In his Pathology of Mind (1879) Henry Maudsley pondered (not triffically scientifically, it has to be said) why the “savage” nations of the earth appeared to suffer less insanity than the populations in the developed world. It’s a classic of Victorian racist discourse. And it seems to me that what this passage actually gives away, as it reaches its crescendo, is how awful it was to be one of the “civilised”.

“A question has been much discussed, and is not yet settled satisfactorily, whether insanity has increased with the progress of civilisation and is still increasing in the community out of proportion to the increase of the population. Travellers are agreed that it is a disease which they seldom meet with amongst barbarous peoples. But that is no proof that it does not occur. Among savages, those who are weak in body or in mind…are often eliminated… Certainly the weak units are not carefully tended as they are among civilised nations…

“Admitting the comparative immunity of uncivilised peoples from insanity, it is not difficult to conceive reasons for it. On looking at any table which sets forth the usual causes of the disease, we find that hereditary disposition, intemperance and mental anxieties of some kind or other cover nearly the whole field of causation. From these three great classes of causes savages are nearly exempt…

“On the other hand, it may be thought that the savage must suffer ill consequences from the unrestrained indulgence of his fierce sensual passions. But it might not be amiss to consider curiously whether savage nudity provokes sensuality so much as civilised dress, especially dress that is artfully designed to suggest what it conceals…

“[And] the savage is not disquieted by fretting social passions: with him there is no eager straining beyond his strength after aims that are not intrisically worth the labour and vexations which they cost — no disappointed ambition from failure to compass such aims, no gloomy dejection from the reaction which follows the successful attainment of an overrated ambition, no pining regrets, no feverish envy of competition, no anxious sense of responsibility, no heaven of aspiration, nor hell of fulfilled desire; he has no life-long hypocrisies to keep up, no gnawing remorse of consience to endure, no tormenting reflections of an exaggerated self-consciousness: he has none, in fact, of the complex passions which make the chief wear and tear of civilised life.”