| Summary: | "The human mind, in its highest development, recalls a preconsciousness, of which the unexpanded mind feels and knows nothing. This remembrance of an antecedent consciousness is the testimony of germs to the full-blossomed intelligence. When man attains to that noble degree of culture where he can logically analyze himself as he was, and is, having the power of comparison and separation, then he learns the resemblances and the differences of things, on the principle that "all thinking is differentiation," and thus man thinks retrospectively, into the most original germs and impersonal principles from which his individuality was evolved. He learns that whatever was contained in the germs of his being is manifested in the matured parts and principles of his organization. He learns that, germinally, all crime is insanity; and that, germinally, all insanity is disease. In the last result, he learns that the destruction of the roots of disease in the human constitution is practically cutting down all the trees of evil, the dire fruits whereof are manifold insanities and crimes. Science thus opens the battle with theology; it is but just begun; and it is to be fought out upon the fields of Nature; tracing the enemy to the very fountain-head of life, overcoming the (d)evils which ever and anon break the linked and golden chain that binds the spirit to the body; and thus inaugurating the era of health, justice, industry, abundance, and happiness. A condition of progress is that mankind shall build the foundation of their Health-Temple upon principles which all men of science and common sense acknowledge to be true, universal, and eternal. This book considers mental disorders, their treatment, and their cure. It focuses particularly on the origin and philosophy of mania, insanity, and crime"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
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