The conception that the natural environment of man must be modified if the body is to survive has long been recognized, but the fact that the mind is incomparably more delicate than the body has scarcely been noticed at all. We assume that the disorderly environment with which we surround the mind has no effect, and are ingenuously surprised when mental instability arises apparently from nowhere; but although we know nothing of its origin our temerity in applying the cure is in no sense daunted.
It has already been pointed out how dangerous it would be to breed man for reason—that is, against suggestibility. The idea is a fit companion for the {64} device of breeding against “degeneracy.” The “degenerate”—that is, the mentally unstable—have demonstrated by the mere fact of instability that they possess the quality of sensitiveness to feeling and to experience, for it is this which has prevented them from applying the remedy of rationalization or exclusion when they have met with experience conflicting with herd suggestion. There can be no doubt as to the value to the State of such sensitiveness were it developed in a congruous environment. The “degeneracy,” therefore, which we see developed as a secondary quality in these sensitive minds is no evidence against the degenerate, but an indictment of the disorderly environment which has ruined them, just as the catchword associating insanity and genius tells us nothing about genius but a great deal about the situation into which it has had the misfortune to be born.
Sensitiveness to feeling and experience is undoubtedly the necessary antecedent of any high grade of that power of intercommunication which we have seen to be necessary to the satisfactory development of man. Such sensitiveness, however, in society as it now is, inevitably leads merely to mental instability. That such sensitiveness increases with