Insanity: Its Causes and PreventionStearns, Henry Putnam
Science
Insanity: Its Causes and Prevention
Stearns, Henry Putnam
Psychiatry -- Early works to 1900
So long as such conditions continue, so long will ignorance, disease, and
misery exist, and consequently there will exist in the human system needs
of the consolation and hope which can come to man only from the teachings
of religion. And he will not only require the teachings of religion by
which to be guided and its admonitions to influence, but also such hopes
and anticipations as it alone can offer as to a higher and better
condition of existence hereafter. The expectation that, some time in the
ages of the world, some of those who are to come after him may possibly be
in a more favored condition of existence on earth, will afford too little
comfort to him in his ofttimes-condition of suffering and ignorance. If
the present is to end all, and there may be no to-morrow for him in which
he may hope for some adjustment and anticipate a higher plane of
existence, then the darkness and mystery of life itself become profoundly
inexplicable. But the expectation of a condition of existence hereafter,
wherein he shall be released from the companions of disease and want,
which now so often haunt his every year of life, will stimulate hope, and
consequently tend toward health of mind.
Again, man requires that which religion alone can bring to him to satisfy
the aspirations of his higher nature. The press and throng of daily life,
in its many-sided avocations, satisfy only as to material things and for a
brief present. Science, in its numerous phases and advancing strides, has
done something, and there can be no doubt will in the future do still
more, for man's happiness and material gain; but these are not all, nor
sufficient for his greatest needs. They deal only with things observable
and physical.
Science unfolds some of the mysterious processes which are constantly
going on in man's system; it demonstrates or photographs for the eye the
approximate structure of nerve-cells or globules of blood; it has traced
out some of the mysterious mechanism of cerebration, and delineated with
more or less exactitude some of the great chemical activities which are
forever going on in organic bodies. It has gone farther, and revealed some
of the hitherto wonderful mysteries in the earth and in the worlds above.
But, after all, its sphere is circumscribed, and mystery still surrounds
us with an impassable wall. The greatest and wisest of its votaries have
at last to confess with confusion of face that they have arrived only on
the brink of an ocean which is infinite--that they know but little.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account