take their leave of life itself. It can- 
 not therefore be unprofitable to endeavor, in one depart- 
 ment of an extensive subject, to follow the course of 
 mental degeneration, and by the exhibition of it, to 
 justify the world's treatment of the particular discords 
 in nature's general harmony. 
 
 It is a well known fact that, from an early period 
 of speculative thought, two doctrines have been held 
 with regard to the sort of connection which exists 
 between a man's mind and his body. 
 
 On the one hand there are those who maintain 
 that mind is an outcome and function of matter, in a 
 certain state of organization, coming with it, growing 
 with it, decaying with it, inseparable from it. On the 
 other hand there are those who hold that mind is an 
 independent spiritual essence, which has entered into 
 the body, as its dwelling place for a time, which makes 
 use of it as its mortal instrument, and which will take 
 
 * It must always be borne in mind that under " Insane" the Amer- 
 ican Census does not include idiots. If these be added the proportion to 
 the population would be raised from about I in 560 to 1 in 300. 
 
6 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 on its independent life when the body, worn out by the 
 operation of natural decay, returns to the earth of which 
 it is made. 
 
 Without entering into a discussion as to which is 
 the true doctrine, it will be sufficient for our purpose to 
 accept and proceed from the generally admitted fact 
 that all the manifestations of mind, which we have to do 
 with in this world, are connected with organization, de- 
 pendent upon it, whether as cause or instrument ; that 
 they are never met with apart from it any more than 
 electricity, or any other natural force, is met with apart 
 from matter, and that higher organization must go 
 along with higher mental function. What is the state 
 of things in another world — whether the disembodied 
 or celestially embodied spirits of the countless myriads 
 of the human race that have come and gone through 
 countless ages are now living higher lives — I do not 
 venture to inquire. One hope and one certitude in 
 the matter everyone may be allowed to have and to 
 express ; the hope that, if they are living now, it is a 
 higher life than they lived upon earth ; the certitude 
 that, if they are living a higher life, most of them must 
 have had a vast deal to unlearn. 
 
 Many persons, who admit, in general terms, the 
 dependence of mental function on cerebral structure, are 
 inclined, when brought to the particular test, to make 
 an exception in favor of moral feeling, or conscience. 
 Some popular capital has been made and made in 
 quarters, where we might justly have looked for greater 
 sincerity and sounder apprehension, out of the fact that 
 physiology, however far it may advance, can never 
 bridge over the gap between nerve element and mind, 
 can never leap from the movements of molecules to 
 
 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 consciousness. No one has ever said that it could. 
 The problem before us as scientific observers is not 
 to demonstrate the real nature of the force which we 
 designate as mental, nor to show how and why certain 
 molecular movements in nerve become, if they do 
 become, sensation or idea, but it is to trace here, as in 
 other departments of nature, uniformities of sequence, 
 to point out that certain sequences are, within our expe- 
 rience, the invariable consequences of certain antecedent 
 conditions. The how or the why is a mystery which we 
 do not attempt to explain ; we do not even aspire to 
 know it. What is the actual power, which makes one 
 body attract another directly as the mass, and inversely 
 as the square of the distance, we have not the least 
 knowledge ; why and how certain molecular movements 
 become heat, light, electricity, or chemical action, we 
 are just as ignorant ; in offering no explanation of the 
 why certain states of matter occasion certain states of 
 mind, we acknowledge a mystery neither more nor less 
 in the one case than in the other. To say that it is 
 inconceivable that matter, in however complicated a 
 state of organization, should feel and think, is simply 
 to appeal to the self sufficiency of the human intellect 
 at the present day, and a sort of argument which, if 
 logically carried through would bar any new conception 
 of what, through ignorance, is yet inconceivable to us. 
 It would make the present limit of conception the 
 limit of conception forever ; and it is certainly unwar- 
 rantable in the face of the fact that the history of the 
 progress of knowledge is, in great part, the history of 
 the inconceivable becoming conceivable. 
 
 There are still many who are content to rest in the 
 same uncertain position which satisfied the well known 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 author of "Inquiries concerning the Intellectual 
 Powers;" who, having pointed out plainly the depend- 
 ence of mental function on organization, and, as a 
 matter of fact which cannot be denied, that there are 
 individuals in whom every correct feeling in regard to 
 moral relations is obliterated, while the judgment is 
 unimpaired in all other relations, stopped there without 
 attempting to prosecute inquiry into the cause of the 
 remarkable fact which he justly emphasized; and he said, 
 it is "a point in the moral constitution of man which 
 does not belong to the physician to investigate ; the fact 
 is unquestionable ; the solution is to be sought in the 
 records of eternal truth."* 
 
 So far from assenting to such an exclusion the 
 physician holds that there is no Holy of Holies in 
 science; he asserts that it distinctly belongs to him to 
 seek for the solution of the problem in the discovery of 
 those laws of nature which are to him the incontestable 
 records of eternal truth. 
 
 Whether there is the same essential connection 
 between moral sense and brain, or between any of our 
 special senses and its special ganglionic center in the 
 brain, whether, in short, conscience is a function of 
 organization, is a problem which the medical psycholo- 
 gist, whose duty brings him into constant intercourse 
 with facts, must face; he cannot rest satisfied with vague 
 speculation; he is bound to investigate the phenomena 
 as they present themselves to observation, and to form 
 conclusions from them, without regard to accepted 
 theories of faith or knowledge ; if he arrives at sound 
 conclusions, from such observations of facts not before 
 observed, these will not contradict old faiths unless in 
 
 * Abercrombie, On the Intellectual Powers. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 that wherein old faiths are wrong and it is right they 
 should be contradicted. His generalizations, like the 
 generalizations of astronomy, or chemistry, or any other 
 branch of science, must rest on their own merits ; they 
 cannot justly be tested by any preconceived standard of 
 truth, however much hallowed by antiquity or sanc- 
 tioned by authority. 
 
 So far as the phenomena of deranged mind reach, 
 the battle has been won and the victory is complete. 
 No one, whose opinion is of any value, pretends now 
 that they are anything more than the deranged func- 
 tions of the supreme nerve centers of the body ; but 
 the victory is not yet complete along the whole line 
 of mental function. There is the strongest desire 
 evinced, and the most strenuous efforts are made in 
 many quarters to exempt from physical research the 
 highest functions of mind, and particularly the so-called 
 moral sense and the will. The moral sense is the 
 stronghold of those who have made strategical move- 
 ments of retreat from other defensive positions they 
 have taken up ; and it is from this stronghold that 
 what are deemed the most telling arguments against 
 the Darwinian doctrine of physiological evolution have 
 come. 
 
 The observation which makes plain the fact "that 
 this power should so lose its sway while reason remains 
 unimpaired " * does not, however, leave us entirely 
 without information concerning the cause of it, when we 
 pursue it faithfully, since it reveals as distinct a de- 
 pendence of moral faculty upon organization as of any 
 other faculty. 
 
 What is commonly called unconsciousness, or insen- 
 
 * Abercrombie, On the Intellectual Powers. 
 
IO HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 sibility, is of course one of the most invariable and char- 
 acteristic of the immediate consequences of all serious 
 injuries of the brain. This state is as a general rule 
 of comparative brief duration, and eventuates either 
 in restoration of consciousness or in its obliteration in 
 death. Sometimes the unconsciousness arising - out of 
 injury to the brain is rapid and complete ; in the course 
 of a few minutes the mind is again operating as if 
 nothing had happened. Sometimes recovery is tardy, 
 unconsciousness being maintained for hours, or days, 
 and being gradually replaced by unimpaired mental 
 activity. Rarely the restoration to consciousness is in- 
 definitely postponed, a state resembling deep slumber 
 being continued for weeks or even months or years. 
 Many instructive examples of the pervading mental 
 effects of physical injury of the brain are to be found 
 in medical literature and might be quoted, but a few, 
 well authenticated, will suffice. 
 
 In October, 1842, an American medical man, Dr. 
 P. R. Hoy, was called to see a youth, aged eighteen, a 
 resident of New Haven, Ohio, who had been struck 
 down insensible by the kick of a horse. There was a 
 depressed fracture of the skull a little above the left 
 temple. The skull was trephined and the loose 
 fragments of bone that pressed upon the brain were 
 removed, whereupon the patient came to his senses. 
 On the morning of the third day the patient was again 
 unconscious. The wound was opened and a clot of 
 blood together with a small quantity of serum was per- 
 mitted to escape ; as soon as this cause of pressure was 
 removed the boy became not only conscious but was 
 able to converse freely. The dura was uninjured and 
 the doctor thought it a good opportunity to make an 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. II 
 
 experiment. He asked the boy a question which in- 
 volved a considerable degree of mental effort and ob- 
 served that there was immediately a decided increase 
 in the flow of blood in the small vessels of the brain 
 accompanied by an increased motion of the organ, and 
 that the congestion and motion subsided gradually as 
 soon as the mind came to rest. He next asked the 
 boy a question, and, before there was time to answer 
 it, he pressed firmly with his finger upon the exposed 
 brain. As long as the pressure was kept up the boy 
 was mute, but the instant it was removed he made a 
 reply never suspecting that he had not answered at 
 once. This experiment was repeated several times 
 with precisely the same result, the boy's thoughts being 
 stopped and started again, on each occasion, as easily 
 and as certainly as the engineer stops and starts his 
 locomotive. 
 
 In August, 1856, an English groom, aged 19, 
 working in Mount Pleasant, Racine County, Wiscon- 
 sin, was ordered to take the mare, Dolly, to town and 
 leave her colt in the stable. While struggling with the 
 colt the mare kicked the boy on the head. Those who 
 witnessed the accident believed him to be killed, but, 
 seeing that he soon began to breath, sent for a surgeon, 
 Dr. Hoy, who found a fracture with depression at the 
 upper part of the boy's forehead a little to the left of the 
 median line. As soon as the depressed portion of the 
 bone was removed the patient called out, with great en- 
 ergy, " Whoa, Dolly! " and then stared about him in 
 blank amazement, demanding, "Where is the mare? 
 Where am I, what has happened?" Three hours had 
 passed since the accident during which the words 
 which he was just going to utter, when it happened, had 
 
12 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 remained locked up, as they might have been locked up 
 in a phonograph, to be let go the moment the obstruct- 
 ing pressure was removed. The patient did not remem- 
 ber when he came to himself that the mare had kicked 
 him ; the last thing, before he was insensible, that he did 
 remember was that she wheeled her heels round and laid 
 back her ears viciously.* 
 
 I am indebted also to Dr. Hoy for the following re- 
 markable case related by Prof. R. D. Mussy, of the Ohio 
 Medical School, at Cincinnati, to the class of 1840, in 
 a lecture on the physiology of the brain. A man living 
 in Vermont was standing near his mill, bantering with 
 his son about shooting a kingfisher that was perched on 
 a dry snag which projected from the water of the pond. 
 The son fired, and the rifle ball, a small one, missed the 
 bird, ricochetted and struck his father near the middle 
 of the forehead. The man dropped instantly ; he was 
 carried home, and, despite the hopelessness of his recov- 
 ery, he continued to live on, "a mere animal," incapable 
 of speech, for fifteen years ; about this time a slight ele- 
 vation of the skull at the crown of the head was discov- 
 ered. Dr. Mussy, who related the case, trephined the 
 skull at this point ; he found and removed the flattened 
 bullet that had remained so long a time within the skull. 
 Presently the patient called out, " Zeke, you dog, you 
 missed it ! " " Missed what ?" asked the doctor. " Why, 
 the kingfisher." This was the first word spoken since 
 the accident, and the old man could not understand that 
 the report of the rifle was not reverberating, at that mo- 
 ment, across the water of the pond. 
 
 A lady, whose case is given by Dr. Abercrombie, 
 was seized by an apoplectic attack while engaged at 
 
 * Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, April, 1877. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 13 
 
 cards. The seizure took place on Thursday evening ; 
 she was in a state of stupor during Friday and Saturday, 
 and recovered her consciousness rather suddenly on Sun- 
 day. The first words she then uttered were, " What is 
 trump ?" 
 
 It is told of a British Captain that at the battle of 
 the Nile he was giving an order from the quarter deck 
 of his vessel when a shot struck him on the head depriv- 
 ing him immediately of speech. As he survived the in- 
 jury he was taken home, and remained insensible in 
 Greenwich Hospital for fifteen months. At the end of 
 that period, during which he is said to have manifested 
 no sign of intelligence, an operation was performed on 
 his head, which almost instantly restored him to con- 
 sciousness. He then immediately arose from his bed 
 and, not recognizing where he was, or what had oc- 
 curred, expressed a desire to complete the order which 
 had been abruptly interrupted when he received the in- 
 jury fifteen months before.* 
 
 A sailor who was wounded in the head while taking 
 a prize in the Mediterranean in June, 1799, lived, to use 
 the words of Sir Astley Cooper, " a year unconscious of 
 his existence." Mr. Cline, the surgeon, performed on 
 him the operation of trepanning a year after the injury. 
 The portion of bone which had been driven in was re- 
 moved and thus the patient recovered perfectly in a few 
 days the use of his brain and mental faculties.f 
 
 Cases of this kind show how entirely dependent 
 every function of mind is upon a sound mechanism of 
 the brain. Just as we can by pressing upon the sensory 
 nerve of the arm prevent an impression made upon the 
 
 * West Riding Reports, 1872. Vol. II, p. 118. 
 f West Riding Reports, 1872. Vol. II. p. 117. 
 
14 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 finger being carried to the brain and felt there, so by 
 pressing upon the brain we can as certainly stop a 
 thought or a volition. In all these cases a good recov- 
 ery presently followed the removal of the pressure upon 
 the brain ; but it would be of no little medical interest 
 to have the after histories of the persons, since it hap- 
 pens sometimes after a serious injury to the head, that 
 despite an immediate recovery, slow degenerative 
 changes are set up in the brain, months or years after- 
 wards, which go on to cause a gradual weakening, and 
 perhaps eventual destruction of mind. 
 
 Now the instructive matter in these cases is that the 
 moral character is usually impaired first and sometimes 
 is completely perverted without a corresponding deteri- 
 oration of the understanding; the person is a thoroughly 
 changed character for the worse. The injury has pro- 
 duced disorder in the most delicate part of the mental 
 organization, that which is separated from actual contact 
 with the skull only by the thin investing membranes of 
 the brain ; and once damaged it is seldom that it is ever 
 completely restored to its former state of soundness. 
 However, happy recoveries are now and then made 
 from mental derangement caused by physical injury to 
 the brain. 
 
