Unsoundness of mind / by T.S. Clouston.

  • Thomas Clouston
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Unsoundness of mind / by T.S. Clouston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    118/440 page 80
    alone. Sympathy is shown at six months old, then comes jealousy, the green-eyed monster, at about fifteen months of age. Anything that can be called reason is only seen after a hundred days have elapsed. The pro- tective instincts which are needed to preserve life come on at about four months. The child shows this first by not doing over again an act through which it has suffered pain. This is the first marked conscious ex- hibition of the great and primary instinct of all living things—namely, the love of life and actions for self- preservation. Showing the contrast between man at four months old and a fully developed fish, a grown-up pike when placed in a glass reservoir of water, for four whole months would dash himself against a plate- glass partition, which was placed between him and some minnows in the same vessel, stunning himself each time, but making those unreasoning attempts to secure food that was needful for his life in spite of those failures. But after thus learning that this attempt to secure such food was causing more harm than good, he would then cease to attempt to attack them when they were placed in even the same division of the aquarium with himself. On the full development of self-control depends practical morals. This comes into greatest power only towards the end of mental development, towards the age of eighteen to five-and-twenty. Indeed, it may be said to go on developing in many persons all through life. It becomes transformed into will-power, which is admittedly the crowning mental force of humanity, being so linked with consciousness that it becomes the highest part of the metaphysical ego. Through it, or its absence, one man is a master, while another is a servant. Through it one race becomes the conquered and another the conqueror. One man is the incarnation of deity and another the incarnation of the devil. One man is a force for all that is good and another for all that
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