Chapter 7 Chapter 7 The Great Fear

"I was there one afternoon watching in silence, trying not to listen to what was being said, when the strangest man in the country greeted me. God will not let there be no lack of such a man here. The man is both high and low, Wisdom and stupidity combined." Descartes didn't think he was mad when his intellectual doubts ran into major troubles.Although he admitted for a long time afterwards that all kinds of irrational forces were waiting around his thought, as a philosopher, since he dared to ask questions, he could not be a member of "madmen". ".Rameau's nephew, however, knew full well that he was mad.Of all his fleeting judgments, this alone was the most persistent. "Before he started to speak, he sighed deeply and raised his hands to his forehead, then he regained his composure and said to me: You know, I'm ignorant and crazy, arrogant and lazy."

People in the 18th century could not really understand the meaning expressed in "Lamore's Nephew".But something happened precisely during the writing of this book that heralds a momentous change.It was a strange thing: the irrationality that had been sent to solitary confinement reappeared, with new dangers and, it seemed, a new right to question.But it was not this mystical interrogation that the eighteenth-century man first noticed, but the social impression: the tattered clothes and the insolence of the beggar, tolerated and annoyed by a ridiculous connivance. . One in the eighteenth century might not have recognized himself in Rameau's nephew, but he was fully present in "I." "I" is the interlocutor of Rameau's nephew, a sort of "exhibitor", amusing but reticent, yet full of eagerness in his heart; for this is the first time since the Great Lockdown that the madman has become a social being, the first The first time he was spoken to and questioned.The irrational reappears as a species, though not in large numbers, but it does, and slowly regains its place in the familiar social context.A decade or so before the French Revolution, Mercier was astonished to discover this phenomenon: "Enter another café and a man whispers to you in a calm, confident tone: Monsieur, you cannot imagine how ruthless the government has been to me Unrighteous, how stupid the government is! For thirty years, I abandoned everything and did not seek personal gain. I shut myself in my study, contemplated, and carefully planned. I designed a plan to pay off all the national debts, and also designed a plan to increase the wealth of the third country, so that they A plan for 400 million francs in revenue, and another for destroying England forever. The very mention of England makes me furious. . . . I was in trouble at home when I was planning a job, and I was imprisoned for three years by some bad creditors....Of course, sir, you know how valuable patriotism is. I am fighting for my country The one who died was an unknown martyr." From the perspective of later generations, this kind of people formed a group of people centered on Lamo's nephew.They didn't have the complex and rich personalities of Raku's nephew.It is only to enrich the picture that they are regarded as followers of Rameau's nephew.

But they are not quite a social profile, a comic image.There is something about them that refers to the irrationality of the eighteenth century.Such is their babbling, their anxieties, and that vague accusation and that underlying pain which they have quite generally.These are all real existences, and there are still traces left today.As for the prodigal sons, libertines, and hooligans at the end of the seventeenth century, it is difficult to say whether they were madmen, patients, or criminals.Messier himself does not know where to place them: "In Paris there are some very good people, economists and anti-economists, who are chivalrous and devoted to the public good, but unfortunately they 'Dizzy-headed'. In other words, they are short-sighted, they don't know what century they are living in and who they are dealing with; Proceed from principles and make erroneous reasoning.” There are indeed such people.These "mind-mapping" designers add a stifled irrationality to the rationality of philosophers, programs of reform, draft constitutions, etc. They become a darkened mirror and a harmless caricature of the rationality of the Enlightenment .However, is it not a serious matter that a ridiculous connivance allows the irrational man to come back into the light of day when he is thought to have been hidden deep in the realm of confinement? It is also as if reason, celebrating its victory, revives the image it molded with mockery, allowing it to wander on the fringes of order. This is a A similar phantom in which reason both recognizes itself and denies itself.

