What is Sanity?
- Author:
Alice Groff,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Insanity is a word of very simple content as to its derivation, and means merely want of health. We apply it exclusively to the mind, and to a very special and extreme condition of mental ill health. But the truth is that insanity exists in all degrees, from inhibition by a “feeling-bias,” which prevents the acceptance of a fact, to inability to distinguish between fact and a figment of the imagination. These minor degrees of insanity are not generally accepted as such, but the evolution of psychological science is bringing us more and more fully to the realization of the truth that such they really are.
Mind?or brain if you choose?may be conceived as an organ of the human body whose chief function it is to reason. What does it mean to reason? To reason is to make a comparison of the resemblances and differences among all the available facts bearing upon the subject under consideration, and to adjust these resemblances and differences into a judgment which may be experimentally and practically applied to life; always holding the mind plastic, however, for the admission of any new fact which may be revealed by science, and for the consequent necessity of a new comparison, a new adj ustment, a new judgment, all following upon the admission of the new fact. Reason is a living thing, a growing thing, an evolving thing,? in a word, reason is a function of life, and the mind capable of it is a perfectly sane mind.
Logic is not reason, though to the untrained mind they may appear to be the same thing. Logic and reason are farther apart than the poles, as science is demonstrating to us more fully every day. Reason is the living thing, a function of life, while logic is the dead thing mechanically constructed from it. Reason starts with an impartial consideration of all the available facts. Logic sets out with a premise, defining a fixed point of aim, and proceeds to manufacture a chain of evidence, keeping the fixed point always in view and ignoring any fact which would divert the mind from the end aimed at. Thus logic shows itself to be an artificial thing, a manufactured thing, a thing without life and incapable of the processes of life. The stupidest mind can use logic when it has learned its parrot lesson of the way to construct a path to any fixed end: a machine could be invented to use logic. Very few minds on the contrary can reason, because very few minds can grasp a large number of facts; very few minds are free from “feeling-bias” in making the comparison of resemblances and differences among facts; very few minds are capable of a judgment which is a perfect adjustment of these resemblances and differences on a large scale. It would seem that the power to reason supremely well, either actual or potential, is the indubitable characteristic of the completely sane mind, and that the mind which cannot reason freely is insane in the degree of this inability. Such a mind may have but one point of insuperable “feeling-bias,” one prejudice, one idee fixe, which inhibits the freedom of its reasoning processes, or it may have many; and these inhibitions may cover the ground all the way from inability to accept a new scientifically demonstrated fact, to inability to distinguish between fact and a figment of the imagination. Such a mind is insane, therefore, to the extent of the number and degree of intensity of these inhibitions. There are minds of a low order of intelligence, because of ignorance of the higher scientific facts of life,?minds of what is called the “common-sense type,”? which have not had the education and varied experience that give broad knowledge, but which nevertheless are perfectly sane minds. They are minds which reason freely within the range of the facts they possess, minds which are always plastic to the admission of new facts that may come within their ken. There are on the other hand minds of almost cosmic intelligence, which are unable to reason freely because of an insuperable “feeling-bias,” or prejudice, utterly unable to coordinate fully in any reasoning processes the enormous number of facts they have knowledge of,?minds which are insane to the degree and intensity of this inability.
Max Stirner’s mind was one which might be called cosmically insane. His “feeling-bias” in favor of his own ego inhibited any coordination with all the other facts of life. Herbert Spencer is an example of a mind starting mature life with a wonderful reasoning power among an enormous number of facts, a mind which however permitted “feeling-bias” to control it to such an extent that free reasoning processes became greatly inhibited in his later years. Nietzsche with a marvellous genius of imagination was always more or less insane, the insanity which finally drove him altogether out of himself being simply a multiplication and intensification of the “feeling-biases” which inhibited his reasoning faculty, to the point of ultimately destroying his ability to distinguish between a fact and a figment of his own imagination. Tolstoi also, in spite of wonderful imaginative powers and marvellous intellectual versatility, was insane in the sense that he was unable to reason freely. His reasoning processes were enormously inhibited by his “feelingbias” in the direction of the doctrine of non-resistance. Great thinkers, that is to say, great originators of new ideas, are often very defective reasoners. This is why genius is so often allied to insanity. Great scientific discoverers are often wretched interpreters of the relational value to life and even of the synthetic value to science, of their own discoveries; and this would seem to be owing not to their specialized greatness, but to the fact that they had not had set before them, from the dawn of intelligence as an object of the highest aspiration in life, the ideal of free reasoning, the determination to allow nothing to inhibit the living function of mind.
Our first duty in education then would seem to be to train the growing mind into the ability to reason freely, to ward youth off the rock of the idee fixe or “feeling-bias” or prejudice, which might inhibit reasoning processes. I would not be understood as repudiating logic in such an education as a method of training, any more than any other form of mathematics. We must needs use logic in presenting any one subject, if for no better reason than to fix the psychological center of attention for the time being, until all the available facts bearing upon the subject are covered by the mind. But logic, as we have seen, is not reason. An insane mind may be brilliantly logical along lines which do not conflict with its inhibitions, while a completely sane mind may be unable to use logic because of ignorance of facts pertaining to the subject under consideration. It will thus be seen that the possession of supreme reasoning power indicates a certain quality of mind which may be called sanity; while the power to use logic may or may not be a faculty of a mind whether sane or insane, this power depending upon a certain kind of training.
Modern neurological science calls insanity “conflict,” meaning by this that the mind in attempting to exercise its natural faculty of reasoning, brings the freely coordinating ideas into conflict with whatever invincibly inhibiting “feeling-bias” or prejudice the mind may possess. Out of this theory there has been developed a neurological or psychiatrical therapeutic called the Freudian method, after Dr Sigmund Freud of Berlin, Germany, who originated it. This method is based upon the observation that if the individual in whose mind there exists this sort of conflict, can be brought to a consciousness and an acknowledgment of the inhibiting “feelingWHAT IS SANITYf 169 bias” or prejudice, he can be cured in the sense of having his mind restored to free reasoning processes upon this one point at least. As the mind entertaining this “feeling-bias” is nearly or quite unconscious of it, this therapeutic is obliged to use the hypnoidal treatment in order to bring out into consciousness and hence to the possibility of recognition and acknowledgment, this inhibitive element.
The Freudian method should receive due welcome and support as a powerful remedial agency for the physically normal mind infected with inhibitions; but much more confidently should we depend upon an infinitely more efficacious preventive agency,?the education of the young child in a way which will prevent the planting of any inhibition to the perfect freedom of the reasoning processes, and which wall thus do away, in the physically normal mind at least, with insanity in all its forms.
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