spectacle of them, their impostures, their defamations; I have braved their resentment, their fury. Exposed to their wrath, I have been pursued again and again by the ministers and the municipal administrators. Twenty military expeditions directed against me, and a whole army mobilized to tear me away from the people, have only increased my audacity. A price has been put on my head; five cruel spies put on my tracks, and two thousand assassins, paid to slay

"This kind of life, the mere recital of which freezes the most callous heart, I have led for eighteen long months without one moment complaining, without once asking for rest or recreation, without heeding the loss of my health, of my estate, and without blanching at the sight of the sword always pointed at my heart. What do I say? I might have been advanced, caressed, fêted, if I had been willing merely to keep silent, and how much gold would have been lavished upon

me, have not for an instant succeeded in making me betray my duty.

"To escape the steel of the assassins, I have been obliged to betake myself to a subterranean life; hunted out from time to time by batallions of alguazils, compelled to flee, wandering through the streets in the dead of night, and often not knowing where to find refuge, in the midst of weapons pleading the cause of liberty, defending the oppressed with my head on the block, and thus growing ever more redoubtable to our oppressors and the public rascals.

me if I had been willing to dishonor my pen. I have repulsed the corrupting metal, I have lived in poverty, I have preserved my heart pure. I might have been a millionaire today if I had been less scrupulous and if I had not always forgotten myself.

"But I am going to abandon to my creditors the remains of the little which I have left, and without money, without assistance, without resources, I shall betake myself to vegetate in the only corner of the earth where I may still breathe in peace. Preceded by the clamors of cal

umny, defamed by the public rascals whom I have unmasked, loaded with the curses of all enemies of our country, abhorred by the great and by men and by men in power, and set down by all ministerial cabinets as a monster to be stifled, perhaps I shall be forgotten by the people to whose advantages I have immolated myself; happy if the regrets of patriots accompany me; but I take with me the honorable testimony of my conscience and I shall be followed by the esteem of mighty spirits.

"However frightful may have been my fate during my long captivity, and however sad the prospect that opens before me, I shall never regret the sacrifices that I have made for my country or the good that I have wished to accomplish for humanity. I have fought without ceasing till this day, and I have not deserted the post of danger till it was taken by storm. If there is in France a single man of insight and determination who dares to reproach me with having too soon despaired of the public safety and with a lack of constancy, let him take my place and retain it for only a week.

"Citizens, I ask of you neither regrets nor gratitude-do not even preserve the memory of my name; but if ever some unexpected turn of destiny brings you victory, remember to make it assured by taking advantage of your success, and never forget, to assure your triumph, the advice of a man whose life was devoted to establishing among you the reign of justice and liberty."

I have quoted so largely from Marat because the man is revealed in his writings. In all the quotations, though there is in every statement an element of truth (he was an important revolutionist, he did break many men in political life), there is shown pathological suspicion, a tendency to find evil in all men who would not follow his

leadership, a total inability to measure himself correctly, intense egoism and megaIomania. Political biography does not reveal any man who more strongly believed in government by murder than Marat. He was not a hypocrite, but firmly believed that the whole art, craft and mystery of statesmanship consisted in enraging the populace so that they would destroy.

Though "The Chains of Slavery" was written in 1774 and the first edition of "A Plan of Criminal Legislation" in 1780, it was about 1788 or 1789, the year of the fall of the Bastille, that he became a politician pure and simple and proceeded to attempt the task of saving humanity by preaching killing. He was a product of RousseauismRousseauism filtered through a paranoiac brain.

I have not time to recite the political doctrines of Marat. Everyone knows them. He spread them by orations and by his paper, The Friend of the People. The people, according to him, meant only the propertyless and those without any occupation. They alone had the right to govern and to own, because, according to his philosophy, they alone produced and originated all wealth. He made each difference of political opinion the occasion of a personal quarrel. If anyone disagreed with him that person was a scoundrel, a criminal, a murderer; he could not conceive that any man might hold views unlike his own and yet be honest. He had almost no friends, though many followers, and his judgment of men was almost always wrong. For example, on Mirabeau's death he wrote: "People, give thanks to God. Your most redoubtable enemy has fallen beneath the scythe of fate. Riquetti is no more; he dies a victim of his numerous treasons, victim of his atrocious accomplices. Adroit rogues, to be found in all circles, have sought to play upon your pity, and already duped with their false discourse you regret this traitor as the most zealous of your defen