However, the fear and anxiety are not getting rid of.They reappeared, and intensified, in response to confinement.People were afraid and still are afraid of confinement. At the end of the 18th century, Sade still worried that what he called "blacks" were waiting to take him away.However, at this time, the closed place has gained its own power and it has instead become the birthplace of evil, which can spread evil by itself and establish another reign of terror. During the few years in the middle of the eighteenth century, a sudden fear arose.This horror was born from a medical point of view, but was mainly propagated by a moral myth.It was then heard that a mysterious disease was spreading from the infirmaries and was about to affect the cities.People were talking about prison fever.They thought of prison wagons and chained prisoners, who were said to leave behind disease as they passed through urban areas.Some say that scurvy causes infectious diseases; others say that the air polluted by the disease will destroy residential areas.The Medieval Panic is at it again, causing a second panic through all sorts of dire accounts.The penitentiaries were no longer mere leprosariums on the fringes of the city; the city had come face to face with leprosy itself: "This is a terrible sore on the city, so great and deep and oozing with pus that if one had not seen it , absolutely unimaginable. The stench is so foul that it can be smelled as far as four hundred yards away. All this reminds people that you are approaching a place where rampage runs rampant, a deep place of corruption and misfortune." Many The confinement centers were all built on the former site where the lepers were detained.Thus, it seems that, over the course of centuries, the new inhabitants also became infected with leprosy.These places of confinement remind one of the symbols and significance of the original site; "There must be not a single leper in the capital! Whoever mentions the name of Bisetl is met with an inexpressible feeling of revulsion, fear and contempt. … ...it has become a shelter for the most hideous and ugliest things in society."

The evils which men had previously tried to banish by confinement reappeared, terrorizing the public in a grotesque form.So there are all kinds of talk about some kind of evil in every direction.This evil is as much physical as it is moral, and it is in this duality that the combined forces of corruption and intimidation are contained.A certain vague image of decay was in vogue, used to denote both moral and physical decay.Both disgust and pity for the incarcerated are based on this image.In the beginning, evil began to ferment in the closed space of confinement.It has all the properties of an acid identified by eighteenth-century chemistry: its particles are small and sharp as needles, and it easily penetrates the human body and heart, which are composed of inert and brittle particles.The mixture of the two particles immediately boiled, releasing harmful gas and corrosive liquid: "These shelters are extremely terrifying, where all kinds of evil gather together and ferment, and spread around, and the people who live in it breathe this kind Polluted air, this air seems to have attached itself to them." These foul gases rose, diffused through the air, and finally fell on nearby residential areas, soaking into people's bodies and defiled people's souls.The idea of ​​the vicious contagion of rot is thus expressed in images.The tangible medium of this epidemic is air.To say that the air is "polluted" is a vague indication that this air is less pure, and that it is a vehicle for spreading this "pollution."Here is a reminder that just before this period country air was considered to have moral and medical value (both good for physical health and refreshing).From this it can be understood that the corrupt atmosphere of hospitals, prisons, and confinement houses contains all the contrary meanings.Since the air is full of harmful gases, the entire city is threatened, and the residents will be gradually eroded by "rot" and "pollution".

These responses are more than a mixture of morality and medicine.No doubt we have to consider the development of literature in general, the sensational and perhaps political propaganda of all sorts of nameless fears.However, panic does prevail in certain cities, and with definite times.This situation is like the great crisis that shook the medieval panic again and again. In 1780, an epidemic spread throughout Paris.Its origins were blamed on an infectious disease at the General Hospital.Some people even want to burn down the building of Bisetel.Faced with the furious situation, the police chief dispatched a commission of inquiry, which included, in addition to several official doctors, the director and doctors of the General Hospital.According to their investigation, what was prevalent in Bisetel was a kind of "typhus", which was related to the foul air.As for the place of origin of the disease, the report of the investigation denied that the source of the disease was the patients in the hospital and the idea of ​​the epidemic; the source of the disease should be blamed entirely on the bad weather, which made the disease epidemic in the capital.The symptoms observed at the General Hospital are consistent with seasonal conditions.And exactly the same disease as that observed in Paris at the same time". In order to reassure the residents and clear Setter's accusation, the report declares that "the rumors that the epidemic in Bisetl will spread to the capital are baseless. "Obviously, this investigation report failed to completely suppress the above-mentioned rumors, because the doctor of the General Volunteer Hospital later issued another statement of the same kind. He was forced to admit that Bisetter's sanitary conditions were very bad, but "the situation Not so bad, after all, that this sanctuary for the unfortunate has become the birthplace of yet another, more deplorable evil.What those unfortunates need is effective treatment, and there is nothing that can be done about that evil."

