Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    whether the individual shall seek first the completest development of which his nature is capable, other gains, such as riches, reputation, power, being al- lowed to fall to him by the way; or whether he shall seek worldly success, the formation of charac- ter being allowed to be a secondary and incidental matter ? It is a vital question, the practical answer to which must influence most materially the training and cultivation of the mind. As a matter of fact it admits of no doubt that self-development is not made a life-aim; that such formation of character as takes place, does, in the great majority of men, take place, as it were, by chance, without premedi- tation, as an incidental effect of the discipline and training which they undergo in the pursuit of other life-aims/' Is it any marvel, then, that the theoretical recognition of a higher aim in life which they make once a week as a conventional duty has no real in- forming influence in the formation of character; that it is a doctrine which, by an easy self-deception, is held on the condition of its being a sort of sleep- ing partner, and taking no active part in the man- agement of affairs ? No argument is needed to prove that it must be hurtful to the intellectual and moral nature to hold a belief on such terms. / Without doubt the practical aims of life, and f the labour and self-denial necessary to the achieve- ment of them, do entail a large amount of self-dis- cipline of a more or less useful kind. But it is not less certain that the full development of the re- sources of the mental nature can be achieved only