And now, we all of us, at least in the capitals and the great centers, find ourselves consumed by a feverish activity which makes the mind labor much more than Nature intended it should, under which is produced all this mass of neurasthenics, hystericals, besides the multitudes of moral insane, profoundly egotistical persons, without affection and wholly directed by a powerful passion for gold, for which they sacrifice everything, even salvation!
And, finally, we have that group of semi-insane, which I call _mattoidi_, and who are known as _détraqués_ in France and _cranks_ in North America--that is, those who have the livery of genius with a substratum of weakness and the practical cunning of the average man, who betray their errors only when they write, who hardly exist save among males (with a few exceptions, like Michel) and in the great centers. I have never seen them in the country. Civilization is now depopulating the country and building up the cities, as it is also augmenting physical excitants with alcoholism, morphinism, etc. Civilization emblazons the baton of the marshal, and not only of the marshal but of the president of the republic, in the eyes of everybody who can read and write. Why, then, should we not suppose that civilization can further derange the equilibrium of mental labor and, indirectly, therefore cause an increase of insanity?
Not only has the number of insane increased, but their importance in society has multiplied fourfold; for which reason we can not fail to give them attention. The morally insane in politics and the megalomaniac insane in the bank who inspired Ibsen are to be found walking around in every country. The blood-criminal, transmuted into the forger and the bankrupt, penetrates into our houses, and we suffer from him every day; while the insane man at first was not regarded, or was adored under the form of a saint or hated as a wizard, possessed of the devil always, or seemed a phenomenon strange to society, a species of extraplanetary meteor. If we add that the degeneration provoked by the abuses of civilization has begotten a multitude of forms akin to madness which afford a field for combinations now tragic, now strangely comic--like the phobia by which one is afraid to cross a room, or avoids a certain group of words, or refuses to know how many doors and windows there are on the street, or can not be at ease without saying sexual pacifying formulas; a class who with their perverted tastes form a real new world apart; and they all may inspire new dramatic settings forth.