Story, first published: Astounding Science Fiction, July 1943
The Solar System is faced with a terrible brain drain, a disastrous trend projected back in the twentieth century: its best minds are losing their sanity, communications are breaking down, and industrial and economic progress is grinding to a halt. The only hope is Sanctuary, an asteroid sanitarium where everyone now goes to be cured. However, returning patients are no longer interested in their former pursuits and have forgotten their skills and knowledge. An agent sent to Sanctuary to investigate discovers that the Asterites, the race of the fifth planet (now the Asteroid Belt), possess the minds of the Sanctuary patients and grant a mental peace, wiping out "those harsher emotions that have taken man up the ladder." The only solution to combat the creeping contagion of madnes is for humans to learn to play their hunches, a new instinct to see into the future, and put those with this psi ability in key position.
The story presents a moral dilemma: humanity must either continue in competition, violence, and adversity risking madness for progress or accept the Sanctuary credo of a "better" life.
Ewald, Robert J.: When the Fires Burn High and the Wind is from the North, p.32