illness, but only of an increasing care. Some other figures, how-
ever, are more indicative of the occurrence of the more severe
mental disturbances. If 17.7 per cent of all rejections of draftees
in the last war were for reasons of mental illness, this fact cer-
tainly bespeaks a high degree of mental disturbance, even if we
have no comparative figures referring to the past, or to other
countries.
The only comparative data which can give us a rough indica-
tion of mental health, are those for suicide, homicide and alco-
holism. No doubt the problem of suicide is a most complex one,
and no single factor can be assumed to be the cause. But even
without entering at this point into a discussion of suicide, I
consider it a safe assumption that a high suicide rate in a given
population is expressive of a lack of mental stability and mental
health. That it is not a consequence of material poverty is clearly
evidenced by all figures. The poorest countries have the lowest
incidence of suicide, and the increasing material prosperity in
Europe was accompanied by an increasing number of suicides.'
As to alcoholism, there is no doubt that it, too, is a symptom of
mental and emotional instability.
The motives for homicide are probably less indicative of path-
ology than those for suicide. However, though countries with a
high homicide rate show a low suicide rate, their combined rates
bring us to an interesting conclusion. If we classify both homi-
cide and suicide as "destructive acts," our tables demonstrate
that their combined rate is not constant, but fluctuating between
the extremes of 35.76 and 4.24. This contradicts Freud's
assumption of the comparative constancy of destructiveness
which underlies his theory of the death instinct. It disproves the
implication that destructiveness maintains an invariable rate, dif-
fering only in directions toward the self or the outside world.