TRANSMISSION OF INSANITY.

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setts State lunatic asylum, Horace Mann, chairman, remarks on this point as follows:

"Nearly one-third part of the cases, (say the trustees,) which have been in the Hospital from the beginning, are cases either proximately or remotely of HEREDITARY INSANITY-that is, cases where some near ancestor of the insane subject was insane, and has transmitted the disease to descendants, or rather, has communicated to the system of the descendants, a predisposition to contract that disease. One of the highest of human responsibilities was violated by the ancestors, in forming alliance, when they bore a hereditary taint of insanity in the system, and the consequence of that violation is, that the descendants now exist with an organization pre-adapted to incur that disease. We cannot foretell, which of the descendants, in such cases, it will be, as we cannot tell who will be injured when a gun is fired into a crowd of people. But the result is none the less certain. While ancestors continue to violate this law, some portion of their innocent descendants must bear the consequences. The transmitted tendency, however, does not in all cases, and by virtue of its own inherent energy, produce the result. Some proximate cause is generally requisite; some application by one's self of a torch to the train laid by another. No means, therefore, either of prevention or of avoidance should be neglected." 340

Intellectual reader, remains there the shadow of a doubt that insanity is hereditary, and that even its various FORMS are so transmitted as to pervade entire families, generation after generation? A tithe of the facts here adduced is sufficient to prove any position taken; and, considered collectively, must enforce upon every reflecting mind the conclusion that insanity is hereditary, and also that it assumes the various FORMS in descendants which it took in ancestors; that is, that like phrenological FACULTIES, are deranged in different families. Nor are these facts more than a drop in the bucket compared with the number that exist. Look where you will, they throng upon you already classified at your hands by nature. The transmission of insanity is as much a LAW OF THINGS as that of scrofula, consumption, longevity, statue, form, or any other characteristic already established. Who will undertake to controvert a principle thus palpable? What mathematical problem is demonstrated more absolutely? Or what doctrine is more generally admitted, or less acted on, either by way of preventing, or in the formation of matrimo

This

nial alliances? And if our argument requires farther proof, it is to be found in its still greater accumulative force 324 345. Other diseases are hereditary. Then why not this? malady is inherited, then why not all others? Though insanity is thus hereditary, yet not all the descendants of the deranged inherit this malady. Those who "take after" other ancestors than those deranged, are seldom subject to it, for reasons already given 318. And even those who are constitutionally predisposed to derangement can escape by employing those preventives prescribed in "Physiology, Animal and Mental' 176. Those children, too, born while their parents were improving in health, and overcoming this tendency, will be less predisposed to it than those who received being and character while their parents were gradually becoming more and more subject to its power. Yet these qualifications will be found explained elsewhere.

But insanity may attack those, all of whose ancestors were perfectly sane. This malady, like all others, can be induced at first 341, else it would never have existed. The reverses in business of 1839 and 1842, domestic troubles, wars, and other powerful public excitements, sometimes unhinge the brain and minds of those already overtaxed, who, being more or less insane, are therefore liable to transmit this predisposition to their descendants, perhaps to be augmented by kindred causes as it descends, or to be obviated by right physiological regimen when it is adopted 340.

It should, perhaps, be added, that the powerful incentives furnished by our national institutions, greatly enhance this predisposition. Half our population are partially beside themselves—in a perpetual fever of preternatural excitement, and both hungry and thirsty for some newer and still newer stimuli to feed its insatiate cravings.

CHAPTER III.

MENTAL FACULTIES AND CHARACTERISTICS HEREDITARY.

SECTION I.

THE LAWS WHICH ENTAIL THE PHYSIOLOGY, ALSO TRANSMIT THE MENTALITY.

