Fallcy 3.

That the occurrence of one or more cases of mental impairment short of actual lunacy in a family constitutes a "heredity" to insanity which would render it wrong to assign a known stress of environment, such as a blow on the head or excessive overwork at school, as the cause of a particular attack in an apparently sound member of the group.

Even the demonstration of cases of actual insanity in a family would not alone warrant us in concluding that every member of the family must therefore be congenitally insane or born with a strong tendency to become so. The contrary is known to be the case, other-wise there would be few of us who could lay claim to be considered sound, seeing that most of us have defective skeletons in our family cupboards. As Dr Clouston says, the tendency towards reproducing the normal and healthy type is stronger than the tendency the other way, and "if the conditions of life are favorable, potentialities never become actualities."

Mr Wilson tries to persuade himself and the public (on the ground of hearsay reports to the effect that one relative has shown mental weakness) that the dux of the Girls' High School referred to was born defective. I am satisfied that not a particle of evidence can be adduced to show that the patient had any congenital defect or disability whatever. I think that my word will be taken when 1 say the patient bore none of the physical stigmata characteristic of congenital defect, and that the rector's statement on the matter is absolutely unjustifiable from every point of view. Her bodily parts were normal and her head well-shaped; and the fact that the girl was able to take the position of dux of a large school should be sufficient evidence at least that her mind was all right. Her, moral character is voluntarily conceded by the rector when he goes out of his way to say "she was goodness itself." When you have granted soundness of body, mind, and morals, you have surely granted all that the most exacting can require, Indeed, we have, in both the cases I cited, the best of all evidence that there was no inherent tendency to insanity in the fact that the victims were able to continue year after year subjecting their minds to stress which could never have been borne had there been initial weakness. What strikes one with amazement in both these cases is, not the fact that their minds ultimately gave way, but that they should have endured and held out so long against the double stress of cramming day and night and neglecting Test, fresh air exercise, and all other means of recreation—Re-Creation.

. . . I may point out, however, that many of the ablest people in the world come of actually insane stock, and that many geniuses have been considered defective themselves on account of their powers of concentraton and abstraction and their apartness from their fellows. Curiously enough. Froebel himself was a case in point, and Robert Louis Stevenson, who gave the following advice to us when we were undergraduate at Edinburgh University, was nicknamed "Daft Stevenson":—