22108	----	THE UNTROUBLED MIND BY HERBERT J. HALL, M.D. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HERBERT J. HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published May 1915_ PREFACE A very wise physician has said that "every illness has two parts--what it is, and what the patient thinks about it." What the patient thinks about it is often more important and more troublesome than the real disease. What the patient thinks of life, what life means to him is also of great importance and may be the bar that shuts out all real health and happiness. The following pages are devoted to certain ideals of life which I would like to give to my patients, the long-time patients who have especially fallen to my lot. They are not all here, the steps to health and happiness. The reader may even be annoyed and baffled by my indirectness and unwillingness to be specific. That I cannot help--it is a personal peculiarity; I cannot ask any one to live by rule, because I do not believe that rules are binding and final. There must be character behind the rule and then the rule is unnecessary. All that I have written has doubtless been presented before, in better ways, by wiser men, but I believe that each writer may expect to find his small public, his own particular public who can understand and profit by his teachings, having partly or wholly failed with the others. For that reason I am encouraged to write upon a subject usually shunned by medical men, being assured of at least a small company of friendly readers. I am grateful to a number of friends and patients who have read the manuscript of the following chapters. These reviewers have been frank and kind and very helpful. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Richard C. Cabot, who has given me much valuable assistance. CONTENTS I. THE UNTROUBLED MIND 1 II. RELIGIO MEDICI 10 III. THOUGHT AND WORK 20 IV. IDLENESS 30 V. RULES OF THE GAME 38 VI. THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT 50 VII. SELF-CONTROL 59 VIII. THE LIGHTER TOUCH 65 IX. REGRETS AND FOREBODINGS 73 X. THE VIRTUES 81 XI. THE CURE BY FAITH 88 I THE UNTROUBLED MIND Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart? MACBETH. When a man tells me he never worries, I am inclined to think that he is either deceiving himself or trying to deceive me. The great roots of worry are conscience, fear, and regret. Undoubtedly we ought to be conscientious and we ought to fear and regret evil. But if it is to be better than an impediment and a harm, our worry must be largely unconscious, and intuitive. The moment we become conscious of worry we are undone. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we cannot leave conscience to its own devices unless our lives are big enough and fine enough to warrant such a course. The remedy for the mental unrest, which is in itself an illness, lies not in an enlightened knowledge of the harmfulness and ineffectiveness of worry, not even in the acquirement of an unconscious conscience, but in the living of a life so full and good that worry cannot find place in it. That idea of worry and conscience, that definition of serenity, simplifies life immensely. To overcome worry by substituting development and growth need never be dull work. To know life in its farther reaches, life in its better applications, is the final remedy--the great undertaking--_it is life_. We must warn ourselves, not infrequently, that the larger life is to be pursued for its own glorious self and not for the sake of peace. Peace may come, a peace so sure that death itself cannot shake it, but we must not expect all our affairs to run smoothly. As a matter of fact they may run badly enough; we shall have our ups and downs, we shall sin and repent, and sin again, but if in the end we live according to our best intuitions, we shall be justified, and we need not worry about the outcome. To put it another way, if we would have the untroubled mind, we must transfer our conscientious efforts from the small details of life--from the worry and fret of common things--into another and a higher atmosphere. We must transfigure common life, dignify it and ennoble it; then, although the old causes of worry may continue, we shall have gained a stature that will make us unconscious masters of the little troubles and in a great degree equal to the larger requirements. Life will be easier, not because we make less effort, but because we are working from another and a better level. If such a change, and it would be a change for most of us, could come about instantly, in a flash of revelation, that would be ideal, but it would not be life. We must return again and again to the old uninspired state wherein we struggle conscientiously with perverse details. I would not minimize the importance and value of this struggle; only the sooner it changes its level the better for every one concerned. Large serenity must, finally, be earned through the toughening of moral fibre that comes in dealing squarely with perplexing details. Some of this struggle must always be going on, but serener life will come when we begin to concern ourselves with larger factors. How are we to live the larger life? Partly through uninspired struggle and through the brave meeting of adversity, but partly, also, in a way that may be described as "out of hand," by intuition, by exercise of the quality of mind that sees visions and grasps truths beyond the realms of common thought. I am more and more impressed with the necessity of inspiration in life if we are to be strong and serene, and so finally escape the pitfalls of worry and conscience. By inspirations I do not mean belief in any system or creed. It is not a stated belief that we need to begin with; that may come in time. We need first to find in life, or at least in nature, an essential beauty that makes its own true, inevitable response within us. We must learn to love life so deeply that we feel its tremendous significance, until we find in the sea and the sky the evidence of an overbrooding spirit too great to be understood, but not too great to satisfy the soul. This is a sort of mother religion--the matrix from which all sects and creeds are born. Its existence in us dignifies us and makes simple, purposeful, and receptive living almost inevitable. We may not know why we are living according to the dictates of our inspiration, but we shall live so and that is the important consideration. If I urge the acquirement of a religious conception that we may cure the intolerable distress of worry, I do what I have already warned against. It is so easy to make this mistake that I have virtually made it on the same page with my warning. We have no right to seek so great a thing as religious experience that we may be relieved of suffering. Better go on with pain and distress than cheapen religion by making it a remedy. We must seek it for its own sake, or rather, we must not seek it at all, lest, like a dream, it elude us, or change into something else, less holy. Nevertheless, it is true that if we will but look with open, unprejudiced eyes, again and again, upon the sunrise or the stars above us, we shall become conscious of a presence greater and more beautiful than our minds can think. In the experience of that vision strength and peace will come to us unbidden. We shall find our lives raised, as by an unseen force, above the warfare of conscience and worry. We shall begin to know the meaning of serenity and of that priceless, if not wholly to be acquired, possession, the untroubled mind. I am aware that I shall be misunderstood and perhaps ridiculed by my colleagues when I attempt to discuss religion in any way. Theology is a field in which I have had no training, but that is the very reason why I dare write of it. I do not even assume that there is a God in the traditional sense. The idea is too great to be made concrete and literal. No single fact of nature can be fully understood by our finite minds. But I do feel vaguely that the laws that compass us, and make our lives possible, point always on--"beyond the realms of time and space"--toward the existence of a mighty overruling spirit. If this is a cold and inadequate conception of God, it is at least one that can be held by any man without compromise. The modern mind is apt to fail of religious understanding and support, because of the arbitrary interpretations of religion which are presented for our acceptance. It is what men say about religion, rather than religion itself, that repels us. Let us think it out for ourselves. If we are open to a simple, even primitive, conception of God, we may still repudiate the creeds and doctrines, but we are likely to become more tolerant of those who find them true and good. We shall be likely in time to find the religion of Christ understandable and acceptable--warm and quick with life. The man who ungrudgingly opens his heart to the God of nature will be religious in the simplest possible sense. He may worry because of the things he cannot altogether understand, and because he falls so far short of the implied ideal. But he will have enlarged his life so much that the common worries will find little room--he will be too full of the joy of living to spend much conscious thought in worry. Such a man will realize that he cannot afford to spend his time and strength in regretting his past mistakes. There is too much in the future. What he does in the future, not what he has failed to do in the past, will determine the quality of his life. He knows this, and the knowledge sends him into that future with courage and with strength. Finally, in some indefinable way, character will become more important to him than physical health even. Illness is half compensated when a man realizes that it is not what he accomplishes in the world, but what he _is_ that really counts, which puts him in touch with the creative forces of God and raises him out of the aimless and ordinary into a life of inspiration and joy. II RELIGIO MEDICI At all events, it is certain that if any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having definite religious views, of being given to prayer and of otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general presumption against his medical skill. GEORGE ELIOT. When a medically educated man talks and writes of religion and of God, he is rightly enough questioned by his brothers--who are too busy with the hard work of practice to be concerned with anything but material problems. To me the word "God" is symbolic of the power which created and which maintains the universe. The sunrise and the stars of heaven give me some idea of his majesty, the warmth and tenderness of human love give me some idea of his divine love. That is all I know, but it is enough to make life glow; it is enough to inspire the most intense devotion to any good cause; it is enough to make me bear suffering with some degree of patience; and it is enough, finally, to give me some confidence and courage even in the face of the great mystery of death. Why this or another conception of God should produce such a profound result upon any one, I do not know, except that in some obscure way it connects the individual with the divine plan, and does not leave him outside in despair and loneliness. However that may be, it will be conceded that a religious conception of some kind does much toward justifying life, toward making it strong and livable, and so has directly to do with certain important problems of illness and health. The most practical medical man will admit that any illness is made lighter and more likely to recover in the presence of hope and serenity in the mind of the patient. Naturally the great bulk of medical practice calls for no handling other than that of the straight medical sort. A man comes in with a crushed finger, a girl with anæmia--the way is clear. It is only in deeper, more intricate departments of medicine that we altogether fail. The bacteriologist and the pathologist have no use for mental treatment, in their departments. But when we come to the case of the nervously broken-down school teacher, or the worn-out telegrapher, that is another matter. Years may elapse before work can be resumed--years of dependence and anxiety. Here, a new view of life is often more useful than drugs, a view that accepts the situation reasonably after a while, that does not grope blindly and impatiently for a cure, but finds in life an inspiration that makes it good in spite of necessary suffering and limitations. Often enough we cannot promise a cure, but we must be prepared to give something better. A great deal of the fatigue and unhappiness of the world is due to the fact that we do not go deep enough in our justification for work or play, or for any experience, happy or sad. There is a good deal of a void after we have said, "Art for art's sake," or "Play for the joy of playing," or even after we have said, "I am working for the sake of my family, or for some one who needs my help." That is not enough; and whether we realize it or not, the lack of deeper justification is at the bottom of a restlessness and uncertainty which we might not be willing to acknowledge, but which nevertheless is very real. I am not satisfied when some moralist says, "Be good and you will be happy." The kind of happiness that comes from a perfunctory goodness is a thing which I cannot understand, and which I certainly do not want. If I work and play and serve and employ, making up the fabric of a busy life, if I attain a very real happiness, I am tormented by the desire to know why I am doing it, and I am not satisfied with the answer I usually get. The patient may not be cured when he is relieved of his anæmia, or when his emaciation has given place to the plumpness and suppleness and physical strength that we call health. The man whom we look upon as well, and who has never known physical illness, is not well in the larger sense until he knows why he is working, why he is living, why he is filling his life with activity. In spite of the elasticity and spring of the world's interests, there must come often, and with a kind of fatal insistence, the deep demand for a cause, for a justification. If there is not an adequate significance behind it, life, with all its courage and accomplishment, seems but a sorry thing, so full of pathos, even in its brightest moments, so shadowed with a sense of loss and of finality that the bravest heart may well fail and the truest courage relax, supported only by the assurance that this way lies happiness or that right is right. What is this knowledge that the world is seeking, but can never find? What is this final justification? If we seek it in its completeness, we are doomed always to be ill and unsatisfied. If we are willing to look only a little way into the great question, if we are willing to accept a little for the whole, content because it is manifestly part of the final knowledge, and because we know that final knowledge rests with God alone, we shall understand enough to save us from much sorrow and painful incompleteness. There is, in the infinitely varied and beautiful world of nature, and in the hearts of men, so much of beauty and truth that it is a wonder we do not all realize that these things of common life may be in us and for us the daily and hourly expression of the infinite being we call God. We do not see God, but we do feel and know so much that we may fairly believe to be of God that we do not need to see Him face to face. It is something more than imagination to feel that it is the life of God in our lives, so often unrecognized or ignored, that prompts us to all the greatness and the inspiration and the accomplishment of the world. If we could know more clearly the joy of such a conception, we should dry up at its source much of the unhappiness which is, in a deep and subtle way, at the bottom of many a nervous illness and many a wretched existence. The happiness which is found in the recognition of kinship with God, through the common things of life, in the experiences which are so significant that they could not spring from a lesser source, the happiness which is not sought, but which is the inevitable result of such recognition--this experience goes a long way toward making life worth living. If we do have this conception of life, then some of the old, old questions that have vexed so many dwellers upon the earth will no longer be a source of unhappiness or of illness of mind or body. The question of immortality, for instance, which has made us afraid to die, will no longer be a question--we shall not need to answer it, in the presence of God, in our lives and in the world about us. We shall be content finally to accept whatever is in store for us--so it be the will of God. We may even look for something better than mere immortality, something more divine than our gross conception of eternal life. This is a religion that I believe medical men may teach without hesitation whenever the need shall arise. I know well enough that many a blunt if kindly man cannot bring himself to say these words, even if he believes them, but I do think that in some measure they point the way to what may wisely be taught. There is a practice of medicine--the common practice--that is concerned with the body only, and with its chemical and mechanical reactions. We can have nothing but respect and admiration for the men who go on year after year in the eager pursuit of this calling. We know that such a work is necessary, that it is just as important as the educational practice of which I write. We know that without the physical side medicine would fail of its usefulness and that disease and death would reap far richer harvests: I only wish the two naturally related aspects of our dealing with patients might not be so completely separated that they lose sight of each other. As a matter of fact, both elements are necessary to our human welfare. If medicine devotes itself altogether to the cure and prevention of physical disease, it will miss half of its possibilities. It is equally true that if we forget the physical necessities in our zeal for spiritual hygiene, we shall get and deserve complete and humiliating failure. Many men will say, "Why mix the two? Why not let the preachers and the philosophers preach and the doctors follow their own ways?" For the most part this may have to be the arrangement, but the doctor who can see and treat the spiritual needs of his patient will always be more likely to cure in the best sense than the doctor who sees only half of the picture. On the other hand, the philosopher is likely to be a comparatively poor doctor, because he knows nothing of medicine, and so can see only the other half of the picture. There is much to be said for the religion of medicine if it can be kept free from cant, if it can be simple and rational enough to be available for the whole world. III THOUGHT AND WORK I wish I had a trade!--It would animate my arms and tranquilize my brain. SENANCOUR. "Doe ye nexte thynge."--_Old English Proverb_. Since our minds are so constantly filled with anxiety, there would seem to be at least one sure way to be rid of it--to stop thinking. A great many people believe that the mind will become less effective, that life will become dull and purposeless, unless they are constantly thinking and planning and arranging their affairs. I believe that the mind may easily and wisely be free from conscious thought a good deal of the time, and that the greatest progress and development in mind often comes when the thinker is virtually at rest, when his mind is to all intents and purposes blank. The busy, unconscious mind does its best work in the serenity of an atmosphere which does not interfere and confuse. It is true that the greatest conceptions do not come to the untrained and undisciplined mind. But do we want great conceptions all the time? There is a technical training for the mind which is, of course, necessary for special accomplishments, but this is quite another matter. Even this kind of thought must not obtrude too much, lest we become conscious of our mental processes and so end in confusion. One of the greatest benefits of work with the hands, or of objective and constructive work with the mind, is that it saves us from unending hours of thinking. Work should, of course, find its fullest justification as an expression of faith. If we have ever so dim a vision of a greater significance in life, of its close relationship to infinite things, we become thereby conscious of the need of service, of the need of work. It is the easy, natural expression of our faith, the inevitable result of a spiritual contact with the great working forces of the world. It is work above all else that saves us from the disasters of conflicting thought. A few years ago a young man came to me, suffering from too much thinking. He had just been graduated from college and his head was full of confused ideas and emotions. He was also very tired, having overworked in his preparation for examinations, and because he had not taken the best care of his body. The symptoms he complained of were sleeplessness and worry, together with the inevitable indigestion and headache. Of course, as a physician, I went over the bodily functions carefully, and studied, as far as I might, into the organic conditions. I could find no evidence of physical disease. I did not say, "There is nothing the matter with you"; for the man was sick. I told him that he was tired, that he had thought too much, that he was too much concerned about himself, and that as a result of all this his bodily functions were temporarily upset. He thought he ought to worry about himself, because otherwise he would not be trying to get well. I explained to him that this mistaken obligation was the common reason for worry, and that in this case, at least, it was quite unnecessary and even harmful for him to go on thinking about himself. That helped a little, but not nearly enough, because when a man has overworked, when he has begun to worry, and when his various bodily functions show results of worry, no reasoning, no explanations, can wholly relieve him. I said to this young man, "In spite of your discomforts, in spite of your depression and concern in regard to yourself, you will get well if you will stop thinking about the matter altogether. You must be first convinced that it is best for you to stop thinking, that no harm or violence can result, and then you must be helped in this direction by going to work with your hands--that will be life and progress, it will lead you to health." Fortunately I had had some experience with nervous illness, and I knew that unless I managed for this man the character and extent of his work, he would not only fail in it, but of its object, and so become more confused and discouraged. I knew the troubled mind, in this instance, might find its solace and its relief in work, but that I must choose the work carefully to suit the individual, and I must see that the nervously fatigued body was not pushed too hard. In the town where I live is a blacksmith shop, presided over by a genial old man who has been a blacksmith since he was a boy, and in whose hands iron is like clay. I took my patient down to the smithy and said, "Here is a young man whom I want to put to work. He will pay for the chance. I want you first to teach him to make hand-wrought nails." This was a good deal of a joke to the smith and to the patient, but they saw that I was in earnest and agreed to go ahead. We got together the proper tools and proceeded to make nails, a job which is really not very difficult. After an hour's work, I called off my patient, much to his disgust, for he was just beginning to be interested. But I knew that if he were to keep on until fatigue should come, the whole matter would end in trouble. So the next day, with some new overalls and a leather apron added to the equipment, we proceeded to another hour's work. We went on this way for three or four days, before the time was increased. The interest of the patient was always fresh, he was eager for more, and he did not taste the dregs of fatigue. Yet he did get the wholesome exercise, and he did get the strong turning of the mind from its worry and concern. Of course, the rest of the day was taken care of in one way or another, but the work was the central feature. In a week, we were at it two hours a day, in three weeks, four hours, and in a month, five hours. He had made a handsome display of hand-wrought nails, a superior line of pokers and shovels for fireplaces, together with a number of very respectable andirons. On each of these larger pieces of handiwork my patient had stamped his initials with a little steel die that was made for him. Each piece was his own, each piece was the product of his own versatility and his own strength. His pride and pleasure in this work were very great, and well they might be, for it is a fine thing to have learned to handle so intractable a material as iron. But in handling the iron patiently and consistently until he could do it without too much conscious thinking, and so without effort, he had also learned to handle himself naturally, more simply and easily. As a matter of fact, the illness which had brought this boy to me was pretty nearly cured by his blacksmithing, because it was an illness of the mind and of the nerves, and not of the body, although the body had suffered in its turn. That young man, instead of becoming a nervous invalid as he might have done, is now working steadily in partnership with his father, in business in the city. I had found him a very interesting patient, full of originality and not at all the tedious and boresome person he might have been had I listened day after day, week after week to the recital of his ills. I was willing to listen,--I did listen,--but I also gave him a new trend of life, which pretty soon made his complaints sound hollow and then disappear. Of course, the problem is not always so simple as this, and we must often deal with complexities of body and mind requiring prolonged investigation and treatment. I cite this case because it shows clearly that relief from some forms of nervous illness can come when we stop thinking, when we stop analyzing, and then back up our position with prescribed work. There may be some nervous invalids who read these lines who will say, "But I have tried so many times to work and have failed." Unfortunately, such failure must often occur unless we can proceed with care and with understanding. But the principle remains true, although it must be modified in an infinite variety to meet the changing conditions of individuals. I see a great many people who are conscientiously trying to get well from nervous exhaustion. They almost inevitably try too hard. They think and worry too much about it, and so exhaust themselves the more. This is the greater pity because it is the honest and the conscientious people who make the greatest effort. It is very hard for them to realize that they must stop thinking, stop trying, and if possible get to work before they can accomplish their end. We shall have to repeat to them over and over again that they must stop thinking the matter out, because the thing they are attempting to overcome is too subtle to be met in that way. So, if they are fortunate, they may rid themselves of the vagueness and uncertainty of life, until all the multitude of details which go to make up life lose their desultoriness and their lack of meaning, and they may find themselves no longer the subjects of physical or nervous exhaustion. IV IDLENESS O ye! who have your eyeballs vex'd and tir'd, Feast them upon the wideness of the sea. KEATS. Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. STEVENSON. It is an unfortunate fact that very few people are able to be idle successfully. I think it is not so much because we misuse idleness as because we misinterpret it that the long days become increasingly demoralizing. I would ask no one to accept a forced idleness without objection or regret. Such an acceptance would imply a lack of spirit, to say the least. But idleness and rest are not incompatible; neither are idleness and service, nor idleness and contentment. If we can look upon rest as a preparation for service, if we can make it serve us in the opportunity it gives for quiet growth and legitimate enjoyment, then it is fully justified and it may offer advantages and opportunity of the best. The chief trouble with idleness is that it so often means introspection, worry, and impatience, especially to those conscientious souls who would fain be about their business. I have for a long time been accustomed to combat the worry and fret of necessary idleness--not by forbidding it, not by advising struggle and fight against it, but by insisting that the best way to get rid of it is to leave it alone, to accept it. When we do this there may come a kind of fallow time in which the mind enriches and refreshes itself beyond our conception. I would rather my patient who must rest for a long time would give up all thought of method, would give up all idea of making his mind follow any particular line of thought or absence of thought. I know that the mind which has been under conscious control a good deal of the time is apt to rebel at this freedom and to indulge in all kinds of alarming extravagances. I am sure, however, that the best way to meet these demands for conscious control is to be careless of them, to be willing to experience these extravagances and inconsistencies without fear, in the belief that finally will come a quiet and peace which will be all that we can ask. The peace of mind that is unguided, in the conscious and literal sense, is a thing which too few of us know. Mr. Arnold Bennett, in his little book, "How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day," teaches that we should leave no time unused in our lives; that we should accomplish a great deal more and be infinitely more effective and progressive if we devoted our minds to the definite working-out of necessary problems whenever those times occur in which we are apt to be desultory. I wish here to make a plea for desultoriness and for an idleness which goes even beyond the idleness of the man who reads the newspaper and forgets what he has read. It seems to me better, whether we are sick or well, to allow long periods in our lives when we think only casually. To the good old adage, "Work while you work and play while you play," we might well add, "Rest while you rest," lest in the end you should be unable successfully either to work or play. A man is not necessarily condemned to tortures of mind because he must rest for a week or a month or a year. I know that there must be anxious times, especially when idleness means dependence, and when it brings hardship to those who need our help. But the invalid must not try constantly to puzzle the matter out. If we do not make ourselves sick with worry, we shall be able sometime to approach active life with sufficient frankness and force. It is the constant effort of the poor, tired mind to solve its problems that not only fails of its object, but plunges the invalid deeper into discouragement and misunderstanding. How cruel this is, and how unfortunate that it should come more commonly to those who try the hardest to overcome their handicaps, to throw off the yoke of idleness and to be well. When you have tried your best to get back to your work and have failed, when you have done this not once but many times, it is inevitable that misunderstanding should creep in, inevitable that you should question very deeply and doubt not infrequently. Yet the chances are that one of the reasons for your failure is that you have tried too hard, that you have not known how to rest. When you have learned how to rest, when you have learned to put off thinking and planning until the mind becomes fresh and clear, when you are in a fair way to know the joy of idleness and the peace of rest, you are a great deal more likely to get back to efficiency and to find your way along the great paths of activity into the world of life. It is not so much the idleness, then, as the attempt to overcome its irksomeness, that makes this condition painful. The invalid in bed is in a trap, to be tormented by his thoughts unless he knows the meaning of successful idleness. This knowledge may come to him by such strategy as I have suggested--by giving up the struggle against worry and fret; but peace will come surely, steadily, "with healing in its wings," when the mind is changed altogether, when life becomes free because of a growth and development that finds significance even in idleness, that sees the world with wise and patient eyes. In a way it does not matter, your physical condition or mine, if our "eyes have seen the glory" that deifies life and makes even its waste places beautiful. What is that view from your window as you lie in your bed? A bit of the sea, if you are fortunate, a corner of garden, surely, the top of an elm tree against the blue. What is it but the revelations of a God in the world? There is enough that is sad and unhappy, but over all are these simple, ineffable things. If the garden is an expression of God in the world, then the world and life are no longer meaningless. Even idleness becomes in some degree bearable because it is a part of a significant world. Unfortunately, the idleness of disability often means pain, the wear and tear of physical or nervous suffering. That is another matter. We cannot meet it fully with any philosophy. My patients very often beg to know the best way to bear pain, how they may overcome the attacks of "nerves" that are harder to bear than pain. To such a question I can only say that the time to bear pain is before and after. Live in such a way in the times of comparative comfort that the attacks are less likely to appear and easier to bear when they do come. After the pain or the "nervous" attack is over, that is the time to prevent the worst features of another. Forget the distress; live simply and happily in spite of the memory, and you will have done all that the patient himself can do to ward off or to make tolerable the next occasion of suffering. Pain itself--pure physical pain--is a matter for the physician's judgment. It is his business to seek out the causes and apply the remedy. V RULES OF THE GAME It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make man better be. BEN JONSON. It is a good thing to have a sound body, better to have a sane mind, but neither is to be compared to that aggregate of virile and decent qualities which we call character. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. The only effective remedy against inexorable necessity is to yield to it. PETRARCH. When I go about among my patients, most of them, as it happens, "nervously" sick, I sometimes stop to consider why it is they are ill. I know that some are so because of physical weakness over which they have no control, that some are suffering from the effects of carelessness, some from wilfulness, and more from simple ignorance of the rules of the game. There are so many rules that no one will ever know them all, but it seems that we live in a world of laws, and that if we transgress those laws by ever so little, we must suffer equally, whether our transgression is a mistake or not, and whether we happen to be saints or sinners. There are laws also which have to do with the recovery of poise and balance when these have been lost. These laws are less well observed and understood than those which determine our downfall. The more gross illnesses, from accident, contagion, and malignancy, we need not consider here, but only those intangible injuries that disable people who are relatively sound in the physical sense. It is true that nervous troubles may cause physical complications and that physical disease very often coexists with nervous illness, but it is better for us now to make an artificial separation. Just what happens in the human economy when a "nervous breakdown" comes, nobody seems to know, but mind and body coöperate to make the patient miserable and helpless. It may be nature's way of holding us up and preventing further injury. The hold-up is severe, usually, and becomes in itself a thing to be managed. The rules we have wittingly or unwittingly broken are often unknown to us, but they exist in the All-Wise Providence, and we may guess by our own suffering how far we have overstepped them. If a man runs into a door in the dark, we know all about that,--the case is simple,--but if he runs overtime at his office and hastens to be rich with the result of a nervous dyspepsia--that is a mystery. Here is a girl who "came out" last year. She was apparently strong and her mother was ambitious for her social progress. That meant four nights a week for several months at dances and dinners, getting home at 3 A.M. or later. It was gay and delightful while it lasted, but it could not last, and the girl went to pieces suddenly; her back gave out because it was not strong enough to stand the dancing and the long-continued physical strain. The nerves gave out because she did not give her faculties time to rest, and perhaps because of a love affair that supervened. The result was a year of invalidism, and then, because the rules of recovery were not understood, several years more of convalescence. Such common rules should be well enough understood, but they are broken everywhere by the wisest people. The common case of the broken-down school teacher is more unfortunate. This tragedy and others like it are more often, I believe, due to unwise choice of profession in the first place. The women's colleges are turning out hundreds of young women every year who naturally consider teaching as the field most appropriate and available. Probably only a very small proportion of these girls are strong enough physically or nervously to meet the growing demands of the schools. They may do well for a time, some of them unusually well, for it is the sensitive, high-strung organism that is appreciative and effective. After a while the worry and fret of the requirements and the constant nag of the schoolroom have their effect upon those who are foredoomed to failure in that particular field. The plight of such young women is particularly hard, for they are usually dependent upon their work. It is, after all, not so much the things we do as the way we do them, and what we think about them, that accomplishes nervous harm. Strangely enough, the sense of effort and the feeling of our own inadequacy damage the nervous system quite as much as the actual physical effort. The attempt to catch up with life and with affairs that go on too fast for us is a frequent and harmful deflection from the rules of the game. Few of us avoid it. Life comes at us and goes by very fast. Tasks multiply and we are inadequate, responsibilities increase before we are ready. They bring fatigue and confusion. We cannot shirk and be true. Having done all you reasonably can, stop, whatever may be the consequences. That is a rule I would enforce if I could. To do more is to drag and fail, so defeating the end of your efforts. If it turns out that you are not fit for the job you have undertaken, give it up and find another, or modify that one until it comes within your capacity. It takes courage to do this--more courage sometimes than is needed to make us stick to the thing we are doing. Rarely, however, will it be necessary for us to give up if we will undertake and consider for the day only such part of our task as we are able to perform. The trouble is that we look at our work or our responsibility all in one piece, and it crushes us. If we cannot arrange our lives so that we may meet their obligations a little at a time, then we must admit failure and try again, on what may seem a lower plane. That is what I consider the brave thing to do. I would honor the factory superintendent, who, finding himself unequal to his position, should choose to work at the bench where he could succeed perfectly. The habit of uncertainty in thought and action, bred, as it sometimes is, from a lack of faith in man and in God, is, nevertheless, a thing to be dealt with sometimes by itself. Not infrequently it is a petty habit that can be corrected by the exercise of a little will power. I believe it is better to decide wrong a great many times--doing it quickly--than to come to a right decision after weakly vacillating. As a matter of fact, we may trust our decisions to be fair and true if our life's ideals are beautiful and true. We may improve our indecisions a great deal by mastering their unhappy details, but we shall not finally overcome them until life rings true and until all our acts and thoughts become the solid and inevitable expression of a healthy growing regard for the best in life, a call to right living that is no mean dictum of policy, but which is renewed every morning as the sun comes out of the sea. However inconsequential the habit of indecision may seem, it is really one of the most disabling of bad habits. Its continuance contributes largely to the sum of nervous exhaustion. Whatever its origin, whether it stands in the relation of cause or effect, it is an indulgence that insidiously takes the snap and sparkle out of life and leaves us for the time being colorless and weak. Next to uncertainty, an uninspired certainty is wrecking to the best of human prospects. The man whose one idea is of making himself and his family materially comfortable, or even rich, may not be coming to nervous prostration, but he is courting a moral prostration that will deny him all the real riches of life and that will in the end reward him with a troubled mind, a great, unsatisfied longing, unless, to be sure, he is too smug and satisfied to long for anything. The larger life leads us inevitably away from ourselves, away from the super-requirements of our families. It demands of them and of ourselves an unselfishness that is born of a love that finds its expression in the service of God. And what is the service of God if it is not such an entering into the divine purposes and spirit that we become with God re-creators in the world--working factors in the higher evolution of humanity? While we live we shall get and save, we shall use and spend, we shall serve the needs of those dependent upon us, but we shall not line the family nest so softly that our children become powerless. We shall not confine our charities to the specified channels, where our names will be praised and our credit increased. We shall give and serve in secret places with our hearts in our deeds. Then we may possess the untroubled mind, a treasure too rich to be computed. We shall not have it for the seeking; it may exist in the midst of what men may call privations and sorrows; but it will exist in a very large sense and it will be ours. The so-called hard-headed business man who never allows himself to be taken advantage of, whose dealings are always strict and uncompromising, is very apt to be a particularly miserable invalid when he is ill. I cannot argue in favor of business laxity,--I know the imperative need of exactness and finality,--but I do believe that if we are to possess the untroubled mind we must make our lives larger than the field of dollars and cents. The charity that develops in us will make us truly generous and free from the reaction of hardness. It is a great temptation to go on multiplying the rules of the game. There are so many sensible and necessary pieces of advice which we all need to have emphasized. That is the course we must try to avoid. The child needs to be told, arbitrarily for a while, what is right, and what is wrong, that he must do this, and he must not do that. The time comes, however, when the growing instinct toward right living is the thing to foster--not the details of life which will inevitably take care of themselves if the underlying principle is made right. It must be the ideal of moral teaching to make clear and pure the source of action. Then the stream will be clear and pure. Such a stream will purify itself and neutralize the dangerous inflow along its banks. It is true that great harm may come from the polluted inflows, but they will be less and less harmful as the increasing current from the good source flows down. We shall have to look well to our habits lest serious ills befall, but that must never be the main concern or we shall find ourselves living very narrow and labored lives; we shall find that we are failing to observe one of the most important rules of the game. VI THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT Beyond the ugly actual, lo, on every side, Imagination's limitless domain. BROWNING. He that too much refines his delicacy will always endanger his quiet. SAMUEL JOHNSON. The great refinement of many poetical gentlemen has rendered them practically unfit for the jostling and ugliness of life. STEVENSON. It has been my fortune as a physician to deal much with the so-called nervous temperament. I have come both to fear and to love it. It is the essence of all that is bright, imaginative, and fine, but it is as unstable as water. Those who possess it must suffer--it is their lot to feel deeply, and very often to be misunderstood by their more practical friends. All their lives these people will shed tears of joy, and more tears of sorrow. I would like to write of their joy, of the perfect satisfaction, the true happiness that comes in creating new and beautiful things, of the deep pleasure they have in the appreciation of good work in others. But with the instinct of a dog trained for a certain kind of hunting I find myself turning to the misfortunes and the ills. The very keenness of perception makes painful anything short of perfection. What will such people do in our clanging streets? What of those fine ears tuned to the most exquisite appreciation of sweet sound? What of that refinement of hearing that detects the least departure from the rhythm and pitch in complex orchestral music? And must they bear the crash of steel on stone, the infernal clatter of traffic? Well, yes,--as a matter of fact--they must, at least for a good many years to come, until advancing civilization eliminates the city noise. But it is not always great noises that disturb and distract. There is a story told of a woman who became so sensitive to noise that she had her house made sound-proof: there were thick carpets and softly closing doors; everything was padded. The house was set back from a quiet street, but that street was strewn with tanbark to check the sound of carriages. Surely here was bliss for the sensitive soul. I need not tell the rest of the story, how absolutely necessary noises became intolerable, and the poor woman ended by keeping a man on the place to catch and silence the tree toads and crickets. There is nothing to excuse the careless and unnecessary noises of the world--we shall dispose of them finally as we are disposing of flamboyant signboards and typhoid flies. But meanwhile, and always, for that matter, the sensitive soul must learn to adjust itself to circumstances and conditions. This adjustment may in itself become a fine art. It is really the art by which the painter excludes the commonplace and irrelevant from his landscape. Sometimes we have to do this consciously; for the most part, it should be a natural, unconscious selection. I am sure it is unwise to attempt at any time the dulling of the appreciative sense for the sake of peace and comfort. Love and understanding of the beautiful and true is too rare and fine a thing to be lost or diminished under any circumstances. The cure, as I see it, is to be found in the cultivation of the faculty that finds some good in everything and everybody. This is the saving grace--it takes great bulks of the commonplace and distils from the mass a few drops of precious essence; it finds in the unscholarly and the imperfect, rare traces of good; it sees in man, any man, the image of God, to be justified and made evident only in the sublimity of death, perhaps, but usually to be developed in life. The nervous person is often morose and unsocial--perhaps because he is not understood, perhaps because he falls so short of his own ideals. Often he does not find kindred spirits anywhere. I do not think we should drive such a man into conditions that hurt, but I do believe that if he is truly artistic, and not a snob, he may lead himself into a larger social life without too much sacrifice. The sensitive, high-strung spirit that does not give of its own best qualities to the world of its acquaintance, that does not express itself in some concrete way, is always in danger of harm. Such a spirit turned in upon itself is a consuming fire. The spirit will burn a long time and suffer much if it does not use its heat to warm and comfort the world of need. Real illness makes the nervous temperament a much more formidable difficulty--all the sensitive faculties are more sensitive--irritability becomes an obsession and idleness a terror. The nervous temperament under irritation is very prone to become selfish--and very likely to hide behind this selfishness, calling it temperament. The man who flies into a passion when he is disturbed, or who spends his days in torment from the noises of the street; the woman of high attainment who has retired into herself, who is moody and unresponsive,--these unfortunates have virtually built a wall about their lives, a wall which shuts out the world of life and happiness. From the walls of this prison the sounds of discord and annoyance are thrown back upon the prisoner intensified and multiplied. The wall is real enough in its effect, but will cease to exist when the prisoner begins to go outside, when he begins to realize his selfishness and his mistake. Then the noises and the irritations will be lost in the wider world that is open to him. After all, it is only through unselfish service in the world of men that this broadening can come. There is no lack of opportunity for service. Perhaps the simplest and most available form of service is charity,--the big, professional kind, of course,--and beyond that the greater field of intimate and personal charity. I know a girl of talent and ability--herself a nervous invalid--sick and helpless for the lack of a little money which would give her a chance to get well. I do not mean money for luxuries, for foolish indulgences, but money to buy opportunity--money that would lift her out of the heavy morass of poverty and give her a chance. She falls outside the beaten path of charity. She is not reached by the usual philanthropies. I also know plenty of people who could help that girl without great sacrifice. They will not do it because they give money to the regular charities--they will not do it because sometimes generosity has been abused. So they miss the chance of broadening and developing their own lives. I know well enough that objective interest can rarely be forced--it must usually come the other way about--through the broadening of life which makes it inevitable. Sometimes I wish I could force that kind of development, that kind of charity. Sometimes I long to take the rich neurasthenic and make him help his brother, make him develop a new art that shall save people from sorrow and loss. We are all together in this world, and all kin; to recognize it and to serve the needs of the unfortunate as we would serve our own children is the remedy for many ills. It is the new art, the final and greatest of all artistic achievements; it warms our hearts and opens our lives to all that is wholesome and good. This is one of the crises in which my theory of "inspiration first" may fail. Here the charity may have to come first, may have to be insisted upon before there can be any inspiration or any further joy in life. It is not always charity in the usual sense that is required; sometimes the charity that gives something besides money is best. But charity in any good sense means self-forgetfulness, and that is a long way on the road to nervous health. Give of yourself, give of your substance, and you will cease to be troubled with the penalties of selfishness. Then take the next step--that gives not because life has come back, but because the world has become larger and warmer and happier. When the giver gives of his sympathy and of his means because he wants to,--not because he has to do so,--he will begin to know what I mean when I say it is better to have the inspiration first. VII SELF-CONTROL He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew. GOETHE. A good many writers on self-control and kindred subjects insist that we shall conscientiously and consciously govern our mental lives. They say, "You must get up in the morning with determination to be cheerful." They insist that in spite of annoyance or trouble you shall keep a smiling face, and affirm to yourself over and over again the denial of annoyance. I do not like this kind of self-control. I wish I could admire it and approve it, but I find I cannot because it seems to me self-conscious and superficial. It is better than nothing and unquestionably adds greatly to the sum of human happiness. But I do not think we ought to be cheerful if we are consumed with trouble and sorrow. The fact is we ought not to be for long beyond a natural cheerfulness that comes from the deepest possible sources. While we are sad, let us be so, simply and naturally; but we must pray that the light may come to us in our sorrow, that we may be able soon and naturally to put aside the signs of mourning. The person who thinks little of his own attitude of mind is more likely to be well controlled and to radiate happiness than one who must continually prompt himself to worthy thoughts. The man whose heart is great with understanding of the sorrow and pathos of life is far more apt to be brave and fine in his own trouble than one who must look to a motto or a formula for consolation and advice. Deep in the lives of those who permanently triumph over sorrow there is an abiding peace and joy. Such peace cannot come even from ample experience in the material world. Despair comes from that experience sometimes, unless the heart is open to the vital spirit that lies beyond all material things, that creates and renews life and that makes it indescribably beautiful and significant. Experience of material things is only the beginning. In it and through it we may have experience of the wider life that surrounds the material. Our hearts must be opened to the courage that comes unbidden when we feel ourselves to be working, growing parts of the universe of God. Then we shall have no more sorrow and no more joy in the pitiful sense of the earth, but rather an exaltation which shall make us masters of these and of ourselves. We shall have a sympathy and charity that shall need no promptings, but that flow from us spontaneously into the world of suffering and need. Beethoven was of a sour temper, according to all accounts, but he wrote his symphonies in the midst of tribulations under which few men would have worked at all. When we have felt something of the spirit that makes work inevitable, it will be as though we had heard the eternal harmonies. We shall write our symphonies, build our bridges, or do our lesser tasks with dauntless purpose, even though the possessions that men count dear are taken from us. Suppose we can do very little because of some infirmity: if that little has in it the larger inspiration, it will be enough to make life full and fine. The joy of a wider life is not obtainable in its completeness; it is only through a lifetime of service and experience that we can approach it. That is the proof of its divine origin--its unattainableness. "God keep you from the she wolf and from your heart's deepest desire," is an old saying of the Rumanians. If we fully obtain our desires, we prove their unworthiness. Does any one suppose that Beethoven attained his whole heart's desire in his music? He might have done so had he been a lesser man. He was not a cheerful companion. That is unfortunate, and shows that he failed in complete inspiration and in the ordinary kind of self-control. He was at least sincere, and that helped not a little to make him what he was. I would almost rather a man would be morose and sincere than cheerful from a sense of duty. Our knowledge of the greater things of life must always be substantiated and worked out into realities of service, or else we shall be weak and ineffective. The charity that balks at giving, reacts upon a man and deadens him. I am always insisting that we must not live and serve through a sense of duty, but that we must find the inspiration first. It is better to give ourselves to service not for the sake of finding God, but because we have found Him and because our souls have grown in the finding until we cannot help giving. If we have grown to such a stature we shall be able to meet sorrow and loss bravely and simply. We shall feel for ourselves and for others in their troubles as Forbes Robertson did when he wrote to his friend who had met with a great loss: "I pray that you may never, never, never get over this sorrow, but through it, into it, into the very heart of God." All this is very unworldly, no doubt, and yet I will venture the assertion that such a standard and such a method will come nearer to the mark of successful and well-controlled living than the most carefully planned campaign of duty. If we plan to make life fine, if we say, in effect, "I will be good and cheerful, no matter what happens," we are beginning at the wrong end. We may be able to work back from our mottoes to real living, but the chances are we shall stop somewhere by the way, too confused and uncertain to go on. Self-control, at its best, is not a conscious thing. It is not well that we should try to be good, but that we should so dignify our lives with the spirit of good that evil becomes well-nigh impossible to us. VIII THE LIGHTER TOUCH Heart not so heavy as mine, Wending late home, As it passed my window Whistled itself a tune. EMILY DICKINSON. I have never seen good come from frightening worriers. It is no doubt wise to speak the truth, but it seems to me a mistake to say in public print or in private advice that worry leads to tragedies of the worst sort. No matter how hopeful we may be in our later teaching about the possibilities of overcoming worry, the really serious worrier will pounce upon the original tragic statement and apply it with terrible insistence to his own case. I would not minimize the seriousness of worry, but I am convinced that we can rarely overcome it by direct voluntary effort. It does not go until we forget it, and we do not forget it if we are always trying consciously to overcome it. We worriers must go about our business--other business than that of worry. Life is serious--alas, too serious--and full enough of pathos. We cannot joke about its troubles; they are real. But, at least, we need not magnify them. Why should we act as though everything depended upon our efforts, even the changing seasons and the blowing winds? No doubt we are responsible for our own acts and thoughts and for the welfare of those who depend upon us. The trouble is we take unnecessary responsibilities so seriously that we overreach ourselves and defeat our own good ends. I would make my little world more blessedly careless--with an _abandon_ that loves life too much to spoil it with worry. I would cherish so great a desire for my child's good that I could not scold and bear down upon him for every little fault, making him a worrier too, but, instead, I would guide him along the right path with pleasant words and brave encouragement. The condemnation of faults is rarely constructive. We had better say to the worriers, "Here is life; no matter what unfortunate things you may have said or done, you must put all evil behind you and live--simply, bravely, well." The greater the evil, the greater the need of forgetting. Not flippantly, but reverently, leave your misdeeds in a limbo where they may not rise to haunt you. This great thing you may do, not with the idea of evading or escaping consequences, but so that past evil may be turned into present and future good. The criminal himself is coming to be treated this way. He is no longer eternally reminded of his crime. He is taken out into the sunshine and air and is given a shovel to dig with. A wonderful thing is that shovel. With it he may bury the past and raise up a happier, better future. We must care so much to expiate our sins that we are willing to neglect them and live righteously. That is true repentance, constructive repentance. We cannot suddenly change our mental outlook and become happy when grief has borne us down. "For the broken heart silence and shade,"--that is fair and right. I would say to those who are unhappy, "Do not try to be happy, you cannot force it; but let peace come to you out of the great world of beauty that calmly surrounds our human suffering, and that speaks to us quietly of God." Genuine laughter is not forced, but we may let it come back into our lives if we know that it is right for it to come. We have all about us instances of the effectiveness of the lighter touch as applied to serious matters. The life of the busy surgeon is a good example. He may be, and usually is, brimming with sympathy, but if he were to feel too deeply for all his patients, he would soon fail and die. He goes about his work. He puts through a half-dozen operations in a way that would send cold shivers down the back of the uninitiated. And yet he is accurate and sure as a machine. If he were to take each case upon his mind in a heavy, consequential way, if he were to give deep concern to each ligature he ties, and if he were to be constantly afraid of causing pain, he would be a poor surgeon. His work, instead of being clean and sharp, would suffer from over-conscientiousness. He might never finish an operation for fear his patient would bleed to death. Such a man may be the reverse of flippant, and yet he may actually enjoy his somber work. Cruel, bloodthirsty? Not at all. These men--the great surgeons--are as tender as children. But they love their work, they really care very deeply for their patients. The successful ones have the lighter touch and they have no time for worry. Sometimes we wish to arouse the public conscience. Do the long columns of figures, the impressive statistics, wake men to activity? It is rather the keen, bright thrust of the satirist that saves the day. Once in a New England town meeting there was a movement for a much-needed new schoolhouse. By the installation of skylights in the attic the old building had been made to accommodate the overflow of pupils. The serious speakers in favor of the new building had left the audience cold, when a young man arose and said he had been up into the attic and had seen the wonderful skylights that were supposed to meet the needs of the children. "I have seen them," he said; "we used to call them scuttles when I was a boy." A hundred thousand dollars was voted for the new schoolhouse. There is a natural gayety in most of us which helps more than we realize to keep us sound. The pity is that when responsibilities come and hardships come, we repress our lighter selves sternly, as though such repression were a duty. Better let us guard the springs of happiness very, very jealously. The whistling boy in the dark street does more than cheer himself on the way. He actually protects himself from evil, and brings courage not only to himself, but to those who hear him. I do not hold for false cheerfulness that is sometimes affected, but a brave show of courage in a forlorn hope will sometimes win the day. It is infinitely more likely to win than a too serious realization of the danger of defeat. The show of courage is often not a pretense at all, but victory itself. The need of the world is very great and its human destiny is in our hands. Half of those who could help to right the wrongs are asleep or too selfishly immersed in their own affairs. We need more helpers like my friend of the skylights. Most of us are far too serious. The slumberers will slumber on, and the worriers will worry, the serious people will go ponderously about until some one shows them how ridiculous they are and how pitiful. IX REGRETS AND FOREBODINGS Regret avails little--still less remorse--the one keeps alive the old offense, the other creates new offenses. GOETHE. The unrepentant sinner walks abroad. Unfortunately for us moralists he seems to be having a very good time. We must not condone him, though he may be a very lovable person; neither must we altogether condemn him, for he may be repentant in the very best way of all ways, the way that forgets much and leaves behind more, because life is so fine that it must not be spoiled, and because progress is in every way better than retrospection. The fact is, that repentance is too often the fear of punishment, and such fear is, to say the least, unmanly. I would rather be a lovable sinner than one of the people who repent because they cannot bear to think of the consequences. Knowledge and fear of consequences undoubtedly keep a great many young people from the so-called sins of ignorance. But there must be something behind knowledge and fear of consequences to stop the youth of spirit from doing what he is inclined to do. Over and over again we must go back to the appreciation of life's dignity and beauty--to the consciousness of the spirit of God behind and in the world if we are to find a balance and a character that will "deliver us from evil." When we have found this consciousness--when we live it and breathe it, we shall be far less apt to sin, and when we have sinned, as we all must in the course of our blundering lives, we shall not waste our time in regret or in the fear of consequences. If the God we dream of is as great as the sea, or as beautiful as a tree, we need not fear Him. He will be tender, and just at the same time. He will be as forgiving as He is strong. The best we can do, then, is to leave our sins in the hand of God and go our way, sadder and wiser, maybe, but not regretting too much, not fearing any more. There is a new idea in medicine--the development of which has been one of the most striking achievements of modern times--the idea of psychanalysis as taught and advocated by Freud in Germany. The plan is to study the subconscious mind of the nervous patient by means of hypnotism, to assist the patient to recall all the mental experiences of his past,--even his very early childhood,--and in this way to make clear the origin of the misconceptions and the unfortunate impressions which have presumably exerted their influence through the years. The new system includes, also, the interpretation of dreams, their effect upon the conscious life and their influence upon the mentality. Very wonderful results are reported from the pursuit of this method. Many a badly warped and twisted life has been straightened out and renewed when the searchlight has revealed the hidden influences that have been at work and which have made trouble. The repression of conscious or unconscious feelings can no doubt change the whole mental life. We should have the greatest respect for the men who are doing this work. It requires, I am told, an almost unbelievable amount of patience and time to accomplish the analysis. No doubt the adult judgment of childish follies is a direct means of disposing of their harmful influence in life, the surest way of losing the conscious or unconscious regrets that sadden many lives. There are probably many cases of disturbed and troubled mind that can be cured in this way only. The method does not appeal to me because I am so strongly inclined to take people as they are, to urge a forgetfulness that does not really forget, but which goes on bravely to the development of life. This development cannot proceed without the understanding that life may be made so beautiful that sins and failures are lost in progress. Some of us may need the subtle analysis of our lives to make clear the points where we went astray in our thoughts and ideas, but many of us, fortunately, are able to take ourselves for better or for worse, sins and all. Most of us ought to do that, for the most part, if we are to progress and live. Sometimes the revelations of evils we know not of result in complications rather than simplification, as in the case of a boy who wrote to me and said that since he had learned of his early sins he had made sure that he could never be well. Instead of going into further analysis with him, I assured him that, while it was undoubtedly his duty to regret all the evil of his life, it was a still greater duty to go on and live the rest of it well, and that he could do so if he would open his eyes to the possibilities of unselfish service. I am very much inclined to preach against self-analysis and the almost inevitable regret and despair that accompany it. One of my patients decided some time ago that her life was wasted, that she had accomplished nothing. It was true that she had not the endurance to meet the usual demands of social or even family life, and that for long periods she had to give up altogether. But it happened that she had the gift of musical understanding, that she had studied hard in younger days. With a little urging the gift was made to grow again and to serve not only the patient's own needs, but to bring very great pleasure to every one who listened to her playing. That rare, true ability was worth everything, and she came to realize it in time. The gift of musical expression is a very great thing, and I succeeded in making this woman understand that she should be happy in that ability even if nothing else should be possible. Often enough nothing that can compare with music exists, and life seems wholly barren. Rather cold comfort it seems at first to assure a person who is helpless that character is the greatest thing in the world, but that is the final truth. The most limited and helpless life may glow with it and be richer than imagination can believe. It is never time to regret--and never time to despair. The less analysis the better. When it comes to character, live, grow, and get a deeper and deeper understanding of life--of life that is near to God and so capable of wrong only as we turn away from Him. "Do not say things; what you are stands over you and thunders so, I cannot hear what you say to the contrary." We shall do well not to forget that, whatever failures or mistakes we have made, there is infinite possibility ahead of us, that character is the greatest thing in the world, and that most good character has been built upon mistakes and failures. I believe there is no sin which may not make up the fabric of its own forgiveness in the living of a free, self-sacrificing life. I know of no bodily ill nor handicap which we may not eventually rise above and beyond by means of brave spiritual progress. The body may fail us, but the spirit reaches on and into the great world of God. X THE VIRTUES The virtues hide their vanquished fires Within that whiter flame-- Till conscience grows irrelevant And duty but a name. FREDERICK LAWRENCE KNOWLES. In most books I have read on "nerves" and similar subjects, advice is given, encouragement is given, but the necessity for patience is not made clear. Patience is typical of all the other virtues. Many a man has followed the best of advice for a time, and has become discouraged because the promised results did not materialize. It is disappointing, surely, to have lived upon a diet for months only to find that you still have dyspepsia, or to have followed certain rules of morality with great precision and enthusiasm without obtaining the untroubled mind. We are accustomed to see results in the material world and naturally expect them everywhere. The trouble is we do not always recognize improvements when we see them, and we insist upon certain preconceived changes as a result of our endeavors. The physician is apt rashly to promise definite physical accomplishments in a given time. He is courting disappointment and distrust when he does so. We all want to get relief from our symptoms, and we are inclined to insist upon a particular kind of relief so strongly that we fail to appreciate the possibilities of another and a better relief which may be at hand. The going astray in this particular is sometimes very unfortunate. I have known a man to rush frantically from one doctor to another, trying to obtain relief for a particular pain or discomfort, unwilling to rest long enough to find out that the trouble would have disappeared naturally if he had taken the advice of the first physician, to live without impatience and within his limitations. The human body is a very complex organism, and sometimes pain and distress are better not relieved, since they may be the expression of some deeper maladjustment which must first be straightened out. This is also true of the mind--in which the unhappy proddings of conscience had better not be cured by anodynes or by evasion unless we are prepared to go deeply enough to make them disappear spontaneously. We must sometimes insist upon patience, though it should exist as a matter of course--patience with ourselves and with others. The physician who demands and secures the greatest degree of patience from his clients is the most successful practitioner, for no life can go on successfully without patience. If patience can be spontaneous,--the natural result of a broadening outlook,--then it will be permanent and serviceable; the other kind, that exists by extreme effort, may do for a while, but it is a poor makeshift. I always feel like apologizing when I ask a man or a woman to be tolerant or charitable or generous or, for that matter, to practice any of the ordinary virtues. Sound living should spring unbidden from the very joy of life; it should need no justification and certainly no urging. But unfortunately, as the world now stands, there are men and groups of men who do not see the light. There is a wide contagion of selfishness and short-sightedness among the well-to-do, and a necessary federation of protection and selfishness among the poor. The practical needs of life, artificial as they are among the rich, and terribly insistent as they are among the poor, blind us to larger considerations. If all matters of welfare, public or private, could be treated unselfishly, how quickly we should be rid of some of the great evils that afflict the race. I am inclined to think that much of the goodness of people does come in that way, unconsciously, naturally, as the light flows from the sun. Yet I suppose that in our present order, and until, through the years, the better time arrives, we must very often ask ourselves and others to be good and to be charitable, just because it is right, or worse still because it is good policy. A man grows better, more human, more intelligent, as he practices the virtues. He is safer, no doubt, and the world is better. It is even true that, by the constant practice of virtues, he may come finally to espouse goodness and become thoroughly good. That is the hopeful thing about it and the reason why we may consistently ask or demand the routine practice of the virtues. But let us hold up all the time in our teaching and in our lives the other course, the development of the inspiration that includes all virtues and that makes all our way easy and plain in a world where confusion reigns, because men are going at the problem of right living the wrong way around. The practice of good living will never be easy in its details, but if it is sure in its inspiration there will be no question of the final triumph. We shall have to fight blindly sometimes and with all the strength and persistence of animals at bay. We shall fail sometimes, too, and that is not always the worst thing that can happen. It is the glory of life that we shall slowly triumph over ourselves and the world. It is the glory of life that out of sore trouble, in the midst of poverty and human injustice, may rise, spontaneous and serene, the spirit of self-sacrifice, the unconquerable spirit of service that does not question, that expresses the divine tenderness in terms of human love. Through the times of darkness and doubt which must inevitably come, there will be for those who cherish such a vision, and who come back to it again and again, no utter darkness, no trouble that wholly crushes, no loss that wholly destroys. If we could not understand it before, it will slowly dawn upon us that the life of Christ exemplified all these things. Charity, kindliness, service, patience,--all these things which have seemed so hard will become in our lives, as in his, the substance and expression of our faith. The great human virtues will become easy and natural, the untroubled mind, or as much of it as is good to possess, will be ours, not because we have escaped trouble, but because we have disarmed it, have welcomed it even, so long as it has served to strengthen and ennoble our lives. XI THE CURE BY FAITH The healing of his seamless dress Is by our beds of pain-- We touch Him in life's throng and press, And we are whole again. WHITTIER. I cannot finish my little book of ideals without writing some things that are in my mind about cure by faith or by prayer. It is a subject that I approach with hesitation because of the danger of misunderstanding. No subject is more difficult and none is more important for the invalid to understand. We hear a great deal about the wonderful cures of Christian Science or of similar agencies, and we all know of people who have been restored to usefulness by such means. Has the healing of Christ again become possible on earth? No one would be more eager to accept it and acknowledge it than the physician if it were really so. But careful investigation always reveals the fact that the wonderful cures are not of the body but of the mind. It is easy enough to say that a cancer or tuberculosis has been cured by faith, and apparently easy for many people to believe it, but alas, the proof is wanting. The Christian Scientist, honest and sincere as he may be, is not qualified to say what is true disease and what is not. What looks like diseased tissue recovers, but medical men know that it could not have been diseased in the most serious sense, and that the prayer for recovery could have had nothing to do with the cure, save in a very indirect way. The man who discards medicine for philosophy or religion is courting unnecessary suffering and even death. The worst part of it is that he may induce some one else to make the same mistake with similar results. In writing this opinion I am in no way denying the great significance and value of faith nor of the prayerful and trustful mind. If it cannot cure actual physical disease, faith can accomplish veritable miracles of healing in the mind of the patient. No thoughtful or honest medical man will deny it. Nor will most medical men deny that the course of almost any physical illness may be modified by faith and prayer. I am almost saying that there is no known medicine of such potency. Every bodily function is the better for the conquering spirit that transcends the earth and finds its necessary expression in prayer. There really need be no issue or disagreement between medicine and faith cure. At its best, one is not more wonderful than the other, and both aim to accomplish the same end--the relief of human suffering. When the two are merged, as some day they will be, we shall be surprised to discover how alike they are. Christian Science is rightly scorned by medical men because it is unscientific, because it makes absurd and untenable claims outside its own field, and because it has not as yet investigated that field in the scientific spirit. When proper study and investigation have been made it will be found that faith cure, not in its present state, but in some future development, will have an immense field of usefulness. It will be worthy of as much respect in that field as medicine proper in its own sphere. As a matter of fact both medicine and faith cure are miraculous in a very real sense, as both depend for efficiency now and always upon the same great laws which may be fairly called divine. What is the discovery that the serum of a horse will under certain circumstances cure diphtheria? Does it not mean that man is tapping sources of power far beyond his understanding? Is man responsible save as the agent? Did he produce the complex animal chemistry that makes this cure possible? Did man make the horse, or the laws that control the physiology and pathology of that animal? Here, then, is faith cure in its largest and best sense. The biologist may not be willing to admit it, but his faith in these great laws of God have made possible the cure of a dread disease. Here, as in all matters of pure religion, it is what men say and write, not the fact itself, that makes all the misunderstanding; we make our judgments and conceive our prejudices from mere surface considerations. Call life what you will,--leave out the symbolic word "God" altogether,--the facts remain. The true scientific spirit must reverence and adore the power that lies behind creation. It is as inconsistent for the bacteriologist to be an unbeliever as it is for the Christian Scientist to deny the value of bacteriology. Medicine is infinitely farther advanced than Christian Science, and yet Christian Science has grasped some truth that the natural scientist has stupidly missed. When an obsession is thrown off and courage substituted for fear, we witness as important a "cure" as can be shown to the credit of surgery. If the Christian Scientists and the other faith-curers were only less superficial and less narrow in their explanation of the facts, if they would condescend to study the diseases they treat, they would be entitled to, and would receive, more respect and consideration. The cure and prevention of disease through the agency of man are evidently part of the divine plan. Our eagerness to advance along the lines of investigation and practice is but that divine plan in action. The truly scientific spirit will neglect no possible curative agent. When scientific men ridicule prayer, they are thinking not of the real thing which is above all possible criticism, but of the feeble and often pathetic groping for the real thing. We ask in our prayers for impossible blessings that would invert the laws of God and change the face of nature--very well, we must be prepared for disappointment. The attitude of prayer may, indeed, transform our own lives and make possible for us experiences that would otherwise have been impossible. But our pathetic demands--we shall never know how forlorn and weak they are. Prayer is the opening of the heart to the being we call God--it is most natural and reasonable. If we pray in our weakness and blindness for what we may not have, there is, nevertheless, a wonderful re-creative effect within us. The comfort and peace of such communion is beyond all else healing and restoring in its influence upon the troubled and anxious mind of man. The poet or the scientist who bows in adoration before the glory of God revealed in nature, prays in effect to that God and his soul is refreshed and renewed. The poor wretch who stands blindfolded before the firing squad, waiting the word that ends the life of a military spy, is near enough to God--and the whispered prayer upon his lips is cure for the wounds that take his life. The best kind of prayer seeks not and asks not for physical relief or benefit, but opens the heart to its maker, and so receives the cure of peace that is a greater miracle than any yet wrought by man. Under the influence of that cure the sick are well and the dead are alive again. With the courage and spirit of such a cure in our lives, we shall inevitably do our utmost to relieve, by any good means, the physical suffering of the world. We shall follow the laws of nature. We shall study them with the utmost care. We shall take nothing for granted, since by less careful steps we shall miss the divine law and so go astray. The science of healing will become no chance and irrational thing. We shall use all the natural means to relieve and prevent suffering--there will be no scoring of one set of doctors by another because all will have one purpose. But more to the point than that, men will discover that health in its largest sense consists in living devout and prayerful lives whereunto shall be revealed in good time all that our finite minds can know and use. There will be no suffering of the body in the old and pitiful sense, for we shall be so much alive that disease and death can no longer claim us. THE END 
31747	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) SOUND MIND; OR, _CONTRIBUTIONS_ TO THE NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HUMAN INTELLECT. By JOHN HASLAM, M.D. LATE OF PEMBROKE HALL, CAMBRIDGE: FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL, NATURAL HISTORY, AND CHEMICAL SOCIETIES OF EDINBURGH. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1819. Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoode, Printers-Street, London. TO SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, M.P. DEAR SIR, The privilege of long acquaintance, and a sufficient experience of the kindness of your disposition, might be an adequate inducement to dedicate the following pages to your notice. To this offering, I am however impelled by motives, which boast a higher descent, and more enlightened character:--an admiration of your superior talents, and the adaptation of those excellent endowments, to the advancement and happiness of the human race,--and by which you have been enabled "The applause of listening senates to command." The subjects to which I now solicit the permission of prefixing your name, were once your favourite study; and I am induced to consider your profound researches into the nature and constitution of the human intellect, as the basis of that high reputation, you now so deservedly maintain among the wise and dignified of your contemporaries. I am, Dear Sir, with respect, esteem, and the kindest feelings, Your very obedient servant, JOHN HASLAM. PREFACE. The indulgence of the public has been already extended to several works which I have submitted to its decision on the subject of INSANITY; and the same favourable interpretation is now solicited for the present performance,--which attempts the more difficult investigation of SOUND MIND. In treating of Mental Derangement, I became very early sensible, that a competent knowledge of the faculties and operations of the Intellect in its healthy state, was indispensably necessary to him, who professed to describe its disorders:--that in order to define the aberrations, the standard should be fixed. There was indeed no lack of theories and systems of Metaphysic; and although they essentially differed, many possessed the highest reputation. Amidst this distraction of conflicting opinions, which no mediator could adequately reconcile,--without daring to contend with a host of discrepancies, or presuming to demolish the lofty edifices which scholastic Pneumatology had reared,--I determined to throw off the shackles of authority, and think for myself. For it was evident, on the freehold ground of literature, that there is "ample room and verge enough" for every man to build his own tenement;--and the present construction is too lowly to intercept another's prospect, and without those ornaments that might provoke the jealousy, or challenge the rivalship of surrounding inhabitants. The mind of every rational person may be considered as an elaboratory, wherein he may conduct psychological experiments:--he is enabled to analyze his own acquirement,--and if he be sufficiently attentive, he may note its formation and progress in his children:--and thus trace the accumulation of knowledge, from the dawn of infancy to the meridian of manhood. The prosecution of these means, according to my own views, will qualify the diligent observer, to become the Natural Historian and Physiologist of the Human Mind. In the comparative survey of the capacities of Man, and the intelligence of animals, the contrast has appeared so striking, that it was impossible wholly to abstain from the inference of his future destination:--notwithstanding very different conclusions had been extorted by some modern physiologists. It has been often remarked, that the practitioners of the healing art, have been very moderately impressed with a solicitude for the future. This observation, in some late instances, has been unhappily confirmed:--but it would be unjust to visit the whole tribe with a sweeping and acrimonious censure, for the transgressions of a few. The reproach has, however, long existed. The venerable father of English poetry, in his description of the Doctor, has passed a high and merited compliment to his learning; which at that period was a heterogeneous compound of Greek, Latin, and Arabian lore, mysteriously engrafted on Galenicals and Astrology:--yet with this courteous concession to his professional science he could not refrain from a dry and sarcastic memorandum, that "His study was but little in the Bible." Throughout this inquiry, the province of the Theologian has never been invaded:--it has been my humble toil to collect and concentrate the scattered rays which emanate from natural reason,--a pale phosphoric light, and "uneffectual" glow, compared with the splendid and animating beams, which issue from the source of divine communication. As the object of these contributions, has been principally to convey my opinions, concerning the formation of the human mind, from the superior capacities that man possesses, many subjects have been left untouched, which, in similar works, urge an important claim to the attention of the reader. Among these neglected articles, the IMAGINATION is the chief omission:--of which many authors have treated so copiously, and so well. According to my own views, the consideration of this faculty was not essential to the outline that has been traced;--and it has been rather deemed a graceful embellishment, than a constituent pillar of the edifice of mind. This gay attirer of thought, that decks passion and sentiment, is also the prolific parent of fiction;--and justly banished from the retreats of sober demonstration.--To the science of numbers,--to mathematical precision, and to the whole range of experimental philosophy,--Imagination does not lend her glowing and gaudy tints. No vestiges of her colouring can be discovered in Divine ordinances, or in the systems of human jurisprudence:--neither in the Ten Commandments nor in the Statutes at Large. Imagination may indeed enliven the cold pages of historical narrative, and blend the "Utile Dulci"--but even here she is a profane intruder: and a vigilant eye must be directed, lest, in some unguarded moment, her seductive blandishments should decoy the nakedness of truth. A sedate and unambitious recorder of facts, does not presume to describe her regions, or to enumerate her attributes. That delightful task must be performed by her votaries, "The poet, the lunatic, and the lover;" nor should the Orator be excluded from his fair participation and kindred alliance with this airy and fascinating group. If the present essay should conform to nature, and be founded in truth,--should it assist the young inquirer, and more especially the medical student,--for whom no compendium of the science of mind has been hitherto prepared; my own expectations will be fully answered; and this scantling may probably lead some more capable person to an extensive investigation, enlarged comprehension, and luminous arrangement of the phenomena of the human intellect. JOHN HASLAM. 57. Frith-Street, Soho-Square, 1st November, 1819. CONTENTS. Page Perception 1 Memory 16 On the intellectual superiority which man has acquired by speech, and the possession of the hand 28 On the nature and composition of language, as applied to the investigation of the phenomena of mind 59 On will or volition 74 On thought or reflection 110 On reason 135 Instinct 160 Conclusion 182 _Works by the same Author._ I. Observations on Madness and Melancholy. II. Illustrations of Madness. III. On the Moral Management of the Insane. IV. Medical Jurisprudence, as it relates to Insanity. V. A Letter to the Governors of Bethlem Hospital. SOUND MIND. PERCEPTION. The faculty of perceiving the objects which surround us, is an important feature in the history of mind; but by what means or contrivance this is effected, can only be known to the Supreme Being, who has thus been pleased to endow us; and our utmost endeavours to detect the _modus operandi_ will be puerile and unavailing. The first operations of the infant are to educate its senses, in order to become acquainted, through these organs, with surrounding objects. This, in the human species, is a process of very slow attainment; and our information concerning this subject, must be derived from attentively watching the progress of the infant itself; as of these early perceptions, for a reason which will be afterwards assigned, we retain no distinct recollection. For the manner in which we become acquainted with the objects in nature, we have appropriated a term, which was probably supposed to be explanatory of the process, by which we received our intelligence of these phenomena, and have accordingly termed it _Perception_. The intrinsic meaning of this word is the taking, seizing, or grasping, of an object, from the Latin _Cum_ and _Capio_, and the same figure pervades most of the European languages. This term may sufficiently apply to the information we derive from the organ of touch; but it affords no solution of that which we obtain through the medium of the other senses, as sight, smell, and hearing. It has been the bane of philosophy, and the great obstacle to its advancement, that we have endeavoured to penetrate that which is inscrutable; and in this vain pursuit, we have neglected to detect and cultivate that which is obvious, and the legitimate province of our research. These organs of sense are the instruments by which we obtain our different perceptions; they are the tests by which we become acquainted with the objects of nature. When we view the newly-born infant, and consider its state for many weeks after it has become a member of our community, we are then enabled to form some opinion of the almost insensible gradations, by which it acquires its perceptions. An enumeration of the progressive steps of this tardy process is within the power of any patient and accurate observer; but this detail does not constitute a part of the plan which has been adopted. It has been endeavoured by writers on this subject, to establish a distinction between perception and sensation, and the reader for his information may consult their works: they do not however appear to have founded this distinction on any obvious difference, nor to have adduced sufficient reasons for their separate establishment, as independent properties of the nerves. To feel, to experience a sensation, or to perceive, implies consciousness; it is that which is transmitted by the nerves to the sensorium, either by the organs of sense, or by the internal nerves; as pain, or feelings of which we are conscious. Consciousness is the test, the evidence, the proof of sensation or perception. This point has been adverted to, in order that terms should not be multiplied without a distinct and essential difference of meaning. The five senses, together with some auxiliaries, which will be the subjects of future notice, may be considered as the instruments or agents, by which the edifice of mind is constructed. In the act of perceiving by the different senses, there are some circumstances, which are particularly deserving of attention. In order that perception may fully and certainly take place, it is necessary that the person should be undisturbed; he ought to be exempt from external intrusions, and internal perturbation. During this process the respiration is in general more slowly drawn, the body endeavours to maintain a perfect quietude, and its position becomes fixed. When we perceive objects by the eye, this organ becomes fixed and the lips are usually closed. During our examinations by the touch, the eye is also fixed, the breathing is suspended, and the lips brought into contact: the fingers are separated, and their more delicately tangent surfaces applied to the object with their utmost expansion. In the exercise of audible perception, the neck is stretched forth, and the ear applied to the quarter from whence the sound appears to issue; the mouth is partly open to conduct the vibrations to the Eustachian tube. When we acquire intelligence by the smell, the lips are very firmly closed, the nostrils become dilated, and the inspiration of air through them is conducted by short and successive inhalations. From the connection between the smell and organs of taste, (and this association is more remarkable in some animals than in man,) it is difficult to describe the process, which, however, principally consists, when minutely tasting, in moving the tongue (the principal discriminator) on the palate:--but when urged by strong appetite as in the act of feeding, and when divested of the restraints which refined society imposes; the nostrils are widely expanded, the eye is keenly directed to the portion, and the hands are busily employed. Experience has sufficiently informed us that the organs of sense must be in a healthy state, in order to the due conveyance of perception. When the function of any organ is altogether defective, as when a person is born blind, he is cut off from all perception of light and of visible objects. If by nature deaf, from the intonation of sounds; and many unhappy instances of such connate defects abound among our species. In one particular subject, both these defects existed from birth; so that the sum of his intelligence was conveyed by the touch, smell, and taste, or in other words, his mind was exclusively composed of the perceptions he derived from these senses. This case will be more particularly noticed in a subsequent chapter. The alterations which take place in the state of our perceptions from a morbid cause, are generally known. Thus a person labouring under a catarrh, will be unable to detect the odours which certain substances communicate in a healthy condition of his olfactory organ. In fever excited by a disordered stomach, the taste will become vitiated, and the partial obstruction of the ear by accumulated wax, will impress him with the bubbling of a pot, the singing of birds, or the ringing of bells. The same law that produces fatigue in a muscle from exertion, appears to obtain in the organs of sense. If they be excited by their appropriate stimuli too violently, or for a too long continuance, fatigue or languor is produced, their percipience is diminished, or confusedly conveyed; and they require a period of rest for their refreshment. As we advance in our enquiries into the nature of perception, it will be evident that we cannot long continue to treat of it as a simple act, or as a distinct faculty. The organs by which we obtain our different perceptions are not insulated parts, but communicate with a substance, termed the brain, and which is continued through the vertebral column. The ultimate expansion of a nerve of sense, has been termed its sentient or percipient extremity; and where it is united to the brain, its sensorial insertion. If we were to divide the optic nerve where it passes into the foramen, taking care to leave the apparatus of the eye uninjured, the visual organ would be deprived of its function, and the person or animal would be completely blind of that eye; so that a communication with the brain is necessary for the purpose or act of perception. As therefore the union of the nerve with the brain is indispensably necessary for the purpose or act of perception, we are naturally led to inquire into the properties of this substance, termed the brain. Before we proceed to this part of the subject, it will be proper to notice a fact which is of frequent occurrence. In amputations of the thigh, at the moment the femoral nerve is divided, it often occurs that a pain is distinctly felt in the toes; and after the limb has been removed, even for many months, the same painful feeling of these lost extremities is occasionally experienced. This circumstance would render it probable that the larger branch of the nerve becomes itself impregnated with the sensation it transmits: indeed it is a continuation of the same substance, from its sentient extremity to its sensorial insertion. This intimate union of nerve and brain may be further illustrated: it has been already noticed, that a morbid state of the organs of sense will convey inaccurate perceptions; and it is equally certain, that disease of the brain, will excite phantasms, which appear as realities to the sensitive organs. As consciousness is implied, in order to constitute the act of perception, it is of some importance to investigate the nature and meaning of this term. The consciousness of _having experienced_ a perception by any of the senses would be an act of memory: consciousness, therefore, applies to the past; and it also accompanies our prediction of the future. When a person is writing a letter, he is at the time, conscious that his own hand is forming the characters; if this letter be afterwards submitted to his inspection, he is conscious that he wrote it; and if he be desired to write it over again, he is conscious that it will bear, both to himself and others, the character of his hand-writing. Consciousness, therefore, accompanies human action through all its tenses: it is equivalent to the knowledge we possess of our own personal identity, the evidence of mind, and therefore must accompany every act of intelligence. Thus we are equally conscious that we perceive, remember, think or reflect, and reason. As consciousness must accompany every act of perception, it follows that we cannot be impressed with more than one at the same instant; for it can never be contended that we are able to experience two acts of consciousness at the same moment. The very term two, implies repetition or succession, and we could as well conceive the possibility of being, at the same time, in two different places. As far as we are warranted to infer from the evidences it affords, an infant appears to possess no consciousness; but it may be considered of early acquirement, and coeval with distinctness of perception. These few preliminary remarks concerning perception have been submitted to the notice of the reader, in order to advance to another subject. The faculties which constitute mind are so blended, and dependant on each other, that it would only hazard confusion to proceed. But this subject will be resumed.[1] FOOTNOTE: [1] There exists already furnished, a considerable mass of facts, dispersed in various works, which might be advantageously collected into a volume in order to illustrate the phenomena and laws of perception, and more especially to display the mutual assistance they afford to each other, and the superior knowledge which we have derived from their united co-operation. MEMORY. Allow a human being to be gifted with his five senses, exquisitely attuned for the conveyance of those perceptions, which the separate organs and common sensory are destined to receive: let him during fifty, or as many thousand years, scent the most delicious perfumes,--convey to his palate the flavour of the choicest viands,--to his eyes, present the fairest prospects in nature,--impart to his ear the sweetest music, and regale his touch with smoothness and warmth; moreover let him be conscious of each individual perception he receives:--what would he be at the expiration of this period, without recollection? He would be no more than a sheet of white paper, that had been carried round the world to receive, through the camera obscura, its most delightful views; or the bare walls of Westminster Abbey, after the commemoration of Handel. Perception and consciousness, therefore, although indispensable to the building up of mind, are by themselves inefficient and useless without the adjunct of memory. The writers who have treated of the human faculties, have usually and properly bestowed an elaborate investigation to the developement of this interesting subject: indeed, when men first began to describe the operations of their own minds, it might be expected that they would treat copiously of its most important function; but the nature of this endowment has received no elucidation from the aggregate of their labours. The term memory has been Anglicised from the Latin Memoria; yet we possess two other words of similar meaning, and from their derivation, in a certain degree, explanatory of this process; namely, to REMEMBER and RECOLLECT. Thus if an individual have seen any particular animal, and given sufficient attention to perceive accurately its construction, so as to possess a complete perception of the different parts or _members_ of which it is composed; he would, in the absence of the animal, be enabled to remember it. If his hand had been duly educated he might form its model, or chisel it from a block of marble; or on a plain surface, according to the rules of art, might make a drawing of the animal, and with such exactitude of its different _members_, that it would appear to those who compared it with the original, that he perfectly _re-membered_ it. To recollect is only a different figure for the same process, and implies to re-gather or collect, those parts which have been scattered in different directions. The perceptions we obtain by our different senses are all capable of being remembered, but in different ways. Those which we derive from sight, may be communicated by the pictures of the objects, which become the means of assisting our recollection, and thus form a durable record of our visible perceptions; of course excepting motion, which pictures cannot represent; but motion, or change of place, implies a succession of perceptions. Yet this manner of record does not directly apply to the other senses: we can exhibit no pictures of odours, tastes, the lowing of a cow, the roaring of a lion, or the warbling of birds; much less do hardness and softness admit of any picturesque representations as their record. The memory of animals seems to be in the simple state: they have, through their organs, different perceptions; and in many instances these organs are more susceptible than those of the human subject. The ear of some timid species is enabled to collect the feeblest vibrations of sound, and which are inaudible to us. The eye of some birds can tolerate an effulgence of light, that would dazzle and confuse our vision; and others "do their errands," in a gloom where we could not distinguish. In certain animals the smell is so acute, that it becomes a sense of the highest importance for the purposes of their destination. But animals are incapable of recording their perceptions by any signs or tokens: they therefore possess no means of recalling them, and their recollection can only be awaked from the recurrence of the object, by which the perception was originally excited: whereas man, by the possession of speech, and of the characters in which it is recorded, can at all times revive his recollection of the past. It is generally acknowledged that our memory is in proportion to the distinctness of the perception, and also to the frequency of its repetition. The simple acts of perception and memory appear to be the same in man and animals; and there are many facts which would induce us to suppose, if these faculties be identical in their nature, that the endowment of the latter is more excellent. This conjecture is hazarded from the greater susceptibility of the organs of some animals, and from their wonderful recollection of tracks which they have traversed. Among the phenomena of memory there are two very curious occurrences, and for which no adequate explanation has been hitherto afforded. Many of the transactions of our early years appear to be wholly obliterated from our recollection; they have never been presented as the subject of our thoughts, but after the lapse of many years, have been accidentally revived, by our being placed in the situation which originally gave them birth. Although there are numerous instances on record, and some perhaps familiar to every reader, I shall prefer the relation of one which came under my immediate observation. About sixteen years ago, I attended a lady at some distance from town, who was in the last stage of an incurable disorder. A short time before her death, she requested that her youngest child, a girl about four years of age, might be brought to visit her, and which was accordingly complied with. The child remained with her about three days. During the last summer some circumstances led me to accompany this young lady to the same house. Of her visit when a child she retained no trace of recollection, nor was the name of the village even known to her. When arrived at the house, she had no memory of its exterior; but on entering the room where her mother had been confined, her eye anxiously traversed the apartment, and she said, "I have been here before, the prospect from the window is quite familiar to me, and I remember that in this part of the room there was a bed and a sick lady, who kissed me and wept." On minute inquiry none of these circumstances had ever occurred to her recollection during this long interval, and in all probability they would never have recurred but for the locality which revived them. In a work professedly the fabric of fancy, but which is evidently a portrait from nature, and most highly finished,--in the third volume of Guy Mannering, the reader may peruse a similar but more interesting relation, where the return of Bertram to the scenes of his childhood, awakens a train of reminiscences which conduce to the developement of his history and legitimate claims. According to my own interpretation, however wonderful these phenomena of memory may appear, they merely afford examples of the simplest acts of recollection, excited by the recurrence of the original objects, at a period when language was little familiar: in the same manner as an animal, at a distant time brought into its former haunts, would remember the paths it had heretofore trodden. But there are some facts in the history of recollection which do not admit of any satisfactory solution. From these it appears, that persons in their childhood have learned a language which, from the acquirement and usage of another during many years, they have entirely forgotten; so that when spoken by others, they have been wholly unable to understand it: yet during the delirium of fever, or from inflammation of the brain and its membranes, in consequence of external injury, the former and forgotten language has been revived, and spoken with fluency: but after a restoration to health no traces of its recollection have remained. A remarkable case of this kind has been published by Mr. Abernethy; and a similar instance is recorded of the lady of an ambassador. These few preliminary observations have been submitted to the reader, in order to introduce a principal part of the subject to his notice, to prevent repetitions, and from the impossibility of considering the more curious and important phenomena of perception and memory as simple and unconnected endowments. ON THE INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY WHICH MAN HAS ACQUIRED BY SPEECH, AND THE POSSESSION OF THE HAND. In our investigations of the nature and offices of the human mind, we are immediately and forcibly struck with two important circumstances, which appear to have contributed in an especial manner to the superiority of man over all other animals. Let it be admitted, without at present discussing the question, or adducing any arguments; that the constitution of the human intellect is of a higher quality, or of a finer staple, than the intelligent principle of other creatures.[2] These two endowments with which man may be considered as exclusively gifted, and which, on a deliberate survey, appear principally to have conduced to his pre-eminence in the range of intellectual creation, are speech and the possession of his hands. One of the chief characteristics by which man is distinguished from the other animals, is the capability he possesses of transmitting his acquirements to posterity. The acquirements of other animals perish with them: they are incapable of recording their achievements, and, as a community, they are stationary. If the reason be sought, it will be immediately found, that they do not enjoy the appropriate organs; and this defect will be detected to arise from their want of speech and hands. There may perhaps arise some of the difficulties already experienced, in the separate consideration of these human attributes,--speech and the hand; as much of the superiority which man possesses has resulted from their combined assistance. It is, however, important to treat of each individually, as far as their separate influence and effects can be distinctly traced. The consideration of speech or significant sound, would naturally introduce an enquiry into its structure and philosophy: but as this knowledge can be collected from the works of many enlightened writers on these subjects, it is unnecessary to obtrude on the reader that which he may find already prepared. Speech is _ordinarily_ acquired by the ear[3], and the sound conveyed through that organ is imitated by the voice. When any object in nature is named by its appropriate articulate sound, as a tree, a fish, a horse, if the object be duly noted and the term remembered, it will mutually, on the presentation of the object, recall the term; or if the term be mentioned, the recollection of the object will arise. Without reverting to the formation of words by letters, or proceeding to the structure of sentences by words, which is the province of the grammarian, it will be seen that these significant sounds, enable human beings to convey to each other the perceptions they have experienced, or are impressed with, at the moment of communication. This endowment of speech to man would, alone, have constituted him vastly superior to the other animals. But whatever might have been his attainments, either from his own discoveries or from the experience of his contemporaries, his departure from life would have consigned the products of his genius and wisdom to the treachery and mutilation of another's recollection. Even in the enlightened and polished period of our present existence, we are fully acquainted with the loss or addition which a fact experiences, from being transmitted through a succession of narrators. Had man been merely furnished with speech, without the means of recording his acts and reflections, we might indeed have preserved by tradition, the names of Homer, Virgil, Cicero, Shakspeare, and Milton; but their works,--those majestic columns which now support the temple of fame, would have perished, had there not been a contrivance to record the productions of their genius. This art, of conferring permanence on the significant sounds of the human voice, has taught us to appreciate and revere the taste and wisdom of our predecessors; and to feel, that although their bodies are buried in peace, yet their names live for evermore:--but more especially this contrivance has preserved the laws of nations, and above all other blessings, has transmitted, in the Sacred Volume, the commandments of the living God. From the brief notice which has been bestowed on this subject, it will be seen, that man could have made but inconsiderable advances in the scale of intellectual progression, by speech alone;--that how much soever this faculty might have elevated him above animals, by endowing his perceptions with intelligence, and rendering his thoughts the circulating medium of his community; yet had he remained without the power of registering the edicts of his mind, language would have expired in its cradle; and as the body mingles with its mother-earth, intelligent sound would have been blended and lost in the medium that produced it. The next subject to be considered, (and its importance will justify an ample review, and minute consideration,) is the hand; a member which may be considered, with some trifling exceptions, as exclusively bestowed on man. The wonderful construction of this part of the human body might be sufficiently exemplified by its achievements. Its anatomy has not, hitherto, been so minutely investigated, as to demonstrate the almost infinite variety of motions to which it is adapted; nor has it been sufficiently compared with the somewhat analogous structure and function in certain of the simiæ, in the claw of the parrot, or with the proboscis of the elephant. At the extremity of the fingers, in the human hand, and on their inner surface, resides the organ of Touch; a sense, of which animals are comparatively deficient. Touch, is distinguished from feeling, which it is the general property of all the nerves to convey, and this feeling is likewise accompanied with consciousness. Thus pain may be felt in the different organs of sense, without any corresponding perception, which it is their separate office to import. Although the acute organ of touch has its seat at the extremity of the fingers, yet the whole surface of the skin (of the human subject) is susceptible, but in an inferior degree, of tangible perceptions. It is sensible of heat and cold, of hard and soft, rough and smooth. The tongue enjoys also a considerable capability of tangible discrimination; but let any person attempt to ascertain the state of his pulse, by applying the tongue to the wrist, he will find it a very unsatisfactory test.[4] It has been already observed, that the perception of objects conveyed through the organ of vision, may be represented by drawings, so as sufficiently and accurately to convey the same perception to the eye of another: thus we recognise the likeness of a person by his portrait; the view of a known country from the landscape; the quadruped, bird, or insect, by its picture: but the perceptions of the organ of touch, can only be communicated through the medium of language; and the same may be observed concerning those derived from the smell and taste. We may indeed submit the same objects of touch, smell, and taste, to a number of persons, who, in all probability, (their organs being similar,) would be impressed with the same perceptions: but these perceptions, recollected, and the objects which excited them absent, can only be communicated through the medium of significant sound. It may be a subject of curious investigation, although foreign to our present enquiry, whether man, in possession of articulate organs, discovered speech, and imposed names on his perceptions; or whether he was originally gifted with this endowment. Without attempting to discuss this question, it is sufficient to remark, that the structure and composition of our own language, and of its northern kindred, afford sufficient evidence of a very rude and necessitous origin. After man had acquired the means of communicating his perceptions by significant sounds, the next important discovery was the art of recording them, so that they might serve as the vehicle of intelligence to his distant contemporaries, or be transmitted to posterity as the sources of improvement. The human hand is the immediate agent by which this contrivance is displayed. It is not intended to trace the history of this wonderful and precious discovery, but to remark, that human ingenuity, has likewise established the record of sounds which are not significant, and which are termed the notations of music. The science of accurate admeasurements has been exclusively discovered by man; and for the attainment of this important acquisition, it will be seen that the hand has been chiefly and progressively instrumental. When we contemplate the present state of man, in our own nation, surrounded by the conveniences which gratify his wants, and behold him practised in their enjoyment, we are little disposed to revert to that period of his history, when he struggled to continue his existence, and trace his tardy progression from rudeness to refinement. Pleas'd with himself, the coxcomb rears his head, And scorns the dunghill where he first was bred. Although we now measure space and time, bodies solid and fluid, heat and its absence with the facility of a single glance; yet if we consider the slow, and painful steps, by which such acquirements have been attained, we shall be forcibly impressed, how much we are the creatures of patient experiment, and also how mainly the hand has contributed to our advancement. If we investigate the standards of admeasurement, we find that many have been derived from the human body, and more especially from its operative instrument, the hand. That the members and dimensions of our own body should have been the original standards of measurement is most natural, and the terms in which they are conveyed afford a sufficient illustration of the fact. Thus, we have a nail; _pollex_, _pouce_, _pulgada_, Swedish _tum_, for an inch; which word has been misapplied by our Saxon predecessors, and corrupted from the Latin _uncia_, which related only to weight. We still measure by digits, by fingers' breadth, by hands high. Cubit from _cubitus_, was formerly employed. We now retain ell, _aune_, _ulna_. Foot, pace, _pas_, _pes_. Yard, not as Mr. Tooke supposed from the Saxon gyrwan, to prepare, but from gyrdan, _cingere_, and is employed to represent the girth of the body. Fathom, the distance of the arms when extended to embrace, from which the meaning is implied in most languages.[5] But it will be immediately perceived, that measurement could not proceed to any considerable extent, could neither be compounded by addition, nor subdivided, without the employment and comprehension of numbers. In our childhood we are taught the knowledge of numbers; and those who have superintended the work of education, must have witnessed the difficulty of impressing on the mind of the child, this kind of information. Alphabetic characters, compared with numbers, are readily acquired: whether it be from the imperfect manner, in which the science of numbers is usually taught, or from the actual difficulty in comprehending the subject, it is not pretended to determine; although, from some considerations, the latter is most probable. The names of different objects are easily acquired, and children examine such objects by their different senses, more especially by the eye and touch; they become desirous of learning their properties, or of becoming acquainted with their construction: and this investigation affords them delight, and excites or gratifies their curiosity. But numbers possess no such attraction; numbers, do not involve any of the obvious properties of these objects, neither their colour, shape, sound, smell, or taste; it therefore becomes perplexing for them to comprehend, if five similar substances, as so many apples, or nuts, be arranged before them, why each, should bear a name, different from the thing itself, and different from each other: why this nut should be termed one, another two, and the next three. In acquiring a knowledge of numbers, as far as the senses are concerned, the eye and the touch are especially exercised; but it appears that the touch is the corrector of the sight: if fifty pieces of money be laid on a table, they will sooner and more accurately be numbered by the touch, than the eye; and we know in other instances, that the motion of the hand is quicker than the discernment of the sight. There are many circumstances, although they do not amount to a proof, which might induce us to consider, that the human hand has much contributed to our knowledge of numbers.[6] As far as we possess any direct evidence, none of the animals are capable of numerating; and this constitutes an essential difference between them and man in their intellectual capacities. In states of weakness of mind, this defect in the power of numerating, is very observable, and forms a just and admitted criterion of idiotcy; and it is well known that such persons exercise the organ of touch in a very limited degree, compared with those of vigorous capacity: their fingers are likewise more taper, and their sentient extremities less pulpy and expanded. The same state of the organ of touch may be remarked in some lunatics who have become idiotic, or where the hands have been confined for a considerable time. Although in our own language, we have not been able to discover any rational etymology of the units, that is, what was originally the meaning of one, two, three, &c., or of what these units were the representatives, we have, however, by the ingenuity of Mr. Tooke, a very probable account of the origin of ten, which means, that which includes, or comprehends all numeration; and that it does so include it, may be learned from the composition of eleven[7]; and if it should amount to no more than a curious coincidence, ten is the number of the manual extremities. Notwithstanding neither our own, nor any of the European tongues, afford us any probable solution of the actual meaning or import of the units, yet this contrivance is satisfactorily developed in the language of some of the African tribes, (vide Park's Travels, p. 337.) where it will be found, that when they had arrived at six, they proceeded by composition; not by the composition of six and one, to form seven, but by five and two. One--_Kidding_. Two--_Fidding_. Three--_Sarra_. Four--_Nani_. Five--_Soolo_. Six--_Seni_. Seven--_Soolo ma Fidding_--Five and Two. Eight--_Soolo ma Sarra_--Five and Three. Nine--_Soolo ma Nani_--Five and Four. Ten--_Nuff_. As numbers must have been acquired in progression,--first one, then two, &c. there appears to be considerable difficulty in conceiving, of what the increase or addition would be the representative, except by adding the already designated numbers together: but our own units do not bear any ostensible marks of such composition, nor do the northern numerals, from whence our own have been imported. If we were now called on to construct a new language, and invent terms for the units, there are no objects familiar to me, which would suggest appropriate terms, as the types of the different units; and it is presumed, as far as we have extended our researches, that the names of things are not arbitrary, but have been imposed for some real or supposed reason. When we consider the importance of numbers to man, as an intellectual being, and compare the advancement he has made by this knowledge, beyond the animals who have wanted the means of acquiring such information, the importance of investigating this curious subject will be fully acknowledged. Without numbers, by which the divisions of time, space, and value are characterised, man could have possessed no knowledge of the order and succession of events; he would, by wanting precise standards, have remained ignorant of admeasurements; and without the definite proportions which numbers confer, property would be a vague and uncertain name. From these remarks an opportunity is now presented, to enumerate the important achievements of the human hand; but as a powerful objection may be urged, against the views which have been sketched out concerning this subject, it will be proper to notice them, in order to refer their discussion to another and more appropriate chapter. It will naturally be stated that the hand is the mere auxiliary, in fact, the servant, of the mind; and in a healthy state of intellect is regulated by its directions, in the performances it executes. The truth of this, it is not intended to deny; but the examination of the objection must be referred to that part of the work, which treats of the influence, which does so regulate and direct, namely, the will, or, as it has been more scholastically termed, volition. We readily acknowledge that he who is born blind can have no perception of visible objects, and that the same negation may be extended to the other senses when defective: thus, if man had been created without hands, and, consequently, without the acute organ of touch, which resides in the extremities of these members, we must at least have been strangers to the "cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, and the solemn temples" which he has reared. Had the upper extremities of the human body terminated at the wrist, such a man as Phidias might have existed, but his occupation would have been unknown. Thus truncated, how would the fleet have been constructed which reaped the laurel at the Nile, at Copenhagen, and Trafalgar? The eternal city could not have existed, nor would our own metropolis have had a being. If we reflect for an instant, we shall perceive that all the conveniences we enjoy, all the arts we practise, and the sciences which elevate and dignify our nature, could never have been realised in a handless community. Speech might indeed have prevailed, but its record could not have been established, and intelligent sounds would only have served to breathe forth the lamentations of misery and despair, or the accents of discontent. We must have remained naked, and perished from the inclemency of weather: man would have owed "the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool." It would be superfluous to pursue this subject further, as the reader has only to consider the superior enjoyments, and accumulated monuments, of art and of wisdom, which the mind of man has produced by the agency of his hand. "Molto opró egli col senno ed con la mano." However it may gratify the pride of man, to find himself gifted with intellectual endowments of a higher order, and distinguished as the lord of creation; yet he must, on reflection, regard this superiority as a "painful pre-eminence." The possession of speech, and hands, the prompt executors of his will, have enabled him to become the perpetrator of crimes to which the tribes of animals are strangers. Language has exclusively furnished man with the means of promulgating the result of his perceptions and thoughts: he thereby becomes capable of communicating to others, that which he has observed, or the opinions he has formed; and so highly has this accuracy of relation been estimated, in all periods of civilised society, that it has been proudly denominated the truth. But the possession of the same faculty of speech, has often induced him to relate that which never occurred, or to disown that which actually took place; and this assertion or denial has been severely reprobated and stigmatised by the appellation of a lie. It is unnecessary to enumerate the catalogue of the articulate vices which the tongue can commit, or sully the dignity of human nature, by the recollection that its lord has been convicted of perjury, slander, blasphemy, and libel. Thus, the hand, this admirable instrument, the elaborations of which excite our wonder and delight, whether we contemplate the chiselled monuments of Grecian art, or the curious manufactures of modern days,--all that is tasteful in art, or auxiliary to science,--even this plastic and creative member, the faithful notary of thought,--becomes the prostituted engine of the vilest fraud, or foulest atrocity. The same hand that fashioned the Minerva of the Parthenon might have picked a lock, or directed a dagger. It will be found, on an accurate investigation, that all laws, which are the VOICE of those whom we have delegated, or who may have assumed such power, and which are recorded by the hand, are principally directed to the lesions against individuals or society, which proceed from speech, or are perpetrated by the hand. FOOTNOTES: [2] It must be felt by the reader that all the epithets, which can be applied to designate this superiority, must be of material character and signification:--whether we say superior structure, texture, purity, &c. In fact, we possess no appropriate expressions, to characterise that which is not material: but this poverty of language, affords no ground for the materiality of mind; on the contrary, it is a strong argument against such doctrine, that we are obliged to clothe the phenomena of mind in the garb of metaphor; for material objects can be well defined according to their obvious properties. [3] Those who are born deaf are taught to imitate articulate sounds independently of the ear. [4] The reader may refer to works on comparative anatomy, for information concerning this sense in animals. They all agree that no animal possesses a complete hand, and that the thumb is especially defective in size, and in the strength which enables it to act in opposition to the combined force of the fingers. The sense of touch in many animals appears to reside in the large and fleshy nostrils, which appear highly sensible; and it is also evident, that in these the touch has an intimate alliance with their sense of smell. [5] It is equally curious to observe that geographical positions, and the principal features of sea and land, have derived their origin from the rude anatomy of the human body. Thus, in a short enumeration we have cape or _head_-land, ness, noss, or _nose_; the _brow_ of a mountain; _tongue_ of land; _mouth_ of a river; _chaps_ of the channel; _neck_ of land; _arm_ of the sea; coast, _costæ_, the ribs. We are said to penetrate into the _heart_ of the country, or to remove to the _back_ settlements. We descend into the _bowels_ of the earth, in order to discover a _vein_ of ore. We ascend from the _foot_ of the mountain; and from its _ridge_ (back) survey the prospect surrounding. Numerous additions might be contributed by further recollection. [6] On many occasions we observe the hands to be the natural refuge for the destitute in arithmetic, and therefore are not surprised at finding many persons counting by their fingers. Some rude nations are said not to have advanced in their numeration beyond five: this may perhaps be uncertain and difficult to prove; but it will be shewn that when others have advanced to ten, that seven has been the compound of five and two, eight of five and three, &c. [7] It is not uninteresting to examine the contrivances that have been resorted to, in order to express the number eleven. The Greeks had [Greek: _endeka_], one (and subaudit) ten; the Romans _undecem_; and a similar adoption has been employed by the southern nations of Europe. The northern people expressed eleven, by _one left_ (after ten, subaudit.) thus Caxton states his Recuyels of Troy to have been "ended and fynished in the holy cyte of Colen, the 19th day of Septembre, in the yere of our sayd Lord God, a thousand four hundred sixty and _enleven_." _En_, in old English, means one, and _leven_ is the past participle of, to leave, formerly written leve. ON THE NATURE AND COMPOSITION OF LANGUAGE, AS APPLIED TO THE INVESTIGATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF MIND. Mind, is an abstract term for all the phenomena of intelligence; and in order to describe them, they have usually been denominated powers, or faculties of the mind: we therefore commonly speak concerning the mind, as of an existence endowed with these properties.[8] It has been already confessed, that we are at present uninformed, and in all probability shall remain ignorant of the nature and operation of our intellectual powers: at least, we shall never be able to comprehend the manner in which we perceive the objects that surround us, nor to explain how we recollect them when they are absent; yet under this acknowledged inability we have framed a language expressive of these powers and operations. This language therefore cannot be the type of such processes, as their nature and operation are unknown. The different terms that have been employed, have originated from the numerous hypotheses, which have prevailed on this subject: but so long as a perfect agreement subsists, concerning the meaning of these terms, it is of little importance; for as we have no knowledge of the actual processes, whereby we perceive, remember, or exert our will, the expressions we employ cannot be explanatory. The language of mind, therefore, is not peculiar, not derived as the nomenclature of modern chemistry, in which names are impregnated with the elements of their composition; but figurative or metaphorical, the vehicle of conjecture, and the ornament of hypothesis. The truth of these remarks, would be best illustrated by an enumeration and analysis of the terms, which have been applied, to designate the powers and operations of the human intellect. Were we now to occupy ourselves, in the construction of a more appropriate language, to designate and explain the phenomena of mind; we should, from our ignorance, be equally incompetent with those who have preceded us. Let the terms therefore remain, but endeavour to afford them a fixed and definite meaning, and suffer them to be so far analysed, as to detect their composition, and discover the reasons which imposed them. In this endeavour there will, however, be found considerable difficulty; especially as the minds of men are not yet agreed respecting the process, by which it is to be performed. There are, however, only two modes, to which we can resort, for the definite meaning of words; namely, etymology and authority. Considering the history of our own language, and the nature of its composition, we are enabled satisfactorily to investigate, not only the primitive sense of our terms, but likewise their exact signification, in the languages from whence we imported them: for there still remain, sufficient authentic materials, in our Saxon and Norman records, to verify their original meaning. If we enquire into the causes, which have operated to deflect these terms from their primitive sense, we shall find authority to be the principal source of such corruption; and this infirmity appears to have pervaded most of the languages of those nations which have produced poets, orators, and metaphysicians.[9] When we examine the nature of authority in language, as it now exists, we find it to be the arbitrary employment of words, by particular writers of acknowledged celebrity. Many have become authorities in our language, from having improved its construction; others, by the perspicuous arrangement of subject, by the force of their reasoning, or the light of their philosophy. Although we may allow the highest merit to these eminent writers, a praise, far beyond the dulness and drudgery of verbal criticism; yet it is by no means to be inferred, that they consequently become authorities, for the real and intrinsic meaning of words. It can never be expected, that the great mass of mankind should be etymologists: the generality must be regulated by the "jus et norma loquendi;" but if this jus, be the jus vagum, and the norma capricious, confusion must ensue, and they will scarcely be speaking the same language. Those who are dignified with the title of authorities, ought to agree; for the sound interpreters of the law should never differ. Language is the circulating medium of our thoughts; and the meaning of words much resembles the value of money. But great diversity of opinion prevails. In the minds of some philosophers, money means only metallic currency, which may be assayed, and its real value ascertained; and this seems to relate to etymology. Others less solid in their views, and gifted with a finer fabric of fancy, are disposed to consider the abstractions of paper to be equivalent to the concrete of bullion, and have accordingly constituted it the jus and norma by authority. To insist on the meaning of a word, because its interpretation has been previously assumed, carries no conviction of its truth. The "jus et norma loquendi," must ever prevail as the currency between human beings; but this acknowledgment should not, in the course of circulation, diminish, the undoubted right we possess, to detect and refuse such as are base or counterfeit. It will not be disputed, that some words bear a much higher importance than others. The names of familiar objects are of little consequence, because we can examine them by our senses, and thereby obtain just perceptions of their character and properties: but general or abstract terms, which are not the objects of sense, but the abbreviations of subjects of reflection, are of the highest interest to our advancement in knowledge and moral conduct. To exemplify the views that have been taken on this subject, three words have been selected:--_to feel_, _to ransack_, and the adjective, _naked_. Of the first, Dr. Johnson, the best authority we now possess, has given six different senses or acceptations as a verb active, and four, as a verb neuter, and has cited the different authorities. He says it is derived from the Anglo-Saxon, _felan_, without explaining what _felan_ means; it however means to feel: but the adduction of a word in another language, of similar sound and identical signification, does not impart meaning. Yet when we find that in the Anglo-Saxon _fell_ means _skin_, which is the seat of feeling, we directly understand the word and all its dependencies; as _fell_ of hair, _felt_ hat, _fell_-monger, _film_, which is a thin fine skin or pellicle. Thus we become enabled to understand and reconcile variety and extension of meaning, from the preservation of integrity of figure. The verb _to ransack_, is another example. Of this word Dr. Johnson has given three senses. According to him, it is derived from _ran_, Anglo-Saxon, and _saka_, Swedish, to search or seize; but we are not informed what _ran_ in Anglo-Saxon signifies, and it so happens that there is no such Swedish word as _saka_, to search. The word _ransack_, for which the Anglo-Saxons had _ransaka_, is derived to us from the Gothic, in which _razn_ (pronounced _ran_) signifies a house, and _sokjan_ to search; so that, _to ransack_, implies to search the house. To the adjective _naked_ Dr. Johnson has given four different meanings. Its etymology, he says, is from the Anglo-Saxon, _nacod_, which in that language was of similar signification: but this imparts no meaning. It is a compound word: _na_, in Anglo-Saxon, signifies _new_, and _cenned_, _born_, so that the condition of the _new-born_ child affords an appropriate interpretation of the term _naked_. To ordinary minds, that which is said to be authority is decisive[10]; a particular author of celebrity is cited, and thus the business concludes. The reasons, which induced him to employ the word in such particular sense, it is in most cases fruitless to enquire; as during their lives, authors have seldom been appreciated: so that the silence of death seems indispensable to procure the consent of authority. As language is the instrument of thought, the vehicle of intelligible communication among human beings, it is impossible to attach too high importance to its precise signification: the difficulties of effecting this concordance have been pointed out, but the remedy has not yet been applied. After all the investigation that has been given to this interesting subject, one leading fact seems indisputable, that all the terms which designate the faculties and operations of our minds, are of physical origin, as well as those which characterise the thinking or immaterial principle itself: and for this, there is sufficient reason; as all language, in order to be adapted for our use, in this state of existence, can only be the representative of the objects of our perceptions and reflections,--an instrument calculated for the meridian of this transitory life: for, when the holy light of happiness to come was revealed to the human race, it was found expedient, for their comprehension, to transmit its rays through a material prism.[11] FOOTNOTES: [8] Mr. Locke, as he advances in his essay, expresses considerable distrust of the existence of these powers and faculties of the mind. "Yet I suspect, I say, that this way of speaking of faculties has misled many into a confused notion of so many distinct agents in us, which had their several provinces and authorities, and did command, obey, and perform several actions, as so many distinct beings; which has been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity, and uncertainty in questions relating to them."--Vol. i. p. 192. 10th edition. [9] To afford a single illustration of this fact, let the verb to _bewray_ be selected, which, although a word of very different meaning, has been confounded with to _betray_. The meaning of the former is to discover, expose, and is derived from a Saxon verb bearing that sense; the latter, Dr. Johnson has derived from the French _trahir_, and has cited some instances, as authorities for its perverted sense. It is but justice to observe, that these words preserve their distinct and separate sense in all the instances where they have been employed, both in Shakspeare and the Bible. It may therefore be inferred, to have been a recent corruption. [10] Of this, Mr. Locke appears to have been fully sensible:--"When men are established in any kind of dignity, 'tis thought a breach of modesty for others to derogate any way from it, and question the authority of men who are in possession of it. This is apt to be censured, as carrying with it too much of pride, when a man does not readily yield to the determination of approved authors, which is wont to be received with respect and submission by others; and 'tis looked upon as insolence for a man to set up, and adhere to his own opinion, against the current stream of antiquity, or to put in the balance against that of some learned doctor, or otherwise approved writer. Whoever backs his tenets with such authorities, thinks he ought thereby to carry the cause; and is ready to stile it impudence in any one who shall stand out against them."--Locke's Works, vol. ii. p. 306. [11] This material prism is to be understood to apply to language; and in this view Newton himself surveyed the question. "For all language as applied to God, is taken from the affairs of men, by some resemblance, not indeed a perfect one, but yet existing to a certain degree."--Newton's Works, edit. Horsley, vol. iv. p. 430. ON WILL OR VOLITION. In the consideration of the nature and offices of the human mind, there is no subject of higher importance than the will, or volition. Every person must have observed, that he is capable of performing certain motions, which he is able to commence, to continue, and to arrest; and the same faculty is possessed by many animals. A slight degree of information will also instruct him, that there are certain motions of his animal frame, over which he has no immediate control. The motions which he is able to direct and regulate, have been termed voluntary; and those over which he possesses no influence or command, have been denominated involuntary motions. The most perfect instances of the latter are the pulsations of the heart, and the movements of the intestines, usually called peristaltic. The curiosity which is natural to man as an intelligent being, would of course prompt him to enquire into the cause of these phenomena, although the result of his investigations might be inadequate to the toil of his research: for, he would be as much puzzled to account for the influence by which certain muscles are moved at will, as he would at others which possess a determinate motion, and are not subject to this direction. While man continues in a healthy state, he is enabled to move at pleasure those muscles or instruments of motion which are subject to his will; and the involuntary muscles continue duly to perform their appropriate office; but in certain morbid states it sometimes occurs, that the exertion of the will to move a leg or arm is ineffectually directed, and however much we desire, wish, or will such motion, these limbs are disobedient.[12] This condition of the members has been termed paralytic: the will to move remains perfect; but the organs to be acted on are insensible to that influence which, in a sound state, excited them to motion. As in the healthy state the will has the power to produce motion, so it is also competent to prevent it; therefore to move or to abstain from motion, are equally the dictates of the will. But it not unfrequently happens, when we intend to thread a needle, to write our name, or to perform some surgical operation, that the will exerts all its influence to keep the hand steady for the due performance of these necessary acts; yet, notwithstanding these implicit commands, the hand continues to move in all directions, but those which could accomplish the object. So, that these muscles, ordinarily voluntary, become, in a certain degree, converted into involuntary muscles. A higher degree of this state prevails in the affection called St. Vitus' Dance, and likewise in some convulsive symptoms attendant on locked jaw, where the body is drawn with incredible violence. It may be noticed, that these states are attended with consciousness. Concerning the nature of this influence, termed the _will_, a great variety of discordant opinions prevail. To enumerate or refute these would be unprofitable labour, more especially as the majority are the mere assumptions of their particular authors. They all, however, seem to be agreed that the will is an inherent faculty, or component part of the mind; and some are induced to consider it as holding the highest office in the department of intellect. The only mode of investigating this subject satisfactorily, according to my own views, is to trace the progress of volition from its feeble commencement, to the full exercise of its important function,--from the dawn to the meridian. As a general observation, it may be remarked that the same influence of the will, which directs the movements of the body, is likewise exerted over the faculties of the mind; although generally in an inferior degree, both from the greater difficulty and less importance of the latter, for the ordinary purposes of life. When we observe the newly-born infant,--that helpless mass of animation,--we perceive no indications to induce us to conclude, that it possesses a voluntary power of directing its movements.[13] It is furnished with the organs of motion, but is unable to exert that influence which manifests direction; yet its involuntary motions continue perfect, and these, as will be subsequently explained, may be considered in their nature and effects as very similar to that, which, in animals, is termed instinct. In the progress of this enquiry, it will be seen that some degree of mental advancement must have been made, before the infant can _direct_ any of the motions of its body; because direction implies knowledge to an extent sufficient for the purposes of command, and also a consciousness of the effort. In the infant, all the organs of sense by degrees become awaked by their appropriate stimuli or objects, and perception is the result. Although we have no memory of our earliest perceptions, which are solely produced by the excitation of external objects, without any direction of the will; yet from the mental indications of the infant, these perceptions would seem to be confused and indistinct. It is some time before the eye appears to notice, and longer before the hand can grasp and manipulate the substances within its reach: in this state, volition would be superfluous if it were possessed. By slow gradations, we find the child capable of directing its eye, of listening to sounds, and of examining by the touch; and these imply the efforts of the will, which appear to be subsequent to perception. As we advance in knowledge, our perceptions, which are the sources of intelligence, are principally acquired by the agency of volition, which directs the organ to the object, but we still continue to be acted on involuntarily by forcible impressions, or striking phenomena. Previously to the acquirement of language, perception, memory, and volition are in their simplest state, such as we observe in animals, and as in them, we are only able to estimate the amount of their mental possessions, from the intellectual phenomena they display. In the infant, the separate and combined examination of objects by the eye and touch are the circumstances most deserving of notice. It may here be proper to explain why these earliest of our perceptions are never remembered in after-life. The long period of human infancy, is a powerful argument for the superiority of our species: the mind of man is built up by his own exertions, and his progress is in the ratio of his experience to his capacity: his mission is more important, and consequently requires a longer period to fulfil: he has few instincts; and the sum of his knowledge is the elaboration of his extended endowments. To have remembered the confused dawnings of his perceptions, the imperfect and obscure transmissions of his unpractised organs would have been superfluous, and the sources of error. In this early state, there is no medium by which his perceptions can be artificially connected; nor do they admit of communication or record. When language is acquired, our perceptions become "doubly armed," and impress the memory with additional effect: the employment of the term as the representative of the object, recalls the original perception, and thus invests the mental phantasm with "a local habitation and a name." Thus our earliest recollections are never anterior to a certain progress in the art of speech. As we possess the instruments of motion in our muscles, they would have been useless without the performance of their function, and our bodies would have been stationary. It is also equally evident that this office must be performed by ourselves, or fulfilled by others. It has been already pointed out that there are certain motions, essential to the preservation of our animal system, termed _involuntary_, which do not originate from ourselves, but are the directions of a superior power, and are effected independently of our experience and control: the other motions, that have been termed voluntary, are the result of acquirement or practice, and have been gradually formed by our exertions. The reader will now be prepared to understand the wisdom of this arrangement, which, in a future chapter, will be more copiously treated; and to feel that the superiority of man, as an intellectual being, and a responsible agent, consists in the formation of his own mind, and in the direction of his thoughts and actions. That we should exert our utmost endeavours to become acquainted with the nature of this influence, which we term the will, is most natural; but hitherto our researches have been wholly unavailing; and it should be recollected that the appearances of life cannot be accounted for by that which is inanimate, nor can the phenomena of intelligence be solved by material analogies. As we are possessed of the implements of motion, it is evident that they were constructed to accomplish their destined purpose; but of the intimate nature of the stimulus which goads them to action, we have no conception: it seems, however, certain that there exists a mutual consent,--a reciprocal subaudition,--a compact, the result of exercise and experience,--between the implements of motion and the will or influence which excites them. As far as we are able to discover, by the most attentive and deliberate examination of our own minds, we do not appear conscious of any intermediate perception, between the motive and the performance of the action, or the execution of the will. If it were allowable to indulge in analogical reasoning, which usually diverts us from the consideration of the subject, we might endeavour to illustrate this process by the firing of a pistol. When we have taken due aim, we have only to draw the trigger, which produces the explosion: in doing this, however, we perceive the emission of light from the combustion of the powder; but to this there is nothing analogous in the operation of the will:--the dictate of the will, and the motion excited, when watched with the utmost attention, appear instantaneous, and become synchronous by habit. Considering the celerity of our voluntary movements, there appears a good reason why no perceptible intervention should exist, to divert the mind from the immediate performance of the will. The correspondence of the motion to the intimation of the will, is the business of education and the performance of habit. The exertion of the will on the bodily organs having been generally described, it now remains to demonstrate its influence on the mind; and so far as we are enabled to discover, it appears to be performed by the same process. The direction of the several organs of sense to the examination of objects, is an act of the will, and has been named Attention; which, by some writers, has been deemed a peculiar and constituent faculty of the mind; but in the present view it is considered only as the practical result of the operation of volition on the organs of sense, on memory, and on reflection. The soundest mind (as far as it has been hitherto considered) may be attributed to him who possesses the most enduring control over the organs of sense, in order to examine objects accurately, and thereby to acquire a full and complete perception. That memory is the best, which can voluntarily and immediately produce that which has been committed to its custody; and that reflection is the most perfect, which is exclusively occupied with the subject of consideration. There seems also to be a considerable similarity between the morbid states of the instruments of voluntary motion, and certain affections of the mental powers: thus, paralysis has its counterpart in the defects of recollection, where the utmost endeavour to remember is ineffectually exerted; tremor may be compared with incapability of fixing the attention, and this involuntary state of muscles ordinarily subjected to the will, also finds a parallel, where the mind loses its influence on the train of thought, and becomes subject to spontaneous intrusions; as may be exemplified in reverie, dreaming, and some species of madness. As attention is considered an exertion of the will on the organs of sense and faculties of the mind, it may be allowable to remark on the nature and meaning of the term. It was evidently imposed under a prevailing hypothesis, that the mind possessed a power of stretching or extending itself to the objects of its perception, or to the subjects of reflection; it is therefore a figurative term. Indeed something of this nature actually takes place in the organ:--in minute examinations by the eye, we actually strain and stretch its muscles, and feel the fatigue which results from over-exertion:--when we listen, the neck is stretched forward, and such position enables us to collect those vibrations of sound, that would be otherwise inaudible. We are not unaccustomed to describe the higher and more felicitous productions of intellect, as a vigorous grasp of the mental powers, or as a noble stretch of thought: but to infer that the mind itself was capable of being extended, would be to invest it directly with the properties of substance, and at once plunge us into the grossest materialism. The perfection of this voluntary direction, or, as it has been termed, faculty of attention, consists in intensity and duration. Of the former there can be no admeasurement, excepting by its effect, which is recollection: its duration can be well ascertained. The faculty of attention in the human mind may be exerted in two ways; first, by the organs of sense to the objects of perception; and, secondly, by the mind to the subjects of its recollection; and this latter exercise of attention, as will be hereafter explained, seems to be in a very great degree peculiar to man, and to be nearly wanting in animals. According to the nature and constitution of the human mind, the effective duration of the attention seems to be very limited: if the eye be steadily directed to any particular object, after a few seconds, it will be found to wander; and if the mind be exerted on the subjects of its recollection, there is very soon perceived an interruption, from the intrusion of irrelevant thoughts. The effective duration of the attention will much depend on the superior capacity, nature, or constitution of the intellect itself; but still more on the manner in which these habits of attention are exercised; for, by proper cultivation, its duration may be considerably protracted. As a proof of the limited endurance of the faculty of attention in ordinary minds, allow the following experiment to be made. Let two ordinary persons, A. and B., take a map of a district with which they are unacquainted, and let each be allowed half an hour to study the map. Desire A. to fix his attention undeviatingly to the map for this time; and at its expiration, the map being withdrawn, request him to put on paper the relative situations and names of the different places; and for the performance of his task, allow him another half hour. As the experiment has been repeatedly made, it may be confidently predicted, that A. would exhibit a very incorrect copy of the original map. Let B. take the same map to study for the same time; but instead of keeping his eyes undeviatingly fixed to the object, desire him to view it only for a few seconds; and then, shutting his eyes, let him endeavour to bring the picture of the map before his mind: his first efforts will convey a very confused notion of the actual and relative positions; but he will become sensible of his defects, and reinspect the map for their correction. If this successive ocular examination and review by the mind, be continued during the half hour, or even for a less time, B. will be competent to make a drawing of the map with superior accuracy to A., who endeavoured to fix his attention for the whole of the time allotted. In conducting this experiment some very curious phenomena may be observed. If A. had directed his eyes to the object intensely and undeviatingly, especially in a strong light, and had then covered or shut his eyes, in order to recollect the relative situations in the map, the straining of the organ to the object would defeat his endeavours; and instead of being able to bring the picture before his mind, he would be annoyed and interrupted by the intrusion of ocular spectra, undergoing the succession of changes described by Dr. Darwin.[14] Thus there are limits to the duration of our effective attention: if the organ of vision be too long directed to the object of perception, ocular spectra arise, fatigue and confusion ensue in the other senses; and if the subjects of recollection be too long and intensely contemplated, delirium will supervene. In page 52, after enumerating the wonderful productions of the hand, an objection was foreseen, which may be conveniently examined in the present chapter. That all the performances of the human hand, and of the other members of the body, which are not the result of involuntary movements, must have been the consequence of the direction of the will, is indisputable: it is, in fact, the common relation of cause and effect: but the creation of this distinction, would assign separate offices to the mind and to the organ;--or to the power directing, and to the instrument by which the command is executed. Sufficient has been already adduced, to render it obvious, that mind or organ _alone_ would be inadequate for the purposes of intelligence. Perception, without its record or memory, would be a useless endowment; muscles or organs of motion, without a power to direct their actions, could have answered no purpose: to be effective, volition must have an object on which its influence can be exerted. In the case of a paralytic arm or leg, the exercise of the will is a fruitless endeavour; and the command to render fixed a tremulous hand is equally unavailing. The power or capacity of moving the muscles,--of directing the organs of sense to the examination of objects,--of recollecting,--and of regulating our thoughts or reflections, constitutes the will; but this acquirement is of very gradual formation, and the result of mutual and progressive exercise, both of mind and organ. Ordinary persons have no information of the structure by which they perform their motions; and it may be also doubted if an able anatomist would be competent to describe the action of the different muscles, in complicated movements. The most dexterous artificer, is wholly ignorant of the intimate construction of the organs by which he performs his wonderful elaborations,--he has acquired the happy facility by repeated exercise. There is a tacit and practical convention between his mind and the powers which produce the performance; tacit, as he is unable to describe them, and practical, as, if naturally left-handed, he is unable by any mental directions or influence of volition, to exhibit the same performance with the right. The apparent facility and astonishing rapidity with which, by practice, we perform many of our voluntary motions, has induced an opinion, that such motions might be considered as automatical, which implies that they were performed by the organ independently of the will; but this would be to maintain, that the most difficult and felicitous of our voluntary motions were themselves involuntary. This supposition is so absurd that it refutes itself; its admission would be a libel on the perfection of human attainment, and tend to subvert the best portion of our existing morality. That voluntary muscles may be converted into involuntary, has been already observed; but this conversion is to be considered a morbid state, and must be regarded as a degradation of our nature, instead of its perfection. Excess in the use of fermented liquors, will generally produce it; and the habitual practice of intemperance will destroy the influence of volition over the intellectual powers; so that the control over the succession of our thoughts can be no longer exerted, and when we give them utterance they are without connection, and we talk at random. It is not to be expected, in a work which professes to be merely contributions to the Natural History and Physiology of Intelligent Beings, that a particular discussion of moral subjects should be instituted; and such is the question concerning the freedom of the human will: the reader is therefore referred to those writers who have fully, and with considerable acuteness, discussed this intricate and important topic. The nature of this attribute is however so interwoven with the philosophy of mind, so connected with the view which has been taken of its history and constitution, that it is impossible wholly to abstain from the consideration of its influence on the excellence and demerit of human actions. It has been endeavoured, throughout this chapter, to establish, that the power which goads or stimulates the muscles to action, and the mind to exertion, is not inherent, but acquired by practice; and this is exemplified by the state of the new-born infant, which, at that period, manifests no more of volition, than of perception, reflection, or reason. It has also been conjectured, that the possession of this influence must be subsequent to perception, for reasons which have been assigned. With its intimate nature we are unacquainted; but we see, as far as muscular motion is concerned, that the same effect is produced by the stimulus of galvanism after the head is removed, and when, according to our existing philosophy, consciousness is destroyed, and the power of willing is abolished. It is by no means intended to suppose that the stimulus of the will has any affinity with the galvanic fluid, because we are unable to prove it; although such opinion has been entertained. According to my own interpretation, Will is to be considered as the mere spur, the simple stimulus to action: it possesses no intelligence to direct; but in the healthy state, excites motion in consequence of being itself directed to such excitement. To invest Will with intelligence sufficient for its purposes, would render reason, the highest of our attainments, superfluous. Those who have most strenuously contended for the freedom of the will, have insisted that it possesses the liberty of choosing or preferring: allow this, and then enquire what must be the nature of that choice or preference, which is selected by an arbitrary decision, without the previous estimate or calculation of reason. Man, beyond all other beings, is endowed with superior means of accumulating knowledge, and of preserving experience; by these, therefore, his actions should be directed. If, independently of these, his will possessed a power of directing his actions, it would be equivalent to the instinct of animals: he would, like them, be stationary, and his conduct liable to no responsibility. The long period of infancy in man has been frequently adverted to; and it is a considerable time before he acquires sufficient experience to direct his conduct; and during which, many of the species of animals have completed several generations. For this reason, the wisest legislators, of all ages, have exempted children under a certain age, from the punishment of death for their actions; and although many of them have entertained erroneous notions concerning the nature of the will, yet they tacitly admit, in the instances of infants, idiots, and madmen,--that is, where the understanding is not sufficiently formed by experience, or where it is perverted by disease, that the acts of the will ought not to be visited by the severity of the law. This is perhaps the best practical illustration, that the will to act, is governed and directed by reason. Had the mind of man, like animals, been furnished with instinct, which, in them, implies a wise, preconcerted, and unvarying performance of important functions, for their individual preservation, and for the continuance of their race,--as may be exemplified in the construction of the habitations of the bee and beaver, together with their wonderful economy,--the fabrication of the spider's web, and many others,--he would, like them, have been stationary, having received from Infinite Bounty and Wisdom sufficient for his destination: his will would have been directed by unerring motives; and thus his conduct would have been absolved from all responsibility. But man is gifted with few instincts, which appear to decline as his reason advances: his intellect is more capacious, and of a finer staple; he possesses additional organs for the accumulation of knowledge; and, by the peculiarity of his construction, is enabled to preserve his acquirements, to avail himself of the treasures of those who have preceded him, and to transmit his collections to posterity. Man, in possession of ampler materials and superior capacity, becomes the architect of his own mind; and to him it is alone permitted, by the aid of experience, and the estimate of reason, to direct his actions: but this generous and exalted faculty involves him in awful responsibility. The same light which discovers to him that which is good and lawful, also exposes its opposite, which is evil and forbidden; and the nature of good and evil, as it forms the foundation of human institutions, has been derived from our experience of their effects, or a calculation of their tendencies. The will of man, therefore, is as free as his experience dictates, and his reason urges to action: yet, that he should often act in opposition to both, is as lamentable as certain: in the transport of immediate gratification, or in the hopes of enjoyment, precept ceases to influence, and example loses its warning. Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. FOOTNOTES: [12] In some of these instances, where the will has ceased to influence the muscles, the due sensibility of the nerves has remained.--Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. ix. p. 8. [13] So little does the infant appear to possess any control over those organs which afterwards become subject to voluntary influence, that it may be sufficient to remark the flow of saliva, of urine, and the more solid evacuations, are subject to no restraint, and for some time are passed with little or no consciousness: even the motions which are excited in the limbs, appear to be spasmodic, rather than the effect of direction. [14] Vide Darwin's Thesis de Spectris Ocularibus. ON THOUGHT OR REFLECTION. Those recollected objects, which have been transmitted by the senses, or which we have perceived by their means, are the subjects of our thoughts or reflections; for these terms will be indifferently employed, as designating the same faculty or process. The obvious meaning of the word _reflection_, is the representation of any object in a mirror. This term, so well understood in that department of natural philosophy named optics, has been transferred to mind, in order to explain a process, supposed to be similar. If, however, we examine the analogy, it will not accord:--to produce reflection in the mirror, the object must be present; in the mind, the reflection takes place when the object is absent. Although the simile, strictly speaking, is imperfect, yet the figure is beautiful, and, considering the metaphorical nature of language, as applied to mental operations, the most natural and appropriate that could have been selected; for, speaking in a general way, our thoughts, in themselves appear very much as the shadows or reflection of our perceptions. As we are but little capable of communicating the nature of our perceptions, independently of language, we must have recourse to inference and conjecture. It is fully understood that our visual perceptions, through the medium of recollection, may be represented by the skilful execution of the hand; and that those of smell, taste, and touch do not directly admit of such delineation. We might next inquire, if the odours we perceive are as strongly impressed on the olfactory organ, as the subjects of visual perception on the eye? Are they as fully and distinctly recollected? and are they capable by themselves of affording the materials for thought or reflection? Animals possess certain senses in common with ourselves; and, in many, the organs are more susceptible than our own; but there are no circumstances which have yet transpired, to induce us to suppose that the perceptions they have acquired are reviewed by their minds, when the objects which excited them are absent. The memory they possess of the perceptions they have experienced, is perhaps superior to that of human beings; still it does not appear, from any manifestations they afford, that it is actively exercised, as with ourselves, but occasionally excited by the recurrence of the object which originally produced it. Language is the pencil which marks the bold outline, and lends a colouring to our different perceptions; and with this boon man is exclusively gifted. A rational curiosity will prompt the reader to inquire, in what our perceptions consist independently of the language in which we ordinarily clothe them. In the instance of optical perception, we know that it is _something_ which is retained by the memory, and may be traced by the hand, so as to convince others that it is truly remembered or recollected[15]; but let the same enquiry be made concerning the perceptions we receive by the touch, the smell, and the taste: in this investigation we shall experience much greater difficulty, as it is an endeavour to conceive the nakedness of a figure which is always clothed. That these perceptions must also be _something_ abstracted from the terms which represent them, is proved, by the circumstance, that they are recollected when they occur again. As we are educated by language, and acquire a facility of employing it as the vehicle of our thoughts, we are little accustomed to contemplate the subject in this manner, and this also enhances the difficulty. When, however, the importance of speech is adequately considered, it will, I think, be detected, that the terms which we employ as the representatives of the perceptions of touch, smell, and taste, are the only media by which they can be voluntarily recollected or communicated to others; and, as signs of such perceptions, are equivalent to the representations by the hand of those which have been perceived by the organ of vision. To attempt the analysis of these silent deposits, to endeavour to describe these bare perceptions, would be altogether unavailing, because description implies language. In fact, it would be an effort to detect the symmetry of the human frame, by loading it with modern finery. The wonderful capacity which man exclusively enjoys, both for the communication of his thoughts, and for the improvement of his memory, in being enabled to acquire and transmit knowledge by impregnating sound with intelligence, and more especially in exhibiting its character embodied to the eye, leaves the rest of animated creation at a prodigious distance. This endowment of language to man, whereby he can, by an articulate sound, recall the perception of objects, (not indeed equal to the sensorial impression, but sufficient for their recollection, and also for the proof of their identity)--whereby he can with equal intelligence exhibit their character to the eye, is sufficient to explain of what the materials of his thoughts consist:--and to prove that animals being unable to substitute a term for their perceptions, are incapable of the process which we denominate thought or reflection. To fathom this mystery, is perhaps impossible; but, from attentively watching that which passeth within us,--from considering the state of animals which want this endowment altogether, it seems to be a law of our intellectual constitution, that our thoughts or reflections can only consist of the terms which represent our perceptions; and this is more evidently true, when we reflect on those subjects which are of a general or abstract nature. Whoever will attentively watch the operation of his own mind,--for this subject admits of direct experiment,--will find that he employs terms when he conducts the process of reflection. In order to afford a fair trial, it is necessary that he should be alone, and subject to no interruptions. It will also add to the facility of the experiment, that he select a subject with which he is but little acquainted, as the process will be more deliberate. On topics with which we are familiar, we have acquired a rapidity of exercise which renders the detection of the process more difficult and perplexing. In this trial, he will be aware that he is repeating words as the materials of his thoughts. If the subject on which he should think involves persons with whom he is acquainted, or scenes he has viewed, he will, in addition to the terms he employs, have the pictures, or visible phantasmata, of these presented to his mind, conjunctively with such words. That we actually employ terms in this process is evident in many, who, when exercising their thoughts on any subject, are found, as we term it, talking to themselves; so that we are enabled to observe the motion of their lips: and this circumstance is to be noticed in most persons when they are counting. The contrivances of language enable us to connect our thoughts; for our perceptions are distinct and individual, and of themselves can possess no elective attraction to _associate_ and combine: they may however, by repetition or habit, become so allied, that the occurrence of one will excite the sequence of the other. We ordinarily recollect them very much in the order and succession of their occurrence; but we are also able to arrange and class them, and by such means, of recollecting them according to the artificial order of their distribution. This may be exemplified in the various expedients that have been devised for the acquirement and retention of knowledge: thus, chronology records events according to the order of their occurrence; an encyclopædia arranges according to alphabet or subject; and the most perfect of this kind, like the index to a book, consists in their mutual reference. This wonderful faculty of thought or reflection, so far as we possess the means of detecting, appears to be peculiar to man; and if it be admitted to consist of our recollected perceptions, by the contrivances of language, we shall find that animals are not in possession of the necessary materials. The ear transmits sounds to animals possessing this sense; and in some species it is so exquisitely susceptible, as to surpass, by many degrees, the acuteness of the same organ in the human subject. It is also recorded, that in some of the wilder tribes of man, the hearing possesses a delicacy of percipience unknown to the inhabitants of a polished community. Superadded to the conveyance of ordinary sound, the ear of man is the great inlet of communication, and the vehicle of articulate intelligence. Through the medium of this sense his knowledge becomes extended, and his memory improved; for every conversation is either a review of his stores, or an addition to his stock. As our thoughts or reflections are conducted by language, great caution is required that the terms we employ should possess a fixed and determinate meaning; and this is more especially important, when we employ words which are not the representatives of the objects of our perceptions, but of a complex nature, or, as they have been denominated, general terms; such as those which are used to designate the faculties and operations of the mind, and such as convey our moral attributes. The perfection of the process of thought, consists in the attention which the will can exert on the subjects of[16] consideration. The nature and endurance of the attention, which the organs of sense can bestow on the objects of perception, have been already discussed; and it will be found, that the same influence is directed when we exercise reflection: so that that mind is to be considered as most efficient, (in proportion to its natural capacity,) which can dwell on the subjects of its thoughts without interruption from irrelevant intrusions. The exertion of voluntary control over our thoughts has been denied; but if we were to subscribe to such doctrine, it would follow that this noble faculty of reflection would be merely a spontaneous concurrence of images and terms accidentally revived,--on rare occasions fortuitously blundering on wit, and ordinarily revelling in the absurdities of distraction. In proportion as we have been duly educated, we become enabled to direct and fix the organs of sense to the objects of perception, to be able at will to revive our memoranda, or to call on the memory to exhibit the deposits which have been confided to its custody, and to dwell pertinaciously on the materials of reflection. It is, however, certain, that in ordinary minds, the attention is little capable of being fixed to objects, and still less to the subjects of reflection; but this incapacity, in both instances, is principally to be attributed to the defects of education, and to a want of proper discipline of the intellectual powers. The endurance of attention in minds of the highest order, by a wise law of our constitution, is limited; and if it be attempted to continue the exertion beyond the natural power, the effort is infructuous. As straining the muscles produces fatigue, stiffness, and tremor;--as ocula spectra intrude on the forced and protracted attention of the visual organs,--so confusion ensues, when thought is racked and goaded to exhaustion. As the staple of the human intellect is vastly superior to that of animals, so we find among our own species a considerable range of capacity; but however we may estimate mental excellence, it should be recollected, that its possession has seldom contributed to the happiness of the individual; so that experience would lead us to prefer the sober medium, which is included by a parenthesis, between the extremes of genius and dulness, and which appears to be the unenvied lot of the mass of society. The two great distinctions which mark the intellects of our species, seem to consist in the difference of character, which is established by those who excel in the exercise of their perceptions and consequent recollection, and those who cultivate and discipline the energies of thought. The former are distinguished by a vigorous activity, a penetrating and unwearied observation; their curiosity seems rather to be attracted by the object itself than directed by the mind. This incessant occupation and restless inquiry furnishes the memory with an abundant vocabulary: they recollect each object they have seen, and can retrace every path they have trodden; the ear greedily imbibes the conversations to which they are anxiously disposed to listen; that which they read, they verbally retain; they excel in quickness of perception and promptitude of memory, and appear to have every thing by heart; they are "the gay motes that people the sun-beams" of the intellectual world:--thus we find them, as inclination may sway, accurate chronologists, biographers pregnant with anecdote, expert nomenclators, botanists, topographers, practical linguists, and bibliographers; in short, the opulent possessors of whatever perception can detect, and memory preserve. The other order of men, (and they are comparatively few,) are the creatures of reflection:--with them the senses are little on the alert; they do not fatigue the wing by excursions through the field of nature; but that which the recollection retains becomes the subject of mental examination. An event is not registered from having merely occurred; but the causes which produced it are investigated, and a calculation is instituted concerning its probable tendency. Words are not simply regarded as the floating currency or medium of exchange, but they are severely subjected to analysis to establish their standard, or to detect the excess of their alloy; their senses are little awake to external impressions; the objects which a change of scene presents are slightly noticed, and feebly remembered; their curiosity is not attracted from without, but excited from within; they are strangers to the haunts of gay and mirthful intercourse, and are rather consulted as oracles, than selected as companions. This constant occupation of thought produces the philosophical historian, profound critic, physiologist, mathematician, general grammarian, etymologist, and metaphysician. After long exertion they become disposed to melancholic disquietude, and often turn in disgust from a world, the beauties of which they want an incentive to examine, and taste to admire. Both of these intellectual orders of our species contribute, but in different manners, to the stores of knowledge. The sound, efficient, and useful mind consists in a due balance and regular exercise of its different faculties. How great soever the pains which an individual may bestow, to fix his thoughts to the examination of a particular subject, he will find that the effective duration of his attention is very limited, and that other thoughts, often wholly unconnected with the subject, will intrude and occupy his mind; on some occasions they are so prevailing and importunate, that he loses the original subject altogether. It is acknowledged, that the soundest and most efficient mind, is distinguished by the control it is capable of exerting on its immediate thoughts; which consist, as has before been observed, of terms, and the phantasmata of visible recollection:--this wandering of the thoughts to other subjects, or this intrusion of irrelevant words and pictures, whichever may be the case, appears to bear a very strong resemblance to a morbid state. It is usually the attendant on indolence, and has probably its source in a want of the proper occupation of mind, and, by indulgence, may become an incurable habit. Yet this rumination of mind has its votaries: by some it is courted as a delightful amusement, and eulogies are bestowed on the incoherent tissue of these reveries and day-dreams. Although these illegitimate offsprings of "retired leisure" may be considered as a perversion of the noblest attribute of man; yet they serve, in some degree, to recruit our recollection of past transactions, which might otherwise have faded in obscurity, or perished from natural decay. In the soundest and most refreshing sleep we seldom dream; so, in those wholesome exercises of the intellect where the mind is fully occupied, and, more especially, when such pursuit is combined with bodily exertion, these masterless associates do not intrude. By continuance, this habit may be so formidably increased, more especially under the guidance of malignant or depressing passions, that these shadows become embodied, and assume a form so potent and terrible, that the will is unable to bind them down, and the understanding attempts to exorcise them in vain. The act of thought or reflection, therefore, appears to consist, not in the operation of an exclusive and particular faculty, but in the voluntary recollection of pictures, as far as visible perception is involved, and of terms or words which are the types or representatives of our perceptions, together with those general terms, which are to be considered as abbreviations of meaning or intelligence. All this would, however, only amount to an act of memory, of such pictures and terms, particular and general; and would not comprehend or include their analysis, estimate, admeasurement, or _ratio_, with inquiries into their source and tendency, which is denominated _reason_, and which will compose the materials of the following chapter. Suffice it to observe that our thoughts on any subject can only be according to the extent of our knowledge of things and opinions; and, therefore, that our thoughts or reflections necessarily involve our reasonings, as they are only recollections without them. FOOTNOTES: [15] In this capability animals will never rival us, as they are deficient of the _hand_, the operative instrument by which it is effected. [16] It may be proper to explain the origin and meaning of this word, and of another usually employed in a similar sense, namely, contemplation. The former is compounded of _cum_ and _sidus_, and presumes a fixity of mind adequate to the survey of the heavenly bodies; the latter is derived from _cum_ and _templum_, and imports the same gravity and concentration of thought which we carry to the fane of devotion. ON REASON. The opinions of the thinking part of mankind have been much divided concerning the signification of the term Reason. Every person, conceives himself privileged to reason upon all the subjects of human intelligence; and whatever he may chuse to offer on any side of a question, he denominates his reasons for or against it. By some, this power is held to be the exclusive possession of man; and such persons naturally conclude that an offence is offered to his intellectual dignity, if the smallest portion be conceded to the most docile animals. This is, however, a question for future examination, and will be discussed when their faculties are more particularly investigated. Those who have affirmed that our own species is exclusively gifted with reason, have not in any manner defined the nature of this faculty, or enumerated the steps of the process by which reasoning is performed: indeed, so ambiguous has been the signification annexed to this term, that it is not uncommon to meet, in the best authors, with the expressions of right reason, false or inconclusive reasonings, absurd reasons, &c. These epithets are, however, perfectly correct, as will be demonstrated in the course of this enquiry. If this capacity of reasoning be peculiar to man, it would not appear difficult to trace the gradations of the process when he employs it: every act of intellectual exertion, deliberately performed, is attended with consciousness; he must therefore be aware of the successive steps of his march: but as this effort might be perplexing to minds unaccustomed to such deliberate and minute investigation, a readier method presents itself in order to attain the object. There are writers in all the departments of human knowledge, who are deservedly held in the highest estimation, and who have reasoned on the subjects they have treated, with the utmost correctness and ability:--let the best specimens of that, which, in these authors, is allowed to be reasoning, be selected and analysed, which will readily demonstrate the means they have pursued to arrive at their conclusion. The whole of this process being conducted by significant sounds conveyed to the ear, or in the signs of these sounds presented to the eye, the inquirer would be immediately impressed, that intelligent sound, or its character, that is, language, must be the vehicle by which this process is performed. In the next place, he would be sensible that these sounds, or their signs, were the substitutes or intended representatives of the objects in nature, either individually or collectively; for he would find that men, by the instrument of speech, had contrived, by a term, equally to express collections as well as individuals; as a man, or an army, which latter might consist of many thousands of the same beings. When he had arrived at this knowledge, he would be persuaded of the importance of these terms, and feel the necessity of their precise and uniform signification, as the representatives of the particular objects or collections they professed to describe:--because, if different significations were affixed to the same term, those who employed it could not mean the same thing. These prefatory observations appear to be proper, and it is important that the reader should bear them in mind; but it will be evident that the most correct description of objects does not constitute the process of reasoning, however indispensable it may be as its foundation. Reason, as the term itself shows, implies _ratio_, estimate, proportion, or admeasurement; and in all the instances of reasoning that can be adduced, this interpretation will apply in the strictest sense. But _ratio_, estimate, &c. involve numbers, by which they can alone be characterised or defined. Thus, by way of illustration, the estimate for a building implies the number of the different materials, with their _cost_, which is the number of pounds, shillings, and pence; also the number of requisite workmen to be employed for such time, or number of weeks, days, &c. at a certain stipend: admeasurement also consists of numbers, whether it be employed on solids, fluids, or designate the succession of our perceptions, called time[17]: and ratio or proportion is equally the creature of numbers. In a preceding part of these contributions, the importance of numbers has been considered, and a confident belief expressed that no animal is capable of numeration; and that the comprehension of addition and subtraction, the basis of all calculation is exclusively the province of the human intellect. This subject, however, requires a more extended investigation; and the research would doubtless reward the toil of the inquirer. It is generally acknowledged, that arithmetic, or the combination and separation of numbers, is the purest and most certain system of reasoning, and liable, when properly conducted, to no difference of opinion; because the meaning of number is definite and universally agreed on, there being no nation that affixes a different value to the units, which are the elements of all ulterior numerative progression; and although, in different languages, they are called by different names, as [Greek: Deka], _decem_, _dieci_, _dix_,--_taihun_, _tÿn_, _zehn_, _tien_, _ten_, yet they have an identical meaning, and denominate the same thing; and notwithstanding the Roman and Arabic symbols are of different character, they represent the same number, whether we employ X or 10. It is owing to this identity of meaning, that the reasoning in numbers is subject to no diversity of opinion. The names of those things which have an actual existence, and can be submitted to the inquisition of our senses, or are capable of being analysed, are subject to comparatively little error, when we reason concerning them, because their character is defined by observation and experiment: but we have terms to designate that which cannot immediately be submitted to the analytic operations of our senses, and which has no palpable existence; and from the undefined nature of these, the greatest discord and confusion have prevailed when we reason concerning them; as the terms, humanity, charity, benevolence, living principle, organisation, materialism, political expediency, taste, liberty, legitimacy, and a thousand besides. In order to proceed regularly with this subject, it appears that our reasonings may be employed concerning things, or the objects in nature, and on terms which are not the immediate representatives of natural phenomena, but as they have been denominated general or abstract; and which are intended to be the verbal representatives of multitudes of objects arbitrarily classed, or of opinions comprised under such term. That reason is not an inherent, peculiar, and independent faculty of the human mind, receives a strong confirmation from considering, that it cannot be voluntarily exerted on subjects of discussion, but requires, as the indispensable condition of its operation, the basis of knowledge, which is to be understood to mean, the result of observation and experiment: for the mere employment of language, on a subject with which we are unacquainted, is but idle prating and a lavishment of words. To reason, is to adapt our means, that is, our knowledge, for the attainment of the end or object proposed: it is the estimate or admeasurement of these means. If, for example, a military commander intended effectually to bombard a city;--such being the object proposed, he would immediately proceed to estimate, admeasure, or calculate his means to produce the effect, and his success would depend on the knowledge he possessed of the nature and properties of the materials employed: he must calculate the distance, elevation, proportionate quantity of powder, and the time the fuzee should burn previously to the explosion of the shell; with various other necessary circumstances. This is an example of a very pure process of reasoning as applied to things, and accords with the definition that has been attempted. If it were necessary to multiply instances of the reasoning on things, perhaps the construction of a thermometer would be a well-adapted illustration; and it would likewise exhibit that which I am very anxious to impress, namely, the very gradual manner in which knowledge, by the operation of reasoning has been applied to the purposes of utility. That many substances, and particularly metallic bodies, augmented in magnitude by being heated, or, as we now term it, expanded by heat, was known many centuries ago, and was a fact of hourly occurrence to the artificers in metals. A similar increment of bulk was also observed in fluids; and it was likewise known, that their dimensions contracted as they cooled. This fact appeared to obtain so generally, that it became an aphorism, that bodies expanded by heat and contracted by cold. Of the precise gradations of heat they were, however, ignorant. Most of the senses became tests, although they were inaccurate criteria. The sight conveyed some distinctive marks; so that when some metallic bodies were heated to a high degree, they were observed to become red, and as the heat was increased, they were rendered white. By the touch, a variety of discriminations of temperature was obtained, to which appropriate terms were annexed, explanatory of its effects, or according with the feelings; as burning, scorching, scalding, blistering hot;--descending to blood, loo, gently, or agreeably warm. The ear was not exempted from its share of information, by detecting the boiling of water, or by discovering when a heated metal was immersed in that fluid, that it was hissing-hot: even the smell detected some obscure traces, sufficient to discourage or invite an approach. These tests, although they might serve for ordinary purposes, were still wholly inadequate for philosophical accuracy. To ascertain quantity, it was necessary to associate number as the index of precision. Notwithstanding the construction of this instrument now appears so simple and easy of contrivance, it is only within a few years that it occurred to fill a tube, having a bulb, with a fluid; and to note the points at which snow dissolved, and water boiled: when these were fixed, the intermediate space might form a scale according to any subdivisions, so as to endow it with precision by the adjunct of numbers. On many occasions, our sensations deceive us, especially in a morbid state of the body: a person in the cold stage of an ague shivers at the temperature that oppresses his attendant with heat; but the instrument described is subject to no variations, by marking the gradations of warmth with the definite character of number. It will now be seen, that man possesses materials for conducting his reasonings, which animals do not enjoy;--by language, and from his capacity of numerating. Speech, of course, involves its record, whereby he can recall the transactions of former ages, and preserve the fruit of experience for his intellectual nurture, when the tree that produced it has perished. This record is the elaboration of the hand,--that wonderful instrument, the register of thought,--that active and and skilful agent that "turns to shape" the contrivances of the mind. It is perhaps impossible, in a few words, to describe precisely the nature of the operation termed reasoning. In general terms it may be defined, _the means we employ for the attainment of the end proposed; the employment of knowledge for the discovery of truth_; or _the process of demonstration_; whether the object be an arithmetical sum, a geometrical problem, or a discourse on taste. A part of the process of reasoning, according to received opinion, consists in comparison, either of things, or of general terms; and this comparison implies not merely their exterior similitude, but likewise their internal structure and composition: because two mineral substances may resemble each other in external appearance, and may wholly differ in their intrinsic properties. The process of ascertaining wherein they agree, and the circumstances which discriminate them, is an instance of reasoning, or the means we employ for the proposed end, and which means necessarily imply the previous possession of knowledge. It will also be seen that in the instance adduced, and indeed in most others, where we reason on things, that precision can only be attained through the medium of number; for these mineral substances, although similar in external character, may contain very different proportions of the precious metals, and their actual value can only be estimated by comparison; that is, by an analysis, founded in knowledge, to ascertain the per centage of gold or silver, which must be expressed in numbers: and the comparison that is instituted concerning general or abstract terms, must have for its basis the establishment of their legitimate force and meaning. When we consult authorities on this subject, and particularly Dr. Johnson's dictionary, we find that he has given eleven different significations of the term _reason_, which he defines to be "the power by which man _deduces_ one proposition from another, or proceeds from premises to consequences." There is, however, much ambiguity in this statement; and it would perhaps be impossible, in reasoning concerning things, (which is to be considered as the most perfect example of this process,) to adduce an instance, in which one proposition is strictly _deduced_ from another. Every proposition is distinct, and independent: numbers, which are definite, may be added together, and the sum-total exhibited, or a lesser number subtracted from a greater, and the remainder shown. It is difficult to say what is really meant by the words "deduces one proposition from another." On examination, it will be found that every simple proposition contains some fact or dictum, something set up or laid down, _aliquid propositum_; and that nothing can be _deduced_ from it, more than the meaning which the words constituting such proposition legitimately convey: indeed, it must be evident, that any deduction from a simple proposition would destroy its force. The sum of our knowledge consists of individual facts, which are in themselves distinct, as much as a flock of sheep is the aggregate of the different animals that compose it; and it is only a misapplication of language, to affirm that we are able to deduce one proposition from another. One proposition may tend to explain or illustrate another; but every proposition, correctly so termed, relates only to itself. The other mode by which we reason, is on abstract or general terms, which are not the representatives of individual substances, or the objects of our perceptions; but the names of classes or collections, or of various hypotheses included or designated by a single name. The difficulties which environ this latter mode of reasoning become immediately evident, and satisfactorily account for the hostility and confusion it has engendered, and for the tardy advancement of real knowledge by this medium. The individual objects in nature can be investigated by observation and experiment, and may be sufficiently estimated; but multitudes of objects arbitrarily classed, or imaginary qualities comprehended by a single name, do not admit of the same analysis by the senses, and we are only enabled to ascertain their real meaning in the two ways that have been pointed out,--by authority, which, to be strictly such, ought to be invariable,--or by etymology, which will demonstrate their original signification, and the reasons which imposed them. Thus when we reason concerning charity, benevolence, humanity, and liberty, terms certainly of the highest importance, but each of which involves a variety of circumstances, and the real signification of which, is to this moment differently interpreted, we are impeded in the process, and fail in our estimate, because the dimensions are uncertain. That which one man considers a charitable donation, another views as the means which encourage idleness, and vice, and a third person is perhaps induced to question the motive, by attributing the gift to pride and ostentation. These general terms seldom admit the precision of numbers, but are characterised as to their proportions by expressions equally general and indefinite: as, much, more, and most, to denote their augmentation; and, little, less, least, to define their diminution. These general but indefinite degrees of comparison, as they are termed, once defined the temperature of our atmosphere, until a scale was discovered to mark its increment and diminution by the accuracy of numbers. Great as may be the convenience of general terms, both for abbreviation and dispatch, they are notwithstanding liable to considerable suspicion, and are the frequent sources of error and misapprehension. It has been principally for this reason, that in proportion to the advancement of the physical sciences, the study of scholastic metaphysic has been deservedly neglected. FOOTNOTE: [17] Time, or the admeasurement of the successive order of our perceptions, embraces a wide area of definition; and it is perhaps impossible, in a few words, to circumscribe the range of its meaning. The sagacity of the human intellect, although by very slow gradations, has accumulated the wonderful mass of knowledge we now possess on this subject: and the investigations which have been made into the faculties of animals, justify the conclusion that its comprehension is limited to man. It would be highly interesting to trace the origin and progress of our information, concerning the nature of time; but a short note to a compressed essay, does not admit of such examination. However, it appears evident, that the striking and regular phenomena of nature have constituted some of our most important distinctions. Thus, the ebbing and flowing of the tide have formed a very early notation; and we still retain in our language the traces of its application in Whitsun_tide_, Shrove_tide_, Allhallow_tide_, &c. The great divisions of time are well understood; as day, from dawn; month, from moon; year, Anglo-Saxon gear, from gyrdan, the girth (of the zodiac). A moderate knowledge of the cognate languages of the north, would readily unravel the origin of all the terms that have been employed by us and kindred nations, for the purpose of characterising the succession of our perceptions. All these subdivisions necessarily imply a comprehension of numbers. From the experience of the past, man has inferred the _probability_ of the future; for by natural knowledge, the probability, great as it is, can only be deduced. The certainty has descended from a higher authority. Although the grammar of our language has endeavoured to mark our predictions of the future by certain signs; yet these do not convey any definite intelligence of that which _is_ to come. In this state of being, man may receive assurances of ulterior existence, but he cannot invest his predictions with the certainty of numbers. The signs of Will and Shall, the utmost boundaries of his future glance, are both verbs in the present tense, and only signify his immediate intention of performance, at a time which may _probably_ arrive. INSTINCT. It has been endeavoured, in the foregoing pages, to describe the intellectual capacities of the human being, and to account for his superiority, from the peculiarity of his structure, and the extended faculties it has conferred. It has also been attempted to maintain, that man, thus gifted, is the architect of his own mind; with the hopeful expectation, that it may tend to the improvement of his culture, but more especially, to exhibit him as the creature of responsibility, in consequence of his ampler endowments: "for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required." The mental phenomena which animals display is a subject of equal curiosity and interest; but it is to be lamented that they have not yet been sufficiently observed, or faithfully collected. Their anatomy has been minutely and diligently investigated, and the functions which have resulted from the peculiarity of their structure, in many instances, have been industriously developed; but an enumeration of their intellectual bounties, and faculties of improvement, are still wanting to complete their history. As we are able to trace the progress of mind, in the infant, from its feeble glimmerings to its bright effulgence in the maturity of man; so we can contemplate the inherent wisdom that directs the animal tribe:--a liberal portion, sufficient for their individual protection, and for the continuance of their race. This definite allotment of mental craft to animals has rendered them stationary, while man has no barriers opposed to his improvement; but, under the fostering auxiliaries of a free soil, wholesome instruction, and intellectual labour, continually advances. However vast his present treasure may appear, its accumulation may be safely predicted; and it is to be expected, or at least, it may be hoped, that his career in moral practice will be commensurate with his progress in science. The human intellect, or the capacity of man for the accumulation of knowledge, has enabled him, in a great degree, to render himself the master of the animal creation; and more especially over those which dwell on the soil he inhabits or range in the atmosphere he respires: his authority or conciliation has little extended to the tenants of the deep. Many of the larger quadrupeds he has subdued, and thereby has become enabled to substitute the exertion of their muscles to relieve the toil and fatigue of his own: of the swifter, he has coerced the speed, for the anticipation of his wishes: the breed of many he has extensively multiplied, to prey on their flesh, or to become nourished by their secretions: his knowledge has been directed to the physical improvements of their race, and he has also relieved them from many infirmities and diseases, consequent on their domestication and labour. The wonderful construction of animals is a fit subject for the serious contemplation of man: but the most striking and important lesson which it impresses, is the adaptation of their organs to the purposes of their destination, or the means they possess for the discharge of the offices they perform. This construction is throughout an exemplification of that which has been defined reason; and that it is perfect, may be concluded from its being the work of the Creator. It has been already observed, that the perceptive organs of many animals, especially the eye, the ear, and the smell, are more acute and vigorous, than those in the human subject: with us, the olfactory organ is considered as the lowest sense, but in some animals it appears to be the most important; and even in man, under certain privations[18], the smell has become a test of the nicest discriminations: indeed, so far as the senses are concerned as the importers of knowledge, animals appear to be gifted beyond our own species. Their memory is also more perfect, as might be expected, from the exquisite sensibility of their perceptive organs. The accuracy with which they recognise persons and places is in many instances really astonishing; and the certainty with which they retrace the most intricate paths, is a proof of the excellence of their local recollection, and of the attention they are capable of bestowing on the objects of their perceptions. This enduring attention is perhaps to be accounted for from their want of reflection, which so frequently diverts man from dwelling on the objects of his senses. Thus, a cat will undeviatingly watch the hole through which a mouse is known to pass, far beyond the time which man can exclusively devote to a subject of expectation. But here their superiority terminates. Their recollection is not refreshed, as in man, by the substitution of a name for the object of perception; much less have they any contrivance to record such intelligent sound, whereby man can preserve and transmit his perceptions. Thus whatever individual excellence animals may attain, they want the means of communicating, and of transmitting to their successors, and this sufficiently accounts for their stationary condition, and for the progression of man. That animals are _incapable of the power_ which has been termed thought or reflection is most probable. According to the interpretation that has been given of this faculty, they are deficient of the materials, or of terms, the representatives of perceptions; consequently of their abbreviations, and of the contrivances by which a proposition or sentence is constructed. That they understand some words, is evident; they know their own names, and, by certain sounds, can be made to stop or advance, to seize or let go, to rise up or lie down; but the extent of this intelligence is very limited, and altogether different from the comprehension of a sentence. It is not improbable that they dream; and, at such times, the recollection of objects and scenes may be presented to them in visible phantasmata; and in the delirium of canine madness, they are observed to snap at imaginary existences; but this is far below the process that constitutes reflection, which consists in the capacity of reviewing the whole of our perceptions; and it has been endeavoured to point out that this can only be effected through the medium of intelligent sound, or its visible representative. If we were to contend for their capacity of reflection, we must, at the same time, acknowledge, that they do not appear to derive any improvement from the process; and to suppose them endowed with that which was nugatory, and contributed in no degree to their advancement, would be an idle and useless hypothesis. When not employed and directed by man, their lives are principally occupied in procuring food, and in the propagation of their species; and when their appetites are satisfied, they repose or sleep: when not guided by instinct, they seem to act from established habits, or the dictates of immediate impression. They are capable of considerable acquirements under the coercive tuition of man, and may be taught a variety of tricks for his amusement or profit; but they do not appear to comprehend their utility, or to hold these instructions in any estimation, as they never practise them when alone. The most accomplished bear would not dance for his own entertainment; and the learned pig never attempted to become a school-master to the hogs of his acquaintance. It has been previously noticed, that in man, and most animals, there were movements of the highest importance to life, which were directed by the Author of the universe, and over which they had no immediate control, termed involuntary motions; so we find, in the tribe of animals, various mental endowments, especially tending to the preservation of the individual, and to the succession of the race, which are not the results of their experience. These have been comprehended under a general term, and denominated instinct. By instinct, is meant the display of contrivance and wisdom by animals, which tends to preserve them as individuals, and to maintain their succession; an intellectual exercise so perfect, that human philosophy has not pretended to improve; so unvaried, that the excellence of its performance cannot be exceeded, and is never diminished; a clearness of execution, that "leaves no rubs and botches in the work," but which, it may be presumed, is not even comprehended by the animal itself, as it does not possess the organs or capacity to acquire the rudiments of the science on which its operations proceed. As man, in his healthy state, is little conscious of his involuntary motions, so I should presume that animals possess but a feeble consciousness of their instinctive achievements. This may be a subject for subtle disputants to decide; but it appears certain, during the exercise of instinct, that their volition must be suspended. When sufficient observation has collected the intuitive wisdom displayed by animals, we shall then be able to _define_ what is precisely meant by instinct; and, which is of much greater importance, to furnish their intellectual history, of which the definition is an abbreviation. One of the most useful contrivances of language, is its abbreviation for the purposes of dispatch; and a definition implies the fewest words into which its history can be compressed, for perfect discrimination and identity of character. Without disputing about a term, it may be noticed, that young ducks hatched by a hen, immediately on their developement, and often with a part of the shell still attached to them, make directly for the water; while the hen, who has performed the office of a mother, screams with alarm for the consequences. A she-cat, the first time she brings forth her young, proceeds to secure the umbilical cord of each kitten, with the caution of an experienced midwife. In both these instances, experience cannot be adduced to account for the performance. When the admirable texture of a spider's web is contemplated; will it be contended that this elaboration is the result of mathematical knowledge _acquired_ by the spider? Have the dwellings of the beaver, and the construction of the honey-comb, their solution in the geometrical attainments of the fabricators? The examples which have been enumerated, (and they are only a few, among multitudes,) can only be accounted for, by maintaining, that these wonderful phenomena proceed from a degree of knowledge acquired by these animals, and are the result of such attainment; or that they are independently furnished with such propensities by the Creator. If it can be demonstrated that the animals displaying the greatest acts of intelligence, are unable to acquire the rudiments of the arts they practise, and cannot comprehend the wisdom they execute, there will remain but one conclusion--that they are the immediate endowments of God. Man has his instincts, although they are few, and these appear to fade as his reason advances; woman enjoys a more bountiful supply. The intellectual difference of the sexes is strongly pronounced: the female is more the creature of perception: man, of reflection:--the duties imposed on her, require less of thought and volition; and when she resembles man by their possession and exercise, she becomes less amiable and attractive. But this is abundantly compensated by the intenseness and constancy of her affections. The gift of instinct to animals, does not exclude them from acquiring knowledge by experience; for their minds are capable of improvement, according to the extent of their capacities, and the intellectual organs with which they are furnished. The instinct which is allotted to them is mental possession which they could not have acquired, from the limited nature of their faculties. All their instincts are processes of the purest reasoning, but they do not originate from themselves; they are not, as in man, the elaboration of thought, the contrivance founded on the estimate of knowledge; but a boon,--an endowment, by which experience is anticipated, and wisdom matured without its progress and accumulation. Animals form an estimate of that which they can accomplish: a horse will not voluntarily attempt a leap he cannot clear; but his admeasurement is instituted solely by his eye: he is deficient of the organ which man possesses;--nor can he measure by steps or paces, as he is unable to numerate. An old hound will spare himself much fatigue in the chace, by knowing, from experience, the doubles of the hare. As man cannot reason independently of knowledge, nor beyond the extent of his acquirements, neither can animals display this faculty further than they possess the means. The instinctive bounty of intellect to animals, of course, renders them stationary as a community; as instinct implies a definite portion of intuitive sagacity, wisdom, or reason, commensurate to their wants and destination. The early manifestation of instinctive wisdom, is the best reply to those philosophers who have argued against its existence; for in a multitude of instances it is exhibited, anterior to the possibility of experience. Man, although gifted with superior capacities, and susceptible of higher attainments, does not, from the paucity of his instincts, arrive during many years at the same maturity both of mind and body, which most animals display within the space of a few weeks; so necessary and important is the protracted period of infancy to the edifice and destination of the human mind. FOOTNOTE: [18] Notwithstanding we cannot sufficiently estimate the perfection of the senses in animals, yet in some instances we are enabled to observe, in our own species, the importance which a lower sense acquires, in consequence of the privation of those which are deservedly considered the more noble. A singular case of this nature occurred in Scotland, the particulars of which have been published by Mr. James Wardrop an eminent surgeon and oculist, 4to. London, 1813. This person, James Mitchel, was born, very nearly blind and deaf. Although he was not deprived of every glimmering and vibration, yet he was incapable of discerning an object, or hearing an articulate sound; consequently to him the visible world was annihilated. A ray of light might serve to delight him as a toy, but it did not enable him to have the visible perception of any substance:--his nerves, indeed, appeared to be agitated by the concussion of sound, yet it was wholly impossible to lodge in his ear the missile of a word. Being thus deprived of the two nobler senses, his _mind_ was constituted of the perceptions he acquired by the organs of touch, smell, and taste. His attention was enduring, and his curiosity eager, far beyond those of any animal. Mr. Wardrop observes that "his organs of touch, of smell, and of taste, had all acquired a preternatural degree of acuteness, and appeared to have supplied, in an astonishing manner, the deficiencies in the senses of seeing and hearing. By those of touch and smell, in particular, he was in the habit of examining every thing within his reach. Large objects, such as the furniture of the room, he felt over with his fingers, whilst those which were more minute, and which excited more of his interest, he applied to his teeth, or touched with the point of his tongue. In exercising the sense of touch, it was interesting to notice the delicate and precise manner by which he applied the extremities of his fingers, and with what ease and flexibility he would insinuate the point of his tongue into all the inequalities of the body under his examination. "But there were many substances which he not only touched, but smelled during his examination. "To the sense of smell he seemed chiefly indebted for his knowledge of different persons. He appeared to know his relations and intimate friends, by smelling them very slightly, and he at once detected strangers." From the whole of this interesting relation, it seems fair to conclude that this youth, even under the privation of sight and hearing, possessed, in the staple of his intellect, capacities beyond the most docile animals; and these consisted in the ardent curiosity which he displayed, and in his desire for the improvement of his limited faculties. Had this boy been confided to my management, I should have endeavoured to educate him through the medium of his touch, so as to communicate his wants, and afford an occupation to his mind. Thus, if milk had uniformly been served to him in a bowl, beer in a mug, water in a decanter with a glass stopper, and wine in a decanter with a cork: if these had been arranged in his apartment, he might have indicated his wish for any of these liquids, by producing the vessel that contained them: the two latter might have been subsequently abbreviated, by producing the glass stopper for water and the cork for wine. As he examined every object by the touch, it would have contributed both to his improvement and occupation, if he had been furnished with a quantity of ductile clay, which he might have modelled to represent the objects he examined, and which he might have preserved as a species of tangible vocabulary. According to my own suppositions, he might have been taught to numerate. It may be a subject of considerable curiosity to enquire, of what the reflections of James Mitchel could have consisted. He had no visible impressions which his hand could record. Being deaf, he could not have acquired the instrument of thought--language; therefore, for the objects of the senses he possessed,--smell, taste, and touch,--he could have no terms, as their substitutes, for the purpose of recollection. The next important question is, in what manner (wanting names whereby they might be represented) would the perceptions of smell, taste, and touch be represented to his mind in order to constitute reflection or thought on these experienced perceptions? If musk, rose, or garlic had been smelled, these perceptions, in a being constructed like Mitchel, would remain dormant, until the same odour were again presented to his olfactory organ; when it would be recollected, or he would be conscious, that it had been previously presented. In such a being, there would be a necessity for a fresh excitation of the organ of sense by the object, to produce recollection; whereas, in those who possess language, the name produces the recollection of the thing perceived. CONCLUSION. The subjects that have been discussed in these contributions, fully establish the pre-eminence of man, over all other created beings; and it has also been endeavoured to demonstrate the circumstances which have principally contributed to this superiority. The conclusions that may be drawn are equally important and consoling. When the capacities of the intellect are fully ascertained, we shall be enabled to supply it with the proper materials of instruction; so that the protracted period of infancy may conduce to the formation of virtuous and enlightened members of civil society. The healing art will be abundantly promoted by a knowledge of mind;--for the remedy of its infirmities and perversions ought to be founded on a thorough knowledge of its faculties and operations;--nor should it be forgotten that the prevention of crimes, and the reformation of delinquents, equally involve an intimate acquaintance with the temperaments of human character. In the contemplation of mind, from the highest order to the lowest rank,--from man, to the maggot that consumes him; we are imprest with the evidence of appropriate contrivance and infinite wisdom. Although we are unable to penetrate the dense veil, that conceals the arcana of vitality and intellect; yet sufficient is exhibited to us, in the ample volume of nature, to satisfy our curiosity, and stimulate the exercise of reason. Observation and experience have disclosed to us, in a great degree, the structure and functions of our own bodily frame; and the same persevering industry has unfolded the variations which obtain in animals. The conclusions that have been formed from the study of anatomy and physiology, amount to a conviction, that the contrivance is admirably adapted to produce the effects we behold;--that the means are competent to the end. The same reasoning applies to the phenomena of intellect, and may be illustrated by the comparative difference which appears in animals and man. The mental endowments and capacities which animals possess, have rendered them stationary; whatever the more docile and intelligent may have been compelled to learn, they do not appear to comprehend, and want the means to communicate: so that their contemporaries and descendants are unbenefited by the acquirement, and the attainment perishes with the individual. When brought into existence, the world is to them a recent creation, and bears no evidence of a former race, from archives or monuments which they can understand. The record of their ancestors has been discovered by man, in fossile preservation; but its characters are unintelligible to them. As they have not been endowed with the capacity to numerate, they can experience no solicitude for the past, nor apprehension for the future. Their recollection is not an act of the will, but an excitation by the object that originally produced it. In the grammar of animals, the present is the only tense, and to punish them for the faults they had formerly committed, would be equally absurd and tyrannical. They are not the creatures of compact, and being unable to comprehend the nature of institutions, and the obligation of laws, they cannot be responsible agents. It has also been remarked, that they are destitute of sympathy for the sufferings of their fellows; but sympathy would be superfluous, where they cannot understand the nature of the affliction, and do not possess the power of administering relief. The features of the human mind are very differently shaped, and strongly indicate an ulterior destination. Man possesses language, the instrument of thought, the vehicle of intelligible communication;--and he is gifted with the hand, to record the subjects of his experience, to fabricate his contrivances, and to rear the durable monuments of his piety and splendour. Thus, he is rapidly progressive, his mind becomes opulent from the intellectual treasures of his ancestors, and, in his turn, he bequeaths to posterity the legacy of wisdom. His comprehension of numbers, on which the nature of time is founded, enable him to revert to the transactions of distant ages, and to invest faded events with the freshness of immediate perception. He alone can embalm the past, and welcome the tidings of the future. Man alone is fitted to covenant, although he may occasionally waver in the performance. His exalted capacities, his comprehension of the law, constitute his responsibility: for where the conditions of the compact are not understood, there can be no disobedience or delinquency. The helpless condition of the human infant, and the paucity of its instincts, apparently render it less favoured than animals;--but it was necessary, in order to constitute man a moral agent and a responsible being, that he should be the architect of his own mind. When born, he has every thing to learn; and a large portion of his existence is consumed to qualify him for his station in society. Had he, like animals, been gifted with intuitive wisdom, the donation would have been so perfect, as to render instruction superfluous;--and such endowment would have diminished the measure of his responsibility. The freedom of his will, by which is to be understood the impulse of reason, not the blind dictates of appetite, nor the sallies of tumultuous passions, renders him amenable. Such is the force of the human mind, that it can surmount the difficulties which situation and circumstances oppose to its improvement: so powerful is reason, that it can correct the prejudices of early tuition, and atone for crime, by the pursuit of honourable practice. Man alone can repent; he only can retrace the acts of former commission, and resolve on amelioration for the future. Thus we find that moral responsibility has its basis in the comprehension of Time. In proportion to our love and estimation of justice, we must be satisfied that, under the purest forms of human government, it is but imperfectly administered: the rewards and punishments in this life will ever be blended with the hopes and fears, the interests and passions, of our species; and there is much of evil, which human sagacity cannot detect. When we consider the attributes of the Deity and the nature of man, we can never be induced to conclude that the tribunals of this world are the courts of final retribution. Man bears in his intellectual construction the badge of moral responsibility, and, consequently, the germ of future existence: and the only incentive that can urge him to the advancement of science, and the practice of virtue, is the reward that Revelation has unfolded. THE END. Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoode, Printers-Street, London. 