345. ARGUMENTATIVE EVIDENCE

THAT progeny inherit the PHYSICAL conditions of parentage is thus conclusively demonstrated. To the ACCUMULATIVE force of our proof, attention is once more invited 324. Proving that likeness and shape are transmitted 312, helps to prove that statue and strength are also entailed 314 315; and these positions once established, confirm every preceding, every succeeding position, and prove that marks, longevity, beauty, and all other physical peculiarities are descended from parents to offspring 324

Establishing this great principle of hereditary entailment, goes far toward proving that diseases in like manner come under this general law of entailment 338, and, besides rendering a far lower order and amount of evidence sufficient to establish this point, greatly increases the force of such proof. So, also, proving that consumption or scrofula is inherited, 326 327, not only confirms every preceding hereditary law, but also redoubles the proof that every other disease is equally handed down from generation to generation. Nor would strictly logical argumentation require that more than one physical quality or disease be proved to be transmitted; because analogy then shows that all others are governed by the same hereditary laws which govern these-that since one is entailed, all are therefore equally so.

Yet we have done more. Every position, thus far taken, has been demonstrated by an order and array of FACTS abundantly sufficient, considered independently, to prove, beyond all reasonable evasion or doubt, each one IN AND OF Itself. How overwhelming the evidence, how absolutely impregnable, then, this inductive reasoning considered COLLECTIVELY?

Nor does it end with showing that the physiolgy is transmitted. It applies with increased momentum to the entailment of the mentality, to which our subject now brings us. Indeed, the preceding has been penned mainly in reference to the succeeding. Though the facts of the entailment of all the physical conditions, and especially of all diseases, are of vast moment in and of themselves, and intrinsically entitled to the practical consideration of every matrimonial candidate, yet they are mainly important by way of proving the far more momentous law, that the MENTAL faculties and characteristics are also transmitted. They have been proved thus conclusively, mainly as laying a solid foundation in the nature of man upon which to build our superstructure, that MIND as well as body is transmitted. And we have been thus minute and particular in noting these facts which are "known and read of all men," because they furnish such conclusive proof that the WHOLE man is governed by the same laws of entailment. The descent of physical qualities has been proved thus incontestibly to be an ordinance of nature chiefly as BASE LINES AND ANGLES to be applied to the transmissibility of the MENTAL powers and characteristics. What relation, then, does the hereditary entailment of the physiology bear to that of the mentality?

Man is an INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL no less than a physical being. Nor are these two departments of his nature strangers to each other; but are inter-related in the most perfectly reciprocal manner conceivable P 15 16 17 155 156, and 209 210 8 209 210. Indeed, the physical was created to subserve the mental. The MIND constitutes the man-the great object of human creation— while flesh and blood are only its habitation and servant. ince, therefore, the physiology is transmitted, and since the ciprocity between it and the mentality is PERFECT-since as

CHARACTER AND SHAPE HEREDITARY.

324 345

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is either so is also the other, and since those laws which govern either govern both, the descent from parents to offspring of the body, and all its multifarious conditions necessarily implies and conclusively proves that of the mind and all its powers and characteristics.

CHARACTER AS SHAPE, AND BOTH EQUALLY TRANSMISSIBLE.

Moreover, CHARACTER IS AS SHAPE. Given forms of body always accompany certain instincts and mental predilections. Thus, the tiger has a fixed physiognomy or form of body, and also corresponding mental characteristics; and the leopard, lynx, panther, tiger-cat, catamount, and cat, partake of the general shape of the tiger, and all animals which thus resemble the tiger type of configuration—the entire feline genus and species also resemble his type of MENTALITY. And the more nearly or remotely in either, proportionally closely or distantly also in the other. Indeed, the cereal, pomological, and entire vegetable kingdoms conform to this law. All fish, all ruminating animals resemble all others of their species, and as far as animals approximate toward man in shape do they resemble him in character; of which the monkey, baboon, and ourang-outang tribes furnish pertinent proofs and examples. Do not African, Indian, and Circassian character always accompany their respective physical conformations? Indeed, are not all who are human in shape, also human in mentality, and all which is animal or vegetable in conformation, equally so in character?

Besides, can we not predicate character from shape? Are not idiocy and superior talents, sincerity and cunning, goodness and selfishness, nobleness and meanness, and most other mental characteristics, indicated in the form, features, and physiognomical expressions of their respective possessors? And what is this-what all kindred indices of character*-but

SIGNS

* See a series of articles on this most interesting subject, entitled " OF CHARACTER," in the American Phrenological Journal, vols. VII., VIII., and IX., by the author, who hopes ultimately to prepare a work in elucidation of this law of things, and show what mental characteristics accom. pany given forms of body and face.