The cycle is thus complete; irrationality in its various forms had replaced leprosy on the map of evil and was exiled from society—now irrationality has become a visible leprosy, The sores that ooze themselves are presented to a motley crowd.Irrationality reappears, but branded as a disease of the imagination, the reverse adds to its terrifying power. It is therefore in the realm of the imagination rather than in strictly medical thought that non-reason unites with and keeps approaching disease.Long before the question of the extent to which irrationality is monopathic was raised, in the realm of confinement, and with the help of its own magic, a kind of combination of the fear of irrationality and the ancient specter of disease was developed. mixture.After a long span of time, the confused ideas about leprosy were at work again; it was these outlandish ideas that were the first impetus to integrate the irrational world and the medical field.These two realms were first crossed over by the phantasy of fear, bringing together such unfortunate concoctions as "corruption" and "pollution."What is important, or arguably key, to the place madness occupies in modern culture is that the medical man is not; Called in as Guardians to protect others from some obscure threat seeping from the walls of the confinement compound.It is easy to imagine that a free and generous sympathy would arouse concern for the fate of the incarcerated, that if the medical profession were more careful and knowledgeable, it would be able to recognize the The crime to be punished is a disease.But in fact, the atmosphere at that time was not so benevolent and objective.If people bring in doctors to look it up, it's because of the fear that strange chemicals seep out of the confinement walls, that the forces built up within the walls will spread out.Once people's imagery has changed, it is believed that the disease has various characteristics, such as fermentation.Corruption, stench, rotting flesh, and the doctor is there.The attainment of a certain medical status by madness has traditionally been called "progress," but in fact this "progress" could only have been achieved by some strange regression.In a mixture of moral and physical pollution '6, ancient images resurfaced with the familiar 18th-century symbolism of "uncleanness."It is the revival of these images, rather than the improvement of knowledge, that brings irrationality to its final encounter with medical thought.It seems odd that it is in this return to cranky thinking laced with contemporary imagery of disease that positivism will rein in the irrational, or rather discover a new rationality capable of guarding against the irrational. .The problem then was not to eradicate the brigands, but to stop them from becoming potential sources of new evil.So the task is to build while cleaning. The great reform movement launched in the second half of the 18th century started with the elimination of pollution.The so-called elimination of pollution is to remove all kinds of unclean substances and harmful gases, inhibit fermentation, and prevent evil and diseases from polluting the air and infecting the atmosphere of the city.Hospitals, correctional institutions, and confinement institutions of all kinds should be more thoroughly separated by pure air.This period produced a body of literature on hospital ventilation.These literatures try to explore the problem of contagion in medicine, but pay more attention to the problem of moral decency. In 1776, the Council of State appointed a commission with the task of determining "the extent to which the various types of hospitals in France need to be improved".Viel was commissioned to renovate La Salle Petriere Hospital.An ideal hospital should retain its original basic functions while preventing possible evils from spreading; irrationality is completely controlled, and it becomes an exhibit without endangering the audience at the same time; irrationality becomes a This kind of specimen can be used as a precept without the risk of infection.In short, this kind of hospital should regain its original meaning as a cage.This "sterilized" confinement facility is also the dream of Abbot de Monceau. In a pamphlet on "National Philanthropy" in 1789 he planned the creation of an educational device—an exhibition that would conclusively demonstrate the evils of moral corruption: "These guarded hospitals . . . Practical as well as necessary asylums.  …Showing these shadowy places and convicts is intended to admonish the overindulgent youth from the same disgrace for their apostasy. Therefore prudent parents let their children Knowing from childhood this terrible and unfortunate place, where the price of sin is disgrace and depravity, and the depraved often lose forever the rights they have acquired in society."