36849	----	[Illustration: Wm C Hunter] THINK A Book for To-day By COL. WM. C. HUNTER Author of Pep, Dollars and Sense, Brass Tacks, etc. [Illustration] The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago _Printed in the United States of America_ Copyright, 1918 by The Reilly & Britton Co. _Made in U. S. A._ Published September 24, 1918 Second Printing--October 1, 1918 Third Printing--June 15, 1919 Fourth Printing--June 1, 1920 Fifth Printing--April 3, 1922 Sixth Printing--February 27, 1925 Seventh Printing--October 25, 1926 Eighth Printing--October 5, 1927 _Think_ PUBLISHER'S NOTE When Colonel Hunter wrote PEP in 1914 and offered it to The Reilly & Britton Company, we immediately accepted the manuscript for publication. So highly did we regard the work that the president of this company, over his signature, contributed an introductory note of endorsement, citing his own experience in following the rules and principles laid down in PEP for the attainment of "poise, efficiency and peace." Our confidence and belief in PEP were amply justified. Eight large editions were printed in four years. Over 70,000 copies have been sold. THINK--the last book that Colonel Hunter wrote--is now published for the first time. It is especially important, coming, as it does, at a time when commonsense thinking, good health, good cheer, optimism and rational methods of living are more necessary than ever before. In this trenchantly written volume, Colonel Hunter has given some golden advice to the man or woman who is facing the big problems of to-day in a wavering or hopeless spirit. Correct your thinking. Get a grip on yourself. Colonel Hunter tells you how. THINK 1. We all enter the world with an abundance of nerve energy, and by conserving that energy we can adapt and adjust our nerve equipment to keep pace with the progress and evolution of our times. The way to preserve and conserve nerve equilibrium and power is to rest and relax the nerves each day. You may rest them by a change of the thought habit each day, by relaxation, by sleep, and by the suggestions made in this book. There are but few advance danger signals shown by the nervous system, and in this there is a marked difference between the nerves and the organic system. If you abuse your stomach, head, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys or eyes, you have distress and pain. The nervous energy is like a barrel of water--you can draw water from the faucet at the bottom until you have almost exhausted the contents. Nature mends ordinary nerve waste each day, like the rains replenish the cistern. [Sidenote: Conserve Your Energy.] A reasonable use of your nerve force, like a reasonable use of the rainwater, means you can maintain a permanent supply. But you must be reasonable; you must give the cistern a chance to refill and replace that which you have drawn out. You, who have shattered and tattered your nerves, are not hopeless. You can come back, but it must be done by complete change of the acts that brought on the condition. Get more sleep. Eliminate the useless, harmful fads, fancies and functions which disturbed and prevented you from living a sane, rational life. Avoid extremes, cultivate rhythm and regularity in your business and your home life. Keep away from excitement. Read really good books. Walk more, talk less. Eat less heat-making foods and more apples. Follow the diet, exercise and thought rules suggested in "Pep." [Sidenote: No Need to Despair.] Maybe these lines are being read by a discouraged one who is "all nerves," which means lost nerve force. To you I say there is hope and cheer and strength and courage if, right here, now, you resolve to cut the actions, habits and stunts that knocked you out and follow my suggestions. I know, my friend, for I've trotted the heat, danced the measure, and been through the mill. Now I am fearless, calm and prepared. I can stand any calamity, meet any issue, endure any sorrow. I can do prodigious work in an emergency, go without rest or eating when required, because I have poise, efficiency--peace. [Sidenote: Steer a Middle Course.] I realize nothing is as bad as it is painted. Nothing is as good as its boosters claim. I go in the middle of the road, avoiding extremes. I have confidence in my heart. Courage, hope, happiness, and content attend me on my way. I've buried envy in a deep pit and covered it with quick lime. I am keeping worry out by keeping faith, hope and cheer thoughts in my brain-room, and these are antiseptics against the ravages of the worry microbe. I have my petty troubles and little make-believe worries, just enough of them to make me realize I have them licked, and to remind me I must not let up on my mastery of them. Worry growls once in a while just to make me grab tighter the handle of my whip. And you may enjoy this serene state, too. There is no secret about it. I will gladly give you the rules of the game in this book. Just prepare to receive some practical, helpful suggestions. 2. [Sidenote: How to Use Your Assets.] You are a busy person, so am I. Busy persons are the ones who do things. The architect is a busy man, but he has learned that the effort spent in preparing his plans is the most important part of his work. The plans enable him to do his work systematically and lay down rules and methods to get the highest efficiency and accomplishment from those who do the work of erecting the building. If the architect would order lumber, stone and hardware, without system, and start to erect the building without carefully prepared plans, the building would lack symmetry and strength, and it would be most expensive. The planning time therefor was time well spent. Few persons have the ability to control and conserve their talents so as to produce the highest efficiency. Men rush along thinking their busyness means business. Really, it means double energy and extra moves to produce a given effect. [Sidenote: Unnecessary Moves.] The elimination of unnecessary moves means operating along lines of least resistance, and any plan or method that will help to do away with unnecessary moves and make the necessary moves more potential will be received with welcome, I am sure. With the object of conserving energy and strengthening your force, this book is written. It shall not be a book of ultimate definiteness or a book of exact science. There are no definite or exact rules that will apply, without exception, to any science except mathematics. But we shall learn many helpful truths, nevertheless, and if I err, or disagree with your conclusions, just eliminate those lines and take the helps you find. I particularly emphasize the importance of taking a few minutes each evening and using the time for sizing up things, by inventory, analysis, speculation, comparison and hypothesis. Many of the great captains of industry who are noted for their energy in accomplishing things worth while, have learned the value of this daily habit. [Sidenote: Know Thyself.] I want to help YOU to form the habit of thinking over each day's activities in the quiet, relaxed, uncolored, unprejudiced, secluded environment of your home. When the day's work is over, spend fifteen or twenty minutes each evening in seclusion, and with closed eyes, size yourself up. Think over your daily round and the work you are doing. Are you getting the best out of yourself? Or are you plodding along aimlessly, scattering your energy in a haphazard, hit-or-miss fashion that benefits nobody? Are you growing, or are you standing still? In these fifteen-minute sizing-up sessions, you will come to grips with yourself. You will see yourself as you really are, and will discover your weaknesses, your strength, your real worth. I have chosen the evening as the time for our little talks. In the evening we can be cozy, comfy and communicative. The bank is closed. We met the note and got through the day. We are alive and well; we can open our hearts. There is no office boy to disturb us, and the life insurance agent is away at his club. Yes, we can be alone and tranquilly let down the tension, lower the speed and with normal heartbeats play the low tones, the soft strains, the quieting music, and soothe our nerves. All day we've heard the band with its drums and trombones and shrieky music. The day with its busy whirl kept our analyzing mental think-tank occupied with thoughts of gain and game and fame. In the evening we have time to study logic and to reason, to analyze and to take inventory, to thresh out problems. So let us relax and reflect in the evening quiet. 3. Man's nature makes it imperative for him to be interested in something. That interest is to his help or hurt, according as he directs it. There is much worry and misery in the world because so many are astatic, like a compass that has lost its loadstone. Man is definitely the result of the materials the body and the mind feed upon. Character is the result of a determined purpose to be and to do right--to one's self and to one's fellows. The man of character focuses his attention on truth, and on fact. [Sidenote: Theory and Fact.] He uses theories with fact, to aid his progress, but he recognizes that theorizing, without fact as a safety ballast, is a useless expenditure. Theories without fact leave man in a rudderless boat; he gets nowhere, he merely drifts. Theory often helps to get at fact, but the better way is to get at fact by proven experience, of which there is an inexhaustible abundance in the world. Facts are based on natural laws. The study of natural laws is beneficial. We shall strive in our studies to keep close to fact with just enough speculation to enliven the interest in facts. Living the artificial life makes for worry, illness and failure. Living in harmony with the great natural laws is the helpful way to live. To abide by the law is safety; to violate the law brings punishment. Every man is better if he follows scientific methods and habits of thought and living. The loafing or astatic mind will fall into morbid tendencies. The employed, truth-seeking, idealistic, hopeful mind is never dependent on people or things for its pleasure. The acquiring of helpful knowledge, the seeking of worth-while truth, are ever profitable employments, paying present and future dividends, and meanwhile those acts positively divert the thought from morbid tendencies. I shall strive to bring helpful knowledge, good cheer and interesting facts for your present occupation and benefit. If I succeed in accomplishing my purpose, even in part, my time has been well spent. [Sidenote: Thought Never Stops.] We have an unchallenged fact to rest our feet on, a fact that shall follow us through all the pages of this book, and that is: Our thoughts never stop, our brains never sleep. So then, we must consider that thought current, and reckon with it. The motive power is turned on, and we must grasp the helm if we sail the sea of life successfully, baffling storms and avoiding rocks. Scientific books are usually dry, uninviting reading; they lack the human interest. They are generally bloodless skeletons. We shall try to weave science into new patterns and paint interesting pictures, so that science will attract and not repel. This book is different in its suggestions, in its prescriptions, in its language, but it is universal with all scientific books, in that its aim is helpful truth. We go by different routes, but our objective point is the same. We will avoid technical names and symbols, and will speak the common language that the multitude understands. We shall deal with problems and aspirations that come to us all in this busy workaday world. We shall try to cut the underbrush in the swamp and blaze a plain trail out on to the big high road. We shall keep in step to the drum-beats of truth, we will rest and recreate in cool shady places, and then up and on to our purpose with smiles on our faces, courage in our hearts, and song on our lips. Every moment of our journey will be worth while and positively helpful if we take the trip with conscientious application and continuity of purpose. Our path is strewn with roses and thorns; we must enjoy the roses and escape the thorns. We welcome you, the neophyte, who have joined us in our pilgrimage. 4. Let's be personal; that's a good way to establish a good idea in place of a bad one. Are YOU pleasant to live with? Keep this personal question before you, even if you are cocksure that you can answer, yes. [Sidenote: Be Pleasant.] Maybe there are some little jars, rattles, gratings, you are not aware of. Few of us are honest when looking for our own faults. There may be some sand in your gear box. It won't hurt you to keep the personal question alive for a few days,--"Am I pleasant to live with?" I love the pleasant people whether they are fat, lean, tall, short, red heads, brown heads, homely, handsome, republicans or democrats, business men or artisans. The complaining, unpleasant grouch is like a bear with a toothache. Miserable himself and spreading misery all around. A freckle-faced, red-headed, cross-eyed man with a healthy funny bone will spread more cheerfulness and sunshine than a bench full of sad and solemn justices of the supreme court, or a religious conference. What a different story would be written of Job, if he had only possessed a servant who could dance a double shuffle and whistle "Dixie" while cooking breakfast. David was a man after my own heart; he brought gladsome songs into the world. He said, "Live the way of pleasantness." You can pray, sing, play, work, think, rest, hope; you can be well or ill, rich or poor and still be pleasant to live with. [Sidenote: Pleasantness a Tonic Quality.] Being pleasant helps you to be strong in body and mind, and it keeps you young a long time. It's good medicine; I know it. My little motto, "Be pleasant every morning until ten o'clock, the rest of the day will take care of itself," has brought sunshine into many homes. If you frown it will soon get to be a habit--and give you a heavy heart. If you smile your face will be attractive, no matter how unlucky you were in the lottery of beauty. Be pleasant and you will never feel old. The pleasant disposition is a sure route to happy land and happy homes. Old Ponce de Leon lost out in searching for the fountain of youth. If he had been pleasant, he would have kept the smiles on his wife's face and there would have been no excuse to leave her to find the mythical fountain. Hoe cake, bacon and smiles beat lobster, champagne and frowns. Our land is thrice blessed with its peaceful, happy homes--for "happy homes are the strength of a nation." Be pleasant in your home. Make the children feel home is the pleasantest place in the world. Every act and example is written in the child's memory tablet. Let your hours with the children be loving, laughing, living hours. Pat them on the head, joke with them, whisper affection, express love to them. Those acts will be remembered in all their years to come, for you are planting everlasting plants that may pass on to a hundred generations and make children happy a thousand years from now. [Sidenote: Cheerfulness Its Own Reward.] Be pleasant to live with and you will have more pleasant things to live for. There will be kindnesses, kisses, beauty, health, peace, fun, happiness and content coming your way all along the great big road of life you are traveling. Be pleasant to live with and the people will turn to you as you pass and reflect your cheerfulness like the sunflowers turn to face the sun. Be pleasant; don't be cross and crabbed because someone else in the household is not pleasant. Do your part; you will likely thereby cure the frown habit on the face of the unfortunate disturber of your peace. Make yourself right before you criticise your life partner. Answer this question, "Am I pleasant to live with?" Don't fool yourself in the matter. Get right down to brass tacks with yourself, watch your moves and acts and attitude for ten days carefully before answering the question. If your answer is no, now is your time to change your attitude and try the pleasant plan, and here is my blessing and good wishes in such an event. 5. There is fun and interest and diversion all around us. All we need is keen observation and we will see much that passes unnoticed to the preoccupied person. What an interesting thing is the great round world we live in! The people are as interesting as fish in an aquarium. [Sidenote: Sitting on the Side Lines.] See the rushing, surging crowd. Man pushes along searching for necessary things to be done; he builds cities, harnesses rivers, makes ships to sail the seas to the uttermost parts of the earth. Man goes to war, he builds death-dealing devices that destroy in a few minutes a beautiful cathedral which has taken centuries to build. Man makes the desert blossom like a rose. Here is the scientist in his laboratory, trying to unite certain elements to produce new substance. Here is the beauty in her silken nest; here the lover; there the musician; yonder the peanut man, and in the office building is the captain of industry--all busy bees deeply absorbed in their respective interests, and intoxicated in the belief that they are important and greatly necessary. Yet in the broad measure of ages they are mere ripples on the sea of time, faint bubbles on the eternal deep, and grains of sand at the mountain foot. Great man by his own measure--minute man by the great measure of time. Mammoths to the near-sighted--mites to the far-sighted. Hustle and bustle, crowd and push. They tramp down the weaker brothers in the mad race after the golden shekels, which are only measures of the ability to buy and own material things; symbols of power to make others serve you. These golden shekels which men fret, sweat and fight for, can only buy physical and material things. [Sidenote: A Great Truth.] Away from the crowd is the little group who have learned a great truth, which is that happiness is not to be bought with gold. This little minority knows that mental pleasures are best, and that mental pleasures cannot be found on the great highway of material conquest. The puffy, corn-fed millionaire pities the man who is content to live with small means and enjoy what he has to the full extent. [Sidenote: Real Happiness.] The wise man is he who gets fullness out of life--happiness, respect, content, freedom from worry; who is busy doing useful things--busy helping his brother, busy training his children, busy spreading sunshine and love and the close-together feeling in his home circle. The corn-fed, hardened, senseless, money-mad, dollar-worshipper knows not peace. Smiles seldom linger on his lips. Peace never rests in his bosom, cheer never lights his face. He is simply a fighting machine, miserable in solitude, suffering when inactive and sick when resting. The money-chaser is up and doing, working like a Trojan, because occupation takes his mind off the painful picture of his misspent opportunity and his destroyed natural instinct. When fighting for gold he forgets his appalling poverty in the really worth-while things in the world. Like the drunkard in his cups, the intoxication makes him forget, and he is negatively happy. Money received as reward for doing things worth-while is laudable. We cannot sit idly by and neglect to earn money to provide food, shelter and education for our loved ones, but between times we should seek the wealth that comes from right mental employment. The millionaire thinks, dreams and gets dollars, and that is all. The worth-while man thinks kindness, usefulness, self-improvement, brotherhood, love and he gets happiness. [Sidenote: Doing for Others.] The man who discovers means to help his fellow man, does a good act, but is the man with the dollars in front of his eyes who commercializes the discovery and invention. In the end, the man that helped mankind fares better than the man who made the millions. It's a great crowd surging by, and very few have the good sense to learn the value of TO-DAY. That great crowd I see below my window thinks ever of to-morrow and forgets the wondrous opportunities that to-day holds out. Those who think always of to-morrow will never get the beauties and joys from life that comes to the little group of To-day, who appreciates and enjoys the real Now, rather than the pictured To-morrow that never comes. It's mighty interesting to sit on the side lines and watch the crowds go by and speculate on their movements. [Sidenote: The Road to Disillusionment.] Save up your pennies, measure everything by the dollar standard, think dollars, dream dollars, work, slave, push for the dollars and you will build a fortune. You will never have peace or recreation or joy; you will live only in hope of a some day when you will retire. That's the way the millionaires travel life's highway. Some day the paper will announce the death of those millionaires, and then the dollars will be blown in by reckless heirs, and so the grinding wheels roll on. Surely there are many ways of looking at things. Surely there is much of interest in the crowd. Surely there is an unending amount of thought and speculation possible about that crowd way down on the street below my window. What passions, what hopes, what joys, what sorrows, are in the hearts of that hurrying, worrying crowd. What noise this din of traffic makes; what activity man has stirred up. A picture, a drama, a tragedy, a comedy--all these I see in the human ants that run along below the hive where I sit and write these lines. The phone rings and my little Nancy Lou's voice says, "Daddy, will you please bring me a pencil and a tablet with lines on it." So I must needs stop this, whatever you may call it, and push through the crowd to get that tablet with "lines on it" for my Nancy Lou; and there is some feeling of happiness and content and peace in Daddy's heart as he lays down his pen, for Daddy is going Home, and that word means a lot in his little family, where they all say "Daddy" instead of Papa or Father. 6. [Sidenote: Wasted Energy.] It is hard enough to do duty once, but doubly hard when you anticipate mentally everything you have to do to-morrow. This doing things twice is a habit easily acquired if you don't watch out, and it means wasted energy. I have just read the experience of a housewife who was resting on a couch and reading. Her eye caught sight of a book lying on the floor across the room. Instantly her mindometer, if I may coin a word, registered, "When you get up, pick up that book." She went on reading, but her mind was not on the magazine she held, but on that book on the floor. So obsessed did she become that she was miserable until she got up and picked up the book. I was talking with a woman who was resting on her porch. Her day's work was over. She was dressed for the afternoon. Everything in the home was neat, sweet, clean and tidy. All was serene but her face, and that was the window through which I saw worry working overtime. By strategy I learned the trouble, and here is her story: "To-morrow a lot of fruit will be ready to preserve. I am worrying where I shall put it. My fruit closet is full." [Sidenote: Doing Things Twice.] The woman had every reason to say to herself, "Sufficient unto the day," yet she was doing the preserving mentally to-day and to-morrow she would do the work physically. A tired mind is harder to rest than a tired body, so we must nip this advance mental work in the bud. We have all been mentally obsessed with worrying about the things we were going to take on our trip; then worrying over the routine of our work when we should return from our trip. If the housewife looks over her week's work and washes the dishes, makes the beds, cooks the meals, dresses the children, mends the clothes, and does all these things in her imagination before she does them in reality, she is indeed a hard working woman. It's all right to plan your work; that's economy in mental expenditure, for it simplifies, systematizes, and saves work. [Sidenote: Planning is Efficiency.] Plan your work in advance, but do not keep your mind on the plans until the work is done. When you have planned, then close the mental book of to-morrow's duty, and turn to pleasures, rest, relaxation and enjoyment of to-day. It is to get a definite, different thought habit fixed that I ask you to give me these few minutes each day, so that we may consider various phases of life, science, pleasure, morals and mental refreshment. True, we can only have a fleeting look at things, but we'll get enough, I hope, to freshen your minds, change the humdrum, and elicit interest in things. Maybe these heart-to-heart, confidential chats will help us and keep us from going through the mental motions of to-morrow's physical work. If these evening talks interest you, help clear your vision, help cheer you, help rest you, then they are good for you, and because they help you, they certainly benefit me and make me very happy, because happiness comes from doing something for others. I write as the mood strikes me, or as a phase of life comes before me, or as an idea strikes in and just won't let go until I grasp my pen and let the words flow. I mean this book to be human, and not a studied literary effort. I want to reach you right there alone in the room where you are reading this, and I want the suggestions, the good, the help, to soak in, and I want you to pass the good you get to your brother; you won't lose a bit by doing so. 7. "She is all right--her only trouble is her NERVES." How often we hear that and how little does the person with steady nerves appreciate the tortures of "nerves." [Sidenote: About Nerves.] A cut, a bruise, a headache, or any of the physical ailments can be quickly cured. Nature will mend the break, but tired, worn, stretched, abused nerves take time to restore. These nerve ailments call for most vigorous mental treatment. Neurasthenia means debilitated or prostrated nerves and it shows itself first of all by worry. Worry means the inability to relax the attention from a definite fear or fancied hard luck. Worry leads to many physical and mental disorders. Left alone this worry stage develops into an acute state and brings with it nervous prostration, and sometimes a complete collapse of the will power. Before the acute stage of neurasthenia is reached, there is noticed "brain fag," and brain fag is nature's warning signal calling upon you to take notice and change your mental habits. Worry sometimes develops into hysteria; again it takes the form of hypochondria or chronic blues. The hypochondriac has a chronic, morbid anxiety about personal health and personal welfare. Frequently this state is accompanied by melancholia. Melancholia is the fork in the road. One turning leads to incurable insanity, the other to curable melancholia. Right here is where heroic action is needed by the sufferer. [Sidenote: Cure the Worry Habit.] Here is where the sufferer must exert his maximum will power, and change completely his mental and physical habits and his surroundings. Occupation, changed habits, taking in of confidence, faith and courage thoughts--these changes are necessary to the victim of melancholia, or he will shatter his health on the danger rocks and go to pieces. Melancholia is an ailment that offers a good chance for Christian Science. Mental suggestion, the powerful personality of a friend, and the personal help such a friend can give by counsel, example and suggestion, are all helps. I have abundant evidence that melancholia sufferers can be restored to peace, efficiency and poise, by proper thought direction, and by proper physical employment. "Pep," which has principally to do with mental efficiency, definitely lays down rules and practical suggestions for the employment of the mind and body. I have letters and verbal proofs in quantity proving the efficiency of those rules and suggestions. So wonderful have been the results, so numerous the recoveries, that the testimonials, if published, would make the fake nerve tonic manufacturer die of envy. [Sidenote: The Importance of Nerves.] "Only your nerves." I cannot understand why the word, only, is used. It makes it appear that nerves are of minor importance. Nerves are less understood than anything in the human anatomy and they are harder to understand. Experience has proved that nerves cannot be restored by dope, patent medicines, tonics or prescriptions. The cure must come by and through the individual possessing the nerves, and by and through the individual's power of will and mastery of the mind. Get the mental equipment right. Let the mind master the body. Let the nerve sufferer get hold of himself and fill his brain with faith-thought instead of fear-thought, with courage instead of cowardice, with strength instead of weakness, with hope instead of despair, with smiles instead of frowns, with occupation instead of sluggishness, and wonders will appear. The little shredded, tingling nerve-ends will then commence to synchronize instead of fight, to harmonize instead of breaking into discord, to build instead of destroy. [Sidenote: You Can "Come Back."] The building, or coming back to a normal state, is slow; it takes time, patience and will power, but it can be done. I know. I have been through the mill, and I pass the word to you and try to stir you to be up and doing, even as I did. Your nerves can be steadied, your thoughts uplifted, your health restored, your ambition re-established, your normality fixed. Smiles, love and content are to be yours. Poise, efficiency, peace, your blessings. Health, happiness and hope your dividends. All these I promise you if you will read this book from cover to cover, _think_, and follow its plain, practical teachings. The curriculum is not hard; it is not my discovery. I am merely the purveyor of facts, the gleaner of truth, and the selector of helpful experiences, first of all for my own benefit, and having proved the truth in my own case, for friends to whom I pass the truths and rules. I made bold to write books, but the writing has paid me well, not alone in dollars, but from having done a helpful thing in writing for other humans who have had problems, worries and nerves. The big books on nerves are discouraging and forbidding by their immensity and the labyrinth of technical, scientific terms. There are fine for teachers, but discouraging for the layman. The great everyday crowd is the class I want to talk to, and so I endeavor to write in plain human, sincere style from heart to heart, with understanding, feeling, charity and sympathy. I have felt the things you feel, and if I can by example, emphasis, suggestion, rule or good intent, be a help to you, then I have done a service. 8. There are men who cannot be kept down by circumstances or obstacles. [Sidenote: The Men Who Do Things.] These men "carry on" with confidence in their hearts and smiles on their faces. They do not lie in wait for the band wagon or favorable winds; they make things happen. They are alert and alive to every favorable opportunity and helpful influence that comes their way. These men are men of good health. They are out of doors much; they carry their heads high and breathe in good air deeply. They greet friends with a smile and put meaning and feeling into every hand clasp. Let's you and I follow their trail, for it leads out on to the big road. Do not fear being misunderstood; right will finally come into its own. We will keep our minds off our enemies, and keep our thoughts on our purpose; we will make up our minds what we want to do. We will mark a straight line on the log and hew to that line. Fear is the dope drug that kills initiative; hate the poison that shatters clear thinking. Hate and fear are the iron ore in our life's vessel; they deflect the compass and prevent us from holding to the course. [Sidenote: Grasp Present Opportunities.] There are splendid worth-while things for us to do, and with continuity of action and singleness of purpose on our part the days will pass by as we are seizing opportunity and making use of the things required for the fulfillment of our desires. We are like the coral insect that takes from the running tide the material to build a solid fortress. Our running tide is made up of the gliding golden days. Let's waste no time in trying to make friends or in seeking to attach ourselves to others. True friends are not caught by pursuit; they come to us; they happen through circumstances we do not create. Self-reliance is ours, and we must first use it for our own betterment. We will then have a surplus of energy to allow us to help others. Our energy hours must be devoted to our purposes and ideals. Atween times, we must rest and relax, and repair the waste that strenuosity makes. Breathe good air, bask in the sunshine, see nature, and say to yourself: "All these treasures are for me; all these things I am part of." [Sidenote: The Joy of Living.] Do not prepare for death; prepare for life. Preparing for death brings the end before your allotted time. Like Job of old, that which we fear will come to us. We must not think of death, or waste time preparing for it. It makes us miserable to-day. It makes us weak and fills us with fear, and it draws the day of our departure nearer. To-day is ours. Live freely, fully to-day. Be unafraid, unhurried, and undisturbed. We are building character, and the way we build it is by mental attitude, by our acts, and by the way we employ the precious moments of to-day. Put yourself in harmony with nature--realize the wonderful power of the will--and you will be strong, a veritable king among men. 9. [Sidenote: The Pessimist.] The calamity howler is found everywhere. In times of peace or war he is with us. This pessimist sows seeds of discord, plants envy, generates the anarchist spirit, and is an all-around nuisance. A man may spend years erecting a building; a fiend can demolish it in a minute with a stick of dynamite. The calamity howler is a destroyer; he doesn't think, he spurts out words. His words and arguments are simply parrot mimicry and void of intellectual impulse, as are the movements of an angle worm. These gloom merchants talk of their rights, and they expect and demand the same privileges and benefits that are earned by the man who uses his head. The pessimist sees good in nobody. Human nature to him is a cesspool of villainy and corruption. He will not tolerate a word of praise for a thing well done. Disparagement is his favorite weapon. He ascribes mean and selfish motives to public-spirited men. Every deed of kindness, every act of generosity, is given a sinister meaning when seen in the light of his own base soul. At home he is a grumbler and a grouch. His presence depresses, and happiness fades away at his approach. In the community, he never reaches high office because he lacks civic spirit and the forward-looking view. He obstructs progress instead of promoting it. At his work, he lags behind where others achieve. He rails at conditions instead of changing them, and eventually he finds himself shelfed and shunned as a back number. These purveyors of panic eat into the vitals of the nation. They breed discontent, undermine morale, and sow suspicion and distrust where previously there had been friendliness, co-operation and the pull-together spirit. Wherever men gather, you will find these ghoulish spirits. They are in evidence in times of peace and plenty, as well as in times of war and peril. It matters not that our farmers are seeing to it that our granaries are filled to-day as never before, and that every man has a job. These prophets of disaster have only one string to their harp, and they will twang on that and no other. [Sidenote: The Danger of Pessimism.] In times of war, the pessimist is doubly dangerous, for he spreads his iniquitous propaganda among people who are already under a great emotional strain. Always a menace, when a people are in the throes of a great life-and-death struggle, it is doubly necessary to stamp out this destroyer of morale, with his insidious campaign of gloom and despair and his veiled innuendos of panic and destruction. It is up to you and to me to denounce these breeders of discord; to hold them up to the scorn of intelligent, thinking people. They are neither doers nor thinkers, and the world has no need of them in these trying times. 10. This evening I rode home in a crowded street car. What an interesting study it was to watch the faces in that car. Discontent, discomfort, worry, gloominess on nearly every face. Tired faces, tired bodies drooped over from a hard day's work, mouth corners depressed. Hopelessness stamped on the countenances. [Sidenote: Gloom and Cheer.] As the people came in the car, some of them had smiles or at least passable expressions, but when they got crowded together and saw the gloomy faces, the gloom spread to their faces, too. At a picnic, all are smiling and laughing. In the street car at six o'clock, the long procession of workers is a stream of solemn faces. Contagion, example, surroundings, yes, that's it--contagion and example. At six o'clock in the cars, all is gloom, blueness and sorrow faces. At eight o'clock many of these faces will be changed; there will be joy, smiles, rosiness, singing and dancing. Yet the actual conditions of finance, health, hope or prospects haven't changed since these people were in the car at six o'clock. Why, then, such a change in two hours? [Sidenote: Good Cheer Contagious.] It is this: At seven o'clock these workers sat down to supper; they were out of that gloom-reflected street car atmosphere. Now they are talking; they are rounding-up the day's activities; they are HOME with mother, sister, brother and the kiddies. The home ones greet them with smiles, the appetizing supper pleases the palate, good cheer permeates, and all around them is smiles and joy. Gloom spreads gloom. Joy spreads joy. Gloom is black; joy is white. One darkens, the other brightens. Well, then, where's the moral? What's the benefit from this little study of the street car passengers? The lesson is plain: It is that you and I are ferments of joy, or acids of gloom. We are influences to help or to hurt. To hurt others by our example hurts us. To help others by our example helps us. We become happier than ever. In the street car, life was not worth living if you judged by the pained faces. In two hours, by changed thought, the example of life was worth while. What changes mental attitude makes! "When a man has spent His very last cent, The world looks blue, you bet; But give him a dollar, And loud he will holler There's life in the old world yet." Next time we get on the street car, let's plant some smiles. Let's give that lady a seat and smile when we do it. We can spread cheer by merely wearing a cheery face. Costs little, pays big. Let's do it. 11. Some of our richest blessings are gained by not striving for them directly. This is so true that we accept the blessings without thinking about how we came to get them. [Sidenote: Be Happy.] Particularly true is this in the matter of happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, but few know how to secure this blessing. Most people have the idea that the possession of material things is necessary to happiness, and that idea is what keeps architects, automobile makers, jewelers, tailors, hotels, railroads, steamships and golf courses busy. Do your duty well, have a worth-while ambition, be a dreamer, have an ideal, keep your duty in mind, be occupied sincerely with your work, keep on the road to your ideal, and happiness will cross your path all the while. Happiness is an elusive prize; it's wary, timid, alert and cannot be caught. Chase it and it escapes your grasp. [Sidenote: One Man's Story.] I read today of a friend who walked home with a workman. This is the workman's story: He had a son who was making a record in school. He had two daughters who helped their mother; he had a cottage, a little yard, a few flowers, a garden. He worked hard in a garage by day, and in the evening he cultivated his flowers, his garden, and his family. He had health, plus contentment a-plenty. His possessions were few and the care of them consequently a negligible effort. Happiness flowed in the cracks of his door. Smiles were on his lips, joy in his heart, love in his bosom; that's the story my friend heard. Then came a friend in an automobile on his way home from the club. He picked up my friend, and unfolded to him a tale of woe, misery and discontent. This club man had money, automobiles, social standing, possessions, and all the objects and material things envious persons covet--yet he was unhappy. His whole life was spent chasing happiness, but his sixty horsepower auto wasn't fast enough to catch it. The poor man I have told you about was the man who washed the club man's auto. The strenuous pleasure seeker fails to get happiness; that is an inexorable law. He develops into a pessimist with an acrid, satirical disgust at all the simple, wholesome, worth-while, real things in life. This is not a new discovery of mine; it's an old truth. Read Ecclesiastes, the pessimistic chronicle of the Bible, and you'll learn what comes to the pleasure-chaser, and you will know about "vanity and vexation of spirit." [Sidenote: Making Others Happy.] Do something for somebody. Engage in moves and enterprises that will be of service to the community and help the uplift of mankind. This making others happy is a positive insurance and guarantee of your own happiness. You must keep a stiff upper lip, a stiff backbone; you must forget the wishbone and the envious heart. Paul had trials, setbacks, hardships and hard labors; he had defeats and discouragements and still the record shows he was "always rejoicing." Paul was a man of Pep. In the dungeon, with his feet in stocks, he sang songs and rejoiced. Paul was happy, ever and always, not because he strove to get happiness, but because he had dedicated his life to the service of mankind. The real hero, the real man of fame, the real man of popularity, doesn't arrive by setting out on a quest for any of these things; the result is incidental. The real hero forgets self first of all; that is the essential step to greatness. Washington at Valley Forge had no thought that his acts there would furnish inspiration for a picture that would endure for generations. Lincoln, the care-worn, tired, noble man, in his speech at Gettysburg, never dreamed that that speech would stamp him as a master of words and thought, in the hearts of his country-men. He thought not of self. He was trying to soothe wounds, cheer troubled spirits, and give courage to those who had been so long in shadowland. Ever has it been that fame, glory, happiness came as rewards, not to those who strive to capture, but to those who strive to free others from their troubles, burdens and problems. 12. I am often asked: "Are you happy ALL the time?" My answer is no. [Sidenote: Continuous Happiness Impossible.] A continuous state of happiness cannot be enjoyed by any human. There are no plans, no habits, no methods of living that will insure unbroken happiness. Happiness means periods or marking posts in our journey along life's road. These high points of bliss are enjoyed because we have to walk through the low places between times. Continuous sunshine, continuous warm weather, continuous rest, continuous travel, continuous anything spells monotony. We must have variety. We need the night to make us enjoy the day, winter to make us enjoy summer, clouds to make us enjoy sunshine, sorrow to make us enjoy happiness. But, dear reader, mark this: We can be philosophical, and have content, serenity and poise between the happiness periods. When you get blue, or have dread or sorrow, or possess that indescribable something that makes you feel badly; when you have worry or trouble, then's the time to get hold of your thinking machinery and dispel the shadows that cross your path. Occupation and focusing your thoughts on your blessings--these are the methods to employ. As long as you dwell upon your imagined or your real sorrows, you will be miserable and the worries will magnify like gathering clouds in April. [Sidenote: Think Happiness.] Change your thoughts to confidence, faith, and good cheer, and busy your hands with work. Think of the happiness periods you have had, and know that there are further happiness dividends coming to you. Keep this sort of thought, and with it, useful occupation, and the sunshine will dispel your gloomy forebodings and sorrow thoughts like the sun dispels the April showers, bringing about a more beautiful day because of the clouds and storms just passed. When trouble or sorrows come, sweeten your cup with sugar remembrances of joys that have been and joys you are to have. Envy no one; envy breeds worry. The person you would envy has his sorrows and shadows, too. You see him only when the sunlight is on the face; you don't see him when he is in shadowland. [Sidenote: Brace Up, Cheer Up.] No, dear ones, I, nor you, nor anyone on earth can have complete, unruffled, continued happiness, but we can brace up and call our reserve will-power, reason, and self-confidence into action when we come to the marshy places along the road. We can pick our steps and get through the mire, and sooner than we believe it possible, we can get on the good solid ground; and as we travel, happiness will often come as a reward for our poise and patience. My friends say: "You always seem happy," and in that saying they tell a truth, for I am happy often--very, very often--and between times I make myself seem to be happy. This making myself "seem to be happy" gives me serenity, contentment, fortitude, and the very "seeming" soon blossoms into a reality of the condition I seem to be in. You can be happy often, and when you are not happy, just seem to be happy anyway; it will help you much. 13. A little child is crying over a real or fancied injury to her body or to her pride. So long as she keeps her mind on the subject she is miserable. Distract her attention, get her mind on another subject, and her tears stop and smiles replace frowns. This shows how we are creatures of our thoughts. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" is a truth that has endured through the centuries. We are children in so far as we cry and suffer when we think of our ills or hurts or wrongs or bad luck. We can smile and have peace, poise and strength if we change our thoughts to faith, courage and confidence. [Sidenote: Fear-Thought and Faith-Thought.] Our condition is what we make it. If we think fear, worry and misery, we will suffer. If we think faith, peace and happiness, we will enjoy life. Every thought that comes out of our brain had to go in first. The kind of thoughts we have afford an indication of the kind of people we are. If we feed our brain storehouse with trash and fear and nonsense, we have poor material to draw from. [Sidenote: Thought Control.] The last thought we put in the brain before going to sleep is most likely to last longest. So it is our duty to quietly relax, to slow down, to eliminate fear-thought and self-accusation, and to substitute some good helpful thought in closing the mental book of each day. Therefore read a chapter or two from a worth-while book the last thing before going to bed. Say to yourself, "I am unafraid; I can, I will awake in the morning with smiles on my face, courage in my heart, and song on my lips." These suggestions for closing the day will be of instant help to you. The great power for good--the wherewith to give you strength, progress and efficiency--is within yourself and at the command of your will. You can't think faith and fear, good and bad, courage and defeat, all at the same time. You can only think one thing at a time. Your great power is your will, and the wherewith to help yourself is your thought habit. Change your thought habit as you go to bed. You can do it; it's a matter of will determination. The more faithful you are to your purpose, the easier your task will be. Be patient, conscientious, rational and confident. You are what your thoughts picture you to be. Your will directs your thoughts. Don't get discouraged if you can't suddenly change your life from shadow to sunshine, from illness to wellness. Big things take time and patience. The great ship lies in the harbor pointed North. A tug boat could make a sudden pull and break the great chain or tow line. Yet you could take a half-inch rope and with your own hands turn the great ship completely around by pulling steadily and patiently. The movement would be slow, but it would be sure and you would finally accomplish your purpose. Don't jerk and fret and be impatient with yourself. You have been for years perhaps worrying and thinking fear-thoughts. You have put a lot of useless and harmful material in your brain. You can't clean all your brain house in a day or a week, but you can do a little cleaning each day. You can take the faith-rope of good purpose and start to pull gently, and finally you will turn your whole life's character toward the port of success. The great crowd worries; only the few have learned the power of the will, and the benefits to be derived from mental control. Business and social duties call for strong men and woman. You can't reach mastership if you remain a slave. Your first duty is to yourself, and success or failure is your reward exactly in proportion as you exercise your will power and handle your thought habits. 14. [Sidenote: The Best Medicine.] The doctors are giving less medicine and doing more in the way of suggesting diet and exercise rules, sanitation and preventive practices. Medicine is mostly poison and its effect is to shock the organs or glands to bring about reaction. Nature makes the cure. In emergency drugs are all right, but the doctor and not the individual should settle the matter of what drug to use and the proper time to use it. When there's a pain or disease, it's due to congestion of some organ, to infection, or to improper nourishment, or improper habits. Ninety per cent of aches, pains and ailments can be cured by a dominant mental attitude and by proper attention to eating and exercise. The habitual medicine user is not cured by the medicine but by nature; the medicine simply serves as a means to establish mental control and to create confidence in the sufferer that he is to get well. Recently I spent much time in a large hospital visiting a relative who had been operated on. I know several members of the staff of doctors and nurses. I have seen many operations, some very heroic ones, and my appreciation of the good work of good surgeons is greatly augmented by the wonderful helps I have seen them bring to suffering humanity. I have talked with scores of patients and watched the progress of their cases. I have by plausible logic, mental suggestion, and good cheer to the hospital patients, brought many a smile through a mist of tears. I have seen the wonderful results of mental suggestion to the discouraged patients. To show the effects that faith-thought will produce, I will relate some instances. [Sidenote: Mental Sickness.] One patient screaming for a hypodermic injection to relieve her pain was given an injection of sterilized water and the pain vanished. Another just could not sleep without her bromide. The nurse fixed up a powder of sugar, salt and flour; the patient took the powder and went to sleep. That was mind control and mental longing satisfied. Another patient had to take something to stop her pains; she got capsules of magnesia. The capsule satisfied her longing, established her faith and gave her relief; the relief was through her mind and not through the capsule. [Sidenote: Changing Thought Direction.] I have seen several weary, despondent patients fretting and wearing themselves out over their so-called weakness and run-down condition. I have placed copies of "Pep" in their hands and watched courage, faith, cheer and serenity come to them. It diverted their minds from self-thought and self-accusation to faith-thought, confidence and courage. You can think of only one thing at a time, and "Pep" or any other book that can change the thought habit from fear to faith, from worry to peace, is doing a service. I've been in shadowland in the hospital to see for myself the actual help that mental control will bring to sufferers, and the evidence is far above my powers to describe. I've seen the patient's eyes brighten up when the cheery surgeon came with hope, smiles and confidence on his face. I've seen the drooping of spirits when well-meaning but poor-expressing friends came into the patient's room and condoned and sorrowed with him. Verily, "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Verily, good cheer and good thought are good medicines. And to these truths all good doctors say "Amen!" 15. [Sidenote: The Pill Fiend.] How often we see the pill fiend. In his vest pocket he has a small apothecary shop--a collection of round paste-board boxes and little bottles. Every little while he dopes himself. If his stomach is on a strike, he pops in a pill. If his head aches, he takes a tablet. If he sneezes, he takes a cold-cure pill. When anyone around speaks of a pain or ache, he hands the person a pill. The pill eater is a hypochondriac, and very likely his doctor knows it. His salvation is that the doctor probably gives him harmless stuff in pill form. The patient doesn't know this, and it's like a rabbit's foot or a piece of pork rubbed on a wart--it satisfies the mind and nature makes the cure. Often, however, the pills are not innocent; the pill fiend buys the tablets and pills direct from the druggist. The headache tablet is most likely one of the coal tar drugs like acetanilid, and that is positively harmful when taken too often. There are times to take pills--in cases of emergency, when you can shock nature with a poison and bring a wholesome reaction. These times are rare, and the doctor should be the sole judge as to when such treatment is necessary. Exercise, diet, correct habits of living will prevent the congestion and clogging-up that causes illness and pain. [Sidenote: A Dangerous Habit.] The pill habit is nothing less than a drug habit, and the drug habit positively weakens the system. The headache tablet does not cure the headache; it only stops the pain; the evil is still there. The headache is merely nature's signal that something is out of whack. Headaches are generally caused by stomach disorders, eye strain, or neuralgia; the latter in turn is caused by too much uric acid in the system. Eat fruit, drink plenty of water, and that will flush the system and stop stomachic headache. See the optician if it's eyes. If you have a frequent headache in the forehead, very likely it's the eyes, even though you do not suspect it. If it's neuralgia, get a corrective diet from the doctor. I know scores of men, and women, too, who take pills enough to kill a person. Their systems have been educated up to it; they are saturated with poison. And the worst of it is they never get well while taking the pills; it is only a temporary deadening of the pain. Then, there are many who take pills to make them sleep. That's a crime. It's self-murder by slow degrees, for they are surely shortening their lives by this poison dope pill habit. [Sidenote: Nature, the Curer.] Mark this: Nature, and Nature alone, effects cures, and it's in very, very few instances that a poison pill can be used to advantage. You can keep well by getting good air, good water, good sunshine, good food, good exercise, good rest, good cheer and good thought. That is what I call my golden prescription, and it will do wonders for you, and every doctor will tell you so. Pills kill, if you keep up the habit. There are no two ways about it. I say positively and knowingly that this pill habit is absolutely life shortening. Don't try to argue; the evidence is unshakable on this point. If you could have seen the derelicts in the hospitals that I have, if you could have seen the wretched bodies, destroyed nerve systems, the broken-down, emaciated, hopeless shells of men and women addicted to the baneful pill habit, you would be as positive as I am that pills kill if you keep up the habit. Life is sweet and precious to us all. Do not shorten it by taking pills and tablets for every ache or pain. Try nature's way. Realize that mental suggestion and will-power will drive away most pains or temporary aches. Brace up, cheer up; chuck the pills in the garbage can. 16. [Sidenote: Two Kinds of Pleasures.] There are two principal kinds of pleasures that man seeks; one is material pleasures, and about ninety-nine per cent of the human family devote themselves to these. The remainder--the one per cent--seek mental pleasures, and this little group is the one that gets the real, lasting, satisfying and improving pleasures out of life. The material pleasures are the social pleasures of eating, displaying, possessing, and so forth. Material pleasures generate in the human the desire for fluff, feathers, and four-flushing. Material pleasures accentuate the desire to possess things, and in the strife for possession, hearts are broken, fortunes wasted, nerves shattered, and the finer sentiments calloused. The homes where material pleasures abound are the ones where worry, neurasthenia and nervous prostration abound. Material pleasures are merely stimulants for the time being, and there always come the intermittent reflexes of gloom and depression. The desire to show off, to excite envy in others, is always present at the homes where material pleasures are the rule. Material pleasures call for crowds. Mental pleasures are best enjoyed in solitude. The material pleasure-seeker lives a life of convention, engagements, routine, strain, and high tension. [Sidenote: Mental Pleasures Are Best.] The person who is so fortunate as to appreciate and follow mental pleasures is serene, natural, happy and content. A cozy room, loved ones around, music, books, love and social conversation--those are mental pleasures; those are best. He who can pick up a book and read things worth while, gets satisfaction unknown to those whose life is a round of banquets, theaters, dances, automobiles, parties, bridge, clubs and society doings. When you spend the evening playing cards, the chances are you come home late, and when you retire, it takes perhaps an hour or so before you fall to sleep. And during the night you dream of cards, of certain hands, of certain circumstances, or certain persons who were prominent in the evening's game. The reason you do not go to sleep after an exciting evening is that you have set your nerve carburetor at high tension and have forgotten to lower it before you go to sleep. [Sidenote: Good Reading.] On the other hand, when you have been reading a restful book, full of good thought, you establish an equilibrium, a relaxed state of nerves, and particularly, you have switched the current or direction of your day's thoughts. That change spells rest, and you retire and go to sleep easily. You will scarcely believe what a wondrous change for the better you will notice in yourself if you make it a rule to have a brain clearing, mental inventory, and nerve relaxation every night before you go to sleep. Your brain works at night always; oft-times you have no remembrance of your dreams, but if your last hour, before retiring, was an hour of excitement, tension or unusual occupation, you will likely go over it all again in your dreams. If you will let nothing prevent your evening period of soliloquy, you will establish your mental habits into a rhythm that will give you peace, rest and benefit. In the olden days, when most families had evening worship or family prayers, the members of those households slept soundly and restfully. Particularly was this so because of the habit formed of getting the mind on peaceful, helpful, comforting, soul-satisfying thoughts that remained fresh on the brain tablets as the members of the home circle went to sleep. Too often the books read in the home circle are all of the exciting, fascinating, highly colored imaginative type. People read stories of love, adventure or crime, and they dream these same things almost every night. I have found that it pays to read two classes of literature in the same evening. First read your novel, story, or fascinating book, but fifteen minutes before you are ready to go to sleep, read some good, wholesome, helpful, uplifting book, and that good stuff will be lastingly filed away in your brain. [Sidenote: What to Read.] Finish your evening with books that are interesting, yet educational. Such books as "Life of the Bee" by Maeterlinck, or any one of Fabre's wonderful books on insect life; "Riddle of the Universe" by Haeckel; Darwin's books; Drummond's "Ascent of Man;" "Walks and Talks in Geological Fields" is a splendid mental night cap; "Power of Silence;" "Physiology of Faith and Fear;" Emerson's "Essays;" Holmes' "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table;" "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam; Tom Moore's Poems; "Plutarch's lives;" Seneca; Addison; Bulwer Lytton; Hugo; Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." This latter book will not fascinate you like Carlyle's "French Revolution," but you will learn to love its fine language, its fine analysis of character, of times, and of things. [Sidenote: What You Gain.] There are countless books of the good improving kind. Always save one of them for your solid reading, after you have read light literature or novels. If you will get the habit, you will notice great benefits and rapid advancement in your mental equipment. You will sleep better, think clearer; you will learn to enjoy mental pleasures more than material pleasures. Fifteen minutes, then, to be yours, yours alone, in which you quiet, soothe, strengthen and pacify yourself and add abundant resources and assets. Let the last reading in the evening be something worth storing up in that precious brain of yours, and the good, worth-while deposit will grow and produce beautiful worth-while mental fruit. [Sidenote: Don't Overdo It.] Get the home reading habit. Don't overdo it. Call on friends; go to a good picture show once in a while, to good concerts, to good plays, but do not make this going-out-in-the-evening-plan a habit. Let it be merely a dessert, or a rarity. Like candy and ice cream, it is proper and enjoyable when it is not overdone. The lover of books and home can enjoy the play, because he only goes to plays worth while, and he doesn't overdo it. The confirmed theater-goer is a pessimist; he roasts nearly every play, and he is universally bored. When you get started reading worth-while books on science, on history, on geography, on travel, on natural history, you tap an inexhaustible field of pleasure and satisfaction. At any time, you can pick up your book and be happy. Waits in railway stations will be opportunities; trips on trains will be pleasant; evenings alone will be enjoyable, if you can get into a book you like. Mental pleasures are best. Material pleasures are merely passing shadows--to be enjoyed for the brief moment before they disappear. 17. [Sidenote: Verbomania.] The malady Verbomania is spreading rapidly. What's that? You have never heard of Verbomania? Well, then, it's taken from _verbosus_, the Latin word meaning "abounding in words," the using of more words than is necessary. _Mania_, also Latin, means "to rage"--excessive or unreasonable desire. Therefore, Verbomania is the excessive desire to use more words than are necessary. There is too much talk nowadays and too little thinking. Some persons start their gab carburetors, and they talk and talk mechanically, without any effort spent in thinking. Just like walking, the motion just goes by itself. Scientists have suggested that perhaps too much talking without thinking is a disease. I don't see that there is any _perhaps_ about it. Disease is an unnatural condition--a function of the mind or body out of its natural order of working. We know we can sit down and run ideas through our brain without words, and we can use a lot of words without ideas. You have read whole pages in a book without receiving an idea. One can rattle off words and not have ideas. When the fountain of words flows in a desert of ideas, it's Verbomania. [Sidenote: Think More, Talk Less.] People in all walks of life have the disease; they talk together too much without any reason other than to take up time or make themselves at ease. Pink teas, receptions and society functions are great rookeries for these Verbomania birds to gather and indulge in their gabfest. The pianist through long practice is able to play a difficult composition without thinking about it; it's automatic; it's habit in action. The society dodo bird is just as dexterous in spinning words without thought, as the pianist with his difficult piece. Our rapid mode of living, our conventions and customs are responsible for much of the Verbomania. I should like to take my Dictophone to a fussy "afternoon" and record the word evacuations, the footless conversation, the forced pleasantries, the set sentences that mingle into a hum and buzz. A wilderness of words in a barrenness of ideas. This abuse of the use of speech makes headaches, weariness, worry, unrest; it saps strength, lowers pep, and lessens resistance. The cure for Verbomania is to keep away from these butterfly buzz bees; put the clothes-pin of caution on your lips; spend more time alone with your thoughts. Nourish your idea plants that have been starved; prune your word plants. Don't expose yourself to the crowds where the Verbomaniacs gather. The disease is contagious; it's easy to acquire and hard to retire. These are ideas put in type to convey a truth for the benefit of all who read these lines, and it is some truth, too. 18. Love builds homes, gold builds houses. The home has a mongrel dog which is called Prince, and all the family love it. The house had a pedigreed bull pup that is kept in the barn. [Sidenote: House and Home.] There is all the difference between the family which has a home and the family which has a house. In houses we find broken hearts, worry, nervous prostration, because there is idleness, artificiality and aimlessness. In homes we find warm hearts, happiness and love, because those in the home have natural, helpful occupation. In the house is cold reserve; the occupants read when compelled to stay indoors; they grow crabbed and cross and get into a state of habitual dumbness and selfishness. In the home there is unselfishness, thoughtfulness, and love expressed. Meal time is joy time; it's the get-together period of smiling faces. In the house the breakfast table is merely a lunch station in the hurried trip from the bedroom to the office. The sensitive wife of the house gets stinging remarks that abide with her after the lord and master of the house has departed. [Sidenote: What Makes Home.] In the home the family gets up plenty early enough. Songs and jokes, kisses and love pats are found; the family is on time, and there is happiness all around. Homes are sweet, because love is present. Houses built by gold are just hotels. I've noticed the difference when a friend invites me to come to his home or to his house; the word he uses, home or house, indicates to me what I will find when I go there. In the house I meet a maid or butler at the door. I see conventional furniture, conventional rooms. I am shown into a conventional waiting room, and I wait conventionally for the hostess to come forward with a stiff backbone, a forced smile, and a languid handshake. When I go to a home built with love, I find a tidy dressed wife at the door, rosy children, and I get a warm, old-fashioned hand clasp, and a beaming, smiling face that spells welcome. And the dinner--that, too, tells the difference between the "depend-on-the-cook" establishment and the "wife-who-is-the-boss" home. At the house is formality and frigidity; at the home is ease and enjoyment. The children of the home make breaks and we love them for it; it's natural instinct and frankness. In the house is worry; in the home is happiness. Verily, there's a difference in the atmosphere of the house built with gold and the home built with love; one is worthless existence, the other worth-while living. 19. [Sidenote: Seven Simple Health Suggestions.] I haven't space in this book to give reasons or show proofs for everything I suggest, but I want right here to give you a few definite, short, positive, helpful rules about food, thought, habit and exercise that will pay you the most wonderful dividends in health and happiness. First--Drink two or three glasses of warm, not hot, water, the first thing when you arise in the morning. Second--Repeat this resolve as you are drinking the water: "I will be pleasant this morning until ten o'clock, and the rest of the day will take care of itself." Third--Walk to your office or place of business, unless it is over four miles, in which case walk the first three miles and ride the remainder of the distance. Fourth--Eat one or two apples every day, and do not insult Nature's proper adjustment by peeling the apple. You want the skin because it has things in it you need for your body, and especially for your brain, and you have especial need of the roughage the skin gives. [Sidenote: Get Enough Sleep.] Fifth--Spend eight or nine hours a day in bed. I belong to the sixty-three hour club; that means nine hours a day rest, seven days in a week, which is sixty-three hours. If, through business, travel or other circumstances, I stay up late one or two nights a week, I balance books before the week is up by taking a rest on Sunday afternoon or going to bed earlier one or two nights. Sixth--Don't stay in bed Sunday morning. It will make you tired, loggy, stupid and cross. Get up Sunday, say, a half hour or an hour later than week days. Later in the day take a nap if you wish. Seventh--Spend fifteen minutes just before going to bed in quiet, relaxed solitude. This is the time to slow down your tension, relax your muscles and soothe your nerves. These rules you can easily remember and if you follow them as I hope you will, the red blood will course in your veins and joy will be in your countenance and the halo of happiness will be around your face. 20. Every once in a while the human has a negative day. Every act, thought, or spoken sentence has a but, a don't, a can't, or some other negative attachment to it. [Sidenote: The Negative Attitude.] The children laugh, play and cut up in the morning, and mother says: "I don't know what I shall do with you, you are just wearing me out." This puts a fear-thought and a weakness-germ both in mother and the kiddies. On Sunday afternoon the family is resting. Mother maybe gets the blues, and says: "What's the use, I never get anywhere, go any place; it's just grind, work and worry all the time." Mother worries because there's a leak in the roof and the water stained the paper in the spare room. She worries because she lives in a rented house, and says: "I have no heart to fix things up because this is a rented house." This negative thought brings on a misery state; it's worry, and the worry comes because you dwell on the off side of things. You rehearse your problem, you go over your work, you count your obstacles, and you pile up the negative and fear thoughts. Bless you, my dear sister, I know what this negative can't, don't, but, and what's-the-use thought is and how it brings misery. I know how the children get on your nerves and make you say "don't" all day to them. [Sidenote: Show Your Positive Side.] There's only one way to drive out this negative thought and that is to switch your will power to the positive current. Next time you have a negative day and the fear thoughts come, just start in one by one and count your blessings of health, blessings of home, and blessings of love. Nothing can hurt you. You've been through these negative days time and time again; the clouds gathered, you were blue, lonesome, homesick and heartsick, but next day you got busy with work, and occupation drove away the clouds, and the sunshine came. The next Sunday you get in this negative state, just put on your hat and go out to see some neighbor, or go to the park, or take a walk. Don't sit and stew and fret over your magnified troubles. Let the children play and laugh; they are not hurting anyone. God bless them. They don't have worries; their little lives are all too short. Their example of smiles and laughter should make you happy. Soon, too soon, they will grow up and go their ways in life and how precious will be the memories of their carefree, golden, happy childhood days. Cut out envy; that's a mighty bad negative wire. It's the devil's favorite food to make worry and discontent. [Sidenote: Envy Makes Worry.] Many of the people you envied in the past are dead and buried. Many of the people you envy now are at heart miserable, and you wouldn't envy them if you could look through the artificial outside and know their real hidden thoughts and lives. "What's-the-use"--that's a bad thing to say; it plants worry seed. You are all right; you have far more blessings than sorrows. You can never be entirely free from troubles, care or little irritations. Rise superior to these things; those around you are affected by and susceptible to your influence and example. If you have a "but," an "if" or a "don't" tied to every command to your children, they will recognize your uncertainty and your negative, hurtful attitude, and they will take your threats, as well as your promises, with a grain of salt. Be careful in giving commands; don't put a Spanish bit in the children's mouths to jerk them and torture them. Be positive, make your promises and orders stick, and the kiddies will soon know you mean what you say. [Sidenote: Exposing Your Weakness.] These negative "driving me crazy" attachments to your commands spell weakness, and make you drive, cajole and spin out your orders, and the children hesitate and are slow to obey. Let them see your positive side. Let them learn to obey with a "yes, mamma" spirit, and your orders will be less frequent, shorter, and they will be obeyed on the instant. The kiddies learn to size you up, mamma, and if they see a wobbly, worried, despondent, unsure attitude in you, they will discount your threats and make allowances, saying: "That's mamma's way." Don't show your cry side but show your smile side. Sunday is a great trial day for you, mamma, but don't let your negative wires get the best of you. Sing as you make the beds and tidy up; let sunshine in and drive out the gloom. Blue Sundays are horror days for the children; you can't expect them to sit still like older folks. They are full of red blood and active muscles. Don't make Sunday a day of punishment to your children. They get their cue from you. Don't you be negative and cross and gloomy. It's bad business for you and all the family. 21. The benefits of walking are so quickly apparent that I hope to get you to make the start and keep it up for two weeks. Then you will require no further urging. [Sidenote: The Best Exercise.] In walking, there are two most important things to do in order to get the greatest benefits: first--walk alone; second--walk your natural gait. So many people tell me they would like to walk all, or part of the way, between their home and office if they had company. Company is the very thing you don't want in walking, and there are two reasons for this. One is, if you walk with a friend, you will hold yourself back, or else you will be walking faster than your natural gait. In either case it is a conscious effort, and this conscious effort, to a large degree, will cause you to lose much of the benefit from your walk. The most important reason, however, is that if you walk with a friend, you are sure to talk, and thus you are using your nervous energy and tiring your brain--the very thing you want to avoid. [Sidenote: Walk, Not Talk.] Walking gives you physical exercise which is absolutely necessary for health. It is the best exercise I know of, because you do not overdo your strength. Walking is beneficial, because when you walk alone, you give your brain a rest. You cannot read the papers, you cannot talk, and your mental apparatus gets complete rest. I recommend that you walk anywhere from three to four miles in the morning. If your home is more than four miles from the office, walk three or four miles of the distance and then take the car. Do not walk home in the evening unless the walk is a short one. In the evening you are tired, and you should conserve your strength. In the morning you are fresh, and the exercise comes to you at a time it is most needed. It will give you strength and courage, and help to keep you in a good mood all day. I cannot too strongly emphasize the importance of walking alone, for it is then that you shift your nerve energy from the dry cell battery of the brain to the magneto, which is the spinal cord. The spinal cord works automatically and it doesn't wear itself out. The brain tires if it uses its energy. In walking you use the thought and the brain impulse to start the magneto, and then the spinal cord action is automatic. This automatic action of the spinal cord is a wise provision of nature to conserve strength. The spinal cord energy is what you might call automatic habit. For instance, in dressing and undressing yourself, you will recall that you put on or take off your clothes in regular order without giving the matter any thought. It is just habit. If you wish to demonstrate the difference between the control of the physical body by brain impulse, and the spinal cord impulse, try this some morning: Start out for your exercise and mentally frame sentences like this as you walk--"right step, left step, right step, left step," and so on. Give thought to each step you have taken, and notice how tired you will be when you have gone half a mile. The next morning, start to walk naturally; give no thought to walking; keep your mind on the beauties of nature which you are passing, or indulge in pleasant soliloquy, and you will feel no fatigue. There isn't a bit of theory in this chapter; it is positive, practical sense that I have proved by my own experiences and by the experiences of everyone to whom I have made this suggestion of walking alone. The moral is this--walk every morning and walk ALONE. 22. The body is made up of billions of little cells. These individual cells are in a state of perpetual activity. They exhaust, wear away, break down with work, and rebuild on food and rest. Every process of life--the beat of the heart, the throb of the brain in thought, the digestion of food, the excretion of waste--all are due to the activity of groups of highly specialized individual cells. [Sidenote: Body Waste.] Every cell uses up its own material and throws off poisonous by-products during activity. These by-products, or wastes, are very poisonous to the individual cell as well as to the entire organism. To get rid of this waste is one of the first duties of the system. It is with the body, made up of its countless millions of individual cells, just as it is with a city and its myriad people: the sewage of the community must be collected and disposed of. The city forms its poisons which we call sewage and the body its poisons, which we call excreta (or carbonic acid, urea, uric acid, faeces, etc.). It is no more important for a city to gather up and get ride of its poisonous sewage than for the animal organism to collect and excrete its cell-waste. Hence, the importance of maintaining normal and constant elimination throughout the body. [Sidenote: Health's Safety-First.] Elimination is kept up by the alimentary tract, the kidneys, the skin, and the lungs. These four are the great pipe-line sewerage systems, so to speak, by which the body throws off its gaseous, liquid and solid poisons. The lungs momentarily strain carbonic acid out of the blood and throw it out in the expired air. They likewise exhale other noxious matters from the system. The alimentary tract throws off faeces, made up of the waste tissue from the whole system, especially the digestive organs, as well as indigestible and non-nutritious portions of the food. The kidneys strain out urea, uric acid, and certain other poisons from the blood and eject them through the urinary tract. Finally the skin likewise is an excretory organ and exhales a very definite amount of gaseous and fluid waste in the course of each twenty-four hours. The skin throws off all the way from a pint to two quarts of liquid each day in the form of vapor. [Sidenote: Proper Functioning.] Thus, to carry on normal elimination from the body, the breathing, digesting, urinary and cutaneous systems must be kept working normally. To impair the work of any of these is to retard bodily drainage. To make certain that elimination is going on naturally, it is necessary to secure perfect functioning of lungs, bowels, kidneys and the skin. Any stoppage in the process of elimination means that some fault has crept into the work of one of these excretory systems. It must be plain now why a disorder of any one of these organs of elimination means so much more profound disturbance to the whole organization than merely disease in one structure. It means that waste products are retained which ought to be thrown out of the body; so straightway every cell in the body begins to be more or less affected. Some poisons disturb one organ more and some another, but in the end the whole body must inevitably be affected. Lack of exercise, bolting of food, eating soft, starchy things, failure to chew properly, failure to get enough roughage, insufficient water, insufficient fruit--these are the general causes of stoppage in the elimination processes. Drink one or two glasses of warm water, not hot, the first thing in the morning. Eat one or two apples, skins and all, every day. Eat toast, especially the crust. Eat cracked wheat or whole wheat bread often. Exercise plenty. Keep cheerful. Eat regularly. Very likely you eat too much. You don't need three big meals a day unless you work outdoors at hard physical labor. Your body is an engine. No use to keep the boiler red hot and two hundred pounds of steam on if your work is light. Good health depends upon proper assimilation and elimination as nature intended. Eat less, exercise more, you who work indoors. If you don't use this caution, you are just slowly killing yourself. 23. [Sidenote: Never Say "Can't."] Many have the habit of keeping their minds on their weaknesses or their shortcomings. If they read of some one doing a great thing or making a worth-while accomplishment, they say: "I never could do such a thing." These persons are always saying, "I never have luck. I can't do this. I can't do that." Always knocking, always thinking "can't" instead of "can" makes for fear, irresoluteness, uncertainty and weakness of character. To say, "I can't, I haven't the ability, I am unlucky" makes you weak and knocks out all chance for doing things. Nothing comes out of the brain that wasn't burned in by thought. If you disparage yourself, belittle your capacity, or drown your good impulses with doubt and self-accusation, you are putting away a lot of bad thought in your brain, and no wonder you will lack in initiative, ambition, confidence and courage. To those who claim to be unlucky, I want to say you are not unlucky--you simply lack pluck. You start at undertakings with a handicap of fear. You have made up your mind that you can't accomplish. You are half beaten before the game starts. In place of the will to achieve, you approach your task in fear and trepidation. In place of confidence and courage and high aspirations, you set out on your journey with the millstone of doubt and irresolution around your neck. [Sidenote: Confidence and Success.] There is but one way to succeed. That is to cast fear and self-accusation aside, and throw your full weight into the struggle with a song on your lips and confidence in your heart. "Victory" should be your battlecry and "Confidence" should be emblazoned on your shield. Many a man has been whipped in a fight, defeated in a contest, or beaten at an undertaking, but he didn't show it or let the other fellow know it. He just kept on with a brave front, and finally the other fellow quit, mistaking grim determination, pluck and perseverance for strength and victory. Ethan Allen with his handful of men were asked to surrender by the British general with his superior force. By all the rights and rules of war, Ethan was licked, but he didn't give in. He replied: "Surrender h--ll; I've just commenced to fight." If Ethan had accused himself and said, "I can't whip that big bunch; there's no hope," he would have been whipped to a finish. Don't show the enemy or the world your weakness. Don't admit anything impossible that is capable of accomplishment. It's the "I can" man who wins. No man ever won a fight if he started out by saying, "I can't whip him, he is too much for me; I am no match for him, but I'll try." No person ever made success in business if he started in with uncertainty, lack of confidence and unbelief in his ability. Confidence has ever been half the battle. [Sidenote: The World's Judgment.] Knock yourself, and the world will accept you at your own estimate. Show streaks of yellow cowardice, and the mob will pounce on you like a pack of hungry wolves. Accuse yourself, curse your luck, belittle your worth, be afraid, and you will remain a mere bump on a log, unnoticed, uninteresting, uninvited. The world welcomes men who do things. The world judges by outward appearances. If your heart is sick, if your courage is low, don't show it. Put up a stiff attitude and act with confidence, and that attitude will carry you over many a pitfall and past many an obstacle. Show strength and the world will help you; show weakness and the world will shun you. You are prejudiced when it comes to judging yourself. You compare your weakness with your friends' strength, and this comparison is unfair; it makes you lose confidence. [Sidenote: Doubt and Belief.] Nothing hurts one worse than doubting one's own ability, assets, and character. When you find yourself experiencing doubt, or inability, or hard luck, turn square around and say: "Begone, doubt; henceforth I have belief." Say: "I have ability; I have pluck, and pluck means luck." Always express confidence, faith, courage, and cheer thoughts, whether you feel them or not. Do this heroically and persistently, and soon the fear shadows and weakness feelings will leave you, and you will be in reality strong, courageous, active, and will do things you never thought possible. "As a man thinketh, so is he." Always remember that. Get hold of your thoughts; make yourself think up, and have faith and courage. Hold to your resolve, and the whole world will change. You will prosper, you will have poise, and every once in a while happiness will come as a reward. No man will be more surprised at your complete change of attitude and character than yourself. Your problems can only be solved by yourself. Friends can advise, _I_ can suggest, but YOU must act. Henceforth, never accuse yourself, never feel sorry for your condition or position, cut out fear thoughts,--be strong. Think faith, courage, cheer, confidence, and strength, and by-and-by the habit will be fixed and natural. This is as certain truth as I have ever experienced. I know it. I've tried it. I've watched others and the results are always good. Don't be passive and forget this chapter. Start right this minute to THINK RIGHT. And you will never regret and never forget this chapter on Self-accusation. 24. [Sidenote: Dare to Dream.] The great colleges turn out thousands of graduates each year, and the great newspapers have much sport ridiculing them in funny pictures. Every great man was once a boy with a dream, and that dream came true because the boy had pep that made him stick to his ambition and kept him from being discouraged because of ridicule or obstacles. Thomas Carlyle, the poor Scotch tutor, dreamed he wanted to be a great author. His clothes were threadbare, his poverty apparent. Friends taunted and ridiculed him until, goaded to indignation, he cried: "I have better books in me than you have ever read." The crowd laughed incredulously and said: "Poor fellow, he's batty." Carlyle stuck to his dream and the world has the "History of Frederick the Great" and the "French Revolution" and "Sartor Resartus." When he had finished the manuscript of the "French Revolution," a careless maid built a fire with it. He wasn't discouraged, but went to work and wrote it over again and very likely better than he wrote it the first time. Bonaparte in the garden of his military school dreamed of being a great general. He stuck to his dream and he realized his hopes. Joseph Pulitzer, a poor emigrant, crawled in a cellar way in New York to sleep, and he dreamed of owning a great newspaper. His dream came true, and the newspaper is printed in a building erected on the spot where he dreamed in the cellar way. Livingston dreamed of exploring darkest Africa; his dream came true. Edison dreamed of great electrical discoveries. His monument is Menlo Park with its great laboratories. Ford dreamed of making an automobile for the purse-limited masses--he was jeered; to-day the world cheers him. My friend, Bert Perrine, was chucked off a stage in the middle of Idaho's great sage brush desert. He said to the driver, "Some day I'll own that stage and I'll use it for a chicken house." He dreamed and schemed, and to-day the desert is the famous Twin Falls country, blossoming like a rose. And on his beautiful ranch at Blue Lakes, that old stage is used for a chicken house. Rockefeller dreamed, Lincoln dreamed--so did Garfield, Wilson, Grant, Clay, Webster, Marshall Field, Richard W. Sears and all the other men who have done things worth while in the world. The great West is the result of dreams come true. Dream on, my boy; hitch your wagon to a star and stay hitched. That dream and that determination are the things that are to carry you over obstacles, past thorny ways, and through criticism, jeers and ridicule. Your time will come. Dream and scheme, and make your ideals materialize into living, pulsating realities. 25. There are many persons who act and advocate ideals merely for effect--they are hypocrites. Here's a little true heart story that probably passed unnoticed except to a very few persons. [Sidenote: Real Charity.] Little Spencer Nelson, a poor boy, eight years old, recently died in a hospital with a little bank clasped to his breast. The bank held $3.41 in pennies which the boy had saved to buy presents for the poor children in his city. The little hero had fought manfully through three months' suffering, enduring the torture of five lacerating operations. The pain failed to dim the spirit of unselfishness which burned brightly and clearly in his tired, fever-racked body. After each operation his mind became more securely fixed on his project to help bring cheer to poor children. The little savings bank was his companion, and each visitor was asked to contribute to his fund. Three hours before he died, a smile beautified his thin wasted face as the nurse dropped a dime in his bank. His last words--a message to his mother--were in a scarcely audible whisper, asking her to remember to use the money to make poor children happy. That was real charity; that boy had no hypocrisy in his heart. [Sidenote: Seek and You Will Find.] The daily paper chronicles instances of sensational charity, where men vie with each other to see who can give most and get the most advertising. These men overlook the wonderful opportunities at their door--they do not realize the beautiful love and charity that would stir in their hearts if they would but look into the out-of-the-way places and get direct connection with pain and suffering. Little Spencer looked from his cot and saw the suffering of other little children and he wanted to help them, and the very resolve and impulse made him forget his own pain and misery. In the Book of Good Deeds, the name of Spencer Nelson will be recorded as a sweeter act of charity than any million-dollar gift to a great institution. What one of you who read these lines can read the story of that little hero and not be touched by the generous love and beautiful conception of charity he possessed. I don't believe much in this far-away charity idea so many have. [Sidenote: Do Good Here At Home.] I believe in helping those near where I am rather than sending money to Siam. Poverty and destitution, unhappily, are familiar spectres at home, as elsewhere. He who seeks to do good will not need to range afar. He can find opportunity close at home, near by, where all of us can find it if we only look. It may be a pleasurable sensation for you to contribute fifty dollars to a missionary scheme in Siam, and get the Missionary report of the budget made up by the committee for the foreign missionary fund. I know that a bucket of coal in an empty stove, a basket of bread and a liberal hunk of round steak to the starving family around the corner brings the donor a better sensation. Take a trip to the hospitals, learn about the homes of the suffering patients in the charity ward, and you will resolve it's a better act to send flour to the poor than flowers to the rich. Little Spencer Nelson had the right idea of charity: definite, immediate help to those he could reach right where he was, rather than sending money to sufferers far, far away. Let your gifts be principally flour and beef; they help those who need help. Flowers are all right in their place, but there are more places where flour can be used to better purpose. I'm keener for filling the coffee can of my suffering neighbor than filling the coffers of the big charity five thousand miles away. I try to help both ways, but the home help pays the bigger dividends. What do you think about it? 26. You have found a friend who has been so much help and comfort to you. I have such a friend too. To-night I am in the mood to think of that friend and write him a letter like this: [Sidenote: What I Think of You.] This is to You. It is for You. It is about You. You I have in mind and the good influence you have had on me. It is a happiness and satisfaction to know you, and to bask in the sunshine of you. The world is better because of you. You have helped to raise the average. You and your goodness--you do not appreciate what that means. You are so modest, so loath to think of yourself, so thoughtful of others, so unselfish that I must tell you of you and about you. You have a warm heart that throbs for others' woes and holds sympathy. The great world is cold, selfish, and cares little for others. But you are different; you are a great pillow of rest on which I and others who love you may lay our tired, weary heads, and you wrap your arms of friendship and goodness about us and feel our very heartbeats. [Sidenote: What I Love in You.] You with your great goodness, your quiet, sympathetic understanding--you soothe our troubled spirits and make us glad of you and glad we have the precious privilege of knowing you. Even now, as I am telling you how I love you, you are trying to wave me aside and stop me, but I am in the mood and I want to express myself. You know that it is a great sin of omission to refrain from expressing our gratitude for goodness extended to us. I want to express my gratitude. I do not want to be guilty of the sin of omission. So here, then, is this little message for you, to tell you that I appreciate you and love you, and these words will last after you are gone and after I am gone, to tell those of to-morrow about you and what those of to-day thought about you. Your life, your goodness, is an everlasting plant that will flourish in many hearts. Your influence will last beyond the calendar of time; it is indestructible. You have a great credit in the universal bank of good deeds, where you have deposited worth-while acts, deeds, kindnesses, cheer, help, friendship, sympathy, courage, gratitude, and all the most precious jewels of humanity. I am happy the very moment I think of you. I try to express myself but the feelings and emotions I would describe have not words or sentences to express them. You understand. You are so big in heart, so sensitive in fabric of feeling, so wise in understanding, that I want you to think and feel all the genuine, noble, lovable, appreciative thoughts you can gather together about the one you can most appreciate. Think hard, sincerely, deeply, about that one, with all your resources of beautiful thought. Think hard that way, and now you will begin to understand my feelings about you, and how I appreciate you. You, my inspiration, who are so sensitized to feeling, so delicately adjusted to read heart vibrations--you must feel this within me that I am trying to express. Not the love between sweethearts, not the love of kin, not the love of friends, but a great universal love I have for you--a love which all who are fortunate enough to know you have for you. It is a love you cannot return to me in equal measure, because you have not the object in me that can merit such love. That you should love me in the way I love you even in the smallest measure is satisfaction supreme. It is glorious to know you. You water the good impulses I have; you encourage all that is noble, elevating, and bettering, in me. I shall try to be like you--that is, so far as I can. You are my model; there is but one _You_. Many may copy you, none may equal you. You my comfort, you my joy. A great glorious _You_ that a little _I_ am trying to paint a picture of. How futile my efforts. I might as well try to improve the deep beautiful colors of the morning-glory, or try to retint the lily with a more beautiful white. And so I bid you good-bye, happy that there is such a one as you in the world--more happy that I know you, and most happy that I know how to appreciate you. The sum of all good things I can say is, "I love you," and the word "love" I use in its greatest, broadest sense, which covers all the good adjectives. This is what I think of YOU. 27. There is a time in the business man's life, between the age of 48 and 52, when he undergoes a pronounced change. More big men are cut off at 50 than at any other age between 45 and 60. From 48 to 52 most men change vitally in their physical and mental make-up. [Sidenote: Dangers of Middle Life.] Many men--hitherto straight, moral men--go to the bad at this time, and per contra, many men quit their immoral and health-hurting habits and change to moral men. This danger period is when the newly-rich find fault with the wives who have helped them to their success. They grow tired of their wives and seek the companionship of younger women. The divorce courts give most interesting figures on this point. At this danger period, men who have been high livers, voracious eaters and heavy drinkers find themselves victims of diabetes, Bright's disease or other forms of kidney trouble. The country is full of prematurely broken-down men who have failed to heed the danger signals along their way. To persist in self-indulgence is to invite disaster. You must deliberately set about to change your mode of living if you would avoid these shoals on which so many men of middle age have foundered. Almost every man between 48 and 52 who works indoors, eats too much, exercises too little, sleeps insufficiently. In this book I have made practical suggestions that have been tried in the furnace of experience and proven adequate. They have helped me; they will help you. They will enable you to gain pep and efficiency; they will give you a new lease on life and make life more worth living. [Sidenote: The Simple Life.] First, live simply; eat simply. If you have in the past, eaten rich foods, drunk fine wines, and have been what the world knows as a "good fellow," your course is clear. You must call a halt on yourself. This path leads inevitably to the graveyard. Follow the seven simple health suggestions laid down in an earlier chapter, and you will feel better, feel happier and will attack the day's work with vim and vigor. Avoid undue excitement. Excitement uses up nerve force. It is an energy consumer. Your mind needs repose as well as your body. When you have finished your day's work, leave business behind you. Do not drag it into your home. In the evening, occupy yourself with a good, worth-while book. Nothing is more conducive to calm and contentment. Let supper be your one hearty meal of the day. And after supper, play with the kids or joke with your wife; get a smile on your face. When you are home, interest yourself in home concerns. The "home men" are the men who live longest. They lead healthy, regular lives, and they keep alive the outside interests that make for peace, poise, content and happiness. Keep a sharp look-out for tendencies to change your habits and morals. At 50 you are walking on thin ice; look out, danger is near. After you are 55, your habits are pretty well established. If you have lived rightly till then, you're safe thereafter and very likely are on your way to a good ripe old age if you take reasonable care of yourself. 28. [Sidenote: Our Sons.] We love our own the best; maybe that's why we indulge our own too much. Our duty to our boys; that's a subject as old as the hills, and it is as important as it is old. It is a subject that has come to the forefront in recent years. Multitudes of paid juvenile workers and sociological experts throughout the country are engaged in the work of keeping the youth of the nation healthily occupied and away from corrupting influences. Modern conditions have created a "boy problem" which was unknown two generations ago. Then there were no slums reeking with vice and squalor and ugliness. The era of great manufacturing enterprises was just beginning. There were no densely populated cities numbering millions of souls. Amusements were simple. Everywhere were stretches of open country, and boys were allowed to run wild in field and woodland and stream. [Sidenote: Times Have Changed.] The great cities of to-day have done away with all this. The good, old-fashioned, healthful recreations have disappeared in all but rural communities. In their place has come the lurid "movie" with its tales of crime and violence and passion. At every crowded street corner, vice beckons, and glaring signs lure the curious boy into the vicious cabaret and dance-hall. To-day I had the boy problem forcibly presented to me. I saw in a court twenty-four boys who had been brought before the Judge charged with petty crimes. Three were sent to the penitentiary, seven to the reform school and fourteen let go temporarily on good behavior. A friend of mine interested in criminology tells me the great bulk of hold-ups, thefts, burglaries and murders are committed by boys between 16 and 22 years of age. These twenty-four boys I mentioned were just ordinary boys, capable of making good citizens if they had had the right kind of home treatment and surroundings. Most of them got in trouble through their association with the "gang" or the "bunch," or the "crowd," and this because daddy didn't have his hand on the rein. That boy must have companionship; he must have a confidant with whom he can share his joys, his sorrows, his hopes, his ambitions. If he doesn't get this comeraderie at home, he gets it "'round the corner." We know where the boy is when he is at school, but how few of us know the boy's doings between times. Pool halls tempt the boys, and these resorts are breeding places where filthy stories, criminal slang and evil practices are hatched. Pool halls and saloons invite and fascinate the boy. He sees the lights. There is a keen pleasure in watching the pink-shirted dude with cigarette in his mouth making fancy shots. There is no one to nag him or bother him; it gets to be his "hang-out," and soon he drifts into a crowd that knows the trail to the red-light district. Painted fairies dazzle the giddy boy. It takes money to go the pace. Crime is gilded over with slang words. Stealing is called "easy money." Robbery is "turning a trick," and so on. A boy becomes what he lives on mentally and physically; that's the net of it. It is a common saying, but a good one, that the boys of to-day are the men of to-morrow. If you train a boy with care and kindness, he will grow up to be an honest and upright citizen. But let him run a wild, undisciplined course, leave him free to explore the crime-spots and plague-pools of the city, and sooner or later his moral fibre is weakened and ultimately snaps. At best he will become an indifferent citizen; at worst a drifter or a criminal. There is nothing better for a boy than discipline properly administered. And that brings up the whole matter of army life. [Sidenote: The Army: A Maker of Men.] The army is a great maker and developer of men. Boys who were headed for perdition have found in the army a new sense of honor and respect. The rigorous training, the idea of duty, the heroic traditions of the service--all these are renewers and rekindlers of manhood. Many a lad who has wasted his health, wealth and substance on the primrose path, has "come back" gloriously in the service of the flag. Look at the average soldier or sailor you meet. His skin is tanned by sun and wind to a deep brown. His eyes are crystal clear. There is youth and strength in his tread. There he stands, clean as a whistle. No fat, no flabbiness--just solid sinew and ruddy health. He is a living exponent of what military training can do for every boy in the country. Hard work, strength-building exercises, sufficient sleep, regular hours, simple, wholesome food, systematic training--these are the things the army and navy offers. And these are the things that make real men. But no training that school or church or army can give him relieves you, Dad, of your obligation to the boy. In the last analysis, it is _your_ influence that will either make him or break him, for it is to you that he looks for guidance and comradeship in his most impressionable years. If you are his chum, if sister shares his amusements with him, if the family work and live on the "all for one and one for all" basis, if the boy is kept busy and interested, he can be easily trained. [Sidenote: Be Worth Copying.] Neglect him and he will neglect you. Love him and he will love you. Meet him half way, he's impressionable. Show him a kindness, he will respond. Show him a good example, he will follow. You have to be with him, or know where he is every minute. During his period of adolescence, say from twelve or thirteen years to sixteen or seventeen, that boy is a mass of plaster of paris, easily shaped while plastic, but once set, all but impossible to recast. That's the time, Dad, you must be on YOUR job with your boy. Your counsel, example, love, interest and teaching will MAKE the boy. Think of these things, Dad, and think hard, and think hard NOW. To-morrow may be too late. 29. [Sidenote: Our Daughters.] Our daughters--how much we love them! How happy we are to have their fresh, smiling faces about us! Their girlish laughter lightens our home hours and creates an atmosphere of joy. What would we not give if we could but insure their happiness! Our fondest and most cherished hopes are bound up in them as they grow up under our eyes and blossom into womanhood. Girl, what a wonderful creature you can be. What a glorious success you can make of your life if you get the right start, find the right hands to help you, the right hearts to love you, and the right eyes to watch you, the right thoughts to make you, and the right ideals to guide you. There are so many influences to spoil you--so much convention, so much artificiality, so much snobbery, so much caste, so much foolish frivolity. Then there are the wrong examples, the wrong grooming, the wrong environments, the wrong influences surrounding you. Really, it is not to be wondered at why so many girls lose their heads and make a fizzle of their young lives. The fizzle is generally made because daddy and mama have a lot of foolish notions about bringing up girls. Especially is this so if the parents are wealthy. [Sidenote: The Wrong Way.] Here is the history of many a rich girl: She is born without welcome, fed on a bottle, reared by a nurse, grows up in a nursery, becomes estranged from her mother; later on, she is sent away to school, mixes with a lot of other rich girls, gets lots of foolish notions, false estimates, and prejudiced views. She graduates and comes home, and then, to commemorate the event, there are a lot of "doings" which she attends. Following this is the show-off, which is called a debut. She is exhibited like a filly at the horse show, and some high-collared young man wins her head, although she thinks it's her heart. She believes it is the proper time for her to marry, and he is such "a swell fellow," he is such "good company," and he "dances so well"--these qualities win her head. So the girl marries and has children; the husband goes broke, and the girl awakens to the necessity of coming down from her pedestal, facing stern necessity, and raising her children as her mother should have raised her. That's the picture of the poor rich girl whose parents are to blame for the nonsense she crammed into her head. But, you, Girl--you are going to learn your cooking on a gas range instead of a chafing dish; you'll learn to bake bread before fudge; you'll learn how to cook solids before you learn to make salads. You will combine simplicity, sentiment, sense sereneness, sweetness, rather than envy, frills, feathers and foolishness. God's noblest calling for woman is the raising of children and the founding of a home. [Sidenote: Cooking and Sewing.] To cook and sew is a higher duty and better occupation than bridge parties and society. Not that you must cook and sew, my dear, but that you should be able to in case the need should arise. With the ability to cook and sew, you can properly direct the cook or seamstress, and they will respect you for your education. I want you to be golden girls--girls who love home and children; girls who love simple things, natural things. I want you to be sweet rather than pretty, lovable rather than popular. Do not look upon matrimony as a means to provide food and finery for yourself. Do not be ashamed of an old-fashioned mother. Do not be a "good fellow." Do not be afraid to say, "I can't afford it." Help the family. Be part of it, and not apart from it. When you are old enough to have a beau, do not be afraid to bring him into your home, no matter how humble it is. Do not esteem your boy friends for the amount of money they spend on your entertainment. Happiness does not consist of lobster-suppers and taxi-rides to the theatre. Ten cents will bring just as much real happiness as ten dollars spent for mere display. Be modest, girls; it is your greatest asset. Don't gossip or belittle other girls. Find the good you can say of others; that quality makes you more attractive. Watch out for candied words and flattery; these things mark the hypocrite, and a hypocrite is an abomination. Flattery is a practiced deceit--a dishonorable bait to catch affections. Do not allow any young man to relate a story in your presence that has the slightest risque turn to it. Show by your words and your actions that such presumption is an insult. Be square with yourself; be square to the man who is after your heart. Put yourself mentally in the place of a wife when a man gets serious. [Sidenote: The Right Man.] Don't hurry, girls; don't judge the man by his money prospects but by his character and ambition. Have nothing to do with any young suitor who isn't always kind, considerate and attentive to his mother. And when real love comes to you and you decide to marry, marry a man of character who courts you in the sweet, simple, old way. If a young man spends money extravagantly before marriage, hard times will always be around during his married life. The most precious possessions in the world are happiness and love, and these come from simple things, genuineness, and usefulness. The painted, powdered, tinsel, fluff, feathers and furbelow girl may be a dashing creature now, and you may envy her, but you, with your quiet, sweet, simple, sensible ways--you will win real love, real respect, real affection, real pleasures, real satisfaction, in all the days to come; you will make a success of your life. Frills and feathers may have an attraction for the girl who makes a fizzle of her life, but sweetness and simplicity, sentiment and sense, are precious jewels that will endure for all time. [Sidenote: The Road to Unhappiness.] The world is full of new-fashioned, slangy, dancy, fancy, foolish girls who marry for style, stunts and society, and their married life is failure, worry and regret. They do not realize, poor things, until it is too late, that money and luxury are not enough to bring happiness. When this truth comes home to them, there is nothing left but disillusion, heartache and sorrow. Be the golden, pure, old-fashioned, sweet, simple, quiet, modest girl who knows things, rather than one who is a show-off girl. When the right young man comes along, he will recognize the kind of girl you are when he meets you. He will see in you a girl of pure gold; a sweet, natural, sensible girl, who will be a helpmate to him and not a drawback. So then, here is the hope that you, girl, will start right, keep right, and end right. I want you to think of sense, sentiment, and simplicity rather than dances, dollars, duds and doings. I want your life to be one of poise, happiness and serenity instead of noise, worry and nerves. This little message is all for you--GIRL. 30. Many churches to-day are running to extremes in one way or another. On the one hand, they are conducted along the lines of form, ceremony and ritualism; the other extreme results in excitement, ecstasy and fanaticism. The church of forms, rituals and ceremonies attracts the passive who are willing to let the priest or pastor or prelate take charge of the religious work while they, the attendants or worshippers, sit quietly by and say "amen" and join in the responses. [Sidenote: Real Religion.] Paul said, "Away with those forms." Christ, in ministering to humanity, gave no forms and made no set sentences for his followers. The Lord's Prayer was given with the admonition, "After this manner pray ye," and certainly not with the command, "Pray ye with these words." Form, ceremony and ritual are much like most associated charities--a sort of convention. Forms cannot express the deep emotions, the natural longings, or the human desires; they are echoes, hollow and unsatisfying. For those who do not feel, for those who do not act, for those who belong to churches because of convention, or for social reasons, forms and frills fill the bill. Form is an exterior religion, an outward show. Form doesn't touch the heart or awaken the soul. Form in religion is like a formal dinner. It is a gaudy display rather than a plan to satisfy human heart hunger. [Sidenote: "Scare-You-to-Death" Method.] Opposite to formal religion is the frenzied "scare-you-to-death" excitement method, which relies upon mental intoxication to stir the people. Like other forms of intoxication, the effect soon wears off. I have little patience or sympathy for the business men who hire professional evangelists to come to town to start revivals. The sensational revivalists have too acute an appreciation of the dollar to convince me of their sincerity in their work. A laborer is worthy of his hire, and a preacher, teacher or benefactor of any sort should be well paid. But when I see these big guns taking away from ten to one hundred thousand dollars in cold cash for a three weeks' campaign converting the poor suffering people, the thought comes to me that if the evangelist were sincere, he would buy a lot of bread, coal and underwear, and hire a lot of trained nurses with a big part of that money. Christ and his Apostles were of the people; they worked with and among the people; they had no committees, no guarantees and no business men's subscription lists. It's mighty hard to read about these sensational evangelists taking in thousands of dollars for a couple of weeks' revival meetings, and harmonize that religion with the religion of Christ, the carpenter, and his Apostles, who were fishermen and workmen. [Sidenote: How They Do It.] The exciting, intoxicating, frenzied revival method is pretty much the same in its working wherever it is practised. The evangelist starts in with the song, "Where is My Wandering Boy To-night;" then follows the picture of mother, which is painted with sobs of blood. Then follows mother's death-bed scene until the audience is in tears. Gesticulation, mimicry, acting, sensationalism, slang and weepy stories follow, until the ferment of excitement is developed to a high pitch, and droves flock down the sawdust trail to be made over on the instant into sanctified beings. The evangelist stays until his engagement is up, and then departs with a pocket full of nice fat bank drafts. [Sidenote: An Old-Time Method.] But there is nothing new about this method. It is as old as humanity. It is the same method that is practised in the more remote and uncivilized portions of the world to-day, where garishly painted savages congregate and render homage to their gods in an orgy of yelling, whooping and beating of the tom-tom. It is a sad commentary on the established profession of the ministry that sensational professionals are called in and paid fabulous prices to convert the people in their community. I do not take much stock in either the frigid form-and-ceremonial method with its frills, or the frenzied fire-and-brimstone, scare-you-to-it extreme. Somewhere between these extremes is the rational, natural, sane road to travel--the religion of brotherly love; of cheers, not tears; of hope, not fear; of courage, not weakness; of joy, not sorrow; of help, not hindrance. [Sidenote: The Religion of Love.] The religion that makes us love one another here--not the kind that says we shall know each other there; the religion that has to do with human passions, human trials, human needs, instead of the frigid form or the fevered frenzy; the religion that avoids the extremes of heat and cold--that's the kind the world needs most. Christ taught love, kindness, charity. He spoke not of beautiful churches and opera-singing choirs. He spoke not of robes, vestments, forms or rituals. One of the most beautiful things in the Bible is the story of the good Samaritan with his simple, unostentatious aid to a wounded man--a man whom the Samaritan knew as an enemy of his people, but who was none the less a brother. And you will remember how the priest of the temple--the man who taught charity and love--drew up his skirts and passed the wounded man by. 31. [Sidenote: Love of Country.] Patriotism--one's love for one's country--is a natural and a beautiful sentiment. With the spirit of idealism behind it, it becomes one of the noblest sentiments that has been developed in the course of humanity's long upward march to civilization. To-day, on Europe's battlefields, millions of men are hazarding their lives. They do so gladly, willingly, with a firm and reasoned conviction in the justice of the cause for which they fight. That is intelligent patriotism--the kind of patriotism that is based on understanding and knowledge. But the world to-day is conscious that there is another kind of patriotism--a false patriotism that is fostered and fomented by ambitious governments for purposes of aggression and aggrandizement. This false patriotism is not a free or voluntary thing. It is the blind, instinctive feeling of sheep-like men who have been bred beneath the yoke of servility and obedience and are like clay in the hands of their overlords. They know not why they fight, but through fear or intimidation or force, they slavishly submit to the will of their Kaiser or Emperor and his minions. This great war, and most every great war of the past, was made possible by a distorted understanding of patriotism. This false patriotism is one of the narrowest and most cruel forces in the world, and when linked with militarism, it becomes the most dangerous. It causes wars, waste and desolation. It creates jealousies, inspires jingoism and braggadocio, keeps alive the fight spirit, and menaces the peace and security of nations. [Sidenote: Militarism.] Militaristic rulers, fired by selfish egotism, know full well what a powerful force patriotism is, and they nurse the babes with fatherland stuff and give them tin soldiers to play with and tin helmets to wear. Patriotism, when it reflects love of the place of one's nativity, when it is based on home ties and associations, is a beautiful and touching thing. But when unscrupulous autocrats utilize this sentiment for their own aggressive purposes, it becomes a menace that must be put down if other nations are to enjoy the blessings of peace and liberty. [Sidenote: False Patriotism a Menace.] To keep this false patriotism alive, wars must be made, so that human blood can be secured to keep the monster from famishing. And so, on slight pretexts, or no pretexts at all, the war lords and imperial autocrats rattle their swords in their scabbards and let loose the avalanche of war on the world. Such patriotism is failure and worse than failure. It is a reversion to the brute age of mankind. It flings a moral challenge to the world that the world must either accept or perish. So much for this monstrous perversion of Right and Reason that has turned Europe into a shambles, and has banded the civilized nations of the world together in a mighty struggle for freedom and democracy. True patriotism is one of the world's constructive forces. It overleaps national frontiers, and is inspired by the ideals of international peace, good-will and amity. It looks forward to the time when national barriers will be let down, and the brotherhood of man will be recognized the world over. Such patriotism is the patriotism of Right Makes Might--not Might Makes Right. It is the kind of patriotism that prevails only among the free, democratic, peace-loving peoples of the world who are fighting to-day for the preservation of free institutions and the rights of humanity. The opposite sort of patriotism is the autocratic, militaristic kind that has furnished the world with an example of savage ferocity and vindictive cruelty that it will not soon forget. In this great struggle, we see Democracy ranged against Autocracy, Right against Might, True Patriotism against False Patriotism. The Right will triumph, as it always has, when pitted against the forces of hate, greed and reaction. 32. [Sidenote: The Happy Medium.] Danger lies in extremes. Too much of anything is bad for the human being's health. There is a certain comfortable proportion of exercise and rest which, when mixed together, will give bodily efficiency. Too much exercise is bad, too little is bad. Until recent years, our vocations and the habit of going to or from our places of business gave us a well-balanced amount of exercise, rest, work and pleasure, and all went well. Lately, we hear much about worry, neurasthenia, nervous prostration and the like. There are several contributing causes to the mental and physical ills which are caused by "nerves." First of all, we have an epidemic of labor-saving devices. The principal argument used by the manufacturer of a labor-saving device is, "It makes money and saves work." Making money and getting soft snaps seem to be the objectives of most human beings. The labor-saving devices take away exercise. The machine does the work. The artisan simply feeds the hopper, puts in a new roll, or drops in the material. He sits down and watches the wheels go around, likely smoking a cigarette in the meanwhile, and more than likely reading the sporting sheet of a yellow newspaper. [Sidenote: Changed Conditions of Work.] Possibly few of my readers have given the matter serious thought, and they will be astounded at the changed conditions of work which have come into our modern life. It will be interesting to note here some of these changes. Men used to live within walking distance of their work. Now the electric street railway and the speedy automobile have eliminated the necessity for much walking. Men used to climb stairs. The elevator has now so accustomed us to the conveniences that stairs are taboo. Machines have replaced muscles. The old printer walked from case to case and got exercise. To-day he sits in an easy backed chair and uses a linotype. Telephoning is quicker than traveling. No one "runs for a doctor." Our houses have electric washers, electric irons and many other labor-saving devices. Even the farmer has his telephone, his auto, his riding plow, his milking machine and his cream separator. In the stores, the cash boy has disappeared. The cash carrier takes the money to a girl who sits in the office, a machine makes the change, and another machine does her mathematics. [Sidenote: Perils of Inactivity.] The modern idea of efficiency puts a premium on the sedentary feature of occupations, and employees are frequently automatons that sit. The business man sits at his desk, sits in a comfortable automobile as he goes home, sits at the dinner table and sits all evening at the theater, or at the card table. It is sit, sit, sit until he gets a big abdomen, a puffy skin and a bad liver. He tries to counteract this with forced exercise in a gymnasium or a couple of hours golfing a week. Very likely, his golfing is more interesting because of the side bets than because of the exercise. We are losing out on the natural, pleasurable, and practical exercises, mixed in the right proportions to promote physical poise and health. Things are too easy, luxury and comfort too teasing, for the ordinary mortal to resist, and the great mob sits or rides hundreds of times when they should stand or walk. When my objective point is five or six blocks, I walk, and I think on the way. I probably get in from two to four miles of walking every day, which my friends would save by riding in the street cars or autos. I walk to my office every morning--a distance of nearly four miles. I walk alone, so that I may relax and not expend conscious effort as is the case when I walk with another. That morning walk prevents me from reading slush and worthless news, and relieves me of the necessity of talking and using up nerve energy. I get the worth-while news from my paper by the headlines and by trained ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. [Sidenote: Four Great Body-Builders.] I just feel fine all the time, and it's because I get to bed early, sleep plenty, exercise naturally, think properly and get the four great body-builders in plenty: air, water, sunshine, food; and the other four great health-builders, which are: good thought, good exercise, good rest, and good cheer. The great crowd aims at ease, and so the business man sits and loses out on the exercise his body and mind must have. And therefore the great crowd pays tribute to doctors, sanitariums, rest cures, fake tonics, worthless medicines, freakish diet fads, and crazy cults, isms, and discoveries that claim to bring health by the easy, lazy, comfortable sitting route. Believe me, dear reader, it is not in the cards to play the game of health that way. "There ain't no sich animal" said the ruben as he saw the giraffe in the circus, and likewise, there "aint no sich thing" as health and happiness for the man who persistently antagonizes Nature, and hunts ease where exercise is demanded. The law of compensation is inexorable in its demand that you have to pay for what you get and that you can't get worth-while things by worthless plans. You must exercise enough to balance things, to clear the system, to preserve your strength; it doesn't take much time. 33. This afternoon I am sitting on a glacial rock in the forest at the foot of Mount Shasta. A beautiful spot in which to rest and a glorious page from the book of nature to read. [Sidenote: Back to Nature.] A canopy of deepest blue sky above, with sunshine unstopped by clouds. The rays of old Sol pulsate themselves into an endless variety of flowers, plants and vegetable life which Mother Earth has given birth to. Glorious trees of magnificent size reach up into the blue and give us shade. Ozone sweeps gently through the forest, impregnated with the perfume of fir, balsam, cedar, pine and flowers. In this spot, nature has thrown up mountains of volcanic rock, which hold the winter's snow in everlasting supply to quench the thirst of plant, of animal, and of the millions of humans in the lower country. The whole hillside around me is a community of springs of crystal water laden with iron and precious salts. It is the breast of Mother Earth which nurses her offspring. Here are no noises of the street; the newsboy's cry of "extra" is not heard. The raucous voice of the peddler, the din of trucks, the honk of automobiles, the clatter of the city--all these are absent. There is no noise here--just the sweet music of falling water, and the aeolian lullaby made by the breeze playing on the pine needles. My eyes take in a panorama of beautiful nature in colors and contrasts that would give stage fright to any artist who tried to paint the scenes on canvas. [Sidenote: Gaining Pep.] I am getting pep. This is my treatment for tired nerves; 'tis the "medcin' of the hills;" 'tis nature's cure, and how it brings the pill box and the bottle of tonic into contempt! I'm letting down the high tension voltage and getting the calm, natural pulsation that nature intended the human machine to have. So quiet, so peaceful, so natural is the view that I drink in inspiration of a worth-while kind. No war news to read, no records of tragedy, no degrading chronicles of man's passions, of man's meanness and man's selfishness. A little chipmunk sits upright on a rock before me wondering at the movements of my yellow pencil and the black mark it makes on the paper. A delicate lace-winged insect lights on my tablet, and a saucy "camp robber," or mutton bird, wonders at the unusual sight of me, the big man animal brother. A big beetle is getting his provisions for the winter. I recognize his occupation, for I've read about him in Fabre's wonderful books on insect life. [Sidenote: Nature's Lodge.] Here, in the sanctum sanctorum of the forest, I am made a member of Nature's lodge, and the ants and bugs and beetles and flowers and plants and trees are initiating me and telling me the secrets of the order. I can only tell you, who are in the great busy world outside, the lessons and morals. The real secrets I must not tell; you will receive them when you, too, come to the hills and forests, and sit down on a rock alone and go through the initiation. You are invited to come in; your application is approved, and you are eligible to membership. Come to Nature's lodge-meeting and clear away the cobwebs from your weary brain; get inspiration and be a man again. Come--soothe and rest and build up those shredded, weakened, tired, weary nerves. Let the sun put its coat of health on you, and let the ozone put the red blood of strength in your veins. [Sidenote: Rest and Recreate.] Come and get perfect brain and body-resting sleep. Come to this wonderful, happy, helpful lodge and get a store of energy, and an abundance of vital ammunition with which to make the fight, when you go back to your factory or office. The doctor can lance the carbuncle, but Nature's outdoor medicine will prevent your having a carbuncle. The doctor can stop a pain with a poison drug, but Nature's outdoor medicine will prevent your having the disorder which makes the pain. No, brother, you can't get health out of a bottle or a pill box. But you _can_ get it from Mother Nature's laboratory, where she compounds air, water, sunshine, beauty, music, thought; where she gives you exercise and rest, health, happiness, all summed up into cashable assets for the human in the shape of poise, efficiency and peace. 34. [Sidenote: Mother.] Mother, you are the one person in all the world whose kindness was never the preface to a request. That's the sweetest tribute we can pay you, and the most truthful one. It covers devotion, love, sentiment, motherhood, and all the noble attributes that go to make the word "Mother" the most hallowed, most sacred, most beautiful word in the English language. There are not words or sentences that can express to you what we think of you or convey our appreciation of you. You want our love; you have it. You should be told of our love; we tell you. Appreciation and gratitude are payments on account, but with all our appreciation and with our whole life's gratitude, the debt we are under can never be paid. "We have careful words for the stranger, And smiles for the some-time guest-- But oft to our own the bitter tone, Though we love our own the best." We've hurt you, Mother, many times, by our thoughtlessness and by the resentment we felt over your plans and your views about the things we did, and you have had heartaches because of such actions of ours. [Sidenote: The Mother Love.] Forgive us, Mother, we're sorry. And there you are, dear; the moment we ask your forgiveness, your great, tender, loving heart has forgiven us and erased the marks of transgression. Always thinking of us, always excusing us, always doing for us, always watching us and always loving us in the most unselfish way. We love you, Mother; we appreciate you. We are going to show our appreciation and love so much more from now on. We have just come to our senses and realized what a wonderful, necessary, helpful being you are. Your sweetness, your gentleness, your goodness, your love, are parts of you. They all go to make up that word "Mother." Your life, your acts, your example, your Motherhood, have all helped the world so much more than you will ever know. In the everlasting record of good deeds, your name is in gold. In the everlasting memory of those who appreciate you, your face, your life, is a sacred, helpful picture that grows more beautiful as the days pass. In tenderness, in appreciation, in love, let us dedicate these thoughts and voice these expressions to Mother, who gives her life by inches, and who would give it all on the instant for her children, if necessity called for the sacrifice. How feeble are words when we try to describe Mother! 35. This is your inning, Dad. [Sidenote: Just Dad.] There have been so many beautiful things written about Mother and all the rest of the family that it is high time we should tell you how much we love you and how much we appreciate you. You've worked so hard; you've been so ambitious to do things for your loved ones, and they have accepted your sacrifice and work and watchfulness as matter of fact. You've had dreams of a some day when you would relax and play and enjoy, but you have set that some day too far ahead. You consider yourself only after all your loved ones are comfortable and happy, and time is passing, Dad. You are too unselfish, too much centered in that some day. Let's change things a bit, Dad. Sometimes the "some day" doesn't come. You are entitled to happiness and pleasure and health and joy right here, now, to-day. It's your duty to have them. Your loved ones do not want you to spend your health in getting wealth. They don't want to see you worn-out, tired, weary and unhappy, in the evening of your life. Besides it's your duty to let them share the responsibility, and work out their own problems. They will be better equipped for life after you are gone if you let them gain knowledge by practical experience. [Sidenote: Keep Alive the Spirit of Youth.] Come on, Dad; get in the group and enjoy things now and you will live longer, and get more out of life, and give more pleasure to your loved ones. Get in the game, Dad; let's see the old light and twinkle in your eyes; let's have the sunshine on your face; the love-light on your lips, and the happiness in your heart. Leave your cares at the office; prepare your mind for play, and you will feel so much better and stronger and so much more successful in your business. We don't want to hear any more sh-h-h--sh-h-h--or whispers when you come home. We don't want to feel that uncomfortable feeling of restraint; let's laugh and sing and love and play--let's make your home-coming a joyous event. We all love you, Dad, but you haven't made it as comfortable as you might for us when we try to express our love. You've been too tired, too busy, too much occupied with those business thoughts. Don't you see how we love you and how we appreciate you? Don't you know that there is no one in the world who can take the place of Dad? Keep your heart young, Dad; we will help if you only say, "Come on." We are waiting for the signal. Let's start the new schedule tonight. Come on, Dad, what do you say? 36. [Sidenote: What Our Bodies are Composed Of.] We speak of the three kingdoms: the animal, the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms, and every substance is classified into one of these. The exact truth is there is but one kingdom, which is the mineral. The vegetable substances and animal combinations are made of mineral elements. In a rough way we distinguish the mineral kingdom as those substances called elements, such as iron, sulphur, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sodium and the like. These elements are unchangeable in themselves; they do not grow. The animal is made of mineral elements associated in certain proportions, such as albumin, carbon, lime, water, salt and the like. The vegetable kingdom also consists of these various chemical combinations. Seed, when planted, extracts the minerals from the air and the earth and combines them into a plant, which grows and has for its object the making of seeds to reproduce and perpetuate itself. The plant has life, but it has no spiritual or mental equipment, and therein vegetable life differs from the animal life. The animal eats vegetable and animal flesh. Through the vegetable he gets the mineral matter necessary for body-building. He also gets a plentiful supply of mineral from the flesh he eats, which flesh was first built up through the vegetables the animal ate. These are definite facts. The human body may be analyzed and separated into something like a dozen substances, among which are water, which is three-fourths of the body's structure, carbon, lime, phosphorus, iron, potassium, salt and so on. By reading a book on anatomy you can learn just exactly the proportions of the substances in the human body. All these chemicals are formed in the shape of little cells, myriads of which are in the body. These cells are constantly being destroyed and new ones made to take their place. Parts of the body are replaced every twenty-four hours; other parts less often. [Sidenote: What Our Bodies Need.] Scientists tell us that the whole body is replaced every seven years. Every move you make destroys cells which nature has to replace. Isn't it reasonable then to conclude that if a man should fail to eat enough lime for his body-building, his bones would suffer? If he does not get enough iron, his blood will suffer, and so on. I am convinced that most physical ailments are caused by a deficiency of the mineral elements in the body. Phosphorus and potash are necessary to human welfare. These elements are in the husk of the wheat, and when the husk is taken off in making flour, the resulting product is mostly starch. The person who lives mostly on white bread will suffer from lack of phosphorus and potash. Nothing could be better for the health of the American people than the nation-wide food campaigns the government is conducting. The educational value of these campaigns is enormous. Eat less wheat! White bread is unessential. Bran, or whole wheat bread, is far more healthful and nourishing, and contains more of the elements the human body needs. Eat more fruit. People do not eat enough fruit. Every year thousands of bushels of peaches and grapes and other fruit go to waste because the demand is not great enough to ship the entire output to the great consuming centers. Study your body's needs. Health is maintained at its proper level only so long as you eat carefully and wisely. 37. The practice of medicine in the past has been directed towards the curing of disease and physical ailments already developed. The practice of medicine in the future is to be along preventive lines. Science is showing us how to prevent infection. Science is fighting the deadly microbe which comes to us in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, and the infected things we touch. [Sidenote: The "Why" of Disease.] Nature has supplied the human body with a home guard of necessary bacteria, and in the circulation system are phagocytes which fight the invading microbes and generally destroy them. When the system is weakened through disease, through lack of exercise, or through improper food, disease has an easy time. I want you to remember this golden prescription. It is composed of the following: Good Air, Good Water, Good Sunshine, Good Food, Good Exercise, Good Cheer, Good Rest and Good Thought. If you take this golden prescription, you will make of yourself a giant in brain and brawn strength. You can't get health out of a bottle. You can't get the system to absorb iron if you take it in the form of tincture of iron. You can eat a pound of rust, which is oxide of iron, and none of that iron will be absorbed in the system. [Sidenote: What to Eat.] As I have explained in another chapter, you must take the mineral in the system through the vegetable route. You will get iron that will be assimilated when you eat beefsteak. Beefsteak has blood; the blood has iron. You will also get iron when you eat spinach. Every element necessary for your body is found in some vegetable or animal food; therefore, you should refrain from confining yourself to a very few articles of food. [Sidenote: Fads, Cults, Isms.] Don't pay any attention to the faddist who gives you a rigorous diet or unpalatable food. You simply make yourself miserable, and you generate more worry and unhappiness by your discipline than the good you get from these freak fads. There are a thousand different fads and cults and isms, each one claiming to be right. Probably each one contains a small portion of right. But it is a sure thing that The Right is too big a thing to be confined within narrow formulae and creeds. We all eat too much meat, but that a strict vegetarian diet is the necessary thing for good health I deny. The sheep, the cow, and horse are vegetarians, and they are short lived. The eagle, the lion, the man, eat animal food, and they are long lived. I may be prejudiced, but it does seem to me that the strict vegetarians are a skinny, sallow-looking lot of humans, speaking generally. I do find that the healthier specimens of vegetarians are those who eat plenty of eggs and drink plenty of milk, both of which are animal food, and both of which have nearly all the elements necessary to sustain life. I don't like fads in the matter of eating. The amount a person consumes should be in exact accord with the body's requirements--neither more nor less. The human body is a machine from a food standpoint. It is an engine that has work to do, and accordingly the amount of fuel necessary for the engine should be in proportion to the amount of work that the engine is called on to perform. [Sidenote: Eat Less, Exercise More.] The majority of city-dwelling people eat too much. This is especially true of men in sedentary occupations, and women whose household duties are light. If your engine needs twenty pounds of steam, how foolish it is to keep up a hundred pounds pressure! If you had five-horsepower work to perform, how foolish it would be to install a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound engine! Eat less of everything. Fat and flabbiness and over-feeding is a national vice with us. The fashionable cafés and restaurants are thronged with puffy, heavy-jowled men and women, eating and drinking. Hotels and food-purveyors are constantly inventing new palate-tickling dishes to tempt your appetite. Orchestras and dramatic troupes are engaged to entertain and amuse you while you overload your stomach, take on fat, and lay the foundation for future cases of indigestion or dyspepsia. There is no escaping a day of reckoning for such mistreatment of yourself. If you would keep yourself fit, it is important that you eat only what is necessary to maintain yourself at normal weight and strength. You do not often find dyspepsia or indigestion among men or women who work hard physically. Isn't it reasonable to suppose that this is because they work hard? You who work indoors, with little physical exercise, will find wonderful benefits if you will cut down the fuel. Much of the physical trouble comes from filling up the boiler too much. Cut down the food and you will feel better. 38. Anger and revenge are great pull-backs to health. Anger makes the blood rush to the head, weakens the body, and distorts the vision. When a woman gets angry, she quarrels with her lover, her husband or her children. Any one of these things is a calamity. When a man gets angry, he is a wild man. His eyes glitter, his mouth is cruel, his fists clinch, his body trembles, his blood veins strain, and he does more harm to his system in five minutes of anger than nature can repair in a day. [Sidenote: Anger and Poise.] Anger makes weak stomachs, dizzy heads, poor judgment, lost friends, despair and sickness, and if the habit becomes confirmed, will likely lead to apoplexy. When two men have differences, watch the cool man finish victor; the angry man always loses. Keep your head; let the other fellow fret and fume. He will tie himself up in a knot, and when the gong is rung, he will be the loser. Serenity is one of God's blessings. Fortunate is the man who can hold his serenity. When you get a letter that stirs you to anger, don't answer that letter for forty-eight hours, then write a moderately vitriolic letter--and then tear it up. [Sidenote: The Futility of Revenge.] I know you are tempted and goaded, and your limit of endurance is sometimes reached. But I know that revenge is sweet only in anticipation. I know that revenge by anger and by the cruel "eye for an eye" measure is never, never sweet. I have been the victim of imposition, ingratitude and insincerity, and advantage has been taken of me because I kept my poise and serenity. I have been called easy, and soft, and friends have shown me where I was imposed upon, but I was stooping to conquer. I kept my reserve, my resistance, and my power ready until time, place, and preparedness let me spring my coup, and then I cashed in beautifully in principal and interest for those acts and hurts. I have power now in my hands to make others suffer keenly and deeply for wrongs they have done me. Yet I do not exercise that power to revenge. I have been misjudged and misunderstood, because cowardly persons have lied and villified me, and have accused me of motives and acts of which I was innocent. I am well hated now by one person in particular, who blames me for things another is guilty of. A word from me would clear myself, but it would bring gloom and despair to that person and would not make me any more cognizant of my innocence. [Sidenote: Time, the Arbiter.] Time somehow will bring out the truth; the cowardly, guilty individual who basks in the favor of the one who is angry at me will surely pay for his wrong. This I know, and I am satisfied with the ultimate result. My former friend, who is angry at me, would simply switch the anger current to the guilty one if I told the facts; the guilty person couldn't stand that anger like I can. My act would break up a home and bring misery. The satisfaction I would receive would not equal the sorrow my act would cause to others. I am far removed from the location where these people live, and I can stand the anger of the one who puts the blame on me by accepting the lies of another as truth. I have the documents in black and white, yet I don't use them because I have poise and the consciousness of knowing I am right, and those who are dear to me know it, too. I've tried both plans, the plan of anger and the plan of poise, and I like poise better. I believe I hear more birds, I believe I get more pleasure out of life and living than the man who gets angry and loves revenge. Anyway, I think so, and "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 39. Sleeping, like breathing and digesting, is controlled by the subconscious brain centers. Natural sleep requires no positive mental impulse; it's just relaxing, and nature takes care of the process. [Sidenote: Can't Sleep.] That is natural sleep, but when you start your dry cell battery, the brain, and commence to worry and fear, you are going to stay awake. Then the conscious mind dominates the subconscious mind, and you banish the very comforter you seek to woo. Business men who work under high tension all day on business matters, and high tension all evening in threshing over again the business of the day, are almost sure to suffer from insomnia. The continuance of this habit of thinking of business day and night brings on the insomnia habit and that, in turn, gives rise to the delusion that you are fighting for your natural sleep. This produces worry, the demon that kills and maims. To have an occasional wakeful night is natural; it is an evidence of intelligence: the mental dullard never has wakeful nights. Unless the fear of sleeplessness becomes a full grown phobia, no anxiety need be felt. The fear of insomnia, the over-anxiety to go to sleep, is to be more dreaded than insomnia itself. [Sidenote: To Get Results.] To get refreshing sleep you must put yourself in a state of actual physical tiredness. Take exercise. Walk in one direction until the first symptoms of becoming tired appear, then walk home. Take a hot bath, then sponge with cold or cool water. Put a cold cloth at the head, and rub the backbone with cold water. Open your windows wide, then relax. Don't worry; you are going to sleep. Lie on your back, open your eyes wide, look up as if you were trying to see your eyebrows, hold your eyes open this way ten to twenty seconds, then close them slowly. Repeat this several times. Sleep will have descended on you before you realize it. Or occupy your mind with auto-suggestions like this: "I am going to sleep--sound, heavy, restful, peaceful sleep. My eyelids are getting heavy--heavy. I am going to close them and go to sleep." Don't try to count imaginary sheep jumping over fence rails. Don't count numbers. It is a bad habit. If these suggestions do not help you the first night, say: "All right, my brain was too active; to-morrow I will let down a bit." Next night eat one or two dry crackers; chew them slowly, masticate them thoroughly until you can swallow easily. This little food will draw the blood pressure from the brain and help you to go to sleep. Drive out business and worry thoughts. Think faith and courage thoughts. 40. To live down the past and erase the errors, live the present boldly. Do not chastise or condemn yourself for mistakes you have made. You are not alone; everyone has made missteps--has hurt others or wronged himself. [Sidenote: Making Mistakes.] Everyone has had reverses and met trouble and misfortune. It's the plan of things. It is by undergoing trials like these that we gain in experience and wisdom. We are enabled to correct our future acts by utilizing the lessons which our mistakes have taught us. Yesterday is dead; forget it. Face about. Live to-day; be busy, be active, be intent on doing right and accomplishing things worth while. The world's memory is short. A misdeed, an error, a wrongful act on your part may set busy tongues wagging to-day, and you may suffer from calumny and criticism. Of course, your errors will be magnified and your wrongs enlarged beyond the truth; that's the penalty you pay for your transgressions. Lies are always added to truth in telling of one's misdeeds. Be brave. Weather the storm; it will soon blow over. To-morrow the world will forget. You've suffered in your own conscience; that's all the debt you can pay on the old score. [Sidenote: Worrying Won't Help.] Now, then, get busy with the glorious opportunity that today presents. Don't make the same mistake again. There are no eyes in the back of your head; look forward. Don't worry by envying the other fellow and comparing his good deeds with your mistakes; you only see his good. He has had troubles and made mistakes, too, but you and the world have forgotten them. If every man's sins were printed on his forehead, the crowds that pass by would all wear their hats over their eyes. I'm trying to comfort you, and slap you on the back, and tell you that you are just human, and all humans make false steps. The patriarchs in the Bible made mistakes, but they got in the fold. History has perpetuated their names. Their lives, on the whole, were worth while. It's the sum total of acts that count. 41. [Sidenote: To-day and To-morrow.] One man says the present is everything, that eternity is nothing. The other man says eternity is everything, that the present is nothing. I believe the real truth is that both are man's chief concern, and neither view comprehends all truth. In this matter, the general rule I have so often pointed out will harmoniously apply. That rule is: Avoid extremes. Those who believe that the Now, the Present, is the all-important thing in man's life have the fashionable or favorite point of view. Man has much definite information about the present, he knows much about life. He is in the midst of life--it pulsates all around him and in him. We know positively that the law of compensation is inexorable in its demand for right and positive in its punishment of wrong. We know that on this earth kindness, love, occupation, help, truth, honor and sympathy are investments which bring happiness to-day. You get your pay instantly when you have done a helpful act, and you get your punishment instantly when you have done a hurtful act. [Sidenote: The Hereafter.] That there is a future most of us agree, because good sense and logic point to that sane and reasonable conclusion. So be it. With a belief in the future estate, it is reasonable to assume that our acts and lives in the present will have influence on our future estate. We know positively of to-day; we know the happiness we can get from good deeds done to-day. We come to this knowledge by experience. If we will have power in the future to look back on to-day's acts, well and good if to-day's acts are worth while. The other view, that Eternity is everything and the present is nothing, is the antiquated view, the narrow view--the, I might say, illiterate view. That view warps the present life; it calls for present self-chastisement, present gloom, present sorrow and present misery. It takes the tangible definite to-day, calls it nothing, and accepts the intangible unknown eternity as everything. [Sidenote: A Cheerless Philosophy.] It trades the definite for the indefinite. It calls life a bubble, a vapor, a shadow. In fact, it throws a pall over to-day's sunshine, and regards our earthly life as a sort of purgatory--a dismal unhappy punishment ante-chamber where man exists and waits, peeping out of his cell windows for a little imagined view of eternity. He waits and endures the unpleasant interval, steeled against the definite pleasures of to-day, his whole outlook colored by a fanatical and intoxicated belief in the expected happiness of the undefined future. He refuses to think of the definite life of to-day that we all know, and spoils the thought of those who do. He is a blockade to progress, a disagreeable part of life's picture. He gets no happiness in the to-day which is in his hands; he loses his opportunity to be of service here, and lives in the hope of a vague and nebulous future state which has no connection with the realities of every-day life. Both theories as ultimate beliefs are wrong, yet each has some truth in its conclusion. By taking the words "Eternity" and "Present" and saying that both mean everything, we avoid extremes and form a truth that is rational, and harmonious to good reason. The man who says that the present is all, does so because he is an utilitarian. He reasons from the definite and the seeable, and refuses to believe in the abstract. Anything that is outside the sphere of his vision and action is of little concern to him. The man who says eternity is all, wastes a golden opportunity and warps himself into a miserable hermit. Life is irrevocable. Every act in our life is placed, set, and fixed. Every act goes in the record book of yesterday, and it cannot be changed. Acts that hurt others will rebound and hurt us. Deeds that help others will rebound and help us. This much is certain. There is a future, I believe that. There is a God, I believe that. Just what the future is, and just what God is, I do not know in perfect detail. Reward for good and punishment for evil is part of God's plan, and I am conscious of this truth. I know that justice prevails in this life, and this life is what I am living now. [Sidenote: The Good That Lies at Hand.] If I live and act to-day in accordance with what I sincerely believe is in tune with God's purpose, I shall, in my future estate, benefit by those acts. If I live and act to-day in disregard of all around me, selfishly catering to my personal desires and believing that eternity is everything and the present nothing, I am neglecting the opportunity to do good now in the hope of a future personal reward, the very nature of which is unknowable. I shall therefore strive to do, and to be, right--to be kind, helpful, cheery and smiling now, for the reward such acts bring now. And I shall doubtless have as good a record and passport to the future as the man who suffers now and lives only upon his selfish hope of the future. His is the faith of fear, mine the faith of reason in the all-wise, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing Ruler of the universe, who gave me my life, my brain, my reason, which I am trying to use, as well as my limitations will permit, in helping myself and helping others to smile, to be happy, to be serene, to be confident, to be competent, to be useful. Everything lives and dies in accordance with the plan of the Creator of the Universe, and you are an atom and I am an atom in that Universe, which is governed by a power too big and too great for us to comprehend. Verily we presume when we say: "We have all the truth; think as we do or you are lost." The old world has not told its full story. The Universe of which this world is a part is still a deep, unfathomable mystery. We shall not know all truth until the great revealing time. [Sidenote: The Use of To-day.] We cannot change the pages of the millions of years gone by. We can do every little to change the pages of the millions of years to come. What little we can do, we can only do TO-DAY. To-day is yours and mine; let's do the best we can with our possession in act and thought and word. The sun goes down behind the sky-line on the West as it has done for millions of years. I lay aside my pen with a bigger view, a deeper appreciation of the Creator, and a profounder faith in His wisdom and works than ever. God made. God rules. God plans. And verily, we are weaklings and foolish who presume by selfish prayer to suggest to Him what He shall do. Let us strive to be appreciative of Him; let us try to lift ourselves to the sublime plane of realizing that we are part of Him and His plan, and that failure is impossible to us, if we keep up and on, doing good, speaking softly, dealing gently, showing kindness to-day, and living in accordance with the big, broad, generous, charitable plan instead of in the little, bigoted, narrow, selfish, conceited idea that we are sole possessors of truth and that the man who differs with us in belief is in error. This chapter is about big things, and in it is a big moral for all who are big enough to grasp it. 42. "I believe in him because he is so sincere." [Sidenote: Sincerity and Truth.] You've heard that, haven't you? I never could understand how a sensible person could use such logic. Sincerity is no evidence of truth. The Hindu mother is sincere when she throws her babe to the crocodiles, but her sincerity is no proof that by this sacrifice she is sure of her salvation. The Christian Scientist is sincere in the belief that medicines do not cure diseases. The doctor is equally sincere in his belief that medicines do cure disease. The Theosophist is sincere, the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Christian, the Pagan, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the Sunworshipper, the Republican, the Democrat, the Progressive, the Prohibitionist, the Brewer, all these are sincere in their beliefs. And as these beliefs are different, it is common sense to say that no one creed, sect, belief, branch, dogma or system includes or embodies all truth. [Sidenote: No Monopoly on Truth.] It is true that every channel or avenue we meet in life's travel has some truth, but it is not for you or me to assume that we are the sole possessors of wisdom and the real discoverers of all truth. We must not take the conclusions we arrive at and expect to force the world to accept without protest our rules for conduct, our methods for living, our practices for morals, or our beliefs for their guidance. Converts to new doctrines, new issues, new cults, and to the old ones, too, are made largely because the ambassadors or proselyters seem so fervid and sincere in expounding what they claim is the definite truth. The believers in a cult or code of ethics are auto-hypnotized; their visions are narrowed. By focusing their thought on their special belief, they bring together sophistry, argument, example and so-called proof that gives them facility in arguing the case or expounding their doctrine. [Sidenote: Christian Science.] You can make no gain in trying to argue with a Christian Scientist. You ask for concrete rules, definite answers and proofs other than their flat statements, and you are told you have not the understanding--you do not view the subject from the right plane, and that the truth cannot be shown you. You are told to have faith and belief, to eliminate antagonism, and to study "Science and Health," and you will receive the divine spirit and see the light. The Scientist is sincere; he shows you "Science and Health" with a lot of testimonials in the back to prove that Christian Science cures disease. Every patent medicine, every science, every system of healing has testimonials by the hundreds. Scientists say there is no disease, no material--that we are only spirit or soul or thought--that we are not matter but mind. Health, they tell us, is truth and disease is error. They deny disease, yet "Science and Health" and the midweek experience meetings have testimonials of disease cured by Christian Science. There is much truth in Christian Science. People are helped by it; people are sincere in their belief in it, but that Christian Science is all truth, all-powerful, all-right, all-sufficient, cannot be proven. What about the people who have gone hence before Christian Science was ever heard of? The theological religion of to-day differs radically in practice and belief from what it was fifty years ago. If the Protestant religion be all truth, what became of our religious ancestors who died before Martin Luther found the truth? [Sidenote: The Spirit of Tolerance.] I have no quarrel with the Christian Scientist, the Protestant, the Roman Catholic, the Buddhist or the Mohammedan. I must be generous and broad enough to admit that others have the right to think and be sincere. All sciences have truth, but no science, sect, cult, dogma or creed is ALL truth. Sincerity is evidence of honest conviction, but that your sincerity in your belief must be accepted by me as proof that I should believe as you do, is, I believe, the place where I have the undoubted right to say: "I reserve the right to my own conclusions, and I would be unjust to myself if I should force myself to accept your viewpoint without fully satisfying myself that you were right." So, because a person is sincere in a conviction that is contrary to your conscientious belief, do not be disturbed. There is no need to swerve from your own common sense analysis of the matter, or be convinced against your better judgment. No one possesses all the truth. It is for you and me to do our plain duty as we see it--to do the best we can each day in act and thought and word. We can pretty much agree on the simple essential truths which are proven. That is--being honest, truthful, kind, lovable, sympathetic, cheerful; doing good, helping one another, and doing things worth while. [Sidenote: Unprofitable Speculation.] If we agree on these things, and do useful work, and think helpful thoughts, we are doing our duty. Theories, arguments and studying too deeply on bootless systems, codes, beliefs, cults, isms and doctrines, is a waste of time. When we can, here and now, derive definite benefits from doing the simple and helpful things, and acting and thinking the simple, practical cheer thoughts, it is neither necessary nor helpful for us to waste time on spiritualism or theoretical beliefs that cannot be proven to our own satisfaction. We are asked to believe these strange, impractical, unnatural beliefs because of the sincerity of others. It's better to believe and to credit the things we can ourselves measure, understand and sincerely adopt. There are hundreds of strange beliefs and spiritual systems, each claiming to be all-powerful, all-right. If any one is all truth, then all the others are all wrong. The bigot who assumes he is the sole possessor of truth--the cult, sect, ism, or science that claims to possess all truth and presumes to lay down the exact rules for the world to obey--should be classed with those misguided religions and institutions of the dark past which burned human beings who dared to doubt their claim to the possession of all truth and knowledge. God never gave his approval to any one man-made religious sect. God is the universal good power. Man often tries to dwarf God's idea to the narrow dimensions of his own small soul. 43. [Sidenote: Whiskey and Fake Medicines.] Whiskey must go. It is written on the pages of the record book of man's progress. Likewise must the quack doctor and the fake medicine go. They have had their day. The quack doctor has already breathed his last in many parts of the country. The fake medicine schemes are still with us, but they are becoming increasingly difficult to put over. That they are doomed to extinction, there can be no doubt. The side-whiskered advertising doctor who magnifies symptoms and proclaims them to be grave forerunners of awful, debilitating disease, is nothing short of a criminal. He is one of the worst of criminals, because he imposes upon the credulity of the ignorant, excites their fear by means of sensational scarehead advertising, and then when he has finally lured them into his spider-web, fleeces them unmercifully. These charlatans are really more contemptible than any thief, for the thief does not pretend to be anything else but what he is, while the quack doctor swindles and exploits you under the guise of being your benefactor. As I have repeatedly explained, illness, feeling "out of sorts," local pains and sickness, unless of the contagious or infectious kind, are largely conditions of the mind. Most of the temporary ailments are caused by constipation, wrong diet or lack of exercise. The doctor gives a laxative, nature re-asserts herself, and the patient is cured. Chronic ailments require long treatments--making long bills and many visits for the quack doctor. [Sidenote: Your Family Physician.] Your health and happiness are things largely in your own control. However, when you feel you must have a doctor, go to your family physician and not to a strange doctor who advertises. His advertisement is merely a spiderweb to catch and hold you while he robs you. It is a hopeful sign of the brighter future toward which man is progressing, that the respectable papers will not lend their aid to swindling doctors. The best papers will not carry these quack doctor or fake medicine ads. Before long the government will pass laws abolishing this baneful, shameful, quack advertising. Quack doctoring, gambling, liquor selling--these are all swindling methods to get money, and in the getting, the ghouls and parasites who practise these "professions" are killing men, ruining homes, destroying happiness, holding back progress. The one object of the quack doctor is to size you up and see what you "are good for." "Good for" means how much money can he get from you, and how long can he keep you as a patient to contribute to his coffers. Let every reader of this book enroll as an opponent to quack doctors and quack medicines, and by word and influence help to hasten the day when such pernicious swindlers and swindling schemes are things of the past. 44. No two minds can see the same picture in the same way, nor can two persons, armed and equipped with logic, come to the same definite conclusions on religion. The old Scripture said: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." The new Scripture teaches us to "turn the other cheek" and "love our enemies." [Sidenote: Religion, Old and New.] Two hundred years ago witchcraft was practised and miserable human beings were burned at the stake. Thirty years ago the preacher who took exception to the universal belief of a hell of fire and brimstone was thrown out of the church. To-day no preacher believes in such a hell. Present day religion is really a Sunday religion. One and a half hours a week the members of the church join in singing, "We shall know each other there." The remainder of the week they make it a point to keep from knowing each other here. [Sidenote: Sectarianism.] The Protestant church divides itself into numerous sects, each one built on some particular ordinance or practice. Each one, in matters of doctrine, will swallow a camel but will strain at a gnat. One sect insists that baptism shall be by immersion because the disciples baptized that way. They believe in following custom literally, yet in the cities they immerse the members in a big tub under the pulpit, which practice is entirely different from the method employed by John the Baptist. Another sect insists upon having a communion every Sunday because the Bible says, "As often as you do this," etc. To be literal in the matter of communion, the Lord's Supper should be served at night, as the original was, and it should be supper and not a few pieces of broken crackers. The sect that insists on following the Scriptures in the matter of baptism by immersion fails to follow the Scriptures in the matter of washing the feet or anointing the head. Many years ago, churches considered it a sacrilege to use an organ. To-day they have orchestras and hire operatic singers. So it seems that the church is broadening out. Thinking men refuse to believe that religion should any longer be a matter of self-chastisement and worry, sobs and misery. Because so much of this sort of teaching is prevalent, the church is not making the gains it should. The church is largely supported by nice little women--many of them maiden ladies who have little to do and know little of the great problems of the busy world. [Sidenote: A Live Religion.] I am thoroughly convinced that the church must recognize that a great evolution is taking place--that we must be more charitable, more broad in our views, less technical in our tenets and more practical in our work. We will have to cut down the fences between the sects and get together in the great field for a common cause, rather than try to maintain little independent vineyards. Religion must teach smiles and joy, courage and brotherly love, instead of frowns, dejection, fear and worry. It must teach us how to be and how to get good out of our to-day on earth. If we are good and do good here, we certainly need have no fear for our future prospects. [Sidenote: The Universal Church.] Day by day we are progressing from narrowness, bigotry, selfishness and envy, to broadness, reason, brotherly love and contentment, and we shall progress from the narrow confines of obstinate orthodoxy or bulldogmatics, by breaking down sect and cult barriers until we are joined together in a universal church in which all can put their hearts and beliefs--in which all can find full range for their spiritual belief and expression. That big, broad, right church will be in harmony with God's purpose. The Creator made all men, and He doesn't confine His love or His interest to any one little man-made, narrow sect or creed. "God is love." "Love thy neighbor." "Help the weak; cheer the grief stricken." Those are the commands and purposes we find everywhere in the Scriptures. "He that believeth in me shall be saved." That's a definite promise, and it is not qualified by a lot of creed paragraphs and beliefs. That promise doesn't have any "buts" or "ifs." It doesn't say we shall be saved if we be Methodists or Catholics, Baptists or Presbyterians. Those names are man-made, and the creeds of those churches are man-made, too. At the congress of religions in the World's Fair at Chicago, over three hundred religions and sects were represented by delegates from all over the world, and every one of these delegates, with hearty accord, sang, "Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow" and "Rock of Ages." Those hymns were universal; they fitted all creeds and sects. Big men in the church are intensely interested in the get-together universal church, and each year will mark a definite progress toward amalgamation of sects and divisions. There should be no Methodist Church North and Methodist Church South. There should not be churches like the Congregational and Presbyterian, whose creeds are identical, the difference being only in the officers. The country village of 1,000 population has five churches; it should have only one. The country is full of half-starved preachers and weak, struggling congregations. The get-together movement will help religion, and it's going to happen surely. 45. Every year the business man goes over his stock, tools, fixtures, and accounts, and prepares a statement of assets and liabilities so as to get a fairly accurate understanding of his profit and loss. If he didn't take this inventory, his net worth would be a matter of guess work. This inventory, which deals with money, materials, etc., and things which are mixed more or less with the human element, is affected by conditions of trade, crops, competition, supply and demand. The business man takes all these conditions into consideration in preparing for the coming year. He red flags the mistakes and green flags the good plans. [Sidenote: Self Inventory. Listing the Liabilities.] The business man should carry the inventory further. Every month or so he should take a careful inventory of himself, putting down his assets of health, initiative, patience, ability to work, smiles, honesty, sincerity, and the like. So also he should put down on the debit side in the list of liabilities the pull-backs, hindrances and other business-killers. These items are untruth, unfairness, sharp practice, grouchiness, impatience, worry, ill-health, gloom, meanness, broken word, unfilled promises and the like. In making up the inventory, pay particular attention to your habits: smoking, drinking, over-eating, useless display, useless social functions, and other useless things that pull on your nerves and your pocket book. Then check up department A, which is your family. How have you dealt with your family and children? Department B is friends. How do you stand in your treatment of them? Department C includes all other persons. Did you lie to, steal from, cheat or defraud any one? How much cash profit did you make? How much less a man did the act make you? Go over your self-respect account. Does it show profit or loss? Check up your employees' account. What has your stewardship shown? Have you drawn the employees closer, or have you driven them further from you? Analyze your spiritual account. Is your religious belief a sham or a conviction? Do you sing on Sunday, "We shall know each other there," or do you make it a point to know and love your brother here, seven days a week? [Sidenote: Balancing the Statement.] Be fair in your inventory. Write down the facts in the two columns designated "good" and "bad," then go over the list and put a red danger flag on the bad. Keep the list until next inventory and see whether you have made a gain or loss in your net moral standing. Don't read this and say, "A good idea." Do the thing literally. Take a clean sheet of paper and write your personal assets and liabilities down in the two columns marked "good" and "bad." If this inventory doesn't help, then you may call me a false prophet. I know the plan is a good one. I know it will help you. If it helps you, you will thank me. There can be no harm in trying, because it's a worth-while thing to test. The business man who never takes inventory is likely to bump some day. 46. The ego is in us. It is a good thing to have, but egotism needs the soft pedal when we speak or do things. Many people are unconscious of their egotism, yet their conversation carries the suggestion, "Even I, who am superior to the herd, would do this or that." [Sidenote: The Personal Pronoun.] For instance, two persons were arguing about the merits of an inexpensive automobile. Parenthetically, I may say that one belonged to the Ford class, and the other to the can't-afford class. A can't-afford snob came to the rescue of the Ford champion by saying, "That's a good car; why, I wouldn't mind owning one of them myself," and he beamed at the party with the consciousness of having settled the matter and removed the stigma from the Ford car. This egotism often crops out when one shows a group picture in which he appears. He doesn't wait for you to find him; he pokes his arm over your shoulder and says, "That's me." To each of us, in the very nature of things, the "I" is the center of our world. We see things always through our I's. If we wish to get along without friction, we must remember that the other fellow has his I's also, and when we try to make him see things through out I's, it makes trouble. [Sidenote: Good Breeding.] The hall mark of education, refinement and character, in the broad sense, is the ability to exclude the personal so far as possible from our conversation. And be big enough to grant to others their undoubted right to see and think from their own standpoint. Argument develops egotism more than almost anything else will. How often have you convinced another in an argument? How often have you been convinced in an argument? The world is big; there are millions of others in it, and our job is a big one if we 'tend pretty well to our own knittin'. 47. Four hundred and twenty-six years ago Christopher Columbus landed on an island which he thought was India. Chris was mighty happy as he put his foot on good old Mother Earth, not so much because he had discovered a new way to India, as he thought, but because his foot touched land. Two days before he landed on San Salvador, his crew pitched into him and threatened to throw him in the sea and turn back with the ship to Spain. [Sidenote: The Last Step Counts.] If Chris had shown the white feather, 1492 would not be the date of the first line in the geography, announcing the "Discovery of America." Chris had perseverance--the stuff that makes men successful. He started to find India by sailing westward. He didn't succeed in his purpose, but his determination was rewarded just the same, for he found a new country, and that was worth while. Before he started, he was promised ten per cent of the revenue from any lands he might discover. Just imagine what that would mean to-day. Columbus had perseverance and pep, and his unwavering fidelity to his cause brought him success in his efforts. The world has improved since 1492, but the percentage of men who would keep everlastingly at it like Columbus did, has not increased, perhaps. Columbus sailed with three ships, the largest sixty-six feet long. He steered in the direction of the setting sun. His crew was 120 men. None of them were enthusiastic at the start; all of them disgusted, discouraged and ready to mutiny toward the last. [Sidenote: Keeping Everlastingly at It.] But Christopher kept the ships pointed West, through rain and shine, through drifting, breezeless days and through wild stormy nights. He kept on and on and on, and he brought home the bacon, which, being interpreted, means that success crowned his efforts. Perseverance and pep--when all is said and done, these are the factors without which no great achievement is possible. It was the mileage made on October 12th, 1492, that counted. It is the last step in a race that counts. It is the last stroke on the nail that counts. The moral is that many a prize has been lost just when it was ready to be plucked. Perseverance--patience--pluck--pep--these are magic words. They are the "Open Sesame" of modern life. They open the door to opportunity, and will bring you prosperity, peace and plenty. 48. The man who ridicules everything is on the toboggan slide, and he will end up by becoming an out-and-out grouch. You and I know men who never have a pleasant word to say of anyone, or a serious commendation of anything. [Sidenote: Ridicule and Humor.] Ridicule and sarcasm are often coated with would-be humor, and are sometimes decked out as puns. By and by, however, this bias toward ridicule and sarcasm gets to be a habit, and the coat of humor becomes threadbare. Just at this time friends depart, for the grouch phase of the disease has started. Sarcasm and ridicule are powerful weapons when used adroitly and for good purposes. But when sarcasm and ridicule are used constantly as a means to generate fun, or as vehicles for humor, then the evil commences. The fun disappears; the sting remains. People will listen to you for awhile if you good-naturedly ridicule a thing, but when you are known to have the habit, that is when friends give you the go-by. Sarcasm and ridicule wound deeply; they are hot pokers jabbed in quivering flesh. [Sidenote: A Dangerous Weapon.] Don't juggle with ridicule or sarcasm, for people look beneath the veneer nowadays. They remember and repeat the axiom, "There's many a true word spoken in jest." There are so many beautiful things to say, so many kind expressions to utter, so many helpful hints to give, that we should be ashamed to say or do things even jokingly that may hurt another. When you ridicule a thing or a person, you may ridicule the tender heart of one you should cheer and help. Ridicule is the negative approach to a subject anyway; the only good it can accomplish is by reflex action or rebound force. Ridicule is mistakenly conceived, by many, as humor. It is used because it can so easily be employed, in a seemingly clever way, to create a laugh. Humor of the clean sort is a rare gift. Humor may easily descend to low comedy through the use of ridicule, and often the audience does not differentiate between low comedy and rare humor. The masses will laugh when the comedian on the stage hits his friend with a club; that sort of fun-making satisfies adults who have children's brains, and people of similar brain-construction will also laugh at jokes which ride on ridicule. But you who read these lines are worthy of better things; that's why you are reading this book. If, in my audience, there are those who have the ridicule habit, I want to arouse you to a better sense of humor than is possible through the employment of ridicule and sarcasm. I don't want you to descend to the level of the grouch. The slide-down is so easy; the climbing back is so very hard. Ridicule and sarcasm are cheap, slap-stick methods to produce fun. They leave a sting many times when you are not aware of it. [Sidenote: When You Can Go the Limit.] When fighting whiskey, sin, corruption or organized evil, then use burning ridicule and caustic sarcasm to sizzle and destroy the things that need to be destroyed. Next time you find yourself using ridicule or sarcasm to provoke mirth, remember you are toying with a habit-forming practice that is likely to get the best of you unless you stop and stop now. 49. [Sidenote: Your Wife and Partner.] A wife is either a partner or an employee. If a partner, she has a right to the fifty-fifty split on profits; if an employee, she is entitled to her wages. A thrifty husband is commendable, but a show-me-what-you-did-with-that-money husband should be punished by being sentenced to attend pink teas, afternoon receptions, and to match samples at the dry goods store. Married folks must be on a partnership basis, or there's sand in the gear box. Give the wife the check-book; let her pay the bills. Play fair with her; show her what your income is; give her all you can afford and what economic and wise administration warrants. She'll cut the cloth to fit the garment. When the husband questions every turn, every move, and doles out every cent, the wife feels like a prisoner or a slave. Wives will do good team work when they are broken to double harness with their husbands. Women are generally raised without being required to economize. They have probably been petted and humored, and are used to preening and smoothing their plumage and looking pretty. [Sidenote: Fine Feathers.] It's the female instinct in the human. In the animal world, the male has the plumage and does the strutting and fascinating; but in the human animal, the female is the bird with the bright plumage. You can't expect her to know much about the economic side of the home the moment you slip the ring on her finger. But she'll shop better than her husband if he takes an interest in her shopping and encourages her in the economical administration of the household budget. She wants a word of appreciation once in a while. She chills under the surveillance and parsimony of an eagle-eyed, meddlesome husband. She's a sweet bird, and sweet birds and hawks don't nest well together. Where the hawk and the dove are in the same cage, the feathers will fly. As I came through the park this morning, I saw a pair of robins who had the right idea. They shared home responsibilities and did fine team work. I think they were mighty happy, too; daddy red breast looked mighty proud as he hustled worms for the family breakfast. Mama Robin looked down with loving eyes at her hubby, and the little baby robins sang a chorus of joy at the very privilege of living in such a home. Worry will fly out of the window the moment the husband and wife lay their cards on the table and play the open hand. The moment one or the other keeps a few cards up their sleeve, then worry and trouble come back. The moral of this is, husbands and wives: live together, get together, stay together, play together, save together, grow together, share together. Travel the same road; don't take different paths. 50. To-night I am in the Ozarks, and old Mother Earth is passing through the belt of meteoric dust--that great mysterious sea in the universe through which we pass every year about the middle of November. [Sidenote: The Stars.] I look out into the night and marvel at the countless stars in the infinite black void, and wonder how closely those stars may be connected with humanity. That they are connected, I have no doubt, for truly, "the sun, the moon, the stars, and endless space as well, are parts, are things, like me, that cometh from and runneth by one grand power of which I am in truth a part, an atom though I be." How many stars are there? Well, let's get ready to appreciate number. I can see about 3,000; with opera glasses I could see 30,000. Franklin Adams some years ago photographed the whole canopy with 206 exposures. He counted the stars by mathematical plans, and published his finding that there were 1,600,000,000 stars. That number is just about the number of humans on this earth. So, then, there is one star for each of us. [Sidenote: Finite and Infinite.] Each of those stars, practically speaking, is larger than the earth. It is thought that many of them may have human beings who think and reason like we do. Multiply the 1,600,000,000 population on this earth by any portion of the 1,600,000,000 stars that may have thinking creatures on them; multiply that total by the millions of years and millions of generations that have passed out of existence. Think of these numbers and limitless boundaries, and then tell me, if you can, that one little man on one little star we call Earth has a strangle-hold on truth, and that his viewpoint, his ism, his little dogma, his narrow creed, is all-sufficient, all-right, all-inclusive. Verily, little protoplasm, you have another guess. We can, by experience and tests, prove two and two make four. We can by practice and experience prove that love, kindness, help, gentleness, sympathy, cheer and courage bring happiness. [Sidenote: The Sense of Proportion.] These are tangible things that fall within the province of human experience. But when one wee Willie with sober face tells you and me and others that he has the truth about the definite, full workings of God's plans and purposes, I think of the greatness of 1,600,000,000 stars, each with 1,600,000,000 humans, and of the unnumbered generations gone by, and say that verily, we must live TO-DAY and do the best we can to-day in act and thought and word. Yesterday is dead; to-morrow is unknown. Where we have been, where we will be, we know not. Where we are to-day, we know, and only God in His omniscience knows the final answer as to our future estate. He will take us and hold us and place us in His keeping and according to His purpose, even though we do not or cannot follow or believe any one of the little man-formed creeds, isms or cults as the measure and rule for our beliefs. Those stars testify to the certainty of God, and I believe in Him. 51. [Sidenote: Success and Envy.] When a man by his brains, or by a fortunate combination of circumstances, rises to a position of prominence, he becomes a target for the envious and a pattern for the imitator. Emulation and envy are ever alert in trying to steal the fruits of the leader or the doer of things. The man who makes a name gets both reward and punishment. The reward is his satisfaction in being a producer, a help to the world, and the glory that comes from widespread recognition and publicity of his accomplishment. The punishment is the slurs, the enmity, the envy and the detraction, to say nothing of the downright lies which are told about him. When a man writes a great book, builds a great machine, discovers a great truth or invents a useful article, he becomes a target for the envious many. If he does a mediocre thing, he is unnoticed; if his work is a masterpiece, jealousy wags its tongue and untruth uses its sting. Wagner was jeered. Whistler was called a mere charlatan. Langley was pronounced crazy. Fulton and Stephenson were pitied. Columbus faced mutiny on his ship on the very eve of his discovery of land. Millet starved in his attic. Time has passed, and the backbiters are all in unmarked graves. The world, until the end of time, will enjoy Wagner's music. Whistler and Millet's paintings attract artists from all over the world, and inventors reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson. [Sidenote: The Price of Greatness.] The leader is assailed because he has done a thing worth while; the slanderers are trying to equal his feat, but their imitations serve to prove his greatness. Because jealous ones cannot equal the leader, they seek to belittle him. But the truly worth-while man wins his laurels and he remains a leader. He has made his genius count, and has given the creature of his brain and imagination to the world. Above the clamor and noise, above the din of the rocks thrown at him, his masterpiece and his fame endure. And compensation, the salve to the sore, makes the great man deaf to the noise and immune to the attacks of the knockers. In his own heart he knows he has done a thing worth while; his own conscience is clear, and he cares not for the estimate of the world. His own character is his chief concern, and he is content in the knowledge that time will bring its reward. If you have high ideals in business, if you achieve success on a big scale, mark well, you will be a subject of attacks, of lies, of malice, of envy, of disreputable competition. There is no way out of it. [Sidenote: Compensation.] But you will be repaid. The lover of fair play, the grateful, true, honest, worth-while people will flock to your standard; the riff-raff will skulk behind bushes and throw rocks and mud, but their acts will prove to the great mass of the people that your purposes, practices and policies are right. Therefore, courage is to be your chief asset; patience, pride, perseverance, your lieutenants. Be not weary, grow not discouraged when your progress is hampered by obstacles. Every truly great man of the past has had his backbiters and detractors. 52. There are three periods in our lives: the youthful, or prospective period, the adult, or introspective period, and the old age, or retrospective period. [Sidenote: Growing Old.] Too many there are who look forward to old age with fear or dread. But old age has its joys and pleasures as well as middle age and youth, and these pleasures are the keener if the first and second periods of life were lived sanely, worthily and properly. Numerous are the great men of the past who have extolled the old-age period of human life with its wisdom and wealth of worldly experience. If the middle period is spent in getting dollars only, then old age will be days of empty nothingness. Youth is the planning time--the time for ideals and ambitions; middle age the building time, and old age the dividend time. With many, old age is spent in reading the book of the past--with sadness as the reader recognizes that the ideals, plans and hopes were shattered. As age turns the page in the book of the past, he reads one hope after another vanished in smoke. Anticipation is seldom realized, and this is as it should be, for in time, men will learn to live each day for each day's good and each day's happiness. Let us perform our duty to-day; let us lay away a kindly act, a smile, a word of cheer in the bank of good deeds. Each of us has a share in this world's work. It matters little whether our actual share is what we had guessed or wished it to be. [Sidenote: The Value of Ideals.] Vicissitudes will cross our path here and there; so-called misfortune or bad luck will strike us when least expected. The failure of our dreams should not grieve us. We cannot reach up and grasp the stars, but like the pilot at the wheel at sea, we can steer by those stars that help us on our way. Our ideal may not be realized, but the journey to it may still be a pleasant one. Our ideals, plans and hopes had a real purpose, a real service; they gave us courage and made us work, and thus they were well worth while. We must not, in the old age period, condemn ourselves because our plans failed or our castles were shattered. There is no hard luck except incurable disease or death. It is not for us to mourn the past or weep for the flowers that are gone. In our active days, we should realize that we are putting memories away in our brains that will come back to us in old age. Only that which we put in our brains can we take out. So then, Mr. Avarice, I warn you: If gold is your God, it's cold comfort you will get in your sunset days. Build up loving ties, appreciation and the worth-while riches of good deeds, and in your evening of life, you will be welcome wherever you go. [Sidenote: Put Not Your Faith in Gold.] If your life was sold for gold, your evening of life will be short and miserable; legatees will grudge you your every breath; they will endure you simply because they are checking off the days from Time's calendar until the day of your passing, and the dollars you sold your soul and heart and life for, will be lavishly spent by cold-blooded heirs who cared nothing for you. Leave a legacy of love, example and character, and if, with these, there are a few dollars, they simply prove your frugality, economy and independence. A few dollars left to heirs will help. Many dollars will hurt. Dollars in old age will give you pleasure by helping in tight corners. They will enable you to help your loved ones over the bumps in the road. Use the dollars to help those you love to help themselves, and your old age will be a busy, happy one, and you won't be in the way. To prepare for that happy period of your life, the foundation must be built in the active to-day period. Carry smiles into your old age; they will keep the heart young, the digestion good, and life will be worth while. 53. I have traveled horseback over the great arid plains of the West, and have read the story of the ages gone before. [Sidenote: The Remote Past.] In Arizona and New Mexico there are ancient ruins of forts and cities built by people we know not of. Chalcedony Park with its petrified forest of mammoth trees silently testifies to a period when vegetation was rampant on what is now a desert. In Wyoming there is coal enough to furnish fuel for the United States for several centuries. Coal is carbon made from decayed trees and vegetation, which became covered with earth and rock, and was subjected to tremendous pressure throughout the thousands of years required to effect the transformation. Oceans and floods gradually covered millions of acres of trees and plants with ooze and soil and sand. Ages turned some of these deposits to stone. There in bleak Wyoming is testimony and evidence of changes that time only can bring about. "A thousand years is as a day and a day is as a thousand years." Thus wrote the scribe of old. So, then, we must consider this estimate of time in reading the first chapter of Genesis which describes the order of the world's creation. First took place the dividing of light from darkness, thus bringing about the rotation of day and night. Then, the separating of land and water; then, the birth of vegetation on the land, the creation of fish and reptiles in the sea, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and finally, the higher animal, man. [Sidenote: The Measure of Time.] The pages of the earth's surface carry in their stratification indelible records harmonizing with this scriptural account of the evolution of the earth from its chaotic misty past to its concrete definite present. Yes, this earth of ours is old, so old that mere man cannot contemplate or accurately estimate its wondrous age. The fossils of the mammoth reptiles and beasts which lived before the appearance of man on this planet are numerous in the fascinating West I know so well. In those arid desert hills are bones of the ancient rhinoceros--parent of our horse--and there are shells, and fossils of fish, and bones of animals imbedded in the strata of rock. Man reads these pages and he is lost in bewilderment, impoverished in thought, dumb for words, paralyzed by his inability to co-ordinate this evidence with any measure of time that will fall within the range of human comprehension. [Sidenote: Age of the Earth.] Historians say the world was 4,004 years old before the Christian era, and 1918 years have passed since then, making the age to date 5,922 years. It is not surprising that through the dark ages, dates and facts were lost. We have not a complete history in written language, but we have some very definite history in the rocks and hills and lands and seas. The world certainly is more than 5,922 years old. Read the record of time so plainly visible at Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls eats away about two feet of rock in a century; the gorge is a good many miles long. At the present rate of erosion, it takes 2,640 years to eat away a mile. Multiply that by the distance between the falls and Lake Ontario and you have an idea of how many years Niagara Falls has been at work. Before Niagara Falls was in existence, the country round about was under the sea; before that, under glaciers; before that, in the tropics, and I don't know how many times it has swung on its pendulum between Frigid, Temperate and Torrid Zones. We are certain to become lost in a labyrinth of mystery when we take these known facts concerning the earth's age, and try to specify any particular number of millions of years as the old world's age. 54. And now my pleasant occupation of writing this book draws to an end. I sincerely hope you have received some definite suggestions that will be helpful to you. To get you to think--that has been my aim. To get you to analyze yourself--to take stock of yourself--to know yourself--that has been the task I set before me. [Sidenote: How to Think.] Think vital thoughts of courage, faith and hope. Then will your days pass joyfully, and your path be one of peace, happiness and contentment. If you fill your mind with gloom and sorrow thoughts, your surroundings will reflect your mental attitude and will accentuate your misery and dejection. Do not give way to this weak, gloomy, pernicious thinking. You can be strong, you will be strong if you learn to control your thought habits. Can you face disagreeable facts without wavering? Can you meet adversity with courage in your heart and a smile on your lips? You can, if you have read this book carefully, calmly, thoughtfully, and put into practice the rules I have laid down. Do not think that you can go through life without your share of pain, disillusion and disappointment. It can't be done. No man has ever done it. Clouds will come, but they can be dispelled. Obstacles will arise, but they can be surmounted. Troubles will visit you, but meet them boldly and courageously and do not show the white feather. To the thinking man or woman, life is a great arena wherein good and bad, joy and sorrow, faith and disillusion, happiness and unhappiness, success and failure are inextricably intermingled. The joy and happiness, accept gratefully; the sorrow and disillusion, bear with fortitude. And remember, although it is not possible to enjoy an absolute and continued state of happiness, it always lies within your power to have serenity, poise, peace and contentment. When you are in the dumps--when that feeling of the hopelessness and un-worth-whileness of life comes over you, then, more than ever, _think_. Do not give way to fear and despondency. Think cheerful thoughts; think of the good things that life has given you, not the least of them being life itself. Think of the ringing words that Milton put into the mouth of Lucifer, the fallen angel, in "Paradise Lost": "The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." [Sidenote: Life's Ever-Newness.] To the person who thinks, life is ever-new, ever-interesting. If you have lost your grip on reality--if you have dwelt too long in the shadowland of doubt, fear and despondency--the thing to do is to correct your thinking. Let your mind soar in contemplation of the beautiful things of nature. Steel yourself against petty pull-backs and recognize them for what they really are--trifling annoyances that serve no purpose except to distract you from the pursuit of the great and glorious goal that lies ahead. Only to the thinking man is it given to see life and see it whole. He only has the true sense of proportion. He keeps his eye on the main objective, secure in the realization that he is master of himself and captain of his own soul. He is self-sufficient, for he knows that no matter what befalls, he carries happiness and contentment within himself wherever he goes. The practice of thinking is a tower of strength. If you are a thinker, life's little troubles serve but to reinforce your spirit of resistance and make you stronger. So then, let this be my last word to you--_think!_--for it is by thinking that man has risen to his present high estate in the world. It is by thinking that the future joy and happiness and peace of the world must be increased. 