 A joiner, who had led a steady life, while at work, 
 and in his usual health, was struck on his head by a ham- 
 mer that fell from a height of about six feet. He was 
 not unsensed, nor did any serious symptoms show them- 
 selves at the time of the accident ; but afterwards he felt 
 the effects of the blow. In six months time he began to 
 complain of giddiness ; he gradually lost his power of 
 application and concentration ; he tried to work but had 
 no idea of what he had to do, and could not fix his mind 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 15 
 
 on anything. In the course of a twelve month his symp- 
 toms became aggravated ; he grew irritable, morose, 
 violent, and threatened suicide ; he was taken to a hos- 
 pital where he made a most determined attempt on his 
 life, by throwing himself over from the staircase at the 
 top of the hospital. His life was saved by the courage 
 of one of the nurses, Miss Stockburn, a probationer ; 
 next day, nineteen months after he received the injury, 
 he was taken to an asylum. There was a slight depres- 
 sion at the seat of the injury on the left parietal ; a por- 
 tion of the skull was removed by the trephine ; no 
 fracture was found and the membranes beneath were 
 apparently healthy. The wound healed rapidly and 
 well ; a decided improvement in nervons symptoms fol- 
 lowed. One month after the operation he was lively, 
 and cheerful, and went to work in the carpenter shop. 
 Dr. Bacon, Medical Superintendent of the asylum says : 
 " He steadily improved and was discharged on trial six 
 months after his admission to the asylum ; he went 
 back to his old employers, is still at work, and is re- 
 ported to be entirely well and fit to be at large."* 
 
 A machinist, while working in a foundry, was struck 
 on the top of the head by a stove lifter. He was 
 taken home unconscious and so remained for six hours 
 and confined to his bed for several days. He was soon 
 able to resume his work which he continued to do for 
 six months. From that time on he became negligent 
 and careless about his clothing, with lack of interest in 
 anything ; finally melancholy and suicidal, and was 
 brought to an asylum, three years after the injury. 
 There was a slight depression of the skull at the point 
 where the blow was received ; the surrounding bone was 
 
 * Journal of Mental Science, Jan'y, 1881. Vol. 26, p. 551. 
 
l6 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 removed by means of a chisel when a spicule of bone the 
 size and shape of a headless carpet tack was found punc- 
 turing the dura ; this was removed ; a water dressing was 
 applied to the wound which healed promptly by direct 
 union. The patient was about on the third day and 
 went home on the seventh day "a new man," as he ex- 
 pressed it, and has been able to continue his work as a 
 stove moulder from that time. Dr. Fletcher, Superin- 
 tendent of the Indiana State Hospital for the Insane, 
 who reported the case, says : " It is now two years since 
 the man was discharged ; he has been perfectly well and 
 has worked at his trade constantly."* 
 
 A particularly instructive case was reported by 
 Dr. Holland Skae, Medical Superintendent of the Ayr 
 District Asylum : 
 
 Some years ago a young man, no member of his 
 family known to have been insane before, while work- 
 ing in a coal pit, was felled to the ground by a large 
 mass of falling coal, which struck him on the head a 
 little above the left extremity of the left eyelid, 
 causing fracture of the skull at that point. He lay 
 insensible for four days after the accident, when he 
 gradually recovered consciousness, and a few weeks 
 afterwards resumed work in the pit. Not many weeks 
 after doing so, however, his wife and friends began to 
 observe an alteration in his habits and nature which 
 became more and more marked and obtrusive as time 
 progressed. He had formerly been a very cheerful, 
 rather merry, sociable, and good-natured man — what 
 his fellow-workers would have called a " neighbourly 
 chiel " — and at all times previous to the accident was 
 kind and lovable to his wife and children, with whom 
 
 * American Journal of Insanity, October, 1887, Vol. 44, p. 212. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS 17 
 
 he delighted to pass his evenings in sober enjoyment. 
 About this time, however, he began to evince a differ- 
 ent spirit and nature altogether ; he became irritable 
 and moody ; at work he would separate himself from 
 his fellow-workers, and when spoken to by them would 
 barely return a civil answer ; at home, of course, the 
 change was still more striking. He was cross and 
 would sit moping over the fire all the evening ; he 
 rudely repulsed his wife's affectionate efforts to rouse 
 him out of his unhappy humor, and "shut her up " with 
 some snappish expression. When his children ran to 
 meet him, he would push them impatiently aside ; 
 altogether his conduct was bearish, disappointing and 
 ill-natured. During four years matters got worse and 
 worse ; he often got excited, using violent language to 
 his wife, his children, and the neighbors. Eventually 
 he became maniacal ; attempted to kill his wife ; as- 
 saulted every one who approached him ; and even at- 
 tempted suicide. He then had a succession of epileptic 
 fits and was taken to an asylum. Here he was taciturn, 
 morose and ill-natured ; he was averse to doing any- 
 thing at all, either in the way of work, or joining in 
 amusements. He was suspicious of those about him ; 
 moreover, he had a fixed delusion that he was the 
 victim of a conspiracy, on the part of his wife and 
 friends, to deprive him of his liberty and independence ; 
 and expressed himself in bitter and resentful terms. 
 A depression of the skull was distinctly traceable both 
 by the eye and by the finger at the point where he 
 sustained the blow. He underwent the operation of 
 trephining, and the depressed portion of bone was re- 
 moved. After a week or two in bed he was moving 
 about, and a gradual improvement took place. He 
 
l8 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 very soon became a very different person altogether ; 
 all his old affection for his wife revived in full force. 
 He became a cheerful, active, lively fellow, never sat- 
 isfied if he was not doing something. He made friends 
 with the attendants and amongst the patients ; and not 
 very long after he was trephined he was discharged 
 sane. He has ever since supported his wife and family. 
 Dr. Skae says : " He has regularly paid visits at about 
 six months intervals to the asylum, generally passing the 
 whole day at it. I have seen him on each occasion, 
 and am satisfied by careful inquiry that he has con- 
 tinued perfectly sane since his discharge four years 
 ago."* 
 
 No plainer example, surely, could be wished to 
 show the direct connection of cause and effect, the 
 great deterioration of moral character produced by the 
 physical injury of the supreme nerve centers of the 
 brain. When the cause was taken away the effect 
 went also. 
 
 In the morbid conditions of double consciousness 
 there is something positive as well as negative; in both 
 these states the vital forces are operating continuously 
 and both have therefore a conviction of continuous 
 existence. In one the identity is laid aside with all the 
 remembrances connected with it, but another is put on, 
 and with the new identity a new memory acts in concert. 
 
 A well marked illustration of this is to be found 
 in some cases published by the late Professor Silliman, 
 of Yale College, in the American Journal of Science, 
 and reproduced in the "Cyclopaedia of Practical Medi- 
 cine," Vol. IV., pp. 27, 28, of which a brief abstract 
 is here given. 
 
 * Journal of Mental Science, January, 1874, Vol. 19, p. 552. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 19 
 
 Case i. A lady in New England, of respectable 
 family, became subject to paroxysms of delirium, which 
 came on suddenly, and after continuing an indefinite 
 time, went off as suddenly, leaving her mind perfectly 
 rational. It often happened that when she was engaged 
 in conversation, she would stop short in the midst of it, 
 become in a moment delirious, and commence a conver- 
 sation on some other subject not having the remotest 
 connection with the previous one; nor would she advert 
 to that during her delirium. "When she became natural 
 again she would pursue the same conversation in which 
 she had been engaged during the lucid interval, begin- 
 ing where she left off. To such a degree was this 
 carried, that she would complete an unfinished story or 
 sentence, or even an unfinished word. When the next 
 paroxysm came on she would continue the conversation 
 which she had been pursuing in her preceding 
 paroxysm; so that she appeared as a person might be 
 supposed to do who had two souls, each occasionally 
 active and occasionally dormant, and utterly ignorant of 
 what the other was doing." It is evident that this 
 affection was neither delirium in the ordinary accepta- 
 tion of terms, nor any form of madness, but one of 
 coherent reverie. 
 
 Case 2. An intelligent lady, in the State of 
 New York, undertook a piece of fine needlework, to 
 which she devoted her time almost constantly for 
 many davs. Before its completion she became sudden- 
 ly delirious, and she continued in that state for seven 
 years. She said not a word during that time about 
 her needlework, but, on recovering suddenly from the 
 affection, immediately inquired respecting it. 
 
 Case 3. A farmer, in New England, became 
 
20 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 dejected and melancholy under the impression that he 
 had made an unwise sale of his property. He was 
 preparing for the enclosure of a lot of land, and began 
 with a beetle and wedges to split timber ; at night he 
 put his tools into a hollow tree and went home. Here 
 he was seized with delirium, which continued several 
 years. He suddenly recovered, and the first question 
 which he asked was, whether his sons had brought in 
 the beetle and wedges? He appeared to be wholly 
 unconscious of the lapse of time from the commence- 
 ment of his attack. His sons avoided any explanation, 
 and simply replied that they had been unable to find 
 the tools. He immediately arose from his bed, went 
 into the field, where he had been at work a number of 
 years before, and found the wedges and the rings of 
 the beetle where he had left them, the beetle itself 
 having mouldered away. 
 
 The phenomenon of thought alternately inter- 
 rupted and restored, or of dipsychia, as we might term 
 it in following Professor Silliman's suggestion, though it 
 reminds us of the old romantic tales of princes laid to 
 sleep in enchanted castles, is nevertheless confirmed by 
 sufficient evidence, and may be considered as a well es- 
 tablished fact. A notable instance of this description 
 has been reported in the 'Transactions of the Royal 
 Society of Edinburgh,' Vol. IX, by Dr. Dyce, and is 
 cited by Dr. Abercrombie. 
 
 The case related by Dr. Dyce is very curious, and 
 in some of its particulars bears resemblance to the his- 
 tory of Negretti. 
 
 Going a step further, let me point out that disease 
 will sometimes do as plain and positive damage to moral 
 character as any which direct injury of the brain will do. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 21 
 
 A fever has sometimes deranged it as deeply as a blow 
 on the head ; a child's conscience has been clean effaced 
 by a succession of epileptic convulsions, just as the mem- 
 ory is sometimes effaced ; and those who see much of 
 epilepsy know well the extreme but passing moral trans- 
 formation that occurs in connection with its seizures. 
 The person may be as unlike himself as possible when 
 he is threatened with a fit ; although naturally cheerful, 
 good natured, sociable and obliging, he becomes irrit- 
 able, surly, and morose, very suspicious, takes offense 
 at the most innocent remark or act, and is apt to resent 
 imaginary offenses with great violence. The change 
 might be compared well with that which happens when 
 a clear and cloudless sky is overcast suddenly with dark 
 and threatening thunder clouds ; and just as the darkly 
 clouded sky is cleared by the thunderstorm which it por- 
 tends, so the gloomy moral perturbation is discharged 
 and the mental atmosphere cleared by an epileptic fit or 
 a succession of such fits. 
 
 In a few remarkable cases however the patient does 
 not come to himself immediately after the fit but is left 
 in a peculiar state of quasi-somnambulism, during which 
 he acts like an automaton, doing strange, absurd, and 
 sometimes even criminal things, without apparently 
 knowing at the time what he is doing, and certainly 
 without remembering in the least what he has done, 
 when he comes to himself. Of excellent moral character 
 habitually, he may turn thief in one of these states, or 
 perpetrate some other criminal offense, whereby he gets 
 himself into trouble with the police. 
 
 The following case is taken from a paper read at 
 the Paris International Congress, 1878, by Dr. Eche- 
 verria, in which he gave the results of observations on 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 267 cases of unquestionable Epileptic Insanity forming 
 part of 532 carefully observed cases of epilepsy. 
 
 A young man, subject to petit mat, in consequence 
 of a fall, one evening after an attack left home, and went 
 in a cabriolet, which he found stopping before a house, 
 to the grave of his father, a mile and a half from Wash- 
 ington, where he gathered flowers to convey to his 
 mother, whom he invited to go for a drive. When she 
 asked how he had obtained the carriage, he answered 
 that he had found it lost in the street. She ordered him 
 to place the horse and carriage instantly in a coach- 
 house, and seek their owner. Instead of obeying he ap- 
 propriated them, and when the proprietor discovered 
 them he pursued him as a thief. When before the mag- 
 istrate next day, he could give no account or explanation 
 of his conduct ; in fact it was obliterated from his mem- 
 ory. Some months after when in New York, he left 
 home after one of his seizures, and roving about as a 
 vagabond on the quays, he met an agent who engaged 
 him as a sailor on a vessel about to sail to London. The 
 agreement was duly executed, and after having left with 
 this agent nearly all his money, &c., he embarked. The 
 captain was not long in discovering he was no marine, 
 and finding him very odd, forbade him to mount the 
 masts, and assigned him some light work. Three or 
 four days after, the patient awoke out of this state of un- 
 consciousness, and expressed the greatest astonishment 
 on finding himself on board a vessel, and was unable to 
 give any account of what had occurred. The mother 
 discovered through the police the departure of her son, 
 and took the measures necessary to place him in an 
 asylum. There he had many similar attacks, preceded 
 by nocturnal attacks and petit mal, until then unrecog- 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 23 
 
 nized. In the intervals he was very gentle and reason- 
 able, but during the attacks he was vicious, always in 
 motion, and disposed to be violent. 
 
 Dr. Echeverria has yet to find a true case of epi- 
 lepsy without unconsciousness. It is more than patent 
 in the stupor which Delasiauve regards as the character- 
 istic of the disease. 
 
 We could not overlook the example cited by 
 Dejoeghere, in which the motive and the premeditation 
 are fitly set forth in a case that on the other hand re- 
 mains as a painful record of the punishment of a furious 
 madman, not only unjust, but unmerciful in its inflic- 
 tion : — 
 
 Roegiers, aged 30, of strong constitution, was the 
 son of healthy parents. When seven years old he was 
 seized, upon a sudden fright, with an epileptic fit, soon 
 followed by several others, chiefly nocturnal, increasing 
 every time in intensity and duration, until lastly degen- 
 erating into a true rage. Roegiers had a fight with a 
 
 man named B . Judged by the Court of Courtrai 
 
 he was condemned to a few months imprisonment ; he 
 protested his innocence as to the charge brought against 
 him ; furthermore, on leaving the Court he shook hands 
 
 with B , assuring him that he entertained no grudge 
 
 against him, since he could not be held accountable for 
 the wrong decision of the Court. However, it is this 
 
 very man B whom he afterwards intends to kill, and 
 
 to this effect Roegiers was seen on the day of the mur- 
 der steadily sharpening his knife for several hours on a 
 grindstone, and repeating incessantly : " I shall know how 
 to have you." He then goes out in broad daylight, 
 
 holding his knife, runs to B , who lives in a very 
 
 populous quarter, and boldly enters his house. But 
 
24 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 B , on beholding Roegiers coming with a knife, 
 
 escapes through the back door. Roegiers chases him, 
 
 stabs B 's sister, who endeavored to defend him, and, 
 
 finally, overtakes him and rushes upon his victim like a 
 tiger. He inflicts upon him a deep wound in the neck, 
 and plunges his nails in it to tear it asunder. 
 
 A great crowd hastened to the spot, but the most 
 daring were afraid of going to the rescue of the unfortu- 
 nate B . It was not until Roegiers fell down that 
 
 they took hold of him, and bound him with cords to a 
 wheelbarrow. To every question put to any detail con- 
 cerning his horrible crime, Roegiers gave always this 
 answer : " Since you make me aware of it, sir, I must 
 needs believe it, but I completely ignore it." 
 
 The physician who examined on the mental condi- 
 tion of Roegiers declared that he enjoyed full possession 
 of his reason. Roegiers was condemned to death, but 
 the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, 
 and the exposing for one hour. While suffering this last 
 punishment he was seized with such violent convulsions 
 that the executioner was obliged to place him in a chair 
 where he had the greatest difficulty to secure him.* 
 
 This determination beyond recall of the Court of 
 Courtrai to carry out its sentence to the end has a fitting 
 parallel in Massachusetts. 
 