These are morals trying to collude with medicine to defend their dreams.Those dangers were confined, but not adequately restrained.These dangers also captivated people's imaginations and desires.Morality dreams of eradicating these dangers, but there is always some urge to experience them, at least to approach them, or to imagine them.There is also an irresistible allure to the horror that hangs over the castle of the Brigand.There the nights were full of unapproachable joys; behind those languid faces was debauchery; on these dark backgrounds emerged the pain and joy in the same strain as the garden of Bosch and his heirs.The secrets leaked from the castle in "The 120 Days of Sodom" have been quietly circulated: "There, the so-called prisoners were treated appallingly. We have heard that some very shameful crimes were often committed there." , some even took place openly in the common room of the prison. These crimes are unspeakable according to modern etiquette. We have heard that there are many shameless and pink prisoners there. When they leave this place they and their accomplices will In the dark dens of debauchery, they have become completely shameless and ready to commit all kinds of crimes." As Rochefoucauld Lyoncourt mentioned the old man in the punishment room of Sarpeteliers The image of women and young women.These people passed on their secrets and pleasures from generation to generation: "The correctional room is the most severe place in the institution. When we visited, there were 47 girls held here, most of them were very young. It was not so much that they committed crimes as they Ignorance. . . . It is astonishing that people of different ages are always mixed here, and frivolous maidens are mixed with worldly women, who teach the former the most debauched things." In For a long time, these ghosts have been prowling the nights of the 18th century.Sometimes they are relentlessly displayed by Sade's work and positioned within the strict geometry of desire.They would also be represented by Goya in dim light in The Asylum or The House for the Deaf. How similar are the images on "Outliers" to them!A complete imaginary picture emerged again.What it expresses is the great fear caused by confinement at this time.

It was not only the abstract irrationality that mingled the madman, the libertine, the invalid, and the criminal, but also a host of grotesques, a dormant world of monsters, that was imprisoned in the classical period.These monstrosities are said to have been highlighted and then submerged by the somber tones of Bosch's work.It will be said that the castle of the confinement had, besides its social function of isolation and purification, an utterly opposite cultural function.Even if they separate the rational from the irrational on the surface of society, they still retain deep down the imagery that allows the rational and the irrational to mix and communicate with each other.The citadel of the Internment House is an important, ever-silent repository of memories.They preserve in the shadows a power of image thought to have been extinct.Although they were established by the neoclassical order, they preserved the forbidden images regardless of this order and their time, so that they could be transmitted intact from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.During this period of neglect, Bro Green Hill (you join the "Cry of Fools" in the same imaginary background), and Noirceuil joins the world of legends about Marshal Reis.Confinement condoned and welcomed the rebellion of such images.