4338	----	THE FREEDOM OF LIFE BY ANNIE PAYSON CALL _Author of "Power Through Repose," "As a Matter of Course," etc._ _FREEDOM_ _LORD GOD of Israel,-- Where Thou art we are free! Call out Thy people, Lord, we pray, From Egypt unto Thee. Open our eyes that we may see Our bondage in the past,-- Oh, help us, Lord, to keep Thy law, And make us free at last!_ _Lord God of Israel,-- Where Thou art we are free! Freed from the rule of alien minds, We turn our hearts to Thee. The alien hand weighs heavily, And heavy is our sin,-- Thy children cry to Thee, O Lord,-- Their God,--to take them in._ _Lord God of Israel,-- Where Thou 'art we are free Cast down our idols from on high, That we may worship Thee. In freedom we will live Thy Love Out from our inmost parts; Upon our foreheads bind Thy Law,-- Engrave it on our hearts!_ _Amen._ CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE FREEDOM OF LIFE HOW TO SLEEP RESTFULLY RESISTANCE HURRY, WORRY, AND IRRITABILITY NERVOUS FEARS SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF LIFE OTHER PEOPLE HUMAN SYMPATHY PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE SELF-CONTROL THE RELIGION OF IT ABOUT CHRISTMAS TO MOTHERS _INTRODUCTION_ INTERIOR freedom rests upon the principle of non-resistance to all the things which seem evil or painful to our natural love of self. But non-resistance alone can accomplish nothing good unless, behind it, there is a strong love for righteousness and truth. By refusing to resist the ill will of others, or the stress of circumstances, for the sake of greater usefulness and a clearer point of view, we deepen our conviction of righteousness as the fundamental law of fife, and broaden our horizon so as to appreciate varying and opposite points of view. The only non-resistance that brings this power is the kind which yields mere personal and selfish considerations for the sake of principles. Selfish and weak yielding must always do harm. Unselfish yielding, on the other hand, strengthens the will and increases strength of purpose as the petty obstacles of mere self-love are removed. Concentration alone cannot long remain wholesome, for it needs the light of growing self-knowledge to prevent its becoming self-centred. Yielding alone is of no avail, for in itself it has no constructive power. But if we try to look at ourselves as we really are, we shall find great strength in yielding where only our small and private interests are concerned, and concentrating upon living the broad principles of righteousness which must directly or indirectly affect all those with whom we come into contact. I _The Freedom of Life_ I AM so tired I must give up work," said a young woman with a very strained and tearful face; and it seemed to her a desperate state, for she was dependent upon work for her bread and butter. If she gave up work she gave up bread and butter, and that meant starvation. When she was asked why she did not keep at work and learn to do it without getting so tired, that seemed to her absurd, and she would have laughed if laughing had been possible. "I tell you the work has tired me so that I cannot stand it, and you ask me to go back and get rest out of it when I am ready to die of fatigue. Why don't you ask me to burn myself, on a piece of ice, or freeze myself with a red-hot poker?" "But," the answer was, "it is not the work that tires you at all, it is the way you do it;" and, after a little soothing talk which quieted the overexcited nerves, she began to feel a dawning intelligence, which showed her that, after all, there might be life in the work which she had come to look upon as nothing but slow and painful death. She came to understand that she might do her work as if she were working very lazily, going from one thing to another with a feeling as near to entire indifference as she could cultivate, and, at the same time, do it well. She was shown by illustrations how she might walk across the room and take a book off the table as if her life depended upon it, racing and pushing over the floor, grabbing the book and clutching it until she got back to her seat, or, how she might move with exaggerated laziness take the book up loosely, and drag herself back again. This illustration represents two extremes, and one, in itself, is as bad as the other; but, when the habit has been one of unnecessary strain and effort, the lazy way, practised for a time, will not only be very restful, but will eventually lead to movement which is quick as well. To take another example, you may write holding the pen with much more force than is needful, tightening your throat and tongue at the same time, or you may drag your pen along the paper and relieve the tendency to tension in your throat and tongue by opening your mouth slightly and letting your jaw hang loosely. These again are two extremes, but, if the habit has been one of tension, a persistent practice of the extreme of looseness will lead to a quiet mode of writing in which ten pages can be finished with the effort it formerly took to write one. Sometimes the habit of needless strain has taken such a strong hold that the very effort to work quietly seems so unnatural as to cause much nervous suffering. To turn the corner from a bad habit into a true and wholesome one is often very painful, but, the first pain worked through, the right habit grows more and more easy, until finally the better way carries us along and we take it involuntarily. For the young woman who felt she had come to the end of her powers, it was work or die; therefore, when she had become rested enough to see and understand at all, she welcomed the idea that it was not her work that tired her, but the way in which she did it, and she listened eagerly to the directions that should teach her to do it with less fatigue, and, as an experiment, offered to go back and try the "lazy way" for a week. At the end of a week she reported that the "lazy way" had rested her remarkably, but she did not do her work so well. Then she had to learn that she could keep more quietly and steadily concentrated upon her work, doing it accurately and well, without in the least interfering with the "lazy way." Indeed, the better concentrated we are, the more easily and restfully we can work, for concentration does not mean straining every nerve and muscle toward our work,--it means _dropping everything that interferes,_ and strained nerves and muscles constitute a very bondage of interference. The young woman went back to her work for another week's experiment, and this time returned with a smiling face, better color, and a new and more quiet life in her eyes. She had made the "lazy way" work, and found a better power of concentration at the same time. She knew that it was only a beginning, but she felt secure now in the certain knowledge that it was not her work that had been killing her, but the way in which she had done it; and she felt confident of her power to do it restfully and, at the same time, better than before. Moreover, in addition to practising the new way of working, she planned to get regular exercise in the open air, even if it had to come in the evening, and to eat only nourishing food. She has been at work now for several years, and, at last accounts, was still busy, with no temptation to stop because of overfatigue. If any reader is conscious of suffering now from the strain of his work and would like to get relief, the first thing to do is to notice that it is less the work that tires him than his way of doing it, and the attitude of his mind toward it. Beginning with that conviction, there comes at first an interest in the process of dropping strain and then a new interest in the work itself, and a healthy concentration in doing the merest drudgery as well as it can be done, makes the drudgery attractive and relieves one from the oppressive fatigue of uninteresting monotony. If you have to move your whole body in your daily work, the first care should be to move the feet and legs heavily. Feel as if each foot weighed a ton, and each hand also; and while you work take long, quiet breaths,--breaths such as you see a man taking when he is very quietly and soundly sleeping. If the work is sedentary, it is a help before starting in the morning to drop your head forward very loosely, slowly and heavily, and raise it very slowly, then take a long, quiet breath. Repeat this several times until you begin to feel a sense of weight in your head. If there is not time in the morning, do it at night and recall the feeling while you are dressing or while you are going to work, and then, during your work, stop occasionally just to feel your head heavy and then go on. Very soon you become sensitive to the tension in the back of your neck and drop it without stopping work at all. Long, quiet breaths while you work are always helpful. If you are working in bad air, and cannot change the air, it is better to try to have the breaths only quiet and gentle, and take long, full breaths whenever you are out-of-doors and before going to sleep at night. Of course, a strained way of working is only one cause of nervous fatigue; there are others, and even more important ones, that need to be understood in order that we may be freed from the bondage of nervous strain which keeps so many of us from our best use and happiness. Many people are in bondage because of doing wrong, but many more because of doing right in the wrong way. Real freedom is only found through obedience to law, and when, because of daily strain, a man finds himself getting overtired and irritable, the temptation is to think it easier to go on working in the wrong way than to make the effort to learn how to work in the right way. At first the effort seems only to result in extra strain, but, if persisted in quietly, it soon becomes apparent that it is leading to less and less strain, and finally to restful work. There are laws for rest, laws for work, and laws for play, which, if we find and follow them, lead us to quiet, useful lines of life, which would be impossible without them. They are the laws of our own being, and should carry us as naturally as the instincts of the animals carry them, and so enable us to do right in the right way, and make us so sure of the manner in which we do our work that we can give all our attention to the work itself; and when we have the right habit of working, the work itself must necessarily gain, because we can put the best of ourselves into it. It is helpful to think of the instincts of the beasts, how true and orderly they are, on their own plane, and how they are only perverted when the animals have come under the influence of man. Imagine Baloo, the bear in Mr. Kipling's "Jungle Book," being asked how he managed to keep so well and rested. He would look a little surprised and say: "Why, I follow the laws of my being. How could I do differently?" Now that is just the difference between man and beast. Man can do differently. And man has done differently now for so many generations that not one in ten thousand really recognizes what the laws of his being are, except in ways so gross that it seems as if we had sunken to the necessity of being guided by a crowbar, instead of steadily following the delicate instinct which is ours by right, and so voluntarily accepting the guidance of the Power who made us, which is the only possible way to freedom. Of course the laws of a man's being are infinitely above the laws of a beast's. The laws of a man's being are spiritual, and the animal in man is meant to be the servant of his soul. Man's true guiding instincts are in his soul,--he can obey them or not, as he chooses; but the beast's instincts are in his body, and he has no choice but to obey. Man can, so to speak, get up and look down on himself. He can be his own father and his own mother. From his true instinct he can say to himself, "you must do this" or "You must not do that." He can see and understand his tendency to disobedience, and _he can force himself to obey._ Man can see the good and wholesome animal instincts in himself that lead to lasting health and strength, and he can make them all the good servants of his soul. He can see the tendency to overindulgence, and how it leads to disease and to evil, and he can refuse to permit that wrong tendency to rule him. Every man has his own power of distinguishing between right and wrong, and his own power of choosing which way he shall follow. He is left free to choose God's way or to choose his own. Through past and present perversions, of natural habit he has lost the delicate power of distinguishing the normal from the abnormal, and needs to be educated back to it. The benefit of this education is an intelligent consciousness of the laws of life, which not only adds to his own strength of mind and body, but increases immeasurably his power of use to others. Many customs of to-day fix and perpetuate abnormal habits to such an extent that, combined with our own selfish inheritances and personal perversions, they dim the light of our minds so that many of us are working all the time in a fog, more or less dense, of ignorance and bondage. When a man chooses the right and refuses the wrong, in so far as he sees it, he becomes wise from within and from without, his power for distinguishing gradually improves, the fog lifts, and he finds within himself a sure and delicate instinct which was formerly atrophied for want of use. The first thing to understand without the shadow of a doubt, is that, man is not in freedom when he is following his own selfish instincts. He is only in the appearance of freedom, and the appearance of freedom, without the reality, leads invariably to the worst bondage. A man who loves drink feels that he is free if he can drink as much as he wants, but that leads to degradation and delirium tremens. A man who has an inherited tendency toward the disobedience of any law feels that he is free if he has the opportunity to disobey it whenever he wants to. But whatever the law may be, the results have only to be carried to their logical conclusion to make clear the bondage to which the disobedience leads. All this disobedience to law leads to an inevitable, inflexible, unsurmountable limit in the end, whereas steady effort toward obedience to law is unlimited in its development of strength and power for use to others. Man must understand his selfish tendencies in order to subdue and control them, until they become subject to his own unselfish tendencies, which are the spiritual laws within him. Thus he gradually becomes free,--soul and body,--with no desire to disobey, and with steadily increasing joy in his work and life. So much for the bondage of doing wrong, and the freedom of doing right, which it seems necessary to touch upon, in order to show clearly the bondage of doing right in the wrong way, and the freedom of doing right in the right way. It is right to work for our daily bread, and for the sake of use to others, in whatever form it may present itself. The wrong way of doing it makes unnecessary strain, overfatigue and illness. The right way of working gives, as we have said before, new power and joy in the work; it often turns even drudgery into pleasure, for there is a special delight in learning to apply one's self in a true spirit to "drudgery." The process of learning such true application of one's powers often reveals new possibilities in work. It is right for most people to sleep eight hours every night. The wrong way of doing it is to go to sleep all doubled up, and to continue to work all night in our sleep, instead of giving up and resting entirely. The right way gives us the fullest possible amount of rest and refreshment. It is right to take our three meals a day, and all the nourishing food we need. The wrong way of doing it, is to eat very fast, without chewing our food carefully, and to give our stomachs no restful opportunity of preparation to receive its food, or to take good care of it after it is received. The right way gives us the opportunity to assimilate the food entirely, so that every bit of fuel we put into our bodies is burnt to some good purpose, and makes us more truly ready to receive more. It is right to play and amuse ourselves for rest and recreation. We play in the wrong way when we use ourselves up in the strain of playing, in the anxiety lest we should not win in a game, or when we play in bad air. When we play in the right way, there is no strain, no anxiety, only good fun and refreshment and rest. We might go through the narrative of an average life in showing briefly the wonderful difference between doing right in the right way, and doing right in the wrong way. It is not too much to say that the difference in tendency is as great as that between life and death. It is one thing to read about orderly living and to acknowledge that the ways described are good and true, and quite another to have one's eyes opened and to act from the new knowledge, day by day, until a normal mode of life is firmly established. It requires quiet, steady force of will to get one's self out of bad, and well established in good habits. After the first interest and relief there often has to be steady plodding before the new way becomes easy; but if we do not allow ourselves to get discouraged, we are sure to gain our end, for we are opening ourselves to the influence of the true laws within us, and in finding and obeying these we are approaching the only possible Freedom of Life. II _How to Sleep Restfully_ IT would seem that at least one might be perfectly free in sleep. But the habits of cleaving to mistaken ways of living cannot be thrown off at night and taken up again in the morning. They go to sleep with us and they wake with us. If, however, we learn better habits of sleeping, that helps us in our life through the day. And learning better habits through the day helps us to get more rest from our sleep. At the end of a good day we can settle down more quickly to get ready for sleep, and, when we wake in the morning, find ourselves more ready to begin the day to come. There are three things that prevent sleep,--overfatigue, material disturbances from the outside, and mental disturbances from, within. It is not uncommon to hear people say, "I was too tired to sleep"--but it is not generally known how great a help it is at such times not to try to sleep, but to go to work deliberately to get I rested in preparation for it. In nine cases out of ten it is the unwillingness to lie awake that keeps us awake. We wonder why we do not sleep. We toss and turn and wish we could sleep. We fret, and fume, and worry, because we do not sleep. We think of all we have to do on the following day, and are oppressed with the thought that we cannot do it if we do not sleep. First, we try one experiment to see if it will not make us sleep, and when it fails, we try another, and perhaps another. In each experiment we, are watching to see if it will work. There are many things to do, any one of which might help us to sleep, but the _watching to see if they will work keeps us awake._ When we are kept awake from our fatigue, the first thing to do is to say over and over to ourselves that we do not care whether we sleep or not, in order to imbue ourselves with a healthy indifference about it. It will help toward gaining this wholesome indifference to say "I am too tired to sleep, and therefore, the first thing for me to do is to get rested in order to prepare for sleep. When my brain is well rested, it will go to sleep; it cannot help it. When it is well rested, it will sleep just as naturally as my lungs breathe, or as my heart beats." In order to rest our brains we want to lie quietly, relaxing all our muscles, and taking even, quiet breaths. It is good when we can take long, full breaths, but sometimes that is too fatiguing; and then we must not only take moderately long, breaths, but be careful to have them gentle, quiet, and rhythmic. To make a plan of breathing and follow it keeps the mind steadily concentrated on the breathing, and gives the rest of the brain, which has been working on other things, a chance to relax and find its own freedom and rest. It is helpful to inhale while we count seven, exhale while we count seven, then rest and breathe naturally while we count seven, and to repeat the series of three for seven times; but to be strict with ourselves and see that we only do it seven times, not once more nor once less. Then we should wait a little and try it again,--and so keep on for a number of times, repeating the same series; and we should always be sure to have the air in our bedrooms as fresh as possible. If the breathing is steady and rhythmical it helps very much, and to inhale and exhale over and over for half an hour has a very pleasant, quieting effect--sometimes such exercises make us nervous at first, and, if we are very tired, that often happens; but, if we keep steadily at work, the nervousness disappears and restful quiet follows which very often brings restoring and refreshing sleep. Another thing to remember--and it is very important--is that an overtired brain needs more than the usual nourishment. If you have been awake for an hour, and it is three hours after your last meal, take half a cup, or a cup of hot milk. If you are awake for another two hours take half a cup more, and so, at intervals of about two. hours, so long as you are awake throughout the night. Hot milk is nourishing and a sedative. It is not inconvenient to have milk by the side of one's bed, and a little saucepan and spirit lamp, so that the milk can be heated without getting up, and the quiet simple occupation of heating it is sometimes restful in itself. There are five things to remember to help rest an overtired brain: 1. A healthy indifference to wakefulness. 2. Concentration of the mind on simple things. 3. Relaxation of the body. 4. Gentle rhythmic breathing of fresh air. 5. Regular nourishment. If we do not lose courage, but keep on steadily night after night, with a healthy persistence in remembering and practising these five things, we shall often find that what might have been a very long period of sleeplessness may be materially shortened and that the sleep which follows the practice of the exercises is better, sounder, and more refreshing, than the sleep that came before. In many cases a long or short period of insomnia can be absolutely prevented by just these simple means. Here is perhaps the place to say that all narcotics are in such cases, absolutely pernicious. They may bring sleep at the time, but eventually they lose their effect, and leave the nervous system in a state of strain which cannot be helped by anything but time, through much suffering that might have been avoided. When we are not necessarily overtired but perhaps only a little tired from the day's work, it is not uncommon to be kept awake by a flapping curtain or a swinging door, by unusual noises in the streets, or by people talking. How often we hear it said, "It did seem hard when I went to bed tired last night that I should have been kept awake by a noise like that--and now this morning, I am more tired than when I went to bed." The head nurse in a large hospital said once in distress: "I wish the nurses could be taught to step lightly over my head, so that they would not keep me awake at night." It would have been a surprise to her if she had been told that her head could be taught to yield to the steps of the nurses, so that their walking would not keep her awake. It is resistance that keeps us awake in all such cases. The curtain flaps, and we resist it; the door swings to over and over again, and we resist it, and keep ourselves awake by wondering why it does not stop; we hear noises in the street that we am unused to, especially if we are accustomed to sleeping in the stillness of the country, and we toss and turn and wish we were in a quiet place. All the trouble comes from our own resistance to the noise, and resistance is nothing but unwillingness to submit to our conditions. If we are willing that the curtain should go on flapping, the door go on slamming, or the noise in the street continue steadily on, our brains yield to the conditions and so sleep naturally, because the noise goes through us, so to speak, and does not run hard against our unwillingness to hear it. There are three facts which may help to remove the resistance which naturally arises at any unusual sound when we are tired and want to get rest. One is that in almost every sound there is a certain rhythm. If we yield to the sound enough to become sensitive to its rhythm, that, in itself, is soothing, and what before was keeping us awake now _helps us to go to sleep._ This pleasant effect of finding the rhythm in sound is especially helpful if one is inclined to lie awake while travelling in sleeping cars. The rhythm of sound and motion in sleeping cars and steamers is, in itself, soothing. If you have the habit of feeling as if you could never get refreshing sleep in a sleeping car, first be sure that you have as much fresh air as possible, and then make up your mind that you will spend the whole night, if necessary, in noticing the rhythm of the motion and sound of the cars. If you keep your mind steadily on it, you will probably be asleep in less than an hour, and, when the car stops, you will wake only enough to settle comfortably into the sense of motion when it starts again. It is pleasant to notice the gentleness with which a good engineer starts his train at night. Of course there is a difference in engineers, and some are much more gentle in starting their engines than others, but the delicacy with which the engine is started by the most expert is delightful to feel, and gives us many a lesson on the use of gentle beginnings, with other things besides locomotive engines, and especially in our dealings with each other. The second fact with regard to yielding, instead of resisting, in order to get to sleep is that listening alone, apart from rhythm, tends to make one sleepy, and this leads us at once to the third fact, that getting to sleep is nothing but a healthy form of concentration. If true concentration is dropping everything that interferes with fixing our attention upon some wholesome object, it means merely bringing the brain into a normal state which induces sleep when sleep is needed. First we drop everything that interferes with the one simple subject, and then we drop that, and are unconscious. Of course it may take some time to make ourselves willing to submit to an unusual noise if we have the habit of feeling that we must necessarily be disturbed by it, and, if we can stop the noise, it is better to stop it than to give ourselves unnecessary tasks in non-resistance. Then again, if we are overtired, our brains are sometimes so sensitive that the effect of any noise is like that of being struck in a sore spot, and then it is much more difficult to bear it, and we can only make the suffering a little less by yielding and being willing that it should go on. I cannot go to sleep while some one is knocking my lame arm, nor can I go to sleep while a noise is hitting my tired brain; but in such cases we can give up expecting to go to sleep, and get a great deal of rest by using our wills steadily not to resist; and sometimes, even then, sleep will come upon us unexpectedly. With regard to the use of the will, perhaps the most dangerous pitfall to be avoided is the use of drugs. It is not too much to say that they never should be used at all for cases of pure sleeplessness, for with time their power to bring sleep gradually becomes exhausted, and then the patient finds himself worse off than before, for the reactionary effect of the drugs leaves him with exhausted nerves and a weakened will. All the strengthening, moral effect which can be gained from overcoming sleeplessness in wholesome ways is lost by a recourse to drugs, and character is weakened instead of strengthened. When one has been in the habit of sleeping in the city, where the noise of the street is incessant, a change to the perfect silence of the country will often keep sleep off quite as persistently as noise. So with a man who has been in the habit of sleeping under other abnormal conditions, the change to normal conditions will sometimes keep him awake until he has adjusted himself to them, and it is not uncommon for people to be so abnormal that they resist rhythm itself, such as is heard in the rolling of the sea, or the rushing of a river. The re-adjustment from abnormal to normal conditions of sleeping may be made surely if we set about it with a will, for we have all nature on our side. Silence is orderly for the night's rest, and rhythm only emphasizes and enhances the silence, when it is the rhythm of nature. The habit of resistance cannot be changed in a single day--it must take time; but if the meaning, the help, and the normal power of non-resistance is clearly understood, and the effort to gain it is persistent, not only the power to sleep, but a new sense of freedom may be acquired which is quite beyond the conception of those who are in the daily habit of resistance. When we lie down at night and become conscious that our arms and our legs and our whole bodies are resting heavily upon the bed, we are letting go all the resistance which has been left stored in our muscles from the activities of the day. A cat, when she lies down, lets go all resistance at once, because she moves with the least possible effort; but there are very few men who do that, and so men go to their rest with more or less resistance stored in their bodies, and they must go through a conscious process of dropping it before they can settle to sleep as a normal child does, without having to think about how it is done. The conscious process, however, brings a quiet, conscious joy in the rest, which opens the mind to soothing influences, and brings a more profound refreshment than is given even to the child--and with the refreshment new power for work. One word more about outside disturbances before we turn to those interior ones which are by far the most common preventatives of refreshing sleep. The reader will say: "How can I be willing that the noise should go on when I am not willing?" The answer is, "If you can see clearly that if you were willing, the noises would not interfere with your sleep, then you can find the ability within you to make yourself willing." It is wonderful to realize the power we gain by compelling and controlling our desires or aversions through the intelligent use of the will, and it is easier to compel ourselves to do right against temptation than to force ourselves to do wrong against a true conviction. Indeed it is most difficult, if not impossible, to force ourselves to do wrong against a strong sense of right. Behind an our desires, aversions, and inclinations each one of us possesses a capacity for a higher will, the exercise of which, on the side of order and righteousness, brings into being the greatest power in human life. The power of character is always in harmony with the laws of truth and order, and although we must sometimes make a great effort of the will to do right against our inclinations the ease of such effort increases as the power of character increases, and strength of will grows steadily by use, because it receives its life from the eternal will and is finding its way to harmony with that. It is the lower, selfish will that often keeps us awake by causing interior disturbances. An actor may have a difficult part to play, and feel that a great deal depends upon his success. He stays awake with anxiety, and this anxiety is nothing but resistance to the possibility of failure. The first thing for him to do is to teach himself to be willing to fail. If he becomes willing to fail, then all his anxiety will go, and he will be able to sleep and get the rest and new life which he needs in order to play the part well. If he is willing to fail, then all the nervous force which before was being wasted in anxiety is set free for use in the exercise of his art. Looking forward to what is going to happen on the next day, or within a few days, may cause so much anxiety as to keep us awake; but if we have a good, clear sense of the futility of resistance, whether our expected success or failure depends on ourselves or on others, we can compel ourselves to a quiet willingness which will make our brains quiet and receptive to restful sleep, and so enable us to wake with new power for whatever task or pleasure may lie before us. Of course we are often kept awake by the sense of having done wrong. In such cases the first thing to do is to make a free acknowledgment to ourselves of the wrong we have done, and then to make up our minds to do the right thing at once. That, if the wrong done is not too serious, will put us to sleep; and if the next day we go about our work remembering the lesson we have learned, we probably will have little trouble in sleeping. If Macbeth had had the truth and courage to tell Lady Macbeth that both he and she were wicked plotters and murderers, and that he intended, for his part, to stop being a scoundrel, and, if he had persisted in carrying out his good intentions, he would never have "murdered sleep." III _Resistance_ A MAN once grasped a very hot poker with his hand, and although he cried out with pain, held on to the poker. His friend called out to him to drop it, whereupon the man indignantly cried out the more. "Drop it? How can you expect me to think of dropping it with pain like this? I tell you when a man is suffering, as I am, he can think of nothing but the pain." And the more indignant he was, the tighter he held on to the poker, and the more he cried out with pain. This story in itself is ridiculous, but it is startlingly true as an illustration of what people are doing every day. There is an instinct in us to drop every hot poker at once; and probably we should be able to drop any other form of unnecessary disagreeable sensation as soon as possible, if we had not lost that wholesome instinct through want of use. As it is, we must learn to re-acquire the lost faculty by the deliberate use of our intelligence and will. It is as if we had lost our freedom and needed to be shown the way back to it, step by step. The process is slow but very interesting, if we are in earnest; and when, after wandering in the bypaths, we finally strike the true road, we find our lost faculty waiting for us, and all that we have learned in reaching it is so much added power. But at present we are dealing in the main with a world which has no suspicion of such instincts or faculties as these, and is suffering along in blind helplessness. A man will drop a hot poker as soon as he feels it burn, but he will tighten his muscles and hold on to a cold in his head so persistently that he only gets rid of it at all because nature is stronger than he is, and carries it off in spite of him. How common it is to see a woman entirely wrapped up, with a handkerchief held to her nose,--the whole body as tense as it can be,--wondering "Why does it take so long to get rid of this cold?" To get free from a severe cold there should be open and clear circulation throughout the whole body. The more the circulation is impeded, the longer the cold will last. To begin with, the cold itself impedes the circulation; and if, in addition, we offer resistance to the very idea of having a cold, we tighten our nerves and our bodies and thereby impede our circulation still further. It is curious that the more we resist a cold the more we hold on to it, but it is a very evident fact; and so is its logical corollary, that the less we resist it the sooner it leaves us. It would seem absurd to people who do not understand, to say:-- "I have caught cold, I must relax and let it go through me." But the literal truth is that when we relax, we open the channels of circulation in our bodies, and so allow the cold to be carried off. In addition to the relaxing, long, quiet breaths help the circulation still more, and so help the cold to go off sooner. In the same way people resist pain and hold on to it; when they are attacked with severe pain, they at once devote their entire attention to the sensation of pain, instead of devoting it to the best means of getting relief. They double themselves up tight, and hold on to the place that hurts. Then all the nervous force tends toward the sore place and the tension retards the circulation and makes it difficult for nature to cure the pain, as she would spontaneously if she were only allowed to have her own way. I once knew a little girl who, whenever she hit one elbow, would at once deliberately rub the other. She said that she had discovered that it took her mind away from the elbow that hurt, and so stopped its hurting sooner. The use of a counterirritant is not uncommon with good physicians, but the counter-irritant only does what is much more effectually accomplished when the patient uses his will and intelligence to remove the original irritant by ceasing to resist it. A man who was troubled with spasmodic contraction of the throat once went to a doctor in alarm and distress. The doctor told him that, in any case, nothing worse than fainting could happen to him, and that, if he fainted away, his throat would be relieved, because the fainting would relax the muscles of the throat, and the only trouble with it was contraction. Singularly, it did not seem to occur to the doctor that the man might be taught to relax his throat by the use of his own will, instead of having to faint away in order that nature might do it for him. Nature would be just as ready to help us if we were intelligent, as when she has to knock us down, in order that she may do for us what we do not know enough to do for ourselves. There is no illness that could not be much helped by quiet relaxing on the part of the patient, so as to allow nature and remedial agencies to do their work more easily. That which keeps relief away in the case of the cold, of pain, and of many illnesses, is the contraction of the nerves and muscles of the body, which impedes the curative power of its healing forces. The contraction of the nerves and muscles of the body is caused by resistance in the mind, and resistance in the mind is unwillingness: unwillingness to endure the distress of the cold, the pain, or the illness, whatever it may be; and the more unwilling we are to suffer from illness, the more we are hindering nature from bringing about a cure. One of the greatest difficulties in life is illness when the hands are full of work, and of business requiring attention. In many eases the strain and anxiety, which causes resistance to the illness, is even more severe, and makes more trouble than the illness itself. Suppose, for instance, that a man is taken down with the measles, when he feels that he ought to be at his office, and that his absence may result in serious loss to himself and others. If he begins by letting go, in his body and in his mind, and realizing that the illness is beyond his own power, it will soon occur to him that he might as well turn his illness to account by getting a good rest out of it. In this frame of mind his chances of early recovery will be increased, and he may even get up from his illness with so much new life and with his mind so much refreshed as to make up, in part, for his temporary absence from business. But, on the other hand, if he resists, worries, complains and gets irritable, he irritates his nervous system and, by so doing is likely to bring on any one of the disagreeable troubles that are known to follow measles; and thus he may keep himself housed for weeks, perhaps months, instead of days. Another advantage in dropping all resistance to illness, is that the relaxation encourages a restful attitude of mind, which enables us to take the right amount of time for recovery, and so prevents either a possible relapse, or our feeling only half well for a long time, when we might have felt wholly well from the time we first began to take up our life again. Indeed the advantages of nonresistance in such cases are innumerable, and there are no advantages whatever in resistance and unwillingness. Clear as these things must be to any intelligent person whose attention is turned in the right direction, it seems most singular that not in one case in a thousand are they deliberately practised. People seem to have lost their common sense with regard to them, because for generations the desire for having our own way has held us in bondage, and confused our standard of freedom; more than that, it has befogged our sense of natural law, and the result is that we painfully fight to make water run up hill when, if we were to give one quiet look, we should see that better things could be accomplished, and our own sense of freedom become keener, by being content to let the water quietly run down and find its own level. It is not normal to be ill and to be kept from our everyday use, but it is still less normal for a healthy, intelligent mind to keep its body ill longer than is necessary by resisting the fact of illness. Every disease, though it is abnormal in itself, may frequently be kept within bounds by a certain normal course of conduct, and, if our suffering from the disease itself is unavoidable, by far our wisest course is to stand aside, so to speak, and let it take its own course, using all necessary remedies and precautions in order that the attack may be as mild as possible. Many readers, although they see the common sense of such non-resistance, will find it difficult to practise it, because of their inheritances and personal habits. The man who held the hot poker only needed to drop it with his fingers; the man who is taken ill only needs to be willing with his mind and to relax with his nerves in order to hasten his recovery. A very useful practice is to talk to ourselves so quietly and earnestly as to convince our brains of the true helpfulness of being willing and of the impediment of our unwillingness. Tell the truth to yourself over and over, quietly and without emotion, and steadily and firmly contradict every temptation to think that it is impossible not to resist. If men could once be convinced of the very real and wonderful power they have of teaching their own brains, and exacting obedience from them, the resulting new life and ability for use would make the world much happier and stronger. This power of separating the clear, quiet common sense in ourselves from the turbulent, willful rebellion and resistance, and so quieting our selfish natures and compelling them to normal behavior, is truly latent in us all. It may be difficult at first to use it, especially in cases of strong, perverted natures and fixed habits, because in such cases our resistances are harder and more interior, but if we keep steadily on, aiming in the right direction,--if we persist in the practice of keeping ourselves separate from our unproductive turbulences, and of teaching our brains what we _know_ to be the truth, we shall finally find ourselves walking on level ground, instead of climbing painfully up hill. Then we shall be only grateful for all the hard work which was the means of bringing us into the clear air of freedom. There could not be a better opportunity to begin our training in non-resistance than that which illness affords. IV _Hurry, Worry, and Irritability_ PROBABLY most people have had the experience of hurrying to a train with the feeling that something held them back, but not many have observed that their muscles, under such conditions, actually _do_ pull them back. If any one wants to prove the correctness of this observation let him watch himself, especially if it is necessary for him to go downstairs to get to the station, while he is walking down the steps. The drawing back or contracting of the muscles, as if they were intelligently trying to prevent us from reaching the train on time, is most remarkable. Of course all that impeding contraction comes from resistance, and it seems at first sight very strange that we should resist the accomplishment of the very thing we want to do. Why should I resist the idea of catching a train, when at the same time I am most anxious to do so? Why should my muscles reflect that resistance by contracting, so that they directly impede my progress? It seems a most singular case of a house divided against itself for me to want to take a train, and for my own muscles, which are given me for my command, to refuse to take me there, so that I move toward the train with an involuntary effort away from it. But when the truth is recognized, all this muscular contraction is easily explained. What we are resisting is not the fact of taking the train, but the possibility of losing it. That resistance reflects itself upon our muscles and causes them to contract. Although this is a practical truth, it takes us some time to realize that the fear of losing the train is often the only thing that prevents our catching it. If we could once learn this fact thoroughly, and live from our clearer knowledge, it would be one of the greatest helps toward taking all things in life quietly and without necessary strain. For the fact holds good in all hurry. It is the fear of not accomplishing what is before us in time that holds us back from its accomplishment. This is so helpful and so useful a truth that I feel it necessary to repeat it in many ways. Fear brings resistance, resistance impedes our progress. Our faculties are paralyzed by lack of confidence, and confidence is the result of a true consciousness of our powers when in harmony with law. Often the fear of not accomplishing what is before us is the _only_ thing that stands in our way. If we put all hurry, whether it be an immediate hurry to catch a train, or the hurry of years toward the accomplishment of the main objects of our lives,--if we put it all under the clear light of this truth, it will eventually relieve us of a strain which is robbing our vitality to no end. First, the times that we _must_ hurry should be minimized. In nine cases out of ten the necessity for hurry comes only from our own attitude of mind, and from no real need whatever. In the tenth case we must learn to hurry with our muscles, and not with our nerves, or, I might better say, we must hurry without excitement. To hurry quietly is to most people an unknown thing, but when hurry is a necessity, the process of successive effort in it should be pleasant and refreshing. If in the act of needful hurry we are constantly teaching ourselves to stop resistance by saying over and over, through whatever we may be doing, "I am perfectly willing to lose that train, I am willing to lose it, I am willing to lose it," that will help to remove the resistance, and so help us to learn how to make haste quietly. But the reader will say, "How can I make myself willing when I am not willing?" The answer is that if you know that your unwillingness to lose the train is preventing you from catching it, you certainly will see the efficacy of being willing, and you will do all in your power toward yielding to common sense. Unwillingness is resistance,--resistance in the mind contracts the muscles, and such contraction prevents our using the muscles freely and easily. Therefore let us be willing. Of course there, is a lazy, selfish indifference to catching a train, or accomplishing anything else, which leaves the tendency to hurry out of some temperaments altogether, but with that kind of a person we are not dealing now. And such indifference is the absolute opposite of the wholesome indifference in which there is no touch of laziness or selfishness. If we want to avoid hurry we must get the habit of hurry out of our brains, and cut ourselves off, patiently and kindly, from the atmosphere of hurry about us. The habit gets so strong a hold of the nerves, and is impressed upon them so forcibly as a steady tendency, that it can be detected by a close observer even in a person who is lying on a lounge in the full belief that he is resting. It shows itself especially in the breathing. A wise athlete has said that our normal breathing should consist of six breaths to one minute. If the reader will try this rate of breathing, the slowness of it will surprise him. Six breaths to one minute seem to make the breathing unnecessarily slow, and just double that seems about the right number for ordinary people; and the habit of breathing at this slower rate is a great help, from a physical standpoint, toward erasing the tendency to hurry. One of the most restful exercises any one can take is to lie at full length on a bed or lounge and to inhale and exhale, at a perfectly even, slow rate, for half an hour. It makes the exercise more restful if another person counts for the breathing, say, ten slowly and quickly to inhale, and ten to exhale, with a little pause to give time for a quiet change from one breath to another. Resistance, which is the mental source of hurry, is equally at the root of that most harmful emotion--the habit of worrying. And the same truths which must be learned and practised to free ourselves of the one habit are applicable to the other. Take the simple example of a child who worries over his lessons. Children illustrate the principle especially well, because they are so responsive that, if you meet them quietly with the truth in difficulties of this kind they recognize its value and apply it very quickly, and it takes them, comparatively, a very little time to get free. If you think of telling a child that the moment he finds himself worrying about his lesson he should close his book and say: "I do not care whether I get this lesson or not." And then, when he has actually persuaded himself that he does not care, that he should open his book and study,--it would seem, at first sight, that he would find it difficult to understand you; but, on the contrary, a child understands more quickly than older people, for the child has not had time to establish himself so firmly in the evil habit. I have in mind a little girl in whom the habit had begun of worrying lest she should fail in her lessons, especially in her Latin. Her mother sent her to be taught how not to worry. The teacher, after giving her some idea of the common sense of not worrying, taught her quieting exercises which she practised every day; and when one day, in the midst of one of her lessons, Margaret seemed very quiet and restful, the teacher asked:-- "Margaret, could you worry about your Latin now if you tried?" "Yes," said Margaret, "I am afraid I could." Nothing more was said, but she went on with her lessons, and several days after, during the same restful quiet time, the teacher ventured again. "Now, Margaret, could you worry about your Latin if you tried?" Then came the emphatic answer, _"No, I could not."_ After that the little girl would say: "With the part of me that worries, I do not care whether I get my Latin or not; with the part of me that does not worry, I want to get my Latin very much; therefore I will stay in the part of me that does not worry, and get my Latin." A childish argument, and one that may be entirely incomprehensible to many minds, but to those who do comprehend, it represents a very real and practical help. It is, in most cases, a grave mistake to, reason with a worry. We must first drop the worry, and then do our reasoning. If to drop the worry seems impossible, we can separate ourselves from it enough to prevent it from interfering with our reasoning, very much as if it were neuralgia. There is never any real reason for a worry, because, as we all know, worry never helps us to gain, and often is the cause of our losing, the things which we so much desire. Sometimes we worry because we are tired, and in that case, if we can recognize the real cause, we should use our wills to withdraw our attention from the object of worry, and to get all possible rest at once, in the confident belief that rest will make things clear, or at least more clear than they were when we were tired. It would be hard to compute the harm that has been done by kindly disposed people in reasoning with the worry of a friend, when the anxiety is increased by fatigue or illness. To reason with one who is tired or ill and worried, only increases the mental strain, and every effort that is made to reason him out of it aggravates the strain; until, finally, the poor brain, through kindly meant effort, has been worked into an extreme state of irritation or even inflammation. For the same reason, a worried mind should not be laughed at. Worries that are aroused by fatigue or illness are often most absurd, but they are not absurd to the mind that is suffering from them, and to make fun of them only brings more pain, and more worry. Gentle, loving attention, with kindly, truthful answers, will always help. By such attention we are really giving no importance to the worry, but only to our friend, with the hope of soothing and quieting him out of his worries, and when he is rested he may see the truth for himself. We should deal with ourselves, in such cases, as gently as we would with a friend, excepting that we can tell the truth to ourselves more plainly than we can to most friends. Worrying is resistance, resistance is unwillingness. Unwillingness interferes with whatever we may want to accomplish. To be willing that this, that, or the other should happen seems most difficult, when to our minds, this, that, or the other would bring disaster. And yet if we can once see clearly that worrying resistance tends toward disaster rather than away from it, or, at the very least, takes away our strength and endurance, it is only a matter of time before we become able to drop our resistance altogether. But it is a matter of time; and, when once we are faced toward freedom, we must be patient and steady, and not expect to gain very rapidly. Theirs is indeed a hard lot who have acquired this habit of worry, and persist in doing nothing to gain their freedom. "Now I have got something to worry about for the rest of my life," remarked a poor woman once. Her face was set toward worrying; nothing but her own will could have turned it the other way, and yet she deliberately chose not to use it, and so she was fixed and settled in prison for the rest of her life. To worry is wicked; it is wickedness of a kind that people often do not recognize as such, and they are not fully responsible until they do; but to prove it to be wicked is an easy matter, when once we are faced toward freedom; and, to get over it, as I have said, is a matter of steady, persistent patience. As for irritability, that is also resistance; but there are two kinds of irritability,--physical and moral. There is an irritability that comes when we are hungry, if we have eaten something that disagrees with us, if we are cold or tired or uncomfortable from some other physical cause. When we feel that kind of irritability we should ignore it, as we would ignore a little snapping dog across the street, while at the same time removing its cause as quickly as we can. There is nothing that delights the devil more than to scratch a man with the irritability of hunger, and have him respond to it at once by being ugly and rude to a friend; for then the irritation immediately becomes moral, and every bit of selfishness rushes up to join it, and to arouse whatever there may be of evil in the man. It is simple to recognize this merely physical form of irritability, and we should no more allow ourselves to speak, or act, or even _think_ from it, than we should allow ourselves to walk directly into foul air, when the good fresh air is close to us on the other side. But moral irritability is more serious; that comes from the soul, and is the result of our wanting our own way. The immediate cause may be some physical disturbance, such as noise, or it may be aroused by other petty annoyances, like that of being obliged to wait for some one who is unpunctual, or by disagreement in an argument. There are very many causes for irritability, and we each have our own individual sensitiveness or antipathy, but, whatever the secondary cause, the primary cause is always the same,--resistance or unwillingness to accept our circumstances. If we are fully willing to be disturbed, we cease to be troubled by the disturbance; if we are willing to wait, we are not annoyed by being kept waiting, and we are in a better, more quiet humor to help our friend to the habit of promptness, if we are willing that another should differ from us in opinion, we can see more clearly either to convince our friend, if he is wrong,--or to admit that he is right, and that we are wrong. The essential condition of good argument is freedom from personal feeling, with the desire only for the truth,--whether it comes from one party or the other. Hurry, worry, and irritability all come from selfish resistance to the facts of life, and the only permanent cure for the waste of force and the exhausting distress which they entail, is a willingness to accept those facts, whatever they may be, in a spirit of cheerful and reverent obedience to law. V _Nervous Fears_ TO argue with nervous anxiety, either in ourselves or in others, is never helpful. Indeed it is never helpful to argue with "nerves" at all. Arguing with nervous excitement of any kind is like rubbing a sore. It only irritates it. It does not take long to argue excited or tired nerves into inflammation, but it is a long and difficult process to allay the inflammation when it has once been aroused. It is a sad fact that many people have been argued into long nervous illnesses by would-be kind friends whose only intention was to argue them out of illness. Even the kindest and most disinterested friends are apt to lose patience when they argue, and that, to the tired brain which they are trying to relieve, is a greater irritant than they realize. The radical cure for nervous fears is to drop resistance to painful circumstances or conditions. Resistance is unwillingness to endure, and to drop the resistance is to be strongly willing. This vigorous "willingness" is so absolutely certain in its happy effect, and is so impossible that it should fail, that the resistant impulses seem to oppose themselves to it with extreme energy. It is as if the resistances were conscious imps, and as if their certainty of defeat--in the case of their victim's entire "willingness "--roused them to do their worst, and to hold on to their only possible means of power with all the more determination. Indeed, when a man is working through a hard state, in gaining his freedom from nervous fears, these imps seem to hold councils of war, and to devise new plans of attack in order to take him by surprise and overwhelm him in an emergency. But every sharp attack, if met with quiet "willingness," brings a defeat for the assailants, until finally the resistant imps are conquered and disappear. Occasionally a stray imp will return, and try to arouse resistance on what he feels is old familiar ground, but he is quickly driven off, and the experience only makes a man more quietly vigilant and more persistently "willing." Perhaps one of the most prevalent and one of the hardest fears to meet, is that of insanity,--especially when it is known to be a probable or possible inheritance. When such fear is oppressing a man,--to tell him that he not only can get free from the fear, but free from any possibility of insanity, through a perfect willingness to be insane, must seem to him at first a monstrous mockery; and, if you cannot persuade him of the truth, but find that you are only frightening him more, there is nothing to do then but to be willing that he should not be persuaded, and to wait for a better opportunity. You can show him that no such inheritance can become an actuality, unless we permit it, and that the very knowledge of an hereditary tendency, when wholesomely used, makes it possible for us to take every precaution and to use every true safeguard against it. The presence of danger is a source of strength to the brave; and the source of abiding courage is not in the nerves, but in the spirit and the will behind them. It is the clear statement of this fact that will persuade him The fact may have to be stated many times, but it should never be argued. And the more quietly and gently and earnestly it is stated, the sooner it will convince, for it is the truth that makes us free. Fear keeps the brain in a state of excitement. Even when it is not consciously felt, it is felt sub-consciously, and we ought to be glad to have it aroused, in order that we may see it and free ourselves, not only from the particular fear for the time being, but from the subconscious impression of fear in general. Is seems curious to speak of grappling with the fear of insanity, and conquering it by being perfectly willing to be insane, but it is no more curious than the relation of the centrifugal and the centripetal forces to each other. We need our utmost power of concentration to enable us to yield truly, and to be fully willing to submit to whatever the law of our being may require. Fear contracts the brain and the nerves, and interrupts the circulation, and want of free circulation is a breeder of disease. Dropping resistance relaxes the tension of the brain and nerves, and opens the channels for free circulation, and free circulation helps to carry off the tendency to disease. If a man is wholesomely willing to be insane, should such an affliction overtake him, he has dropped all resistance to the idea of insanity, and thus also to all the mental and physical contractions that would foster insanity. He has dropped a strain which was draining his brain of its proper strength, and the result is new vigor to mind and body. To drop an inherited strain produces a great and wonderful change, and all we need to bring it about is to thoroughly understand how possible and how beneficial it is. If we once realize the benefit of dropping the strain, our will is there to accomplish the rest, as surely as it is there to take our hand out of the fire when it burns. Then there is the fear of contagion. Some people are haunted with the fear of catching disease, and the contraction which such resistance brings induces a physical state most favorable to contagion. There was once a little child whose parents were so full of anxious fears that they attempted to protect him from disease in ways that were extreme and ridiculous. All his toys were boiled, everything he ate or drank was sterilized, and many other precautions were taken,--but along with all the precautions, the parents were in constant fear; and it is not unreasonable to feel that the reflection upon the child of the chronic resistance to possible danger with which he was surrounded, had something to do with the fact that the dreaded disease was finally caught, and that, moreover, the child did not recover. If reasonably healthy conditions had been insisted upon, and the parents had felt a wholesome trust in the general order of things, it would have been likely to make the child more vigorous, and would have tended to increase his capacity for throwing off contagion. Children are very sensitive, and it is not unusual to see a child crying because its mother is out of humor, even though she may not have spoken a cross word. It is not unusual to see a child contract its little brain and body in response to the fears and contractions of its parents, and such contraction keeps the child in a state in which it may be more difficult to throw off disease. If you hold your fist as tight as you can hold it for fifteen minutes, the fatigue you will feel when it relaxes is a clear proof of the energy you have been wasting. The waste of nervous energy would be much increased if the fist were held tightly for hours; and if the waste is so great in the useless tightening of a fist, it is still greater in the extended and continuous contraction of brain and nerves in useless fears; and the energy saved through dropping the fears and their accompanying tension can bring in the same proportion a vigor unknown before, and at the same time afford protection against the very things we feared. The fear of taking cold is so strong in many people that a draught of fresh air becomes a bugaboo to their contracted, sensitive nerves. Draughts are imagined as existing everywhere, and the contraction which immediately follows the sensation of a draught is the best means of preparing to catch a cold. Fear of accident keeps one in a constant state of unnecessary terror. To be willing that an accident should happen does not make it more likely to happen, but it prevents our wasting energy by resistance, and keeps us quiet and free, so that if an emergency of any kind arises, we are prepared to act promptly and calmly for the best. If the amount of human energy wasted in the strain of nervous fear could be measured in pounds of pressure, the figures would be astonishing. Many people who have the habit of nervous fear in one form or another do not throw it off merely because they do not know how. There are big and little nervous fears, and each and all can be met and conquered,--thus bringing a freedom of life which cannot even be imagined by those carrying the burden of fear, more or less, throughout their lives. The fear of what people will think of us is a very common cause of slavery, and the nervous anxiety as to whether we do or do not please is a strain which wastes the energy of the greater part of mankind. It seems curious to measure the force wasted in sensitiveness to public opinion as you would measure the waste of power in an engine, and yet it is a wholesome and impersonal way to think of it,--until we find a better way. It relieves us of the morbid element in the sensitiveness to say, "I cannot mind what so-and-so thinks of me, for I have not the nervous energy to spare." It relieves us still more of the tendency to morbid feeling, if we are wholesomely interested in what others think of us, in order to profit by it, and do better. There is nothing morbid or nervous about our sensitiveness to opinion, when it is derived from a love of criticism for the sake of its usefulness. Such a rightful and wise regard for the opinion of others results in a saving of energy, for on the one hand, it saves us from the mistakes of false and shallow independence, and, on the other, from the wasteful strain of servile fear. The little nervous fears are countless. The fear of not being exact. The fear of not having turned off the gas entirely. The fear of not having done a little daily duty which we find again and again we have done. These fears are often increased, and sometimes are aroused, by our being tired, and it is well to realize that, and to attend at once carefully to whatever our particular duty may be, and then, when the fear of not having done it attacks us, we should think of it as if it were a physical pain, and turn our attention quietly to something else. In this way such little nagging fears are relieved; whereas, if we allowed ourselves to be driven by them, we might bring on nervous states that would take weeks or months to overcome. These nervous fears attack us again and again in subtle ways, if we allow ourselves to be influenced by them. They are all forms of unwillingness or resistance, and may all be removed by dropping the resistance and yielding,--not to the fear, but to a willingness that the fear should be there. One of the small fears that often makes life seem unbearable is the fear of a dentist. A woman who had suffered from this fear for a lifetime, and who had been learning to drop resistances in other ways, was once brought face to face with the necessity for going to the dentist, and the old fear was at once aroused,--something like the feeling one might have in preparing for the guillotine,--and she suffered from it a day or two before she remembered her new principles. Then, when the new ideas came back to her mind, she at once applied them and said, "Yes, I _am afraid,_ I _am awfully afraid._ I am _perfectly willing to be afraid," _and the ease with which the fear disappeared was a surprise,--even to herself. Another woman who was suffering intensely from fear as to the after-effects of an operation, had begun to tremble with great nervous intensity. The trembling itself frightened her, and when a friend told her quietly to be willing to tremble, her quick, intelligence responded at once. "Yes," she said, "I will, I will make myself tremble," and, by not only being willing to tremble, but by making herself tremble, she got quiet mental relief in a very short time, and the trembling disappeared. The fear of death is, with its derivatives, of course, the greatest of all; and to remove our resistance to the idea of death, by being perfectly willingly to die is to remove the foundation of all the physical cowardice in life, and to open the way for the growth of a courage which is strength and freedom itself. He who yields gladly to the ordinary facts of life, will also yield gladly to the supreme fact of physical death, for a brave and happy willingness is the characteristic habit of his heart:-- Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will." There is a legend of the Arabs in which a man puts his head out of his tent and says, "I will loose my camel and commit him to God," and a neighbor who hears him says, in his turn, "I will tie my camel and commit him to God." The true helpfulness from non-resistance does not come from neglecting to take proper precautions against the objects of fear, but from yielding with entire willingness to the necessary facts of life, and a sane confidence that, whatever comes, we shall be provided with the means of meeting it. This confidence is, in itself, one of the greatest sources of intelligent endurance. VI _Self-Consciousness_ SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS may be truly defined as a person's inability to get out of his own way. There are, however, some people who are so entirely and absolutely self-conscious that everything they do, even though it may appear spontaneous and ingenuous, is observed and admired and approved of by themselves,--indeed they are supported and sustained by their self-consciousness. They are so completely in bondage to themselves that they have no glimpse of the possibility of freedom, and therefore this bondage is pleasant to them. With these people we have, at present, nothing to do; it is only those who have begun to realize their bondage as such, or who suffer from it, that can take any steps toward freedom. The self-satisfied slaves must stay in prison until they see where they are--and it is curious and sad to see them rejoicing in bondage and miscalling it freedom. It makes one long to see them struck by an emergency, bringing a flash of inner light which is often the beginning of an entire change of state. Sometimes the enlightenment comes through one kind of circumstance, sometimes through another; but, if the glimpse of clearer sight it brings is taken advantage of, it will be followed by a time of groping in the dark, and always by more or less suffering. When, however, we know that we are in the dark, there is hope of our coming to the light; and suffering is nothing whatever after it is over and has brought its good results. If we were to take away the prop of self-approval entirely and immediately from any one of the habitually self-satisfied people, the probable result would be an entire nervous collapse, or even a painful form of insanity; and, in all changes of state from bondage to freedom, the process is and must be exceedingly slow. No one ever strengthened his character with a wrench of impatience, although we are often given the opportunity for a firm and immediate use of the will which leaves lasting strength behind it. For the main growth of our lives, however, we must be steadily patient, content to aim in the true direction day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. If we fall, we must pick ourselves up and go right on,--not stop to be discouraged for one instant after we have recognized our state as a temptation. Whatever the stone may be that we have tripped over, we have learned that it is there, and, while we may trip over the same stone many times, if we learn our lesson each time, it decreases the possible number of stumbles, and smooths our paths more than we know. There is no exception to the necessity for this patient, steady plodding in the work required to gain our freedom from self-consciousness. It is when we are aware of our bondage that our opportunity to gain our freedom from it really begins. This bondage brings very real suffering, and we may often, without exaggeration, call it torture. It is sometimes even extreme torture, but may have to be endured for a lifetime unless the sufferer has the clear light by which to find his freedom; and, unfortunately, many who might have the light will not use it because they are unwilling to recognize the selfishness that is at the root of their trouble. Some women like to call it "shyness," because the name sounds well, and seems to exonerate them from any responsibility with regard to their defect. Men will rarely speak of their self-consciousness, but, when they do, they are apt to speak of it with more or less indignation and self-pity, as if they were in the clutches of something extraneous to themselves, and over which they can never gain control. If, when a man is complaining of self-consciousness and of its interference with his work in life, you tell him in all kindness that all his suffering has its root in downright selfishness, he will, in most cases, appear not to hear, or he will beg the question, and, having avoided acknowledging the truth, will continue to complain and ask for help, and perhaps wonder whether hypnotism may not help him, or some other form of "cure." Anything rather than look the truth in the face and do the work in himself which, is the only possible road to lasting, freedom. Self-pity, and what may be called spiritual laziness, is at the root of most of the self-torment in the world. How ridiculous it would seem if a man tried to produce an electric burner according to laws of his own devising, and then sat down and pitied himself because the light would not burn, instead of searching about until he had found the true laws of electricity whose application would make the light shine successfully. How ridiculous it would seem if a man tried to make water run up hill without providing that it should do so by reaching its own level, and then got indignant because he did not succeed, and wondered if there were not some "cure" by means of which his object might be accomplished. And yet it is no more strange for a man to disobey habitually the laws of character, and then to suffer for his disobedience, and wonder why he suffers. There is an external necessity for obeying social laws which must be respected, or society would go to pieces; and there is just as great an internal necessity for obeying spiritual laws to gain our proper self-control and power for use; but we do not recognize that necessity because, while disregarding the laws of character, we can still live without the appearance of doing harm to the community. Social laws can be respected in the letter but not in the spirit, whereas spiritual laws must be accepted by the individual heart and practiced by the individual will in order to produce any useful result. Each one of us must do the required work in himself. There is no "cure," no help from outside which can bring one to a lasting freedom. If self-consciousness makes us blush, the more we are troubled the more it increases, until the blushing may become so unbearable that we are tempted to keep away from people altogether; and thus life, so far as human fellowship goes, would become more and more limited. But, when such a limitation is allowed to remain within us, and we make no effort of our own to find its root and to exterminate it, it warps us through and through. If self-consciousness excites us to talk, and we talk on and on to no end, simply allowing the selfish suffering to goad us, the habit weakens our brains so that in time they lose the power of strong consecutive thought and helpful brevity. If self-consciousness causes us to wriggle, and strain, and stammer, and we do not recognize the root of the trouble and shun it, and learn to yield and quietly relax our nerves and muscles, of course the strain becomes worse. Then, rather than suffer from it any longer, we keep away from people, just as the blushing man is tempted to do. In that case, the strain is still in us, in the back of our brains, so to speak--because we have not faced and overcome it. Stage fright is an intense form of self-consciousness, but the man who is incapable of stage fright lacks the sensitive temperament required to achieve great power as an artist. The man who overcomes stage fright by getting out of his own way, and by letting the character he is playing, or the music he is interpreting, work through him as a clear, unselfish channel receives new power for his work in the proportion that he shuns his own interfering selfishness. But it is with the self-consciousness of everyday life that we have especially to do now, and with the practical wisdom necessary to gain freedom from all its various discomforts; and, even more than that, to gain the new power for useful service which comes from the possession of that freedom. The remedy is to be found in obedience to the law of unselfishness, carried out into the field of nervous suffering. Whatever one may think, however one may try to dodge the truth by this excuse or that, the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain freedom from self-consciousness are _absolutely within the individual who suffers._ When we once understand this, and are faced toward the truth, we are sure to find our way out, with more or less rapidity, according to the strength with which we use our wills in true obedience. First, we must be willing to accept the effects of self-consciousness. The more we resist these effects the more they force themselves upon us, and the more we suffer from them. We must be willing to blush, be willing to realize that we have talked too much, and perhaps made ourselves ridiculous. We must be willing to feel the discomforts of self-consciousness in whatever form they may appear. Then--the central point of all--we must know and understand, and not dodge in the very least the truth that the _root of self-consciousness is selfishly caring what other people think of us,--and wanting to appear well before them._ Many readers of this article who suffer from self-consciousness will want to deny this; others will acknowledge it, but will declare their inability to live according to the truth; some,--perhaps more than a few,--will recognize the truth and set to work with a will to obey it, and how happily we may look forward to the freedom which will eventually be theirs! A wise man has said that when people do not think well of us, the first thing to do is to look and see whether they are right. In most cases, even though they way have unkind feelings mingled with their criticism, there is an element of truth in it from which we may profit. In such cases we are much indebted to our critics, for, by taking their suggestions, we are helped toward strength of character and power for use. If there is no truth in the criticism, we need not think of it at all, but live steadily on, knowing that the truth will take care of itself. We should be willing that any one should think _anything_ of us, so long as we have the strength of a good conscience. We should be willing to appear in any light if that appearance will enhance our use, or is a necessity of growth. If an awkward appearance is necessary in the process of our journey toward freedom, we must not resist the fact of its existence, and should only dwell on it long enough to shun its cause in so far as we can, and gain the good result of the greater freedom which will follow. It is because the suffering from self-consciousness is often so intense that freedom from it brings, by contrast, so happy and so strong a sense of power. There is a school for the treatment of stammerers in this country in which the pupils are initiated into the process of cure by being required to keep silence for a week. This would be a most helpful beginning in a training to overcome self-consciousness. We should recognize first that we must be willing to endure the effects of self-consciousness without resistance. Secondly, we should admit that the root of self-consciousness lies entirely in a selfish desire to appear well before others. If, while recognizing these two essential truths and confirming them until they are thoroughly implanted in our brains, we should quietly persist in going among people, the practice of silent attention to others would be of the greatest value in gaining real freedom. The practice of attentive and sympathetic silence might well be followed by people in general far more than it is. The protection of a loving, unselfish silence is very great: a silence which is the result of shunning all selfish, self-assertive, vain, or affected speech; a silence which is never broken for the sake of "making conversation," "showing off," or covering selfish embarrassment; a silence which is full of sympathy and interest,--the power of such a silence cannot be overestimated. If we have the evil habit of talking for the sake of winning approval, we should practise this silence; or if we talk for the sake of calling attention to ourselves, for the sake of winning sympathy for our selfish pains and sorrows, or for the sake of indulging in selfish emotions, nothing can help us more than the habit of loving and attentive silence. Only when we know how to practise this--in an impersonal, free and quiet spirit, one which is not due to outward repression of any kind--are we able to talk with quiet, loving, helpful speech. Then may we tell the clean truth without giving unnecessary offence, and then may we soothe and rest, as well as stimulate in, wholesome ways; then, also, will our minds open to receive the good that may come to us through the words and actions of others. VII _The Circumstances of Life_ IT is not the circumstances of life that trouble or weigh upon us, it is the way we take them. If a man is playing a difficult game of chess, the more intricate the moves the more thoughtfully he looks over his own and his opponent's men, and the more fully he is aroused to make the right move toward a checkmate. If, when the game became difficult, the player stopped to be depressed and disheartened, his opponent would probably always checkmate him; whereas, in most cases, the more difficult the game the more thoroughly the players are aroused to do their best, and a difficult game is invariably a good one,--the winner and the loser both feel it to be so,--even though the loser may regret his loss. But--the reader will say--a game of chess is a game only,--neither one's bread and butter nor one's life depend upon winning or losing it. If, however, we need to be cool and quiet and trustful for a game, which is merely an amusement, and if we play the game better for being cool and quiet and trustful, why is not a quiet steadiness in wrestling with the circumstances of life itself just as necessary, not only that we may meet the particular problem of the moment truly, but that we may gain all the experience which may be helpful in meeting other difficult circumstances as they present themselves. We must first convince ourselves thoroughly of the truth that CIRCUMSTANCES, HOWEVER DIFFICULT, ARE ALWAYS--WITHOUT EXCEPTION, OPPORTUNITIES, AND NOT LIMITATIONS. They are not by any means opportunities for taking us in the direction that our own selfishness would have us go; they are opportunities which are meant to guide us in the direction we most need to follow,--in the ways that will lead us to the greatest strength in the end. The most unbelieving of us will admit that "there is a destiny which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may," and it is in the stupid resistance to having our ends shaped for us that we stop and groan at what we call the limitations of circumstances. If we were quickly alert to see where circumstances had placed the gate of opportunity, and then steadily persisted in going through it, it would save the loss of energy and happiness which results from obstinately beating our heads against a stone wall where there is no gate, and where there never can be a gate. Probably there is hardly a reader who will not recall a number of cases in which circumstances appear to have been only limitations to him or to his friends; but if he will try with a willing mind to find the gate of opportunity which was not used, he will be surprised to learn that it was wide open all the time, and might have led him into a new and better country. The other day a little urchin playing in the street got in the way of a horse, and just saved himself from being run over by a quick jump; he threw up his arms and in a most cheerful voice called out, "It's all right, only different!" If the horse had run over him, he might have said the same thing and found his opportunity to more that was good and useful in life through steady patience on his bed. The trouble is that we are not willing to call it _"all right"_ unless it is _the same,_--the same in this case meaning whatever may be identical with our own personal ideas of what is "all right." That expressive little bit of slang is full of humor and full of common sense. If, for instance, when we expect something and are disappointed, we could at once yield out of our resistance and heartily exclaim, "it is all right, only different," how much sooner we should discover the good use in its being different, and how soon we should settle into the sense of its being "all right!" When a circumstance that has seemed to us _all wrong_ can be made, through our quiet way of meeting it, to appear all right, only different, it very soon leads to a wholesome content in the new state of affairs or to a change of circumstances to which we can more readily and happily adjust ourselves. A strong sense of something's being "all right" means a strong sense of willingness that it should be just as it is. With that clear willingness in our hearts in general, we can adjust ourselves to anything in particular,--even to very sudden and unexpected changes. It is carrying along with us a background of powerful non-resistance which we can bring to the front and use actively at a moment's notice. It seems odd to think of actively using non-resistance, and yet the expression is not as contradictory as it would appear, for the strength of will it takes to attain an habitual attitude of wholesome non-resistance is far beyond the strength of will required to resist unwholesomely. The stronger, the more fixed and immovable the centre, the more free and adaptable are the circumferences of action; and, even though our central principle is fixed and immovable, it must be elastic enough to enable us to change our point of view whenever we find that by so doing we can gain a broader outlook and greater power for use. To acquire the strength of will for this habitual non-resistance is sometimes a matter of years of practice. We have to compel ourselves to be "willing," over and over again, at each new opportunity; sometimes the opportunities seem to throng us; and this, truly considered, is only a cause for gratitude. In life the truest winning often comes first under the guise of failure, and it is willingness to accept failure, and intelligence in understanding its causes, and using the acquired knowledge as a means to a higher end, that ultimately brings true success. If we choose, a failure can always be used as a means to an end rather than as a result in itself. How often do we hear the complaint, "I could do so well if it were not for my circumstances." How many people are held down for a lifetime by the habitual belief in circumstances as limitations, and by ignoring the opportunities which they afford. "So long as I must live with these people I can never amount to anything." If this complaint could be changed to the resolve: "I will live with these people until I have so adjusted myself to them as to be contented," a source of weakness would be changed into a source of strength. The quiet activity of mind required to adjust ourselves to difficult surroundings gives a zest and interest to life which we can find in no other way, and adds a certain strength to the character which cannot be found elsewhere. It is interesting to observe, too, how often it happens that, when we have adjusted ourselves to difficult circumstances, we are removed to other circumstances which are more in sympathy with our own, thoughts and ways: and sometimes to circumstances which are more difficult still, and require all the strength and wisdom which our previous discipline has taught us. If we are alive to our own true freedom, we should have an active interest in the necessary warfare of life. For life is a warfare--not of persons, but of principles--and every man who loves his freedom loves to be in the midst of the battle. Our tendencies to selfish discontent are constantly warring against our love of usefulness and service, and he who wishes to enjoy the full activity of freedom must learn to fight and to destroy the tendencies within himself which stand in the way of his own obedience to law. But he needs, for this, the truthful and open spirit which leads to wise self-knowledge; a quiet and a willing spirit, to make the necessary sacrifice of selfish pride. His quiet earnestness will give him the strength to carry out what his clear vision will reveal to him in the light of truth He will keep his head lifted up above his enemies round about him, so that he may steadily watch and clearly see how best to act. After periods of hard fighting the intervals of rest will be full of refreshment, and will always bring new strength for further activity. If, in the battle with difficult circumstances, we are thrown down, we must pick ourselves up with quick decision, and not waste a moment in complaint or discouragement. We should emphasize to ourselves the necessity for picking ourselves up immediately, and going directly on, over and over again,--both for our own benefit, and the benefit of those whom we have the privilege of helping. In the Japanese training of "Jiu Jitsu," the idea seems to be to drop all subjective resistance, and to continue to drop it, until, through the calmness and clearness of sight that comes from quiet nerves and a free mind, the wrestler can see where to make the fatal stroke. When the right time has arrived, the only effort which is necessary is quick, sharp and conclusive. This wonderful principle is often misused for selfish ends, and in such cases it leads eventually to bondage because, by the successful satisfaction of selfish motives, it strengthens the hold of our selfishness upon us; but, when used in an unselfish spirit, it is an ever-increasing source of strength. In the case of difficult circumstances,--if we cease to resist,--if we accept the facts of life,--if we are willing to be poor, or ill, or disappointed, or to live with people we do not like,--we gain a quietness of nerve and a freedom of mind which clears off the mists around us, so that our eyes may see and recognize the gate of opportunity,--open before us. It is the law of concentration and relaxation. If we concentrate on being willing, on relaxing until we have dropped every bit of resistance to the circumstances about us, that brings us to a quiet and well-balanced point of view, whence we can see clearly how to take firm and decided action. From such action the re-action is only renewed strength,--never painful and contracting weakness. If we could give up all our selfish desires and resistances, circumstances, however difficult, would have no power whatever to trouble us. To reach such absolute willingness is a long journey, but there is a straight path leading nearer and nearer to the happy freedom which is our goal. Self-pity is one of the states that interferes most effectually with making the right use of circumstances. To pity one's self is destruction to all possible freedom. If the reader finds himself in the throes of this weakness and is helped through these words to recognize the fact, let him hasten to shun it as he would shun poison, for it is progressively weakening to soul and body. It will take only slight difficulties of any kind to overthrow us, if we are overcome by this temptation. Imagine a man in the planet Mars wanting to try his fortunes on another planet, and an angel appearing to him with permission to transfer him to the earth. "But," the angel says, "of course you can have no idea of what the life is upon the new planet unless you are placed in the midst of various circumstances which are more or less common to its inhabitants." "Certainly," the Martian answers, "I recognize that, and I want to have my experience on this new planet as complete as possible; therefore the more characteristic and difficult my circumstances are the better." Then imagine the interest that man would have, from the moment he was placed on the earth, in working, his way through, and observing his experience as he worked. His interest would be alive vivid, and strong, from the beginning until he found himself, with earthly experience completed, ready to return to his friends in Mars. He would never lose courage or be in any way disheartened. The more difficult his earthly problem was, the more it would arouse his interest and vigor to solve it. So many people prefer a difficult problem in geometry to an easy one, then why not in life? The difference is that in mathematics the head alone is exercised, and in life the head and the heart are both brought into play, and the first difficulty is to persuade the head and heart to work together. In the visitor from Mars, of course, the heart would be working with the head, and so the whole man would be centred on getting creditably through his experience and home again. If our hearts and heads were together equally concentrated on getting through our experience for the sake of the greater power of use it would bring,--and, if we could trustfully believe in getting home again, that is, in getting established in the current of ordinary spiritual and natural action, then life would be really alive for us, then we should actually get the scent of our true freedom, and, having once had a taste of it, we should have a fresh incentive in achieving it entirely. There is one important thing to remember in an effort to be free from the bondage of circumstances which will save us from much unnecessary suffering. This has to do with the painful associations which arise from circumstances which are past and over. A woman, for example, suffered for a year from nervous exhaustion in her head, which was brought on, among other things, by over-excitement in private theatricals. She apparently recovered her health, and, because she was fond of acting, her first activities were turned in that direction. She accepted a part in a play; but as soon as she began to study all her old head symptoms returned, and she was thoroughly frightened, thinking that she might never be able to use her head again. Upon being convinced, however, that all her discomfort came from her own imagination, through the painful associations connected with the study of her part, she returned to her work resolved to ignore them, and the consequence was that the symptoms rapidly disappeared. Not uncommonly we hear that a person of our acquaintance cannot go to some particular place because of the painful events which occurred there. If the sufferer could only be persuaded that, when such associations are once bravely faced, it takes a very short time for the painful effects to disappear entirely, much unnecessary and prolonged discomfort would be saved. People have been kept ill for weeks, months and years, through. holding on to the brain impression of some painful event. Whether the painful circumstances are little or great, the law of association is the same and, in any case, the brain impression can be dropped entirely, although it may take time and patience to do it. We must often talk to our brains as if we were talking to another person to eliminate the impressions from old associations. Tell your brain in so many words, without emotion, that the place or the circumstance is nothing, nothing whatever,--it is only your idea about it, and the false association can be changed to a true one. So must we yield our selfish resistances and be ready to accept every opportunity for growth that circumstances offer; and, at the same time, when the good result is gained, throw off the impression of the pain of the process entirely and forever. Thus may we both live and observe for our own good and that of others; and he who is practising this principle in his daily life can say from his heart:--"Now shall my head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me." VIII _Other People_ HOWEVER disagreeable other people may be,--however unjust they may be, however true it may be that the wrong is all on their side and not at all on ours,--whatever we may suffer at their hands,--we can only remedy the difficulty by looking first solely to ourselves and our own conduct; and, not until we are entirely free from resentment or resistance of any kind, and not until we are quiet in our own minds with regard to those who may be oppressing or annoying us, should we make any effort to set them right. This philosophy is sound and absolutely practical,--it never fails; any apparent failure will be due to our own delinquency in applying it; and, if the reader will think of this truth carefully until he feels able to accept it, he will see what true freedom there is in it,--although it may be a long time before he is fully able to carry it out. How can I remain in any slightest bondage to another when I feel sure that, however wrong he may be, the true cause of my discomfort and oppression is in myself? I am in bondage to myself, and it is to myself that I must look to gain my freedom. If a friend is rude and unkind to me, and I resent the rudeness and resist the unkindness, it is the resentment and resistance that cause me to suffer. I am not suffering for my friend, I am suffering for myself; and I can only gain my freedom by shunning the resentment and resistance as sin against all that is good and true in friendship. When I am free from these things in myself,--when, as far as I am concerned, I am perfectly and entirely willing that my friend should be rude or unjust, then only am I free from him. It is impossible that he should oppress me, if I am willing that he should be unjust or unkind; and the freedom that comes from such strong and willing non-resistance is like the fresh air upon a mountain. Such freedom brings with it also a new understanding of one's friend, and a new ability to serve him. Unless we live a life of seclusion, most of us have more than one friend, or acquaintance, or enemy, with whom we are brought into constant or occasional contact, and by whom we are made to suffer; not to mention the frequent irritations that may come from people we see only once in our lives. Imagine the joy of being free from all this irritability and oppression; imagine the saving of nervous energy which would accompany such freedom; imagine the possibility of use to others which would be its most helpful result! If we once catch even the least glimpse of this quiet freedom, we shall not mind if it takes some time to accomplish so desirable a result, and the process of achieving it is deeply interesting. The difficulty at first is to believe that so far as we are concerned, the cause Of the trouble is entirely within, ourselves. The temptation is to think:-- "How can I help resenting behavior like that! Such selfishness and lack of consideration would be resented by any one." So any one might resent it, but that is no reason why we should. We are not to make other people's standards our own unless we see that their standards are higher than ours; only then should we change,--not to win the favor of the other people, but because we have recognized the superior value of their standards and are glad to put away what is inferior for what is better. Therefore we can never excuse ourselves for resentment or resistance because other people resent or resist. There can be no possible excuse for resistance to the behavior of others, and it is safe to say that we must _never pit our wills against the wills of other people._ If we want to do right and the other man wants us to do wrong, we must pass by his will, pass under it or over it, but never on any account resist it. There has been more loss of energy, more real harm done, through this futile engagement of two personal wills than can ever be computed, and the freedom consequent upon refusing such contact is great in proportion. Obedience to this law of not pitting our wills against the wills of other people leads to new freedom in all sorts of ways,--in connection with little, everyday questions, as to whether a thing is one color or another, as well as in the great and serious problems of life. If, in an argument, we feel confident that all we want is the truth,--that we do not care whether we or our opponents are in the right, as long as we find the right itself,--then we are free, so far as personal feeling is concerned; especially if, in addition, we are perfectly willing that our opponents should not be convinced, even though the right should ultimately prove to be on our side. With regard to learning how always to look first to ourselves,--first we must become conscious of our own resentment and resistance, then we must acknowledge it heartily and fully, and then we must go to work firmly and steadily to refuse to harbor it. We must relax out of the tension of our resistance with both soul and body; for of course, the resistance contracts the nerves of our bodies, and, if we relax from the contractions in our bodies, it helps us to gain freedom from resistance in our hearts and minds. The same resistance to the same person or the same ideas may return, in different forms, many times over; but all we have to do is to persist in dropping it as often as it returns, even if it be thousands of times. No one need be afraid of losing all backbone and becoming a "mush of concession" through the process of dropping useless resistance, for the strength of will required to free ourselves from the habit of pitting one's own will against that of another is much greater than the strength we use when we indulge the habit. The two kinds of strength can no more be compared than the power of natural law can be compared to the lawless efforts of human waywardness. For the will that is pitted against the will of another degenerates into obstinacy, and weakens the character; whereas the will that is used truly to refuse useless resistance increases steadily in strength, and develops power and beauty of character. Again, the man who insists upon pitting his will against that of another is constantly blinded as to the true qualities of his opponent. He sees neither his virtues nor his vices clearly; whereas he who declines the merely personal contest becomes constantly clarified in his views, and so helped toward a loving charity for his opponent,--whatever his faults or difficulties may be,--and to an understanding and love of the good in him, which does not identify him with his faults. When we resent and resist, and are personally wilful, there is a great big beam in our eye, which we cannot see through, or under, or over,--but, as we gain our freedom from all such resistance, the beam is removed, and we are permitted to see things as they really are, and with a truer sense of proportion, our power of use increases. When a person is arguing with all the force of personal wilfulness, it is both pleasant and surprising to observe the effect upon him if he begins to feel your perfect willingness that he should believe in his own way, and your willingness to go with him, too, if his way should prove to be right. His violence melts to quietness because you give him nothing to resist. The same happy effect comes from facing any one in anger, without resistance, but with a quiet mind and a loving heart. If the anger does not melt--as it often does--it is modified and weakened, and--as far as we are concerned--it cannot touch or hurt us. We must remember always that it is not the repression or concealment of resentment and resistance, and forbearing to express them, that can free us from bondage to others; it is overcoming any trace of resentment or resistance within our own hearts and minds. If the resistance is in us, we are just as much in bondage as if we expressed it in our words and actions. If it is in us at all, it must express itself in one way or another,--either in ill-health, or in unhappy states of mind, or in the tension of our bodies. We must also remember that, when we are on the way to freedom from such habits of resistance, we may suffer from them for a long time after we have ceased to act from them. When we are turning steadily away from them, the uncomfortable effects of past resistance may linger for a long while before every vestige of them disappears. It is like the peeling after scarlet fever,--the dead skin stays on until the new, tender skin is strong underneath, and after we think we have peeled entirely, we discover new places with which we must be patient. So, with the old habits of resistance, we must, although turning away from them firmly, be steadily patient while waiting for the pain from them to disappear. It must take time if the work is to be done thoroughly,--but the freedom to be gained is well worth waiting for. One of the most prevalent forms of bondage is caring too much in the wrong way what people think of us. If a man criticises me I must first look to see whether he is right. He may be partly right, and not entirely,--but, whatever truth there is in his criticism, I want to know it in order that I may see the fault clearly myself and remedy it. If his criticism is ill-natured it is not necessarily any the less true, and I must not let the truth be obscured by his ill-nature. All, that I have to do with the ill-nature is to be sorry, on my friend's account, and help him out of it if he is willing; and there is nothing that is so likely to make him willing as my recognizing the justice of what he says and acting upon it, while, at the same time, I neither resent nor resist his ill-nature. If the man is both ill-natured and unjust,--if there is no touch of what is true in his criticism,--then all I have to do is to cease resenting it. I should be perfectly willing that he should think anything he pleases, while I, so far as I can see, go on and do what is right. _The trouble is that we care more to appear right than to be right._ This undue regard for appearances is very deep-seated, for it comes from long habit and inheritance; but we must recognize it and acknowledge it in ourselves, in order to take the true path toward freedom. So long as we are working for appearances we are not working for realities. When we love to _be_ right first, then we will regard appearances only enough to protect what is good and true from needless misunderstanding and disrespect. Sometimes we cannot even do that without sacrificing the truth to appearances, and in such cases we must be true to realities first, and know that appearances must harmonize with them in the end. If causes are right, effects must be orderly, even though at times they may not seem so to the superficial observer. Fear of not being approved of is the cause of great nervous strain and waste of energy; for fear is resistance, and we can counteract that terrified resistance only by being perfectly willing that any one should think anything he likes. When moving in obedience to law--natural and spiritual--a man's power cannot be overestimated; but in order to learn genuine obedience to law, we must be willing to accept our limitations and wait for them to be gradually removed as we gain in true freedom. Let us not forget that if we are overpleased--selfishly pleased--at the approval of others, we are just as much in bondage to them as if we were angry at their disapproval. Both approval and disapproval are helpful if we accept them for the use they can be to us, but are equally injurious if we take them to feed our vanity or annoyance. It is hard to believe, until our new standard is firmly established, that only from this true freedom do we get the most vital sense of loving human intercourse and companionship, for then we find ourselves working hand in hand with those who are united to us in the love of principles, and we are ready to recognize and to draw out the best in every one of those about us. If this law of freedom from others--which so greatly increases our power of use to them and their power of use to us--had not been proved absolutely practical, it would not be a law at all. It is only as we find it practical in every detail, and as obedience to it is proved to be the only sure road to established freedom that we are bound to accept it. To learn to live in such obedience we must be steady, persistent and patient,--teaching ourselves the same truths many times, until a new habit of freedom is established within us by the experience of our daily lives. We must learn and grow in power from every failure; and we must not dwell with pride and complacency on good results, but always move steadily and quietly forward. IX _Human Sympathy_ A NURSE who had been only a few weeks in the hospital training-school, once saw--from her seat at the dinner-table--a man brought into the house who was suffering intensely from a very severe accident. The young woman started up to be of what service she could, and when she returned to the table, had lost her appetite entirely, because of her sympathy for the suffering man. She had hardly begun her dinner, and would have gone without it if it had not been for a sharp reprimand from the superintendent. "If you really sympathize with that man," she said, "you will eat your dinner to get strength to take care of him. Here is a man who will need constant, steady, _healthy_ attention for some days to come,--and special care all this afternoon and night, and it will be your duty to look out for him. Your 'sympathy' is already pulling you down and taking away your strength, and you are doing what you can to lose more strength by refusing to eat your dinner. Such sympathy as that is poor stuff; I call it weak sentimentality." The reprimand was purposely sharp, and, by arousing the anger and indignation of the nurse, it served as a counter-irritant which restored her appetite. After her anger had subsided, she thanked the superintendent with all her heart, and from that day she began to learn the difference between true and false sympathy. It took her some time, however, to get thoroughly established in the habit of healthy sympathy. The tendency to unwholesome sympathy was part of her natural inheritance, along with many other evil tendencies which frequently have to be overcome before a person with a very sensitive nervous system can find his own true strength. But as she watched the useless suffering which resulted in all cases in which people allowed themselves to be weakened by the pain of others, she learned to understand more and more intelligently the practice of wholesome sympathy, and worked until it had become her second nature. Especially did she do this after having proved many times, by practical experience, the strength which comes through the power of wholesome sympathy to those in pain. Unwholesome sympathy incapacitates one for serving others, whether the need be physical, mental, or moral. Wholesome sympathy not only gives us power to serve, but clears our understanding; and, because of our growing ability to appreciate rightly the point of view of other people, our service can be more and more intelligent. In contrast to this unwholesome sympathy, which is the cause of more trouble in the world than people generally suppose, is the unwholesome lack of sympathy, or hardening process, which is deliberately cultivated by many people, and which another story will serve to illustrate. A poor negro was once brought to the hospital very ill; he had suffered so keenly in the process of getting there that the resulting weakness, together with the intense fright at the idea of being in a hospital, which is so common to many of his class, added to the effects of his disease itself, were too much for him, and he died before he had been in bed fifteen minutes. The nurse in charge looked at him and said, in a cold, steady tone:-- "It was hardly worth while to make up the bed." She had hardened herself because she could not endure the suffering of unwholesome sympathy, and yet "must do her work." No one had taught her the freedom and power of true sympathy. Her finer senses were dulled and atrophied,--she did not know the difference between one human soul and another. She only knew that this was a case of typhoid fever, that a case of pneumonia, and another a case of delirium tremens. They were all one to her, so far as the human beings went. She knew the diagnosis and the care of the physical disease,--and that was all. She did the material work very well, but she must have brought torture to the sensitive mind in many a poor, sick body. Another form of false sympathy is what may be called professional sympathy. Some people never find that out, but admire and get comfort from the professional sympathy of a doctor or a nurse, or any other person whose profession it is to care for those who are suffering. It takes a keen perception or a quick emergency to bring out the false ring of professional sympathy. But the hardening process that goes on in the professional sympathizer is even greater than in the case of those who do not put on a sympathetic veneer. It seems as if there must be great tension in the more delicate parts of the nervous system in people who have hardened themselves, with or without the veneer,--akin to what there would be in the muscles if a man went about his work with both fists tightly clenched all day, and slept with them clenched all night. If that tension of hard indifference could be reached and relaxed, the result would probably be a nervous collapse, before true, wholesome habits could be established, but unfortunately it often becomes so rigid that a healthy relaxation is out of the question. Professional sympathy is of the same quality as the selfish sympathy which we see constantly about us in men or women who sympathize because the emotion attracts admiration and wins the favor of others. When people sympathize in their selfishness instead of sympathizing in their efforts to get free, the force of selfishness is increased, and the world is kept down to a lower standard by just so much. A thief, for instance, fails in a well-planned attempt to get a large sum of money, and confides his attempt and failure to a brother thief, who expresses admiration for the sneaking keenness of the plan, and hearty sympathy in the regret for his failure. The first thief immediately pronounces the second thief "a good fellow." But, at the same time, if either of these apparently friendly thieves could get more money by cheating the other the next day he would not hesitate to do so. To be truly sympathetic, we should be able so to identify ourselves with the interests of others that we can have a thorough appreciation of their point of view, and can understand their lives clearly, as they appear to themselves; but this we can never do if we are immersed in the fog,--either of their personal selfishness or our own. By understanding others clearly, we can talk in ways that are, and seem to them, rational, and gradually lead them to a higher standard. If a woman is in the depths of despair because a dress does not fit, I should not help her by telling her the truth about her character, and lecturing her upon her folly in wasting grief upon trifles, when there are so many serious troubles in the world. From her point of view, the fact that her dress does not fit _is_ a grief. But if I keep quiet, and let her see that I understand her disappointment, and at the same time hold my own standard, she will be led much more easily and more truly to see for herself the smallness of her attitude. First, perhaps, she will be proud that she has learned not to worry about such a little thing as a new dress; and, if so, I must remember her point of view, and be willing that she should be proud. Then, perhaps, she will come to wonder how she ever could have wasted anxiety on a dress or a hat, and later she may perhaps forget that she ever did. It is like leading a child. We give loving sympathy to a child when it breaks its doll, although we know there is nothing real to grieve about There is something for the child to grieve about, something very real _to her;_ but we can only sympathize helpfully with her point of view by keeping ourselves clearly in the light of our own more mature point of view. From the top of a mountain you can see into the valley round about,--your horizon is very broad, and you can distinguish the details that it encompasses; but, from the valley, you cannot see the top of the mountain, and your horizon is limited. This illustrates truly the breadth and power of wholesome human sympathy. With a real love for human nature, if a man has a clear, high standard of his own,--a standard which he does not attribute to his own intelligence--his understanding of the lower standards of other men will also be very clear, and he will take all sorts and conditions of men into the region within the horizon of his mind. Not only that, but he will recognize the fact When the standard of another man is higher than his own, and will be ready to ascend at once when he becomes aware of a higher point of view. On the other hand, when selfishness is sympathizing with selfishness, there is no ascent possible, but only the one little low place limited by the personal, selfish interests of those concerned. Nobody else's trouble seems worth considering to those who are immersed in their own, or in their selfish sympathy with a friend whom they have chosen to champion. This is especially felt among conventional people, when something happens which disturbs their external habits and standards of life. Sympathy is at once thrown out on the side of conventionality, without any rational inquiry as to the real rights of the case. Selfish respectability is most unwholesome in its unhealthy sympathy with selfish respectability. The wholesome sympathy of living human hearts sympathizes first with what is wholesome,--especially in those who suffer,--whether it be wholesomeness of soul or body; and true sympathy often knows and recognizes that wholesomeness better than the sufferer himself. Only in a secondary way, and as a means to a higher end, does it sympathize with the painful circumstances or conditions. By keeping our sympathies steadily fixed on the health of a brother or friend, when he is immersed in and overcome by his own pain, we may show him the way out of his pain more truly and more quickly. By keeping our sympathies fixed on the health of a friend's soul, we may lead him out of selfishness which otherwise might gradually destroy him. In both cases our loving care should be truly felt,--and felt as real understanding of the pain or grief suffered in the steps by the way, with an intelligent sense of their true relation to the best interests of the sufferer himself Such wholesome sympathy is alert in all its perceptions to appreciate different points of view, and takes care to speak only in language which is intelligible, and therefore useful. It is full of loving patience, and never forces or persuades, but waits and watches to give help at the right time and in the right place. It is more often helpful with silence than with words. It stimulates one to imagine what friendship might be if it were alive and wholesome to the very core. For, in such friendship as this, a true friend to one man has the capacity of being a true friend to all men, and one who has a thoroughly wholesome sympathy for one human being will have it for all. His general attitude must always be the same--modified only by the relative distance which comes from variety in temperaments. In order to sympathize with the best possibilities in others, our own standards must be high and clear, and we must be steadily true to them. Such sympathy is freedom itself,--it is warm and glowing,--while the sympathy which adds its weight to the pain or selfishness of others can really be only bondage, however good it may appear. X _Personal Independence_ IN proportion as every organ of the human body is free to perform its own functions, unimpeded by any other, the body is perfectly healthy and vigorous; and, in proportion as every organ of the body is receiving its proper support from every other, the body as a whole is vigorous, and in the full use of its powers. These are two self-evident axioms, and, if we think of them quietly for a little while, they will lead us to a clear realization of true personal independence. The lungs cannot do the work of the heart, but must do their own work, independently and freely; and yet, if the lungs should suddenly say to themselves: "This is all nonsense,--our depending upon the heart in this way; we must be independent! It is weak to depend upon the other organs of the body!" And if they should repel the blood which the heart pumped into them, with the idea that they could manage the body by themselves, and were not going to be weakly dependent upon the heart, the stomach, or any other organ,--if the lungs should insist upon taking this independent stand, they would very soon stop breathing, the heart would stop beating, the stomach would stop digesting, and the body would die. Or, suppose that the heart should refuse to supply the lungs with the blood necessary to provide oxygen; the same fatal result would of course follow. Or, even let us imagine all the organs of the body agreeing that it is weak to be dependent, and asserting their independence of each other. At the very instant that such an agreement was carried into effect, the body would perish. Then, on the other hand,--to reverse the illustration,--if the lungs should feel that they could help the heart's work by attending to the circulation of the blood, if the heart should insist that it could inhale and exhale better than the lungs, and should neglect its own work in order to advise and assist the lungs in the breathing, the machinery of the body would be in sad confusion for a time, and would very soon cease altogether. This imaginary want of real independence in the working of the different organs of the body can be illustrated by the actual action of the muscles. How often we see a man working with his mouth while writing, when he should be only using his hands; or, working uselessly with his left hand, when what he has to do only needs the right! How often we see people trying to listen with their arms and shoulders! Such illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely, and, in all cases, the false sympathy of contraction in the parts of the body which are not needed for the work in hand comes from a wrong dependence,--from the fact that the pats of the body that are not needed, are officiously dependent upon those that are properly active, instead of minding their own affairs and saving energy for their own work. The wholesome working of the human organism, is so perfect in its analogy to the healthy relations of members of a community, that no reader should pass it by without very careful thought. John says:-- "I am not going to be dependent upon any man. I am going to live my own life, in my own way, as I expect other men to live theirs. If they will leave me alone, I will leave them alone," and John flatters himself that he is asserting his own strength of personality, that he is emphasizing his individuality. The truth is that John is warping himself every day by his weak dependence upon his own prejudices. He is unwilling to look fairly at another main's opinion for fear of being dependent upon it. He is not only warping himself by his "independence," which is puffed up with the false appearance of strength, but he is robbing his fellow-men; for he cannot refuse to receive from others without putting it out of his own power to give to others. Real giving and receiving must be reciprocal in spirit, and absolutely dependent upon each other. It is a curious and a sad study to watch the growing slavery of such "independent" people. James, on the other hand, thinks he cannot do anything without asking another man's advice or getting another man's help; sometimes it is always the same man, sometimes it is one of twenty different men. And so, James is steadily losing the power of looking life in the face, and of judging for himself whether or not to take the advice of others from a rational principle, and of his own free will, and he is gradually becoming a parasite,--an animal which finally loses all its organs from lack of use, so that only its stomach remains,--and has, of course, no intelligence at all. The examples of such men as James are much more numerous than might be supposed. We seldom see them in such flabby dependence upon the will of an individual as would make them conspicuous; but they are about us every day, and in large numbers, in their weak dependence upon public opinion,--their bondage to the desire that other men should think well of them. The human parasites that are daily feeding on social recognition are unconsciously in the process of losing their individuality and their intelligence; and it would be a sad surprise to them if they could see themselves clearly as they really are. Public opinion is a necessary and true protection to the world as it is, because if it were not for public opinion, many men and women would dare to be more wicked than they are. But that is no reason why intelligent men should order their lives on certain lines just because their neighbors do,--just because it is the custom. If the custom is a good custom, it can be followed intelligently, and because we recognize it as good, but it should not be followed only because our neighbors follow it. Then, if our neighbors follow the custom for the same intelligent reason, it will bring us and them into free and happy sympathy. Neither should a man hesitate to do right, positively and fearlessly, in the face of the public assertion that he is doing wrong. He should, of course, look himself over many times to be sure that he is doing right, according to his own best light, and he should be willing to change his course of action just as fearlessly if he finds he has made a mistake; but, having once decided, he will respect public opinion much more truly by acting quietly against it with an open mind, than he would if he refused to do right, because he was afraid of what others would think of him. To defy carelessly the opinion of others is false independence, and has in it the elements of fear, however fearless it may seem; but to respectfully ignore it for the sake of what is true, and good, and useful, is sure to enlarge the public heart and to help, it eventually to a clearer charity. Individual dependence and individual independence are absolutely necessary to a well-adjusted balance. It is just as necessary to the individual men of a community as to the individual organs of the body. It is not uncommon for a person to say:-- "I must give up So-and-so; I must not see so much of him,--I am getting so dependent upon him." If the apparent dependence on a friend is due to the fact that he has valuable principles to teach which may take time to learn, but which lead in the end to greater freedom, then to give up such companionship, out of regard for the criticism of others would, of course, be weakness and folly itself. It is often our lot to incur the severest blame for the very weaknesses which we have most entirely overcome. Many people will say:-- "I should rather be independently wrong than dependently right," and others will admire them for the assertion. But the truth is, that whenever one is wrong, one is necessarily dependent, either upon man or devil; but it is impossible to be dependently right, excepting for the comparatively short time that we may need for a definite, useful purpose. If a man is right in his mental and moral attitude merely because his friend is right, and not because he wants the right himself, it will only be a matter of time before his prop is taken away, and he will fall back into his own moral weakness. Of course, a man can begin to be right because his friend is right;--but it is because there is something in him which responds to the good in his friend. Strong men are true to their friendships and convictions, in spite of appearances and the clamor of their critics. True independence is never afraid of appearing dependent, and true dependence leads always to the most perfect independence. We cannot, really enjoy our own freedom without the growing desire and power to help other people to theirs. Our own love of independence will bring with it an equal love for the independence of our neighbor; and our own love of true dependence--that is, of receiving wise help from any one through whom it may be sent--will give us an equal love for giving help wherever it will be welcome. Our respect for our own independence will make it impossible that we should insist upon trying to give help to others where it is not wanted; and our own respect for true dependence will give us a loving charity, a true respect for those who are necessarily and temporarily dependent, and teach us to help them to their true balance. We should learn to keep a margin of reserve for ourselves, and to give the same margin to others. Not to come too near, but to be far enough away from every one to give us a true perspective. There is a sort of familiarity that arises sometimes between friends, or even mere acquaintances, which closes the door to true friendship or to real acquaintance. It does not bring people near to one another, but keeps them apart. It is as if men thought that they could be better friends by bumping their heads together. Our freedom comes in realizing that all the energy of life should come primarily from a love of principles and not of persons, excepting as persons relate to principles. If one man finds another living on principles that are higher than his own, it means strength and freedom for him to cling to his friend until he has learned to understand and live on those principles himself. Then if he finds his own power for usefulness and his own enjoyment of life increased by his friendship, it would indeed be weak of him to refuse such companionship from fear of being dependent. The surest and strongest basis of freedom in friendship is a common devotion to the same fundamental principles of life; and this insures reciprocal usefulness as well as personal independence. We must remember that the very worst and weakest dependence is not a dependence upon persons, but upon a sin,--whether the sin be fear of public opinion or some other more or less serious form of bondage. The only true independence is in obedience to law, and if, to gain the habit of such obedience, we need a helping hand, it is truly independent for us to take it. _We all came into the world alone, and we must go out of the world alone, and yet we are exquisitely and beautifully dependent upon one another._ A great German philosopher has said that there should be as much space between the atoms of the body, in relation to its size, as there is between the stars in relation to the size of the universe,--and yet every star is dependent upon every other star,--as every atom in the body is dependent upon every other atom for its true life and action. This principle of balance in the macrocosm and the microcosm is equally applicable to any community of people, whether large or small. The quiet study and appreciation of it will enable us to realize the strength of free dependence and dependent freedom in the relation of persons to one another. The more truly we can help one another in freedom toward the dependence upon law, which is the axis of the universe, the more wholesome and perfect will be all our human relations. XI _Self-control_ TO most people self-control means the control of appearances and not the control of realities. This is a radical mistake, and must be corrected, if we are to get a clear idea of self-control, and if we are to make a fair start in acquiring it as a permanent habit. I am what I am by virtue of my own motives of thought and action, by virtue of what my mind is, what my will is, and what I am in the resultant combination of my mind and will; I am not necessarily what I appear from the outside. If a man is ugly to me, and I want to knock him down, and refrain from doing so simply because it would not appear well, and is not the habit of the people about me, my desire to knock him down is still a part of myself, and I have not controlled myself until I am absolutely free from that interior desire. So long as I am in hatred to another, I am in bondage to my hatred; and if, for the sake of appearances, I do not act or speak from it, I am none the less at its mercy, and it will find an outlet wherever it can do so without debasing me in the eyes of other men more than I am willing to be debased. The control of appearances is merely outward repression, and a very common instance of this may be observed in the effort to control a laugh. If we repress it, it is apt to assert itself in spite of our best efforts; whereas, if we relax our muscles, and let the sensation go through us, we can control our desire to laugh and so get free from it. When we repress a laugh, we are really holding on to it, in our minds, but, when we control it by relaxing the tension that comes from the desire to laugh, it is as if the sensation passed over and away from us. It is a well-known fact among surgeons that, if a man who is badly frightened, takes ether, no matter how well he controls his outward behavior, no matter how quiet he appears while the ether is being administered, as soon as he loses control of his voluntary muscles, the fear that has been repressed rushes out in the form of excitement. This is a practical illustration of the fact that control of appearances is merely control of the muscles, and that, even so far as our nervous system goes, it is only repression, and self-repression is not self-control. If I repress the expression of irritability, anger, hatred, or any other form of evil, it is there, in my brain, just the same; and, in one form or another, I am in bondage to it. Sometimes it expresses itself in little meannesses; sometimes it affects my body and makes me ill; often it keeps me from being entirely well. Of one thing we may be sure,--it makes me the instrument of evil, in one way or another. Repressed evil is not going to lie dormant in us forever; it will rise in active ferment, sooner or later. Its ultimate action is just as certain as that a serious impurity of the blood is certain to lead to physical disease, if it is not counteracted. Knowing this to be true, we can no longer say of certain people "So-and-so has remarkable self-control." We can only say, "So-and-so represses his feelings remarkably well: what a good actor he is!" The men who have real self-control do exist, and they are the leaven that saves the race. It is good to know that this habitual repression comes, in many cases, from want of knowledge of the fact that self-repression is not self-control. But the reader may say, "what am I to do, if I feel angry, and want to hit a man in the face; I am not supposed to hit him am I, rather than to repress my feelings?" No, not at all, but you are supposed to use your will to get in behind the desire to hit him, and, by relaxing in mind and body, and stopping all resistance to his action, to remove that desire in yourself entirely. If once you persistently refuse to resist by dropping the anger of your mind and the tension of your body, you have gained an opportunity of helping your brother, if he is willing to be helped; you have cleared the atmosphere of your own mind entirely, so that you can understand his point of view, and give him the benefit of reasonable consideration; or, at the very least, you have yourself ceased to be ruled by his evils, for you can no longer be roused to personal retaliation. It is interesting and enlightening to recognize the fact that we are in bondage to any man to the extent that we permit ourselves to be roused to anger or resentment by his words or actions. When a man's brain is befogged by the fumes of anger and irritability it can work neither clearly nor quietly, and, when that is the case, it is impossible for him to serve himself or his neighbor to his full ability. If another person has the power to rouse my anger or my irritability, and I allow the anger or the irritability to control me, I am, of course, subservient to my own bad state, and at the mercy of the person who has the power to excite those evil states just in so far as such excitement confuses my brain. Every one has in him certain inherited and personal tendencies which are obstacles to his freedom of mind and body, and his freedom is limited just in so far as he allows those tendencies to control him. If he controls them by external repression, they are then working havoc within him, no matter how thoroughly he may appear to be master of himself. If he acknowledges his mistaken tendencies fully and willingly and then refuses to act, speak, or think from them, he is taking a straight path toward freedom of life and action. One great difficulty in the way of self-control is that we do not want to get free from our anger. In such cases we can only want to want to, and if we use the strength of will that is given us to drop our resistance in spite of our desire to be angry we shall be working toward our freedom and our real self-control. There is always a capacity for unselfish will, the will of the better self, behind the personal selfish will, ready and waiting for us to use it, and it grows with use until finally it overrules the personal selfish will with a higher quality of power. It is only false strength that supports the personal will,--a false appearance of strength which might be called wilfulness and which leads ultimately to the destruction of its owner. Any true observer of human nature will recognize the weakness of mere selfish wilfulness in another, and will keep entirely free from its trammels by refusing to meet it in a spirit of resentment or retaliation. Real self-control, as compared to repression, is delightful in its physical results, when we have any difficult experience to anticipate or to go through. Take, for instance, a surgical operation. If I control myself by yielding, by relaxing the nervous tension which is the result of MY fear, true self-control then becomes possible, and brings a helpful freedom from, reaction after the trouble is over. Or the same principle can be applied if I have to go through a hard trial with a friend and must control myself for his sake,--dropping resistance in my mind and in my body, dropping resistance to his suffering, yielding my will to the necessities of the situation,--this attitude will leave me much more clear to help him, will show him how to help himself, and will relieve him from the reaction that inevitably follows severe nervous strain. The power of use to others is increased immeasurably when we control ourselves interiorly, and do not merely outwardly repress. It often happens that a drunkard who is supposed to be "cured," returns to his habit, simply because he has wanted his drink all the time, and has only been taught to repress his appetite; if he had been steadily and carefully taught real self-control, he would have learnt to control and drop his interior _desire,_ and thus keep permanently free. How often we see intemperance which had shown itself in drink simply turned into another channel, another form of selfish indulgence, and yet the victim will complacently boast of his self-control. An extreme illustration of this truth is shown in the case of a well-known lecturer on temperance. He had given up drink, but he ate like a glutton, and his thirst for applause was so extreme as to make him appear almost ridiculous when he did not receive it. The opportunities for self-control are, of course, innumerable; indeed they constitute pretty much the whole of life. We are living in freedom and use, real living use, in proportion as we are in actual control of our selfish selves, and led by our love of useful service. In proportion as we have through true self-control brought ourselves into daily and hourly obedience to law, are we in the freedom that properly belongs to our lives and their true uses. When once we have won our freedom from resistance, we must use that freedom in action, and put it directly to use. Sometimes it will result in a small action, sometimes in a great one; but, whatever it is, it must be _done._ If we drop the resistance, and do not use the freedom gained thereby for active service, we shall simply react into further bondage, from which it will be still more difficult to escape. Having dropped my antagonism to my most bitter enemy, I must do something to serve him, if I can. If I find that it is impossible to serve him, I can at least be of service to someone else; and this action, if carried out in the true spirit of unselfish service, will go far toward the permanent establishment of my freedom. If a circumstance which is atrociously wrong in itself makes us indignant, the first thing to do is to drop the resistance of our indignation, and then to do whatever may be within our power to prevent the continuance of such wrong. Many people weaken their powers of service by their own indignation, when, if they would cease their excited resistance, they would see clearly how to remedy the wrong that arouses their antagonism. Action, when accompanied by personal resistance, however effective it may seem, does not begin to have the power that can come from action, without such resistance. As, for instance, when we have to train a child with a perverse will, if we quietly assert what is right to the child, and insist upon obedience without the slightest antagonistic feeling to the child's naughtiness, we accomplish much more toward strengthening the character of the child than if we try to enforce our idea by the use of our personal will, which is filled with resistance toward the child's obstinacy. In the latter case, it is just pitting our will against the will of the child, which is always destructive, however it may appear that we have succeeded in enforcing the child's obedience. The same thing holds true in relation to an older person, with the exception that, with him or her, we cannot even attempt to require obedience. In that case we must,--when it is necessary that we should speak at all,--assert the right without antagonism to what we believe to be their wrong, and without the slightest personal resistance to it. If we follow this course, in most cases our friend will come to the right point of view,--sometimes the result seems almost miraculous,--or, as is often the case, we, because we are wholesomely open-minded, will recognize any mistake in our own point of view, and will gladly modify it to agree with that of our friend. The trouble is that very few of us feel like working to remedy a wrong merely for the sake of the right, and therefore we must have an impetus of personal feeling to carry us on toward the work of reformation. If we could once be strongly started in obedience to the law from love of the law itself, we should find in that impersonal love a clear light and power for effective action both in the larger and in the smaller questions of life. There is a popular cry against introspection and an insistence that it is necessarily morbid, which works in direct opposition to true self-control. Introspection for its own sake is self-centred and morbid, but we might as well assert that it is right to have dirty hands so long as we wear gloves, and that it is morbid to want to be sure that our hands are clean under our gloves, as to assert that introspection for the sake of our true spiritual freedom is morbid. If I cannot look at my selfish motives, how am I going to get free from them? It is my selfish motives that prevent true self-control. It is my selfish motives that prompt me to the false control of repression, which is counterfeit and for the sake of appearances alone. We must see these motives, recognize and turn away from them, in order to control ourselves interiorly into line with law. We cannot possibly see them unless we look for them. If we look into ourselves for the sake of freedom, for the sake of our greater power for use, for the sake of our true self-control, what can be more wholesome or what can lead us to a more healthy habit of looking out from ourselves into the lives and interests of others? The farther we get established in motives that are truly unselfish, the sooner we shall get out of our own light, and the wider our horizon will be; and the wider our horizon, the greater our power for use. There must, of course, be a certain period of self-consciousness in the process of finding our true self-control, but it is for the sake of an end which brings us more and more fully into a state of happy, quiet spontaneity. If we are working carefully for true self-control we shall welcome an unexpected searchlight from another mind. If the searchlight brings into prominence a bit of irritation that we did not know was there, so much the better. How could we free ourselves from it without knowing that it was there? But as soon as we discover it we can control and cast it off. A healthy introspection is merely the use of a searchlight which every one who loves the truth has the privilege of using for the sake of his own growth and wilfulness, and circumstances often turn it full upon us, greatly to our advantage, if we do not wince but act upon the knowledge that it brings. It is possible to acquire an introspective habit which is wholesome and true, and brings us every day a better sense of pro. portion and a clearer outlook. With regard to the true control of the Pleasurable emotions, the same principle applies. People often grow intensely excited in listening to music,--letting their emotions run rampant and suffering in consequence a painful reaction of fatigue. If they would learn to yield so that the music could pass over their nerves as it passes over the strings of a musical instrument, and then, with the new life and vigor derived from the enjoyment, would turn to some useful work, they would find a great expansion in the enjoyment of the music as well as a new pleasure in their work. Real self-control is the subjugation of selfishness in whatever form it may exist, and its entire subordination to spiritual and natural law. Real self-control is not self-centred. In so far as we become established in this true self-control, we are upheld by law and guided by the power behind it to the perfect freedom and joy of a useful life. XII _The Religion of It_ THE religion of it is the whole of it. "All religion has relation to life and the life of religion is to do good." If religion does not teach us to do good in the very best way, in the way that is most truly useful to ourselves and to other people, religion is absolutely useless and had better be ignored altogether. We must beware, however, of identifying the idea of religion with the men and the women who pervert it. If an electrician came to us to light our house, and the lights would not burn, we would not immediately condemn all electric lighting as bosh and nonsense, or as sentimental theory; we should know, of course, that this especial electrician did not understand his business, and would at once look about to find a man who did, and get him to put our lights in order. If no electrician really seemed to know his business, and we wanted our lights very much, the next thing to do would be to look into the laws of electricity ourselves, and find out exactly where the trouble was, and so keep at work until we had made our own lights burn, and always felt able, if at any time they failed to burn, to discover and remedy the difficulty ourselves. There is not a man or woman who does not feel, at some time, the need of an inner light to make the path clear in the circumstances of life, and especially in dealing with others. Many men and women feel that need all the time, and happy are those who are not satisfied until the need is supplied and they are working steadily in daily practical life, guided by a light that they know is higher than theory. When the light is once found, and we know the direction in which we wish to travel, the path is not by any means always clear and smooth, it is often, full of hard, rough Places, and there are sometimes miles to go over where our light seems dim; but if we have proved our direction to be right, and keep steadily and strongly moving forward, we are always sure to come into open resting places where we can be quiet, gather strength, and see the light more clearly for the next stage of the journey. "It is wonderful," some one remarked, "how this theory of non-resistance has helped me; life is quite another thing since I have practised it steadily." The reply was "it is not wonderful when we realize that the Lord meant what He said when He told us not to resist evil." At this suggestion the speaker looked up with surprise and said: "Why, is that in the New Testament? Where, in what part of it?" She never had thought of the sermon on the Mount as a working plan, or, indeed, of the New Testament as a handbook of life,--practical and powerful in every detail. If we once begin to use it daily and hourly as a working plan of life, it is marvellous how the power and the efficiency of it will grow on us, and we shall no more be able to get along without it than an electrician can get along without a knowledge of the laws of electricity. Some people have taken the New Testament so literally that they have befogged themselves entirely with regard to its real meaning, and have put it aside as impracticable; others have surrounded it with an emotional idea, as something to theorize and rhapsodize about, and have befogged themselves in that way with regard to its real power. Most people are not clear about it because of the tradition that has come to us through generations who have read it and heard it read in church, and never have thought of living it outside. We can have a great deal of church without any religion, but we cannot have religion without true worship, whether the worship is only in our individual souls, or whether it is also the function of a church to which we belong, with a building dedicated to the worship of the Lord to which we go for prayer and for instruction. If we could clear ourselves from the deadening effects of tradition, from sentimentality, from nice theory, and from every touch of emotional and spurious peace, and take up the New Testament as if we were reading it for the first time, and then if we could use it faithfully as a working plan for a time, simply as an experiment,--it would soon cease to be an experiment, and we should not need to be told by any one that it is a divine revelation; we would be confident of that in our own souls. Indeed that is the only way any one can ever be sure of revelation; it must come to each of us alone, as if it had never come to any one before; and yet the beauty and power of it is such that it has come to myriads before us and will come to myriads after us in just the same way. But there is no real revelation for any one _until he has lived what he sees to be true._ I may talk like an angel and assert with a shining face my confident faith in God and in all His laws, but my words will mean nothing whatever, unless I have so lived my faith that it has been absorbed, into my character and so that the truths of my working plan have become my second nature. Many people have discovered that the Lord meant what He said when He said: "Resist not evil," and have proved how truly practical is the command, in their efforts to be willing to be ill, to be willing that circumstances should seem to go against them, to be willing that other people should be unjust, angry, or disagreeable. They have seen that in yielding to circumstances or people entirely,--that is, in dropping their own resistances,--they have gained clear, quiet minds, which enables them to see, to understand, and to practise a higher common sense in the affairs of their lives, which leads to their ultimate happiness and freedom. It is now clear to many people that much of the nervous illness of to-day is caused by a prolonged state of resistance to circumstances or to people which has kept the brain in a strained and irritated state so that it can no longer do its work; and that the patient has to lay by for a longer or a shorter period, according to his ability to drop the resistances, and so allay the irritation and let his brain and nervous system rest and heal. Then with regard to dealing with others, some of us have found out the practical common sense of taking even injustice quietly and without resistance, of looking to our own faults first, and getting quite free from all resentment and resistance to the behavior of others, before we can expect to understand their point of view, or to help them to more reasonable, kindly action if they are in error. Very few of us have recognized and acknowledged that that was what the Lord meant when He said: "Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." It comes with a flash of recognition that is refreshingly helpful when we think we have discovered a practical truth that works, and then see that it is only another way of putting what has been taught for the last two thousand years. Many of us understand and appreciate the truth that a man's true character depends upon his real, interior motives. He is only what his motives are, and not, necessarily, what his motives appear to be. We know that, if a man only controls the appearance of anger and hatred, he has no real self-control whatever. He must get free from the anger itself to be free in reality, and to be his own master. We must stop and think, however, to understand that this is just what the Lord meant when He told us to clean the inside of the cup and the platter, and we need to think more to realize the strength of the warning, that we should not be "whitened sepulchres." We know that we are really related to those who can and do help us to be more useful men and women, and to those whom we can serve in the most genuine way; we know that we are wholesomely dependent upon all from whom we can learn, and we should be glad to have those freely dependent upon us whom we can truly serve. It is most strengthening when we realize that this is the true meaning of the Lord's saying, "For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother." That the Lord Himself, with all His strength, was willing to be dependent, is shown by the fact that, from the cross, He said to those who had crucified Him, "I thirst." They had condemned Him, and crucified Him, and yet He was willing to ask them for drink, to show His willingness to be served by them, even though He knew they would respond only with a sponge filled with vinegar. We know that when we are in a hard place, if we do the duty that is before us, and keep steadily at work as well as we can, that the hard problem will get worked through in some way. We know that this is true, for we have proved it over and over; but how many people realize that it is because the Lord meant what He said when He told us: to "take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself." I am reasoning from the proof of the law to the law itself. There is no end to the illustrations that we might find proving the spiritual common sense of the New Testament and, if by working first in that way, we can get through this fog of tradition, of sentimentality, and of religious emotion, and find the living power of the book itself, then we can get a more and more clear comprehension of the laws it teaches, and will, every day, be proving their practical power in all our dealings with life and with people. Whether we are wrestling with nature in scientific work, whether we are working in the fine arts, in the commercial world, in the professional world, or are dealing with nations, it is always the same,--we find our freedom to work fully realized only when we are obedient to law, and it is a wonderful day for any human being when he intelligently recognizes and finds himself getting into the current of the law of the New Testament. The action of that law he sees is real, and everything outside he recognizes as unreal. In the light of the new truth, we see that many things which we have hitherto regarded as essential, are of minor importance in their relation to life itself. The old lady who said to her friend, "My dear, it is impossible to exaggerate the unimportance of things," had learned what it meant to drop everything that interferes, and must have been truly on her way to the concentration which should be the very central power of all life,--obedience to the two great commandments. Concentration does not mean straining every nerve and muscle toward obedience, it means _dropping every thing that interferes._ If we drop everything that interferes with our obedience to the two great commandments, and the other laws which are given us all through the New Testament to help us obey, we are steadily dropping all selfish resistance, and all tendency to selfish responsibility; and in that steady effort, we are on the only path which can by any possibility lead us directly to freedom. XIII _About Christmas_ THERE was once a family who had a guest staying with them; and when they found out that he was to have a birthday during his visit they were all delighted at the idea of celebrating it. Days before--almost weeks before--they began to prepare for the celebration. They cooked and stored a large quantity of good things to eat, and laid in a stock of good things to be cooked and prepared on the happy day. They planned and arranged the most beautiful decorations. They even thought over and made, or selected, little gifts for one another; and the whole house was in hurry and confusion for weeks before the birthday came. Everything else that was to be done was postponed until after the birthday; and, indeed, many important things were neglected. Finally the birthday came, the rooms were all decorated, the table set, all the little gifts arranged, and the guests from outside of the house had all arrived. Just after the festivities had begun a little child said to its mother: "Mamma, where is the man whose birthday it is--" "Hush, hush," the mother said, "don't ask questions." But the child persisted, until finally the mother said: "Well, I am sure I do not know, my dear, but I will ask." She asked her neighbor, and the neighbor looked surprised and a little puzzled. "Why," she said, "it is a celebration, we are celebrating his birthday, and he is a guest in the house." Then the mother got interested and curious herself. "But where is the guest? Where is the man whose birthday it is?" And, this time she asked one of the family. He looked startled at first, and then inquired of the rest of the family. "Where is the guest whose birthday it is?" Alas I nobody knew. There they were, all excited and trying to enjoy themselves by celebrating his birthday, and he,--some of them did not even know who he was! He was left out and forgotten! When they had wondered for a little while they immediately forgot again, and went on with their celebrations,--all except the little child. He slipped out of the room and made up his mind to find the man whose birthday it was, and, finally, after a hard search, he found him upstairs in the attic,--lonely and sick. He had been asked to leave the guestroom, which he had occupied, and to move upstairs, so as to be out of the way of the preparations for his birthday. Here he had fallen ill, and no one had had time to think of him, excepting one of the humbler servants and this little child. They had all been so busy preparing for his birthday festival that they had forgotten him entirely. This is the way it is with most of us at Christmas time. Whenever we think of a friend, or even an acquaintance, we think of his various qualities,--not always in detail, but as forming a general impression which we associate with his name. If it is a friend whom we love and admire, we love, especially on his birthday, to dwell on all that is good and true in his character; and at such times, though he may be miles away in body, we find ourselves living with him every hour of the day, and feel his presence, and, from that feeling, do our daily tasks with the greater satisfaction and joy. Every one in this part of the world, of course, knows whose birthday we celebrate on the twenty-fifth of December. If we imagine that such a man never really existed, that he was simply an ideal character, and nothing more,--if we were to take Christmas Day as the festival of a noble myth,--the ideal which it represents is so clear, so true, so absolutely practical in the way it is recorded in the book of his life, that it would be a most helpful joy to reflect upon it, and to try and apply its beautiful lessons on the day which would especially recall it to our minds. Or, let us suppose that such a man really did exist,--a man whose character was transcendently clear and true, quiet, steady, and strong,--a man who was full of warm and tender love for all,--who was constantly doing good to others without the slightest display or self-assertion,--a man who was simple and humble,--who looked the whole world in the face and did what was right,--even though the whole respectable world of his day disapproved of him, and even though this same world attested in the most emphatic manner that he was doing what was dangerous and wicked,--a man with spiritual sight so keen that it was far above and beyond any mere intellectual power,--a sight compared to which, what is commonly known as intellectual keenness is, indeed, as darkness unto light; a man with a loving consideration for others so true and tender that its life was felt by those who merely touched the hem of his garment. Suppose we knew that such a man really did live in this world, and that the record of his life and teachings constitute the most valuable heritage of our race,--what new life it would give us to think of him, especially on his birthday,--to live over, so far as we were able, his qualities as we knew them; and to gain, as a result, new clearness for our own everyday lives. The better we knew the man, the more clearly we could think of him, and the more full our thoughts would be of living, practical suggestions for daily work. But now just think what it would mean to us if we really knew that this humble, loving man were the Creator of the universe--the very God--who took upon Himself our human nature with all its hereditary imperfections; and, in that human nature met and conquered every temptation that ever was, or ever could be possible to man; thus--by self-conquest--receiving all the divine qualities into his human nature, and bringing them into this world within reach of the hearts and minds of all men, to give light and warmth to their lives, and to enable them to serve each other;--if we could take this view of the man's life and work, with what quiet reverence and joy should we celebrate the twenty-fifth of December as a day set apart to celebrate His birth into the world! If we ourselves loved a truthful, quiet way of living better than any other way, how would we feel to see our friends preparing to celebrate our birthday with strain, anxiety, and confusion? If we valued a loving consideration for others more than anything else in the world, how would it affect us to see our friends preparing for the festival with a forced sense of the conventional necessity for giving? Who gives himself with his gift feeds three,-- Himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me." That spirit should be in every Christmas gift throughout Christendom. The most thoughtless man or woman would recognize the truth if they could look at it quietly with due regard for the real meaning of the day. But after having heard and assented to the truth, the thoughtless people would, from force of habit, go on with the same rush and strain. It is comparatively easy to recognize the truth, but it is quite another thing to habitually recognize your own disobedience to it, and compel yourself to shun that disobedience, and so habitually to obey,--and to obey it is our only means of treating the truth with real respect. When you ask a man, about holiday time, how his wife is, not uncommonly he will say:-- "Oh, she is all tired out getting ready for Christmas." And how often we hear the boast:-- "I had one hundred Christmas presents to buy, and I am completely worn out with the work of it." And these very women who are tired and strained with the Christmas work, "put on an expression" and talk with emotion of the beauty of Christmas, and the joy there is in the "Christmas feeling." Just so every one at the birthday party of the absent guest exclaimed with delight at all the pleasures provided, although the essential spirit of the occasion contradicted directly the qualities of the man whose birthday it was supposed to honor. How often we may hear women in the railway cars talking over their Christmas shopping:-- "I got so and so for James,--that will do for him, don't you think so?" And, when her companion answers in the affirmative, she gives a sigh of relief, as if to say, now he is off my mind! Poor woman, she does not know what it means to give herself with her gift. She is missing one of the essentials of the true joy of Christmas Day. Indeed, if all her gifts are given in that spirit, she is directly contradicting the true spirit of the day. How many of us are unconsciously doing the same thing because of our--habit of regarding Christmas gifts as a matter of conventional obligation. If we get the spirit of giving because of Him whose birthday it is, we shall love to give, and our hearts will go out with our gifts,--and every gift, whether great or small, will be a thoughtful message of love from one to another. There are now many people, of course, who have this true spirit of Christmas giving, and they are the people who most earnestly wish that they had more. Then there are many more who do not know the spirit of a truly thoughtful gift, but would be glad to know it, if it could once be brought to their attention. We cannot give in a truly loving spirit if we give in order that we may receive. We cannot give truly in the spirit of Christmas if we rush and hurry, and feel strained and anxious about our gifts. We cannot give truly if we give more than we can afford. People have been known to give nothing, because they could not give something expensive; they have been known to give nothing in order to avoid the trouble of careful and appropriate selection: but to refrain from giving for such reasons is as much against the true spirit of Christmas as is the hurried, excited gift-making of conventionality. Even now there is joy in the Christmas time, in spite of the rush and hurry and selfishness, and the spirit of those who keep the joy alive by remembering whose birthday it is, serves as leaven all over the world. First let us remember what Christmas stands for, and then let us try to realize the qualities of the great personality which gave the day its meaning and significance,--let us honor them truly in all our celebrations. If we do this, we shall at the same time be truly honoring the qualities, and respecting the needs of every friend to whom we give, and our gifts, whether great or small, will be full of the spirit of discriminating affection. Let us realize that in order to give truly, we must give soberly and quietly, and let us take an hour or more by ourselves to think over our gifts before we begin to buy or to make them. If we do that the helpful thoughts are sure to come, and new life will come with them. A wise man has described the difference between heaven and hell by saying that in heaven, every one wants to give all that he has to every one else, and that in hell, every one wants to take away from others all they have. It is the spirit of heaven that belongs to Christmas. XIV _To Mothers_ MOST mothers know that it is better for the baby to put him into his crib and let him go quietly to sleep by himself, than to rock him to sleep or put him to sleep in his mother's arms. Most mothers know also the difficulty of getting the baby into the right habit of going to sleep; and the prolonged crying that has to be endured by both mother and baby before the habit is thoroughly established. Many a mother gets worn out in listening to her crying child, and goes to bed tired and jaded, although she has done nothing but sit still and listen. Many more, after listening and fretting for a while, go and take up the baby, and thus they weaken him as well as their own characters. A baby who finds out, when he is two months old, that his mother will take him up if he cries, is also apt to discover, if he cries or teases enough, that his mother will let him have his own way for the rest of his life. The result is that the child rules the mother, rather than the mother the child; and this means sad trouble and disorder for both. Strong, quiet beginnings are a most valuable help to all good things in life, and if a young mother could begin by learning how to sit quietly and restfully and let her baby cry until he quieted down and went to sleep, she would be laying the foundation for a very happy life with her children. The first necessity, after having seen that nothing is hurting him and that he really needs nothing, is to be willing that he should cry. A mother can make herself willing by saying over and over to herself, "It is right that he should cry; I want him to cry until he has learned to go to sleep quietly by himself He will be a stronger and a more healthy man for getting into all good habits as a child." Often the mother's spirit is willing, or wants to be willing, but her nerves rebel if, while she is teaching herself to listen quietly, she will take long, quiet breaths very steadily for some time, and will occupy herself with interesting work, she will find it a great help toward dropping nervous resistance. Children are much more sensitive than most people know, and readily respond to the mother's state of mind; and even though the mother is in the next room, if she is truly dropping her nervous resistance and tension, the baby will often stop his crying all the sooner, and besides, his mother will feel the good effects of her quiet yielding in her care of the baby all day long. She will be rested instead of tired when the baby has gone to sleep. She will have a more refreshing sleep herself, and she will be able to care for the baby more restfully when they are both awake. It is a universal rule that the more excited or naughty the children are, the more quiet and clear the mother should be. A mother who realizes this for the first time, and works with herself until she is free from all excited and strained resistance, discovers that it is through her care for her children that she herself has learned how to live. Blessed are the children who have such a mother, and blessed is the mother of those children! It is resistance--resistance to the naughtiness or disobedience in the child that not only hurts and tires the mother, but interferes with the best growth of the child. "What!" a mother may say, "should I want my child to be naughty? What a dreadful thing!" No, we should not want our children to be naughty, but we should be willing that they should be. We should drop resistance to their naughtiness, for that will give us clear, quiet minds to help them out of their troubles. All vehemence is weak; quiet, clear decision is strong; and the child not only feels the strength of the quiet, decisive action, but he feels the help from his mother's quiet atmosphere which comes with it. If all parents realized fully that the work they do for their children should be done in themselves first, there would soon be a new and wonderful influence perceptible all about us. The greatest difficulty often comes from the fact that children have inherited the evil tendencies of their parents, which the parents themselves have not acknowledged and overcome. In these cases, most of all, the work to be done for the child must first be done in the parents. A very poor woman, who was living in one room with her husband and three children, once expressed her delight at having discovered how to manage her children better: "I see!" she said, "the more I hollers, the more the children hollers; now I am not going to holler any more." There is "hollering" of the voice, and there is "hollering" of the spirit, and children echo and suffer from both. The same thing is true from the time they are born until they are grown up, when it should be right for them to be their own fathers and mothers, so far as their characters are concerned, that they can receive the greatest possible help from their parents through quiet non-resistance to their naughtiness, combined with firm decision in demanding obedience to law,--a decision which will derive its weight and influence from the fact that the parents themselves obey the laws to which they require obedience. Thus will the soul of the mother be mother to the soul of her child, and the development of mother and child be happily interdependent. It is, of course, not resisting to be grieved at the child's naughtiness,--for that grief must come as surely as penitence for our own wrongdoing. The true dropping of resistance brings with it a sense that the child is only given to us in trust, and an open, loving willingness leaves us free to learn the highest way in which the trust may be fulfilled. 
