"The lack of self-restraint is plainly an inborn character, for it may show itself in but one member of the family brought up in exactly the same circumstances as other members who do not show any such peculiarity. The victim is born with one important mental faculty defective, precisely as another may be born with hare-lip."
In neuropaths the mental mechanism of projection, which we all show, is often marked.
Any personal shortcoming, being repugnant to us causes self-reproach, which we avoid by "projecting" the fault (unconsciously) on some one else.
Readers should get "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoieffsky, an epileptic genius who saw that for those like him, happiness could be got through peace of mind alone, and not in the cut-throat struggle for worldly success. He projected his stabler self into Prince Muishkin, the idiot, and every one of the six hundred odd pages of this amazing description of a neuropathic nation is stamped with the hall-mark of genius.
CHAPTER XXVI
MARRIAGE
"Between two beings so complex and so diverse as man and woman, the whole of life is not too long for them to know one another well, and to learn to love one another worthily."—Comte.
No neuropath should have children, but marriage is good in mild cases, for neuropaths are benefited by sympathetic companionship, and their sexual passions are so strong that they must be gratified, by marriage, prostitution, or unnaturally.