ders." This is his sincere opinion of a statesman whom sane Frenchmen had hoped would live, knowing that he alone could chain the wild men and thieves who were ruining the country. Marat had no conception of constructive statemanship; all his opinions were destructive and hence he could not in any degree comprehend a man of Mirabeau's type. Mirabeau knew that there are natural political laws, just as there are natural physical laws. Marat could not conceive this. Though he had been trained a little in natural science, his intellect was not of the kind that could really form a conception of the meaning of a natural law. He could not conceive inevitability. Mentally, in his earlier life in many ways he resembled the sentimental sympathizers with Bolshevism who are to-day making so much noise in America. It is noteworthy that almost all the American born among them have led shielded lives, have never been in contact with the realities of life, have never had to work (their fathers did that for them); the women advocates have failed in woman's first and natural function. Among the foreign born are internationalists, parasites, and those who left the countries of their birth for their countries' good.

It is not easy to discover much about his physical appearance. No one has given an unbiased, unemotional description. Carlyle, who was not a historian, but a master of a certain dramatic style, an artist, and who thought, probably correctly, that truth is greater than fact, describes him as a “largeheaded, smoke-bleared, dwarfish individual with blue lips." A contemporary says he was five feet high, with bow legs, a very large head, and aquiline nose. Fleischmann, a recent writer, says he had brilliant eyes, full of fire, and as one cheek was higher than the other the two eyes were not in the same horizontal line. Madame Roland, an unfriendly and contemporary witness, relates in her memoirs that his open shirt

showed a yellowish chest and that his long finger nails were filthy and his face hideous. Dr. John Moore, a sane observer, who traveled in France during the Revolution and saw him many times, says, "Marat is a little man of a cadaverous complexion, and a countenance exceedingly expressive of his despotism: to a painter of massacres, Marat's head would be inestimable. Such heads are rare in this country [England], yet they are sometimes to be met with at the Old Bailey." With one quality which under most circumstances all men praise, Moore credits Marat, but damns him for it. He writes: "This man certainly possesses a great deal of courage both personal and political. No danger can terrify him, nothing can disconcert him: his heart, as well as his forehead, seems to be made of brass."

From about 1789, he suffered continually from a skin disease which caused an agonizing pruritus. The only relief he got was from a continuous bath, and much of his writing was done while bathing. Cabanès, who made a very careful study of him, concludes his skin disease was eczema, that he was hypochondriacal, had insomnia and constant headaches and that all his mental peculiarities were largely bound up with his bodily suffering. Dr. C. E. Wallis quotes Dr. Graham Little as being of the opinion. that the skin affection was probably a dermatitis herpetiformis, on the ground that the irritation and pain from which he suffered were alleviated by sitting in a bath of water, whereas eczema itself would have been aggravated by contact with water. Whatever his skin disease may have been, the agony of the pruritus was intense, and for years he had no relief save when in his tub. He stayed in it for hours, worked in it and was killed in it.

A word about his murder. Charlotte Corday, a woman lacking three months of twenty-five years of age, murdered Marat on July 4, 1793. Her life contains nothing of interest save her one act of crime, which

she believed to be an act of heroism. She was the daughter of a rather decayed gentleman, and at the time of the Revolution was living in Caen. She read with all the fervor of the time Plutarch, Rousseau, and Voltaire, and conjured up in her mind a picture of the Roman Republic such as never existed. She hoped that France would soon be a modern antique Rome. She was in sympathy with the Girondists whom Marat hated. She went to Paris, bought a knife, visited Marat while in his bath, spoke a few words and stabbed him, making a wound "between the first and second rib, traversing the upper part of the right lung as well as the aorta, and going into the left clavicle." He died. She tried to escape, or did not, according to whether you believe anarchists or sane men. She was made to confront the corpse at midnight. She bore the ordeal well, indeed was quite heroic, and said: "Yes, it was I who killed him." She was guillotined. Meanwhile the mob made a God of Marat, and then, after the fashion of the mob, very soon ceased to worship, in order to curse and destroy all memorials in his honor.

Where should Marat be placed in a psychological classification of men? Paul Lacroix, some fifty years ago, wrote: "There were two Marats-the Marat who is known to everyone, and the other Marat whose existence no one at the present day suspects: the one was the pupil and admirer of Rousseau, the lover of nature, the learned author of many discoveries worthy of mention in chemistry and physics, the energetic and brilliant writer who produced a book of philosophy worthy of the philosopher of Geneva-the one who wrote only scientific, philosophical, and literary works; he was a doctor in the Comte d'Artois' bodyguard; he died, or rather he disappeared, at the end of the year 1789, to give place to his namesake." G. Edward Wallis, in his interesting little pamphlet, explains him by the same assumption of two personali

ties: (1) the one, that of a scientist and philosopher, who died in 1789: (2) the other that of a fanatical journalist, pamphleteer and demagogue.