14196	----	THE NERVOUS HOUSEWIFE BY ABRAHAM MYERSON, M.D. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1920 Published November, 1920 Norwood Press Set up and electrotyped by J.S. Cushing Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I INTRODUCTORY 1 II THE NATURE OF "NERVOUSNESS" 17 III TYPES OF HOUSEWIFE PREDISPOSED TO NERVOUSNESS 46 IV THE HOUSEWORK AND THE HOME AS FACTORS IN THE NEUROSIS 74 V REACTION TO THE DISAGREEABLE 91 VI POVERTY AND ITS PSYCHICAL RESULTS 116 VII THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HUSBAND 126 VIII THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HOUSEHOLD CONFLICTS 141 IX THE SYMPTOMS AS WEAPONS AGAINST THE HUSBAND 160 X HISTORIES OF SOME SEVERE CASES 168 XI OTHER TYPICAL CASES 199 XII TREATMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL CASES 231 XIII THE FUTURE OF WOMAN, THE HOME, AND MARRIAGE 244 INDEX 269 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY How old is the problem of the Nervous Housewife? Did the semi-mythical Cave Man (who is perhaps only a pseudo-scientific creation) on his return from a prehistoric hunt find his leafy spouse all in tears over her staglocythic house-cleaning, or the conduct of the youngest cave child? Did she complain of her back, did she have a headache every time they disagreed, did she fuss and fret until he lost his patience and dashed madly out to the Cave Man's Refuge? We cannot tell; we only know that all humor aside, and without reference to the past, the Nervous Housewife is surely a phenomenon of the present-day American home. In greater or less degree she is in every man's home; nor is she alone the rich Housewife with too little to do, for though riches do not protect, poverty predisposes, and the poor Housewife is far more frequently the victim of this disease of occupation. Every practicing physician, every hospital clinic, finds her a problem, evoking pity, concern, exasperation, and despair. She goes from specialist to specialist,--orthopedic surgeon, gynecologist, X-ray man, neurologist. By the time she has completed a course of treatment she has tasted all the drugs in the pharmacopeia, wears plates on her feet, spectacles on her nose, has had her teeth tinkered with, and her insides straightened; has had a course in hydrotherapeutics, electrotherapeutics, osteopathy, and Christian Science! Such is an extreme case; the minor cases pass through life burdened with pains and aches of the body and soul. And one of the commonest and saddest of transformations is the change of the gay, laughing young girl, radiant with love and all aglow at the thought of union with her man, into the housewife of a decade,--complaining, fatigued, and disillusioned. Bound to her husband by the ties the years and the children have brought, there is a wall of misunderstanding between them. "Men don't understand," cries she. "Women are unreasonable," says he. What are the causes of the change? Did the housewife of a past generation go through the same stage? Ask any man you meet and he will tell you his mother is or was more enduring than his wife. "She bore three times as many children; she did all her own housework; she baked more, cooked more, sewed more; she got up at five o'clock in the morning and went to bed at ten at night; she never went out, never had a vacation, did not know the meaning of manicure, pedicure, coiffure. She was contented, never extravagant, and rarely sick." So the average man will say, and then: "Those were the good old days of simple living, gone like the dodo!" To-day,--well, it reminds me of a joke I heard. One man meets another and says: 'By the way, I heard that your wife was the champion athlete at college.' 'Ah, yes,' said the husband; 'now she is too weak to wash the dishes.' Is the average man's impression the correct one? Or are we dealing with the incorrigible disposition of man to glorify the past? To the majority of people their youth was an era of stronger, braver men, more wholesome, beautiful women. People were better, times were more natural, and there is a grim satisfaction in predicting that the "world is going to the dogs." "The good old days" has been the cry of man from the very earliest times. Yet read what a contemporary of the housewife of three quarters of a century ago says,--the wisest, wittiest, sanest doctor of the day, Oliver Wendell Holmes. The genial autocrat of the breakfast table observes: "Talk about military duty! What is that to the warfare of a married maid of all work, with the title of mistress and an American female constitution which collapses just in the middle third of life, comes out vulcanized India rubber, if it happens to live through the period when health and strength are most wanted?" And then, if one looks in the advertisements of half a century ago, one finds the nostrum dealer loudly proclaiming his capacity to cure what is evidently the Nervous Housewife. In America at least she has always existed, perhaps in lesser numbers than at present. And one remembers in a dim sort of way that the married woman of olden days was altogether faded at thirty-five, that she entered on middle life at a time when at least many of our women of to-day still think themselves young. It becomes interesting and necessary at this point to trace the evolution of the home, because this is to trace the evolution of our housewife. We are apt to think of the home as originating in a sort of cave, where the little unit--the Man, the Woman, and the Children--dwelt in isolation, ever on the watch against marauders, either animal or human. In this cave the woman was the chattel of man; he had seized her by force and ruled by force. Perhaps there was such a stage, but much more likely the home was a communal residence, where the man-herd, the group, the clan, the Family in the larger sense dwelt. Only a large group would be safe, and the strong social instinct, the herd feeling, was the basis of the home. Here the men and women dwelt in a promiscuity that through the ages went through an evolution which finally became the father-controlled monogamy of to-day. Here the women lived; here they span, sewed, built; here they started the arts, the handicrafts, and the religions. And from here the men went forth to fish and hunt and fight, grim males to whom a maiden was a thing to court and a wife a thing to enslave. Just how the home became more and more segregated and the family life more individualized is not in the province of this book to detail. This is certain: that the home was not only a place where man and woman mated, where their children were born and reared, where food was prepared and cooked, and where shelter from the elements was obtained; it was also the first great workshop, where all the manifold industries had their inception and early development. The housewife was then not only mother, wife, cook, and nurse; she was the spinner, the weaver, the tanner, the dyer, the brewer, the druggist. Even in the high civilization of the Jews this wide scope of the housewife prevailed. Read what the wisest, perhaps because most married, of men says: She seeketh wool and flax, And worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchant ships; She bringeth her food from afar. She considereth a field, and buyeth it. With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, And maketh strong her arms. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good. Her lamp goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the distaff And her hands hold the spindle. * * * * * She is not afraid of the snow for her household: For all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh for herself coverlets, She maketh linen garments and selleth them, And delivereth girdles unto the merchants. No wonder "her children rise up and call her blessed" and it is somewhat condescending of her husband when he "praiseth her." All we learn of him is that he "is known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of the land." With a wife like her, this was all he had to do. This combination of industrialism and domesticity continued until gradually men stepped into the field of work, perhaps as a result of their wives' example, and became farmers on a larger scale, merchants of a wider scope, artisans, handicraftsmen, guild members of a more developed technique. Woman started these things in the home or near it; man, through his restless energy, specialized and thus developed an intenser civilization. But even up till the nineteenth century woman carried on all her occupations at the home, which still continued to be workshop and hearth. Then man invented the machine, harnessed steam, wired electricity, and there was born the Factory, the specialized house of industry, in which there works no artisan, only factory hands. The home could not compete with this man's monster, into which flowed one river of raw material and out of which poured another of finished products. But not only did the factory dye, weave, spin, tan, etc.; it also invaded the innermost sphere of woman's work. For her loaf of bread it turned out thousands, until finally she is beginning to give up baking; for her hit-or-miss jellies, preserves, jams, it invented scientific canning with absolute methods, handy forms, tempting flavors. And canning did not stop there; meats, soups, vegetables, fruits are now placed in the hands of the housewife "Ready to Serve," until the cynical now state, "Woman is no longer a cook, she is a can opener." With all the talk in this modern time of women invading man's field, it is just to remark that man has stepped into woman's work and carried off a huge part of it to his own creation, the factory. Thus it has come to pass that in our day the housewife does but little dyeing, spinning, weaving, is no longer a handicraftsman, and in addition is turning over a large part of her food preparation and cooking to the factory. But the factory is not content with thus disarranging the ancient scheme of things by invading the housewife's province; it has dragged a large number of women, yearly increasing in number and proportion, into industry. Thus it has made this condition of affairs: that it takes the young girl from the home for the few years that intervene before her marriage. She is thus initiated into wage-earning before she becomes a man's wife, the housewife. This industrial period of a girl's life is important psychologically, for it profoundly influences her reaction to her status and work as homekeeper. Of even greater importance to our study than the influence of the factory is the rise of what is known as feminism. Of all the living creatures in the world the female of the human species has been the most downtrodden, for to every wretched class of man there was a still inferior, more wretched group, their wives. She was a slave to the slaves, a dependent of the abjectly poor. When men passed through the stage where woman's life might be taken at a whim, she remained a creature without rights of the wider kind. Men debated whether she had a soul, made cynical proverbs about her, called her the "weaker vessel," and debarred her from political and economic equality, classing her up to this very moment in rights with the idiot, the imbecile, and the criminal. Worse than this, they gave her a spurious homage, created a lop-sided chivalry, and caused her to accept as her ideal goal of womanhood the achievement of beauty and the entrance into wifehood. After they tied her hand and foot with restrictions and belittling ideals, they capped the climax by calling her weak and petty by nature and even got her to believe it! It is not my intention to trace the rise of feminism. Brave women arose from age to age to glorify the world and their sex, and men here and there championed them. Man started to emancipate himself from slavery, and noble ideals of the equality of mankind first were whispered, then shouted as battle cries, and finally chiseled with enduring letters into the foundations of States. "But if all this was good for men, why not for women--why should they be fettered by illiteracy, pettiness, dependence; why should they be voiceless in the state and world?" So asked the feminists. The factory called for women as labor; they became the clerks, the teachers, the typists, the nurses. Medicine and the law opened their doors, at least in part. And now we are on the verge of universal suffrage, with women entering into the affairs of the world, theoretically at least the equals of man. But with the entrance of woman into many varied professions and occupations, with a wider access to experience and knowledge, arose what may be called the era of the "individualization of woman." For if any group of people are kept under more or less uniform conditions in early life, if one goal is held out as the only legitimate aim and end, in a word, if their training and purposes are made alike, they become alike and individuality never develops. With individuality comes rebellion at old-established conditions, dissatisfaction, discontent, and especially if the old ideal still remains in force. This new type of woman is not so well fitted for the old type of marriage as her predecessors. There arises a group of consequences based psychologically on this, a fact which we shall find of great importance later on. Women still regard marriage as their chief goal in life, still enter homes, still bear children, and take their husband's name. But having become more individualized they demand more definite individual treatment and rebel more at what they consider an infringement of their rights as human beings. Also, and unfortunately, they still wish the right to be whimsical, they continue to reserve for themselves the weapons of tears, reproaches, and unreasonable demands. This has brought about the divorce evil. Briefly the "divorce" evil arises first from the rebellion of woman against marital drunkenness, unfaithfulness, neglect, brutality that a former generation of wives tolerated and even expected. Second, it arises from a conflict between the institution of marriage which still carries with it the chattel idea--that woman is property--and a generation of women that does not accept this. Third, it arises from the ill-balanced demands of women to be treated as equals and also as irresponsible, petty, and indulged tyrants. Men are unable to adjust themselves to the shattering of the romantic ideal, and the home disintegrates. Though divorce is the top of the crest of marital unhappiness, it really represents only the extreme cases, and behind it is a huge body of quarreling and divided homes. We shall later see that our Nervous Housewife has symptoms and pains and aches and changes in mood and feeling that are born of the conflict that is in part pictured by divorce. _Divorce is a manifestation of the discontent of women, and so is the nervousness of the housewife._ There arises as a result of this individualization of woman, as a result of increasing physiological knowledge, the hugely important fact of restricted child bearing. The woman will no longer bear children indiscriminately,--and the large family is soon to be a thing of the past in America and in all the civilized world. The-woman-that-knows-how shrinks from the long nine months of pregnancy, the agony of the birth, and the weary restricted months of nursing. Had the woman of a past time known how, she too would have refused to bear. In this the housewife of to-day is seconded by her husband, for where he has sympathy for his wife he prefers to let her decide the number of children, and also he is impressed by the high cost of rearing them. One gets cynical about the influence of church, patriotism, and press when one sees how the housewife has disregarded these influences. For all the religions preach that race suicide is a sin, all the statesmen point out that only decadent nations restrict families, and all or nearly all the press thunder against it. It is even against the law for a physician or other person to instruct in the methods of birth restriction, and yet--the birth rate steadily drops. An immigrant mother has six, eight, or ten children and her daughter has one, two, or three, very rarely more, and often enough none. This is true even of races close to religious teaching, such as the Irish Catholic and the Jew. One can well be cynical of the power of religion and teaching and law when one finds that even the families of ministers, rabbis, editors, and lawmakers, all of whom stand publicly for natural birth, have shown a great reduction in their size, that has taken place in a single generation. Is the modern woman more susceptible to the effects of pregnancy,--less resistant to the strain of childbearing and childbirth? It is a quite general impression amongst obstetricians that this is a fact and also that fewer women are able to nurse their babies. If so, these phenomena are of the highest importance to the race and likewise to the problem of the new housewife. For we shall learn that the lowering of energy is both a cause and symptom of her neuroses. If then we summarize what has been thus far outlined, we find two currents in the evolution of the housewife. _First_, she has yielded a large part of her work to the factory, practically all of that part of it which is industrial and a considerable portion of the food preparation. _Second_, there has been a rise in the dignity and position of woman in the past one hundred and fifty years which has had many results. She has considerably widened the scope of her experience with life through work in the factory, in the office, in the schoolhouse, and in the professions. This has changed her attitude toward her original occupation of housewife and is a psychological fact of great importance. She has become more industrial and individualized, and as a result has declined to live in unsatisfactory relations with man, so that divorce has become more frequent. In part this is also caused by her inability to give up petty irresponsibility while claiming equality. Finally, the declining birth rate is still further evidence of her individualization and is in a sense her denial of mere femaleness and an affirmation of freedom. CHAPTER II THE NATURE OF "NERVOUSNESS" Preliminary to our discussion of the nervousness of the housewife we must take up without great regard to details the subject of nervousness in general. Nervousness, like many another word of common speech, has no place whatever in medicine. Indeed, no term indicating an abnormal condition is so loosely used as this one. People say a man is nervous when they mean he is subject to attacks of anger, an emotional state. Likewise he is nervous when he is a victim of fear, a state literally the opposite of the first. Or, if he is restless, is given to little tricks like pulling at his hair, or biting his nails, he is nervous. The mother excuses her spoiled child on the ground of his nervousness, and I have seen a thoroughly bad boy who branded his baby sister with a heated spoon called "nervous." A "nervous breakdown" is a familiar verbal disguise for one or other of the sinister faces of insanity itself. It should be made clear that what we are dealing with in the nervous housewife is not a special form of nervous disorder. It conforms to the general types found in single women and also in men. It differs in the intensity of symptoms, in the way they group themselves, and in the causes. Physicians use the term psychoneuroses to include a group of nervous disorders of so-called functional nature. That is to say, there is no alteration that can be found in the brain, the spinal cord, or any part of the nervous system. In this, these conditions differ from such diseases as locomotor ataxia, tumor of the brain, cerebral hemorrhage, etc., because there are marked changes in the structure in the latter troubles. One might compare the psychoneuroses to a watch which needed oiling or cleaning, or merely a winding up,--as against one in which a vital part was broken. The most important of the psychoneuroses, in so far as the housewife is concerned, is the condition called neurasthenia, although two other diseases, psychasthenia and hysteria, are of importance. It is interesting that neurasthenia is considered by many physicians as a disease of modern times. Indeed, it was first described in 1869 by the eminent neurologist Beard, who thought it was entirely caused by the stress and strain of American life. That not only America, but every part of the whole civilized world has its neurasthenia is now an accepted fact. Knowing what we do of its causes we infer that it is probably as old as mankind; but there exists no reasonable doubt that modern life, with its hurry, its tensions, its widespread and ever present excitement, has increased the proportion of people involved. Particularly the increase in the size and number of the cities, as compared with the country, is a great factor in the spread of neurasthenia. Then, too, the introduction of so-called time-saving, _i.e._ distance-annihilating instruments, such as the telephone, telegraph, railroad, etc., have acted not so much to save time as to increase the number of things done, seen, and heard. The busy man with his telephone close at hand may be saving time on each transaction, but by enormously increasing the number of his transactions he is not saving _himself_. The keynote of neurasthenia is _increased liability to fatigue_. The tired feeling that comes on with a minimum of exertion, worse on arising than on going to bed, is its distinguishing mark. Sleep, which should remove the fatigue of the day, does not; the victim takes half of his day to get going; and at night, when he should have the delicious drowsiness of bedtime, he is wide-awake and disinclined to go to bed or sleep. This fatigue enters into all functions of the mind and body. Fatigue of mind brings about lack of concentration, an inattention; and this brings about an inefficiency that worries the patient beyond words as portending a mental breakdown. Fatigue of purpose brings a listlessness of effort, a shirking of the strenuous, the more distressing because the victim is often enough an idealist with over-lofty purposes. Fatigue of mood is marked by depression of a mild kind, a liability to worry, an unenthusiasm for those one loves or for the things formerly held dearest. And finally the fatigue is often marked by a lack of control over the emotional expression, so that anger blazes forth more easily over trifles, and the tears come upon even a slight vexation. _To be neurasthenic is to magnify the pins and pricks of life into calamities, and to be the victim of an abnormal state that is neither health nor disease._ The more purely physical symptoms constitute almost everything imaginable. 1. Pains and aches of all kinds stand out prominently; headache, backache, pains in the shoulders and arms, pains in the feet and legs, pains that flit here and there, dull weary pains, disagreeable feelings rather than true pains. These pains are frequently related to disagreeable experiences and thoughts, but it is probable that fatigue plays the principal part in evoking them. 2. Changes in the appetite, in the condition of the stomach and bowels, are prominent. Loss of appetite is complained of, or more often a capricious appetite, vanishing quickly, or else too easily satisfied. The capriciousness of appetite is undoubtedly emotional, for disagreeable emotions, such as worry, fear, vexation, have long been known as the chief enemies of appetite. With this change of appetite goes a host of disorders manifested by "belching", "sour stomach", "logy feelings", etc. What is back of these lay terms is that the tone, movement, and secreting activity of the stomach is impaired in neurasthenia. When we consider later on the nature of emotion, we shall find these changes to be part of the disorder of emotion. 3. So, too, there is constipation. In how far the constipation is primary and in how far it is secondary is a question. At any rate, once it is established, it interferes with all the functions of the organism by its interference with the mood. The following story of Voltaire bluntly illustrates a fact of widespread knowledge. Voltaire and an Englishman, after an intimate philosophical discussion, decided that the aches and pains of life outnumbered the agreeable sensations, and that to live was to endure unhappiness. Therefore, they decided that jointly they would commit suicide and named the time and the place. On the day appointed the Englishman appeared with a revolver ready to blow out his brains, but no Voltaire was to be seen. He looked high and low and then went to the sage's home. There he found him seated before a table groaning with the good things of life and reading a naughty novel with an expression of utmost enjoyment. Said the Englishman to Voltaire, "This was the day upon which we were to commit suicide." "Ah, yes," said Voltaire, "so we were, but to-day my bowels moved well." 4. The disturbed sleep, either as insomnia or an unrestful, dream-disturbed slumber, is a distressing symptom. For we look to the bed as a refuge from our troubles, as a sanctuary wherein is rebuilded our strength. We may link work and sleep as the two complementary functions necessary for happiness. If sleep is disturbed, so is work, and with that our purposes are threatened. So disturbed sleep has not only its bodily effects but has its marked results on our happiness. 5. Fundamental in the symptoms of neurasthenia is fear. This fear takes two main forms. First, the worry over the life situation in general, that is to say, fear concerning business; fear concerning the health and prosperity of the household; fear that magnifies anything that has even the faintest possibility of being direful into something that is almost sure to happen and be disastrous. This constant worry over the possibilities of the future is both a cause of neurasthenia and a symptom, in that once a neurasthenic state is established, the liability to worry becomes greatly increased. Second, there is a special form of worry called by the old authors hypochondriacism, which essentially is fear about one's own health. The hypochondriac magnifies every flutter of his heart into heart disease, every stitch in his side into pleurisy, every cough into tuberculosis, every pain in the abdomen into cancer of the stomach, every headache into the possibility of brain tumor or insanity. He turns his gaze inward upon himself, and by so doing becomes aware of a host of sensations that otherwise stream along unnoticed. Our vision was meant for the environment, for the world in which we live, since the bodily processes go on best unnoticed. The little fugitive pains and aches; the little changes in respiration; the rumblings and movements of the gastro-intestinal tract have no essential meaning in the majority of cases, but once they are watched with apprehension and anxiety, they multiply extraordinarily in number and intensity. One of the cardinal groups of symptoms in a neurasthenic is this fear of serious bodily disease for which he seeks examination and advice constantly. Naturally enough, he becomes the choicest prey for the charlatan, the faker, or perhaps ranks second to the victim of venereal or sexual disease. The faker usually assures him that he has the disorders he fears and then proceeds to cure him by his own expensive and marvelous course of treatment. What has been sketched here is merely the outside of neurasthenia. Back of it as causative are matters we shall deal with in detail later on in relation to the housewife,--matters like innate temperament, bad training, liability to worry, wounded pride, failure, desire for sympathy, monotony of life, boredom, unhappiness, pessimism of outlook, over-æsthetic tastes, unfulfilled and thwarted desires, secret jealousy, passions and longings, fear of death, sex problems and difficulties and doubt; matters like recent illness, childbirth, poverty, overwork, wrong sex habits, lack of fresh air, etc. Fundamentally neurasthenia is a deënergization. By this is meant that either there is an actual reduction in the energy of the body (as after a sickness, pregnancy, etc.) or else something impedes the discharge of energy. This latter is usually an emotional matter, or arises from some thought, some life situation of a depressing kind. It is necessary and important that we consider these two aspects of our subject a little closer, not so much as regards the housewife, but over the wider field of the human being. The human being, like every living thing, is an instrument for the building up and discharge of energy. He takes in food, the food is digested (made over into certain substances) and these are built up into the tissues,--and then their energy is discharged as heat and as motion. The heat is the body temperature, the motion is the movement of the human body in all the marvelous variety of which it is capable. In other words, the discharge of energy is the play of our childhood and of our later years; it is the skill and strength of our arms, the cleverness of our hands, the fleetness of our feet, the joyous vigor of our love-making, the embrace; it is the noble purpose, the long, hard-fought battles of any kind. It is all that is summed up in desire, purpose, and achievement. Now all these things may be impeded by actual reduction of energy, as in tuberculosis, cancer, or in the lassitude of convalescence. In addition there are emotions, feelings, thoughts that energize,--that create vigor and strength of body and mind. Joy rouses the spirit; one dances, laughs, sings, shouts; or the more quiet type of person takes up work with zeal and renewed energy. Hope brings with it an eagerness for the battle, a zest for work. The glow of pride that comes with praise is a stimulus of great power and enlarges the scope of the personality. The feeling that comes with successful effort, with rewarded effort, is a new birth of purpose and will. And whatever arouses the fighting spirit, which in the last analysis is based on anger, achieves the same end. There are _deënergizing emotions and experiences_ as well, things that suddenly rob the victim of strength and purpose. Fear of a certain type is one of these things, as when one's knees knock together, the limbs become as it were without the control of the will, the heart flutters, and the voice is hoarse and weak. Fear of sickness, fear of death, either for one's self or some beloved one, may completely deënergize the strongest man. Then there is hope deferred, and disappointment, the frustration of desire and purpose, helplessness before insult and injustice, blame merited or unmerited, the feeling of failure and inevitable disaster. There is the unhappy life situation,--the mistaken marriage, the disillusionment of betrayed love, the dashing of parental pride. The profoundest deënergization of life may come from a failure of interest in one's work, a boredom due to monotony, a dropping out of enthusiasm from the mere failure of new stimuli, as occurs with loneliness. Any or all of these factors may bring about a neurasthenic, deënergized state with lowering of the functions of mind and body. We shall discover how this comes about farther on. What part does a subconscious personality take in all this and in further symptoms? Is there a subconsciousness, and what is it? In answer, the majority of modern psychologists and psychopathologists affirm the existence of a subconscious personality. One needs only mention James, Janet, Ribot, McDougall, Freud, Prince, out of a host of writers. Whether they are right or not, or whether we now deal with a new fashion in mental science, this can be affirmed--that every human being is a pot boiling with desires, passions, lusts, wishes, purposes, ideas, and emotions, some of which he clearly recognizes and clearly admits, and some of which he does not clearly recognize and which he would deny. These desires, passions, purposes, etc., are not in harmony one with another; they are often irreconcilable and one has to be smothered for the sake of the other. Thus a sex feeling that is not legitimate, an illicit forbidden love has to be conquered for the sake of the purpose to be religious or good, or the desire to be respected. So one may struggle against a hatred for a person whom one should love,--a husband, a wife, an invalid parent, or child whose care is a burden, and one refuses to recognize that there is such a struggle. So one may seek to suppress jealousy, envy of the nearest and dearest; soul-stirring, forbidden passions; secret revolt against morality and law which may (and often do) rage in the most puritanical breast. In the theory of the subconscious these undesired thoughts, feelings, passions, wishes, are repressed and pushed into the innermost recesses of the being, out of the light of the conscious personality, but nevertheless acting on the personality, distorting it, wearying it. However this may be, there is struggle, conflict in every human breast and especially difficult and undecided struggles in the case of the neurasthenic. Literally, secretly or otherwise, he is a house divided against himself, deënergized by fear, disgust, revolt, and conflict. And the housewife we are trying to understand is particularly such a creature, with a host of deënergizing influences playing on her, buffeting her. Our aim will be to analyze these influences and to discover how they work. I have stated that in medical practice two other types are described,--psychasthenia and hysteria. These are not so definitely related to the happenings of life as to the inborn disposition of the patient. Nor are they quite so common in the housewife as the neurasthenic, deënergized state. However, they are usually of more serious nature, and as such merit a description. By the term psychasthenia is understood a group of conditions in which the bodily symptoms, such as fatigue, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, etc., are either not so marked as in neurasthenia, or else are overshadowed by other, more distinctly mental symptoms. These mental symptoms are of three main types. There is a tendency to recurring fears,--fears of open places, fears of closed places, fear of leaving home, of being alone, fear of eating or sleeping, fear of dirt, so that the victim is impelled continually to wash the hands, fear of disease--especially such as syphilis--and a host of other fears, all of which are recognized as unreasonable, against which the victim struggles but vainly. Sometimes the fear is nameless, vague, undifferentiated, and comes on like a cloud with rapid heartbeat, faint feelings, and a sense of impending death. Sometimes the fear is related to something that has actually happened, as, fear of anything hot after a sunstroke; or fear of any vehicle after an automobile accident. There is also a tendency to obsessive ideas and doubts; that is, ideas and doubts that persist in coming against the will of the patient, such as the obscene word or phrase that continually obtrudes itself on a chaste woman, or the doubt whether one has shut the door or properly turned off the gas. Of course, everybody has such obsessions and doubts occasionally, but to be psychasthenic about it is to have them continually and to have them obtrude themselves into every action. In extreme psychasthenia the difficulty of "making up the mind", of deciding, becomes so great that a person may suffer agonies of internal debate about crossing the street, putting on his clothes, eating his meals, doing his work, about every detail of his coming, going, doing, and thinking. A restless anxiety results, a fear of insanity, an inefficiency, and an incapacity for sustained effort that results in the name that is often applied,--"anxiety neurosis." Third, there is a group of impulsions and habits. Citing a few absurd impulsions: a person feels compelled to step over every crack, to touch the posts along his journey, to take the stairs three steps at a time. The habits range from the queer desire to bite one's nails to the quick that is so common in children and which persists in the psychasthenic adult, to the odd grimaces and facial contortions, blinking eyes and cracking joints of the inveterate _ticquer_. Against some of these habit spasms, comparable to severe stammering, all measures are in vain, for there seems to be a queer pleasure in these acts against which the will of the patient is powerless. Especially do the first two described types of trouble follow exhaustion, acute illness, sudden fright, and long painful ordeal. The ground is prepared for these conditions, _e.g._ by the strain of long attendance on a sick husband or child. Then, suddenly one day, comes a queer fear or a faint dizzy feeling which awakens great alarm, is brooded upon, wondered at, and its return feared. This fearful expectation really makes the return inevitable, and then the disease starts. If the patient would seek competent advice at this stage, recovery would usually be prompt. Instead, there is a long unsuccessful struggle, with each defeat tending to make the fear or anxiety or obsession habitual. Sometimes, perhaps in most cases, and in all cases according to Freud and his followers, there is a long-hidden series of causes behind the symptoms; subconscious sexual conflicts and repressions, etc. It may be stated here that the present author is not at all a Freudian and believes that the causes of these forms of nervousness are simpler, more related to the big obvious factors in life, than to the curiously complicated and bizarrely sexual Freudian factors. People get tired, disgusted, apprehensive; they hate where they should love; love where they should hate; are jealous unreasonably; are bored, tortured by monotony; have their hopes, purposes, and desires frustrated and blocked; fear death and old age, however brave a face they may wear; want happiness and achievement, and some break, one way or another, according to their emotional and intellectual resistance. These and other causes are the great factors of the conditions we have been considering. Of all the forms of nervousness proper, the psychoneuroses, hysteria is probably the one having its source mainly in the character of the patient. That is to say, outward happenings play a part which is secondary to the personality defect. Hysteria is one of the oldest of diseases and has probably played a very important rôle in the history of man. Unquestionably many of the religions have depended upon hysteria, for it is in this field that "miracle cures" occur. All founders of religions have based part of their claim on the belief of others in their healing power. Nothing is so spectacular as when the hysterical blind see, the hysterical dumb talk, the hysterical cripple throws away his crutches and walks. In every age and in every country, in every faith, there have been the equivalents of Lourdes and St. Anne de Beaupré. In hysteria four important groups of symptoms occur in the housewife as well as in her single sisters and brothers. There is first of all an emotional instability, with a tendency to prolonged and freakish manifestations,--the well-known hysterics with laughing, crying, etc. Fundamental in the personality of the hysterics is this instability, this emotionality, which is however secondary to an egotistic, easily wounded nature, craving sympathy and respect and often unable legitimately to earn them. A group of symptoms that seem hard to explain are the so-called paralyses. These paralyses may affect almost any part, may come in a moment and go as suddenly, or last for years. They may concern arm, leg, face, hands, feet, speech, etc. They seem very severe, but are due to worry, to misdirected ideas and emotions and not at all to injury to the nervous system. They are manifestations of what the neurologists call "dissociations of the personality." That is, conflicts of emotions, ideas, and purposes of the type previously described have occurred, and a paralysis has resulted. These paralyses yield remarkably to any energizing influence like good fortune, the compelling personality of a physician or clergyman or healer (the miracle cure), or a serious danger. The latter is exemplified in the cases now and then reported of people who have not been out of bed for years, but are aroused by threat of some danger, like a fire, reach safety, and thereafter are well. Similar in type to the paralyses are losses of sensation in various parts of the body,--losses so complete that one may thrust a needle deep into the flesh without pain to the patient. In the days of witch-hunting the witch-hunters would test the women suspected with a pin, and if they found places where pain was not felt, considered they had proof of witchcraft or diabolic possession, so that many a hysteric was hanged or drowned. The history of man is full of psychopathic characters and happenings; insane men have changed the course of human events by their ideas and delusions, and on the other hand society has continually mistaken the insane and the nervously afflicted for criminals or wretches deserving severest punishment. Especially striking in hysteria are the curious changes in consciousness that take place. These range from what seem to be fainting spells to long trances lasting perhaps for months, in which animation is apparently suspended and the body seems on the brink of death. In olden days the Delphian oracles were people who had the power voluntarily of throwing themselves into these hysteric states and their vague statements were taken to be heaven-inspired. To-day, their descendants in hysteria are the crystal gazers, the mediums, the automatic writers that by a mixture of hysteria and faking deceive the simple and credulous. For, in the last analysis, all hysterics are deceivers both of themselves and of others. Their symptoms, real enough at bottom, are theatrical and designed for effect. As I shall later show, they are weapons, used to gain an end, which is the whim or will of the patient. In order to clinch our understanding of the above conditions we must now consider in more detail certain phases of emotion. Fear curdles the blood, anger floods the body with passion, sorrow flexes the proud head to earth and stifles the heartbeat; joy opens the floodgates of strength, and hope lifts up the head and braces man's soul. Man is said to be a rational being, but his thought is directed mainly against the problems of nature, much more rarely against _his own_ problems. It is for emotion that we live, for emotion in the wide sense of pleasure and pride. What guides us in our conduct is desire, and desire in the last analysis is based on the instincts and the allied emotions,--hunger, sex, property, competition, coöperation. The intelligence guides the instincts and governs the emotions, but in the case of the vast majority of mankind is swept out of the field when any great decision is to be made. We are accustomed to thinking of emotion as a thing purely psychical,--purely of the mind, despite the fact that all the great descriptions and all the homely sayings portray it as bodily. "My heart thumped like a steam engine," or "I could not catch my breath"; "a cold chill played up and down my back"; "I swallowed hard, because my mouth was so dry I could not speak." And the Bible repeatedly says of the man stricken by fear, "His bowels turned to water," with a graphic force only equaled by its truth. William James, nearly simultaneously with Lange, pointed out that emotion cannot be separated from its physical concomitants and maintain its identity. That is, if we separate in our minds the weak, chilly feeling, the dry mouth, the racing heart, the sharp, harsh breathing, and the tension of the muscles getting ready for flight from the feeling of fear, nothing tangible is left. Similarly with sorrow or joy or anger. Take the latter emotion; imagine yourself angry,--immediately the jaw becomes set and the lips draw back in a semi-snarl, the fists clench and the muscles tighten, while the head and body are thrust forward in what is, as Darwin pointed out, the preparation for pouncing on the foe. Even if you mimic anger without any especial reason, there steals over you a feeling not unlike anger. In a famous paragraph James essentially states that instead of crying because we are sorry, it is fully as likely that we are sorry because we cry. So with every emotion; we are afraid because we run away, and happy because we dance and shout. In other words he reversed the order of things as the everyday person would see it; makes primary and of fundamental importance the physical response rather than the feeling itself. This has been widely disagreed with, and is not at all an acceptable theory in its entirety. Yet modern physiology has shown that emotion is largely a physical matter, largely a thing of blood vessels, heartbeat, lungs, glands, and digestive organs. This physical foundation of emotion is a very important matter in our study of the housewife as of every other living person. For it is especially in the emotional disturbance that the origin of much of nervousness is to be found, and that on what may be called the physical basis of emotion. What can emotion produce that is pathological, detrimental to well-being? We may start with the grossest, simplest manifestations. It may entirely upset digestion, as in the vomiting of disgust and excitement. Or, in lesser measure, it may completely destroy the appetite, as occurs when a disturbing emotion arises at mealtime. This is probably brought about by the checking of the gastric secretions. (Cannon's work; Pavlow's work.) It may check the secretion of milk in the nursing mother, or it may change the quality of the milk so that it almost poisons the infant. It may cause the bladder and bowels to be evacuated, or it may prevent their evacuation. It may so change the supply of blood in the body as to leave the head without sufficient quantity and thus bring about a fainting spell; _i.e._ may absolutely deprive the victim of consciousness. In lesser degree it causes the blush, a visible manifestation of emotion often very distressing. It may completely abolish sex power in the male, or it may bring about sex manifestations which the victim would almost rather die than show. It may completely deënergize so that neither interest, enthusiasm, or power remains. This is a familiar effect of sorrow but occurs in lesser degree with the form of fear called worry. The fact is that emotion is an intense bodily response to a situation which when perceived is the state of feeling. This intense bodily response, involving the very minutest tissues of the body, may increase the available energy, may help the bodily functioning, may stimulate the "psychical" processes, but also it may deënergize to an extraordinary degree, it may interfere with every function, including thought and action. It may surely produce acute illness, and it may, though rarely, produce death. Moreover, it is extraordinarily contagious. Every one knows how a hearty laugh spreads, and how quick the response to a smile. Indeed, emotion has probably for one of its main functions the producing of an effect on some one else, and all the world uses emotion for this purpose. Anger is used to produce fear, sorrow to evoke sympathy, fear is to bring about relenting, a smile and laughter, friendliness, except where one smiles or laughs _at_ some one, and then its design is to bring sorrow, anger, or pain. The leader maintains a hopeful, joyous demeanor so that his followers may also be joyous or hopeful and thus be energized to their best. Morale is the state of emotion of a group; it is raised when joyous, energizing emotions are set working in the group and is lowered when pessimistic deënergizing emotions become dominant. A city or a nation becomes energized with good news and success and deënergized when the battle seems lost. The spread of emotion from person to person by sympathetic feeling or the reverse (as when we get depressed because our enemy is happy) is a social fact of incalculable importance. The problem of the nervous housewife is a problem of society because she gives her mood over to her family or else intensely dissatisfies its members so that the home ties are greatly weakened. This spread of emotion was happily portrayed by a motion picture I recently saw. Old Grouchy Moneybags, wealthy beyond measure and afflicted with gout, is seated at his breakfast table. In the next room, seen with the all-seeing eye of the movie, the butler makes love to the very willing maid. In the kitchen the fat cook is feeding the ever hungry butcher's boy with gingerbread and cake, and on the back steps the household cat is purring gently in contentment. Happiness is the predominant note. Then Old Moneybags savagely rings the bell. Enters the butler, obsequious and solicitous. "The coffee is bad, the toast is vile, everything is wrong. You are a _deleted deleted deleted deleted_ rascal." Exit the butler, outwardly humble, inwardly a raging flood of anger, and he meets the maid, who archly invites his attentions. She gets them, only they are in the form of an angry shove and an oath. White with indignation, she stamps her foot and runs into the kitchen, bursting into tears. The cook, solicitous, receives a slap in the face, and as the maid bounces out, the cook, seeking a victim, grabs away the gingerbread from the butcher's boy. And that still hungry juvenile slams the door as he leaves and kicks the slumbering cat off the back doorstep. Unfortunately the film did not show what the outraged cat did. Possibly it started a devastation that reached back into Moneybags' career; at any rate the unusual little picture (which later went on to the usual happy ending) showed how emotion spreads through the world, just as disease does. The infection that starts in the hovel finally strikes down the rich man's child, enthroned in the palace. The mood engendered by the humiliation of poverty or cruelty or any injustice finally shakes a king off his throne. So when we trace the deënergizing emotions of the housewife, we are tracing factors that affect her husband, his work, and Society at large; we trace the things that mold her children, and thus we follow her mood, her emotion, into the future, into history. CHAPTER III TYPES OF HOUSEWIFE PREDISPOSED TO NERVOUSNESS There are three main factors in the production of the nervousness of the housewife, and they weave and interweave in a very complex way to produce a variety of results. All the things of life, no matter how simple in appearance, are a complex combination of action and reaction. Our housewife's symptoms are no exception, whether they are mainly pains, aches, and fatigue, or the deeply motivated doubt or feeling of unreality. The nature of the housewife, the conditions of her life, and her relations to her husband are these three factors. All enter into each case, though in some only one may be emphasized as of importance. There are cases where the nature of the woman is mainly the essential cause, others where it is the conditions of her life, and still others where the husband stands out as the source of her symptoms. We are now to consider the nature of the housewife as our first factor. We may preamble this by saying that a woman essentially normal in one relationship in life may be abnormal in some other, may be the traditional square peg in the round hole. Moreover, we are to insist on the essential and increasing individuality of women, which is to a large extent a recent phenomenon. The cynical commonplace is "All women are alike"--and then follows the specific accusation--"in fickleness", "in extravagance", "in unreasonableness", in this trick or that. The chief effort of conservatism is to make them alike, to fit each one for the same life by the same training in habits, knowledge, abilities, and ideals. Talk about Prussianism! The great Prussianism, with its ideal of uniformity, serviceability, and servility, has been the masculine ideal of woman's life. Man was to be diversified as life itself, was to taste all its experiences, but woman had her sphere, which belied all mathematics by being a narrow groove. The nineteenth century changed all that,--or started the change which is going on with extraordinary rapidity in the twentieth. There are all kinds of women, at least potentially. It may be true that woman tends less to vary than man, that she follows a conservative middle-of-the-road biologically, while man spreads out, but no one can be sure of this until woman's early training to some extent resembles man's. 1. From the very start woman is trained to vanity. Every mother loves to doll up her girl baby, and the child is admired for her dress and appearance. Now it is an essential quality of the normal human being that he accepts as an ideal the quality most admired. To the young child, the girl, the young woman, the important thing is Looks, Looks, Looks! The first question asked about a woman is, "Is she pretty?" The pretty girls, the ones most courted, the ones surest on the whole to get married and to become housewives are usually spoiled by indulgence, petting, admiration, and this for a quality not at all related to strong character, and therefore vanity of a trivial kind results. 2. Moreover, woman is trained to emotionality. It may be that she is by nature more emotional than man, but again this can only be known when she has been trained to repress emotional response as a man is trained. If a boy cries or shows fear, he is scolded, and training of one kind or another is instituted to bring about moral and mental hardihood. But if a girl cries, she is consoled by some means and taught that tears are potent weapons, a fact she uses with extraordinary effect later on, especially in dealing with men. If she shows fear, she is protected, sheltered, and given a sort of indulged inferiority. 3. The romantic ideal is constantly held before her in the private counsel of her mother, in the books she reads, in the plays she witnesses, in all the allurements of art. She is to await the lover, the hero; he will take her off with him to dwell in love and happiness forever. All stories, or most of them, end before the heroine develops the neurosis of the housewife. In fact, literature is the worst possible preparation for married life, excepting perhaps the _courtship_. This latter emphasizes a distorted chivalry that makes of woman a petty thing on a pedestal, out of touch with reality; it is an exciting entrance into what in the majority of cases is a rather monotonous existence. All these things--vanity, emotionality, romanticism, courtship--are poor training for the home. They hinder even the strongest woman, they are fetters for the more delicate. In taking up the special types predisposed to the nervousness of the housewife it is to be emphasized that conditions may bring about the neurosis in the normal housewife. Nevertheless, there are groups of women who, because of their make-up or constitution, acquire the neurosis much more easily and much more intensely than do the normal women. They are the types most commonly seen in the hospital clinic or in the private consulting room of the neurologist. First comes the hyperæsthetic type. One of the chief marks of advancing civilization is an increasing refinement of taste and desire. The fundamental human needs are food, shelter, clothes, sex relations, and companionship. These the savage has as well as his civilized brother, and he finds them not only necessary but agreeable. What we call progress improves the food and the shelter, modifies the clothes, elaborates the sex relations and the code governing companionship. With each step forward the cruder methods become more actively disagreeable, and only the refined methods prove agreeable. In other words, desire keeps pace with improvement, so that although great advances materially have been made, there has been little advance, if any, in contentment. This is because as we progress in refinement little things come to be important, manner becomes more essential than matter, and we get to the hyperæsthetic stage. Thus the dinner becomes less important than the manner of serving it. In the "highest circles" it is the _savoir faire_, the niceties of conduct, that count more than character. Words become the means of playing with thought rather than the means of expressing it, and thought itself scorns the elemental and fundamental and busies itself with the vagaries of existence. From another angle, to the hyperæsthetic more and more things have become disagreeable. To the man of simple tastes and simple feelings, only the calamities are disagreeable; to the hyperæsthetic every breeze has a sting, and life is full of pin pricks. "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" are multiplied in number, and furthermore the reaction to them is intensified. In the "Arabian Nights" the princess boasts that a rose petal bruises her skin, while her competitor in delicacy is made ill by a fiber of cotton in her silken garments. So with the hyperæsthetic; an unintentional overlooking is reacted to as a deadly insult; the thwarting of any desire robs life of its savor; sounds become noises; a bit of litter, dirt; a little reality, intolerable crudity. A woman with this temperament is a poor candidate for matrimony unless there goes with it a capacity for adjustment, unusual in this type. Most men have their habitual crudities, their daily lapses, and every home is the theater of a constant struggle with the disagreeable. Intensely pleased by the utmost refinements, these are too uncommon to make up for the shortcomings. The hyperæsthetic woman is constantly the prey of the most deënergizing of emotions,--disgust. "It makes me sick" is not an exaggerated expression of her feeling. And her afflicted household size up the situation with the brief analysis, "Everything makes her nervous." Every one in her household falls under the tyranny of her disposition, mingling their concern with exasperation, their pity with a silent almost subconscious contempt. Next comes the over-conscientious type. Whatever conscience is, whether implanted by God, or the social code sanctified by training, teaching, and a social nature, there can be no question that, as the Court of Appeals, it does harm as well as good. There are people whose lack of conscience is back of all manner of crimes, from murder down to careless, slack work; whose cruelty, lust, and selfishness operate unhampered by restraint. On the other hand there are others whose hypertrophied conscience works in one of two directions. If they are zealots, convinced of the righteousness of their own decisions and conclusions, their conscience spurs them on to reforming the world. Since they are more often wrong than right, they become, as it were, a sort of misdirected Providence, raising havoc with the happiness and comfort of others. Whether the conscienceless or those overburdened with this type of conscience have done more harm in the world is perhaps an open question, which I leave to the historians for settlement. The other type of the overconscientious does definite harm to themselves. This type I have called the "Seekers of Perfection" and it is their affliction that they are miserable with anything less. They are particularly hard on themselves, differing in this wise from the by hyperæsthetic. Constantly they examine and reëxamine what they have done. "Is it the best I can do?" "Should I rest now; have I the right to rest?" Into every moment of enjoyment they obtrude conscience, or rather conscience obtrudes itself. They become wedded to a purpose, and then that purpose becomes a tyrant allowing no escape, even for a brief pleasure, from its chains. Nothing is right that wastes any time; nothing is good but the best. The sense of humor is conspicuously lacking in this type, for one of the main functions of humor is to season effort and straining purpose with proportion. Should one of these unfortunates be a housewife, then she is continually "picking up", continually pursuing that household Will-o'-the-Wisp, "finishing the work." For it is the nature of housework that it is never finished, no matter how much is done. This overconscientious person, unless she is made of steel springs and resilient rubber, breathlessly chasing this phantom all day and into the night, gives way under the strain, even though she have a dozen servants to help. For to this type each helper is not at all an aid. At once up goes the standard of what is to be done, and each servant becomes an added care, an added responsibility. "I'd love to go out with you," wails this housewife, "but there's something I must finish to-day." The word _must_, self-imposed, becomes the mania of her life, to the open rebellion of her household. The word drives her to the real neglect of her husband, who becomes irritated at her constant and to him needless activity, coupled with her complaints. "Why don't you rest if you are tired," is his stock remonstrance; "the house looks all right to me." But it is futile. She becomes irritated, perhaps cries and says, "Just like a man. It's clean to you if there are no cobwebs on the walls." Whereupon the debate closes, but the woman is the more deënergized and the man exasperated at the unreasonableness of women in general and his wife in particular. It is probably true that woman has more conscience, in so far as detail is concerned, than man. She is more of a lover of order and neatness, more wedded to decorum. Man loves comfort and his interest is more specialized and analytical, and as a rule he hates fussiness. This hatred of fussiness makes him long for the masculine clubroom, gives him the kind of uneasiness that sends him off on a fishing trip or hunting expedition. Further, and this is of great social importance, many a broken home, many an unexplainable triangle of the Wife, the Husband, and the Other Woman owes its existence, not to the charms of the other woman, but to the overconscientious wife. The third type predisposed to the neurosis of the housewife is the overemotional woman. We have already considered the effect of certain types of emotion on health and endurance and may formulate it as follows: Emotion may act as a great bodily disturbance, affecting every organ and every function of the body. What we call nervousness is largely made up of abnormal emotional response, of persistent emotion, of the blocking of energy by emotion. Now people differ from the very start of life in their response to situations. One baby, if he does not get what he wants, turns his attention to something else, and another will cry for hours or until he gets it. One will manifest anger and strike at being blocked or impeded in his desires, and the other will implore and plead in a baby way for his wish. In the face of difficulties one man shows fear and worry, another acts hastily and without premeditation, a third flares up in what we call a fighting spirit and seeks to batter down the resistance, and still a fourth becomes very active mentally, calling upon all of his past experience and seeking a definite plan to gain his end. A loss, a deprivation, plunges one type of person into deepest sorrow, a helpless sorrow, inert and symbolic of the hopeless frustration of love. The same affliction striking at another man's heart makes him deeply and soberly reflective, and out of it there ensues a great philanthropy, a great memorial to his grief. For the one, sorrow has deënergized; for the other it has energized, has raised the efforts to a nobler plane. Now there are women, and also men, to whom emotion acts like an overdose of a drug. Parenthetically, emotion and certain drugs have very similar effects. No matter how joyous the occasion and how exuberant their joy, a mood may settle into their lives like a fog and obscure everything. This mood may arise from the smallest disappointment; or a sudden vision of possible disaster to one they love may appear before them through some stray mental association. They are at the mercy of every sad memory and of every look into the future. Preëminently, they are the victims of that form of chronic fear called worry, more aptly named by Fletcher "fearthought." He implied by this name that it was a sort of degenerated "forethought." If the baby has a cough, then it may have tuberculosis or pneumonia or some disastrous illness, of which death is the commonest ending. How often is the doctor called in by these women and needlessly, and how she does keep his telephone busy! It is true that a cough may be early tuberculosis, but this is the last possibility rather than the first. If the husband is late, Heaven knows what may have happened. She has visions of him lying dead in some morgue, picked up by the police, or he's in a hospital terribly injured by an automobile, or, perchance, a robber has sandbagged him and dragged him into a dark alley. If she is a bit jealous, and he is at all attractive, then the disaster lies that way. It doesn't matter that his work may be such that he cannot be at home regularly or on schedule; the sinister explanation takes possession of her to the exclusion of the more rational; _she has a sort of affinity for the terrible_. And when her husband comes home, the profound fear in many cases turns sharply and quickly to anger at him. Her distorted sense of responsibility makes him the culprit for her unnecessary fear. Now it is true that almost every woman has something of this tendency, but it is only the extreme case that I am here depicting. In this extreme form, this type of woman is commonly found among the Jews. The Jewish home reverberates with emotionality and largely through this attitude of the Jewish housewife. Such a woman is apt to make a slave of her family through their fear of arousing her emotions. How frequently people are chained by their sympathies, how frequently they are impeded in enjoyment by the tyranny of some one else's weakness, would fill one of the biggest chapters in a true history of the human race,--a book that will probably never be written. Naturally enough, this housewife finds plenty to worry about, to react to, and since these reactions are physical, they have a lowering effect on her energy. To those familiar with the conception that every emotion, every feeling, needs a discharge, it will seem heretical when I say that the excessive discharge of emotion is harmful. Freud finds the root of most nervous trouble in repressed emotion. That is in part true, but it is also true that excessive emotionality is a high-grade injury, for emotional discharge is habit forming. It becomes habitual to cry too much, to act too angry, to fear too much. The conquest and disciplining of emotion is one of the great objects of training. It has for its goal the supremacy of the noblest organ of the human being, his brain. For proper living there must be emotion--there always will be--but it must be tempered with intelligence if the best good of the individual and the race is to be reached. The type of woman we must now study is a very modern product, the non-domestic type. That the great majority of women have a maternal instinct does not nullify the fact that a small number have none whatever. One of the facts of life, not taken into account with a fraction of its true significance and importance, is the variability of the race, the wide range of abilities, instincts, emotions, aspirations, and tastes. A quality is said to be normal when the majority of the group possess it, but it may be utterly lacking in a smaller number who are thereby declared abnormal. At present, it is normal for woman to be domestic, _i.e._ to yearn for husband, home, and children; to want to be a housewife. Unfortunately, all these yearnings do not hang closely together, and a woman may want a husband and be swept by her own desire and opportunity into matrimony, and yet she may "detest" children, may dislike the housekeeping activities of marriage. The sex and other instincts upon which marriage is based are not always linked with the maternal and home-keeping instincts. While this has probably always been true, it mattered little in olden days. A woman regarded the home as her destiny and generally had experienced no other life. But as was shown in the first chapter, industry and feminism have given woman a taste of other kinds of life and have developed her individual points of character and abilities. Perhaps she has been the bookkeeper of a large concern; or the private secretary to a man of exciting affairs; or she has been the buyer for some house; or she has dabbled in art or literature; or she has been a factory girl mingling with hundreds of others, working hard, but in a large group; or a saleslady in a department store,--and domestic life is expected of her as if she had been trained for it. In fact, she has been trained away from it. The novelists delight to tell us of the woman who seeks a career and enters the struggle of her profession and fails. And then there comes, just when her failure is greatest and she is most weepingly feminine, the patient hero, and he holds out his arms, and she slips into them, oh, so joyously! She now has a home, and will be happy--long row of asterisks, and have children; and if it is a movie, a year or more elapses and we are permitted to gaze upon a charming domestic scene. But alas for reel life as against real life! We are not shown how she yearns for the activities of her old career; we are not shown the feeling she constantly has that she is too good for housekeeping. If she has been fortunate enough to marry a rich and indulgent man, she becomes a dilettante in her work, playing with art or science. If her first vocation was business, she is bored to death by domesticity. But if she marries poverty, she looks on herself as a drudge, and though loyalty and pride may keep her from voicing her regrets, they eat like a canker worm in the bud,--and we have the neurosis of this type of housewife. Or else her experience in business makes her size up her husband more keenly, and we find her rebelling against his failure, criticizing him either openly to the point of domestic disharmony, or inwardly to her own disgust. It is not meant that all business and professional women, all typists and factory girls are dissatisfied with marriage or develop an abnormal amount of neurosis. Many a girl of this type really loves housekeeping, really loves children, and makes the ideal housewife. Intelligent, clear-eyed, she manages her home like a business. But if independent experience and a non-domestic nature happen to reside in the same woman, then the neurosis appears in full bloom. Against the adulation given to women singers and actresses, against the fancied rewards of literature and business, the domestic lot seems drab to this non-domestic type. Here the question arises: Is there room in our society for matrimony and a business career? That a large number of exceptional women have found it possible to be mothers, housewives, authors, and singers at one and the same time does not take away from the fact that in the majority of cases such a combination means either a childless marriage or the turning over of an occasional child to servants: it means the abandonment of the home and the living in hotels, except in the few cases where there is wealth and trusty servants. Wherever women who have children are poor and work in factories, there is the greatest infant mortality, there is the greatest amount of juvenile delinquency, and there is the greatest amount of marital difficulty. Our present conception of matrimony demands that woman remains in the home until such time at least as her children are able to care largely for themselves. In the history of the worst cases of the housewife's neurosis one finds previously existing trouble, though, as I have before this emphasized, the neurosis may develop in the previously normal. This previously existing trouble is the "nervous breakdown" in high school or in college, or in the factory and the office, though it must be said it occurs relatively less often in the latter places than the former. This previous breakdown often appears as the direct result from emotional strain such as an unhappy love affair, or the fear of failure in examinations. It may have followed acute illness, like influenza or pneumonia. But the original temperament was nervous, high-strung, delicate; one learns of an appetite that disappeared easily, a sleep readily disturbed, in short, an easily lowered or obstructed output of energy. This type of woman, neurotic from her very birth, is often the very best product of our civilization from the standpoint of character and ability, just as the male neurasthenic is often the backbone of progress and advancement. But we are concerned with these questions: "What happens to her in marriage?" "How about her fitness for marriage?" As to the first question, we may say that all depends on whom and how she marries. For after all a woman does not marry _matrimony_, she marries a _man_, a home, and generally children. And if the neurotic woman marries a devoted, kindly, conscientious man with wealth enough to give her servants in the household and variety in her experiences, she is as reasonably well off as could be expected. She is no worse off than if she had remained single and continued to be a school teacher, social worker, typist, factory hand the rest of her days,--and she has fulfilled more of her desires and functions. But if she marries an unsympathetic, impatient man or a poor one, or a combination, then the first child brings a breakdown that persists, with now and then short periods of betterment, for many years. Then we have the chronic invalid, the despair of a household, the puzzle of the doctors. "Not really sick," say the latter to the discouraged husband, seeking to adjust himself to his wife, "only neurasthenic. All the organs are O.K." To differentiate between a lowered energy and imaginary illness or laziness is a hard task to which this husband is usually unequal. Though some show of duty and kindness remains, love dies in such a household. And the very effort to give sympathy where doubt exists as to the genuineness of the affliction is painful and increases the chasm between wife and husband. That some of the sweetest marriages result where the wife is of this type does not change the general situation that such a marriage is an increased risk. Should a man knowingly marry such a woman? The question is futile in the overwhelming majority of cases. He will marry her, is the answer. For the fascinating woman is frequently of this type. Witness the charm of the neuropathic eye with its widely dilated pupil that changes with each emotion, the mobile face,--delicate, with a play of color, red and white, that is charming to look at, but which the grim physician calls "Vasomotor instability." There is nothing neutral about this type; she is either very lovely or a freak. So all advice in the matter is of little avail. And racially speaking it is good that it is of no avail. I believe firmly that such a woman is more often the mother of high ability than her more placid sister; that something of the delicacy of feeling and intensity of reaction of neurasthenia is a condition of genius. We are too far away from any real knowledge of heredity to advise for or against marriage in the most of cases on this basis, and certainly we must not repeat Lombroso and Nordau's errors and call all variations from stupidity degeneration. But this does not change the domestic situation of the man who is usually much more concerned with his own comfort than the mathematical possibilities of his offspring being geniuses. Certainly such a woman as the type now considered is not a poor man's wife, for she really needs what only the rich can have,--servants, variety, frequent vacations, and freedom from worry. Now worry cannot be shut out of even the richest home, for illness, old age, and death are grim visitors who ask no man's leave. But poverty and its worries are kept away by wealth, and poverty is perhaps the most persistent tormentor of man. Essential in the study of "nervousness" is the physical examination, and we here pass to the physically ill housewife. It is important to remember that the diagnosis of neurasthenia is, properly speaking, what is called by physicians a diagnosis of exclusion. That is to say, after one has excluded all possible illnesses that give rise to symptoms like neurasthenia, then and then only is the diagnosis justified. That is, a woman physically ill, with heart, lung, or kidney disease, or with derangements of the sexual organs, may act precisely like a nervous housewife,--may have pains and aches, changes in mood, loss of control of emotion; in a word may be deënergized. It is not often enough remembered that bearing children, though a natural process, is hazardous, not only in its immediate dangers but to the future health of the woman. Injuries to the internal and external parts occur with almost every first birth, especially if that birth occurs after twenty-five years of age. Repair of the parts immediately is indicated, but in what percentage of cases is this done? In a very small percentage of cases, I venture to state, not only in my own small experience in this work, but on the statements of men of large experience and high authority. In this connection I may state that the leading obstetricians believe that the woman of to-day has a harder time in labor than her predecessors. Aside from the more or less mythical stories of the savage women who deliver themselves on the march, there seems to be no reasonable doubt that in an increasing civilization and feminization, woman becomes less able to deliver herself, especially at the first birth. Why is this? After all, it is a fundamental matter. And moreover it is more often the tennis-playing, horseback-riding, athletic girl who falls short in this respect than the soft-limbed, shrinking, old-fashioned girl. Does a strenuous existence make against easy motherhood? It would seem so; it would seem the more masculine the occupations of woman become, the less able are they to carry out the truly female functions. But this is a digression from our point. A retroverted uterus, a lacerated perineum, such minor difficulties as flat feet, such major ones as valvular disease of the heart, are causes of ill health to be ruled out before "nervousness" (or its medical equivalents) is to be diagnosed. It is superfluous to say that we have here briefly considered only a few of the types specially predisposed to difficulty. Moreover men and women do not readily fall into "types." A woman may be hyperæsthetic in one sphere of her tastes and as thick-skinned as a rhinoceros in others. She may squirm with horror if her husband snores in his sleep, but be willing to live in an ugly modern apartment house with a poodle dog for her chief associate. Or the overconscientious woman may expend her energies in chasing the last bit of dirt out of her house but be willing to poison her family with three delicatessen meals a day. The overemotional housewife may flood the household with her tears over trifles but be a very Spartan in the grave emergencies of life. And the neurotic woman, a chronic invalid for housework, may do a dragoon's work for Woman Suffrage. It may be that no man can understand women; it is a fact they do not understand themselves. But in this they are not unlike men. One might speak of the jealous woman, the selfish woman, the woman envious of her more fortunate sisters, poisoning herself by bitter thoughts. These traits belong to all men and women; they are part of human nature, and they have their great uses as well as their difficulties. Jealousy, selfishness, envy, three of the cardinal sins of the theologian, are likewise three of the great motive forces of mankind. They are important as reactions against life, not as qualities, and we shall so consider them in a later chapter. Though we have discussed the types predisposed to the nervousness of the housewife, it is a cardinal thesis of this book that great forces of society and the nature of her life situation are mainly responsible. From now on we are face to face with these factors and must consider them frankly and fully. CHAPTER IV THE HOUSEWORK AND THE HOME AS FACTORS IN THE NEUROSIS One of the most remarkable of the traits of man is the restless advancement of desire,--and consequently the never-ending search for contentment. What we look upon as a goal is never more than a rung in the ladder, and pressure of one kind or another always forces us on to further weary climbing. This is based on a great psychological law. If you put your hand in warm water it _feels_ warm only for a short time, and you must add still warmer water to renew the stimulus. Or else you must withdraw your hand. The law, which is called the Weber-Fechner Law, applies to all of our desires as well as to our sensations. To appreciate a thing you must lose it; to reach a desire's gratification is to build up new desires. This is to be emphasized in the case of the housewife, but with this additional factor: that how one reacts to being a housewife depends on what one expects out of life and housekeeping. If one expects little out of life, aside from being a housewife, then there is contentment. If one expects much, demands much, then the housewife's lot leads to discontent. What is disagreeable is not a fixed thing, except for pain, hunger, thirst, and death. The disagreeable is the balked desire, the obstructed wish, the offended taste. It is a main thesis of this book that the neurosis of the housewife has a large part of its origin in the increasing desires of women, in their demands for a fuller, more varied life than that afforded by the lot of the housewife. Dissatisfaction, discontent, disgust, discouragement, hidden or open, are part of the factors of the disease. Furthermore there is an increasing sensitiveness of woman to the disagreeable phases of housework. What are these phases that are attended with difficulty? 1. The status of the house work. It is an essential phase of housework that as soon as woman can afford it she turns it over to a servant. Furthermore there is greater and greater difficulty in getting servants, which merely means that even the so-called servant class dislikes the work. No amount of argument therefore leads away from the conclusion that housework must be essentially disagreeable, in its completeness. There may be phases of it that are agreeable; some may like the cooking or the sewing, but no one likes these things plus the everlasting picking up; no one likes the dusting, the dishwashing, the clothes washing and ironing, the work that is no sooner finished than it beckons with tyrannical finger to be begun. To say nothing of the care of the children! I do not class as a housewife the woman who has a cook, two maids, a butler, and a chauffeur,--the woman who merely acts as a sort of manager for the home. I mean the poor woman who has to do all her own work, or nearly all; I mean her somewhat more fortunate sister who has a maid with whom she wrestles to do her share,--who relieves her somewhat but not sufficiently to remove the major part of housewifery. After all, only one woman in ten has any help at all! It is therefore no exaggeration when I say that though the housewife may be the loveliest and most dignified of women, her work is to a large extent menial. One may arise in indignation at this and speak of the science of housekeeping, of cleanliness, of calories in diet, of child-culture; one may strike a lofty attitude and speak of the Home (capital H), and how it is the corner stone of Society. I can but agree, but I must remind the indignant ones that ditch diggers, garbage collectors, sewer cleaners are the backbone of sanitation and civilization, and yet their occupations are disagreeable. "Fine words butter no parsnips." There are some rare souls who lend to the humblest tasks the dignity of their natures, but the average person frets and fumes under similar circumstances. In its aims and purposes housekeeping is the highest of professions; in its methods and technique it ranks amongst the lowest of occupations. We must separate results, ideals, aims, and possibilities from methods. All work at home has the difficulty of the segregation, the isolation of the home. Man, the social animal who needs at least some one to quarrel with, has deliberately isolated his household, somewhat as a squirrel hides nuts,--on a property basis. There has grown up a definite, aesthetic need of privacy; all of modesty and the essential family feeling demand it. This is good for the man, and perhaps for the children, but not for the woman. Her work is done alone, and at the time her husband comes home and wants to stay there, she would like to get out. Work that is in the main lonely, and work that on the whole leaves the mind free, leads almost inevitably to daydreaming and introspection. These are essentials, in the housework,--monotony, daydreaming, and introspection. Let us consider monotony and its effects. The need of new stimuli is a paramount need of the human being. Solitary confinement is the worst punishment, so cruel that it is prohibited in some communities. We need the cheerful noises of the world, we need as releasers of our energies the sights, sounds, smells of the earth; we must have the voices and the presence of our fellows, not for education, but for the maintenance of interest in living. For the mind to turn inward on itself is pleasurable only in rare snatches, for short periods of time or for rare and abnormal people. Man's mind loves the outside world but becomes uneasy when confronted by itself. The human being, whether male or female, housewife or industrial worker, is a seeker of sensations. Without new sensations man falls into boredom or a restless and unhappy state, from which the mind seeks freedom. It is true that one may become a mere seeker of sensations, a restless and fickle pleasure lover who passes from the normal to the abnormal, exotic in his vain search for what is logically impossible,--lasting novelty. Variety however is not the mere spice of life; it is the basis of interest and concentrated purpose as well. People of course vary greatly in what they regard as variety, and this is often a constitutional matter as well as a matter of education. What is new, striking and interest-provoking to the child has not the same value to the adult; what is boredom to the city man might be of huge interest to the country man. A person trained to a certain type of life, taught to expect certain things, may find no need of other newer things. In other words people accustomed to a wide range of stimuli need a wide range, while people unaccustomed to such a range do not need it. The most important stimuli are other _persons_, capable of setting into action new thoughts, new emotions, new conduct. We need what Graham Wallas calls "face to face associations of ideas",--ideas called into being by words, moods, and deeds of others. It is this group of stimuli that the busy housewife conspicuously lacks. "She has no one to talk to," especially in the modern apartment life. It is true she has her children to scold, to discipline, to teach, and to talk _at_; but contact with child minds is not satisfying, has not the flavor of companionship, is not reciprocal in the sense that adult minds are. There therefore results introspection and daydreaming, both of which may be of slight importance to some women but which are distinctly disastrous to others. If the married life is satisfactory the daydreaming and introspection may be very pleasurable, as they usually are at the beginning of marriage. The young bride dreams of love that does not swerve, of understanding that persists, of success, of riches to come, of children that are lovely and marvelous. And the happy woman also finds her thoughts pleasant ones, and her castles in the air are mere enlargements of her life. But the dissatisfied woman, the unhappy woman, finds her daydreams pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. She is constantly coming back to reality; reality constantly obtrudes itself into her dreams. The daydreaming is rebelled against as foolish, as puerile, as futile. A struggle takes place in the mind; disloyal and disastrous thoughts creep in which are constantly dismissed but always reappear. The profoundest disgust and deënergization may appear, and fatigue, aches, pains, and weariness of life often results. One may compare interest to a tonic. How often does one see a little group, who for the time being are not interesting to one another, sit sleepy, tired, bored, yawning, restless. Then a new person enters, a person of importance or of interest. The fatigue disappears like magic, and all are bright, energetic, sparkling. The basis of club life is the monotony of the home; man uses the saloon, the clubroom, the pool room, the street corner, the lodge meeting, as an escape from the unstimulating atmosphere of wife and family,--the hearth. But for the housewife there is usually no escape, though she needs it more than her husband does. Furthermore the non-domestic type, the woman with especial ability, the woman who has been courted, petted, and sought for before marriage is the one who reacts most to the monotony of the home. There are plenty of women who consider the home a refuge from a world they find more strenuous, more fatiguing than they can stand, or who find in housework a consecration to their ordained duty. Which type is the better woman depends upon the point of view, but it is safe to say that feminism and the industrial world are making it harder and harder for an increasing number of women to settle down to home-keeping. The housewife is _par excellence_ a sedentary creature. She goes to work when she gets up in the morning, within doors. She goes to bed at night, very frequently without having stirred from the home. A great many women, especially those who have no help and have children, find it next to impossible to get out of doors except for such incidental matters as hanging out the clothes or going to the grocery. It is true that some women so situated get out each day. But they are possessed either of greater energy or skill or else own a less urgent conscience. At least for many women it gets to be a habit to stay in. If there is a moment of leisure, a chair or a couch, and a book or paper, seem the logical way of resting up. Now sedentary life has several main effects upon health and mood. It tends quite definitely to lower the vigor of the entire organism. Perhaps it is the poor ventilation, perhaps it is the lack of the exercise necessary for good muscle tone that brings about this result. Though the housewife may work hard her muscles need the tone of walking, running, swimming, lifting, that our life for untold centuries before civilization made necessary and pleasurable. With this sedentary life comes loss of appetite or capricious appetite. Frequently the housewife becomes a nibbler of food, she eats a bite every now and then and never develops a real appetite. Nor is this a female reaction to "food close-at-hand"; watch any male cook, or better still take note of the man of the house on a Sunday. He spends a good part of his day making raids on the ice chest, and it is a frequent enough result to find him "logy" on Monday. Furthermore, in the household without a servant, the housewife rarely eats her meal in peace and comfort. She jumps up and down from each course, and immediately after the meal she rarely relaxes or rests. The dishes _must_ be cleared away and washed, and this keeps from her that peace of mind so necessary for good digestion. An increasing refinement of taste adds to these difficulties. If the family eat in the dining room, have separate plates for each course, and various utensils for each dish, have snowy linen instead of oilcloth,--then there is more work, more strain, less real comfort. Much of what we call refinement is a cruel burden and entails a grievous waste of human energy and happiness. An important result of the sedentary life is constipation. Woman, under the best of circumstances, is more liable to this difficulty than her mate, just as the human being is more liable to it than the four-legged beast. Man's upright position has not been well adjusted by appropriate structures. Childbearing, lack of vigorous exercise, the corset, and the hustle and bustle of the early morning hours so that regular habits are not formed, bring about a sluggish bowel. Indeed it is a cynicism amongst physicians that the proper definition of woman is "a constipated biped." While it is a lay habit to ascribe overmuch to constipation, it is also true that it does definite harm. For many people a loaded bowel acts as a mood depressant, as illustrated by the Voltaire story. For others it destroys the appetite and brings about an uneasiness that affects the efficiency. Whether there is a poisoning of the organism, an autointoxication, in such a condition is not a settled matter. But the importance of the constipation habit lies chiefly in its effect upon mood and energy, in its relation to neurasthenia. These factors, the nature of housework, monotony and the results of sedentary life bear with especial weight upon the woman of little means. It is absolutely untrue that nervousness is a disease of wealth. There are cases enough where lack of purpose and lack of routine tasks, as in the case of wealthy women, lead to a rapid demoralization and deënergization. It is also true that the search for pleasure leads to a sterile sort of strenuousness that breaks down the health, as well as inflicting injury on the personality. Poverty is picturesque only to the outsider. "It's hell to be poor" is the poor man's summary of the situation. There are serious psychical injuries in poverty which will demand our attention later, and still more serious bodily ones. In the case of the housewife, poverty on the physical side means (1) never-ending work; (2) no escape from drudgery and monotony; (3) insufficient convalescence from the injuries of childbearing; (4) a poor home, badly constructed, badly managed, without conveniences and necessities. That there are plenty of poor women who bear up well under their burdens is merely a testimony to the inherent vitality of the race. A man would be a wreck morally, physically, and mentally if he coped with his wife's burdens for a month. Either that or the housekeeping would get down to bare essentials. If a man kept such a house, dusting and cleaning would be rare events, meals would become as crude as the needs of life would allow, ironing and linen would be wiped off as non-essential, and the children would run around like so many little animals. In other words an integral part of what we call civilization in the home would disappear. Perhaps men would reorganize the home. The housekeeper of to-day is only in spots coöperative; her social sense is undeveloped. Men might, and I think likely would, arrange for a group housekeeping such as that which they enjoy in their clubs. This digression aside, there are debilitating factors in the housewife's lot which need some amplification. We have referred to the insufficient time for convalescence from childbirth. There are _sequelæ_ of childbirth, such as varicose veins, flat feet, back strain, that render the victim's life a burden. The rich woman finds it easy to secure rest enough and proper medical attention. But the poor woman, not able to rest, and with recourse either to her overbusy family doctor or to the overburdened, careless, out-patient department of some hospital, drags along with her troubles year in and year out, becomes old before her time, and loses through constant pain and distress the freshness of life. It is impossible to separate the psychical factors from the physical, largely because there is no separation. One of the aims of a woman's life is to be beautiful, or at least good looking. From her earliest days this is held out to her as a way to praise, flattery, and power. It becomes a cardinal purpose, a goal, even an ideal. Unlike the purposes of men this goal is attained early, if at all, and then Nature or Life strip it away. The well-to-do woman or the exceptional poor woman may succeed in keeping her figure and her facial beauty for a relatively long time, though by the forties even these have usually given up the struggle. For the poor woman the fading comes early,--household work, bearing children, sedentary life, worry, and a non-appreciative husband bringing about the fatal change. I doubt if men see their youth slipping away with the anguish of women. To men, maturity means success, greater proficiency, more achievement,--means purpose-expanding. To women, to whom the main purpose of life is marriage, it means loss of their physical hold on their mate, loss of the longed for and delightful admiration of others; it means substantially the frustration of purpose. And I have noticed that the very worst cases of neurosis of the housewife come in the early thirties, in women previously beautiful or extraordinarily attractive. They watch the crows'-feet, the fine wrinkles, the fat covering the lines of the neck and body with something of the anguish that the general watches the enemy cutting off his lines of communication or a statesman marks the rise of an implacable rival. Popular literature, popular art, and popular drama, including in this by a vigorous stretching of the idea the movie, are in a conspiracy against reality. This is of course because of the tyranny of the "Happy Ending." While the happy ending is psychologically and financially necessary, in so far as the publishers, editors, and producers are concerned, what really happens is that the disagreeable phases of life, not being faced, persist. To have a blind side for the disagreeable does not rule it out of existence; in fact, it thus gains in effect. To say that housekeeping is looked upon essentially as menial, to say that it is monotonous, that it is sedentary, and has the ill effects that arise from these characteristics, is not to deny that it has agreeable phases. It has an agreeable side in its privacy, its individuality, and it fosters certain virtues necessary to civilization. That I do not lay stress on these is because novelist, dramatist, and scenario author, as well as churchman and statesman, have always dwelt on these. The agreeable phases of the housewife's work do not cause her neurosis; it is the disagreeable in her life that do. Or rather it is what any individual housewife finds disagreeable that is of importance, and it is my task to show what these things are, how they work, and finally what to do about it. CHAPTER V REACTION TO THE DISAGREEABLE A few preliminary words about the disagreeable in the housewife's lot will be of value. We may divide the things, situations, and happenings of life into three groups,--the agreeable, the indifferent, and the disagreeable. No two men will agree in detail in judging what is agreeable, indifferent, or disagreeable. There are as many different points of view as there are people, and in the end what is one man's meat may literally be another man's poison. There are, however, only a few ways of reacting to what one considers the disagreeable. The agreeable things of life do not cause a neurosis, though they may injure character or impair efficiency. And we may neglect the theoretical indifferent. 1. A disagreeable thing may be so disastrous in our viewpoint as to cause fear. This fear may be expressed as flight, which is a normal reaction, or it may be expressed by a sort of paralysis of function, as the fainting spell, or the great weakness which makes flight impossible. Fear is a much abused emotion. People speak glibly about taking it out of life, on the ground that it is wholly harmful. "Children must not experience fear; it is wrong, it is immoral; they should grow up in sunshine and gladness, without fear." A whole sect, many minor religions, take this Pollyanna attitude toward reality. As a matter of fact fear is _a_ (I almost said _the_) great motive force of human life. Fear of the elements was the incentive to shelter; fear of starvation started agriculture and the storage of food; fear of disease and death gives medicine its standing; fear of the unknown is the backbone of conservatism, and fear of the rainy day is the source of thrift. Fear of death is not only the basis of religion, but of life insurance as well. Fear of the finger of scorn and the blame of our fellows is the great force in morality. And no amount of attempted unity with God will ever take the place of the injunction to fear Him! 2. While fear then is back of the constructive forces of life it works hand in hand with another emotion that is also greatly disparaged by sentimentalists,--anger. The disagreeable, by balking an instinct, by obstructing a wish or purpose, may arouse anger. The anger may blaze forth in a sudden destructive fury in an effort to remove the obstacle, or it may simmer as a patient sullenness, or it may link itself with thought and become a careful plan to overcome the opposition. It may range all the way from the blow of violence to burning indignation against wrong and injustice; it is the source of the fighting spirit. Without fear, purpose would never be born; without anger in some form or other it would never be fulfilled. 3. But while fear and anger work well in succession, or at different times, when both emotions are awakened by some disagreeable situation or thing, when there is a helpless anger, when the instinct to fight is paralyzed by fear, when doubt arises, then there is deënergization. Thus a hostile situation, an intensely disagreeable situation, may be met with energy: viz. planning, constructive flight, destructive action, or it may be met with a deënergization, confusion, paralysis, hopeless anger. It may cause an intense inner conflict with high constant emotions, fatigue, incapacity to choose the proper action, and the peculiar agony of doubt. This last type of reaction is a very common one in the housewife. For the situation is never clear-cut for decision--there is the ideal implanted by training, education, social pressure, and her own desire to live in conformity with this ideal; there is opposing it disgust, anger, weariness, lack of interest that her house duties bring with them. This conflict leads nowhere so far as action is concerned, for she can neither accept nor reject the situation. This is to say: The human being needs primarily a definite point of view, a definite starting place for his actions. Some belief, some goal, some definite purpose is needed for the rallying of the energy of mind and body. Drifting is intolerable to the acute, active mind bent upon some achievement before death. Man is the only animal keenly aware of his mortality, and consequently he is the only one to fear the passing of time. This passing of time can be received equably by the one conscious of achievement, or who has some compensation in belief and purpose; it becomes intolerable to those in doubt. Fundamentally one may say that neurasthenia and the allied diseases which we are here summing up as the nervousness of the housewife are reactions to the disagreeable. The fatigue, pains and aches, changes in mood and emotion are born of this reaction, except in those cases where they arise from definite bodily disease, and even here a vicious circle is established. The weakness and fatigue state, the consciousness of impaired power brought about by sickness, are reacted to in a neurasthenic manner. It is not often enough realized by physicians that a physical defect or a physical injury may be reacted to so as to bring about nervous and mental symptoms; may cause the emotions of fear, hopeless anger, and sorrow; may cause an agony of doubt. With these few words on types of reactions to the disagreeable let us turn again to the disagreeable factors in our housewife's life which may cause her neurosis. The child is the central bond of the home and is of course the biological reason for marriage. The maternal instinct has long been recognized as one of the great civilizing factors, the source of much of human sympathy and the gentler emotions. While the beautiful side of the mother-child relationship is well known and cannot be overestimated, the maternal instinct has its fierce, its jealous, its narrow aspect. Love and sympathy for one's own in a competitive world have often as their natural results injustice and hardness for the children of others. While the best type of mother irradiates her love for her own into love for all children, it is not uncommon for women to find their chiefest source of rivalry in the progress and welfare of their children. Maternal devotion is largely its own reward. The child takes the maternal sacrifices for granted, and after the first few years the interests of parent and child diverge. There is a never-ending struggle between the rising and the receding generations, which is inherent in the nature of things and will always exist wherever the young are free. All the world honors the mother, but few children return in anything like equality the love and sacrifices of their own mother. Is the maternal instinct waning in intensity in this period of feminization? There have always been some bad, careless, selfish mothers; has their number increased? Probably not, yet the maternal instinct now has competition in the heart of the modern woman. The desire to participate in the world's activity, the desire to learn, to acquire culture, engenders a restless impatience with the closed-in life of the mother-housewife. This interferes with single-minded motherhood, brings about conflict, and so leads to mental and bodily unrest. Of course this interferes little or not at all with some, probably most of the present-day mothers, but is a factor of importance in the lives of many. The nervous housewife has several difficulties in her relations to her children. These are of importance in understanding her and have been touched on before this, but it will be of advantage to consider them as a group. We have said that the opinion of obstetricians is that the modern woman has more difficulty in delivering herself than did her ancestress. If this is true (and we may be dealing with the fact that obstetricians are often the ones to see the difficult cases, or that these stand out in their memories) there are several explanations. First, women marry later than they did. It may be said that the first child is easiest born before the mother is twenty-five years of age, and that from that time on a first child is born with rapidly increasing difficulty. The pelvis, like all the bony-joint structures of the body, loses plasticity with years, and plasticity is the prime need for childbearing. Similarly with the uterus, which is of course a muscular organ, but possesses an elastic force that diminishes as the woman grows older. Second, the vigor of the uterine contractions upon which the passage of the baby depends is controlled largely by the so-called sympathetic nervous system, though glands throughout the body are very important factors as well. This part of the nervous system and these glands are part of the mechanism of emotion as well as of childbearing, and emotion plays a rôle of importance in childbearing. The modern woman _fears_ childbearing as her ancestress did not, partly through greater knowledge, partly through her divided attitude towards life. Having a harder time in childbearing means a slower convalescence, a need for more rest and care. Then nursing becomes somehow more difficult, more wearing to the mother; she rebels more against it, and yet, knowing its importance, she tries to "keep her milk." It often seems that the more women know about nursing, the less able they are to nurse, that the ignorant slum-dweller who nurses the child each time it cries and drinks beer to furnish milk does better than her enlightened sister who nurses by the clock and drinks milk as a source of her baby's supply. The feeling of great responsibility for her child's welfare that the modern woman has acquired, as a result of popular education in these matters, undoubtedly saves infants' lives and is therefore worth the price. A secondary result of importance, and one not good, is the added liability to fatigue and breakdown that the mother acquires. This factor we meet again in the next phase of our subject, the education and training of children. Though the number of children has conspicuously decreased, the care and attention given them has increased in inverse proportion. The woman with six children or more turned over the younger children to the older ones, so that her burden, though heavy, was much less than it may seem. Further, though she loved and cared for them, she knew far less of hygiene than her descendant; she did not try to bring them up in a germless way; and her household activities kept her too busy to allow her to notice each running nose, or each "festering sore." Not having nearly so much knowledge of disease, she had much less fear and was spared this type of deënergization. Her daughter views with alarm each cough and sneeze, has sinister forebodings with each rash; pays an enormous attention to the children's food, and through an increasing attention to detail in her child's life and actions has a greater liability to break under the greater responsibility and conscientiousness. It must be remembered that the feeling of responsibility and apprehensive attention is not merely "mental." It means fatigue, more disturbance of appetite, and less restful sleep. These are things of great importance in causing nervousness; in fact, they constitute a large part of it. Perhaps another generation will find that hygiene can be taught without producing fussiness and fear. Certainly popular education has its value, but it has a morbid side that now needs attention. This morbid side is not only bad for the mother but is unqualifiedly bad for the child. For the child of to-day, the center of the family stage in his attention, is often either spoiled or made neurasthenic by his treatment. Either he is frankly indulged, or else an over-critical attitude is taken toward him. "Bad habits must not be formed" is the actuating motive of the overconscientious parents, for they do not seem to know that the "trial and error" method is the natural way of learning. Children take up one habit after another for the sake of experience and discard them by themselves. For a child to lie, to steal, to fight, to be selfish, to be self-willed is not at all unnatural; for him to have bad table manners and to forget admonition in general and against these manners in particular is his birthright, so to speak. Yet many a mother of to-day torments her child into a bad introspection and self-consciousness, herself into neurasthenia, and her husband into seething rebellion, because of her desire for perfection, because of her fear that a "bad act" may form into a habit and thence into a vicious character. Especially is this true of the overæsthetic, overconscientious types described in Chapter III. I have seen women who made the dinner table less a place to eat than a place where a child was pilloried for his manners,--pilloried into sullen, appetiteless state. So, too, an unfortunate publicity given to child prodigies brought with it for a short time an epidemic of forced intellectual feeding of children, that produced only a precocious neurasthenia as its great result. Similarly the Montessori method of child training which made every woman into a kindergarten teacher did a hundred times more harm than good, despite the merits of the system. That a child needs to experiment with life himself means that it will be a long time before the average mother will know how to help him. A factor that tends to perplex the mother and hurts the training of the child is her doubt as how "to discipline." Shall it be the old-fashioned corporal punishment of a past generation, the appeal to pain and blame? Shall it be the nowadays emphasized moral suasion, the appeal to conscience and reason? With all the preachers of new methods filling her ear she finds that moral suasion fails in her own child's case, and yet she is afraid of physical punishment. This is not the place to study child training in any extensive manner, yet it needs be said that praise and blame, pleasure and pain, are the great incentives to conduct. One cannot drive a horse with one rein; neither can one drive a child into social ways, social conformity by one emotion or feeling. Corporal punishment is a necessity, sparingly used but vigorously used when indicated. Of course praise is needed and so is reward. What is here to be emphasized is that a sense of great responsibility and an over-critical attitude toward the children is a factor of importance in the nervous state of the modern housewife. Increasing knowledge and increasing demand have brought with them bad as well as good results. Here as elsewhere a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a more serious difficulty is this,--though fads in training arise that are loudly proclaimed as the only way, there is as yet no real science of character or of character growth. The tragedy of illness is acute everywhere, and the sick child is in every household. In many cases I have traced the source of the housewife's neurosis to the care and worry furnished by one child. There are truly delicate children who "catch everything", who start off by being difficult to nurse, and who pass from one infection to another until the worried mother suspects disease with every change in the child's color. A sick child is often a changed child, changed in all the fundamental emotions,--cranky, capricious, unaffectionate, difficult to care for. A sick child means, except where servants and nurses can be commanded, disturbed sleep, extra work, confinement to the house, heavy expense, and a heightened tension that has as its aftermath, in many cases, collapse. The savor of life seems to go, each day is a throbbing suspense. With recovery, if the woman can rest, in the majority of cases no marked degree of deënergization follows. But in too many cases rest is not possible, though it is urgently needed. The mother needs the care of convalescence more than does the child. There is an extraordinary lack of provision for the tired housewife. True there are sanataria galore, with beautiful names, in pretty places, well equipped with nurses and doctors to care for their patients. But these are prohibitive in price, and at the present writing the cheapest place is about forty dollars per week. This rate puts them out of the reach of the great majority who need them. Moreover, where there are small children and where there is no trusty servant or some kindly relative or friend it seems impossible for the housewife to leave the home. Her husband must work daily for their bread and unless they are willing to turn to the charitable organizations, it is necessary for the housewife to carry on, despite her fatigue. So at the best she gets an hour or two extra rest a day, takes a "little tonic" from the family doctor and gets along with her pains, her aches, and moods as best she can. But the sick do not always recover. Fortunately, the average human being grieves a while over death, but the life struggle soon absorbs him, and the bereavement itself becomes a memory. But now and then one meets mothers whose griefs and deprivations seem without end. No religion, no philosophy can bring them back into continuity with their lives. They go about in a sorrowful dream, hugging their affliction, resenting any effort to comfort or console; without interest in the daily task or in those whom they should love. They offer the severest problem in readjustment, in reënergization, for they actively resent being helped. Sometimes one believes their grief is an effort to atone for neglect real or fancied, a self-punishment which is not remitted until full atonement has been made. Aside from the physical difficulties in the bearing and rearing of children, and in addition to the ordinary mental difficulties, such as judging what discipline to use, there are especial problems of some importance. Men vary in character from the saint to the villain, in ability from the genius to the idiot. The children they once were vary as much. There are children who go through the worst of homes, the worst of environments, the worst of trainings,--and come out pure gold, with characters all the better for the struggle. There are others whom no amount of love, discipline, training, and benefits help; they are despicable from the ordinary viewpoint from the first of life to the last. Some children, adversely situated as to poverty and health, become geniuses, and their reverse is in the poor child whom heredity, early disease, or some freak of nature dooms to feeble-mindedness. The heart of the mother is in her child; she glories in its progress, and she refuses to see its defects until they glare too brightly to be overlooked. Then she has a heartbreak all the more bitter for her maternal love. It is the incorrigibly bad child and the mentally deficient child who evoke the severest, most neurasthenic reaction on the part of the housewife. Not only is pride hurt, not only is the expanded self-love injured, but such children are a physical care and burden of such a nature as to outbalance that of three or four normal children. The bad child, egoistic, undisciplinable, destructive, and quarrelsome, or the child who cannot be taught honesty, or the one who continually runs away, is an unending source of "nervousness" to his mother. As time goes on and the difficulty is seen to be fundamental, a battle between hostility and love springs up in the mother's breast that plays havoc with her strength and character. The very worst cases of housewife neurosis are seen in such mothers; the most profound interference with mood, emotion, purpose, and energy results. Similarly, with the mother of the feeble-minded child. At first the child is viewed as a bit slow in walking, talking, in keeping clean, and the mother explains it all away on this ground or that. A previous illness, a fall in which the head was hurt, difficulty with the teething, diet, etc., all receive the blame. Alas! In the course of time the child goes to kindergarten and the terrible report comes back that "the child cannot learn, is clumsy, etc.", and the teacher thinks he should be examined. Then either through the examination or through the pressure of repeated observations mother love yields to the truth and feeble-mindedness is recognized. There are plenty of women who, with this fact established, adjust themselves, make up their minds to it. But others find that it takes all the pleasure out of their lives, become morbid, and do not enjoy their normal children. For with all due respect to eugenics and statistics I am convinced that the most of feeble-mindedness is accidental or incidental, and not a matter of heredity. Once a mother gets imbued with the notion that the condition is hereditary, she falls into agonies of fear for her other children. In my mind there is a thoroughly reprehensible publicity given to half-baked work in heredity, mental hygiene, and the like that does far more harm than good and interferes with the legitimate work. There is no offhand solution for the case of the incorrigible boy or girl. Of course the largest number sooner or later reform, sometimes overnight, and in a way to remind one of the religious conversions that James speaks of in his "Varieties of Religious Experiences." So long as a child has a social streak in his make-up, so long as he at least is responsive to the praise and blame of others and understands that he does wrong, so long may one hope for him. But the child to whom the opinion of others seems of no value, who follows his own egoism without check or control by the accepted standard of conduct, by the moral law, by the praise and blame of those near to him, is almost hopeless. Some day intelligence may keep him out of trouble, but by itself it cannot change his nature. It is not sufficiently realized that while there has been a rise of feminism there has also been a great change in the status of children, a change that makes their care far more difficult than in the past. They have risen from subordinate figures in the household, schooled in absolute obedience, "to be seen and not heard," to the central figures in the household. One of the strangest of revolutions has taken place in America, taken place in almost every household, and without the notice of historians or sociologists. That is because these professional students of humanity have their attention focused on little groups of figures called the leaders, and not nearly enough on that mass which gives the leaders their direction and power. The age of the child! His development parallels that of women, in that an individualization has taken place. In the past education and training took notice of the child-group, not of the individual child. But child-culture has taken on new aspects, punishment has been largely superseded, individual study and treatment are the thing. Personality is the aim of education, especial aptitudes are recognized in the various types of schools that have arisen: commercial, industrial, classical; yes, and even schools for the feeble-minded. All this is admirable, and in another century will bring remarkable results. Even to-day some good has come, but this is largely vitiated by other influences. Aside from the fact that the attention paid the child often increases his self-importance and makes his wishes more capricious, there are factors that tend to rob him of his naïveté. These factors are the movies, the newspapers, and the spread of luxurious habits amongst children. The movies are marvelous agents for the spread of information and misinformation. Because of the natural settings they give to the most absurd and unnatural stories, their essential falsity and unreality is often made the more pernicious. Their possibilities for good are enormous, their actual performance is conspicuously to lower the public taste, to create a habit which discourages earnest reading or intelligent entertainment. For children they act as a stimulant of an unwholesome kind, acquainting them with realistic crime, vice, and vulgarity, giving them a distaste for childlike enjoyment. One sees nowadays altogether too often the satiated child who seeks excitement, the cynical, overwise child filled with the lore of the movies. In similar fashion the "comic" cartoons of the newspapers have an extraordinary fascination for children. Every child wants to read the funny page, though the funny page is not for childish reading. The humor is coarse, slangy, and distinctly vulgar; very clever frequently and thoroughly enjoyable to those whom it cannot harm. If the historians of, say, 4500 A.D. were by chance to get hold of a few copies of our newspapers of 1920 they might legitimately conclude that the denizen of this remote period expressed surprise by falling backward out of his shoes, expressed disagreement by striking the other person over the head with a brick or a club; that women were always taller than their mates and usually "beat them up"; that all husbands, especially if elderly, chased after every young and pretty girl. They might conclude that the language of the mass of the people was of such remarkable types as this: "You tell them Casket, I'm Coffin", or "the Storm and Strife is coming; beat it!" No one I think enjoys the comic page more than the present writer,--yet it spreads a demoralizing virus amongst children. Of what use is it to teach children good English when the newspaper deliberately teaches them the cheapest slang? Of what use is it to teach them manners and kindliness when the newspaper constantly spreads boorishness and "rough house" conduct? Of what use is it to raise taste when this is injured at the very outset of life by giving bad taste a fascinating attraction? Throughout the community there is a stir and excitement that is reflecting on the children. There are so many desirable luxuries in the world now, so many revealed by movie and symbolized by the automobile, the cabaret, the increasing vulgarity of the theater (the disappearance of the drama and the omnipresent girl and music show), a restless search for pleasure throughout the community even before the War, have not missed the child. All these things make the lot of the housewife harder in so far as the training of her children is concerned. She is dealing with a more alert, more sophisticated, more sensuous child,--and one who knows his place and power. The press and the theater both have knowledge of this and a recent witty play dealt with the sins of the children, paraphrasing of course the classic of a bygone day, "Sins of the Fathers." And a wise old gentleman said to his grandson recently, when the lad complained about his mother, "Of course you are right. Every son has a right to be obeyed by his mother." I am by no means a pessimist. Every forward step has its bad side, but nevertheless is a forward step. It is in the nature of things that we shall never reach a millennium, though we may considerably improve the value and dignity of human life. Democracy has a rôle in the world of great importance,--but the spread of education and opportunity to the mass may make it more difficult for the best ideals and customs to survive in the avalanche of mediocrity that becomes released by the agencies that profit by appealing to the mass. So, too, the rise of the woman and child bring us face to face with new problems, which I think are less difficult problems than those they have superseded and replaced, but which are yet of importance. And a great problem is this: how to individualize the child and keep from spoiling him; how to give him freedom and pleasure, and keep him from sophistication. CHAPTER VI POVERTY AND ITS PSYCHICAL RESULTS In the story of Buddha it is related that it was the shock of learning of the existence of four great evils which aroused his desire to save mankind. These evils were Old Age, Sickness, Death, and Poverty. Theologians and the sentimentalists are unanimous in their praise of poverty,--the theologians because they seek their treasure in heaven, and the sentimentalists because they are incorrigible dodgers of reality, because they cannot endure the existence of evil. But Buddha knew better, and the common sense of mankind has shown itself in the desperate struggle to reach riches. We have spoken of the part played by the physical disadvantages of poverty in causing the nervousness of the housewife. It is not alleged or affirmed that all poor housewives suffer from the neurosis,--that would be nonsense. But poor food, poor housing, poor clothing, the lack of vacations, the insufficient convalescence from illness and childbirth are not blessings nor do they have anything but a bad effect, an effect traceable in the conditions we are studying. Furthermore, the woman who does all her own housework, including the cooking, scrubbing, washing, ironing, and the multitudinous details of housekeeping, in addition to the bearing and rearing of children, does more than any human being should do. It is very well to say, "See what the women of a past generation did," but could we look at the thing objectively, we would see that they were little better than slaves. That is the long and short of it,--the Emancipation Proclamation did not include them. Aside from the physical effects of poverty on the housewife, there are factors of psychical importance that call for a hearing. After all, what is poverty in one age is riches in another; what is poverty for one man is wealth to his neighbor. More than that, what a man considers riches in anticipation is poverty in realization. Here again we deal with the mounting of desire. The philosophical, contented woman, satisfied with her life even though it is poor, is exempted from one great factor making for breakdown. Contentment is the great shield of the nervous system, the great bulwark against fatigue and obsession. But contentment leads away from achievement, which springs from discontent, from yearning desire. Whether civilization in the sense of our achievements is worth the price paid is a matter upon which the present writer will not presume to pass judgment. Whether it is or not, Mankind is committed to struggle onward, regardless of the result to his peace of mind. There are two principal psychical injuries with poverty--fear and worry--and we must pass to their consideration as factors in the neuroses of some women. Worry is chronic fear directed against a life situation, usually anticipated. Man the foreseeing must worry or he dies,--dies of starvation, disease, disaster. It is true that worry may be excessive and directed either against imaginary or inevitable ills; ills that never come, ills that must come, like old age and death. Men in comfortable places cry "Why worry?" meaning of course that the most of worry is about ills that are never realized. That is true, but the person living just on the brink of disaster, ruined or made dependent on charity by unemployment, a long illness, or any failure of power and strength, cannot be as philosophical as the man fortified by a nice bank account or dividend-paying investments. These well-to-do advisers of the poor remind one of the heroes of ancient fables who, having magic weapons and impenetrable armor, showed no fear in battle. One wonders how much courage they would have had if armed as their foemen were. For the poor housewife who sees no escape from poverty, whose husband is either a workman or a struggling business man always on the edge of failure, life often seems like a wall closing in, a losing battle without end. Especially in the middle-aged, in those approaching fifty, does this happen. Aside from the condition produced by "change of life", the so-called involution period, there is a reaction of the "time of life" that is found very commonly. For old age is no longer far off on the horizon; it is close at hand, around the corner, and the looking-glass proclaims its coming. The woman wonders whether her husband will long be able to keep up,--and then "what will become of us?" To be thrown on the benevolence of children is a sad ending to independent natures, to people of experience. Crudely put, those who have been dependents are now sustainers; those who have been led now guide; the inferiors are the superiors. This is not cynicism, for with the best intentions in the world, if the children are also poor, the care of the parents is a burden that they cannot help showing, sooner or later. Looking forward to such an ending to the hard work and struggle of a lifetime is part of the worry of poverty, to be classed with the fear of sickness and unemployment. We may loudly proclaim that one honest man is as good as another, that character is the measure of worth, that success cannot be measured by money. These things are true; the difficulty is not to make people believe it, it is to make people _feel_ it. Deeply ingrained in poverty is not alone to be deprived of things desired; more important is the feeling of inferiority that goes with the condition. Only in the Bohemia of the novelists do the poor feel equal to the rich. One of the fundamental strivings of the human being is the enlargement of the self-feeling, which fundamentally is the wish to be superior, to have the admiration and homage of others. All daydreaming builds this air castle; all ambition has this as its goal. No matter how we disguise it to ourselves and others, the main ends of purpose are power and place. True, we may wish for power and place so as to help others; we may wish them as the result of constructive work and achievement, but the enlargement of self-feeling is the end result of the striving. To be poor is to be inferior in feeling and applies equally to men and women. Man is a competitive-social animal and competes in everything, from the cleverness and beauty of his children to the excellence of his taste in hats. Money has the advantage of being the symbol of value, of being concrete and definite, and of having the inestimable property of purchasing power. Now woman is as competitive as her mate. A housewife vies with her neighboring housewives in her clothes, her good looks, her youth, her husband, her children, her home, her housekeeping, her money,--vies with her in folly as well as in wisdom. How much of the extravagance of women (and here is a difficulty to be dealt with later) arises from rivalry only the tongues of women could tell, but it is safe to say that the greater part of it has this origin. Jealousy and envy are harsh words, yet they stand for traits having a great psychological value. Part of the impetus for effort rises from these feelings, and an incredibly large part. Many a man who bends unremitting in his effort has in mind some man of whose success he is envious, or whose efforts he watches with a jealousy hidden almost from himself. Upon women these feelings play with devastating force. One may be satisfied with what he has until some one else he knows gets more; that is to say, the causes of most of the dissatisfaction and discontent of the world are envy and jealousy. In many cases it may be a righteous sort of jealousy or envy. A woman, especially because she is a rival of her fellow-woman mainly in small things, becomes acutely miserable when she is outstripped by her neighbor and especially if she is passed by her relatives and intimate friends. Poverty is especially hard on those intensely ambitious for their children. "They must have the education I did not have; they must have a good time in life which I never had; I don't want them to be poor all their lives like we are." Here is the woman who works herself to the bone, yet is content and well save for her fatigue, if her children respond to her efforts by success in study and by ambitious efforts of their own. But if the struggling mother is so unfortunate as to have drawn in Nature's lottery an unappreciative or a weak-minded child, then the breakdown is tragic. A poor man is much more apt to be philosophical about poverty for his children than his wife is. He is willing to do what he can for them, but he is more apt to realize what mother love is blind to,--that the average child is unappreciative of the parents' efforts and takes them for granted. The man is more apt to think and say, "Let them stand on their own feet and make their own way; it will do them good." The mother usually longs to spare her children struggle, the father rarely shares this desire except in a mild way. It may be that there was a time when classes were more fixed, that poverty had less of humiliation and blocked desire than it has at present. That society of all grades is restless with the desire for luxury seems without doubt. How profoundly the psychology of the masses is being altered by education, by the newspaper, the magazine, the movie, the automobile, the fashion changes that make a dress obsolete in a season and above all the department store and the alluring advertisement, no one can hope to even estimate. Modern capitalism reaps great wealth by developing the luxurious, the spendthrift tastes of the poor. It would be a peculiar poetic justice that will make that development into the basis of revolution. The women of the poor are perhaps even more restless than the men. In fact, it is the women that set the pace in these matters. This is because to woman has fallen the spending of the family funds, a fact of great importance in bringing about discord in the house. As the shopper the poor woman now sees the beautiful things that her ancestors knew nothing of, since there were no department stores in those days. To-day desires are awakened that cannot be fulfilled; she sees other women buying what she can only long for, and an active discontent with her lot appears. Unphilosophical this, and severely to be deprecated as unworthy of woman. This has been done so often and so effectively(?) by divines, reformers, press, that a mere physician begs leave to remark that it is a natural sequence of the publicity luxury to-day has. _The most successful commercial minds of America are in a conspiracy against the poor Housewife to make her discontented with her lot by increasing her desires_; they are on the job day and night and invade every corner of her world; well, they have succeeded. The divines, etc., who thunder against luxury have no word to say against the department store and the advertising manager. CHAPTER VII THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HUSBAND The husband differs from the wife in this fundamental,--that essentially he is not a house man as she is a house woman. For the man the home is the place where he houses his family and where he rests at night. Here also he spends his leisure time in amount varying with his domesticity. Man writes songs and books about the home, but the woman lives there. Perhaps that is why women have not written sentimental verse about it. Marriage is variously regarded. "It is a sacrament, a religious sanction, and not to be dissolved by anything but Death." So say a very large group of our people. "It is a contract, governed by law, entered into under certain conditions and to be dissolved only by law." This is the attitude of practically all the governments of the world and rapidly is becoming the dominant point of view. Though the religious combat this conception of marriage, no marriage is legal on religious sanction alone, and the increase of divorce among those claiming to be Catholics is an undisputed fact. It is only in the last century that the contract side of marriage has been emphasized and become dominant. There has resulted a conflict between the sacramental, sacred point of view and the secular. This conflict, like all other social conflicts, is a part of the inner life of most of the men and women of this generation, influencing their attitude toward marriage, the home, the mate. For when we say a thing is part of the "spirit of the times" we mean merely that arising as a development of, or a change from, old ideas in the minds of leaders, it has become propagated among the mass. It has become part of their thought, incentive to their action, source of their energies. Thus sentiment and religion proclaim the sacredness of marriage, its eternal nature, its indissolubility. The law asserts it to be a civil relationship, to be made or unmade by law itself; experience teaches that if it is sacred, then sacredness includes folly, indiscretion, brutality, and crime. Therefore the marriage relationship has become a source of conflict for our times, with opposing champions shouting out their point of view, with books, the movies, the press, the stage, with daily experience adducing cases. The scene of conflict is in the moods and emotions of all of us. This divided view is particularly the attitude of women and becomes part of the neurosis of the housewife. After all a woman does not marry an institution; she marries a man with whom she lives, sharing his life. In the natural course of events she becomes the mother of the children to whom he is father. We may dismiss as nonimportant the occasional freak marriage where a man and woman live apart, have no children and meet occasionally,--for obvious purposes. Such a marriage is not only sterile biologically, not only empty of the virtues of marriage, but encounters none of its difficulties. This intimate individual relationship makes marriage when complete and successful the happiest human experience. Soberly speaking, it is then the flower of existence, satisfying biologically and humanly, giving peace and satisfaction to body and mind. This is the ideal, the "happy ending" at which most romances, novels, plays, and all the daydreams of youth leave us. Warm, cozy, intense domesticity, where passion is legitimate and love and friendship eternal; where children play around the hearth fire; of which death only is the ending! This ideal is not realized largely because no ideal is. How often is it closely approximated? Experience says seldom. That implies no reproach against marriage, for we are to judge marriage by the rest of life and not by an ideal. A world in which great wars occur frequently, in which economic conflict is constant, in which sickness and disaster are never absent; where education is occasional, where reason has yet to rule in the larger policies and where folly occupies the high places,--why expect marriage to be more nearly perfect than the life of which it is a part? To be reasonably comfortable and happy in marriage is all we may expect. What are the difficulties confronting the partners which impede happiness and especially which bring the neurosis of the housewife? For after all we can only examine the field for our own purpose. We may divide the difficulties as follows from the standpoint of the neurosis of the housewife: 1. Those that arise from the sex relationship itself. 2. Those that arise from conflicts of will, purpose, ideas. 3. Those that arise from the types of husbands. 4. Those that arise from the types of wives. (This has already been considered under the heading Types Predisposed to the Neurosis.) Before we go on to the consideration of these various factors we must repeat what has been emphasized frequently in this book. That the change in the status of woman implies difficulty in the marriage relationship. If only _one_ will is expected to be dominant in the household, the man's, then there can arise no conflict. If the form of the household is unaltered, but if the woman demands its control or expects equality, then conflict arises. If a woman expects a man to beat her at his pleasure, as has everywhere been the case and still is in some places, if she considers it just, brutality exists only in extremes of violence. If she considers a blow, or even a rough word, an unendurable insult, then brutality arises with the commonest disagreement. In other words, it is comparatively easy to deal with a woman expecting an inferior position, whose individual tastes, wills, ideas, and ideals have never been developed,--the ancient woman; it is very much more difficult to deal with her modern sister. Happily the day is passing when prudery governed the discussion of sex. Lewdness exists in concealment, suggestion is more provocatory than frankness. The morbidness of men who condemned themselves to celibacy has influenced the world; their fear of sex led to a misguided silence shrouding the wrecks of many a life. The sex relationship is the basis of marriage. The famous couplet of Rosalind still holds good. The sex instinct (or rather instincts, for coupled with sex-desire is love of beauty, admiration, joy of possession, triumph, etc.) has the unique place of being more regulated by law and custom than any other basic instinct. The law holds that no marriage is consummated until the sex act has taken place, regardless of the words of preacher or State official. The happiness of the first year or years of married life is mostly in its voluptuous bonds, for companionship and comradeship have really not yet arisen. Complementary to this it may be said that much of married misery, especially for the woman, arises from the first marital embrace. This last is because of the ignorance of men and women, an ignorance wholly due to prudery. The majority of women have been chaste before marriage; the majority of men have not. One would expect therefore knowledge of men, the knowledge of experience. But the experience has been gained with women of a certain type and has not equipped the man to deal with his wife. Though most women know in advance what is expected of them, some are even ignorant of the most elemental facts of sex, and even those who know are unprepared for reality. Too frequently the man regards himself as a Grand Seigneur with a paramount "Jus Primis Noctis." True, the majority of men are abashed in the presence of innocence and deal gently with it,--but others follow in a repellent way their instinct of possession. Any neurologist of experience has cases where sexual frigidity and neurasthenia in a woman can be traced back to the shock of that all-important first night. There are savage races in which preparation for marriage is an elementary part of education. We need not follow them into absurdity, but more than the last silly whispered words to bride and groom at the ceremony is necessary. A formal antenuptial enlightenment, frank and expert, is needed by our civilization. The sex appetite varies as widely as any other human character. Generally speaking, it is believed that sexual passion in women is more episodic than in men, often relating to the menstrual period. In many cases it does not develop as a conscious factor in the woman's life until after marriage, and sometimes not until the first child is born. Certainly desire in the girl is a more generalized, less local, less conscious excitement than it is in the boy who cannot misunderstand his feelings. I think it may safely be said that allowing for the freedom of boys and men, there is native to the male a more urgent passion than to the female. This would be biologically necessary, since upon him devolves not only courtship but the fundamental activity in the sexual act. A passionless woman may have sexual relation, a passionless man cannot. The disparity in sex desire between a husband and wife may be slight or great. No statistics on the subject will ever be gathered, from the very nature of the facts, but it is safe to say that much more disparity exists than is suspected. And likewise it causes more trouble than is suspected. Where the virility of the mate is inadequate there breeds a subtle dissatisfaction that may corrode domestic happiness and bring about conflict on subjects quite remote from the real issue. Contrariwise, to have relations forced or coaxed on one where desire is lacking brings about disgust, nervous reactions, fatigue of marked nature. A woman sexually well mated often clings beyond reason to an unworthy mate. Many an inexplicable marriage, many a fantastic loyalty of a good woman to a bad man has its origin where it is least expected, in the sex attachment. Demureness of appearance, refinement of manner, noble ideals are not at all inconsistent with powerful sex feeling. There is no reason why strong, well-controlled passion should be considered anything but a virtue, why the pleasure of the sexual field should, under the social restriction, be regarded as impure. Too often the latter is the case. Fantastic puritanical ideas often govern both men and women. I have in mind several couples who desired to live continent until such time as children were desired. The biological reasons for the sexual relations seemed to them the only "pure" reasons. Needless to say the resolution broke down under the intimacy of one roof, but meanwhile a conflict was engendered that took some vigorous counsel to dissipate. This purely occidental idea that sexual pleasure is somehow unworthy is responsible for a disparity of a further kind. There are parts of the physical side of love in which the majority of men need education, though in the well-adjusted married life the proper knowledge comes. Nature has not completely adjusted the sexes to one another; it is the part of the man to bring about that adjustment. This part of the adjustment need not here be detailed; the books of Havelock Ellis are explicit on the matter. Certainly no small share of the difficulties of our housewife result, for it is a law that excitement without gratification brings about nervous instability. Whether or not the American domestic life is too intimate, too constant, is an important question. For the majority of people, after the first ecstasy of the bridal year, separate rooms might be better than a single chamber occupied together. There are people to whom one bed and one room is symbolic of their close unity, of their joined lives, who find comfort and companionship in the knowledge that their life partner sleeps beside them. Where sexual compatibility or adjustment exists, there is nothing but commendation for this arrangement. Where it does not exist, the separate chambers are better for obvious reasons. A development of recent times is the rapidly increasing use of what are politely known as birth-control measures. This development is rapidly changing the number of births in the community to a figure below that necessary for the perpetuation of the race. We are not concerned here with the morality or immorality of these measures. Modern woman undoubtedly will continue to take the stand that childbearing should be voluntary, that involuntary motherhood is incompatible with her dignity and status as a person. In this, through the increasing cost of living as well as sympathy with her attitude, she will be backed by her husband. I predict without fear that Church and State will have to adjust themselves to this situation. The fear of pregnancy has brought about this situation, that many a woman undergoes an agony of symptoms which is only relieved when her monthly function appears. This fear makes the sexual relationship a risk almost outweighing its pleasure. The notoriously "unsafe" character of the contraceptive measures has only diminished this fear, not completely allayed it. Moreover the contraceptive measures, according to the law that every "solution" breeds new problems, have their place in causing nervousness. Rarely do these measures replace the natural act in satisfaction. Further, some are unable to conquer their repugnance and disgust and some are left excited and unsatisfied. Vasomotor disturbances, neurasthenic symptoms, obsessions, and hysterical phenomena occur in many women as well as in some men. One of the stock questions of the neurologists when examining a married man or woman complaining of neurasthenic symptoms relates to the contraceptive measures used. The channel of discharge of sexual excitement is race old. And this new development blocks that channel. For many persons this is sufficient to deënergize the organism. At the present time there are two trends in the sex sphere, so far as women are concerned. There is the masculine trend, which is usually called feminism. Women tend to take up the work formerly exclusively belonging to men; they tend to dress more like men, with flat shoes, collars and ties, and tailor-made clothes. They take up the vices of men,--smoking, drinking,--are building up a club life, live in bachelor apartments, call each other by their last names, etc. Whether with this goes a greater sexual license or not it is difficult to say. The observers best qualified to comment think there has been a decrease in female chastity,--that the entrance of women in industrial life, the growth of the cities, the increase in automobiles, the greater freedom of women, the dropping of restraint in manner and speech, have brought women's morals somewhat nearer to men's. The other trend, not entirely separate except for externals, is marked by a hyper-sexuality, an emphasis of femaleness. This is by far the more common phenomenon and probably more widely spread through society. The dress of women in general is more daring, more designed for sex allurement than for a century past. Women paint and powder in a way that only the demimonde did a generation ago, reminding one of the ladies of the French Court in the eighteenth century. Further, the plays of the day would be called mere burlesque a generation back; the girl and music show has the center of the stage, and the drama in America has almost disappeared. There is an epidemic of magazines that flirt with the risqué; with titles that are sometimes much more clever than their contents. Such eras have been with us before this, have come and gone. It is doubtful if they ever affected so large a number of people. The excitement of the daily life is increased in a sexual way, and this brings an unrest that reacts on the anchor of the home, the housewife. She too tugs at her moorings; life must be speeded up for her too as well as for the younger and unattached women. She becomes more dissatisfied and therefore more nervous. Altogether the sexual relationship of modern marriage needs a candid examination. No drastic change is indicated, but education in sexual affairs for men and women is a need. Even the prudish admit the pleasure of the sex-life, and that seems to be their fundamental aversion to it. Most of the advice and injunctions in the past seem to have come from the sexually abnormal. It is time that this was changed; in fact, it is being changed. The danger lies in a swing to extremes, in leaving the fields to those who think reform lies in the abolition of restraint, in the disregard of all social supervision and obligation. Free love is more disastrous if possible than prudery. CHAPTER VIII THE HOUSEWIFE AND HER HOUSEHOLD CONFLICTS The problems of life are not all sexual, and in fact even in the relations of men and women there are more important factors. After all, as Spencer pointed out in a marvelous chapter, love itself is a composite of many things, some, of the earth, earthy, and some of the finest stuff our human life holds. The aspirations, the ideals, the yearnings of the girl attach themselves to some man as their fulfillment; the chivalrous feelings, the desire to protect and cherish, the passion for beauty of the man lead to some girl as their goal. There are few for whom the glow and ardor of their young love bring no refinement of their passion; there are few who have not felt a pulsating unity with all that love and live, at least for some ecstatic moments. Something of what James has so beautifully designated as the "aura of infinity that hangs over a young girl" also lingers over the love of men and women. All the cynics and epigram makers in the world agree that love ends with marriage, and this not only in modern times but even back into those days of the French Court of Love, when Margaret de Valois decided that the lover had more claims than the husband. Romance dies with marriage is the plaint of poet and novelists; the charm of woman disappears with her mystery, with possession. And the typical humorist speaks of the curl papers and kimono of the wife, the snores and unshaven beard of the husband. "Familiarity is the death of passion" is the theme of countless writers who bemoan its passing in the matrimonial state. How much harm the romantic tales have done to marriage and the sober-satisfying everyday life, no one can estimate, no one can overestimate. Romanticism, which extols sex as the prime and only thing of life, prudery which closes its eyes to it and makes sour faces, need special places in Dante's Inferno. Neither has dealt with reality,--reality, which is satisfying and pleasant unless examined with the prejudices instilled by the hypersexual romance writer and the perverted sexuality of the prude. Nevertheless that two people brought up entirely differently, and having different attitudes towards love and life, should come into sharp conflict is to be expected. Further, that disillusionment follows after the excitement and heightened expectation of courtship is inevitable. Marriage at the best includes a settlement to routine; it carries with it an adjustment to reality, a getting down to earth that is painful and disappointing to minds fed to expect thrill and passion with each moment. The idealization of the mate--the man or woman--gives way to a gradually increasing knowledge of imperfection and common clay. Common sense, earnestness of purpose, willingness to adjust, and a sense of humor save the situation and change the love of the engaged period into a more solid, robust affection which gains in durability and wearing quality what it loses in intensity. Unfortunately, in many cases to a great extent and in all to some extent, there arises dissension natural wherever two human beings meet on anything like equal terms. In times past (and in many countries at the present time), the patriarchal household prevailed. The Head of the House was the father, a sovereign either stern or indulgent according to his nature. Perhaps his wife ruled him through his love for her, as women have ruled from the beginning of things, but if she did it was not by right but by privilege. America has changed all that, so say all native and foreign observers. Here the woman rules; here she drags her husband after her like a tail to a kite; here she is mistress and he obeys, though nominally still head of the household. All the humorists emphasize this, and the novelist depicts it as the common situation. The husband is represented as yoked to the wheel of his wife's whims, tyrannized over by the one he works for. This is surely a gross exaggeration, though it furnishes excellent material for satire. The man still makes the main conditions of life for both; his name is taken, his work sustains the household, his purse supplies the means of existence, his industrial business situation determines the residence, his social standing is theirs. This does not prevent him from being "henpecked" in many cases, but on the whole it assures his superior status. Nevertheless it is true that the American woman of whatever origin has a will of her own as no other woman has. Since the expression of will is one of the chief sources of human pleasures, one of the chief, most persistent activities, man and wife enter into a contest for supremacy in the household. It may be settled quietly and without even recognizing its existence, on the common plan that the woman shall have charge of the home and the man of his business; it may rage with violence over the fundamental as well as the trivial things of home. After all, it is not the importance of a thing that determines the size of the row it may raise; men have killed each other over a nickel because defeat over even this trifle was intolerable. What are the chief sources of conflict? For to name them all would be simply to name every possible source of difference of opinion that exists. Let us take as an example Extravagance. This is a new development. In the former days the bulk of purchases was made by the husband, in whose hands the purse strings were tightly clutched. With the growth of the cities and industry, the development of the department store and rise of shopping as an institution, the man gave place to his wife largely because industry would not let him off during the daytime. So the housewife disbursed most of the funds of her home,--and there arose one of the fiercest and most persistent of domestic conflicts. Despite the fact that most American husbands turn over their purses to their wives, they still regard the money as their own. The desire to "get ahead" is an insistent one, returning with redoubled force after each expenditure. He finds his entire income gone each week or month, or finds less left than he expected. "Where does it all go?" is his cry; "Must we spend as much as we do?" "How do people get along who get less than we do?" To this his wife has the answer, "We must have _this_, and we _must_ have that. We must live as our neighbors do." Here is the keynote to the situation. There has been a democratization of society of this nature; there has been a spread throughout the community of aristocratic tastes. The woman of even the poor and the middle classes must have her spring and autumn suits, her dresses for summer, her summer and winter hats. Her husband too must change his clothes with each shift of the season. For this the enterprise of the clothing trade, the splendid display of the department stores are responsible, awakening desire and dissatisfaction. While the man accuses the woman of extravagance, he is as guilty as she. He too spends money freely,--on his cigars and cigarettes, on every edition of the newspapers, on the shine which he might easily apply himself, on a thousand and one nickels that become a muckle. The American is lavish, hates to stint, detests being a "piker", says, "Oh, what's the difference; it will all be the same in a hundred years," but kicks himself mentally afterwards. Meanwhile he quarrels with his wife, who really is extravagant. In this battle the man wins, even if he loses, for he rarely broods over the defeat. But it brings about a sense of tension in his wife; it brings about a disunion in her heart, because she wants to please her husband, and at the same time she wants to "keep up" with her neighbors and friends. And who sets the pace for her, for all of her group; who establishes the standard of expenditure? Not the thrifty, saving woman, not the one who mends her clothes and makes her own hats, but the extravagant woman, the rich woman perhaps of recently acquired wealth who cares little for a dollar. Against her better judgment the woman of the house enters a race with no ending and becomes intensely dissatisfied, while her husband becomes desperate over the bills. This disunion in her spirit does what all such disunions do,--it predisposes her to a breakdown. It makes the housework harder; it makes the relations with her husband more difficult. It takes away pleasure and leaves discontent and doubt,--the mother-stuff of nervousness. While most American husbands are generous, there are enough stingy ones to set off their neighbors. To these men the goal of life is the accumulation of money, as indeed it is with the majority. But to them that goal is to be reached by saving every penny, by denying themselves and theirs all expenditures beyond the necessities. The woman who marries such a man is humiliated to the quick by his attitude. That a man values a dollar more than he does her wish is an insult to the sensitive woman. There ensues either a never-ending battle with estrangement, or else a beaten woman (for the stingy are stubborn) accepts her lot with a broken spirit, sad and deënergized. Or perhaps, it should be added, a third result may come about; the woman accepts the man's ideal of life and joins with him in their scrimping campaign. With this agreement life goes on happily enough. It is not of course meant that all or a great majority of American women have difficulties with their husbands over money. But I have in mind several patients who would be happy if this never-ending problem were settled. The struggle "gets on the nerves" of the partners; they say things they regret and act with an impatience that has its root in fatigue. This difficulty over money and its spending gets worse in the late thirties and early forties, for it is then the man realizes with a startled spirit that he is getting into middle age, that sickness and death are taking their toll of his friends, and that he has not got on. The sense of failure irritates him, depresses him. He finds that he and his wife look at the money situation from a different angle. "If you loved me," says she, "you would see things a little more my way." "If you loved me," says he, "you would not act to worry me so." Here in the year 1920, the high cost of living is becoming the strain of life. Capital and Labor are at each other's throats; men cry "profiteer" at those whom good fortune and callous conscience have allowed to take advantage of the world crisis. The air is filled with the whispers that a crash is coming, though the theaters are crowded, the automobile manufacturers are burdened with orders, and the shops brazenly display the most gorgeous and extravagant gowns. That the marital happiness of the country is threatened by this I do not see recorded in any of the discussions on the subject. Yet this phase of the high cost of living is perhaps its most important result. The housewife's money difficulties are not confined to the question of expenditure. For there is a factor not consciously put forward but evident upon a little probing. If a woman remains poor, either actually or relatively, she always knows some man with whom she was familiar in her youth who became rich, or she has a woman friend whose husband has become successful. A subtle sort of regret for her marriage may and does arise in many a woman, a subtle disrespect for her husband because of his failure. The husband becomes aware of her decreased admiration, and he is hurt in his tenderest place, his pride. One of the worst cases of neurasthenia I have seen in a housewife arose in such a woman, who struggled between loyalty and contempt until exhausted. For she came of a successful family, she had married against their counsel and her husband, though good, was an entire failure financially. Measuring men by their success, she found her lowered position almost unendurable but was too proud to acknowledge her error. Out of this division in feelings came a complete deënergization. Whether or not such a housewife deserves any sympathy in her trouble, it is certain she presents a problem to every one connected with her. While money and expenditure afford a fertile field from which nervousness arises, there are others of importance. Disagreement and disunion, conflict, arise over the training and care of the children. Here the different reactions of a man and woman--_e.g._ to a boy's pranks--causes a taking of sides that is disastrous to the peace of the family. Usually the American father believes his wife is too fussy about his son's manners and derelictions, secretly or otherwise he is quite pleased when his son develops into a "regular" boy,--tough, mischievous, and aggressive. But sometimes it is the overstern father who arouses the mother's concern for the child. If a frank quarrel results, no definite neurotic symptoms follow. It is when the woman fears to side against the husband and watches the discipline with vexation and inner agony that she lowers her energy in the way repeatedly described. Next perhaps to actual disloyalty women feel most the cessation of the attentions, courtesies, and remembrances of their unmarried life. Women expect this to happen and usually they forgive it in the man who devotes himself to his family, struggles for a livelihood or better, and helps in the care of the children. It is the hyperæsthetic type of housewife spoken of previously who weighs against her husband's devotion a minor dereliction in courtesy. For it is too common in women to let a momentary neglect or absent-minded discourtesy outweigh a lifetime of devotion. This is part of a feminine devotion to manner and form, of which men are, comparatively speaking, innocent. Aside from this phase of woman's character there are men who either rapidly or gradually resume after marriage their bachelor freedom, to the neglect of their wives. Though for some time after marriage they give up their "freedom" to play consort and escort, sooner or later they sink back into finding their recreation with their male friends,--at club, lodge, saloon, pool room, etc. When night comes they are restless. At first one excuse or another takes them out, later they break boldly from the domestic ties and only occasionally and under protest do they stay at home or escort the housewife to church, visiting, or the theater. (It needs be said at this point that in America married life often proceeds too far in the domestication of the man, in his complete separation from male companionship, in a never-broken companionship between man and wife. This is distinctly unhealthy for the man, for he requires in his recreation the sense of freedom from restraint that he can have only in masculine company; where the difficult attitude of chivalry can be discarded for an equality and a frankness impossible even with his wife.) The housewife, thus left alone, though wounded, may adjust herself. She may build up a companionship for herself in church or amongst her neighbors; she may leave her husband and get a divorce; she may become unfaithful on the basis that turn about is fair play; she may devote herself with greater zeal to her home and children and build up a serene life against odds. But often she does none of these things. Hurt in her pride, she struggles to gain back her husband. Tears and reproaches fail, sickness sometimes succeeds. If she is childless she becomes obsessed with the belief that a child would hold her husband home. If she is failing in the freshness of her beauty she makes a pathetic effort to hold her indifferent mate through cosmetics and beauty specialists. Without the courage and character to make or break the situation she falls into a feeling of inferiority from which originates her headaches, her feelings of unreality, her loss of enthusiasm, her depressed mind and body. This type of woman, dependent upon the love and affection of her husband for her health and strength, mental and physical, is the type that woman's education and training, at least in the past, have tended to make. She has not been taught, she has not the power, to stand in life alone; she is the clinging vine to the man's oak, she is the traditional woman. She is happy and well with the right man, but Heaven help her if the marriage ceremony links her with a philanderer! For she has been taught to accept as true and right that mischievous couplet: Love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence. We need for our womanhood a braver standpoint than that, one more firmly based, less apt to bring failure and disaster. For neither man nor woman should love be the whole existence. It should be a fundamental purpose interwoven with other purposes. Fortunately one source of domestic difficulty will soon pass from America,--alcoholism. Politicians and theorizers may speak of the blow to individual liberty and satirically prophesy that soon coffee and tobacco will be legislated out also. They need to read Gilbert Chesterton and learn that though "a tree grows upward it stops growing and never reaches the sky." To see, as I do, the almost complete absence of delirium tremens from the emergency and city hospitals, where once every Sunday morning found a dozen or two of raving men; to witness the disappearance of alcoholic insanity from our asylums, where once it constituted fifteen per cent of the male admissions; to see cruelty to children drop to one tenth of its former incidence; to know that former drunkards are steadily at work to the joy of their wives and the good of their own souls,--this is to make one bitterly impatient with the chatter about the "joy and pleasure of life gone," etc. etc., that has become the stock-in-trade of the stage and the press. Though alcoholism did not cause all poverty, it stupefied men's minds so that they permitted much preventable poverty; though it did not cause all immorality, a few drinks often sent a good man to the brothel; and what is more, many of the brothel inmates endured their life largely because of the stupefying use of alcohol. No one knows the evil of alcohol more than the poor housewife. Of course the woman brought up to believe that drunkenness was to be expected in a man--and who often drank with him--was a victim without severe mental anguish, though her whole life was ruined by drink. But for the refined woman who married a clean, clever young fellow only to have him come home some day reeking of liquor,--silly, obscene, helpless,--_her_ contact with John Barleycorn took the joy and sweetness from her life. She often adjusted herself, but in many cases adjustment failed, and a chronic state of bruised and tingling nervousness resulted. A future generation will not consider it possible that the people of a century that saw the use of wireless, the airship, radium, and the X-ray could think intoxication with its literal poisoning funny, could make a stock humorous situation out of it, and could regard the habit-forming drug that caused it a necessity. After all is said and done, the fiercest domestic conflicts arise out of the inherent childishness of men and women. Pride and the unwillingness to concede personal error, overtender egoism, bossiness, and rebellion against it, petty jealousies and stubbornness,--these are the basic elements in discord. Children quarrel about trifles, children are unreasonably jealous, children fight for leadership and seek constantly to enlarge their ego as against their comrades. Any one who watches two five-year-olds for an hour will observe a dozen conflicts. So with many husbands and wives. Unreason, petty jealousy, stubbornness over trifles, bossiness (not leadership), overready temper and overready tears,--these cause more domestic difficulty than alcohol and unfaithfulness put together. The education of American women is certainly not tending to eradicate these defects, which are not necessarily feminine, from her character. In the domestic struggle the man has the major faults as his burden; the woman has a host of minor ones. She claims equality for her virtues yet demands a tender consideration for her weaknesses. Dealing with petty annoyances, disagreeing over petty matters, with her mind engrossed in her disillusions and grievances, many a woman finds her disagreeables a burden too much for her "nerves." That a philosophy of life would save her is of course obvious, but this is a matter which we shall deal with later. CHAPTER IX THE SYMPTOMS AS WEAPONS AGAINST THE HUSBAND Throughout life, two great trends may be picked out of the intricacy of human motives and conduct. The one is (or may be called) the Will to Power, the other the Will to Fellowship. The will to power is the desire to conquer the environment, to lead one's fellows, to accumulate wealth (power), to write a great book (influence or power), to become a religious leader (power), to be successful in any department of human effort. In every group, from a few tots playing in the grass to gray-headed statesmen deciding a world's destinies, there is a struggle of these wills to power. In the children's group this takes the trivial (to us) form as to who shall be "policeman" or "teacher", in the statesmen it takes the "weighty" form as to which river shall form a boundary line and which group of capitalists shall exploit this or that benighted country. The will to power includes all trends which inflate the ego,--love of admiration, pride, reluctance to admit error, desire for beauty, lust for possession, cruelty, even philanthropy, which in many cases is the good man's desire for power over the lives of his fellows. Side by side with this group of instincts and purposes, interplaying and interweaving with it, modifying it and being modified by it, is the group we call the will to fellowship. This is the social sense, the need of other's good will, the desire to help, sympathy, love, friendly feeling, self-sacrifice, sense of fair play, all the impulses that are essentially maternal and paternal, devotion to the interests of others. This will to fellowship permeates all groups, little and big, old and young, and is the cement stuff of life, holding society together. There are those who find no difference between the _egoism_ of the will to power and the _altruism_ of the will to fellowship. They assert that if egoism is given a wider range, so that the ego includes others, you have altruism, which therefore is only an egoism of a larger ego. However true this may be logically, for all practical purposes we may separate these two trends in human nature. In each individual there goes on from cradle to grave a struggle between the will to power and the will to fellowship. The teaching of morality is largely the government, the subordination of the will to power; the teaching of success and achievement is largely the discovery of means by which it is to be gained. However we may disguise it to ourselves, power is what we mainly seek, though we may call our goal knowledge, science, benevolence, invention, government, money. Without the will to fellowship the will to power is tyranny, harshness, cruelty, autocracy, and men hate the possessor of such a character. Without the will to power, the will to fellowship is sterile, futile, and the owner becomes lost in a world of striving people who brush him aside. The two must mingle. And a curious thing becomes evident in the life of men, which in itself is simple enough to understand. When men who have been ruthless, concentrated on success, specialists in the will to power, reach their goal, they often turn to the thwarted will to fellowship for real satisfaction in life, become philanthropists, world benefactors, etc. On the other hand those who start out with ideals of altruism and service, specialists in the will to fellowship, generally lose enthusiasm for this and turn slowly, half reluctantly, to the will for power. In life's cycle it is common to see the egotist turn philanthropist, and the altruist, the idealist, lose faith and become an egotist. How does this apply to the nervous housewife? Simply this, that there are various ways of seeking power, of gaining one's ends. There is first the method of force, directly applied. The strong man disdains subtlety, persuasion, sweeps opposition aside. "Might is right" is his motto; he beats down opposition by fist, by sword, by thundering voice, or look. Men who use this method are little troubled by codes; they follow the primitive line of direct attack. There is second the method of strategy, the disguise of purpose, the disguise of means. The effort is to shift the attention of the opponent to another place and then to walk off with the prize. "Possession is nine points of the law" say these folk. And a straight line is _not_ the shortest way for strategy. Or exchange with your opponent, give what _seems_ valuable for what _is_ valuable and then fall back on the adage, "A fair exchange is no robbery." Third, there is persuasion. Here, by stirring your opponent into friendliness, he talks matters over, he aligns his interest with yours. Compromise is the keynote, coöperation the watchword. "'Tis folly to fight, we both lose by battle; whose is the gain?" Fourth is the method of the weak, to gain an end through weakness, through arousing sympathy, by parading grief, by awakening the discomfort of unpleasant emotion in an opponent who is of course not an implacable enemy. This has been woman's weapon from time immemorial; tears and sobs are her sword and gun. Unable to cope with man on an equal plane, through his superior physical strength, his intrenched social and legal position, she took advantage of her beauty and desirability, of his love; if that failed, she fell back on her grief and sorrow by which to plague him into submission, into yielding. Children use this weapon constantly; they cry for a thing and develop symptoms in the face of some disagreeable event, such as a threatened punishment. In their day-dreams the idea of dying to punish their cruel parents is a favorite one. This appeal to the conscience of the stronger through a demonstration of weakness may be called "Will to Power through Weakness." It has long been known to women that a man is usually helpless in the presence of woman's tears, if it is apparent that something he has done has brought about the deluge. And in the case of some housewives, certain similarities between tears and the symptoms appear that show that in these cases, at least, the symptoms of nervousness appear as a substitute for tears in the marital conflict. Not that this is a deliberate and fully conscious process, nor that it causes the symptoms. On the contrary, it is a use for them! Such a conclusion of course is not to be reached in those cases where the symptoms arise out of sickness of some kind, or where they follow long and arduous household tasks. But every one knows that the woman who gets sick, has a nervous headache, weakness, a loss of appetite, or becomes blue as soon as she loses in some domestic argument, or when her will is crossed; these symptoms persist until the exasperated but helpless husband yields the point at issue. Then recovery takes place almost at once. In some of the severer cases of neurasthenia in women such a mechanism can be traced. There is a definite relation between the onset of the attacks and some domestic difficulty, and though the recovery does not take place at once, an adjustment in favor of the wife causes the condition to turn soon for the better. I do not claim that the above is an original discovery. True, the medical men have not formulated it in their textbooks, but every experienced practitioner knows it to occur. And the humorists and the satirists of the daily press use the theme every day. The favorite point is that the brutal husband is forced to his knees through the disabilities of his wife, and that cure takes place when--he gets her the bonnet or dress she wants, when the trip to Florida is ordered, etc. etc. Discreditable to women? Discreditable to those women who use it? Men would do the same in the face of superior force. In the battle of wills that goes on in life the weak must use different weapons than the strong. Doubtless the women of another day, trained otherwise than our present-day women and having a different relationship to men, will abandon, at least in larger part, the weapons of weakness. Wherever women work with men on a plane of equality they ask no favors and resort to no tears. They play the game as men do, as "good sports." But where the relationship is the one-sided affair of matrimony, a certain type uses her tears, her aches and pains, her moods, and her failings to gain her point. CHAPTER X HISTORIES OF SOME SEVERE CASES The cases that follow represent mainly the severe types of nervousness in the housewife. To every case that comes to the neurologist there are a hundred that explain their symptoms as "stomach trouble", "backache", etc., who remain well enough to carry on, and who think their pains and aches inevitably wrapped with the lot of woman. It will be seen, upon reading these cases, that a rather pessimistic attitude is taken toward some of them. It would be nice to present a series of cases all of which recovered, and it would be easy to do that by picking the cases. Such a series would be optimistic in its trend; it would however have the small demerit of being false to life. Though the majority of women suffering from nervousness may be relieved or cured, a number cannot be essentially benefited. Some of them have temperaments utterly incompatible with matrimony, others have husbands of the incorrigible type, others have life situations to change which would make it necessary to change society. Therefore in these cases all a doctor can do is to _relieve symptoms_, relieve some of the distress and rest content with that. I am essentially neither pessimist nor optimist in the presentation of these cases, nor do I seek to present the man or woman's case with prejudice. In life a realistic attitude is the best, for if we were to remove much of the sentimental self-deception at present so prevalent, huge reforms would occur almost overnight. Sentimentality decorates and disguises all kinds of horridness and makes us feel kindly toward evil. Strip it away, and we would immediately break down the evil. There is always this danger in presenting "cases" to a lay public, that symptoms are suggested to a great many people. How deeply suggestible the mass of people can be is only appreciated when one sees the result of public health lectures and books. Many persons tend to develop all the symptoms they hear of, from pains and aches to mental failure. Even in the medical schools this is so, and every medical teacher is consulted each year by students who feel sure they have the diseases he has described. So in presenting the following cases symptoms will be largely omitted. What will be presented is history and to a certain extent treatment. That part of treatment which is strictly medical can only be indicated. It may be said that in obtaining the intimate history of a woman a difficulty is met with in the natural reluctance to telling what often seems to the patient painful and unnecessary details. To some people it seems inconceivable that fears, pains and aches, sleeplessness, etc., can arise out of difficulties like the monotony of housework, temperament, or troubles with the husband. Furthermore, though some women understand well enough the source of their conflicts, they are ashamed to tell and rest mainly on the surface of their symptoms. To obtain the truth it is necessary to see the patient over and over again, to get somewhat closer to her. This is especially easy to do after the physician has to a certain extent relieved the patient. In other words, except in the cases where the woman is quite prepared to tell of her intimate difficulties, it is best to go slowly from the medical to the social-psychological point of view. Case I. The overworked, under-rested type of housewife. Mrs. A.J., thirty years old, is a woman of American birth and ancestry. Her parents were poor, her father being a mechanic in a factory town of Massachusetts. She had several brothers and sisters, all of whom reached maturity and most of whom married. Before marriage she was a salesgirl in a department store, worked fairly hard for rather small pay, but was strong, jolly, liked dancing and amusements, liked men and had her girl friends. At the age of twenty-two she married a mechanic of twenty-four, a good, sober, steady man, devoted to her and very domestic. Unfortunately he was not very well for some time following a pneumonia in the third year of their marriage. They drew upon all their savings and fell seriously in debt. This meant borrowing and scrimping for several years,--a fact which had great bearing on the wife's illness later. They had three children, born the twelfth month, the third year, and the fourth year after marriage. After the first child the mother was very well, nursed the baby successfully, and the little family flourished. Then came the unfortunate illness of the husband, which threw him out of work for six months, during which time they lived on an allowance from his union, his savings, and finally ran into debt. This greatly grieved the man and depressed the woman, but both bore up well under it until the birth of the second child, when their circumstances forced them to move to a poorer apartment. The wife was delivered by a dispensary physician, who did his duty well but allowed the woman, who protested she felt well, to get up and care for her husband and baby much earlier than she should have done. The nursing of this baby was more difficult. The mother's breasts did not seem to be nearly as active as in the previous case. The baby cried a great deal and needed attention a good part of the night. The husband was unable to help as he had previously done and the fatigue of the care of child and man brought a condition where the woman was tired all the time. Still she bore up well, though when the summer came she greatly missed the little two weeks' vacation that she and her husband had yearly taken together from the days of their courtship. The husband recovered, but his strength came back very slowly. He went to work as soon as possible but worked only part time for six months. At night he came home utterly exhausted and could not help his wife at all. During the next year both children were sick, first with scarlet fever and then with whooping cough. The mother did most of the nursing, though by this time the father was able to help and did. The necessary expenses so depleted the family treasury that when the summer came neither could afford to go away. Both noticed that the mother was getting more irritable than was natural to her. She went out very seldom and her youthful good looks had largely been replaced by a sharp-featured anxiety. Though she carried on faithfully she had to rest frequently and at night tossed restlessly, though greatly fatigued. She became pregnant again, much to her dismay and to the great regret of her husband. At times she thought of abortion, but only in a desperate way. The last few months of her term were in the very hot months of the year and she was very uncomfortable. However, she was delivered safely, got up in a week to help in the care of her other two children and to get the house into shape again. Her milk was fairly plentiful, despite her fatigue and "jumpy nerves." Unfortunately at this time, when they had accumulated a little surplus and she was looking forward to better clothes for her family and more comforts, the plant at which her husband was employed suspended operations because of some "high finance" mix-up. Coming at this time, the news struck terror into her heart; she broke down, became "hysterical" _i.e._ had an emotional outburst. This passed away, but now she was sleepless, had no appetite, complained of headache and great fatigue. Though she was assured that the plant would reopen soon (in fact it soon did), she made little progress. That she was suffering from a psychoneurosis was evident; what remained was to bring about treatment. This was done by enlisting a development of recent days,--the Social Service agencies. Out of the old-time charity has come a fine successor, social service; out of the amateurish, self-consciously gracious and sweet Lady Bountiful has come the social worker. Unfortunately social service has not yet dropped the name "Charity", perhaps has not been able to do so, largely because the well-to-do from whom the money must come like to think of themselves as charitable, rather than as the beneficiaries of the social system giving to the unfortunates of that system. Let me say one more word about social service and the social worker, though I feel that a volume of praise would be more fitting. The social worker has become an indispensable part of the hospital organization, an investigator to bring in facts, a social adjuster to bring about cure. For a hospital to be without a social service department is to confess itself behind the times and inefficient. Briefly, this is what was done for this family. Their prejudices against social aid were removed by emphasizing that they were not recipients of charity. The husband was allowed to pay, or arrange to pay, for a six weeks' stay in the country for the mother and the new baby. The home for this purpose was found by the agency and was that of a kindly elderly couple who took the woman into their hearts as well as over their threshold. The social worker arranged with a nursing organization to send a worker to the man's house each day to clean up the home while the children stayed in a nursery. One way or another the husband and children were made comfortable, and the wife came back from her stay, made over, eager to get back to her work. It is obvious that in such a case as this the physician is largely diagnostician and director, the actual treatment consisting in getting a selfish and inert social system to help out one of its victims. That a sick man should be left to sink or swim, though he has previously been industrious and a good member of society, is injustice and social inefficiency. That a woman, under such circumstances, should be left with the entire burden on her hands is part of the stupidity and cruelty of society. How avert such a thing? For one thing do away with the name "Charity" in relief work,--and find some system by which industry will adequately care for its victims. What system will do that? I fear it may be called socialistic to suggest that some of the fifteen billions spent last year on luxuries might better be shifted to social amelioration. The record in automobile production would be more pleasing if it did not mean a shift from real social wealth to individual luxury. Case II. The over-rich, purposeless woman. This type is of course the direct opposite of the woman in Case I and represents the kind of woman usually held up as most commonly afflicted with "nervousness." "If she really had something to do," say the critics, "she would not be nervous." This is fundamentally true of her, though not true of the majority of women whom we have discussed. It seems difficult to believe that hard work and worry may bring the same results as idleness and dissatisfaction, but it is true that both deënergize the organism, the body and mind, and so are kindred evils. What's the matter with the poor is their poverty, while the matter with the rich is their wealth. Mrs. A. De L. is of middle-class people whose parents lived beyond their means and educated their only daughter to do the same. Here is one of the anomalies of life: bitterly aware of their folly, the extravagant and struggling deliberately push their children into the same road. Mrs. De L. learned early that the chief objects of life in general were to keep up appearances and kill time; that as a means to success a woman must get a rich husband and keep beautiful. Being an intelligent girl and pretty she managed to get the rich husband,--and settled down to the rich housewife's neurosis. Her husband was old-fashioned despite his rather new wealth, and they had two children,--a large modern American family. Though he allowed her to have servants he insisted that she manage their household, which she did with rebellion for a short time, and then rather quickly broke away from it by turning over the household to a housekeeper. This brought about the silent disapproval of her husband, who let her "have her own way", as he said, "because it's the fashion nowadays." She became a seeker of pleasure and sensation, drifting from one type of amusement to the other in an intricately mixed coöperation and rivalry with members of her set. She followed every fad that infests staid old Boston, from the esoteric to the erotic. She became an accomplished dancer, ran her own car, followed the races, went to art exhibitions, subscribed to courses of lectures of which she would attend the first, dabbled in new religions, became enthusiastic: about social work for a month or two,--and became a professional at bridge. Summers she rested by chasing pleasure and flirting with male _habitués_ of fashionable summer resorts; part of the winter she recuperated at Palm Beach, where she vied for the leadership of her set with her dearest enemy. Her husband financed all her ventures with a disillusioned shrug of his shoulders. As she entered the thirties she became intensely dissatisfied with herself and her life, tried to get back to active supervision of her home but found herself in the way, though her children were greatly pleased and her husband sceptical. The need of excitement and change persisted; gradually an intense boredom came over her. Her interest in life was dulled and she began a mad search for some sensation that would take away the distressing self-reproach and dissatisfaction. Shortly after this she lost the power to sleep and had a host of symptoms which need not be detailed here. The medical treatment was first to restore sleep. I may say that this is a first step of great importance, no matter how the sleeplessness originates. For even if an idea or a disturbing emotion is its cause, the sleeplessness may become a habit and needs energetic attention. With this done, attention was paid to the social situation, the life habits. It was pointed out that all the philosophies of life were based on simple living and work, and that all the wise men from the beginning of the written word to our own times have shown the futility of seeking pleasure. It was shown that to be a sensation seeker was to court boredom and apathy, and that these had deënergized her. For interest in the world is the great source of energy and the great marshaler of energy. From the child bored by lack of playmates, who brightens up at the sight of a woolly little dog, to the old and vigorous man who makes the mistake of resigning from work, this function of interest can be shown. She was advised to get a fundamental, nonegoistic purpose, one that would rally both her emotions and her intelligence into service. Finally she was told bluntly that on these steps depended her health and that from now on any breakdown would be merely a confession of failure in reasonableness and purpose. That she improved greatly and came back to her normal health I know. Whether she continued to remain well and how far she followed the advice given I cannot say. From the earliest time to this, necessity has been the main spur to purpose, and probably the lure of social competition drew the lady back to her old life. Experience, though the best teacher, seems to have the same need of repetition that all teaching does. Case III. The physically sick woman who displays nervousness. Though this is one of the most important of the types of nervous housewife the subject is essentially medical. We shall therefore not detail any case, but it is wise to reemphasize some facts. There are bodily diseases of which the early and predominant symptoms are classed as "nervousness." Hyperthyroidism, or Graves' Disease, a condition in which there is overactivity of the thyroid gland and which is particularly prevalent among young women, is one of those diseases. In this condition excitability, irritability, emotional outbursts, fatigue, restlessness, digestive disorders, vasomotor disorders, appear before the characteristic symptoms do. Neuro-syphilis is another such disease. This is an involvement of the nervous system by syphilis. One of the tragedies that distresses even hardened doctors is to find some fine woman who has acquired neuro-syphilis through her husband, though he himself may remain well. In the early stages this disease not only has neurasthenic symptoms but is very responsive to treatment, and thus the early diagnosis is of great importance. What is known as reflex nervousness arises as a result of minor local conditions, such as astigmatism and other eye conditions, trouble with the nose and throat and trouble with the organs of generation. The latter is especially important in any consideration of nervousness in the housewife, particularly in the woman who has borne children. Frequently too the existence of hemorrhoids, resulting from constipation, acts to increase the irritability of a woman who is perhaps too modest to consult a physician regarding such trouble. Where such modesty exists (and it is found in the very women one would be apt to think were the very last to be swayed by it), then a competent woman physician should be consulted. With good women physicians and surgeons in every large community there is no reason for reluctance to be examined on the part of any woman. Further details are not necessary. Enough has been said to emphasize the fact that the nervousness of the housewife is first a medical problem and then a social-psychological one. Case IV. A case presenting bad hygiene as the essential factor. Bad hygiene is something more than exposure to bad air, poor food, contaminated water, etc. It includes habits and times of eating, attention to the bowels, outdoor exercise, sleep, and in the marital state it includes the sexual indulgence. The housewife under consideration, Mrs. T.F., aged twenty-eight, married five years, two children, complained mainly of headache, occasional dizziness, great irritability, and fatigue, so that quarrels with her husband were very common, though there seemed nothing to quarrel about. The family was not rich, but lived in a comfortable apartment; there were no serious financial burdens, the children were reasonably healthy and good, and the closest questioning revealed the husband as a kindly man who never took the initiative in quarrels but who was never able to keep silent under provocation. The couple was still in love and there seemed to be no essential incompatibility. Questioned as to her habits, Mrs. F. said she did all her own housework except the washing and ironing and scrubbing. She had a little girl three times a week to take the baby out. Before marriage she had been a stenographer, but never earned high pay and had no love for her work. In fact she gave it up with relief and found housework with its disagreeable features much more to her taste than business. She had been of a placid, pleasant temperament and could not understand the change in her. Since all this did not explain her symptoms, closer inquiry was made into her habits. She arose with her husband at seven-thirty, prepared his breakfast, sent the oldest child off to kindergarten and then had her own breakfast, which usually consisted of toast and coffee. At noon she had a very small piece of meat or an egg and a few potatoes with tea. At night she ate sparingly of the dinner, which usually was meat, potatoes, another vegetable, and a dessert. Her husband here stated that she ate at this meal less than the boy of four and a half. Comparing her buxom figure with the diet a discrepancy was at once apparent. She then confessed with shame that she was a constant nibbler, eating a bit of this or that every half hour or so, and consequently never had an appetite. The food thus nibbled usually was either spicy or sweet, and she consumed quite a bit of candy. Her bowels moved infrequently and she always needed laxatives. In her spare time she felt rather "logy", rarely went out, except now and then at night with her husband, and spent her leisure hours on the couch reading or nibbling. This in itself would have quite explained much of her trouble. It has been pointed out that body and mind are not separable; that mental functions are based on the bodily functions, and that mood may rest on no more exalted cause then the condition of the bowels. But a more intimate questioning revealed sexual habits which are easily drifted into by people of an amorous turn of character and who are really fond of one another. These both husband and wife frankly said they had not meant to speak of, but with their disclosure it was evident that a good deal of importance was to be attached to them. The correction of the life habits was of course the fundamental need. The young woman was instructed in detail as to diet, the care of the bowels and outdoor exercise. Since she was in perfect condition except for stoutness she could easily look for recovery, and as an added incentive the restoration of youthful good looks was held out as certain. The sexual life was frankly discussed, and necessary restrictions were imposed. Both the husband and wife agreed willingly to the changes ordered and promised faithfully to carry out instructions. The patient made a splendid recovery and very rapidly. Here was a deënergization dependent solely upon the sedentary life of the housewife and upon ignorance of sex hygiene. Here were quarreling and impending marital disaster removed by attention to details in living. Here was a complete proof that not only does a sound mind need a sound body, but that a sound marriage needs one as well. Case V. The hyperæsthetic woman. Mrs. J.F. is twenty-seven years of age. She was born in the United States, of middling well-to-do people. Her father was a gruff, hearty man, not in the least bit finicky, who really despised manners and the like, though he was conventional enough in his own way. Her mother was an old-fashioned housewife, fond of her home and family, in fact perhaps more attached to the former than the latter. She hated servants and got along without them (except for a day woman) until she became rather too old to do the work. J.'s sister and two brothers were duplicates of the parents,--hearty, stolid, and remarkably plain looking. J., the younger sister, though not the youngest in the family, was as different from her family as if she had sprung from another stock. She was slender, very pretty, with a quick, alert mind which jumped at conclusions, because labored analysis fatigued it. Above all, from the very start of life she was sensitive to a degree that perplexed her family, who were however intensely sympathetic because they adored her. This adoration arose from the fact that J. was brighter and prettier than most of her friends, and that her cleverness in many directions--music, writing, talking, handiwork--was the talk of their little group. This sensitiveness arose from two main factors. First, an egoism fostered by the worship of her friends and the leadership of her group,--an egoism which led her to regard as a sort of insult anything disagreeable. Accustomed to praise, the least criticism implied or outspoken cut like a knife; accustomed to being waited upon, she resented physical discomfort of the slightest kind. Second, there must also have been an actual physical sensitiveness to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. that made her perceive what others failed to notice. This led to an artistry manifested by her nice work in music and decoration and also by an excessive displeasure at the inartistic. With this training, experience, and natural temperament she should have married a rich collector of art products, who would have added her to his collection and cherished her as his most fragile possession. Instead, through the working of that strange law of contraries by which Nature strikes averages between extremes, she fell in love with a hulk of a man whose ideas on art were limited to calling a picture "pretty", who loved sports and the pleasures of the table, and whose business motto was "Beat the other guy to it." A successful man, troubled with few subtleties either of approach or conscience, he viewed the marriage relationship in the old-fashioned way and the new American indulgence. A man's wife was to be given all the clothes she wanted, servants to help run the home, ought to bear two or three children, and love her indulgent husband. As for any real intimacy, he knew nothing of it. Kindly, self-indulgent, wife-indulgent, child-indulgent, ruthless in business, he may stand as something America has produced without any effort. From the very first night J.'s world was shattered. We need not enter into details in this matter, but a woman of this type needs finesse in the initiation into marriage more than at any other time. Cave-man style outraged her every fiber, and the man was dumbfounded at her reaction. Though he tried to make amends his very effort and lack of understanding complicated matters. Aside from this matter, which in the course of time became adjusted, so that though she rebelled desire arose in her, she found herself at odds with her husband's tastes and conduct in little things. Though his table manners were good enough, the gusto of his eating annoyed her and took away her own appetite. When they went to a play together the coarse jokes and the plainly sensuous aroused his enthusiasm. He lacked subtlety and could not understand the "finer" things of life. As he grew settled in matrimony, which he enjoyed in spite of her nerves (which he took for granted as like a woman), he grew stouter and this irritated and jarred her. She finally realized she no longer loved him. It is doubtful if she realized this before the birth of her first and only child. She lacked maternal feeling and rebelled with a bitter rebellion against the distortion of her figure that came with the pregnancy. The nursing ordered by the doctor and expected by all around her nearly drove her "wild", she said, for she felt like a "cow", a "female." Indeed she reacted bitterly against the femaleness that marriage forced on her and hated the essential maleness of her husband. Her emotional reaction against nursing took away her milk, and finally the disgusted family doctor ordered the baby weaned and he was turned over to a servant. She went back to her own life, determined to become a housewife, to see if she could not love her husband and her home. But everything he did irritated her, and everything in the house made her feel as in a "luxurious cage." Yet she was by no means a feminist; she detested "noisy suffragettes", thought women doctors and lawyers ridiculous, and had been brought up to regard marriage as indissoluble. Gradually out of the conflict, the chilling fear that she had made a mistake which could not be rectified, the constant irritation and annoyances, the revolt against her own sex feeling and her life situation, arose the neurosis. It took the form mainly of sudden unaccountable fears with faint dizzy feelings. The family physician on the aside told me that it was "just a case of a damn fool woman with everybody too good to her." What constitutes a "damn fool" will include every person in the world, according to some one else. It seemed obvious to me that J. was not meant by nature to be a housewife or any kind of wife. Matrimonially she was a misfit, unless she met some man of a type like herself, though I doubt if any man could have pleased her. I doubt if her over-exacting taste would not rebel against the animal in life itself. For though the animal of life is essentially as fine as the human, certain types find it impossible to acknowledge it in themselves. At any rate I advised separation for a time,--six months at least. I told the woman her reaction to her husband was abnormal and finicky. She answered that she knew this but could not conceive of any change. We discussed the matter in all its ramifications, and though she and her husband agreed to the separation, I knew that he was determined to hold her to her contract. She improved somewhat but I believe that such a temperament is incompatible with marriage, at least to such a man. The outlook is therefore a poor one. Case VI. The over-conscientious housewife,--the seeker of perfection. The woman whose history is to be discussed comes from a family of New England stock, _i.e._ the Anglo-Saxon strain modified by New England climate, diet, history, religion, and tradition into a distinct type. This type, often traditionally conservative and often extraordinarily radical, has this prevailing trait,--standards of right and wrong are set up somehow or other, and a remarkably consistent effort is made to maintain these inflexibly. However, the hyperconscientious are not peculiarly New England alone; I have met Jewish women, Italians, French, Irish, and Negroes who showed the same loyalty to a self-imposed ideal. This lady, Mrs. F.B., thirty-five years of age, with three children, was brought by her husband against her will. He declared that both she and he were on the verge of nervous prostration; that unless something was done he would start beating her, this last of course representing a type of humorous desperation that usually has a wish concealed in it. She was "worn to a frazzle", always tired, sleepless, of capricious appetite, irritable, complaining, and yet absolutely refused to see a physician. She had taken tonics by the gallon, been overhauled by a dozen specialists, all of whom say, "nothing wrong of any importance--yet she is a wreck and I am getting to be one." Her husband was a jolly looking personage from the Middle West, in a small business which kept his family comfortably. He looked domestic and admitted he was, which his wife corroborated. Evidently he was exasperated and worried as he gave the history of the case, with his wife now and then putting in a word: "Now, John, you are stretching things there; don't believe him, Doctor; not so bad as all that," etc. She was a slender person, rather dowdily dressed as compared with her husband, with garments quite a little behind the prevailing mode. Her hair was unbecomingly put up, and it was evident that she disdained cosmetics of any kind, even the innocent rice powder. Her hands were quite unmanicured, though they were, of course, clean and neat. The hat was the simplest straw, home trimmed and neat, but a mere "lid" compared to the creations most women of her class were at the time wearing. That clothes were meant to be ornamental as well as useful was an attitude she completely rejected. It turned out that life to her was an eternal housekeeping,--from the beginning of the day to the end she was on the job. Though she had a maid this did not relieve her much, for she constantly fretted and fumed over the maid's slackness. Everything had to be spotless _all the time_; she could not bear the disordered moments of bedtime, of the early morning hours, of wash day, of meal preparation, of the children's room, etc. She was obsessed by cleanliness and order, and her exasperated efforts, her reaction to any untidiness kept her husband and children bound in a fear like her own, though they rebelled and scolded her for it. "She's always after the children," said her husband. "She is crazy about them, but she has got them so they don't dare call their soul their own. They don't bring their playmates into the house largely because they know that mother, though she wants children to play, goes after them picking up and cleaning." This restlessness in the presence of disorder was accompanied by the effort to eradicate all vices, all discourtesies, all errors in manners from the children. She feared "bad habits" as she feared immorality. She thought that any rudeness might grow into a habit, must be broken early; any selfish manifestation might be the beginning of a gross selfishness, any lying or pilfering might be the beginning of a career of crime. Here one might hold forth on the necessity for trial and error in children's lives. They want to try things, they form little habits for a day, a week, a month which they discard after a while; they try out words and phrases, playing with them and then pass on to a new experiment. They are insatiable seekers of experience, untiring in their quest for experiment,--and they learn thereby. Not every mickle grows into a muckle, and the supplanting of habits, the discarding of them as unsatisfactory, is as marked a phenomenon as the formation of habits. So our patient allowed nothing for imperfections, experimental stages, developing tastes in her children. She was, however, hardest on herself, self-critical, scolded herself constantly because her house was never perfect, her work never done. She never had time to go out; she had become a veritable slave to a conscience that prodded her every time she read a book, took a nap, or went to a picture show. It was not at first obvious either to her or her husband that her own ideal of cleanliness and perfection was responsible for her neurasthenia. If her "stomach was out of order ought she not have some stomach remedy; if her nerves were out of order would the doctor not prescribe a nerve tonic or a sedative?" The idea of a medicine for everything is still strong in the community and especially amongst dwellers in small towns, and represents a latent belief in magic. In addition to such medicines as I thought the situation demanded, and to such advice as bore on her attitude to work and play, I hinted that dressing more fashionably might be of value. For the poorly dressed always have a feeling of inferiority in the presence of the better dressed, and this feeling is seriously disagreeable. To raise the ego-feeling one must remove feelings of inferiority, and here was a relatively simple situation. This woman really cared about clothes, admired them, but had got it into her head early in life that it was sinful to be vain about one's looks. Though she had discarded the sin idea the notion lingered in the form of "unworthy of a sensible woman", "extravagance", etc. As she was painfully self-conscious in the presence of others as a result, this was a hidden reason for sticking to her home. This woman had a really fine intelligence, wanted to be well and made a gallant effort to change her attitude. In this she succeeded, became as she put it more "careless of her things and more careful of her people." Of course one cannot expect her ever to be anything but a fine housekeeper but she manages to be comfortable and has conquered an over-zealous conscience. CHAPTER XI OTHER TYPICAL CASES Case VII. The ambitious woman discontented with her husband's ability. In the American marriage relationship the woman makes the home and the man makes the fortune. In some countries the wife is an active business partner. This is notably true in France, among the Jews in Russia, and many immigrant races in the United States. The wife may even take the leadership if her superiority clearly shows up. Perhaps the American method works well enough in a majority of cases, but there are superior women yoked to inferior men who finally despair of their husband's advancement, and who, as the phrase goes, ought to be "wearing the trousers" themselves. Mrs. D.J., thirty-nine years old, married fourteen years, two children, had excellent health before marriage. Her family, originally poor, had been characterized by great success. Her brothers occupy important places in the business world and are wealthy. One of her sisters is married to a man who is successful in law, and the other sister is an executive in a department store. Before marriage Mrs. J. was in her brother's business, and at the time of her marriage earned a comfortable salary. She married a man who inherited a small business, and when they married she was enthusiastic over the prospects of this business. But unfortunately her husband never followed her plans; he listened impatiently and went ahead in his own way. As a result of his conservatism they had not advanced at all financially. Though they were not poor as compared with the mass of people, they were poor as compared with her brothers and brother-in-law. In addition to the exasperation over her husband's attitude toward her counsel (which was approved by her brothers), she developed a disrespect for him, a feeling that he was to be a failure and a certain contempt crept into her attitude. Against this she struggled, but as the time went on the feeling became almost too strong to be disguised and caused many quarrels. It is probable that if her own brothers and sisters had not done so well her feeling toward her husband would not have reached the proportions it did, for she became envious of the good things they enjoyed and to a certain extent resented her sisters-in-law's attitude toward her husband and herself as poor. The part futile jealousy and envy play in life will not be underestimated by those who will candidly view their own feelings when they hear of the success of those who are near them. One of the reasons that ostentation and bragging are in such disfavor is because of the unpleasant envy and jealousy they tend involuntarily to arouse. With disrespect came a distaste for sexual relations, and here was a complicating factor of a decisive kind. She developed a disgust that brought about hysterical symptoms and finally she took refuge in refusal to live as a wife. This aroused her husband's anger and suspicions; he accused her of infidelity and had her watched. The disunion proceeded to the point of actual separation, and she then passed into an acute nervous condition, marked by fear, restlessness, sleeplessness, and fatigue. The analysis of this patient's reactions was difficult and as much surmised as acknowledged. With her breakdown her husband's affection immediately revived and his solicitude and tenderness awoke her old feeling, together with remorse for her attitude towards his lack of business success. It was obvious to me in the few times I saw her that she was working out her own salvation and that no one's assistance was necessary after she understood herself. Intelligence is a prime essential to cure in such cases,--an ignorant or unintelligent woman with such reactions cannot be dealt with. Gradually her intelligence took command, new resolves and purposes grew out of her illness, and it may confidently be said that though she never will be a phlegmatic observer of her husband's struggles she has conquered her old criticism and hostility. Case VII. The nondomestic type and the mother-in-law. That there is a nondomestic type of woman to-day is due to the rise of feminism and the fascination of industry. Where a woman has once been in the swirl of business, has been part of an organization and has tasted financial success, settling down may be possible, but is much more difficult than to the woman of past generations. Such a woman probably has never cooked a meal, or mended a stocking, or washed dishes,--and she has been financially independent. For love of a man she gives all this up, and even under the best of circumstances has her agonies of doubt and rebellion. Mrs. A. O'L. had added to these difficulties the mother-in-law question. She was an orphan when she married, and was the private secretary of a business man who because she was efficient and intelligent and loyal gave her a good salary. She knew his affairs almost as well as he did and was treated with deference by the entire organization. She married at twenty-six a man entirely worthy of her love, a junior official in a bank, looked on as a rising man, of excellent personal habits and attractive physique. She resigned her position gladly and went into the home he furnished, prepared to become a good wife and mother. Unfortunately there already was a woman in the house, Mr. O'L.'s mother. She was a good lady, a widow, and had made her home with the son for some years. She was a capable, efficient housewife, with a narrow range of sympathies, and with no ambitions. There arose at once the almost inevitable conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Some day perhaps we shall know just why the husband's mother and his wife get along best under two roofs, though the husband's father presents no great difficulties. Perhaps in the attachment of a mother to a son there is something of jealousy, which is aroused against the other woman; perhaps women are more fiercely critical of women than men are. Perhaps the mother, if she has a good son, is apt to think no woman good enough for him, and if she is not consulted in the choosing is apt to feel resentment. Perhaps to be supplanted as mistress of the household or to fear such supplantment is the basic factor. At any rate, the old Chinese pictorial representation of trouble as "two women under one roof" represents the state in most cases where mother-in-law and daughter-in-law live together. The senior Mrs. O'L. began a campaign of criticism against the younger woman. There was enough to find fault with, since the wife was absolutely inexperienced. But she was entirely new to hostile criticism, and it impeded her learning. Furthermore, she was not inclined to try all of the mother-in-law's suggestions; she had books which took diametrically the opposite point of view in some matters. There were some warm discussions between the ladies, and a spirit of rebellion took possession of the wife. This was emphasized by the fact that she found herself very lonely and longed secretly for the hum and stir of the office; for the deference and the courtesy she had received there. Further, the distracted husband, in his rôles of husband and son, found himself displeasing both his wife and his mother. He tried to get the girl to subordinate herself, since he knew that this would be impossible for his mother. To this his wife acceded, but was greatly hurt in her pride, felt somehow lowered, and became quite depressed. The house seemed "like a prison with a cross old woman as a jailer", as she expressed it. Another factor of importance needs some space. The bridal year needs seclusion, on account of a normal voluptuousness that attends it. No outsider should witness the embraces and the kisses; no outsider should be present to impede the tender talks and the outlet of feeling. It sometimes happens that the elderly have a reaction against all love-making; having outlived it they are disgusted thereby, they find it animal like, though indeed it is the lyric poetry of life. So it was in this case; the mother was a third party where three is more than a crowd, and she was a critical, disgusted third party. The young woman found herself taking a similar attitude to the love-making, found herself inhibiting her emotions and had a furtive feeling of being spied on. The previously strong, energetic girl quickly broke down. Physical strength and energy may come entirely from a united spirit; a disunited spirit lowers the physical endurance remarkably. She became disloyal to matrimony, rebelled against housework, and yet loved her husband intensely. A prey to conflicting ideas and emotions, she fell into a circular thinking and feeling, where depressed thoughts cannot be dismissed and depressed energy follows depressed mood. Prominent in the symptoms were headache, sleeplessness, etc., for which the neurologist was consulted. How to remedy this situation was to tax the wisdom of a Solomon. It probably would have remained insoluble, had not the statement I made that the main element in the difficulty was the mother-in-law _vs._ daughter-in-law situation come to the ears of the old lady. Conscientious and well-meaning, that lady announced her determination to take up her residence with a married daughter who already had a well-organized household, and whose husband was a favorite of the mother's. Despite the mother-in-law joke of the humorists, the mother-in-law is far more friendly to a daughter's husband than to a son's wife. This solved part of my patient's problem. There remained the adjustment to domestic life. This was hard, and though in part successful, it was delayed by the sterility of the marriage. The husband and wife agreed that pending a child she might well become active again in the larger world. Though the best place would have been her old work, pride and convention stood in the way, and so she entered upon more or less amateurish social work. Finally, perhaps as an unconsciously humorous compensation for her own troubles, she became an ardent and thoroughly efficient secretary to a league of housewives that aimed at better conditions. This work took up her time except for the supervising of a servant, and this nondomestic arrangement worked well since she had no children. Case VIII. The childless, neglected woman. It happened that two of the severest cases I have seen occurred, one in a Jewish woman and the other in a young Irish woman, with such an identity of symptoms and social domestic background that either case might have been interchanged for the other without any appreciable difference. The factors in the cases might simply be summarized as childlessness, anxiety, neglect, and loneliness, and in each case the main symptoms were anxiety, attacks of cardiac symptoms, fatigue, and sleeplessness. The young Jewish woman, thirty years of age, had been married since the age of twenty. Before marriage she worked in the needle trades, was well and strong and had no knowledge of any particular nervous or mental disease in her family. She married a man of twenty-four, who had also been in the tailoring business and had branched out in a small way in business. This business required him to go to work at about seven-thirty in the morning and he finished at nine-thirty in the evening. In the earlier years of their marriage he came home rather promptly at the end of his long day and the pair were quite happy. At about the third year after marriage the woman became quite alarmed at her continued sterility. She commenced to consult physicians and in the course of the next three years underwent three operations with no result. She began to brood over this, especially since about this time her husband began to show a decided lack of interest in the home. He would come home at twelve and later, and she found that he was playing cards,--in fact had become a confirmed gambler. When she first discovered this, she became greatly worried; made a trip to New York where his people lived and induced them to bring pressure to bear on him for reform. This they did, with the result that for about six months he remained away from cards and gave more attention to his wife. The reform lasted only for a short period and then the husband plunged deeper into gaming than ever, and there were periods of three and four days at a stretch when he would not return home at all. At such times the lonely wife, who still loved her husband, fell into a perturbed and agitated frame of mind, the worse because she confided her difficulties to no one. When he would return, shamefaced and repentant, she would reproach him bitterly and this would bring about renewed attention, gifts, etc., for a week or so,--and then backsliding. Finally even the brief spasmodic reforms grew less common, her reproaches were answered hotly or listened to with indifference, and she became "practically a widow" except for the occasions when the sexual feeling mastered them both. The neurosis in this case approached almost an insanity. The dwelling alone, the desperate obsessive desire for a child to bring back his love and attentions and to satisfy her own maternal instinct, the pain the sight of happy couples with children gave her and which made her shun other women and their company, the fear that her husband was unfaithful (which fear was probably justified), and the lack of any fixed or definite purpose, the lack of a great pride or self-sufficiency, brought on symptoms that necessitated her removal to a sanitarium. This of course pricked the conscience of her husband. He visited her frequently, vowed a complete change, promised to bring his business to the point where he would be able to come home at six, etc., etc. Gradually she improved and finally made a partial recovery. Whether or not the husband kept his promises I cannot say. On the chances he did. Most confirmed gamblers, however, remain gamblers. The lure of excitement is more potent to such men than a wife whose charm has gone, through familiarity, through time itself, through the inconstancy of passion and love. The gambler usually knows no duty; he is kind and generous but only to please himself. He is easily bored and his sympathies rarely stand the disagreeable long; he knows only one _constant_ attraction,--Chance. The other woman suffered in much the same way except that she was fortunate enough finally to be deserted by her husband. This ended her doubts and fears, broke her down for a short while, and then she went back to industry. In this I have no doubt she found only an incomplete satisfaction for her yearnings and desires, but she had something to take up her time, and built up contacts with others in a way that was impossible in her lonely home. Case IX. The will to power through weakness; a case of hysteria in the home. This case is classic in the outspoken value of the symptoms to the woman. It is not of course typical, except as the extreme is typical, and that is what is usually meant, Roosevelt, we say, was a typical American, meaning that he represented in extreme development a certain type of man. So this case shows very clearly what is not so clear at first in many cases of conflict between man and wife. The woman in question was twenty-seven, of French-Canadian origin, but thoroughly American in appearance and speech. She was of a middle-class rural family and had married a farmer who finally had given up his farm and was a mechanic in a small city. The young woman had always been irritable, egoistic, and sensitive. As a girl if anything happened to "shock her nerves", _i.e._ to displease her, she fainted, vomited, or went into "hysterics." As a result her family treated her with great caution and probably were well pleased when she married off their hands and left the home. Married life soon provided her with sufficient to displease her. Her husband drank but not sufficiently to be classed as a heavy drinker. He was a quiet, rather taciturn man, utterly averse to the pleasures for which his wife longed. She wanted to go to dances, to take in the theaters, to live in more expensive rooms, and especially she became greatly attached to a group of people of a sporty type whom her husband tersely called "tinhorn bluffs" and whom he refused to visit. They quarreled vigorously and the quarrels always ended one way,--she became sick in one way or other. This usually brought her husband around to her way of thinking, at least for a time, and much against his will he would go with her to her friends. Finally, however, she set her heart on living with these people, and he set his will firmly against hers. She then developed such an alarming set of symptoms that after a while the physician who asked my opinion had made up his mind that she had a brain tumor. She was paralyzed, speechless, did not eat and seemed desperately ill. The diagnosis of hysteria was established by the absence of any evidence of organic disease and by the history of the case. The relief of symptoms was brought about by means which I need not detail here, but which essentially consisted in proving to the patient that no true paralysis existed and in tricking her into movement and speech. When she was well enough to be up and about and to talk freely, she and her husband were both informed that the symptoms arose because her will was thwarted, and _that_ part of their function was to bring the man to his knees. He agreed to this, but she took offense and refused to come any more to see me,--a not unnatural reaction. The outlook in such a case is that the couple will live like cats and dogs. Such a temperament as this woman's is inborn. She is essentially, in the complete meaning of the word, unreasonable. Her nature demands a sympathetic attention and consideration that her character does not warrant. Throughout life she demands to receive but has no desire to give. Nor is she powerful enough to take, so there arise emotional crises with marked disturbance in bodily energy, and especially symptoms that frighten the onlooker, such as paralyses, blindness, deafness, fainting spells, etc. Whatever is the source of these symptoms, they are frequently used to gain some end or purpose through the sympathy and discomfort of others. Not all hysteria, either in men or women, is united with such a character as this woman's. Sufficient stress and strain may bring about hysterical symptoms in a relatively normal person and short hysterical reactions are common in the normal woman. The height of cynicism may be found in the discovery that war causes hysteria in some men in much the same way that matrimony causes hysteria in some women. A humorous review of a paper on the domestic neuroses was entitled "Kitchen Shell Shock." But severe hysteria, when it arises in the housewife, springs mainly from her disposition and not from the kitchen. Case X. The unfaithful husband. Monogamous marriage is based upon the assumption that loyalty to a single male is moral and possible. It is probable that in no age has this agreement been loyally carried out by the husbands; it is probable that in our own time the single standard of morals has first been strongly emphasized. With the rise of women into equality one of the important demands they have made is that men remain as loyal as themselves. Therefore the reaction to