However, the imagery of liberty at the end of the century was not in every way consistent with the imagery the seventeenth century was trying to eliminate.Something happened in the Kingdom of Darkness that took them out of that secret world from which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance discovered them.They originally lived in people's hearts, people's desires and people's imaginations.At this time, (we do not suddenly reveal the existence of the madman to the public, but a bubbling expression of human desires full of strange contradictions: lust and murder, sadism and masochism, wanton and servility, domineering and swallowing , all in one body. The omnipresent cosmic conflict revealed by madness in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was transformed into a dialectic without the mediation of the mind at the end of the classical period. Sadism It is not the name finally given to a practice as old as sex. It is a large-scale cultural phenomenon. This phenomenon emerged only at the end of the eighteenth century, and constitutes one of the most momentous shifts in the Western imagination; Indulgence, irrationality transformed into delusions of the heart, madness of desire, and mad dialogues of love and death. Irrationality was imprisoned and its voice silenced for a century. When it reappeared, it was no longer of this world It is no longer an image, but a language and a desire. It is at this time that sadism appears. Moreover, the following situation is not accidental; sadism (literally translated as Sade madness --Translator) This unique phenomenon named after a person was born in confinement, and the entire work of Sade is shrouded in images of fortresses, cells, cellars, monasteries and inaccessible islands. These images are actually It is no accident that all the eccentric literature on madness and terror contemporaneous with Sade's work also rushed out of its stronghold of confinement. Thus, at the end of the eighteenth century, Wasn't the sudden total transformation of memory in the West, and the possibility of rediscovering familiar images of the end of the Middle Ages, distorted of course, and given a new meaning, due to Is the aftermath and reawakening of the madman of the place confirmed?

In the classical period, people's consciousness of madness and irrationality were not separated.The irrational experience that governs all forms of confinement surrounds the consciousness of madness, forcing it to recede, almost to lose its most characteristic elements, and even to disappear. But in the anxieties of the second half of the eighteenth century, the fear of madness was intensified at the same time as the fear of the irrational.So the two interdependent defilements are constantly reinforcing each other.And just as we see the liberty of the power of image that accompanies irrationality, we hear complaints from all sides about the rampant activities of madness.We have long been familiar with the societal anxieties of "nervous disease," that as humans perfect themselves, they become increasingly vulnerable.As the century progressed, the anxieties grew heavier, and the admonitions more serious.Lauran had already noticed: "Since the birth of medicine, ... diseases have multiplied, and have become more critical, more complex, and more difficult to diagnose and treat." And the dogma of medicine: Nervous diseases "were not as common in the past as they are today; this is the case for two reasons. One is that people in the past were on the whole healthier and less diseased than they are today, and There were also fewer diseases. Another reason is that lately the causes of nervous diseases have greatly multiplied in comparison with other common causes, while some of the others even seem to be on the decline.  … I dare say that if Neurological diseases used to be rare, but today they are the most common diseases."And people quickly regained the strong sense of the sixteenth century that reason is unsteady and vulnerable to damage at any time, but especially by madness.Mathey, a Geneva doctor, was deeply influenced by Rousseau.He raised hopes for all reasonable people: "If you are smart and educated, don't use it to show off; a small thing is enough to disturb or even destroy your so-called wisdom that you are proud of; an accident, a sudden and violent A single mood swing can turn the most sane and brightest human being into an incoherent idiot." The threat of madness became a pressing issue of the century. But there is a very unique way to this awareness.The fascination with the irrational was an emotional one that involved the iconographic revival movement.The fear of madness is less bound by this heritage.If the return of irrationality is represented as a large-scale recurrence, which is self-inherited without being restricted by time, then the consciousness of madness is accompanied by a certain analysis of modernity, so this consciousness is placed in the era, from the very beginning. historical and social context.In the separation of the ashrams between the consciousness of irrationality and the consciousness of madness, we see a decisive point of departure at the end of the eighteenth century: on the one hand, irrationality proceeds from here, with the help of Hinderling, Nerval and Nietzsche. Going deeper and deeper into the root of time, irrationality thus becomes an inappropriate "synapse" of the world; on the other hand, the understanding of madness strives to place time more accurately in the development of nature and history.It is after this period that the time of irrationality and the time of madness have two opposite vectors.One is an unconditional return, an absolute sinking; the other is the opposite, developing in accordance with the historical sequence. l.Madness and freedom.For a long time certain forms of melancholia were considered peculiarly British; this was confirmed both in medicine and in literature.Montesquieu once compared the suicides of the Romans with those of the British, arguing that the former was a moral and political act, the result of various educations, while the latter was a pathology, because "the British have no Obvious reasons lead to suicide, they even commit suicide in the arms of happiness".Here, context plays a role.If happiness was part of the order of nature and reason in the eighteenth century, then misfortune, at least that which hinders happiness for no reason, should be a constituent element of another order.At first people sought the latter order in the harsh climate and the imbalance of nature (the suitable climate is caused by nature, and the unsuitable climate is caused by the environment).But this is not enough to explain the "British disease".Cheyne had long ago declared that the source of this insanity was wealth, good food, abundance enjoyed by all the inhabitants, pleasure and leisure of the rich.People gradually began to look for political and economic explanations, and wealth, social development, and various institutions seemed to be the determinants of madness.In the early 19th century, Spurzheim synthesized these analyzes in a work.Madness, he argued, "is more prevalent in England than elsewhere" but as a punishment for the freedom and abundance generally enjoyed there.Indulgence of the mind is more dangerous than power and despotism. "Religious sentiments . . . are unfettered; everyone can preach to whoever will hear him"; by hearing different points of view, "the mind is disturbed in its search for truth."Hesitating, looking left and right, half-hearted is very dangerous!There is also the danger of contention, passion, and opinionatedness: "Everything is opposed, and opposition excites. Everyone can hold his own, whether in religion, politics, science, or everything else." point of view, but he must be prepared to be opposed." So much freedom makes man unable to control time; everyone is at a loss.Everything in the country is also in turmoil: "The English are a commercial people. A man's mind, if it is always thinking of business, is constantly disturbed by fear and hope. The soul of business is selfishness, so it is easy to become jealous others, and use the means to achieve the end." Moreover, this freedom is by no means a truly normal freedom.This liberty is in every respect checked and disturbed by demands opposed to the most legitimate individual desires.This is the freedom to seek profit, to form parties for personal gain, and to organize financial organizations, not the freedom of human