ions, or by direct donations of money,
etc., with a view of preventing, if possible, a relapse of the disease.
May this portion of the work of your society be an ever-flowing fountain
of joy and satisfaction to your members!

Of much greater importance is the best portion of your work, namely,
_the prevention of insanity_. It is nevertheless true, and cannot be
doubted, that in all civilized countries insanity increases in a manner
which is out of proportion to the increase of the population. Much
thought has been given to the cause of this phenomenon, and physicians
as well as moralists, national economists as well as philosophers and
philanthropists, have endeavored to fathom the connection between this
fact and the conditions of modern social life. According to all
observations, it is certain that the cause of this phenomenon is not a
single etiological condition, but that it is the sum of a number of
influences which act upon the human race and produce their travages in
the mental and moral life of our patients. The conditions which give
rise to this increase of insanity may be looked for in the manner in
which modern civilization influences mankind, in its development and
culture, in the family and in the school-room, in its views of life and
habits; also in the manner in which civilization forces a man to fight a
heavier and harder battle for pleasure and possessions, power and
knowledge, and causes him to go even beyond his powers of endurance.

More than even civilization itself, are at fault those pernicious
abnormities, rare monstrosities, which are transmitted from generation
to generation, or are also often newly developed and appear to belong to
our civilization. If we want to prevent the increase of insanity, we
must endeavor to do away with these monstrosities and eccentricities
from our social life which remove mankind more and more, in a pernicious
manner, from its natural development and from the normal conditions of
moral and physical life; we must endeavor to kill these poisonous
offshoots of pseudo civilization, which are the enemies of the normal
existence of man. It is necessary to liberate the individual, as well as
the entire society of modern times, from the potentiated egotism which
spurs man on in overhaste, and in all departments of mental and physical
life, to a feverish activity, and then leads to an early senile decay of
both body and mind; from that terrible materialism which causes the