unchastity or unfaithfulness on the part of the man is apt to be more severe than in the past, on the theory that where more is demanded failure in performance is felt the keener. The housewife, Mrs. F.C., aged thirty-five, is a prepossessing woman, the mother of two children, and has been married for nine years. Her health has always been fairly good, though in the last four years she has been somewhat irritable. She attributed this to struggle to make both ends meet, her husband being a workman with wages just over the border line of sufficiency. They quarreled "no more than other couples do", were as much in love "as other couples are", to use her phrases. She was above her class in education, read what are usually called advanced books, was "strong for suffrage", etc. However she was a good housekeeper, devoted to her children and faithful to her husband. Their sexual relations were normal and up till six months before I saw her she thought herself a well-mated, rather fortunate woman. Out of a clear sky came proof of long-continued unfaithfulness on the part of her "domestic" husband: a chance bill for women's clothes fluttered out of his pocket and under the bed, so that next morning she found it; an unbelieving moment and then a visit to the address on the bill, and proof plenty that he had been disloyal, not only to her but to the children, who had been obliged to scrimp along while he helped maintain another woman. Humiliated beyond measure by her disaster, unable to endure her past memories of happiness and faith, with an unstable world rocking before her, through the revelation that a quiet, contented, loving man could be completely false, she found no adequate reason for living and became a helpless prey to her troubled mind. "A temporary unfaithfulness, a yielding to sudden temptation" she could understand, but a determined plan of duplicity shattered her whole scheme of values. A very severe psychoneurosis followed, and her children and she were taken over by her parents and cared for. Sleeplessness was so prominent in her case and so evidently the central physical symptom that its control was difficult and required a regular campaign for success. With sleep restored and the resumption of eating, the most of her acute symptoms were passed, though a profound depression remained. Her husband, thoroughly abashed and ashamed, made furtive attempts at reconciliation. These were absolutely rejected, and from her attitude it was obvious that no reconciliation was possible. "Had he not been found out," said the wife, "he would still be living with her. I can never trust him again; I would die before I lived with him." Little by little her pride recovered, for in such cases the deepest wound is to the ego, the self-valuation. The deepest effort of life is to increase that valuation by increasing its power and its respect by others; the keenest hurt comes with the lowering of the valuation of one's own personality. A woman gives herself to a man, without lowering a self-feeling if he is tender and faithful; if he holds her cheap, as by flagrant disloyalty, then her surrender is her most painful of memories. With the recovery of pride came the restoration of her interest in her children, and her purposes reshaped themselves into definite plans. Part of the process in readjustment in any disordered life is to centralize the dispersed purposes, to redirect the life energies. She agreed that she would accept aid from the husband, as his duty, but only for the children. For herself, as soon as the children were a year or so older, she would go back to industry and become self-supporting. Her plans made, her recovery proceeded to a firm basis, and I have no doubt as to its permanence. Nevertheless, life has changed its complexion for her, and there will be many moments of agony. These are inevitable and part of the recovery process. I shall not attempt to settle the larger problem of whether she should have forgiven her husband and returned to him. Granting that his repentance was genuine, granting that no further lapse would occur, she would never be able to forget that when he deceived her he had _acted_ the part of a devoted husband. She would never be able fully to trust him, and this would spoil their married happiness entirely. "For the children's sake," cry some readers; well, that is the only strong argument for return. But on the whole it seems to me that an honest separation, an honest revolt of a proud woman is better than a dishonest reunion, or a "patient Griselda" acceptance of gross wrong. Case XI. The unfaithful wife. In such cases as the preceding and the one now to be detailed, the difficulties of the physician are multiplied by his entrance into ethics. Ordinarily medicine has nothing to do with morals; to the doctor saint and sinner are alike, and the only immorality is not to follow orders. To do one's duty as a doctor, with one's sole aim the physical health of the patient, may mean to advise what runs counter to the present-day code of morals. This is the true "Doctor's Dilemma." In such cases discretion is the safest reaction, and discretion bids the physician say, "Call in some one else on that matter; I am only a doctor." A true neurologist must regard himself as something more than a physician. He needs be a good preacher, an astute man of the world, as well as something of a lawyer. The patient expects counsel of an intimate kind, expects aid in the most difficult situations, viz., the conflicts of health and ethics. Mrs. A.R., thirty-one years of age and very attractive, has been married since the age of eighteen. She has two children, and her husband, ten years her senior, is a man of whose character she says, "Every one thinks he is perfect." A little overstaid and over dignified, inclined to be pompous and didactic, he is kind-hearted and loyal, and successful in a small business. He is an immigrant Swiss and she is American born, of Swiss parentage. Always romantic, Mrs. A.R. became greatly dissatisfied with her home life. At times the whole scheme of things, matrimony, settled life, got on her nerves so that she wanted to scream. She was bored, and it seemed to her that soon she would be old without ever having really lived. "I married before I had any fun, and I haven't had any fun since I married except"--Except for the incident that broke down her health by swinging her into mental channels that made her long for the quiet domesticity against which she had so rebelled. Her daydreaming was erotic, but romantically so, not realistic. There are in the community adventurers of both sexes whose main interest in life is the conquest of some woman or man. The male sex adventurers are of two main groups, a crude group whose object is frank possession and a group best called sex-connoisseurs, who seek victims among the married or the hitherto virtuous; who plan a campaign leisurely and to whom possession must be preceded by difficulties. Frequently these gentry have been crude, but as satiation comes on a new excitement is sought in the invasion of other men's homes. Undoubtedly they have a philosophy of life that justifies them. Since this is not a novel we may omit the method by which one of these men found his way to the secret desires of our patient, and how he proceeded to develop her dissatisfaction into momentary physical disloyalty. She came out of her dereliction dazed; could it be she who had done this, who had descended into the vilest degradation? She broke off all relations with the man, probably much to his surprise and disgust, and plunged into a self-accusatory internal debate that brought about a profound neurasthenia. Naturally she did not of her own accord speak of her unfaithfulness,--largely because no one knew of it. Her husband did not in the least suspect her; he thought she needed a rest, a change, little realizing how "change" had broken her down. (For after all, the most of infidelity is based on a sort of curiosity, a seeking of a new stimulus, rather than true passion.) The truth was forced out of her when it was evident to me that something was obsessing her. When she had confessed her difficulty the question arose as to her husband. She was no longer dissatisfied, no longer eager for romance; but could she live with him if she had been unfaithful? Ought she not to tell him; and yet she feared to do this, feared the result to him, for she felt sure he would forgive her. In reality the conflict in her mind arose first from self-depreciation and second from indecision as to confession. As to the self-accusation, I told her that though she had been very foolish she had punished herself severely enough; that her reaction was that of an _essentially moral_ person; that an essentially immoral woman would have continued in her career, and at least would not have been so remorseful. As to confessing, I told her that I believed that if she came to peace without such a confession wisdom would dictate not to make it, and that perhaps a little romanticism was still present in the quixotic idea of confession. Discretion is sometimes the better part of veracity, and I felt sure that she would not find it difficult to forget her pain. It may be questioned whether such advice was ethical. I am sure no two professors of ethics could agree on the matter, and where they would disagree I chose the policy of expediency. Moreover, I felt certain that Mrs. R.'s remorse did not need the purge of confession to her husband, that she was not of that deeply fixed nature which requires heroic measures. Her confession to me was sufficient, and since it was apparent that she would not repeat her folly it was not necessary to go to extremes. The last two cases make pertinent some further remarks on sex. It has previously been stated that the sex field is the one in which arise many of the difficulties which breed the psychoneuroses. It would not be the place here to give details of cases, though every neurologist of experience is well aware of the neuroses that arise in marriage, among both men and women. Some day society will reach the plane where matters relating to the great function by which the world is perpetuated can be discussed with the freedom allowed to the discussion of the details of nutrition. No one seriously doubts that women are breaking away from traditional ideas in these matters. There was a time (the Victorian Age) in the United States and England when prudery ruled supreme in the manners and dress of women. That this has largely disappeared is a good thing, but whether there is a tendency to another extreme is a matter where division of opinion will occur. A transition from long skirts to dress that will permit complete freedom of movement and resembling in a feminine way the garments of men would be unqualifiedly good. It would remove undue emphasis of sex and accentuate the essential human-ness of woman. But a transition from long skirts to short tight ones, impeding movement, is the transition from prudery to pruriency and is by no means a clear gain. Plenty of scope for art and beauty might be found in a costume of which pantalettes of some kind are the basis. I doubt if women will ever be regarded quite as human beings so long as they paint, wear fantastic coiffures, hobble along on foolish heels, and are clad in over tight short skirts. Similarly with the literature of the period. The so-called sex story, the sex problem, obsesses the writers. Nor are these frank, free discussions of the essential difficulties in the relation between man and woman. Usually the stories deal with the difficulties of the idle rich woman without children, or concern themselves with trivial triangles. In the type of interminable continued stories that every newspaper now carries, the woman's difficulties range around the most absurd petty jealousies, and she never seems to cook or sew or have any responsibility, and they always end so "sweetly." On the stage the epidemic of girl and music shows has quite displaced the drama. Here sex is exploited to the point of the risque and sometimes beyond it. Sex is overemphasized by our civilization on its distracting side, its spicy and condimental values, and underemphasized so far as its realities go. The aim seems to be to titillate sex feeling constantly, and a precocious acquaintance with this form of stimulation is the lot of most city children. Such things would have no serious results to the housewife if they did not arouse expectations that marriage does not fulfill at all. This is the great harm of prurient clothes, literature, art, and stage,--it unfits people for sex reality. In how far the delayed marriages of men and women are good or bad it is almost impossible to decide. That unchastity increases with delay is a certainty, that fewer children are born is without doubt. Whether the fixation of habit makes it harder for the wife to settle down to the household, and the man less domestic, cannot be answered with yes or no. There seems to be no greater wisdom of choice shown in mature than in early marriages, though this would be best answered by an analysis of divorce records. That contraceptive measures have come to stay; that they are increasing in use, the declining birth rate absolutely evidences. I take no stock in the belief that education reduces fertility through some biological effect; where it reduces fertility it does so through a knowledge of cause, effect, and prevention. Some day it will come to pass that contraceptive measures will be legal, in view of the fact that our jurists and law makers are showing a decline in the size of their own families. When that time comes the discussion of means of this kind consistent with nervous health will be frank, and some part of the neurasthenia of our modern times will disappear. The vaster racial problems that will arise are not material for discussion in this book. Though not perhaps completely relevant to the nervousness of the housewife, it is not without some point to touch on the "neurosis of the engaged." The freedom of the engaged couple is part of the emancipation of youth in our time. Frankly, a love-making ensues that stops just short of the ultimate relationship, an excitement and a tension are aroused and perpetuated through the frequent and protracted meetings. Sweet as this period of life is, in many cases it brings about a mild exhaustion, and in other cases, relatively few, a severe neurosis. On the whole the engagement period of the average American couple is not a good preparation for matrimony. How to bring about restraint without interfering with normal love-making is not an easy decision to make. But it would be possible to introduce into the teaching of hygiene the necessity of moderation in the engaged period; it would be especially of service to those whose engagement must be prolonged to be advised concerning the matter. Here is a place for the parents, the family friend, or the family physician. Men and women as they enter matrimony are only occasionally equipped with real knowledge as to the physiology and psychology of the sex life. That a great deal of domestic dissatisfaction and unhappiness could be obviated if wisdom and experience instructed the husband and wife in the matter I have not the slightest doubt. The first rift in the domestic lute often dates from difficulties in the intimate life of the pair, difficulties that need not exist if there were knowledge. That reason and love may coexist, that the beauty of life is not dependent on a sentimentalized ignorance are cardinal in my code of beliefs. He who believes that sentiment disappears with enlightenment is the true cynic, the true pessimist. He who believes that intelligence and knowledge should guide instinct and that happiness is thus more certain is better than an optimist; he is a rationalist, a realist. CHAPTER XII TREATMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL CASES It is obvious that what is largely a problem of the times cannot be wholly considered as an individual problem. Yet individual cases do yield to treatment (to use the slang of medicine) or at least a large proportion do. The minor cases in point of symptoms are very frequently the most stubborn, since neither the patient nor the family are willing to concede that to alter the life situation is as important as the taking of medicine. Most housewives are nervous, both in their own eyes and in those of their husbands, yet rightly they are not regarded as sick. They are uncomfortable, even unhappy, and the way out seems impossible to find. I believe that even with things as they are, adjustments are possible that can help the average woman. It is conceded that where the life situation involves an unalterable factor, relief or help may be unobtainable. It is necessary first of all to rule out physical disease. To do this means a thorough physical study. By doing this a considerable number of women will be immensely helped. Flat feet, varicose veins, injuries to the organs of generation, eye strain, relaxed gastro-intestinal tract, and the major diseases,--these must be remembered as factors that may determine nervousness. With this question settled, let us assume that there is no such difficulty or it has been remedied, and we have next to consider the life situation of the patient. Here we enter into a difficult place, where knowledge of life and understanding of men and women, as well as tact, are the essentials. It is necessary to remedy whatever bad hygienic habits exist. A rich woman may have settled down to a deënergizing life, with too much time in bed, too many matinées, too many late nights, too many bonbons, etc. Aside from the psychical injuries that such a life produces, it is bad for "the nerves" in its effects upon digestion, bodily tone, and the sources of mood. On some simple detail of life, some unfortunate habit, the whole structure of misery may rest. I always keep in mind an incident of some years ago when I lived in a small town in Massachusetts. For some reason our furnace threw coal gas into the house in such a way as nearly to poison us. The landlord sent several plumbers down, and one after the other suggested drastic remedies,--a new chimney, a new furnace, etc. Finally the landlord and I investigated for ourselves. At the bottom of the chimney we found an inconspicuous loose brick which allowed air to enter the chimney beneath the entrance of the pipe from the stove. We got ten cents' worth of lime and fastened the brick in firmly. A complete cure, where the specialists had failed. So there often exists some drain on the energy and strength of the woman which may be simple and easily changed, and yet is critical in its significance and importance. An overdomestic woman may stick too closely to the house; an underdomestic one may go too often to movies and suffer the fatigue of mind and body that comes from over-indulgence in this most popular indoor sport. Carelessness about the eating and the care of the bowel functions may have started a vicious chain of things leading through irritability and fatigue into neurasthenia. We say human beings are all the same, but the range of individual susceptibility to trouble is such that a difficulty not important to most people will raise havoc with others who are in most ways perfectly normal. Look then for the bad hygiene! Look for the evils of the sedentary life Look for the root of the trouble in lack of exercise, poor habits of eating, insufficient air, disturbed sleep! Search for physical difficulties before inquiring into the psychical life. If poverty exists, then one may inquire into the amount of work done, the character of the home, the opportunities for recreation and recuperation. All or any of the factors I have mentioned in previous chapters may be critical, and the moil and turmoil of a crowded tenement home may be responsible. That such conditions do not break all women down does not prove that they do not break _some_ women down, women with finer sensibilities, or lesser endurance (which often go together). The most depressing problems are met among the poor, the cases where one can see no way out because the social machinery is inadequate to care for its victims. What is one to do when one meets a poor woman with three or four or more children, living in a crowded way, overworked, racked in her nerves by her fears, worries, and the disagreeable in her life, drudging from morning till night, yearning for better things, despairing of getting them, tormented by desires and ambitions that must be thwarted? "What right has a poor woman anyway to desires above her station, and why does not she resign herself to her lot?" ask the comfortable. Unfortunately philosophy and resignation are difficult even for philosophers and saints, and much more so for the aspiring woman. And our American civilization preaches "Strive, Strive!" too constantly for much philosophy and resignation of an effective kind to be found. One must give tonics, prescribe rest, try to get social agencies interested, obtain vacations and convalescent care, etc. Can one purge a woman of futile longings and strivings, rid her of natural fears and even of absurd fears? It can be done to a limited degree, if the patient has intelligence and if one gives liberally of one's time and sympathy. But unfortunately the consulting room for the poor is in the crowded clinic, the thronged dispensary, and how is the overworked physician to give the time and energy necessary? For the time required is the least requirement. To deal adequately with the neurasthenic is to have unending sympathy and patience and an energy that is limitless. Without such energy or endurance the physician either slumps to a prescriber of tonics and sedatives, a dispenser of such stale advice as "Don't worry" and "You need a rest", or else himself gives out. In dealing with the cases in the better-to-do and the rich, one has more weapons in the armamentarium. The worry is more futile here, more ridiculous, and one can attack it vigorously. Usually it is not overwork in these cases; it is monotony, boredom, discontent with something or other, a vicious circle of depressing thoughts and emotions, some difficulty in the sex life, some reaction against the husband, a rebellion of a weak, futile kind against life, maladjustment of a temperament to a situation. Some difficulties, even when ascertained and clearly understood, are insurmountable. "The truth shall make ye free" is true only in the very largest sense. Some temperaments are inborn, and are as unchangeable as the nose on one's face. In such cases the ordinary physical therapeutics help the acute symptoms that flare up now and then, and that is as much as one may expect. But it is certain that in the majority of cases more than this may be accomplished. It is often a great surprise and relief to a woman to realize that her overconscientiousness, her fussiness, her rebellion, and discontent, her reaction to something or other is back of her symptoms. She has feared disease of the brain, tumor, insanity, or has blamed her trouble on some other definite physical basis. If one deals with intelligence, explanation helps a great deal. The intelligent usually want to be convinced; they do not ask for miracles, they seek counsel as well as treatment. It is my firm belief that the function of intelligence is to control instinct and emotion, and that temperament, if inborn, is not unchangeable, even at maturity. Once you convince a person that his or her symptoms are due to fear, worry, doubt, and rebellion you enlist the personal efforts to change. A new philosophy of life must be presented. Less fussiness, less fear, more endurance, less reaction to the trifles of their life are necessary. The aimless drifter must be given a central purpose or taught to seek one; the dissatisfied and impatient must be asked, "Why should life give you all you want?" "What cannot be remedied must be endured!" What a wealth of wisdom in the proverb! One seeks to establish an ideal of fortitude, of patience, of fidelity to duty,--old-fashioned words, but serenity of spirit is their meaning. Suddenly to come face to face with one's self, to strip away the self-imposed disguise, to see clearly that jealousy, impatience, luxurious, and never satisfied tastes, a selfish and restless spirit, are back of ennui and fatigue, pains and aches of body and mind, is to step into a true self-understanding. If a situation demands action, even drastic action, "surgical" action, then that action must be forthcoming, even though it hurts. To end doubt, perplexity, to cease being buffeted between hither and yon, is to end an intolerable life situation. I have in mind certain domestic situations, such as the effort to keep up in appearance and activity with those of more means and ability. Sexual difficulties, so important and so common, demand the coöperation of the husband for remedy. He should be seen (for usually the wife consults the physician alone) and the situation gone over with him. Men are usually willing to help, willing to seek a way out. A neurasthenic wife is a sore trial to the patience and endurance of her husband and he is anxious enough to help cure her. Where there is conflict of other kinds the situation is complicated by the intricacy of the factors. Financial difficulties especially wear down the patience and endurance of the partners, and the physician cannot prescribe a golden cure. In prosperous times there is less neurasthenia than in the unprosperous, just as there is less suicide. Sometimes it is just one thing, one difficulty, over which the conflict rages. I have in mind two such cases, where one habit of the husband deënergized his wife by outraging her pride and love. When he was induced to yield on this point the wife came back to herself,--a highly strung, very efficient self. In fact, the basis of treatment is the painstaking study of the individual woman and then the painstaking _adjustment_ of that individual woman. It may mean the adjustment of the whole life situation to that housewife, or conversely the adjustment of the housewife to the life situation. In many marital difficulties that one sees, not so much in practice as in contact with normal married couples, the trouble reminds one of the orang-outang in Kipling's story who had "too much Ego in his Cosmos." Marriage, to be successful, is based on a graceful recession of the ego in the cosmos of each of the partners. The prime difficulty is this; people do not like to recede the ego. And the worst offenders are the ones who are determined to stand up for the right, which usually is a disguised way of naming their desire. One might speak of a thousand and one things that every man and every woman knows. One might speak of the death of love and the growth of irritation, the disappearance of sympathy,--these are the hopeless situations. But far more common and important, though less tragic, is the disappearance of the little attentions, the little love-making, the disappearance of good manners. Men are not the only or the worst offenders in this; the nervous housewife is very apt to be the scold and the nag. Perhaps the neurasthenia of the husband arises from his revolt against the incessant demands of his wife, but that's another story. At any rate, there is what seems to be a cardinal point of difference between men and women, perhaps arising from some essential difference in make-up, perhaps in part due to difference in training. An essential need of the average American-trained woman is sympathy, constantly expressed, constantly manifested. The average man tends to become matter-of-fact, the average woman finds in matter-of-factness the death of love. She acts as if she believed that the little acts of love and sympathy are the more important as manifesting the real state of feeling, that the major duties were of less importance. On this point most men and women never seem to agree. The man gets impatient over the constant demand for his attention. He thinks it unreasonable and childish. Intent upon his own struggle he is apt to think her affairs are minor matters. He thinks his wife makes mountains out of molehills and lacks a sense of proportion. He forgets that the devotion of the husband is the woman's anchor to windward, her grip on safety,--that his success and struggle are hers only in so far as he and she are intimate and lover-like. And women, even those who trust their husbands absolutely so far as physical loyalty goes, jealously watch them for the appearance of boredom, or lack of interest, for the falling off of the lover's spirit and feeling. After marriage the rivalry of men expresses itself in business more than in love. Even where a woman does not fear another woman as a rival she fears the rivalry of business,--and with reason. So she craves attention, sympathy, as well as the dull love of everyday life. She ought to have it; it is her recompense for her lot, for her married life, her smaller interests. Now and then some great man intent upon a great work has some excuse for absorption in that work; for the great majority of men there is no such excuse. Their own affairs are also minor and are no more important than those of their wives. Fair play demands that the women they have immured in a home have a prior claim to their company, in at least the majority of the leisure hours. If in the time to come the home alters and a woman who continues to work marries a man who works, and they meet only at night, then it will be ethical for each to go his or her way. Marriage at present must mean the giving up of freedom for the man as well as for the woman, in the interests of justice and the race. In medicine we prescribe bitter tonics which have the property of increasing appetite and vigor. For the husband of every woman there is this bit of advice; sympathy and attention constitute a sweet tonic, which if judiciously administered is of incomparable power and efficiency. CHAPTER XIII THE FUTURE OF WOMAN, THE HOME, AND MARRIAGE No true sportsman ever prophesies. For the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the prophet. If he is right, he can brag the rest of his days of his seer-like vision. If he is wrong, no one takes the trouble to reproach or mock him. Therefore I do not claim to be a prophet in discussing the future of woman, the home, and marriage. At any time just one invention may come along that will totally alter the face of things. Moreover we are now in the midst of great changes in industry, in social relations, in the largest matters of national and international nature. Men and women alike are involved in these changes, but it is impossible to judge the outcome. For history records many abortive reformations, many reactionary centuries and eras as well as successful reformations and progressive ages. Whether or not it fits woman to be a housewife of the traditional kind, feminism is certain to develop further. Women will enter into more diverse occupations than ever before, they will enter politics, they will find their way to direct power and action. More and more those who work will be specialized and individualized--- the woman executive, the writer, the artist, the doctor, lawyer, architect, chemist, and sociologist--will resist the dictum "Woman's place is the Home." The woman of this group will either be forced into celibacy, or in ever-increasing numbers she will insist on some sort of arrangement whereby she can carry on her work. She will perhaps refuse to bear children and transform domesticity into an apartment hotel life, in which she and her husband eat breakfast and dinner together and spend the rest of the waking time separately, as two men might. Such a development, while perhaps satisfying the ideas of progress of the feminist, will be bad eugenically. There will be a removal from the race of the value of these women, the intellectual members of their sex. Whether the work this group of women do will equal the value of the children they might have had no one can say. But after all, the number of women who will enter the professions and remain in them on the conditions above stated will be relatively small. The main function of women will always be childbearing. If ever there comes a time when the drift will be away from this function, then a counter-movement will start up to sway women back into this sphere of their functions. Moreover, the bulk of women entering industry will enter it in the humbler occupations and they will in the main be willing enough to marry and bear children, even in the limited way. Yet since they enter marriage with a wider experience than ever before, the conditions of marriage and the home must change, even though gradually. So on the whole we may look to an increasing individuality of woman, an increasing feeling of worth and dignity as an individual, an increasing reluctance to take up life as the traditional housewife. Rebellion against the monotony and the seclusive character of the home will increase rather than diminish, and it must be faced without prejudice and without any reliance on any authority, either of church or state, that will force women back to "womanly" ways of thinking, feeling or doing. Sooner or later we shall have to accept legally what we now recognize as fact,--the restriction of childbearing. Whether we regard it as good or bad, the modern woman will not bear and nurse a large family. And the modern man, though he has his little joke about the modern family, is one with his wife in this matter. With husband and wife agreed there seems little to do but accept the situation. That this condition of affairs is leaving the peopling of the world to the backward, the ignorant, and the careless is at present accepted by most authors. One has only to read the serious articles on this subject in the journals devoted to racial biology to realize how deeply important the matter is. Yet there may be some undue alarm felt, for contraceptive measures are becoming so prevalent in Europe, America, and Asia that all races will soon be on the same footing, and moreover all classes in society except the feeble-minded are learning the procedures. The prolificness of the feeble-minded is indeed a menace, and society may find itself compelled to lower their fertility artificially. What will probably happen is that the one, two, or three-child family will be born before the mother's thirty-fifth year, and she will then or before forty become free from the severest burdens of the housewife. What will she do with her time; what will the better-to-do woman do? Will she gradually give her energies to the community, or will she while away her time in the spurious culture that occupies so many club women to-day? It is safe to say that women will enter far more largely than ever before into movements for the betterment of the race. Though their way of life may breed neurasthenia for some, it will have this great advantage,--the mother feeling will sweep into society, will enter politics, and social discussions. That we need that feeling no one will deny who has ever tried to enlist social energies for race betterment and failed while politicians stepped in for all the funds necessary even for some anti-social activities. We have too much legalism in our social structure and not near enough of the humanism that the socially minded mother can bring. Is the increasing incidence of divorce a revolt against domesticity? To some extent yes, but where women obtain the divorce it is mainly a refusal to tolerate unfaithfulness, desertion, incompatibility of temperament. It does not mean that the family is threatened by divorce,--rather that the family is threatened by the conditions for which divorce is nowadays obtained and which were formerly not reasons for divorce. In many countries adultery on the part of the man, cruel and abusive treatment, chronic intoxication, and desertion were not grounds for divorce. These to-day are the grounds for divorce, and in the opinion of the writer they should invalidate a marriage. I would go even further and say that wherever there was concealed insanity or venereal disease the marriage should be annulled, as it is in some States. Divorce will not then diminish, despite the campaign against it, until the conditions for which it is sought are removed. Until that time comes, to bind two people together who are manifestly unhappy simply encourages unfaithfulness and cruelty, and is itself a cruelty. Whether we can devise a system where woman's individuality and humanness can have scope and yet find her willing to accept the rôles of mother and homekeeper, is a serious question. It seems to me certain that woman will continue to demand her freedom, regardless of her status as wife and mother. She will continue to receive more and more general and special education, and she will continue to find the rôle of the traditional housewife more uncongenial. Out of that maladaptation and the discontent and rebellion will arise her neurosis. In other words what we must seek to do--those of us who are not bound by tradition alone but who seek to modify institutions to human beings rather than the reverse--is to find out what changes in the home and matrimonial conditions are necessary for the woman of to-day and to-morrow. That there has been a huge migration to the cities in the last century is one of its outstanding peculiarities. This urban movement has meant the greater concentration of humans in a given area, and it is therefore directly responsible for the apartment house. That is to say, there has been a trend away from individual homes, completely segregated and individualized, to houses where at least part of the housework was eliminated, in a sense was coöperative. This coöperation is increasing; more and more houses have janitors, more and more houses furnish heat. In the highest class of apartment house the trend is toward permanent hotel life, with the exception that individual housekeeping is possible. Because of the limited space and the desire of the modern well-to-do woman to escape as much as possible from housekeeping, because of the smaller families (which idea has been fostered by landlords), the number of rooms and the size of the rooms have grown less. The kitchenette apartment is a new departure for those who can afford more room, for it is well known that the poor in the slums have long since lived in one or two rooms serving all purposes. The huge modern apartment house, the huge modern tenement house, are part first of the urban movement and second of that movement away from housekeeping which has been sketched in the Introduction. The home has been praised as the nucleus of society, its center, its heart. Its virtues have been so unanimously extolled that one need but recite them. It is the embodiment of family, the soul of mother, father, and children. It is the place where morality and modesty are taught. In it arise the basic virtues of love of parents, love of children, love of brothers and sisters; sympathy is thus engendered; loyalty has here its source. The privacy of the home is a refuge from excitement and struggle and gives rest and peace to the weary battler with the world. It is a sanctuary where safety is to be sought, and this finds expression in the English proverb, "Every Englishman's home is his castle." It is a reward, a purpose in that men and women dream of their own home and are thrilled by the thought. Throughout its quiet runs the scarlet thread of its sex life. Home is where love is legitimate and encouraged. Yet the home has great faults; it is no more a divine institution than anything else human is. Without at all detracting from its great, its indispensable virtues, let us, as realists, study its defects. On the physical-economic side is the inefficiency and waste inseparable from individual housekeeping. Labor-saving machinery and devices are often too expensive for the individual home, and so small stoves do the cooking and the heating, each individual housewife or her helper washes by hand the dishes of each little group. Shopping is a matter for each woman, and necessitates numberless small shops; perhaps the biggest waste of time and energy lies here. The cooking is done according to the intelligence and knowledge of nutrition of each housewife, and housewives, like the rest of the world, range in intelligence from feeble-mindedness to genius, with a goodly number of the uninformed, unintelligent, and careless. Poets and novelists and the stage extol home cooking, but the doctors and dietitians know there are as many kinds of home cooking as there are kinds of homekeepers. The laboratory and not the home has been the birthplace of the science of nutrition, and we have still many traditions regarding the merits of home cooking and feeding to break from. Take as one minor example the gorging encouraged on Sunday and certain holidays. The housewife feels it her duty to slave in a kitchen all Sunday morning that an over-big meal may be eaten in half an hour by her family. She encourages gluttony by feeling that her standing as cook is directly proportional to the heartiness of her meal. Thanksgiving, Christmas,--the good cheer of gluttony is sentimentalized and hallowed into poetry and music. The table that groans under its good cheer has its sequence in the diners who groan without cheer. While we might further dilate on the physical deficiencies and inefficiencies of the segregated home, there is a disadvantage of vaster importance. After all, institutionalized cooking is rarely satisfactory, because it lacks the spirit of good home cooking, the desire to meet individual taste without profit. It lacks the ideal of service. There are bad effects from the segregation and the privacy of the home, even of the good kind. For there are very many bad homes; those in which drunkenness, immorality, quarreling, selfishness, improvidence, brutality, and crime are taught by example. After all, we like to speak too much in generalities--the Home, Woman, Man, Labor, Capital, Mankind--forgetting there is no such thing as "the Home." There are homes of all kinds with every conceivable ideal of life and training and having only one thing in common,--that they are segregated social units, based usually on the family relationship. Montaigne very truly said approximately this: "He who generalizes says 'Hello' to a crowd; he who _knows_ shakes hands with individuals." In the first place the home (to show my inconsistency in regard to generalizing) is the place where prejudice is born, nourished, and grown to its fullest proportions. The child born and reared in a home is exposed to the contagion of whatever silliness and prejudice actuate the lives and dominate the thought and feeling of its parents. And the quirks and twists to which it is exposed affect its life either positively or negatively, for it either accepts their prejudices or develops counter-prejudices against them. To cite a familiar case; it is traditional that some of the children brought up overstrictly, overcarefully, throw off as soon as possible and as completely as possible conventional morals and manners. Such persons have simply overreacted to their training, revolted against the prejudice of their teaching by building counter-prejudices. Further, the home fosters an anti-social feeling, or perhaps it would be kinder to say a non-social feeling. Your home-loving person comes in the course of time to that state of mind where little else is of importance; the home becomes the only place where his sympathies and his altruistic purposes find any real outlet. The capitalist of the stage (and of real life too) is one so devoted to his home and family that he decorates one and the other with the trophies of other homes. There is none so devoted to his home as the peasant, and there is no one so individualistic, so intent in his own prosperity. The home encourages an intense altruism, but usually a narrow one. The feeling of warmth and comfort of the hearth fire when a blizzard rages outside too often makes us forget the poor fellows in the blizzard. Thus the home is the backbone of conservatism, which is good, but it becomes also the basis of reactionary feeling. It is the people that break away from home and home ties who do the great things. When the home is quiet and harmonious it is the place where great virtues are developed. But when it is noisy and disharmonious, then its very seclusiveness, its segregation, lends to the quarrels the bitterness of civil war. The intensity of feeling aroused is proportional to the intimacy of the home and not to the importance of the thing quarreled about. Good manners and that sign and symbol of largeness of spirit, tolerance for the opinions of others, rarely are born in the home. It is hardly realized how much quarreling, how much of intense emotional violence goes on in many homes. Its isolation and the absence of the restraining influence of formality and courtesy bring the wills of the family members into sharp conflict. Words are used that elsewhere would bring the severest physical answer, or bring about the most complete disruption of friendly relations. Love and anger, duty and self-interest bring about intense inner conflict in the home, and the struggle between the two generations, the rising and the receding, is here at its height. That courtesy to each other might be taught the children, might be insisted on by the parents is my firm belief. Love and intimacy need not exclude form. Manners and morals are not exclusive of each other. If the marriage ceremony included the vow to be polite, it might leave out almost everything else. The home should be the place where tolerance, courtesy, and emotional control are taught both by precept and example. Can the home be altered to bring in more of the social spirit and yet maintain its great virtues, its extraordinary attraction for the human heart? It's an old story that criticism, the pointing out of defect, is easy, while good suggestions are few and difficult to convert into programs for action. In medicine diagnosis is far ahead of treatment,--so in society at large. Any plans that have for their end a sort of social barracks, with men and women and their children living in apartments, but eating and drinking in large groups, will meet the fiercest resistance from the sentiment of our times and cannot succeed, unless it is forced on us by some breakdown of the social structure. Nevertheless a larger coöperation, at least in the cities, will come. Buildings must be built so that a deal of individual labor disappears. Just as coöperative stores are springing up, so coöperative kitchens, community kitchens organized for service would be a great benefit. Especially for the poor, without servants, where the woman is frequently forced to neglect her own rest and the children's welfare because she must cook, would such a development be of great value. Unfortunately the few community kitchens now operating have in mind only the middle-class housewife and not the housewife in most need,--the poor housewife. Here is a plan for real social service; cooking for the poor of the cities, scientific, nutritious, tasty, at cost. Much of the work of medicine would be eliminated with one stroke; much of racial degeneracy and misery would disappear in a generation. That the home needs labor-saving devices in order that much of the disagreeable work may be eliminated is unquestioned. Inventive genius has only given a fragmentary attention to the problems of the housewife. Most of the devices in use are far beyond the means of the poor and even the lower middle class. Furthermore, though they save labor many of them do not save time. The tests by which the good household device ought to be judged are these: First--Is it efficient? Second--Is it labor saving? Third--Is it time saving? We need to break away from traditional cooking apparatus and traditional diet. The installation and use of fireless cookers, self-regulating ovens, is a first step. The discarding of most of the puddings, roasts, fancy dishes that take much time in the preparation and that keep the housewife in the kitchen would not only save the housewife but would also be of great benefit to her husband. The cult of hearty eating, which results in keeping a woman (mistress or maid) in the kitchen for three or more hours that a man may eat for twenty or thirty minutes is folly. The type of meal that either takes only a short time for preparation and devices which render the attention of the housewife unnecessary are ethical and healthy, both for the family and society. The joys of the table are not to be despised, and only the dyspeptic or the ascetic hold them in contempt; but simplicity in eating is the very heart of the joy of the table. Elaboration and gluttony are alike in this,--they increase the housework and decrease the well-being of the diner. How to maintain the sweetness of the family spirit of the home and yet bring into it a wider social spirit, break down its isolated individualistic character, is a problem I do not pretend to be able to solve. Ancient nations emphasized the social-national aspect of life overmuch, as for example the Spartans; the modern home overemphasizes the family aspect. We must avoid extremes by clinging to the virtues and correcting the vices of the home. Alarmists are constantly raising the cry that marriage is declining and that society is thereby threatened at its very heart. There is the pessimist who feels that the "irreligion" of to-day is responsible; there is the one who blames feminism; and there is the type that finds in Democracy and liberalism generally the cause of the receding old-fashioned morality. Divorce, late marriage, and child-restriction are the manifestations of this decadence, and the press, the pulpit, science, and the State all have taken notice of these modern phenomena, though with widely differing attitudes. That matrimony is changing cannot be questioned or denied. The main change is that woman is entering more and more as an equal partner whose rights the modern law recognizes as the ancient law did not. She is no longer to be classed as exemplified by the famous words of Petruchio, when he claimed his wife, the erstwhile shrew, as his property in exactly the same sense as any domestic animal, linking the wife with the horse, the cow, the ass, as the chattels of the man. The law agreed to this attitude of the man, the Church supported it; woman, strangely enough, seemed to glory in it. With the rise of woman into the status of a human being (a revolution not yet accomplished in entirety) the property relationship weakened but lingers very strongly as a tradition that molds the lives of husband and wife. Women are still held more rigidly to their duties as wives than men to their duties as husbands, and the will of the husband still rules in the major affairs of life, even though in a thousand details the wife rules. Theoretically every man willingly acknowledges the importance of his wife as mother and homekeeper, but practically he acts as if his work were the really important activity of the family. The obedience of the wife is still asked for by most of the religious ceremonies of the times. Two great opinions are therefore still struggling in the home and in society; one that matrimony implies the dependence and essential inferiority of woman, and the other that the man and woman are equal partners in the relationship. I fully realize that the advocate of the first opinion will deny that the inferiority of woman is at all implied in their standpoint. But it is an inferior who vows obedience, it is the inferior who loses legal rights, it is the inferior who yields to another the "headship" of the home. The struggle of these two opinions will have only one outcome, the complete victory of the modern belief that the sexes are, all in all, equal, and that therefore marriage is a contract of equals. Meanwhile the struggling opinions, with the scene of conflict in every home, in every heart, cause disorder as all struggles do. When the victory is complete, then conduct will be definite and clear-cut, then the home will be reorganized in relation to the new belief, and then new problems will arise and be met. How conduct will be changed, what the new problems will be and how they will be met, I do not pretend to know. Meanwhile there is this to say,--that marriage should be guarded so that the grossly unfit do not marry. A thorough physical examination is as necessary for matrimony as it is for civil service, and many of the horrors every generation of doctors has witnessed could be eliminated at once and for all time. Further, if marriage is a desirable state, and on the whole it must be preferred to a single existence, surely so long as our code of morals remains unchanged, and so long as we believe the race must be perpetuated, then the too late marriage should be discouraged. The ideal age for women to enter matrimony is from twenty-two to twenty-five; the ideal age for men is from twenty-five to twenty-eight. It is not my province to deal at length with this subject, but I may state that I believe that continence beyond these ages becomes increasingly difficult, that immorality is encouraged, that adaptability becomes lessened, and that wiser selection of mates does _not_ occur. But how bring about early marriages in a time when the luxuries seem to have become necessities, and therefore the necessity of marriage is eyed more and more as an extravagance of the foolhardy? How bring about early marriage when women are earning pay almost equal to that of the men and are therefore more reluctant to enter matrimony unless at a high standard of living. The late marriage is an evil, but how it can be displaced by the early marriage under the present social scheme I do not see. We have considered divorce before this. It is not an evil but a symptom of evil; not a disease in itself. It cannot be lessened or abolished unless we are willing to state that a man and a woman should live together as husband and wife, hating, despising, or fearing one another. We cannot countenance brutality, unfaithfulness, or temperamental mismating. It is true that divorces are often obtained for trivial reasons, but usually the partners are not adapted to one another, according to modern ways of thinking and feeling. What is commonplace in one age is cruelty in the next, and this is a matter not of argument but of expectation and feeling. Nothing more need be said of contraceptive measures than this: they are inevitably increasing in use and soon will be part of the average marriage. Society must recognize this, and the lawmakers must legalize what they themselves practise. Matrimony, the home, woman, these are nodal points in the network of our human lives. But they are not fixed centers, and the great weaver, Time, changes the design constantly. Through them run the threads of the great instincts, of tradition, of economic change, of the ideas, ideals, and activities of man the restless. Man will always love woman, woman will always love man; children will be born and reared, and sex conflict, maladjustment, will always be secondary to these great facts. How men and women will live together, how they will arrange for the children, will be questions that women will help the world answer as well as their mates. That the main trend of things is for better, more ethical, more just relationship, I do not doubt. The secondary, most noisy changes are perhaps evil, the main primary change is good. Meanwhile in the hurly-burly of new things, of complex relationships, working blindly, is the nervous housewife. This book has been written that she may know herself better and thus move towards the light; that her husband may win sympathy and understanding and be bound to her in a closer, better union, and that the physician and Society may seek the direct and the remote means to helping her. INDEX Alcoholism and housewife, 157 Anger, 88 Beauty, loss of, 88 Birth control, 14-16 Birth control measures and nervousness, 137 Cases, treatment of, 231-243 Child and cartoons, 113 and movies, 111 Childbearing and modern woman, 15 Children and the neurosis, 97-115 Daydreaming, 81 Diet and Cooking, 259 Disagreeable, reaction to the, 90 Divorce, 13 Emotions, effects of, 27-30; 42-45 Engagement period, 229 Extravagance of the housewife, 145 Fear, 93 Feminism and individualization of woman, 10-13 Happiness and high cost of living, 151 Histories of cases: case with bad hygiene, 183-187 hyperæsthetic woman, 187-193 over-rich, purposeless type, 177-181 overworked, under-rested type, 171-177 physically ill type, 181-183 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 5 Home, aboriginal, 5 faults of, 225 future of, 250 isolation of, 77 Household conflicts, 141-159 Housewife, hyperæsthetic type of, 51 non-domestic type of, 61 overconscientious type of, 53 overemotional type of, 57 physically ill, 69 previously neurotic, 65 types predisposed to nervousness, 47-73 Housewife and abnormal child, 107 and childbearing, 99 and neglect, 153 and poverty, 117 Housewife of past generation, 3 Housework, evolution of, 5-10 nature of, 75 Housework and factory, 9 Husband and housewife, 127 Hysteria, 35 Jealousy and envy, 123 Marriage, conflicting views of, 127 Marriage and sex relationship, 131-140 Monotony, effects of, 79 Nervousness, 17-20 Nervousness and child hygiene, 100 Nervousness and sick child, 104 Neurasthenia, causes, 9 symptoms, 20-26 Neurasthenia and fear, 23 Pruriency of our times, 275 Psychasthenia, 31 Psychoneuroses, 18 Sedentary life, effects of, 83 Sex and society, 139 Subconscious, 29 Symptoms as weapons against husband, 161 Voltaire and constipation, 23 Will to power through weakness, 163, 212 Woman, arts and crafts, 6-8 Woman, discontent of, 13 future of, 244 training of, 48-50 Woman, industry and home, 8-10 Worry, 119 _By the Author of "RELIGION and HEALTH"_ =HEALTH THROUGH WILL POWER= _By_ JAMES J. WALSH, M.D. _Medical Director of Fordham University School of Sociology_ 12mo. Cloth. 288 pages. * * * * * "The American Public sorely needs the gospel of health that Dr. Walsh preaches to it in his new book." --_The Pilot, Boston._ "I do not wonder that your splendid book 'Health Through Will Power' has met with such great success. I know that I could hardly leave the book out of my hands, it was so interesting and instructive." --_Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes, of New York._ "'Health Through Will Power' is packed with medical wisdom translated into the vernacular of common sense." --_The Ave Maria._ "Your book is capable of adding largely to happiness, as well as health. It is also wonderful, spiritually. I feel like recommending the book to everyone I know." --_Mgr. M.J. Lavelle, of New York._ "This book should find a place in every home, as it will help to bring us back to a more natural manner of living." --_The Rosary Magazine._ * * * * * LITTLE, BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON 
4385	----	AS A MATTER OF COURSE BY ANNIE PAYSON CALL Author of "Power Through Repose," "The Freedom of Life," "Nerves and Common Sense," Etc. 1894 PREFACE. THE aim of this book is to assist towards the removal of nervous irritants, which are not only the cause of much physical disease, but materially interfere with the best possibilities of usefulness and pleasure in everyday life. CONTENTS. I. INTRODUCTION II. PHYSICAL CARE III. AMUSEMENTS IV. BRAIN IMPRESSIONS V. THE TRIVIALITY OF TRIVIALITIES VI. MOODS VII. TOLERANCE VIII. SYMPATHY IX. OTHERS X. ONE'S SELF XI. CHILDREN XII. ILLNESS XIII. SENTIMENT VERSUS SENTIMENTALITY XIV. PROBLEMS XV. SUMMARY AS A MATTER OF COURSE. I. INTRODUCTION. IN climbing a mountain, if we know the path and take it as a matter of course, we are free to enjoy the beauties of the surrounding country. If in the same journey we set a stone in the way and recognize our ability to step over it, we do so at once, and save ourselves from tripping or from useless waste of time and thought as to how we might best go round it. There are stones upon stones in every-day life which might be stepped over with perfect ease, but which, curiously enough, are considered from all sides and then tripped upon; and the result is a stubbing of the moral toes, and a consequent irritation of the nervous system. Or, if semi-occasionally one of these stones is stepped over as a matter of course, the danger is that attention is immediately called to the action by admiring friends, or by the person himself, in a way so to tickle the nervous system that it amounts to an irritation, and causes him to trip over the next stone, and finally tumble on his nose. Then, if he is not wise enough to pick himself up and walk on with the renewed ability of stepping over future stones, he remains on his nose far longer than is either necessary or advisable. These various stones in the way do more towards keeping a nervous system in a chronic state of irritation than is imagined. They are what might perhaps be called the outside elements of life. These once normally faced, cease to exist as impediments, dwindle away, and finally disappear altogether. Thus we are enabled to get nearer the kernel, and have a growing realization of life itself. Civilization may give a man new freedom, a freedom beyond any power of description or conception, except to those who achieve it, or it may so bind him body and soul that in moments when he recognizes his nervous contractions he would willingly sell his hope of immortality to be a wild horse or tiger for the rest of his days. These stones in the way are the result of a perversion of civilization, and the cause of much contraction and unnecessary suffering. There is the physical stone. If the health of the body were attended to as a matter of course, as its cleanliness is attended to by those of us who are more civilized, how much easier life might be! Indeed, the various trippings on, and endeavors to encircle, this physical stone, raise many phantom stones, and the severity of the fall is just as great when one trips over a stone that is not there. Don Quixote was quite exhausted when he had been fighting the windmills. One recognizes over and over the truth spoken by the little girl who, when reprimanded by her father for being fretful, said: "It isn't me, papa, it's that banana." There is also the over-serious stone; and this, so far from being stepped over or any effort made to encircle it, is often raised to the undue dignity of a throne, and not rested upon. It seems to produce an inability for any sort of recreation, and a scorn of the necessity or the pleasure of being amused. Every one will admit that recreation is one swing of life's pendulum; and in proportion to the swing in that direction will be the strength of the swing in the other direction, and vice versa. One kind of stone which is not the least among the self-made impediments is the microscopic faculty which most of us possess for increasing small, inoffensive pebbles to good-sized rocks. A quiet insistence on seeing these pebbles in their natural size would reduce them shortly to a pile of sand which might be easily smoothed to a level, and add to the comfort of the path. Moods are stones which not only may be stepped over, but kicked right out of the path with a good bold stroke. And the stones of intolerance may be replaced by an open sympathy,--an ability to take the other's point of view,--which will bring flowers in the path instead. In dealing with ourselves and others there are stones innumerable, if one chooses to regard them, and a steadily decreasing number as one steps over and ignores. In our relations with illness and poverty, so-called, the ghosts of stones multiply themselves as the illness or the poverty is allowed to be a limit rather than a guide. And there is nothing that exorcises all such ghosts more truly than a free and open intercourse with little children. If we take this business of slipping over our various nerve-stones as a matter of course, and not as a matter of sentiment, we get a powerful result just as surely as we get powerful results in obedience to any other practical laws. In bygone generations men used to fight and kill one another for the most trivial cause. As civilization increased, self-control was magnified into a virtue, and the man who governed himself and allowed his neighbor to escape unslain was regarded as a hero. Subsequently, general slashing was found to be incompatible with a well-ordered community, and forbearance in killing or scratching or any other unseemly manner of attacking an enemy was taken as a matter of course. Nowadays we do not know how often this old desire to kill is repressed, a brain-impression of hatred thereby intensified, and a nervous irritation caused which has its effect upon the entire disposition. It would hardly be feasible to return to the killing to save the irritation that follows repression; civilization has taken us too far for that. But civilization does not necessarily mean repression. There are many refinements of barbarity in our civilization which might be dropped now, as the coarser expressions of such states were dropped by our ancestors to enable them to reach the present stage of knives and forks and napkins. And inasmuch as we are farther on the way towards a true civilization, our progress should be more rapid than that of our barbaric grandfathers. An increasingly accelerated progress has proved possible in scientific research and discovery; why not, then, in our practical dealings with ourselves and one another? Does it not seem likely that the various forms of nervous irritation, excitement, or disease may result as much from the repressed savage within us as from the complexity of civilization? The remedy is, not to let the savage have his own way; with many of us, indeed, this would be difficult, because of the generations of repression behind us. It is to cast his skin, so to speak, and rise to another order of living. Certainly repression is only apparent progress. No good physician would allow it in bodily disease, and, on careful observation, the law seems to hold good in other phases of life. There must be a practical way by which these stones, these survivals of barbaric times, may be stepped over and made finally to disappear. The first necessity is to take the practical way, and not the sentimental. Thus true sentiment is found, not lost. The second is to follow daily, even hourly, the process of stepping over until it comes to be indeed a matter of course. So, little by little, shall we emerge from this mass of abnormal nervous irritation into what is more truly life itself. II. PHYSICAL CARE. REST, fresh air, exercise, and nourishment, enough of each in proportion to the work done, are the material essentials to a healthy physique. Indeed, so simple is the whole process of physical care, it would seem absurd to write about it at all. The only excuse for such writing is the constant disobedience to natural laws which has resulted from the useless complexity of our civilization. There is a current of physical order which, if one once gets into it, gives an instinct as to what to do and what to leave undone, as true as the instinct which leads a man to wash his hands when they need it, and to wash them often enough so that they never remain soiled for any length of time, simply because that state is uncomfortable to their owner. Soap and water are not unpleasant to most of us in their process of cleansing; we have to deny ourselves nothing through their use. To keep the digestion in order, it is often necessary to deny ourselves certain sensations of the palate which are pleasant at the time. So by a gradual process of not denying we are swung out of the instinctive nourishment-current, and life is complicated for us either by an amount of thought as to what we should or should not eat, or by irritations which arise from having eaten the wrong food. It is not uncommon to find a mind taken up for some hours in wondering whether that last piece of cake will digest. We can easily see how from this there might be developed a nervous sensitiveness about eating which would prevent the individual from eating even the food that is nourishing. This last is a not unusual form of dyspepsia,--a dyspepsia which keeps itself alive on the patient's want of nourishment. Fortunately the process of getting back into the true food-current is not difficult if one will adopt it The trouble is in making the bold plunge. If anything is eaten that is afterwards deemed to have been imprudent, let it disagree. Take the full consequences and bear them like a man, with whatever remedies are found to lighten the painful result. Having made sure through bitter experience that a particular food disagrees, simply do not take it again, and think nothing about it. It does not exist for you. A nervous resistance to any sort of indigestion prolongs the attack and leaves, a brain-impression which not only makes the same trouble more liable to recur, but increases the temptation to eat forbidden fruit. Of course this is always preceded by a full persuasion that the food is not likely to disagree with us now simply because it did before. And to some extent, this is true. Food that will bring pain and suffering when taken by a tired stomach, may prove entirely nourishing when the stomach is rested and ready for it. In that case, the owner of the stomach has learned once for all never to give his digestive apparatus work to do when it is tired. Send a warm drink as a messenger to say that food is coming later, give yourself a little rest, and then eat your dinner. The fundamental laws of health in eating are very simple; their variations for individual needs must be discovered by each for himself. "But," it may be objected, "why make all this fuss, why take so much thought about what I eat or what I do not eat?" The special thought is simply to be taken at first to get into the normal habit, and as a means of forgetting our digestion just as we forget the washing of our hands until we are reminded by some discomfort; whereupon we wash them and forget again. Nature will not allow us to forget. When we are not obeying her laws, she is constantly irritating us in one way or another. It is when we obey, and obey as a matter of course, that she shows herself to be a tender mother, and helps us to a real companionship with her. Nothing is more amusing, nothing could appeal more to Mother Nature's sense of humor, than the various devices for exercise which give us a complicated self-consciousness rather than a natural development of our physical powers. Certain simple exercises are most useful, and if the weather is so inclement that they cannot be taken in the open air, it is good to have a well-ventilated hall. Exercise with others, too, is stimulating, and more invigorating when there is air enough and to spare. But there is nothing that shows the subjective, self-conscious state of this generation more than the subjective form which exercise takes. Instead of games and play or a good vigorous walk in the country, there are endless varieties of physical culture, most of it good and helpful if taken as a means to an end, but almost useless as it is taken as an end in itself; for it draws the attention to one's self and one's own muscles in a way to make the owner serve the muscle instead of the muscle being made to serve the owner. The more physical exercise can be simplified and made objective, the more it serves its end. To climb a high mountain is admirable exercise, for we have the summit as an end, and the work of climbing is steadily objective, while we get the delicious effect of a freer circulation and all that it means. There might be similar exercises in gymnasiums, and there are, indeed, many exercises where some objective achievement is the end, and the training of a muscle follows as a matter of course. There is the exercise-instinct; we all have it the more perfectly as we obey it. If we have suffered from a series of disobediences, it is a comparatively easy process to work back into obedience. The fresh-air-instinct is abnormally developed with some of us, but only with some. The popular fear of draughts is one cause of its loss. The fear of a draught will cause a contraction, the contraction will interfere with the circulation, and a cold is the natural result. The effect of vitiated air is well known. The necessity, not only for breathing fresh air when we are quiet, but for exercising in the open, grows upon us as we see the result. To feel the need is to take the remedy, as a matter of course. The rest-instinct is most generally disobeyed, most widely needed, and obedience to it would bring the most effective results. A restful state of mind and body prepares one for the best effects from exercise, fresh air, and nourishment. This instinct is the more disobeyed because with the need for rest there seems to come an inability to take it, so that not only is every impediment magnified, but imaginary impediments are erected, and only a decided and insistent use of the will in dropping everything that interferes, whether real or imaginary, will bring a whiff of a breeze from the true rest-current. Rest is not always silence, but silence is always rest; and a real silence of the mind is known by very few. Having gained that, or even approached it, we are taken by the rest-wind itself, and it is strong enough to bear our full weight as it swings us along to renewed life and new strength for work to come. The secret is to turn to silence at the first hint from nature; and sleep should be the very essence of silence itself. All this would be very well if we were free to take the right amount of rest, fresh air, exercise, and nourishment; but many of us are not. It will not be difficult for any one to call to mind half a dozen persons who impede the good which might result from the use of these four necessities simply by complaining that they cannot have their full share of either. Indeed, some of us may find in ourselves various stones of this sort stopping the way. To take what we can and be thankful, not only enables us to gain more from every source of health, but opens the way for us to see clearly how to get more. This complaint, however, is less of an impediment than the whining and fussing which come from those who are free to take all four in abundance, and who have the necessity of their own especial physical health so much at heart that there is room to think of little else. These people crowd into the various schools of physical culture by the hundred, pervade the rest-cures, and are ready for any new physiological fad which may arise, with no result but more physical culture, more rest-cure, and more fads. Nay, there is sometimes one other result,--disease. That gives them something tangible to work for or to work about. But all their eating and breathing and exercising and resting does not bring lasting vigorous health, simply because they work at it as an end, of which self is the centre and circumference. The sooner our health-instinct is developed, and then taken as a matter of course, the sooner can the body become a perfect servant, to be treated with true courtesy, and then forgotten. Here is an instinct of our barbarous ancestry which may be kept and refined through all future phases of civilization. This instinct is natural, and the obedience to it enables us to gain more rapidly in other, higher instincts which, if our ancestors had at all, were so embryonic as not to have attained expression. Nourishment, fresh air, exercise, rest,--so far as these are not taken simply and in obedience to the natural instinct, there arise physical stones in the way, stones that form themselves into an apparently insurmountable wall. There is a stile over that wall, however, if we will but open our eyes to see it. This stile, carefully climbed, will enable us to step over the few stones on the other side, and follow the physical path quite clearly. III. AMUSEMENTS. THE ability to be easily and heartily amused brings a wholesome reaction from intense thought or hard work of any kind which does more towards keeping the nervous system in a normal state than almost anything else of an external kind. As a Frenchman very aptly said: "This is all very well, all this study and care to relieve one's nerves; but would it not be much simpler and more effective to go and amuse one's self?" The same Frenchman could not realize that in many countries amusement is almost a lost art. Fortunately, it is not entirely lost; and the sooner it is regained, the nearer we shall be to health and happiness. One of the chief impediments in the way of hearty amusement is over-seriousness. There should be two words for "serious," as there are literally two meanings. There is a certain intense form of taking the care and responsibility of one's own individual interests, or the interests of others which are selfishly made one's own, which leads to a surface-seriousness that is not only a chronic irritation of the nervous system, but a constant distress to those who come under this serious care. This is taking life _au grand serieux_. The superficiality of this attitude is striking, and would be surprising could the sufferer from such seriousness once see himself (or more often it is herself) in a clear light. It is quite common to call such a person over-serious, when in reality he is not serious enough. He or she is laboring under a sham seriousness, as an actor might who had such a part to play and merged himself in the character. These people are simply exaggerating their own importance to life, instead of recognizing life's importance to them. An example of this is the heroine of Mrs. Ward's "Robert Elsmere," who refused to marry because the family could not get on without her; and when finally she consented, the family lived more happily and comfortably than when she considered herself their leader. If this woman's seriousness, which blinded her judgment, had been real instead of sham, the state of the case would have been quite clear to her; but then, indeed, there would have been no case at all. When seriousness is real, it is never intrusive and can never be overdone. It is simply a quiet, steady obedience to recognized laws followed as a matter of course, which must lead to a clearer appreciation of such laws, and of our own freedom in obeying them. Whereas with a sham seriousness we dwell upon the importance of our own relation to the law, and our own responsibility in forcing others to obey. With the real, it is the law first, and then my obedience. With the sham, it is myself first, and then the laws; and often a strained obedience to laws of my own making. This sham seriousness, which is peculiarly a New England trait, but may also be found in many other parts of the world, is often the perversion of a strong, fine nature. It places many stones in the way, most of them phantoms, which, once stepped over and then ignored, brings to light a nature nobly expansive, and a source of joy to all who come in contact with it. But so long as the "seriousness" lasts, it is quite incompatible with any form of real amusement. For the very essence of amusement is the child-spirit. The child throws himself heartily and spontaneously into the game, or whatever it may be, and forgets that there is anything else in the world, for the time being. Children have nothing else to remember. We have the advantage of them there, in the pleasure of forgetting and in the renewed strength with which we can return to our work or care, in consequence. Any one who cannot play children's games with children, and with the same enjoyment that children have, does not know the spirit of amusement. For this same spirit must be taken into all forms of amusement, especially those that are beyond the childish mind, to bring the delicious reaction which nature is ever ready to bestow. This is almost a self-evident truth; and yet so confirmed is man in his sham maturity that it is quite common to see one look with contempt, and a sense of superiority which is ludicrous, upon another who is enjoying a child's game like a child. The trouble is that many of us are so contracted in and oppressed by our own self-consciousness that open spontaneity is out of the question and even inconceivable. The sooner we shake it off, the better. When the great philosopher said, "Except ye become as little children," he must have meant it all the way through in spirit, if not in the letter. It certainly is the common-sense view, whichever way we look at it, and proves as practical as walking upon one's feet. With the spontaneity grows the ability to be amused, and with that ability comes new power for better and really serious work. To endeavor with all your might to win, and then if you fail, not to care, relieves a game of an immense amount of unnecessary nervous strain. A spirit of rivalry has so taken hold of us and become such a large stone in the way, that it takes wellnigh a reversal of all our ideas to realize that this same spirit is quite compatible with a good healthy willingness that the other man should win--if he can. Not from the goody-goody motive of wishing your neighbor to beat,--no neighbor would thank you for playing with him in that spirit,--but from a feeling that you have gone in to beat, you have done your best, as far as you could see, and where you have not, you have learned to do better. The fact of beating is not of paramount importance. Every man should have his chance, and, from your opponent's point of view, provided you were as severe on him as you knew how to be at the time, it is well that he won. You will see that it does not happen again. Curious it is that the very men or women who would scorn to play a child's game in a childlike spirit, will show the best known form of childish fretfulness and sheer naughtiness in their way of taking a game which is considered to be more on a level with the adult mind, and so rasp their nerves and the nerves of their opponents that recreation is simply out of the question. Whilst one should certainly have the ability to enjoy a child's game with a child and like a child, that not only does not exclude the preference which many, perhaps most of us may have for more mature games, it gives the power to play those games with a freedom and ease which help to preserve a healthy nervous system. If, however, amusement is taken for the sole purpose of preserving a normal nervous system, or for returning to health, it loses its zest just in proportion. If, as is often the case, one must force one's self to it at first, the love of the fun will gradually come as one ignores the first necessity of forcing; and the interest will come sooner if a form of amusement is taken quite opposite to the daily work, a form which will bring new faculties and muscles into action. There is, of course, nothing that results in a more unpleasant state of ennui than an excess of amusement. After a certain amount of careless enjoyment, life comes to a deadly stupid standstill, or the forms of amusement grow lower. In either case the effect upon the nervous system is worse even than over-work. The variety in sources of amusement is endless, and the ability to get amusement out of almost anything is delightful, as long as it is well balanced. After all, our amusement depends upon the way in which we take our work, and our work, again, depends upon the amusement; they play back and forth into one another's hands. The man or the woman who cannot get the holiday spirit, who cannot enjoy pure fun for the sake of fun, who cannot be at one with a little child, not only is missing much in life that is clear happiness, but is draining his nervous system, and losing his better power for work accordingly. This anti-amusement stone once removed, the path before us is entirely new and refreshing. The power to be amused runs in nations. But each individual is in himself a nation, and can govern himself as such; and if he has any desire for the prosperity of his own kingdom, let him order a public holiday at regular intervals, and see that the people enjoy it. IV. BRAIN IMPRESSIONS. THE mere idea of a brain clear from false impressions gives a sense of freedom which is refreshing. In a comic journal, some years ago, there was a picture of a man in a most self-important attitude, with two common mortals in the background gazing at him. "What makes him stand like that?" said one. "Because," answered the other, "that is his own idea of himself." The truth suggested in that picture strikes one aghast; for in looking about us we see constant examples of attitudinizing in one's own idea of one's self. There is sometimes a feeling of fright as to whether I am not quite as abnormal in my idea of myself as are those about me. If one could only get the relief of acknowledging ignorance of one's self, light would be welcome, however given. In seeing the truth of an unkind criticism one could forget to resent the spirit; and what an amount of nerve-friction might be saved! Imagine the surprise of a man who, in return for a volley of abuse, should receive thanks for light thrown upon a false attitude. Whatever we are enabled to see, relieves us of one mistaken brain-impression, which we can replace by something more agreeable. And if, in the excitement of feeling, the mistake was exaggerated, what is that to us? All we wanted was to see it in quality. As to degree, that lessens in proportion as the quality is bettered. Fortunately, in living our own idea of ourselves, it is only ourselves we deceive, with possible exceptions in the case of friends who are so used to us, or so over-fond of us, as to lose the perspective. There is the idea of humility,--an obstinate belief that we know we are nothing at all, and deserve no credit; which, literally translated, means we know we are everything, and deserve every credit. There is the idea, too, of immense dignity, of freedom from all self-seeking and from all vanity. But it is idle to attempt to catalogue these various forms of private theatricals; they are constantly to be seen about us. It is with surprise unbounded that one hears another calmly assert that he is so-and-so or so-and-so, and in his next action, or next hundred actions, sees that same assertion entirely contradicted. Daily familiarity with the manifestations of mistaken brain-impressions does not lessen one's surprise at this curious personal contradiction; it gives one an increasing desire to look to one's self, and see how far these private theatricals extend in one's own case, and to throw off the disguise, as far as it is seen, with a full acknowledgment that there may be--probably is--an abundance more of which to rid one's self in future. There are many ways in which true openness in life, one with another, would be of immense service; and not the least of these is the ability gained to erase false brain-impressions. The self-condemnatory brain-impression is quite as pernicious as its opposite. Singularly enough, it goes with it. One often finds inordinate self-esteem combined with the most abject condemnation of self. One can be played against the other as a counter-irritant; but this only as a process of rousing, for the irritation of either brings equal misery. I am not even sure that as a rousing process it is ever really useful. To be clear of a mistaken brain-impression, a man must recognize it himself; and this recognition can never be brought about by an unasked attempt of help from another. It is often cleared by help asked and given; and perhaps more often by help which is quite involuntary and unconscious. One of the greatest points in friendly diplomacy is to be open and absolutely frank so far as we are asked, but never to go beyond. At least, in the experience of many, that leads more surely to the point where no diplomacy is needed, which is certainly the point to be aimed at in friendship. It is trying to see a friend living his own idea of himself, and to be obliged to wait until he has discovered that he is only playing a part. But this very waiting may be of immense assistance in reducing our own moral attitudinizing. How often do we hear others or find ourselves complaining of a fault over and over again! "I know that is a fault of mine, and has been for years. I wish I could get over it." "I know that is a fault of mine,"--one brain-impression; "it has been for years,"--a dozen or more brain-impressions, according to the number of years; until we have drilled the impression of that fault in, by emphasizing it over and over, to an extent which daily increases the difficulty of dropping it. So, if we have the habit of unpunctuality, and emphasize it by deploring it, it keeps us always behind time. If we are sharp-tongued, and dwell with remorse on something said in the past, it increases the tendency in the future. The slavery to nerve habit is a well-known physiological fact; but nerve habit may be strengthened negatively as well as positively. When this is more widely recognized, and the negative practice avoided, much will have been done towards freeing us from our subservience to mistaken brain-impressions. Let us take an instance: unpunctuality-for example, as that is a common form of repetition. If we really want to rid ourselves of the habit, suppose every time we are late we cease to deplore it; make a vivid mental picture of ourselves as being on time at the next appointment; then, with the how and the when clearly impressed upon our minds, there should be an absolute refusal to imagine ourselves anything but early. Surely that would be quite as effective as a constant repetition of the regret we feel at being late, whether this is repeated aloud to others, or only in our own minds. As we place the two processes side by side, the latter certainly has the advantage, and might be tried, until a better is found. Of course we must beware of getting an impression of promptness which has no ground in reality. It is quite possible for an individual to be habitually and exasperatingly late, with all the air and innocence of unusual punctuality. It would strike us as absurd to see a man painting a house the color he did not like, and go on painting it the same color, to show others and himself that which he detested. Is it not equally absurd for any of us, through the constant expression of regret for a fault, to impress the tendency to it more and more upon the brain? It is intensely sad when the consciousness of evil once committed has so impressed a man with a sense of guilt as to make him steadily undervalue himself and his own powers. Here is a case where one's own idea of one's self is seventy-five per cent below par; and a gentle and consistent encouragement in raising that idea is most necessary before par is reached. And par, as I understand it, is simple freedom from any fixed idea of one's self, either good or bad. If fixed impressions of one's self are stones in the way, the same certainly holds good with fixed impressions of others. Unpleasant brain-impressions of others are great weights, and greater impediments in the way of clearing our own brains. Suppose So-and-so had such a fault yesterday; it does not follow that he has not rid himself of at least part of it to-day. Why should we hold the brain-impression of his mistake, so that every time we look at him we make it stronger? He is not the gainer thereby, and we certainly are the losers. Repeated brain-impressions of another's faults prevent our discerning his virtues. We are constantly attributing to him disagreeable motives, which arise solely from our idea of him, and of which he is quite innocent. Not only so, but our mistaken impressions increase his difficulty in rising to the best of himself. For any one whose temperament is in the least sensitive is oppressed by what he feels to be another's idea of him, until he learns to clear himself of that as well as of other brain-impressions. It is not uncommon to hear one go over and over a supposed injury, or even small annoyances from others, with the reiterated assertion that he fervently desires to forget such injury or annoyances. This fervent desire to forgive and forget expresses itself by a repeated brain-impression of that which is to be forgiven; and if this is so often repeated in words, how many times more must it be repeated mentally! Thus, the brain-impression is increased until at last forgetting seems out of the question. And forgiving is impossible unless one can at the same time so entirely forget the ill-feeling roused as to place it beyond recall. Surely, if we realized the force and influence of unpleasant brain-impressions, it would be a simple matter to relax and let them escape, to be replaced by others that are only pleasant It cannot be that we enjoy the discomfort of the disagreeable impressions. And yet, so curiously perverted is human nature that we often hear a revolting story told with the preface, "Oh, I can't bear to think of it!" And the whole story is given, with a careful attention to detail which is quite unnecessary, even if there were any reason for telling the story at all, and generally concluded with a repetition of the prefatory exclamation. How many pathetic sights are told of, to no end but the repetition of an unpleasant brain-impression. How many past experiences, past illnesses, are gone over and over, which serve the same worse than useless purpose,--that of repeating and emphasizing the brain-impression. A little pain is made a big one by persistent dwelling upon it; what might have been a short pain is sometimes lengthened for a lifetime. Similarly, an old pain is brought back by recalling a brain-impression. The law of association is well known. We all know how familiar places and happenings will recall old feelings; we can realize this at any time by mentally reviving the association. By dwelling on the pain we had yesterday we are encouraging it to return to-morrow. By emphasizing the impression of an annoyance of to-day we are making it possible to suffer beyond expression from annoyances to come; and the annoyances, the pains, the disagreeable feelings will find their old brain-grooves with remarkable rapidity when given the ghost of a chance. I have known more than one case where a woman kept herself ill by the constant repetition, to others and to herself, of a nervous shock. A woman who had once been frightened by burglars refused to sleep for fear of being awakened by more burglars, thus increasing her impression of fear; and of course, if she slept at all, she was liable at any time to wake with a nervous start. The process of working herself into nervous prostration through this constant, useless repetition was not slow. The fixed impressions of preconceived ideas in any direction are strangely in the way of real freedom. It is difficult to catch new harmonies with old ones ringing in our ears; still more difficult when we persist in listening at the same time to discords. The experience of arguing with another whose preconceived idea is so firmly fixed that the argument is nothing but a series of circles, might be funny if it were not sad; and it often is funny, in spite of the sadness. Suppose we should insist upon retaining an unpleasant brain-impression, only when and so long as it seemed necessary in order to bring a remedy. That accomplished, suppose we dropped it on the instant. Suppose, further, that we should continue this process, and never allow ourselves to repeat a disagreeable brain-impression aloud or mentally. Imagine the result. Nature abhors a vacuum; something must come in place of the unpleasantness; therefore way is made for feelings more comfortable to one's self and to others. Bad feelings cause contraction, good ones expansion. Relax the muscular contraction; take a long, free breath of fresh air, and expansion follows as a matter of course. Drop the brain-contraction, take a good inhalation of whatever pleasant feeling is nearest, and the expansion is a necessary consequence. As we expand mentally, disagreeable brain-impressions, that in former contracted states were eclipsed by greater ones, will be keenly felt, and dropped at once, for the mere relief thus obtained. The healthier the brain, the more sensitive it is to false impressions, and the more easily are they dropped. One word by way of warning. We never can rid ourselves of an uncomfortable brain-impression by saying, "I will try to think something pleasant of that disagreeable man." The temptation, too, is very common to say to ourselves clearly, "I will try to think something pleasant," and then leave "of that disagreeable man" a subtle feeling in the background. The feeling in the background, however unconscious we may be of it, is a strong brain-impression,--all the stronger because we fail to recognize it,--and the result of our "something pleasant" is an insidious complacency at our own magnanimous disposition. Thus we get the disagreeable brain-impression of another, backed up by our agreeable brain-impression of ourselves, both mistaken. Unless we keep a sharp look-out, we may here get into a snarl from which extrication is slow work. Neither is it possible to counteract an unpleasant brain-impression by something pleasant but false. We must call a spade a spade, but not consider it a component part of the man who handles it, nor yet associate the man with the spade, or the spade with the man. When we drop it, so long as we drop it for what it is worth, which is nothing in the case of the spade in question, we have dropped it entirely. If we try to improve our brain-impression by insisting that a spade is something better and pleasanter, we are transforming a disagreeable impression to a mongrel state which again brings anything but a happy result. Simply to refuse all unpleasant brain-impressions, with no effort or desire to recast them into something that they are not, seems to be the only clear process to freedom. Not only so, but whatever there might have been pleasant in what seemed entirely unpleasant can more truly return as we drop the unpleasantness completely. It is a good thing that most of us can approach the freedom of such a change in imagination before we reach it in reality. So we can learn more rapidly not to hamper ourselves or others by retaining disagreeable brain-impressions of the present, or by recalling others of the past. V. THE TRIVIALITY OF TRIVIALITIES. LIFE is clearer, happier, and easier for us as things assume their true proportions. I might better say, as they come nearer in appearance to their true proportions; for it seems doubtful whether any one ever reaches the place in this world where the sense of proportion is absolutely normal. Some come much nearer than others; and part of the interest of living is the growing realization of better proportion, and the relief from the abnormal state in which circumstances seem quite out of proportion in their relation to one another. Imagine a landscape-painter who made his cows as large as the houses, his blades of grass waving above the tops of the trees, and all things similarly disproportionate. Or, worse, imagine a disease of the retina which caused a like curious change in the landscape itself wherein a mountain appeared to be a mole-hill, and a mole-hill a mountain. It seems absurd to think of. And, yet, is not the want of a true sense of proportion in the circumstances and relations of life quite as extreme with many of us? It is well that our physical sense remains intact. If we lost that too, there would seem to be but little hope indeed. Now, almost the only thing needed for a rapid approach to a more normal mental sense of proportion is a keener recognition of the want. But this want must be found first in ourselves, not in others. There is the inclination to regard our own life as bigger and more important than the life of any one about us; or the reverse attitude of bewailing its lack of importance, which is quite the same. In either case our own life is dwelt upon first. Then there is the immediate family, after that our own especial friends,--all assuming a gigantic size which puts quite out of the question an occasional bird's-eye view of the world in general. Even objects which might be in the middle distance of a less extended view are quite screened by the exaggerated size of those which seem to concern us most immediately. One's own life is important; one's own family and friends are important, very, when taken in their true proportion. One should surely be able to look upon one's own brothers and sisters as if they were the brothers and sisters of another, and to regard the brothers and sisters of another as one's own. Singularly, too, real appreciation of and sympathy with one's own grows with this broader sense of relationship. In no way is this sense shown more clearly than by a mother who has the breadth and the strength to look upon her own children as if they belonged to some one else, and upon the children of others as if they belonged to her. But the triviality of magnifying one's own out of all proportion has not yet been recognized by many. So every trivial happening in our own lives or the lives of those connected with us is exaggerated, and we keep ourselves and others in a chronic state of contraction accordingly. Think of the many trifles which, by being magnified and kept in the foreground, obstruct the way to all possible sight or appreciation of things that really hold a more important place. The cook, the waitress, various other annoyances of housekeeping; a gown that does not suit, the annoyances of travel, whether we said the right thing to so-and-so, whether so-and-so likes us or does not like us,--indeed, there is an immense army of trivial imps, and the breadth of capacity for entertaining these imps is so large in some of us as to be truly encouraging; for if the domain were once deserted by the imps, there remains the breadth, which must have the same capacity for holding something better. Unfortunately, a long occupancy by these miserable little offenders means eventually the saddest sort of contraction. What a picture for a new Gulliver!--a human being overwhelmed by the imps of triviality, and bound fast to the ground by manifold windings of their cobweb-sized thread. This exaggeration of trifles is one form of nervous disease. It would be exceedingly interesting and profitable to study the various phases of nervous disease as exaggerated expressions of perverted character. They can be traced directly and easily in many cases. If a woman fusses about trivialities, she fusses more when she is tired. The more fatigue, the more fussing; and with a persistent tendency to fatigue and fussing it does not take long to work up or down to nervous prostration. From this form of nervous excitement one never really recovers, except by a hearty acknowledgment of the trivialities as trivialities, when, with growing health, there is a growing sense of true proportion. I have seen a woman spend more attention, time, and nerve-power on emphasizing the fact that her hands were all stained from the dye on her dress than a normal woman would take for a good hour's work. As she grew better, this emphasizing of trivialities decreased, but, of course, might have returned with any over-fatigue, unless it had been recognized, taken at its worth, and simply dropped. Any one can think of example after example in his own individual experience, when he has suffered unnecessary tortures through the regarding of trifling things, either by himself or by some one near him. With many, the first instance will probably be to insist, with emphasis and some feeling, that they are _not_ trivialities. Trivialities have their importance _when given their true proportion_. The size of a triviality is often exaggerated as much by neglect as by an undue amount of attention. When we do what we can to amend an annoyance, and then think no more about it until there appears something further to do, the saving of nervous force is very great. Yet, so successful have these imps of triviality come to be in their rule of human nature that the trivialities of the past are oftentimes dwelt upon with as much earnestness as if they belonged to the present. The past itself is a triviality, except in its results. Yet what an immense screen it is sometimes to any clear understanding or appreciation of the present! How many of us have listened over and over to the same tale of past annoyances, until we wonder how it can be possible that the constant repetition is not recognized by the narrator! How many of us have been over and over in our minds past troubles, little and big, so that we have no right whatever to feel impatient when listening to such repetitions by others! Here again we have, in nervous disease, the extreme of a common trait in humanity. With increased nervous fatigue there is always an increase of the tendency to repetition. Best drop it before it gets to the fatigue stage, if possible. Then again there are the common things of life, such as dressing and undressing, and the numberless every-day duties. It is possible to distort them to perfect monstrosities by the manner of dwelling upon them. Taken as a matter of course, they are the very triviality of trivialities, and assume their place without second thought. When life seems to get into such a snarl that we despair of disentangling it, a long journey and change of human surroundings enable us to take a distant view, which not uncommonly shows the tangle to be no tangle at all. Although we cannot always go upon a material journey, we can change the mental perspective, and it is this adjustment of the focus which brings our perspective into truer proportions. Having once found what appears to be the true focus, let us be true to it. The temptations to lose one's focus are many, and sometimes severe. When temporarily thrown off our balance, the best help is to return at once, without dwelling on the fact that we have lost the focus longer than is necessary to find it again. After that, our focus is better adjusted and the range steadily expanded. It is impossible for us to widen the range by thinking about it; holding the best focus we know in our daily experience does that Thus the proportions arrange themselves; we cannot arrange the proportions. Or, what is more nearly the truth, the proportions are in reality true, to begin with. As with the imaginary eye-disease, which transformed the relative sizes of the component parts of a landscape, the fault is in the eye, not in the landscape; so, when the circumstances of life are quite in the wrong proportion to one another, in our own minds, the trouble is in the mental sight, not in the circumstances. There are many ways of getting a better focus, and ridding one's self of trivial annoyances. One is, to be quiet; get at a good mental distance. Be sure that you have a clear view, and then hold it. Always keep your distance; never return to the old stand-point if you can manage to keep away. We may be thankful if trivialities annoy us as trivialities. It is with those who have the constant habit of dwelling on them without feeling the discomfort that a return to freedom seems impossible. As one comes to realize, even in a slight degree, the triviality of trivialities, and then forget them entirely in a better idea of true proportion, the sense of freedom gained is well worth working for. It certainly brings the possibility of a normal nervous system much nearer. VI. MOODS. RELIEF from the mastery of an evil mood is like fresh air after having been several hours in a close room. If one should go to work deliberately to break up another's nervous system, and if one were perfectly free in methods of procedure, the best way would be to throw upon the victim in rapid sequence a long series of the most extreme moods. The disastrous result could be hastened by insisting that each mood should be resisted as it manifested itself, for then there would be the double strain,--the strain of the mood, and the strain of resistance. It is better to let a mood have its way than to suppress it. The story of the man who suffered from varicose veins and was cured by the waters of Lourdes, only to die a little later from an affection of the heart which arose from the suppression of the former disease, is a good illustration of the effect of mood-suppression. In the case cited, death followed at once; but death from repeated impressions of moods resisted is long drawn out, and the suffering intense, both for the patient and for his friends. The only way to drop a mood is to look it in the face and call it by its right name; then by persistent ignoring, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another, finally drop it altogether. It takes a looser hold next time, and eventually slides off entirely. To be sure, over-fatigue, an attack of indigestion, or some unexpected contact with the same phase in another, may bring back the ghost of former moods. These ghosts may even materialize, unless the practice of ignoring is at once referred to; but they can ultimately be routed completely. A great help in gaining freedom from moods is to realize clearly their superficiality. Moods are deadly, desperately serious things when taken seriously and indulged in to the full extent of their power. They are like a tiny spot directly in front of the eye. We see that, and that only. It blurs and shuts out everything else. We groan and suffer and are unhappy and wretched, still persistently keeping our eye on the spot, until finally we forget that there is anything else in the world. In mind and body we are impressed by that and that alone. Thus the difficulty of moving off a little distance is greatly increased, and liberation is impossible until we do move away, and, by a change of perspective, see the spot for what it really is. Let any one who is ruled by moods, in a moment when he is absolutely free from them, take a good look at all past moody states, and he will see that they come from nothing, go to nothing, and, are nothing. Indeed, that has been and is often done by the moody person, with at the same time an unhappy realization that when the moods are on him, they are as real as they are unreal when he is free. To treat a mood as a good joke when you are in its clutches, is simply out of the question. But to say, "This now is a mood. Come on, do your worst; I can stand it as long as you can," takes away all nerve-resistance, until the thing has nothing to clutch, and dissolves for want of nourishment. If it proves too much for one at times, and breaks out in a bad expression of some sort, a quick acknowledgment that you are under the spell of a bad mood, and a further invitation to come on if it wants to, will loosen the hold again. If the mood is a melancholy one, speak as little as possible under its influence; go on and do whatever there is to be done, not resisting it in any way, but keep busy. This non-resistance can, perhaps, be better illustrated by taking, instead of a mood, a person who teases. It is well known that the more we are annoyed, the more our opponent teases; and that the surest and quickest way of freeing ourselves is not to be teased. We can ignore the teaser externally with an internal irritation which he sees as clearly as if we expressed it. We can laugh in such a way that every sound of our own voice proclaims the annoyance we are trying to hide. It is when we take his words for what they are worth, and go with him, that the wind is taken out of his sails, and he stops because there is no fun in it. The experience with a mood is quite parallel, though rather more difficult at first, for there is no enemy like the enemies in one's self, no teasing like the teasing from one's self. It takes a little longer, a little heartier and more persistent process of non-resistance to cure the teasing from one's own nature. But the process is just as certain, and the freedom greater in result. Why is it not clear to us that to set our teeth, clench our hands, or hold any form of extreme tension and mistaken control, doubles, trebles, quadruples the impression of the feeling controlled, and increases by many degrees its power for attacking us another time? Persistent control of this kind gives a certain sort of strength. It might be called sham strength, for it takes it out of one in other ways. But the control that comes from non-resistance brings a natural strength, which not only steadily increases, but spreads on all sides, as the growth of a tree is even in its development. "If a man takes your cloak, give him your coat also; if one compel you to go a mile, go with him twain." "Love your enemies, do good to them that hurt you, and pray for them that despitefully use you." Why have we been so long in realizing the practical, I might say the physiological, truth of this great philosophy? Possibly because in forgiving our enemies we have been so impressed with the idea that it was our enemies we were forgiving. If we realized that following this philosophy would bring us real freedom, it would be followed steadily as a matter of course, and with no more sense that we deserved credit for doing a good thing than a man might have in walking out of prison when his jailer opened the door. So it is with our enemies the moods. I have written heretofore of bad moods only. But there are moods and moods. In a degree, certainly, one should respect one's moods. Those who are subject to bad moods are equally subject to good ones, and the superficiality of the happier modes is just as much to be recognized as that of the wretched ones. In fact, in recognizing the shallowness of our happy moods, we are storing ammunition for a healthy openness and freedom from the opposite forms. With the full realization that a mood is a mood, we can respect it, and so gradually reach a truer evenness of life. Moods are phases that we are all subject to whilst in the process of finding our balance; the more sensitive and finer the temperament, the more moods. The rhythm of moods is most interesting, and there is a spice about the change which we need to give relish to these first steps towards the art of living. It is when their seriousness is exaggerated that they lose their power for good and make slaves of us. The seriousness may be equally exaggerated in succumbing to them and in resisting them. In either case they are our masters, and not our slaves. They are steady consumers of the nervous system in their ups and downs when they master us; and of course retain no jot of that fascination which is a good part of their very shallowness, and brings new life as we take them as a matter of course. Then we are swung in their rhythm, never once losing sight of the point that it is the mood that is to serve us, and not we the mood. As we gain freedom from our own moods, we are enabled to respect those of others and give up any endeavor to force a friend out of his moods, or even to lead him out, unless he shows a desire to be led. Nor do we rejoice fully in the extreme of his happy moods, knowing the certain reaction. Respect for the moods of others is necessary to a perfect freedom from our own. In one sense no man is alone in the world; in another sense every man is alone; and with moods especially, a man must be left to work out his own salvation, unless he asks for help. So, as he understands his moods, and frees himself from their mastery, he will find that moods are in reality one of Nature's gifts, a sort of melody which strengthens the harmony of life and gives it fuller tone. Freedom from moods does not mean the loss of them, any more than non-resistance means allowing them to master you. It is non-resistance, with the full recognition of what they are, that clears the way. VII. TOLERANCE. WHEN we are tolerant as a matter of course, the nervous system is relieved of almost the worst form of persistent irritation it could have. The freedom of tolerance can only be appreciated by those who have known the suffering of intolerance and gained relief. A certain perspective is necessary to a recognition of the full absurdity of intolerance. One of the greatest absurdities of it is evident when we are annoyed and caused intense suffering by our intolerance of others, and, as a consequence, blame others for the fatigue or illness which follows. However mistaken or blind other people may be in their habits or their ideas, it is entirely our fault if we are annoyed by them. The slightest blame given to another in such a case, on account of our suffering, is quite out of place. Our intolerance is often unconscious. It is disguised under one form of annoyance or another, but when looked full in the face, it can only be recognized as intolerance. Of course, the most severe form is when the belief, the action, or habit of another interferes directly with our own selfish aims. That brings the double annoyance of being thwarted and of rousing more selfish antagonism. Where our selfish desires are directly interfered with, or even where an action which we know to be entirely right is prevented, intolerance only makes matters worse. If expressed, it probably rouses bitter feelings in another. Whether we express it openly or not, it keeps us in a state of nervous irritation which is often most painful in its results. Such irritation, if not extreme in its effect, is strong enough to keep any amount of pure enjoyment out of life. There may be some one who rouses our intolerant feelings, and who may have many good points which might give us real pleasure and profit; but they all go for nothing before our blind, restless intolerance. It is often the case that this imaginary enemy is found to be a friend and ally in reality, if we once drop the wretched state of intolerance long enough to see him clearly. Yet the promptest answer to such an assertion will probably be, "That may be so in some cases, but not with the man or woman who rouses my intolerance." It is a powerful temptation, this one of intolerance, and takes hold of strong natures; it frequently rouses tremendous tempests before it can be recognized and ignored. And with the tempest comes an obstinate refusal to call it by its right name, and a resentment towards others for rousing in us what should not have been there to be roused. So long as a tendency to anything evil is in us, it is a good thing to have it roused, recognized, and shaken off; and we might as reasonably blame a rock, over which we stumble, for the bruises received, as blame the person who rouses our intolerance for the suffering we endure. This intolerance, which is so useless, seems strangely absurd when it is roused through some interference with our own plans; but it is stranger when we are rampant against a belief which does not in any way interfere with us. This last form is more prevalent in antagonistic religious beliefs than in anything else. The excuse given would be an earnest desire for the salvation of our opponent. But who ever saved a soul through an ungracious intolerance of that soul's chosen way of believing or living? The danger of loss would seem to be all on the other side. One's sense of humor is touched, in spite of one's self, to hear a war of words and feeling between two Christians whose belief is supposed to be founded on the axiom, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Without this intolerance, argument is interesting, and often profitable. With it, the disputants gain each a more obstinate belief in his own doctrines; and the excitement is steadily destructive to the best health of the nervous system. Again, there is the intolerance felt from various little ways and habits of others,--habits which are comparatively nothing in themselves, but which are monstrous in their effect upon a person who is intolerant of them. One might almost think we enjoyed irritated nerves, so persistently do we dwell upon the personal peculiarities of others. Indeed, there is no better example of biting off one's own nose than the habit of intolerance. It might more truly be called the habit of irritating one's own nervous system. Having recognized intolerance as intolerance, having estimated it at its true worth, the next question is, how to get rid of it. The habit has, not infrequently, made such a strong brain-impression that, in spite of an earnest desire to shake it off, it persistently clings. Of course, the soil about the obnoxious growth is loosened the moment we recognize its true quality. That is a beginning, and the rest is easier than might be imagined by those who have not tried it. Intolerance is an unwillingness that others should live in their own way, believe as they prefer to, hold personal habits which they enjoy or are unconscious of, or interfere in any degree with our ways, beliefs, or habits. That very sense of unwillingness causes a contraction of the nerves which is wasteful and disagreeable. The feeling rouses the contraction, the contraction more feeling; and so the Intolerance is increased in cause and in effect. The immediate effect of being willing, on the contrary, is, of course, the relaxation of such contraction, and a healthy expansion of the nerves. Try the experiment on some small pet form of intolerance. Try to realize what it is to feel quite willing. Say over and over to yourself that you are quite willing So-and-so should make that curious noise with his mouth. Do not hesitate at the simplicity of saying the words to yourself; that brings a much quicker effect at first. By and by we get accustomed to the sensation of willingness, and can recall it with less repetition of words, or without words at all. When the feeling of nervous annoyance is roused by the other, counteract it on the instant by repeating silently: "I am quite willing you should do that,--do it again." The man or woman, whoever he or she may be, is quite certain to oblige you! There will be any number of opportunities to be willing, until by and by the willingness is a matter of course, and it would not be surprising if the habit passed entirely unnoticed, as far as you are concerned. This experiment tried successfully on small things can be carried to greater. If steadily persisted in, a good fifty per cent of wasted nervous force can be saved for better things; and this saving of nervous force is the least gain which comes from a thorough riddance of every form of intolerance. "But," it will be objected, "how can I say I am willing when I am not?" Surely you can see no good from the irritation of unwillingness; there can be no real gain from it, and there is every reason for giving it up. A clear realization of the necessity for willingness, both for our own comfort and for that of others, helps us to its repetition in words. The words said with sincere purpose, help us to the feeling, and so we come steadily into clearer light. Our very willingness that a friend should go the wrong way, if he chooses, gives us new power to help him towards the right. If we are moved by intolerance, that is selfishness; with it will come the desire to force our friend into the way which we consider right. Such forcing, if even apparently successful, invariably produces a reaction on the friend's part, and disappointment and chagrin on our own. The fact that most great reformers were and are actuated by the very spirit of intolerance, makes that scorning of the ways of others seem to us essential as the root of all great reform. Amidst the necessity for and strength in the reform, the petty spirit of intolerance intrudes unnoticed. But if any one wants to see it in full-fledged power, let him study the family of a reformer who have inherited the intolerance of his nature without the work to which it was applied. This intolerant spirit is not indispensable to great reforms; but it sometimes goes with them, and is made use of, as intense selfishness may often be used, for higher ends. The ends might have been accomplished more rapidly and more effectually with less selfish instruments. But man must be left free, and if he will not offer himself as an open channel to his highest impulses, he is used to the best advantage possible without them. There is no finer type of a great reformer than Jesus Christ; in his life there was no shadow of intolerance. From first to last, he showed willingness in spirit and in action. In upbraiding the Scribes and Pharisees he evinced no feeling of antagonism; he merely stated the facts. The same firm calm truth of assertion, carried out in action, characterized his expulsion of the money-changers from the temple. When he was arrested, and throughout his trial and execution, it was his accusers who showed the intolerance; they sent out with swords and staves to take him, with a show of antagonism which failed to affect him in the slightest degree. Who cannot see that, with the irritated feeling of intolerance, we put ourselves on the plane of the very habit or action we are so vigorously condemning? We are inviting greater mistakes on our part. For often the rouser of our selfish antagonism is quite blind to his deficiencies, and unless he is broader in his way than we are in ours, any show of intolerance simply blinds him the more. Intolerance, through its indulgence, has come to assume a monstrous form. It interferes with all pleasure in life; it makes clear, open intercourse with others impossible; it interferes with any form of use into which it is permitted to intrude. In its indulgence it is a monstrosity,--in itself it is mean, petty, and absurd. Let us then work with all possible rapidity to relax from contractions of unwillingness, and become tolerant as a matter of course. Whatever is the plan of creation, we cannot improve it through any antagonistic feeling of our own against creatures or circumstances. Through a quiet, gentle tolerance we leave ourselves free to be carried by the laws. Truth is greater than we are, and if we can be the means of righting any wrong, it is by giving up the presumption that we can carry truth, and by standing free and ready to let truth carry us. The same willingness that is practised in relation to persons will be found equally effective in relation to the circumstances of life, from the losing of a train to matters far greater and more important. There is as much intolerance to be dropped in our relations to various happenings as in our relations to persons; and the relief to our nerves is just as great, perhaps even greater. It seems to be clear that heretofore we have not realized either the relief or the strength of an entire willingness that people and things should progress in their own way. How can we ever gain freedom whilst we are entangled in the contractions of intolerance? Freedom and a healthy nervous system are synonymous; we cannot have one without the other. VIII. SYMPATHY. SYMPATHY, in its best sense, is the ability to take another's point of view. Not to mourn because he mourns; not to feel injured because he feels injured. There are times when we cannot agree with a friend in the necessity for mourning or feeling injured; but we can understand the cause of his disturbance, and see clearly that his suffering is quite reasonable, _from his own point of view_. One cannot blame a man for being color-blind; but by thoroughly understanding and sympathizing with the fact that red _must_ be green as he sees it, one can help him to bring his mental retina to a more normal state, until every color is taken at its proper value. This broader sort of sympathy enables us to serve others much more truly. If we feel at one with a man who is suffering from a supposed injury which may be entirely his own fault, we are doing all in our power to confirm him in his mistake, and his impression of martyrdom is increased and protracted in proportion. But if, with a genuine comprehension of his point of view, however unreal it may be in itself, we do our best to see his trouble in an unprejudiced light, that is sympathy indeed; for our real sympathy is with the man himself, cleared from his selfish fog. What is called our sympathy with his point of view is more a matter of understanding. The sympathy which takes the man for all in all, and includes the comprehension of his prejudices, will enable us to hold our tongues with regard to his prejudiced view until he sees for himself or comes to us for advice. It is interesting to notice how this sympathy with another enables us to understand and forgive one from whom we have received an injury. His point of view taken, his animosity against us seems to follow as a matter of course; then no time or force need be wasted on resentment. Again, you cannot blame a man for being blind, even though his blindness may be absolutely and entirely selfish, and you the sufferer in consequence. It often follows that the endeavor to get a clear understanding of another's view brings to notice many mistaken ideas of our own, and thus enables us to gain a better standpoint It certainly helps us to enduring patience; whereas a positive refusal to regard the prejudices of another is rasping to our own nerves, and helps to fix him in whatever contraction may have possessed him. There can be no doubt that this open sympathy is one of the better phases of our human intercourse most to be desired. It requires a clear head and a warm heart to understand the prejudices of a friend or an enemy, and to sympathize with his capabilities enough to help him to clearer mental vision. Often, to be sure, there are two points of view, both equally true. But they generally converge into one, and that one is more easily found through not disputing our own with another's. Through sympathy with him we are enabled to see the right on both sides, and reach the central point. It is singular that it takes us so long to recognize this breadth of sympathy and practise it. Its practice would relieve us of an immense amount of unnecessary nerve-strain. But the nerve-relief is the mere beginning of gain to come. It steadily opens a clearer knowledge and a heartier appreciation of human nature. We see in individuals traits of character, good and bad, that we never could have recognized whilst blinded by our own personal prejudices. By becoming alive to various little sensitive spots in others, we are enabled to avoid them, and save an endless amount of petty suffering which might increase to suffering that was really severe. One good illustration of this want of sympathy, in a small way, is the waiting-room of a well-known nerve-doctor. The room is in such a state of confusion, it is such a mixture of colors and forms, that it would be fatiguing even for a person in tolerable health to stay there for an hour. Yet the doctor keeps his sensitive, nervously excited patients sitting in this heterogeneous mass of discordant objects hour after hour. Surely it is no psychological subtlety of insight that gives a man of this type his name and fame: it must be the feeding and resting process alone; for a man of sensitive sympathy would study to save his patients by taking their point of view, as well as to bring them to a better physical state through nourishment and rest. The ability to take a nervous sufferer's point of view is greatly needed. There can be no doubt that with that effort on the part of friends and relatives, many cases of severe nervous prostration might be saved, certainly much nervous suffering could be prevented. A woman who is suffering from a nervous conscience writes a note which shows that she is worrying over this or that supposed mistake, or as to what your attitude is towards her. A prompt, kind, and direct answer will save her at once from further nervous suffering of that sort. To keep an anxious person, whether he be sick or well, watching the mails, is a want of sympathy which is also shown in many other ways, unimportant, perhaps, to us, but important if we are broad enough to take the other's point of view. There are many foolish little troubles from which men and women suffer that come only from tired nerves. A wise patience with such anxieties will help greatly towards removing their cause. A wise patience is not indulgence. An elaborate nervous letter of great length is better answered by a short but very kind note. The sympathy which enables us to understand the point of view of tired nerves gives us the power to be lovingly brief in our response to them, and at the same time more satisfying than if we responded at length. Most of us take human nature as a great whole, and judge individuals from our idea in general. Or, worse, we judge it all from our own personal prejudices. There is a grossness about this which we wonder at not having seen before, when we compare the finer sensitiveness which is surely developed by the steady effort to understand another's point of view. We know a whole more perfectly as a whole if we have a distinct knowledge of the component parts. We can only understand human nature en masse through a daily clearer knowledge of and sympathy with its individuals. Every one of us knows the happiness of having at least one friend whom he is perfectly sure will neither undervalue him nor give him undeserved praise, and whose friendship and help he can count upon, no matter how great a wrong he has done, as securely as he could count upon his loving thought and attention in physical illness. Surely it is possible for each of us to approach such friendship in our feeling and attitude towards every one who comes in touch with us. It is comparatively easy to think of this open sympathy, or even practise it in big ways; it is in the little matters of everyday life that the difficulty arises. Of course the big ways count for less if they come through a brain clogged with little prejudices, although to some extent one must help the other. It cannot be that a man has a real open sympathy who limits it to his own family and friends; indeed, the very limit would make the open sympathy impossible. One is just as far from a clear comprehension of human nature when he limits himself by his prejudices for his immediate relatives as when he makes himself alone the boundary. Once having gained even the beginning of this broader sympathy with others, there follows the pleasure of freedom from antagonisms, keener delight in understanding others, individually and collectively, and greater ability to serve others; and all these must give an impetus which takes us steadily on to greater freedom, to clearer understanding, and to more power to serve and to be served. Others have many experiences which we have never even touched upon. In that case, our ability to understand is necessarily limited. The only thing to do is to acknowledge that we cannot see the point of view, that we have no experience to start from, and to wait with an open mind until we are able to understand. Curiously enough, it is precisely these persons of limited experience who are most prone to prejudice. I have heard a man assert with emphasis that it was every one's _duty_ to be happy, who had apparently not a single thing in life to interfere with his own happiness. The duty may be clear enough, but he certainly was not in a position to recognize its difficulty. And just in proportion with his inability to take another's point of view in such difficulty did he miss his power to lead others to this agreeable duty. There are, of course, innumerable things, little and big, which we shall be enabled to give to others and to receive from others as the true sympathy grows. The common-sense of it all appeals to us forcibly. Who wants to carry about a mass of personal prejudices when he can replace them by the warm, healthy feeling of sympathetic friendship? Who wants his nerves to be steadily irritated by various forms of intolerance when, by understanding the other's point of view, he can replace these by better forms of patience? This lower relief is little compared with the higher power gained, but it is the first step up, and the steps beyond go ever upward. Human nature is worth knowing and worth loving, and it can never be known or loved without open sympathy. Why, we ourselves are human nature! Many of us would be glad to give sympathy to others, especially in little ways, but we do not know how to go to work about it; we seem always to be doing the wrong thing, when our desire is to do the right. This comes, of course, from the same inability to take the other's point of view; and the ability is gained as we are quiet and watch for it. Practice, here as in everything else, is what helps. And the object is well worth working for. IX. OTHERS. HOW to live at peace with others is a problem which, if practically solved, would relieve the nervous system of a great weight, and give to living a lightness and ease that might for a time seem weirdly unnatural. It would certainly decrease the income of the nerve-specialists to the extent of depriving those gentlemen of many luxuries they now enjoy. Peace does not mean an outside civility with an inside dislike or annoyance. In that case, the repressed antagonism not only increases the brain-impression and wears upon the nervous system, but it is sure to manifest itself some time, in one form or another; and the longer it is repressed, the worse will be the effect. It may be a volcanic eruption that is produced after long repression, which simmers down to a chronic interior grumble; or it may be that the repression has caused such steadily increasing contraction that an eruption is impossible. In this case, life grows heavier and heavier, burdened with the shackles of one's own dislikes. If we can only recognize two truths in our relations with others, and let these truths become to us a matter of course, the worst difficulties are removed. Indeed, with these two simple bits of rationality well in hand, we may safely expect to walk amicably side by side with our dearest foe. The first is, that dislike, nine times out often, is simply a "cutaneous disorder." That is, it is merely an irritation excited by the friction of one nervous system upon another. The tiny tempests in the tiny teapots which are caused by this nervous friction, the great weight attached to the most trivial matters of dispute, would touch one's sense of humor keenly if it were not that in so many cases these tiny tempests develop into real hurricanes. Take, for example, two dear and intimate friends who have lived happily together for years. Neither has a disposition which is perfect; but that fact has never interfered with their friendship. Both get over-tired. Words are spoken which sound intensely disagreeable, even cruel. They really express nothing in the world but tired nerves. They are received and misinterpreted by tired nerves on the other side. So these two sets of nerves act and react upon one another, and from nothing at all is evolved an ill-feeling which, if allowed to grow, separates the friends. Each is fully persuaded that his cutaneous trouble has profound depth. By a persistent refusal of all healing salves it sometimes sinks in until the disease becomes really deep seated. All this is so unnecessary. Through the same mistake many of us carry minor dislikes which, on account of their number and their very pettiness, are wearing upon the nerves, and keep us from our best in whatever direction we may be working. The remedy for all these seems very clear when once we find it. Recognize the shallow-ness of the disorder, acknowledge that it is a mere matter of nerves, and avoid the friction. Keep your distance. It is perfectly possible and very comfortable to keep your distance from the irritating peculiarities of another, while having daily and familiar relations with him or her. The difficulty is in getting to a distance when we have allowed ourselves to be over-near; but that, too, can be accomplished with patience. And by keeping a nervous distance, so to speak, we are not only relieved from irritation, but we find a much more delightful friendship; we see and enjoy the qualities in another which the petty irritations had entirely obscured from our view. If we do not allow ourselves to be touched by the personal peculiarities, we get nearer the individual himself. To give a simple example which would perhaps seem absurd if it had not been proved true so many times: A man was so annoyed by his friend's state of nervous excitability that in taking a regular morning walk with him, which he might have enjoyed heartily, he always returned fagged out He tried whilst walking beside his friend to put himself in imagination on the other side of the street The nervous irritation lessened, and finally ceased; the walk was delightful, and the friend--never suspected! A Japanese crowd is so well-bred that no one person touches another; one need never jostle, but, with an occasional "I beg your pardon," can circulate with perfect ease. In such a crowd there can be no irritation. There is a certain good-breeding which leads us to avoid friction with another's nervous system. It must, however, be an avoidance inside as well as outside. The subterfuge of holding one's tongue never works in the end. There is a subtle communication from one nervous system to another which is more insinuating than any verbal intercourse. Those nearest us, and whom we really love best, are often the very persons by whom we are most annoyed. As we learn to keep a courteous distance from their personal peculiarities our love grows stronger and more real; and an open frankness in our relation is more nearly possible. Strangely enough, too, the personal peculiarities sometimes disappear. It is possible, and quite as necessary, to treat one's own nervous system with this distant courtesy. This brings us to the second simple truth. In nine cases out of ten the cause of this nervous irritation is in ourselves. If a man loses his temper and rouses us to a return attack, how can we blame him? Are we not quite as bad in hitting back? To be sure, he began it. But did he? How do we know what roused him? Then, too, he might have poured volleys of abuse upon us, and not provoked an angry retort, if the temper had not been latent within us, to begin with. So it is with minor matters. In direct proportion to our freedom from others is our power for appreciating their good points; just in proportion to our slavery to their tricks and their habits are we blinded to their good points and open to increased irritation from their bad ones. It is curious that it should work that way, but it does. If there is nothing in us to be roused, we are all free; if we are not free, it is because there is something in us akin to that which rouses us. This is hard to acknowledge. But it puts our attitude to others on a good clean basis, and brings us into reality and out of private theatricals; not to mention a clearing of the nervous system which gives us new power. There is one trouble in dealing with people which does not affect all of us, but which causes enough pain and suffering to those who are under its influence to make up for the immunity of the rest. That is, the strong feeling that many of us have that it is our duty to reform those about us whose life and ways are not according to our ideas of right. No one ever forced another to reform, against that other's will. It may have appeared so; but there is sure to be a reaction sooner or later. The number of nervous systems, however, that have been overwrought by this effort to turn others to better ways, is sad indeed. And in many instances the owners of these nervous systems will pose to themselves as martyrs; and they are quite sincere in such posing. They are living their own impressions of themselves, and wearing themselves out in consequence. If they really wanted right for the sake of right, they would do all in their power without intruding, would recognize the other as a free agent, and wait. But they want right because it is their way; consequently they are crushed by useless anxiety, and suffer superfluously. This is true of those who feel themselves under the necessity of reforming all who come in touch with them. It is more sadly true of those whose near friends seem steadily to be working out their own destruction. To stand aside and be patient in this last case requires strength indeed. But such patience clears one's mind to see, and gives power to act when action can prove effective. Indeed, as the ability to leave others free grows in us, our power really to serve increases. The relief to the nervous system of dropping mistaken responsibility cannot be computed. For it is by means of the nervous system that we deal with others; it is the medium of our expression and of our impression. And as it is cleared of its false contractions, does it not seem probable that we might be opened to an exquisite delight in companionship that we never knew before, and that our appreciation of human nature would increase indefinitely? Suppose when we find another whose ways are quite different from ours, we immediately contract, and draw away with the feeling that there is nothing in him for us. Or suppose, instead, that we look into his ways with real interest in having found a new phase of human nature. Which would be the more broadening process on the whole, or the more delightful? Frequently the contraction takes more time and attention than would an effort to understand the strange ways. We are almost always sure to find something in others to which we can respond, and which awakens a new power in us, if only a new power of sympathy. To sum it all up, the best way to deal with others seems to be to avoid nervous friction of any sort, inside or out; to harbor no ill-will towards another for selfishness roused in one's self; to be urged by no presumptive sense of responsibility; and to remember that we are all in the same world and under the same laws. A loving sympathy with human nature in general, leads us first to obey the laws ourselves, and gives us a fellow-feeling with individuals which means new strength on both sides. To take this as a matter of course does not seem impossible. It is simply casting the skin of the savage and rising to another plane, where there will doubtless be new problems better worth attention. X. ONE'S SELF. TO be truly at peace with one's self means rest indeed. There is a quiet complacency, though, which passes for peace, and is like the remarkably clear red-and-white complexion which indicates disease. It will be noticed that the sufferers from this complacent spirit of so-called peace shrink from openness of any sort, from others or to others. They will put a disagreeable feeling out of sight with a rapidity which would seem to come from sheer fright lest they should see and acknowledge themselves in their true guise. Or they will acknowledge it to a certain extent, with a pleasure in their own humility which increases the complacency in proportion. This peace is not to be desired. With those who enjoy it, a true knowledge of or friendship with others is as much out of the question as a knowledge of themselves. And when it is broken or interfered with in any way, the pain is as intense and real as the peace was false. The first step towards amicable relations with ourselves is to acknowledge that we are living with a stranger. Then it sometimes happens that through being annoyed by some one else we are enabled to recognize similar disagreeable tendencies in ourselves of which we were totally ignorant before. As honest dealing with others always pays best in the end, so it is in all relations with one's self. There are many times when to be quite open with a friend we must wait to be asked. With ourselves no such courtesy is needed. We can speak out and done with it, and the franker we are, the sooner we are free. For, unlike other companions, we can enjoy ourselves best when we are conspicuous only by our own absence! It is this constant persistence in clinging to ourselves that is most in the way; it increases that crown of nervous troubles, self-consciousness, and makes it quite impossible that we should ever really know ourselves. If by all this, we are not ineffable bores to ourselves, we certainly become so to other people. It is surprising, when once we come to recognize it, how we are in an almost chronic state of posing to ourselves. Fortunately, a clear recognition of the fact is most effectual in stopping the poses. But they must be recognized, pose by pose, individually and separately stopped, _and then ignored_, if we want to free ourselves from ourselves entirely. The interior posing-habit makes one a slave to brain-impressions which puts all freedom out of the question. To cease from such posing opens one of the most interesting gates to natural life. We wonder how we could have obscured the outside view for so long. To find that we cannot, or do not, let ourselves alone for an hour in the day seems the more surprising when we remember that there is so much to enjoy outside. Egotism is immensely magnified in nervous disorders; but that it is the positive cause of much nervous trouble has not been generally admitted. Let any one of us take a good look at the amount of attention given by ourselves to ourselves. Then acknowledge, without flinching, what amount of that attention is unnecessary; and it will clear the air delightfully, for a moment at any rate. The tendency to refer everything, in some way or another, to one's self; the touchiness and suspicion aroused by nothing but petty jealousy as to one's own place; the imagined slights from others; the want of consideration given us,--all these and many more senseless irritations are in this over-attention to self. The worries about our own moral state take up so great a place with many of us as to leave no room for any other thought. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see a woman worrying so over her faults that she has no time to correct them. Self-condemnation is as great a vanity as its opposite. Either in one way or another there is the steady temptation to attend to one's self, and along with it an irritation of the nerves which keeps us from any sense of real freedom. With most of us there is no great depth to the self-disease if it is only stopped in time. When once we are well started in the wholesome practice of getting rid of ourselves, the process is rapid. A thorough freedom from self once gained, we find ourselves quite companionable, which, though paradoxical, is without doubt a truth. "That freedom of the soul," writes Fenelon, "which looks straight onward in its path, losing no time to reason upon its steps, to study them, or to dwell upon those already taken, is true simplicity." We recognize a mistake, correct it, go on and forget. If it appears again, correct it again. Irritation at the second or at any number of reappearances only increases the brain-impression of the mistake, and makes the tendency to future error greater. If opportunity arises to do a good action, take advantage of it, and silently decline the disadvantage of having your attention riveted to it by the praise of others. A man who is constantly analyzing his physical state is called a hypochondriac. What shall we call the man who is constantly analyzing his moral state? As the hypochondriac loses all sense of health in holding the impression of disease, so the other gradually loses the sense of wholesome relation to himself and to others. If a man obeyed the laws of health as a matter of course, and turned back every time Nature convicted him of disobedience, he would never feel the need of self-analysis so far as his physical state was concerned. Just so far as a man obeys higher laws as a matter of course, and uses every mistake to enable him to know the laws better, is morbid introspection out of the question with him. "Man, know thyself!" but, being sure of the desire to know thyself, do not be impatient at slow progress; pay little attention to the process, and forget thyself, except when remembering is necessary to a better forgetting. To live at real peace with ourselves, we must surely let every little evil imp of selfishness show himself, and not have any skulking around corners. Recognize him for his full worthless-ness, call him by his right name, and move off. Having called him by his right name, our severity with ourselves for harboring him is unnecessary. To be gentle with ourselves is quite as important as to be gentle with others. Great nervous suffering is caused by this over-severity to one's self, and freedom is never accomplished by that means. Many of us are not severe enough, but very many are too severe. One mistake is quite as bad as the other, and as disastrous in its effects. If we would regard our own state less, or careless whether we were happy or unhappy, our freedom from self would be gained more rapidly. As a man intensely interested in some special work does not notice the weather, so we, if we once get hold of the immense interest there may be in living, are not moved to any depth by changes in the clouds of our personal state. We take our moods as a matter of course, and look beyond to interests that are greater. Self may be a great burden if we allow it. It is only a clear window through which we see and are seen, if we are free. And the repose of such freedom must be beyond our conception until we have found it. To be absolutely certain that we know ourselves at any time is one great impediment to reaching such rest. Every bit of self-knowledge gained makes us more doubtful as to knowledge to come. It would surprise most of us to see how really unimportant we are. As a part of the universe, our importance increases just in proportion to the laws that work through us; but this self-importance is lost to us entirely in our greater recognition of the laws. As we gain in the sensitive recognition of universal laws, every petty bit of self-contraction disappears as darkness before the rising of the sun. XI. CHILDREN. WORK for the better progress of the human race is most effective when it is done through the children; for children are future generations. The freedom in mature life gained by a training that would enable the child to avoid nervous irritants is, of course, greatly in advance of most individual freedom to-day. This real freedom is the spirit of the kindergarten; but Frobel's method, as practised to-day, does not attack and put to rout all those various nervous irritants which are the enemies of our civilization. To be sure, the teaching of his philosophy develops such a nature that much pettiness is thrown off without even being noticed as a snare; and Frobel helps one to recognize all pettiness more rapidly. There are, however, many forms of nervous irritation which one is not warned against in the kindergarten, and the absence of which, if the child is taught as a matter of course to avoid them, will give him a freedom that his elders and betters (?) lack. The essential fact of this training is that it is only truly effectual when coming from example rather than precept. A child is exquisitely sensitive to the shortcomings of others, and very keen, as well as correct, in his criticism, whether expressed or unexpressed. In so far as a man consents to be taught by children, does he not only remain young, but he frees himself from the habit of impeding his own progress. This is a great impediment, this unwillingness to be taught by those whom we consider more ignorant than ourselves because they have not been in the world so long. Did no one ever take into account the possibility of our eyes being blinded just because they had been exposed to the dust longer? Certainly one possible way of clearing this dust and avoiding it is to learn from observing those who have had less of it to contend with. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that no training of any child could be effectual to a lasting degree unless the education was mutual. When Frobel says, "Come, let us live with our children," he does not mean, Come, let us stoop to our children; he means, Let us be at one with them. Surely a more perfect harmony in these two great phases of human nature--the child and the man--would be greatly to the advantage of the latter. Yet, to begin at the beginning, who ever feels the necessity of treating a baby with respect? How quickly the baby would resent intrusive attentions, if it knew how. Indeed, I have seen a baby not a year old resent being transferred from one person to another, with an expression of the face that was most eloquent. Women seem so full of their sense of possession of a baby that this eloquence is not even observed, and the poor child's nervous irritants begin at a very early age. There is so much to be gained by keeping at a respectful nervous distance from a baby, that one has only to be quiet enough to perceive the new pleasure once, to lose the temptation to interfere; and imagine the relief to the baby! It is, after all, the sense of possession that makes the trouble; and this sense is so strong that there are babies, all the way from twenty to forty, whose individuality is intruded upon so grossly that they have never known what freedom is; and when they venture to struggle for it, their suffering is intense. This is a steadily increasing nervous contraction, both in the case of the possessed and the possessor, and perfect nervous health is not possible on either side. To begin by respecting the individuality of the baby would put this last abnormal attitude of parent and child out of the question. Curiously enough, there is in some of the worst phases of this parent-child contraction an external appearance of freedom which only enhances the internal slavery. When a man, who has never known what it was in reality to give up a strong will, prides himself upon the freedom he gives to his child, he is entangling himself in the meshes of self-deception, and either depriving another of his own, or ripening him for a good hearty hatred which may at any time mean volcanoes and earthquakes to both. This forcible resentment of and resistance to the strong will of another is a cause of great nervous suffering, the greater as the expression of such feeling is repressed. Severe illness may easily be the result. To train a child to gain freedom from the various nervous irritants, one must not only be gaining the same freedom one's self, but must practise meeting the child in the way he is counselled to meet others. One must refuse to be in any way a nervous irritant to the child. In that case quite as much instruction is received as given. A child, too, is doubly sensitive; he not only feels the intrusion on his own individuality, but the irritable or self-willed attitude of another in expressing such intrusion. Similarly, in keeping a respectful distance, a teacher grows sensitive to the child, and again the help is mutual, with sometimes a balance in favor of the child. This mistaken, parent-child attitude is often the cause of severe nervous suffering in those whose only relation is that of friendship, when one mind is stronger than the other. Sometimes there is not any real superior strength on the one side; it is simply by the greater gross-ness of the will that the other is overcome. This very grossness blinds one completely to the individuality of a finer strength; the finer individual succumbs because he cannot compete with crowbars, and the parent-child contraction is the disastrous result. To preserve for a child a normal nervous system, one must guide but not limit him. It is a sad sight to see a mother impressing upon a little brain that its owner is a naughty, naughty boy, especially when such impression is increased by the irritability of the mother. One hardly dares to think how many more grooves are made in a child's brain which simply give him contractions to take into mature life with him; how many trivial happenings are made to assume a monstrous form through being misrepresented. It is worth while to think of such dangers, such warping influences, only long enough to avoid them. A child's imagination is so exquisitely alive, his whole little being is so responsive, that the guidance which can be given him through happy brain-impressions is eminently practicable. To test this responsiveness, and feel it more keenly, just tell a child a dramatic story, and watch his face respond; or even recite a Mother-Goose rhyme with all the expression at your command. The little face changes in rapid succession, as one event after another is related, in a way to put a modern actor to shame. If the response is so quick on the outside, it must be at least equally active within. One might as well try to make a white rose red by rouging its petals as to mould a child according to one's own idea of what he should be; and as the beauty and delicacy of the rose would be spoiled by the application of the pigment, so is the baby's nervous system twisted and contracted by the limiting force of a grosser will. Water the rose, put it in the sun, keep the insect enemies away, and then enjoy it for itself. Give the child everything that is consistent with its best growth, but neither force the growth nor limit it; and stand far enough off to see the individuality, to enjoy it and profit by it. Use the child's imagination to calm and strengthen it; give it happy channels for its activity; guide it physically to the rhythm of fresh air, nourishment, and rest; then do not interfere. If the man never turns to thank you for such guidance, because it all came as a matter of course, a wholesome, powerful nervous system will speak thanks daily with more eloquence than any words could ever express. XII. ILLNESS. AS far as we make circumstances guides and not limitations, they serve us. Otherwise, we serve them, and suffer accordingly. Just in proportion, too, to our allowing circumstances to be limits do we resist them. Such resistance is a nervous strain which disables us physically, and of course puts us more in the clutches of what appears to be our misfortune. The moment we begin to regard every circumstance as an opportunity, the tables are turned on Fate, and we have the upper hand of her. When we come to think of it, how much common-sense there is in making the best of every "opportunity," and what a lack of sense in chafing at that which we choose to call our limitations! The former way is sure to bring a good result of some sort, be it ever so small; the latter wears upon our nerves, blinds our mental vision, and certainly does not cultivate the spirit of freedom in us. How absurd it would seem if a wounded man were to expose his wound to unnecessary friction, and then complain that it did not heal! Yet that is what many of us have done at one time or another, when prevented by illness from carrying out our plans in life just as we had arranged. It matters not whether those plans were for ourselves or for others; chafing and fretting at their interruption is just as absurd and quite as sure to delay our recovery. "I know," with tears in our eyes, "I ought not to complain, but it is so hard," To which common-sense may truly answer: "If it is hard, you want to get well, don't you? Then why do you not take every means to get well, instead of indulging first in the very process that will most tend to keep you ill?" Besides this, there is a dogged resistance which remains silent, refuses to complain aloud, and yet holds a state of rigidity that is even worse than the external expression. There are many individual ways of resisting. Each of us knows his own, and knows, too, the futility of it; we do not need to multiply examples. The patients who resist recovery are quite as numerous as those who keep themselves ill by resisting illness. A person of this sort seems to be fascinated by his own body and its disorders. So far from resisting illness, he may be said to be indulging in it He will talk about himself and his physical state for hours. He will locate each separate disease in a way to surprise the listener by his knowledge of his own anatomy. Not infrequently he will preface a long account of himself by informing you that he has a hearty detestation of talking about himself, and never could understand why people wanted to talk of their diseases. Then in minute detail he will reveal to you his brain-impression of his own case, and look for sympathetic response. These people might recover a hundred times over, and they would never know it, so occupied are they in living their own idea of themselves and in resisting Nature. When Nature has knocked us down because of disobedience to her laws, we resist her if we attempt at once to rise, or complain of the punishment. When the dear lady would hasten our recovery to the best of her ability, we resist her if we delay progress by dwelling on the punishment or chafing at its necessity. Nature always tends towards health. It is to prevent further ill-health that she allows us to suffer for our disobedience to her laws. It is to lead us back to health that she is giving the best of her powers, having dealt the deserved punishment. The truest help we can give Nature is not to think of our bodies, well or ill, more than is necessary for their best health. I knew a woman who was, to all appearances, remarkably well; in fact, her health was her profession. She was supposed to be a Priestess of Health. She talked about and dwelt upon the health of her body until one would have thought there was nothing in the world worth thinking of but a body. She displayed her fine points in the way of health, and enjoyed being questioned with regard to them. This woman was taken ill. She exhibited the same interest, the same pleasure, in talking over and dwelling upon her various forms of illness; in fact, more. She counted her diseases. I am not aware that she ever counted her strong points of health. This illustration is perhaps clear enough to give a new sense of the necessity for forgetting our bodies. When ill use every necessary remedy; do all that is best to bring renewed health. Having made sure you are doing all you can, forget; don't follow the process. When, as is often the case, pain or other suffering puts forgetting out of the question, use no unnecessary resistance, and forget as soon as the pain is past Don't strengthen the impression by talking about it or telling it over to no purpose. Better forego a little sympathy, and forget the pain sooner. It is with our nerves that we resist when Nature has punished us. It is nervous strain that we put into a useless attention to and repetition of the details of our illness. Nature wants all this nerve-force to get us well the faster; we can save it for her by not resisting and by a healthy forgetting. By taking an illness as comfortably as possible, and turning our attention to something pleasant outside of ourselves, recovery is made more rapidly. Many illnesses are accompanied by more or less nervous strain, and its natural control will assist nature and enable medicines to work more quickly. The slowest process of recovery, and that which most needs the relief of a wholesome non-resistance, is when the illness is the result entirely of over-worked nerves. Nature allows herself to be tried to the utmost before she permits nervous prostration. She insists upon being paid in full, principal and interest, before she heals such illness. So severe is she in this case that a patient may appear in every way physically well and strong weeks, nay, months, before he really is so. It was the nerves that broke down last, and the nerves are the last to be restored. It is, however, wonderful to see how much more rapid and certain recovery is if the patient will only separate himself from his nervous system, and refuse all useless strain. Here are some simple directions which may help nervous patients, if considered in regular order. They can hardly be read too often if the man or woman is in for a long siege; and if simply and steadily obeyed, they will shorten the siege by many days, nay, by many weeks or months, in some cases. Remember that Nature tends towards health. All you want is nourishment, fresh air, exercise, rest, and patience. All your worries and anxieties now are tired nerves. When a worry appears, drop it. If it appears again, drop it again. And so continue to drop it if it appears fifty or a hundred times a day or more. If you feel like crying, cry; but know that it is the tired nerves that are crying, and don't wonder why you are so foolish,--don't feel ashamed of yourself. If you cannot sleep, don't care. Get all the rest you can without sleeping. That will bring sleep when it is ready to come, or you are ready to have it. Don't wonder whether you are going to sleep or not. Go to bed to rest, and let sleep come when it pleases. Think about everything in Nature. Follow the growing of the trees and flowers. Remember all the beauties in Nature you have ever seen. Say Mother-Goose rhymes over and over, trying how many you can remember. Read bright stories for children, and quiet novels, especially Jane Austen's. Sometimes it helps to work on arithmetic. Keep aloof from emotions. Think of other people. Never think of yourself. Bear in mind that nerves always get well in waves; and if you thought yourself so much better,--almost well, indeed,--and then have a bad time of suffering, don't wonder why it is, or what could have brought it on. Know that it is part of the recovery-process; take it as easily as you can, and then ignore it. Don't try to do any number of things to get yourself well; don't change doctors any number of times, or take countless medicines. Every doctor knows he cannot hurry your recovery, whatever he may say, and you only retard it by being over-anxious to get strong. Drop every bit of unnecessary muscular tension. When you walk, feel your feet heavy, as if your shoes were full of lead, and think in your feet. Be as much like a child as possible. Play with children as one of them, and think with them when you can. As you begin to recover, find something every day to do for others. Best let it be in the way of house-work, or gardening, or something to do with your hands. Take care of yourself every day as a matter of course, as you would dress or undress; and be sure that health is coming. Say over and over to yourself: Nourishment, fresh air, exercise, rest, PATIENCE. When you are well, and resume your former life, if old associations recall the unhappy nervous feelings, know that it is only the associations; pay no attention to the suffering, and work right on. Only be careful to take life very quietly until you are quite used to being well again. An illness that is merely nervous is an immense opportunity, if one will only realize it as such. It not only makes one more genuinely appreciative of the best health, and the way to keep it, it opens the sympathies and gives a feeling for one's fellow-creatures which, having once found, we cannot prize too highly. It would seem hard to believe that all must suffer to find a delicate sympathy; it can hardly be so. To be always strong, and at the same time full of warm sympathy, is possible, with more thought. When illness or adverse circumstances bring it, the gate has been opened for us. If illness is taken as an opportunity to better health, not to more illness, our mental attitude will put complaint out of the question; and as the practice spreads it will as surely decrease the tendency to illness in others as it will shorten its duration in ourselves. XIII. SENTIMENT _versus_ SENTIMENTALITY. FREEDOM from sentimentality opens the way for true sentiment. An immense amount of time, thought, and nervous force is wasted in sentimentalizing about "being good." With many, the amount of talk about their evils and their desire to overcome them is a thermometer which indicates about five times that amount of thought Neither the talk nor the thought is of assistance in leading to any greater strength or to a more useful life; because the talk is all talk, and the essence of both talk and thought is a selfish, morbid pleasure in dwelling upon one's self. I remember the remark of a young girl who had been several times to prayer-meeting where she heard the same woman say every time that she "longed for the true spirit of religion in her life." With all simplicity, this child said: "If she longs for it, why doesn't she work and find it, instead of coming every week and telling us that she longs?" In all probability the woman returned from every prayer-meeting with the full conviction that, having told her aspirations, she had reached the height desired, and was worthy of all praise. Prayer-meetings in the old, orthodox sense are not so numerous as they were fifty years ago; but the same morbid love of telling one's own experiences and expressing in words one's own desires for a better life is as common as ever. Many who would express horror at these public forms of sentimentalizing do not hesitate to indulge in it privately to any extent. Nor do they realize for a moment that it is the same morbid spirit that moves them. It might not be so pernicious a practice if it were not so steadily weakening. If one has a spark of real desire for better ways of living, sentimentalizing about it is a sure extinguisher if practised for any length of time. A woman will sometimes pour forth an amount of gush about wishing to be better, broader, nobler, stronger, in a manner that would lead you, for a moment, perhaps, to believe in her sincerity. But when, in the next hour, you see her neglecting little duties that a woman who was really broad, strong, and noble would attend to as a matter of course, and not give a second thought to; when you see that although she must realize that attention to these smaller duties should come first, to open the way to her higher aspirations, she continues to neglect them and continues to aspire,--you are surely right in concluding that she is using up her nervous system in sentimentalizing about a better life; and by that means is doing all in her power to hinder the achievement of it. It is curious and very sad to see what might be a really strong nature weakening itself steadily with this philosophy and water. Of course it reaches a maudlin state if it continues. His Satanic Majesty must offer this dose, sweetened with the sugar of self-love, with intense satisfaction. And if we may personify that gentleman for the sake of illustration, what a fine sarcastic smile must dwell upon his countenance as he sees it swallowed and enjoyed, and knows that he did not even have to waste spice as an ingredient! The sugar would have drowned the taste of any spice he could supply. There is not even the appearance of strength in sentimentalizing. Besides the sentimentalizing about ourselves in our desire to live a better life, there is the same morbid practice in our love for others; and this is quite as weakening. It contains, of course, no jot of real affection. What wholesome love there is lives in spite of the sentimentalizing, and fortunately is sometimes strong enough on one side or the other to crowd it out and finally exterminate it. It is curious to notice how often this sham sentiment for others is merely a matter of nerves. As an instance we can take an example, which is quite true, of a woman who fancied herself desperately fond of another, when, much to her surprise, an acute attack of toothache and dentist-fright put the "affection" quite out of her head. In this case the "love" was a nervous irritant, and the toothache a counter-irritant. Of course the sooner such superficial feeling is recognized and shaken off, the nearer we are to real sentiment. "But," some one will say, "how are we to know what is real and what is not? I would much rather live my life and get more or less unreality than have this everlasting analyzing." There need be no abnormal analyzing; that is as morbid as the other state. Indulge to your heart's content in whatever seems to you real, in what you believe to be wholesome sentiment. But be ready to recognize it as sham at the first hint you get to that effect, and to drop it accordingly. A perfectly healthy body will shed germs of disease without ever feeling their presence. So a perfectly healthy mind will shed the germs of sentimentality. Few of us are so healthy in mind but that we have to recognize a germ or two and apply a disinfectant before we can reach the freedom that will enable us to shed the germs unconsciously. A good disinfectant is, to refuse to talk of our own feelings or desires or affections, unless for some end which we know may help us to more light and better strength. Talking, however, is mild in its weakening effect compared with thinking. It is better to dribble sham sentiment in words over and over than to think it, and repress the desire to talk. The only clear way is to drop it from our minds the moment it appears; to let go of it as we would loosen our fingers and drop something disagreeable from our hands. A good amount of exercise and fresh air helps one out of sentimentalizing. This morbid mental habit is often the result of a body ill in some way or another. Frequently it is simply the effect of tired nerves. We help others and ourselves out of it more rapidly by not mentioning the sentimentalizing habit, but by taking some immediate means towards rest, fresh air, vigorous exercise, and better nourishment. Mistakes are often made and ourselves or others kept an unnecessary length of time in mental suffering because we fail to attribute a morbid mental state to its physical cause. We blame ourselves or others for behavior that we call wicked or silly, and increase the suffering, when all that is required is a little thoughtful care of the body to cause the silly wickedness to disappear entirely. We are supposed to be indulging in sickly sentiment when we are really suffering from sickly nerves. An open sympathy will detect this mistake very soon, and save intense suffering by an early remedy. Sentiment is as strengthening as sentimentality is weakening. It is as strong, as clear, and as fine in flavor as the other is sickly sweet. No one who has tasted the wholesome vigor of the one could ever care again for the weakening sweetness of the other, however much he might have to suffer in getting rid of it. True sentiment seeks us; we do not seek it. It not only seeks us, it possesses us, and runs in our blood like the new life which comes from fresh air on top of a mountain. With that true sentiment we can feel a desire to know better things and to live them. We can feel a hearty love for others; and a love that is, in its essence, the strongest of all human loves. We can give and receive a healthy sympathy which we could never have known otherwise. We can enjoy talking about ourselves and about "being good," because every word we say will be spontaneous and direct, with more thought of law than of self. This true sentiment seeks and finds us as we recognize the sham and shake it off, and as we refuse to dwell upon our actions and thoughts in the past or to look back at all except when it is a necessity to gain a better result. We are like Orpheus, and true sentiment is our Eurydice with her touch on our shoulder; the spirits that follow are the sham-sentiments, the temptations to look back and pose. The music of our lyre is the love and thought we bring to our every-day life. Let us keep steadily on with the music, and lead our Eurydice right through Hades until we have her safely over the Lethe, and we know sentimentality only as a name. XIV. PROBLEMS. THERE are very few persons who have not I had the experience of giving up a problem in mathematics late in the evening, and waking in the morning with the solution clear in their minds. That has been the experience of many, too, in real-life problems. If it were more common, a great amount of nervous strain might be saved. There are big problems and little, real and imaginary; and some that are merely tired nerves. In problems, the useless nervous element often plays a large part. If the "problems" were dropped out of mind with sufferers from nervous prostration, their progress towards renewed health might be just twice as rapid. If they were met normally, many nervous men and women might be entirely saved from even a bowing acquaintance with nervous prostration. It is not a difficult matter, that of meeting a problem normally,--simply let it solve itself. In nine cases out of ten, if we leave it alone and live as if it were not, it will solve itself. It is at first a matter of continual surprise to see how surely this self-solution is the result of a wholesome ignoring both of little problems and big ones. In the tenth case, where the problem must be faced at once, to face it and decide to the best of our ability is, of course, the only thing to do. But having decided, be sure that it ceases to be a problem. If we have made a mistake, it is simply a circumstance to guide us for similar problems to come. All this is obvious; we know it, and have probably said it to ourselves dozens of times. If we are sufferers from nervous problems, we may have said it dozens upon dozens of times. The trouble is that we have said it and not acted upon it. When a problem will persist in worrying us, in pulling and dragging upon our nerves, an invitation to continue the worrying until it has worked itself out is a great help towards its solution or disappearance. I remember once hearing a bright woman say that when there was anything difficult to decide in her life she stepped aside and let the opposing elements fight it out within her. Presumably she herself threw in a little help on one side or the other which really decided the battle. But the help was given from a clear standpoint, not from a brain entirely befogged in the thick of the fight. Whatever form problems may take, however important they may seem, when they attack tired nerves they must be let alone. A good way is to go out into the open air and so identify one's self with Nature that one is drawn away in spite of one's self. A big wind will sometimes blow a brain clear of nervous problems in a very little while if we let it have its will. Another way out is to interest one's self in some game or other amusement, or to get a healthy interest in other people's affairs, and help where we can. Each individual can find his own favorite escape. Of course we should never shirk a problem that must be decided, but let us always wait a reasonable time for it to decide itself first. The solving that is done for us is invariably better and clearer than any we could do for ourselves. It will be curious, too, to see how many apparently serious problems, relieved of the importance given them by a strained nervous system, are recognized to be nothing at all. They fairly dissolve themselves and disappear. XV. SUMMARY. THE line has not been clearly drawn, either in general or by individuals, between true civilization and the various perversions of the civilizing process. This is mainly because we do not fairly face the fact that the process of civilization is entirely according to Nature, and that the perversions which purport to be a direct outcome of civilization are, in point of fact, contradictions or artificialities which are simply a going-over into barbarism, just as too far east is west. If you suggest "Nature" in habits and customs to most men nowadays, they at once interpret you to mean "beastly," although they would never use the word. It is natural to a beast to be beastly: he could not be anything else; and the true order of his life as a beast is to be respected. It is natural to a man to govern himself, as he possesses the power of distinguishing and choosing, With all the senses and passions much keener, and in their possibilities many degrees finer, than the beasts, he has this governing power, which makes his whole nervous system his servant just in so far as through this servant he loyally obeys his own natural laws. A man in building a bridge could never complain when he recognized that it was his obedience to the laws of mechanics which enabled him to build the bridge, and that he never could have arbitrarily arranged laws that would make the bridge stand. In the same way, one who has come to even a slight recognition of the laws that enable him to be naturally civilized and not barbarously so, steadily gains, not only a realization of the absolute futility of resisting the laws, but a growing respect and affection for them. It is this sham civilization, this selfish refinement of barbarous propensities, this clashing of nervous systems instead of the clashing of weapons, which has been largely, if not entirely, the cause of such a variety and extent of nervous trouble throughout the so-called civilized world. It is not confined to nervous prostration; if there is a defective spot organically, an inherited tendency to weakness, the nervous irritation is almost certain to concentrate upon it instead of developing into a general nervous break-down. With regard to a cure for all this, no superficial remedy, such as resting and feeding, is going to prove of lasting benefit; any more than a healing salve will suffice to do away with a blood disease which manifests itself by sores on the surface of the skin. No physician would for a moment inveigle himself into the belief that the use of external means alone would cure a skin disease that was caused by some internal disorder. Such skin irritation may be easily cured by the right remedy, whereas an external salve would only be a means of repression, and would result in much greater trouble subsequently. Imagine a man superficially cured of an illness, and then exposed while yet barely convalescent to influences which produce a relapse. That is what is done in many cases when a patient is rested, and fattened like a prize pig, and then sent home into all the old conditions, with nothing to help him to elude them but a well-fed, well-rested body. That, undeniably, means a great deal for a short period; but the old conditions discover the scars of old wounds, and the process of reopening is merely a matter of time. From all sides complaints are heard of the disastrous results of civilization; while with even a slight recognition of the fact that the trouble was caused by the rudiments of barbarism, and that the higher civilization is the life which is most truly natural, remedies for our nervous disorders would be more easily found. It is the perversions of the natural process of civilization that do the harm; just as with so-called domesticated flowers there arise coarse abnormal growths, and even diseases, which the wholesome, delicate organism of a wild flower makes impossible. The trouble is that we do not know our own best powers at all; the way is stopped so effectually by this persistent nervous irritation. With all its superficiality, it is enough to impede the way to the clear, nervous strength which is certainly our inheritance. After all, what has been said in the foregoing chapters is simply illustrative of a prevalent mental skin-disorder. If the whole world were suffering from a physical cutaneous irritation, the minds of individuals would be so concentrated on their sensations that no one could know of various wonderful powers in his own body which are now taken as a matter of course. There would be self-consciousness in every physical action, because it must come through, and in spite of, external irritation. Just in so far as each individual one of us found and used the right remedy for our skin-trouble should we be free to discover physical powers that were unknown to our fellow-sufferers, and free to help them to a similar remedy when they were willing to be helped. This mental skin-disorder is far more irritating and more destructive, and not only leads to, but actually is, in all its forms, a sort of self-consciousness through which we work with real difficulty. To discover its shallowness and the simplicity of its cure is a boon we can hardly realize until, by steady application, we have found the relief. The discovery and cure do not lead to a millennium any more than the cure of any skin disease guarantees permanent health. For deeper personal troubles there are other remedies. Each will recognize and find his own; but freedom, through and through, can never be found, or even looked for clearly, while the irritation from the skin disease is withdrawing our attention. "But, friends, Truth is within ourselves: it takes no rise From outward things; whatever you may believe, There is an inmost centre in us all Where truth abides in fulness; and around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect clear perception which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Blinds it, and makes all error; and TO KNOW Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without." Browning's "baffling and perverting carnal mesh" might be truly interpreted as a nervous tangle which is nothing at all except as we make it with our own perverted sight. To help us to move a little distance from the phantom tangle, that it may disappear before our eyes, has been the aim of this book. So by curing our mental skin-disease as a matter of course, and then forgetting that it ever existed, we may come to real life. This no one can find for another, but each has within himself the way. THE END. 
4337	----	POWER THROUGH REPOSE BY ANNIE PAYSON CALL New Edition with Additions _Personality binds--universality expands._ FRANCOISE DELSARTE. When the body is perfectly adjusted, perfectly supplied with force, perfectly free and works with the greatest economy of expenditure, it is fitted to be a perfect instrument alike of impression, experience, and expression. W. R. ALGER. I. THE GUIDANCE OF THE BODY THE literature relating to the care of the human body is already very extensive. Much has been written about the body's proper food, the air it should breathe, the clothing by which it should be protected, the best methods of its development. That literature needs but little added to it, until we, as rational beings, come nearer to obeying the laws which it discloses, and to feeling daily the help which comes from that obedience. It is of the better use, the truer guidance of this machine, that I wish especially to write. Although attention is constantly called to the fact of its misuse,--as in neglected rest and in over-strain,--in all the unlimited variety which the perverted ingenuity of a clever people has devised, it seems never to have come to any one's mind that this strain in all things, small and great, is something that can be and should be studiously abandoned, with as regular a process of training, from the first simple steps to those more complex, as is required in the work for the development of muscular strength. When a perversion of Nature's laws has continued from generation to generation, we, of the ninth or tenth generation, can by no possibility jump back into the place where the laws can work normally through us, even though our eyes have been opened to a full recognition of such perversion. We must climb back to an orderly life, step by step, and the compensation is large in the constantly growing realization of the greatness of the laws we have been disobeying. The appreciation of the power of a natural law, as it works through us, is one of the keenest pleasures that can come to man in this life. The general impression seems to be that common-sense should lead us to a better use of our machines at once. Whereas, common-sense will not bring a true power of guiding the muscles, any more than it will cause the muscles' development, unless having the common-sense to see the need, we realize with it the necessity for cutting a path and walking in it. For the muscles' development, several paths have been cut, and many who are in need are walking in them, but, to the average man, the road to the best kind of muscular development still remains closed. The only training now in use is followed by sleight-of-hand performers, acrobats, or other jugglers, and that is limited to the professional needs of its followers. Again, as the muscles are guided by means of the nerves, a training for the guidance of the muscles means, so far as the physique is concerned, first, a training for the better use of the nervous force. The nervous system is so wonderful in its present power for good or ill, so wonderful in its possible power either way, and so much more wonderful as we realize what we do not know about it, that it is not surprising that it is looked upon with awe. Neither is it strange that it seems to many, especially the ignorant, a subject to be shunned. It is not uncommon for a mother, whose daughter is suffering, and may be on the verge of nervous prostration because of her misused nerves, to say, "I do not want my daughter to know that she has nerves." The poor child knows it already in the wrong way. It is certainly better that she should know her nerves by learning a wholesome, natural use of them. The mother's remark is common with many men and women when speaking of themselves,--common with teachers when talking to or of their pupils. It is of course quite natural that it should be a prevailing idea, because hitherto the mention of nerves by man or woman has generally meant perverted nerves, and to dwell on our perversions, except long enough to shun them, is certainly unwholesome in the extreme. II. PERVERSIONS IN THE GUIDANCE OF THE BODY SO evident are the various, the numberless perversions of our powers in the misuse of the machine, that it seems almost unnecessary to write of them. And yet, from another point of view, it is very necessary; for superabundant as they are, thrusting their evil results upon us every day in painful ways, still we have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, and for want of a fuller realization of these most grievous mistakes, we are in danger of plunging more and more deeply into the snarls to which they bring us. From nervous prostration to melancholia, or other forms of insanity, is not so long a step. It is of course a natural sequence that the decadence of an entire country must follow the waning powers of the individual citizens. Although that seems very much to hint, it cannot be too much when we consider even briefly the results that have already come to us through this very misuse of our own voluntary powers. The advertisements of nerve medicines alone speak loudly to one who studies in the least degree the physical tendencies of the nation. Nothing proves better the artificial state of man, than the artificial means he uses to try to adjust himself to Nature's laws,--means which, in most cases, serve to assist him to keep up a little longer the appearance of natural life. For any simulation of that which is natural must sooner or later lead to nothing, or worse than nothing. Even the rest-cures, the most simple and harmless of the nerve restorers, serve a mistaken end. Patients go with nerves tired and worn out with misuse,--commonly called over-work. Through rest, Nature, with the warm, motherly help she is ever ready to bring us, restores the worn body to a normal state; but its owner has not learned to work the machine any better,--to drive his horses more naturally, or with a gentler hand. He knows he must take life more easily, but even with a passably good realization of that necessity, he can practise it only to a certain extent; and most occupants of rest-cures find themselves driven back more than once for another "rest." Nervous disorders, resulting from overwork are all about us. Extreme nervous prostration is most prevalent. A thoughtful study of the faces around us, and a better understanding of their lives, brings to light many who are living, one might almost say, in a chronic state of nervous prostration, which lasts for years before the break comes. And because of the want of thought, the want of study for a better, more natural use of the machine, few of us appreciate our own possible powers. When with study the appreciation grows, it is a daily surprise, a constantly increasing delight. Extreme nervous tension seems to be so peculiarly American, that a German physician coming to this country to practise became puzzled by the variety of nervous disorders he was called upon to help, and finally announced his discovery of a new disease which he chose to call "Americanitis." And now we suffer from "Americanitis" in all its unlimited varieties. Doctors study it; nerve medicines arise on every side; nervine hospitals establish themselves; and rest-cures innumerable spring up in all directions,--but the root of the matter is so comparatively simple that in general it is overlooked entirely. When illnesses are caused by disobedience to the perfect laws of Nature, a steady, careful obedience to these laws will bring us to a healthful state again. Nature is so wonderfully kind that if we go one-tenth of the way, she will help us the other nine-tenths. Indeed she seems to be watching and hoping for a place to get in, so quickly does she take possession of us, if we do but turn toward her ever so little. But instead of adopting her simple laws and following quietly her perfect way, we try by every artificial means to gain a rapid transit back to her dominion, and succeed only in getting farther away from her. Where is the use of taking medicines to give us new strength, while at the same time we are steadily disobeying the very laws from the observance of which alone the strength can come? No medicine can work in a man's-body while the man's habits are constantly counteracting it. More harm than good is done in the end. Where is the use of all the quieting medicines, if we only quiet our nerves in order that we may continue to misuse them without their crying out? They will cry out sooner or later; for Nature, who is so quick to help us to the true way of living, loses patience at last, and her punishments are justly severe. Or, we might better say, a law is fixed and immovable, and if we disobey and continue to disobey it, we suffer the consequences. III. REST IN SLEEP HOW do we misuse our nervous force? First, let us consider, When should the body be completely at rest? The longest and most perfect rest should be during sleep at night. In sleep we can accomplish nothing in the way of voluntary activity either of mind or body. Any nervous or muscular effort during sleep is not only useless but worse,--it is pure waste of fuel, and results in direct and irreparable harm. Realizing fully that sleep is meant for rest, that the only gain is rest, and that new power for use comes as a consequence,--how absurd it seems that we do not abandon ourselves completely to gaining all that Nature would give us through sleep. Suppose, instead of eating our dinner, we should throw the food out of the window, give it to the dogs, do anything with it but what Nature meant we should, and then wonder why we were not nourished, and why we suffered from faintness and want of strength. It would be no more senseless than the way in which most of us try to sleep now, and then wonder why we are not better rested from eight hours in bed. Only this matter of fatiguing sleep has crept upon us so slowly that we are blind to it. We disobey mechanically all the laws of Nature in sleep, simple as they are, and are so blinded by our own immediate and personal interests, that the habit of not resting when we sleep has grown to such an extent that to return to natural sleep, we must think, study, and practise. Few who pretend to rest give up entirely to the bed, a dead weight,--letting the bed hold them, instead of trying to hold themselves on the bed. Watch, and unless you are an exceptional case (of which happily there are a few), you will be surprised to see how you are holding yourself on the bed, with tense muscles, if not all over, so nearly all over that a little more tension would hardly increase the fatigue with which you are working yourself to sleep. The spine seems to be the central point of tension--it does not _give_ to the bed and rest there easily from end to end; it touches at each end and just so far along from each end as the man or woman who is holding it will permit. The knees are drawn up, the muscles of the legs tense, the hands and arms contracted, and the fingers clinched, either holding the pillow or themselves. The head, instead of letting the pillow have its full weight, holds itself onto the pillow. The tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth, the throat muscles are contracted, and the muscles of the face drawn up in one way or another. This seems like a list of horrors, somewhat exaggerated when we realize that it is of sleep, "Tired Nature's sweet restorer," that we are speaking; but indeed it is only too true. Of course cases are not in the majority where the being supposed to enjoy repose is using _all_ these numerous possibilities of contraction. But there are very few who have not, unconsciously, some one or two or half-dozen nervous and muscular strains; and even after they become conscious of the useless contractions, it takes time and watchfulness and patience to relax out of them, the habit so grows upon us. One would think that even though we go to sleep in a tense way, after being once soundly off Nature could gain the advantage over us, and relax the muscles in spite of ourselves; but the habits of inheritance and of years are too much for her. Although she is so constantly gracious and kind, she cannot go out of her way, and we cannot ask her to do so. How simple it seems to sleep in the right way; and how wholesome it is even to think about it, in contrast to the wrong way into which so many of us have fallen. If we once see clearly the great compensation in getting back to the only way of gaining restful sleep, the process is very simple, although because we were so far out of the right path it often seems slow. But once gained, or even partially gained, one great enemy to healthful, natural nerves is conquered, and has no possibility of power. Of course the mind and its rapid and misdirected working is a strong preventive of free nerves, relaxed muscles, and natural sleep. "If I could only stop myself from thinking" is a complaint often heard, and reason or philosophy does not seem to touch it. Even the certain knowledge that nothing is gained by this rapid thought at the wrong time, that very much is lost, makes no impression on the overwrought mind,--often even excites it more, which proves that the trouble, if originally mental, has now gained such a hold upon the physique that it must be attacked there first. The nerves should be trained to enable the body to be an obedient servant to a healthy mind, and the mind in giving its attention to such training gains in normal power of direction. If you cannot stop thinking, do not try; let your thoughts steam ahead if they will. Only relax your muscles, and as the attention is more and more fixed on the interesting process of letting-go of the muscles (interesting, simply because the end is so well worth gaining), the imps of thought find less and less to take hold of, and the machinery in the head must stop its senseless working, because the mind which allowed it to work has applied itself to something worth accomplishing. The body should also be at rest in necessary reclining in the day, where of course all the laws of sleep apply. Five minutes of complete rest in that way means greater gain than an hour or three hours taken in the usual manner. I remember watching a woman "resting" on a lounge, propped up with the downiest of pillows, holding her head perfectly erect and in a strained position, when it not only would have been easier to let it fall back on the pillow, but it seemed impossible that she should not let it go; and yet there it was, held erect with an evident strain. Hers is not an unusual case, on the contrary quite a common one. Can we wonder that the German doctor thought he had discovered a new disease? And must he not be already surprised and shocked at the precocious growth of the infant monster which he found and named? "So prone are mortals to their own damnation, it seems as though a devil's use were gone." There is no better way of learning to overcome these perversions in sleep and similar forms of rest, than to study with careful thought the sleep of a wholesome little child. Having gained the physical freedom necessary to give perfect repose to the body, the quiet, simple dropping of all thought and care can be made more easily possible. So we can approach again the natural sleep and enjoy consciously the refreshment which through our own babyhood was the unconscious means of giving us daily strength and power for growth. To take the regular process, first let go of the muscles,--that will enable us more easily to drop disturbing thoughts; and as we refuse, without resistance, admittance to the thoughts, the freedom from care for the time will follow, and the rest gained will enable us to awaken with new life for cares to come. This, however, is a habit to be established and thoughtfully cultivated; it cannot be acquired at once. More will be said in future chapters as to the process of gaining the habit. IV. OTHER FORMS OF REST DO you hold yourself on the chair, or does the chair hold you? When you are subject to the laws of gravitation give up to them, and feel their strength. Do not resist these laws, as a thousand and one of us do when instead of yielding gently and letting ourselves sink into a chair, we _put_ our bodies rigidly on and then hold them there as if fearing the chair would break if we gave our full weight to it. It is not only unnatural and unrestful, but most awkward. So in a railroad car. Much, indeed most of the fatigue from a long journey by rail is quite unnecessary, and comes from an unconscious officious effort of trying to carry the train, instead of allowing the train to carry us, or of resisting the motion, instead of relaxing and yielding to it. There is a pleasant rhythm in the motion of the rapidly moving cars which is often restful rather than fatiguing, if we will only let go and abandon ourselves to it. This was strikingly proved by a woman who, having just learned the first principles of relaxation, started on a journey overstrained from mental anxiety. The first effect of the motion was that most disagreeable, faint feeling known as car-sickness. Understanding the cause, she began at once to drop the unnecessary tension, and the faintness left her. Then she commenced an interesting novel, and as she became excited by the plot her muscles were contracted in sympathy (so-called), and the faintness returned in full force, so that she had to drop the book and relax again; and this process was repeated half-a-dozen times before she could place her body so under control of natural laws that it was possible to read without the artificial tension asserting itself and the car-sickness returning in consequence. The same law is illustrated in driving. "I cannot drive, it tires me so," is a common complaint. Why does it tire you? Because instead of yielding entirely and freely to the seat of the carriage first, and then to its motion, you try to help the horses, or to hold yourself still while the carriage is moving. A man should become one with a carriage in driving, as much as one with his horse in riding. Notice the condition in any place where there is excuse for some anxiety,--while going rather sharply round a corner, or nearing a railroad track. If your feet are not pressed forcibly against the floor of the carriage, the tension will be somewhere else. You are using nervous force to no earthly purpose, and to great earthly loss. Where any tension is necessary to make things better, it will assert itself naturally and more truly as we learn to drop all useless and harmful tension. Take a patient suffering from nervous prostration for a long drive, and you will bring him back more nervously prostrated; even the fresh air will not counteract the strain that comes from not knowing how to relax to the motion of the carriage. A large amount of nervous energy is expended unnecessarily while waiting. If we are obliged to wait for any length of time, it does not hurry the minutes or bring that for which we wait to keep nervously strained with impatience; and it does use vital force, and so helps greatly toward "Americanitis." The strain which comes from an hour's nervous waiting, when simply to let yourself alone and keep still would answer much better, is often equal to a day's labor. It must be left to individuals to discover how this applies in their own especial cases, and it will be surprising to see not only how great and how common such strain is, but how comparatively easy it is to drop it. There are of course exceptional times and states when only constant trying and thoughtful watchfulness will bring any marked result. We have taken a few examples where there is nothing to do but keep quiet, body and brain, from what should be the absolute rest of sleep to the enforced rest of waiting. Just one word more in connection with waiting and driving. You must catch a certain train. Not having time to trust to your legs or the cars, you hastily take a cab. You will in your anxiety keep up exactly the same strain that you would have had in walking,--as if you could help the carriage along, or as if reaching the station in time depended upon your keeping a rigid spine and tense muscles. You have hired the carriage to take you, and any activity on your part is quite unnecessary until you reach the station; why not keep quiet and let the horses do the work, and the driver attend to his business? It would be easy to fill a small volume with examples of the way in which we are walking directly into nervous prostration; examples only of this one variety of disobedience,--namely, of the laws of_ rest._ And to give illustrations of all the varieties of disobedience to Nature's laws in _activity_ would fill not one small book, but several large ones; and then, unless we improve, a year-book of new examples of nervous strain could be published. But fortunately, if we are nervous and short-sighted, we have a good share of brain and commonsense when it is once appealed to, and a few examples will open our eyes and set us thinking, to real and practical results. V. THE USE OF THE BRAIN LET us now consider instances where the brain alone is used, and the other parts of the body have nothing to do but keep quiet and let the brain do its work. Take thinking, for instance. Most of us think with the throat so contracted that it is surprising there is room enough to let the breath through, the tongue held firmly, and the jaw muscles set as if suffering from an acute attack of lockjaw. Each has his own favorite tension in the act of meditation, although we are most generous in the force given to the jaw and throat. The same superfluous tension may be observed in one engaged in silent reading; and the force of the strain increases in proportion to the interest or profundity of the matter read. It is certainly clear, without a knowledge of anatomy or physiology, that for pure, unadulterated thinking, only the brain is needed; and if vital force is given to other parts of the body to hold them in unnatural contraction; we not only expend it extravagantly, but we rob the brain of its own. When, for purely mental work, all the activity is given to the brain, and the body left free and passive, the concentration is better, conclusions are reached with more satisfaction, and the reaction, after the work is over, is healthy and refreshing. This whole machine can be understood perhaps more clearly by comparing it to a community of people. In any community,--Church, State, institution, or household,--just so far as each member minds his own business, does his own individual work for himself and for those about him, and does not officiously interfere with the business of others, the community is quiet, orderly, and successful. Imagine the state of a deliberative assembly during the delivery of a speech, if half-a-dozen of the listeners were to attempt to help the speaker by rising and talking at the same time; and yet this is the absurd action of the human body when a dozen or more parts, that are not needed, contract "in sympathy" with those that have the work to do. It is an unnecessary brace that means loss of power and useless fatigue. One would think that the human machine having only one mind, and the community many thousands, the former would be in a more orderly state than the latter. In listening attentively, only the brain and ears are needed; but watch the individuals at an entertaining lecture, or in church with a stirring preacher. They are listening with their spines, their shoulders, the muscles of their faces. I do not refer to the look of interest and attention, or to any of the various expressions which are the natural and true reflection of the state of the mind, but to the strained attention which draws the facial muscles, not at all in sympathy with the speaker, but as a consequence of the tense nerves and contracted muscles of the listener. "I do not understand why I have this peculiar sort of asthma every Sunday afternoon," a lady said to me. She was in the habit of hearing, Sunday morning, a preacher, exceedingly interesting, but with a very rapid utterance, and whose mind travelled so fast that the words embodying his thoughts often tumbled over one another. She listened with all her nerves, as well as with those needed, held her breath when he stumbled, to assist him in finding his verbal legs, reflected every action with twice the force the preacher himself gave,--and then wondered why on Sunday afternoon, and at no other time, she had this nervous catching of the breath. She saw as soon as her attention was drawn to the general principles of Nature, how she had disobeyed this one, and why she had trouble on Sunday afternoon. This case is very amusing, even laughable, but it is a fair example of many similar nervous attacks, greater or less; and how easy it is to see that a whole series of these, day after day, doing their work unconsciously to the victim, will sooner or later bring some form of nervous prostration. The same attitudes and the same effects often attend listening to music. It is a common experience to be completely fagged after two hours of delightful music. There is no exaggeration in saying that we should be _rested_ after a good concert, if it is not too long. And yet so upside-down are we in our ways of living, and, through the mistakes of our ancestors, so accustomed have we become to disobeying Nature's laws, that the general impression seems to be that music cannot be fully enjoyed without a strained attitude of mind and body; whereas, in reality, it is much more exquisitely appreciated and enjoyed in Nature's way. If the nerves are perfectly free, they will catch the rhythm of the music, and so be helped back to the true rhythm of Nature, they will respond to the harmony and melody with all the vibratory power that God gave them, and how can the result be anything else than rest and refreshment,--unless having allowed them to vibrate in one direction too long, we have disobeyed a law in another way. Our bodies cannot by any possibility be _free,_ so long as they are strained by our own personal effort. So long as our nervous force is misdirected in personal strain, we can no more give full and responsive attention to the music, than a piano can sound the harmonies of a sonata if some one is drawing his hands at the same time backwards and forwards over the strings. But, alas! a contracted personality is so much the order of the day that many of us carry the chronic contractions of years constantly with us, and can no more free ourselves for a concert at a day's or a week's notice, than we can gain freedom to receive all the grand universal truths that are so steadily helpful. It is only by daily patience and thought and care that we can cease to be an obstruction to the best power for giving and receiving. There are, scattered here and there, people who have not lost the natural way of listening to music,--people who are musicians through and through so that the moment they hear a fine strain they are one with it. Singularly enough the majority of these are fine animals, most perfectly and normally developed in their senses. When the intellect begins to assert itself to any extent, then the nervous strain comes. So noticeable is this, in many cases, that nervous excitement seems often to be from misdirected intellect; and people under the control of their misdirected nervous force often appear wanting in quick intellectual power,--illustrating the law that a stream spreading in all directions over a meadow loses the force that the same amount of water would have if concentrated and flowing in one channel. There are also many cases where the strained nerves bring an abnormal intellectual action. Fortunately for the saving of the nation, there are people who from a physical standpoint live naturally. These are refreshing to see; but they are apt to take life too easily, to have no right care or thought, and to be sublimely selfish. Another way in which the brain is constantly used is through the eyes. What deadly fatigue comes from time spent in picture galleries! There the strain is necessarily greater than in listening, because all the pictures and all the colors are before us at once, with no appreciable interval between forms and subjects that differ widely. But as the strain is greater, so should the care to relieve it increase. We should not go out too far to meet the pictures, but be quiet, and let the pictures come to us. The fatigue can be prevented if we know when to stop, and pleasure at the time and in the memory afterwards will be surprisingly increased. So is it in watching a landscape from the car window, and in all interests which come from looking. I am not for one instant condemning the _natural_ expression of pleasure, neither do I mean that there should be any apparent nonchalance or want of interest; on the contrary, the real interest and its true expression increase as we learn to shun the shams. But will not the discovery of all this superfluous tension make one self-conscious? Certainly it will for a time, and it must do so. You must be conscious of a smooch on your face in order to wash it off, and when the face is clean you think no more of it. So you must see an evil before you can shun it. All these physical evils you must be vividly conscious of, and when you are so annoyed as to feel the necessity of moving from under them self-consciousness decreases in equal ratio with the success of your efforts. Whenever the brain alone is used in thinking, or in receiving and taking note of impressions through either of the senses, new power comes as we gain freedom from all misdirected force, and with muscles in repose leave the brain to quietly do its work without useless strain of any kind. It is of course evident that this freedom cannot be gained without, first, a consciousness of its necessity. The perfect freedom, however, when reached, means freedom from self-consciousness as well as from the strain which made self-consciousness for a time essential. VI. THE BRAIN IN ITS DIRECTION OF THE BODY WE come now to the brain and its direction of other parts of the body. What tremendous and unnecessary force is used in talking,--from the aimless motion of the hands, the shoulders, the feet, the entire body, to a certain rigidity of carriage, which tells as powerfully in the wear and tear of the nervous system as superfluous motion. It is a curious discovery when we find often how we are holding our shoulders in place, and in the wrong place. A woman receiving a visitor not only talks all over herself, but reflects the visitor's talking all over, and so at the end of the visit is doubly fatigued. "It tires me so to see people" is heard often, not only from those who are under the full influence of "Americanitis," but from many who are simply hovering about its borders. "Of course it tires you to see people, you see them with, so much superfluous effort," can almost without exception be a true answer. A very little simple teaching will free a woman from that unnecessary fatigue. If she is sensible, once having had her attention brought and made keenly alive to the fact that she talks all over, she will through constant correction gain the power of talking as Nature meant she should, with her vocal apparatus only, and with such easy motions as may be needed to illustrate her words. In this change, so far from losing animation, she gains it, and gains true expressive power; for all unnecessary motion of the body in talking simply raises a dust, so to speak, and really blurs the true thought of the mind and feeling of the heart. The American voice--especially the female voice--is a target which has been hit hard many times, and very justly. A ladies' luncheon can often be truly and aptly compared to a poultry-yard, the shrill cackle being even more unpleasant than that of a large concourse of hens. If we had once become truly appreciative of the natural mellow tones possible to every woman, these shrill voices would no more be tolerated than a fashionable luncheon would be served in the kitchen. A beautiful voice has been compared to corn, oil, and wine. We lack almost entirely the corn and the oil; and the wine in our voices is far more inclined to the sharp, unpleasant taste of very poor currant wine, than to the rich, spicy flavor of fine wine from the grape. It is not in the province of this book to consider the physiology of the voice, which would be necessary in order to show clearly how its natural laws are constantly disobeyed. We can now speak of it only with regard to the tension which is the immediate cause of the trouble. The effort to propel the voice from the throat, and use force in those most delicate muscles when it should come from the stronger muscles of the diaphragm, is like trying to make one man do the work of ten; the result must eventually be the utter collapse of the one man from over-activity, and loss of power in the ten men because of muscles unused. Clergyman's sore throat is almost always explainable in this way; and there are many laymen with constant trouble in the throat from no cause except the misuse of its muscles in talking. "The old philosopher said the seat of the soul was in the diaphragm. However that may be, the word begins there, soul and body; but you squeeze the life out of it in your throat, and so your words are born dead!" was the most expressive exclamation of an able trainer of the voice. Few of us feel that we can take the time or exercise the care for the proper training of our voices; and such training is not made a prominent feature, as it should be, in all American schools. Indeed, if it were, we would have to begin with the teachers; for the typical teacher's voice, especially in our public schools, coming from unnecessary nervous strain is something frightful. In a large school-room a teacher can be heard, and more impressively heard, in common conversational tones; for then it is her mind that is felt more than her body. But the teacher's voice mounts the scale of shrillness and force just in proportion as her nervous fatigue increases; and often a true enthusiasm expresses itself--or, more correctly, hides itself--in a sharp, loud voice, when it would be far more effective in its power with the pupils if the voice were kept quiet. If we cannot give time or money to the best development of our voices, we can grow sensitive to the shrill, unpleasant tones, and by a constant preaching of "lower your voices," "speak more quietly," from the teacher to herself, and then to her pupils, from mother to child, and from every woman to her own voice, the standard American voice would change, greatly to the national advantage. I never shall forget the restful pleasure of hearing a teacher call the roll in a large schoolroom as quietly as she would speak to a child in a closet, and every girl answering in the same soft and pleasant way. The effect even of that daily roll-call could not have been small in its counteracting influence on the shrill American tone. Watch two people in an argument, as the excitement increases the voice rises. In such a case one of the best and surest ways to govern your temper is to lower your voice. Indeed the nervous system and the voice are in such exquisite sympathy that they constantly act and react on each other. It is always easier to relax superfluous tension after lowering the voice. "Take the bone and flesh sound from your voice" is a simple and interesting direction. It means do not push so hard with your body and so interfere with the expression of your soul. Thumping on a piano, or hard scraping on a violin, will keep all possible expression from the music, and in just the same proportion will unnecessary physical force hide the soul in a voice. Indeed with the voice--because the instrument is finer--the contrast between Nature's way and man's perversion is far greater. One of the first cares with a nervous invalid, or with any one who suffers at all from overstrained nerves, should be for a quiet, mellow voice. It is not an invariable truth that women with poorly balanced nerves have shrill, strained voices. There is also a rigid tone in a nervously low voice, which, though not unpleasant to the general ear, is expressive to one who is in the habit of noticing nervous people, and is much more difficult to relax than the high pitched voices. There is also a forced calm which is tremendous in its nervous strain, the more so as its owner takes pride in what she considers remarkable self-control. Another common cause of fatigue with women is the useless strain in sewing. "I get so tired in the back of my neck" is a frequent complaint. "It is because you sew with the back of your neck" is generally the correct explanation. And it is because you sew with the muscles of your waist that they feel so strangely fatigued, and the same with the muscles of your legs or your chest. Wherever the tired feeling comes it is because of unnatural and officious tension, which, as soon as the woman becomes sensible of it, can be stopped entirely by taking two or three minutes now and then to let go of these wrongly sympathetic muscles and so teach them to mind their own business, and sew with only the muscles that are needed. A very simple cause of over-fatigue in sewing is the cramped, strained position of the lungs; this can be prevented without even stopping in the work, by taking long, quiet, easy breaths. Here there must be _no exertion whatever_ in the chest muscles. The lungs must seem to expand from the pressure of the air alone, as independently as a rubber ball will expand when external pressure is removed, and they must be allowed to expel the air with the same independence. In this way the growth of breathing power will be slow, but it will be sure and delightfully restful. Frequent, full, quiet breaths might be the means of relief to many sufferers, if only they would take the trouble to practise them faithfully,--a very slight effort compared with the result which will surely ensue. And so it is with the fatigue from sewing. I fear I do not exaggerate, when I say that in nine cases out of ten a woman would rather sew with a pain in her neck than stop for the few moments it would take to relax it and teach it truer habits, so that in the end the pain might be avoided entirely. Then, when the inevitable nervous exhaustion follows, and all the kindred troubles that grow out of it she pities herself and is pitied by others, and wonders why God thought best to afflict her with suffering and illness. "Thought best!" God never thought best to give any one pain. He made His laws, and they are wholesome and perfect and true, and if we disobey them we must suffer the consequences! I knock my head hard against a stone and then wonder why God thought best to give me the headache. There would be as much sense in that as there is in much of the so-called Christian resignation to be found in the world to-day. To be sure there are inherited illnesses and pains, physical and mental, but the laws are so made that the compensation of clear-sightedness and power for use gained by working our way rightly out of all inheritances and suffering brought by others, fully equalizes any apparent loss. In writing there is much unnecessary nervous fatigue. The same cramped attitude of the lungs that accompanies sewing can be counteracted in the same way, although in neither case should a cramped attitude be allowed at all Still the relief of a long breath is always helpful and even necessary where one must sit in one position for any length of time. Almost any even moderately nervous man or woman will hold a pen as if some unseen force were trying to pull it away, and will write with firmly set jaw, contracted throat, and a powerful tension in the muscles of the tongue, or whatever happens to be the most officious part of this especial individual community. To swing the pendulum to another extreme seems not to enter people's minds when trying to find a happy medium. Writer's paralysis, or even the ache that comes from holding the hand so long in a more or less cramped attitude, is easily obviated by stopping once in an hour or half hour, stretching the fingers wide and letting the muscles slowly relax of their own accord. Repeat this half-a-dozen times, and after each exercise try to hold the pen or pencil with natural lightness; it will not take many days to change the habit of tension to one of ease, although if you are a steady writer the stretching exercise will always be necessary, but much less often than at first. In lifting a heavyweight, as in nursing the sick, the relief is immediate from all straining in the back, by pressing hard with the feet on the floor and _thinking_ the power of lifting in the legs. There is true economy of nervous force here, and a sensitive spine is freed from a burden of strain which might undoubtedly be the origin of nervous prostration. I have made nurses practise lifting, while impressing the fact forcibly upon them by repetition before they lift, and during the process of raising a body and lowering it, that they must use entirely the muscles of the legs. When once their minds have full comprehension of the new way, the surprise with which they discover the comparative ease of lifting is very pleasant. The whole secret in this and all similar efforts is to use muscular instead of nervous force. Direct with the directing power; work with the working power. VII. THE DIRECTION OF THE BODY IN LOCOMOTION LIFTING brings us to the use of the entire body, which is considered simply in the most common of all its movements,--that of walking. The rhythm of a perfect walk is not only delightful, but restful; so that having once gained a natural walk there is no pleasanter way to rest from brain fatigue than by means of this muscle fatigue. And yet we are constantly contradicting and interfering with Nature in walking. Women--perhaps partly owing to their unfortunate style of dress--seem to hold themselves together as if fearing that having once given their muscles free play, they would fall to pieces entirely. Rather than move easily forward, and for fear they might tumble to pieces, they shake their shoulders and hips from side to side, hold their arms perfectly rigid from the shoulders down, and instead of the easy, natural swing that the motion of walking would give the arms, they go forward and back with no regularity, but are in a chronic state of jerk. The very force used in holding an arm as stiff as the ordinary woman holds it, would be enough to give her an extra mile in every five-mile walk. Then again, the muscles of the throat must help, and more than anywhere else is force unnecessarily expended in the waist muscles. They can be very soon felt, pushing with all their might--and it is not a small might--officiously trying to assist in the action of the legs; whereas if they would only let go, mind their own business, and let the legs swing easily as if from the shoulders, they might reflect the rhythmic motion, and gain in a true freedom and power. Of course all this waste of force comes from nervous strain and is nervous strain, and a long walk in the open air, when so much of the new life gained is wrongly expended, does not begin to do the good work that might be accomplished. To walk with your muscles and not use superfluous nervous force is the first thing to be learned, and after or at the same time to direct your muscles as Nature meant they should be directed,--indeed we might almost say to let Nature direct them herself, without our interference. Hurry with your muscles and not with your nerves. This tells especially in hurrying for a train, where the nervous anxiety in the fear of losing it wakes all possible unnecessary tension and often impedes the motion instead of assisting it. The same law applies here that was mentioned before with regard to the carriage,--only instead of being quiet and letting the carriage take you, be quiet and let your walking machine do its work. So in all hurrying, and the warning can hardly be given too many times, we must use our nerves only as transmitters--calm, well-balanced transmitters--that our muscles may be more efficient and more able servants. The same mistakes of unnecessary tension will be found in running, and, indeed, in all bodily motion, where the machine is not trained to do its work with only the nerves and muscles needed for the purpose. We shall have opportunity to consider these motions in a new light when we come to the directions for gaining a power of natural motion; now we are dealing only with mistakes. VIII. NERVOUS STRAIN IN PAIN AND SICKNESS THERE is no way in which superfluous and dangerous tension is so rapidly increased as in the bearing of pain. The general impression seems to be that one should brace up to a pain; and very great strength of will is often shown in the effort made and the success achieved in bearing severe pain by means of this bracing process. But alas, the reaction after the pain is over--that alone would show the very sad misuse which had been made of a strong will. Not that there need be no reaction; but it follows naturally that the more strain brought to bear upon the nervous system in endurance, the greater must be the reaction when the load is lifted. Indeed, so well is this known in the medical profession, that it is a surgical axiom that the patient who most completely controls his expression of pain will be the greatest sufferer from the subsequent reaction. While there is so much pain to be endured in this world, a study of how best to bear it certainly is not out of place, especially when decided practical effects can be quickly shown as the result of such study. So prevalent is the idea that a pain is better borne by clinching the fists and tightening all other muscles in the body correspondingly, that I know the possibility of a better or more natural mode of endurance will be laughed at by many, and others will say, "That is all very well for those who can relax to a pain,--let them gain from it, I cannot; it is natural for me to set my teeth and bear it." There is