 The case happened in Boston, the Metropolis of 
 New England, about twenty years ago, and the victim 
 of such cold execution of the law was again a wretched 
 young epileptic, subject to diurnal and nocturnal fits ; 
 during the latter he would go up the roof of his house, 
 dance in the most dangerous positions, and accomplish 
 
 * " Annales de Medicine" Beiges, 1843. Quoted in " La Folie Devant 
 les Tribunaux " par Legrand du Saulle, Paris, 1864, p. 422. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 25 
 
 unconsciously such other no less risky feats, which caused 
 his neighbors to call them "dare-devilment." One even- 
 ing this lad, under the influence of a fit, ran after his 
 sweetheart into the street and took her life with a bread 
 knife he carried home, and of which crime he always 
 protested to have no recollection whatever. Dr. Clement 
 A. Walker, Superintendent of the Lunatic Hospital, 
 Boston, endeavored, unsuccessfully, to satisfy the jury 
 that the boy was an epileptic ; that the homicidal act of 
 violence had been the outcome of epileptic insanity ; 
 that epileptics cannot be held responsible for any act of 
 violence perpetrated during their unconscious automat- 
 ism which they have no power to control, nor capacity 
 to judge. Consequently he was convicted of man- 
 slaughter and sentenced to prison ; but while the judge 
 was uttering the sentence, the boy fell into a violent fit, so 
 violent that several officers — and he was a lad not much 
 over fourteen — failed to control him. A physician was 
 sent for who etherized him, and he was taken back to 
 jail. This physician testified that he thought the fit was 
 feigned, and did not see any good evidence why it was 
 not. About one week after, the prisoner was called for 
 sentence again, when he was brought in by one door, 
 walked through the Court, and taken out by another 
 door. It was ordered by the Court that the prisoner 
 should be sentenced while thus walking through, lest he 
 might be seized with another fit, which exploded twenty- 
 four hours after confinement in prison. 
 
 In this singular case, it became a question whether 
 the execution of the law should be carried out in spite of 
 everything, cheating, as it was, the epileptic malady from 
 its attacks, by the strategy of walking the boy across the 
 Court while sentence was pronounced, in utter disregard 
 
26 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 of the statutory provision by which the prisoner must 
 stand before the judge and jury to hear his sentence, as 
 well as of every humane sentiment of commiseration, to 
 which the violent convulsions experienced by the boy in 
 Court so strongly appealed, and which the judge did 
 not believe to have been simulated, as was demonstrated 
 by the unprecedented and illegal proceeding he author- 
 ized in order to prevent a recurrence of a fit. 
 
 Dr. David Skae describes the case of a gentleman, 
 afflicted with epilepsy, who came voluntarily under his 
 care, whose violence was most sudden and impulsive, 
 followed by maniacal paroxysm and fury ; "for eight or 
 ten days he spun round and round from left to right — 
 sometimes lying, sometimes sitting, sometimes on his 
 head/' While chatting pleasantly over a rubber of whist, 
 he would suddenly perform a somersault over the table, 
 upsetting everything, and, unless forcibly restrained by 
 two or three strong men, assault everybody right and 
 left. 
 
 Cases of injury to moral character from sun-stroke 
 are very like those already described. A young officer 
 in the Indian army became insane from sun-stroke and 
 continually complained of his fellow officers poisoning 
 his food. To avoid this annoyance they persuaded him 
 to sell out. He took his passage from Calcutta for Eng- 
 land, but the passengers seeing his insanity, refused to 
 travel with him, and the captain landed him at Madras, 
 giving him back half his passage money. After waiting 
 some time he got a passage by a sailing vessel to Eng- 
 land, and on his way home he felled the mate of the 
 vessel with a large mallet ; he was put in irons and on 
 his arrival was handed over to the authorities to be 
 tried, being in the meanwhile put in Newgate. On the 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 27 
 
 interposition of his relatives he was released and placed 
 in an asylum. He was generally morose, but joined in 
 the amusements of the other patients, playing cricket, 
 billiards, bowles, and taking long walks, but he never 
 lost sight of the necessity laid upon him to kill some- 
 body. 
 
 He left the asylum and has boarded in various 
 houses in the country, under the charge of an attendant, 
 upon whom he has made some murderous assaults.* 
 
 The " Neurological Correspondence" of The Jour- 
 nal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, January, 1878, 
 Vol. Ill, No. 1, contains several interesting notes. Dr. 
 Edward C. Mann read a paper before the Medico-Legal 
 Society of New York, in which he relates the case of 
 a man who had been suffering from sun-stroke, and 
 who took a small quantity of alcohol and then went 
 out for a walk. He met a friend with whom he had 
 been familiar for years, and a discussion arose as to 
 the respective merits of certain politicians, when the 
 argument becoming excited, the man pulled out a re- 
 volver and shot his friend. He then went in a con- 
 fused and dazed state and sat for some hours on a pier 
 near the river ; subsequently he went home, burst into 
 tears, and, after informing his wife of the sad occur- 
 rence, gave himself up at the police station. There 
 was a total blank in the prisoner's mind in regard to 
 the events immediately preceding the pistol shot, which 
 seemed to have aroused his attention at the time, and 
 he had no recollection of the fact that he had sat on 
 the pier for some time afterwards. There had existed 
 for months previous to the occurrence a profound 
 
 * Morisonian Lectures on Insanity for 1873, Edited by T. S. Clous 
 ton, M. D. 
 
28 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 moral or affective derangement, which from its marked 
 periodicity was evidently epileptiform in character, and 
 the sudden homicidal outburst supplied the interpreta- 
 tion of the previously obscure attacks of recurrent 
 derangement. There had evidently been induced, by 
 sun-stroke, an epileptiform neurosis which had been 
 manifesting itself for months, chiefly by irritability, 
 suspicion, moroseness, and perversion of character, with 
 periodic exacerbations of excitement, all foreign to the 
 man previous to the attack of sun-stroke. This epi- 
 leptic neurosis often exists for a long time in an un- 
 developed or masked form, and is connected with 
 suicidal and homicidal mania. There is abundant tes- 
 timony to show that during such seizures persons may 
 perform actions and even speak and answer questions 
 automatically. Moreover, such persons may entertain 
 delusions of fear and persecutions, and commit criminal 
 deeds as a result of such delusions ; and when such 
 cases in their terror and distress of mind commit such 
 violent deeds they either experience immediate relief 
 or they continue in a state of excitement unconscious 
 or very imperfectly conscious of the gravity of their 
 acts. When they become conscious again, their 
 memory is apt to be very uncertain as to the preced- 
 ing events. 
 
 Intense cold, it is well known, will affect the men- 
 tal faculties in a remarkable manner, when the corporeal 
 functions have comparatively suffered less. 
 
 Captain Parry relates, that during his voyage of 
 discovery, two young gentlemen, when first they re- 
 turned on board ship after exposure to intense cold, 
 looked wild, spoke thick and indistinctly, and it was 
 impossible to draw from them a rational answer ; the 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 29 
 
 mental powers appeared gradually to revive with the 
 returning circulation ; till then they had the appear- 
 ance as if they had been drinking too freely.* 
 
 Dr. Reich tells us of four boys, from six to ten 
 years of age, who were exposed in a sledge to cold 
 of from sixteen to twenty-two degrees below zero ; 
 and, being suddenly introduced into a room heated by 
 a stove, they showed symptoms of mental derangement, 
 lasting for several hours. There were maniacal excite- 
 ment, delirium, and halucinations. This condition 
 passed off with a long sleep, and on awakening they 
 retained no recollection whatever of the mental dis- 
 order. It is supposed to have been caused by an 
 alteration in the cerebral circulation induced by the 
 rapid change from cold to heat.f 
 
 The paroxysms of epilepsy are often preceded by 
 a spectrum; and the state of the brain then existing, 
 whatever it may be, being present in other instances 
 without being followed by the paroxysm, has often 
 been the origin of a belief in supernatural appearances. 
 
 Dr. Conolly mentions the case of a gentleman of 
 his acquaintance who in a state approaching to faint- 
 ness, sometimes induced by cupping, and sometimes 
 by pain, sees the most lovely landscapes displayed 
 before him. J The same writer records a case in which 
 an attack of scarlet fever threw all the previous events 
 of a boy's life so much into the shade that they 
 could not be distinctly remembered for many years 
 afterwards ; they were not forgotten, but they were 
 dimly recollected. | 
 
 *" Expedition to the North Pole." Vol. I, p. 108. 
 t " Centralblatt fiir Nervenheilkunde." No. 6, 1881. 
 X Op. Cit., p. 240. 
 J Op. Cit., p. 236. 
 
30 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 One effect of the great plague at Athens is related 
 to have been the impairment of the memory of those 
 who recovered ; so that their friends were often not 
 remembered by them, but were thought to be stran- 
 gers. In the fever which has been described by 
 certain authors under the name of Calentura, a sin- 
 gular delusion of the senses is said to take place. 
 This affection has been observed in sailors during 
 voyages in hot regions ; the patient mistakes the sea 
 for fields and pastures, representing, perhaps, the 
 scenery of his distant home ; and the patients have 
 been known to walk overboard with this impression. 
 
 In consumption, the most fatal of all diseases, there 
 is a state of the brain which prevents much of the suf- 
 fering which might be expected to arise from the num- 
 erous causes of distress which are accumulated in the 
 patient. An immitigable cough, preventing sleep ; a 
 burning fever ; fits of coldness ; profuse and wasting 
 perspiration ; diarrhoea ; frequent sickness ; daily in- 
 creasing emaciation ; falling hair ; and strength almost 
 hourly diminishing ; — all these lamentable accompani- 
 ments or parts of the malady, weigh little on the 
 spirits of the patient, and hopes are entertained, and pro- 
 jects formed, even in the hour of death. Even physi- 
 cians, to whom all these signs are so familiar as hardly 
 to be mistaken or overlooked, seem to overlook or 
 mistake them in their own persons. M. Bayle, in his 
 excellent work on diseases of the brain, ascribes this 
 effect, which he says he has remarked in three physicians 
 who had died of the malady, to cerebral excitement. 
 
 Phthisis being one of the very few organic diseases 
 which often appear in early life, it generally happens 
 that its victims have death set before them before life 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 31 
 
 has lost any of its charm, and whilst every object of 
 human ambition appears in those colors of which time 
 seldom fails to deprive them. But they do not see the 
 death that is set before them ; and commonly sink into 
 the grave with hope and promised pleasures still around 
 them. 
 
 If we had not hourly proofs of our entire depend- 
 ence on a Governing Power, it might be worth while to 
 remark on the possibility shown to us in the curious in- 
 stances where the delusion is complete, of our being 
 so variously affected by the same external circum- 
 stances as to make our perfect happiness, if it were de- 
 signed that it should be perfect here, quite consistent 
 with the accidents of terrestrial life. No extravagance 
 of imagination is required to admit that the slightest 
 possible change of the mode in which our organization 
 is affected by external agents, might create that happier 
 state to which men look forward amidst the trials of this, 
 but which will probably consist of no less a change of 
 objects than of modes of perceiving them. 
 
 There are other diseases which in like manner play 
 havoc with moral feeling. Almost every form of men- 
 tal derangement begins with a moral alienation, slight 
 perhaps at the outset, but soon so great that a prudent, 
 temperate, chaste, and truthful person shall be changed 
 to exactly the opposite of what he was. 
 
 This alienation of character continues throughout 
 the course of the disease, and it is frequently found to 
 last for a while after all disorder of intelligence is gone. 
 Indeed the experienced physician never feels confident 
 that the recovery is stable and sure until the person is 
 restored to his natural sentiments and affections. Thus 
 it appears that when the mind undergoes decadence, the 
 
32 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 moral feeling is the first to suffer ; the highest aquisition 
 of mental evolution, it is the first to witness to mental 
 degeneracy. 
 
 One form of mental disease, known as general par- 
 alysis, is usually accompanied with a singularly complete 
 paralysis of the moral sense from the outset, and a not 
 uncommon feature of it, very striking in some cases, is 
 a persistent tendency to steal, the person stealing, in a 
 weak minded manner, what he has no particular need of, 
 and makes no use of when he has stolen it. The victim 
 of this fatal disease is frequently sent to prison and 
 treated as a common criminal, notwithstanding a med- 
 ical man who knows his business might be able to say 
 with entire certitude that the supposed criminal was 
 suffering from organic disease of the brain, which had 
 destroyed moral sense at the outset, which would go on 
 to destroy all the other faculties of his mind in succession, 
 and which in the end would destroy life itself. There is 
 no question in such case of moral guilt ; it is not sin, 
 but disease that we are confronted with ; not a theory, 
 but a condition ; and after the victim's death we find the 
 plainest evidence of disease of the brain, which has gone 
 along with the decay of mind. 
 
 It can hardly be necessary to remind the reader of 
 the fate of some eminent public characters, men moving 
 in stations of great responsibility, and harassed with the 
 cares of State ; or men engaged in extensive commer- 
 cial transactions ; or men of studious habits and much 
 ambition, and anxious minds. Many instances might 
 be mentioned of the fatal end of such persons appar- 
 ently induced, and in some cases proved to be induced, 
 by slow disease of the brain, or the membranes 
 of the brain, commencing and going on unsus- 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 33 
 
 pected until it became inconsistent with the perform- 
 ance of the proper functions of life ; or, until the 
 long course of self-restraint which has acquired the re. 
 spect of his fellow creatures suddenly ceases and a man 
 of high character is reduced to infamy ; or, until produc- 
 ing extreme irritability or melancholy, it causes the in- 
 dividual to die by his own hand. Where no previous 
 misconduct can be traced, it is more charitable and 
 generally more just to attribute the misdeed to mental 
 disturbance arising from positive physical disease. 
 
 I need not dwell any longer upon the morality- 
 sapping effects of particular diseases, but shall simply 
 call to mind the profound deterioration of moral sense 
 and will, which is produced by the long-continued and 
 excessive use of alcohol and opium. There is nowhere 
 a more miserable specimen of degradation of moral 
 feeling, and of impotence of will, than the debauchee 
 who has made himself the abject slave of either of 
 these pernicious excesses. Insensible to the interests 
 of his family, to his personal reponsibilities, to the obli- 
 gations of duty, he is utterly untruthful and untrust- 
 worthy, and in the worst end there is not a meanness of 
 pretense, or of conduct, that he will not descend to, not 
 a He he will not tell, in order to gain the means to 
 gratify his overruling craving. 
 
 It is not merely that passion is strengthened and 
 will weakened by indulgence, as a moral effect, but the 
 alcohol or opium, which is absorbed into his blood, is 
 carried by it to his brain and acts injuriously upon its 
 tissues ; the chemist will, indeed, extract alcohol from 
 the besotted brain of the worst drunkard, as he will de- 
 tect morphia in the secretions of a person who is taking 
 large doses of morphia. Seldom, therefore, is it of the 
 
34 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 least use to preach reformation to these people until 
 they have been restrained forcibly from their besetting 
 indulgence for a long enough period to allow the brain 
 to get rid of the poison, and its tissues to regain a 
 healthier tone. Too often, it is of little use then ; the 
 tissues have been damaged beyond the possibility of 
 complete restoration. Moreover, observation has shown 
 that the drink craving is oftentimes hereditary, so that 
 a taste for the poison is ingrained in the tissues, and is 
 quickly kindled by gratification into uncontrollable de- 
 sire. 
 
 Thus far it appears, then, that moral feeling may 
 be impaired or destroyed by direct injury of the brain, 
 by the disorganizing action of disease, and by the 
 chemical action of certain substances, which, when 
 taken in excess, are poisons to the nervous system. 
 
 When we look sincerely at the facts, we cannot 
 help perceiving that it is just as closely dependent upon 
 organization as the meanest function of mind ; that 
 there is not an argument to prove the so-called materi- 
 alism of one part of the mind which does not apply with 
 equal force to the whole mind. 
 
