Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    excesses, and the infirmities and diseases engendered by them. But it is quite certain that men will not abandon their excesses in this day or generation ; that they will not adopt self-denying ordinances; that they will not be at the pains to cherish their bodies, so as to develop their powers to the best advantage, and to make them the ready servants of an enlightened and well developed will. They will go on as before, producing insanity from lack of self-denial; and when admonished of the steep and arduous path which they should follow, will go away, like one of old, sorrowful, because they have many passions. It is to the perfecting of mankind by the thorough application of a true system of education that we must look for the development of the knowledge and the power of self-restraint which shall enable them, not only to protect themselves from much insanity in one generation, but to check the propagation of it from generation to generation. It is not probable that much progress can be made in one generation; for centuries are but seconds in the great process of human evolution; none the less is it a duty to do all we can to carry it forward, in the con- fident hope that the day will dawn although it is yet only the twelfth hour of the night. Unhappily we are not yet agreed as to what should be the true aim and character of education. Eegarding the subject from a scientific point of view, the best education would seem to be that which was directed to teach man to understand himself, and to understand the nature which surrounds him, and of which he is a part and a product; so to enable him, as