a distinct difference between what is natural to us and natural to Nature, although the first term is of course misused. Pain comes from an abnormal state of some part of the nervous system. The more the nerves are strained to bear pain, the more sensitive they become; and of course those affected immediately feel most keenly the increased sensitiveness, and so the pain grows worse. Reverse that action, and through the force of our own inhibitory power let a new pain be a reminder to us to _let go,_ instead of to hold on, and by decreasing the strain we decrease the possibility of more pain. Whatever reaction may follow pain then, will be reaction from the pain itself, not from the abnormal tension which has been held for the purpose of bearing it. But--it will be objected--is not the very effort of the brain to relax the tension a nervous strain? Yes, it is,--not so great, however, as the continued tension all over the body, and it grows less and less as the habit is acquired of bearing the pain easily. The strain decreases more rapidly with those who having undertaken to relax, perceive the immediate effects; for, of course, as the path clears and new light comes they are encouraged to walk more steadily in the easier way. I know there are pains that are better borne and even helped by a certain amount of _bracing,_ but if the idea of bearing such pain quietly, easily, naturally, takes a strong hold of the mind, all bracing will be with a true equilibrium of the muscles, and will have the required effect without superfluous tension. One of the most simple instances of bearing pain more easily by relaxing to it occurs while sitting in the dentist's chair. Most of us clutch the arms, push with our feet, and hold ourselves off the chair to the best of our ability. Every nerve is alive with the expectation of being hurt. The fatigue which results from an hour or more of this dentist tension is too well known to need description. Most of the nervous fatigue suffered from the dentist's work is in consequence of the unnecessary strain of expecting a hurt and not from any actual pain inflicted. The result obtained by insisting upon making yourself a dead weight in the chair, if you succeed only partially, will prove this. It will also be a preliminary means of getting well rid of the dentist fright,--that peculiar dread which is so well known to most of us. The effect of fright is nervous strain, which again contracts the muscles. If we drop the muscular tension, and so the nervous strain, thus working our way into the cause by means of the effect, there will be no nerves or muscles to hold the fright, which then so far as the physique is concerned cannot exist. _So far as the physique is concerned,--_that is emphatic; for as we work inward from the effect to the cause we must be met by the true philosophy inside, to accomplish the whole work. I might relax my body out of the nervous strain of fright all day; if my mind insisted upon being frightened it would simply be a process of freeing my nerves and muscles that they might be made more effectually tense by an unbalanced, miserably controlled mind. In training to bring body and mind to a more normal state, the teacher must often begin with the body only, and use his own mind to gently lead the pupil to clearer sight. Then when the pupil can strike the equilibrium between mind and body,--he must be left to acquire the habit for himself. The same principles by which bearing the work of the dentist is made easier, are applicable in all pain, and especially helpful when pain is nervously exaggerated. It would be useless and impossible to follow the list of various pains which we attempt to bear by means of additional strain. Each of us has his own personal temptation in the way of pain,--from the dentist's chair to the most severe suffering, or the most painful operation,--and each can apply for himself the better way of bearing it. And it is not perhaps out of place here to speak of the taking of ether or any anaesthetic before an operation. The power of relaxing to the process easily and quietly brings a quicker and pleasanter effect with less disagreeable results. One must take ether easily in mind and body. It a man forces himself to be quiet externally, and is frightened and excited mentally, as soon as he has become unconscious enough to lose control of his voluntary muscles, the impression of fright made upon the brain asserts itself, and he struggles and resists in proportion. These same principles of repose should be applied in illness when it comes in other forms than that of pain. We can easily increase whatever illness may attack us by the nervous strain which comes from fright, anxiety, or annoyance. I have seen a woman retain a severe cold for days more than was necessary, simply because of the chronic state of strain she kept herself in by fretting about it; and in another unpleasantly amusing case the sufferer's constantly expressed annoyance took the form of working almost without intermission to find remedies for herself. Without using patience enough to wait for the result of one remedy, she would rush to another until she became--so to speak--twisted and snarled in the meshes of a cold which it took weeks thoroughly to cure. This is not uncommon, and not confined merely to a cold in the head. We can increase the suffering of friends through "sympathy" given in the same mistaken way by which we increase our own pain, or keep ourselves longer than necessary in an uncomfortable illness. IX. NERVOUS STRAIN IN THE EMOTIONS THE most intense suffering which follows a misuse of the nervous power comes from exaggerated, unnecessary, or sham emotions. We each have our own emotional microscope, and the strength of its lens increases in proportion to the supersensitiveness of our nervous system. If we are a little tired, an emotion which in itself might hardly be noticed, so slight is the cause and so small the result, will be magnified many times. If we are very tired, the magnifying process goes on until often we have made ourselves ill through various sufferings, all of our own manufacture. This increase of emotion has not always nervous fatigue as an excuse. Many people have inherited emotional magnifying glasses, and carry them through the world, getting and giving unnecessary pain, and losing more than half of the delight of life in failing to get an unprejudiced view of it. If the tired man or woman would have the good sense to stop for one minute and use the power which is given us all of understanding and appreciating our own perverted states and so move on to better, how easy it would be to recognize that a feeling is exaggerated because of fatigue, and wait until we have gained the power to drop our emotional microscopes and save all the evil results of allowing nervous excitement to control us. We are even permitted to see clearly an inherited tendency to magnify emotions and to overcome it to such an extent that life seems new to us. This must be done by the individual himself, through a personal appreciation of his own mistakes and active steps to free himself from them. No amount of talking, persuading, or teaching will be of the slightest service until that personal recognition comes. This has been painfully proved too often by those who see a friend suffering unnecessarily, and in the short-sighted attempt to wrench the emotional microscope from his hand, simply cause the hold to tighten and the magnifying power to increase. A careful, steady training of the physique opens the way for a better practice of the wholesome philosophy, and the microscope drops with the relaxation of the external tension which has helped to hold it. Emotions are often not even exaggerated but are from the beginning imaginary; and there are no more industrious imps of evil than these sham feelings. The imps have no better field for their destructive work than in various forms of morbid, personal attachment, and in what is commonly called religion,--but which has no more to do with genuine religion than the abnormal personal likings have to do with love. It is a fact worthy of notice that the two powers most helpful, most strengthening, when sincerely felt and realized, are the ones oftenest perverted and shammed, through morbid states and abnormal nervous excitement. The sham is often so perfect an image of the reality that even the shammer is deceived. To tell one of these pseudo-religious women that the whole attitude of her externally sanctified life is a sham emotion, would rouse anything but a saintly spirit, and surprise her beyond measure. Yet the contrast between the true, healthful, religious feeling and the sham is perfectly marked, even though both classes follow the same forms and belong to the same charitable societies. With the one, religion seems to be an accomplishment, with a rivalry as to who can carry it to the finest point; with the other, it is a steadily growing power of wholesome use. This nervous strain from sham emotions, it must be confessed, is more common to the feminine nature. So dangerously prevalent is it that in every girls' school a true repression of the sham and a development of real feeling should be the thoughtful, silent effort of all the teachers. Any one who knows young girls feels deeply the terrible harm which comes to them in the weakening of their delicate, nervous systems through morbid, emotional excitement. The emotions are vividly real to the girls, but entirely sham in themselves. Great care must be taken to respect the sense of reality which a young girl has in these mistakes, until she can be led out so far that she herself recognizes the sham; then will come a hearty, wholesome desire to be free from it. A school governed by a woman with strong "magnetism," and an equally strong love of admiration and devotion, can be kept in a chronic state of hysteria by the emotional affection of the girls for their teacher. When they cannot reach the teacher they will transfer the feeling to one another. Where this is allowed to pervade the atmosphere of a girls' school, those who escape floods of tears or other acute hysterical symptoms are the dull, phlegmatic temperaments. Often a girt will go from one of these morbid attachments to another, until she seems to have lost the power for a good, wholesome affection. Strange as it may seem, the process is a steady hardening of the heart. The same result comes to man or woman who has followed a series of emotional flirtations,--the perceptions are dulled, and the whole tone of the system, mental and physical, is weakened. The effect is in exact correspondence in another degree with the result which follows an habitual use of stimulants. Most abnormal emotional states are seen in women--and sometimes in men--who believe themselves in love. The suffering is to them very real. It seems cruel to say, "My dear, you are not in the least in love with that man; you are in love with your own emotions. If some one more attractive should appear, you could at once transfer your emotional tortures to the seemingly more worthy object." Such ideas need not be flung in so many words at a woman, but she may be gently led until she sees clearly for herself the mistake, and will even laugh at the morbid sensations that before seemed to her terribly real. How many foolish, almost insane actions of men and women come from sham emotions and the nervous excitement generated by them, or from nervous excitement and the sham emotions that result in consequence! Care should be taken first to change the course of the nervous power that is expressing itself morbidly, to open for it a healthy outlet, to guide it into that more wholesome channel, and then help the owner to a better control and a clearer understanding, that she may gain a healthy use of her wonderful nervous power. A gallop on horseback, a good swim, fresh air taken with any form of wholesome fun and exercise is the way to begin if possible. A woman who has had all the fresh air and interesting exercise she needs, will shake off the first sign of morbid emotions as she would shake off a rat or any other vermin. To one who is interested to study the possible results of misdirected nervous power, nothing could illustrate it with more painful force than the story by Rudyard Kipling, "In the Matter of a Private." Real emotions, whether painful or delightful, leave one eventually with a new supply of strength; the sham, without exception, leave their victim weaker, physically and mentally, unless they are recognized as sham, and voluntarily dismissed by the owner of the nerves that have been rasped by them. It is an inexpressibly sad sight to see a woman broken, down and an invalid, for no reason whatever but the unnecessary nervous excitement of weeks and months of sham emotion. Hardly too strong an appeal can be made to mothers and teachers for a careful watchfulness of their girls, that their emotions be kept steadily wholesome, so that they may grow and develop into that great power for use and healthful sympathy which always belongs to a woman of fine feeling. There is a term used in college which describes most expressively an intense nervous excitement and want of control,--namely, "dry drunk." It has often seemed to me that sham emotions are a woman's form of getting drunk, and nervous prostration is its delirium tremens. Not the least of the suffering caused by emotional excitement comes from mistaken sympathy with others. Certain people seem to live on the principle that if a friend is in a swamp, it is necessary to plunge in with him; and that if the other man is up to his waist, the sympathizer shows his friendliness by allowing the mud to come up to his neck. Whereas, it is evident that the deeper my friend is immersed in a swamp, the more sure I must be to keep on firm ground that I may help him out; and sometimes I cannot even give my hand, but must use a long pole, the more surely to relieve him from danger. It is the same with a mental or moral swamp, or most of all with a nervous swamp, and yet so little do people appreciate the use of this long pole that if I do not cry when my friend cries, moan when my friend moans, and persistently refuse to plunge into the same grief that I may be of more real use in helping him out of it, I am accused by my friend and my friend's friend of coldness and want of sympathy. People have been known to refuse the other end of your pole because you will not leave it and come into the swamp with them. It is easy to see why this mistaken sympathy is the cause of great unnecessary nervous strain. The head nurse of a hospital in one of our large cities was interrupted while at dinner by the deep interest taken by the other nurses in seeing an accident case brought in. When the man was put out of sight the nurses lost their appetite from sympathy; and the forcible way with which their superior officer informed them that if they had any real sympathy for the man they would eat to gain strength to serve him, gave a lesson by which many nervous sympathizers could greatly profit. Of course it is possible to become so hardened that you "eat your dinner" from a want of feeling, and to be consumed only with sympathy for yourself; but it is an easy matter to make the distinction between a strong, wholesome sympathy and selfish want of feeling, and easier to distinguish between the sham sympathy and the real. The first causes you to lose nervous strength, the second gives you new power for wholesome use to others. In all the various forms of nervous strain, which we study to avoid, let us realize and turn from false sympathy as one to be especially and entirely shunned. Sham emotions are, of course, always misdirected force; but it is not unusual to see a woman suffering from nervous prostration caused by nervous power lying idle. This form of invalidism comes to women who have not enough to fill their lives in necessary interest and work, and have not thought of turning or been willing to turn their attention to some needed charity or work for others. A woman in this state is like a steam-engine with the fire in full blast, and the boiler shaking with the power of steam not allowed to escape in motive force. A somewhat unusual example of this is a young woman who had been brought up as a nervous invalid, had been through nervous prostration once, and was about preparing for another attack, when she began to work for a better control of her nervous force. After gaining a better use of her machine, she at once applied its power to work,--gradually at first and then more and more, until she found herself able to endure what others had to give up as beyond their strength. The help for these, and indeed for all cases, is to make the life objective instead of subjective. "Look out, not in; look up, not down; lend a hand," is the motto that must be followed gently and gradually, but _surely,_ to cure or to prevent a case of "Americanitis." But again, good sense and care must be taken to preserve the equilibrium; for nervous tension and all the suffering that it brings come more often from mistaken devotion to others than from a want of care for them. Too many of us are trying to make special Providences of ourselves for our friends. To say that this short-sighted martyrdom is not only foolish but selfish seems hard, but a little thought will show it to be so. A woman sacrifices her health in over-exertion for a friend. If she does not distress the object of her devotion entirely out of proportion to the use she performs, she at least unfits herself, by over-working, for many other uses, and causes more suffering than she saves. So are the great ends sacrificed to the smaller. "If you only knew how hard I am trying to do right" comes with a strained face and nervous voice from many and many a woman. If she could only learn in this case, as in others, of "vaulting ambition that o'er-leaps itself and falls upon the other side;" if she could only realize that the very strained effort with which she tries, makes it impossible for her to gain,--if she would only "relax" to whatever she has to do, and then try, the gain would be incomparable. The most intense sufferers from nervous excitement are those who suppress any sign of their feeling. The effort to "hold in" increases the nervous strain immensely. As in the case of one etherized, who has suppressed fright which he feels very keenly, as soon as the voluntary muscles are relaxed the impression on the brain shows itself with all the vehemence of the feeling,--so when the muscles are consciously relaxed the nervous excitement bursts forth like the eruption of a small volcano, and for a time is a surprise to the man or woman who has been in a constant effort of suppression. The contrast between true self-control and that which is merely repressed feeling, is, like all contrast between the natural and the artificial, immeasurable; and the steadily increasing power to be gained by true self-control cannot be conveyed in words, but must be experienced in actual use. Many of us know with what intense force a temper masters us when, having held in for some time, some spring is touched which makes silence impossible, and the sense of relief which follows a volley of indignant words. To say that we can get a far greater and more lasting relief without a word, but simply through relaxing our muscles and freeing our excited nerves, seems tame; but it is practically true, and is indeed the only way from a physical standpoint that one may be sure of controlling a high temper. In that way, also, we keep the spirit, the power, the strength, from which the temper comes, and so far from being tame, life has more for us. We do not tire ourselves and lose nervous force through the wear and tear of losing our temper. To speak expressively, if not scientifically, Let go, and let the temper slip over your nerves and off,--you do not lose it then, for you know where it is, and you keep all the nervous force that would have been used in suppression or expression for better work. That, the reader will say, is not so easy as it sounds. Granted, there must be the desire to get a true control of the temper; but most of us have that desire, and while we cannot expect immediate success, steady practice will bring startling results sooner than we realize. There must be a clear, intelligent understanding of what we are aiming at, and how to gain it; but that is not difficult, and once recognized grows steadily as we gain practical results. Let the first feeling of anger be a reminder to "let go." But you will say, "I do not want to let go,"--only because your various grandfathers and grandmothers were unaccustomed to relieving themselves in that manner. When we give way to anger and let it out in a volley of words, there is often a sense of relief, but more often a reaction which is most unpleasant, and is greatly increased by the pain given to others. The relief is certain if we "relax;" and not only is there then no painful reaction, but we gain a clear head to recognize the justice or injustice of our indignation, and to see what can be done about its cause. Petty irritability can be met in the same way. As with nervous pain it seems at first impossible to "relax to it;" but the Rubicon once crossed, we cannot long be irritable,--it is so much simpler not to be, and so much more comfortable. If when we are tempted to fly into a rage or to snap irritably at others we could go through a short process of relaxing motions, the effect would be delightful. But that would be ridiculous; and we must do our relaxing in the privacy of the closet and recall it when needed outside, that we may relax without observation except in its happy results. I know people will say that anything to divert the mind will cure a high temper or irritability. That is only so to a limited extent; and so far as it is so, simply proves the best process of control. Diversion relieves the nervous excitement, turning the attention in another direction,--and so is relaxing so far as it goes. Much quicker and easier than self-control is the control which allows us to meet the irritability of others without echoing it. The temptation to echo a bad temper or an irritable disposition in others, we all know; but the relief which comes to ourselves and to the sufferer as we quietly relax and refuse to reflect it, is a sensation that many of us have yet to experience. One keeps a clear head in that way, not to mention a charitable heart; saves any quantity of nervous strain, and keeps off just so much tendency to nervous prostration. Practically the way is opened to this better control through a physical training which gives us the power of relaxing at will, and so of maintaining a natural, wholesome equilibrium of nerves and muscles. Personal sensitiveness is, to a great degree, a form of nervous tension. An individual case of the relief of this sensitiveness, although laughable in the means of cure, is so perfectly illustrative of it that it is worth telling. A lady who suffered very much from having her feelings hurt came to me for advice. I told her whenever anything was said to wound her, at once to imagine her legs heavy,--that relaxed her muscles, freed her nerves, and relieved the tension caused by her sensitive feelings. The cure seemed to her wonderful. It would not have done for her to think a table heavy, or a chair, or to have diverted her mind in any other way, for it was the effect of relaxation in her own body that she wanted, which came from persistently thinking her legs heavy. Neither could her sensitiveness have taken a very deep hold, or mere outside relaxation would not have reached it; but that outside process had the effect of greatly assisting in the power to use a higher philosophy with the mind. Self-consciousness and all the personal annoyances that come with or follow it are to so great an extent nervous tension, that the ease with which they may be helped seems sometimes like a miracle to those who study for a better guidance of their bodies. Of worries, from the big worries with a real foundation to the miserable, petty, nagging worries that wear a woman's nervous system more than any amount of steady work, there is so much to be said that it would prove tedious, and indeed unnecessary to recount them. A few words will suggest enough toward their remedy to those who are looking in the right direction, and to others many words would be of no avail. The petty worries are the most wearing, and they fortunately are the most easily helped. By relaxing the muscular contractions invariably accompanying them we seem to make an open channel, and they slip through,--which expression I am well aware is not scientific. The common saying, "Cares roll off her like water off a duck's back," means the same thing. Some human ducks are made with backs eminently fitted for cares to slip from; but those whose backs seem to be made to hold the cares can remould themselves to the right proportions, and there is great compensation in their appreciation of the contrast. Never resist a worry. It is increased many times by the effort to overcome it. The strain of the effort makes it constantly more difficult to drop the strain of the worry. When we quietly go to work to relax the muscles and so quiet the nerves, ignoring a worry, the way in which it disappears is surprising. Then is the time to meet it with a broad philosophizing on the uselessness of worry, etc., and "clinch" our freedom, so to speak. It is not at the first attempt to relax, or the second, or the ninth, that the worry will disappear for many of us, and especially for worriers. It takes many hours to learn what relaxing is; but having once learned, its helpful power is too evident for us not to keep at it, if we really desire to gain our freedom. To give the same direction to a worrier that was so effective with the woman whose feelings were easily hurt, may seem equally ridiculous; but in many cases it will certainly prove most useful. When you begin to worry, think your legs heavy. Your friends will appreciate the relief more than you do, and will gain as you gain. A recital of all the emotional disturbances which seem to have so strong a hold on us, and which are merely misdirected nervous force, might easily fill a volume; but a few of the most common troubles, such as have been given, will perhaps suffice to help each individual to understand his own especial temptations in that direction,--and if I have made even partially clear the ease with which they may be relieved through careful physical training, it is all I can hope for. The body must be trained to obey the mind; the mind must be trained to give the body commands worth obeying. The real feelings of life are too exquisite and strengthening in their depth and power to be crowded out by those gross forms of nervous excitement which I can find no better name for than sham emotions. If we could only realize this more broadly, and bring up the children with a wholesome dread of morbid feeling what a marked change would there be in the state of the entire race! All physicians agree that in most cases it is not overwork, it is not mental strain, that causes the greater number of cases of nervous disturbance, but that they are more often brought on by emotional strain. The deepest grief, as well as the greatest joy, can be met in a way to give new strength and new power for use if we have a sound philosophy and a well-guided, wholesome body to meet it. But these last are the work of years; and neither the philosophy nor the physical strength can be brought to bear at short notice, although we can do much toward a better equilibrium even late in life. Various forms of egotism, if not exactly sham emotions, are the causes of great nervous strain. Every physician knows the intense egotism which often comes with nervous prostration. Some one has very aptly said that insanity is only egotism gone to seed. It often seems so, especially when it begins with nervous prostration. We cannot be too careful to shun this nervous over-care for self. We inherit so strongly the subjective way of living rather than the objective, that it impresses itself upon our very nerves; and they, instead of being open channels for the power always at our command to pass freely to the use for which it is intended, stop the way by means of the attention which is so uselessly turned back on ourselves, our narrow personal interests, and our own welfare. How often we see cases where by means of the nervous tension all this has increased to a disease, and the tiresome _Ego_ is a monster in the way of its owner and all his would-be friends. "I cannot bear this." "I shall take cold." "If you only knew how I suffered." Why should we know, unless through knowing we can give you some relief? And so it goes, I--I--I--forever, and the more the more nervous prostration. Keep still, that all which is good may come to you, and live out to others that your life may broaden for use. In this way we can take all that Nature is ready to give us, and will constantly give us, and use it as hers and for her purposes, which are always the truest and best Then we live as a little child would live,--only with more wisdom. X. NATURE'S TEACHING NATURE is not only our one guide in the matter of physical training, she is the chief engineer who will keep us in order and control the machine, if we aim to fulfil her conditions and shun every personal interference with the wholesome working of her laws. Here is where the exquisite sense of growing power comes. In studying Nature, we not only realize the strength that comes from following her lead, but we discover her in ourselves gently moving us onward. We all believe we look to Nature, if we think at all; and it is a surprise to find how mistaken we are. The time would not be wasted if we whose duties do not lead us to any direct study of natural life for personal reasons, would take fifteen minutes every day simply to think of Nature and her methods of working, and to see at the same time where, so far as we individually are concerned, we constantly interfere with the best use of her powers. With all reverence I say it, this should be the first form of prayer; and our ability to pray sincerely to God and live in accordance with His laws would grow in proportion to our power of sincere sympathy with the workings of those laws in Nature. Try to realize the quiet power of all natural growth and movement, from a blade of grass, through a tree, a forest of trees, the entire vegetable growth on the earth, the movement of the planets, to the growth and involuntary vital operations of our own bodies. No words can bring so full a realization of the quiet power in the progress of Nature as will the simple process of following the growth of a tree in imagination from the working of its sap in the root up to the tips of the leaves, the blossoms, and the fruit. Or beginning lower, follow the growth of a blade of grass or a flower, then a tree, and so on to the movement of the earth, and then of all the planets in the universe. Let your imagination picture so vividly all natural movements, little by little, that you seem to be really at one with each and all. Study the orderly working of your own bodily functions; and having this clearly in mind, notice where you, in all movements that are or might be under the control of your will, are disobeying Nature's laws. Nature shows us constantly that at the back of every action there should be a great repose. This holds good from the minutest growth to the most powerful tornado. It should be so with us not only in the simple daily duties, but in all things up to the most intense activity possible to man. And this study and realization of Nature's method which I am pleading for brings a vivid sense of our own want of repose. The compensation is fortunately great, or the discouragement might be more than could be borne. We must appreciate a need to have it supplied; we must see a mistake in order to shun it. How can we expect repose of mind when we have not even repose of muscle? When the most external of the machine is not at our command, surely the spirit that animates the whole cannot find its highest plane of action. Or how can we possibly expect to know the repose that should be at our command for every emergency, or hope to realize the great repose behind every action, when we have not even learned the repose in rest? Think of Nature's resting times, and see how painful would be the result of a digression. Our side of the earth never turns suddenly toward the sun at night, giving us flashes of day in the darkness. When it is night, it is night steadily, quietly, until the time comes for day. A tree in winter, its time for rest, never starts out with a little bud here and there, only to be frost bitten, and so when spring-time comes, to result in an uneven looking, imperfectly developed tree. It rests entirely in its time for rest; and when its time for blooming comes, its action is full and true and perfect. The grass never pushes itself up in little, untimely blades through the winter, thus leaving our lawns and fields full of bare patches in the warmer season. The flowers that close at night do not half close, folding some petals and letting others stay wide open. Indeed, so perfectly does Nature rest when it is her time for resting, that even the suggestion of these abnormal actions seems absolutely ridiculous. The less we allow ourselves to be controlled by Nature's laws, the more we ignore their wonderful beauty; and yet there is that in us which must constantly respond to Nature unconsciously, else how could we at once feel the absurdity of any disobedience to her laws, everywhere except with man? And man, who is not only free to obey, but has exquisite and increasing power to realize and enjoy them in all their fulness, lives so far out of harmony with these laws as ever to be blind to his own steady disobedience. Think of the perfect power for rest in all animals. Lift a cat when she is quiet, and see how perfectly relaxed she is in every muscle. That is not only the way she sleeps, but the way she rests; and no matter how great or how rapid the activity, she drops all tension at once when she stops. So it is with all animals, except in rare cases where man has tampered with them in a way to interfere with the true order of their lives. Watch a healthy baby sleeping; lift its arm, its leg, or its head carefully, and you will find each perfectly relaxed and free. You can even hold it on your outspread hands, and the whole little weight, full of life and gaining new power through the perfect rest, will give itself entirely to your hands, without one particle of tension. The sleep that we get in babyhood is the saving health of many. But, alas! at a very early age useless tension begins, and goes on increasing; and if it does not steadily lead to acute "Americanitis," it prevents the perfect use of all our powers. Mothers, watch your children with a care which will be all the more effective because they will be unconscious of it; for a child's attention should seldom be drawn to its own body. Lead them toward the laws of Nature, that they may grow in harmony with them, and so be saved the useless suffering, strain, and trouble that comes to us Americans. If we do not take care, the children will more and more inherit this fearful misuse of the nervous force, and the inheritance will be so strong that at best we can have only little invalids. How great the necessity seems for the effort to get back into Nature's ways when we reflect upon the possibilities of a continued disobedience! To be sure, Nature has Repose itself and does not have to work for it. Man is left free to take it or not as he chooses. But before he is able to receive it he has personal tendencies to restlessness to overcome. And more than that, there are the inherited nervous habits of generations of ancestors to be recognized and shunned. But repose is an inmost law of our being, and the quiet of Nature is at our command much sooner than we realize, if we want it enough to work for it steadily day by day. Nothing will increase our realization of the need more than a little daily thought of the quiet in the workings of Nature and the consequent appreciation of our own lack. Ruskin tells the story with his own expressive power when he says, "Are not the elements of ease on the face of all the greatest works of creation? Do they not say, not there has been a great _effort _here, but there has been a great power here?" The greatest act, the only action which we know to be power in itself, is the act of Creation. Behind that action there lies a great Repose. We are part of Creation, we should be moved by its laws. Let us shun everything we see to be in the way of our own best power of action in muscle, nerve, senses, mind, and heart. Who knows the new perception and strength, the increased power for use that is open to us if we will but cease to be an obstruction? Freedom within the limits of Nature's laws, and indeed there is no freedom without those limits, is best studied and realized in the growth of all plants,--in the openness of the branch of a vine to receive the sap from the main stem, in the free circulation of the sap in a tree and in all vegetable organisms. Imagine the branch of a vine endowed with the power to grow according to the laws which govern it, or to ignore and disobey those laws. Imagine the same branch having made up its vegetable mind that it could live its own life apart from the vine, twisting its various fibres into all kinds of knots and snarls, according to its own idea of living, so that the sap from the main stem could only reach it in a minimum quantity. What a dearth of leaf, flower, and fruit would appear in the branch! Yet the figure is perfectly illustrative of the way in which most of us are interfering with the best use of the life that is ours. Freedom is obedience to law. A bridge can be built to stand, only in obedience to the laws of mechanics. Electricity can be made a useful power only in exact obedience to the laws that govern it, otherwise it is most destructive. Has man the privilege of disobeying natural laws, only in the use of his own individual powers? Clearly not. And why is it that while recognizing and endeavoring to obey the laws of physics, of mechanics, and all other laws of Nature in his work in the world, he so generally defies the same laws in their application to his own being? The freedom of an animal's body in obeying the animal instincts is beautiful to watch. The grace and power expressed in the freedom of a tiger are wonderful. The freedom in the body of a baby to respond to every motion and expression is exquisite to study. But before most children have been in the world three years their inherited personal contractions begin, and unless the little bodies can be watched and trained out of each unnecessary contraction as it appears, and so kept in their own freedom, there comes a time later, when to live to the greatest power for use they must spend hours in learning to be babies all over again, and then gain a new freedom and natural movement. The law which perhaps appeals to us most strongly when trying to identify ourselves with Nature is the law of rhythm: action, re-action; action, re-action; action, re-action,--and the two must balance, so that equilibrium is always the result. There is no similar thought that can give us keener pleasure than when we rouse all our imagination, and realize all our power of identifying ourselves with the workings of a great law, and follow this rhythmic movement till we find rhythm within rhythm,--from the rhythmic motion of the planets to the delicate vibrations of heat and light. It is helpful to think of rhythmic growth and motion, and not to allow the thought of a new rhythm to pass without identifying ourselves with it as fully as our imagination will allow. We have the rhythm of the seasons, of day and night, of the tides, and of vegetable and animal life,--as the various rhythmic motions in the flying of birds. The list will be endless, of course, for the great law rules everything in Nature, and our appreciation of it grows as we identify ourselves with its various modes of action. One hair's variation in the rhythm of the universe would bring destruction, and yet we little individual microcosms are knocking ourselves into chronic states of chaos because we feel that we can be gods, and direct our own lives so much better than the God who made us. We are left in freedom to go according to His laws, or against them; and we are generally so convinced that our own stupid, short-sighted way is the best, that it is only because Nature tenderly holds to some parts of us and keeps them in the rhythm, that we do not hurl ourselves to pieces. _This law of rhythm--or of equilibrium in motion and in rest--is the end, aim, and effect of all true physical training for the development and guidance of the body._ Its ruling power is proved in the very construction of the body,--the two sides; the circulation of the blood, veins and arteries; the muscles, extensor and flexor; the nerves, sensory and motor. When the long rest of a body balances the long activity, in day and night; when the shorter rests balance the shorter activity, as in the various opportunities offered through the day for entire rest, if only a minute at a time; when the sensory and motor nerves are clear for impression and expression; when the muscles in parts of the body not needed are entirely quiet, allowing those needed for a certain action to do their perfect work; when the co-ordination of the muscles in use is so established that the force for a movement is evenly divided; when the flexor rests while its antagonizing muscle works, and _vice versa,--_ when all this which is merely a _natural power for action and rest _is automatically established, then the body is ready to obey and will obey the lightest touch of its owner, going in whatever direction it may be sent, artistic, scientific, or domestic. As this exquisite sense of ease in a natural movement grows upon us, no one can describe the feeling of new power or of positive comfort which comes with it; and yet it is no miracle, it is only natural. The beasts have the same freedom; but they have not the mind to put it to higher uses, or the sense to enjoy its exquisite power. Often it seems that the care and trouble to get back into Nature's way is more than compensated for in the new appreciation of her laws and their uses. But the body, after all, is merely a servant; and, however perfect its training may have been, if the man, the master, puts his natural power to mean or low uses, sooner or later the power will be lost. Self-conscious pride will establish its own contractions. The use of a natural power for evil ends will limit itself sooner or later. The love for unwholesome surroundings will eventually put a check on a perfectly free body, although sometimes the wonder is that the check is so long in coming. If we have once trained ourselves into natural ways, so akin are the laws of Nature and spirit, both must be obeyed; and to rise to our greatest power means always to rise to our greatest power for use. "A man's life is God's love for the use for which he was made;" a man's power lies in the best direction of that use. This is a truth as practical as the necessity for walking on the feet with the head up. XI. THE CHILD AS AN IDEAL WHILE the path of progress in the gaining of repose could not be traced thus far without reference to the freedom of a baby, a fuller consideration of what we may learn from this source must be of great use to us. The peace and freshness of a little baby are truly beautiful, but are rarely appreciated. Few of us have peace enough in ourselves to respond to these charms. It is like playing the softest melody upon a harp to those whose ears have long been closed. Let us halt, and watch, and listen, and see what we shall gain! Throughout the muscular system of a normal, new-born baby it is impossible to find any waste of force. An apparent waste will, upon examination, prove itself otherwise. Its cry will at first seem to cause contractions of the face; but the absolute removal of all traces of contraction as the cry ceases, and a careful watching of the act itself, show it to be merely an exaggeration of muscular action, not a permanent contraction. Each muscle is balanced by an opposing one; in fact, the whole thing is only a very even stretching of the face, and, undoubtedly, has a purpose to accomplish. Examine a baby's bed, and see how distinctly it bears the impression of an absolute giving up of weight and power. They actually _do_ that which we only theorize about, and from them we may learn it all, if we will. A babe in its bath gives us another fine opportunity for learning to be simple and free. It yields to the soft pressure of the water with a repose which is deeply expressive of gratitude; while we, in our clumsy departures from Nature's state, often resist with such intensity as not to know--in circumstances just as simply useful to us--that we have anything for which to be grateful. In each new experience we find it the same, the healthy baby yields, _lets himself go,_ with an case which must double his chances for comfort. Could we but learn to do so, our lives would lengthen, and our joys and usefulness strengthen in exact proportion. All through the age of unconsciousness, this physical freedom is maintained even where the mental attitude is not free. Baby wrath is as free and economical of physical force as are the winsome moods, and this until the personality has developed to some extent,--that is, _until the child reflects the contractions of those around him._ It expends itself in well-balanced muscular exercise, one set of muscles resting fully in their moment of non-use, while another set takes up the battle. At times it will seem that all wage war together; if so, the rest is equal to the action. It is not the purpose of this chapter to recommend anger, even of the most approved sort; but if we will express the emotion at all, let us do it as well as we did in our infancy! Channels so free as this would necessitate, would lessen our temptations to such expression; we, with mature intellects, would see it for what it is, and the next generation of babies would less often exercise their wonderfully balanced little bodies in such an unlovely waste. Note the perfect openness of a baby throat as the child coos out his expression of happiness. Could anything be more free, more like the song of a bird in its obedience to natural laws? Alas, for how much must we answer that these throats are so soon contracted, the tones changed to so high a pitch, the voice becoming so shrill and harsh! Can we not open our throats and become as these little children? The same _openness_ in the infant organism is the child's protection in many dangers. Falls that would result in breaks, strains, or sprains in us, leave the baby entirely whole save in its "feelings," and often there, too, if the child has been kept in the true state mentally. Watch a baby take its food, and contrast it with our own ways of eating. The baby draws it in slowly and evenly, with a quiet rhythm which is in exact accord with the rhythmic action of its digestive organs. You feel each swallow taken in the best way for repair, and for this reason it seems sometimes as if one could see a baby grow while feeding. There cannot be a lovelier glimpse of innocent physical repose than the little respites from the fatigue of feeding which a baby often takes. His face moist, with open pores, serene and satisfied, he views the hurry about him as an interesting phase of harmless madness. He is entirely outside of it until self-consciousness is quite developed. The sleep of a little child is another opportunity for us to learn what we need. Every muscle free, every burden dropped, each breath carries away the waste, and fills its place with the needed substance of increasing growth and power. In play, we find the same freedom. When one idea is being executed, every other is excluded. They do not think _dolls_ while they roll _hoop!_ They do not think of work while they play. Examine and see how we do both. The baby of one year, sitting on the shore burying his fat hand in the soft warm sand, is for the time being alive _only_ to its warmth and softness, with a dim consciousness of the air and color about him. If we could engross ourselves as fully and with as simple a pleasure, we should know far more of the possible power of our minds for both work and rest. It is interesting to watch normal children in these concentrations, because from their habits we may learn so much which may improve our own sadly different manner of living. It is also interesting but pathetic to see the child gradually leaving them as he approaches boyhood, and to trace our part in leading him away from the true path. The baby's perfect placidity, caused by mental and bodily freedom, is disturbed at a very early age by those who should be his true guides. It would be impossible to say when the first wrong impression is made, but it is so early that a true statement of the time could only be accepted from scientific men. For mothers and fathers have often so dulled their own sensitiveness, that they are powerless to recognize the needs of their children, and their impressions are, in consequence, untrustworthy. At the time the pangs of teething begin, it is the same. The healthy child left to itself would wince occasionally at the slight pricking pain, and then turn its entire attention elsewhere, and thus become refreshed for the next trial. But under the adult influence the agony of the first little prick is often magnified until the result is a cross, tired baby, already removed several degrees from the beautiful state of peace and freedom in which Nature placed him under our care. The bodily freedom of little children is the foundation of a most beautiful mental freedom, which cannot be wholly destroyed by us. This is plainly shown by the childlike trust which they display in all the affairs of life, and also in their exquisite responsiveness to the spiritual truths which are taught to them. The very expression of face of a little child as it is led by the hand is a lesson to us upon which pages might be written. Had we the same spirit dwelling in us, we more often should feel ourselves led "beside the still waters," and made "to lie down in green pastures." We should grow faster spiritually, because we should not make conflicts for ourselves, but should meet with the Lord's quiet strength whatever we had to pass through. Let us learn of these little ones, and help them to hold fast to that which they teach us. Let us remember that the natural and the ideal are truly one, and endeavor to reach the latter by means of the former. When through hereditary tendency our little child is not ideal,--that is, natural,--let us with all the more earnestness learn to be quiet ourselves that we may lead him to it, and thus open the channels of health and strength. XII. TRAINING FOR REST BUT how shall we gain a natural repose? It is absurd to emphasize the need without giving the remedy. "I should be so glad to relax, but I do not know how," is the sincere lament of many a nervously strained being. There is a regular training which acts upon the nervous force and teaches its proper use, as the gymnasium develops the muscles. This, as will be easily seen, is at first just the reverse of vigorous exercise, and no woman should do powerful muscular work without learning at the same time to guide her body with true economy of force. It is appalling to watch the faces of women in a gymnasium, to see them using five, ten, twenty times the nervous force necessary for every exercise. The more excited they get, the more nervous force they use; and the hollows under their eyes increase, the strained expression comes, and then they wonder that after such fascinating exercise they feel so tired. A common sight in gymnasium work, especially among women, is the nervous straining of the muscles of the arms and hands, while exercises meant for the legs alone are taken. This same muscular tension is evident in the arm that should be at rest while the other arm is acting; and if this want of equilibrium in exercise is so strikingly noticeable in the limbs themselves, how much worse it must be all through the less prominent muscles! To guide the body in trapeze work, every well-trained acrobat knows he must have a quiet mind, a clear head, and obedient muscles. I recall a woman who stands high in gymnastic work, whose agility on the triple bars is excellent, but the nervous strain shown in the drawn lines of her face before she begins, leaves one who studies her carefully always in doubt as to whether she will not get confused before her difficult performance is over, and break her neck in consequence. A realization also of the unnecessary nervous force she is using, detracts greatly from the pleasure in watching her performance. If we were more generally sensitive to misdirected nervous power, this interesting gymnast, with many others, would lose no time in learning a more quiet and naturally economical guidance of her muscles, and gymnasium work would not be, as Dr. Checkley very justly calls it, "more often a straining than a training." To aim a gun and hit the mark, a quiet control of the muscles is necessary. If the purpose of our actions were as well defined as the bull's eye of a target, what wonderful power in the use of our muscles we might very soon obtain! But the precision and ease in an average motion comes so far short of its possibility, that if the same carelessness were taken as a matter of course in shooting practice, the side of a barn should be an average target. Gymnasium work for women would be grand in its wholesome influence, if only they might learn the proper _use_ of the body while they are working for its development. And no gymnasium will be complete and satisfactory in its results until the leader arranges separate classes for training in economy of force and rhythmic motion. In order to establish a true physical balance the training of the nerves should receive as much attention as the training of the muscles. The more we misuse our nervous force, the worse the expenditure will be as muscular power increases; I cannot waste so much force on a poorly developed muscle as on one that is well developed. This does not by any means argue against the development of muscle; it argues for its proper use. Where is the good of an exquisitely formed machine, if it is to be shattered for want of control of the motive power? It would of course be equally harmful to train the guiding power while neglecting entirely flabby, undeveloped muscles. The only difference is that in the motions for this training and for the perfect co-ordinate use of the muscles, there must be a certain amount of even, muscular development; whereas although the vigorous exercise for the growth of the muscles often helps toward a healthy nervous system, it more often, where the nervous force is misused, exaggerates greatly the tension. In every case it is equilibrium we are working for, and a one-sided view of physical training is to be deplored and avoided, whether the balance is lost on the side of the nerves or the muscles. Take a little child early enough, and watch it carefully through a course of natural rhythmic exercises, and there will be no need for the careful training necessary to older people. But help for us who have gone too far in this tension comes only through patient study. So far as I can, I will give directions for gaining the true relaxation. But because written directions are apt to be misunderstood, and so bring discouragement and failure, I will purposely omit all but the most simple means of help; but these I am sure will bring very pleasant effects if followed exactly and with the utmost patience. The first care should be to realize how far you are from the ability to let go of your muscles when they are not needed; how far you are from the natural state of a cat when she is quiet, or better still from the perfect freedom of a sleeping baby; consequently how impossible it is for you ever to rest thoroughly. Almost all of us are constantly exerting ourselves to hold our own heads on. This is easily proved by our inability to let go of them. The muscles are so well balanced that Nature holds our heads on much more perfectly than we by any possibility can. So it is with all our muscles; and to teach them better habits we must lie flat on our backs, and try to give our whole weight to the floor or the bed. The floor is better, for that does not yield in the least to us, and the bed does. Once on the floor, give way to it as far as possible. Every day you will become more sensitive to tension, and every day you will be better able to drop it. While you are flat on your backs, if you can find some one to "prove" your relaxation, so much the better. Let your friend lift an arm, bending it at the different joints, and then carefully lay it down. See if you can give its weight entirely to the other person, so that it seems to be no part of you, but as separate as if it were three bags of sand, fastened loosely at the wrist, the elbow, and the shoulder; it will then be full of life without tension. You will find probably, either that you try to assist in raising the arm in your anxiety to make it heavy, or you will resist so that it is not heavy with its own weight but with I your personal effort. In some cases the nervous force is so active that the arm reminds one of a lively eel. Then have your legs treated in the same way. It is good even to have some one throw your arm or your leg up and catch it; also to let it go unexpectedly. Unnecessary tension is proved when the limb, instead of dropping by the pure force of gravity, sticks fast wherever it was left. The remark when the extended limb is brought to the attention of its owner is, "Well, what did you want me to do? You did not say you wanted me to drop it,"--which shows the habitual attitude of tension so vividly as to be almost ridiculous; the very idea being, of course, that you are not wanted to do anything but _let go,_ when the arm would drop of its own accord. If the person holding your arm says, "Now I will let go, and it must drop as if a dead weight," almost invariably it will not be the force of gravity that takes it, but your own effort to make it a dead weight; and it will come down with a thump which shows evident muscular effort, or so slowly and actively as to prove that you cannot let it alone. Constant and repeated trial, with right thought from the pupil, will be certain to bring good results, so that at least he or she can be sure of better power for rest in the limbs. Unfortunately this first gain will not last. Unless the work goes on, the legs and arms will soon be "all tightened up" again, and it will seem harder to let go than ever. The next care must be with the head. That cannot be treated as roughly as the limbs. It can be tossed, if the tosser will surely catch it on his open hand. Never let it drop with its full weight on the floor, for the jar of the fall, if you are perfectly relaxed, is unpleasant; if you are tense, it is dangerous. At first move it slowly up and down. As with the arms, there will be either resistance or attempted assistance. It seems at times as though it were and always would be impossible to let go of your own head. Of course, if you cannot give up and let go for a friend to move it quietly up and down, you cannot let go and give way entirely to the restful power of sleep. The head must be moved up and down, from side to side, and round and round in opposite ways, gently and until its owner can let go so completely that it seems like a big ball in the hands that move it. Of course care must be taken to move it gently and never to extremes, and it will not do to trust an unintelligent person to "prove" a body in any way. Ladies' maids have been taught to do it very well, but they had in all cases to be carefully watched at first. The example of a woman who had for years been an invalid is exceedingly interesting as showing how persistently people "hold on." Although the greater part of her time had been spent in a reclining attitude, she had not learned the very rudiments of relaxation, and could not let go of her own muscles any more easily than others who have always been in active life. Think of holding yourself on to the bed for ten years! Her maid learned to move her in the way that has been described, and after repeated practice, by the time she had reached the last movement the patient would often be sleeping like a baby. It did not cure her, of course; that was not expected. But it taught her to "relax" to a pain instead of bracing up and fighting it, and to live in a natural way so far as an organic disease and sixty years of misused and over-used force would allow. Having relaxed the legs and arms and head, next the spine and all the muscles of the chest must be helped to relax. This is more difficult, and requires not only care but greater muscular strength in the lifter. If the one who is lifting will only remember to press hard on the floor with the feet, and put all the effort of lifting in the legs, the strain will be greatly lessened. Take hold of the hands and lift the patient or pupil to a sitting attitude. Here, of course, if the muscles that hold the head are perfectly relaxed, the head will drop back from its own weight. Then, in letting the body back again, of course, keep hold of the hands,--_never_ let go; and after it is down, if the neck has remained relaxed, the head will be back in a most uncomfortable attitude, and must be lifted and placed in the right position. It is some time before relaxation is so complete as that. At first the head and spine will come up like a ramrod, perfectly rigid and stiff. There will be the same effort either to assist or resist; the same disinclination to give up; often the same remark, "If you will tell me what you want me to do, I will do it;" the same inability to realize that the remark, and the feeling that prompts it, are entirely opposed to the principle that you are _wanted to do nothing, and to do nothing with an effort is impossible._ In lowering the body it must "give" like a bag of bones fastened loosely together and well padded. Sometimes when it is nearly down, one arm can be dropped, and the body let down the rest of the way by the other. Then it is simply giving way completely to the laws of gravity, it will fall over on the side that is not held, and only roll on its back as the other arm is dropped. Care must always be taken to arrange the head comfortably after the body is resting on the ground. Sometimes great help is given toward relaxing the muscles of the chest and spine by pushing the body up as if to roll it over, first one side and then the other, and letting it roll back from its own weight. It is always good, after helping the separate parts to a restful state, to take the body as a whole and roll it over and over, carefully, and see if the owner can let you do so without the slightest effort to assist you. It will be easily seen that the power, once gained, of remaining perfectly passive while another moves you, means a steadily increasing ability to relax at all times when the body should be given to perfect rest. This power to "let go" causes an increasing sensitiveness to all tension, which, unpleasant as it always is to find mistakes of any kind in ourselves, brings a very happy result in the end; for we can never shun evils, physical or spiritual, until we have recognized them fully, and every mistaken way of using our machine, when studiously avoided, brings us nearer to that beautiful unconscious use of it which makes it possible for us to forget it entirely in giving it the more truly to its highest use. After having been helped in some degree by another, and often without that preliminary help, come the motions by which we are enabled to free ourselves; and it is interesting to see how much more easily the body will move after following this course of exercises. Take the same attitude on the floor, giving up entirely in every part to the force of gravity, and keep your eyes closed through the whole process. Then stop and imagine yourself heavy. First think one leg heavy, then the other, then each arm, and both arms, being sure to keep the same weight in the legs; then your body and head. Use your imagination to the full extent of its power, and think the whole machine heavy; wonder how the floor can hold such a weight. Begin then to take a deep breath. Inhale through the nose quietly and easily. Let it seem as if the lungs expanded themselves with, out voluntary effort on your part. Fill first the lower lungs and then the upper. Let go, and exhale the air with a sense of relief. As the air leaves your lungs, try to let your body rest back on the floor more heavily, as a rubber bag would if the air were allowed to escape from it. Repeat this breathing exercise several times; then inhale and exhale rhythmically, with breaths long enough to give about six to a minute, for ten times, increasing the number every day until you reach fifty. This eventually will establish the habit of longer breaths in the regular unconscious movement of our lungs, which is most helpful to a wholesome physical state. The directions for deep breathing should be carefully followed in the deep breaths taken after each motion. After the deep breathing, drag your leg up slowly, very slowly, trying to have no effort except in the hip joint, allowing the knee to bend, and dragging the heel heavily along the floor, until it is up so far that the sole of the foot touches without effort on your part. Stop occasionally in the motion and let the weight come into the heel, then drag the foot with less effort than before,--so will the strain of movement be steadily decreased. Let the leg slip slowly down, and when it is nearly flat on the floor again, let go, so that it gives entirely and drops from its own weight. If it is perfectly free, there is a pleasant little spring from the impetus of dropping, which is more or less according to the healthful state of the body. The same motion must be repeated with the other leg. Every movement should be slower each day. It is well to repeat the movements of the legs for three times, trying each time to move more slowly, with the leg heavier than the time before. After this, lift the arm slowly from the shoulder, letting the hand hang over until it is perpendicular to the floor. Be careful to think the arm heavy, and the motive power in the shoulder. It helps to relax if you imagine your arm held to the shoulder by a single hair, and that if you move it with a force beyond the minimum needed to raise it, it will drop off entirely. To those who have little or no imagination this will seem ridiculous; to others who have more, and can direct it usefully, this and similar ways will be very helpful. After the arm is raised to a perpendicular position, let the force of gravity have it,--first the upper arm to the elbow, and then the forearm and hand, so that it falls by pieces. Follow the same motion with the other arm, and repeat this three times, trying to improve with each repetition. Next, the head must be moved slowly,--so slowly that it seems as though it hardly moved at all,--first rolled to the left, then back and to the right and back again; and this also can be repeated three times. After each of the above motions there should be two or three long, quiet breaths. To free the spine, sit up on the floor, and with heavy arms and legs, head dropped forward, let it go back slowly and easily, as if the vertebrae were beads on a string, and first one bead lay flat, then another and another, until the whole string rests on the floor, and the head falls back with its own weight. This should be practised over and over before the movement can be perfectly free; and it is well to begin on the bed, until you catch the idea and its true application. After, and sometimes before, the process of slow motions, rolling over loosely on one side should be practised,--remaining there until the weight all seems near the floor, and then giving way so that the force of gravity seems to "flop" it back (I use "flop" advisedly); so again resting on the other side. But one must go over by regular motions, raising the leg first heavily and letting it fall with its full weight over the other leg, so that the ankles are crossed. The arm on the same side must be raised as high as possible and dropped over the chest. Then the body can be rolled over, and carried as it were by the weight of the arm and leg. It must go over heavily and freely like a bag of loose bones, and it helps greatly to freedom to roll over and over in this way. Long breaths, taken deeply and quietly, should be interspersed all through these exercises for extreme relaxation. They prevent the possibility of relaxing too far. And as there is a pressure on every muscle of the body during a deep inspiration, the muscles, being now relaxed into freedom, are held in place, so to speak, by the pressure from the breath,--as we blow in the fingers of a glove to put them in shape. Remember always that it is equilibrium we are working for, and this extreme relaxation will bring it, because we have erred so far in the opposite direction. For instance, there is now no balance at all between our action and our rest, because we are more or less tense and consequently active all through the times when we should be entirely at rest; and we never can be moved by Nature's rhythm until we learn absolute relaxation for rest, and so gain the true equilibrium in that way. Then again, since we use so much unnecessary tension in everything we do, although we cannot remove it entirely until we learn the normal motion of our muscles, still after an hour's practice and the consequent gain in extreme relaxation, it will be impossible to attack our work with the same amount of unnecessary force, at least for a time; and every day the time in which we are able to work, or talk, or move with less tension will increase, and so our bad habits be gradually changed, if not to good, to better ones. So the true equilibrium comes gradually more and more into every action of our lives, and we feel more and more the wholesome harmony of a rhythmic life. We gradually swing into rhythm with Nature through a child-like obedience to her laws. Of one thing I must warn all nervous people who mean to try the relief to be gained from relaxation. The first effects will often be exceedingly unpleasant. The same results are apt to follow that come from the reaction after extreme excitement,--all the way from nervous nausea and giddiness to absolute fainting. This, as must be clearly seen, is a natural result from the relaxation that comes after years of habitual tension. The nerves have been held in a chronic state of excitement over something or nothing; and, of course, when their owner for the first time lets go, they begin to feel their real state, and the result of habitual strain must be unpleasant. The greater the nervous strain at the beginning, the more slowly the pupil should advance, practising in some cases only five minutes a day. And with regard to those people who "live on their nerves," not a few, indeed very many, are so far out of the normal way of living that they detest relaxation. A hearty hatred of the relaxing motions is often met, and even when the mind is convinced of the truth of the theory, it is only with difficulty that such people can persuade themselves or be persuaded by others to work steadily at the practice until the desired result is gained. "It makes me ten times more nervous than I was before." "Oh, no, it does not; it only makes you realize your nervousness ten times more." "Well, then, I do not care to realize my nervousness, it is very disagreeable." "But, unfortunately, if you do not realize it now and relax into Nature's ways, she will knock you hard against one of her stone walls, and you will rebound with a more unpleasant realization of nervousness than is possible now." The locomotive engine only utilizes nineteen per cent of the amount of fuel it burns, and inventors are hard at work in all directions to make an engine that will burn only the fuel needed to run it. Here is a much more valuable machine--the human engine--burning perhaps eighty-one per cent more than is needed to accomplish its ends, not through the mistake of its Divine Maker, but through the stupid, short-sighted thoughtlessness of the engineer. Is not the economy of our vital forces of much greater importance than mechanical or business economy? It is painful to see a man--thin and pale from the excessive nervous force he has used, and from a whole series of attacks of nervous prostration--speak with contempt of "this method of relaxation." It is not a method in any sense except that in which all the laws of Nature are methods. No one invented it, no one planned it; every one can see, who will look, that it is Nature's way and the only true way of living. To call it a new idea or method is as absurd as it would be, had we carried our tension so far as to forget sleep entirely, for some one to come with a "new method" of sleep to bring us into a normal state again; and then the people suffering most intensely from want of "tired Nature's sweet restorer" would be the most scornful in their irritation at this new idea of "sleep." Again, there are many, especially women, who insist that they prefer the nervously excited state, and would not lose it. This is like a man's preferring to be chronically drunk. But all these abnormal states are to be expected in abnormal people, and must be quietly met by Nature's principles in order to lead the sufferers back to Nature's ways. Our minds are far enough beyond our bodies to lead us to help ourselves out of mistaken opinions; although often the sincere help of others takes us more rapidly over hard ground and prevents many a stumble. Great nervous excitement is possible, every one knows, without muscular tension; therefore in all these motions for gaining freedom and a better physical equilibrium in nerve and muscle, the warning cannot be given too often to take every exercise easily. Do not work at it, go so far even as not to care especially whether you do it right or not, but simply do what is to be done without straining mind or body by effort. It is quite possible to make so desperate an effort to relax, that more harm than good is done. Particularly harmful is the intensity with which an effort to gain physical freedom is made by so many highly strung natures. The additional mental excitement is quite out of proportion to the gain that may come from muscular freedom. For this reason it is never advisable for one who feels the need of gaining a more natural control of nervous power to undertake the training without a teacher. If a teacher is out of the question, ten minutes practice a day is all that should be tried for several weeks. XIII. TRAINING FOR MOTION "IN every new movement, in every unknown attitude needed in difficult exercises, the nerve centres have to exercise a kind of selection of the muscles, bringing into action those which favor the movement, and suppressing those which oppose it." This very evident truth Dr. Lagrange gives us in his valuable book on the Physiology of Exercise. At first, every new movement is unknown; and, owing to inherited and personal contractions, almost from the earliest movement in a child's learning to walk to the most complicated action of our daily lives, the nerve centres exercise a mistaken selection of muscles,--not only selecting more muscles than are needed for perfect co-ordination of movement, but throwing more force than necessary into the muscles selected. To a gradually increasing extent, the contracting force, instead of being withdrawn when the muscle is inactive, remains; and, as we have already seen, an arm or leg that should be passive is lifted, and the muscles are found to be contracted as if for severe action. To the surprise of the owner the contraction cannot be at once removed. Help for this habitual contraction is given in the preceding chapter. Further on Dr. Lagrange tells us that "Besides the apprenticeship of movements which are unknown, there is the improvement of already known movements." When the work of mistaken selection of muscles has gone on for years, the "improvement of already known movements," from the simplest domestic action to the accomplishment of very great purposes, is a study in itself. One must learn first to be a grown baby, and, as we have already seen, gain the exquisite passiveness of a baby; then one must learn to walk and to move by a natural process of selection, which, thanks to the contractions of his various ancestors, was not the process used for his original movements. This learning to live all over again is neither so frightful nor so difficult as it sounds. Having gained the passive state described in the last chapter, one is vastly more sensitive to unnecessary tension; and it seems often as though the child in us asserted itself, rising with alacrity to claim its right of natural movement, and with a new sense of freedom in the power gained to shun inherited and personal contractions. Certainly it is a fact that freedom of movement is gained through shunning the contractions. And this should always be kept in mind to avoid the self-consciousness and harm which come from a studied movement, not to mention the very disagreeable impression such movements give to all who appreciate their artificiality. Motion in the human body, as well as music, is an art. An artist has very aptly said that we should so move that if every muscle struck a note, only harmony would result. Were it so the harmony would be most exquisite, for the instrument is Nature's own. We see how far we are from a realization of natural movement when we watch carefully and note the muscular discords evident to our eyes at all times. Even the average ballet dancing, which is supposed to be the perfection of artistic movement, is merely a series of pirouettes and gymnastic contortions, with the theatrical smile of a pretty woman to throw the glare of a calcium light over the imperfections and dazzle us. The average ballet girl is not adequately trained, from the natural and artistic standpoint. If this is the case in what should be the quintessence of natural, and so of artistic movement, it is to a great degree owing to the absolute carelessness in the selection of the muscles to be used in every movement of daily life. Many exercises which lead to the freedom of the body are well known in the letter--not in the spirit--through the so-called "Delsarte system." if they had been followed with a broad appreciation of what they were meant for and what they could lead to, before now students would have realized to a far greater extent what power is possible to the human body. But so much that is good and helpful in the "Delsarte system" has been misused, and so much of what is thoroughly artificial and unhealthy has been mixed with the useful, that one hesitates now to mention Delsarte. Either he was a wonderful genius whose thoughts and discoveries have been sadly perverted, or the inconsistencies of his teachings were great enough to limit the true power which certainly can be found in much that he has left us. Besides the exercises already described there are many others, suited to individual needs, for gaining the freedom of each part of the body and of the body as a whole. It is not possible to describe them clearly enough to allow them to be followed without a teacher, and to secure the desired result. Indeed, there would be danger of unpleasant results from misunderstanding. The object is so to stand that our muscles hold us, with the natural balance given them, instead of trying, as most of us do, to hold our muscles. In moving to gain this natural equilibrium we allow our muscles to carry us forward, and when they have contracted as far as is possible for one set, the antagonizing muscles carry us back. So it is with the side-to-side poising from the ankles, and the circular motion, which is a natural swinging of the muscles to find their centre of equilibrium, having once been started out of it. To stand for a moment and _think_ the feet heavy is a great help in gaining the natural poising motions, but care should always be taken to hold the chest well up. Indeed, we need have no sense of effort in standing, except in raising the chest,--and that must be as if it were pulled up outside by a button in its centre, but there must be no strain in the effort. The result of the exercises taken to free the head is shown in the power to toss the head lightly and easily, with the waist muscles, from a dropped forward to an erect position. The head shows its freedom then by the gentle swing of the neck muscles, which is entirely involuntary and comes from the impetus given them in tossing the head. Tension in the muscles of the neck is often very difficult to overcome; because, among other reasons, the sensations coming from certain forms of nervous over-strain are very commonly referred to the region of the base of the brain. It is not unusual to find the back of the neck rigid in extreme tension, and whether the strain is very severe or not, great care must be taken to free it by slow degrees, and the motions should at first be practised only a few minutes at a time. I can hardly warn readers too often against the possibility of an unpleasant reaction, if the relaxing is practised too long, or gained too rapidly. Then should come exercises for freeing the arms; and these can be taken sitting. Let the arms hang heavily at the sides; raise one arm slowly, feeling the weight more and more distinctly, and only contracting the shoulder muscles. It is well to raise it a few inches, then drop it heavily and try again,--each time taking force out of the lower muscles by thinking the arm heavy, and the motive power in the shoulder. If the arm itself can rest heavily on some one's hand while you are still raising it from the shoulder, that proves that you have succeeded in withdrawing the useless tension. Most arms feel stiff all the way along, when the owners raise them. Your arm must be raised until high overhead, the hand hanging from the wrist and dropped into your lap or down at the side, letting the elbow "give," so that the upper arm drops first, and then the fore arm and hand,--like three heavy sand-bags sewed together. The arm can be brought up to the level of the shoulder, and then round in front and dropped. To prove its freedom, toss it with the shoulder muscles from the side into the lap. Watch carefully that the arm itself has no more tension than if it were a sand-bag hung at the side, and could only be moved by the shoulder. After practising this two or three times so that the arms are relaxed enough to make you more sensitive to tension, one hundred times a day you will find your arms held rigidly, while you are listening or talking or walking. Every day you will grow more sensitive to the useless tension, and every day gain new power to drop it. This is wherein the real practice comes. An hour or two hours a day of relaxing exercises will amount to nothing if at the same time we are not careful to use the freedom gained, and to do everything more naturally. It is often said, "But I cannot waste time watching all day to see if I am using too much force." There is no need to watch; having once started in the right direction, if you drop useless muscular contraction every time you notice it, that is enough. It will be as natural to do that as for a musician to correct a discord which he has inadvertently made on the piano. There are no motions so quieting, so helpful in the general freeing of the body, as the motions of the spine. There are no motions more difficult to describe, or which should be more carefully directed. The habitual rigidity of the spine, as compared with its possible freedom, is more noticeable in training, of course, than is that of any other part of the body. Each vertebra should be so distinctly independent of every other, as to make the spine as smoothly jointed as the toy snakes, which, when we hold the tip of the tail in our fingers, curve in all directions. Most of us have spinal columns that more or less resemble ramrods. It is a surprise and delight to find what can be accomplished, when the muscles of the spine and back are free and under control. Of course the natural state of the spine, as the seat of a great nervous centre, affects many muscles of the body, and, on the other hand, the freedom of these muscles reacts favorably upon the spine. The legs are freed for standing and walking by shaking the foot free from the ankle with the leg, swinging the fore leg from the upper leg, and so freeing the muscles at the knee, and by standing on a footstool and letting one leg hang off the stool a dead weight while swinging it round from the hip. Greater freedom and ease of movement can be gained by standing on the floor and swinging the leg from the hip as high as possible. Be sure that the only effort for motion is in the muscles of the hip. There are innumerable other motions to free the legs, and often a great variety must be practised before the freedom can be gained. The muscles of the chest and waist are freed through a series of motions, the result of which is shown in the ability to toss the body lightly from the hips, as the head is tossed from the waist muscles; and there follows the same gentle involuntary swing of the muscles of the waist which surprises one so pleasantly in the neck muscles after tossing the head, and gives a new realization of what physical freedom is. In tossing the body the motion must be successive, like running the scale with the vertebrae. In no motion should the muscles work _en masse._ The more perfect the co-ordination of muscles in any movement, the more truly each muscle holds its own individuality. This power of freedom in motion should be worked for after once approaching the natural equilibrium. If you rest on your left leg, it pushes your left hip a little farther out, which causes your body to swerve slightly to the right,--and, to keep the balance true, the head again tips to the left a little. Now rise slowly and freely from that to standing on both feet, with body and head erect; then drop on the right foot with the body to left, and head to right. Here again, as in the motions with the spine, there is a great difference in the way they are practised. Their main object is to help the muscles to an independent individual co-ordination, and there should be a new sense of ease and freedom every time we practise it. Hold the chest up, and push yourself erect with the ball of your free foot. The more the weight is thought into the feet the freer the muscles are for action, provided the chest is well raised. The forward and back spinal motion should be taken standing also; and there is a gentle circular motion of the entire body which proves the freedom of all the muscles for natural movement, and is most restful in its result. The study for free movement in the arms and legs should of course be separate. The law that every part moves from something prior to it, is illustrated exquisitely in the motion of the fingers from the wrist. Here also the individuality of the muscles in their perfect co-ordination is pleasantly illustrated. To gain ease of movement in the fore arm, its motive power must seem to be in the upper arm; the motive power for the entire arm must seem to be centred in the shoulder. When through various exercises a natural co-ordination of the muscles is gained, the arm can be moved in curves from the shoulder, which remind one of a graceful snake; and the balance is so true that the motion seems hardly more than a thought in the amount of effort it takes. Great care should be given to freeing the hands and fingers. Because the hand is in such constant communication with the brain, the tension of the entire body often seems to be reflected there. Sometimes it is even necessary to train the hand to some extent in the earliest lessons. Exercises for movement in the legs are to free the joints, so that motions may follow one another as in the arm,--the foot from the ankle; the lower leg from the upper leg; the upper leg from the hip; and, as--in the arm, the free action of the joints in the leg comes as we seem to centre the motive power in the hip. There is then the same grace and ease of movement which we gain in the arm, simply because the muscles have their natural equilibrium. Thus the motive power of the body will seem to be gradually drawn to an imaginary centre in the lower part of the trunk,--which simply means withdrawing superfluous tension from every part. The exercise to help establish this equilibrium is graceful, and not difficult if we take it quietly and easily, using the mind to hold a balance without effort. Raise the right arm diagonally forward, the left leg diagonally back,--the arm must be high up, the foot just off the floor, so that as far as possible you make a direct line from the wrist to the ankle; in this attitude stretch all muscles across the body from left to right slowly and steadily, then relax quite as slowly. Now, be sure your arm and leg are free from all tension, and swing them very slowly, as if they were one piece, to as nearly a horizontal position as they can reach; then slowly pivot round until you bring your arm diagonally back and your leg diagonally forward; still horizontal, pivot again to the starting point; then bring leg down and arm up, always keeping them as in a line, until your foot is again off the floor; then slowly lower your arm and let your foot rest on the floor so that gradually your whole weight rests on that leg, and the other is free to swing up and pivot with the opposite arm. All this must be done slowly and without strain of any kind. The motions which follow in sets are for the better daily working of the body, as well as to establish its freedom. The first set is called the "Big Rhythms," because it takes mainly the rhythmic movement of the larger muscles of the body, and is meant, through movements taken on one foot, to give a true balance in the poise of the body as well as to make habitual the natural co-ordination in the action of all the larger muscles. It is like practising a series of big musical chords to accustom our ears to their harmonies. The second set, named the "Little Rhythms,"--because that is a convenient way of designating it,--is a series meant to include the movement of all the smaller muscles as well as the large ones, and is carried out even to the fingers. The third set is for spring and rapid motion, especially in joints of arms and legs. Of course having once found the body's natural freedom, the variety of motions is as great as the variety of musical sounds and combinations possible to an instrument which will respond to every tone in the musical scale. It is in opening the way for this natural motion that the exquisite possibilities in motion purely artistic dawn upon us with ever-increasing light. And as in music it is the sonata, the waltz, or the nocturne we must feel, not the mechanical process of our own performance,--so in moving, it is the beautiful, natural harmonies of the muscles, from the big rhythms to all the smaller ones, that we must feel and make others feel, and not the mere mechanical grace of our bodies; and we can move a sonata from the first to the last, changing the time and holding the theme so that the soul will be touched through the eye, as it is through the ear now in music. But, according to the present state of the human body, more than one generation will pass before we reach, or know the beginning of, the highest artistic power of motion. If art is Nature illuminated, one must have some slight appreciation and experience of Nature before attempting her illumination. The set of motions mentioned can be only very inadequately described in print. But although they are graceful, because they are natural, the first idea in practising them is that they are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. For in the big and little rhythms and the springing motions, in practising them over and over again we are establishing the habit of natural motion, and will carry it more and more into everything we do. If the work of the brain in muscular exercise were reduced to its minimum, the consequent benefit from all exercise would greatly increase. A new movement can be learned with facility in proportion to the power for dropping at the time all impressions of previous movements. In training to take every motion easily, after a time the brain-work is relieved, for we move with ease,--that is, with a natural co-ordination of muscles, automatically,--in every known motion; and we lessen very greatly the mental strain, in learning a new movement, by gaining the power to relax entirely at first, and then, out of a free body, choose the muscles needed, and so avoid the nervous strain of useless muscular experiment. So far as the mere muscular movement goes, the sensation is that of being well oiled. As for instance, in a natural walk, where the swinging muscles and the standing muscles act and rest in alternate rhythmic action, the chest is held high, the side muscles free to move in, harmony with the legs, and all the spring in the body brought into play through inclining slightly forward and pushing with the ball of the back foot, the arms swinging naturally without tension. Walking with a free body is often one of the best forms of rest, and in the varying forms of motion arranged for practice we are enabled to realize, that "perfect harmony of action in the entire man invigorates every part." XIV. MIND TRAINING IT will be plainly seen that this training of the body is at the same time a training of the mind, and indeed it is in essence a training of the will. For as we think of it carefully and analyze it to its fundamental principles, we realize that it might almost be summed up as in itself a training of the will alone. That is certainly what it leads to, and where it leads from. Maudsley tells us that "he who is incapable of guiding his muscles, is incapable of concentrating his mind;" and it would seem to follow, by a natural sequence, that training for the best use of all the powers given us should begin with the muscles, and continue through the nerves and the senses to the mind,--all by means of the will, which should gradually remove all personal contractions and obstructions to the wholesome working of the law of cause and effect. Help a child to use his own ability of gaining free muscles, nerves clear to take impressions through every sense, a mind open to recognize them, and a will alive with interest in and love for finding the best in each new sensation or truth, and what can he not reach in power of use to others and in his own growth. The consistency of creation is perfect. The law that applies to the guidance of the muscles works just as truly in training the senses and the mind. A new movement can be learned with facility in proportion to the power of dropping at the time all impressions of previous movements. Quickness and keenness of sense are gained only in proportion to the power of quieting the senses not in use, and erasing previous impressions upon the sense which is active at the time. True concentration of mind means the ability to drop every subject but that centred upon. Tell one man to concentrate his mind on a difficult problem until he has worked it out,--he will clinch his fists, tighten his throat, hold his teeth hard together, and contract nobody knows how many more muscles in his body, burning and wasting fuel in a hundred or more places where it should be saved. This is _not_ concentration. Concentration means the focussing of a force; and when the mathematical faculty of the brain alone should be at work, the force is not focussed if it is at the same time flying over all other parts of the body in useless strain of innumerable muscles. Tell another man, one who works naturally, to solve the same problem,--he will instinctively and at once "erase all previous impressions" in muscle and nerve, and with a quiet, earnest expression, not a face knotted with useless strain, will concentrate upon his work. The result, so far as the problem itself is concerned, may be the same in both cases; but the result upon the physique of the men who have undertaken the work will be vastly different. It will be insisted upon by many, and, strange as it may seem, by many who have a large share of good sense, that they can work better with this extra tension. "For," the explanation is, "it is natural to me." That may be, but it is not natural to Nature; and however difficult it may be at first to drop our own way and adopt Nature's, the proportionate gain is very great in the end. Normal exercise often stimulates the brain, and by promoting more vigorous circulation, and so greater physical activity all over the body, helps the brain to work more easily. Therefore some men can think better while walking. This is quite unlike the superfluous strain of nervous motion, which, however it may seem to help at the time, eventually and steadily lessens mental power instead of increasing it. The distinction between motion which wholesomely increases the brain activity and that which is simply unnecessary tension, is not difficult to discern when our eyes are well opened to superfluous effort. This misdirected force seems to be the secret of much of the overwork in schools, and the consequent physical break-down of school children, especially girls. It is not that they have too much to do, it is that they do not know how to study naturally, and with the real concentration which learns the lesson most quickly, most surely, and with the least amount of effort. They study a lesson with all the muscles of the body when only the brain is needed, with a running accompaniment of worry for fear it will not be learned. Girls can be, have been, trained out of worrying about their lessons. Nervous strain is often extreme in students, from lesson-worry alone; and indeed in many cases it is the worry that tires and brings illness, and not the study. Worry is brain tension. It is partly a vague, unformed sense that work is not being done in the best way which makes the pressure more than it need be; and instead of quietly studying to work to better advantage, the worrier allows herself to get more and more oppressed by her anxieties,--as we have seen a child grow cross over a snarl of twine which, with very little patience, might be easily unravelled, but in which, in the child's nervous annoyance, every knot is pulled tighter. Perhaps we ought hardly to expect as much from the worried student as from the child, because the ideas of how to study arc so vague that they seldom bring a realization of the fact that there might be an improvement in the way of studying. This possible improvement may be easily shown. I have taken a girl inclined to the mistaken way of working, asked her to lie on the floor where she could give up entirely to the force of gravity,--then after helping her to a certain amount of passivity, so that at least she looked quiet, have asked her to give me a list of her lessons. Before opening her mouth to answer, she moved in little nervous twitches, apparently every muscle in her body, from head to foot. I stopped her, took time to bring her again to a quiet state, and then repeated the question. Again the nervous movement began, but this time the child exclaimed, "Why, isn't it funny? I cannot think without moving all over!" Here was the Rubicon crossed. She had become alive to her own superfluous tension; and after that to train her not only to think without moving all over, but to answer questions easily and quietly and so with more expression, and then to study with greatly decreased effort, was a very pleasant process. Every boy and girl should have this training to a greater or less degree. It is a steady, regular process, and should be so taken. We have come through too many generations of misused force to get back into a natural use of our powers in any rapid way; it must come step by step, as a man is trained to use a complicated machine. It seems hardly fair to compare such training to the use of a machine,--it opens to us such extensive and unlimited power. We can only make the comparison with regard to the first process of development. A training for concentration of mind should begin with the muscles. First, learn to withdraw the will from the muscles entirely. Learn, next, to direct the will over the muscles of one arm while the rest of the body is perfectly free and relaxed,--first, by stretching the arm slowly and steadily, and then allowing it to relax; next, by clinching the fist and drawing the arm up with all the force possible until the elbow is entirely bent. There is not one person in ten, hardly one in a hundred, who can command his muscles to that slight extent. At first some one must lift the arm that should be free, and drop it several times while the muscles of the other arm are contracting; that will make the unnecessary tension evident. There are also ways by which the free arm can be tested without the help of a second person. The power of directing the will over various muscles that should be independent, without the so-called sympathetic contraction of other muscles, should be gained all over the body. This is the beginning of concentration in a true sense of the word. The necessity for returning to an absolute freedom of body before directing the will to any new part cannot be too often impressed upon the mind. Having once "sensed" a free body--so to speak--we are not masters until we gain the power to return to it at a moment's notice. In a second we can "erase previous impressions" for the time; and that is the foundation, the rock, upon which our house is built. Then follows the process of learning to think and to speak in freedom. First, as to useless muscular contractions. Watch children work their hands when reciting in class. Tell them to stop, and the poor things will, with great effort, hold their hands rigidly still, and suffer from the discomfort and strain of doing so. Help them to freedom of body, then to the sense that the working of their hands is not really needed, and they will learn to recite with a feeling of freedom which is better than they can understand. Sometimes a child must be put on the floor to learn to think quietly and directly, and to follow the same directions in this manner of answering. It would be better if this could always be done with thoughtful care and watching; but as this would be inappropriate with large classes, there are quieting and relaxing exercises to be practised sitting and standing, which will bring children to a normal freedom, and help them to drop muscular contractions which interfere with ease and control of thought and expression. Pictures can be described,--scenes from Shakespeare, for instance,--in the child's own words, while making quiet motions. Such exercise increases the sensitiveness to muscular contraction, and unnecessary muscular contraction, beside something to avoid in itself, obviously makes thought _indirect._ A child must think quietly, to express his thought quietly and directly. This exercise, of course, also cultivates the imagination. In all this work, as clear channels are opened for impression and expression, the faculties themselves naturally have a freer growth. The process of quiet thought and expression must be trained in all phases,--from the slow description of something seen or imagined or remembered, to the quick and correct answer required to an example in mental arithmetic, or any other rapid thinking. This, of course, means a growth in power of attention,--attention which is real concentration, not the strained attention habitual to most of us, and which being abnormal in itself causes abnormal reaction. And this natural attention is learned in the use of each separate sense,--to see, to hear, to taste, to smell, to touch with quick and exact impression and immediate expression, if required, and a in obedience to the natural law of the conservation of human energy. With the power of studying freely, comes that of dropping a lesson when it is once well learned, and finding it ready when needed for recitation or for any other use. The temptation to take our work into our play is very great, and often cannot be overcome until we have learned how to "erase all previous impressions." The concentration which enables us all through life to be intent upon the one thing we are doing, whether it is tennis or trigonometry, and drop what we have in hand at once and entirely at the right time, free to give out attention fully to the next duty or pleasure, is our saving health in mind and body. The trouble is we are afraid. We have no trust. A child is afraid to stop thinking of a lesson after it is learned,--afraid he will forget it. When he has once been persuaded to drop it, the surprise when he takes it up again, to find it more clearly impressed upon his mind, is delightful. One must trust to the digestion of a lesson, as to that of a good wholesome dinner. Worry and anxiety interfere with the one as much as with the other. If you can drop a muscle when you have ceased using it, that leads to the power of dropping a subject in mind; as the muscle is fresher for use when you need it, so the subject seems to have grown in you, and your grasp seems to be stronger when you recur to it. The law of rhythm must be carefully followed in this training for the use of the mind. Do not study too long at a time. It makes a natural reaction impossible. Arrange the work so that lessons as far unlike as possible may be studied in immediate succession. We help to the healthy reaction of one faculty, by exercising another that is quite different. This principle should be inculcated in classes, and for that purpose a regular programme of class work should be followed, calculated to bring about the best results in all branches of study. The first care should be to gain quiet, as through repose of mind and body we cultivate the power to "erase all previous impressions." In class, quiet, rhythmic breathing, with closed eyes, is most helpful for a beginning. The eyes must be closed and opened slowly and gently, not snapped together or apart; and fifty breaths, a little longer than they would naturally be, are enough to quiet a class. The breaths must be counted, to keep the mind from wandering, and the faces must be watched very carefully, for the expression often shows anything but quiet. For this reason it is necessary, in initiating a class, to begin with simple relaxing motions; later these motions will follow the breathing. Then follow exercises for directing the muscles. The force is directed into one arm with the rest of the body free, and so in various simple exercises the power of directing the will only to the muscles needed is cultivated. After the muscle-work, the pupils are asked to centre their minds for a minute on one subject,--the subject to be chosen by some member, with slight help to lead the choice to something that will be suggestive for a minute's thinking. At first it seems impossible to hold one subject in mind for a minute; but the power grows rapidly as we learn the natural way of concentrating, and instead of trying to hold on to our subject, allow the subject to hold us by refusing entrance to every other thought. In the latter case one suggestion follows another with an ease and pleasantness which reminds one of walking through new paths and seeing on every side something fresh and unexpected. Then the class is asked to think of a list of flowers, trees, countries, authors, painters, or whatever may be suggested, and see who can think of the greatest number in one minute. At first, the mind will trip and creak and hesitate over the work, but with practice the list comes steadily and easily. Then follow exercises for quickness and exactness of sight, then for hearing, and finally for the memory. All through this process, by constant help and suggestion, the pupils are brought to the natural concentration. With regard to the memory, especial care should be taken, for the harm done by a mechanical training of the memory can hardly be computed. Repose and the consequent freedom of body and mind lead to an opening of all the faculties for better use; if that is so, a teacher must be more than ever alive to lead pupils to the spirit of all they are to learn, and make the letter in every sense suggestive of the spirit. First, care should be taken to give something worth memorizing; secondly, ideas must be memorized before the words. A word is a symbol, and in so far as we have the habit of regarding it as such, will each word we hear be more and more suggestive to us. With this habit well cultivated, one sees more in a single glance at a poem than many could see in several readings. Yet the reader who sees the most may be unable to repeat the poem word for word. In cultivating the memory, the training should be first for the attention, then for the imagination and the power of suggestive thought; and from the opening of these faculties a true memory will grow. The mechanical power of repeating after once hearing so many words is a thing in itself to be dreaded. Let the pupil first see in mind a series of pictures as the poem or page is read, then describe them in his own words, and if the words of the author are well worth remembering the pupil should be led to them from the ideas. In the same way a series of interesting or helpful thoughts can be learned. Avoidance of mere mechanism cannot be too strongly insisted upon; for exercise for attaining a wholesome, natural guidance of mind and body cannot be successful unless it rouses in the mind an appreciation of the laws of Nature which we are bound to obey. A conscious experience of the results of such obedience is essential to growth. XV. ARTISTIC CONSIDERATIONS ALTHOUGH so much time and care are given to the various means of artistic expression, it is a singular fact that comparatively little attention is given to the use of the very first instrument which should be under command before any secondary instrument can be made perfectly expressive. An old artist who thanked his friend for admiring his pictures added: "If you could only see the pictures in my brain. But--" pointing to his brain and then to the ends of his fingers--"the channels from here to here are so long!" The very sad tone which we can hear in the wail of the painter expresses strongly the deficiencies of our age in all its artistic efforts. The channels are shorter just in proportion to their openness. If the way from the brain to the ends of the fingers is perfectly clear, the brain can guide the ends of the fingers to carry out truly its own aspirations, and the honest expression of the brain will lead always to higher ideals. But the channels cannot be free, and the artist will be bound so long as there is superfluous tension in any part of the body. So absolutely necessary, is it for the best artistic expression that the body should throughout be only a servant of the mind, that the more we think of it the more singular it seems that the training of the body to a childlike state is not regarded as essential, and taken as a matter of course, even as we take our regular nourishment. The artificial is tension in its many trying and disagreeable phases. Art is freedom, equilibrium, rhythm,--anything and everything that means wholesome life and growth toward all that is really the good, the true, and the beautiful. Art is immeasurably greater than we are. If we are free and quiet, the poem, the music, the picture will carry us, so that we shall be surprised at our own expression; and when we have finished, instead of being personally elated with conceited delight in what we have done, or exhausted with the superfluous effort used, we shall feel as if a strong wind had blown through us and cleared us for better work in the future. Every genius obeys the true principle. It is because a genius is involuntarily under the law of his art that he is pervaded by its power. But we who have only talent must learn the laws of genius, which are the laws of Nature, and by careful study and steady practice in shunning all personal obstructions to the laws, bring ourselves under their sway. Who would wish to play on a stringed instrument already vibrating with the touch of some one else, or even with the last touch we ourselves gave it. What noise, what discord, with no possible harmonies! So it is with our nerves and muscles. They cannot be used for artistic purposes to the height of their best powers while they are tense and vibrating to our own personal states or habits; so that the first thing is to free them absolutely, and not only keep them free by constant practice, but so train them that they will become perfectly free at a moment's notice, and ready to respond clearly to whatever the heart and the mind want to express. The finer the instrument, the lighter the touch it will vibrate to. Indeed it must have a light touch to respond clearly with musical harmonies; any other touch would blur. With a fine piano or a violin, whether the effect is to be _piano_ or _fortissimo,_ the touch should be only with the amount of force needed to give a clear vibration, and the ease with which a fortissimo effect is thus produced is astonishing. It is only those with the most delicate touch who can produce from a fine piano grand and powerful harmonies without a blur. The response in a human instrument to a really light touch is far more wonderful than that from any instrument made by man; and bodily effort blurs just as much more in proportion. The muscles are all so exquisitely balanced in their power for co-ordinate movement, that a muscle pulling one way is almost entirely freed from effort by the equalizing power of the antagonizing muscle; and at some rare moments when we have really found the equilibrium and can keep it, we seem to do no more than _think_ a movement or a tone or a combination of words, and they come with so slight a physical exertion that it seems like no effort at all. So far are we from our possibilities in this lightness of touch in the use of our bodies, that it is impossible now for most of us to touch as lightly as would, after training, bring the most powerful response. One of the best laws for artistic practice is, "Every day less effort, every day more power." As the art of acting is the only art where the whole body is used with no subordinate instrument, let us look at that with regard to the best results to be obtained by means of relief from superfluous tension. The effects of unnecessary effort are strongly felt in the exhaustion which follows the interpretation of a very exciting role. It is a law without exception, that if I absorb an emotion and allow my own nerves to be shaken by it, I fail to give it in all its expressive power to the audience; and not only do I fall far short in my artistic interpretation, but because of that very failure, come off the stage with just so much nervous force wasted. Certain as this law is, and infallible as are its effects, it is not only generally disbelieved, but it is seldom thought of at all. I must feet Juliet in my heart, understand her with my mind, and let her vibrate clearly _across_ my nerves, to the audience. The moment I let my nerves be shaken as Juliet's nerves were in reality, I am absorbing her myself, misusing nervous force, preparing to come off the stage thoroughly exhausted, and keeping her away from the audience. The present low state of the drama is largely due to this failure to recognize and practise a natural use of the nervous force. To work up an emotion, a most pernicious practice followed by young aspirants, means to work your nerves up to a state of mild or even severe hysteria. This morbid, inartistic, nervous excitement actually trains men and women to the loss of all emotional control, and no wonder that their nerves play the mischief with them, and that the atmosphere of the stage is kept in its present murkiness. The power to work the nerves up in the beginning finally carries them to the state where they must be more artificially urged by stimulants; and when the actor is off the stage he has no self-control at all. This all means misused and over-used force. In no schools is the general influence so absolutely morbid and unwholesome, as in most of the schools of elocution and acting. The methods by which the necessity for artificial stimulants can be overcome are so simple and so pleasant and so immediately effective, that it is worth taking the time and space to describe them briefly. Of course, to begin with, the body must be trained to perfect freedom in repose, and then to freedom in its use. A very simple way of practising is to take the most relaxed attitude possible, and then, without changing it, to recite _with all the expression that belongs to it_ some poem or selection from a play full of emotional power. You will become sensitive at once to any new tension, and must stop and drop it. At first, an hour's daily practice will be merely a beginning over and over,--the nervous tension will be so evident,--but the final reward is well worth working and waiting for. It is well to begin by simply inhaling through the nose, and exhaling quietly through the mouth several times; then inhale and exhale an exclamation in every form of feeling you can think of Let the exclamation come as easily and freely as the breath alone, without superfluous tension in any part of the body. So much freedom gained, inhale as before, and exhale brief expressive sentences,--beginning with very simple expressions, and taking sentences that express more and more feeling as your freedom is better established. This practice can be continued until you are able to recite the potion scene in Juliet, or any of Lady Macbeth's most powerful speeches, with an case and freedom which is surprising. This refers only to the voice; the practice which has been spoken of in a previous chapter brings the same effect in gesture. It will be readily seen that this power once gained, no actor would find it necessary to skip every other night, in consequence of the severe fatigue which follows the acting of an emotional role. Not only is the physical fatigue saved, but the power of expression, the power for intense acting, so far as it impresses the audience, is steadily increased. The inability of young persons to express an emotion which they feel and appreciate heartily, can be always overcome in this way. Relaxing frees the channels, and the channels being open the real poetic or dramatic feeling cannot be held back. The relief is as if one were let out of prison. Personal faults that come from self-consciousness and nervous tension may be often cured entirely without the necessity of drawing attention to them, simply by relaxing. Dramatic instinct is a delicate perception of, quick and keen sympathies for, and ability to express the various phases of human nature. Deep study and care are necessary for the best development of these faculties; but the nerves must be left free to be guided to the true expression,--neither allowed to vibrate to the ecstatic delight of the impressions, or in mistaken sympathy with them, but kept clear as conductors of all the heart can feel and the mind understand in the character or poem to be interpreted. This may sound cold. It is not; it is merely a process of relieving superfluous nervous tension in acting, by which obstructions are removed so that real sympathetic emotions can be stronger and fuller, and perceptions keener. Those who get no farther than emotional vibrations of the nerves in acting, know nothing whatever of the greatness or power of true dramatic instinct. There are three distinct schools of dramatic art,--one may be called dramatic hysteria, the second dramatic hypocrisy. The first means emotional excitement and nervous exhaustion; the second artificial simulation of a feeling. Dramatic sincerity is the third school, and the school that seems most truly artistic. What a wonderful training is that which might,--which ought to be given an actor to help him rise to the highest possibility of his art! A free body, exquisitely responsive to every command of the mind, is absolutely necessary; therefore there should be a perfect physical training. A quick and keen perception to appreciate noble thoughts, holding each idea distinctly, and knowing the relations of each idea to the others, must certainly be cultivated; for in acting, every idea, every word, should come clearly, each taking its own place in the thought expressed. Broad human sympathies, the imaginative power of identifying himself with all phases of human nature, if he has an ideal in his profession above the average, an actor cannot lack. This last is quite impossible without broad human charity; for "to observe truly you must sympathize with those you observe, and to sympathize with them you must love them, and to love them you must forget yourself." And all these requisites--the physical state, the understanding, and the large heart--seem to centre in the expression of a well-trained voice,--a voice in which there is the minimum of body and the maximum of soul. By training, I always mean a training into Nature. As I have said before, if art is Nature illuminated, we must find Nature before we can reach art. The trouble is that in acting, more than in any other art, the distinction between what is artistic and what is artificial is neither clearly understood nor appreciated; yet so marked is the difference when once we see it, that the artificial may well be called the hell of art, as art itself is heavenly. Sincerity and simplicity are the foundations of art. A feigning of either is often necessary to the artificial, but many times impossible. Although the external effect of this natural training is a great saving of nervous force in acting, the height of its power cannot be reached except through a simple aim, from the very heart, toward sincere artistic expression. So much for acting. It is a magnificent study, and should be more truly wholesome in its effects than any other art, because it deals with the entire body. But, alas I it seems now the most thoroughly morbid and unwholesome. All that has been said of acting will apply also to singing, especially to dramatic singing and study for opera; only with singing even more care should be taken. No singer realizes the necessity of a quiet, absolutely free body for the best expression of a high note, until having gained a certain physical freedom without singing, she takes a high note and is made sensitive to the superfluous tension all over the body, and later learns to reach the same note with the repose which is natural; then the contrast between the natural and the unnatural methods of singing becomes most evident,--and not with high notes alone, but with all notes, and all combinations of notes. I speak of the high note first, because that is an extreme; for with the majority of singers there is always more or less fear when a high note is coming lest it may not be reached easily and with all the clearness that belongs to it. This fear in itself is tension. For that reason one must learn to relax to a high note. A free body relieves the singer immensely from the mechanism of singing. So perfect is the unity of the body that a voice will not obey perfectly unless the body, as a whole, be free. Once secure in the freedom of voice and body to obey, the song can burst forth with all the musical feeling, and all the deep appreciation of the words of which the singer is capable. Now, unfortunately, it is not unusual in listening to a public singer, to feel keenly that he is entirely adsorbed in the mechanism of his art. If this freedom is so helpful, indeed so necessary, to reach one's highest power in singing, it is absolutely essential on the operatic stage. With it we should have less of the wooden motion so common to singers in opera. When one is free, physically free, the music seems to draw out the acting. With a great composer and an interpreter free to respond, the music and the body of the actor are one in their power of expressing the emotions. And the songs without words of the interludes so affect the spirit of the singer that, whether quiet or in motion, he seems, through being a living embodiment of the music, to impress the sense of seeing so that it increases the pleasure of hearing. I am aware that this standard is ideal; but it is not impossible to approach it,--to come at least much nearer to it than we do now, when the physical movements on the stage are such, that one wants to listen to most operas with closed eyes. We have considered artistic expression when the human body alone is the instrument. When the body is merely a means to the use of a secondary instrument, a primary training of the body itself is equally necessary. A pianist practises for hours to command his fingers and gain a touch which will bring the soul from his music, without in the least realizing that so long as he is keeping other muscles in his body tense, and allowing the nervous force to expend itself unnecessarily in other directions, there never will be clear and open channels from his brain to his fingers; and as he literally plays with his brain, and not with his fingers, free channels for a magnetic touch are indispensable. To watch a body _give_ to the rhythm of the music in playing is most fascinating. Although the motion is slight, the contrast between that and a pianist stiff and rigid with superfluous tension is, very marked, and the difference in touch when one relaxes to the music with free channels has been very clearly proved. Beside this, the freedom in mechanism which follows the exercises for arms and hands is strikingly noticeable. With the violin, the same physical equilibrium of motion must be gained; in fact it is equally necessary in all musical performance, as the perfect freedom of the body is always necessary before it can reach its highest power in the use of any secondary instrument. In painting, the freer a body is the more perfectly the mind can direct it. How often we can see clearly in our minds a straight line or a curve or a combination of both, but our hands will not obey the brain, and the picture fails. It does not by any means follow that with free bodies we can direct the hand at once to whatever the brain desires, but simply that by making the body free, and so a perfect servant of the mind, it can be brought to obey the mind in a much shorter time and more directly, and so become a truer channel for whatever the mind wishes to accomplish. In the highest art, whatever form it may take, the law of simplicity is perfectly illustrated. It would be tiresome to go through a list of the various forms of artistic expression; enough has been said to show the necessity for a free body, sensitive to respond to, quick to obey, and open to express the commands of its owner. XVI. TESTS ADOPTING the phrase of our forefathers, with all its force and brevity, we say, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." If the laws adduced in this book are Nature's laws, they should preserve us in health and strength. And so they do just so far as we truly and fully obey them. Then are students and teachers of these laws never ill, never run down, "nervous," or prostrated? Yes, they are sometimes ill, sometimes run down and overworked, and suffer the many evil effects ensuing; but the work which has produced these results is much greater and more laborious than would have been possible without the practice of the principles. At the same time their states of illness occur because they only partially obey the laws. In the degree which they obey they will be preserved from the effects of tensity, overstrung nerves, and generally worn-out bodies; and in sickness coming from other causes--mechanical, hereditary, etc.--again, according to their obedience, they will be held in all possible physical and mental peace, so that the disease may wither and drop like the decayed leaf of a plant. As well might we ask of the wisest clergyman in the land, Do his truths _never_ fail him? Is he _always_ held in harmony and nobility by their power? However great and good the man may be, this state of perfection will never be reached in this world. In exact parallel to the spiritual laws upon which all universal truth, of all religions, is founded, are the truths of this teaching of physical peace and equilibrium. As religion applies to all the needs of the soul, so this applies to all the needs of the body. As a man may be continually progressing in nobility of thought and action, and yet find himself under peculiar circumstances tried even to the stumbling point,--so may the student of bodily quiet and equilibrium, who appears even to a very careful observer to be in surprising possession of his forces, under a similar test stumble and fall into some form of the evil effects out of which he has had power to lead others. It is important that this parallelism should be recognized, that the unity of these truths may be finally accomplished in the living; therefore we repeat, Is this any more possible than that the full control of the soul should be at once possessed? Think of the marvellous construction of the human body,--the exquisite adjustment of its economy. Could a power of control sufficient to apply to its every detail be fully acquired at once, or even in a life-time? But when one does fall who has made himself even partially at one with Nature's way of living, the power of patient waiting for relief is very different. He separates himself from his ailments in a way which without the preparation would be to him unknown. He has, without drug or other external assistance, an anodyne always within himself which he can use at pleasure. He positively experiences that "underneath are the everlasting arms," and the power to experience this gives him much respite from pain. Pain is so often prolonged and accentuated _by dwelling in its memory, _living in a self-pity of the time when it shall come again! The patient who comes to his test with the bodily and mental repose already acquired, cuts off each day from the last, each hour from the last, one might almost say each breath from the last, so strong is his confidence in the renewal of forces possible to those who give themselves quite trustfully into Nature's hands. It is not that they refuse external aid or precaution. No; indeed the very quiet within makes them feel most keenly when it is orderly to rest and seek the advice of others. Also it makes them faithful in following every direction which will take them back into the rhythm of a healthful life. But while they do this they do not centre upon it. They take the precautions as a means and not as an end. They centre upon that which they have within themselves, and they know that that possible power being in a state of disorder and chaos no one or all of the outside measures are of any value. As patients prepared by the work return into normal life, the false exhilaration, which is a sure sign of another stumble, is seen and avoided. They have learned a serious lesson in economy, and they profit by it. Where they were free before, they become more so; and where they were not, they quietly set themselves toward constant gain. They work at lower pressure, steadily gaining in spreading the freedom and quiet deeper into their systems, thus lessening the danger of future falls. Let us state some of the causes for "breaking down," even while trying well to learn Nature's ways. First, a trust in one's own capacity for freedom and quiet. "I can do this, now that I know how to relax." When truly considered, the thing is out of reason, and we should say, "Because I know how to relax, I see that I must not do this." The case is the same with the gymnast who greatly overtaxes his muscle, having foolishly concluded that because he has had some training he can successfully meet the test. There is nothing so truly stupid as self-satisfaction; and these errors, with all others of the same nature, re fruits of our stupidity, and unless shunned surely lead us into trouble. Some natures, after practice, relax so easily that they are soon met by the dangers of overrelaxation. Let them remember that it is really equilibrium they are seeking, and by balancing their activity and their relaxation, and relaxing only as a means to an end,--the end of greater activity and use later,--they avoid any such ill effect. As the gymnast can mistake the purpose of his muscular development, putting it in the place of greater things, regarding it as an end instead of a means,--so can he who is training for a better use of his nervous force. In the latter case, the signs of this error are a slackened circulation, a loathing to activity, and various evanescent sensations of peace and satisfaction which bear no test, vanishing as soon as they are brought to the slightest trial. Unless you take up your work with fresh interest and renewed vigor each time after practice, you may know that all is not as it should be. To avoid all these mistakes, examine the work of each day and let the next improve upon it. If you are in great need of relaxing, take more exercise in the fresh air. If unable to exercise, get your balance by using slow and steady breaths, which push the blood vigorously over its path in the body, and give one, to a degree, the effect of exercise. Do not mistake the disorders which come at first, when turning away from an unnatural and wasteful life of contractions, for the effects of relaxing. Such disorders are no more caused by relaxing than are the disorders which beset a drunkard or an opium-eater, upon refusing to continue in the way of his error, primarily caused by the abandonment of his evil habit, even though the appearance is that he must return to it in order to re-establish his pseudo-equilibrium. One more cause of trouble, especially in working without a guide, is the habit of going through the form of the exercises without really doing them. The tests needed here have been spoken of before. Do not separate your way of practising from your way of living, but separate your life entirely from your practice while practising, trying outside of this time always to accomplish the agreement of the two,--that is, live the economy of force that you are practising. You can be just as gay, just as vivacious, but without the fatiguing after-effects. As you work to gain the ideal equilibrium, if your test comes, do not be staggered nor dismayed. Avoid its increase by at once giving careful consideration to the causes, and dropping them. Keep your life quietly to the form of its usual action, as far as you wisely can. If you have gained even a little appreciation of equilibrium, you will not easily mistake and overdo. When you find yourself becoming bound to the dismal thought of your test and its terrors, free yourself from it every time, by concentrating upon the weight of your body, or the slowness of the slowest breaths you can draw. Keep yourself truly free, and these feelings of discouragement and all other mental distortions will steadily lose power, until for you they are no more. If they last longer than you think they should, persist in every endeavor, knowing that the after-result, in increased capacity to help yourself and others, will be in exact ratio to your power of persistency without succumbing. The only way to keep truly free, and therefore ready to profit by the help Nature always has at hand, is to avoid thought of your form of illness as far as possible. The man with indigestion gives the stomach the first place in his mind; he is a mass of detailed and subdued activity, revolving about a monstrous stomach,--his brain, heart, lungs, and other organs, however orderly they may be, are of no consideration, and are slowly made the degraded slaves of himself and his stomach. The man who does not sleep, worships sleep until all life seems _sleep,_ and no life any importance without it. He fixes his mind on not sleeping, rushes for his watch with feverish intensity if a nap does come, to gloat over its brevity or duration, and then wonders that each night brings him no more sleep. There is nothing more contracting to mind and body than such idol-worship. Neither blood nor nervous fluid can flow as it should. Let us be sincere in our work, and having gained even one step toward a true equilibrium, hold fast to it, never minding how severely we are tempted. We see the work of quiet and economy, the lack of strain and of false purpose, in fine old Nature herself; let us constantly try to do our part to make the picture as evident, as clear and distinct, in God's greater creation,--Human Nature. XVII THE RATIONAL CARE OF SELF A WOMAN who had had some weeks of especially difficult work for mind and body, and who had finished it feeling fresh and well, when a friend expressed surprise at her freedom from fatigue, said, with a smiling face: "Oh! but I took great care of myself all through it: I always went to bed early, and rested when it was possible. I was careful to eat only nourishing food, and to have exercise and fresh air when I could get them. You see I knew that the work must be accomplished, and that if I were over-tired I could not do it well." The work, instead of fatiguing, had evidently refreshed her. If that same woman had insisted, as many have in similar cases, that she had no time to think of herself; or if such care had seemed to her selfish, her work could not have been done as well, she would have ended it tired and jaded, and would have declared to sympathizing friends that it was "impossible to do a work like that without being all tired out," and the sympathizing friends would have agreed and thought her a heroine. A well-known author, who had to support his wife and family while working for a start in his literary career, had a commercial position that occupied him every day from nine to five. He came home and dined at six, went to bed at seven, slept until three, when he got up, made himself a cup of coffee, and wrote until he breakfasted at eight. He got all the exercise he needed in walking to and from his outside work and was able to keep up this regular routine, with no loss of health, until he could support his family comfortably on what he earned from his pen. Then he returned to ordinary hours. A brain once roused will take a man much farther than his strength; if this man had come home tired and allowed himself to write far into the night, and then, after a short sleep, had gone to the indispensable earning of his bread and butter, the chances are that his intellectual power would have decreased, until both publishers and author would have felt quite certain that he had no power at all. The complacent words, "I cannot think of myself," or, "It is out of the question for me to care for myself," or any other of the various forms in which the same idea is expressed, come often from those who are steadily thinking of themselves, and, as a natural consequence, are so blinded that they cannot see the radical difference between unselfish care for one's self, as a means to an end, and the selfish care for one's self which has no other object in view. The wholesome care is necessary to the best of all good work. The morbid care means steady decay for body and soul. We should care for our bodies as a violinist cares for his instrument. It is the music that comes from his violin which he has in mind, and he is careful of his instrument because of its musical power. So we, with some sense of the possible power of a healthy body, should be careful to keep it fully supplied with fresh air; to keep it exercised and rested; to supply it with the quality and quantity of nourishment it needs; and to protect it from unnecessary exposure. When, through mistake or for any other reason, our bodies get out of order, instead of dwelling on our discomfort, we should take immediate steps to bring them back to a normal state. If we learned to do this as a matter of course, as we keep our hands clean, even though we had to be conscious of our bodies for a short time while we were gaining the power, the normal care would lead to a happy unconsciousness. Carlyle says, and very truly, that we are conscious of no part of our bodies until it is out of order, and it certainly follows that the habit of keeping our bodies in order would lead us eventually to a physical freedom which, since our childhood, few of us have known. In the same way we can take care of our minds with a wholesome spirit. We can see to it that they are exercised to apply themselves well, that they are properly diverted, and know how to change, easily, from one kind of work to another. We can be careful not to attempt to sleep directly after severe mental work, but first to refresh our minds by turning our attention into entirely different channels in the way of exercise or amusement. We must not allow our minds to be over-fatigued any more than our bodies, and we must learn how to keep them in a state of quiet readiness for whatever work or emergency may be before them. There is also a kind of moral care which is quite in line with the care of the mind and the body, and which is a very material aid to these,--a way of refusing to be irritable, of gaining and maintaining cheerfulness, kindness, and thoughtfulness for others. It is well known how much the health of any one part of us depends upon all the others. The theme of one of Howells's novels is the steady mental, moral, and physical degeneration of a man from eating a piece of cold mince-pie at midnight, and the sequence of steps by which he is led down is a very natural process. Indeed, how much irritability and unkindness might be traced to chronic indigestion, which originally must have come from some careless disobedience of simple physical laws. When the stomach is out of order, it needs more than its share of vital force to do its work, and necessarily robs the brain; but when it is in good condition this force may be used for mental work. Then again, when we are in a condition of mental strain or unhealthy concentration, this condition affects our circulation and consumes force that should properly be doing its work elsewhere, and in this way the normal balance of our bodies is disturbed. The physical and mental degeneration that follows upon moral wrong-doing is too well known to dwell upon. It is self-evident in conspicuous cases, and very real in cases that are too slight to attract general attention. We might almost say that little ways of wrongdoing often produce a worse degeneration, for they are more subtle in their effects, and more difficult to realize, and therefore to eradicate. The wise care for one's self is simply steering into the currents of law and order,--mentally, morally, and physically. When we are once established in that life and our forces are adjusted to its currents, then we can forget ourselves, but not before: and no one can find these currents of law and order and establish himself in them, unless he is working for some purpose beyond his own health. For a man may be out of order physically, mentally, or morally simply for the want of an aim in life beyond his own personal concerns. No care is to any purpose--indeed, it is injurious--unless we are determined to work for an end which is not only useful in itself, but is cultivating in us a living interest in accomplishment, and leading us on to more usefulness and more accomplishment. The physical, mental, and moral man are all three mutually interdependent, but all the care in the world for each and all of them can only lead to weakness instead of strength, unless they are all three united in a definite purpose of useful life for the benefit of others. Even a hobby re-acts upon itself and eats up the man who follows it, unless followed to some useful end. A man interested in a hobby for selfish purposes alone first refuses to look at anything outside of his hobby, and later turns his back on everything but his own idea of his hobby. The possible mental contraction which may follow, is almost unlimited, and such contraction affects the whole man. It is just as certain a law for an individual that what he gives out must have a definite relation to what he takes in, as it is for the best strength of a country that its imports and exports should be in proper balance. Indeed, this law is much more evident in the case of the individual, if we look only a little below the surface. A man can no more expect to live without giving out to others than a shoemaker can expect to earn his bread and butter by making shoes and leaving them piled in a closet. To be sure, there are many men who are well and happy, and yet, so far as appearances go, are living entirely for themselves, with not only no thought of giving, but a decided unwillingness to give. But their comfort and health are dependent on temporary conditions, and the external well-being they have acquired would vanish, if a serious demand were made upon their characters. Happy the man or woman who, through illness of body or soul, or through stress of circumstances, is aroused to appreciate the strengthening power of useful work, and develops a wholesome sense of the usefulness and necessity of a rational care of self! Try to convince a man that it is better on all accounts that he should keep his hands clean and he might answer, "Yes, I appreciate that; but I have never thought of my hands, and to keep them clean would make me conscious of them." Try to convince an unselfishly-selfish or selfishly-unselfish person that the right care for one's self means greater usefulness to others, and you will have a most difficult task. The man with dirty hands is quite right in his answer. To keep his hands clean would make him more conscious of them, but he does not see that, after he had acquired the habit of cleanliness, he would only be conscious of his hands when they were dirty, and that this consciousness could be at any time relieved by soap and water. The selfishly-unselfish person is right: it is most pernicious to care for one's self in a self-centred spirit; and if we cannot get a clear sense of wholesome care of self, it is better not to care at all. With a perception of the need for such wholesome care, would come a growing realization of the morbidness of all self-centred care, and a clearer, more definite standard of unselfishness. For the self-centred care takes away life, closes the sympathies, and makes useful service obnoxious to us; whereas the wholesome care, with useful service as an end, gives renewed life, an open sympathy, and growing power for further usefulness. We do not need to study deeply into the laws of health, but simply to obey those we know. This obedience will lead to our knowing more laws and knowing them better, and it will in time become a very simple matter to distinguish the right care from the wrong, and to get a living sense of how power increases with the one, and decreases with the other. XVIII. OUR RELATIONS WITH OTHERS EVERY one will admit that our relations to others should be quiet and clear, in order to give us freedom for our work. Indeed, to make these relations quiet and happy is the special work that some of us have to do. There are laws for health, laws for gaining and keeping normal nerves, laws for honest, kindly action toward others,--but the obedience to all these is a dead obedience, and does not lead to vigorous life, unless accompanied by a hearty love for work and play with those to whom we stand in natural relations,--both young and old. It is with life as it is with art, what we do must be done with love, or it will have no force. Without the living spark of love, we may have the appearance, but never the spirit, of useful work or quiet content. Stagnation is not peace, and there can be no life, and so no living peace, without happy relations with those about us. The more we realize the practical strength of the law which bids us love our neighbor as ourselves, and the more we act upon it, the more quickly we gain the habit of pleasant, patient friendliness, which sooner or later may beget the same friendliness in return. In this kind of friendly relation there is a savor which so surpasses the unhealthy snap of disagreement, that any one who truly finds it will soon feel the fallacy of the belief that "between friends there must be a little quarrelling, to give spice to friendship." To be willing that every one should be himself, and work out his salvation in his own way, seems to be the first principle of the working plan drawn from the law of loving your neighbor as yourself. If we drop all selfish resistance to the ways of others, however wrong or ignorant they may be, we are more free to help them to better ways when they turn to us for help. It is in pushing and being pushed that we feel most strain in all human relations. We wait willingly for the growth of plants, and do not complain, or try in abnormal ways to force them to do what is entirely contrary to the laws of nature; and if we paid more attention to the laws of human nature, we should not stunt the growth of children, relatives, and friends by resisting their efforts,--or their lack of effort,--or by trying to force them into ways that we think must be right for them because we are sure they are right for us. There is a selfish, restless way of pushing others "for their own good" and straining to "help" them, and there is a selfish, entirely thoughtless way of letting them alone; it is difficult to tell which is the worse, or which does more harm. The first is the attitude of unconscious hypocrisy; the second is that of selfish indifference. It is in letting alone, with a loving readiness to help, that we find strength and peace for ourselves in our relations with others. All great laws are illustrated most clearly in their simplest forms, and there is no better way to get a sense of really free and wholesome relations with others than from the relations of a mother with her baby. Even healthy reciprocity is there, in all the fulness of its best beginnings, and the results of wholesome, rational, maternal care are evident to the delighted observer in the joyous freedom with which the baby mind develops according to the laws of its own life. Heidi is a baby not yet a year old, and is left alone a large part of the day. Having no amusements imposed upon her, she has formed the habit of entertaining herself in her own way; she greets you with the most fascinating little gurgles, and laughs up at you when you stop and speak to her as if to say, "How do you do? I am having a _very_ happy time!" Five minutes' smiling and being smiled at by her gives a friend who stops to talk "a _very_ happy time" too. If you take her up for a little while, she stays quietly and looks at you, then at the trees or at something in the room, then at her own hand. If you say "ah," or "oo," she answers with a vowel too; so the conversation begins and goes on, with jolly little laughter every now and then, and when you give her a gentle kiss and put her down, her good-bye is a very contented one, and her "Thank you; please come again," is quite as plainly understood as if she had said it. You leave her, feeling that you have had a very happy visit with one of your best friends. Heidi is not officiously interfered with; she has the best of care. When she cries, every means is taken to find the cause of her trouble; and when the trouble is remedied, she stops. She is a dear little friend, and gives and takes, and grows. Another baby of the same age is Peggy. She is needlessly handled and caressed. She is kissed a hundred times a day with rough affection, which is mistaken for tenderness and love. She is "bounced" up and down and around; and the people about her, who believe themselves her friends and would be heartbroken if she were taken from them, talk at her, and not with her; they make her do "cunning little things," and then laugh and admire; they try over and over to force her to speak words when her little brain is not ready for the effort; and when she is awake, she is almost constantly surrounded by "loving" noise. Peggy is capable of being as good a friend as Heidi, but she is not allowed to be. Her family are so overwhelmed by their own feelings of love and admiration that they really only love themselves in her, for they give her not the slightest opportunity to be herself. The poor baby has sleepless, crying nights, and a little irritating illness hanging about her all the time; the doctor is called, and every one wonders why she should be ill; every one worries about her; but the caressing and noisy affection go on. Although much of the difference between these two babies could probably be accounted for by differences of heredity and temperament, it nevertheless remains true that it is very largely the result of a difference between wise and foolish parents. The real friendship which her mother gave to Heidi, and which resulted in her happy, placid ways and quickly responsive intelligence, meets with a like response in older children; and reciprocal friendship grows in strength and in pleasure both for child and older friend, as the child grows older. When a child is permitted the freedom of his own individuality, he can show the best in himself. When he is tempted to go wrong, he can be rationally guided in the right way in such a manner that he will accept the guidance as an act of friendship; and to that friendship he will feel bound in honor to be true, because he knows that we, his friends, are obeying the same laws. Of course all this comes to him from no conscious action of his own mind, but from an unconscious, contented recognition of the state of mind of his older friends. A poor woman, who lived in one room with her husband and two children, said once in a flash of new intelligence, "Now I see: the more I hollers, the more the children hollers; I am not going to holler any more." There are various grades of "hollering;" we "holler" often without a sound, and the child feels it, and "hollers" with many sounds which are distressing to him and to us. It is primarily true with babies and young children that "if you want to have a friend, you must be a friend." If we want courtesy and kindliness from a child, we must be courteous and kindly to him. Not in outside ways alone,--a child quickly feels the sham of mere superficial attention,--but sincerely, with a living interest. So should we truly, from our inmost selves, meet a child as if he were of our own age, and as if we were of his age. This sounds like a paradox, but indeed the one proposition is essential to the other. If we meet a child only as if he were of our age, our attitude tends to make him a little prig; if we meet him as if we were as young as he is, his need for maturer influences produces a lack of balance which we must both feet; but if we sincerely meet him as if the exchange of age were mutual, we find common ground and valuable companionship. This mutual understanding is the basis of all true friendship. Only read, instead of "age," "habit of mind," "character," "state," and we have the whole. It is aiming for reciprocal relations, from the best in us to the best in others, and from the best in others to the best in ourselves. It is the foundation of all that is strengthening, and quiet, and happy, in all human intercourse with young and old. To gain the friendly habit is more difficult with our contemporaries than it is with children. We have no right to guide older people unless they want to be guided, and they often want to guide us in ways we do not like at all. We have no right to try to change their opinions, unless they ask us for new light; and they often insist upon trying to change ours whether we ask them or not. There is sure to be selfish resistance in us when we complain of it in others, and we must acknowledge it and get free from it before we can give or find the most helpful sympathy. A healthy letting people alone, and a good wholesome scouring of ourselves, will, if it is to come at all, bring open friendliness. If it is not to come, then the healthy letting people alone should continue, for it is possible to live in the same house with a wilful and trying character, and live at peace, if he is lovingly let alone. If he is unlovingly let alone, the peace will be only on the outside, and must sooner or later give way to storms, or, what is much worse, harden into unforgiving selfishness. Our influence with others depends primarily upon what we are, and only secondarily upon what we think or upon what we say. It is so with babies and young children, and more so with our older friends. If we honestly feel that there is something for us to learn from another, however wrong or ignorant, in some ways, he may seem, we are not only more able to find and profit by the best in him, but also to give to him in return whatever he may be ready to receive. How little quiet comfort there is in families where useless resistance to one another is habitual! Members of one family often live along together with more or less appearance of good fellowship, but with an inner strain which gives them drawn faces and tired bodies, or else throws them back upon themselves in the enjoyment of their own selfishness; and sometimes there is not even the appearance of good fellowship, but a chronic resistance and disagreement, all for the want of a little sympathy and common sense. It is the sensitive people that suffer most, and their sensitiveness is deplored by the family and by themselves. If they could only know how great a gift their sensitiveness is! To appreciate this, it must be used to find and feel the good in others, not to make us abnormally alive to real or fancied slights. We must use it to enlarge our sympathies and help us understand the wrong-doing of others enough to point the way, if possible, to better things, not merely to criticise and blame them. Only in such ways can we learn to realize and use the delicate power of sensitiveness. Selfish sensitiveness is a blessing turned to a curse; but the more lovingly sensitive we become to the need of moral freedom in our friends, the Dearer we are led to our own. There are no human relations that do not illustrate the law which bids me "love my neighbor as myself;" especially clearly is it revealed,--in its breach of observance,--in the comparatively external relations of host and guest in ordinary social life, and in the happiness that can be given and received when it is readily obeyed. A lady once said, "I go into my bedroom and take note of all the conveniences I have there, and then look about my guest chamber to see that it is equally well and appropriately furnished." She succeeds in her object in the guest chamber if she is the kind of hostess to her guest that she would have her guest be to her; not that her guest's tastes are necessarily her own, but that she knows how to find out what they are and how to satisfy them. It is often difficult to love our neighbor as ourselves because we do not know how to love ourselves. We are selfish, or stupid, or aggressive with ourselves, or try too hard for what is right and good, instead of trusting with inner confidence and reverence to a power that is above us. Over-thoughtfulness for others, in little things or great, is oppressive, and as much an enemy to peace, as the lack of any thoughtfulness at all. It is like too much attention to the baby, and comes from the same kind of selfish affection, with--frequently the added motive of wanting to appear disinterested. One might give pages of examples showing the right and the wrong way in all the varied relations of life, but they would all show that the right way comes from obedience to the law of unselfishness. To obey this law we must respect our neighbor's rights as we respect our own; we must gain and keep the clear and quiet atmosphere that we like to find about our friend; we must shun everything that would interfere with a loving kindliness toward him, as we would have him show the same kindliness toward us. We must know that we and our friends are one, and that, unless a relation is a mutual benefit, it is no true relation at all. But, first of all, we must remember that a true appreciation of the wonderful power of this law comes only with daily, patient working, and waiting for the growth it brings. In so far as we are truly the friend of one, whether he be baby, child, or grown man,--shall we be truly the friend of all; in so far as we are truly the friend of all, shall we be truly the friend of every one; and, as we find the living peace of this principle, and a greater freedom from selfishness,--whether of affection or dislike,--those who truly belong to us will gravitate to our sides, and we shall gravitate to theirs. Each one of us will understand his own relation to the rest,--whether remote or close,--for in that quiet light it will be seen to rest on intelligible law, which only the fog and confusion of selfishness concealed. XIX. THE USE OF THE WILL IT is not generally recognized that the will can be trained, little by little, by as steadily normal a process as the training of a muscle, and that such training must be through regular daily exercise, and as slow in its effects as the training of a muscle is slow. Perhaps we are unconsciously following, as a race, the law that Froebel has given for the beginnings of individual education, which bids us lead from the "outer to the inner," from the known to the unknown. There is so much more to be done to make methods of muscular training perfect, that we have not yet come to appreciate the necessity for a systematic training of the will. Every individual, however, who recognizes the need of such training and works accordingly, is doing his part to hasten a more intelligent use of the will by humanity in general. When muscles are trained abnormally their development weakens, instead of strengthening, the whole system. Great muscular strength is often deceptive in the appearance of power that it gives; it often effectually hides, under a strong exterior, a process of degeneration which is going on within, and it is not uncommon for an athlete to die of heart disease or pulmonary consumption. This is exactly analogous to the frequently deceptive appearance of great strength of will. The will is trained abnormally when it is used only in the direction of personal desire, and the undermining effect upon the character in this case is worse than the weakening result upon the body in the case of abnormal muscular development. A person who is persistently strong in having his own way may be found inconsistently weak when he is thwarted in his own way. This weakness is seldom evident to the general public, because a man with a strong will to accomplish his own ends is quick to detect and hide any appearance of weakness, when he knows that it will interfere with whatever he means to do. The weakness, however, is none the less certainly there, and is often oppressively evident to those from whom he feels that he has nothing to gain. When the will is truly trained to its best strength, it is trained to obey; not to obey persons or arbitrary ideas, but to obey laws of life which are as fixed and true in their orderly power, as the natural laws which keep the suns and planets in their appointed spheres. There is no one who, after a little serious reflection, may not be quite certain of two or three fixed laws, and as we obey the laws we know, we find that we discover more. To obey truly we must use our wills to yield as well as to act. Often the greatest strength is gained through persistent yielding, for to yield entirely is the most difficult work a strong will can do, and it is doing the most difficult work that brings the greatest strength. To take a simple example: a small boy with a strong will is troubled with stammering. Every time he stammers it makes him angry, and he pushes and strains and exerts himself with so much effort to speak, that the stammering, in consequence, increases. If he were told to do something active and very painful, and to persist in it until his stammering were cured, he would set his teeth and go through the work like a soldier, so as to be free from the stammering in the shortest possible time. But when he is told that he must relax his body and stop pushing, in order to drop the resistance that causes his trouble, he fights against the idea with all his little might. It is all explained to him, and he understands that it is his only road to smooth speaking; but the inherited tendency to use his will only in resistance is so strong, that at first it seems impossible for him to use it in any other way. The fact that the will sometimes gains its greatest power by yielding seems such a paradox that it is not strange that it takes us long to realize it. Indeed, the only possible realization of it is through practice. The example of the little stammering boy is an illustration that applies to many other cases of the same need for giving up resistance. No matter how actively we need to use our wills, it is often, necessary to drop all self-willed resistance first, before we begin an action, if we want to succeed with the least possible effort and the best result. When we use the will forcibly to resist or to repress, we are simply straining our nerves and muscles, and are exerting ourselves in a way which must eventually be weakening, not only to them, but to the will itself. We are using the will normally when, without repression or unnecessary effort, we are directing the muscles and nerves in useful work. We want "training and not straining" as much for the will as for the body, and only in that way does the will get its strength. The world admires a man for the strength of his will if he can control the appearance of anger, whereas the only strength of will that is not spurious is that which controls the anger itself. We have had the habit for so long of living in appearances, that it is only by a slow process that we acquire a strong sense of their frailty and lack of genuine value. In order to bring the will, by training, out of the region of appearances into that of realities, we must learn to find the true causes of weakness and use our wills little by little to remove them. To remove the external effect does no permanent good and produces an apparent strength which only hides an increasing weakness. Imagine, for instance, a woman with an emotional, excitable nature who is suffering from jealousy; she does not call it jealousy, she calls it "sensitive nerves," and the doctors call it "hysteria." She has severe attacks of "sensitive nerves" or "hysteria" every time her jealousy is excited. It is not uncommon for such persistent emotional strain, with its effect upon the circulation and other functions of the body, to bring on organic disease. In such a case the love of admiration, and the strength of will resulting from that selfish desire, makes her show great fortitude, for which she receives much welcome praise. That is the effect she wants, and in the pose of a wonderful character she finds it easy to produce more fortitude--and so win more admiration. A will that is strong for the wrong, may--if taken in time--become equally strong for the right. Perversion is not, at first, through lack of will, but through the want of true perception to light the way to its intelligent use. A man sometimes appears to be without power of will who is only using a strong will in the wrong way, but if he continues in his wrong course long enough, his weakness becomes real. If a woman who begins her nervous degeneration by indulging herself in jealousy--which is really a gross emotion, however she may refine it in appearance--could be made to see the truth, she would, in many cases, be glad to use her will in the right direction, and would become in reality the beautiful character which her friends believe her to be. This is especially true because this moral and nervous perversion often attacks the finest natures. But when such perversion is allowed to continue, the sufferer's strength is always prominent in external dramatic effects, but disappears oppressively when she is brought face to face with realities. Many people who are nervous invalids, and many who are not, are constantly weakening themselves and making themselves suffer by using their wills vigorously in every way _but_ that which is necessary to their moral freedom: by bearing various unhappy effects with so-called stoicism, or fighting against them with their eyes tight shut to the real cause of their suffering, and so hiding an increasing weakness under an appearance of strength. A ludicrous and gross example of this misuse of the will may be observed in men or women who follow vigorously and ostentatiously paths of self-sacrifice which they have marked out for themselves, while overlooking entirely places where self-denial is not only needed for their better life, but where it would add greatly to the happiness and comfort of others. It is curious a such weakness is common with people who are apparently very intelligent; and parallel with this are cases of men who are remarkably strong in the line of their own immediate careers, and proportionately weak in every other phase of their lives. We very seldom find a soldier, or a man who is powerful in politics, who can answer in every principle and action of his life to Wordsworth's "Character of the Happy Warrior." Absurd as futile self-sacrifice seems, it is not less well balanced than the selfish fortitude of a jealous woman or than the apparent strength of a man who can only work forcibly for selfish ends. The wisest use of the will can only grow with the decrease of self-indulgence. "Nervous" women are very effective examples of the perversion of a strong will. There are women who will work themselves into an illness and seem hopelessly weak when they are not having their own way, who would feel quite able to give dinner parties at which they could be prominent in whatever role they might prefer, and would forget their supposed weakness with astonishing rapidity. When things do not go to please such women, they are weak and ill; when they stand out among their friends according to their own ideal of themselves and are sufficiently flattered, they enter into work which is far beyond their actual strength, and sooner or later break down only to be built up on another false basis. This strong will turned the wrong way is called "hysteria," or "neurasthenia," or "degeneracy." It may be one of these or all three, _in its effect,_ but the training of the will to overcome the cause, which is always to be found in some kind of selfishness, would cure the hysteric, give the neurasthenic more wholesome nerves, and start the degenerate on a course of regeneration. At times it would hardly surprise us to hear that a child with a stomach-ache crying for more candy was being treated for "hysteria" and studied as a "degenerate." Degenerate he certainly is, but only until he can be taught to deny himself candy when it is not good for him, with quiet and content. There are many petty self-indulgences which, if continually practised, can do great and irreparable harm in undermining the will. Every man or woman knows his own little weaknesses best, but that which leads to the greatest harm is the excuse, "It is my temperament; if I were not tardy, or irritable, or untidy,"--or whatever it may be,--"I would not be myself." Our temperament is given us as a servant, not as a master; and when we discover that an inherited perversion of temperament can be trained to its opposite good, and train it so, we do it not at a loss of individuality, but at a great gain. This excuse of "temperament" is often given as a reason for not yielding. The family will is dwelt upon with a pride which effectually prevents it from keeping its best strength, and blinds the members of the family to the weakness that is sure to come, sooner or later, as a result of the misuse of the inheritance of which they are so proud. If we train our wills to be passive or active, as the need may be, in little things, that prepares us for whatever great work may be before us, just as in the training of a muscle, the daily gentle exercise prepares it to lift a great weight. Whether in little ways or in great ways, it is stupid and useless to expect to gain real strength, unless we are working in obedience to the laws that govern its development. We have a faculty for distinguishing order from disorder and harmony from discord, which grows in delicacy and strength as we use it, and we can only use it through refusing disorder and choosing order. As our perception grows, we choose more wisely, and as we choose more wisely, our perception grows. But our perceptions must work in causes, not at all in effects, except as they lead us to a knowledge of causes. We must, above all, train our wills as a means of useful work. It is impossible to perfect ourselves for the sake of ourselves. It is a happy thing to have been taught the right use of the will as a child, but those of us who have not been so taught, can be our own fathers and our own mothers, and we must be content with a slow growth. We are like babies learning to walk. The baby tries day after day, and does not feel any strain, or wake in the morning with a distressing sense of "Oh! I must practise walking to-day. When shall I have finished learning?" He works away, time after time falling down and picking himself up, and some one day finally walks, without thinking about it any more. So we, in the training of our wills, need to work patiently day by day; if we fall, we must pick ourselves up and go on, and just as the laws of balance guide the baby, so the laws of life will carry us. When the baby has succeeded in walking, he is not elated at his new power, but uses it quietly and naturally to accomplish his ends. We cannot realize too strongly that any elation or personal pride on our part in a better use of the will, not only obstructs its growth, but is directly and immediately weakening. A quiet, intelligent use of the will is at the root of all character; and unselfish, well-balanced character, with the insight which it develops, will lead us to well-balanced nerves. SUMMING UP TO sum it all up, the nerves are conductors for impression and expression. As channels, they should be as free as Emerson's "smooth hollow tube," for transmission from without in, and from within out. Thus the impressions will be clear, and the expressions powerful. The perversions in the way of allowing to the nerves the clear conducting power which Nature would give them are, so far as the body is concerned, unnecessary fatigue and strain caused by not resting entirely when the times come for rest, and by working with more than the amount of force needed to accomplish our ends,--thus defying the natural laws of equilibrium and economy. Not only in the ways mentioned do we defy these most powerful laws, but, because of carelessness in nourishment and want of normal exercise out of doors, we make the establishment of such equilibrium impossible. The nerves can never be open channels while the body wants either proper nourishment, the stimulus that comes from open air exercise, perfect rest, or true economy of force in running the human machine. The physical training should be a steady shunning of personal perversions until the nervous system is in a natural state, and the muscles work in direct obedience to the will with the exquisite co-ordination which is natural to them. The same equilibrium must be found in the use of the mind. Rest must be complete when taken, and must balance the effort in work,--rest meaning often some form of recreation as well as the passive rest of steep. Economy of effort should be gained through normal concentration,--that is, the power of erasing all previous impressions and allowing a subject to hold and carry us, by dropping every thought or effort that interferes with it, in muscle, nerve, and mind. The nerves of the senses must be kept clear through this same ability to drop all previous impressions. First in importance, and running all through the previous training, is the use of the will, from which all these servants, mental and physical, receive their orders,--true or otherwise as the will itself obeys natural and spiritual laws in giving them. The perversions in the will to be shunned are misuse of muscles by want of economy in force and power of direction; abuse of the nervous system by unwisely dwelling upon pain and illness beyond the necessary care for the relief of either, or by allowing sham emotions, irritability, and all other causes of nervous distemper to overcome us. The remedy for this is to make a peaceful state possible through a normal training of the physique; to realize and follow a wholesome life in all its phases; to recognize daily more fully through obedience the great laws of life by which we must be governed, as certainly as an engineer must obey the laws of mechanics if he wants to build a bridge, that will stand, as certainly as a musician must obey the laws of harmony if he would write good music, as surely as a painter must obey the laws of perspective and of color if he wishes to illuminate Nature by means of his art. No matter what our work in life, whether scientific, artistic, or domestic, it is the same body through which the power is transmitted; and the same freedom in the conductors for impression and expression is needed, to whatever end the power may be moved, from the most simple action to the highest scientific or artistic attainment. The quality of power differs greatly; the results are widely different, but the laws of transmission are the same. So wonderful is the unity of life and its laws! THE END. 
4339	----	NERVES AND COMMON SENSE BY ANNIE PAYSON CALL _Author of "Power Through Repose," "As a Matter of Course," "The Freedom of Life," etc._ _NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION_ MANY of these articles first appeared in "The Ladies' Home Journal," and I am glad to take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Edward Bok--the editor--for his very helpful and suggestive titles. ANNIE PAYSON CALL. CONTENTS I. HABIT AND NERVOUS STRAIN II. HOW WOMEN CAN KEEP FROM BEING NERVOUS III. "YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW I AM RUSHED" IV. "WHY DOES MRS. SMITH GET ON MY NERVES?" V. THE TRYING MEMBER OF THE FAMILY VI. IRRITABLE HUSBANDS VII. QUIET _vs._ CHRONIC EXCITEMENT VIII. THE TIRED EMPHASIS IX. HOW TO BE ILL AND GET WELL X. IS PHYSICAL CULTURE GOOD FOR GIRLS? XI. WORKING RESTFULLY XII. IMAGINARY VACATIONS XIII. THE WOMAN AT THE NEXT DESK XIV. TELEPHONES AND TELEPHONING XV. DON'T TALK XVI. "WHY FUSS SO MUCH ABOUT WHAT I EAT?" XVII. TAKE CARE OF YOUR STOMACH XVIII. ABOUT FACES XIX. ABOUT VOICES XX. ABOUT FRIGHTS XXI. CONTRARINESS XXII. HOW TO SEW EASILY XXIII. DO NOT HURRY XXIV. THE CARE OF AN INVALID XXV. THE HABIT OF ILLNESS XXVI. WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES ME SO NERVOUS? XXVII. POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EFFORT XVIII. HUMAN DUST XXIX. PLAIN EVERY-DAY COMMON SENSE XXX. A SUMMING UP CHAPTER I _Habit and Nervous Strain_ PEOPLE form habits which cause nervous strain. When these habits have fixed themselves for long enough upon their victims, the nerves give way and severe depression or some other form of nervous prostration is the result. If such an illness turns the attention to its cause, and so starts the sufferer toward a radical change from habits which cause nervous strain to habits which bring nervous strength, then the illness can be the beginning of better and permanent health. If, however, there simply is an enforced rest, without any intelligent understanding of the trouble, the invalid gets "well" only to drag out a miserable existence or to get very ill again. Although any nervous suffering is worth while if it is the means of teaching us how to avoid nervous strain, it certainly is far preferable to avoid the strain without the extreme pain of a nervous breakdown. To point out many of these pernicious habits and to suggest a practical remedy for each and all of them is the aim of this book, and for that reason common examples in various phases of every-day life are used as illustrations. When there is no organic trouble there can be no doubt that _defects of character, inherited or acquired, are at the root of all nervous illness._ If this can once be generally recognized and acknowledged, especially by the sufferers themselves, we are in a fair way toward eliminating such illness entirely. The trouble is people suffer from mortification and an unwillingness to look their bad habits in the face. They have not learned that humiliation can be wholesome, sound, and healthy, and so they keep themselves in a mess of a fog because they will not face the shame necessary to get out of it. They would rather be ill and suffering, and believe themselves to have strong characters than to look the weakness of their characters in the face, own up to them like men, and come out into open fresh air with healthy nerves which will gain in strength as they live. Any intelligent man or woman who thinks a bit for himself can see the stupidity of this mistaken choice at a glance, and seeing it will act against it and thus do so much toward bringing light to all nervously prostrated humanity. We can talk about faith cure, Christian Science, mind cure, hypnotism, psychotherapeutics, or any other forms of nerve cure which at the very best can only give the man a gentle shunt toward the middle of the stream of life. Once assured of the truth, the man must hold himself in the clean wholesomeness of it by actively working for his own strength of character _from his own initiative._ There can be no other permanent cure. I say that strength of character must grow from our own initiative, and I should add that it must be from our own initiative that we come to recognize and actively believe that we are dependent upon a power not our own and our real strength comes from ceasing to be an obstruction to that power. The work of not interfering with our best health, moral and physical, means hard fighting and steady, never-ending vigilance. But it pays--it more than pays! And, it seems to me, this prevailing trouble of nervous strain which is so much with us now can be the means of guiding all men and women toward more solid health than has ever been known before. _But we must work for it!_ We must give up expecting to be cured. CHAPTER II _How Women can keep from being Nervous_ MANY people suffer unnecessarily from "nerves" just for the want of a little knowledge of how to adjust themselves in order that the nerves may get well. As an example, I have in mind a little woman who had been ill for eight years--eight of what might have been the best years of her life--all because neither she nor her family knew the straight road toward getting well. Now that she has found the path she has gained health wonderfully in six months, and promises to be better than ever before in her life. Let me tell you how she became ill and then I can explain her process of getting well again. One night she was overtired and could not get to sleep, and became very much annoyed at various noises that were about the house. Just after she had succeeded in stopping one noise she would go back to bed and hear several others. Finally, she was so worked up and nervously strained over the noises that her hearing became exaggerated, and she was troubled by noises that other people would not have even heard; so she managed to keep herself awake all night. The next day the strain of the overfatigue was, of course, very much increased, not only by the wakeful night, but also by the annoyance which had kept her awake. The family were distressed that she should not have slept all night; talked a great deal about it, and called in the doctor. The woman's strained nerves were on edge all day, so that her feelings were easily hurt, and her brothers and sisters became, as they thought, justly impatient at what they considered her silly babyishness. This, of course, roused her to more strain. The overcare and the feeble, unintelligent sympathy that she had from some members of her family kept her weak and self-centered, and the ignorant, selfish impatience with which the others treated her increased her nervous strain. After this there followed various other worries and a personal sense of annoyance--all of which made her more nervous. Then--the stomach and brain are so closely associated--her digestion began to cause her discomfort: a lump in her stomach, her food "would not digest," and various other symptoms, all of which mean strained and overwrought nerves, although they are more often attributed merely to a disordered stomach. She worried as to what she had better eat and what she had better not eat. If her stomach was tired and some simple food disagreed with her all the discomfort was attributed to the food, instead of to the real cause,--a tired stomach,--and the cause back of that,--strained nerves. The consequence was that one kind of wholesome food after another was cut off as being impossible for her to eat. Anything that this poor little invalid did not like about circumstances or people she felt ugly and cried over. Finally, the entire family were centered about her illness, either in overcare or annoyance. You see, she kept constantly repeating her brain impression of overfatigue: first annoyance because she stayed awake; then annoyance at noises; then excited distress that she should have stayed awake all night; then resistance and anger at other people who interfered with her. Over and over that brain impression of nervous illness was repeated by the woman herself and people about her until she seemed settled into it for the rest of her life. It was like expecting a sore to get well while it was constantly being rubbed and irritated. A woman might have the healthiest blood in the world, but if she cut herself and then rubbed and irritated the cut, and put salt in it, it would be impossible for it to heal. Now let me tell you how this little woman got well. The first thing she did was to take some very simple relaxing exercises while she was lying in bed. She raised her arms very slowly and as loosely as she could from the elbow and then her hands from the wrist, and stretched and relaxed her fingers steadily, then dropped her hand and forearm heavily, and felt it drop slowly at first, then quickly and quietly, with its own weight. She tried to shut her eyes like a baby going to sleep, and followed that with long, gentle, quiet breaths. These and other exercises gave her an impression of quiet relaxation so that she became more sensitive to superfluous tension. When she felt annoyed at noises she easily noticed that in response to the annoyance her whole body became tense and strained. After she had done her exercises and felt quiet and rested something would happen or some one would say something that went against the grain, and quick as a wink all the good of the exercises would be gone and she would be tight and strained again, and nervously irritated. Very soon she saw clearly that she must learn to drop the habit of physical strain if she wanted to get well; but she also learned what was more--far more--important than that: that _she must conquer the cause of the strain or she could never permanently drop it._ She saw that the cause was resentment and resistance to the noises--the circumstances, the people, and all the variety of things that had "made her nervous." Then she began her steady journey toward strong nerves and a wholesome, happy life. She began the process of changing her brain impressions. If she heard noises that annoyed her she would use her will to direct her attention toward dropping resistance to the noises, and in order to drop her mental resistance she gave her attention to loosening out the bodily contractions. Finally she became interested in the new process as in a series of deep and true experiments. Of course her living and intelligent interest enabled her to gain very much faster, for she not only enjoyed her growing freedom, but she also enjoyed seeing her experiments work. Nature always tends toward health, and if we stop interfering with her she will get us well. There is just this difference between the healing of a physical sore and the healing of strained and irritated nerves With the one our bodies are healed, and things go on in them about the same as before. With the other, every use of the will to free ourselves from the irritation and its cause not only enables us to get free from the nervous illness, but in addition brings us new nerve vigor. When nervous illness is met deeply enough and in the normal way, the result is that the nerves become stronger than ever before. Often the effect of nervous strain in women is constant talking. Talk--talk--talk, and mostly about themselves, their ailments, their worries, and the hindrances that are put in their way to prevent their getting well. This talking is not a relief, as people sometimes feel. It is a direct waste of vigor. But the waste would be greater if the talk were repressed. The only real help comes when the talker herself recognizes the strain of her talk and "loosens" into silence. People must find themselves out to get well--really well--from nervous suffering. The cause of nervous strain is so often in the character and in the way we meet circumstances and people that it seems essential to recognize our mistakes in that direction, and to face them squarely before we can do our part toward removing the causes of any nervous illness. Remember it is not circumstances that keep us ill. It is not people that cause our illness. It is not our environment that overcomes us. It is the way we face and deal with circumstances, with people, and with environment that keeps our nerves irritated or keeps them quiet and wholesome and steady. Let me tell the story of two men, both of whom were brought low by severe nervous breakdown. One complained of his environment, complained of circumstances, complained of people. Everything and every one was the cause of his suffering, except himself. The result was that he weakened his brain by the constant willful and enforced strain, so that what little health he regained was the result of Nature's steady and powerful tendency toward health, and in spite of the man himself. The other man--to give a practical instance--returned from a journey taken in order to regain the strength which he had lost from not knowing how to work. His business agent met him at the railroad station with a piece of very bad news. Instead of being frightened and resisting and contracting in every nerve of his body, he took it at once as an opportunity to drop resistance. He had learned to relax his body, and by doing relaxing and quieting exercises over and over he had given himself a brain impression of quiet and "let go" which he could recall at will. Instead of expressing distress at the bad news he used his will at once to drop resistance and relax; and, to the surprise of his informant, who had felt that he must break his bad news as easily as possible, he said "Anything else?" Yes, there was another piece of news about as bad as the first. "Go on," answered the man who had been sick with nerves; "tell me something else." And so he did, until he had told him five different things which were about as disagreeable and painful to hear as could have been. For every bit of news our friend used his will with decision to drop the resistance, which would, of course, at once arise in response to all that seemed to go against him. He had, of course, to work at intervals for long afterward to keep free from the resistance; but the habit is getting more and more established as life goes on with him, and the result is a brain clearer than ever before in his life, a power of nerve which is a surprise to every one about him, and a most successful business career. The success in business is, however, a minor matter. His brain would have cleared and his nerve strengthened just the same if what might be called the business luck had continued to go against him, as it seemed to do for the first few months after his recovery. That everything did go against him for some time was the greatest blessing he could have had. The way he met all the reverses increased his nerve power steadily and consistently. These two men are fair examples of two extremes. The first one did not know how to meet life. If he had had the opportunity to learn he might have done as well as the other. The second had worked and studied to help himself out of nerves, and had found the true secret of doing it. Some men, however, and, I regret to say, more women, have the weakening habit so strong upon them that they are unwilling to learn how to get well, even when they have the opportunity. It seems so strange to see people suffer intensely--and be unwilling to face and follow the only way that will lead them out of their torture. The trouble is we want our own way and nervous health, too, and with those who have once broken down nervously the only chance of permanent health is through learning to drop the strain of resistance when things do not go their way. This is proved over and over by the constant relapse into "nerves" which comes to those who have simply been healed over. Even with those who appear to have been well for some time, if they have not acquired the habit of dropping their mental and physical tension you can always detect an overcare for themselves which means dormant fear--or even active fear in the background. There are some wounds which the surgeons keep open, even though the process is most painful, because they know that to heal really they must heal from the inside. Healing over on the outside only means decay underneath, and eventual death. This is in most cases exactly synonymous with the healing of broken-down nerves. They must be healed in causes to be permanently cured. Sometimes the change that comes in the process is so great that it is like reversing an engine. If the little woman whom I mentioned first had practiced relaxing and quieting exercises every day for years, and had not used the quiet impression gained by the exercises to help her in dropping mental resistances, she never would have gained her health. Concentrating steadily on dropping the tension of the body is very radically helpful in dropping resistance from the mind, and the right idea is to do the exercises over and over until the impression of quiet openness is, by constant repetition, so strong with us that we can recall it at will whenever we need it. Finally, after repeated tests, we gain the habit of meeting the difficulties of life without strain--first in little ways, and then in larger ways. The most quieting, relaxing, and strengthening of all exercises for the nerves comes in deep and rhythmic breathing, and in voice exercises in connection with it. Nervous strain is more evident in a voice than in any other expressive part of man or woman. It sometimes seems as if all other relaxing exercises were mainly useful because of opening a way for us to breathe better. There is a pressure on every part of the body when we inhale, and a consequent reaction when we exhale, and the more passive the body is when we take our deep breaths the more freely and quietly the blood can circulate all the way through it, and, of course, all nervous and muscular contraction impairs circulation, and all impaired circulation emphasizes nervous contraction. To any one who is suffering from "nerves," in a lesser or greater degree, it could not fail to be of very great help to take half an hour in the morning, lie flat on the back, with the body as loose and heavy as it can be made, and then study taking gentle, quiet, and rhythmic breaths, long and short. Try to have the body so loose and open and responsive that it will open as you inhale and relax as you exhale, just as a rubber bag would. Of course, it will take time, but the refreshing quiet is sure to come if the practice is repeated regularly for a long enough time, and eventually we would no more miss it than we would go without our dinner. We must be careful after each deep, long breath to rest quietly and let our lungs do as they please. Be careful to begin the breaths delicately and gently, to inhale with the same gentleness with which we begin, and to make the change from inhaling to exhaling with the greatest delicacy possible--keeping the body loose. For the shorter breaths we can count three, or five, or ten to inhale, and the same number to exhale, until we have the rhythm established, and then go on breathing without counting, as if we were sound asleep. Always aim for gentleness and delicacy. If we have not half an hour to spare to lie quietly and breathe we can practice the breathing while we walk. It is wonderful how we detect strain and resistance in our breath, and the restfulness which comes when we breathe so gently that the breath seems to come and go without our volition brings new life with it. We must expect to gain slowly and be patient; we must remember that nerves always get well by ups and downs, and use our wills to make every down lead to a higher up. If we want the lasting benefit, or any real benefit at all when we get the brain impression of quiet freedom from these breathing exercises, we must insist upon recalling that impression every time a test comes, and face the circumstances, or the person, or the duty with a voluntary insistence upon a quiet, open brain, rather than a tense, resistant one. It will come hard at first, but we are sure to get there if we keep steadily at it, for it is really the Law of the Lord God Almighty that we are learning to obey, and this process of learning gives us steadily an enlarged appreciation of what trust in the Lord really is. There is no trust without obedience, and an intelligent obedience begets trust. The nerves touch the soul on one side and the body on the other, and we must work for freedom of soul and body in response to spiritual and physical law if we want to get sick nerves well. If we do not remember always a childlike attitude toward the Lord the best nerve training is only an easy way of being selfish. To sum it all up--if you want to learn to help yourself out of "nerves" learn to rest when you rest and to work without strain when you work; learn to loosen out of the muscular contractions which the nerves cause; learn to drop the mental resistances which cause the "nerves," and which take the form of anger, resentment, worry, anxiety, impatience, annoyance, or self-pity; eat only nourishing food, eat it slowly, and chew it well; breathe the freshest air you can, and breathe it deeply, gently, and rhythmically; take what healthy, vigorous exercise you find possible; do your daily work to the best of your ability; give your attention so entirely to the process of gaining health for the sake of your work and other people that you have no mind left with which to complain of being ill, and see that all this effort aims toward a more intelligent obedience to and trustfulness in the Power that gives us life. Wholesome, sustained concentration is in the very essence of healthy nerves. CHAPTER III _"You Have no Idea how I am Rushed"_ A WOMAN can feel rushed when she is sitting perfectly still and has really nothing whatever to do. A woman can feel at leisure when she is working diligently at something, with a hundred other things waiting to be done when the time comes. It is not all we have to do that gives us the rushed feeling; it is the way we do what is before us. It is the attitude we take toward our work. Now this rushed feeling in the brain and nerves is intensely oppressive. Many women, and men too, suffer from it keenly, and they suffer the more because they do not recognize that that feeling of rush is really entirely distinct from what they have to do; in truth it has nothing whatever to do with it. I have seen a woman suffer painfully with the sense of being pushed for time when she had only two things to do in the whole day, and those two things at most need not take more than an hour each. This same woman was always crying for rest. I never knew, before I saw her, that women could get just as abnormal in their efforts to rest as in their insistence upon overwork. This little lady never rested when she went to rest; she would lie on the bed for hours in a state of strain about resting that was enough to tire any ordinarily healthy woman. One friend used to tell her that she was an inebriate on resting. It is perhaps needless to say that she was a nervous invalid, and in the process of gaining her health she had to be set to work and kept at work. Many and many a time she has cried and begged for rest when it was not rest she needed at all: it was work. She has started off to some good, healthy work crying and sobbing at the cruelty that made her go, and has returned from the work as happy and healthy, apparently, as a little child. Then she could go to rest and rest to some purpose. She had been busy in wholesome action and the normal reaction came in her rest. As she grew more naturally interested in her work she rested less and less, and she rested better and better because she had something to rest from and something to rest for. Now she does only a normal amount of resting, but gets new life from every moment of rest she takes; before, all her rest only made her want more rest and kept her always in the strain of fatigue. And what might seem to many a very curious result is that as the abnormal desire for rest disappeared the rushed feeling disappeared, too. There is no one thing that American women need more than a healthy habit of rest, but it has got to be real rest, not strained nor self-indulgent rest. Another example of this effort at rest which is a sham and a strain is the woman who insists upon taking a certain time every day in which to rest. She insists upon doing everything quietly and with--as she thinks--a sense of leisure, and yet she keeps the whole household in a sense of turmoil and does not know it. She sits complacently in her pose of prompt action, quietness and rest, and has a tornado all about her. She is so deluded in her own idea of herself that she does not observe the tornado, and yet she has caused it. Everybody in her household is tired out with her demands, and she herself is ill, chronically ill. But she thinks she is at peace, and she is annoyed that others should be tired. If this woman could open and let out her own interior tornado, which she has kept frozen in there by her false attitude of restful quiet, she would be more ill for a time, but it might open her eyes to the true state of things and enable her to rest to some purpose and to allow her household to rest, too. It seems, at first thought, strange that in this country, when the right habit of rest is so greatly needed, that the strain of rest should have become in late years one of the greatest defects. On second thought, however, we see that it is a perfectly rational result. We have strained to work and strained to play and strained to live for so long that when the need for rest gets so imperative that we feel we must rest the habit of strain is so upon us that we strain to rest. And what does such "rest" amount to? What strength does it bring us? What enlightenment do we get from it? With the little lady of whom I first spoke rest was a steadily-weakening process. She was resting her body straight toward its grave. When a body rests and rests the circulation gets more and more sluggish until it breeds disease in the weakest organ, and then the physicians seem inclined to give their attention to the disease, and not to the cause of the abnormal strain which was behind the disease. Again, as we have seen, the abnormal, rushed feeling can exist just as painfully with too much and the wrong kind of rest as with too much work and the wrong way of working. We have been, as a nation, inclined toward "Americanitis" for so long now that children and children's children have inherited a sense of rush, and they suffer intensely from it with a perfectly clear understanding of the fact that they have nothing whatever to hurry about. This is quite as true of men as it is of women. In such cases the first care should be not to fasten this sense of rush on to anything; the second care should be to go to work to cure it, to relax out of that contraction--just as you would work to cure twitching St. Vitus's dance, or any other nervous habit. Many women will get up and dress in the morning as if they had to catch a train, and they will come in to breakfast as if it were a steamer for the other side of the world that they had to get, and no other steamer went for six months. They do not know that they are in a rush and a hurry, and they do not find it out until the strain has been on them for so long that they get nervously ill from it--and then they find themselves suffering from "that rushed feeling." Watch some women in an argument pushing, actually rushing, to prove themselves right; they will hardly let their opponent have an opportunity to speak, much less will they stop to consider what he says and see if by chance he may not be right and they wrong. The rushing habit is not by any means in the fact of doing many things. It asserts itself in our brains in talking, in writing, in thinking. How many of us, I wonder, have what might be called a quiet working brain? Most of us do not even know the standard of a brain that thinks and talks and lives quietly: a brain that never pushes and never rushes, or, if by any chance it is led into pushing or rushing, is so wholesomely sensitive that it drops the push or the rush as a bare hand would drop a red-hot coal. None of us can appreciate the weakening power of this strained habit of rush until we have, by the use of our own wills, directed our minds toward finding a normal habit of quiet, and yet I do not in the least exaggerate when I say that its weakening effect on the brain and nerves is frightful. And again I repeat, the rushed feeling has nothing whatever to do with the work before us. A woman can feel quite as rushed when she has nothing to do as when she is extremely busy. "But," some one says, "may I not feel pressed for time when I have more to do than I can possibly put into the time before me ?" Oh, yes, yes--you can feel normally pressed for time; and because of this pressure you can arrange in your mind what best to leave undone, and so relieve the pressure. If one thing seems as important to do as another you can make up your mind that of course you can only do what you have time for, and the remainder must go. You cannot do what you have time to do so well if you are worrying about what you have no time for. There need be no abnormal sense of rush about it. Just as Nature tends toward health, Nature tends toward rest--toward the right kind of rest; and if we have lost the true knack of resting we can just as surely find it as a sunflower can find the sun. It is not something artificial that we are trying to learn--it is something natural and alive, something that belongs to us, and our own best instinct will come to our aid in finding it if we will only first turn our attention toward finding our own best instinct. We must have something to rest from, and we must have something to rest for, if we want to find the real power of rest. Then we must learn to let go of our nerves and our muscles, to leave everything in our bodies open and passive so that our circulation can have its own best way. But we must have had some activity in order to have given our circulation a fair start before we can expect it to do its best when we are passive. Then, what is most important, we must learn to drop all effort of our minds if we want to know how to rest; and that is difficult. We can do it best by keeping our minds concentrated on something simple and quiet and wholesome. For instance, you feel tired and rushed and you can have half an hour in which to rest and get rid of the rush. Suppose you lie down on the bed and imagine yourself a turbulent lake after a storm. The storm is dying down, dying down, until by and by there is no wind, only little dashing waves that the wind has left. Then the waves quiet down steadily, more and more, until finally they are only ripples on the water. Then no ripples, but the water is as still as glass. The sun goes down. The sky glows. Twilight comes. One star appears, and green banks and trees and sky and stars are all reflected in the quiet mirror of the lake, and you are the lake, and you are quiet and refreshed and rested and ready to get up and go on with your work--to go on with it, too, better and more quietly than when you left it. Or, another way to quiet your mind and to let your imagination help you to a better rest is to float on the top of a turbulent sea and then to sink down, down, down until you get into the still water at the bottom of the sea. We all know that, no matter how furious the sea is on the surface, not far below the surface it is absolutely still. It is very restful to go down there in imagination. Whatever choice we may make to quiet our minds and our bodies, as soon as we begin to concentrate we must not be surprised if intruding thoughts are at first constantly crowding to get in. We must simply let them come. Let them come, and pay no attention to them. I knew of a woman who was nervously ill, and some organs of her body were weakened very much by the illness. She made-up her mind to rest herself well and she did so. Every day she would rest for three hours; she said to herself, "I will rest an hour on my left side, an hour on my right side, and an hour on my back." And she did that for days and days. When she lay on one side she had a very attractive tree to look at. When she lay on the other she had an interesting picture before her. When she lay on her back she had the sky and several trees to see through a window in front of the bed. She grew steadily better every week--she had something to rest for. She was resting to get well. If she had rested and complained of her illness I doubt if she would have been well to-day. She simply refused to take the unpleasant sensations into consideration except for the sake of resting out of them. When she was well enough to take a little active exercise she knew she could rest better and get well faster for that, and she insisted upon taking the exercise, although at first she had to do it with the greatest care. Now that this woman is well she knows how to rest and she knows how to work better than ever before. For normal rest we need the long sleep of night. For shorter rests which we may take during the day, often opportunity comes at most unexpected times and in most unexpected ways, and we must be ready to take advantage of it. We need also the habit of working restfully. This habit of course enables us to rest truly when we are only resting, and again the habit of resting normally helps us to work normally. A wise old lady said: "My dear, you cannot exaggerate the unimportance of things." She expressed even more, perhaps, than she knew. It is our habit of exaggerating the importance of things that keeps us hurried and rushed. It is our habit of exaggerating the importance of ourselves that makes us hold the strain of life so intensely. If we would be content to do one thing at a time, and concentrate on that one thing until it came time to do the next thing, it would astonish us to see how much we should accomplish. A healthy concentration is at the root of working restfully and of resting restfully, for a healthy concentration means dropping everything that interferes. I know there are women who read this article who will say; "Oh, yes, that is all very well for some women, but it does not apply in the least to a woman who has my responsibilities, or to a woman who has to work as I have to work." My answer to that is: "Dear lady, you are the very one to whom it does apply!" The more work we have to do, the harder our lives are, the more we need the best possible principles to lighten our work and to enlighten our lives. We are here in the world at school and we do not want to stay in the primary classes. The harder our lives are and the more we are handicapped the more truly we can learn to make every limitation an opportunity--and if we persistently do that through circumstances, no matter how severe, the nearer we are to getting our diploma. To gain our freedom from the rushed feeling, to find a quiet mind in place of an unquiet one, is worth working hard for through any number of difficulties. And think of the benefit such a quiet mind could be to other people! Especially if the quiet mind were the mind of a woman, for, at the present day, think what a contrast she would be to other women! When a woman's mind is turbulent it is the worst kind of turbulence. When it is quiet we can almost say it is the best kind of quiet, humanly speaking. CHAPTER IV _Why does Mrs. Smith get on My Nerves?_ IF you want to know the true answer to this question it is "because you are unwilling that Mrs. Smith should be herself." You want her to be just like you, or, if not just like you, you want her to be just as you would best like her. I have seen a woman so annoyed that she could not eat her supper because another woman ate sugar on baked beans. When this woman told me later what it was that had taken away her appetite she added: "And isn't it absurd? Why shouldn't Mrs. Smith eat sugar on baked beans? It does not hurt me. I do not have to taste the sugar on the beans; but is it such an odd thing to do. It seems to me such bad manners that I just get so mad I can't eat!" Now, could there be anything more absurd than that? To see a woman annoyed; to see her recognize that she was uselessly and foolishly annoyed, and yet to see that she makes not the slightest effort to get over her annoyance. It is like the woman who discovered that she spoke aloud in church, and was so surprised that she exclaimed: "Why, I spoke out loud in church!" and then, again surprised, she cried: "Why, I keep speaking aloud in church!"--and it did not occur to her to stop. My friend would have refused an invitation to supper, I truly believe, if she had known that Mrs. Smith would be there and her hostess would have baked beans. She was really a slave to Mrs. Smith's way of eating baked beans. "Well, I do not blame her," I hear some reader say; "it is entirely out of place to eat sugar on baked beans. Why shouldn't she be annoyed?" I answer: "Why should she be annoyed? Will her annoyance stop Mrs. Smith's eating sugar on baked beans? Will she in any way--selfish or otherwise--be the gainer for her annoyance? Furthermore, if it were the custom to eat sugar on baked beans, as it is the custom to put sugar in coffee, this woman would not have been annoyed at all. It was simply the fact of seeing Mrs. Smith digress from the ordinary course of life that annoyed her." It is the same thing that makes a horse shy. The horse does not say to himself, "There is a large carriage, moving with no horse to pull it, with nothing to push it, with--so far as I can see--no motive power at all. How weird that is! How frightful!"