 Seeing that we know no more essentially what mat- 
 ter is than what mind is, being unable in either case to 
 go beyond the phenomena of which we have experi- 
 ence, it might be of interest to ask those who cannot 
 conceive that any organization of matter however com- 
 plex should be capable of such exalted functions as 
 those which are called mental, whether it is really any 
 more conceivable that any organization of matter can 
 be the mechanical instrument of the complex mani- 
 festations of an immaterial mind. Is it not just as 
 easy for an omnipotent power to endow matter with 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 35 
 
 mental functions as it is to create an immaterial entity 
 capable of accomplishing them through matter?* 
 
 From the time of Locke, the discussions" of phil- 
 osophers have tended to unsettle our notions of mat- 
 ter, and no one is hardy enough, now, to say what it is 
 or what it may not be. It is strangely overlooked by 
 many who write on this matter, that the brain is not a 
 dead instrument, but a living organ, with functions of a 
 higher kind than those of any other bodily organ, in- 
 asmuch as its organic nature and structure far surpasses 
 those of any other organ. What, then, are these func- 
 tions if not mental ? No one thinks it necessary to as- 
 sume an immaterial liver behind the hepatic structure in 
 order to account for its functions. But so far as the na- 
 ture of nerve and the complex structure of the cerebral 
 convolutions exceed in dignity the hepatic elements and 
 structure, so far must the material functions of the brain 
 exceed those of the liver. Men are not sufficiently care- 
 ful to ponder the wonderful operations of which matter 
 is capable, or to reflect on the miracles effected by it 
 which are continually before their eyes. Are the prop- 
 erties of a chemical compound less mysterious because 
 of the familiarity with which we handle them? Con- 
 sider the seed dropped into the ground ; it swells with 
 germinating energy ; bursts its integuments, sends up- 
 ward a delicate shoot, which grows into a stem, putting 
 forth in due season its leaves and flowers, until finally a 
 beautiful structure is formed such as Solomon in all his 
 glory could not equal, and all the art of mankind can- 
 not imitate. And yet all these processes are operations 
 of matter ; for it is not thought necessary to assume an 
 
 *See "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," by John Milton, Vol. 1 pp 
 250, 251. ' ^" 
 
36 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 immaterial, or spiritual plant which effects its purposes 
 through the agency of the material structure which we 
 observe.* Surely there are here exhibited properties of 
 matter wonderful enough to satisfy anyone of the 
 powers that may be inherent in it. Are we, then, to 
 believe that the highest and most complex development 
 of organic structure is not capable of even more won- 
 derful operations? 
 
 Matter, which seems, to common people, so intelli- 
 gible, is still wrapped in mystery. We know it only by 
 its relation to mind or as an assemblage of powers to 
 awaken certain sensations. 
 
 Leaving this inquiry, however, without attempting 
 to explain the mystery of that which constitutes the 
 particular nature of matter, on which its properties de- 
 pend, I pass on to some considerations of the reciprocal 
 relation of mental function to moral feeling as illustrated 
 in the development of the human brain. 
 
 It is a pretty well accepted scientific doctrine 
 that our far-distant prehistoric ancestors were a very 
 much lower order of beings than we are — even if they 
 did not inherit directly from the monkey ; that they 
 were very much like in conformation, habits, intelli- 
 gence, and moral feeling, the lowest existing savages ; f 
 and that we have risen to our present level of being by 
 a slow process of evolution which has been going on 
 gradually through untold generations. Whether or not 
 "through the ages one increasing purpose runs," it is cer- 
 tainly true that "the thoughts of men are widened with 
 the process of the suns." Now, when we examine the 
 
 * See " Paradise Lost," John Milton, Book V., lines 469-485. 
 f " Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man." Sir 
 John Lubbock, London, 1870. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 37 
 
 brain of the lowest savage — whom we need not be too 
 proud to look upon as our ancestor in the flesh — we find 
 it to be considerably smaller than the ordinary brain of 
 civilized man ; its convolutions, which are the highest 
 nerve centers of mind, are decidedly fewer in number, 
 more simple in character, and more systematic in ar- 
 rangement. These are marks of inferiority, for in those 
 things in which it differs from the ordinary brain of civ- 
 ilized man it gets nearer in structure to the still much 
 inferior brain of the monkey ; it represents, we may 
 say, a stage of development in the long distance which 
 has been traversed between the two. A comparison of 
 the relative brain weights will give a rude notion of the 
 differences ; the brain weight of an average Caucasian 
 male is forty-nine ounces ; that of a negro is forty-four 
 ounces ; and the brains of the Hottentot, Bushman and 
 Australian are, so far as observation goes, of less weight 
 than those of Negroes ; the average weight of the adult 
 male brain is ten per cent, greater than that of the 
 female, and the weight of the male Negro's brain is less 
 than that of the average Caucasian female.* The brain 
 of the Bushwoman weighed thirty-one and a half 
 ounces ; that of the Hottentot Venus, who was no 
 idiot, was a very little larger. f Professor Gratiolet 
 carefully figured and described the brain of the Hotten- 
 tot Venus ; it presented a striking simplicity and regu- 
 lar arrangement of the convolutions of the frontal lobe ; 
 an almost perfect symmetry in the two hemispheres 
 "such as is never exhibited in the normal brains of the 
 Caucasian race," and which involuntarily recalls the 
 regularity and symmetry of the cerebral convolutions 
 
 *John Thurman, M.D., "Journal of Mental Science," April, 1866. 
 f Prof. John Marshall, Philosophical Transactions, 1865. 
 
38 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 in the lower animals. The brain was palpably inferior 
 to that of a normally developed white woman ; " it 
 could be compared only with the brain of a white who is 
 idiotic from arrest of cerebral development."* There 
 can be no doubt then of a great difference of develop- 
 ment between the highest and the lowest existing human 
 brain. 
 
 There can be no doubt, furthermore, that the gross 
 differences which there are between the size and develop- 
 ment of the brain of a low savage, and of an average 
 Caucasian, go along with great differences of intellectual 
 and moral capacities ; that lower mental function an- 
 swers to lower cerebral structure. It is a well known 
 fact that many savages cannot count beyond five,f and 
 that they have no words in their vocabulary for the 
 higher qualities of human nature, such as virtue, justice, 
 humanity, and their opposites, vice, injustice, and cru- 
 elty, or for the more abstract ideas. The native Aus- 
 tralian, for example, who is in the case, having no words 
 for justice, love, mercy, and the like, would not in the 
 least know what remorse meant ; if anyone showed it 
 in his presence, he would think, probably, that he had 
 got a bad headache. He has no words to express the 
 higher sentiments and thoughts, because he has never 
 felt and thought them, and has never, therefore, had 
 the need to express them ; J he has not in his inferior 
 
 * Transactions of the Anthropological Society, Paris, 1861. 
 
 f Brett, " History of the British Colonies in the West Indies." 4th ed., 
 London, 1887. 
 
 X True love, observes Sir John Lubbock, is almost unknown amongst 
 the lowest races, and marriage in its lowest phases is by no means a matter 
 of affection and companionship. Among the Koussa Kaffirs, Lichtenstein 
 asserts that there is no feeling of love in marriage. In North America the 
 Tinne Indians had no word for " dear" or " beloved," and the Algonquin 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 39 
 
 brain the nervous substrata which should minister to 
 such sentiments and thoughts, and cannot have them in 
 his present state of social evolution, any more than he 
 could make a particular movement of his body if the 
 proper muscles were wanting. Nor could any amount 
 of training in the world, we may be sure, ever make 
 him equal in this respect to the average Caucasian, any 
 more than it could add substance to the brain of a small- 
 headed idiot and raise it to the ordinary level. Were 
 anyone, indeed, to make the experiment of taking the 
 young child of an Australian savage and of bringing it 
 up side by side with an average European child, taking 
 pains to give them exactly the same education in every 
 respect, he would certainly have widely different results 
 in the end ; in the one case he would have to do with a 
 well-organized instrument, ready to give out good intel- 
 lectual notes, and a fine harmony of moral feeling when 
 properly handled ; in the other case, an imperfectly organ- 
 ized instrument, from which it would be out of the power 
 of the most patient and skillful touch to elicit more than 
 a few feeble intellectual notes, and a very rude and primi- 
 tive sort of moral feeling, a little better feeling, cer- 
 tainly, than that of its fathers, but still most primitive ; 
 for many savages regard as virtues most of the big 
 vices and crimes, such as theft, rape, murder, at any 
 rate, when they are practiced at the expense of neigh- 
 
 language is stated to have contained no verb meaning "to love," so that 
 when the Bible was translated by the missionaries into that language, it 
 was necessary to invent a word for that purpose. He cites a French writer 
 to show that the Samoyedes of Siberia show little affection for their wives 
 and " daignent d peine four dire tine parole de douceur." Many other instances 
 might be adduced to illustrate this remarkable fact, but these are sufficient 
 to show that in one very important circumstance at any rate the early races 
 did not approach the more civilized nations. 
 
40 HUMAN DISCORDS 
 
 boring - tribes.* Their moral feeling, such as it is, is ex- 
 tremely circumscribed, being limited in application to 
 the tribe. In civilized society we have, happily, got a 
 step further than that, since we are not as savages are, 
 and our forefathers probably were, divided into a mul- 
 titude of tribes eager to injure and even extirpate one 
 another from motives of tribal patriotism, f No doubt 
 we have reached a much higher pitch of moral feeling 
 now, but there is plainly room yet for a wider expan- 
 sion, and mankind seems to be far off the gaol of its 
 high calling, so long as divided into jealous and hostile 
 nations it suffers national divisions to limit the applica- 
 tion of moral feeling. 
 
 Now, what do the discoveries of science warrant us 
 to conclude respecting the larger and more complex 
 brain of the civilized man, and its higher capacities of 
 thought and feeling ? They teach us this ; that it has 
 reached its higher level not by any sudden and big cre- 
 ative act, nor by a succession of small creative acts, but 
 by the slow and gradual operation of processes of nat- 
 ural evolution going on through countless ages. Each 
 new insight into natural phenomena on the part of man, 
 
 * The wife of an Australian savage having died of some disease, he in- 
 formed Dr. Lander that he would go and kill a woman of a distant tribe, so 
 that his wife's spirit might have rest. Forbidden imperatively to do so, and 
 threatened with imprisonment if he did, he became wretched and wasted 
 away ; but he disappeared eventually, and was absent for some time. When 
 he re-appeared he was in good condition, for he had succeeded in killing a 
 woman ; his sorrow because of a sacred duty omitted had disappeared, his 
 tribal moral feeling was satisfied, and his bodily nutrition sympathized with 
 the restored animation of his mind. — American Journal of Insanity, July, 
 1871. 
 
 fThe story of Jael and Sisera is instructive in this respect ; the light 
 in which she was regarded for her abuse of the sacred rite of Eastern hospi- 
 tality showing the limited range of moral feeling at that time. — -Judges, v. 
 24-27. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 41 
 
 each act of wiser doing founded on truer insight, each 
 bettered feeling which has been developed by wiser con- 
 duct, has tended to determine by degrees a correspond- 
 ing structural change of the brain, which has been trans- 
 mitted, as an innate endowment, to succeeding genera- 
 tions, just as the acquired habit of a parent animal be- 
 comes sometimes the instinct of its offspring, and the 
 accumulated results of these slow and minute gains 
 transmitted by hereditary action, have culminated in the 
 higher cerebral organization in which they now are, as it 
 were, capitalized. Thus the added structure embodies in it- 
 self the superior intellectual and moral capabilities of ab- 
 stract reasoning and moral feeling, which have been the 
 slow acquisitions of the ages, and it gives them out again 
 in its functions when it discharges its functions rightly. 
 If one of our remote pre-historic ancestors were to come 
 to life among us now, we should have more or less of an 
 imbecile, who could not compete on equal terms with 
 other persons, but must perish, unless charitably cared 
 for, just as the low savage whose brain is destitute of the 
 higher nervous substrata of thought and feeling perishes, 
 when he comes in contact and competition with the 
 white man. The only way in which the native savage 
 can be raised to the level of civilized thought and feel- 
 ing must be, if it shall be, by cultivation through many 
 generations, by a process of evolution similar to that 
 which lies back between our savage ancestors and us. 
 
 That is one aspect of the operation of natural law 
 in human events, the operation of the law of heredity 
 in development in carrying mankind forward, that is, to 
 a higher level of being. It teaches us plainly enough 
 that the highest qualities of mind bear witness to the 
 reign of law in nature as certainly as do the lowest prop- 
 
4* HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 erties of matter, and that if we are to go on progressing 
 in time to come it must be by the observation of, and 
 obedience to, the laws of development. 
 
 There is, however, another important aspect of the 
 law of heredity which it concerns us to bear sincerely in 
 mind, its operation in working out human degeneracy, 
 in carrying mankind downward, that is, to a lower level 
 of being. It is certain that man may degenerate as well 
 as develop ; that he has been doing so both as nation 
 and individual, ever since we have records of his doings 
 on earth. In many regions of the globe there have 
 been a succession of partial civilizations that have been 
 followed by periods of barbarism ; some of the savages 
 of to-day are the heirs of higher races that have per- 
 ished. There is a broad and easy way of dissolution, 
 national, social, and individual, which is the opposite of 
 the steep and narrow way of evolution. In the flowing 
 tide of progress there are innumerable ebbing waves. 
 Now what it behooves us to realize distinctly is that 
 there is not anything more miraculous about the degen- 
 eration or extinction of a nation, or a family, than there 
 is about its rise and development ; that both are the 
 work of natural law. A nation does not sink into de- 
 cadence, I presume, so long as it keeps fresh those vir- 
 tues of character through which it became great among 
 nations ; it is when it suffers them to be eaten away by 
 luxury, corruption, and other enervating vices, that it 
 undergoes that degeneration of character which prepares 
 and makes easy its overthrow. In like manner a family 
 reckless of the laws of physical and moral hygiene, may 
 go through a process of degeneracy until it becomes ex- 
 tinct. What we call mental derangement is truly in 
 most cases a form of human degeneracy, a phase in the 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 43 
 
 working out of it ; and if this degeneracy were suffered 
 to take its course through generations the natural termi- 
 nation would be extinction of the family. If a man 
 will but make himself the subject of serious scientific 
 study, he shall find that this working out of degeneracy 
 through generations affords him a rational explanation 
 of most of those evil impulses of the heart which he 
 has been content to attribute to the wiles and instiga- 
 tions of the devil ; that the evil spirit which has taken 
 possession of the wicked man is often the legacy of 
 parental or ancestral error, misfortune, or wrong doing. 
 Let us take for the purpose of illustrating by ex- 
 ample the nature and bearing of this scientific study a 
 case which every physician who has had much expe- 
 rience must have been asked some time or other to 
 consider and advise about ; a quite young child which 
 is causing its parents alarm and distress by the preco- 
 cious display of vicious desires and tendencies of all 
 sorts that are quite out of keeping with its tender 
 years, and by the utter failure of either precept, or ex- 
 ample, or punishment, to imbue it with good feeling 
 and with the desire to do right. It may not be no- 
 tably deficient in intelligence ; on the contrary it may 
 be capable of learning quickly, when it likes, and ex- 
 tremely cunning in lying, in stealing, in gratifying 
 other perverse inclinations ; and it cannot be said not 
 to know right from wrong, since it invariably eschews 
 the right and chooses the wrong, showing an amazing 
 acuteness in escaping detection, and the punishment 
 which follows detection. It is in truth, congenitally 
 conscienceless, by nature destitute of moral sense, and 
 actively imbued with immoral sense. Now this unfor- 
 tunate creature is of so tender an age that the theory 
 
44 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 of satanic agency is not thought to offer an adequate 
 explanation of its evil impulses ; in the end everybody 
 who has to do with it feels that it is not responsible 
 for its vicious conduct, perceives that punishment does 
 not, and cannot, in the least, reform it, and is per- 
 suaded that there is some native defect of mind which 
 renders it a proper case for medical advice. 
 
