sane men in the land. But if this be true, or if
anything like this be true, what becomes of the
broad hue that is drawn between the man in
the lunatic asylum and the man on 'Change?
The law declares men lunatics when they are
dangerous to society, or when they are incapable
of managing their own affairs. One of these
conditions lunatics share with the criminals, who
are all persons of diseased mind, although not
the less righteously punishable for their offences.
To the other class how many of our friends
belong!  What rash speculation, indiscreet and
unjust quarrels, stupid prejudices, and idiotic
credulity cause men to bring their worldly state
to ruin is not to be learnt only in the Bankruptcy
Court.

We would not, of course, convert the gaol
into a lunatic asylum. There can be nothing
wholesomer than the determination to push
human responsibility to the utmost. With the
unsound bit in the mind, there is commonly
more than enough of serviceable reason to
control a pet excess within the bounds of common
justice and morality. When, as happened lately,
a soldier of marked eccentricity spends a night
in cutting the throats of his wife and six children
whom he loves, and prepares also to blow
up the fort in which he is stationed, a just pity
recognises the plea of insanity. But when, as
also happened lately, a schoolmaster with a
perverted sense of duty flogs a boy to death,
though we may understand the twist of his mind,
we condemn him to the uttermost. The law, in fact,
admits already too often the plea of insanity, or
unsoundness of mind, in bar of responsibility.
The obvious rarity of a sound body, which is so
much easier of acquisition than a sound mind, is
enough to suggest to us how constantly and
universally more or less unsoundness of mind
must live subject to full responsibility. There
is no line of demarcation between sane and
insane, the healthy and the sickly hues of mind
shade one into the other by the most imperceptible
gradation of tint. But there is to be drawn
somewhere an arbitrary line, and we believe
the number to be very small of those whom
such a line can safely or wisely put on the side
of the irresponsible. Men with a tendency to
go wrong in any particular direction, are not to
be kept within bounds by removal of the
common restraints of society.

When we accept fairly this doctrine, we get
rid of one bar to the improvement of a dangerous
class of sick minds, in the terror with which
people still regard insanity. And yet insanity
is but the Latin term for " want of health " of
mind. This is a terror left from the old days of
whips, chains, cells, and straw pallets. There is
an extreme insanity of mind dependent upon
well-marked bodily diseases altering the
condition of the brain, with which, the physician
now knows how to deal. But minor differences
in the health and constitution of the brain, to be
recognised only by their effect on the workings
of the intellect or temper, are innumerable. In
their first arising, they are influenced by wholesome
treatment, physical and mental, to a most
remarkable degree, and so it is that the first
movements of the minds of children may be
regulated to their lifelong advantage, in a quiet,
wisely ordered home. Prejudices, everybody
knows, may be removed easily when they are
but a few months old, hardly, or not at all, when
of long standing. As of prejudices, so of all
mental unsoundness. Of cases of insanity
brought into the York Retreat, the recoveries
were four to one from attacks not more than
three months old, but only one in four from
attacks older than a twelvemonth.

Until we have bridged over with a little
better knowledge and some honest admissions
the gulf now set between insanity and sanity of
mind, the repugnance to whatever looks like an
admission even of a possible insanity, will keep
a vast number of diseased minds out of asylums
during those earlier stages of infirmity in which
they are to a considerable extent open to remedy.
Moreover, as it was urged at the last meeting of
the Social Science Association by one of the best
practical authorities upon this topic, Mr. Samuel
Gaskell, now Commissioner in Lunacy, most
insufficient means of help are offered to the
labouring and middle classes when attacked or
threatened with disease of the mind. The law
has already done much for the insane pauper,
but in England and Wales for those who are
not paupers, there is lamentable want of proper
means of care and treatment. Mr. Gaskell
believes that for the support of such asylums
adequate funds could be derived from the
patients, if the land and buildings were once
furnished by the public, and there are few ways
in which expenditure would lead to as much
return of public good.

But Mr. Gaskell urges also that view of the
case on which we are now more particularly
dwelling, when he reminds us " that diseases of
the mind, as well as diseases of the body, assume
an infinite variety of forms, varying both in kind
and intensity." He thinks it unwise that " the
same certificates, orders, returns, restrictive
regulations, and penalties are applicable to all
patients, whether affected merely by the slightest
aberration, or suffering from total loss of mental
power and self-control.

"How marked a difference," he says, " is
here observable in respect to bodily complaints,
for which we have hospitals both general and
special, dispensaries for milder cases, as well as
convalescent and sea-side houses. And why, it
may with good reason be asked, have we not
asylums adapted to the slightest as well as the
most severe form of disease?"

The particular suggestion made by Mr. Gaskell
is for the legal sanctioning of a sort of asylum, in
which, under wise medical supervision and with
quiet oversight, care might be had of slight
affections, or the slight beginnings of disease,
that neglect only, or mismanagement, would
cause to be severe. This should be a recognised
asylum, lying outside the operation of the
present lunacy laws, and use might be made of
it as a sort of probationary house for insane
patients, discharged as cured from asylums of