control, freedom of thought and heart.Because of the economy, the family in England is more despotic than anywhere else: only rich girls are able to marry; "others can only obtain their feet by other means which are harmful to body and mind." This principle also encourages licentiousness, thus May cause epilepsy." Therefore.Business should make people's thinking never close to the truth, so that people's nature will inevitably fall into contradictions.To separate man's time from the changes of the seasons, and to make man's desires subject to the law of interest.In short, this kind of freedom does not make people own themselves, but keeps people alienated from their own essence and their own world.It makes people obsessed with the sheer appearance of people and money, addicted to inextricable feelings and unsatisfied desires.Freedom in the state of commerce is the "environment" between man and the happiness of the world in which he knows himself, between man and nature in which he discovers truth.Precisely because of this, it is the determining factor of madness.When Spurzheim wrote, it coincided with the peak period of the "Holy Alliance" and the restoration of the absolute monarchy.At this point, it is easy to blame liberalism for the whole world's madness. "To be able to see that man's greatest desire, that is, the freedom of his individuality, has its drawbacks, can be regarded as a discerning eye." But, for us.The value of this analysis lies not in its critique of freedom, but in its use of a notion which, for Spurzheim, signifies an "abnormal environment" - an environment in which the psychological and biological mechanisms of madness are manipulated. Indulging and being strengthened and extended. 2.Madness, Religion, and Times.Religious belief provides an imagery, a illusory realm conducive to hallucinations and delusions of every kind.Physicians have long shrugged off the consequences of excessive piety and too strong a belief.Too stringent moral demands, too strong aspirations for salvation and an afterlife, are often cited as causes of melancholia. The Encyclopedia also cites such examples at the right time; "Some missionaries impress the weak-willed with strong language, and they stimulate the latter's extreme fear of the pain that will be suffered by breaking the canon, so that the latter A startling change has taken place in the minds of men. At the hospital in Mom6limar, some women are said to have suffered from mania and depression as a result of participating in a missionary activity in the city. The minds of these women were caught up in the frivolous preaching of the missionaries. All day they talked about despair, vengeance, punishment, and so on. One of them completely refused treatment, thinking that she was in hell, and nothing could quench the fire she thought was devouring her." Pinel followed these enlightened According to the doctor's thinking, it is forbidden to read books about religious beliefs for "people suffering from depression due to piety", and even advocates the implementation of single-person confinement for "religious believers who think they are called by God and try to change their religious beliefs".But here again it is primarily a critique rather than an empirical analysis, since it is suspected that religious affairs, by their very deliberate and hallucinatory nature, induce delusions and hallucinations.Pinel reported the case of a man who had just been cured of madness.This man "reads a religious book...that says that everyone has their own guardian angel. The next night, he felt surrounded by a group of angels and heard heavenly music, receiving revelation." In Religion is thus fully regarded as a factor in the propagation of falsehoods.Long before Pinel, however, some analyzes had taken on a more strictly historical character, seeing religion as an environment in which feelings were gratified or repressed. In 1781, the German writer Moehson described the distant era when priests enjoyed absolute power as a happy era. At that time, there was no idleness, and there were "religious ceremonies, religious activities, pilgrimage, visiting the poor, and visiting the poor." regular holiday".Their time is occupied by the well-arranged happiness, and they have no