 To show that this portrait is no exaggerated fancy 
 sketch let me relate a case described by Mr. Haslam — 
 a boy ten years of age who was sent to the Bethlehem 
 Hospital to be cared for. The history of the case is 
 as follows : 
 
 The parents are persons of sound mind and they 
 do not remember any branches of their respective fam- 
 ilies to have been in any manner disordered in their 
 intellects. The subject of the present relation was 
 their eldest son ; the second child was of a disposition 
 remarkably mild ; and the youngest, a boy of about 
 two and a half years, was distinguished by the irrita- 
 bility and impatience of his temper. At the age of 
 two years the subject of the present relation became 
 so mischievous and uncontrollable that he was sent 
 from home to be nursed by his aunt. In this situa- 
 tion he continued until he was nearly nine years old ; 
 the creature of volition and the terror of the family ; 
 at this time the advice of a physician was sought. 
 Different systems of management were adopted, indul- 
 gence in every wish and correction for each individual 
 perverseness, or impropriety of conduct. He would 
 neither dress nor undress himself, though capable of 
 both ; when his hands were at liberty he tore his 
 clothes; he broke everything that was presented to him, 
 or came within his reach, and frequently refused to 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 45 
 
 take food. He gave answers only to such questions 
 as pleased him, and acted in opposition to every direc- 
 tion. His aunt exercised this plan for several months, 
 but perhaps not to the extent laid down ; for it may 
 be presumed that after a few flagellations her humanity 
 prevailed. He was of a very healthy appearance, and 
 his head was well formed. His tongue was unusually 
 thick, though his articulation was perfectly distinct. 
 His countenance is described as decidedly "maniacal," 
 a complex term for many ideas not very easy to be 
 defined. His stature for his age was short, but 
 he was well compacted and possessed great bodily 
 strength. His skin was smooth and clear, though some- 
 what deficient in sensibility ; his pulse was natural, 
 appetite good but not inordinate. He slept soundly, 
 and seemed to require a considerable duration of sleep, 
 though he often awoke as if suddenly alarmed. He 
 had a very retentive memory, and had made as great 
 proficiency in speech as the generality of boys at his 
 age. Few circumstances appeared to give him pleas- 
 ure, but he would describe very correctly anything 
 which had delighted him. He had been several times 
 at school but as he lacked the power of continued at- 
 tention, and was only attracted by fits and starts, he 
 was the hopeless pupil of many masters, distinguished 
 for their patience and rigid discipline ; it may, therefore, 
 be concluded that from these gentlemen he derived all 
 the benefits which could result from privations to his 
 stomach and from the application of the rod to the more 
 delicate parts of his skin. 
 
 Mr. Haslam says : " On the first interview I had 
 w T ith him he contrived after two or three minutes' ac- 
 quaintance to break a window and tear the frill of my 
 
46 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 shirt. He was an unrelenting foe to all china, glass, and 
 crockery ware ; whenever they came within his reach he 
 shivered them instantly. In walking the street the 
 keeper was compelled to take the wall as he uni- 
 formly broke the windows if he could get near them, 
 and his operation was performed so dextrously and with 
 such safety to himself that he never cut his ringers. To 
 tear lace and destroy the finer textures of female orna- 
 ment seemed to gratify him exceedingly, and he seldom 
 walked out without finding an occasion of indulging 
 this propensity. He never became attached to any in- 
 ferior animal ; to these creatures his conduct was that of 
 a brute ; he oppressed the feeble and avoided the society 
 of those more powerful than himself. When he was 
 spoken to he usually said : ' Now I will look unpleas- 
 ant.' The usual games of children afforded him no 
 amusement ; whenever boys were at play he never 
 joined them ; he appeared incapable of forming a friend- 
 ship with anyone ; he felt no consideration for sex, and 
 would as readily kick or bite a girl as a boy. Of kind, 
 ness shown him he was equally insensible ; he would re- 
 ceive an orange as a present, and afterwards throw it in 
 the face of the donor. To the man who looked after 
 him he appeared to entertain something like an attach- 
 ment ; when this person went out of the room he raised 
 a loud outcry, and said : ' What will become of me if he 
 goes away ? I like him, for he carries the cane which 
 makes me a good boy.' The man seemed to be of a 
 different opinion, however, for he said, when he grew 
 older he should be afraid to continue with him, as he 
 was persuaded the boy would destroy him, whenever he 
 found the means and opportunity. Of his own disorder 
 he was sometimes sensible ; he would often express a 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 47 
 
 wish to die, for, he said, ' God had not made him like 
 other children.' During the time he remained at Beth- 
 lehem, I conducted him through the hospital and pointed 
 out to him several patients who were chained in their 
 cells ; he discovered no fear or alarm ; and when a mis- 
 chievous maniac, who was more strictly confined than 
 the rest, was shown him, he said : ' This would be the 
 right place for me.' Considering the duration of his in- 
 sanity, and being ignorant of any means by which he 
 was likely to recover, he was returned to his friends 
 after remaining a few weeks in London."* 
 
 Where, then, is the fault that a human being is born 
 into the world who will go wrong, nay, who must go 
 wrong, in virtue of a bad organization ? How comes it 
 that an individual capable of looking before and after, 
 remembering the retribution of past sin and the Nemesis 
 that awaits a future wrong doing is so forgetful of true 
 self interest as to yield to evil impulses ? And whence 
 do these impulses come ? One thing is certain, Moral 
 Philosophy cannot penetrate the hidden springs of feel- 
 ing and impulse, they lie deeper than it can reach, for 
 they lie in the physical constitution of the individual, 
 and going still farther back, perhaps in his organic ante- 
 cedents. Moral Philosophy may make its hard and fast 
 lines, and lay down abstract propositions concerning the 
 power of will in the conduct of life, but when we have 
 to do with concrete cases it is plain that no such definite 
 lines can be applied, and that abstract propositions are 
 only true of a certain proportion of mankind. More- 
 over, it appears also that those of whom they are true, 
 have much less merit in the matter, and those of whom 
 they are not true, much less blame than moral philoso- 
 
 *" Observations on Madness." John Haslam, London, 1809, Page 198. 
 
48 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 phers are apt to imagine and inculcate. The fate of in- 
 heritance, which constitutes the misfortune of the latter, 
 constitutes also the virtue of the former. His father 
 and mother, his grandfather and grandmother, are latent 
 or declare themselves in him ; and it is on the lines laid 
 down in his nature that his development has proceeded. 
 Humanity is contained in the individual ; whatever act 
 of vice, folly, crime, or madness one man has perpe- 
 trated, each man has in him the potentiality of perpe- 
 trating. It is not by virtue of education so much as by 
 virtue of inheritance that he is brave or timid, generous 
 or selfish, prudent or reckless, boastful or modest, quick 
 or placid in temper ; the ground tone of his character is 
 original in him, and it colors all the subsequently 
 formed emotions and their sympathetic ideas. As in 
 one word ages of human culture are summed up,* 
 so in one mortal are summed up generations of human 
 existence ; in his nature as in his knowledge man is the 
 inheritor of the acquisitions of the past, the heir of all 
 the ages. 
 
 Instead of regarding the mind as it were from the 
 center, one should approach the consideration of it by 
 degrees from the circumference ; instead of starting 
 with man as the immediate object of philosophy, let 
 us start from the outer inert world, at the disposal of 
 physical and chemical forces ; what do we see result ? 
 Another world where the forms individualize themselves 
 and of which the continued mobility attests the pres- 
 ence of new agents ! Minerals, plants, animals detach 
 themselves, and appear to us as the steps of evolution 
 in nature rising higher and higher. And man ! he ap- 
 
 *"Some Lessons of Antiquity." An address delivered at the Man- 
 sion House, 23d of February, 1889, by Prof. F. Max Muller. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 49 
 
 pears at the summit of this vast series, species among 
 the species, individual in his species. But between 
 the species and the individual is there not yet some- 
 thing? Between the human type, as it can be anatom- 
 ically defined, and this same type as it manifests itself 
 in each one of us, is there not a gap ? And the gap 
 is filled by the very history of the human species ; for 
 we pertain to races, to varieties of the human race, 
 and we all accept the heritage of a long past ; we 
 have, if we may be permitted to employ the expression, 
 a historical mind — we are one of the links of a long 
 chain. 
 
 However great may be the discoveries that are yet 
 to be made, it is an assured principle that humanity 
 has not always been exactly similar to itself. The ideas 
 which constitute our most precious patrimony have had 
 their history ; civilizations which are nothing else than 
 the aggregate of ideas dominant at a certain epoch, 
 and in certain countries, have not been servile copies 
 one of another ; mental enlightenment has changed its 
 place ; but at the same time it has increased. This 
 historic mind of which the first impulses and the most 
 spontaneous testimony remains lost in the darkness of 
 the past, develops itself from age to age, from nation 
 to nation ; never definitely fixing itself upon one par- 
 ticular religion, aesthetics, or philosophy ; the mind, 
 wafted by a favorable wind, seeks new shores, and the 
 world seems to be colored with clearer light. These 
 periods of excitement are never wasted ; nothing is lost ; 
 nothing is useless ; the impulse once given diffuses itself, 
 extends itself, and never stops. If we take the words 
 which express the thoughts of a high mental culture 
 and trace their origin and the gradual development of 
 
50 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 their meanings, what a succession of human experiences, 
 rising in complexity is displayed ! There is not an ab- 
 stract term that does not mean generations of human 
 culture. Let us take in like manner the human being 
 and trace back through the long record of ages the 
 steps of his genesis, or examine rather the resolution 
 of his essential human nature into its lower elements, 
 as exhibited in the degenerate acts of this child, and 
 we shall cease to be surprised at phenomena which the 
 young creature never could have acquired, and which, 
 so far as its conscious life is concerned, appears strangely 
 precocious and inexplicable. We are witnesses of a 
 retrograde metamorphosis of humanity, of the undoing 
 of what has been done through ages, of the formless 
 ruin of carefully fashioned form. 
 
 We can seldom find the exact cause and trace de- 
 finitely the mode of its operation ; the study is much 
 too complex and difficult for such exactness at present, 
 but we shall not fail to discover the broad fact of the 
 frequency of mental degeneracy in the direct line of 
 the child's ancestors. The influence of systematic cul- 
 ture upon anyone is no doubt great, but that which de- 
 termines the limit, and even in some degree the nature 
 of the effect of culture, that which forms the foundation 
 upon which all the modifications of art must rest, is the 
 inherited nature. 
 
 Many an experience in life teaches the individual 
 who has had the blessing of a good parentage, how 
 incalculable is his debt ; when compelled to act at critical 
 moments, or under difficult and trying circumstances, 
 to which he was not consciously equal, or under great 
 temptation to do wrong, or in any other case in which 
 his art has failed him, he shall have cause to bless the 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 5 I 
 
 nature which he has inherited, to give thanks for the 
 reserve force of a sound and vigorous character which 
 his parents have endowed him with, and which has stood 
 him in good stead, and inspired him, as his leisurely 
 consideration proves, to do rightly when he knew not 
 what he was doing. Better than all his pastors and 
 masters can teach him, it will enable him to meet his 
 last fate with becoming dignity, in the hour of death 
 and in the day of judgment. 
 
 The individual's nature is beneath his art ; if sound 
 it will come to his rescue when culture fails him ; if 
 unsound it will overthrow him in the hour of trial in 
 spite of culture.* 
 
 Instances sometimes occur in young children of 
 blind destructive impulse, or even of persistent homi- 
 cidal desire. Romberg met with a child six years old 
 which suffered from attacks of blind destructive im- 
 pulse, in which it smashed to pieces whatever it could, 
 rushed into the street with a knife in its hand and 
 could scarce be restrained, f 
 
 In younger children of three or four years old, 
 attacks of shrieking, wild refractoriness, rage, biting, 
 and destructive propensities, which occur periodically, 
 are sometimes met with. And if anyone should think 
 that these are instances of early depravity what will he 
 say to the case of a child raving mad immediately after 
 birth. Chrichton quotes such a case. When four days 
 old he possessed so much strength in his legs and arms, 
 that four women could, at times with difficulty restrain 
 him. These paroxysms either ended with an inde- 
 
 * " Man fancies that he determines his life, that he guides himself, 
 and all the while his nature is an irresistable part of his destiny." — Goethe's 
 Egmont. 
 
 \ Deutsche Klinik, 1851, p. 178. 
 
52 HUMAN DISCORDS 
 
 scribable laughter, for which no evident reason could 
 be observed, or else he tore in anger everything near 
 him, which he could tear, clothes, linen, bed furniture, 
 and even thread, when he could get hold of it. When 
 he began to have teeth, he died.* The case seems to 
 be an example of sensorial insanity, and is not unlike 
 those cases in which convulsions prove fatal to young 
 children. The earliest acts of the new-born child are 
 reflex, and these, when there is a morbid condition of 
 nerve element, may become convulsions. To the re- 
 flex acts follow consensual or sensational acts ; and these, 
 when there is a morbid state of the sensory ganglia, 
 became the tearing, biting, and unnatural laughter of 
 the insane infant. In the animal, where the nervous 
 center of idea is but imperfectly developed, the insanity 
 is also sensorial. 
 
 A child may be afflicted also at an early age with 
 a persistent morbid homicidal desire. A well-known 
 case is recorded by Esquirol in which a girl aged seven 
 and a half years manifested a fixed desire to kill her 
 stepmother, who had always treated her kindly. The 
 grandmother had, in the child's hearing, expressed her 
 dissatisfaction with its father's second marriage, without 
 foreseeing the effect which might be produced on a 
 child then only two years old.f To sensational respond- 
 ence to external nature succeeds, in the order of mental 
 development, ideational reaction ; and when ideational 
 activity is first beginning, it is not difficult to implant an 
 idea which may long abide. 
 
 Another case of a girl, aged seven years and a half, 
 who made repeated attempts to injure and kill her 
 
 *Op., Cit., Vol. II, Appendix, p. 355. 
 
 f " Traite des Maladies Mentales," Tome II., p. 115. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 53 
 
 mother, is related by Parent-Duchatelet ;* the morbid 
 tension of the ganglionic cells had been brought about 
 in this case by a well-recognized cause of disturbance at 
 all ages. 
 
 How are we to account for those cases of juvenile 
 suicide so often recorded, where the dreadful propensity 
 is excited by the most trivial causes ? Medical literature 
 is rich in such examples. 
 