--and, with a quickly beating heart, jump aside and caper in scared excitement. A horse when he first sees an automobile gets an impression on his brain which is entirely out of his ordinary course of impressions--it is as if some one suddenly and unexpectedly struck him, and he shies and jumps. The horse is annoyed, but he does not know what it is that annoys him. Now, when a horse shies you drive him away from the automobile and quiet him down, and then, if you are a good trainer, you drive him back again right in front of that car or some other one, and you repeat the process until the automobile becomes an ordinary impression to him, and he is no longer afraid of it. There is, however, just this difference between a woman and a horse: the woman has her own free will behind her annoyance, and a horse has not. If my friend had asked Mrs. Smith to supper twice a week, and had served baked beans each time and herself passed her the sugar with careful courtesy, and if she had done it all deliberately for the sake of getting over her annoyance, she would probably have only increased it until the strain would have got on her nerves much more seriously than Mrs. Smith ever had. Not only that, but she would have found herself resisting other people's peculiarities more than ever before; I have seen people in nervous prostration from causes no more serious than that, on the surface. It is the habit of resistance and resentment back of the surface annoyance which is the serious cause of many a woman's attack of nerves. Every woman is a slave to every other woman who annoys her. She is tied to each separate woman who has got on her nerves by a wire which is pulling, pulling the nervous force right out of her. And it is not the other woman's fault--it is her own. The wire is pulling, whether or not we are seeing or thinking of the other woman, for, having once been annoyed by her, the contraction is right there in our brains. It is just so much deposited strain in our nervous systems which will stay there until we, of our own free wills, have yielded out of it. The horse was not resenting nor resisting the automobile; therefore the strain of his fright was at once removed when the automobile became an ordinary impression. A woman, when she gets a new impression that she does not like, resents and resists it with her will, and she has got to get in behind that resistance and drop it with her will before she is a free woman. To be sure, there are many disagreeable things that annoy for a time, and then, as the expression goes, we get hardened to them. But few of us know that this hardening is just so much packed resistance which is going to show itself later in some unpleasant form and make us ill in mind or body. We have got to yield, yield, yield out of every bit of resistance and resentment to other people if we want to be free. No reasoning about it is going to do us any good. No passing back and forth in front of it is going to free us. We must yield first and then we can see clearly and reason justly. We must yield first and then we can go back and forth in front of it, and it will only be a reminder to yield every time until the habit of yielding has become habitual and the strength of nerve and strength of character developed by means of the yielding have been established. Let me explain more fully what I mean by "yielding." Every annoyance, resistance, or feeling of resentment contracts us in some way physically; if we turn our attention toward dropping that physical contraction, with a real desire to get rid of the resistance behind it, we shall find that dropping the physical strain opens the way to drop the mental and moral strain, and when we have really dropped the strain we invariably find reason and justice and even generosity toward others waiting to come to us. There is one important thing to be looked out for in this normal process of freeing ourselves from other people. A young girl said once to her teacher: "I got mad the other day and I relaxed, and the more I relaxed the madder I got!" "Did you want to get over the anger?" asked the teacher. "No, I didn't," was the prompt and ready answer. Of course, as this child relaxed out of the tension of her anger, there was only more anger to take its place, and the more she relaxed the more free her nerves were to take the impression of the anger hoarded up in her; consequently it was as she said: the more she relaxed the "madder" she got. Later, this same little girl came to understand fully that she must have a real desire to get over her anger in order to have better feelings come up after she had dropped the contraction of the anger. I know of a woman who has been holding such steady hatred for certain other people that the strain of it has kept her ill. And it is all a matter of feeling: first, that these people have interfered with her welfare; second, that they differ from her in opinion. Every once in a while her hatred finds a vent and spends itself in tears and bitter words. Then, after the external relief of letting out her pent-up feeling, she closes up again and one would think from her voice and manner--if one did not look very deep in--that she had only kindliness for every one. But she stays nervously ill right along. How could she do otherwise with that strain in her? If she were constitutionally a strong woman this strain of hatred would have worn on her, though possibly not have made her really ill; but, being naturally sensitive and delicate, the strain has kept her an invalid altogether. "Mother, I can't stand Maria," one daughter says to her mother, and when inquiry is made the mother finds that what her daughter "cannot stand" is ways that differ from her own. Sometimes, however, they are very disagreeable ways which are exactly like the ways of the person who cannot stand them. If one person is imperious and demanding she will get especially annoyed at another person for being imperious and demanding, without a suspicion that she is objecting vehemently to a reflection of herself. There are two ways in which people get on our nerves. The first way lies in their difference from us in habit--in little things and in big things; their habits are not our habits. Their habits may be all right, and our habits may be all right, but they are "different." Why should we not be willing to have them different? Is there any reason for it except the very empty one that we consciously and unconsciously want every one else to be just like us, or to believe just as we do, or to behave just as we do? And what sense is there in that? "I cannot stand Mrs. So-and-so; she gets into a rocking-chair and rocks and rocks until I feel as if I should go crazy!" some one says. But why not let Mrs. So-and-so rock? It is her chair while she is in it, and her rocking. Why need it touch us at all? "But," I hear a hundred women say, "it gets on our nerves; how can we help its getting on our nerves?" The answer to that is: "Drop it off your nerves." I know many women who have tried it and who have succeeded, and who are now profiting by the relief. Sometimes the process to such freedom is a long one; sometimes it is a short one; but, either way, the very effort toward it brings nervous strength, as well as strength of character. Take the woman who rocks. Practically every time she rocks you should relax, actually and consciously relax your muscles and your nerves. The woman who rocks need not know you are relaxing; it all can be done from inside. Watch and you will find your muscles strained and tense with resistance to the rocking. Go to work practically to drop every bit of strain that you observe. As you drop the grossest strain it will make you more sensitive to the finer strain and you can drop that--and it is even possible that you may seek the woman who rocks, in order to practice on her and get free from the habit of resisting more quickly. This seems comical--almost ridiculous--to think of seeking an annoyance in order to get rid of it; but, after laughing at it first, look at the idea seriously, and you will see it is common sense. When you have learned to relax to the woman who rocks you have learned to relax to other similar annoyances. You have been working on a principle that applies generally. You have acquired a good habit which can never really fail you. If my friend had invited Mrs. Smith to supper and served baked beans for the sake of relaxing out of the tension of her resistance to the sugar, then she could have conquered that resistance. But to try to conquer an annoyance like that without knowing how to yield in some way would be, so far as I know, an impossibility. Of course, we would prefer that our friends should not have any disagreeable, ill-bred, personal ways, but we can go through the world without resisting them, and there is no chance of helping any one out of them through our own resistances. On the other hand a way may open by which the woman's attention is called to the very unhealthy habit of rocking--or eating sugar on beans--if we are ready, without resistance, to point it out to her. And if no way opens we have at least put ourselves out of bondage to her. The second way in which other people get on our nerves is more serious and more difficult. Mrs. So-and-so may be doing very wrong--really very wrong; or some one who is nearly related to us may be doing very wrong--and it may be our most earnest and sincere desire to set him right. In such cases the strain is more intense because we really have right on our side, in our opinion, if not in our attitude toward the other person. Then, to recognize that if some one else chooses to do wrong it is none of our business is one of the most difficult things to do--for a woman, especially. It is more difficult to recognize practically that, in so far as it may be our business, we can best put ourselves in a position to enable the other person to see his own mistake by dropping all personal resistance to it and all personal strain about it. Even a mother with her son can help him to be a man much more truly if she stops worrying about and resisting his unmanliness. "But," I hear some one say, "that all seems like such cold indifference." Not at all--not at all. Such freedom from strain can be found only through a more actively affectionate interest in others. The more we truly love another, the more thoroughly we respect that other's individuality. The other so-called love is only love of possession and love of having our own way. It is not really love at all; it is sugar-coated tyranny. And when one sugar-coated tyrant' antagonizes herself against another sugar-coated tyrant the strain is severe indeed, and nothing good is ever accomplished. The Roman infantry fought with a fixed amount of space about each soldier, and found that the greater freedom of individual activity enabled them to fight better and to conquer their foes. This symbolizes happily the process of getting people off our nerves. Let us give each one a wide margin and thus preserve a good margin for ourselves. We rub up against other people's nerves by getting too near to them--not too near to their real selves, but too near, so to speak, to their nervous systems. There have been quarrels between good people just because one phase of nervous irritability roused another. Let things in other people go until you have entirely dropped your strain about them--then it will be clear enough what to do and what to say, or what not to do and what not to say. People in the world cannot get on our nerves unless we allow them to do so. CHAPTER V _The Trying Member of the Family_ "TOMMY, don't do that. You know it annoys your grandfather." "Well, why should he be annoyed? I am doing nothing wrong." "I know that, and it hurts me to ask you, but you know how he will feel if he sees you doing it, and you know that troubles me." Reluctantly and sullenly Tommy stopped. Tommy's mother looked strained and worried and discontented. Tommy had an expression on his face akin to that of a smouldering volcano. If any one had taken a good look at the grandfather it would have been very clear that Tommy was his own grandson, and that the old man and the child were acting and reacting upon one another in a way that was harmful to both; although the injury was, of course, worse to the child, for the grandfather had toughened. The grandfather thought he loved his little grandson, and the grandson, at times, would not have acknowledged that he did not love his grandfather. At other times, with childish frankness, he said he "hated him." But the worst of this situation was that although the mother loved her son, and loved her father, and sincerely thought that she was the family peacemaker, she was all the time fanning the antagonism. Here is a contrast to this little story An old uncle came into the family of his nephew to live, late in life, and with a record behind him of whims and crotchets in the extreme. The father and mother talked it over. Uncle James must come. He had lost all his money. There was no one else to look after him and they could not afford to support him elsewhere where he would be comfortable. They took it into account, without offence, that it was probably just as much a cross to Uncle James to come as it was to them to have him. They took no pose of magnanimity such as: "Of course we must be good and offer Uncle James a home," and "How good we are to do it!" Uncle James was to come because it was the only thing for him to do. The necessity was to be faced and fought and conquered, and they had three strong, self-willed little children to face it with them. They had sense enough to see that if faced rightly it would do only good to the children, but if made a burden to groan over it would make their home a "hornets' nest." They agreed to say nothing to the children about Uncle James's peculiarities, but to await developments. Children are always delighted at a visit from a relative, and they welcomed their great-uncle with pleasure. It was not three days, however, before every one of the three was crying with dislike and hurt feelings and anger. Then was the time to begin the campaign. The mother, with a happy face, called the three children to her, and said "Now listen, children. Do you suppose I like Uncle James's irritability any better than you do?" "No," came in a chorus; "we don't see how you stand it, Mother." Then she said: "Now look here, boys, do you suppose that Uncle James likes his snapping any better than we do?" "If he does not like it why does he do it?" answered the boys. "I cannot tell you that; that is his business and not yours or mine," said the mother; "but I can prove to you that he does not like it. Bobby, do you remember how you snapped at your brother yesterday, when he accidentally knocked your house over?" "Yes!" replied Bobby. "Did you feel comfortable after it?" "You bet I didn't," was the quick reply. "Well," answered the mother, "you boys stop and think just how disagreeable it is inside of you when you snap, and then think how it would be if you had to feel like that as much as Uncle James does." "By golly, but that would be bad," said the twelve-year-old. "Now, boys," went on the mother, "you want to relieve Uncle James's disagreeable feelings all you can, and don't you see that you increase them when you do things to annoy him? His snappish feelings are just like a sore that is smarting and aching all the time, and when you get in their way it hurts as if you rubbed the sore. Keep out of his way when you can, and when you can't and he snaps at you, say: 'I beg your pardon, sir,' like gentlemen, and stop doing what annoys him; or get out of his way as soon as you can." Uncle James never became less snappish. But the upright, manly courtesy of those boys toward him was like fresh air on a mountain, especially because it had become a habit and was all as a matter of course. The father and mother realized that Uncle James had, unconsciously, made men of their boys as nothing else in the world could have done, and had trained them so that they would grow up tolerant and courteous toward all human peculiarities. Many times a gracious courtesy toward the "trying member" will discover good and helpful qualities that we had not guessed before. Sometimes after a little honest effort we find that it is ourselves who have been the trying members, and that the other one has been the member tried. Often it is from two members of the family that the trying element comes. Two sisters may clash, and they will generally clash because they are unlike. Suppose one sister moves and lives in big swings, and the other in minute details. Of course when these extreme tendencies are accented in each the selfish temptation is for the larger mind to lapse into carelessness of details, and for the smaller mind to shrink into pettiness, and as this process continues the sisters get more and more intolerant of each other, and farther and farther apart. But if the sister who moves in the big swings will learn from the other to be careful in details, and if the smaller mind will allow itself to be enlarged by learning from the habitually broader view of the other, each will grow in proportion, and two women who began life as enemies in temperament can end it as happy friends. There are similar cases of brothers who clash, but they are not so evident, for when men do not agree they leave one another alone. Women do not seem to be able to do that. It is good to leave one another alone when there is the clashing tendency, but it is better to conquer the clashing and learn to agree. So long as the normal course of my life leads me to live with some one who rubs me the wrong way I am not free until I have learned to live with that some one in quiet content. I never gain my freedom by running away. The bondage is in me always, so long as the other person's presence can rouse it. The only way is to fight it out inside of one's self. When we can get the co-operation of the other so much the better. But no one's co-operation is necessary for us to find our own freedom, and with it an intelligent, tolerant kindliness. "Mother, you take that seat. No, not that one, Mother--the sun comes in that window. Children, move aside and let your grandmother get to her seat." The young woman was very much in earnest in seeing that her mother had a comfortable seat, that she had not the discomfort of the hot sun, that the children made way for her so that she could move into her seat comfortably. All her words were thoughtful and courteous, but the spirit and the tone of her words were quite the reverse of courteous. If some listener with his eyes shut had heard the tone without understanding the words he might easily have thought that the woman was talking to a little dog. Poor "Mother" trotted into her seat with the air of a little dog who was so well trained that he did at once what his mistress ordered. It was very evident that "Mother's" will had been squeezed out of her and trampled upon for years by her dutiful daughter, who looked out always that "Mother" had the best, without the first scrap of respect for "Mother's" free, human soul. The grandchildren took the spirit of their mother's words rather than the words themselves, and treated their grandmother as if she were a sort of traveling idiot tagged on to them, to whom they had to be decently respectful whenever their mother's eye was upon them, and whom they ignored entirely when their mother looked the other way. It so happened that I was sitting next to this particular mother who had been poked into a comfortable seat by her careful daughter. And, after a number of other suggestions had been poked at her with a view to adding to her comfort, she turned to me and in a quaint, confidential way, with the gentle voice of a habitual martyr, and at the same time a twinkle of humor in her eye, she said "They think, you know, I don't know anything." And after that we had a little talk about matters of the day which proved to me that "Mother" had a mind broader and certainly more quiet than her daughter. I studied the daughter with interest after knowing "Mother" better, and her habitual strain of voice and manner were pathetic. By making a care of her mother instead of a companion, she was not only guilty of disrespect to a soul which, however weak it may have been in allowing itself to be directed in all minor matters, had its own firm principles which were not overridden nor even disturbed by the daughter's dominance. If the daughter had only dropped her strain of care and her habit of "bossing" she would have found a true companion in her mother, and would have been a healthier and happier woman herself. In pleasant contrast to this is the story of a family which had an old father who had lost his mind entirely, and had grown decrepit and childish in the extreme. The sons and daughters tended him like a baby and loved him with gentle, tender respect. There was no embarrassment for his loss of mind, no thought of being distressed or pained by it, and because his children took their father's state so quietly and without shame, every guest who came took it in the same way, and there was no thought of keeping the father out of sight. He sat in the living-room in his comfortable chair, and always one child or another was sitting right beside him with a smiling face. Instead of being a trying member of the family, as happens in so many cases, this old father seemed to bring content and rest to his children through their loving care for him. Very often--I might almost say always--the trying member of the family is trying only because we make her so by our attitude toward her, let her be grandmother, mother, or maiden aunt. Even the proverbial mother-in-law grows less difficult as our attitude toward her is relieved of the strain of detesting everything she does, and expecting to detest everything that she is going to do. With every trying friend we have, if we yield to him in all minor matters we find the settling of essential questions wonderfully less difficult. A son had a temper and the girl he married had a temper. The mother loved her son with the selfish love with which so many mothers burden their children, and thought that he alone of all men had a right to lose his temper. Consequently she excused her son and blamed her daughter-in-law. If there were a mild cyclone roused between the two married people the son would turn to his mother to hear what a martyr he was and what misfortune he had to bear in having been so easily mistaken in the woman he married. Thus the mother-in-law, who felt that she was protecting her poor son, was really breeding dissension between two people who could have been the best possible friends all their lives. The young wife very soon became ashamed of her temper and worked until she conquered it, but it was not until her mother-in-law had been out of this world for years that her husband discovered what he had lost in turning away from his wife's friendship, and it was only by the happy accident of severe illness that he ever discovered his mistake at all, and gained freedom from the bondage of his own temper enough to appreciate his wife. If, however, the wife had yielded in the beginning not only to her husband's bad temper but also to the antagonism of her mother-in-law, which was, of course, annoying in many petty ways, she might have gained her husband's friendship, and it is possible that she might, moreover, have gained the friendship of her mother-in-law. The best rule with regard to all trying members of the family is to yield to them always in non-essentials; and when you disagree in essentials stick to the principle which you believe to be right, but stick to it without resistance. Believe your way, but make yourself willing that the trying member should believe her way. Make an opportunity of what appears to be a limitation, and, believe me, your trying member can become a blessing to you. I go further than that--I truly believe that to make the best of life every family should have a trying member. When we have no trying member of our family, and life goes along smoothly, as a matter of course, the harmony is very liable to be spurious, and a sudden test will all at once knock such a family into discord, much to the surprise of every member. When we go through discord to harmony, and once get into step, we are very likely to keep in step: Be willing, then, make yourself willing, that the trying member should be in the way. Hope that she will stay in your family until you have succeeded in dropping not only all resistance to her being there, but every resistance to her various ways in detail. Bring her annoying ways up to your mind voluntarily when you are away from her. If you do that you will find all the resistances come with them and you can relax out of the strain then and there. You will find that when you get home or come down to breakfast in the morning (for many resistances are voluntarily thrown off in the night) you will have a pleasanter feeling toward the trying member, and it comes so spontaneously that you will be surprised yourself at the absence of the strain of resistance in you. Believe me when I say this: the yielding in the non-essentials, singularly enough, gives one strength to refuse to yield in principles. But we must always remember that if we want to find real peace, while we refuse to yield in our own principles so long as we believe them to be true, we must be entirely willing that others should differ from us in belief. CHAPTER VI _Irritable Husbands_ SUPPOSE your husband got impatient and annoyed with you because you did not seem to enter heartily into the interests of his work and sympathize with its cares and responsibilities and soothe him out of the nervous harassments. Would you not perhaps feel a little sore that he seemed to expect all from you and to give nothing in return? I know how many women will say that is all very well, but the husband and father should feel as much interest in the home and the children as the wife and mother does. That is, of course, true up to a certain point, always in general, and when his help is really necessary in particular. But a man cannot enter into the details of his wife's duties at home any more than a woman can enter into the details of her husband's duties at his office. Then, again, my readers may say: "But a woman's nervous system is more sensitive than a man's; she needs help and consolation. She needs to have some one on whom she can lean." Now the answer to that will probably be surprising, but an intelligent understanding and comprehension of it would make a very radical difference in the lives of many men and women who have agreed to live together for life--for better and for worse. Now the truth is man's nervous system is quite as sensitive as a woman's, but the woman's temptation to emotion makes her appear more sensitive, and her failure to control her emotions ultimately increases the sensitiveness of her nerves so that they are more abnormal than her husband's. Even that is not always true The other day a woman sat in tears and distress telling of the hardness of heart, the restlessness, the irritability, the thoughtlessness, the unkindness of her husband. Her face was drawn with suffering. She insisted that she was not complaining, that it was her deep and tender love for her husband that made her suffer so. "But it is killing me, it is killing me," she said, and one who saw her could well believe it. And if the distress and the great strain upon her nerves had kept on it certainly would have made her ill, if not have actually ended her life with a nervous collapse. The friend in whom she confided sat quietly and heard her through. She let her pour herself out to the very finish until she stopped because there was nothing more to say. Then, by means of a series of gentle, well-adapted questions, she drew from the wife a recognition--for the first time--of the fact that she really did nothing whatever for her husband and expected him to do everything for her. Perhaps she put on a pretty dress for him in order to look attractive when he came home, but if he did not notice how well she looked, and was irritable about something in the house, she would be dissolved in tears because she had not proved attractive and pleased him. Maybe she had tried to have a dinner that he especially liked; then if he did not notice the food, and seemed distracted about something that was worrying him, she would again be dissolved in tears because he "appreciated nothing that she tried to do for him." Now it is perfectly true that this husband was irritable and brutal; he had no more consideration for his wife than he had for any one else. But his wife was doing all in her power to fan his irritability into flame and to increase his brutality. She was attitudinizing in her own mind as a martyr. She was demanding kindness and attention and sympathy from her husband, and because she demanded it she never got it. A woman can demand without demanding imperiously. There is more selfish demanding in a woman's emotional suffering because her husband does not do this or that or the other for her sake than there is in a tornado of man's irritability or anger. You see, a woman's demanding spirit is covered with the mush of her emotions. A man's demanding spirit stands out in all its naked ugliness. One is just as bad as the other. One is just as repulsive as the other. It is a radical, practical impossibility to bring loving-kindness out of any one by demanding it. Loving-kindness, thoughtfulness, and consideration have got to be born spontaneously in a man's own mind to be anything at all, and no amount of demanding on the part of his wife can force it. When this little lady of whom I have been writing found that she had been demanding from her husband what he really ought to have given her as a matter of course, and that she had used up all her strength in suffering because he did not give it, and had used none of her strength in the effort to be patient and quiet in waiting for him to come to his senses, she went home and began a new life. She was a plucky little woman and very intelligent when once her eyes were opened. She recognized the fact that her suffering was resistance to her husband's irritable selfishness, and she stopped resisting. It was a long and hard struggle of days, weeks, and months, but it brought a very happy reward. When a man is irritable and ugly, and his wife offers no resistance either in anger or suffering, the irritability and ugliness react upon himself, and if there is something better in him he begins to perceive the irritability in its true colors. That is what happened to this man. As his wife stopped demanding he began to give. As his wife's nerves became calm and quiet his nerves quieted and calmed. Finally his wife discovered that much of his irritability had been roused through nervous anxiety in regard to his business about which he had told her nothing whatever because it "was not his way." There is nothing in the world that so strengthens nerves as the steady use of the will to drop resistance and useless emotions and get a quiet control. This woman gained that strength, and to her surprise one day her husband turned to her with a full account of all his business troubles and she met his mind quietly, as one business man might meet another, and without in the least expressing her pleasure or her surprise. She took all the good change in him as a matter of course. Finally one day it came naturally and easily to talk over the past. She found that her husband from day to day had dreaded coming home. The truth was that he had dreaded his own irritability as much as he had dreaded her emotional demanding. But he did not know it--he did not know what was the matter at all. He simply knew vaguely that he was a brute, that he felt like a brute, and that he did not know how to stop being a brute. His wife knew that he was a brute, and at the same time she felt throughly convinced that she was a suffering martyr. He was dreading to come home and she was dreading to have him come home--and there they were in a continuous nightmare. Now they have left the nightmare far, far behind, and each one knows that the other has one good friend in the world in whom he or she can feel entire confidence, and their friendship is growing stronger and clearer and more normal every day. It is not the ceremony that makes the marriage: the ceremony only begins it. Marriage is a slow and careful adjustment. A true story which illustrates the opposite of this condition is that of a man and woman who were to all appearances happily married for years. They were apparently the very closest friends. The man's nerves were excitable and peculiar, and his wife adjusted herself to them by indulging them and working in every way to save him from friction. No woman could stand that constant work of adjustment which was in reality maladjustment, and this wife's nerves broke down unexpectedly and completely. When our nerves get weak we are unable to repress resistance which in a stronger state we had covered up. This wife, while she had indulged and protected her husband's peculiarities, had subconsciously resisted them. When she became ill her subconscious resistance came to the surface. She surprised herself by growing impatient with her husband. He, of course; retorted. As she grew worse he did not find his usual comfort from her care, and instead of trying to help her to get well he turned his back on her and complained to another woman. Finally the friction of the two nervous systems became dangerously intense. Each was equally obstinate, and there was nothing to do but to separate The woman died of a broken heart, and the man is probably insane for the rest of his life. It was nothing but the mismanagement of their own and each other's nerves that made all this terrible trouble. Their love seemed genuine at first, and could certainly have grown to be really genuine if they had become truly adjusted. And the saddest part of the whole story is that they were both peculiarly adapted to be of use to their fellow-men. During the first years of their life their home was a delight to all their friends. Tired nerves are likely to close up a man or make him irritable, complaining, and ugly, whereas the tendency in a woman is to be irritable, complaining, and tearful. Now of course when each one is selfishly looking out for his or her comfort neither one can be expected to understand the other. The man thinks he is entirely justified in being annoyed with the woman's tearful, irritable complaints, and so he is--in a way. The woman thinks that she has a right to suffer because of her husband's irritable ugliness, and so she has--in a way. But in the truest way, and the way which appeals to every one's common sense, neither one has a right to complain of the other, and each one by right should have first made things better and clearer in himself and herself. Human nature is not so bad--really in its essence it is not bad at all. If we only give the other man a real chance. It is the pushing and pulling and demanding of one human being toward another that smother the best in us, and make life a fearful strain. Of course there is a healthy demanding as well as an unhealthy demanding, but, so far as I know, the healthy demanding can come only when we are clear of personal resistance and can demand on the strength of a true principle and without selfish emotion. There is a kind of gentle, motherly contempt with which some women speak of their husbands, which must get on a man's nerves very painfully. It is intensely and most acutely annoying. And yet I have heard good women speak in that way over and over again. The gentleness and motherliness are of course neither of them real in such cases. The gentle, motherly tone is used to cover up their own sense of superiority. "Poor boy, poor boy," they may say; "a man is really like a child." So he may be--so he often is childish, and sometimes childish in the extreme. But where could you find greater and more abject childishness than in a woman's ungoverned emotions? A woman must respect the manliness of her husband's soul, and must cling to her belief in its living existence behind any amount of selfish, restless irritability, if she is going to find a friend in him or be a friend to him. She must also know that his nervous system may be just as sensitive as hers. Sometimes it is more sensitive, and should be accordingly respected. Demand nothing and expect nothing, but hold him to his best in your mind and wait. That is a rule that would work wonderfully if every woman who is puzzled about her husband's restlessness and lack of interest in home affairs would apply it steadily and for long enough. It is impossible to manufacture a happy, sympathetic married life artificially--impossible! But as each one looks to one's self and does one's part fully, and then is willing to wait for the other, the happiness and the sympathy, the better power for work and the joyful ability to play come--they do come; they are real and alive and waiting for us as we get clear from the interferences. "Why doesn't my husband like to stay with me when he comes home? Why can't we have nice, cozy times together?" a wife asks with sad longing in her eyes. And to the same friend the husband (who is, by the way, something of a pig) says: "I should be glad to stay with Nellie often in the evening, but she will always talk about her worries, and she worries about the family in a way that is idiotic. She is always sure that George will catch the measles because a boy in the next street has them, and she is always sure that our children do not have the advantages nor the good manners that other children have. If it is not one thing it is another; whenever we are alone there is something to complain of, and her last complaint was about her own selfishness." Then he laughed at what he considered a good joke, and in five minutes had forgotten all about her. This wife, in a weak, selfish little way, was trying to give her husband her confidence, and her complaint about her own selfishness was genuine. She wanted his help to get out of it. If he had given her just a little gracious attention and told her how impossible it was really to discuss the children when she began the conversation with whining complaint, she would have allowed herself to be taught and their intercourse would have improved. On the other hand, if the wife had realized that her husband came home from the cares of his business tired and nervous, and if she had talked lightly and easily on general subjects and tried to follow his interests, when his nerves were rested and quiet she might have found him ready and able to give her a little lift with regard to the children. It is interesting and it is delightful to see how, as we each work first to bear our own burdens, we not only find ourselves ready and able to lighten the burdens of others but find others who are helpful to us. A woman who finds her husband "so restless and irritable" should remember that in reality a man's nervous system is just as sensitive as a woman's, and, with a steady and consistent effort to bear her own burdens and to work out her own problems, should prepare herself to lighten her husband's burdens and help to solve his problems; that is the truest way of bringing him to the place where he will be glad to share her burdens with her as well as his own. But we want to remember that there is a radical difference between indulging another's selfishness, and waiting, with patient yielding, for him to discover his selfishness himself, and to act unselfishly from his own free will. CHAPTER VII _Quiet vs. Chronic Excitement_ SOME women live in a chronic state of excitement all the time and they do not find it out until they get ill. Even then they do not always find it out, and then they get more ill. It is really much the same with excitable women as with a man who thinks he must always keep a little stimulant in himself in order to keep about his work. When a bad habit is established in us we feel unnatural if we give the habit up for a moment--and we feel natural when we are in it--but it is poison all the same. If a woman has a habit of constantly snuffing or clearing her throat, or rocking a rocking chair, or chattering to whoever may be near her she would feel unnatural and weird if she were suddenly wrenched out of any of these things. And yet the poisoning process goes on just the same. When it seems immaterial to us that we should be natural we are in a pretty bad way and the worst of it is we do not know it. I once took a friend with me into the country who was one of those women who lived on excitement in every-day life. When she dressed in the morning she dressed in excitement. She went down to breakfast in excitement. She went about the most humdrum everyday affairs excited. Every event in life--little or big--was an excitement to her--and she went to bed tired out with excitement--over nothing. We went deep in the woods and in the mountains, full of great powerful quiet. When my friend first got there she was excited about her arrival, she was excited about the house and the people in it, but in the middle of the night she jumped up in bed with a groan of torture. I thought she had been suddenly taken ill and started up quickly from my end of the room to see what was the trouble. "Oh, oh," she groaned, "the quiet! It is so quiet!" Her brain which had been in a whirl of petty excitement felt keen pain when the normal quiet touched it. Fortunately this woman had common sense and I could gradually explain the truth to her, and she acted upon it and got rested and strong and quiet. I knew another woman who had been wearing shoes that were too tight for her and that pinched her toes all together. The first time she wore shoes that gave her feet room enough the muscles of her feet hurt her so that she could hardly walk. Of course, having been cramped into abnormal contraction the process of expanding to freedom would be painful. If you had held your fist clenched tight for years, or months, or even weeks, how it would hurt to open it so that you could have free use of your fingers. The same truth holds good with a fist that has been clenched, a foot that has been pinched, or a brain that has been contracted with excitement. The process leading from the abnormal to the normal is always a painful one. To stay in the abnormal means blindness, constantly limiting power and death. To come out into a normal atmosphere and into a normal way of living means clearer sight, constantly increasing power, and fresh life. This habit of excitement is not only contracting to the brain; it has its effect over the whole body. If there is any organ that is weaker than any other the excitement eventually shows itself. A woman may be suffering from indigestion, or she may be running up large doctor's bills because of either one of a dozen other organic disturbances, with no suspicion that the cause of the whole trouble is that the noisy, excited, strained habits of her life have robbed her body of the vitality it needed to keep it in good running order. As if an engineer threw his coal all over the road and having no fuel for his engine wondered that it would not run. Stupid women we are--most of us! The trouble is that many of us are so deeply immersed in the habit of excitement that we do not know it. It is a healthy thing to test ourselves and to really try to find ourselves out. It is not only healthy; it is deeply interesting. If quiet of the woods, or, any other quiet place, makes us fidgety, we may be sure that our own state is abnormal and we had better go into the woods as often as possible until we feel ourselves to be a part of the quiet there. If we go into the woods and get soothed and quieted and then come out and get fussed up and excited so that we feel painfully the contrast between the quiet and our every-day life, then we can know that we are living in the habit of abnormal excitement and we can set to work to stop it. "That is all very well," I hear my readers say, "but how are you going to stop living in abnormal excitement when every circumstance and every person about you is full of it and knows nothing else?" If you really want to do it and would feel interested to make persistent effort I can give you the recipe and I can promise any woman that if she perseveres until she has found the way she will never cease to be grateful. If you start with the intention of taking the five minutes' search for quiet every day, do not let your intention be weakened or yourself discouraged if for some days you see no result at all. At first it may be that whatever quiet you find will seem so strange that it will annoy you or make you very nervous, but if you persist and work right through, the reward will be worth the pains many times over. Sometimes quieting our minds helps us to quiet our bodies; sometimes we must quiet our bodies first before we can find the way to a really quiet mind. The attention of the mind to quiet the body, of course, reacts back on to the mind, and from there we can pass on to thinking quietly. Each individual must judge for herself as to the best way of reaching the quiet. I will give several recipes and you can take your choice. First, to quiet the body:-- 1. Lie still and see how quietly you can breathe. 2. Sit still and let your head droop very slowly forward until finally it hangs down with its whole weight. Then lift it up very, very slowly and feel as if you pushed it all the way up from the lower part of your spine, or, better still, as if it grew up, so that you feel the slow, creeping, soothing motion all the way up your spine while your head is coming up, and do not let your head come to an entirely erect position until your chest is as high as you can hold it comfortably. When your head is erect take a long, quiet breath and drop it again. You can probably drop it and raise it twice in the five minutes. Later on it should take the whole five minutes to drop it and raise it once and an extra two minutes for the long breath. When you have dropped your head as far as you can, pause for a full minute without moving at all and feel heavy; then begin at the lower part of your spine and very slowly start to raise it. Be careful not to hold your breath, and watch to breathe as easily and quietly as you can while your head is moving. If this exercise hurts the back of your neck or any part of your spine, don't be troubled by it, but go right ahead and you will soon come to where it not only does not hurt, but is very restful. When you have reached an erect position again stay there quietly--first take long gentle breaths and let them get shorter and shorter until they are a good natural length, then forget your breathing altogether and sit still as if you never had moved, you never were going to move, and you never wanted to move. This emphasizes the good natural quiet in your brain and so makes you more sensitive to unquiet. Gradually you will get the habit of catching yourself in states of unnecessary excitement; at such times you cannot go off by yourself and go through the exercises. You cannot even stop where you are and go through them, but you can recall the impression made on your brain at the time you did them and in that way rule out your excitement and gain the real power that should be in its place. So little by little the state of excitement becomes as unpleasant as a cloud of dust on a windy day and the quiet is as pleasant as under the trees on top of a hill in the best kind of a June day. The trouble is so many of us live in a cloud of dust that we do not suspect even the existence of the June day, but if we are fortunate enough once or twice even to get to sneezing from the dust, and so to recognize its unpleasantness, then we want to look carefully to see if there is not a way out of it. It is then that we can get the beginning of the real quiet which is the normal atmosphere of every human being. But we must persist for a long time before we can feel established in the quiet itself. What is worth having is worth working for--and the more it is worth having, the harder work is required to get it. Nerves form habits, and our nerves not only get the habit of living in the dust, but the nerves of all about us have the same habit. So that when at first we begin to get into clear air, we may almost dislike it, and rush back into the dust again, because we and our friends are accustomed to it. All that bad habit has to be fought, and conquered, and there are many difficulties in the way of persistence, but the reward is worth it all, as I hope to show in later articles. I remember once walking in a crowded street where the people were hurrying and rushing, where every one's face was drawn and knotted, and nobody seemed to be having a good time. Suddenly and unexpectedly I saw a man coming toward me with a face so quiet that it showed out like a little bit of calm in a tornado. He looked like a common, every-day man of the world, so far as his dress and general bearing went, and his features were not at all unusual, but his expression was so full of quiet interest as to be the greatest contrast to those about him. He was not thinking his own thoughts either--he was one of the crowd and a busy, interested observer. He might have said, "You silly geese, what are you making all this fuss about, you can do it much better if you will go more easily." If that was his thought it came from a very kindly sense of humor, and he gave me a new realization of what it meant, practically, to be in the world and not of it. If you are in the world you can live, and observe, and take a much better part in its workings. If you are of it, you are simply whirled in an eddy of dust, however you may pose to yourself or to others. CHAPTER VIII _The Tired Emphasis_ "I AM so tired, so tired--I go to bed tired, I get up tired, and I am tired all the time." How many women--how many hundred women, how many thousand women--say that to themselves and to others constantly. It is perfectly true; they are tired all the time; they do go to bed tired and get up tired and stay tired all day. If, however, they could only know how very much they increase their fatigue by their constant mental emphasis of it, and if at the same time they could turn their wills in the direction of decreasing the fatigue, instead of emphasizing it, a very large percentage of the tired feeling could be done away with altogether. Many women would gladly make more of an effort in the direction of rest if they knew how, and I propose in this article to give a prescription for the cure of the tired emphasis which, if followed, will bring happy results. When you go to bed at night, no matter how tired you feel, instead of thinking how tired you are, think how good it is that you can go to bed to get rested. It will probably seem absurd to you at first. You may say to yourself: "How ridiculous, going to bed to get rested, when I have only one short night to rest in, and one or two weeks in bed would not rest me thoroughly." The answer to that is that if you have only one night in which to rest, you want to make the most of that night, and if you carry the tired emphasis to bed with you you are really holding on to the tired. This is as practically true as if you stepped into a bog and then sat in it and looked forlorn and said. "What a terrible thing it is that I should be in a bog like this; just think of having to sit in a black, muddy bog all the time," and staying there you made no effort whatever to get out of it, even though there was dry land right in front of you. Again you may answer: "But in my tired bog there is no dry land in front of me, none at all." I say to that, there is much more dry land than you think--if you will open your eyes--and to open your eyes you must make an effort. No one knows, who has not tried, what a good strong effort will do in the right direction, when we have been living and slipping back in the wrong direction. The results of such efforts seem at times wonderful to those who have learned the right direction for the first time. To get rid of the tired emphasis when we have been fixed in it, a very strong effort is necessary at first, and gradually it gets easier, and easier, until we have cast off the tired emphasis entirely and have the habit of looking toward rest. We must say to ourselves with decision in so many words, and must think the meaning of the words and insist upon it: "I am very tired. Yes, of course, I am very tired, but I am going to bed to get rested." There are a hundred little individual ways that we can talk to ourselves, and turn ourselves toward rest, at the end of the day when the time comes to rest. One way to begin, which is necessary to most of us, is to stop resisting the tired. Every complaint of fatigue, whether it is merely in our own minds, or is made to others, is full of resistance, and resistance to any sort of fatigue emphasizes it proportionately. That is why it is good to say to ourselves: "Yes, I am tired; I am awfully tired. I am willing to be tired." When we have used our wills to drop the nervous and muscular contractions that the fatigue has caused, we can add with more emphasis and more meaning, "and I am going to bed to get rested." Some one could say just here: "That is all very well for an ordinarily tired person, but it would never do me any good. I am too tired even to try it." The answer to that is, the more tired you are, the more you need to try it, and the more interesting the experiment will be. Also the very effort of your brain needed to cast off the tired emphasis will be new to you, and thought in a new direction is always restful in itself. Having learned to cast off the tired emphasis when we go to bed at night, we can gradually learn to cast it off before we go to meals, and at odd opportunities throughout the day. The more tired we are, the more we need to minimize our fatigue by the intelligent use of our own wills. Who cares for a game that is simple and easy? Who cares for a game when you beat as a matter of course, and without any effort on your part at all? Whoever cares for games at all cares most for good, stiff ones, where, when you have beaten, you can feel that you have really accomplished something; and when you have not beaten, you have at least learned points that will enable you to beat the next time, or the next to the next time--or sometime. And everyone who really loves a game wants to stick to it until he has conquered and is proficient. Why not wake up, and realize that same interest and courage in this biggest game of all--this game of life? We must play it! Few of us are cowards enough to put ourselves out of it. Unless we play it and obey the rules we do not really play at all. Many of us do not know the rules, but it is our place to look about and find them out. Many more of us think that we can play the game better if we make up rules of our own, and leave out whatever regular rules we do know, that do not suit our convenience. But that never works. It only sometimes seems to work; and although plain common sense shows us over and over that the game played according to our own ideas amounts to nothing, it is strange to see how many work and push to play the game in their own way instead of in the game's way. It is strange to see how many shove blindly in this direction, and that direction, to cut their way through a jungle, when there is the path just by them, if they will take it. Most of us do not know our own power because we would rather stay in a ditch and complain. Strength begets strength, and we can only find our greater power, by using intelligently, and steadily, the power we have. CHAPTER IX _How to be Ill and get Well_ ILLNESS seems to be one of the hardest things to happen to a busy woman. Especially hard is it when a woman must live from hand to mouth, and so much illness means, almost literally, so much less food. Sometimes one is taken so suddenly and seriously ill that it is impossible to think of whether one has food and shelter or not; one must just be taken care of or die. It does not seem to matter which at the time. Then another must meet the difficulty. It is the little nagging illnesses that make the trouble--just enough to keep a woman at home a week or ten days or more, and deprive her of wages which she might have been receiving, and which she very much needs. These are the illnesses that are hard to bear. Many a woman has suffered through an illness like this, which has dragged out from day to day, and finally left her pale and weak, to return to her work with much less strength than she needs for what is before her. After forcing herself to work day after day, her strength comes back so slowly, that she appears to go through another illness, on her feet, and "in the harness," before she can really call herself well again. There are a few clear points which, if intelligently comprehended, could teach one how to meet an illness, and if persistently acted upon, would not only shorten it, but would lighten the convalescence so that when the invalid returned to her work she would feel stronger than before she was taken ill. When one is taken with a petty illness, if it is met in an intelligent way, the result can be a good rest, and one feels much better, and has a more healthy appearance, than before the attack. This effect has been so often experienced that with some people there is a little bit of pleasantry passed on meeting a friend, in the remark: "Why, how do you do; how well you look--you must have been ill!" If we remember when we are taken ill that nature always tends towards health, we will study carefully to fulfill nature's conditions in order to cure the disease. We will rest quietly, until nature in her process toward health has reached health. In that way our illness can be the means of giving us a good rest, and, while we may feel the loss of the energy of which the disease has robbed us, we also feel the good effects of the rest which we have given to organs which were only tired. These organs which have gained rest can, in their turn, help toward renewing the strength of the organs which had been out of order, and thus we get up from an illness looking so well, and feeling so well, that we do not regret the loss of time, and feel ready to work, and to gradually make up the loss of money. Of course, the question is, how to fulfill the conditions so that this happy result can be attained. In the first place, _do not fret._ "But how can I help fretting?" someone will say, "when I am losing money every day, and do not know how many more days I may be laid up?" The answer to that is: "If you will think of the common sense of it, you can easily see that the strain of fretting is interfering radically with your getting well. For when you are using up strength to fret, you are simply robbing yourself of the vitality which would be used directly in the cure of your illness." Not only that, but the strain of fretting increases the strain of illness, and is not only preventing you from getting well, but it is tending to keep you ill. When we realize that fact, it seems as if it would be an easy matter to stop fretting in order to get well. It is as senseless to fret about an illness, no matter how much just cause we may feel we have, as it would be to walk west when our destination was directly east. Stop and think of it. Is not that true? Imagine a child with a pin pricking him, kicking, and screaming, and squirming with the pain, so that his mother--try as carefully as she may--takes five minutes to find the pin and get it out, when she might have done it and relieved him in five seconds, if only the child had kept still and let her. So it is with us when Mother Nature is working with wise steadiness to find the pin that is making us ill, and to get it out. We fret and worry so that it takes her ten or twenty days to do the good work that she might have done in three. In order to drop the fretting, we must use our wills to think, and feel, and act, so that the way may be opened for health to come to us in the quickest possible time. Every contraction of worry which appears in the muscles we must drop, so that we lie still with a sense of resting, and waiting for the healing power, which is surely working within us, to make us well. _We can do this by a deliberate use of our wills._ If we could take our choice between medicine, and the curative power of dropping anxiety and letting ourselves get well, there would be no hesitancy, provided we understood the alternatives. I speak of fretting first because it is so often the strongest interference with health. Defective circulation is the trouble in most diseases, and we should do all we can to open the channels so that the circulation, being free elsewhere, can tend to open the way to greater freedom in the part diseased. The contractions caused by fretting impede the circulation still more, and therefore heighten the disease. If once, by a strong use of the will, we drop the fretting and give ourselves up entirely to letting nature cure us, then we can study, with interest, to fulfill other necessary conditions. We can give ourselves the right amount of fresh air, of nourishment, of bathing, and the right sort of medicine, if any is needed. Thus, instead of interfering with nature, we are doing all in our power to aid her; and when nature and the invalid work in harmony, health comes on apace. When illness brings much pain and discomfort with it, the endeavor to relax out of the contractions caused by the pain, are of the same service as dropping contractions caused by the fretting. If one can find a truly wise doctor, or nurse, in such an illness as I refer to, get full instructions in just one visit, and then follow those directions explicitly, only one visit will be needed, probably, and the gain from that will pay for it many times over. This article is addressed especially to those who are now in health. It is perhaps too much to expect one in the midst of an illness to start at once with what we may call the curative attitude, although it could be done, but if those who are now well and strong will read and get a good understanding of this healthy way of facing an illness, and get it into their subconscious minds, they will find that if at any time they should be unfortunate enough to be attacked with illness, they can use the knowledge to very real advantage, and--what is more--they can, with the right tact, help others to use it also. To see the common sense of a process and, when we have not the opportunity to use the laws ourselves, to help others by means of our knowledge, impresses our own brains more thoroughly with the truth, especially if our advice is taken and acted upon and thus proved to be true. It must not be forgotten, however, that to help another man or woman to a healthy process of getting well requires gentle patience and quiet, steady, unremitting tact. CHAPTER X _Is Physical Culture good for Girls?_ A NUMBER of women were watching a game of basket-ball played by some high-school girls. In the interim for rest one woman said to her neighbor: "Do you see that girl flat on her back, looking like a very heavy bag of sand?" "Yes," the answer was; "what under the sun is she doing that for? She looks heavy and lazy and logy, while the other girls are talking and laughing and having a good time." "You wait and watch her play," responded the first woman. And so they waited and watched, and to the astonishment of the friend the girl who had looked "lazy and logy," lying flat on her back during the rest-time, was the most active of the players, and really saved the game. When the game was finished the woman said to her friend with surprise in her voice: "How did you see through that, and understand what that girl was aiming for?" The answer was: "Well, I know the girl, and both she and I have read Kipling's 'The Maltese Cat.' Don't you remember how the best polo ponies in that story, when they were off duty, hung their heads and actually made themselves looked fagged, in order to be fresher when the time came to play? And how 'The Maltese Cat' scouted the silly ponies who held their heads up and kicked and looked alert while they waited? And don't you remember the result?" "No, I never read the story, but I have certainly seen your point prove itself to-day. I shall read it at once. Meanwhile, I want to speak to that clever girl who could catch a point like that and use it." "Take care, please, that you do not mention it to her at all," said the friend. "You will draw her attention back to herself and likely as not make her lose the next game. Points like that have got to be worked on without self-consciousness, not talked about." And so the women told the child they were glad that her side won the game and never mentioned her own part in it at all. After all she had only found the law that the more passive you can be when it is time to rest, the more alert you are and the more powerful in activity. The polo pony knew it as a matter of course. We humans have to discover it. Let us, just for the interest of it, follow that same basket-ball player a little more closely. Was she well developed and evenly trained in her muscles? Yes, very. Did she go to gymnasium, or did she scorn it? She went, twice a week regularly, and had good fun there; but there was just this contrast between her and most of the girls in the class: Jane, as we will call her, went to gymnasium as a means to an end. She found that she got an even development there which enabled her to walk better, to play better, and to work better. In gymnasium she laid her muscular foundation on which to build all the good, active work of her life. The gymnasium she went to, however, was managed in an unusual way except for the chest weights, which always "opened the ball," the members of the class never knew what work they were to do. Their minds were kept alert throughout the hour and a half. If their attention wavered they tripped or got behind in the exercise, and the mental action which went into the movement of every muscle made the body alive with the healthy activity of a well-concentrated, well-directed mind. Another point which our young friend learned at gymnasium was to direct her mind only on to the muscles that were needed. Did you ever try to clench your fist so tight that it could not be opened? If not, try it, and relax all over your body while you are keeping your fist tight closed. You will see that the more limp your body becomes the tighter you can keep your fist clenched. All the force goes in that one direction. In this way a moderately strong girl can keep a strong man hard at work for several minutes before he can make any impression on the closed hand. That illustrates in a simple way the fact that the most wholesome concentration is that which comes from dropping everything that interferes--letting the force of mind or body flow only in the direction in which it is to be used. Many girls use their brains in the wrong way while on the gymnasium floor by saying to themselves, "I cannot do that." The brain is so full of that thought that the impression an open brain would receive has no chance to enter, and the result is an awkward, nervous, and uncertain movement. If a girl's brain and muscle were so relaxed that the impression on the one would cause a correct use and movement of the other how easy it would be thereafter to apply the proper tension to the muscle at the proper time without overtaxing the nerves. Some one has well said that "it is training, not straining, that we want in our gymnasiums." Only when a girl is trained from this point of view does she get real training. This basket-ball player had also been taught how to rest after exercise in a way which appealed to her especially, because of her interest which had already been aroused in Kipling's polo pony. She was taught intelligently that if, after vigorous exercise, when the blood is coursing rapidly all over the body, you allow yourself to be entirely open and passive, the blood finds no interruptions in its work and can carry away the waste matter much more effectually. In that way you get the full result of the exercise. It is not necessary always to lie down to have your body passive enough after vigorous exercise to get the best results. If you sit down after exercise you want to sit without tension. Or if you walk home from gymnasium you want to walk loosely and freely, keeping your chest up and a little in advance, and pushing with the ball of your back foot with a good, rhythmic balance. As this is the best way to sit and the best way to walk--gymnasium or no gymnasium--to look out for a well-balanced sitting and a well-balanced walk directly after vigorous exercise, keeps us in good form for sitting and walking all the time. I know of a professor in one of our large colleges who was offered also a professorship in a woman's college, and he refused to accept because he said women's minds did not react. When he lectured to girls he found that, however attentively they might seem to listen, there was no response. They gave nothing in return. Of course this is not true of all girls, and of course the gentleman who refused the chair in the woman's college would agree that it is not true of all girls, but if those who read the anecdote would, instead of getting indignant, just look into the matter a little, they would see how true it is of many girls, and by thinking a little further we can see that it is not at present the girls' fault. A hundred years ago girls were not expected to think. I remember an anecdote which a very intelligent old lady used to tell me about her mother. Once, when she was a little girl, her mother found some fault with her which the daughter knew to be unjust, and she answered timidly, "But, Mother, I think--" "Abigail," came the sharp reminder, "you've no business to think." One hundred years ago it was only the very exceptional girls who really thought. Now we are gradually working toward the place where every girl will think. And surely it cannot be very long now before the united minds of a class of college girls will have the habit of reacting so that any man will feel in his own brain a vigorous result from lecturing to them. This fact that a girl's brain does not react is proved in many ways. Most of the women who come to nerve specialists seem to feel that they are to sit still and be cured, while the men who come respond and do their part much more intelligently--the result being that men get out of "nerves" in half the time and stay out, whereas girls often get out a little way and slump (literally slump) back again before they can be helped to respond truly enough to get well and keep themselves well. This information is given only with an idea of stirring girls up to their best possibilities, for there is not a woman born with a sound mind who is not capable of reacting mentally, in a greater or less degree, to all that she hears, provided she uses her will consciously to form the new habit. Now this need of intelligent reaction is just the trouble with girls and physical culture. Physical culture should be a means to an end--and that is all, absolutely all. It is delightful and strengthening when it is taught thoughtfully as a means to an end, and I might almost say it is only weakening when it is made an end in itself. Girls need to react intelligently to what is given them in physical training as much as to what is given them in a lecture on literature or philosophy or botany. How many girls do we know who take physical culture in a class, often simply because it is popular at the time, and never think of taking a long walk in the country--never think of going in for a vigorous outdoor game? How many girls do we know who take physical culture and never think of making life easy for their stomachs, or seeing that they get a normal amount of sleep? Exercise in the fresh air, with a hearty objective interest in all that is going on about us, is the very best sort of exercise that we can take, and physical culture is worse than nothing if it is not taken only as a means to enable us to do more in the open air, and do it better, and gain from it more life. There is one girl who comes to my mind of whom I should like to tell because she illustrates truly a point that we cannot consider too carefully. She went to a nerve specialist very much broken in health, and when asked if she took plenty of exercise in the open air she replied "Yes, indeed." And it was proved to be the very best exercise. She had a good horse, and she rode well; she rode a great deal, and not too much. She had interesting dogs and she took them with her. She walked, too, in beautiful country. But she was carrying in her mind all the time extreme resistance to other circumstances of her life. She did not know how to drop the resistance or face the circumstances, and the mental strain in which she held herself day and night, waking or sleeping, prevented the outdoor exercise from really refreshing her. When she learned to face the circumstances then the exercise could do its good work. On the other hand, there are many forms of nervous resistance and many disagreeable moods which good, vigorous exercise will blow away entirely, leaving our minds so clear that we wonder at ourselves, and wonder that we could ever have had those morbid thoughts. The mind acts and the body reacts, the body acts and the mind reacts, but of course at the root of it all is the real desire for what is normal, or--alas!--the lack of that desire. If physical culture does not make us love the open air, if it does not make us love to take a walk or climb a mountain, if it does not help us to take the walk or climb the mountain with more freedom, if it does not make us move along outdoors so easily that we forget our bodies altogether, and only enjoy what we see about us and feel how good it is to be alive--why, then physical culture is only an ornament without any use. There is an interesting point in mountain-climbing which I should like to speak of, by the way, and which makes it much pleasanter and better exercise. If, after first starting--and, of course, you should start very slowly and heavily, like an elephant--you get out of breath, let yourself stay out of breath. Even emphasize the being out of breath by breathing harder than your lungs started to breathe, and then let your lungs pump and pump and pump until they find their own equilibrium. The result is delightful, and the physical freedom that follows is more than delightful. I remember seeing two girls climbing in the high Rocky Mountains in this way, when other women were going up on ponies. Finally one of the guides looked back, and with an expression of mild astonishment said "Well, you have lungs!" This was a very pleasant proof of the right kind of breathing. There are many good points for climbing and walking and swimming and all outdoor exercise that can be gained from the best sort of physical culture; and physical culture is good for girls when it gives these points and leads to a spontaneous love for outdoor exercise. But when it results only in a self-conscious pose of the body then it is harmful. We want to have strong bodies, free for every normal action, with quiet nerves, and muscles well coordinated. Then our bodies are merely instruments: good, clean, healthy instruments. They are the "mechanism of the outside." And when the mechanism of the outside is well oiled and running smoothly it can be forgotten. There can be no doubt but that physical culture is good for girls provided it is given and taken with intelligent interest, but it must be done thoroughly to be done to real advantage. As, for instance, the part the shower-bath plays after exercising is most important, for it equalizes the circulation. Physical culture is good for girls who have little or no muscular action in their daily lives, for it gives them the healthiest exercise in the least space of time, and prepares them to get more life from exercise outdoors. It is good for girls whose daily lives are full of activity, because it develops the unused muscles and so rests those that have been overused. Many a hardworking girl has entered the gymnasium class tired and has left it rested. CHAPTER XI _Working Restfully_ ONCE met a man who had to do an important piece of scientific work in a given time. He worked from Saturday afternoon at 2 o'clock until Monday morning at 10 o'clock without interruption, except for one hour's sleep and the necessary time it took for nourishment. After he had finished he was, of course, intensely tired, but instead of going right to bed and to sleep, and taking all that brain strain to sleep with him he took his dog and his gun and went hunting for several hours. Turning his attention to something so entirely different gave the other part of his brain a chance to recover itself a little. The fresh air revived him, and the gentle exercise started up his circulation, If he had gone directly to sleep after his work, the chances are that it would have taken him days to recover from the fatigue, for nature would have had too much against her to have reacted quickly from so abnormal a strain--getting an entire change of attention and starting up his circulation in the fresh air gave nature just the start she needed. After that she could work steadily while he slept, and he awakened rested and refreshed. To write from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning seems a stupid thing to do--no matter what the pressure is. To work for an abnormal time or at an abnormal rate is almost always stupid and short sighted. There are exceptions, however, and it would be good if for those exceptions people knew how to take the best care of themselves. But it is not only after such abnormal work that we need to know how to react most restfully. It is important after all work, and especially for those who have some steady labor for the whole day. Every one is more or less tired at the end of the day and the temptation is to drop into a chair or lie down on the sofa or to go right to bed and go to sleep. Don't do it. Get some entire, active change for your brain, if it is only for fifteen minutes or half an hour. If you live in the city, even to go to walk and look into the shop windows is better than nothing. In that way you get fresh air, and if one knows how to look into shop windows without wanting anything or everything they see there, then it is very entertaining. It is a good game to look into a shop window for two or three minutes and then look away and see how well you can remember everything in it. It is important always to take shop windows that are out of one's own line of work. If you live in the country, a little walk out of doors is pleasanter than in the city, for the air is better; and there is much that is interesting, in the way of trees and sky, and stars, at night. As you walk, make a conscious effort to look out and about you. Forget the work of the day, and take good long breaths. When you do not feel like going out of doors, take a story book--or some other reading, if you prefer--and put your mind right on it for half an hour. The use of a really good novel cannot be overestimated. It not only serves as recreation, but it introduces us to phases of human nature that otherwise we would know nothing whatever about. A very great change from the day's work can be found in a good novel and a very happy change. If the air in the theaters were fresher and good seats did not cost so much a good play, well acted, would be better than a good novel. Sometimes it freshens us up to play a game after the day's work is over, and for those who love music there is of course the greatest rest in that. But there again comes in the question of cost. Why does not some kind soul start concerts for the people where, for a nominal admission, the best music can be heard? And why does not some other kind soul start a theater for the people where, for a very small price of admission, they can see the best plays and see them well acted? We have public libraries in all our cities and towns, and a librarian in one large city loves to tell the tale of a poor woman in the slums with her door barred with furniture for fear of the drunken raiders in the house, quietly reading a book from the public library. There are many similar stories to go with that. If we had really good theaters and really good concerts to be reached as simply and as easily as the books in our public libraries, the healthy influence throughout the cities would be proportionately increased. The trouble is that people cater as much to the rich with their ideas of a national theater as the theatrical syndicate itself. I could not pretend to suggest amusements that would appeal to any or every reader, but I can make my point clear that when one is tired it is healthy to have a change of activity before going to rest. "Oh," I hear, "I can't! I can't! I am too tired." I know the feeling. I have no doubt the man who wrote for nearly two days had a very strong tendency to go right to bed, but he had common sense behind it, and he knew the result would be better if he followed his common sense rather than his inclination. And so it proved. It seems very hard to realize that it is not the best thing to go right to bed or to sit and do nothing when one is so tired as to make it seem impossible to do anything else. It would be wrong to take vigorous physical exercise after great brain or body fatigue, but entire change of attention and gentle exercise is just what is needed, although care should always be taken not to keep at it too long. Any readers who make up their minds to try this process of resting will soon prove its happy effect. A quotation from a recent daily paper reads, "'Rest while you work,' says Annie Payson Call,"--and then the editor adds, "and get fired," and although the opportunity for the joke was probably thought too good to lose, it was a natural misinterpretation of a very practical truth. I can easily imagine a woman--especially a tired out and bitter woman--reading directions telling how to work restfully and exclaiming with all the vehemence of her bitterness: "That is all very well to write about. It sounds well, but let any one take hold of my work and try to do it restfully. "If my employer should come along and see me working in a lazy way like that, he would very soon discharge me. No, no. I am tired out; I must keep at it as long as I can, and when I cannot keep at it any longer, I will die--and there is the end." "It is nothing but drudge, drudge for your bread and butter--and what does your bread and butter amount to when you get it?" There are thousands of women working to-day with bodies and minds so steeped in their fatigue that they cannot or will not take an idea outside of their rut of work. The rut has grown so deep, and they have sunken in so far that they cannot look over the edge. It is true that it is easier to do good hard work in the lines to which one has been accustomed than to do easy work which is strange. Nerves will go on in old accustomed habits--even habits of tiresome strain--more easily than they will be changed into new habits of working without strain. The mind, too, gets saturated with a sense of fatigue until the fatigue seems normal, and to feel well rested would--at first--seem abnormal. This being a fact, it is a logical result that an habitually tired and strained mind will indignantly refuse the idea that it can do more work and do it better without the strain. There is a sharp corner to be turned to learn to work without strain, when one has had the habit of working with it. After the corner is turned, it requires steady, careful study to understand the new normal habit of working restfully, and to get the new habit established. When once it is established, this normal habit of work develops its own requirements, and the working without strain becomes to us an essential part of the work itself. For taken as a whole, more work is done and the work is done better when we avoid strain than when we do not. What is required to find this out is common sense and strength of character. Character grows with practice; it builds and builds on itself when once it has a fair start, and a very little intelligence is needed if once the will is used to direct the body and mind in the lines of common sense. Intelligence grows, too, as we use it. Everything good in the soul grows with use; everything bad, destroys. Let us make a distinction to begin with between "rest while you work" and "working restfully." "Rest while you work" might imply laziness. There is a time for rest and there is a time for work. When we work we should work entirely. When we rest we should rest entirely. If we try to mix rest and work, we do neither well. That is true. But if we work restfully, we work then with the greatest amount of power and the least amount of effort. That means more work and work better done after the right habit is established than we did before, when the wrong habit was established. The difficulty comes, and the danger of "getting fired," when we are changing our habit. To obviate that difficulty, we must be content to change our habit more slowly. Suppose we come home Saturday night all tired out; go to bed and go to sleep, and wake Sunday almost more tired than when we went to bed. On Sunday we do not have to go to work. Let us take a little time for the sole purpose of thinking our work over, and trying to find where the unnecessary strain is. "But," I hear some one say, "I am too tired to think." Now it is a scientific fact that when our brains are all tired out in one direction, if we use our wills to start them working in another direction, they will get rested. "But," again I hear, "if I think about my work, why isn't that using my brain in the same direction?" Because in thinking to apply new principles to work, of which you have never thought before, you are thinking in a new direction. Not only that, but in applying new and true principles to your work you are bringing new life into the work itself. On this Sunday morning, when you take an hour to devote yourself to the study of how you can work without getting overtired ask yourself the following questions:-- (1) "What do I resist in or about my work?" Find out each thing that you do resist, and drop the contractions that come in your body, with the intention of dropping the resistances in your mind. (2) "Do I drop my work at meals and eat quietly?" (3) "Do I take every opportunity that I can to get fresh air, and take good, full breaths of it?" (4) "Do I feel hurried and pushed in my work? Do I realize that no matter how much of a hurry there may be, I can hurry more effectively if I drop the strain of the hurry?" (5) "How much superfluous strain do I use in my work? Do I work with a feeling of strain? How can I observe better in order to become conscious of the strain and drop it?" These are enough questions for one time! If you concentrate on these questions and on finding the answers, and do it diligently, you will be surprised to see how the true answers will come to you, and how much clearer they will become as you put them into daily practice. CHAPTER XII _Imaginary Vacations_ ONCE a young woman who had very hard work to do day after day and who had come to where she was chronically strained and tired, turned to her mother just as she was starting for work in the morning, and in a voice tense with fatigue and trouble, said:-- "Mother, I cannot stand it. I cannot stand it. Unless I can get a vacation long enough at least to catch my breath, I shall break down altogether." "Why don't you take a vacation today?" asked her mother. The daughter got a little irritated and snapped out:--- "Why do you say such a foolish thing as that, Mother? You know as well as I that I could not leave my work to-day." "Don't be cross, dear. Stop a minute and let me tell you what I mean. I have been thinking about it and I know you will appreciate what I have to say, and I know you can do it. Now listen." Whereupon the mother went on to explain quite graphically a process of pretense--good, wholesome pretense. To any one who has no imagination this would not or could not appeal. To the young woman of whom I write it not only appealed heartily, but she tried it and made it work. It was simply that she should play that she had commenced her vacation and was going to school to amuse herself. As, for instance, she would say to herself, and believe it: "Isn't it good that I can have a vacation and a rest. What shall I do to get all I can out of it? "I think I will go and see what they are doing in the grammar school. Maybe when I get there it will amuse me to teach some of the children. It is always interesting to see how children are going to take what you say to them and to see the different ways in which they recite their lessons." By the time she got to school she was very much cheered. Looking up she said to herself: "This must be the building." She had been in it every school day for five years past, but through the process of her little game it looked quite new and strange now. She went in the door and when the children said "good morning," and some of them seemed glad to see her, she said to herself: "Why, they seem to know me; I wonder how that happens?" Occasionally she was so much amused at her own consistency in keeping up the game that she nearly laughed outright. She heard each class recite as if she were teaching for the first time. She looked upon each separate child as if she had never seen him before and he was interesting to her as a novel study. She found the schoolroom more cheerful and was surprised into perceiving a pleasant sort of silent communication that started up between her pupils and herself. When school was over she put on her hat and coat to go home, with the sense of having done something restful; and when she appeared to her mother, it was with a smiling, cheerful face, which made her mother laugh outright; and then they both laughed and went out for a walk in the fresh air, before coming in to go to bed, and be ready to begin again the next day. In the morning the mother felt a little anxious and asked timidly: "Do you believe you can make it work again today, just as well as yesterday?" "Yes, indeed and better," said the daughter. "It is too much fun not to go on with it." After breakfast the mother with a little roguish twinkle, said: "Well, what do you think you will do to amuse yourself to-day, Alice?" "Oh! I think--" and then they both laughed and Alice started off on her second day's "vacation." By the end of a week she was out of that tired rut and having a very good time. New ideas had come to her about the school and the children; in fact, from being dead and heavy in her work, she had become alive. When she found the old tired state coming on her again, she and her mother always "took a vacation," and every time avoided the tired rut more easily. If one only has imagination enough, the helpfulness and restfulness of playing "take a vacation" will tell equally well in any kind of work. You can play at dressmaking--play at millinery--play at keeping shop. You can make a game of any sort of drudgery, and do the work better for it, as well as keep better rested and more healthy yourself. But you must be steady and persistent and childlike in the way you play your game. Do not stop in the middle and exclaim, "How silly!"--and then slump into the tired state again. What I am telling you is nothing more nor less than a good healthy process of self-hypnotism. Really, it is more the attitude we take toward our work that tires us than the work itself. If we could only learn that and realize it as a practical fact, it would save a great deal of unnecessary suffering and even illness. We do not need to play vacation all the time, of course. The game might get stale then and lose its power. If we play it for two or three days, whenever we get so tired that it seems as if we could not bear it--play it just long enough to lift ourselves out of the rut--then we can "go to work again" until we need another vacation. We need not be afraid nor ashamed to bring back that childlike tendency--it will be of very great use to our mature minds. If we try to play the vacation game, it is wiser to say nothing about it. It is not a game that we can be sure of sharing profitably either to ourselves or to others. If you find it works, and give the secret to a friend, tell her to play it without mentioning it to you, even though she shares your work and is sitting in the next chair to you. Another most healthy process of resting while you work is by means of lowering the pressure. Suppose you were an engine, whose normal pressure was six hundred pounds, we will say. Make yourself work at a pressure of only three hundred pounds. The human engine works with so much more strain than is necessary that if a woman gets overtired and tries to lighten her work by lightening the pressure with which she does it, she will find that really she has only thrown off the unnecessary strain, and is not only getting over her fatigue by working restfully, but is doing her work better, too. In the process of learning to use less pressure, the work may seem to be going a little more slowly at first, but we shall find that it will soon go faster, and better, as time establishes the better habit. One thing seems singular; and yet it appeals entirely to our common sense as we think of it. There never comes a time when we cannot learn to work more effectively at a lower pressure. We never get to where we cannot lessen our pressure and thus increase our power. The very interest of using less pressure adds zest to our work, however it may have seemed like drudging before, and the possibility of resting while we work opens to us much that is new and refreshing, and gives us clearer understanding of how to rest more completely while we rest. All kinds of resting, and all kinds of working, can bring more vitality than most of us know, until we have learned to rest and to work without strain. CHAPTER XIII _The Woman at the Next Desk_ IT may be the woman sewing in the next chair; it may be the woman standing next at the same counter; it may be the woman next at a working table, or it may be the woman at the next desk. Whichever one it is, many a working woman has her life made wretched by her, and it would be a strange thing for this miserable woman to hear and a stranger thing--at first--for her to believe that the woman at the next desk need not trouble her at all. That, if she only could realize it, the cause of the irritation which annoyed her every day and dragged her down so that many and many a night she had been home with a sick headache was entirely and solely in herself and not at all in the woman who worked next to her, however disagreeable that woman may have been. Every morning when she wakes the woman at the next desk rises before her like a black specter. "Oh, I would not mind the work; I could work all day happily and quietly and go home at night and rest; the work would be a joy to me compared to this torture of having to live all day next to that woman." It is odd, too, and true, that if the woman at the next desk finds that she is annoying our friend, unconsciously she seems to ferret out her most sensitive places and rub them raw with her sharp, discourteous words. She seems to shirk her own work purposely and to arrange it so that the woman next her must do the work in her place. Then, having done all in her power to give the woman next her harder labor, she snaps out a little scornful remark about the mistakes that have been made. If she--the woman at the next desk--comes in in the morning feeling tired and irritable herself, she vents her irritability on her companion until she has worked it off and goes home at night feeling much better herself, while her poor neighbor goes home tired out and weak. The woman at the next desk takes pains to let little disagreeable hints drop about others--if not directly in their hearing at least in ways which she knows may reach them. She drops hint to others of what those in higher office have said or appeared to think, which might frighten "others" quite out of their wits for fear of their being discharged, and then, where should they get their bread and butter? All this and more that is frightful and disagreeable and mean may the woman at the next desk do; or she may be just plain, every-day _ugly._ Every one knows the trying phases of her own working neighbor. But with all this, and with worse possibilities of harassment than I have even touched upon, the woman at the next desk is powerless, so far as I am concerned, if I choose to make her so. The reason she troubles me is because I resist her. If she hurts my feelings, that is the same thing. I resist her, and the resistance, instead of making me angry, makes me sore in my nerves and makes me want to cry. The way to get independent of her is not to resist her, and the way to learn not to resist her is to make a daily and hourly study of dropping all resistances to her. This study has another advantage, too; if we once get well started on it, it becomes so interesting that the concentration on this new interest brings new life in itself. Resistance in the mind brings contraction in the body. If, when we find our minds resisting that which is disagreeable in another, we give our attention at once to finding the resultant contraction in our bodies, and then concentrate our wills on loosening out of the contraction, we cannot help getting an immediate result. Even though it is a small result at the beginning, if we persist, results will grow until we, literally, find ourselves free from the woman at the next desk. This woman says a disagreeable thing; we contract to it mind and body. We drop the contraction from our bodies, with the desire to drop it from our minds, for loosening the physical tension reacts upon the mental strain and relieves it. We can say to ourselves quite cheerfully: "I wish she would go ahead and say another disagreeable thing; I should like to try the experiment again." She gives you an early opportunity and you try the experiment again, and again, and then again, until finally your brain gets the habit of trying the experiment without any voluntary effort on your part. That habit being established, _you are free from the woman at the next desk._ She cannot irritate you nor wear upon you, no matter how she tries, no matter what she says, or what she does. There is, however, this trouble about dropping the contraction. We are apt to have a feeling of what we might call "righteous indignation" at annoyances which are put upon us for no reason; that, so-called, "righteous indignation" takes the form of resistance and makes physical contractions. It is useless to drop the physical contraction if the indignation is going to rise and tighten us all up again. If we drop the physical and mental contractions we must have something good to fill the open channels that have been made. Therefore let us give our best attention to our work, and if opportunity offers, do a kindness to the woman at the next desk. Finally, when she finds that her ways do not annoy, she will stop them. She will probably, for a time at first, try harder to be disagreeable, and then after recovering from several surprises at not being able to annoy, she will quiet down and grow less disagreeable. If we realize the effect of successive and continued resistance upon ourselves and realize at the same time that we can drop or hold those resistances as we choose to work to get free from them, or suffer and hold them, then we can appreciate the truth that if the woman at the next desk continues to annoy us, it is our fault entirely, and not hers. CHAPTER XIV _Telephones and Telephoning_ MOST men--and women--use more nervous force in speaking through the telephone than would be needed to keep them strong and healthy for years. It is good to note that the more we keep in harmony with natural laws the more quiet we are forced to be. Nature knows no strain. True science knows no strain. Therefore _a strained high-pitched voice does not carry over the telephone wire as well as a low one._ If every woman using the telephone would remember this fact the good accomplished would be thricefold. She would save her own nervous energy. She would save the ears of the woman at the other end of the wire. She would make herself heard. Patience, gentleness, firmness--a quiet concentration--all tell immeasurably over the telephone wire. Impatience, rudeness, indecision, and diffuseness blur communication by telephone even more than they do when one is face to face with the person talking. It is as if the wire itself resented these inhuman phases of humanity and spit back at the person who insulted it by trying to transmit over it such unintelligent bosh. There are people who feel that if they do not get an immediate answer at the telephone they have a right to demand and get good service by means of an angry telephonic sputter. The result of this attempt to scold the telephone girl is often an impulsive, angry response on her part--which she may be sorry for later on--and if the service is more prompt for that time it reacts later to what appears to be the same deficiency. No one was ever kept steadily up to time by angry scolding. It is against reason. To a demanding woman who is strained and tired herself, a wait of ten seconds seems ten minutes. I have heard such a woman ring the telephone bell almost without ceasing for fifteen minutes. I could hear her strain and anger reflected in the ringing of the bell. When finally she "got her party" the strain in her high-pitched voice made it impossible for her to be clearly understood. Then she got angry again because "Central" had not "given her a better connection," and finally came away from the telephone nearly in a state of nervous collapse and insisted that the telephone would finally end her life. I do not think she once suspected that the whole state of fatigue which had almost brought an illness upon her was absolutely and entirely her own fault. The telephone has no more to do with it than the floor has to do with a child's falling and bumping his head. The worst of this story is that if any one had told this woman that her tired state was all unnecessary, it would have roused more strain and anger, more fatigue, and more consequent illness. Women must begin to find out their own deficiencies before they are ready to accept suggestions which can lead to greater freedom and more common sense. Another place where science and inhuman humanity do not blend is in the angry moving up and down of the telephone hook. When the hook is moved quickly and without pause it does not give time for the light before the telephone girl to flash, therefore she cannot be reminded that any one is waiting at the other end. When the hook is removed with even regularity and a quiet pause between each motion then she can see the light and accelerate her action in getting "the other party." I have seen a man get so impatient at not having an immediate answer that he rattled the hook up and down so fast and so vehemently as to nearly break it. There is something tremendously funny about this. The man is in a great hurry to speak to some one at the other end of the telephone, and yet he takes every means to prevent the operator from knowing what he wants by rattling his hook. In addition to this his angry movement of the hook is fast tending to break the telephone, so that he cannot use it at all. So do we interfere with gaining what we need by wanting it overmuch! I do not know that there has yet been formed a telephone etiquette; but for the use of those who are not well bred by habit it would be useful to put such laws on the first page of the telephone book. A lack of consideration for others is often too evident in telephonic communication. A woman will ask her maid to get the number of a friend's house for her and ask the friend to come to the telephone, and then keep her friend waiting while she has time to be called by the maid and to come to the telephone herself. This method of wasting other people's time is not confined to women alone. Men are equal offenders, and often greater ones, for the man at the other end is apt to be more immediately busy than a woman under such circumstances. To sum up: The telephone may be the means of increasing our consideration for others; our quiet, decisive way of getting good service; our patience, and, through the low voice placed close to the transmitter, it may relieve us from nervous strain; for nerves always relax with the voice. Or the telephone may be the means of making us more selfish and self-centered, more undecided and diffuse, more impatient, more strained and nervous. In fact, the telephones may help us toward health or illness. We might even say the telephone may lead us toward heaven or toward hell. We have our choice of roads in the way we use it. It is a blessed convenience and if it proves a curse--we bring the curse upon our own heads. I speak of course only of the public who use the telephone. Those who serve the public in the use of the telephone must have many trials to meet, and, I dare say, are not always courteous and patient. But certainly there can be no case of lagging or discourtesy on the part of a telephone operator that is not promptly rectified by a quiet, decided appeal to the "desk." It is invariably the nervous strain and the anger that makes the trouble. There may be one of these days a school for the better use of the telephone; but such a school never need be established if every intelligent man and woman will be his and her own school in appreciating and acting upon the power gained if they compel themselves to go with science--and never allow themselves to go against it. CHAPTER XV _Don't Talk_ THERE is more nervous energy wasted, more nervous strain generated, more real physical harm done by superfluous talking than any one knows, or than any one could possibly believe who had not studied it. I am not considering the harm done by what people say. We all know the disastrous effects that follow a careless or malicious use of the tongue. That is another question. I simply write of the physical power used up and wasted by mere superfluous words, by using one hundred words where ten will do--or one thousand words where none at all were needed. I once had been listening to a friend chatter, chatter, chatter to no end for an hour or more, when the idea occurred to me to tell her of an experiment I had tried by which my voice came more easily. When I could get an opportunity to speak, I asked her if she had ever tried taking a long breath and speaking as she let the breath out. I had to insist a little to keep her mind on the suggestion at all, but finally succeeded. She took a long breath and then stopped. There was perhaps for half a minute a blessed silence, and then what was my surprise to hear her remark: "I--I--can't think of anything to say." "Try it again," I told her. She took another long breath, and again gave up because she could not think of anything to say. She did not like that little game very much, and thought she would not make another effort, and in about three minutes she began the chatter, and went on talking until some necessary interruption parted us. This woman's talking was nothing more nor less than a nervous habit. Her thought and her words were not practically connected at all. She never said what she thought for she never thought. She never said anything in answer to what was said to her, for she never listened. Nervous talkers never do listen. That is one of their most striking characteristics. I knew of two well-known men--both great talkers--who were invited to dine. Their host thought, as each man talked a great deal and--, as he thought--talked very well, if they could meet their interchange of ideas would be most delightful. Several days later he met one of his guests in the street and asked how he liked the friend whom he had met for the first time at his house. "Very pleasant, very pleasant," the man said, "but he talks too much." Not long after this the other guest accosted him unexpectedly in the street "For Heaven's sake, don't ask me to dine with that Smith again--why, I could not get a word in edgewise." Now, if only for selfish reasons a man might realize that he needs to absorb as well as give out, and so could make himself listen in order to be sure that his neighbor did not get ahead of him. But a conceited man, a self-centered man or a great talker will seldom or never listen. That being the case, what can you expect of a woman who is a nervous talker? The more tired such a woman is the more she talks; the more ill she is the more she talks. As the habit of nervous talking grows upon a woman it weakens her mind. Indeed, nervous talking is a steadily weakening process. Some women talk to forget. If they only knew it was slow mental suicide and led to worse than death they would be quick to avoid such false protection. If we have anything we want to forget we can only forget it by facing it until we have solved the problem that it places before us, and then working on, according to our best light: We can never really cover a thing up in our minds by talking constantly about something else. Many women think they are going to persuade you of their point of view by talking. A woman comes to you with her head full of an idea and finds you do not agree with her. She will talk, talk, talk until you are blind and sick and heartily wish you were deaf, in order to prove to you that she is right and you are wrong. She talks until you do not care whether you are right or wrong. You only care for the blessed relief of silence, and when she has left you, she has done all she could in that space of time to injure her point of view. She has simply buried anything good that she might have had to say in a cloud of dusty talk. It is funny to hear such a woman say after a long interview, "Well, at any rate, I gave him a good talking to. I guess he will go home and think about it." Think about it, madam? He will go home with an impression of rattle and chatter and push that will make him dread the sight of your face; and still more dread the sound of your voice, lest he be subjected to further interviews. Women sit at work together. One woman talks, talks, talks until her companions are so worn with the constant chatter that they have neither head nor nerve enough to do their work well. If they know how to let the chatter go on and turn their attention away from it, so that it makes no impression, they are fortunate indeed, and the practice is most useful to them. But that does not relieve the strain of the nervous talker herself; she is wearing herself out from day to day, and ruining her mind as well as hurting the nerves and dispositions of those about her who do not know how to protect themselves from her nervous talk. Nervous talking is a disease. Now the question is how to cure it. It can be cured, but the first necessity is for a woman to know she has the disease. For, unlike other diseases, the cure does not need a physician, but must be made by the patient herself. First, she must know that she has the disease. Fifty nervous talkers might read this article, and not one of them recognize that it is aimed straight at her. The only remedy for that is for every woman who reads to believe that she is a nervous talker until she has watched herself for a month or more--without prejudice--and has discovered for a certainty that she is not. Then she is safe. But what if she discover to her surprise and chagrin that she is a nervous talker? What is the remedy for that? The first thing to do is to own up the truth to herself without equivocation. To make no excuses or explanations but simply to acknowledge the fact. Then let her aim straight at the remedy--silence--steady, severe, relaxed silence. Work from day to day and promise herself that for that day she will say nothing but what is absolutely necessary. She should not repress the words that want to come, but when she takes breath to speak she must not allow the sentence to come out of her mouth, but must instead relax all over, as far as it is possible, and take a good, long, quiet breath. The next time she wants to speak, even if she forgets so far as to get half the sentence out of her mouth, stop it, relax, and take a long breath. The mental concentration necessary to cure one's self of nervous talking will gather together a mind that was gradually becoming dissipated with the nervous talking habit, and so the life and strength of the mind can be saved. And, after that habit has been cured, the habit of quiet thinking will begin, and what is said will be worth while. CHAPTER XVI _"Why Fuss so Much About What I Eat?"_ I KNOW a woman who insisted that it was impossible for her to eat strawberries because they did not agree with her. A friend told her that that was simply a habit of her mind. Once, at a time when her stomach was tired or not in good condition for some other reason, strawberries had not agreed with her, and from that time she had taken it for granted that she could not eat strawberries. When she was convinced by her friend that her belief that strawberries did not agree with her was merely in her own idea, and not actually true, she boldly ate a plate of strawberries. That night she woke with indigestion, and the next morning she said "You see, I told you they would not agree with me." But her friend answered: "Why, of course you could not expect them to agree right away, could you? Now try eating them again to-day." This little lady was intelligent enough to want the strawberries to agree with her and to be willing to do her part to adjust herself to them, so she tried again and ate them the next day; and now she can eat them every day right through the strawberry season and is all the better for it. This is the fact that we want to understand thoroughly and to look out for. If we are impressed with the idea that any one food does not agree with us, whenever we think of that food we contract, and especially our stomachs contract. Now if our stomachs contract when a food that we believe to disagree with us is merely mentioned, of course they would contract all the more when we ate it. Naturally our digestive organs would be handicapped by the contraction which came from our attitude of mind and, of course, the food would appear not to agree with us. Take, for instance, people who are born with peculiar prenatal impressions about their food. A woman whom I have in mind could not take milk nor cream nor butter nor anything with milk or cream or butter in it. She seemed really proud of her milk-and-cream antipathy. She would air it upon all occasions, when she could do so without being positively discourteous, and often she came very near the edge of discourtesy. I never saw her even appear to make an effort to overcome it, and it is perfectly true that a prenatal impression like that can be overcome as entirely, as can a personally acquired impression, although it may take a longer time and a more persistent effort. This anti-milk-and-cream lady was at work every day over-emphasizing her milk-and-cream contractions; whereas if she had put the same force into dropping the milk-and-cream contraction she would have been using her will to great advantage, and would have helped herself in many other ways as well as in gaining the ability to take normally a very healthful food. We cannot hold one contraction without having its influence draw us into many others. We cannot give our attention to dropping one contraction without having the influence of that one effort expand us in many other ways. Watch people when they refuse food that is passed them at table; you can see whether they refuse and at the same time contract against the food, or whether they refuse with no contraction at all. I have seen an expression of mild loathing on some women's faces when food was passed which "did not agree with them," but they were quite unconscious that their expressions had betrayed them. Now, it is another fact that the contraction of the stomach at one form of food will interfere with the good digestion of another form. When cauliflower has been passed to us and we contract against it how can we expect our stomachs to recover from that contraction in time to digest perfectly the next vegetable which is passed and which we may like very much? It may be said that we expand to the vegetable we like, and that immediately counteracts the former contraction to the vegetable which we do not like. That is true only to a certain extent, for the tendency to cauliflower contraction is there in the back of our brains influencing our stomachs all the time, until we have actually used our wills consciously to drop it. Edwin Booth used to be troubled very much with indigestion; he suffered keenly from it. One day he went to dine with some intimate friends, and before the dinner began his hostess said with a very smiling face: "Now, Mr. Booth, I have been especially careful with this dinner not to have one thing that you cannot digest." The host echoed her with a hearty "Yes, Mr. Booth, everything that will come to the table is good for your digestion." The words made a very happy impression on Mr. Booth. First there was the kind, sympathetic friendliness of his hosts; and then the strong suggestion they had given him that their food would agree with him. Then there was very happy and interesting talk during the whole time that they were at table and afterward. Mr.. Booth ate a hearty dinner and, true to the words of his host and hostess, not one single thing disagreed with him. And yet at that dinner, although care had been taken to have it wholesome, there were served things that under other conditions would have disagreed. While we should aim always to eat wholesome food, it is really not so much the food which makes the trouble as the attitude we take toward it and the way we test it. All the contractions which are made by our fussing about food interfere with our circulation; the interference with our circulation makes us liable to take cold, and it is safe to say that more than half the colds that women have are caused principally by wrong eating. Somewhat akin to grandmother's looking for her spectacles when all the time they are pushed to the top of her head is the way women fuss about their eating and then wonder why it is that they cannot seem to stand drafts. There is no doubt but that our food should be thoroughly masticated before it goes into our stomachs. There is no doubt but that the first process of digestion should be in our mouths. The relish which we get for our food by masticating it properly is greater and also helps toward digesting it truly. All this cannot be over-emphasized if it is taken in the right way. But there is an extreme which perhaps has not been thought of and for which happily I have an example that will illustrate what I want to prove. I know a woman who was, so to speak, daft on the subject of health. She attended to all points of health with such minute detail that she seemed to have lost all idea of why we should be healthy. One of her ways of over-emphasizing the road to health was a very careful mastication of her food. She chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed, and the result was that she so strained her stomach with her chewing that she brought on severe indigestion, simply as a result of an overactive effort toward digestion. This was certainly a case of "vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other." And it was not unique. The over-emphasis of "What shall I eat? How much shall I eat? How often shall I eat? When shall I eat? How shall I eat?"--all extreme attention to these questions is just as liable to bring chronic indigestion as a reckless neglect of them altogether is liable to upset a good, strong stomach and keep it upset. The woman who chewed herself into indigestion fussed herself into it, too, by constantly talking about what was not healthful to eat. Her breakfast, which she took alone, was for a time the dryest-looking meal I ever saw. It was enough to take away any one's healthy relish just to look at it, if he was not forewarned. Now our relish is one of our most blessed gifts. When we relish our food our stomachs can digest it wholesomely. When we do not our stomachs will not produce the secretions necessary to the most wholesome digestion. Constant fussing about our food takes away our relish. A gluttonous dwelling upon our food takes away our relish. Relish is a delicate gift, and as we respect it truly, as we do not degrade it to selfish ends nor kill it with selfish fastidiousness, it grows upon us and is in its place like any other fine perception, and is as greatly useful to the health of our bodies as our keener and deeper perceptions are useful to the health of our minds. Then there is the question of being sure that our stomachs are well rested before we give them any work to do, and being sure that we are quiet enough after eating to give our stomachs the best opportunity to begin their work. Here again one extreme is just as harmful as the other. I knew a woman who had what might be called the fixed idea of health, who always used to sit bolt upright in a high-backed chair for half an hour after dinner, and refuse to speak or to be spoken to in order that "digestion might start in properly." If I had been her stomach I should have said: "Madam, when you have got through giving me your especial attention I will begin my work--which, by the way, is not your work but mine!" And, virtually, that is what her stomach did say. Sitting bolt upright and consciously waiting for your food to begin digestion is an over-attention to what is none of your business, which contracts your brain, contracts your stomach and stops its work. Our business is only to fulfill the conditions rightly. The French workmen do that when they sit quietly after a meal talking of their various interests. Any one can fulfill the conditions properly by keeping a little quiet, having some pleasant chat, reading a bright story or taking life easy in any quiet way for half an hour. Or, if work must begin directly after eating, begin it quietly. But this feeling that it is our business to attend to the working functions of our stomachs is officious and harmful. We must fulfill the conditions and then forget our stomachs. If our stomachs remind us of themselves by some misbehavior we must seek for the cause and remedy it, but we should not on any account feel that the cause is necessarily in the food we have eaten. It may be, and probably often is, entirely back of that. A quick, sharp resistance to something that is said will often cause indigestion. In that case we must stop resisting and not blame the food. A dog was once made to swallow a little bullet with his food and then an X-ray was thrown on to his stomach in order that the process of digestion might be watched by means of the bullet. When the dog was made angry the bullet stopped, which meant that the digestion stopped; when the dog was over-excited in any way digestion stopped. When he was calmed down it went on again. There are many reasons why we should learn to meet life without useless resistance, and the health of our stomachs is not the least. It would surprise most people if they could know how much unnecessary strain they put on their stomachs by eating too much. A nervous invalid had a very large appetite. She was helped twice, sometimes three times, to meat and vegetables at dinner. She thought that what she deemed her very healthy appetite was a great blessing to her, and often remarked upon it, as also upon her idea that so much good, nourishing food must be helping to make her well. And yet she wondered why she did not gain faster. Now the truth of the matter was that this invalid had a nervous appetite. Not only did she not need one third of the food she ate, but indeed the other two thirds was doing her positive harm. The tax which she put upon her stomach to digest so much food drained her nerves every day, and of course robbed her brain, so that she ate and ate and wept and wept with nervous depression. When it was suggested to her by a friend who understood nerves that she would get better very much faster if she would eat very much less she made a rule to take only one helping of anything, no matter how much she might feel that she wanted another. Very soon she began to gain enough to see for herself that she had been keeping herself ill with overeating, and it was not many days before she did not want a second helping. Nervous appetites are not uncommon even among women who consider themselves pretty well. Probably there are not five in a hundred among all the well-fed men and women in this country who would not be more healthy if they ate less. Then there are food notions to be looked out for and out of which any one can relax by giving a little intelligent attention to the task. "I do not like eggs. I am tired of them." "Dear, dear me! I ate so much ice cream that it made me ill, and it has made me ill to think of it ever since." Relax, drop the contraction, pretend you had never tasted ice cream before, and try to eat a little--not for the sake of the ice cream, but for the sake of getting that knot out of your stomach. "But," you will say, "can every one eat everything?" "Yes," the answer is, "everything that is really good, wholesome food is all right for anybody to eat." But you say: "Won't you allow for difference of tastes?" And the answer to that is: "Of course we can like some foods more than others, but there is a radical difference between unprejudiced preferences and prejudiced dislikes." Our stomachs are all right if we will but fulfill their most simple conditions and then leave them alone. If we treat them right they will tell us what is good for them and what is not good for them, and if we will only pay attention, obey them as a matter of course without comment and then forget them, there need be no more fuss about food and very much less nervous irritability. CHAPTER XVII _Take Care of Your Stomach_ WE all know that we have a great deal to do. Some of us have to work all day to earn our bread and butter and then work a good part of the night to make our clothes. Some of us have to stand all day behind a counter. Some of us have to sit all day and sew for others, and all night to sew for ourselves and our children. Most of us have to do work that is necessary or work that is self-imposed. Many of us feel busy without really being busy at all. But how many of us realize that while we are doing work outside, our bodies themselves have good, steady work to do inside. Our lungs have to take oxygen from the air and give it to our blood; our blood has to carry it all through our bodies and take away the waste by means of the steady pumping of our hearts. Our stomachs must digest the food put into them, give the nourishment in it to the blood, and see that the waste is cast off. All this work is wholesome and good, and goes on steadily, giving us health and strength and new power; but if we, through mismanagement, make heart or lungs or stomach work harder than they should, then they must rob us of power to accomplish what we give them to do, and we blame them, instead of blaming ourselves for being hard and unjust taskmasters. The strain in a stomach necessary to the digesting of too much food, or the wrong kind of food, makes itself felt in strain all through the whole system. I knew a woman whose conscience was troubling her very greatly. She was sure she had done many very selfish things for which there was no excuse, and that she herself was greatly to blame for other people's troubles. This was a very acute attack of conscience, accompanied by a very severe stomach ache. The doctor was called in and gave her an emetic. She threw a large amount of undigested food from her stomach, and after that relief the weight on her conscience was lifted entirely and she had nothing more to blame herself with than any ordinary, wholesome woman must have to look out for every day of her life. This is a true story and should be practically useful to readers who need it. This woman's stomach had been given too much to do. It worked hard to do its work well, and had to rob the brain and nervous system in the effort. This effort brought strain to the whole brain, which was made evident in the region of the conscience. It might have come out in some other form. It might have appeared in irritability. It might even have shown itself in downright ugliness. Whatever the effects are, whether exaggerated conscience, exaggerated anxiety, or irritability, the immediate cause of the trouble in such cases as I refer to is in the fact that the stomach has been given too much to do. We give the stomach too much to do if we put a great deal of food into it when it is tired. We give it too much to do if we put into it the wrong kind of food. We give it too much to do if we insist upon working hard ourselves, either with body or brain, directly after a hearty meal. No matter how busy we are we can protect our stomachs against each and all of these three causes of trouble. If a woman is very tired her stomach must necessarily be very tired also. If she can remember that at such times even though she may be very hungry, her body is better nourished if she takes slowly a cup of hot milk, and waits until she is more rested before taking solid food, than if she ate a hearty meal. It will save a strain, and perhaps eventually severe illness. If it is possible to rest and do absolutely nothing for half an hour before a meal, and for half an hour after that insures the best work for our digestion. If one is pretty well, and cannot spare the half hour, ten or fifteen minutes will do, unless there is a great deal of fatigue to be conquered. If it is necessary to work right up to mealtime, let up a little before stopping. As the time for dinner approaches do not work quite so hard; the work will not lose; in the end it will gain--and when you begin work again begin lightly, and get into the thick of it gradually. That gives your stomach a good chance. If possible get a long rest before the last meal, and if your day is very busy, it is better to have the heartiest meal at the end of it, to take a good rest afterward and then a walk in the fresh air, which may be long or short, according to what other work you have to do or according to how tired you are. I know many women will say: "But I am tired all the time; if I waited to rest before I ate, I should starve." The answer to that is "protect your stomach as well as you can. If you cannot rest before and after each meal try to arrange some way by which you can get rid of a little fatigue." If you do this with attention and interest you will find gradually that you are less tired all the time, and as you keep on steadily toward the right path, you may be surprised some day to discover that you are only tired half the time, and perhaps even reach the place where the tired feeling will be the exception. It takes a good while to get our misused stomachs into wholesome ways, but if we are persistent and intelligent we can surely do it, and the relief to the overstrained stomach--as I have said--means relief to the whole body. Resting before and after meals amounts to very little, however, if we eat food that is not nourishing. Some people are so far out of the normal way of eating that they have lost a wholesome sense of what is good for them, and live in a chronic state of disordered stomach, which means a chronic state of disordered nerves and disposition. If such persons could for one minute literally experience the freedom of a woman whose body was truly and thoroughly nourished, the contrast from the abnormal to the normal would make them dizzy. If, however, they stayed in the normal place long enough to get over the dizziness, the freedom of health would be so great a delight that food that was not nourishing would be nauseous to them. Most of us are near enough the normal to know the food that is best for us, through experience of suffering from food which is not best for us, as well as through good natural instinct. If we would learn from the normal working of the involuntary action of our organs, it might help us greatly toward working more wholesomely in all our voluntary actions. If every woman who reads this article would study not to interfere with the most healthy action of her own stomach, her reward after a few weeks' persistent care would be not only a greater power for work, but a greater power for good, healthy, recuperative rest. CHAPTER XVIII _About Faces_ WATCH the faces as you walk along the street! If you get the habit of noticing, your observations will grow keener. It is surprising to see how seldom we find a really quiet face. I do not mean that there should be no lines in the face. We are here in this world at school and we cannot have any real schooling unless we have real experiences. We cannot have real experiences without suffering, and suffering which comes from the discipline of life and results in character leaves lines in our faces. It is the lines made by unnecessary strain to which I refer. Strange to say the unquiet faces come mostly from shallow feeling. Usually the deeper the feeling the less strain there is on the face. A face may look troubled, it may be full of pain, without a touch of that strain which comes from shallow worry or excitement. The strained expression takes character out of the face, it weakens it, and certainly it detracts greatly from whatever natural beauty there may have been to begin with. The expression which comes from pain or any suffering well borne gives character to the face and adds to its real beauty as well as its strength. To remove the strained expression we must remove the strain behind; therefore the hardest work we have to do is below the surface. The surface work is comparatively easy. I know a woman whose face is quiet and placid. The lines are really beautiful, but they are always the same. This woman used to watch herself in the glass until she had her face as quiet and free from lines as she could get it--she used even to arrange the corners of her mouth with her fingers until they had just the right droop. Then she observed carefully how her face felt with that placid expression and studied to keep it always with that feeling, until by and by her features were fixed and now the placid face is always there, for she has established in her brain an automatic vigilance over it that will not allow the muscles once to get "out of drawing." What kind of an old woman this acquaintance of mine will make I do not know. I am curious to see her--but now she certainly is a most remarkable hypocrite. The strain in behind the mask of a face which she has made for herself must be something frightful. And indeed I believe it is, for she is ill most of the time--and what could keep one in nervous illness more entirely than this deep interior strain which is necessary to such external appearance of placidity. There comes to my mind at once a very comical illustration of something quite akin to this although at first thought it seems almost the reverse. A woman who constantly talked of the preeminency of mind over matter, and the impossibility of being moved by external circumstances to any one who believed as she did--this woman I saw very angry. She was sitting with her face drawn in a hundred cross lines and all askew with her anger. She had been spouting and sputtering what she called her righteous indignation for some minutes, when after a brief pause and with the angry expression still on her face she exclaimed: "Well, I don't care, it's all peace within." I doubt if my masked lady would ever have declared to herself or to any one else that "it was all peace within." The angry woman was--without doubt--the deeper hypocrite, but the masked woman had become rigid in her hypocrisy. I do not know which was the weaker of the two, probably the one who was deceiving herself. But to return to those drawn, strained lines we see on the people about us. They do not come from hard work or deep thought. They come from unnecessary contractions about the work. If we use our wills consistently and steadily to drop such contractions, the result is a more quiet and restful way of living, and so quieter and more attractive faces. This unquietness comes especially in the eyes. It is a rare thing to see a really quiet eye; and very pleasant and beautiful it is when we do see it. And the more we see and observe the unquiet eyes and the unquiet faces the better worth while it seems to work to have ours more quiet, but not to put on a mask, or be in any other way a hypocrite. The exercise described in a previous chapter will help to bring a quiet face. We must drop our heads with a sense of letting every strain go out of our faces, and then let our heads carry our bodies down as far as possible, dropping strain all the time, and while rising slowly we must take the same care to drop all strain. In taking the long breath, we must inhale without effort, and exhale so easily that it seems as if the breath went out of itself, like the balloons that children blow up and then watch them shrink as the air leaves them. Five minutes a day is very little time to spend to get a quiet face, but just that five minutes--if followed consistently--will make us so much more sensitive to the unquiet that we will sooner or later turn away from it as by a natural instinct. CHAPTER XIX _About Voices_ I KNEW an old German--a wonderful teacher of the speaking voice--who said "the ancients believed that the soul of the man is here"--pointing to the pit of his stomach. "I do not know," and he shrugged his shoulders with expressive interest, "it may be and it may not be--but I know the soul of the voice is here--and you Americans--you squeeze the life out of the word in your throat and it is born dead." That old artist spoke the truth--we Americans--most of us--do squeeze the life out of our words and they are born dead. We squeeze the life out by the strain which runs all through us and reflects itself especially in our voices. Our throats are tense and closed; our stomachs are tense and strained; with many of us the word is dead before it is born. Watch people talking in a very noisy place; hear how they scream at the top of their lungs to get above the noise. Think of the amount of nervous force they use in their efforts to be heard. Now really when we are in the midst of a great noise and want to be heard, what we have to do is to pitch our voices on a different key from the noise about us. We can be heard as well, and better, if we pitch our voices on a lower key than if we pitch them on a higher key; and to pitch your voice on a low key requires very much less effort than to strain to a high one. I can imagine talking with some one for half an hour in a noisy factory--for instance--and being more rested at the end of the half hour than at the beginning. Because to pitch your voice low you must drop some superfluous tension and dropping superfluous tension is always restful. I beg any or all of my readers to try this experiment the next time they have to talk with a friend in a noisy street. At first the habit of screaming above the noise of the wheels is strong on us and it seems impossible that we should be heard if we speak below it. It is difficult to pitch our voices low and keep them there. But if we persist until we have formed a new habit, the change is delightful. There is one other difficulty in the way; whoever is listening to us may be in the habit of hearing a voice at high tension and so find it difficult at first to adjust his ear to the lower voice and will in consequence insist that the lower tone cannot be heard as easily. It seems curious that our ears can be so much engaged in expecting screaming that they cannot without a positive effort of the mind readjust in order to listen to a lower tone. But it is so. And, therefore, we must remember that to be thoroughly successful in speaking intelligently below the noise we must beg our listeners to change the habit of their ears as we ourselves must change the pitch of our voices. The result both to speaker and listener is worth the effort ten times over. As we habitually lower the pitch of our voices our words cease gradually to be "born dead." With a low-pitched voice everything pertaining to the voice is more open and flexible and can react more immediately to whatever may be in our minds to express. Moreover, the voice itself may react back again upon our dispositions. If a woman gets excited in an argument, especially if she loses her temper, her voice will be raised higher and higher until it reaches almost a shriek. And to hear two women "argue" sometimes it may be truly said that we are listening to a "caterwauling." That is the only word that will describe it. But if one of these women is sensitive enough to know she is beginning to strain in her argument and will lower her voice and persist in keeping it lowered the effect upon herself and the other woman will put the "caterwauling" out of the question. "Caterwauling" is an ugly word. It describes an ugly sound. If you have ever found yourself in the past aiding and abetting such an ugly sound in argument with another--say to yourself "caterwauling," "caterwauling," "I have been 'caterwauling' with Jane Smith, or Maria Jones," or whoever it may be, and that will bring out in such clear relief the ugliness of the word and the sound that you will turn earnestly toward a more quiet way of speaking. The next time you start on the strain of an argument and your voice begins to go up, up, up--something will whisper in your ear "caterwauling" and you will at once, in self-defense, lower your voice or stop speaking altogether. It is good to call ugly things by their ugliest names. It helps us to see them in their true light and makes us more earnest in our efforts to get away from them altogether. I was once a guest at a large reception and the noise of talking seemed to be a roar, when suddenly an elderly man got up on a chair and called "silence," and having obtained silence he said, "it has been suggested that every one in this room should speak in a lower tone of voice." The response was immediate. Every one went on talking with the same interest only in a lower tone of voice with a result that was both delightful and soothing. I say every one--there were perhaps half a dozen whom I observed who looked and I have no doubt said "how impudent." So it was "impudent" if you chose to take it so--but most of the people did not choose to take it so and so brought a more quiet atmosphere and a happy change of tone. Theophile Gautier said that the voice was nearer the soul than any other expressive part of us. It is certainly a very striking indicator of the state of the soul. If we accustom ourselves to listen to the voices of those about us we detect more and more clearly various qualities of the man or the woman in the voice, and if we grow sensitive to the strain in our own voices and drop it at once when it is perceived, we feel a proportionate gain. I knew of a blind doctor who habitually told character by the tone of the voice, and men and women often went to him to have their characters described as one would go to a palmist. Once a woman spoke to him earnestly for that purpose and he replied, "Madam, your voice has been so much cultivated that there is nothing of you in it--I cannot tell your real character at all." The only way to cultivate a voice is to open it to its best possibilities--not to teach its owner to pose or to imitate a beautiful tone until it has acquired the beautiful tone habit. Such tones are always artificial and the unreality in them can be easily detected by a quick ear. Most great singers are arrant hypocrites. There is nothing of themselves in their tone. The trouble is to have a really beautiful voice one must have a really beautiful soul behind it. If you drop the tension of your voice in an argument for the sake of getting a clearer mind and meeting your opponent without resistance, your voice helps your mind and your mind helps your voice. They act and react upon one another with mutual benefit. If you lower your voice in general for the sake of being more quiet, and so more agreeable and useful to those about you, then again the mental or moral effort and the physical effort help one another. It adds greatly to a woman's attraction and to her use to have a low, quiet voice--and if any reader is persisting in the effort to get five minutes absolute quiet in every day let her finish the exercise by saying something in a quiet, restful tone of voice. It will make her more sensitive to her unrestful tones outside, and so help her to improve them. CHAPTER XX _About Frights_ HERE are two true stories and a remarkable contrast. A nerve specialist was called to see a young girl who had had nervous prostration for two years. The physician was told before seeing the patient that the illness had started through fright occasioned by the patient's waking and discovering a burglar in her room. Almost the moment the doctor entered the sick room, he was accosted with: "Doctor, do you know what made me ill? It was frightful." Then followed a minute description of her sudden awakening and seeing the man at her bureau drawers. This story had been lived over and over by the young girl and her friends for two years, until the strain in her brain caused by the repetition of the impression of fright was so intense that no skill nor tact seemed able to remove it. She simply would not let it go, and she never got really well. Now, see the contrast. Another young woman had a similar burglar experience, and for several nights after she woke with a start at the same hour. For the first two or three nights she lay and shivered until she shivered herself to sleep. Then she noticed how tightened up she was in every muscle when she woke, and she bethought herself that she would put her mind on relaxing her muscles and getting rid of the tension in her nerves. She did this persistently, so that when she woke with the burglar fright it was at once a reminder to relax. After a little she got the impression that she woke in order to relax and it was only a very little while before she succeeded so well that she did not wake until it was time to get up in the morning. The burglar impression not only left her entirely, but left her with the habit of dropping all contractions before she went to sleep, and her nerves are stronger and more normal in consequence. The two girls had each a very sensitive, nervous temperament, and the contrast in their behavior was simply a matter of intelligence. This same nerve specialist received a patient once who was positively blatant in her complaint of a nervous shock. "Doctor, I have had a horrible nervous shock. It was horrible. I do not see how I can ever get over it." Then she told it and brought the horrors out in weird, over-vivid colors. It was horrible, but she was increasing the horrors by the way in which she dwelt on it. Finally, when she paused long enough to give the doctor an opportunity to speak, he said, very quietly: "Madam, will you kindly say to me, as gently as you can, 'I have had a severe nervous shock.'" She looked at him without a gleam of understanding and repeated the words quietly: "I have had a severe nervous shock." In spite of herself she felt the contrast in her own brain. The habitual blatancy was slightly checked. The doctor then tried to impress upon her the fact that she was constantly increasing the strain of the shock by the way she spoke of it and the way she thought of it, and that she was really keeping herself ill. Gradually, as she learned to relax the nervous tension caused by the shock, a true intelligence about it all dawned upon her; the over-vivid colors faded, and she got well. She was surprised herself at the rapidity with which she got well, but she seemed to understand the process and to be moderately grateful for it. If she had had a more sensitive temperament she would have appreciated it all the more keenly; but if she had had a more sensitive temperament she would not have been blatant about her shock. CHAPTER XXI _Contrariness_ I KNOW a woman who says that if she wants to get her father's consent to anything, she not only appears not to care whether he consents or not, but pretends that her wishes are exactly opposite to what they really are. She says it never fails; the decision has always been made in opposition to her expressed desires, and according to her real wishes. In other words, she has learned how to manage her father. This example is not unique. Many of us see friends managing other friends in that same way. The only thing which can interfere with such astute management is the difficulty that a man may have in concealing his own will in order to accomplish what he desires. Wilfulness is such an impulsive quantity that it will rush ahead in spite of us and spoil everything when we feel that there is danger of our not getting our own way. Or, if we have succeeded in getting our own way by what might be called the "contrary method," we may be led into an expression of satisfaction which will throw light on the falseness of our previous attitude and destroy the confidence of the friend whom we were tactfully influencing. To work the "contrary method" to perfection requires a careful control up to the finish and beyond it. In order never to be found out, we have to be so consistent in our behavior that we gradually get trained into nothing but a common every-day hypocrite, and the process which goes on behind hypocrisy must necessarily be a process of decay. Beside that, the keenest hypocrite that ever lived can only deceive others up to a certain limit. But what is one to do when a friend can only be reached by the "contrary method"? What is one to do when if, for instance, you want a friend to read a book, you know that the way to prevent his reading it is to mention your desire? If you want a friend to see a play and in a forgetful mood mention the fact that you feel sure the play would delight him, you know as soon as the words are out of your mouth you have put the chance of his seeing the play entirely out of the question? What is one to do when something needs mending in the house, and you know that to mention the need to the man of the house would be to delay the repair just so much longer? How are our contrary-minded friends to be met if we cannot pretend we do not want what we do want in order to get their cooperation and consent? No one could deliberately plan to be a hypocrite understanding what a hypocrite really is. A hypocrite is a sham--a sham has nothing solid to stand on. No one really respects a sham, and the most intelligent, the most tactful hypocrite that ever lived is nothing but a sham,--_false_ and a sham! Beside, no one can manage another by the process of sham and hypocrisy without sooner or later being found out, and when he is found out, all his power is gone. The trouble with the contrary-minded is they have an established habit of resistance. Sometimes the habit is entirely inherited, and has never been seen or acknowledged. Sometimes it has an inherited foundation, with a cultivated superstructure. Either way it is a problem for those who have to deal with it,--until they understand. The "contrary method" does not solve the problem; it is only a makeshift; it never does any real work, or accomplishes any real end. It is not even lastingly intelligent. The first necessity in dealing truly with these people is _not to be afraid o f their resistances._ The second necessity, which is so near the first that the two really belong side by side, is _never to meet their resistances with resistances o f our own._ If we combat another man's resistance, it only increases his tension. No matter how wrong he may be, and how right we are, meeting resistance with resistance only breeds trouble. Two minds can act and react upon one another in that way until they come to a lock which not only makes lasting enemies of those who should have been and could be always friends, but the contention locks up strain in each man's brain which can never be removed without pain, and a new awakening to the common sense of human intercourse. If we want a friend to read a book, to go a journey, or to do something which is more important for his own good than either, and we know that to suggest our desire would be to rouse his resistance, the only way is to catch him in the best mood we can, say what we have to say, give our own preference, and at the same time feel and express a willingness to be refused. Every man is a free agent, and we have no right not to respect his freedom, even if he uses that freedom to stand in his own light or in ours. If he is standing in our light and refuses to move, we can move out of his shadow, even though we may have to give up our most cherished desire in order to do so. If he is standing in his own light, and refuses to move, we can suggest or advise and do whatever in us lies to make the common sense of our opinion clear; but if he still persists in standing in his own light, it is his business, not ours. It requires the cultivation of a strong will to put a request before a friend which we know will be resisted, and to yield to that resistance so that it meets no antagonism in us. But when it is done, and done thoroughly, consistently, and intelligently, the other man's resistance reacts back upon himself, and he finds himself out as he never could in any other way. Having found himself out, unless his mulishness is almost past sanity, he begins to reject his habit of resistance of his own accord. In dealing with the contrary minded, the "contrary method" works so long as it is not discovered; and the danger of its being discovered is always imminent. The upright, direct method is according to the honorable laws of human intercourse, and brings always better results in the end, even though there may be some immediate failures in the process. To adjust ourselves rightly to another nature and go with it to a good end, along the lines of least resistance, is of course the best means of a real acquaintance, but to allow ourselves to manage a fellow-being is an indignity to the man and worse than an indignity to the mind who is willing to do the managing. Our humanity is in our freedom. Our freedom is in our humanity. When one, man tries to manage another, he is putting that other in the attitude of a beast. The man who is allowing himself to be managed is classing himself with the beasts. Although this is a fact so evident on the base of it that it needs neither explanation nor enlargement, there is hardly a day passes that some one does not say to some one, "You cannot manage me in that way," and the answer should be, "Why should you want to be managed in any way; and why should I want to insult you by trying to manage you at all?" The girl and her father might have been intelligent friends by this time, if the practice of the "contrary method" had not tainted the girl with habitual hypocrisy, and cultivated in the father the warped mind which results from the habit of resistance, and blind weakness which comes from the false idea that he is always having his own way. If we want an open brain and a good, freely working nervous system, we must respect our own freedom and the freedom of other people,--for only as individuals stand alone can they really influence one another to any good end. It is curious to see how the men of habitual resistance pride themselves on being in bondage to no one, not knowing that the fear of such bondage is what makes them resist, and the fear of being influenced by another is one of the most painful forms of bondage in which a man can be. The men who are slaves to this fear do not stop even to consider the question. They resist and refuse a request at once, for fear that pausing for consideration would open them to the danger of appearing to yield to the will of another. When we are quite as willing to yield to another as to refuse him, then we are free, and can give any question that is placed before us intelligent consideration, and decide according to our best judgment. No amount of willfulness can force a man to any action or attitude of mind if he is willing to yield to the willful pressure if it seems to him best. The worse bondage of man to man is the bondage of fear. CHAPTER XXII _How to Sew Easily_ IT is a common saying that we should let our heads save our heels, but few of us know the depth of it or the freedom and health that can come from obedience to it. For one thing we get into ruts. If a woman grows tired sewing she takes it for granted that she must always be tired. Sometimes she frets and complains, which only adds to her fatigue. Sometimes she goes on living in a dogged state of overtiredness until there comes a "last straw" which brings on some organic disease, and still another "straw" which kills her altogether. We, none of us, seem to realize that our heads can save not only our heels, but our hearts, and our lungs, our spines and our brains--indeed our whole nervous systems. Men and women sometimes seem to prefer to go on working--chronically tired--getting no joy from life whatever, rather than to take the trouble to think enough to gain the habit of working restfully. Sometimes, to be sure, they are so tired that the little extra exertion of the brain required to learn to get rid of the fatigue seems too much for them. It seems easier to work in a rut of strain and discomfort than to make the effort to get out of the rut--even though they know that by doing so they will not only be better themselves, but will do their work better. Now really the action of the brain which is needed to help one to work restfully is quite distinct from the action which does the work, and a little effort of the brain in a new direction rests and refreshes the part of the brain which is drudging along day after day, and not only that, but when one has gained the habit of working more easily life is happier and more worth while. If once we could become convinced of that fact it would be a simple matter for the head to learn to save the heels and for the whole body to be more vigorous in consequence. Take sewing, for instance: If a woman must sew all day long without cessation and she can appreciate that ten or fifteen minutes taken out of the day once in the morning and once in the afternoon is going to save fatigue and help her to do her sewing better, doesn't it seem simply a lack of common sense if she is not willing to take that half hour and use it for its right purpose? Or, if she is employed with others, is it not a lack of common sense combined with cruelty in her employer if he will not permit the use of fifteen minutes twice a day to help his employees to do their work better and to keep more healthy in the process of working? It seems to me that all most of us need is to have our attention drawn to the facts in such cases as this and then we shall be willing and anxious to correct the mistakes. First, we do not know, and, secondly, we do not think, intelligently. It is within our reach to do both. Let me put the facts about healthy sewing in numerical order:-- First--A woman should never sew nor be allowed to sew in bad air. The more or less cramped attitude of the chest in sewing makes it especially necessary that the lungs should be well supplied with oxygen, else the blood will lose vitality, the appetite will go and the nerves will be straining to bring the muscles up to work which they could do quite easily if they were receiving the right amount of nourishment from air and food. Second--When our work gives our muscles a tendency steadily in one direction we must aim to counteract that tendency by using exercises with a will to pull them in the opposite way. If a man writes constantly, to stop writing half a dozen times a day and stretch the fingers of his hand wide apart and let them relax back slowly will help him so that he need not be afraid of writer's paralysis. Now a woman's tendency in sewing is to have her chest contracted and settled down on her stomach, and her head bent forward. Let her stop even twice a day, lift her chest off her stomach, see that the lifting of her chest takes her shoulders back, let her head gently fall back, take a long quiet breath in that attitude, then bring the head up slowly, take some long quiet breaths like gentle sighs, gradually let the lungs settle back into their habitual state of breathing, and then try the exercise again. If this exercise is repeated three times in succession with quiet care, its effect will be very evident in the refreshment felt when a woman begins sewing again. At the very most it can only take two minutes to go through the whole exercise and be ready to repeat it. That will mean six minutes for the three successive times. Six minutes can easily be made up by the renewed vigor that comes from the long breath and change of attitude. Stopping for the exercise three times a day will only take eighteen--or at the most twenty-minutes out of the day's work and it will put much more than that into the work in new power. Third--We must remember that we need not sew in a badly cramped position. Of course the exercises will help us out of the habitually cramped attitude, but we cannot expect them to help us so much unless we make an effort while sewing to be as little cramped as possible. The exercises give us a new standard of erectness, and that new standard will make us sensitive to the wrong attitude. We will constantly notice when our chests get cramped and settled down on our stomachs and by expanding them and lifting them, even as we sew, the healthy attitude will get to be second nature. Fourth--We must sew with our hands and our arms, not with our spines, the backs of our necks, or our legs. The unnecessary strain she puts into her sewing makes a woman more tired than anything else. To avoid this she must get sensitive to the strain, and every time she perceives it drop it; consciously, with a decided use of her will, until she has established the habit of working without strain. The gentle raising of the head to the erect position after the breathing exercise will let out a great deal of strain, and so make us more sensitive to its return when we begin to sew, and the more sensitive we get to it the sooner we can drop it. I think I hear a woman say, "I have neither the time nor the strength to attend to all this." My answer is, such exercise will save time and strength in the end. CHAPTER XXIII _Do not Hurry_ HOW can any one do anything well while in a constant state of rush? How can any one see anything clearly while in a constant state of rush? How can any one expect to keep healthy and strong while in a constant state of rush? But most of my readers may say, "I am not in a constant state of rush--I only hurry now and then when I need to hurry." The answer to that is "Prove it, prove it." Study yourself a little, and see whether you find yourself chronically in a hurry or not. If you will observe yourself carefully with a desire to find the hurry tendency, and to find it thoroughly, in order to eliminate it, you will be surprised to see how much of it there is in you. The trouble is that all our standards are low, and to raise our standards we must drop that which interferes with the most wholesome way of living. As we get rid of all the grosser forms of hurry we find in ourselves other hurry habits that are finer and more subtle, and gradually our standards of quiet, deliberate ways get higher; we become more sensitive to hurry, and a hurried way of doing things grows more and more disagreeable to us. Watch the women coming out of a factory in the dinner hour or at six o'clock. They are almost tumbling over each other in their hurry to get away. They are putting on their jackets, pushing in their hatpins, and running along as if their dinner were running away from them. Something akin to that same attitude of rush we can see in any large city when the clerks come out of the shops, for their luncheon hour, or when the work of the day is over. If we were to calculate in round numbers the amount of time saved by this rush to get away from the shop, we should find three minutes, probably the maximum--and if we balance that against the loss to body and mind which is incurred, we should find the three minutes' gain quite overweighted by the loss of many hours, perhaps days, because of the illness which must be the result of such habitual contraction. It is safe to predict when we see a woman rushing away from factory or shop that she is not going to "let up" on that rate of speed until she is back again at work. Indeed, having once started brain and body with such an exaggerated impetus, it is not possible to quiet down without a direct and decided use of the will, and how is that decided action to be taken if the brain is so befogged with the habit of hurry that it knows no better standard? One of the girls from a large factory came rushing up to the kind, motherly head of the boarding house the other day saying:-- "It is abominable that I should be kept waiting so long for my dinner. I have had my first course and here I have been waiting twenty minutes for my dessert." The woman addressed looked up quietly to the clock and saw that it was ten minutes past twelve. "What time did you come in?" she said. "At twelve o'clock." "And you have had your first course?" "Yes." "And waited twenty minutes for your dessert?" "Yes!" (snappishly). "How can that be when you came in at twelve o'clock, and it is now only ten minutes past?" Of course there was nothing to say in answer, but whether the girl took it to heart and so raised her standard of quiet one little bit, I do not know. One can deposit a fearful amount of strain in the brain with only a few moments' impatience. I use the word "fearful" advisedly, for when the strain is once deposited it is not easily removed, especially when every day and every moment of every day is adding to the strain. The strain of hurry makes contractions in brain and body with which it is impossible to work freely and easily or to accomplish as much as might be done without such contractions. The strain of hurry befogs the brain so that it is impossible for it to expand to an unprejudiced point of view. The strain of hurry so contracts the whole nervous and muscular systems that the body can take neither the nourishment of food nor of fresh air as it should. There are many women who work for a living, and women who do not work for a living, who feel hurried from morning until they go to bed at night, and they must, perforce, hurry to sleep and hurry awake. Often the day seems so full, and one is so pressed for time that it is impossible to get in all there is to do, and yet a little quiet thinking will show that the important things can be easily put into two thirds of the day, and the remaining third is free for rest, or play, or both. Then again, there is real delight in quietly fitting one thing in after another when the day must be full, and the result at the end of the day is only healthy fatigue from which a good night's rest will refresh us entirely. There is one thing that is very evident--a feeling of hurry retards our work, it does not hasten it, and the more quietly we can do what is before us, the more quickly and vigorously we do it. The first necessity is to find ourselves out--to find out for a fact when we do hurry, and how we hurry, and how we have the sense of hurry with us all the time. Having willingly, and gladly, found ourselves out, the remedy is straight before us. Nature is on the side of leisure and will come to our aid with higher standards of quiet, the possibilities of which are always in every one's brain, if we only look to find them. To sit five minutes quietly taking long breaths to get a sense of leisure every day will be of very great help--and then when we find ourselves hurrying, let us stop and recall the best quiet we know--that need only take a few seconds, and the gain is sure to follow. _Festina lente_ (hasten slowly) should be in the back of our brains all day and every day. "'T is haste makes waste, the sage avers, And instances are far too plenty; Whene'er the hasty impulse stirs, Put on the brake, Festina Lente." CHAPTER XXIV _The Care of an Invalid_ TO take really good care of one who is ill requires not only knowledge but intelligent patience and immeasurable tact. A little knowledge will go a great way, and we do not need to be trained nurses in order to help our friends to bear their illnesses patiently and quietly and to adjust things about them so that they are enabled to get well faster because of the care we give them. Sometimes if we have only fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes at night to be with a sick friend, we can so arrange things for the day and for the night that we will have left behind us a directly curative influence because our invalid feels cared for in the best way, and has confidence enough to follow the suggestions we have given. More depends upon the spirit with which we approach an invalid than anything else. A trained nurse who has graduated at the head of her class and has executive ability, who knows exactly what to do and when to do it, may yet bring such a spirit of self-importance and bustle that everything she does for the invalid's ease, comfort, and recuperation is counteracted by the unrestful "professional" spirit with which the work is done. On the other hand, a woman who has only a slight knowledge of nursing can bring so restful and unobtrusive an atmosphere with her that the invalid gains from her very presence. Overwhelming kindness is not only tiresome and often annoying, but a serious drag on one who is ill. People who are so busy doing kindnesses seldom consult the invalid's preferences at all. They are too full of their own selfish kindliness and self-importance. I remember a woman who was suffering intensely from neuralgia in her face. A friend, proud of the idea of caring for her and giving up her own pleasure to stay in the darkened room and keep the sufferer's face bathed in hot water, made such a rustling back and forth with her skirts in getting the water that the strain of the constant noise and movement not only counteracted any relief that might have come from the heat, but it increased the pain and made the nervous condition of the patient much worse. So it is with a hundred and one little "kindnesses" that people try to do for others when they are ill. They talk to amuse them when the invalids would give all in their power to have a little quiet. They sit like lumps and say nothing when a little light, easy chatting might divert the invalid's attention and so start up a gentle circulation which would tend directly toward health. Or, they talk and are entertaining for a while in a very helpful way, but not knowing when to stop, finally make the patient so tired that they undo all the good of the first fifteen minutes. They flood the room with light, "to make it look pleasant," when the invalid longs for the rest of a darkened room; or they draw the shades when the patient longs for the cheerfulness of sunlight. They fuss and move about to do this or that and the other "kindness" when the sick person longs for absolute quiet. They shower attentions when the first thing that is desired is to be let alone. One secret of the whole trouble in this oppressive care of the sick is that this sort of caretaker is interested more to please herself and feel the satisfaction of her own benefactions than she is to really please the friend for whom she is caring. Another trouble is common ignorance. Some women would gladly sacrifice anything to help a friend to get well; they would give their time and their strength gladly and count it as nothing, but they do not know how to care for the sick. Often such people are sadly discouraged because they see that they are only bringing discomfort where, with all their hearts, they desire to bring comfort. The first necessity in the right care for the sick is to be quiet and cheerful. The next is to aim, without disturbing the invalid, to get as true an idea as possible of the condition necessary to help the patient to get well. The third is to bring about those conditions with the least possible amount of friction. Find out what the invalid likes and how she likes it by observation and not by questions. Sometimes, of course, a question must be asked. If we receive a snappish answer, let us not resent it, but blame the illness and be grateful if, along with the snappishness, we find out what suits our patient best. If we see her increasing her pain by contracting and giving all her attention to complaining, we cannot help her by telling her that that sort of thing is not going to make her well. But we can soothe her in a way that will enable her to see it for herself. Often the right suggestion, no matter how good it is, will only annoy the patient and send her farther on in the wrong path; but if given in some gentle roundabout way, so that she feels that she has discovered for herself what you have been trying to tell her, it will work wonders toward her recovery. If you want to care for the sick in a way that will truly help them toward recovery, you must observe and study,--study and observe, and never resent their irritability. See that they have the right amount of air; that they have the right nourishment at the right intervals. Let them have things their own way, and done in their own way so far as is possible without interfering with what is necessary to their health. Remember that there are times when it is better to risk deferring recovery a little rather than force upon an invalid what is not wanted, especially when it is evident that resistance will be harmful. Quiet, cheerfulness, light, air, nourishment, orderly surroundings, and to be let judiciously alone; those are the conditions which the amateur nurse must further, according to her own judgment and, her knowledge of the friend she is nursing. For this purpose she must, as I have said, study and observe, and observe and study. I do not mean necessarily to do all this when she is "off duty," but to so concentrate when she is attending to the wants of her friend that every moment and every thought will be used to the best gain of the patient herself, and not toward our ideas of her best gain. A little careful effort of this kind will open a new and interesting vista to the nurse as well as the patient. CHAPTER XXV _The Habit of Illness_ IT is surprising how many invalids there are who have got well and do not know it! When you feel ill and days drag on with one ill feeling following another, it is not a pleasant thing to be told that you are quite well. Who could be expected to believe it? I should like to know how many men and women there are who will read this article, who are well and do not know it; and how many of such men and women will take the hint I want to give them and turn honestly toward finding themselves out in a way that will enable them to discover and acknowledge the truth? Nerves form habits. They actually form habits in themselves. If a woman has had an organic trouble which has caused certain forms of nervous discomfort, when the organic trouble is cured the nerves are apt to go on for a time with the same uncomfortable feelings because during the period of illness they had formed the habit of such discomfort. Then is the time when the will must be used to overcome such habits. The trouble is that when the doctor tells these victims of nervous habit that they are really well they will not believe him. "How can I be well," they say, "when I suffer just as I did while I was ill?" If then the doctor is fortunate enough to convince them of the fact that it is only the nervous habit formed from their illness which causes them to suffer, and that they can rouse their wills to overcome intelligently this habit, then they can be well in a few weeks when they might have been apparently ill for many months--or perhaps even years. Nerves form the habit of being tired. A woman can get very much overfatigued at one time and have the impression of the fatigue so strongly on her nerves that the next time she is only a little tired she will believe she is very tired, and so her life will go until the habit of being tired has been formed in her nerves and she believes that she is tired all the time--whereas if the truth were known she might easily feel rested all the time. It is often very difficult to overcome the habit which the nerves form as a result of an attack of nervous prostration. It is equally hard to convince any one getting out of such an illness that the habit of his nerves tries to make him believe he cannot do a little more every day--when he really can, and would be better for it. Many cases of nervous prostration which last for years might be cured in as many months if the truth about nerve habits were recognized and acted upon. Nerves can form bad habits and they can form good habits, but of all the bad habits formed by nerves perhaps the very worst is the habit of being ill. These bad habits of illness engender an unwillingness to let go of them. They seem so real. "I do not want to suffer like this," I hear an invalid say; "if it were merely a habit don't you think I would throw it off in a minute?" I knew a young physician who had made somewhat of a local reputation in the care of nerves, and a man living in a far-distant country, who had been for some time a chronic invalid, happened by accident to hear of him. My friend was surprised to receive a letter from this man, offering to pay him the full amount of all fees he would earn in one month and as much more as he might ask if he would spend that time in the house with him and attempt his cure. Always interested in new phases of nerves, and having no serious case on hand himself at the time, he assented and went with great interest on this long journey to, as he hoped, cure one man. When he arrived he found his patient most charming. He listened attentively to the account of his years of illness, inquired of others in the house with him, and then went to bed and to sleep. In the morning he woke with a sense of unexplained depression. In searching about for the cause he went over his interviews of the day before and found a doubt in his mind which he would hardly acknowledge; but by the end of the next day he said to himself: "What a fool I was to come so far without a more complete knowledge of what I was coming to! This man has been well for years and does not know it. It is the old habit of his illness that is on him; the illness itself must have left him ten years ago." The next day--the first thing after breakfast--he took a long walk in order to make up his mind what to do, and finally decided that he had engaged to stay one month and must keep to his promise. It would not do to tell the invalid the truth--the poor man would not believe it. He was self-willed and self-centered, and his pains and discomforts, which came simply from old habits of illness, were as real to him as if they had been genuine. Several physicians had emphasized his belief that he was ill. One doctor--so my friend was told--who saw clearly the truth of the case, ventured to hint at it and was at once discharged. My friend knew all these difficulties and, when he made up his mind that the only right thing for him to do was to stay, he found himself intensely interested in trying to approach his patient with so much delicacy that he could finally convince him of the truth; and I am happy to say that his efforts were to a great degree successful. The patient was awakened to the fact that, if he tried, he could be a well man. He never got so far as to see that he really was a well man who was allowing old habits to keep him ill; but he got enough of a new and healthy point of view to improve greatly and to feel a hearty sense of gratitude toward the man who had enlightened him. The long habit of illness had dulled his brain too much for him to appreciate the whole truth about himself. The only way that such an invalid's brain can be enlightened is by going to work very gently and leading him to the light--never by combating. This young physician whom I mention was successful only through making friends with his patient and leading him gradually to appear to discover for himself the fact which all the time the physician was really telling him. The only way to help others is to help them to help themselves, and this is especially the truth with nerves. If you, my friend, are so fortunate as to find out that your illness is more a habit of illness than illness itself, do not expect to break the habit at once. Go about it slowly and with common sense. A habit can be broken sooner than it can be formed, but even then it cannot be broken immediately. First recognize that your uncomfortable feelings whether of eyes, nose, stomach, back of neck, top of head, or whatever it may be, are mere habits, and then go about gradually but steadily ignoring them. When once you find that your own healthy self can assert itself and realize that you are stronger than your habits, these habits of illness will weaken and finally disappear altogether. The moment an illness gets hold of one, the illness has the floor, so to speak, and the temptation is to consider it the master of the situation--and yielding to this temptation is the most effectual way of beginning to establish the habits which the illness has started, and makes it more difficult to know when one is well. On the other hand it is clearly possible to yield completely to an illness and let Nature take its course, and at the same time to take a mental attitude of wholesomeness toward it which will deprive the illness of much of its power. Nature always tends toward health; so we have the working of natural law entirely on our side. If the attitude of a man's mind is healthy, when he gets well he is well. He is not bothered long with the habits of his illness, for he has never allowed them to gain any hold upon him. He has neutralized the effect of the would-be habits in the beginning so that they could not get a firm hold. We can counteract bad habits with good ones any time that we want to if we only go to work in the right way and are intelligently persistent. It would be funny if it were not sad to hear a man say, "Well, you know I had such and such an illness years ago and I never really recovered from the effects of it," and to know at the same time that he had kept himself in the effects of it, or rather the habits of his nerves had kept him there, and he had been either ignorant or unwilling to use his will to throw off those habits and gain the habits of health which were ready and waiting. People who cheerfully turn their hearts and minds toward health have so much, so very much, in their favor. Of course, there are laws of health to be learned and carefully followed in the work of throwing off habits of illness. We must rest; take food that is nourishing, exercise, plenty of sleep and fresh air--yet always with the sense that the illness is only something to get rid of, and our own healthy attitude toward the illness is of the greatest importance. Sometimes a man can go right ahead with his work, allow an illness to run its course, and get well without interrupting his work in the least, because of his strong aim toward health which keeps his illness subordinate. But this is not often the case. An illness, even though it be treated as subordinate, must be respected more or less according to its nature. But when that is done normally no bad habits will be left behind. I know a young girl who was ill with strained nerves that showed themselves in weak eyes and a contracted stomach. She is well now--entirely well--but whenever she gets a little tired the old habits of eyes and stomach assert themselves, and she holds firmly on to them, whereas each time of getting overtired might be an opportunity to break up these evil habits by a right amount of rest and a healthy amount of ignoring. This matter of habit is a very painful thing when it is supported by inherited tendencies. If a young person overdoes and gets pulled down with fatigue the fatigue expresses itself in the weakest part of his body. It may be in the stomach and consequently appear as indigestion; it may be in the head and so bring about severe headaches, and it may be in both stomach and head. If it is known that such tendencies are inherited the first thought that almost inevitably comes to the mind is: "My father always had headaches and my grandfather, too. Of course, I must expect them now for the rest of my life." That thought interpreted rightly is: "My grandfather formed the headache habit, my father inherited the habit and clinched it--now, of course, I must expect to inherit it, and I will do my best to see if I cannot hold on to the habit as well as they did--even better, because I can add my own hold to that which I have inherited from both my ancestors." Now, of course, a habit of illness, whether it be of the head, stomach, or of both, is much more difficult to discard when it is inherited than when it is first acquired in a personal illness of our own; but, because it is difficult, it is none the less possible to discard it, and when the work has been accomplished the strength gained from the steady, intelligent effort fully compensates for the difficulty of the task. One must not get impatient with a bad habit in one's self; it has a certain power while it lasts, and can acquire a very strong hold. Little by little it must be dealt with--patiently and steadily. Sometimes it seems almost as if such habits had intelligence--for the more you ignore them the more rampant they become, and there is a Rubicon to cross, in the process of ignoring which, when once passed, makes the work of gaining freedom easier; for when the backbone of the habit is broken it weakens and seems to fade away of itself, and we awaken some fine morning and it has gone--really gone. Many persons are in a prison of bad habits simply because they do not know how to get out--not because they do not want to get out. If we want to help a friend out of the habit of illness it is most important first to be sure that it is a habit, and then to remember that a suggestion is seldom responded to unless it is given with generous sympathy and love. Indeed, when a suggestion is given with lack of sympathy or with contempt the tendency is to make the invalid turn painfully away from the speaker and hug her bad habits more closely to herself. What we can do, however, is to throw out a suggestion here and there which may lead such a one to discover the truth for herself; then, if she comes to you with sincere interest in her discovery, don't say: "Yes, I have thought so for some time." Keep yourself out of it, except in so far as you can give aid which is really wanted, and accepted and used. Beware of saying or doing anything to or for any one which will only rouse resentment and serve to push deeper into the brain an impression already made by a mistaken conviction. More than half of the functional and nervous illnesses in the world are caused by bad habit, either formed or inherited. Happy are those who discover the fact for themselves and, with the intelligence born from such discovery, work with patient insight until they have freed themselves from bondage. Happy are those who feel willing to change any mistaken conviction or prejudice and to recognize it as a sin against the truth. CHAPTER XXVI _What is It that Makes Me so Nervous?_ THE two main reasons why women are nervous are, first, that they do not take intelligent care of their bodies, and secondly, that they do not govern their emotions. I know a woman who prefers to make herself genuinely miserable rather than take food normally, to eat it normally, and to exercise in the fresh air. "Everybody is against me," she says; and if you answer her, "My dear, you are acting against yourself by keeping your stomach on a steady strain with too much unmasticated, unhealthy, undigested food," she turns a woe-begone face on you and asks how you can be "so material." "Nobody loves me; nobody is kind to me. Everybody neglects me," she says. And when you answer, "How can any one love you when you are always whining and complaining? How can any one be kind to you when you resent and resist every friendly attention because it does not suit your especial taste? Indeed, how can you expect anything from any one when you are giving nothing yourself?" She replies, "But I am so nervous. I suffer. Why don't they sympathize?" "My dear child, would you sympathize with a woman who went down into the cellar and cried because she was so cold, when fresh air and warm sunshine were waiting for her outside?" This very woman herself is cold all the time. She piles covers over herself at night so that the weight alone would be enough to make her ill. She sleeps with the heat turned on in her room. She complains all day of cold when not complaining of other things. She puts such a strain on her stomach that it takes all of her vitality to look after her food; therefore she has no vitality left with which to resist the cold. Of course she resists the idea of a good brisk walk in the fresh air, and yet, if she took the walk and enjoyed it, it would start up her circulation, give her blood more oxygen, and help her stomach to go through all its useless labor better. When a woman disobeys all the laws of nervous health how can she expect not to have her nerves rebel? Nerves in themselves are exquisitely sensitive--with a direct tendency toward health. "Don't give me such unnecessary work," the stomach cries. "Don't stuff me full of the wrong things. Don't put a bulk of food into me, but chew your food, so that I shall not have to do my own work and yours, too, when the food gets down here." And there is the poor stomach, a big nervous centre in close communication with the brain, protesting and protesting, and its owner interprets all these protestations into: "I am so unhappy. I have to work so much harder than I ought. Nobody loves me. Oh, why am I so nervous?" The blood also cries out: "Give me more oxygen. I cannot help the lungs or the stomach or the brain to do their work properly unless you take exercise in the fresh air that will feed me truly and send me over the body with good, wholesome vigor." Now there is another thing that is sadly evident about the young woman who will not take fresh air, nor eat the right food, nor masticate properly the food that she does eat. When she goes out for a walk she seems to fight the fresh air; she walks along full of resistance and contraction, and tightens all her muscles so that she moves as if she were tied together with ropes. The expression of her face is one of miserable strain and endurance; the tone of her voice is full of complaint. In eating either she takes her food with the appearance of hungry grabbing, or she refuses it with a fastidious scorn. Any nervous woman who really wants to find herself out, in order to get well and strong, and contented and happy, will see in this description a reflection of herself, even though it may be an exaggerated reflection. Did you ever see a tired, hungry baby fight his food? His mother tries to put the bottle to his mouth, and the baby cries and cries, and turns his head away, and brandishes his little arms about, as if his mother were offering him something bitter. Then, finally, when his mother succeeds in getting him to open his mouth and take the food it makes you smile all over to see the contrast: he looks so quiet and contented, and you can see his whole little body expand with satisfaction. It is just the same inherited tendency in a nervous woman that makes her either consciously or unconsciously fight exercise and fresh air, fight good food and eating it rightly, fight everything that is wholesome and strengthening and quieting to her nerves, and cling with painful tenacity to everything that is contracting and weakening, and productive of chronic strain. There is another thing that a woman fights: she fights rest. Who has not seen a tired woman work harder and harder, when she was tired, until she has worn herself to a state of nervous irritability and finally has to succumb for want of strength? Who has not seen this same tired woman, the moment she gets back a little grain of strength, use it up again at once instead of waiting until she had paid back her principal and could use only the interest of her strength while keeping a good balance in reserve? "I wish my mother would not do so many unnecessary things," said an anxious daughter. A few days after this the mother came in tired, and, with a fagged look on her face and a fagged tone in her voice, said: "Before I sit down I must go and see poor Mrs. Robinson. I have just heard that she has been taken ill with nervous prostration. Poor thing! Why couldn't she have taken care of herself?" "But, mother," her daughter answered, "I have been to see Mrs. Robinson, and taken her some flowers, and told her how sorry you would be to hear that she was ill." "My dear," said the fagged mother with a slight tone of irritation in her voice, "that was very good of you, but of course that was not my going, and if I should let to-day pass without going to see her, when I have just heard of her illness, it would be unfriendly and unneighborly and I should not forgive myself." "But, mother, you are tired; you do need to rest so much." "My dear," said the mother with an air of conscious virtue, "I am never too tired to do a neighborly kindness." When she left the house her daughter burst into tears and let out the strain which had been accumulating for weeks. Finally, when she had let down enough to feel a relief, a funny little smile came through the tears. "There is one nervously worn-out woman gone to comfort and lift up another nervously worn-out woman--if that is not the blind leading the blind then I don't know. I wonder how long it will be before mamma, too, is in the ditch?" This same story could be reversed with the mother in the daughter's place, and the daughter in the mother's. And, indeed, we see slight illustrations of it, in one way or the other, in many families and among many friends. This, then, is the first answer to any woman's question, "Why am I so nervous?" Because you do not use common sense in taking exercise, fresh air, nourishment, and rest. Nature tends toward health. Your whole physical organism tends toward health. If you once find yourself out and begin to be sensible you will find a great, vigorous power carrying you along, and you will be surprised to see how fast you gain. It may be some time before Nature gets her own way with you entirely, because when one has been off the track for long it must take time to readjust; but when we begin to go with the laws of health, instead of against them, we get into a healthy current and gain faster than would have seemed possible when we were outside of it, habitually trying to oppose the stream. The second reason why women are nervous is that they do not govern their emotions. Very often it is the strain of unpleasant emotions that keeps women nervous, and when we come really to understand we find that the strain is there because the woman does not get her own way. She has not money enough. She has to live with some one she dislikes. She feels that people do not like her and are neglectful of her. She believes that she has too much work to do. She wishes that she had more beauty in her life. Sometimes a woman is entirely conscious of when or why she fails to get her own way; then she knows what she is fretting about, and she may even know that the fretting is a strain that keeps her tired and nervously irritated. Sometimes a woman is entirely unconscious of what it is that is keeping her in a chronic state of nervous irritability. I have seen a woman express herself as entirely resigned to the very circumstance or person that she was unconsciously resisting so fiercely that her resistance kept her ill half of the time. In such cases the strain is double. First, there is the strain of the person or circumstance chronically resisted and secondly, there is the strain of the pose of saintly resignation. It is bad enough to pose to other people, but when we pose to other people and to ourselves too the strain is twice as bad. Imagine a nerve specialist saying to his patient, "My dear madam, you really must stop being a hypocrite. You have not the nervous strength to spare for it." In most cases, I fear, the woman would turn on him indignantly and go home to be more of a hypocrite than ever, and so more nervously ill. I have seen a woman cry and make no end of trouble because she had to have a certain relative live in the house with her, simply because her relative "got on her nerves." Then, after the relative had left the house, this same woman cried and still kept on making no end of trouble because she thought she had done wrong in sending "Cousin Sophia" away; and the poor, innocent, uncomplaining victim was brought back again. Yet it never seemed to occur to the nervous woman that "Cousin Sophia" was harmless, and that her trouble came entirely from the way in which she constantly resented and resisted little unpolished ways. I do not know how many times "Cousin Sophia" may be sent off and brought back again; nor how many times other things in my nervous friend's life may have to be pulled to pieces and then put together again, for she has not yet discovered that the cause of the nervous trouble is entirely in herself, and that if she would stop resisting "Cousin Sophia's" innocent peculiarities, stop resisting other various phases of her life that do not suit her, and begin to use her will to yield where she has always resisted, her load would be steadily and happily lifted. The nervous strain of doing right is very painful; especially so because most women who are under this strain do not really care about doing right at all. I have seen a woman quibble and talk and worry about what she believed to be a matter of right and wrong in a few cents, and then neglect for months to pay a poor man a certain large amount of money which he had honestly earned, and which she knew he needed. The nervous conscience is really no conscience at all. I have seen a woman worry over what she owed to a certain other woman in the way of kindness, and go to a great deal of trouble to make her kindness complete; and then, on the same day, show such hard, unfeeling cruelty toward another friend that she wounded her deeply, and that without a regret. A nervous woman's emotions are constantly side-tracking her away from the main cause of her difficulty, and so keeping her nervous. A nervous woman's desire to get her own way--and strained rebellion at not getting her own way--bedazzles or befogs her brain so that her nerves twist off into all sorts of emotions which have nothing whatever to do with the main cause. The woman with the troublesome relative wants to be considered good and kind and generous. The woman with the nervous money conscience wants to be considered upright and just in her dealings with others. All women with various expressions of nervous conscience want to ease their consciences for the sake of their own comfort--not in the least for the sake of doing right. I write first of the nervous hypocrite because in her case the nervous strain is deeper in and more difficult to find. To watch such a woman is like seeing her in a terrible nightmare, which she steadily "sugar-coats" by her complacent belief in her own goodness. If, among a thousand nervous "saints" who may read these words, one is thereby enabled to find herself out, they are worth the pains of writing many times over. The nervous hypocrites who do not find themselves out get sicker and sicker, until finally they seem to be of no use except to discipline those who have the care of them. The greatest trouble comes through the befogging emotions. A woman begins to feel a nervous strain, and that strain results in exciting emotions; these emotions again breed more emotions until she becomes a simmering mass of exciting and painful emotions which can be aroused to a boiling point at any moment by anything or any one who may touch a sensitive point. When a woman's emotions are aroused, and she is allowing herself to be governed by them, reason is out of the question, and any one who imagines that a woman can be made to understand common sense in a state like that will find himself entirely mistaken. The only cure is for the woman herself to learn first how entirely impervious to common sense she is when she is in the midst of an emotional nerve storm, so that she will say, "Don't try to talk to me now; I am not reasonable, wait until I get quiet." Then, if she will go off by herself and drop her emotions, and also the strain behind her emotions, she will often come to a good, clear judgment without outside help; or, if not, she will come to the point where she will be ready and grateful to receive help from a clearer mind than her own. "For goodness' sake, don't tell that to Alice," a young fellow said of his sister. "She will have fits first, and then indigestion and insomnia for six weeks." The lad was not a nerve specialist; neither was he interested in nerves--except to get away from them; but he spoke truly from common sense and his own experience with his sister. The point is, to drop the emotions and face the facts. If nervous women would see the necessity for that, and would practice it, it would be surprising to see how their nerves would improve. I once knew a woman who discovered that her emotions were running away with her and making her nervously ill. She at once went to work with a will, and every time something happened to rouse this great emotional wave she would deliberately force herself to relax and relax until the wave had passed over her and she could see things in a sensible light. When she was unable to go off by herself and lie down to relax, she would walk with her mind bent on making her feet feel heavy. When you drop the tension of the emotion, the emotion has nothing to hold on to and it must go. I knew another woman who did not know how to relax; so, to get free from this emotional excitement, she would turn her attention at once to figures, to her personal accounts or even to saying the multiplication table. The steady concentration of her mind on dry figures and on "getting her sums right" left the rest of her brain free to drop its excitement and get into a normal state again. Again it is sometimes owing to the pleasant emotions which some women indulge in to such an extreme that they are made ill. How many times have we heard of women who were "worn to a shred" by the delight of an opera, or a concert, or an exciting play? If these women only knew it, their pleasure would be far keener if they would let the enjoyment pass through them, instead of tightening up in their nerves and trying to hold on to it. Nature in us always tends toward health, and toward pleasant sensations. If we relax out of painful emotions we find good judgment and happy instincts behind them. If we relax so that pleasant emotions can pass over our nerves they leave a deposit of happy sensation behind, which only adds to the store that Nature has provided for us. To sum up: The two main reasons why women are nervous are that they do not take intelligent care of their bodies, and that they do not govern their emotions; but back of these reasons is the fact that they want their own way altogether too much. Even if a woman's own way is right, she has no business to push for it selfishly. If any woman thinks, "I could take intelligent care of my own body if I did not have to work so hard, or have this or that interference," let her go to work with her mind well armed to do what she can, and she will soon find that there are many ways in which she can improve in the normal care of her body, in spite of all the work and all the interferences. To adapt an old saying, the women who are overworked and clogged with real interferences should aim to be healthy; and, if they cannot be healthy, then they should be as healthy as they can. CHAPTER XXVII _Positive and Negative Effort_ DID you ever have the grip? If you ever have you may know how truly it is named and how it does actually grip you so that it seems as if there were nothing else in the world at the time--it appears to entirely possess you. As the Irishman says, the grip is "the disease that lasts fur a week and it takes yer six weeks ter get over it." That is because it has possessed you so thoroughly that it must be routed out of every little fiber in your body before you are yourself again, and there are hidden corners where it lurks and hides, and it often has to be actually pulled out of them. Now it has been already recognized that if we relax and do not resist a severe cold it leaves us open so that our natural circulation carries away the cold much more quickly than if we allowed ourselves to be full of resistance to the discomfort and the consequent physical contraction that impeded the circulation and holds the cold in our system. My point is this--that it is comparatively easy to relax out of a cold. We can do it with only a negative effort, but to relax so that nature in her steady and unswerving tendency toward health can lift us out of the grip is quite another matter. When we feel ourselves entirely in the power of such a monster as that is at its worst, it is only by a very strong and positive effort of the will that we can yield so that nature can guide us into health, and we do not need the six weeks of getting well. In order to gain this positive sense of yielding away from the disease rather than of letting it hold us, we must do what seems at the time the impossible--we must refuse to give our attention to the pain or discomfort and insist upon giving our attention entirely to yielding out of the contractions which the painful discomforts cause. In other words, we must give up resisting the grip. It is the same with any other disease or any pain. If we have the toothache and give all our attention to the toothache, it inevitably makes it worse; but if we give our attention to yielding out of the toothache contractions, it eases the pain even though it may be that only the dentist can stop it. Once I had an ulcerated tooth which lasted for a week. I had to yield so steadily to do my work during the day and to be able to sleep at all at night that it not only made the pain bearable, but when the tooth got well I was surprised to find how many habitual contractions I had dropped and how much more freedom of action I had before my tooth began to ulcerate. I should not wish to have another ulcerated tooth in order that I might gain more freedom, but I should wish to take every pain of body and mind so truly that when the pain was over I should have gained greater freedom than I had before it began. You see it is the same with every pain and with every disease. Nature tends toward health and if we make the disease simply a reminder to yield--and to yield more deeply--and to put our positive effort there, we are opening the way for nature to do her best work. If our entire attention is given to yielding and we give no attention whatever to the pain, except as a reminder to yield, the result seems wonderful. It seems wonderful because so few of us have the habit of giving our entire attention to gaining our real freedom. With most of us, the disease or discomfort is positive, and our effort against it is negative or no effort at all. A negative effort probably protects us from worse evil, but that is all; it does not seem to me that it can ever take us ahead, whereas a positive effort, while sometimes we seem to move upward in very slow stages, often takes us in great strides out of the enemy's country. If we have the measles, the whooping cough, scarlet fever--even more serious diseases--and make the disease negative and our effort to free ourselves from it positive, the result is one thousand times worth while. And where the children have the measles and the whooping cough, and do not know how to help nature, the mothers can be positive for the children and make their measles and whooping cough negative. The positive attitude of a mother toward her sick child puts impatience or despair out of the question. Do not think that I believe one can be positive all at once. We must work hard and insist over and over again before we can attain the positive attitude and having attained it, we have to lose it and gain it again, lose it and gain it again, many times before we get the habit of making all difficulties of mind and body negative, and our healthy attitude toward conquering them positive. I said "difficulties of mind and body." I might better have said "difficulties of body, mind and character," or even character alone, for, after all, when you come to sift things down, it is the character that is at the root of all human life. I know a woman who is constantly complaining. Every morning she has a series of pains to tell of, and her complaints spout out of her in a half-irritated, whining tone as naturally as she breathes. Over and over you think when you listen to her how useful all those pains of hers would be if she took them as a reminder to yield and in yielding to do her work better. But if one should venture to suggest such a possibility, it would only increase the complaints by one more--that of having unsympathetic friends and being misunderstood. "Nobody understands me--nobody understands me." How often we hear that complaint. How often in hearing it we make the mental question, "Do you understand yourself?" You see the greatest impediment to our understanding ourselves is our unwillingness to see what is not good in ourselves. It is easy enough in a self-righteous attitude of what we believe to be humility to find fault with ourselves, but quite another thing when others find fault with us. When we are giving our attention to discomforts and pains in a way to give them positive power, and some one suggests that we might change our aim, then the resistance and resentment that are roused in us are very indicative of just where we are in our character. Another strong indication of allowing our weaknesses and faults to be positive and our effort against them negative is the destructive habit of giving excuses. If fault is found with us and there is justice in it, it does not make the slightest difference how many things we have done that are good, or how much better we do than some one else does--the positive way is to say "thank you" in spirit and in words, and to aim directly toward freeing ourselves from the fault. How ridiculous it would seem if when we were told that we had a smooch on our left cheek, we were to insist vehemently upon the cleanliness of our right cheek, or our forehead, or our hands, instead of being grateful that our attention should be called to the smooch and taking soap and water and at once washing it off. Or how equally absurd it would be if we went into long explanations as to how the smooch would not have been there if it had not been for so and so, and so and so, or so and so,--and then with all our excuses and explanations and protestations, we let the smooch stay--and never really wash it off. And yet this is not an exaggeration of what most of us do when our attention is called to defects of character. When we excuse and explain and tell how clean the other side of our face is, we are putting ourselves positively on the side of the smooch. So we are putting ourselves entirely on the side of the illness or the pain or the oppression of difficult circumstances when we give excuses or resist or pretend not to see fault in ourselves, or when we confess faults and are contented about them, or when we give all our attention to what is disagreeable and no attention to the normal way of gaining our health or our freedom. Then all these expressions of self or of illness are to us positive, and our efforts against them only negative. In such cases, of course, the self possesses us as surely as the grip possesses us when we succumb entirely to all its horrors and make no positive effort to yield out of it. And the possession of the self is much worse, much deeper, much more subtle. When possessed with selfishness, we are laying up in our subconsciousness any number of self-seeking motives which come to the surface disguised and compel us to make impulsive and often foolish efforts to gain our own ends. The self is every day proving to be the enemy of the man or woman whom it possesses. God leaves us free to obey Him or to choose our own selfish way, and in His infinite Providence He is constantly showing us that our own selfish way leads to death and obedience to Him leads to life. That is, that only in obedience to Him do we find our real freedom. He is constantly showering us with a tender generosity and kindness that seems inconceivable, and sometimes it seems as if more often than not we were refusing to see. Indeed we blind ourselves by making all pains of body and faults of soul positive and our efforts against them negative. If we had a disagreeable habit which we wanted to conquer and asked a friend to remind us with a pinch every time he saw the habit, wouldn't it seem very strange if when he pinched us, according to agreement, we jumped and turned on him, rubbing our arm with indignation that he should have pinched? Or would it not be even funnier if we made the pinch merely a reminder to go on with the habit? The Lord is pinching us in that way all the time, and we respond by being indignant at or complaining at our fate, or reply by going more deeply into our weaknesses of character by allowing them to be positive and the pinches only to emphasize them to us. One trouble is that we do not recognize that there is an agreement between us and the Lord, or that we recognize and then forget it; and yet there should be--there is--more than an agreement, there is a covenant. And the Lord is steadily, unswervingly doing His part, and we are constantly failing in ours. The Lord in His loving kindness pinches--that is, reminds us--and we in our stupid selfishness do not use His reminders. As an example of making our faults positive and our effort to conquer them negative, one very common form is found in a woman I know, who has times of informing her friends quite seriously and with apparent regret of her very wrong attitudes of mind. She tells how selfish she is and she gives examples of the absolute selfishness of her thoughts when she is appearing to do unselfish things. She tells of her efforts to do better and confesses what she believes to be the absolute futility of her effort. At first I was quite taken in by these confessions, and attracted by what seemed to be a clear understanding of herself and her own motives, but after a little longer acquaintance with her, made the discovery, which was at first surprising to me, that her confessions of evil came just as much from conceit as if she had been standing at the mirror admiring her own beauty. Selfish satisfaction is often found quite as much in mental attitudes of grief as in sensations of joy. Finally this woman has recognized for herself the conceit in her contemplation of her faults, and that she has not only allowed them to be positive while her attitude against them is negative; she has actually nursed them and been positive herself with their positiveness. Her attitude against them was therefore more than ordinarily negative. The more common way of being negative while we allow our various forms of selfishness to positively govern us is, first in bewailing a weakness seriously, but constantly looking at it and weeping over it, and in that way suggesting it over and over to our brains so that we are really hypnotizing ourselves with the fault and enforcing its expression when we think we are in the effort to conquer it. Such is our negative attitude. Now if we are convinced that evil in ourselves has no power unless we give it power, that is the first step toward making our efforts positive and so negativing the evil. If we are convinced that evil in ourselves has not only no power but no importance unless we give it power, that is a step still farther in advance. The next step is to refuse to submit to it and refuse to resist it. That means a positive yielding away from it and a positive attention to doing our work as well as we can do it, whatever that work may be. There is one way in which people suffer intensely through being negative and allowing their temptations to be positive, and that is in the question of inherited evil. "How can I ever amount to anything with such inheritances? If you could see my father and what he is, and know that I am his daughter, you would easily appreciate why I have no hope for myself," said a young woman, and she was perfectly sincere in believing that because of her inherited temptations her life must be worthless. It took time and gentle, intelligent reasoning to convince her that not only are no inherited forms of selfishness ours unless by indulging we make them ours, but that, through knowing our inheritances, we are forewarned and forearmed, and the strength we gain from positive effort to free ourselves fully compensates us for what we have suffered in oppression from them. Such is the loving kindness of our Creator. This woman of whom I am writing awoke to the true meaning of the story of the man who asked, before he went with the Lord Jesus Christ, first to go back and bury his father. The Lord answered, "Let the dead bury their dead, and come thou and follow me." When we feel that we must be bound down by our inheritances, we are surely not letting the dead bury their dead. And so let us study the whole question more carefully and learn the necessity of letting all that is sickness and all that is evil be negative to us and our efforts to conquer it be positive; in that way the illness and the evil become less than negative,--they gradually are removed and disappear. Why, in the mere matter of being tired, if we refuse to let the impression of the fatigue be positive to us, and insist upon being positive ourselves in giving attention to the fact that now we are going to rest, we get rested in half the time,--in much less than half the time. Some people carry chronic fatigue with them because of their steady attention to fatigue. "I am tired, yes, but _I am going to get rested!"_ That is the sensible attitude of mind. Nature tends toward health. As we realize that and give our attention to it positively, we come to admire and love the healthy working of the laws of nature, and to feel the vigor of interest in trying to obey them intelligently. Nature's laws are God's laws, and God's laws tend toward the health of the spirit in all matters of the spirit as surely as they tend toward health of body in all natural things. That is a truth that as we work to obey we grow to see and to love with deepening reverence, and then indeed we find that God's laws are all positive, and that the workings of self are only negative. CHAPTER XXVIII _Human Dust_ WHEN we face the matter squarely and give it careful thought, it seems to appear very plainly that the one thing most flagrantly in the way of the people of to-day living according to plain common sense--spiritual common sense as well as material--is the fact that we are all living in a chronic state of excitement. It is easy to prove this fact by seeing how soon most of us suffer from ennui when "there is not anything going on." It seems now as if the average man or woman whom we see would find it quite impossible to stop and do nothing--for an hour or more. "But," some one will say, "why should I stop and do nothing when I am as busy as I can be all day long, and have my time very happily full?" Or some one else may say, "How can I stop and do nothing when I am nearly crazy with work and must feel that it is being accomplished?" Now the answer to that is, "Certainly you should not stop and do nothing when you are busy and happily busy;" or, "Although your work will go better if you do not get 'crazy' about it, there is no need of interrupting it or delaying it by stopping to do nothing--but _you should be able to stop and do nothing,_ and to do it quietly and contentedly at any time when it might be required of you." No man, woman, or child knows the power, the very great power, for work and play--there is with one who has in the background always the ability to stop and do nothing. If we observe enough, carefully enough, and quietly enough, to get sensitive to it, we can see how every one about us is living in excitement. I have seen women with nothing important to do come down to breakfast in excitement, give their orders for the day as if they were about running for a fire; and the standard of all those about them is so low that no one notices what a human dust is stirred up by all this flutter over nothing. A man told me not long ago that he got tired out for the day in walking to his office with a friend, because they both talked so intensely. And that is not an unusual experience. This chronic state of strain and excitement in everyday matters makes a mental atmosphere which is akin to what the material atmosphere would be if we were persistently kicking up a dust in the road every step we took. Every one seems to be stirring up his own especial and peculiar dust and adding it to every one else's especial and peculiar dust. We are all mentally, morally and spiritually sneezing or choking with our own dust and the dust of other people. How is it possible for us to get any clear, all-round view of life so long as the dust stirring habit is on us? So far from being able to enlarge our horizon, we can get no horizon at all, and so no perspective until this human dust is laid. And there is just this one thing about it, that is a delight to think of: When we know how to live so that our own dust is laid, that very habit of life keeps us clear from the dust of other people. Not only that, but when we are free from dust ourselves, the dust that the other men are stirring up about us does not interfere with our view of them. We see the men through their dust and we see how the dust with which they are surrounding themselves befogs them and impedes their progress. From the place of no dust you can distinguish dust and see through it. From the place of dust you cannot distinguish anything clearly. Therefore, if one wishes to learn the standards of living according to plain common sense, for body, mind, and spirit, and to apply the principles of such standards practically to their every-day life, the first absolute necessity is to get quiet and to stay quiet long enough to lay the dust. You may know the laws of right eating, of right breathing, of exercise, and rest--but in this dust of excitement in daily life such knowledge helps one very little. You constantly forget, and forget, and forget. Or, if in a moment of forced acknowledgment to the need of better living, you make up your mind that you will live according to sensible laws of hygiene, you go along pretty well for a few weeks, perhaps even months, and then as you feel better physically, you get whirled off into the excitement again, and before you know it you are in the dust with the rest of the world, and all because you had no background for your good resolutions. You never had found and you did not understand quiet. Did you ever see a wise mother come into a noisy nursery where perhaps her own children were playing excitedly with several little companions, who had been invited in to spend a rainy afternoon? The mother sees all the children in a great state of excitement over their play, and two or three of them disagreeing over some foolish little matter, with their brains in such a state that the nursery is thick with infantile human dust. What does the wise mother do? Add dust of her own by scolding and fretting and fuming over the noise that the children are making? No--no indeed. She first gets all the children's attention in any happy way she can, one or two at a time, and then when she has their individual attention to a small degree, she gets their united attention by inviting their interest in being so quiet that they "can hear a pin drop." The children get keenly interested in listening. The first time they do not hear the pin drop because Johnnie or Mollie moved a little. Mother talks with interest of what a very delightful thing it is to be for a little while so quiet that we can hear a pin drop. The second time something interferes, and the third time the children have become so well focused on listening that the little delicate sound is heard distinctly, and they beg mother to try and see if they cannot hear it again. By this time the dust is laid in the nursery, and by changing the games a little, or telling them a story first, the mother is able to leave a nursery full of quiet, happy children. Now if we, who would like to live happily and keep well, according to plain common sense, can put ourselves with intelligent humility in the place of these little children and study to be quiet, we will be working for that background which is never failing in its possibilities of increasing light and warmth and the expanse of outlook. First with regard to a quiet body. Indigestion makes us unquiet, therefore we must eat only wholesome food, and not too much of it, and we must eat it quietly. Poor breathing and poor blood makes us unquiet, therefore we should learn to expand our lungs to their full extent in the fresh air and give the blood plenty of oxygen. Breathing also has a direct effect on the circulation and the brain, and when we breathe quietly and rhythmically, we are quieting the movement of our blood as well as opening the channels so that it can flow without interruption. We are also quieting our brain and so our whole nervous system. Lack of exercise makes us unquiet, because exercise supplies the blood more fully with oxygen and prevents it from flowing sluggishly, a sluggish circulation straining the nervous system. It is therefore important to take regular exercise. Want of rest especially makes us unquiet; therefore we should attend to it that we get--as far as possible--what rest we need, and take all the rest we get in the best way. We cannot expect to fulfill these conditions all at once, but we can aim steadily to do so, and by getting every day a stronger focus and a steadier aim we can gain so greatly in fulfilling the standards of a healthy mind in a healthy body, and so much of our individual dust will be laid, that I may fairly promise a happy astonishment at the view of life which will open before us, and the power for use and enjoyment that will come. Let us see now how we would begin practically, having made up our minds to do all in our power to lay the dust and get a quiet background. We must begin in what may seem a very small way. It seems to be always the small beginnings that lead to large and solidly lasting results. Not only that, but when we begin in the small way and the right way to reach any goal, we can find no short cuts and no seven-league boots. We must take every step and take it decidedly in order to really get there. We must place one brick and then another, exactly, and place every brick--to make a house that will stand. But now for our first step toward laying the dust. Let us take half an hour every day and do nothing in it. For the first ten minutes we will probably be wretched, for the next ten minutes we may be more wretched, but for the last five minutes we will get a sense of quiet and at first the dust, although not laid, will cease to whirl. And then--an interesting fact--what seems to us quiet in the beginning of our attempt, will seem like noise and whirlwinds, after we have gone further along. Some one may easily say that it is absurd to take half an hour a day to do nothing in. Or that "Nature abhors a vacuum, and how is it possible to do nothing? Our minds will be thinking of or working on something." In answer to this, I might say with the Irishman, "Be aisy, but if you can't be aisy, be as aisy as you can!" Do nothing as well as you can. When you begin thinking of anything, drop it. When you feel restless and as if you could not keep still another minute, relax and make yourself keep still. I should take many days of this insistence upon doing nothing and dropping everything from my mind before taking the next step. For to drop everything from one's mind, for half an hour is not by any means an easy matter. Our minds are full of interests, full of resistances. With some of us, our minds are full of resentment. And what we have to promise ourselves to do is for that one-half hour a day to take nothing into consideration. If something comes up that we are worrying about, refuse to consider it. If some resentment to a person or a circumstance comes to mind, refuse to consider it. I know all this is easier to say than to do, but remember, please, that it is only for half an hour every day-only half an hour. Refuse to consider anything for half an hour. Having learned to sit still, or lie still, and think of nothing with a moderate degree of success, and with most people the success can only be moderate at best, the next step is to think quietly of taking long, gentle, easy breaths for half an hour. A long breath and then a rest, two long breaths and then a rest. One can quiet and soothe oneself inside quite wonderfully with the study of long gentle breaths. But it must be a study. We must study to begin inhaling gently, to change to the exhalation with equal delicacy, and to keep the same gentle, delicate pressure throughout, each time trying to make the breath a little longer. After we have had many days of the gentle, long breaths at intervals for half an hour, then we can breathe rhythmically (inhale counting five or ten, exhale counting five or ten), steadily for half an hour, trying all the time to have the breath more quiet, gentle and steady, drawing it in and letting it out with always decreasing effort. It is wonderful when we discover how little effort we really need to take a full and vigorous breath. This half hour's breathing exercise every day will help us to the habit of breathing rhythmically all the time, and a steady rhythmic breath is a great physical help toward a quiet mind. We can mingle with the deep breathing simple exercises of lifting each arm slowly and heavily from the shoulder, and then letting it drop a dead weight, and pausing while we feel conscious of our arms resting without tension in the lap or on the couch. But all this has been with relation to the body, and it is the mental and moral dust of which I am writing. The physical work for quiet is only helpful as it makes the body a better instrument for the mind and for the will. A quiet body is of no use if it contains an unquiet mind which is going to pull it out of shape or start it up in agitation at the least provocation. In such a case, the quiet body in its passive state is only a more responsive instrument to the mind that wants to raise a dust. One--and the most helpful way of quieting the mind--is through a steady effort at concentration. One can concentrate; on doing nothing--that is, on sitting quietly in a chair or lying quietly on the bed or the floor. Be quiet, keep quiet, be quiet, keep quiet. That is the form of concentration, that is the way of learning to do nothing to advantage. Then we concentrate on the quiet breathing, to have it gentle, steady, and without strain. In the beginning we must take care to concentrate without strain, and without emotion, use our minds quietly, as one might watch a bird who was very near, to see what it will do next, and with care not to frighten it away. These are the great secrets of true strengthening concentration. The first is dropping everything that interferes. The second is working to concentrate easily without emotion. They are really one and the same. If we work to drop everything that interferes, we are so constantly relaxing in order to concentrate that the very process drops strain bit by bit, little by little. An unquiet mind, however, full of worries, anxieties, resistances, resentments, and full of all varieties of agitation, going over and over things to try to work out problems that are not in human hands, or complaining and fretting and puzzling because help seems to be out of human power, such a mind which is befogged and begrimed by the agitation of its own dust is not a cause in itself--it is an effect. The cause is the reaching and grasping, the unreasonable insistence on its own way of kicking, dust-raising self-will at the back of the mind. A quiet will, a will that can remain quiet through all emergencies, is not a self-will. It is the self that raises the dust--the self that wants, and strains to get its own way, and turns and twists and writhes if it does not get its own way. God's will is quiet. We see it in the growth of the trees and the flowers. We see it in the movement of the planets of the Universe. We see God's mind in the wonderful laws of natural science. Most of all we see and feel, when we get quiet ourselves, God's love in every thing and every one. If we want the dust laid, we must work to get our bodies quiet. We must drop all that interferes with quiet in our minds, and we must give up wanting our own way. We must believe that God's way is immeasurably beyond us and that if we work quietly to obey Him, He will reveal to us His way in so far as we need to know it, and will prepare us for and guide us to His uses. The most perfect example we have of a quiet mind in a quiet body, guided by the Divine Will, is in the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we study His words and His works, we realize the power and the delicacy of His human life, and we realize--as far as we are capable of realizing--the absolute clearness of the atmosphere about Him. We see and feel that atmosphere to be full of quiet--Divine Human Love. There is no suffering, no temptation, that any man or woman ever had or ever will have that He did not meet in Himself and conquer. Therefore, if we mean to begin the work in ourselves of finding the quiet which will lay our own dust from the very first, if we have the end in our minds of truer obedience and loving trust, we can, even in the simple beginning of learning to do nothing quietly, find an essence of life which eventually we will learn always to recognize and to love, and to know that it is not ourselves, but it is from the Heavenly Father of ourselves. Some of us cannot get that motive to begin with; some of us will, if we begin at all, work only for relief, or because we recognize that there is more power without dust than with it, but no one of us is ever safe from clouds of dust unless at the back of all our work there is the desire to give up all self-will for the sake of obeying and of trusting the Divine Will more and more perfectly as time goes on. If we are content to work thoroughly and to gain slowly, not to be pulled down by mistakes or discouragements, but to learn from them, we are sure to be grateful for the new light and warmth and power for use that will come to us, increasing day by day. CHAPTER XXIX _Plain Every-day Common Sense_ PLAIN common sense! When we come to sift everything down which will enable us to live wholesome, steady, every-day, interesting lives, plain common sense seems to be the first and the simplest need. In the working out of any problem, whether it be in science or in art or in plain everyday living, we are told to go from the circumference to the center, from the known to the unknown, from simplest facts to those which would otherwise seem complex. And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain every-day common sense. When we stop and think a while, the lack of this important quality is quite glaring, and every one who has his attention called to it and recognizes that lack enough to be interested to supply it in his own life, is doing more good toward bringing plain common sense into the world at large than we can well appreciate. For instance, it is only a fact of plain common sense that we should keep rested, and yet how many of us do? How many readers of this article will smile or sneer, or be irritated when they read the above, and say, "It is all very well to talk of keeping rested. How is it possible with all I have to do? or with all the care I have? or with all I have to worry me?" Now that is just the point--the answer to that question, "How is it possible?" So very few of us know how to do it, and if "how to keep rested though busy" were regularly taught in all schools in this country, so far from making the children self-conscious and over-careful of themselves, it would lay up in their brains ideas of plain common sense which would be stocked safely there for use when, as their lives grew more maturely busy, they would find the right habits formed, enabling them to keep busy and at the same time to keep quiet and rested. What a wonderful difference it would eventually make in the wholesomeness of the manners and customs of this entire nation. And that difference would come from giving the children now a half hour's instruction in the plain common sense of keeping well rested, and in seeing that such instruction was entirely and only practical. It has often seemed to me that the tendency of education in the present day is more toward giving information than it is in preparing the mind to receive and use interesting and useful information of all kinds: that is, in helping the mind to attract what it needs; to absorb what it attracts, and digest what it absorbs as thoroughly as any good healthy stomach ever digested the food it needed to supply the body with strength. The root of such cultivation, it seems to me, is in teaching the practical use and application of all that is studied. To be sure, there is much more of that than there was fifty years ago, but you have only to put to the test the minds of young graduates to see how much more of such work is needed, and how much more intelligent the training of the young mind may be, even now. Take, for instance, the subject of ethics. How many boys and girls go home and are more useful in their families, more thoughtful and considerate for all about them, for their study of ethics in school? And yet the study of ethics has no other use than this. If the mind absorbed and digested the true principles of ethics, so that the heart felt moved to use them, it might--it probably would--make a great change in the lives of the boys and girls who studied it--a change that would surprise and delight their parents and friends. If the science of keeping rested were given in schools in the way that, in most cases, the science of ethics seems to be given now, the idea of rest would lie in an indigestible lump on the minds of the students, and instead of being absorbed, digested and carried out in their daily lives, would be evaporated little by little into the air, or vomited off the mind in various jokes about it, and other expressions that would prove the children knew nothing of what they were being taught. But again, I am glad to repeat--if instruction, _practical_ instruction, were given every day in the schools on how to form the habit of keeping rested, it would have a wonderful effect upon the whole country, not to mention where in many individual cases it would actually prevent the breaking out of hereditary disease. Nature always tends toward health; so strongly, so habitually does nature tend toward health that it seems at times as if the working of natural laws pushed some people into health in spite of chronic antagonism they seem to have against health--one might even say in spite of the wilful refusal of health. When one's body is kept rested, nature is constantly throwing off germs of disease, constantly working, and working most actively, to protect the body from anything that would interfere with its perfect health. When one's body is not rested, nature works just as hard, but the tired body--through its various forms of tension that impede the circulation, prevent the healthy absorption of food and oxygen, and clog the way so that impurities cannot be carried off--interferes with nature's work and thus makes it impossible for her to keep the machine well oiled. When we are tired, the very fact of being tired makes us more tired, unless we rest properly. A great deal--it seems to me more than one-half--of the fatigue in the world comes from the need of an intelligent understanding of how to keep rested. The more that lack of intelligence is allowed to grow, the worse it is going to be for the health of the nation. We have less of that plain common sense than our grandfathers and grandmothers. They had less than their fathers and mothers. We need more than our ancestors, because life is more complicated now, than it was then. We can get more if we will, because there is more real understanding of the science of hygiene than our fathers and mothers had before us. Our need now is to use _practically_ the information which a few individuals are able to give us, and especially to teach such practical use to our children. Let us find out how we would actually go to work to keep rested, and take the information of plain common sense and use it. To keep rested we must not overwork our body inside or outside. We must keep it in an equilibrium of action and rest. We overwork our body inside when we eat the wrong food and when we eat too much or not enough of the right food, for then the stomach has more than its share of work to do, and as the effort to do it well robs the brain and the whole nervous system, so, of course, the rest of the body has not its rightful supply of energy and the natural result is great fatigue. We overwork our body inside when we do not give it its due amount of fresh air. The blood needs the oxygen to supply itself and the nerves and muscles with power to do their work. When the oxygen is not supplied to the blood, the machinery of the body has to work with so much less power than really belongs to it, that there is great strain in the effort to do its work properly, and the effect is, of course, fatigue. In either of the above cases, both with an overworked stomach and an overworked heart and lungs, the complaint is very apt to be, "Why am I so tired when I have done nothing to get tired?" The answer is, "No, you have done nothing outside with your muscles, but the heart and lungs and the stomach are delicate and exquisite instruments. You have overworked them all, and such overwork is the more fatiguing in proportion to what is done than any other form, except overwork of the brain." And the overtired stomach and heart and lungs tire the brain, of course. Of the work that is given to the brain itself to overtire it we must speak later. So much now for that which prevents the body from keeping rested inside, in the finer working of its machinery. It is easy to find out what and how to eat. A very little careful thought will show us that. It is only the plain common sense of eating we need. It is easy to see that we must not eat on a tired stomach, and if we have to do so, we must eat much less than we ordinarily would, and eat it more slowly. So much good advice is already given about what and how to eat, I need say nothing here, and even without that advice, which in itself is so truly valuable, most of us could have plain common sense about our own food if we would use our minds intelligently about it, and eat only what we know to be nourishing to us. That can be done without fussing. Fussing about food contracts the stomach, and prevents free digestion almost as much as eating indigestible food. Then again, if we deny ourselves that which we want and know is bad for us, and eat only that which we know to be nourishing, it increases the delicacy of our relish. We do not lose relish by refusing to eat too much candy. We gain it. Human pigs lose their most delicate relish entirely, and they lose much--very much more--than that. Unfortunately with most people, there is not the relish for fresh air that there is for food. Very few people want fresh air selfishly; the selfish tendency of most people is to cut it off for fear of taking cold. And yet the difference felt in health, in keeping rested, in ease of mind, is as great between no fresh air and plenty of fresh air as it is between the wrong kind of food and enough (and not too much) of the right kind of food. Why does not the comfort of the body appeal to us as strongly through the supply of air given to the lungs as through that of food given to the stomach? The right supply of fresh air has such wonderful power to keep us rested! Practical teaching to the children here would, among other things, give them training which would open their lungs and enable them to take in with every breath the full amount of oxygen needed toward keeping them rested. There are so many cells in the lungs of most people, made to receive oxygen, which never receive one bit of the food they are hungry for. There is much more, of course, very much more, to say about the working of the machinery of the inside of the body and about the plain common sense needed to keep it well and rested, but I have said enough for now to start a thoughtful mind to work. Now for keeping the body well rested from the outside. It is all so well arranged for us--the night given us to sleep in, a good long day of work and a long night of rest; so the time for rest and the time for work are equalized and it is so happily arranged that out of the twenty-four hours in the day, when we are well, we need only eight hours' sleep. So well does nature work and so truly that she can make up for us in eight hours' sleep what fuel we lose in sixteen hours of activity. Only one-third of the time do we need to sleep, and we have the other two-thirds for work and play. This regular sleep is a strong force in our aim to keep rested. Therefore, the plain common sense of that is to find out how to go to sleep naturally, how to get all the rest out of sleep that nature would give us, and so to wake refreshed and ready for the day. To go to sleep naturally we must learn how to drop all the tension of the day and literally _drop_ to sleep like a baby. _Let go into sleep_--there is a host of meaning in that expression. When we do that, nature can revive and refresh and renew us. Renew our vitality, bring us so much more brain power for the day, all that we need for our work and our play; or almost all--for there are many little rests during the day, little openings for rest that we need to take, and that we can teach ourselves to take as a matter of course. We can sit restfully at each one of our three meals. Eat restfully and quietly, and so make each meal not only a means of getting nourishment, but of getting rest as well. There is all the difference of illness and health in taking a meal with strain and a sense of rush and pressure of work, and in taking it as if to eat that one meal were the only thing we had to do in the day. Better to eat a little nourishing food and eat it quietly and at leisure than a large meal of the same food with a sense of rush. This is a very important factor in keeping rested. Then there are the many expected and unexpected times in the day when we can take rest and so _keep rested._ If we have to wait we can sit quietly. Whatever we are doing we can make use of the between times to rest. Each man can find his own "between times." If we make real use of them, intelligent use, they not only help us to keep rested, they help us to do our work better, if we will but watch for them and use them. Now the body is only a servant, and in all I have written above, I have only written of the servant. How can a servant keep well and rested if the master drives him to such an extent that he is brought into a state, not where he won't go, but where he can't go, and must therefore drop? It is the intelligent master, who is a true disciple of plain common sense, who will train his servant, the body, in the way of resting, eating and breathing, in order to fit it for the maximum of work at the minimum of energy. But if you obey every external law for the health and strength of the body, and obey it implicitly, and to the letter, with all possible intelligence, you cannot keep it healthy if the mind that owns the body is pulling it and twisting it, and _twanging_ on its delicate machinery with a flood of resentment and resistance; and the spirit behind the mind is eager, wretched, and unhappy, because it does not get its own way, or elated with an inflamed egoism because it is getting its own way. All plain common sense in the way of health for the body falls dead unless followed up closely with plain common sense for the health of the mind; and then again, although when there is "a healthy mind in a healthy body," the health appears far more permanent than when a mind full of personal resistance tries to keep its body healthy, even that happy combination cannot be really permanent unless there is found back of it a healthy spirit. But of the plain common sense of the spirit there is more to be said at another time. With regard to the mind, let us look and see not only that it is not sensible to allow it to remain full of resistance, but is it not positively stupid? What an important factor it should be in the education of children to teach them the plain common sense needed to keep the mind healthy--to teach them the uselessness of a mental resistance, and the wholesomeness of a clean mind. If a child worries about his lessons, he is resisting the possibility of failing in his class; let him learn that the worry _interferes_ with his getting his lesson. Teach him how to drop the worry, and he will find not only that he gets the lesson in less time, but his mind is clearer to remember it. By following the same laws, children could be taught that a feeling of rush and hurry only impedes their progress. The rushed feeling sometimes comes from a nervous unquiet which is inherited, and should be trained out of the child. But alas! alas! how can a mother or a father train a child to live common sensibly without useless resistance when neither the mother nor the father can do that same themselves. It is not too late for any mother or father to learn, and if each will have the humility to confess to the child that they are learning and help the child to learn with them, no child would or could take advantage of that and as the children are trained rightly, what a start they can give their own children when they grow up--and what a gain there might be from one generation to another! Will it ever come? Surely we hope so. CHAPTER XXX _A Summing Up_ GIVE up resentment, give up unhealthy resistance. If circumstances, or persons, arouse either resentment or resistance in us, let us ignore the circumstances or persons until we have quieted ourselves. Freedom does not come from merely yielding out of resentment or unhealthy resistance, it comes also from the strong and steady focus on such yielding. _Concentration and relaxation are just as necessary one to another to give stability to the nerves of a man--as the centrifugal and centripetal forces are necessary to give stability to the Earth._ As the habit of healthy concentration and relaxation grows within us, our perception clears so that we see what is right to do, and are given the power to do it. As our freedom from bondage to our fellowmen becomes established, our relation to our fellowmen grows happier, more penetrating and more full of life, and later we come to understand that at root it is ourselves--our own resentment and resistance--to which we have been in bondage,--circumstances or other people have had _really_ nothing to do with it. When we have made that discovery, and are steadily acting upon it, we are free indeed, and with this new liberty there grows a clear sense and conviction of a wise, loving Power which, while leaving us our own free will, is always tenderly guiding us. No one ever really believed anything without experiencing it. We may think we believe all sorts of beautiful truths, but how can any truth be really ours unless we have proved it by living? We do not fully believe it until it runs in our blood--that is--we must see a truth with our minds, love it with our hearts and live it over and over again in our lives before it is ours. If the reader will think over this little book--he will see that every chapter has healthy yielding at the root of it. It is a constant repetition of the same principle applied to the commonplace circumstances of life, and if the reader will take this principle into his mind, and work practically to live it in his life, he will find the love for it growing in his heart, and with it a living conviction that when truly applied, it always works. Some one once described the difference between good breeding and bad breeding as that between a man who works as a matter of course to conquer his limitations--and a man to whom his limitations are inevitable. There is spiritual good breeding and natural good breeding. The first comes from the achievement of personal character--the second is born with us--to use or misuse as we prefer. It is a happy thing to realize that our freedom from bondage to circumstances, and our loving, intelligent freedom from other people, is the true spiritual good breeding which gives vitality to every action of our lives, and brings us into more real and closer touch with our fellow-men. Courtesy is alive when it has genuine love of all human nature at the root of it--it is dead when it is merely a matter of good form. In so far as I know, the habit of such freedom and good breeding cannot be steadily sustained without an absolute, conscious dependence upon the Lord God Almighty. 
