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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    a moral science by the application of the inductive method to the study of moral phenomena, so far from weakening the authority of conscience, cannot fail to strengthen the feeling of duty to do the right and eschew the wrong, by showing plainly how, through the unfading operation of natural law, the former surely brings good and the latter evil upon mankind. That it should be necessary to enter into arguments :o prove the moral nature of men to be a proper Subject of scientific study, and to set forth the bene- ficial effect which such a study must have upon the understanding and the moral nature, will probably be thought as extraordinary a thing in the years to come as it seems extraordinary to us now that persons should have had to set forth elaborate reasons in times past to disprove the existence of witchcraft. Meanwhile, it is plain that in neglecting a most promising means of mental training, and in thus failing to develop to the utmost all the resources of their mental nature, men do not do all that they might do to protect themselves from the inroads of mental derangement. It is, indeed, to the development of the vast amount of undeveloped mentality which there assuredly is among mankind that we may look with confident hope for the diminution in time to come of the sum of insanity upon earth.