 Physiologically, psychologically and pathologically, 
 we are brought back to the same conclusion, namely, 
 that the unconscious action of the organism is a deeper 
 fact than its conscious action, that the real conditions 
 of mental action must be investigated in regions of 
 which introspective consciousness gives no account. 
 What real meaning is there in saying, that "man is con- 
 scious to himself of faculties not comprised within the 
 chain of physical necessity," when a blow on the head, 
 or the virus of a fever, or any such physical cause, in a 
 moment lays low the highest faculties of the proudest 
 metaphysician ? The unrelenting circle of necessity en- 
 compasses all. One may go his destined course with 
 tranquil resignation, and another may fret and fume, 
 but willingly or unwillingly both must go. The cage 
 may be a larger or a smaller one, but the bars are al- 
 ways there. " Where wast thou when I laid the foun- 
 dations of the earth ? Canst thou bind the sweet in- 
 fluences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion ? Canst 
 thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season ? Or canst 
 thou gird Arcturus with his sons? Then Job answered 
 and said : ' Behold, I am vile ; what shall I answer 
 thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth.'" On what 
 
 * " Annales d' Hygiene publique et de Medicine legale," Tome VII., p. 
 173, et suiv, Paris, 1832. 
 
54 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 foundation can mental science surely rest save on a care- 
 ful induction from all available facts, whether they are 
 called physiological or psychical ? " Happy they," says 
 Goethe, " who soon detect the chasm that lies between 
 their wishes and their powers." 
 
 One of the most extraordinary instances of the op- 
 eration of this law in working out moral degeneracy 
 without any perceivable weakening of the intellectual 
 faculty is the case of Servin, described in the Duke of 
 Sully's " Memoirs of Henry IV. of France," and which 
 Dr. Rush regarded as a case of "universal moral de- 
 rangement." 
 
 Sully says : — " Just before my departure from Calais, 
 old Servin came and presented his son to me, and 
 begged I would use my endeavors to make him a man of 
 some worth and honesty ; but he confessed it was what 
 he dared not hope, not through any want of understand- 
 ing or capacity in the young man, but from his natural 
 inclination to all kinds of vice. The old man was in the 
 right ; for what he told me having excited my curiosity 
 to gain a thorough knowledge of young Servin, I found 
 him to be at once both a wonder and a monster ; for I 
 can give no other idea of that assemblage of the most 
 excellent and most pernicious qualities. Let the reader 
 represent to himself a man of genius so lively, and an 
 understanding so extensive, as rendered him acquainted 
 with almost everything that could be known ; of so vast 
 and ready a comprehension that he immediately made 
 himself master of whatever he attempted, and of so pro- 
 digious a memory that he never forgot what he had once 
 learned. He possessed all parts of philosophy and the 
 mathematics, particularly fortification and drawing ; even 
 in theology he was so well skilled that he was an excel- 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 55 
 
 lent preacher whenever he had a mind to exert that tal- 
 ent, and an able disputant for and against the reformed 
 religion indifferently. He not only understood Greek, 
 Hebrew, and all the languages which we call learned, 
 but also all the different jargons or modern dialects ; he 
 accented and pronounced them so naturally, and so per- 
 fectly imitated the gestures and manners both of the 
 several nations of Europe, and the particular provinces 
 of France, that he might have been taken for a native of 
 all or any of these countries ; and this quality he applied 
 to counterfeit all sorts of persons, wherein he succeeded 
 wonderfully ; he was, moreover, the best comedian and 
 greatest droll that, perhaps, ever appeared ; he had a 
 genius for poetry, and had written many verses ; he 
 played upon almost all instruments, was a perfect master 
 of music, and sang most agreeably and justly ; he like- 
 wise could say mass, for he was of a disposition to do, as 
 well as to know, all things ; his body was perfectly well 
 suited to his mind, he was light, nimble, dextrous, and fit 
 for all exercises ; he could ride well, and in dancing, wrest- 
 ling, and leaping, he was admired ; there are no games of 
 recreation that he did not know ; and he was skilled in 
 almost all mechanic arts. But now for the reverse of the 
 medal. Here it appeared that he was treacherous, cruel, 
 cowardly, deceitful ; a liar, a cheat, a drunkard and glut- 
 ton ; a sharper in play, immersed in every species of vice, 
 a blasphemer, an atheist ; in a word, in him might be 
 found all the vices contrary to nature, honor, religion and 
 society ; the truth of which he evinced with his latest 
 breath, for he died in the flower of his age, in a low 
 house, perfectly corrupted by his debaucheries, and ex- 
 pired with a glass in his hand, cursing and denying God." * 
 
 *" Memoirs of the Duke of Sully, Prime Minister to Henry the Great," 
 Vol. III., p. 35. 
 
56 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 If it be a question in this instance whether controll- 
 able vice, or uncontrollable impulse, would the more 
 properly characterize the case of this young man, we 
 may, I think, reasonably conclude that there was some 
 constitutional peculiarity. Whether or not we hesitate 
 to pronounce him wholly irresponsible, we may agree 
 with Rush, that "such persons are, in a pre-eminent de- 
 gree, objects of compassion, and that it is the business 
 of medicine to aid law in preventing and curing their 
 moral alienation of mind." (Op. cit, p. 358.) 
 
 It is, indeed, most certain that men are not bred 
 well or ill by accident any more than animals are ; but 
 while most persons are ready to acknowledge this fact 
 in a general way, very few pursue the admission to its 
 exact and vigorous consequences, and fewer still suffer 
 it to influence their conduct. 
 
 An extraordinary example of the perpetuation of 
 the criminal class by heredity is afforded by the history 
 of the infamous Jukes family, whose pedigree has been 
 made out with singular care, notwithstanding the va- 
 grant habits, illegitimate unions, and extreme untruthful- 
 ness, to which this particular class of humanity is dis- 
 posed. It has been traced during no less than seven 
 generations, and is the subject of an elaborate memoir 
 printed in the Thirty-first Annual Report of the Prison 
 Association of New York, 1876. It includes no less 
 than 540 individuals of jukes blood, of whom a fright- 
 ful number degraded into criminality, pauperism, or 
 disease. It is difficult to summarize the results in a 
 few plain figures, but those respecting the fifth genera- 
 tion, through the eldest of the five prolific daughters of 
 the man who is the common ancestor of the race, may 
 be stated. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 57 
 
 The total number of these was 123, of whom thirty- 
 eight came through an illegitimate granddaughter, and 
 eighty-five through legitimate grandchildren. Out of 
 the thirty-eight, sixteen have been in jail, sixteen for 
 heinous offenses, one of these having been committed 
 no less than nine times ; eleven others led openly dis- 
 reputable lives, or were paupers ; the history of three 
 had not been traced, and only four are known to have 
 done well. 
 
 The great majority of the women consorted with 
 criminals. As to the eighty-five legitimate descendants, 
 they were less flagrantly bad, for only five of them had 
 been in jail, and only thirteen had been paupers. 
 
 Now, the ancestor of all this mischief, who was 
 born about the year 1730, is described ashaving been a 
 jolly, companionable sort of man, a hunter, and a fisher, 
 a hard drinker, averse to steady labor, but working 
 hard and idling by turns, and who had numerous illegiti- 
 mate children, whose issue has not been traced. 
 
 He was, in fact, a somewhat good specimen of a 
 half-savage, without any seriously criminal instincts. 
 The girls were apparently attractive, marrying early and 
 sometimes not badly ; but the gypsy-like character of 
 the race was unsuited to success in a civilized country. 
 So the descendants went to the bad, and such heredi- 
 tary moral weaknesses as they may have had, rose to the 
 surface and worked their mischief without check. Co- 
 habitating with criminals, and being extremely prolific, 
 the result was the production of a stock exceeding 500 
 in number, of a prevalent criminal type. Through dis- 
 ease and intemperance the breed is now rapidly dimin- 
 ishing ; the infant mortality has of late been horrible, 
 but fortunately the women of the present generation 
 
58 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 bear usually fewer children, and many of them are alto- 
 gether childless. The criminal classes contain a con- 
 siderable portion of epileptics, and other persons of 
 instable, emotional temperaments, subject to nervous 
 explosions which burst out at intervals and relieve the 
 system. Their instability of nervous action, irregulari- 
 ties of bodily temperature, mobile intellectual activity, 
 and extraordinary oscillations between opposed emo- 
 tional states give rise to manifestations of extreme 
 piety and of extreme vice. These unfortunate beings 
 see no incongruity between the pious phrases which 
 they pour out at one moment and their vile and ob- 
 scene language in the next ; neither do they show 
 repentance for past misconduct when they are convicted 
 of crimes, however abominable the}^ may be. They are 
 creatures of the moment, possessing no inhibitory check 
 upon their desires and emotions, which drive them 
 headlong hither and thither. From Max Jukes de- 
 scended in seventy-five years, 200 thieves and murder- 
 ers, 280 invalids attacked by blindness, idiocy, or con- 
 sumption, 90 prostitutes, and 300 children who died 
 prematurely. The various members of the family cost 
 the State more than a million dollars,* 
 
 The inheritance of evil tendencies was strikingly 
 exhibited in the history of a family reported by Miss 
 Schuyler, President of the New York State Charity 
 Aid Society. (New York Times, March 8th, 1878.) 
 " Margaret," the " mother of criminals," left behind her 
 " a long train of diseases, weaknesses, bad habits, cor- 
 rupt and morbid passions, physical and moral degeneracy, 
 and open crimes which can never be measured by human 
 eye. 
 
 * Dugdale : " The Jukes." 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 5^ 
 
 The female children of the line became mothers, in 
 their teens, of illegitimate children ; the boys were 
 thieves and vagrants as by a law of nature, as soon as 
 
 they could exercise any activity The children 
 
 grew up in nurseries of crime and became, of course, 
 paupers or worse. The stronger and bolder lived by 
 thieving, or committed burglary, robbery or murder. 
 Crime and indulgence gradually caused the degeneracy 
 of some and they became epileptics, lunatics, and idiots. 
 
 Some of this miserable breed reached the age of 
 
 ninety years, and some of the women had at least 
 twenty children. The stock of this race of criminals 
 was preserved by intermarriage with fresh and vigorous 
 families of ruffians. The total number of the race was 
 seven hundred, mainly paupers, beggars, prostitutes and 
 criminals." 
 
 It is a great pity that men cannot be brought to re- 
 alize the important truth, that an inheritance far better 
 than land or wealth, which they may leave to their 
 children, is that of a good nature — the "confidence of a 
 good descent." It is a great blessing, however, that 
 when men neglect this truth, nature takes the matter 
 out of their hands, and, with the determination that 
 progress shall not be frustrated by human follies and 
 vices, puts a stop to propagation by sterility and 
 idiocy. 
 
 The hereditary kinship which is sometimes traceable 
 between crime and insanity I do not purpose to set 
 forth in detail ; the subject is discussed fully by Dr. 
 Prosper Lucas, in the well-known classic, Traitd philo- 
 sophique et physiologique de I ' Httrddite Naturelle ; but 
 to make clear what I mean I will give one or two illus- 
 trations. Of five children from an insane mother and 
 
6o HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 a drunken father, one was suicidal, two suffered imprison- 
 ment for crimes, one daughter was insane, the other was 
 imbecile. In Haslam's Work on Madness, under the 
 section, " Influence of Heredity," may be found this 
 record : — 
 
 M. H. Her father had been several times insane ; 
 her mother was likewise so afflicted a few months before 
 her death. Afterwards her father married a woman 
 perfectly sane by whom he had three children, two 
 female and one male ; both the females were melan- 
 cholic, the male was a vicious character and had been 
 transported. M. H. has had ten children, three have 
 died with convulsions, the eldest girl is epileptic. 
 
 M. Morel, of Rouen, relates the history of one 
 family which may be shortly summed up thus : — 
 First Generation. — Immorality, Alcoholic Excess, 
 
 Moral Brutishness. 
 Second Generation. — Hereditary drunkenness, Mani- 
 acal attacks, General Paralysis. 
 Third Generation. — Sobriety, Hypochondria, Lype- 
 mania, Systematic Delirium, Homicidal tenden- 
 cies. 
 Fourth Generation. - — Feeble intelligence, Stupidity, 
 First attack of Mania at 16, Transition to com- 
 plete Idiocy ; probable extinction of the race.* 
 
 The case of Christiana Edmonds is a notable 
 one : — 
 
 She was convicted of murder, afterwards reprieved 
 and sent to an asylum ; her brother died epileptic and 
 idiotic ; her sister suffered from mental excitement, and 
 once attempted to throw herself out of a window ; her 
 
 *Traite des Degenerescences, de l'Espece Humaine. B. A. Morel, 
 Paris, 1857. Page 125. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 6 I 
 
 mother's father died paralyzed and childish ; a cousin on 
 the same side was imbecile ; she had herself been sub- 
 ject to somnambulism in childhood, had suffered from 
 hysteria later in life, and had finally had an attack of 
 hemiplegia ; and at the time of her trial her face drawn 
 to one side showed the effect of the hemiplegic attack 
 from which she suffered. 
 
 Dr. Maudsley, whose testimony, as an expert in 
 the case, is given in the "Journal of Mental Science," 
 says : " I had more than an hour's conversation with her 
 in Newgate, and, at the end of it, two convictions were 
 firmly planted in my mind ; the first that she had no real 
 moral appreciation of the nature of her crime, and no 
 shadow of a feeling of remorse in regard to it, the sec- 
 ond that she would have poisoned a whole city full of 
 people, if it had lain in her way to do so, without 
 hesitation, compunction, or remorse. Nevertheless, her 
 intellect was acute, certainly above the average, and 
 showed no signs of disorder. I could only regard her 
 case as a strong confirmation of an opinion I have else- 
 where expressed, and which I believe to be a just con- 
 clusion from facts ; namely, that one occasional result 
 of descent from an insane family is a nature entirely 
 destitute of moral sense — congenitally defective in that 
 respect — whereby the individual is as insensible to the 
 moral relations of life, as a person color blind is to cer- 
 tain colors."* 
 
 One example more shall suffice to exhibit the alli- 
 ance between degenerate types ; it shows the effect of 
 crime in one generation of a family upon the mental 
 organization of the following generations. 
 
 While the Reign of Terror was going on during 
 
 * " Journal of Mental Science." Vol. xviii, p. 409. 
 
62 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 the first French Revolution, an innkeeper profited by 
 the critical situation in which many nobles of his com- 
 mune found themselves, to decoy them into his house, 
 where he was believed to have robbed and murdered 
 them. His daughter, having quarrelled with him, de- 
 nounced him to the authorities, who put him on his 
 trial, but he escaped conviction from lack of proof. 
 She committed suicide subsequently ; one of her bro- 
 thers had nearly murdered her with a knife, and an- 
 other brother hanged himself; her sister was paroxysmally 
 violent ; her daughter, in whom the degenerate line 
 approached extinction, became completely deranged 
 and was sent to an asylum.* 
 
 Here, then, is just the sort of pedigree which we 
 really want — if we are to judge of the worth of a 
 family, — the hereditary line of its vices, virtues, and 
 diseases. 
 
 First Generation. — Acute Intelligence, Murder and 
 Robbery, Absence or Destruction of Moral 
 Sense. 
 Second Generation. — Suicide, Homicidal violence and 
 
 suicide, Epilepsy, Imbecility, Mania. 
 Third Generation. — Mania. 
 
 It may be said that this was an extreme and excep- 
 tional case ; but it is on that account better fitted to 
 produce an impression ; and it must be remembered 
 that the laws by which its results were worked out are 
 laws which are continually at work in accomplishing less 
 striking results, and that so-called exceptional cases in 
 science are when rightly studied exceptionally useful in 
 helping us to discover the laws for which we are search- 
 ing. What we wish to prove is that the moral element 
 
 *Moreau, " La Psychologie Morbide," p. 359. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 63 
 
 is an essential part of a complete and sound character, 
 in the present state of human evolution. He who is 
 destitute of moral sense is to that extent a defective be- 
 ing ; he marks the beginning of race degeneracy ; and if 
 better influences do not intervene to check or neutralize 
 the morbid tendency, his children will exhibit a further 
 degeneracy and be actually morbid varieties. What 
 shall be the particular outcome of the morbid strain 
 — whether vice, or crime, or madness — will, of course 
 depend on the circumstances of life ; the inborn fact 
 counts for much, but not for everything, in the result. 
 It, or the potentiality of it, is inherited by most per- 
 sons, though some appear to be born without it ; it is 
 developed by culture, decays by disuse, and is perverted 
 or destroyed by disease. 
 