time to waste their feelings, get bored with life, and feel restless.If a person feels guilty, he receives actual, often physical, punishment.This punishment occupied his thoughts and convinced him that the fault had been paid to the party president.When the Confessor encounters "hypochondria who come to confess too often," he makes them atone for their sins with austerities to "thin their overly viscous blood," or send them on a pilgrimage to distant lands: "The The reform committee, the long distance, the distance from their former home, the distance from what troubled them, the society of other pilgrims, the slow but lively trek, had more effect on them than the comfortable travel that today replaces the pilgrimage." Finally, the priest's The divine nature gave each of his orders an absolute value, and no one would think of trying to evade it; "generally, the insane patient does not tell the doctor everything."In Merson's view, religion is a kind of intermediary between man and sin and between man and punishment.It appears as an authoritative synthesis that restrains crime by imposing punishment; whereas it leads directly to madness if religion relaxes its grip and maintains only the ideals of conscience and spiritual asceticism.Only a consistent religious environment can protect man from insanity in all its subterranean and delusional forms.By fulfilling religious rites and requirements, people can not only avoid the useless waste of emotion before committing crimes, but also avoid futile repeated remorse after committing crimes.Religion organizes the whole of human life around the fulfillment of this moment.The religion of the happy age always celebrates the "now."But once it has been idealized in the modern age, religion casts a temporal halo, an empty environment, around the "now."It is a milieu of idleness and remorse, in which the human mind is completely agitated, where indulgences allow time to be wasted day after day; and finally, madness can do whatever it wants. Leadership enjoys peace and zero.Generally speaking, civilization constitutes an environment conducive to the development of madness.If the advance of knowledge drives away error, it spreads a taste, even a bibliophilia.Study life, completely trapped in abstract speculation, exhausting mind and effort, these will have extremely disastrous consequences.Tissot explained that in the human body, the part that often works becomes strong and solid first; the arm muscles and fibers of manual laborers become tough first, making them strong, healthy and long-lived. “读书人的脑子首先硬化，使他们常常变得无法连贯地思维。”其结果必然是痴呆症。知识变得越抽象复杂，产生疯癫的危险性就越大。按照普莱萨万（Pressavin）的说法，如果一种知识接近于直觉，只需要大脑器官和内部感官的轻微活动，那么这种知识只能刺激起一种生理快感："如果科学的对象是我们的感官能够很容易感受的，那么这种和谐的共鸣便便灵魂处于和谐一致。......这种科学在整个身体机器中进行着一种有益于各部分功能的轻微活动。"反之，如果一种知识与感官的联系过于薄弱，过于脱离直觉，那么就会引起大脑的紧张，进而使整个身体失调；"有些事物的联系人们很难把握，因为我们的感官不容易接近它们，或者因为它们的关系过于复杂，需要我们费力去研究它们。（有关的科学）使灵魂陷于这样一种活动，即不断地使内部感官处于极度紧张状态，从而产生极大的疲劳感。"这样，知识就在感觉周围组成了一种抽象关系的环境。在这种环境中，人有可能失去生理快感，而这种生理快感通常是人与世界关系的媒介。毫无疑问，知识在激增，但是，它的代价也随之增大。谁能断定今天聪明人比以前更多了呢？但是有一点是可以断定的："当今有更多的人患有智力病症。"这种知识环境的发展比知识本身更迅速。 然而，不仅知识在使人脱离感官，而且感受力本身也在使人脱离感官。感受力不再受大自然运动的控制，而是受各种习惯、各种社会生活的要求的控制。现代人，尤其是女人，夜行昼伏，阴阳颠倒：“巴黎妇女起床的时间比大自然规定的时间迟得多。一天中最好的时光已偷偷溜走，最新鲜的空气已经消失。人们无福享受它。日晒蒸腾起的有害烟气已经在大气中扩散。在这个时候，美人们才决定起床。”这种感觉紊乱在剧院中继续发展。那是一个滋生幻觉、挑逗感情、蛊惑心灵的地方。女人们特别欣赏那些“煽情”场面。她们的心灵“受到强烈震撼，引起神经的骚动，虽然转瞬即逝，但后果往往很严重；一时的心乱神迷，为现代悲剧的表演而潜焉出涕，是由此产生的最轻的后果了。”'他叫、说则构成一种更造作的环境，对于已经紊乱的感受力更加危险。现代作家极力以假乱真，为此而调动一切艺术手段。结果，使他们力图在女读者中唤起强烈而危险的情感的目的更容易实现：“在法国早期推崇骑士风度的时代，头脑简单的妇女满足于知道令人难以置信的惊人事件；而现在，她们则要求事实必须令人可信，而情感则应超凡绝伦，足以使她们神魂颠倒，心乱意迷。于是她们极力在自己周围的一切事物中寻求能够迷惑她们的新奇东西。然而，在她们看来，周围的一切都索然无味，因为她们要寻求的东西在大自然中是没有的。”小说则构成了一个可以滥用全部感受力的环境。它使灵魂出壳而进入一个虚幻的情感世界，情感越不真实就越强烈，也越不受温和的自然法则的控制。“如此之多的作家当然会造就出大批的读者。而连续不断地阅读就会导致各种神经病痛。在各种损害妇女健康的原因中，最近一百年来小说的无限倍增也许是最主要的。……一个女孩在10岁时就用读小说取代跑步，到了20岁就会成为一个忧郁的妇人，而不会成为一个贤妻良母。" 在18世纪，人们围绕着对疯癫及其传播的危险的意识，通过缓慢而零碎的方式，逐渐形成一套新的概念体系。在16世纪，疯癫被安置在非理性的画面上。在这种画面上，疯癫掩盖着某种模糊的道德意义和根源。它的神秘性使它与原罪发生了联系。奇怪的是，虽然人们从中感受到咄咄逼人的兽性，但并没有因此使疯癫变得无辜。在18世纪下半叶，疯癫不再被视为使人更接近于某种原始的堕落或某种模糊存在的兽性的东西。相反，它被置于人在考虑自身、考虑他的世界以及考虑大自然所直接提供的一切东西时所划定的距离。在人与自己的情感、与时间。与他者的关系都发生了变化的环境里，疯癫有可能发生了，因为在人的生活及发展中一切都是与自然本性的一种决裂。疯癫不再属于自然秩序，也不属于原始堕落，而是属于一件新秩序。在这种新秩序中，人们开始有一种对历史的预感。而且在这种新秩序中，通过一种模糊的生成关系，形成了医生所说的精神错乱和哲学家所说的异化。不论人处于二者中任何一种状态，都会败坏自己的真正本性。但是，自19世纪黑格尔之后，这二者之间很快就毫无相似之处了。