Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/86

 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and also co-ordination, and a subsequent superior equilibrium In reality, the development of insanity is peculiar to a crisis of development and differentiation destined to be extenuated more and more in the measure that the new equilibrium tends to con- stitute itself and to limit the pathological phenomena to the nar- rowest boundaries. From this point of view, for example, it is certain that economic crises exercise a considerable influence in causing insanity, and, unfortunately, in our most advanced socie- ties the crises have become the rule ; hence the continued growth of mental derangements, especially in countries possessing a high civilization, but a civilization not yet coherent. However, crises, although indicating generally a tendency to progress, can, in cer- tain cases, correspond to a social retrogression. The development of mental derangement, then, is not necessarily in relation to the progress of civilization, but rather to a possible state either of dis- solution or superior integration. The crisis is not, in the main, an essential element and characteristic of progress ; neither is mental disease. It is not progress, then, which increases insanity, but the crisis which precedes either the progress or the regress. This is the case in Belgium, whose economic development, let us hope, will tend toward a superior social co-ordination where the perturbations, economic as well as mental, moral, and polit- ical, will necesarily be reduced. The following is a table of the insane of Belgium in institutions, not comprising, therefore, the insane living in their own families :

Male

Female

Total

i83<5..

2.744

2 361

e 105

1842

2.426

2 088

4 514

iS$i.

3.630

2.277

4 Q07

i8<;8..

2,10";

2.22$

4.420

1881..

4.4(4

4.030

8,763

i88<;..

4.7l6

4,6 1 2

0.328

l800. .

c 4C-2

<;.324

10 777

l8Q3. .

6.275

e 7iQ

1 1 OQd

l804. .

6,372

<i,008

12,300

i8gc

6 624

6 178

12 802

1806..

7.037

6 278

11.11 C

1807..

7.167

6 401

ii 568

1808...

7.477

6.740

14 222

l8qq. .

7.C20

6.0 c?

14 $8$