crime committed with pen and crayon. They infuse into their mode of proceeding too much consideration for interests not always, not necessarily, those of cultivated and moral men. The policeman is so often compelled to intervene in the service of a privileged class, of the insupportable arrogance of administrations, of the assumption of infallibility of ministers and other government officials of the most unworthy byzantism and of the most stupid superstition, that he does not dishonour the man on whose shoulder he lays his heavy hand. Hence it comes to this, that the pornographist must be branded with infamy. But the punitive sentence of a judge does not with certainty have this effect.

The condemnation of works trading on unchastity must emanate from men of whose freedom from prejudice and freedom of mind, intelligence and independence, no one entertains a doubt. The word of such men would be of great weight among the people. There already exists an Association of Men for the Suppression of Immorality.' Unfortunately it allows itself to be guided not only by solicitude for the moral health and purity of the multitude, and especially of the young, but by considerations which to the majority of the people seem to be prejudices. The association pursues disbelief almost more than immorality. An outspoken word against revelation or the Church inspires this association with as much horror as an act of obscenity. To this narrow-minded confessionalism is it due that its work is less rich in blessing than it might be. But in spite of this, we can take this 'Association of Men' as a pattern. Let us do what it does, but without mummeries. Here is a great and grateful task, e.g., for the new 'Society for Ethical Culture' of Berlin: Let it constitute itself the voluntary guardian of the people s morality. Doubtless the pornographists will attempt to turn it into ridicule. But the scorn will soon enough stick in their own throats. An association composed of the people's leaders and instructors, professors, authors, members of Parliament, judges, high functionaries, has the power to exercise an irresistible boycott. Let the 'Society for Ethical Culture' undertake to examine into the morality of artistic and literary productions. Its composition would be a guarantee that the examination would not be narrow-minded, not prudish, and not canting. Its members have sufficient culture and taste to distinguish the thoughtlessness of a morally healthy artist from the vile speculation of a scribbling ruffian. When such a society, which would be joined by those men from the people who are the best fitted for this task, should, after serious investigation and in the consciousness of a heavy responsibility, say of a man, 'He is a criminal!' and of a work, 'It is a

disgrace to our nation!' work and man would be annihilated. No respectable bookseller would keep the condemned book; no respectable paper would mention it, or give the author access to its columns; no respectable family would permit the branded work to be in their house; and the wholesome dread of this fate would very soon prevent the appearance of such books as Bahr's Gute Schule, and would dishabituate the 'realists' from parading a condemnation based on a crime against morality as a mark of distinction.

Medical specialists of insanity have likewise failed to understand their duty. It is time for them to come to the front. 'It is a prejudice,' Bianchi most justly says,*to believe that psychiatry must be enclosed within a sanctuary like that at Mecca.' It is no doubt meritorious to indurate sections of the spinal cord in chromic acid, and tint them in a neutrophyllic solution, but this should not exhaust the activity of a professor of psychiatry. Neither is it sufficient that he should in addition give a few lectures to jurists, and publish observations in technical journals. Let him speak to the mass of cultivated persons who are neither physicians nor learned in law. Let him enlighten them in general publications and in accessible conferences concerning the leading facts in mental therapeutics. Let him show them the mental derangement of degenerate artists and authors, and teach them that the works in fashion are written and painted delirium. In all other branches of medical science it is discerned that hygiene is of more importance than therapeutics, and that the public health has much more to expect from prophylactics than from treatment. With us in Germany the psychiatrist alone fails as yet to concern himself with the hygiene of the mind. It is time that he should practise his profession in this direction also. A Maudsley in England, a Charcot, a Magnan in France, a Lombroso, a Tonnini in Italy, have brought to vast circles of the people an understanding of the obscure phenomena in the life of the mind, and disseminated knowledge which would make it impossible in those countries for pronounced lunatics with the mania for persecution to gain an influence over hundreds of thousands of electoral citizens,† even if it could not prevent the coming into fashion of the degenerate art. In Germany alone no psychiatrist has as yet followed this example. It is time to atone for this negligence. Popularized expositions from the pens of experts whose

A. G. Bianchi, La Patologia del Genie e gli scienziati Italiani. Milano, 1892, p. 79.

Allusion is here made to the political influence exercised in a number of German electoral districts by the anti-Semite Passchen, a proved lunatic, with a mania for persecution.-TRANSLATOR.

prominent official status would recommend them to the reader would restrain many healthy spirits from affiliating themselves with degenerate tendencies.

Such is the treatment of the disease of the age which I hold to be efficacious: Characterization of the leading degenerates as mentally diseased; unmasking and stigmatizing of their imitators as enemies to society; cautioning the public against the lies of these parasites.

We in particular, who have made it our life's task to combat antiquated superstition, to spread enlightenment, to demolish historical ruins and remove their rubbish, to defend the freedom of the individual against State oppression and the mechanical routine of the Philistine; we must resolutely set ourselves in opposition to the miserable mongers who seize upon our dearest watchwords, with which to entrap the innocent. The freedom' and 'modernity,' the 'progress' and 'truth,' of these fellows are not ours. We have nothing in common with them. They wish for self-indulgence; we wish for work. They wish to drown consciousness in the unconscious; we wish to strengthen and enrich consciousness. They wish for evasive ideation and babble; we wish for attention, observation, and knowledge. The criterion by which true moderns may be recognised and distinguished from impostors calling themselves moderns may be this: Whoever preaches absence of discipline is an enemy of progress; and whoever worships his 'I' is an enemy to society. Society has for its first premise, neighbourly love and capacity for selfsacrifice; and progress is the effect of an ever more rigorous subjugation of the beast in man, of an ever tenser self-restraint, an ever keener sense of duty and responsibility. The emancipation for which we are striving is of the judgment, not of the appetites. In the profoundly penetrating words of Scripture (Matt. v. 17), 'Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.'

INDEX.

561