which lies at the base of all the ‘phobias’ and ‘manias,’ namely, the great emotionalism of the degenerate.[231] If to emotionalism, or an excessive excitability, he had added the cerebral debility, which implies feebleness of perception, will, memory, judgment, as well as inattention and instability, he would have exhaustively characterized the nature of degeneration, and perhaps prevented psychiatry from being stuffed with a crowd of useless and disturbing designations. Kowalewski approached much nearer to the truth in his well-known treatise,[232] where he has represented all the mental disorders of the degenerate as one single malady, which merely presents different degrees of intensity, and which induces in its mildest form neurasthenia; under a graver aspect impulsions and groundless anxieties; and, in its most serious form, the madness of brooding thought or doubt. Within these limits may be ranged all the particular ‘manias’ and ‘phobias’ which at present swarm in the literature of mental therapeutics. But if it be untenable to make a particular malady out of every symptom in which the fundamental disorder (_i.e._, degeneration) shows itself, it should not, on the other hand, be ignored that among certain of the degenerate a group of morbid phenomena distinctly predominates, without involving the absence of the other groups. Thus, it is permissible to distinguish among them certain principal species, notably, beside the mystics, of whom we have studied the most remarkable representatives in contemporary art and poetry, the ego-maniacs (_Ichsüchtigen_). It is not from affectation that I use this word instead of the terms ‘egoism’ (_Selbstsucht_) and ‘egoist,’ so generally employed. Egoism is a lack of amiability, a defect in education, perhaps a fault of character, a proof of insufficiently developed morality, but it is not a disease. The egoist is quite able to look after himself in life, and hold his place in society; he is often also, when the attainment of low ends only is in view, even more capable than the superior and nobler man, who has inured himself to self-abnegation. The ego-maniac, on the contrary, is an invalid who does not see things as they are, does not understand the world, and cannot take up a right attitude towards it. The difference I make in German between _Ichsucht_ and _Selbstsucht_, the French also make in their language, where a careful writer will never confound the word ‘egotisme,’ borrowed from the English, with ‘egoïsme’--that is, selfishness.