Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/689

Rh of mental evolution, it is the first to witness to mental degeneracy. One form of mental disease, known as general paralysis, is usually accompanied with a singularly complete paralysis of the moral sense from the outset; and a not uncommon feature of it, very striking in some cases, is a persistent tendency to steal, the person stealing in a weak-minded manner what he has no particular need of, and makes no use of when he has stolen it. The victim of this fatal disease is frequently sent to prison and treated as a common criminal in the first instance, notwithstanding that a medical man who knows his business might be able to say with entire certitude that the supposed criminal was suffering from organic disease of the brain, which had destroyed moral sense at the outset, which would go on to destroy all the other faculties of his mind in succession, and which in the end would destroy life itself. There is no question in such case of moral guilt; it is not sin but disease that we are confronted with; and after the victim's death we find the plainest evidence of disease of brain, which has gone along with the decay of mind. Had the holiest saint in the calendar been afflicted as he was, he could not have helped doing as he did.

I need not dwell any longer upon the morality-sapping effects of particular diseases, but shall simply call to mind the profound deterioration of moral sense and will which is produced by the long-continued and excessive use of alcohol and opium. There is nowhere a more miserable specimen of degradation of moral feeling and of impotence of will than the debauchee who has made himself the abject slave of either of these pernicious excesses. Insensible to the interests of his family, to his personal responsibilities, to the obligations of duty, he is utterly untruthful and untrustworthy, and in the worst end there is not a meanness of pretense or of conduct that he will not descend to, not a lie he will not tell, in order to gain the means to gratify his overruling craving. It is not merely that passion is strengthened and will weakened by indulgence as a moral effect, but the alcohol or opium which is absorbed into his blood is carried by it to the brain and acts injuriously upon its tissues: the chemist will, indeed, extract alcohol from the besotted brain of the worst drunkard, as he will detect morphia in the secretions of a person who is taking large doses of morphia. Seldom, therefore, is it of the least use to preach reformation to these people, until they have been restrained forcibly from their besetting indulgence for a long enough period to allow the brain to get rid of the poison, and its tissues to regain a healthier tone. Too often it is of little use then; the tissues have been damaged beyond the possibility of complete restoration. Moreover, observation has shown that the drink-craving is oftentimes hereditary, so that a taste for the poison is ingrained in the tissues, and is quickly kindled by gratification into uncontrollable desire.

Thus far it appears, then, that moral feeling may be impaired or