 "Crime," says Dr. Maudsley, "is not always a 
 simple affair of yielding to an evil impulse, or a vicious 
 passion, which might be checked were ordinary control 
 exercised ; it is clearly sometimes the result of an actual 
 neurosis which has close relations of nature and de- 
 scent to other neuroses ; and this neurosis is the physical 
 result of physiological laws of production and evolution. 
 The criminal psychosis which is the mental side of the 
 neurosis is for the most part an intractable malady, pun- 
 ishment being of no avail to produce a permanent re- 
 formation. A true reformation would be a reforming 
 of the individual nature ; and how can that which has 
 been forming through generations be ^formed within 
 the period of a single life ? ' Can the Ethiopian change 
 his skin, or the leopard his spots ? '" * 
 
 It may be set down then as a fact of observation, 
 
 * Address to the Psychological Section, British Medical Association, 
 August 7, 1872, Henry Maudsley, M. D 
 
64 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 that mental degeneracy in one generation is sometimes 
 the evident cause of an innate deficiency or absence of 
 moral sense in the next generation. The child bears the 
 burden of its ancestral infirmities or wrong doings. It 
 was this avenging law of heredity by which guilt brings 
 after it its punishment on earth, and the children expiate 
 the sins or errors of the parents, that under the name of 
 fate or destiny often played so great and grand a part in 
 Grecian tragedy ; when the prophetic writers of the 
 Bible are read in a natural sense it cannot fail to be seen 
 what a stress they laid upon "the confidence of a good 
 descent." It was a proverb in Israel, "The fathers have 
 eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on 
 edge." Here, then, and in this relation, may be noted 
 the instructive fact that just as moral feeling was the 
 first function to be affected at the beginning of mental 
 derangement in the individual, so now the defect or ab- 
 sence of it is seen to mark the way of degeneracy 
 through generations. 
 
 It was the latest acquisition of mental evolution ; it 
 is the first to go in mental dissolution. 
 
 A second fact of observation may be set down as 
 worthy of observation, if not of immediate acceptation, 
 namely, that an absence of moral feeling in one genera- 
 tion, as shown by a mean, selfish, and persistent disre- 
 gard of moral action in the conduct of life, may be the 
 cause of mental derangement in the next generation. 
 In fact, a person may succeed in producing insanity in 
 his progeny by a persistent disuse of moral feeling, and 
 a continuous exercise throughont his life of those selfish, 
 mean, and anti-social tendencies which are a negation of 
 the highest moral relations of mankind. He does not 
 ever exercise the nervous substrata which minister to 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 65 
 
 moral functions, wherefore they undergo atrophy in 
 him, and he runs the risk of transmitting them to his 
 progeny in so imperfect a state that they are incapable 
 of full development in them ; just as the instinct of an 
 animal which is not exercised for many generations, on 
 account of changed conditions of life, becomes less dis- 
 tinct by degrees, and, in the end, perhaps, extinct. In 
 sober truth the lessons of morality which were pro- 
 claimed by the prophets of old as indispensable to the 
 stability and well being of families and nations, were 
 not mere visions of vague fancy ; founded upon actual 
 observation and intuition of the laws of nature working 
 in human events they were insights into the eternal 
 truths of human evolution.* 
 
 Whether, then, man goes upwards or downwards, 
 undergoes development or degeneration, we have equally 
 to do with matters of stern law. Provision has been 
 made for both ways ; it has been left to him to find out 
 and to determine which way he shall take. And it is 
 plain that he must find the right path of evolution, and 
 avoid the wrong path of degeneracy, by observation and 
 experience, pursuing the same method of positive in- 
 quiry which has served him so well in the different 
 sciences. 
 
 Being preeminently and essentially a social being, 
 
 * The most ancient books of the Parsees, the Zend-Avesta, proclaim, 
 under the form of a myth, the operation of the law of heredity, in respect to 
 the moral nature; (Zend-Avesta, Vol. iii., pp. 351-378); the book of Mo- 
 saism, the Bible, reproduces this myth in its first pages, from whence the 
 legends and traditions of Islamism have been borrowed ; (Apercu historique 
 sur le temps anttl-islamiques. Revue indt!pendante. Perron, directeur de l'ecole 
 de Medecine du Caire, Vol. V., pp. 445-450) ; the evangelists put, two several 
 times, into the mouth of Christ, the knowledge of the principle which he 
 revives, first, in the discourse on judgment, and in a parable ; (Matthew, 
 chap, xii., verse 33) ; secondly, in the most daring reproach directed against 
 the Pharasees (Matthew, chap, xxiii., verses 29-34). 
 
66 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 each one the member of one body — the unit, that is, in 
 the social organism — the laws which he has to observe 
 and obey are not the physical laws of nature only, but 
 also those higher laws which govern the relations of in- 
 dividuals in the social state. If he makes his observa- 
 tions sincerely and adequately in this way he cannot fail 
 to perceive that the laws of morality were not really 
 miraculous revelations from heaven, any more than was 
 the discovery of the law of gravitation, but that they 
 were essential conditions of social evolution, and were 
 learned practically by the stern lessons of experience. 
 He has learned his duty to his neighbor as he has 
 learned his duty to nature; it is implicit in the complex 
 society of men dwelling together in peace and unity, and 
 it has been revealed explicitly by the intuition of a few 
 extraordinary men of sublime moral genius.* 
 
 As it is not a true, it cannot be a useful, notion to 
 foster that morality was the special gift to man, and 
 is the special property of any theological system, and 
 that its life is bound up essentially with the life of 
 any such creed. It is not religious creed which has 
 invented and been the basis of morality, but morality 
 which has been the bulwark of religions. And as a 
 
 * A considerable amount of mischief is done by the complacent vanity 
 with which man demonstrates his superior relations to other animals, in 
 place of laboring earnestly to develop those relations to something higher 
 which undoubtedly exists potentially in him ; for the progression which has 
 been observed in nature should rightly be realized in the events of human 
 life — in the history of mankind as well as in the history of the individual. 
 Were it not that all men are only too glad to pull down the mighty to their 
 level, "to pare the mountain to the plain " one might wonder that no one 
 has tried to prove these men of genius of a different species from the com- 
 mon ruck of mortals — " Ovk blada otl r//nldeoi hi 7/jwcf," as Socrates says 
 (Cratylus, ch. xxxii.). They only struggled upwards with success as it is 
 the beneficent purpose of nature that all should do. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 67 
 
 matter of fact, it is certain that morality has suffered 
 many times, not a little from its connection with theo- 
 logical creeds ; that its truths have been appropriated 
 and used to support demoralizing superstitions which 
 were no part of it ; that doctrines essentially immoral 
 have been even taught in the name of religion ; and 
 that religious systems, in their struggles to establish 
 their supremacy, have oftentimes shown small respect 
 to the claims of morality.* 
 
 Had religion been true to its nature and function, 
 as wide as morality and humanity, it should have been 
 the bond of unity to hold mankind together in one 
 brotherhood, linking them in good feeling, good will, 
 and good work toward one another. 
 
 If we would learn to reason closely, we must learn 
 to be good doubters. Doubt, determined doubt, is the 
 only key which unlocks the caskets of certain knowl- 
 edge. We have so many lame philosophies because 
 we have so few thorough doubters. It is not the spirit 
 of doubt, as bishops and parsons sing, which hinders 
 the progress of truth and religion ; but the spirit of 
 assumption. Why have we all these disgraceful divis- 
 ions, wranglings, and heart-burnings in science and 
 theology ? It is not because men will doubt too much, 
 but because they will not doubt enough. It is be- 
 cause they hate the trouble of doubting in themselves, 
 and resent its reasonable demands in others, that we 
 are flooded with sham philosophies, superstitions and 
 infidelities. 
 
 Fortunate is it, then, for the interests of morality 
 that it is not bound up essentially with any form of 
 
 *See "History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages." Henry C. 
 Lea, New York, 1887. 
 
 " History of European Morals." W. E. H. Lecky, New York, 1869. 
 
68 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 religious creed, but that it survives when creeds die, 
 having its more secure foundations in the hard won 
 experience of mankind. 
 
 The inquiry which, taking a sincere survey of the 
 facts, finds the basis and sanction of morality in ex- 
 perience, by no means arrives in the end at easy les- 
 sons of self-indulgence for the individual and the race, 
 but on the contrary at the hardest lessons of self- 
 renunciation. Disclosing to man the stern and uniform 
 reign of law in nature, even in the evolution and de- 
 generacy of his own nature, it takes from him the 
 comfortable but demoralizing doctrine that he or 
 others can escape the penalty of his ignorance, error, 
 or wrong doings, either by penitence or prayer, and 
 holds him to the strictest account for them. Discard- 
 ing the notion that the observed uniformity of nature 
 is but a uniformity of sequence at will, which may be 
 interrupted whenever its interruption is earnestly enough 
 asked for, a notion which were it more than lip doc- 
 trine must necessarily deprive him of his most urgent 
 motive to study patiently the laws of nature in order 
 to conform to them, it enforces a stern feeling of re- 
 sponsibility to search out painfully the right path of 
 obedience and to follow it, inexorably laying upon man 
 the responsibility of the future of his race. 
 
 If it be most certain, as it is, that all disobedience 
 of natural law, whether physical or moral, is avenged 
 inexorably in its consequences on earth, either upon the 
 individual himself, or more often, perhaps, upon others, 
 that the violated law cannot be bribed to stay its arm 
 by burnt offerings, nor placated by prayers, it is a harm- 
 ful doctrine as tending directly to undermine under- 
 standing and to weaken will, to teach that either prayer 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 69 
 
 or sacrifice will obviate the consequences of want of 
 foresight or want of self-discipline, or that reliance upon 
 supernatural aid will make amends for lack of intelli- 
 gent will. We read and we do well to read regularly 
 the ten commandments, and we still pray half heartedly 
 in our churches — as our forefathers prayed with their 
 whole hearts —that our hearts may be inclined to keep 
 them. Yet is there a person of sincere understanding 
 who, uttering that prayer, does not know well that, if 
 it is to be answered, he must cleanse his hands, purify 
 his heart, and put in force, in his moral world, those 
 other sanitary measures which experience has proved to 
 be efficacious, and that the aid vouchsafed to the 
 prayer will only be given when these are by themselves 
 succesful ? To get rid of the notion of supernatural in- 
 tervention is the essential condition of true knowledge 
 and self-help in this matter. 
 
 If the matter be made one simply of scientific ob- 
 servation it must be confessed that all the evidence goes 
 to prove that the events of the moral world are mat- 
 ters of law and order equally with those of the physical 
 world, and that supernatural interpositions have no more 
 place in the one than in the other ; that he who prays 
 for the creation of a clean heart and the renewal of a 
 right spirit within him, if he gets at last what he prays 
 for, gets it by the operation of the ordinary laws of 
 moral growth and development, in consequence of pains- 
 taking watchfulness over himself, and the continual ex- 
 ercise of good resolves. Only when he gets it in that 
 way will he get the benefit of Supernatural aid ; and if 
 he rests in the belief of supernatural aid, without taking 
 pains to get it entirely in that way, he will do himself 
 moral harm ; for if he cannot rely upon special inter- 
 
70 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 positions in the moral any more than in the physical 
 world, if he has to do entirely with those secondary laws 
 of nature, through which alone the supernatural is made 
 natural, the invisible visible, it needs no demonstration 
 that the opposite belief cannot strengthen but must 
 weaken the understanding and the will. It is plain that 
 true moral hygiene is as impossible to him who relies 
 upon supernatural power to change his heart, to the 
 neglect of the proper means provided, as sanitary science 
 is impossible to the savage who relies upon his fetich to 
 stay a pestilence or plague and neglects to clean away dirt* 
 When it is properly understood, natural science sets 
 before man a higher intellectual aim than he is ever 
 likely to reach by metaphysical paths and raises a more 
 self-sacrificing moral standard. 
 
 * When a great and sudden revolution in the Ego is produced by an 
 external cause it is full of hazard to the mental stability of the individual, 
 and very apt to become pathological ; nothing is more perilous to the equi- 
 librium of a character than for anyone to be placed in entirely changed exter- 
 nal circumstances without his inner life having been gradually adapted 
 thereto; and madness, when its origin is fairly examined, always means 
 discord between the individual and his circumstances. Dr. Channing, in a 
 sermon On the Evil of Sin, speaking of the absurdity of the notion that in 
 
 changing worlds there will be a change of character, says : " In the 
 
 first place, it contradicts all our experience of the nature and the laws of 
 the mind. There is nothing more striking in the mind than the connection 
 of its successive states. Our present knowledge, thoughts, feelings, and 
 characters, are the result of former impressions, passions, and pursuits. 
 We are in this moment what the past made us ; and to suppose that, at 
 death, the influences of our whole past course are to cease on our minds, 
 and that a character is to spring up altogether at war with what has pre- 
 ceded it, is to suppose the most important law or principle of the mind to be 
 violated, is to destroy all analogy between the present and future, and 
 to substitute for experience the wildest dreams of fancy. In truth, such a 
 sudden revolution in the character, as is here supposed, seems to destroy 
 man's identity. The individual thus transformed can hardly seem to him- 
 self or to others the same being. It is equivalent to the creation of a new 
 soul."— "The Works of William E. Channing, D.D." Vol. IV, p. 159. Bos- 
 ton, 1848. 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 7 I 
 
 For when all has been said, it is not the most ele- 
 vated or the most healthy business for a man to be occu- 
 pied continually with anxieties and apprehensions and 
 cares about the salvation of his own soul, and to be 
 earnest to do well in this life in order that he may escape 
 eternal suffering, and gain eternal happiness, in the life 
 to come. An altruistic end, as the prime motive of well 
 doing, is the strongest and noblest motive to well doing ; 
 with the incarnation of Divine Wisdom, we are taught, 
 there was an annihilation of self. Can anyone hesitate to 
 declare that it is better for a man's self, and best for his 
 kind to have fought with the beasts of unrighteousness 
 even if the dead rise not? To make his life subserve 
 the good of his kind, to promote the well being of the 
 social organization of which he is a unit, is the plain and 
 inevitable conclusion which science enforces as to his 
 true function and highest development. 
 
 The golden rule of morals was perceived and pro- 
 claimed long before it received its highest Christian ex- 
 pression.* Modern science teaches no new morality. 
 It simply brings men back to that which has been the 
 central lesson and real stay of the great religions of the 
 world, and which is implicit in the constitution of society, 
 and it does this in a way that promises to bring the 
 
 * There appears to be no doubt that Confucius, among others, had the 
 clearest apprehension of it and expressly taught it ; and the Buddhist reli- 
 gion of perfection is certainly founded upon self-conquest and self-sacrifice. 
 They are its very corner-stone; the purification of the mind from unholy de- 
 sires and passions, and a devotion to the good of others, which rises to an 
 enthusiasm for humanity in order to escape the miseries of this life and to 
 attain to a perfect moral repose. " Let all the sins that have been commit- 
 ted fall upon me, in order that the world may be delivered," Buddha says. 
 And of the son or disciple of Buddha it is said : " When reviled he revileth 
 not again ; when smitten he bears the blow without resentment ; when 
 treated with anger and passion he returns love and good will ; when threat- 
 ened with death he bears no malice." 
 
