THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
and also co-ordination, and a subsequent superior equilibrium In reality, the development of insanity is peculiar to a crisis of development and differentiation destined to be extenuated more and more in the measure that the new equilibrium tends to con- stitute itself and to limit the pathological phenomena to the nar- rowest boundaries. From this point of view, for example, it is certain that economic crises exercise a considerable influence in causing insanity, and, unfortunately, in our most advanced socie- ties the crises have become the rule ; hence the continued growth of mental derangements, especially in countries possessing a high civilization, but a civilization not yet coherent. However, crises, although indicating generally a tendency to progress, can, in cer- tain cases, correspond to a social retrogression. The development of mental derangement, then, is not necessarily in relation to the progress of civilization, but rather to a possible state either of dis- solution or superior integration. The crisis is not, in the main, an essential element and characteristic of progress ; neither is mental disease. It is not progress, then, which increases insanity, but the crisis which precedes either the progress or the regress. This is the case in Belgium, whose economic development, let us hope, will tend toward a superior social co-ordination where the perturbations, economic as well as mental, moral, and polit- ical, will necesarily be reduced. The following is a table of the insane of Belgium in institutions, not comprising, therefore, the insane living in their own families :
Male
Female
Total
i83<5..
2.744
2 361
e 105
1842
2.426
2 088
4 514
iS$i.
3.630
2.277
4 Q07
i8<;8..
2,10";
2.22$
4.420
1881..
4.4(4
4.030
8,763
i88<;..
4.7l6
4,6 1 2
0.328
l800 . .
c 4C-2
<;.324
10 777
l8Q3. .
6.275
e 7iQ
1 1 OQd
l804. .
6,372
<i,008
12,300
i8gc
6 624
6 178
12 802
1806. .
7.037
6 278
11.11 C
1807. .
7.167
6 401
ii 568
1808...
7.477
6.740
14 222
l8qq. .
7.C20
6.0 c?
14 $8$
