There is good reason to believe that primitive man had a far greater tendency to dissociation, to subconscious psychopathic states than modern man. Even the Middle Ages teem with psychopathic mental epidemics of the most puerile type. In the course of evolution, social and individual, this neurotic, psychopathic tendency has gradually diminished, but has never been completely eliminated. Increase of knowledge, better education, the increase of social safeguards, sanitary and hygienic conditions with consequent increase of safety from dangers, have all helped materially in decreasing the occasions for the cultivation of the fear instinct. Under the rigorous conditions of primitive life individuals who have been unfortunate and have become affected with mental troubles and emotional afflictions of the fear instinct are mercilessly exterminated by the process of tribal and social selection. Each generation weeds out the individuals who have been unfortunate enough to fall under unfavorable circumstances and have become mentally sick, suffering from acquired psychopathic disturbances. In primitive life the crippled, the maimed, the wounded, the sick fall by the way, and are left to perish a miserable death. In fact, the less fortunate, the wounded and the stricken in the battle of life, are attacked by their own companions,--they are destroyed by the ruthless, social brute. The gregarious brute has no sympathy with the pains and sufferings of the injured and the wounded. The faint and the ailing are destroyed by the herd. Civilization, on the other hand, tends more and more towards the preservation of psychopathic individuals. We no longer kill our sick and our weak, nor do we abandon them to a miserable, painful death,--we take care of them, and cure them. Moreover, we prevent pathogenic factors from exercising a harmful, malign social selection of the “fit.” We do our best to free ourselves from the blind, merciless, purposeless selection, produced by pathogenic micro-organisms and by other noxious agencies. We learn to improve the external environment. We do not condemn people to death because they are infected with smallpox, typhus, typhoid bacilli, or because of an infected appendix. We no longer regard them as sinful, unclean, accursed, and tabooed. We vaccinate, inoculate, operate, and attempt to cure them. By sanitary and prophylactic measures we attempt to prevent the very occurrence of epidemics. Our valuation of individuals is along lines widely different from those of the stone age and cave man. We value a Pascal, a Galileo, a Newton, a Darwin, a Pasteur, and a Helmholtz far above a Milo of Croton or an African Johnson.