72 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 understanding into entire harmony with the will, and to 
 promote by a close and consistent interaction their ac- 
 cordant growth and development ; it strips morality of 
 the livery of superstition, in which theological creeds 
 have dressed it, and presents it to the adoration of 
 mankind in its natural purity and strength. Mighty, it 
 must be allowed, is the power of the human will ; that 
 which, to him whose will is not developed, \sfate, is to 
 him who has a well-fashioned will poiver ; so much has 
 been conquered from necessity, so much has been taken 
 from the devil's territory. 
 
 The scientific spirit of the age preaches self-renunci- 
 ation. The investigations of Geology, revealing the ex- 
 istence of the earth for thousands of years before man 
 appeared upon it, — the discoveries of Astronomy, show- 
 ing how small a fragment the earth is in the vast im- 
 mensity of the universe, — the records of history teach- 
 ing the littleness of man in the mighty course of nature, 
 — and the researches of the chemist and physiologist 
 proving the very close relationship of man to the flower 
 which he tramples upon and the dust which he despises, 
 — all tend to dispel human blindness and to humble 
 human arrogance. How persistently has the self-hood 
 of mankind opposed these revelations of his humble po- 
 sition in the universe ! Willingly or unwillingly, how- 
 ever, man must indeed acknowledge them — nay, must 
 indeed believe it possible that the sun may rise when 
 there is no human eye to behold it, that the birds may 
 sing when there is no human ear to listen, that the flow- 
 ers may bloom and the fruits may ripen when there is no 
 human hand to pluck them, that the course of nature 
 may continue though all men have perished. For it is a 
 supposition which the history of the past does not re- 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 73 
 
 ject, that, after man has disappeared from the earth, 
 other and higher beings may take his place and rejoice 
 in the beauties of nature as he has rejoiced in them. 
 
 If the lesson of self-renunciation is distinctly taught 
 to humanity, with how much greater force is it taught 
 to the individual mortal. It is a natural vanity in every- 
 one to think that he will be greatly missed when life's 
 fitful dream is ended ; and yet how little is the loss of 
 the most distinguished felt. When he is gone to his 
 everlasting rest it seems that he has rightly gone, and 
 his place is so filled up that he seems no longer 
 wanted. A little while and who thinks of "the touch 
 of a vanished hand"? — who remembers "the sound 
 of the voice that is still?" Life refuses to carry with 
 it the dead body of grief ; for death is the condition 
 of new life. The storied urn last only for a few gen- 
 erations at most, but the living work which a man has 
 done never dies ; it is a monument which outlasts time, 
 which the universe cannot destroy unless it destroys 
 itself. 
 
 As far as we can judge, the force in the universe is 
 a constant quantity. Nothing appears to be added and 
 nothing is taken away. When the force of man is aug- 
 mented in mental development, it is evidently at the 
 expense of nature ; and when man degenerates, nature 
 increases at his expense. The correlation which is be- 
 lieved to exist between the physical forces may be sup- 
 posed to exist between them and the mental or vital 
 force. Speculation on the matter is, however, of no 
 avail, and must always come back to the same place 
 where it has been times and times before. 
 
 If we ask whence comes this impulse, we can only 
 answer tamelv that it comes from the same unfathom- 
 
74 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 able source as the impulse which inspires or moves or- 
 ganic evolution throughout nature. He who reflects 
 upon himself and the universe is forced in the end to 
 the recognition in the workings of the world of a power 
 from which all life and energy proceed, which has been 
 from the beginning, is now, and, so far as we can see, 
 ever shall be, and which cannot be comprehended or 
 controlled by human thought or will, but comprehends 
 and controls human thought and will. We recognize an 
 impulsion outside ourselves, working also in our wills, 
 which is the moving energy of the evolution which went 
 on through countless ages before man appeared, which 
 is going on now in his progress, and which will doubt- 
 less go on through countless ages after he has ceased to 
 replenish the earth and subdue it. We come back, in- 
 deed, to something which, however we may name it 
 or forbear to name it, is very like the theological Trin- 
 ity — the Unrevealed and Unrevealable, the Revealed 
 and the Revealer. In human thought and will, nature 
 has arrived at self-consciousness, but the power which 
 impels the highest evolution of life as manifested in the 
 highest reach of human thought and will is fundament- 
 ally the same power which impels the evolution of the 
 lowest forms of life. 
 
 The nature of the Deity as the creator and gov- 
 ernor of the world is not within the scope of scientific 
 investigation. A scientific investigation of the nature of 
 the Deity by the method of observation and induction 
 is for obvious reasons impossible. Mental science does 
 not seek to fathom the abysses of the Infinite. It does 
 not attempt to explain the being and the nature of God, 
 nor the origin of evil, nor to give any reason for the ex- 
 istence of the universe. In its survey of facts it simply 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 75 
 
 views mental development, whether in the individual or 
 in the race, as a process of organization as the consum- 
 mate display of nature's organic evolution, and recog- 
 nizes the most favorable conditions of such evolution to 
 be the most intimate harmony between man and nature. 
 It also teaches him lessons of reverence and humility, 
 for it teaches him in the first place not to despise and 
 call unclean the supreme product of evolution, the last 
 and best work of his Creator's hand ; and secondly, not 
 impiously to circumscribe supernatural power by the 
 narrow limits of his understanding, but to bethink him- 
 self that it were just as easy in the beginning, or now, 
 or at any time, for the Almighty Creator of matter and 
 its properties to make it think as to make mind think. 
 
 We can say no more now than what Empedocles 
 said in the ' Olympiads,' " All things are but a mingling 
 and a separation of the mingled, which are called life 
 and death by ignorant mortals ; " however closely we 
 trace the order of events the mystery of the why re- 
 mains where it was ; the power which determines why 
 one tissue supervenes on another, why life should tend 
 upwards, which inspires and guides the everlasting be- 
 coming of things, must ever remain past finding out. 
 
 Meanwhile the abortive lines which vice produces, 
 and the great miseries which are witnessed, are examples 
 excellently well adapted for the formation of correct in- 
 ductions in the spirit of positive science ; they are patho- 
 logical instances — experiments supplied by nature — 
 tending to the correction of unjust theories, and the es- 
 tablishment of true generalizations. Far, then, from 
 being useless, they are beneficial, as they are inevitable, 
 in the purpose of nature ; with mankind generally, as 
 with man individually, it is out of suffering that knowl- 
 
76 . HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 edge comes. If each age would but believe that the 
 whole universe had not been created solely for its satis- 
 faction, and if each individual in the age would but learn 
 that he is a very insignificant atom in the great whole, 
 then, perhaps, it might be possible to look with less im- 
 patience, and more calmness, on those events which are 
 painful, and do not accord with the human ideal of what 
 should be. 
 
 Sufficient is it for each one to feel that with the 
 definite aim of the development of his moral and intel- 
 lectual nature before him, he must work definitely for 
 that object, must pursue with quiet constancy his course, 
 " like a star without haste, yet without rest," in other 
 matters, outside his orbit, and beyond the reach of his 
 faculties, being content to "stretch lame hands of faith," 
 and "faintly trust the larger hope." 
 
 The belief in the supernatural is often an honest 
 and avowed belief entertained by many great men ; it 
 is, however, one in which we cannot for a moment con- 
 cur. To us supernaturalism is an absurdity ; if it exists, 
 it exists not for us, as color exists not for the blind, nor 
 sound for the deaf. We believe in only one supernat- 
 ural existence, namely, in the omnipotent Creator of 
 matter and its properties — the power which made nature 
 — the father and friend of man. We believe in the 
 book of Nature and its author ; in the world and in God. 
 But as for the supernatural, the spirit world of sights 
 and sounds, the whole tribe of apparitions, the whole 
 chime of ghostly voices, the delusive phenomena of the 
 "spiritists," the zoists, the mesmerists, the mystics, the 
 credulous enthusiasts, et hoc omne genus, we believe that 
 they can, one and all of them, be explained upon the 
 principles of physical or meta-physical law. A large 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 77 
 
 number of them are pure and simple fictions ; others, 
 intended only at first as an expression of imaginative 
 thought, have been mistaken for realities ; others again 
 have been, neither more nor less, the expressions of par- 
 tial insanity. It is certainly not to be denied that a 
 belief in a supernatural intervention in human affairs 
 might be useful at one stage of human evolution, and 
 indeed essential to social progress, just as it is essential 
 to a child's welfare to believe in and respect its own 
 parents, who may nevertheless be unworthy of respect, 
 and yet may be mischievous at a later stage when it has 
 done its work and undergoes decay ; the intellect having 
 outgrown it. It is a sad mission to cut through and 
 destroy with the scissors of analysis the delicate and 
 iridescent veil with which our proud mediocrity envel- 
 ops itself. It may be a sad thing to strike away that 
 crutch which alone seems to support the feebleness of 
 humanity, but it is plain that for a man to lean habitu- 
 ally and heavily on a crutch is not the way to learn 
 to walk firmly ; he will do that best by risking many 
 falls and by making more skillful trials after each fall ; 
 and in like manner he who has to learn and to do in 
 a world of natural law will find his true good in get- 
 ting strength through suffering, skill through trial, vic- 
 tory through obedience, and not in reliance on super- 
 natural interpositions, which have hitherto occurred for 
 the most part where there was no need for their occur- 
 rence, and have failed to occur where they were most 
 wanted — where their help would have been not super- 
 fluous, but serviceable. 
 
 When Christians assemble together in holy com- 
 munion, to break bread in memory of the life and suf- 
 ferings of the Saviour, they solemnly renew and attest 
 
78 HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 their conviction of the essentiality to human welfare of 
 the sublime moral truths which he proclaimed in speech, 
 realized in his life, and suffered for in his death, and 
 quicken their sense of them, which is apt to grow dull 
 in the rude conflicts of the world. We get strength 
 and comfort to go on the narrow way of uprightness, 
 from this assembling of ourselves together in solemn 
 meeting, out of our consent of faith and the infection 
 of sympathy ; for we are beings of the same kind, strug- 
 gling with the same trials, bearing the same sorrows, and 
 looking forward to the same end of our labors under the 
 sun. But it cannot, therefore, be argued that there is 
 anything which does not come by ordinary mental laws, 
 anything supernatural, in the moral enthusiasm which 
 is kindled in these circumstances. 
 
 If a number of persons were gathered together in 
 the same sympathetic way to fan some unwise, emo- 
 tional excitement and to do some foolish thing, the ex- 
 citement would be augmented, and the infection of it 
 would spread by sympathy in the same way. The in- 
 fection of emotion has, as history shows, given rise to 
 many moral epidemics. 
 
 If it come to pass that man is robbed of that in- 
 tensely personal feeling which is poured out in appre- 
 hensive wails about the salvation of his own soul, or in 
 emotional strains by writers of the spasmodic and fleshly 
 school of poetry, or in morbidly subtle analysis of over- 
 strained feelings of any sort, there will be no harm 
 done ; for it is a sort of emotion that is as unwholesome 
 as a hysterical ecstacy. Let him attain instead to that 
 calmer, deeper, wider, and healthier emotion which is 
 subordinated to pure insight into the harmonies of 
 nature, and to philosophical survey of its serene order 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 79 
 
 and is applied objectively to give warmth of tone and 
 color to their expression in words. The creed of nature 
 is not shrieking self-assertion, but serene self-surrender ; 
 not man against the universe, but man as a part of 
 the universe ; not individual life with the single aim of 
 securing a blissful immortality, but individual life in 
 subordination to the general life. 
 
 Assuredly the " everlasting arms " are beneath the 
 upright man who dealeth uprightly, but they are the 
 everlasting laws of nature which sustain him who, doing 
 that which is lawful and right, leads a life that is in 
 faithful harmony with Nature's progress. The destruc- 
 tion which falls upon him who dealeth treacherously 
 and doeth iniquity, "observing not the Commandments 
 of the Lord to obey them " are the avenging conse- 
 quences of broken natural laws. 
 
 I do not know how far the student of theology 
 may be, or think himself to be, free to study a science, 
 which like all natural science, whatever must certainly 
 lead to a remodelling of all creeds ; and I shall not 
 venture to express an opinion on that point. But I 
 feel myself quite free to say that mental science 
 will assuredly afford a solid support to all the great 
 doctrines of Christianity whether they be of faith 
 or morals, whenever the intelligent theologian seeks 
 its aid. The sermon which scientific psychology 
 preaches to-day is the sermon which nearly nineteen 
 hundred years ago was preached from the Mount of 
 Olives near Jerusalem. I can speak with less scruple 
 as to the student of law. /To him mental science will 
 offer the means of determining the true nature of evi- 
 dence ; the origin of beliefs and convictions ; the just 
 extent of responsibility — personal, parental, social ; the 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 
 
 uses and abuses of punishment ; and the best means of 
 reformation of criminals and classes of criminals. 
 
 It must be confessed that those who pursue the 
 study of the physical sciences do appear, in their enthus- 
 iasm for their special work, sometimes to lose sight of 
 that which is the end of all science, and to propound as 
 sufficient for human instruction, guidance, and conduct 
 that which is practically a negation of anything like a 
 doctrine adequate to embrace the phenomena of human 
 feeling and conduct. Men will have some faith to live 
 by. Revolutions in human conduct do not appear to 
 have come from the intellect in times past ; again and 
 again that which seemed the foolishness of the simple 
 has confounded the wisdom of the wise ; and it is not 
 impossible that when the students of physical science 
 have made it all so plain that a wayfaring man, though 
 a fool, cannot go wrong, if he will only keep his eyes 
 open, some untaught person " out of Galilee," a friend 
 of publicans and sinners, who happens to be inspired 
 with strong moral sympathies, will stir up a wave of 
 feeling which shall sweep over the paths, and hardly 
 leave a trace of them behind. 
 
 " Bless not thyself only," says the author of the 
 Reli^io Medici, " that thou wert born at Athens ; but 
 among thy multiplied acknowledgments lift up one hand 
 to heaven that thou wert born of honest parents, that 
 modesty, humility, patience, and veracity lay in the same 
 egg, and came into the world with thee. From such 
 foundations thou mayest be happy in a virtuous pre- 
 cocity, and make an early and long walk in goodness ; 
 so mayest thou feel the contrary vice unto nature, and 
 resist some by the antidote of thy temper." Schiller has 
 somewhere said: "This is the peculiar curse of evil, that 
 
HUMAN DISCORDS. 8l 
 
 it must continually reproduce evil ; " and one may con- 
 fidently add : This is the peculiar blessing of good, that 
 it must continually reproduce good. 
 
 If the science of Psychology is to prove of good 
 service in the cause of civilization, — if it be destined to 
 add to the blessings of social life, to promote and diffuse 
 well doing and happiness throughout society, and fur- 
 ther the great and noble cause of truth and Christian 
 charity among men, then will the question now raised 
 come in for a large share of the attention of the really 
 wise and good, of those — 
 
 " Whose actions teach 
 More virtue than a sect can preach ; " 
 
 and not the less of those who 
 
 " Hold that ever 
 Virtue and knowledge are endowments greater" 
 
 than nobleness and riches. 
 
/ & 
 

 
LBA P ?9