Hughlings Jackson has since applied
that hypothesis to the elucidation of morbid mental states and their
correlated phenomena. When disorganizing--or, if we may borrow
an expression from the terminology of geological science,
_denuding_--disease attacks the mental organism, it, so to say, strips
off, layer by layer, the successive strata of "habit," "principle," and
"nature," which compose the character. First in order go the higher
moral qualities of the mind; next those which are the result of
personally formed habits; then the inherited principles of personal and
social life; at length the polish which civilization gives to humanity
is lost, and in the process of denudation the evolutionary elements of
man's nature are progressively destroyed, until he is reduced to the
level of a creature inspired by purely animal passions, and obeying the
lower brutish instincts. The term "moral insanity" is accurate as far
as it goes, but it expresses only the first stage in a process of
dissolution which is essentially the same throughout, but which has
unfortunately received different designations as its several features
have been recognized and studied apart. The difference between the
subject of "moral insanity" and the general paralytic, who has lost all
sense of decency and lives the life of a beast, is one of degree.
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