Dr. Cabanès seems to believe that his mental peculiarities were very largely the result of his physical ill health. Many of his contemporaries, not only physicians but also men of business and of affairs, solved the problem by the diagnosis of simple lunacy. A few writers of recent date, men in sympathy with his ideas, claim that far from being an insane man, he was a political genius; but one must not take them too seriously, because they are living in a mental world so topsy-turvy and in a moral world so vacuous that they regard crime as being proof of moral independence, and clear thinking as evidence of lack of mind.

Lacroix and Wallis's theory of two personalities is figurative rather than a statement of scientific fact. His case was not one of double personality. There was no break in his personality, no sudden change in his character. His behavior changed, not because he changed, but because the stimuli acting on him changed. He began to be political while still practicing medicine and many of his peculiarities, especially his megalomania, are shown even in his medical writings. As always happens in true paranoia, there was a long prodromal period, and it took years for his insanity to come to its fruition.

I cannot altogether agree with Cabanès. Pruritus, no matter how severe or how continuous, cannot cause the clinical picture that Marat presents. It is possible, however, that the pruritus was only an external manifestation of some disorder of metabolism, which acted not only on the nerve endings in the skin, but also on the cerebral cortical cells. This, of course, is purely hypothetical; but the mystery of mental abnormality surely will be explained on physical grounds. Many writers speak of his head as being monstrous in comparison

with his height, which was less than five feet. He may have been hydrocephalic, or may have had some disorder of his pituitary gland leading to abnormal bony development, though his facial bones and hands do not indicate this (he was not acromegalic), and associated with it there may have been a congenital tendency to mental abnormality. He did not have the goodnatured temperament usually found accompanying disease of the pituitary body. The whole matter of the relation of the ductless glands to mental function is in a nebulous state; but the twentieth century may see proven that what one's attitude toward life is, how one explains the riddle of the universe, how one behaves, may depend in some degree on little glands that not so long ago were regarded as vestigial.

I have said there is not time to describe his political life and opinions. We must, however, pay some attention to them. He started his paper, The Friend of the People, at the beginning of the Revolution. He used it solely to abuse pretty nearly everyone, not only the king, the ministers and the nobles. He preached not revolution alone, which would have been entirely sane, but murder and general theft. He took a large part in arranging the proceedings of the mob of women who went to Versailles and brought the king to Paris. He urged the soldiers to murder the officers. Several times he was denounced, but always escaped by flight or hiding. In 1790 he was denounced, but the Cordeliers rescued him. Lafayette laid siege to his home, but he found asylum with an actress friend. In the same year, he proposed a law to the Assembly, that "eight hundred gibbets ought to be erected in the Tuileries to hang all traitors, beginning with the elder Mirabeau." It failed to pass. He hated the Gironde party. He was one of the organizers of the massacres in the prisons—a butchery which Robespierre continued under shadow of law. He boasted that a dictator was

needed and that Robespierre was the one fit man. He declared that it was necessary to guillotine 270,000 people in order to free France.

The gentlemen who regard him as a political genius, e.g., the sincere members of the Bolshevik party of to-day, not only in Russia but also in this country, are themselves mentally abnormal. He is not the only lunatic in history who has had a following during life and after death.

Let us sum up his life and see whether we have data enough to classify him. The test of a man's sanity is his behavior; behavior being the visible signs of mental reaction to stimuli. When it is in consonance with the time in which and the place where a man lives, his local environment, his racial and his family inheritance, and his formal education, he is sane. Of Marat's ancestral history we know nothing. We know, too, little of his parents to form a judgment as to whether they were wholly normal or not. They surely were not noticeably abnormal and his young life was passed happily. It is true that his father worked at many different things in at least three countries, and though this makes us think of the possibility of his lacking fixity of purpose, it does not prove it.

The time in which Marat lived determined the twist his mind was to take. Had he been living in America a generation ago he would have been an ardent, I will not say disciple, but rival of the leader of the Populists; to-day he would, if living in America, be a chief among the anarchists of the east side of New York, and probably would be making speeches before admiring audiences of gentle male and female feminists, with soft hands and softer heads, who think they are broadening their minds by listening to arguments in proof of the righteousness of murder, he meanwhile wondering how soon his real associates would get a chance to string his audience and all their relatives to nearby lampposts.