The pathology of emotions : physiological and clinical studies / by Ch. Féré, physician at the Bicêtre; rendered into English by Robert Park.

  • Féré, Ch. (Charles), 1852-1907.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pathology of emotions : physiological and clinical studies / by Ch. Féré, physician at the Bicêtre; rendered into English by Robert Park. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    crime when a hurtful act is accomplished by an individual whose reactions are directed by a diseased brain. One cannot then pursue him for reparation. What remains for determination then is, is it the victim or the community who should bear the con- sequences of the brain defects of the abnormal? There is no reason why the consequences of the anomalies and maladies of the other viscera should not also be laid to the charge of the com- munity of laborious people. This practice subsumes that there exist in society beings charged by their intelligence and their labour to provide for the satisfaction of the needs and even of the caprices of unproductive neighbours. IN'atural history apprises us that sacrifices of this kind are not made in general except at the price of the life or the decadence of those who accomplish it. In the midst of the external world, says Claud Bernard,* certain beings have been prepared from the point of view of philosophical facts in order to create substances destined for the alimentation of others. But from the philosophical point of view each individual works for himself and lives as he can at the expense of those who surround him. When the nutritive elements which he has accumulated for his subsistence or for his repro- duction are drawn from a vegetable or an animal it can only be at the expense of its vitality and that of its race. That this subtraction may be voluntary and accomplished in the name of pity and charity does not alter the result. Generalise by thought, says Bastiat, self-renunciation, and you will see that it is destruc- tion of society. t Physiology concords with political economy in condemning in- temperate generosity which favours the development and multipli- cation of emotionals. Philosophers of all time have affirmed that the great law of humanity is progress, and that, in the final reckoning, the most sudden and violent and apparently disastrous changes turn out for the benefit of the species. Let one consider intellec- tual evolution in its industrial and artistic manifestations, the amelioration, in a manner, of the greatest number and the aug- mentation of the mean duration of life: one will be rationally forced to reicognise that, in short, the facts justify this optimism. ■* Lcfons de physiologic exp. appliq. a la viccL, 1855, t. i., p. 130. t CEuvres completes, 3rd ed., 1881, t. i., p. 11.