37109	----	[Transcriber's Notes] Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. This book is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012175505 Obvious spelling or typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling of names and inventive and alternative spelling is left as printed. Extended quotations and citations are indented such as reports, letters and interviews. [End Transcriber's Notes] HEALTH THROUGH WILL POWER BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D., Sc.D., Etc. MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF FORDHAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY; PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY AT CATHEDRAL COLLEGE; LECTURER ON PSYCHOLOGY, MARYWOOD COLLEGE, ETC. BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1919 _Copyright, 1919,_ By Little, Brown, and Company. _All rights reserve_ Published, November, 1919 _Norwood Press_ Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. _To_ J. H. W. EX ANIMO ET CORDE J. J. W. {vii} PREFACE A French surgeon to whom the remark was made in the third year of the War that France was losing an immense number of men replied: "Yes, we are losing enormously, but for every man that we lose we are making two men." What he meant, of course, was that the War was bringing out the latent powers of men to such an extent that every one of those who were left now counted for two. The expression is much more than a mere figure of speech. It is quite literally true that a man who has had the profound experience of a war like this becomes capable of doing ever so much more than he could before. He has discovered his own power. He has tapped layers of energy that he did not know he possessed. Above all, he has learned that his will is capable of enabling him to do things that he would have hesitated about and probably thought quite impossible before this revelation of himself to himself had been made. {viii} In a word, the War has proved a revival of appreciation of the place of the human will in life. Marshal Foch, the greatest character of the War, did not hesitate even to declare that "A battle is the struggle of two wills. It is never lost until defeat is accepted. They only are vanquished who confess themselves to be." Our generation has been intent on the development of the intellect. We have been neglecting the will. "Shell shock" experiences have shown us that the intellect is largely the source of unfavorable suggestion. The will is the controlling factor in the disease. Many another demonstration of the power of will has been furnished by the War. This volume is meant to help in the restoration of the will to its place as the supreme faculty in life, above all the one on whose exercise, more than any other single factor, depends health and recovery from disease. The time seems opportune for its appearance and it is commended to the attention of those who have recognized how much the modern cult of intellect left man unprepared for the ruder trails of life yet could not see clearly what the remedy might be. {ix} CONTENTS PAGE Preface vii CHAPTER I The Will in Life 1 II Dreads 19 III Habits 42 IV Sympathy 57 V Self-Pity 69 VI Avoidance of Conscious Use of the Will 80 VII What the Will Can Do 102 VIII Pain and the Will 112 IX The Will and Air and Exercise 133 X The Will to Eat 148 XI The Place of the Will in Tuberculosis 167 XII The Will in Pneumonia 187 XIII Coughs and Colds 196 XIV Neurotic Asthma and the Will 207 XV The Will in Intestinal Function 215 XVI The Will and the Heart 227 XVII The Will in So-Called Chronic Rheumatism 240 XVII Psycho-Neuroses 258 XIX Feminine Ills and the Will 270 Index 285 {1} HEALTH THROUGH WILL POWER CHAPTER I THE WILL IN LIFE "What he will he does and does so much That proof is called impossibility." _Troilus and Cressida._ The place of the will in its influence upon health and vitality has long been recognized, not only by psychologists and those who pay special attention to problems of mental healing, but also, as a rule, by physicians and even by the general public. It is, for instance, a well-established practice, when two older folk, near relatives, are ill at the same time, or even when two younger persons are injured together and one of them dies, or perhaps has a serious turn for the worse, carefully to keep all knowledge of it from the other one. The reason is a very definite conviction that in the revulsion of feeling caused by learning of the fatality, or as {2} a result of the solicitude consequent upon hearing that there has been a turn for the worse, the other patient's chances for recovery would probably be seriously impaired. The will to get better, even to live on, is weakened, with grave consequences. This is no mere popular impression due to an exaggeration of sympathetic feeling for the patient. It has been noted over and over again, so often that it evidently represents some rule of life, that whenever by inadvertence the serious condition or death of the other was made known, there was an immediate unfavorable development in the case which sometimes ended fatally, though all had been going well up to that time. This was due not merely to the shock, but largely to the "giving up", as it is called, which left the surviving patient without that stimulus from the will to get well which means so much. It is surprising to what an extent the will may affect the body, even under circumstances where it would seem impossible that physical factors could any longer have any serious influence. We often hear it said that certain people are "living on their wills", and when they are of the kind who take comparatively little food and yet succeed in accomplishing {3} a great deal of work, the truth of the expression comes home to us rather strikingly. The expression is usually considered, however, to be scarcely more than a formula of words elaborated in order to explain certain of these exceptional cases that seem to need some special explanation. The possibility of the human will of itself actually prolonging existence beyond the time when, according to all reason founded on physical grounds, life should end, would seem to most people to be quite out of the question. And yet there are a number of striking cases on record in which the only explanation of the continuance of life would seem to be that the will to live has been so strongly aroused that life was prolonged beyond even expert expectation. That the will was the survival factor in the case is clear from the fact that as soon as this active willing process ceased, because the reason that had aroused it no longer existed, the individuals in question proceeded to reach the end of life rapidly from the physical factors already at work and which seemed to portend inevitably an earlier dissolution than that which happened. Probably a great many physicians know of striking examples of patients who have lived beyond the time when ordinarily death would {4} be expected, because they were awaiting the arrival of a friend from a distance who was known to be coming and whom the patient wanted very much to see. Dying mothers have lived on to get a last embrace of a son or daughter, and wives have survived to see their husbands for a last parting--though it seemed impossible that they should do so, so far as their physical condition was concerned--and then expired within a short time. Of course there are any number of examples in which this has not been true, but then that is only a proof of the fact that the great majority of mankind do not use their wills, or perhaps, having appealed to them for help during life never or but slightly, are not prepared to make a definite serious call on them toward the end. I am quite sure, however, that a great many country physicians particularly can tell stories of incidents that to them were proofs that the will can resist even the approach of death for some time, though just as soon as the patients give up, death comes to them. Professor Stokes, the great Irish clinician of the nineteenth century, to whom we owe so much of our knowledge of the diseases of the heart and lungs, and whose name is enshrined in terms commonly used in medicine in {5} connection with these diseases, has told a striking story of his experiences in a Dublin hospital that illustrates this very well. An old Irishman, who had been a soldier in his younger years and had been wounded many times, was in the hospital ill and manifestly dying. Professor Stokes, after a careful investigation of his condition, declared that he could not live a week, though at the end of that time the old soldier was still hanging on to life, ever visibly sinking. Stokes assured the students who were making the rounds of his wards with him that the old man had at most a day or two more to live, and yet at the end of some days he was still there to greet them on their morning visits. After the way of medical students the world over, though without any of that hard-heartedness that would be supposed ordinarily to go with such a procedure, for they were interested in the case as a medical problem, the students began to bet how long the old man would live. Finally, one day the old man said to Stokes in his broadest brogue: "Docther, you must keep me alive until the first of the month, because me pension for the quarther is then due, and unless the folks have it, shure they won't have anything to bury me with." {6} The first of the month was some ten days away. Stokes said to his students, though of course not in the hearing of the patient, that there was not a chance in the world, considering the old soldier's physical condition, that he would live until the first of the month. Every morning, in spite of this, when they came in, the old man was still alive and there was even no sign of the curtains being drawn around his bed as if the end were approaching. Finally on the morning of the first of the month, when Stokes came in, the old pensioner said to him feebly, "Docther, the papers are there. Sign them! Then they'll get the pension. I am glad you kept me alive, for now they'll surely have the money to bury me." And then the old man, having seen the signature affixed, composed himself for death and was dead in the course of a few hours. He had kept himself alive on his will because he had a purpose in it, and once that purpose was fulfilled, death was welcome and it came without any further delay. There is a story which comes to us from one of the French prisons about the middle of the nineteenth century which illustrates forcibly the same power of the will to maintain life after it seemed sure, beyond peradventure, {7} that death must come. It was the custom to bury in quicklime in the prison yard the bodies of all the prisoners who died while in custody. The custom still survives, or did but twenty years ago, even in English prisons, for those who were executed, as readers of Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" will recall. Irish prisons still keep up the barbarism, and one of the reasons for the bitterness of the Irish after the insurrection of 1916 in Dublin was the burial of the executed in quicklime in the prison yard. The Celtic mind particularly revolts at the idea, and it happened that one of the prisoners in a certain French prison, a Breton, a Celt of the Celts, was deeply affected by the thought that something like this might happen to him. He was suffering from tuberculosis at a time when very little attention was paid to such ailments in prisoners, for the sooner the end came, the less bother there was with them; but he was horrified at the thought that if he died in prison his body would disappear in the merciless fire of the quicklime. So far as the prison physician could foresee, the course of his disease would inevitably reach its fatal termination long before the end of his sentence. In spite of its advance. {8} however, the prisoner himself declared that he would never permit himself to die in prison and have his body face such a fate. His declaration was dismissed by the physician with a shrug and the feeling that after all it would not make very much difference to the man, since he would not be there to see or feel it. When, however, he continued to live, manifestly in the last throes of consumption, for weeks and even months after death seemed inevitable, some attention was paid to his declaration in the matter and the doctors began to give special attention to his case. He lived for many months after the time when, according to all ordinary medical knowledge, it would seem he must surely have died. He actually outlived the end of his sentence, had arrangements made to move him to a house just beyond the prison gate as soon as his sentence had expired, and according to the story, was dead within twenty-four hours after the time he got out of prison and thus assured his Breton soul of the fact that his body would be given, like that of any Christian, to the bosom of mother earth. But there are other and even more important phases of the prolongation of life by the will that still better illustrates its power. {9} It has often been noted that men who have had extremely busy lives, working long hours every day, often sleeping only a few hours at night, turning from one thing to another and accomplishing so much that it seemed almost impossible that one man could do all they did, have lived very long lives. Men like Alexander Humboldt, for instance, distinguished in science in his younger life, a traveler for many years in that hell-hole of the tropics, the region around Panama and Central America, a great writer whose books deeply influenced his generation in middle age. Prime Minister of Prussia as an older man, lived to be past ninety, though he once confessed that in his forties he often slept but two or three hours a night and sometimes took even that little rest on a sofa instead of a bed. Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century was just such another man. Frail of body, elected Pope at sixty-four, it was thought that there would soon be occasion for another election; he did an immense amount of work, assumed successfully the heaviest responsibilities, and outlived the years of Peter in the Papal chair, breaking all the prophecies in that regard and not dying till he was ninety-three. Many other examples might be cited. {10} Gladstone, always at work, probably the greatest statesman of the nineteenth century in the better sense of that word, was a scholar almost without a peer in the breadth of his scholarly attainments, a most interesting writer on multitudinous topics, keen of interest for everything human and always active, and yet he lived well on into the eighties. Bismarck and Von Moltke, who assumed heavier responsibilities than almost any other men of the nineteenth century, saw their fourscore years pass over them a good while before the end came. Bismarck remarked on his eighty-first birthday that he used to think all the good things of life were confined to the first eighty years of life, but now he knew that there were a great many good things reserved for the second eighty years. I shall never forget sitting beside Thomas Dunn English, the American poet, at a banquet of the Alumni of the University of Pennsylvania, when he repeated this expression for us; at the time he himself was well past eighty. He too had been a busy man and yet rejoiced to be with the younger alumni at the dinner. My dear old teacher, Virchow, of whom they said when he died that four men died, for he was distinguished not only as a pathologist, {11} which was the great life-work for which he was known, but as an anthropologist, a historian of medicine and a sanitarian, was at seventy-five actively accomplishing the work of two or three men. He died at eighty-one, as the result of a trolley injury, or I could easily imagine him alive even yet. Von Ranke, the great historian of the popes, began a universal history at the age of ninety which was planned to be complete in twelve volumes, one volume a year to be issued. I believe that he lived to finish half a dozen of them. I have some dear friends among the medical profession in America who are in their eighties and nineties, and all of them were extremely busy men in their middle years and always lived intensely active lives. Stephen Smith and Thomas Addis Emmet, John W. Gouley, William Hanna Thompson, not long dead, and S. Weir Mitchell, who lived to be past eighty-five, are typical examples of extremely busy men, yet of extremely long lives. All of these men had the will power to keep themselves busily at work, and their exercise of that will power, far from wearing them out, actually seemed to enable them to tap reservoirs of energy that might have remained {12} latent in them. The very intensiveness of their will to do seemed to exert an extensive influence over their lives, and so they not only accomplished more but actually lived longer. Hard work, far from exhausting, has just the opposite effect. We often hear of hard work killing people, but as a physician I have carefully looked into a number of these cases and have never found one which satisfied me as representing exhaustion due to hard work. Insidious kidney disease, rheumatic heart disease, the infections of which pneumonia is a typical example, all these have been the causes of death and not hard work, and they may come to any of us. They are just as much accidents as any other of the mischances of life, for it is as dangerous to be run into by a microbe as by a trolley car. Using the will in life to do all the work possible only gives life and gives it more abundantly, and people may rust out, that is be hurt by rest, much sooner than they will wear out. Here, then, is a wellspring of vitality that checks for a time at least even lethal changes in the body and undoubtedly is one of the most important factors for the prolongation of life. It represents the greatest force for health and power of accomplishment that we have. {13} Unfortunately, in recent years, it has been neglected to a great extent for a number of reasons. One of these has been the discussions as to the freedom of the will and the very common teaching of determinism which seemed to eliminate the will as an independent faculty in life. While this affected only the educated classes who had received the higher education, their example undoubtedly was pervasive and influenced a great many other people. Besides, newspaper and magazine writers emphasized for popular dissemination the ideas as to absence of the freedom of the will which created at least an unfortunate attitude of mind as regards the use of the will at its best and tended to produce the feeling that we are the creatures of circumstances rather than the makers of our destiny in any way, or above all, the rulers of ourselves, including even to a great extent our bodily energies. Even more significant than this intellectual factor, in sapping will power has been the comfortable living of the modern time with its tendency to eliminate from life everything that required any exercise of the will. The progress which our generation is so prone to boast of concerns mainly this making of people {14} more comfortable than they were before. The luxuries of life of a few centuries ago have now become practically the necessities of life of to-day. We are not asked to stand cold to any extent, we do not have to tire ourselves walking, and bodily labor is reserved for a certain number of people whom we apparently think of as scarcely counting in the scheme of humanity. Making ourselves comfortable has included particularly the removal of nearly all necessity for special exertion, and therefore of any serious exercise of the will. We have saved ourselves the necessity for expending energy, apparently with the idea that thus it would accumulate and be available for higher and better purposes. The curious thing with regard to animal energy, however, is that it does not accumulate in the body beyond a certain limited extent, and all energy that is manufactured beyond that seems to have a definite tendency to dissipate itself throughout the body, producing discomfort of various kinds instead of doing useful work. The process is very like what is called short-circuiting in electrical machinery, and this enables us to understand how much harm may be done. Making ourselves comfortable, therefore, may in the {15} end have just exactly the opposite effect, and often does. This is not noted at first, and may escape notice entirely unless there is an analysis of the mode of life which is directed particularly to finding out the amount of exertion of will and energy that there is in the daily round of existence. The will, like so many other faculties of the human organism, grows in power not by resting but by use and exercise. There have been very few calls for serious exercise of the will left in modern life and so it is no wonder that it has dwindled in power. As a consequence, a good deal of the significance of the will in life has been lost sight of. This is unfortunate, for the will can enable us to tap sources of energy that might otherwise remain concealed from us. Professor William James particularly called attention to the fact, in his well-known essay on "The Energies of Men", that very few people live up to their _maximum_ of accomplishment or their _optimum_ of conduct, and that indeed "_as a rule men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions._" It is with the idea of pointing out how much the will can accomplish in changing things for {16} the better that this volume is written. Professor James quoted with approval Prince Pueckler-Muskau's expression, "I find something very satisfactory in the thought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force of his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent." [Footnote 1] [Footnote 1: "Tour in England, Ireland and France."] It is this power, thus daringly called omnipotent, that men have not been using to the best advantage to maintain health and even to help in the cure of disease, which needs to be recalled emphatically to attention. The war has shown us in the persons of our young soldiers that the human will has not lost a single bit of its pristine power to enable men to accomplish what might almost have seemed impossible. One of the heritages from the war should be the continuance of that fine use of the will which military discipline and war's demands so well brought into play. Men can do and stand ever so much more than they realize, and in the very doing and standing find a satisfaction that surpasses all the softer pleasant feelings that come from mere comfort and lack of necessity for physical and {17} psychical exertion. Their exercise of tolerance and their strenuous exertion, instead of exhausting, only makes them more capable and adds to instead of detracting from their powers. How much this discipline and training of the will meant for our young American soldiers, some of whom were raised in the lap of luxury and almost without the necessity of ever having had to do or stand hard things previously in their lives, is very well illustrated by a letter quoted by Miss Agnes Repplier in the _Century_ for December. It is by no means unique or even exceptional. There were literally thousands of such letters written by young officers similarly circumstanced, and it is only because it is typical and characteristic of the spirit of all of these young men that I quote it here. Miss Repplier says that it came from "a young American lieutenant for whom the world had been from infancy a perilously pleasant place." He wrote home in the early spring of 1918: "It has rained and rained and rained. I am as much at home in a mud puddle as any frog in France, and I have clean forgotten what a dry bed is like. But I am as fit as a fiddle and as hard as nails. I can eat scrap iron and sleep standing. Aren't there things {18} called umbrellas, which you pampered civilians carry about in showers?" If we can secure the continuance of this will exertion, life will be ever so much heartier and healthier and happier than it was before, so that the war shall have its compensations. {19} CHAPTER II DREADS "O, know he is the bridle of your will. There's none but asses will be bridled so." _A Comedy of Errors._ It must be a surprise to most people, after the demonstration of the power of the will in the preceding chapter, that so many fail to make use of it. Indeed, the majority of mankind are quite unable to realize the store of energy for their health and strength and well-being which is thus readily available, though so often unused or called upon but feebly. The reason why the will is not used more is comparatively easy to understand, however, once its activity in ordinary conditions of humanity is analyzed a little more carefully. The will is unfortunately seldom permitted to act freely. Brakes are put on its energies by mental states of doubt and hesitation, by contrary suggestion, and above all by the dreads which humanity has allowed to fasten {20} themselves on us until now a great many activities are hampered. There is the feeling that many things cannot be done, or may be accomplished only at the cost of so much effort and even hardship that it would be hopeless for any but those who are gifted with extremely strong wills to attempt them. People grow afraid to commit themselves to any purpose lest they should not be able to carry it out. Many feel that they would never be able to stand what others have stood without flinching and are persuaded that if ever they were placed in the position where they had to withstand some of the trials that they have heard of they would inevitably break down under the strain. Just as soon as a human being loses confidence that he or she may be able to accomplish a certain thing, that of itself is enough to make the will ever so much less active than it would otherwise be. It is like breaking a piece of strong string: those who know how wrap it around their fingers, then jerk confidently and the string is broken. Those who fear that they may not be able to break it hesitate lest they should hurt themselves and give a half-hearted twitch which does not break the string; the only thing they succeed {21} in doing is in hurting themselves ever so much more than does the person who really breaks it. After that abortive effort, they feel that they must be different from the others whose fingers were strong enough to break the string, and they hesitate about it and will probably refuse to make the attempt again. It is a very old story,--this of dreads hampering the activities of mankind with lack of confidence, and the fear of failure keeping people from doing things. One of his disciples, according to a very old tradition, once asked St. Anthony the Hermit what had been the hardest obstacle that he found on the road to sanctity. The story has all the more meaning for us here if we recall that health and holiness are in etymology the same. St. Anthony, whose temptations have made him famous, was over a hundred at the time and had spent some seventy years in the desert, almost always alone, and probably knew as much about the inner workings of human nature from the opportunities for introspection which he had thus enjoyed as any human being who ever lived. His young disciple, like all young disciples, wanted a short cut on the pathway that they were both traveling. The old man said to him, "Well, {22} I am an old man and I have had many troubles, but most of them never happened." Many a nightmare of doubt and hesitation disappears at once if the dread of it is overcome. The troubles that never happen, if dwelt upon, paralyze the will until health and holiness become extremely difficult of attainment. There is the secret of the failure of a great many people in life in a great many ways. They fear the worst, dread failure, dampen their own confidence, and therefore fritter away their own energy. Anything that will enable them to get rid of the dreads of life will add greatly to their power to accomplish things inside as well as outside their bodies. Well begun is half done, and tackling a thing confidently means almost surely that it will be accomplished. If the dread of failure, the dread of possible pain in its performance, the dread of what may happen as a result of activity,--if all these or any of them are allowed to obtrude themselves, then energy is greatly lessened, the power to do things hampered and success becomes almost impossible. This is as true in matters of health and strength as it is with regard to various external accomplishments. It takes a great {23} deal of experience for mankind to learn the lesson that their dreads are often without reality, and some men never learn it. Usually when the word dreads is used, it is meant to signify a series of psychic or psychoneurotic conditions from which sensitive, nervous people suffer a great deal. There is, for instance, the dread of dirt called learnedly misophobia, that exaggerated fear that dirt may cling to the hands and prove in some way deleterious which sends its victims to wash their hands from twenty to forty times a day. Not infrequently they wash the skin pretty well off or at least produce annoying skin irritation as the result of their feeling. There are many other dreads of this kind. Some of them seem ever so much more absurd even than this dread of dirt. Most of us have a dread of heights, that is, we cannot stand on the edge of a height and look down without trembling and having such uncomfortable feelings that it is impossible for us to stay there any length of time. Some people also are unable to sit in the front row of the balcony of a theater or even to kneel in the front row of a gallery at church without having the same dread of heights that comes to others at the edge of a high precipice. I have among my {24} patients some clergymen who find it extremely difficult to stand up on a high altar, though, almost needless to say, the whole height is at most five or six ordinary steps. Then there are people who have an exaggerated dread of the dark, so that it is quite impossible for them to sleep without a light or to sleep alone. Sometimes such a dread is the result of some terrifying incident, as the case in my notes in which the treasurer of a university developed an intense dread of the dark which made sleep impossible without a light, after he had been shot at by a burglar who came into his room and who answered his demand, "Who is that?" by a bullet which passed through the head of the bed. Most of the skotophobists, the technical name for dark-dreaders, have no such excuse as this one. Victims of nervous dreads have as a rule developed their dread by permitting some natural feeling of minor importance to grow to such an extent that it makes them very miserable. Some cannot abide a shut-in place. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, the English writer and painter, often found a railroad compartment in the English cars an impossible situation and had to break his journey in order to get over {25} the growing feeling of claustrophobia, the dread of shut-in places, which would steal over him. There are any number of these dreads and, almost needless to say, all of them may interfere with health and the pursuit of happiness. I have seen men and women thrown into a severe nervous state with chilly feelings and cold sweat as the result of trying to overcome one of these dreads. They make it impossible for their victims to do a great many things that other people do readily, and sadly hamper their wills. There is only one way to overcome these dreads, and that is by a series of acts in the contrary direction until a habit of self-control with regard to these haunting ideas is secured. All mankind, almost without exception, has a dread of heights, and yet many thousands of men have in recent years learned to work on high buildings without very much inconvenience from the dread. The wages are good, they _want_ to work this way, and the result is they take themselves in hand and gradually acquire self-control. I have had many of them tell me that at first they were sure they would never be able to do it, but the gradual ascent of the building as the work proceeded accustomed them to height, {26} and after a while it became almost as natural to work high up in the air as on the first or second story of a building or even on the level ground. The overcoming of these dreads is not easy unless some good reason releases the will and sets it to exerting its full power. When this is the case, however, the dread is overcome and the brake lifted after some persistence, with absolute assurance. Men who became brave soldiers have been known to have had a great dread of blood in early life. Some of our best surgeons have had to leave the first operation that they ever saw or they would have fainted, and yet after repeated effort they have succeeded in overcoming this sensitiveness. As a matter of fact, most people suffer so much from dreads because they yielded to a minor dread and allowed a bad habit to be formed. It is a question of breaking a bad habit by contrary acts rather than of overcoming a natural disposition. Many of those who are victims have the feeling that they cannot be expected to conquer nature this way. As a result, they are so discouraged at the very idea that success is dubious and practically impossible from their very attitude of mind; but it is only the {27} second nature of a habit that they have to overcome, and this is quite another matter, for exactly contrary acts to these which formed a habit will break it. Some of these dreads seem to be purely physical in origin or character yet prove to be merely or to a great degree only psychic states. Insomnia itself is more a dread than anything else. In writing for the International Clinics some years ago (Volume IV, Series XXVI) I dwelt on the fact that insomnia as a dread was probably responsible for more discomfort and complaints from mankind than almost anything else. Insomniaphobia is just such a dread as agoraphobia, the dread of open spaces; or akrophobia, the dread of heights; or skotophobia, the dread of the dark, and other phobias which afflict mankind. It is perfectly possible in most cases to cure such phobias by direct training against them, and this can be done also with regard to insomnia. Some people, particularly those who have not been out much during the day and who have suffered from wakefulness a few times, get it on their mind that if this state keeps up they will surely lose their reason or their bodily health, and they begin to worry about {28} it. They commence wondering about five in the afternoon whether they are going to be awake that night or not. It becomes a haunt, and no matter what they do during the evening every now and then the thought recurs that they will not sleep. By the time they actually lie down they have become so thoroughly occupied with that thought that it serves to keep them awake. Some of them avoid the solicitude before they actually get to bed, but begin to worry after that, and if after ten minutes they are not asleep, above all if they hear a clock strike somewhere, they are sure they are going to be awake, they worry about it, get themselves thoroughly aroused, and then they will not go to sleep for hours. It is quite useless to give such people drugs, just as useless as to attempt to give a man a drug to overcome the dread of heights or the dread of the dark or of a narrow street through which he has to pass. They must use their wills to help them out of a condition in which their dreads have placed them. Apart from these neurotic dreads, quite unreasoning as most of them are, there are a series of what may be called intellectual dreads. These are due to false notions that have come to be accepted and that serve to {29} keep people from doing things that they ought to do for the sake of their health, or set them performing acts that are injurious instead of beneficial. The dread of loss of sleep has often caused people to take somnifacients which eventually proved ever so much more harmful than would the loss of sleep they were meant to overcome. Many a person dreading a cold has taken enough quinine and whisky to make him more miserable the next day than the cold would have, had it actually made its appearance, as it often does not. The quinine and whisky did not prevent it, but the expectation was founded on false premises. There are a great many other floating ideas that prove the source of disturbing dreads for many people. A discussion of a few typical examples will show how much health may be broken by the dreads associated with various ills, for they often interfere with normal, healthy living. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" applies particularly in this matter. There are many morbid fears that disturb mankind and keep us from accomplishing what might otherwise be comparatively easy. A great many people become convinced that they have some diseased condition, or morbid elements at least, {30} in them which make it impossible for them to do as much as other people. Sometimes this morbid persuasion takes the form of hypochrondia and the individuals feel that they have a constitution that unfits them for prolonged and strenuous effort of any kind, so they avoid it. The number of valetudinarians, that is of those who live their lives mainly engaged in caring for their health, though their physicians have never been able to find anything organically wrong with them, is much larger than might be imagined. This state of mind has been with us for many centuries, for the word which describes it, hypochondria, came to us originally from Greece and is an attempt to localize the affection in connection with its principal symptom, which is usually one of discomfort in the stomach region or to one side or the other of it, that is, in the hypochondria or beneath the ribs. Such a state of mind, in which the patient is constantly complaining of one symptom or another, quite paralyzes the will. The individual may be able to do some routine work but he will not be able to have any initiative or energy for special developments of his occupation, and of course, when any real affection occurs, he will feel that he is quite {31} unable to bear this additional burden of disease. Hypochondriacs, however, sometimes fairly enjoy their ill health and therefore have been known not infrequently to live on to a good, round old age, ever complaining more and more. It is their dread of disease that keeps them from getting better and prevents their wills from throwing off whatever symptoms there are and becoming perfectly well. Until something comes along and rouses their wills, there is no hope of affecting them favorably, and it is surprising how long the state may continue without any one ever having found any organic affection to justify all the discomforts of which they complain. Quite literally, they are suffering from complaints and not from disease in the ordinary sense of the word. Sometimes these dreads of disease are dependent on some word which has taken on an exaggerated significance in people's minds. A word that in recent years has been the source of a great deal of unfavorable suggestion is "catarrh", and a mistaken notion of its meaning has been productive of a serious hampering of their will to be well in a number of persons. In itself, both according to its derivation and its accepted scientific {32} significance, the word means only that first stage of inflammatory irritation of mucous membranes which causes secretion to flow more freely than normally. _Catarrhein_ in Greek means only to flow down. [Footnote 2] [Footnote 2: The word has, by the way, the same meaning as rheumatism, which is also from the Greek verb, to flow, though its application is usually limited to the serous membranes of the joints or the serous surfaces of the intermuscular planes. By derivation, catarrh is the same word also as gout, which comes from _gutta_ in Latin, meaning a drop and implying secretory disturbances. These three words--catarrh, rheumatism, gout--have been applied to all sorts of affections and are so general in meaning as to be quite hard to define exactly. They have for this very reason, their vagueness, become a prolific source of unfortunate suggestion and of all kinds of dreads that disturb health.] By abuse, however, the word _catarrh_ has come to mean in the minds of a great many people in our time a very serious inflammation of the mucous membranes, almost inevitably progressive and very often resulting in fetid diseased conditions of internal or external mucous membranes, very unpleasant for the patient and his friends and the source of serious complications and _sequelae_. This idea has been fostered sedulously by the advertisers of proprietary remedies and the ingenious exploiters of various modes of treatment. As a result, a great many people who for one reason or another--usually because of some slight increase of secretion in the nose and {33} throat--become convinced they have catarrh begin to feel that they cannot be expected to have as much resistive vitality as others, since they are the subjects of this serious progressive disease. As a matter of fact, very few people in America, especially those living in the northern or eastern States, are without some tendency to mild chronic catarrh. The violent changes of temperature and the damp, dark days predispose to it; but it produces very few symptoms except in certain particularly sensitive individuals whose minds become centered on slight discomforts in the throat and nose and who feel that they must represent some serious and probably progressive condition. As a matter of fact, catarrh has almost nothing of the significance attributed to it so often in magazine and newspaper advertisements. Simple catarrh decreases without producing any serious result, and indeed it is an index of a purely catarrhal condition that there is a complete return to normal. Sometimes microbes are associated with its causation, but when this is so, they are bacteria of mild pathological virulence that do not produce deep changes. As for catarrh developing fetid, foul-smelling discharges or odors, that {34} is out of the question. There are certain affections, notably diphtheria, that may produce such serious changes in the mucous membranes that there will always even long after complete recovery be an unpleasant odorous condition, but it is probable that even in these cases there exists a special form of microbe quite rare in occurrence which produces the state known as _ozena_. As to catarrh spreading from the nose and throat to the other mucous membranes, that is also quite out of the question if it is supposed to occur in the way that the advertising specialist likes to announce. Catarrhal conditions may occur in the stomach, but like those of the nose and throat they are not serious, heal completely, and produce no definite changes. A pinch of snuff may cause a catarrhal condition of the nose, that is an increase of secretion due to hyperaemia of the mucous membrane; the eating of condiments, of Worcestershire sauce, peppers, and horse-radish may cause it in the stomach. It may be due to microbic action or to irritant or decomposing food, but it is not a part of a serious, wide-spreading pathological condition that will finally make the patient miserable. It is surprising, however, how many people say with an air of finality {35} that they have catarrh, as if it should be perfectly clear that as a result they cannot be expected at any time to be in sufficiently good health to be called on for any special work, and of course if any affection should attack them, their natural immunity to disease has been so lowered by this chronic affection, of which they are the victims, that no strong resistance could be expected from them. All this is merely a dread induced by paying too much attention to medical advertisements. It is better not to know as much as some people know, or think they know about themselves, than to know so many things that are not so. Their dreads seriously impair their power to work and leave them ill disposed to resist affections of any kind that may attack them. It is a sad confession to make, but not a little of the enforced study of physiology in our schools has become the source of a series of dreads and solicitudes rather than of helpful knowledge. We have as a result a generation who know a little about their internal economy, but only enough to make them worry about it and not quite enough to make them understand how thoroughly capable our organisms are of caring for themselves successfully and with resultant good health, if we will only {36} refrain from putting brakes on their energies and disturbing their functions by our worries and anxieties. Another such word as catarrh in its unfavorable suggestiveness in recent years has been auto-intoxication. It is a mouth-filling word, and therefore very probably it has occupied the minds of the better educated classes. Usually the form of auto-intoxication that is most spoken of is intestinal auto-intoxication, and this combination has for many people a very satisfying polysyllabic length that makes it of special significance. Its meaning is taken to be that whenever the contents of the intestines are delayed more than twenty hours or perhaps a little longer, or whenever certain irritant materials find their way into the intestinal tract, there is an absorption of toxic matter which produces a series of constitutional symptoms. These include such vague symptomatic conditions as sleepiness, torpor after meals, an uncomfortable sense of fullness--though when we were young we rather liked to have that feeling of fullness--and sometimes a feeling of heat in the skin with other sensations of discomfort in various parts of the body. At times there is headache, but this is rather rare; lassitude and a feeling of {37} inability to do things is looked upon as almost characteristic of the condition. Usually there are nervous symptoms of one kind or another associated with the other complaints and there may be distinctly hysterical or psycho-neurotic manifestations. Auto-intoxication as just described has become a sort of fetish for a great many people who bow down and worship at its shrine and give some of the best of their energies and not a little of their time to meditation before it. As a matter of fact, in the last few years it has come to be recognized that auto-intoxication is a much abused word employed very often when there are serious organic conditions in existence elsewhere in the body and still more frequently when the symptoms are due merely to functional nervous troubles. These are usually consequent upon a sedentary life, lack of fresh air and exercise, insufficient attention to the diet in the direction of taking simple and coarse food, and generally passing disturbances that can be rather readily catalogued under much simpler affections than a supposed absorption of toxic materials from the intestines. Reflexes from the intestinal tract, emphasized by worries about the condition, are much more responsible for the feelings {38} complained of--which are often not in any sense symptoms--than any physical factors present. As Doctor Walter C. Alvarez said in a paper on the "Origin of the So-called Auto-intoxicational Symptoms" published from the George Williams Hooper Foundation for Medical Research of the University of California Medical School, [Footnote 3] as the conclusion of his investigation of the subject: [Footnote 3: _Journal of the American Medical Association_, January 4, 1919.] "Auto-intoxication is commonly diagnosed when a physical examination would show other more definite causes for the symptoms. Those who believe that intestinal stasis can account for a long list of disease conditions have little proof to offer for their views. Many of the assumptions on which they rest their case have proved to be wrong. "The usual symptoms of the constipated disappear so promptly after a bowel movement that they cannot be due to absorbed toxins. They must be produced mechanically by distension and irritation of the colon. They occur in nervous, sensitive people. It has been shown that various activities of the digestive tract can profoundly affect the sensorium and the vasomotor nerves. The {39} old ideas of insidious poisoning led to the formation of hypochrondriacs; the new explanation helps to cure many of them." There are many other terms in common use that have unfortunate suggestions and make people feel, if they once get the habit of applying them to themselves, that they are the subject of rather serious illness. I suppose that one of the most used and most abused of these is uric acid and the uric acid diathesis. Scientific physicians have nearly given up these terms, but a great many people are still intent on making themselves miserable. All sorts of symptoms usually due to insufficient exercise and air, inadequate diversion of mind and lack of interests are attributed to these conditions. Some time or other a physician or perhaps some one who is supposed to be a friend suggested them and they continue to hamper the will to be well by baseless worries founded on false notions for years afterwards. What is needed is a definite effort of the will to throw off these nightmares of disease that are so disturbing and live without them. It is surprising how much vital energy may be wasted in connection with such dreads. Unfortunately, too, medicines of various kinds are taken to relieve the symptoms connected {40} with them and the medicine does ever so much more harm than good. Oliver Wendell Holmes declared a generation ago that if all the medicines that had ever been taken by mankind were thrown into the sea it would be much better for mankind and much worse for the fishes. The expression still has a great truth in it, especially as regards that habit of self-drugging so common among the American people. In the course of lecture engagements, I stay with very intelligent friends on a good many occasions each year, and it is surprising how many of them have medicine bottles around, indicating that they are subject to dreads of various kinds with regard to themselves for which they feel medicine should be taken. These dreads unfortunately often serve to lessen resistive vitality to real affections when they occur and therefore become a source of real danger. All these various dreads, then, have the definite effect of lessening the power of the will to enable people to do their work and remain well. They represent serious brakes upon the flow of nerve impulses from the spiritual side of man's nature to the physical. This is much more serious in its results than would usually be thought; and one of the {41} things that a physician has to find out from a great many patients is what sources of dread they are laboring under so as to neutralize them or at least correct them as far as possible. It is surprising how much good can be accomplished by a deliberate quest after dreads and the direct discussion of them, for they are always much less significant when brought out of the purlieus of the mind directly into the open. Many a neurotic patient, particularly, will not be improved until his dreads are relieved. This form of psycho-analysis rather than the search for sex insults, as they are called, or sexual incidents of early life, is the hopeful phase of modern psychological contribution to therapeutics. {42} CHAPTER III HABITS "Why, will shall break it; will and nothing else." _Love's Labor's Lost_. Dreads are brakes on the will, inhibitions which prevent its exercise and make accomplishment very difficult and sometimes impossible. They represent mainly a state of mind, yet often they contain physical elements, and the disposition counts for much. Their counterpart in the opposite direction is represented by habits which are acquired facilities of action for good or for ill. Habits not only make activities easy but they even produce such a definite tendency to the performance of certain actions as to make it difficult not to do them. They may become so strong as to be tyrants for ill, though it must not be forgotten that properly directed they may master what is worst in us and help us up the hill of life. Acts that are entirely voluntary and very difficult at first may become by habit so {43} natural that it is extremely difficult to do otherwise than follow the ingrained tendency. Nature's activities are imperative. Habitual actions may become equally so. When some one once remarked to the Duke of Wellington that habit was second nature, he replied: "Oh, ever so much more than that! Habit may be ten times as strong as nature." The function of the will in health is mainly to prevent the formation of bad habits or break those that have been formed, but above all, to bring about the formation of habits that will prevent as far as is possible the development of tendencies to disease in the body, Man probably faces no more difficult problem in life than the breaking of a bad habit. Usually it requires the exercise of all his will power applied to its fullest extent. If there is a more difficult problem than the breaking of a bad habit it is the formation of a good one late in life because of the persistency of advertence and effort that is required. It is comparatively easy to prevent the formation of bad habits and also easy to form good habits in the earlier years. The organism is then plastic and yields itself readily and thus becomes grooved to the habit or hardened against it by the performance of even a few acts. {44} All the psychologists insist that after the period of the exercise of instinct as the basis of life passes, habit becomes the great force for good or for ill. We become quite literally a bundle of habits, and the success of life largely depends on whether these habits are favorable or unfavorable to the accomplishment of what is best in us. More than anything else health depends on habit. We begin by doing things more or less casually, and after a time a tendency to do them is created; then almost before we know it, we find that we have a difficult task before us, if we try not to do them. To begin with, the activity which becomes the subject of a habit may be distinctly unpleasant and require considerable effort to accomplish. Practically every one who has learned to smoke recalls more or less vividly the physical disturbance caused by the first attempt and how even succeeding smokes for some time, far from being pleasant, required distinct effort and no little self-control. After a time, the desire to smoke becomes so ingrained that a man is literally made quite miserable by the lack of it and finds himself almost incapable of doing anything else until he has had his smoke. {45} Even more of an effort is required to establish the habit of chewing tobacco, and it is even more difficult to break when once it has been formed. Any one who has seen the discomfort and even torments endured by a man who, after he had chewed tobacco for many years, tried to stop will appreciate fully what a firm hold the habit has obtained. I have known a serious business man who almost had to give up business, who lost his sleep and his appetite and went through a nervous crisis merely by trying to break the habit of chewing tobacco. In the Orient they chew betel nut. It is an extremely hot material which burns the tongue and which a man can stand for only a very short time when he first tries it. After a while, however, he finds a pleasant stimulation of sensation in the constant presence of the biting betel nut in his mouth; he craves it and cannot do his work so well without it. He will ever advert to its use and will be restless without it. He continues to use it in spite of the fact that the intense irritation set up by the biting qualities of the substance causes cancer of the tongue to occur ten times as frequently among those who chew betel nut as among the rest of the population. Not all {46} those who chew it get cancer, for some die from other causes before there is time for the cancer to develop, and some seem to possess immunity against the irritation. The betel nut chewer ignores all this, proceeds to form the habit, urged thereto by the force of example, and then lets himself drift along, hoping that it will have no bad effects. The alcohol and drug habits are quite as significant in shortening life as betel nut and yet men take them up quite confident in the beginning that _they_ will not fall victims, and then find themselves enmeshed. It is probable that the direct physical effects of none of these substances shorten life to a marked degree unless they are indulged in to very great excess, but the moral hazards which they produce, accidents, injuries of various kinds, exposure to disease, all these shorten life. Men know this very well, and yet persist in the formation of these habits. Any habit, no matter how strong, can be broken if the individual really wishes to break it, provided the subject of it is not actually insane or on the way to the insane asylum. He need only get a motive strong enough to rouse his will, secure a consciousness of his own power, and then the habit can be broken. {47} After all, it must never be forgotten that the only thing necessary in order to break a habit effectively is to refuse to perform a single act of it, the next time one is tempted. That breaks the habit and makes refusal easier and one need only continue the refusal until the temptation ceases. Men who have not drawn a sober breath for years have sometimes come to the realization of the fools that they were making of themselves, the injury they were doing their relatives, or perhaps have been touched by a child's words or some religious motive, and after that they have never touched liquor again. Father Theobald Mathew's wonderful work in this regard among the Irish in the first half of the nineteenth century has been repeated by many temperance or total abstinence advocates in more recent generations. I have known a confirmed drunkard reason himself into a state of mind from which he was able to overcome his habit very successfully, though his reasoning consisted of nothing more than the recognition of the fact that suggestion was the root of his craving for alcohol. His father had been a drunkard and he had received so many warnings from all his older relatives and had himself so come to dwell on {48} the possible danger of his own formation of the habit that he had suggested himself into the frame of mind in which he took to drink. I have known a physician on whom some half a dozen different morphine cures had been tried--always followed by a relapse--cure himself by an act of his own will and stay cured ever since because of an incident that stirred him deeply enough to arouse his will properly to activity. One day his little boy of about four was in his office when father prepared to give himself one of his usual injections of morphine. The little boy gave very close attention to all his father's manipulations, and as the doctor was hurrying to keep an appointment, he did not notice the intent eye witness of the proceedings. Just as the needle was pushed home and the piston shot down in the barrel, the little boy rushed over to his father and said, "Oh, Daddy, do that to me." Apparently this close childish observer had noted something of the look of satisfaction that came over his father's face as he felt the fluid sink into his tissues. It is almost needless to say that the shock the father received was enough to break his morphine habit for good and all. It simply released his will and then he found that if he {49} really wanted to, he could accomplish what the various cures for the morphine habit only lead up to--and in his case unsuccessfully--the exercise of his own will power. The word "habit" suggests nearly always, unfortunately, the thought of bad habits, just as the word "passion" implies, with many people, evil tendencies. But it must not be forgotten that there are good passions and good habits that are as helpful for the accomplishment of what is best in life as bad passions and bad habits are harmful. A repetition of acts is needed for the formation of good habits just as for the establishment of customs of evil. Usually, however, and this must not be forgotten, the beginning of a good habit is easier than the beginning of a bad habit. Once formed, the good habits are even more beneficial than the bad habits are harmful. It is almost as hard to break a good habit as a bad one, provided that it has been continued for a sufficient length of time to make that groove in the nervous system which underlies all habit. We cannot avoid forming habits and the question is, shall we form good or bad habits? Good habits preserve health, make life easier and happier; bad habits have the opposite effect, though {50} there is some countervailing personal element that tempts to their formation and persistence. Every failure to do what we should has its unfortunate effect upon us. We get into a state in which it is extremely difficult for us to do the right things. We have to overcome not only the original inertia of nature, but also a contrary habit. If we do not follow our good impulses, the worse ones get the upper hand. As Professor James said, for we must always recur to him when we want to have the clear expression of many of these ideas: "Just as, if we let our emotions evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating; so there is reason to suppose that if we often flinch from making an effort, before we know it the effort-making capacity will be gone; and that, if we suffer the wandering of our attention, presently it will wander all the time. Attention and effort are but two names for the same psychic fact. To what brain-processes they correspond we do not know. The strongest reason for believing that they do depend on brain processes at all and are not pure acts of the spirit, is just this fact, that they seem in some degree subject to the law of habit, which is a material law." It must not be forgotten that we mold not {51} alone what we call character, but that we manifestly produce effects upon our tissues that are lasting. Indeed it is these that count the most, for health at least. It is the physical basis of will and intellect that is grooved by what we call habit. As Doctor Carpenter says: "Our nervous systems have grown to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterwards into the same identical fold." Permitting exceptions to occur when we are forming a habit is almost necessarily disturbing. The classical figure is that it is like letting fall a ball of string which we have been winding. It undoes in a moment all that we have accomplished in a long while. As Professor Bain has said it so much better than I could, I prefer to quote him: "The peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. It is necessary, above all things, in such a situation never to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the {52} right. The essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition under any circumstances." This means training the will by a series of difficult acts, accomplished in spite of the effort they require, but which gradually become easier from repeated performance until habit replaces nature and dominates the situation. Serious thinkers who faced humanity's problems squarely and devoted themselves to finding solutions for them had worked out this formula of the need of will training long ago, and it was indeed a principal characteristic of medieval education. The old monastic schools were founded on the idea that training of the will and the formation of good habits was ever so much more important than the accumulation of information. They frankly called the human will the highest faculty of mankind and felt that to neglect it would be a serious defect in education. The will can only be trained by the accomplishment of difficult things day after day until its energies are aroused and the man becomes conscious of his own powers and the {53} ability to use them whenever he really wishes. There was a time not so long since, and there are still voices raised to that purport, when it was the custom to scoff at the will training of the older time and above all the old-fashioned suggestion that mortifications of various kinds--that is, the doing of unpleasant things just for the sake of doing them--should be practiced because of the added will power thus acquired. The failure of our modern education which neglected this special attention to the will is now so patent as to make everyone feel that there must be a recurrence to old time ideas once more. The formation of proper habits should, then, be the main occupation of the early years. This will assure health as well as happiness, barring the accidents that may come to any human being. Good habits make proper living easy and after a time even pleasant, though there may have been considerable difficulty in the performance of the acts associated with them at the beginning. Indeed, the organism becomes so accustomed to their performance after a time that it becomes actually something of a trial to omit them, and they are missed. Education consists much more in such {54} training of the will than in storing the intellect with knowledge, though the latter idea has been unfortunately the almost exclusive policy in our education in recent generations. We are waking up to the fact that diminution of power has been brought about by striving for information instead of for the increase of will energy. Professor Conklin of Princeton, in his volume on "Heredity and Environment", emphasized the fact that "Will is indeed the supreme human faculty, the whole mind in action, the internal stimulus which may call forth all the capacities and powers." He had said just before this: "It is one of the most serious indictments against modern systems of education that they devote so much attention to the training of the memory and intellect and so little attention to the training of the will, upon the proper development of which so much depends." Nor must it be thought that the idea behind this training of the will is in any sense medievally ascetic and old-fashioned and that it does not apply to our modern conditions and modes of thinking. Professor Huxley would surely be the one man above all whom any one in our times would be least likely to think of {55} as mystical in his ways or medieval in his tendencies. In his address on "A Liberal Education and Where to Find It", delivered before the South London Workingmen's College some forty years ago, in emphasizing what he thought was the real purpose of education, he dwelt particularly on the training of the will. He defined a liberal education not as so many people might think of it in terms of the intellect, but rather in terms of the will. He said that a liberal education was one "which has not only prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards which nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties." And then he added: "That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order, ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great {56} and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her operations; one who is no stunted ascetic but who is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. "Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, completely as a man can be, in harmony with nature." This is the liberal education in habits of order and power that every one must strive for, so that all possible energies may be available for the rewards of good health. Details of the habits that mean much for health must be reserved for subsequent chapters, but it must be appreciated in any consideration of the relation of the will to health that good habits formed as early as possible in life and maintained conservatively as the years advance are the mainstay of health and the power to do work. {57} CHAPTER IV SYMPATHY "Never could maintain his part but in the force of his will." _Much Ado about Nothing_. A great French physician once combined in the same sentence two expressions that to most people of the modern time would seem utter paradoxes. "Rest," he said, "is the most dangerous of remedies, never to be employed for the treatment of disease, except in careful doses, under the direction of a physician and rarely for any but sufferers from organic disease"; while "sympathy", he added, "is the most insidiously harmful of anodynes, seldom doing any good except for the passing moment, and often working a deal of harm to the patient." With the first of these expressions, we have nothing to do here, but the second is extremely important in any consideration of the place of the will in human life. Nothing is so prone {58} to weaken the will, to keep it from exerting its full influence in maintaining vital resistance, and as a result, to relax not only the moral but the physical fiber of men and women as misplaced sympathy. It has almost exactly the same place in the moral life that narcotics have in the physical, and it must be employed with quite as much nicety of judgment and discrimination. Sympathy of itself is a beautiful thing in so far as it implies that _suffering with_ another which its Greek etymology signifies. In so far as it is pity, however, it tends to lessen our power to stand up firmly under the trials that are sure to come, and is just to that extent harmful rather than helpful. There is a definite reaction against it in all normal individuals. No one wants to be pitied. We feel naturally a little degraded by it. In so far as it creates a feeling of self-pity, it is particularly to be deprecated, and indeed this is so important a subject in all that concerns the will to be well and to get well that it has been reserved for a special chapter. What we would emphasize here is the harm that is almost invariably done by the well-meant but so often ill-directed sympathy of friends and relatives which proves relaxing of moral {59} purpose and hampers the will in its activities, physical as well as ethical. Human nature has long recognized this and has organized certain customs of life with due reference to it. We all know that when children fall and even hurt themselves, the thing to do is not to express our sympathy and sorrow for them, even though we feel it deeply, but unless their injury is severe, to let them pick themselves up and divert their minds from their hurts by suggesting that they have broken the floor, or hurt it. For the less sympathy expressed, the shorter will be the crying, and the sooner the child will learn to take the hard knocks of life without feeling that it is especially abused or suffering any more than comes to most people. Unfortunately, it is not always the custom to do the same thing with the children of a larger growth. This is particularly true when there is but a single child in the family, or perhaps two, when a good deal of sympathy is likely to be wasted on their ills which are often greatly increased by their self-consciousness and their dwelling on them. Diversion of mind, not pity, is needed. The advice to do the next thing and not cry over spilt milk is ever so much better than sentimental recalling of the past. {60} Many a young man who went to war learned the precious lesson that sympathy, though he might crave it, instead of doing him good would do harm. Many a manly character was rounded out into firm self-control and independence by military discipline and the lack of anything like sentimentality in camp and military life. A good many mothers whose boys had been the objects of their special solicitude felt very sorry to think that they would have to submit to the hardships and trials involved in military discipline. Most of them who were solicitous in this way were rather inclined to feel that their boy might not be able to stand up under the rigidities of military life and hoped at most that he would not be seriously harmed. They could not think that early rising, hard work, severe physical tasks, tiring almost to exhaustion, with plain, hearty, yet rather coarse food, eaten in slapdash fashion, would be quite the thing for their boy of whom they had taken so much care. Not a few of them were surprised to find how the life under these difficult circumstances proved practically always beneficial. I remember distinctly that when the soldiers were sent to the Mexican border the mother of {61} a soldier from a neighboring State remarked rather anxiously to me that she did not know what would happen to Jack under the severe discipline incident to military life. He had always gone away for five or six weeks in the summer either to the mountains or to the seashore, and the Mexican border, probably the most trying summer climate in the United States, represented the very opposite of this. Besides, there was the question of the army rations; Jack was an only son with five sisters. Most of them were older than he, and so Jack had been coddled as though by half a dozen mothers. He was underweight, he had a rather finicky appetite, he was capricious in his eating both as to quantity and quality, and was supposed to be a sufferer from some form of nervous indigestion. Personally, I felt that what Jack needed was weight, but I had found it very hard to increase his weight. He was particularly prone to eat a very small breakfast, and his mother once told me that whenever he was at home, she always prepared his breakfast for him with her own hands. This did not improve matters much, however, for Jack was likely to take a small portion of the meat cooked for him, refuse to touch the potatoes, and eat marmalade and toast with {62} his coffee and nothing more. No wonder that he was twenty pounds underweight or that his mother should be solicitous as to what might happen to her Jack in army life at the Border. I agreed with her in that but there were some things that I knew would not happen to Jack. His breakfast, for instance, would not be particularly cooked for him, and he might take or leave exactly what was prepared for every one else. Neither would the Government cook come out and sit beside Jack while he was at breakfast and tempt him to eat, as his mother had always done. I knew, too, that at other meals, while the food would be abundant, it would usually be rather coarse, always plain, and there would be nothing very tempting about it unless you had your appetite with you. If ever there is a place where appetite is the best sauce, it is surely where one is served with army food. I need scarcely tell what actually happened to Jack, for it was exactly what happened to a good many Jacks whose mothers were equally afraid of the effects of camp life on them. Amid the temptations of home food, Jack had remained persistently underweight. Eating an army ration with the sauce of appetite due to prolonged physical efforts in the outdoor {63} air every day, Jack gained more than twenty pounds in weight, in spite of the supposedly insalubrious climate of the Border and the difficult conditions under which he had to live. It was literally the best summer vacation that Jack had ever spent, though if the suggestion had ever been made that this was the sort of summer vacation that would do him good, the idea would have been scoffed at as impractical, if not absolutely impossible. Homer suggested that a mollycoddle character whom he introduces into the "Iliad" owed something of his lack of manly stamina to the fact that he had six sisters at home, and an Irish friend once translated the passage by saying that the young man in question was "one of seven sisters." This had been something of Jack's trouble. He had been asked always whether he changed his underwear at the different seasons, whether he wore the wristlets that sisterly care provided for him, whether he put on his rubbers when he went out in damp weather and carried his umbrella when it was threatening rain, and all the rest. He got away from all this sympathetic solicitude in army life and was ever so much better for it. It is extremely difficult to draw the line {64} where the sympathy that is helpful because it is encouraging ends, and sentimental pity which discourages begins. There is always danger of overdoing and it is extremely important that growing young folks particularly should be allowed to bear their ills without help and learn to find resources within themselves that will support them. The will can thus be buttressed to withstand the difficulties of life, make them much easier to bear, and actually lessen their effect. Ten growing young folks have been seriously hurt by ill-judged sympathy for every one that has been discouraged by the absence of sympathy or by being made to feel that he must take the things of life as they come and stand them without grouchy complaint or without looking for sympathy. This is particularly true as regards those with any nervous or hysterical tendencies, for they readily learn to look for sympathy. The most precious lesson of the war for physicians has been that which is emphasized in the chapter on "The Will and the War Psychoneuroses." There was an immense amount of so-called "shell-shock" which really represented functional neurotic conditions such as in women used to be called hysteria. At the {65} beginning of the war there was a good deal of hearty sympathy with it, and patients were encouraged by the physicians and then by the nurses and other patients in the hospital to tell over and over again how their condition developed. It was found after a time that the sympathy thus manifested always did harm. The frequent repetition of their stories added more and more suggestive elements to the patients' condition, and they grew worse instead of better. It was found that the proper curative treatment was to make just as little as possible of their condition, to treat them firmly but with assurance--once it had been definitely determined that no organic nervous trouble was present--and to bring about a cure of whatever symptoms they had at a single sitting by changing their attitude of mind towards themselves. Some of the patients proved refractory and for these isolation and rather severe discipline were occasionally necessary. The isolation was so complete as to deprive them not only of companionship but also of reading and writing materials and the solace of their tobacco. Severe cases were sometimes treated by strong faradic currents of electricity which were extremely painful. Patients who insisted that {66} they could not move their muscles were simply made to jump by an electric shock, thus proving to them that they could use the muscles, and then they were required to continue their use. Those suffering from shell-shock deafness and muteness were told that an electrode would be applied to their larynx or the neighborhood of their ear and when they felt pain from it, that was a sign that they were able to talk and to hear if they wished, and that they must do so. Relapses had to be guarded against by suggestion, and where relapses became refractory and stronger currents of electricity to ear and larynx were deemed inadvisable, the strict isolation treatment usually proved effective. In a word, discipline and not sympathy was the valuable mode of treating them. Sympathy did them harm as it invariably does. The world has recognized this truism always, but we need to learn the lesson afresh, or the will power is undermined. Character is built up by standing the difficult things of life without looking for the narcotic of sympathy or any other anaesthetizing material. These are "hard sayings," to use a Scriptural expression, but they represent the accumulation of wisdom of human experience. Sympathy can be {67} almost as destructive of individual morale as the dreads, and it is extremely important that it should not be allowed to sap will energy. In our time above all, when the training of the will has been neglected, though it is by far the most important factor in education, this lesson with regard to the harmful effect of sympathy needs to be emphasized. For nervous people, that is, for those who have, either from inheritance or so much oftener from environment, yielded to circumstances rather than properly opposed them, sympathy is quite as dangerous as opium. George Eliot once replied to a friend who asked her what was duty, that duty consisted in facing the hard things in life without taking opium. Healthy living to a great extent depends on standing what has to be borne from the bodies that we carry around with us without looking for sympathy. It has often been emphasized that human beings are eminently lonely. The great experiences of life and above all, death and suffering, we have to face by ourselves and no one can help us. We may not be, as Emerson suggested, "infinitely repellent particles", but at all the profoundest moments of life we feel our alone-ness. The more {68} that we learn to depend bravely on ourselves and the less we seek outside support for our characters, the better for us and our power to stand whatever comes to us in life. Physical ills are always lessened by courageously facing them and are always increased by cringing before them. The one who dreads suffers both before and during the time of the pain and thus doubles his discomfort. We must stand alone in the matter and sympathy is prone to unman us. Looking for sympathy is a tendency to that self-pity which is treated in a subsequent chapter and which does more to increase discomfort in illness, exaggerate symptoms, and lower resistive vitality than anything else, in the psychic order at least. Suffering is always either constructive or destructive of character. It is constructive when the personal reaction suffices to lessen and make it bearable. It is destructive whenever there is a looking for sympathy or a leaning on some one else. Character counts in withstanding disease, and even in the midst of epidemics, according to many well-grounded traditions, those who are afraid contract the disease sooner than others and usually suffer more severely. Sympathy must not be allowed to produce any such effect as this. {69} CHAPTER V SELF-PITY "The will dotes that is attributive To what infectiously itself affects." _Troilus and Cressida_. The worst brake on the will to be well is undoubtedly the habit that some people have of pitying themselves and feeling that they are eminently deserving of the pity of others because of the trials, real or supposed, which they have to undergo. Instead of realizing how much better off they are than the great majority of people--for most of the typical self-pitiers are not real subjects for pity--they keep looking at those whom they fondly suppose to be happier than themselves and then proceed to get into a mood of commiseration with themselves because of their ill health--real or imaginary--or uncomfortable surroundings. Just as soon as men or women assume this state of mind, it becomes extremely difficult for them to stand any real {70} trials that appear, and above all, it becomes even more difficult for them to react properly against the affections of one kind or another that are almost sure to come. Self-pity is ever a serious hamperer of resistive vitality. A great many things in modern life have distinctly encouraged this practice of self-pity and conscious commiseration of one's state until it has become almost a commonplace of modern life for those who feel that they are suffering, especially if they belong to what may be called the sophisticated classes. We have become extremely sensitive as a consequence about contact with suffering. Editors of magazines and readers for publishing houses often refuse in our time to accept stories that have unhappy endings, because people do not care to read them, it is said. The story may have some suffering in it and even severe hardships, especially if these can be used for purposes of dramatic climax, but by the end of the story everything must have turned out "just lovely", and it must be understood that suffering is only a passing matter and merely a somewhat unpleasant prelude to inevitable happiness. Almost needless to say, this is not the way of life as it must be lived in what many {71} generations of men have agreed in calling "this vale of tears." For a great many people have to suffer severely and without any prospect of relief--none of us quite escape the necessity of suffering--and as some one has said, all human life, inasmuch as there is death in it, must be considered a tragedy. The old Greeks did not hesitate, in spite of their deep appreciation of the beauty of nature and cordial enthusiasm for the joy of living, even to emphasize the tragedy in life. They were perhaps inclined to think that the sense of contrast produced by tragedy heightened the actual enjoyment of life and that indeed all pleasure was founded rather on contrast than positive enjoyment. One may not be ready to agree with the saying that the only thing that makes life worth while is contrast, but certainly suffering as a background enhances happiness as nothing else can. Aristotle declared that tragedy purges life, that is, that only through the lens of death and misfortune could one see life free from the dross of the sordid and merely material to which it was attached. His meaning was that tragedy lifted man above the selfishness of mere individualism, and by showing him the misfortunes of others prepared him to struggle {72} for himself when misfortune might come, as it almost inevitably would; and at the same time lifted him above the trifles of daily life into a higher, broader sphere of living, where he better realized himself and his powers. For man is distinctly prone to forget about death and suffering, and when he does, to become eminently selfish and forgetful of the rights of others and his duties towards them. The French have a saying, consisting of but four words and an intervening shrug of the shoulders, that is extremely illuminating. They quote as the expression of the usual thought of men when brought face to face with the fact that people are dying all around them, "_On meurt--les autres!_" "People die--Oh, yes (with an expressive shrug of the shoulders), other people!" We refuse to recognize the fact that we too must go until that is actually forced upon us by advancing years or by some incurable disease. As for suffering, a great many people have come almost to resent that they should be asked to suffer, and character dissolves in self-pity as a result. Instead of the constant, continuous reading of what may be called Sybaritic literature--for it is said that the Sybarite finds it impossible to sleep if there is a crushed rose leaf next {73} his skin--instead of being absorbed in the literature which emphasizes the pleasures of life and pushes its pains into the background, young people, and especially those of the better-to-do classes, should be taught from their early years to read the lives of those who have endured successfully hardships of various kinds and have succeeded in getting satisfaction out of their accomplishment in life, despite all the suffering that was involved. These are human beings like ourselves, and what mortal has done, other mortals can do. There was a school of American psychologists before the war who had come to recognize the value of that old-fashioned means of self-discipline of mind, the reading of the lives of the saints. For those to whom that old-fashioned practice may seem too reactionary, there are the lives and adventures of our African and Asiatic travelers and our polar explorers as a resource. War books have been a godsend for our generation in this regard. They have led people to contemplate the hardest kind of suffering--and very often in connection with those who are nearest and dearest to them-- and thus made them understand something of the possibilities of human nature to withstand {74} trials and sufferings. As a result they have been trained not to make too much of their own trivial trials, as they soon learned to recognize them in the face of the awful hardships that this war involved. What Belgium endured was bad enough, while the experiences of Poland, Servia, Armenia were an ascending scale of horrors, but also of humanity's power to stand suffering. Life in the larger families of the olden times afforded more opportunities for the proper teaching of the place of suffering than in the smaller families of the modern time. Older children, as they grew up, had before them the example of mother's trials and hardships in bearing and rearing children, and so came to understand better the place of hard things in life. In a large family it was very rare when one or more of the members did not die, and thus growing youth was brought in contact with the greatest mystery in life, that of death. Very frequently at least one of the household and sometimes more, had to go through a period of severe suffering with which the others were brought in daily contact. It is sometimes thought in modern times that such intimacy with those who are suffering takes the joy out of life for those who {75} are young, but any one who thinks so should consult a person who has had the actual experience; while occasionally it may be found that some one with a family history of this kind may think that he or she was rendered melancholy by it, nine out of ten or even more will frankly say that they feel sure that they were benefited. There is nothing in the world that broadens and deepens the significance of life like intimate contact with suffering, if not in person, then in those who are near and dear to us. As a physician, I have often felt that I should like to take people who are constantly complaining of their little sorrows and trials, who are downhearted over some minor ailment, who sometimes suffer from fits of depression precipitated by nothing more, perhaps, than a dark day or a little humid weather, or possibly even a petty social disappointment, and put them in contact with cancer patients or others who are suffering severely day by day, yes, hour by hour, night and day, and yet who are joyful and often a source of joy to others. Let us not forget that nearly one hundred thousand people die every year from cancer in this country alone. As a physician, I have often found that a {76} chronic invalid in a house became the center of attraction for the whole household, and that particularly when it was a woman, whether mother or elder sister, all of the other members brought their troubles to her and went away feeling better for what she said to them. I have seen this not in a few exceptional instances, but so often as to know that it is a rule of life. Chronic invalids often radiate joy and happiness, while perfectly well people who suffer from minor ills of the body and mind are frequently a source of grumpiness, utterly lack sympathy, and are impossible as companions. An American woman, bedridden for over thirty years, has organized by correspondence one of the most beautiful charities of our time. Pity properly restricted to practical helpfulness without any sentimentality is a beautiful thing. There is always a danger, however, of its arousing in its object that self-pity which is so eminently unlovely and which has so often the direct tendency to increase rather than decrease whatever painful conditions are present. Crying over oneself is always to be considered at least hysterical. Crying, except over a severe loss, is almost unpardonable. {77} It is often said that a good cry, like a rainstorm, clears the atmosphere of murk and the dark elements of life, but it is dangerous to have recourse to it. It is a sign of lack of character almost invariably and when indulged in to any extent will almost surely result in deterioration of the power to withstand the trials of life, whatever they may be. Professor William James has suggested that not only should men and women stand the things that come to them in the natural course of events, but they should even go out and seek certain things hard to bear with the idea of increasing their power to withstand the unpleasant things of life. This is, of course, a very old idea in humanity, and the ascetics from the earliest days of Christianity taught the doctrine of self-inflicted suffering in order to increase the power of resistance. It is usually said that the principal idea which the hermits and anchorites and the saintly personages of the early Middle Ages, of whose mortifications we have heard so much, had in inflicting pain on themselves was to secure merit for the hereafter. Something of that undoubtedly was in their minds, but their main purpose was quite literally ascetic. _Ascesis_, from the Greek, means in its strict {78} etymology just exercise. They were exercising their power to stand trials and even sufferings, so that when these events came, as inevitably they would, seeing that we carry round with us what St. Paul called "this body of our death," they would be prepared for them. Practically any psychologist of modern times who has given this subject any serious thought will recognize, as did Professor James, the genuine psychology of human nature that lies behind these ascetic practices. Nothing that I know is so thoroughgoing a remedy for self-pity as the actual seeking at times of painful things in order to train oneself to bear them. The old-fashioned use of disciplines, that is, little whips which were used so vigorously sometimes over the shoulders as to draw blood, or the wearing of chains which actually penetrated the skin and produced quite serious pain no longer seems absurd, once it is appreciated that this may be a means of bracing up character and making the real trials and hardships of life much easier than would otherwise be the case. Not that human nature must not be expected to yield a little under severe trials and bend before the blasts of adverse fortune, but {79} that there should not be that tendency to exaggerate one's personal feelings which has unfortunately become characteristic of at least the better-to-do classes in our time. Not that we would encourage stony grief, but that sorrow must be restrained and, above all, must not be so utterly selfish as to be forgetful of others. Tears should, to a large extent, be reserved, as they are in most perfectly normal individuals, for joyous rather than sad occasions, for no one ever was supremely joyful without having tears in the eyes. It is when we feel most sympathetic to humanity that the gift of tears comes to us, and no feeling is quite so completely satisfying as comes from the tears of joy. Mothers who have heard of their boy's bravery, its recognition by those above him, and its reward by proper symbols, have had tears come welling to their eyes, while their hearts were stirred so deeply with sensations of joy and pride that probably they have never before felt quite so happy. {80} CHAPTER VI AVOIDANCE OF CONSCIOUS USE OF THE WILL "Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners." _Othello_. Doctor Austin O'Malley, in his little volume, "Keystones of Thought", says: "When you are conscious of your stomach or your will you are ill." We all appreciate thoroughly, as the result of modern progress in the knowledge of the influences of the mind on the body, how true is the first part of this saying, but comparatively few people realize the truth of the second part. The latter portion of this maxim is most important for our consideration. It should always be in the minds of those who want to use their own wills either for the purpose of making themselves well, or keeping themselves healthy, but above all, should never be forgotten by those who want to help others get over various ills that are manifestly due in whole or in part to the failure to use the vital energies in the body as they should be employed. {81} Conscious use of the will, except at the beginning of a series of activities, is always a mistake. It is extremely wasteful of internal energy. It adds greatly to the difficulty of accomplishing whatever is undertaken. It includes, above all, watching ourselves do things, constantly calculating how much we are accomplishing and whether we are doing all that we should be doing, and thus makes useless demands on power partly by diversion of attention, partly by impairment of concentration, but above all by adding to the friction because of the inspection that is at work. The old kitchen saw is "a watched kettle never boils." The real significance of the expression is of course that it seems to take so long for the water to boil that we become impatient while watching and it looks to us as though the boiling process would really never occur. This is still more strikingly evident when we are engaged in watching our own activities and wondering whether they are as efficient as they should be. The lengthening of time under these circumstances is an extremely important factor in bringing about tiredness. Ask any human being unaccustomed to note the passage of time to tell you when two minutes have elapsed; {82} inevitably he will suggest at the end of thirty to forty seconds that the two minutes must be up. Only by counting his pulse or by going through some regular mechanical process will he be enabled to appreciate the passage of time in anything like its proper course. When watched thus, time seems to pass ever so much more slowly than it would otherwise. It is extremely important then that people should not acquire the impression that they must be consciously using their will to bring themselves into good health and keep themselves there, for that will surely defeat their purpose. What is needed is a training of the will to do things by a succession of harder and harder tasks until the ordinary acts of life seem comparatively easy. Intellectual persuasion as to the efficiency of the will in this matter means very little. The ordinary feeling that reasoning means much in such matters is a fallacy. Much thinking about them is only disturbing of action as a rule and Hamlet's expression that the "native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" is a striking bit of psychology. Shakespeare had no illusions with regard to the place of the will in life and more than any English author has emphasized it. I have {83} ventured to illustrate this by quotations from him under each chapter heading, but there are many more quite as applicable that might readily be found. He knew above all how easy it was for human beings to lessen the power of their wills and has told us of "the cloy'd will that satiateth unsatisfied desire" and "the bridles of our wills", and has given us such adjectives as "benumbed" and "neutral" and "doting", which demonstrates his recognition of how men weaken their wills by over-deliberation. The mode of training in the army is of course founded on this mode of thinking. The young men in the United States Army want to accomplish every iota of their duty and are not only willing but anxious to do everything that is expected of them. There were some mighty difficult tasks ahead of them over in Europe and our method of preparing the men was not by emphasizing their duty and dinning into their ears and minds how great the difficulty would be and how they must nerve themselves for the task. Such a mode of preparation would probably have been discouraging rather than helpful. But they were trained in exercises of various kinds in an absolutely regular life under plain living in the {84} midst of hard work until their wills responded to the word of command quite unconsciously and immediately without any need of further prompting. Their bodies were trained until every available source of energy was at command, so that when they _wanted_ to do things they set about them without more ado, and as they were used to being fatigued they were not constantly engaged in dreading lest they should hurt themselves, or fostering fears that they might exhaust their energies or that their tiredness, even when apparently excessive, would mean anything more than a passing state that rest would repair completely. If at every emergency of their life at war soldiers had to go through a series of conscious persuasions to wake up their will and set their energies at work, and if they had to occupy themselves every time in presenting motives why this activity should not be delayed, then military discipline, at least in so far as it involves prompt obedience, would almost inevitably be considerable of a joke. What is needed is unthinking, immediate obedience, and this can be secured only by the formation of deeply graven habits which enable a man to set about the next thing that duty calls for at once. {85} Every action that we perform is the result of an act of the will, but we do not have to advert to that as a rule; whenever any one gets into a state of mind where it is necessary to be constantly adverting to it, then, as was said at the beginning of this chapter, there is something the matter with the will. The faculty is being hampered in its action by consciousness, and such hampering leads to a great waste of energy. The will is the great, unconscious faculty in us. By far the greater part of what has come unfortunately to be called the unconscious and the subconscious and that has occupied so much of the attention of modern writers on psychological subjects is really the will at work. It attains its results we know not how, and it is prompted to their accomplishment in ways that are often very difficult for us to understand. Its effects are often spoken of as due to the submerged self or the subliminal self or the other self, but it is only in rare and pathological cases as a rule that such expressions are justified once the place of the will is properly recognized. It is often said, for instance, that the power some people have of waking after a certain {86} period of sleep at night or after a short nap during the daytime, a power that a great many more people would possess if only they deliberately practised it, is due to the subconsciousness or the subliminal personality of the individual which wakes him up at the determined time. Why those terms should be used when other things are accomplished by the human will just as mysteriously is rather difficult to understand. It is well recognized that if an individual in the ordinary waking state wants to do something after the lapse of an hour or so he will do it, provided his will is really awake to the necessity of accomplishing it. It is true that he may become so absorbed in his current occupation as to miss the time, but such abstraction usually means that he was not sufficiently interested in the duty that was to be performed as to keep the engagement with himself, or else that he is an individual in whom the intellectual over-shadows the voluntary life. We speak of him as an impractical man. We all know the danger there is in putting off calling some one by telephone on being told that "the line is busy", for not infrequently it will happen that several hours will elapse before we think of the matter again {87} and then perhaps it may be too late. If we set a definite time limit with ourselves, however, then our will will prompt us quite as effectively, though quite as inexplicably, at the expiration of that time as it awakes those who have resolved to be aroused at a predetermined moment. We may miss our telephone engagement with ourselves, but we practically never miss an important train, because having deeply impressed upon ourselves the necessity for not missing this, our will arouses us to activity in good time. There is not the slightest necessity, however, for appealing to the unconscious or the subconscious in this. It is true that there is a wonderful sentinel within us that awakes us from daydreams or disturbs the ordinary course of some occupation to turn our attention to the next important duty that we should perform. We know that this sentinel is quite apart from our consciousness; but the power we have of setting ourselves to doing anything is exemplified in very much the same way. When I want a book, I do not know what it is that sets my muscles in motion and brings me to a shelf and then directs my attention to choosing the one I shall take down and consult. It is an unconscious activity, but not the activity of {88} unconsciousness, which is only a contradiction in terms. [Footnote 4] [Footnote 4: It is true that there is a particular phase of our intellectual effort included under the modern terms unconscious or subconscious that is mysterious enough to deserve a special name, but we already have an excellent term for this quality which is not vague but thoroughly descriptive of its activity. This is intuition,--a word that has been in use for nearly a thousand years now and signifies the immediate perception of a truth,--by a flash as it were. We may know nothing about a subject and may have only begun to think about it, when there flashes on us a truth that has perhaps never occurred to any one else and certainly has never been in our minds before. It has been suggested in recent years that such flashes of intelligence are due to the secondary personality or the subliminal self or the other self, and it is often added that it is the development of our knowledge of these phases of psychology that represents modern progress in the science of mind. Only the term for it is new, however, for intuition has been the subject of special intensive study for a long while. Indeed, the reason why the old-time poet appealed to the muses for aid and the modern poet suggests inspiration as the source of his poetic thought, is because both of them knew that their best thoughts flash on them, not as the result of long and hard thinking, but by some process in which with the greatest facility come perceptions that even they themselves are surprised to learn that they have. To say that such things come from the unconscious is simply to ignore this wonderful power of original thought, that is, primary perception. Emerson suggested that intuition represented all the knowledge that came without tuition, as if this were the etymology, and the hint is excellent for the meaning, though the real derivation of the word has no relation to tuition. To attribute these original thoughts to the unconscious or any partly conscious faculty in us is to ignore a great deal of careful study of psychology before our time. It is besides to entangle oneself in the absurdity of discussing an unconscious consciousness.] While many people are inclined to feel almost helpless in the presence of the idea that it is their unconscious selves that enable them {89} to do things or initiate modes of activity, the feeling is quite different when we substitute for that the word "will." All of us recognize that our wills can be trained to do things, and while at first it may require a conscious effort, we can by the formation of habits not only make them easy, but often delightful and sometimes quite indispensable to our sense of well being. Walking is extremely difficult at the beginning, when its movements are consciously performed, but it becomes a very satisfying sort of exercise after a while and then almost literally a facile, nearly indispensable activity of daily life, so that we feel the need for it, if we are deprived of it. This has to be done with regard to the activities that make for health. We have to form habits that render them easy, pleasant, and even necessary for our good feelings. This can be done, as has been suggested in the chapter on habits, but we have to avoid any such habit as that of consciously using the will. That is a bad habit that some people let themselves drop into but it should be corrected. Having set our activities to work we must, as far as possible, forget about them and let them go on for themselves. It is not only possible but even easy and above all almost {90} necessary that we should do this. Hence at the beginning people must not expect that they will find the use of their will easy in suppressing pain, lessening tiredness, and facilitating accomplishment, but they must look forward to the time quite confidently when it will be so. In the meantime the less attention paid to the process of training, the better and more easily will the needed habits be formed. Failure to secure results is almost inevitable when conscious use of the will comes into the problem. As a rule a direct appeal should not be made to people to use their wills, but they should be aroused and stimulated in various ways and particularly by the force of example. What has made it so comparatively easy for our young soldiers to use their wills and train their bodies and get into a condition where they are capable of accomplishing what they would have thought quite impossible before, has been above all the influence of example. A lot of other young men of their own age are standing these things exemplarily. They are seen performing what is expected of them without complaint, or at least without refusal, and so every effort is put forth to do likewise without any time spent on reflection as to how {91} difficult it all is or how hard to bear or how much they are to be pitied. It is not long before what was hard at first becomes under repetition even easy and a source of fine satisfaction. Getting up at five in the morning and working for sixteen hours with only comparatively brief intervals for relaxation now and then, and often being burdened with additional duties of various kinds which must be worked in somehow or other, seems a very difficult matter until one has done it for a while. Then one finds everything gets done almost without conscious effort. Will power flows through the body and lends hitherto unexpected energy, but of this there is no consciousness; indeed, conscious reflection on it would hamper action. No wonder that as a result of the facility acquired, one comes to readily credit the assumption that the will is a spiritual power and that some source of energy apart from the material is supplying the initiative and the resources of vitality that have made accomplishment so much easier than would have been imagined beforehand. This is quite literally what training of the will means: training ourselves to use all our powers to the best advantage, not putting obstacles in their way nor brakes on their exertion, but {92} also not thinking very much about them or making resolutions. The way to do things is to do them, not think about them. Professor James is, as always, particularly happy in his mode of expressing this great truth. He insists that the way to keep the will active is not by constantly thinking about it and supplying new motives and furbishing up old motives for its activity, but by cultivating the faculty of effort. His paragraph in this regard is of course well known, and yet it deserves to be repeated here because it represents the essence of what is needed to make the will ready to do its best work. He says: "As a fine practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: _Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day_. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time and {93} possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire _does_ come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." To do things on one's will without very special interest is an extremely difficult matter. It can be done more readily when one is young and when certain secondary aims are in view besides the mere training of the will, but to do things merely for will training becomes so hard eventually that some excuse is found and the task is almost inevitably given up. Exercising for instance in a gymnasium just for the sake of taking exercise or keeping in condition becomes so deadly dull after a while that unless there is a trainer to keep a man up to the mark, his exercise dwindles from day to day until it amounts to very little. Men who are growing stout about middle life will take up the practice of a cold bath after ten minutes or more of morning exercises with a good deal of enthusiasm, but they will not keep it up long, or if they do continue for several months, any {94} change in the daily routine will provide an excuse to drop it. Companionship and above all competition in any way greatly helps, but it takes too much energy of the will to make the effort alone. Besides, when the novelty has worn off and routine has replaced whatever interest existed in the beginning in watching the effect of exercise on the muscles, the lack of interest makes the exercise of much less value than before. If there is not a glow of satisfaction with it, the circulation, especially to the periphery to the body, is not properly stimulated and some of the best effect of the exercise is lost. Athletes often say of solitary exercise that it leaves them cold, which is quite a literal description of the effect produced on them. The circulation of the surface is not stimulated as it is when there is interest in what is being done and so the same warmth is not produced at the surface of the body. It is comparatively easy to persuade men who need outdoor exercise to walk home from their offices in the afternoon when the distance is not too far, but it is difficult to get them to keep it up. The walk becomes so monotonous a routine after a time that all sorts of excuses serve to interrupt the habit, and then it is not long before it is done so irregularly as to lose {95} most of its value. Here as in all exercise, companionship which removes conscious attention from advertence to the will greatly aids. On the other hand, as has been so clearly demonstrated in recent years, it is very easy to induce men to go out and follow a little ball over the hills in the country, an ideal form of exercise, merely because they are interested in their score or in beating an opponent. Any kind of a game that involves competition makes people easily capable of taking all sorts of trouble. Instead of being tired by their occupation in this way and not wanting to repeat it, they become more and more interested and spend more and more time at it. The difference between gymnastics and sport in this regard is very marked. In sport the extraneous interest adds to the value of the exercise and makes it ever so much easier to continue; when it sets every nerve tingling with the excitement of the game, it is doing all the more good. Gymnastics grow harder unless in some way associated with competition, or with the effort to outdo oneself, while indulgence in sport becomes ever easier. Many a young man would find it an intolerable bore and an increasingly difficult task if asked to give as much time and energy {96} to some form of hard work as he does to some sport. He feels tired after sport, but not exhausted, and becomes gradually able to stand more and more before he need give up, thus showing that he is constantly increasing his muscular capacity. Conscious training of the will is then practically always a mistake. It is an extremely difficult thing to do, and the amount of inhibition which accumulates to oppose it serves after a time to neutralize the benefit to be derived. Good habits should be formed, but not merely for the sake of forming them. There should be some ulterior purpose and if possible some motive that lifts men up to the performance of duty, no matter how difficult it is. Our young men who went to the camps demonstrated how much can be accomplished in this manner. They were asked to get up early in the morning, to work hard for many hours in the day, or take long walks, sometimes carrying heavy burdens, and were so occupied that they had but very little time to themselves. They were encouraged to take frequent cold baths, which implied further waste of heat energy, and then were very plainly fed, though of course with a good, rounded diet, {97} well-balanced, but without any frills and with very little in it that would tempt any appetite except that of a hungry man. They learned the precious lesson that hunger is the best sauce for food. Most of these men were pushed so hard that only an army officer perfectly confident of what he was doing and well aware that all of his men had been thoroughly examined by a physician and had nothing organically wrong with them would have dared to do it. A good many of us had the chance to see how university men took the military regime. Long hours of drilling and of hard work in the open made them so tired that in the late afternoon they could just lie down anywhere and go to sleep. I have seen young fellows asleep on porches or in the late spring on the grass and once saw a number of them who found excellent protection from the sun in what to them seemed nice soft beds--at least they slept well in them--inside a series of large earthen-ware pipes that were about to be put down for a sewer. Some of them were pushed so hard, considering how little physical exercise they had taken before, that they fainted while on drill. Quite a few of them were in such a state of nervous tension that they fainted on {98} being vaccinated. Almost needless to say, had they been at home, any such effect would have been a signal for the prompt cessation of such work as they were doing, for the home people would have been quite sure that serious injury would be done to their boys. These young fellows themselves did not think so. Their physicians were confident that with no organic lesion present the faint was a neurotic derangement and not at all a symptom of exhaustion. The young soldiers would have felt ashamed if there had been any question of their stopping training. They felt that they could make good as well as their fellows. They would have resented sympathy and much more pity. They went on with their work because they were devoted to a great cause. After a time, it became comparatively easy for them to accomplish things that would hitherto have been quite impossible and for which they themselves had no idea that they possessed the energy. It was this high purpose that inspired them to let more and more of their internal energy loose without putting a brake on, until finally the habit of living up to this new maximum of accomplishment became second nature and therefore natural and easy of accomplishment. {99} Here is the defect in systems which promise to help people to train their wills by talking much about it, and by persuading them that it can be done, that all they have to do is to set about it. Unless one has some fine satisfying purpose in doing things, their doing is difficult and fails to accomplish as much good for the doer as would otherwise be the case. Conscious will activity requires, to use old-fashioned psychological terms, the exercise of two faculties at the same time, the consciousness and the will. This adds to the difficulty of willing. What is needed is a bait of interest held up before the will, constantly tempting it to further effort but without any continuing consciousness on the part of the individual that he must will it and keep on willing it. That must ever be a hampering factor in the case. Human nature does not like imperatives and writhes and wastes energy under them. On the contrary, optatives are pleasant and give encouragement without producing a contrary reaction; and it is this state of mind and will that is by far the best for the individual. Above all, it is important that the person forming new habits should feel that there is nothing else to be done except the hard things {100} that have been outlined. If there is any mode of escape from the fulfillment of hard tasks, human nature will surely find it. If our young soldiers had felt that they did not have to perform their military duties and that there was some way to avoid them, the taking of the training would have proved extremely difficult. They just _had_ to take it; there was no way out, so they pushed themselves through the difficulties and then after a time they found that they were tapping unsuspected sources of energy in themselves. For when people _have_ to do things, they find that they can do ever so much more than they thought they could, and in the doing, instead of exhausting themselves, they actually find it easier to accomplish more and more with ever less difficulty. The will must by habit be made so prompt to obey that obedience will anticipate thought in the matter and sometimes contravene what reason would dictate if it had a chance to act. The humorous story of the soldier who, carrying his dinner on a plate preparatory to eating it, was greeted by a wag with the word "Attention!" in martial tones, and dropped his dinner to assume the accustomed attitude, is well known. Similar practical jokes are said to have been played, on a certain number {101} of occasions in this war, with the thoroughly trained young soldier. The help of the will to the highest degree is obtained not by a series of resolutions but by doing whatever one wishes to do a number of times until it becomes easy and the effort to accomplish it is quite unconscious. Reason does not help conduct much, but a trained will is of the greatest possible service. It can only be secured, however, by will action. The will is very like the muscles. There is little use in showing people how to accomplish muscle feats; they must do them for themselves. The less consciousness there is involved in this, the better. {102} CHAPTER VII WHAT THE WILL CAN DO "I can with ease translate it to my will." _King John_. It should be well understood from the beginning just what the will can do in the matter of the cure or, to use a much better word, the relief of disease, not forgetting that disease means etymologically and also literally discomfort rather than anything else. The will cannot cure organic disease in the ordinary sense of that term. It is just as absurd to say that the will can bring about the cure of Bright's disease as it is to suggest that one can by will power replace a finger that has been lost. When definite changes have taken place in tissues, above all when connective tissue cells have by inflammatory processes come to take the place of organic tissue cells, then it is idle to talk of bringing about a cure, though sometimes relief of symptoms may be secured; above all the compensatory powers of the body {103} may be called upon and will often bring relief, for a time, at least. What is true of kidney changes applies also to corresponding changes in other organs, and there can be no question of any amount of will power bringing about the redintegration of organs that have been seriously damaged by disease or replacing cells that have been destroyed. There are however a great many organic diseases in which the will may serve an extremely useful purpose in the relief of symptoms and sometimes in producing such a release of vital energy previously hampered by discouragement as will enable the patient to react properly against the disease. This is typically exemplified in tuberculosis of the lungs. Nothing is so important in this disease, as we shall see, as the patient's attitude of mind and his will to get well. Without that there is very little hope. With that strongly aroused, all sorts of remedies, many of them even harmful in themselves, have enabled patients to get better merely because the taking of them adds suggestion after suggestion of assurance of cure. The cells of the lungs that have been destroyed by the disease are not reborn, much less recreated, but nature walls off the diseased parts, and the rest of {104} the lungs learn to do their work in spite of the hampering effect of the diseased tissues. When fresh air and good food are readily available for the patient, then the will power is the one other thing absolutely necessary to bring about not only relief from symptoms, but such a betterment in the tissues as will prevent further development of the disease and enable the lungs to do their work. The disease is not cured, but, as physicians say, it is arrested, and the patient may and often does live for many years to do extremely useful work. In a disease like pneumonia the will to get well, coupled with the confidence that should accompany this, will do more than anything else to carry the patient over the critical stage of the affection. Discouragement, which is after all by etymology only disheartenment, represents a serious effect upon the heart through depression. The fullest power of the heart is needed in pneumonia and discouragement puts a brake on it. As we shall see it is probably because whiskey took off this brake and lifted the scare that it acquired a reputation as a remedy in pneumonia and also in tuberculosis. In spite of what was probably an unfavorable physical effect, whiskey {105} actually benefited the patient by its production of a sense of well being and absence of regard for consequences. Hence its former reputation. This extended also to its use in a continued fever where the same disheartenment was likely to occur with unfortunate consequences on the general condition and above all with disturbance of appetite and of sleep. Worry often made the patients much more restless than they would otherwise have been and they thus wasted vital energy needed to bring about the cure of the affection under which they were laboring. In all of these cases solicitude led to surveillance of processes within the body and interfered with their proper performance. It is perfectly possible to hamper the lungs by watching their action, and the same thing may be done for the heart. Whenever involuntary activities in the body are watched, their proper functioning is almost sure to be disturbed. We have emphasized that in the chapter on "Avoidance of Conscious Use of the Will," and so it need not be dwelt on further here. Even apart from over-consciousness there occur some natural dreads that may disturb nature's vital reactions, and these can be {106} overcome through the will. There is a whole series of inhibitions consequent upon fears of various kinds that sadly interfere with nature's reaction against disease. To secure the neutralization of these the will must be brought into action, and this is probably better secured by suggestion, that is, by placing some special motive before the individual, than by any direct appeal. Particularly is this true if patients have not been accustomed before this to use their wills strenuously, for they will probably be disturbed by such an appeal. What will power when properly released can do above all is to bring the relief of discomfort. In a great many cases the greater part of the discomfort is due to over-sensitization and over-attention. Even in such severe organic diseases as cancer, the awakening of the will may accomplish very much to bring decided relief. This is why we have had so many "cancer cures" that have failed. They made the patient feel better at first, and they relieved pain to some extent and therefore were thought to be direct remedial agents for the cancer itself. The malignant condition however has progressed without remission, though sometimes, possibly as the result of the new courage given flowing as surplus vitality into {107} the tissues, perhaps the progress of the lesion has been retarded. The patient sometimes has felt so much better as to proclaim himself cured. What is thus true of cancer will be found to occur in any very serious organic condition, such as severe injury, chronic disease involving important organs, and even such nutritional diseases as anemia or diabetes. The awakening in the patient of the feeling that there is hope and the maintenance of that hope in any way will always bring relief and usually some considerable remission in the disease. It is in convalescence above all, however, that the will power manifests its greatest helpfulness. When patients are hopeful and anxious to get well they are tempted to eat properly, to get out into the air; they thus sleep better and recovery is rapid. Whenever they are disheartened, as for instance when husband and wife have been together in an injury, or both have contracted a disease and one of them dies, the survivor is likely to have a slow and lingering convalescence. The reason is obvious: there is literal lack of will power or at least unwillingness to face the new conditions of life, and vitality is spent in vain regret for the companionship that has been {108} lost. This depression can only be lifted by motives that appeal to the inner self and by such an awakening of the will for further interests in life as will set vital energies flowing freely again. In convalescence from injuries received after middle life or from affections that have been accompanied by incapacity to use muscles there is particular need of the will. A great many older people refuse to go through the pain and discomfort, soreness and tenderness as the younger folk who are training their muscles call them, which must be borne in order to bring about redevelopment of muscles, after they have once become atrophic from disuse. The refusal to push through a period of what is often rather serious discomfort leads many people to foster disabilities and use their muscles in wrong ways sometimes even for years. Something occurs then to arouse their wills and they get better. Anything that will do this will cure them. Sometimes it is a new liniment, sometimes a new mode of manipulation or massage, sometimes some supposed electrical or magnetic discovery and sometimes the touch of a presumed healer. Anything at all will be effective provided it wakens their wills into such activity {109} as will enable them to persist in the use of their muscles through the period of soreness and tenderness necessary to restore proper muscular functions. It is quite surprising to see what can be accomplished in this way, and the quacks and charlatans of the world have made their fortunes out of such patients always, while their cure has been the greatest possible advertisement and has attracted ever so many other patients to these so-called healers. Nothing that can be done for these patients will have any good results unless their own wills are aroused, new hope given them and they themselves made to tap the layers of energy in them that can restore them to health. To tell them that they were to be cured by their own will, however, would probably inhibit utterly this energy that is needed, so that somehow they have to be brought to the state of mind in which they will accomplish the purpose demanded of them by indirection. The will is particularly capable of removing obstacles to nutrition that have often hampered the activities and sometimes seriously impaired the health of patients. Many people are not eating enough for one reason or another and need to have their diet regulated, not in {110} the direction of a limitation or selection of food, though this appeals to so many people under the term dieting, but so that they shall eat enough and of the proper variety to maintain their health and bodily functions. A great many nervous diseases are dependent on lack of sufficient food. Eating in those who lead sedentary lives much indoors is ever so much more a matter of will than of appetite. When people say that they eat all they want to, what they mean, as a rule, is that they eat all that they have formed the habit of eating. Other habits can readily be formed and will often do them good. For a great many of the less serious symptoms which make people valetudinarians, nervous indigestion, insomnia, tendencies to headache, queer feelings in the head, constipation, the proper habit secured by will power, of eating so as to secure sufficient food, is the most important single factor. This the will must be trained to accomplish. Now that disease prevention has become even more important than cure, the will is an extremely efficient element. Air, food, exercise are important factors for healthy living. A great many people are neglecting them and then seem surprised that they should suffer from various symptoms of impaired {111} functioning of bodily organs. Many men and a still greater number of women are staying in the house so much that their oxidation within the body is at a low ebb, and it is no wonder that vital processes are not carried on to the best advantage. Our generation has eliminated exercise from life to a great extent, and now that the auto and the trolley car limit walking, not only the feet of mankind suffer severely, but all the organs in the body work at a disadvantage for lack of the exercise that they should have. No wonder that under the circumstances appetite is impaired and other functions of the body suffer. Instead of simple foods various artificial stimulants are employed--such as alcohol, spices, and the like--to provoke appetite, often with serious consequences for the digestive organs. The will to be well includes the willing of the means proper to that purpose, and particularly regular exercise, several hours a day in the air, good simple food taken in sufficient quantity at three regular intervals and the avoidance of such sources of worry as will disturb physical functions. {112} CHAPTER VIII PAIN AND THE WILL "That the will is infinite and the execution confined." _Troilus and Cressida_. The symptom of disease that humanity dreads the most is pain. Fortunately, it is also the symptom which is most under the control of the will, and which can be greatly relieved by being bravely faced and, to as great an extent as possible, ignored. It requires courage and usually persistent training to succeed in the relief of severe pain in this way, but men have done it, and women too, and men and women _can_ do it, if they really want to, though unfortunately all of the trend of modern life has been in the opposite direction, of avoiding pain at whatever cost instead of bravely facing it. The American Indian, trained from his youth to stand severe pain, scoffed at even the almost ingeniously diabolical tortures of his enemy captors. After they had pushed slivers beneath his nails or {113} slowly crushed the end of a finger, or put salt in long, superficial wounds that had bared a whole series of sensitive cutaneous nerves, he has been known to laugh at them, and ask them proudly, without giving a sign of the pain that he was enduring, whether that was all that they could do. It was just a question of the human will overcoming even the worst sensations that the body could send up to the brain and deliberately refusing to permit any reactions that would reveal the reflex torment that was actually taking place. The war has done much to bring back the recognition of that diminution--to a great extent at least--or even almost entire suppression of pain which may occur, indeed almost constantly does occur, as a consequence of a man facing it bravely. We have been accustomed to think of the early martyrs as probably divinely helped in their power to withstand pain. Whatever of celestial aid they had, we know that martyrs for all sorts of causes, some of them certainly not divine, have exhibited some degree of this same steadfastness. Their behavior makes it reasonably clear that as the result of making up their minds to stand the pain involved, they have actually suffered so little that it was not {114} difficult to suppress external manifestations of their sufferings. It is not merely a suppression of the reflexes that has occurred but a minimizing to a very striking degree of the actual sensations felt. We have many stories of the older time before the modern use of anaesthetics, which tell how bravely men endured pain and at the same time retained their power to do things. Indeed, some of them accomplished purposes in the midst of what would seem like supreme agony which made it very clear that pain alone has nothing like the prostrating effect that it is often supposed to have. For we have well authenticated tales of physicians performing amputations on themselves at times when no other assistance was available, and accomplishing the task so well that they recovered without complications. A blacksmith in the distant West, whose leg had been crushed by the fall of a huge beam, actually had himself carried into his shop and amputated his own limb above the knee, searing the blood vessels with hot irons as he proceeded. Such a manifestation of will power is, of course, exceptional to a degree, and yet it illustrates what men can do in the face of conditions that are usually supposed {115} to be overwhelming. Many a man in lumber camps or in distant island fisheries or on board fishing vessels, far beyond the hope of reaching a physician in time for him to be of service, has done things of this kind. We can be quite sure that the will to accomplish for himself what seemed necessary to save his life lessened his pain, made it ever so much more bearable and generally proved the power of the human will over even these physical manifestations in the body that are commonly supposed to be quite beyond any interference from the psychical part of nature. The spirit can still dominate the flesh, even in matters of pain, and dictate how much it shall be affected. It is a hard lesson to learn, but it is one that can be learned by proper persistence. In the early part of the war particularly many a young man had to face even serious operations without an anaesthetic. The awful carnage of the first six weeks of the war had not been anticipated and therefore there were not sufficient stores of anaesthetics available to permit of their use in every case. Besides, many operations had to be performed so close to the front and under such circumstances that there could not be anaesthetics for all of them; and it was a never-ending source of {116} surprise to those who witnessed the details to see how bravely and uncomplainingly the young men took their enforced suffering. Many a one, when his turn came to be operated on, quietly asked for a cigarette and then bore unflinchingly painful manipulations that the surgeon was extremely sorry to have to inflict. Over and over again, when there was question of the regular succession of patients, young soldiers in severe pain suggested that some one else who seemed in worse condition than they, or who perhaps was not quite so well able to stand pain and control himself, should be attended to before they were. There is no doubt at all that this very power of self-control lessened their pain and made it ever so much easier to bear and less of a torment than it would have been otherwise. Any great diversion of mind that turns the attention completely to something else will lessen even severe pain so much as to make it quite negligible for the moment. Headaches disappear promptly when there is an alarm of fire, and toothaches have been known to vanish, for the time at least, as the result of a burglar scare. Much less than this is needed, however, and there are many familiar examples {117} which illustrate the fact that the turning of the attention to something else will greatly diminish or even abolish pain. The well known story of the French surgeon about to set a dislocation is a typical demonstration. His patient was a woman of the nobility, her dislocation was of the shoulder and it was necessary for him to inflict very severe pain in order to replace it. Besides, as the result of the reflex of that pain, he was certain to meet with great resistance from spasm in the surrounding muscles. It was before the days of anaesthetics, which relieve all of these inconveniences, and above all, relax the muscles. The surgeon got ready to do the ultimate manipulation that would replace the joint in its proper relation, and necessarily inflicted no little pain in his preparations. The lady complained very much, so he turned on her angrily, told her that she must stand it, slapped her in the face, and before she had recovered from the shock, the dislocation had been restored to the normal condition. It was rather heroic treatment, and it is to be hoped that she understood it, but it is easy to understand how much the procedure lessened her physical pain. When the mind is very much preoccupied {118} and the will intent on accomplishing some immediate purpose, even severe pain will not be felt at all. Instances of this are not rare, and men who are advancing in a charge on a battlefield will often be wounded rather severely, and yet continue to advance without knowing anything about their wounds until a friend calls attention to their bleeding, or they themselves notice it; or perhaps even loss of blood may make them faint. The late President Roosevelt furnished a magnificent illustration of this principle when he was wounded some years ago in the midst of a political campaign. A crank shot at him, in one of the Western cities, and though the bullet penetrated four inches of muscle on his chest wall, and then flattened itself against a rib, he did not know that he was wounded. The flattening of the bullet must have represented at least as much force as would be exerted by a heavy blow on the chest, and yet the Colonel never felt it. His friends congratulated him on his escape from injury until it was noted that blood was oozing through a hole that had been made in his coat. The intense will activity of the President simply kept him from noticing either the shock or the pain. {119} Not long before the war a striking example was given of how a man may stand suffering in spite of long years of the refining influences of a sedentary scholarly life, most of it spent indoors. The second last General of the Jesuits developed a sarcoma on his upper arm and was advised to submit to an amputation of the arm at the shoulder joint. He was a man well on in the sixties and the operation presented an extremely serious problem. The surgeons suggested that he should be ready for the anaesthetic at a given hour the next morning and then they would proceed to operate. He replied that he would be ready for the operation at the time suggested, but that he would not take an anaesthetic. They argued with him that it would be quite impossible for him to stand unanaesthetized the extensive cutting and dissection necessary to complete an operation of this kind in an extremely important part of the body, where large nerves and arteries would have to be cut through and where the slightest disturbance on the part of the patient might easily lead to serious or even fatal results. Above all, he could not hope to stand it in tissues that had been rendered more sensitive than before by the enlarged circulation to the part, due to {120} the growth of the tumor, and the consequent hyperaemic condition of most of the tissues through which the cutting would have to be done and which were thus hypersensitized. He insisted, however, that he would not take an anaesthetic, for surely here seemed a chance to welcome suffering voluntarily as his Lord and Master had done. I believe that the head surgeon said at first that he would not operate. He felt sure that the operation would have to be interrupted after it had been begun, because the patient would not be able to stand the pain and there would then be the danger from bleeding as well as from infection which might occur. The General of the Jesuits, however, was so calm and firm that at last it was determined to permit him to try at least to stand it, though most of the surgeons were sure that he would probably have to give up and allow himself to be anaesthetized before they were through. The event then was most interesting. The patient not only underwent the operation without a murmur, but absolutely without wincing. The surgeon who performed the operation said afterwards, "It was like cutting wax and not human flesh, so far as any reaction was concerned, though of course it bled." {121} The story carries its lesson of the power of a brave man to face even such awful pain as this and probably actually overcome it to such an extent that he scarcely felt it, simply because he willed that he would do so and occupied himself with other thoughts during the process. Such an example as that of this General of the Jesuits will seem to most people a reversion to that mystical attitude of mind of the medieval period, when somehow or other people were able to stand ever so much more pain than any one in our time could possibly think of enduring. We hear of saints of the Middle Ages who inflicted what now seem hideous self-tortures on themselves and not only bore them bravely but went about life smiling and doing good to others while they were under the influence of them. It would seem quite impossible, however, for people of the modern time to get into any such state of mind. Our discoveries for the prevention of pain have made it unnecessary to stand much suffering, and as a result mankind would seem to have lost some if not most of the faculty of standing pain. So little of truth is there in any such thought that any number of the young men of the present generation between {122} twenty and thirty, that is, during the very years when mankind most resents pain and therefore reacts most to it, and by the same token feels it the most, have shown during this war that they possessed all the old-fashioned faculty of standing pain without a whimper and thinking of others while they did it. Lack of advertence always lessens pain and may even nullify it until it becomes exceedingly severe. In his little volume, "A Journey around My Room", Xavier de Maistre dwells particularly on the fact that his body, when his spirit was wandering, would occasionally pick up the fire tongs and burn itself before his _alter ego_ could rescue it. Concentration of attention on some subject that attracts may neutralize pain and make it utterly unnoticed until physical consequences develop. Undoubtedly dwelling on pain, anticipating it, noting the first sensations that occur, multiplies the painful feeling. The physical reasons for this are to be found in the increased blood supply consequent upon conscious attention to any part, which sensitizes the nerves of the area and the added number of nerve fibers that are at once put into association with the area by the act of concentration of the attention. These serve to render sensation {123} much more acute than it would otherwise be. It might seem impossible to control the attention, but this has been done over and over again, even in the midst of severe pain, until there is no doubt that it is quite possible. As for the increase of pain by deliberate attention, that is so familiar an experience that practically every one has had it at some time. The reason for it has become very clear as the result of our generation's investigations into the constitution of the nervous system. The central nervous system, instead of being a _continuum_, or series of nerve elements which are directly connected with each other, consists of a very large number of separate individual cells which only make contacts with each other, the nerve impulses flowing over across the contact. The demonstration of these we owe originally to Ramon y Cajal, the distinguished Spanish brain anatomist, to whom was awarded some years ago the Nobel Prize as well as the Prize of the City of Paris for his researches. In connection with his surprising discoveries as to the neurons which make up the brain, he suggested the Law of Avalanche, which would serve to explain the supersensitiveness of parts to which concentrated attention is paid. {124} According to this law, pain felt in any small area of the body may be multiplied very greatly if the sensation from it is distributed over a considerable part of the brain, as happens when attention is centered upon it. A pain message that comes from a localized area of the body disturbs under normal conditions at most a few thousand cells in the brain, because the area is directly represented only by these cells. They are connected however by dendrites and cell branches of various kinds with a great many other cells in different parts of the brain. A pain message that comes up will ordinarily produce only disturbance of the directly connected cells, but it may be transmitted and diffused over a great many of the cells of the cortex of the brain if the attention is focused strongly on it. The area at first affected, but a few thousand cells, may spread to many millions or perhaps even some hundreds of millions of them, if the centering of attention causes them to be "connected up", as the electricians say, with the originally affected small group of cells. It is just what happens in high mountains when a few stones loosened somewhere near the top by the wind or by melting processes begin their course down the mountain side. {125} On the way they disturb ever more and more of the loose pieces of ice and the shifting snows as well as the rocks near them, until, gathering force, what was at the beginning only a minor movement of small particles becomes a dreaded avalanche, capable not only of sweeping away men in its path but even of obliterating houses and sometimes of changing the whole face of a mountain area. Hence the expression suggested by Ramon y Cajal of the Law of Avalanche for this wide diffusion of sensation, which spreads from a few thousand to millions or billions of cells, and from a rather bearable pain becomes intolerable torture, as a consequence of the brain's complete occupation with it. Now it is possible for most people, indeed for all who have not some organic morbid condition, to control this spread of pain beyond its original connections, provided only they will to do so, refuse to be ruled by their dreads and proceed to divert attention from the painful condition to other subjects. Here is why the man who bravely faces pain actually lessens the amount that he has to bear. There is no pain in the part affected. That we know, because any interruption of the nerve tract leading from the affected part to the brain {126} eliminates the pain. In the same way, the obtunding of the nerve cells in the cortex by anaesthetics or of the conducting nerve apparatus on the way to the brain by local anaesthesia, will have a like effect. Anything then that will interfere with the further conduction of the pain sensation and the cortical cells directly affected will lessen the sense of pain, and this is what happens when a man settles himself firmly to the thought that he will not allow himself to be affected beyond what is the actual reaction of the nerve tissues to the part. As a matter of fact, the anticipation of pain due to the dread of it predisposes the part to be much more sensitive than it was before. We can all of us readily make experiments which show this very clearly. Ordinarily we have a stream of sensations flowing up from the surface of the body to the brain, consequent upon the fact that the skin surface is touched by garments over most of the body, and that our nerves of touch respond to their usually rather rough surface. We have learned to pay no attention to these because we have grown accustomed to them, though any one who thinks that they are negligible should witness the writhings of a poor Indian under the stress {127} of being civilized when he is required to wear a starched shirt for the first time. Ordinarily Indians have learned to suppress their feelings, but the shirt with its myriad points of contact, all of them starchily scraping, usually proves too much for his equanimity, and he wiggles and twists to such an extent as shows very clearly that he is extremely uncomfortable. Most people have something of the same feeling the first day that they change into woolen underclothes after they have been wearing cotton for months, and the sensation is by no means easy to bear with equanimity. Ordinarily from custom and habit in the suppression of feelings we notice none of these contact sensations with their almost inevitable itchy and ticklish feelings, though they are constantly there, but we can reveal them to ourselves by thinking definitely about any part of the body. Such concentration of attention at once brings that part of the body above the threshold of consciousness, and we have distinct feelings there that we did not notice before. If for instance we think about the big toe on the left foot, immediately our attention is turned to it and we note sensations in it that were quite unnoticed before. We can feel the stocking touching any part of it {128} that we think of. Not only that, but if we concentrate attention on a part most uncomfortable sensations develop. If anything calls our attention even to the middle of our backs, we find at once that there is a distinct sensation there, and this may become so insistent as to demand relief. It is well understood now what happens in these cases. As we have said, the attention given to a part leads to a widening of the minute blood vessels located there so that the nerve endings to the part are supplied with more blood and therefore become more sensitive. We know from experience in cold windy weather that when the cheek is hyperaemic the drawing of a leaf or even of a piece of paper across it may produce a very acute painful sensation. Hyperaemia always makes parts of the body much more sensitive than before. Attention has just this effect over all the surface of the body, as we can demonstrate to ourselves. We can actually, though only gradually, make our feet warm by thinking about them, because the active attention to them sends more blood to them. The dread of pain then, by concentrating attention on the part beforehand, actually increases the pain that has to be suffered and makes the subject {129} ever so much more sensitive. Sensitiveness is of course dependent on other factors, as for instance lack of outdoor air and of oxygenization, which actually seems to hypersensitize people so that even very slight pain becomes extremely difficult to bear, but the question of attention, which is after all almost entirely a voluntary matter, has more to do with making pain harder to bear than anything else. In the preanaesthetic days, men have been known to sit and watch calmly an amputation of one of their limbs without wincing and apparently without undergoing very much pain. Many are the incidents in history of a favorite general who showed his men how to bear pain by calmly smoking a cigar while a surgeon amputated an arm or a leg or performed some other rather important surgery. Pain is after all like the sense of danger and may be suppressed practically to as great a degree. Once during the present war, when long columns of soldiers going to the front had to pass by the open market place of a town that was being shelled by the Germans, there was danger of the troops losing something of their morale at this point and of confusion ensuing. It would have been disturbing both to discipline and the {130} ordered movement of the troops to divert them by narrower streets, and the shells, though dangerous, were not falling frequently and not working serious havoc. Every one knew, however, that the German gunners had the range, and a shell might land square in the market place at any time; thus there was a feeling of uneasiness and a tendency to nervous lack of self-control, with the inevitable confusion of movement afterwards. One of the French generals ordered an armchair to be brought out of one of the houses near by, took a position in the center of the square, with a little wand in his hand, and calmly joked with the soldiers as they went by about the temperature of the day mentioning occasionally something about a shell that happened to strike not far away. According to the story he was an immense man weighing nearly three hundred pounds, and so provided a very good-sized target for shells, but he was never touched and, almost needless to say, the line of soldiers never wavered while their general sat there joking at the danger. It is sometimes thought that men in the older, less refined times could stand pain and suffering generally much better than our generation which is supposed to have {131} degenerated in that respect. We have found, however, during the war that the soldiers who could stand supreme suffering the best were very often those who came from better-to-do families, who had been subjected to the most highly refining influences of civilization, but also to that discipline of the repression of the emotions which is recognized as an important phase of civilization. Strange as it may seem, the city boys stood the hardships and the trials of trench life better than the country boys and not only withstood the physical trials but were calmer under fire and ever so much less complaining under injury. After all it is what might be expected, once serious thought is given to the subject, and yet somehow it comes as a surprise, as if the country boy ought to be less sensitive,--as indeed he probably is; but he lacks that training in self-control which enables the city boy to stand suffering. All our feeling that human nature has degenerated in physical constitution has been completely contradicted by the reaction of our young soldiers to camp and trench life. They have gone back to the lack of comforts and conveniences of the pioneer days and have had to submit to the outdoor life and the {132} hardships that their pioneer grandfathers went through and have not failed under them. The boys have come out of it all demonstrating not only that their courage was capable of supporting them, but with their physical being bettered by the conditions and their power to stand suffering revealed in a way that would scarcely have been believed possible beforehand. {133} CHAPTER IX THE WILL AND AIR AND EXERCISE "And wishes fall out as they are willed." _Pericles_ Very probably the most important function of the will in its relation to health is that which concerns its power to control the habits of mankind as regards air and exercise. It is surprising to what an extent people neglect both of these essentials of healthy living in the midst of our modern sophisticated life, unless the will power is consciously used for the purpose of forming and then maintaining habits with regard to these requisites for health. It is a very fortunate thing that instinct urges the child, particularly the infant, to almost constant movement during its waking hours. Children that are healthy and that are growing rapidly, boys somewhat more than girls, are so constantly in movement that one would almost think that they must be on springs. Whenever they discover that they can make a {134} new movement, they proceed to make it over and over again until they can do it with facility. There is no lolling around for them; as soon as they wake, they want to be up and doing, no matter what the habits of the household may be. They are constantly on the move. We know that this is absolutely essential for growth as well as for the proper training of their muscles, but it is a very fortunate thing that children do it for themselves, for if their mothers were compelled to train them, the task would be indeed difficult. All mother has to do is to control them to some extent and keep them from venturing too far, lest they should hurt themselves. When the control of instinct over life is gradually replaced by reason, this tendency to exercise gradually diminishes until it is often surprising to find how little people are taking. As it is mainly the need for exercise that forces people out into the air, indoor life comes to be the main portion of existence. This is all contrary to nature, and so it is not surprising that _disease_, in its original etymological sense of discomfort, develops rather readily. The lack of exercise in the air permits a great many people to drift into all sorts of morbid conditions in which they are quite miserable. This {135} is, of course, particularly true as regards nervous ailments of various kinds; only under the term nervous ailments should be included not alone direct affections of the nervous system or functional disturbances of nerves, but also a number of other conditions. Nervous indigestion, insomnia, neurotic constipation and many of the symptomatic affections associated with these conditions, tired feelings that interfere with activities, headache, various feelings of discomfort in the muscles and around the joints, inability to control the emotions and other such common complaints--if that is the proper word for them--all these are fostered by a sedentary life indoors. They frequently make not only the patient himself--or oftener herself--miserable, but also all those who come in contact with her. Above all, it must not be forgotten that lack of exercise in the open air has a very definite tendency to make people extremely sensitive to discomforts of all kinds, mental as well as physical. Many a man or woman whose life seems full of worries, sometimes without any adequate cause at all, who goes from one dread to another, who wakes in the morning with a sense of depression, find that most of these feelings and sometimes all of them, {136} disappear promptly when they begin to exercise more in the open. Nothing dispels the gloom and depressions consequent upon an accumulation of cares and worries of various kinds like a few weeks in the woods, where every moment is passed in the fresh outdoor air, which actually seems to blow the cobwebs of ill feelings away and leaves the individual with a freedom of mind and a comfort of body that he almost expected never to enjoy again. Undoubtedly the most important factor for the preservation of health is an abundance of fresh air. At certain seasons of the year this is not only easy and agreeable, but to do anything else imposes hardship. In our climate, however, there are about six months of the year in which it requires some exercise of will power to secure as much open air life as is required for health. There are weeks when it is too hot, there are many weeks when it is too cold. The cold air particularly is important, because it produces a stimulating vital reaction than which nothing is more precious for health. We have no tonic among all the drugs of the pharmacopeia that is equal to the effect of a brisk walk in the bracing air of a dry cold day. After a long morning and {137} perhaps a whole day in the house, even half an hour outdoors will enable us to throw off the sluggishness consequent upon confinement to the indoor air and the lack of appetite and the general feeling of physical lassitude which has followed living in an absolutely equable temperature for twenty-four hours. Sometimes it requires no little effort of the will to secure this, and to continue it day after day without missing it or letting it be crowded out by claims that are partly real and partly excuses, because we do not care to make the special effort required. What humanity needs is regular exercise in the open air every day. As it is, between the trolley car and the automobile, very few people get what they need. Any one who has to go a mile takes a car or some other conveyance and between waiting for the car and certain inevitable delays it will probably take ten minutes or more to go the mile. In five minutes more one could walk that distance and secure precious exercise besides such diversion of mind as inevitably comes from walking on busy city streets and which makes an excellent recreation in the midst of one's work. For it is quite impossible in our day to walk along city streets absorbed in abstract mental {138} occupations. One of the objections to walking is that after a while it can be accomplished as a matter of routine without necessarily taking one's mind away from subjects in which it has been absorbed. It is quite impossible for this to happen, however, on modern city streets. "The outside of a horse", it used to be said, "is good for the inside of a man." The main reason for this was because it is impossible for a man to ride horseback, unless his mount is a veritable old Dobbin, without paying strict attention to the animal. The same thing is true as regards city pedestrianism, especially since the coming of the auto has made it necessary to watch our steps and look where we go. A great many people would be ever so much better in health if they walked to business or to school every morning instead of riding, for the young need it even more than the older people. Especially is this true for all those who follow sedentary occupations. Clerks in lawyers' offices, typewriters and stenographers, secretaries--all those who have to sit down much during the day--need the brisk walking and need it not merely of a Sunday or a Saturday afternoon, but every day in the year. Many of them, if they walked two and three miles to {139} the office, would probably require only fifteen minutes, at most half an hour, more than if they took a train or trolley, but they would have secured a good hour of exercise in the open air. On the other hand the unfortunate crowding of trolley and elevated and subway trains in the busy hours when people go to and from their work makes an extremely uncomfortable and often rather depressing commencement and completion of the day's work. I know of nothing that makes a worse beginning for the day than to have to stand for half an hour or longer in a swaying, bumping car, hanging to a strap, crushed and crowded by people getting in and out. The effect of coming home under such circumstances after a reasonably long day's work is even more serious, and any little sacrifice that will enable people to avoid it will do them a great deal of good. Fifteen or twenty minutes of extra time morning and evening would often suffice for this and would at the same time add a bracing walk in the open air to the day's routine. When first begun, such a practice would make one tired and sore, but that condition would pass in the course of a few days and be replaced by a healthy feeling of satisfaction {140} that would be well worth all the effort required. We should need ever so much less medicine for appetite and for constipation if this were true. A great many people who stand during the day would probably deem it quite out of the question for them to walk three miles or more to and from their business, for their feet get so tired that they feel that they could not endure it. What they need more than anything else, however, is exercise that will bring about a stimulation of the circulation in their feet. Standing is very depressing to the circulation. It leads to compression of the veins and hence interference with the return circulation, with lowered nutrition which often predisposes to flat foot or yielding arch and tends to create corns and callouses: walking in reasonably well fitting shoes on the contrary tends to make the feet ever so much less sensitive Our soldiers have had that experience and have learned some very precious lessons with regard to the care of their feet, the principal one being that the best possible remedy for foot troubles is to exercise the feet vigorously in walking and running, provided the shoes permit proper foot use. I have often known clerks and floorwalkers {141} who have to stand all day or move but a few steps at intervals, who were so tired at night that they felt the one thing they could do was to sit down for a while after dinner and then go to bed, but who came to feel ever so much better after a brisk walk home. It was rather hard to persuade them that, exhausted as they felt, they would actually get rested and not more tired from vigorous walking, but once they tried it, they knew the exercise was what they needed. The air in stores is often dry and uncomfortable for those who are in them all day. It is usually and quite properly regulated for the customers who come in from the streets expecting to get warm without delay. In dry, cold weather particularly, an evening walk home sets the blood in circulation until it gets thoroughly oxidized and the whole body feels better. Such a brisk walk will often prevent the development of flat foot, especially if care is taken to spring properly from the ball of the foot, in the good, old-fashioned heel and toe method of walking. Once flat foot has developed, walking probably is more difficult, but even then, with properly fitting shoes, the patients will be the better for a good walk after their work is over. It requires some will power to acquire the {142} habit, but once formed, the benefit and pleasure derived make it easy to keep up the practice. Those who walk thus regularly will often find that their evening tiredness is not so marked, and they will feel much more like going out for some diversion than they otherwise would. Probably nothing is more dispiriting in the course of time than to come home merely to eat dinner, sit down after dinner and grow sleepy on one's chair until one feels quite miserable, and then go to bed. There should be always, unless in very inclement weather, an outing before bedtime, and this should be looked forward to. It will often forestall the feeling that the day is over after dinner and so keep the individual from settling down into the dozy discomfort of an after-dinner nap as the closing scene of the day. Good habits in this matter require an effort of the will to form; bad habits almost seem to form of themselves and then require a special effort to break. It is surprising how many of the dreads and anxiety neuroses and psycho-neurotic solicitudes and neurasthenic disquietudes and other more or less morbid mental states disappear under the influence of a brisk walk for three or {143} four miles or more every day. I have tried this prescription on all sorts of people, including particularly myself, and I know for certain that when troubles are accumulating the thing to do is to get outdoors more, especially for walking; then the incubus begins to lift. Clergymen, university professors, members of religious orders, school teachers, as well as bankers, clerks and business people of various kinds, have been subjected to the influence of this prescription with decided benefit. Some of them assert that they never felt so well as since they have formed the habit of walking every day. It must, however, be _every_ day, and it must not merely be a mile or so but it must be at least three miles. That means for a good many people about an hour spent in actual walking, but it is well worth the time and effort. Above all, it repays not only in health and in better feelings but in the increased amount of work that can be done on the day itself. A whole day passed indoors will often contain many wasted hours, while if a walk of a couple of miles is planned for the morning and one for a couple of miles more in the afternoon, very satisfactory study or other work can be done in the intervals. Almost needless to say, a brisk walk in the {144} cooler weather will create an appetite where it did not exist before. Women often need counsel in this matter more than men, and regular walking for them is indeed a counsel of health. Very few women in these modern times walk much, and to walk more than a mile seems to them a hardship. This is responsible for more of the supersensitiveness and nervous complaints of all kinds to which women are liable than anything else that I know of. It is also one important factor in the production of the constipation to which women are so much more liable than men. We see many advertisements with regard to the jolts to which the body is subjected every time the heel is put down and of the means that should be taken to prevent them, but it must not be forgotten that men and women were meant by nature to walk erect and that this recurring jolt has a very definite effect in stimulating peristalsis and favoring the movement of the contents of the intestines. Besides, if the walking is brisk, the breathing is deeper and there is some massage of the liver, as also of the other abdominal viscera, while other organs are affected favorably. Walking for women--regular, everyday walking--would be indeed a precious habit, but now {145} that women have occupations more and more outside of the house, this is one of the things they must make up their minds to do, if they are to maintain health, remembering that making up the mind is really making up the will. Over and over again I have seen a great many of the troubles of the menopause or change of life in women disappear or become ever so much less bothersome as the result of the formation of regular habits of walking out of doors every day. Unfortunately, there is a definite tendency about this time for women to withdraw more and more from public appearances and to live to a considerable extent in retirement at home. Nothing could be much worse for them. They need, above all, to get out and to have a number of interests, and if these interests can only be so arranged as to demand rather prolonged walks, so much the better. This is more particularly true for the unmarried woman who is going through this critical time, and the question of walking regularly every day for three or four miles must be proposed to her. It will require a considerable effort of the will. More than two miles at the beginning will probably be too tiring, but the amount can be gradually increased {146} until at least four miles on the average is covered every day. Above all, for the feelings of discomfort in the cardiac region so often noticed at this time, regular walking is the best remedy in most cases, always of course presupposing that there is no organic heart condition, for in that case only a physician can give the proper direction for each case. By the exercise of the lungs that it requires, it will probably save most people from colds and coughs which they have had to endure every winter. Lastly be it said that practically all men and women, though more particularly the men who have lived well beyond the Psalmist's limit of threescore and ten, have been regular daily walkers, or else they have taken exercise in some form in the open air which is the equivalent of walking. One of the most distinguished of English physicians, Sir Hermann Weber, who died just after the end of the war in London, was in his ninety-fifth year. He had practised medicine regularly until the age of eighty and continued in excellent health and vigor until just before his death. During the last year of life, he contributed an interesting article to the _British Medical Journal_ on the "Influence of Muscular Exercise on Longevity." He attributed his vigor at the age of {147} ninety-five as well as the prolongation of his life to his practice of spending every day two or three hours in the open air. He walked, as a rule, forty to fifty miles a week. Even in the most inclement weather he rarely did less than thirty miles a week. Many another octogenarian and nonagenarian has attributed his good health and long life to the habit of regular daily exercise in the open. Instead of using up energy, the will so used brings out latent stores of energy that would not otherwise be employed and thus adds to the available amount of vitality for the individual. Doctor Thomas Addis Emmet, only just dead, over ninety, in his younger years as a busy medical practitioner never kept a horse. It would not be difficult to cite many other examples among men who lived to advanced old age and who considered that they owed their good health and long life to daily habits of outdoor exercise. {148} CHAPTER X THE WILL TO EAT "If your will want not, time and place will be fruitfully added." _King Lear_. Eating is usually supposed to be entirely a matter of appetite which instinct directs to the best possible advantage of the individual. This is quite true for those who are living the outdoor life that is normal or at least most healthy for men, and when they are getting an abundance of exercise, and may I add also have not too great a variety of food materials in tempting form presented to them. Under the artificial not to say unnatural conditions which men have to a great extent created for themselves in city life, confined at indoor sedentary occupations, some of them--and they are much more numerous than is usually imagined--eat too little, while a great many, owing to stimulation of appetite in various ways, eat too much. Eating therefore for health's sake has to be done through the will and as a rule by the {149} formation of deliberate habits. It is easy to form habits either of defect or excess in the matter of eating and indeed a great deal of the ill health to which mankind is liable is due to errors in either of these directions. Having disturbed nature's instincts for food in modifying the mode of life to suit modern conveniences, we have now to learn from experience and scientific observations what we should eat and then make up our minds to eat such quantity and variety as is necessary to maintain health and strength in the particular circumstances in which we are placed. While the greatest emphasis has been placed on the dangers to health in overeating, the number of people who, for one reason or another, eat too little is, as has been said, quite surprising. A very large proportion of those under normal weight are so merely because they have wrong habits of eating. Indeed, it may be laid down as a practical rule of health that wherever there is no organic disease the condition of being underweight is a symptom of undereating. A great many thin people insist that the reason why they are underweight is that it is a family trait and that father and mother, or at least one of them, and some of their grandparents exhibited this {150} peculiarity; and thus it is not surprising that they should have it. A careful analysis of the family eating in such cases has shown me in a large number of instances, indeed almost without exception, that what my patients had inherited was not a constitutional tendency to thinness, but a family habit of undereating. This accrued to them not from nature but from nurture, and was acquired in their bringing up. Most of them were eating one quite abundant meal a day and perhaps a pretty good second meal, but practically all of them were skimping at least one meal very much. In some way or other, a family habit of eating very little at this meal had become established and was now an almost inviolable custom. A great many thin individuals, that is persons who are somewhat more than ten per cent. under the average normal weight for their height, either do not eat breakfast at all or eat a very small one. It is not unusual for the physician analyzing their day's dietary to be told that the meal consists of a cup of coffee and a piece of bread. Sometimes there is a roll, but more often only part of a roll, though occasionally in recent years there may be some fruit and some cereal; the fruit will usually be a half of one of the citrus fruits {151} which contains practically no nutrition and is only a pleasant appetizer, while more often than not the cereal will be one of the dry, ready-to-eat varieties which, apart from the milk or cream that may be served with them, contain in the usual small helpings very little nutriment. Such breakfasts are particularly the rule among women who are under weight. Sometimes lunch is comparatively light so that there are two daily apologies for meals. To make up for these, the third meal may be very hearty. City folk often eat at dinner more than is good for them. This may produce a sense of uncomfortable distention and overfulness followed by sleepiness which may be set down as due to indigestion, though it is just a question of overeating for the nonce. It would be much more conducive to health to distribute the eating over the three meals of the day, but it requires a special effort of the will to break the unfortunate habits that have been formed. Particularly it seems hard for many people to eat a substantial breakfast and a determined effort is required to secure this. It would seem almost as though their wills had not yet waked up and that it was harder for them to do things at this time of day. It is especially important for working {152} women, that is, those who have such regular occupations as school-teacher, secretary, clerk and the like, to eat a hearty breakfast. They can get a warm properly chosen meal at home at this hour, while very often in the middle of the day they have to eat a lunch that is not nearly so suitable. As a consequence of neglecting breakfast then, it is twenty-four hours between their warm, hearty meals. Even when they eat a rather good lunch, some eighteen hours elapse since the last hearty meal was taken, and one half the day's work has to be done on the gradually decreasing energy secured from the evening meal of the day before. With this unfortunate habit of eating, most of that was used up during the night in repairing the tissue losses of the day before, so that the morning's work has to be done largely "on the will" rather than on the normal store of bodily energy. It is surprising how many patients who are admitted to tuberculosis sanatoria have been underweight for years as a consequence of unfortunate habits of eating. Not infrequently it is found that they have a number of prejudices with regard to the simple and most nutritious foods that mankind is accustomed to. Not a few of the younger ones who {153} develop tuberculosis have been laboring under the impression that they could not digest milk or eggs or in some way they had acquired a distaste for them and so had eliminated them from their diet; some of them had also stopped eating butter or used it very sparingly. At the sanatoria, as a rule, very little attention is paid to the supposed difficulty of digestion of milk and eggs and perhaps butter. The patients are at once put on the regular diet containing these articles and the nurse sees that they take them even between meals, and unless there is actual vomiting or some very definite objective--not merely subjective--sign of indigestion, the patients are required to continue the diet. It is almost an invariable rule for the patients of such institutions to come to the physician in charge after a couple of weeks and ask how it was that they could have thought that these simple articles of food disagreed with them. They have begun to like them now and are surprised at their former refusal to take them, which they begin to suspect, as the physician very well knows, to have been the principal reason for the development of their tuberculosis. There are people who are up to weight or {154} slightly above it who develop tuberculosis, but they do not represent one in five of the patients who suffer from the affection. In probably three fourths of all the cases of tuberculosis the predisposing factor which allowed the tubercle bacillus to grow in the tissues was the loss of weight or the being underweight. There is a good biological reason for this, for there are certain elements in the make-up of the tubercle bacillus which favor its growth at a time when fat is being lost from the tissues rather than deposited, for at that time more fat for the growth of the tubercle bacillus is available in the lungs than at other times. Often among the poor the loss in weight is due to lack of food because of poverty, or failure to eat because of alcoholism, but not infrequently among all classes it is just a question of certain bad habits of eating that might readily have been corrected by the will. It is surprising how many people who complain of various nervous symptoms--meaning by that term symptoms for which no definite physical basis can be found, or for which only that extremely indefinite basis of a vague reflex, real or supposed, from the abdominal organs--are underweight and will be found to be eating much less than the average of {155} humanity. These nervous symptoms include above all discomforts of various kinds in the abdominal region; sense of gone-ness; at times a feeling of fullness because of the presence of gas; grumblings, acid eructations, bitter taste in the mouth, and above all, constipation. As is said in the chapter on "The Will and the Intestinal Functions," the most potent and frequent cause of constipation is insufficient eating, either in quantity or in variety. It is especially in the digestive tract of those who do not eat as much as they should that gas accumulates. This gas is usually thought to be due to fermentation, but as fermentation is a very slow gas producer and nervous patients not infrequently belch up large quantities, it is evident that another source for it must be sought. Any one who has seen a number of hysterical patients with gaseous distention of the abdomen and attacks of belching in which immense quantities of gas are eructated, will be forced to the conclusion that in such nervous crises gas leaks out of the blood vessels of the walls of the digestive tract and that this is the principal source of the gas noted. What is true in the severe nervous attacks is also true in nervous symptoms of other kinds, and neurotic indigestion so called {156} is always accompanied by the presence of gas. Apparently the old maxim of the physicist of past centuries has an application here. "Nature abhors a vacuum" and as the stomach and intestines are not as full as they ought to be, nor given as much work to do as they should have, nature proceeds to occupy them with gas which finds its way in from the very vascular gastrointestinal walls. This is of course an explanation that would not have been popular a few years ago when the chemistry of digestion seemed so extremely important, but in recent years, medical science has brought us back rather to the physics of digestion, and I think that most physicians who have seen many functional nervous patients would now agree with these suggestions as to the origin of gaseous disturbance in the gastrointestinal tract in a great many of these cases. Besides the physical symptoms, there are a whole series of psychic or psycho-neurotic symptoms, the basis of which undoubtedly lies in the condition of underweight as a consequence of undereating. Over and over again I have seen the feeling of inability to do things which had come over men, and {157} particularly women, disappear by adding to and regulating the diet until an increase in weight came. Extreme tiredness is a frequent symptom in those under weight, and this often leads to their having no recreation after their work because they have not enough energy for it; as every human being needs diversion, a vicious circle of influence which adds to their nervous tired condition is formed. I have seen in so many cases the eating of a good breakfast and a good lunch supply working people with the energy hitherto lacking that enabled them to go out of an evening to the theater or to entertainments of one kind or another, that it has become a routine practice to treat these people by adding to their dietary unless there are direct contra-indications. Dreads are much more common among people who are underweight than among those who eat enough to keep themselves in proper physical condition. I have had a series of cases, unfortunately only a small one in number, in which the craving for alcoholic liquor disappeared before an increase in diet and a gain in weight. I shall never forget the first case in which this happened. The patient was a man of nearly sixty years of age who held a {158} rather important political office in a small neighboring town. He was on the point of losing it because periodical sprees were becoming more frequent and it was impossible for him to maintain his position. He was over six feet in height and he weighed less than a hundred and fifty pounds. I had tried to get him to gain in weight by advice and suggestion without avail. Finally, I had to make a last effort to use whatever influence I had to save his political position for him, and then I succeeded in making him understand that he would have to do as I told him in the matter of eating, or else I would have nothing more to do with him. It was not without some misgivings that I thus undertook to make a man of nearly sixty change his lifelong habits of eating. That is something which I consider no physician has a right to do unless there is some very imperative reason for it. Here was, however, a desperate case. It was in the late afternoon particularly that this patient craved drink so much that he could not deny himself. As he ate but very little breakfast and had a hasty scanty lunch, he was at the very bottom of his physical resources at that time, and at the end of a rather demanding day's work. We had {159} to break up his other habits in the hope of getting at the craving. He had taken coffee and a roll for breakfast. I dictated a cereal, two eggs and several rashers of bacon and several rolls. I insisted on fifteen minutes in the open before lunch and then a hearty lunch with some substantial dessert at the end of it. This man proceeded to gain at the rate of a little more than three pounds a week. By the end of two months, he weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds and had not touched a drop of liquor in that time and felt that he had no craving for it. That is some ten years ago, and there has been no trouble with his alcoholic cravings since. He has maintained his weight; he says that he never felt so well and that above all he now has no more of that intense tiredness that used to come to him at the end of the day. Every now and then he says to me in musing mood,--"And to think that I had never learned to eat enough!" For these very tired feelings so often complained of by nervous patients, once it has been decided that there is no organic trouble--for of course kidney or heart or blood pressure affections may readily cause them--there are just two things to be considered: These are {160} flat-foot or yielding arch, and undereating. When there is a combination of these two, then tiredness may well seem excessive and yet be readily amenable to treatment. Persons with occupations which require standing are especially liable to suffer in this way. Undereating in the evening is especially important for many nervous people and is often the source of wakefulness. It is the cause of insomnia, not so much at the beginning of the night, as a rule, as in the early morning. Many a person who wakes at four or five and cannot go to sleep again is hungry. There is a sense of gone-ness in the stomach region in these cases, which the patients are prone to attribute to their nerves in general, or some of them who have had unfortunate suggestions from their physicians may talk of their abdominal brain; but it is surprising how often their feelings are due simply to emptiness. Any thin person particularly who has his last meal before seven and does not go to bed until after eleven should always take something to eat before retiring. A glass of milk or a cup of cocoa and some crackers or a piece of simple cake may be sufficient, but it is important to eat enough. Animals and men naturally get sleepy after eating and do not sleep well if their {161} stomachs are empty. Children are the typical examples. We are all only children of a larger growth in this regard. When the last meal is taken before seven and people do not go to bed until nearly twelve, as is frequently the case in large cities, the custom of having something to eat just before bed is excellent for sleep. I have known the establishment of this habit to afford marked relief in cases of insomnia that had extended over years. The people in my experience who sleep the worst are those who, having taken a little cambric tea and some toast and preserves with perhaps a piece of cake for supper, think that this virtuous self-control in eating ought to assure them good rest. It has just the opposite effect. Disturbed sleep, full of dreams and waking moments, is oftener due to insufficient eating than to overeating. The people whom I know who sleep the best and from whom there are no complaints of insomnia, are those who, having eaten so heartily at dinner that they get to the theater a little late, attend the Follies or some late show for a while and then go round to one of the Broadway restaurants and chase a Welsh rarebit or some lobster a la Newburg, with a biscuit Tortoni or a Pêche Melba down {162} to their stomachs and then go home to sleep the sleep of the just. Just as there are bad habits of eating too little that are dangerous and must be corrected by the will so there are bad habits of eating too much that can only be corrected in the same way. While it is dangerous to be under weight in the early years of life, it is at least as dangerous to be overweight in middle life. With the variety and abundance of food now supplied at a great many tables, it is comparatively easy for people in our time to eat too much. The result is that among the better-to-do classes a great many people suffer from obesity, sometimes to such an extent that life is made a burden to them. There is only one way to correct this and that is to eat less and of course to exercise more. Reduction in diet means the breaking of a long established habit and that of course is often hard. The whole family may have to set a good example of abstinence from too great a variety of food and especially from the richer foods, in order that a parent may be helped to prevent further development of obesity and to lose gently and gradually some of the overweight that is being put on, and which now, by conserving heat and slowing up metabolism {163} generally within the body, makes it so easy for even reduced quantities of food to maintain the former habit of adding weight. In this matter of obesity, however, just exactly as in the case of tuberculosis for those who are underweight, prevention is much better than cure. The people who know that they inherit such tendencies should be particularly careful not to form habits of eating that will add considerably to their weight. After all, it is not nearly so difficult a matter as is often imagined. There is no need, unless in very exceptional cases, of denying one's self anything that is liked in the ordinary foods, only less of each article must be eaten. Even desserts need not be entirely eliminated, for ices may be taken instead of ice cream; sour fruits and especially those of the citrus variety--oranges and grapefruit--and the gelatine desserts may be eaten almost with impunity. The phrase "eat and grow thin" has deservedly become popular in recent years because as a matter of fact it is perfectly possible to eat heartily and above all to satisfaction without putting on weight. It is, of course, harder to lose weight, but even that may be accomplished gradually under proper direction if there is the persistent will to do it. {164} In recent years another disease has come to attract attention which represents the result of an overindulgence in food materials that can be limited without much difficulty. This is diabetes which used to be comparatively rare but has now become rather frequent. An authority on the disease declared not long since that there are over half a million people in this country now who either have or will have diabetes as the result of the breaking down of their sugar metabolism. It is not surprising that the disease should be on the increase, for the consumption of sugar has multiplied to a very serious degree during the last few generations. A couple of centuries ago, those who wanted sugar went not to the grocery store, but to the apothecary shop. It was kept as a flavoring material for children's food, as a welcome addition to the dietary of invalids and the old, and quite literally as a drug, for it was considered to have, as it actually has, to a slight extent at least, some diuretic qualities that made it valuable. A little more than a century ago, a thousand tons of sugar sufficed for the whole world's needs, while the year before the war, the world consumed some twenty-two million of tons of sugar. It is said that every man, woman, and {165} child in the United States consumed on the average every day a quarter of a pound of sugar. Our candy stores have multiplied, and while two generations ago the little candy stores sold candies practically entirely for children, eking out their trade with stationery and newspapers and school supplies, now candy stores dealing exclusively in confectionery are very common. There are several hundred stores in the United States that pay more than $25,000 a year rent, though they sell nothing but candy and ice-cream sodas. Corresponding with the increase in the sale of candy has come also the consumption of very sweet materials of various kinds. French pastries, Vienna tarts, Oriental sweetmeats, Turkish fig paste, Arabian date conserves, and West Indian guava jelly, are all familiar products on our tables. Chocolate has become one of the important articles of world commerce, though almost unknown beyond a very narrow circle a little more than a century ago. Tea and coffee have been introduced from the near and the far East and by a Western abuse consumed with such an amount of sweetening as make them the medium of an immense consumption of sugar. There is no doubt that unless good habits {166} of self-denial in this regard are formed, diabetes, which is an extremely serious disease, especially for those under middle life, will continue to increase in frequency. The candy and sugar habit is rather easy to form; every one realizes that it is a habit, but it is sometimes almost as hard to break as the tobacco habit. We were meant to get our sugar by the personal manufacture of it from starch substances. If a crust of bread is chewed vigorously until it swallows itself, that is, dissolves in the secretions and gradually disappears, it will be noted that there is a distinctly sweetish taste in the mouth. This is the starch of the bread being changed into sugar. We were expected by nature to make our own sugar in this way, but this has proved too slow and laborious a way for human nature to get all the sugar it cared for, so most people prefer to secure it ready made. Sugar is almost as artificial a product as alcohol and is actually capable of doing almost as much harm as its not distantly related chemical neighbor. It is rather important that good habits in the matter should be formed and we have been letting ourselves drift into very unfortunate habits in recent years. {167} CHAPTER XI THE PLACE OF THE WILL IN TUBERCULOSIS "And like a neutral to his will and matter Did nothing." _Hamlet_. Probably the very best illustration in the whole range of medicine of the place of the will in the cure of disease is afforded by tuberculosis. This used to be the most fatal of all human affections until displaced from its "bad eminence" within the last few years by pneumonia, which now carries off more victims. As it is, however, about one in nine or perhaps a few more of all those who die are victims of tuberculosis. This high mortality would seem to indicate that the disease must be very little amenable to the influence of the will, since surely under ordinary circumstances a good many people might be expected to have the desire and the will to resist the affection if that were possible. In spite of the large death rate this is exactly what is true. {168} Tuberculous infections are extremely common, much commoner even than their high mortality reveals. After long and critical discussion with a number of persistent denials, it is now generally conceded by authorities in the disease that the old maxim "after all, all of us are a little tuberculous" is substantially correct. Very few human beings entirely escape infection from the tubercle bacillus at some time in life. The great majority of us never become aware of the presence of the disease and succeed in conquering it, though the traces of it may be found subsequently in our bodies. Careful autopsies reveal, however, that very few even of those who did not die directly from tuberculosis fail to show tuberculous lesions, usually healed and well shut off from the healthy tissues, in their bodies. One in eight of those who become infected have not the resistive vitality to throw off the disease or the courage to face it and take such precautions as will prevent its advance. All those, however, who give themselves any reasonable chance for the development of resistance survive the disease though they remain always liable to attack from it subsequently if they should run down in health and strength. {169} Heredity, which used to be supposed to play so important a rôle in the affection, is now known to have almost nothing to do with the spread of the disease. Family tendencies are probably represented by nothing more than a proneness to underweight which makes one more liable to infection, and this is due as a rule to family habits in the matter of undernourishment from ill-advised consumption of food. Probably a certain lack of courage to face the disease boldly and do what is necessary to develop bodily resistance against it may also be an hereditary family trait, but environment means ever so much more than heredity. There is a well known expression current among those who have had most experience in the treatment of patients suffering from tuberculosis that "tuberculosis takes only the quitters", that is to say that only those succumb to consumption who have not the strength of will to face the issue bravely and without discouragement to push through with the measures necessary for the treatment of their disease. In a word it is only those who lack the firmness of purpose to persist in the mode of life outlined for them who eventually die from their affection of the {170} lungs. No specific remedy has been found that gives any promise of being helpful, much less of affording assured recovery, though a great many have been tried and not a few are still in hopeful use. Recent experience has only served to emphasize the fact that the one thing absolutely indispensable for any successful treatment of tuberculosis of the lungs is that the patient should regain weight and strength and with them resistive vitality so as to be able to overcome the disease and get better. To secure this favorable result two conditions of living are necessary but they must be above all persisted in for a considerable period. First there must be an abundance of fresh air with rest during the advancing stage or whenever there are acute symptoms present, and secondly an abundance of good food which will provide a store of nutritive energy and make the resistive vitality as high as possible. Curiously enough this "fresh air and good food" treatment for the disease was recognized as the sheet anchor of the therapeutics of consumption as long ago as Galen's time, the end of the second century, when that distinguished Greek physician was practising at Rome. Nearly eighteen hundred {171} years ago Galen suggested that he had tried many remedies for what he called phthisis, the Greek equivalent of our word consumption or wasting away, and had often thought that he had noted a remedial value in them, but after further experience he felt that the all-important factors for cure were fresh air and good food. He even went so far as to say that he thought the best food of the consumptive or the phthisical, as he called them, was milk and eggs. A great deal of water has flowed under the bridge of medical advance since his time and at many periods since physicians have been sure that they had valuable remedies for consumption; yet here we are practically back at Galen's conclusion more than fifty generations after his time, and we are even inclined to think of this mode of treatment as comparatively new, as it is in modern history. The influence on consumption of the will to get well when once aroused was typically exemplified in the career of the well-known London quack of the beginning of the nineteenth century, St. John Long. He set himself up as having a sure cure for consumption. He was a charlatan of the deepest dye whose one idea was to make money, and who knew {172} nothing at all about medicine in any way. He took a large house in Harley Street and fitted it up for the reception of people anxious to consult him. For some seasons every morning and afternoon the public way was blocked up with carriages pressing to his door. Nine out of ten of his patients were ladies and many of them were of the highest rank; fashion and wealth hastened to place themselves and their daughters at the mercy of the pretender's ignorance. His mode of treatment was by inhalation. He assured his patients that the breathing in of this medicated vapor would surely cure their pulmonary disease, and because others were intent on going they went; many of them were greatly benefited for a time and these so-called cures proved a bait for many other patients. J. Cordy Jeaffreson in his volume "A Book about Doctors", written two generations ago, has told the story of St. John Long's successful application of the principle of community of treatment and its effectiveness upon his patient. Like Mesmer he realized that treating people in groups led them mutually to influence each other and to bring about improvement. St. John Long {173} had in one of the rooms in Harley Street "two enormous inhalers, with flexible tubes running outward in all directions and surrounded by dozens of excited women-- ladies of advanced years and young girls giddy with the excitement of their first London season--puffing from their lips the medicated vapor or waiting until a mouthpiece should be at liberty for their pink lips." In our generation of course we had various phases of similar treatment, including nebulizers and compressed air apparatus and medicated vapor, all working wonders for a while, and then proving to have no physical beneficial effect. What is surprising is to find the number of cures that were worked. St. John Long had so many applicants for attention that he was literally unable to give heed to all of them. The news of the wonderful remedy flew to every part of the United Kingdom and from every quarter sick persons, wearied of a vain search after an alleviation of their sufferings, flocked to London with hope renewed once more. This enabled St. John Long to select for treatment only such cases as gave ready promise of cure. He made it a great preliminary of his treatment that his {174} patients should eat well as a rule and on one occasion when he was called into the country to see a man suffering in the last stages of consumption he said quite frankly, "Sir, you are so ill that I cannot take you under my charge at present. You want stamina. Take hearty meals of beefsteak and strong beer; and if you are better in ten days I will do my best for you and cure you." It is easy to understand that if he made it a rule for his consumptive patients that they should eat well or not expect relief from his medicine he would secure a great many good results. Especially would this be true in many cases that came up to him from the country, had the advantage of a change of climate, and of environment and very soon found that they had much more strength than they thought they had. They had been dreading the worst, they were now led to hope for the best; they took the brake off their will, they fed well and it was not long then before they proceeded to get well. As even a little experience with consumptive patients shows it is often difficult for them to follow directions--and keep it up--in the matter of fresh air and good food and here is where the question of the will in the {175} treatment is all important. Many a consumptive has in early life formed bad habits with regard to eating, especially in the direction of eating too little and refusing for some reason or other to take what are known to be the especially nutritious foods. Not infrequently indeed it is their neglect of nutrition in this regard that has been the principal predisposing factor toward the development of the disease. This bad habit must be overcome and often proves refractory. Then it is never easy to give up the pursuit of a chosen vocation and pursue faithfully for a suitable period the humdrum monotonous existence of prolonged rest every day in the open air with eating and sleeping as almost the only serious interests, if indeed they can be called such, permitted in life. It is only those who have the will power to follow directions faithfully, whole-heartedly and persistently who have a reasonable prospect of getting ahead of their disease and eventually securing such a conquest of it as will enable them to return to their ordinary life as it was before the development of tuberculosis. Unless patients are ready to follow directions as regards outdoor air and good food the {176} cure, or as specialists in tuberculosis prefer to call it the arrest of symptoms in the disease, is almost out of the question. Above all it is extremely important that those who suffer from pulmonary tuberculosis should be ready to follow directions at an early stage of their disease, before any serious symptoms develop, for it is then that most can be done for them. Many a sufferer from tuberculosis makes his or her cure extremely difficult, certainly ever so much more difficult than it would otherwise have been, because the dread of going to see a physician--lest they should be told that their affection is really consumption and demands immediate strenuous treatment--causes them to put off consultation with some one whose opinion in the matter is reliable. This is indeed one of the principal reasons why tuberculosis of the lungs still continues to carry off so many victims every year,-- because people are afraid to learn the truth. They dare not put the question to a definite issue and refuse to believe the possibility that certain disturbing symptoms represent developing tuberculosis. They defer seeing an expert; they take this and that suggestion from friends; they buy cough remedies which {177} they see advertised, sometimes they tinker with so-called "consumption cures." After a while an advance of their symptoms makes it absolutely necessary to see a physician but often by this time their disease has progressed from an incipient case rather easy to be treated and with an excellent prognosis to a more advanced stage at which cure is ever so much more difficult; or by this time it may even prove that their strength has been seriously sapped and they have not enough resistive vitality left to bring about reaction toward the cure. The all-important thing for all those who have at any time lived near consumptives, whether relatives or others--for the disease is almost invariably acquired and not hereditary--or who have worked for any prolonged period in more or less intimate contact with those who had a chronic cough or who subsequently developed tuberculosis, is that on the first symptom that is at all suspicious they should make up their minds to have the question as to whether they have tuberculosis or not definitely settled and that they should be ready to do what they are told in the matter. The first symptom is not a persistent cough as so many think, nor continued loss of {178} weight, which is an advanced sign as a rule, but a continued rapidity of pulse for which no non-pulmonary reason can be found. The old idea that consumptives should not be told what their affection was, lest it should disturb their minds and discourage them so much as to do them harm, has now been abandoned by practically all those of large experience in the care of the tuberculous. The opposite policy of being perfectly candid and making the patients understand their serious condition and the importance of taking all the measures necessary for cure, yet without permitting them to be unnecessarily scared, has been adopted. Their will to get well must be thoroughly aroused. After all, it must be recalled that tuberculosis is an extremely curable disease. It is now definitely known that more than ninety per cent. of humanity have at some time had a tuberculosis process, that is to say a focus of tuberculosis active within their tissues. Only about one in nine of the deaths in civilized countries is from tuberculosis. That means that at least eight other people who have not died from the disease but from something else have had the affection, yet have recovered from it. Instead of the old shadow of {179} heredity with its supposedly almost inevitable fatality, so that young people who saw their brothers and sisters or other relatives around them die from the disease felt that they were doomed, we now know that the hereditary factor plays an extremely minor role if indeed it plays any serious rôle at all in the development of the disease. No affection is so amenable to the state of mind and the will to be well as tuberculosis. That is exactly the reason why so many remedies have come into vogue and apparently been very successful in its treatment and then after a while have proved to be of no particular service or even perhaps actually harmful so far as their physical effect is concerned. It cannot be too often repeated that anything whatever that a patient takes that will arouse new hope and give new courage and reawaken the will will actually benefit these patients. No wonder then that scarcely a year passes without some new remedy for tuberculosis being proposed. All that is needed to affect favorably patients suffering from the disease is to have some good reason presented which makes them feel that they ought to get better and then at once they eat better and proceed to increase {180} their resistive vitality. The despondency that comes with the lack of the will to be well hurts their appetite particularly and no tuberculosis patient can ever hope to recover health unless he is eating heartily. With better eating there is always a temptation to be more outdoors and the ability to stand cooler air which always means that the lungs are given their opportunity to breathe fresh cool air which constitutes absolutely the best tonic that we have for the affection. It has been recognized in recent years that the only climates which give reasonable hope of being helpful for the tuberculous are those which present a variation of some thirty degrees in their temperature every day. Whenever this is the case chilly feelings are always produced in those who are exposed to the change, even though the lower temperature curve may not go down to anywhere near freezing. If for instance the temperature at the hottest hour of the day, say three o'clock in the afternoon, is 90° F. and that of the later evening or middle of the night is 60° F., chilly feelings will be produced. Just the same thing is true if the temperature is between 30° F. and 40° F. shortly after the middle of the day and then goes down to {181} near zero at night. These chilly feelings are uncomfortable, but they produce an excellent reaction in the circulation and set the blood coursing from the heart to the tissues better than any medicine that we have. In the midst of this the lungs have their resistive vitality raised so as to throw off the disease. This is probably one of the principal reasons why mountain climates have been found so much more helpful for the treatment of tuberculosis than regions of lower elevations. Whenever the elevation is more than fifteen hundred feet there will almost invariably be a variation of thirty degrees between the day and the night temperature. There are of course still greater variations, even sixty or seventy degrees sometimes where the altitudes are very high, but this is often too great for the tuberculous patients to react properly to, in their rundown conditions. Besides, the air is much rarer at the higher elevations, breathing is more difficult, because the lungs have to breathe more rapidly and more deeply in order to secure the amount of oxygen that is needed for bodily necessities from the rarified air. The middle elevations then, between fifteen hundred and twenty-five {182} hundred feet, have been found the best for tuberculosis patients, and they are very pleasant during the summer time, though never without the chilly discomfort of the drop in temperature. During the fall and winter, however, many patients become tired out trying to react to these variations of temperature and want to seek other climates where they will not have to submit to the discomfort and the chilly feelings. If they come down to more comfortable quarters before their tuberculosis has been brought to a standstill by the increase of their resistive vitality, it is very probable that they will lose most of the benefit that they derived from their mountain experience. Here is where the will comes in. Those who have the will to do it and the persistence to stick at it and the character that keeps them in good humor in spite of the discouraging circumstances which almost inevitably develop from time to time, will almost without exception recover from their tuberculosis with comparatively little difficulty, if they have only taken up the treatment before the disease is so far advanced as to be beyond cure. In the older days consumptives used to be sent to the Riviera and to Algiers and to {183} other places where the climate was comparatively equable, with the idea that if they could only avoid the chilly feelings consequent upon variations of temperature it would be better for them. Many of the disturbing symptoms of tuberculosis are rendered less troublesome in such a climate, but the disease itself is likely to remain quiescent at best or perhaps even to get insidiously worse, as tuberculosis is so prone to do. These milder climates require much less exercise of the will, but that very fact leaves them without the all-important therapeutic quality which the lower altitudes possess. For many people the outdoor life and the sight of nature in the variations produced in scenery during the course of the days and the seasons are satisfying enough to be helpful in making their cure of tuberculosis easy. They are extremely fortunate if they have this strong factor in their favor. It is very probable that we owe the discovery of the value of the Adirondacks and other such medium altitudes in the treatment of tuberculosis to the fact that Doctor Trudeau liked the outdoors so much and was indeed so charmed with the Adirondack region that when death from tuberculosis seemed {184} inevitable, he preferred the Saranac region as a place to die in, in spite of the hardships and the bitter cold from which at that time there was so little adequate protection, to the comforts of the city. He scarcely hoped for the miracle of cure from a disease which he as a doctor knew had carried off so many people, but if he were to die he felt that he would rather die in the face of nature with his beloved mountains all around him than in the shut-in spaces of the city. His resolution to go to the Adirondacks seemed to many of those who heard of it scarcely more than the caprice of a man whom death had marked for itself. His physicians surely had no hope of his journey benefiting him but they felt very probably that in the conditions he might be allowed to have this last desire since there were so few other desires of life that he was likely to have fulfilled. His will to live outdoors in spite of the bitter cold of that first winter undoubtedly saved his life and then he evolved the system of outdoor treatment which has in the past fifty years saved so many lives and is now the recognized treatment for the disease. It is easy to understand, however, how much of firm determination was required {185} on his part forty years ago, when there were no comfortable ways of getting into the Adirondacks, when the last stage of the journey had to be made for forty miles on a mattress in a rough wagon, when water for washing had to be secured by breaking the ice in the pitcher or on the lake and when the bitter climate must have been the source of almost poignant torture to a man constantly running a slight temperature. He had the courage and the will power to do it and the result was not only his own survival but a great benefit secured for others. Unfortunately many a consumptive patient who during his first period of treatment keeps to the letter the regulations for outdoor air and abundant food fails to do so if it is necessary to come back a second time. Persistency is here a jewel indeed and only the persistent win out. Many an arrested case fails to keep the rules of living that may be necessary for years afterwards and runs upon relapse. The will to do what is necessary is all-important. Trudeau himself, after securing the arrest of his disease in the Adirondacks, though he lived and worked successfully to almost seventy years of age, found it quite impossible to live out of them {186} and often had to hurry back from even comparatively brief visits to the lowlands. Besides, every now and then during some forty years he had the will power to take his own prescription of outdoor air and absolute rest. It was the faculty to do this that gave him length of life far beyond the average of humanity and the power to accomplish so much in spite of the invasion of the disease which had rendered large parts of both lungs inoperative. Not only did he live on, however, but he succeeded in doing so much valuable work that few men in the medical profession of America have stamped their name deeper on modern medical science than this consumptive who had constantly to use his will to keep himself from letting go. {187} CHAPTER XII THE WILL IN PNEUMONIA "Who shall stay you?--My will, not all the world." _Hamlet_. What is true of tuberculosis and the influence of the will has proved to be still more true, if possible, of pneumonia. Clinical experience with the disease in recent years has not brought to us any remedy that is of special value, nor least of all of specific significance, but it has enabled us to understand how individual must be the treatment of patients suffering from pneumonia. We have recognized above all that mentally disturbing factors which lessen the patient's courage and will to live may prove extremely serious. We hesitate about letting an older person suffering from pneumonia learn any bad news and particularly any announcement of the death of a near relative, above all, a husband or wife. The shock and depression consequent upon any such announcement may {188} prove serious or even fatal. The heart needs all its power to accomplish its difficult task of forcing blood through the limited space left free in the unaffected lung tissue, and anything which lessens that, that is anything which _disheartens_ the patient, to use our expressive English phrase, must be avoided as far as possible. When a man of fifty or beyond, one or more of whose friends has died of pneumonia about his age, comes down with the disease and learns, as he often will in spite of the best directed effort to the contrary, that he is suffering from the affection, if he is seriously disturbed by the knowledge, we realize that it bodes ill for the course of the disease. If a pneumonia patient, especially beyond middle life, early in the case expresses the thought that perhaps this may be the end and clings at all insistently to that idea, the physician is almost sure to feel little confidence of pulling him through the illness. In probably no disease is it more important that the patient's courage should be kept up and that his will should help rather than hamper. Courage is above all necessary in pneumonia because the organs that are most affected and have most to do with his recovery are so much {189} under the control of the emotions. Any emotional disturbance will cause the heart to be affected to some extent and the respiration to be altered in some way. When a pneumonia patient has to lie for days watching his respirations at forty to the minute, though probably he has never noticed them before, and feels how his heart is laboring, no wonder that he gets scared, and yet his scare is the very worst thing that can happen to him. It will further disturb both his heart and his respiration and leave him with less energy to overcome the affection. He may be tempted to make conscious efforts to help his lungs in their work, though any such attempt will almost surely do more harm than good. He must just face the inevitable for some five to nine days, hope for the best all the time and keep up his courage so as not to disturb his heart. After middle life only the patients who are capable of doing that will survive the trial that pneumonia gives. The super-abounding energy of the young man will carry him through it much better; and besides, the young man usually has much less solicitude as to the future and much less depending on his recovery. A generation ago or even less, whiskey or {190} brandy or some form of strong, alcoholic stimulant, as it was called, was looked upon as the sheet anchor in pneumonia. For a generation or more at that time, the same remedy had been looked upon by a great many physicians as an extremely precious resource in the treatment of tuberculosis. The therapeutic theory behind the practice was that in affections of the lungs a particular strain was placed upon the heart and therefore this organ needed to be stimulated just as far as could be done with safety. As alcohol increases the rapidity of the heart beat, it was considered to be surely a stimulant and came to be looked upon as the safest of heart stimulants, because, except when used over very long periods, direct bad effects had not been noticed. In pneumonia, above all, the heart needed to be stimulated because it had to pump blood through the portion of the lungs unaffected by the pneumonia, usually congested and offering special hindrances to the circulation; besides, a much larger amount of blood than usual had to be pumped through these portions of the lungs in order to compensate for the solidified portions. A number of very experienced physicians came to be quite sure that alcoholic stimulants {191} were the most valuable remedy that we had for this special purpose of cardiac stimulation; some of them went so far as to say, with a well known New York clinician, that if they were to be offered all the drugs of the pharmacopeia without alcoholic stimulant for the treatment of pneumonia on the one hand, or whiskey or brandy on the other without all the pharmacals, they would prefer to take the alcohol, confident that it would save more patients for them. They were quite sure that they had made observations which justified them in this conclusion. We know at the present time that alcohol is not a stimulant but always a narcotic. It increases the rapidity of the heart beat, though not by direct stimulation, but by disturbing the inhibitory nerve apparatus of the heart and thus permitting the heart to beat faster. Just as there is a governor on a steam engine, to keep it from going too fast and regulate its speed to a definite range, so there is a similar governing apparatus or mechanism in connection with the heart. It is by affecting this that alcohol makes the heart go faster. Blood pressure is not raised, but on the contrary lowered, and the effect of alcohol is depression and not stimulation. {192} In spite of this, good observers seemed to note favorable effects from the use of alcohol in both pneumonia and tuberculosis. This appears to be a paradox until one analyzes the psychic effects of alcohol and places them alongside the physical, in order to determine the ultimate equation of the influence of the substance. Alcohol has a very definite tendency to produce a state of euphoria, that is, of well-being. The patient's mind is brought to where it dismisses solicitude with regard to himself. This neutralizes directly the anxiety which so often acts as a definite brake upon resistive vitality. The alcoholic stimulant, in so far as it has any physical effect, probably does a little harm, but its influence on the mind of the patient not only serves to neutralize this, but adds distinctly to the patient's prospects of recovery. Without it, the dread which comes over him paralyzes to some extent at least his heart activity and interferes with lung action. Under the influence of alcohol, he gains courage--artificial, it is true--but still enough to put _heart_ in him, and this is the stimulation that the older clinical observers noted. The patient can, with the scare lifted, use his will to be well {193} ever so much more effectively and psychic factors are neutralized that were hampering his resistive vitality. This illustrates very well indeed the place of dilute alcohol in some of the usual forms in therapeutics about the middle of the nineteenth century. Practically all the textbooks of medicine at that time recommended alcohol for many of the continued fevers. In sepsis, in child-bed fever, in typhoid, in typhus, as well as in tuberculosis and pneumonia and other less common affections, whiskey or brandy was recommended highly and usually given in considerable quantities. All of these affections are likely to be accompanied by considerable anxiety and solicitude with a series of recurring dreads that sadly interfere with nature's efforts toward recovery. Under certain circumstances, the scare, to use the plain, simple word, was sufficient to turn the scale against the patient. The giving of whiskey at least lifted the scare [Footnote 5] {194} and enabled the patient to use his vital resources to best advantage. [Footnote 5: The use of whiskey for snake-bite probably has no other significance than this lifting of the scare. It used to be said that the alcoholic stimulation neutralized the depressant effect of snake poisoning on the heart. Now we know that this is not true, and in addition, we know of no effect that alcohol in the system might have in neutralizing the presence of the toxic albumin which constitutes the danger in snake poisoning. It is only rarely that the bite of a rattlesnake will be fatal. Experts declare that the snake must be a large one, its sting must be inflicted on the bare skin, it must not have stung any one so as to empty its poison glands for more than twenty-four hours, and the full dose of the poison must be injected beneath the skin for the bite to be fatal. Very rarely are all these conditions fulfilled. When a person is bitten by a snake, however, the terror which ensues is quite sufficient of itself to hurt the patient seriously and he may scare himself to death, though the snake poison would not have killed him. The whiskey lifts the scare and gives nature a chance to neutralize the poison which she can usually do successfully.] It is extremely important, then, first to be sure that the patient's will to be well is not hampered by unfortunate psychic factors and secondly, that his courage shall be stimulated to the greatest possible degree. Fresh air is the most important adjuvant for this that we have. The outdoor air gives a man the courage to dissipate dreads and makes him feel that he can accomplish what seemed impossible before. Undoubtedly this is one of the favorable effects of the fresh-air treatment of pneumonia, for it makes people mentally ever so much less morbid. The patient's surroundings must be made as encouraging as possible and there must be no signs of anxious solicitude, no long faces, no weeping, and as far as possible, no disturbance about business affairs that might make him think that a fatal termination was {195} feared. His will to get well must be fostered in every possible way and obstacles removed. This is why it has been so well said in recent years that good nursing is the most important part of the treatment of pneumonia. This does not mean that a good nurse can replace a physician, but that both must coordinate their efforts to making the patient just as comfortable as possible, so that he will feel assured that everything that should be, is being done for him, and that it is only a question of being somewhat uncomfortable for a few days and he will surely get well. Sunny rooms, smiling faces, flowers at his bedside, cheerful greetings, all these, by adding to the patient's euphoria, bolster up his will and make him feel that after all, thousands of people have suffered from pneumonia and recovered from it, and there is no reason why he should not, provided that he will not interfere with his own recovery. {196} CHAPTER XIII COUGHS AND COLDS "The power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills." _Othello_. It might seem as though the will had nothing to do with such very material ailments as coughs and colds, and yet the more one knows about them, the clearer it becomes that their symptoms can be lessened, their duration shortened, their tendencies to complications modified, and to some extent at least, they can be almost literally thrown off by the will to be well. The idea of a little more than a generation ago that coughs and colds would be most benefited by confinement to the house and as far as possible to a room of an absolutely equable temperature has gradually given way before the success of the open-air treatment for tuberculosis and the meaning of fresh air in the management of pneumonia cases. Fresh, cold air is always beneficial to the lungs, no matter what the conditions present in them, though it requires {197} no little courage and will power to face the practical application of that conclusion in many cases. When it is bravely faced, however, the results are most satisfactory, and the respiratory condition, if amenable to therapeutics, is relieved or proceeds to get better. Of course it is well understood that any and every patient who has a rise in temperature, that is whose temperature is above 100° F. in the later afternoon hours, should be in bed. Under no circumstances must a person with any degree of fever move around. This does not mean, however, that such patients should not be subjected to fresh, cold air. The windows in their room or the ward in which they are treated should be open, and if the condition is at all prolonged, arrangements should be made for wheeling their beds out on the balcony or placing them close to a window. The cold air gives them distinctly chilly feelings and sometimes they complain of this, but they must be asked to stand it. Of course if the cold disturbs their circulation, if the feet and hands get cold and the lips blue, the patients are not capable of properly reacting against the cold and must not be subjected to it. Their subjective feelings of chilliness, however, must {198} not be sufficient to keep them from the ordeal of cold, fresh air; on the contrary, they must be told of the benefit they will receive from it and asked to exert their wills to stand the discomfort with just as little disturbance as possible. People suffering from coughs, no matter how severe, should get out into the air regularly, if they have no fever, and should go on with their regular occupation unless that occupation is very confining or is necessarily conducted in dusty air. Keeping to the house only prolongs the affection and makes it much more liable to complications than would otherwise be the case. Sufferers from these affections should not go into crowds, should avoid the theaters and crowded cars, partly for the sake of others--because they can readily convey their affection to them--but also for their own sake, because they are more susceptible to other forms of bacteria than those already implanted in their own systems and they are much more liable to pick up foreign bacteria in crowds than anywhere else. They should be out in the open air, particularly in the sunlight, and this will do more to shorten the course of a cough and cold than anything else. {199} They need more sleep than before and should be in bed at least ten or eleven hours in the day, though if they should not sleep during all of that time, they need not feel disturbed but may read or knit or do something else that will occupy them while they retain a recumbent position. They should not indulge in long, tiresome walks and in special exertion, but should postpone these until the cough has given definite signs of beginning to remit. With regard to the cough itself, it must not be forgotten that the action of coughing is for the special purpose of removing material that needs to be cleared from the lungs and the throat and larynx. It should not be indulged in except for that purpose. It requires a special effort, and while the lungs and other respiratory passages are the subject of a cold, these extra efforts should not be demanded of them unless they are absolutely necessary. Almost needless to say, people indulge in a great deal of unnecessary coughing. Some of this is a sort of habit and some of it is due to that tendency to imitate, so common in mankind. Every one has surely heard during religious services, in a pause just after heads have been bowed in prayer or for a {200} benediction, a single cough from a distant part of the church which seemed to be almost the signal for a whole battery of coughs that followed immediately from every portion of the edifice. If some one begins coughing during a sermon or discourse, others will almost inevitably follow. Coughing, like yawning, is very liable to imitation. The famous rule of an old-time German physician was that no one was justified in coughing or scratching the head unless these activities were productive. Unless you get something as the result of the coughing, it should not be indulged in. There are a great many people who cough much more than necessary and who delay the progress of their betterment in that way. Whenever material is present to be coughed up, coughing is not only proper but almost indispensable. It is the imitative cough, the coughs which indicate overconsciousness of one's affection, the coughs that so often almost unconsciously are meant to catch the sympathy of those around, which must be repressed by the will, and when the patient finds that he really has to cough less than he thinks, he will be quite sure that he is getting better and will actually improve as a consequence of this feeling. {201} Coughs need an abundance of fluid much more than medicine, and warm fluids are better than cold; the will must be exercised so as to secure the taking of these regularly. At least a quart of warm liquid, milk if one is not already overweight, should be taken between meals during the existence of a cough. Hot milk taken at night will very often secure much better rest with ever so much less coughing than would otherwise be the case. The tendency to take cough remedies which lessen the cough by their narcotic effect always does harm. Coughing is a necessary evil in connection with coughs, and whatever suppression there is should be accomplished by means of the will. Remedies that lessen the coughing also lock up the secretions and disturb the system generally and therefore prolong the affection and do the patient harm. Most of the remedies that are supposed to choke off a cough have the same effect. Quinine and whiskey have been very popular in this regard but always do harm rather than good. Their use is a relic of the time when whiskey was employed for almost every form of continued fever and when quinine was supposed to be good for every febrile affection. We know now that quinine has no effect {202} except upon malarial fevers, and then only by killing the malarial organism, and that whiskey is a narcotic and not a stimulant and does harm rather than good. Those who did not take the familiar Q. and W. have in recent years had the habit of administering to themselves or to their friends various laxative or anodyne or antiphlogistic remedies that are supposed to abort a cough or cold and above all, prevent complications. All of these remedies do harm. Every single one of them, even if it makes the patient a little more comfortable for the time, produces a condition that prevents the system from throwing off the infection which the cold represents as well and as promptly as it otherwise would. It requires a good deal of will power to keep from taking the many remedies which friends and sometimes relatives insist on offering us whenever a cold is developing, but the thing to do is to summon the will power and bravely refuse them. Medicine knows no remedies that will abort a cold. The use of brisk purgatives, sometimes to an extent which weakens the patient very much the next day, is simply a relic of the time when every patient was treated with antimony {203} or calomel and free purgation was supposed to be almost as much of a cure-all as blood-letting. There is no reason in the world to think that the emptying of food out of the bowels will do any particular good, unless there is some definite indication that the food material present there should be removed because it is producing some deleterious effect. The longer a physician is in the practice of medicine the less he tries to abort infectious diseases, and coughs and colds are, of course, just infections. They must run their course, and the one thing essential is to put the patient in as good condition as possible so that his resistive vitality will enable him to throw off the infection as quickly as possible. It requires a good deal of exercise of will power on the part of the physician to keep from running after the many will-o'-the-wisps of treatment that are supposed to be so effective in shortening the course of disease, but any physician who looks back at the end of twenty years will know that his patients have reason to be thankful to him just in proportion as he has avoided running after the fads and fancies of current medicine and conservatively tried to treat his patients rather than cure their diseases. The patient is ever so much {204} more important than his disease, no matter what the disease may be. Above all, for the cure and prevention of coughs and colds people must not be afraid of cold, fresh air. A good many seem to fear that any exposure to cold air while one has a cough may bring about pneumonia or some other serious complication. It must not be forgotten, however, that the pneumonia months in the year occur in the fall and the spring, October and November and March and April producing most deaths from the disease, and not December, January and February. The large city in this country which may be said to have the fewest deaths from pneumonia is Montreal, where the temperature during December and January is often almost continuously below zero for weeks at a time and where there is snow on the ground for three or four months in succession. The highest death rate from pneumonia is to be found in some of our southern cities which have rather mild winters and rather equable temperature,--that is, no considerable variation in the daily temperature range. Cold air is bracing and tonic for the lungs and enables them to resist the microbe of pneumonia, and it is now recognized {205} by physicians that personal immunity is a much more important factor in the prevention of the disease than anything else. Coughs and colds and bronchitis and pneumonia, the respiratory diseases generally, are much less frequent in very cold climates than in variable regions. Arctic explorers are but rarely troubled by them, even though they may be exposed to extremely low temperatures for months. Men subjected to blizzards at thirty and forty degrees below zero may have fingers and toes frozen but do not have respiratory affections. Some years ago, it was noted that one of these Arctic expeditions had spent nearly two years within the Arctic Circle without suffering from bronchial or throat disease and within a month after their return in the spring most of them had had colds. Nansen and his men actually returned from the Arctic regions where they had been in excellent health during two severe winters to be confined to their beds with grippy colds within a week of their restoration to civilization, with its warm comfortable homes and that absolute absence of chill which is connected in so many people's minds with the thought of coughs and colds. The principal reason why colds are so {206} frequent in the winter time in our cities and that pneumonia has increased so much is mainly because people are afraid of standing a little cold. Office buildings are now heated up to seventy degrees to make the personnel absolutely comfortable even on the coldest days, and as a consequence the air is so dry that it is more arid--that is more lacking in water vapor, as the United States Public Health Service pointed out--than Death Valley, Arizona, in summer. People dress too warmly, anticipating wintry days and often getting milder weather and thus making themselves susceptible to chilling because the skin is so warm that the blood is attracted to the surface. Will power to stand cold, even though at a little cost of discomfort, is the best preventive of coughs and colds and their complications and the best remedy for them, once the acute febrile stage has passed. {207} CHAPTER XIV NEUROTIC ASTHMA AND THE WILL "Great minds of partial indulgence To their benumbed wills." _Troilus and Cressida_. In closing a clinical lecture on bronchial asthma at the University of Marburg some years ago, Professor Friedrich Müller, who afterwards became professor at Berlin, said, "Each asthmatic patient is a problem by himself and must be studied as such; meantime, it must not be forgotten what an important rôle suggestion plays in the treatment of the disease." This represents very probably the reason why so many remedies have been recommended for asthma and have proved very successful in the hands of their inventors or discoverers as regards the first certain number of patients who use them, and yet on subsequent investigation have turned out to be of no special therapeutic value and sometimes indeed to have no physical effect of any significance. {208} Of course this is said with regard to neurotic asthma only, and must not be applied too particularly to other forms of the affection, though there is no doubt at all that the symptoms of even the most severe cases of organic asthma can be very much modified and often very favorably, by suggestive methods. The principal feature of asthma is a special form of severe difficulty in breathing. It is known now that the beginning of the affection is always as Strumpell said, "an extensive and quite rapid contraction of the smaller and smallest bronchial branches, that is the terminal twigs of the bronchial tubes." It is not so much air hunger, though there is, of course, an element of that because the lungs are not functioning properly, as an inability to empty the lungs of air already there and get more for respiratory purposes. The spasm in asthma has a tendency to hold the lungs too full of air and produce the feeling of their getting ever fuller and fuller. What the old sea captain said in the midst of his attack of asthma, when somebody sympathized with him because he had so much difficulty in getting his breath, was that he had lots of breath and would like to get rid of some of it. {209} He added, "If I ever get all this breath that's in me now out of me, I'll never draw another breath so long as I live, so help me." The respiration spasm is usually at full inspiration and the effort is mainly directed toward expiration and expulsion of air present using the accessory respiratory muscles for that purpose. The picture of a man suffering from asthma is that of a patient so severely ill as to be very disturbing to one not accustomed to seeing it. It would be almost impossible for any one not used to the attacks to think that in an hour or two at the most the patient would be quite comfortable and if he is accustomed to the attacks, that he will be walking around the next day almost as if nothing had happened. All that the affection consists in is a spasm of the bronchioles and as soon as that lets up, the patient will be himself again. Some material may have accumulated during the time when the spasm was on which will still need to be disposed of, and there will be, of course, tiredness of muscles unaccustomed to be used in that special way, but that will be all. We are still in the dark as to what causes the spasms but undoubtedly psychic factors {210} play an important etiological rôle. For a good many people, there is a distinct element of dread as the immediate cause of their asthmatic attacks. Some people have it only when they have gone through some disturbing neurotic experience. Occasionally it is the result of physical factors combined with some psychic element. Cat asthma is not very uncommon and occurs as a consequence of some contact by the individual with a specimen of the cat tribe though usually the large cats, the lions and tigers, do not cause it. There is nearly always, in those who are liable to this form of asthma, a special detestation of cats. There is probably some emanation from the animal which produces the asthmatic fever, just as is true also of horses in those cases where horse asthma occurs. In a few of these latter cases, however, it was noted that the horse asthma did not begin until after there had been some terrifying experience in connection with the horse, as a runaway, a collision, or something of that kind. Any one who sees many asthmatic cases inevitably gets the impression after a time that their very dread of the attacks has not a little to do with predisposing them. {211} Occasionally the dread is associated with some other organic disturbance, either of heart or kidneys, or oftener still, with some solicitude with regard to these organs and the persuasion that there is something serious the matter with them, though there is at most only some functional disturbance. This is particularly true of cases of palpitation of the heart where there has been considerable dread of organic heart disease. In a certain number of these cases, there is some emphysema present, that is, overdistention of the lungs, such as is seen in high-chested people. Owing to the long anterio-posterior diameter of the chest and the fact that as a consequence it is nearly as thick through as it is wide, this form of chest is sometimes spoken of as barrel-chest. Patients who have it are particularly likely to suffer from asthma if they have any dread of heart trouble or if they are of a nervous constitution. I have known people with the dread of the dark to get an attack of asthma if they were asked to sleep alone after having been accustomed for years to sleep with somebody in the room. I have known even a physician to have attacks of asthma of quite typical character as the result of a dread of being {212} out after dark which had gradually come over him. I have had a physician patient who was very uncomfortable if alone on the streets of New York, even during the day, and whose symptoms at their worst were distinctly dyspneic or asthmatic. He used to have to bring his wife with him whenever he came to see me for he lived out in one of the neighboring towns, because he was so afraid that he might get an asthmatic attack that would overcome him and he would feel helpless without some one to aid him. In practically all these cases, the treatment of asthma becomes largely that of treating the accompanying dread. Once the acute symptoms of the attack itself manifest themselves, they have to be treated in any way that experience has shown will relieve the patient. The general condition, however, needs very often an awakening of the will to regulate the life, to get out into the air more than before, to avoid disturbing neurotic elements, and worrying conditions of various kinds. Thin people need to be made to gain in weight, using their will for that purpose; stout people who eat too much and take too little exercise need to have their lives {213} regulated in the opposite direction. In the meantime, anything that arouses the patient to believe firmly that his condition will be improved by some remedy or mode of treatment, will help him to make the intervals between attacks longer and the attacks themselves less disturbing. The will undoubtedly plays a distinct role in this matter which patients who have been through a series of asthmatic attacks recognize very clearly. The many remedies for asthma which have been lauded highly even by physicians, and that have cured or relieved a great many patients and yet after a while have proved to be without much beneficial effect, make it very clear how much the affection depends on the will power to face it and throw it off. Nothing will be curative in asthma unless the patient has confidence in his power and uses his own will energy to help it. He must overcome the element of dread which occurs in connection with all asthmatic attacks, even those due to organic disease of heart or kidneys. No matter how frequent the attacks have been, there is always an element of fright that enters into an affection which interferes with the respiration. This must {214} be overcome by psychic means to help out the physical remedies that are employed. Sometimes the psychic remedies will succeed of themselves where more material means have failed completely. {215} CHAPTER XV THE WILL IN INTESTINAL FUNCTION "Ill will never said well." _Henry V_. During the past generation, the appreciation of the relative part played by the stomach and intestines in digestion has completely changed. Our forefathers considered the stomach the all-important organ of digestion and the intestines as scarcely more than a long tube to facilitate absorption and deal properly with waste materials. Their relative values are now exactly reversed in our estimation. The stomach has come to be looked upon as scarcely more than a thin-walled bag meant to hold the food that we take at each meal and then pass it on by degrees to be digested, prepared for absorption and finally absorbed in the intestines. It has comparatively little to do with such alteration of the food as prepares it to be absorbed. Its motor function is much more important than its secretory function and serious stomach troubles are {216} dependent on disturbances of stomach motility. Contractions at the pyloric orifice, that is the passageway from the stomach into the intestines, will cause the retention of food and seriously interfere with health. The dilatation of the stomach for any reason may produce a like result and these are the stomach affections that need special care. If the stomach will only pass the food on properly, the intestines will do the rest. A number of people have been found in the course of routine stomach examinations who proved to have no secretory function of the stomach and yet suffered no symptoms at all attributable to this fact. The condition is well known and is called _achylia gastrica_, that is, failure of the stomach to manufacture chyle, the scientific term for food changed by stomach secretions. Our stomachs are only meant, apparently, to provide a reservoir for food that will save us the necessity of eating frequently during the day, as the herbivorous and graminivorous animals have to do, and enable us to store away enough food to provide nutrition for five or six hours. We thus have the leisure to occupy ourselves with other things besides eating and drinking. This conclusion as to the relative {217} significance of the stomach and digestion is confirmed by the fact that removal of the whole stomach or practically all of it for cancer has in a number of well known cases been followed by gain in weight and general improvement in health. Schlatter's case, the very first one in which nearly the whole stomach was removed, proved a typical instance of this, for the patient proceeded to gain some forty pounds in weight. She had lost this during the course of the growth of a cancer and its interference with stomach motility. It was necessary, however, for her to be fed, rather carefully, well-chosen foods usually in liquid form, and every hour and a half instead of at longer intervals. Her intestines were thus spared from overloading and proceeded to do the work of digestion for which they are so well provided by abundant secretion poured into them from the large glands, the liver and the pancreas, as well as the series of small glands in their own walls all of which were manifestly meant to do extremely important work. In the increased estimation of the significance of the digestive functions of the intestines which has come in recent years, there has been a tendency, as always in human {218} affairs, for the pendulum to swing too far. Above all, certain phases of intestinal function have come to occupy too much attention and to be the subject of oversolicitude. Whenever this happens, whatever function it concerns is sure to be interfered with. Attention has been concentrated to a great extent on evacuation of the bowels and the consequences have been rather serious. A great many people whose intestinal functions were proceeding quite regularly have had their attention called to the fact that any sluggishness of the intestines may be the source of disturbing symptoms and the beginning of even serious morbid conditions. As a consequence, they pay a great deal of attention to the matter and before long become so solicitous that the elimination of waste materials from the intestines is interfered with. Above all, they may be led to pick and choose their foods so delicately that there is not the necessary waste material left to encourage peristalsis. The result is that to some extent at least, intestinal function would almost seem to have broken down in our day. Everywhere one sees advertisements of medicines and remedies and treatments of various kinds that will aid in the evacuation of the bowels. {219} Most of them are guaranteed to be perfectly harmless and all of them are pleasant to take, they work while you are doing nothing else and are just engaged in saving mankind not only suffering but complications of various kinds that may lead to serious results. Some years ago, when Matthew Arnold was in this country, he declared in one of his lectures that what the world needed was "leading and light," but a well known American physician who is closely in touch with American life declared not long since that what we needed in America manifestly, if advertisements were any index of the needs of a people, was laxatives and more laxatives. Advertisements cost money; it is said that at least four times as much as the advertising costs must be spent by the public on any object advertised in order to make it pay, so that very probably nearly a billion of dollars a year is spent in this country on laxatives. Only whiskey and tobacco present a higher bill to the American people annually. Practically all of the laxative medicines do harm if taken over a prolonged period. Over and over again physicians have found that laxative remedies introduced even by scientists, with the assurance that they were quite {220} harmless and had no undesirable after effects proved the source of annoying or even serious symptoms after a while. It is true that when constipation has become habitual, it may be necessary to give laxative medicines for a prolonged period, but this is only another instance of the necessity that is often presented to the physician of choosing between two evils and trying to find the lesser one. Even the heavy oil that has become so popular in recent years has been found on careful investigation and prolonged observation to have certain undesirable effects and it must not be forgotten that it has not been used generally for a sufficiently long time for us to be absolutely sure what its sequelae may be. This breakdown of intestinal activity is not the fault of nature but of men and women who have been thinking to improve on the natural laws of living. As the result of improvements in diet and refinements in cooking and the preparation of foods, less and less of their roughage is left in our articles of food when sent to the table. It is on this roughage or waste material that intestinal movement or peristalsis depends. If we eat perfectly white bread, cut all the gristle and fatty materials from our meat, carefully eliminating {221} the connective tissue bundles that may occur in it, eat our vegetables mainly in the shape of purees and avoid to a great extent all the coarser varieties, such as parsnips and carrots and beets, we provide very little material for the intestines to carry on and aid them in the elimination of other wastes. If, besides, we always ride and do not walk, and so have none of that precious jolting which occurs every time the heel comes down, and if we have no bending movements in our lives, no wonder that intestinal movement becomes sluggish and we have to supply stimulants and irritants to get it to do its work. Intestinal evacuation is very largely a matter of will. There are very few people so constituted by nature that they will not have regular movements sufficient to maintain their digestive tracts in excellent health, if they form the right habits. They must, however, make up their minds, that is their wills, to restore coarse materials to their diet. They must eat whole wheat or graham bread, must eat fruit regularly and usually eat the skins of the fruit with it, that is as far as apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums and the like are concerned. Even as regards oranges, it is probable that the eating of occasional {222} pieces of orange peel is an excellent means of helping intestinal functions and providing waste material. [Footnote 6 ] [Footnote 6: A curious discovery has been made in recent years that orange skin contains a very precious element essential for bodily health, belonging to the class of substances known as the vitamines and contains more of it than any other food material that we have. The instinct which tempted so many of us as children to eat orange skin, in spite of the fact that we were discouraged from the practice, was founded on something much more than mere childish caprice. Orange skin is after all the basis of marmalade which has been so commonly used by the English people at breakfast and which is at once a tasty and healthful material.] When baked potatoes are taken, the skin should be eaten, mainly because of the waste material it provides, but also because just underneath the skin and sure to be removed with it if it is taken off, there are certain salts and other substances that are excellent for health and particularly for digestion. Besides, the carbonized material which so often occurs on baked potatoes is of itself a good thing. It represents some of that charcoal which in recent years French physicians particularly have found very valuable as a remedy for certain disturbances of intestinal digestion. The removal of parings from fruit and vegetables and the careful trimming of meat, have taken out of human diet the materials which meant most for intestinal movements for former generations, and they {223} have to be supplied artificially by means of irritant drugs, salts, oils and the like, to the detriment of function. The other element in the modern situation as regards the failure of intestinal function is the lack of fluids. People who live indoors are not tempted to take so much water as those who work outside and yet in our modern, steam-heated houses they often need more. Our heating systems take much more water from us than the former methods of heating. The result is seen in our furniture that comes apart from dryness and in our books and other things which crack and deteriorate. Something of the same thing happens to human beings unless they supply sufficient fluids. For this it is necessary deliberately to make up the mind, which always means the will, to consume five or six glasses of water between meals and especially to take one on rising in the morning and another on going to bed. This should _not_ be hot and above all not lukewarm water, but fresh cold water which stimulates peristalsis. The creation of a habit is needed in the matter or it will be neglected. I have sometimes given patients some harmless drug, like a lithium salt, that was to be taken three or four times a day in a full glass of {224} water, in order to be sure that they would take the water. They were willing to take the medicine but I could not be assured that without it they would drink the amount of water that I counselled. Above all, a regular habit of going to the toilet at a definite time every day must be created. Nothing is so important. In little children, even from their very early years, such a habit can be established; it is only necessary to put them on their chairs at certain times in the day and the desired result will follow. Adults are merely children of a larger growth in this matter, and the habit of going regularly is all-important. A little patience is needed, though there should be no forcing, and after a time, a very satisfactory habit can be established in this manner. It seems almost impossible to many people that anything so simple should prove to be remedial for what to them for a time seemed so serious a disturbance of health, but only a comparatively short trial of the method will be sufficient to demonstrate its value. A book or newspaper may be taken with one, or Lord Chesterfield's advice to learn a page of Horace which may afterwards be sent down as an offering to Libitina, the goddess of secret {225} places, may be followed, but the mind must not be diverted too much from the business in hand, and the will must be afforded an opportunity to exert its power. It is true that the muscular elements of the intestines consist of unstriped muscles and that they are involuntary, and yet experience and observation have shown that the will has a certain indirect influence even over involuntary muscle. The heart, though entirely involuntary in its regular activities, can be deeply influenced by the will and the emotions, as the words encouraging and discouraging, or the equivalent Saxon words heartening and disheartening, make very clear. Undoubtedly the peristaltic functions of the intestines can be encouraged by a favorable attitude of the will towards them. Above all, it is important that the anxious solicitude which a great many people have and foster sedulously with regard to the effect of even slight disturbances of intestinal functions should be overcome. We have discussed this question in the chapter on dreads and need only say here that the delay of a few hours in the evacuation of the bowels or even the missing entirely of an intestinal movement for a full day occasionally, will {226} usually not disturb the general health to any notable extent, and that the symptoms so often attributed to these slight disturbances of intestinal function are much more due to the solicitude about them than to any physical effect. There are a great many people whose intestinal functions are quite sluggish and whose movements occur only every second day or so, who are in perfectly good health and strength and have no symptoms attributable to any absorption of supposed toxic materials from the intestines. Indeed, in recent years, the idea of intestinal auto-toxemia has lost more and more in popularity for it has come to be recognized that the symptoms attributed to this condition are due in a number of cases to serious organic disease in other parts of the body, and in a great many cases to functional nervous troubles and to the psycho-neuroses, especially the oversolicitude with regard to the intestines. The will is needed then for intestinal function to regulate the diet, to increase the quantity of fluid, to secure regular habits and to eliminate worry and anxiety which interferes with intestinal peristalsis. There are but very few cases that will not yield to this discipline of the will when properly and persistently tried. {227} CHAPTER XVI THE WILL AND THE HEART "For what I will, I will, and there an end." _Two Gentlemen of Verona_. The heart is the _primum movens_, the first tissue of the body that moves of itself in the animal organism, doing so rhythmically and of course continuously before the nervous system develops in the embryo. This spontaneous activity would seem to place it quite beyond the control of the will, as of course it is, so far as the continuance of its essential activity goes, but there is probably no organ that is so much influenced by the emotions and comes indirectly under the influence of the will as the heart. There are a series of expressions in practically all languages which chronicle this fact. We talk about the encouragement and discouragement or in Saxon terms that are exactly equivalent to the French words, heartening and disheartening of the individual. At moments of panic the {228} heart can be felt to be depressed, while at times when resolve is high there is a sense of well-being in connection with the firm action of the heart that flows over into the organism and makes everything seem easy of accomplishment. There are a number of heart conditions that depend for their existence and continuance on a sense of discouragement, that is oversolicitude with regard to the heart. If something calls attention to that organ, the fact that it is so important for life and health and that anything the matter with it may easily prove serious, will sometimes precipitate a feeling of panic that is reflected in the heart and adds to the symptoms noted. The original disturbing heart sensation may be due to nothing more than some slight distention of the stomach by gas, or by a rather heavy meal, but once the dread of the presence of a heart condition of some kind comes over the individual, all the subjective feelings in the cardiac region are emphasized and the discouragement that results further disturbs both heart and patient. Palpitation of the heart is scarcely more than a solicitous noting of the fact that the heart is beating. In certain cases, under the {229} stress of emotion, the heart beat-rate may be faster than normal, but in a number of people who complain of palpitation, no rapid heart action is noted. What has happened is that something having called particular attention to the heart, the beating of the organ gets above the threshold of consciousness and then continues to be noted whenever attention is given it. This is of itself quite sufficient to cause a sense of discomfort in the heart region and there may be, owing to the solicitude about the organ, a great deal of complaint. Just one thing is absolutely necessary in the treatment of these cases, once it is found that there is no organic condition present. The patient's will must be stimulated to divert the attention from the heart and to keep solicitude from disturbing both that organ and the patient himself. It is not always easy to accomplish this, but where the patient has confidence in the diagnosis and the assurance that nothing serious is the matter, a contrary habit that will overcome the worry with regard to the heart can be formed. For it must not be forgotten that in these cases a series of acts of solicitous attention has been performed which has created a habit that can only be overcome by the opposite habit. {230} It is surprising how much discomfort this simple affection, due to a functional disturbance of the heart and overattention to it, may produce and how much it may interfere with the usual occupation. It is a case, however, simply of willing to be better, and nothing else will accomplish the desired result. At times the mistake is made of giving such patients a heart remedy, perhaps digitalis, but this only emphasizes the unfavorable suggestion and besides, by stimulating heart action, sometimes brings it more into the sphere of consciousness than before and actually does harm. There is a form of this functional disturbance of the heart which reaches a climax of power to disturb and then is sometimes spoken of as spurious _angina pectoris_. In these cases the patient complains not only of a sense of discomfort but of actual pain over the heart region and this pain is sometimes spoken of as excruciating. Occasionally the pain will be reflected down the left arm which used to be considered the pathognomic sign of true _angina pectoris_ but is not. Sometimes the pain is reflected in the neck on the left side or at times is noted at the angle of the scapula behind. When these symptoms occur {231} in young persons and particularly in young women, there is no reason to think for a moment of their being due to true _angina pectoris_, which is a spasm of the heart muscle consequent upon the degeneration of the coronary arteries, the blood vessels which feed the heart itself, and occurs almost exclusively in the old, and much more commonly in old men. The pain of true _angina pectoris_ is often said to be perhaps the worst torture that humanity has to bear. As a rule, however, it is very prostrating and so genuine sufferers from it are not loud in their complaints. Their suffering is more evident in their faces than in their voices. Indeed, it has come to be looked upon as a rule by the English clinicians and heart experts that the more fuss there is made, the less likelihood there is of the affection being true _angina pectoris_. When there is pain in the heart region then, especially in young or comparatively young women, of which great complaint is made, it is almost surely to be considered spurious _angina_, even though there may be reflex pain down the arm as well as the impending sense of death which used to be considered distinctive of the genuine _angina pectoris_. {232} The treatment of true _angina_ depends to some extent on inspiring the patient with courage, for it is needed to carry him through the very serious condition to which he is subjected. The psychic element is important, though the drug treatment by the nitrites and especially amyl nitrite is often very effective. In spurious _angina_, the will is the all-important element. There is some irritation of the heart muscle but it is mainly fright that exaggerates the pain and then concentration of attention on it makes it seem very serious. The one thing that is all important is to relieve patients from the solicitude which comes upon them with regard to their hearts and which prevents them from suppressing their feelings and diverting their minds to other things. Sometimes the will is needed to bring about such a change in the habits of the individual as will furnish proper nutrition for the heart. Very often these patients are under weight, not infrequently they have been staying a great deal in the house, and both of these bad habits of living need to be corrected. Good habits of eating and exercise are above all important for the relief of the condition. For functional heart trouble, gentle exercise {233} in the open air generally must be taken, for it acts as a tonic stimulant to the heart muscle. Almost as a rule, when patients suffer from symptoms from their hearts, they are inclined to consider them a signal that they must rest and above all must not exercise to such an extent as to make the heart go faster. Rest, if indulged in to too great an extent, has a very unfavorable effect upon the heart, for the heart, like all muscles, needs exercise to keep it in good condition. One of the most important developments of heart therapeutics in our generation was the Nauheim treatment. In this, exercise is an important feature. The exercise is graduated and is pushed so as to make a definite call upon the heart's muscular power. Nauheim is situated in a little cup-shaped valley and patients are directed to walk a certain distance on one of the various roads, distances being marked by signposts every quarter of a mile or so. The walk outward, when the patient is fresh, is slightly uphill, and the return home is always downhill, which saves the patient from any undue strain. The experience at Nauheim was so favorable that many physicians took up the practice of having their heart patients exercise {234} regularly and found that it was decidedly to their benefit. If this is true for organic heart conditions, it is even more valuable for neurotic heart cases, though it often requires a good deal of exercise of will on the part of patients suffering from these affections to control their feelings and take such exercise as is needed. In men, it will often be found that the discomfort in the heart region, particularly in muscular, well-built men who have no organic condition, is due more to lack of exercise than to any other factor. This is particularly true whenever the men have taken considerable vigorous exercise when they were young and then tried to settle down to the inactive habits of a sedentary life. Athletes who have been on the teams at college, self-made men who have been hard manual laborers when they were young, even sons of farmers who take up city life are likely to suffer in this way. Their successful treatment depends more on getting exercise in the open back into their lives than on anything else, and for this a call upon the individual's will power for the establishment of the needed new habits is the essential. Former athletes who try to settle down to a very inactive life are almost sure to have {235} uncomfortable feelings in their heart region. At times it will be hard to persuade them that they have not some serious affection consequent upon some overstrain at athletics. In a few cases, this will be found to be true, but in the great majority the root of the trouble is that the heart craves exercise. A good many functional heart cases, like the neurotic indigestions, so called--are due to the fact that the heart and the stomach are not given enough to do. The renewal of exercise in the daily life--and it should be the daily life as a rule and not merely once or twice a week--will do more than anything else to relieve these cases and restore the patient's confidence. We saw during the war that a number of young men, officers even more than privates--that is, the better educated more than the less educated--suffered from shell shock so called. A good many university men may suffer from what might be termed heart shock if they find any reason to be solicitous about their hearts. These neurotic conditions can only be relieved by the will and diversion of attention. A certain number of people who suffer from missed beats of their hearts become very much perturbed about the condition of that organ. {236} Irregular heart action, and especially what has been called the irregularly irregular heart, may prove to be a serious condition. There are a number of regular irregularities of heart action, however, consisting particularly of the missed beat at shorter or longer intervals, which may have almost no significance at all. I know two physicians, both athletes when they were at college, who have suffered from a missed heartbeat since their early twenties. In one case it has lasted now for thirty-five years and the physician is still vigorous and hearty, capable even of running up an elevated stairway after a train without any inconvenience. Some twenty years ago there was question of his taking out a twenty-year life insurance policy and the insurance company's physician at first hesitated to accept the risk because of the missed beat. An examination made by three physicians at the home office was followed by his acceptance and he has outlived the maturity of the policy in good health and been given a renewal of it, in spite of the fact that his missed beat still persists. There is often likely to be a good deal of solicitude as to the eventual prognosis in these cases, that is as to what the prospect of {237} prolonged life is. The regularly irregular heart does not seem to make for an unfavorable prognosis. Young patients particularly who have learned that they have a missed heartbeat need to have this fact emphasized. We have the story of an important official of an American university in whom a missed beat was discovered when he was under forty. This was many years ago, and the prognosis of his condition was considered to be rather serious. The patient actually lived, however, for a little more than fifty years after the discovery of his missed beat. It is easy to understand what a favorable effect on a patient solicitous about a missed beat such a story as this will have. It heartens a patient and gives him the will power to throw off his anxieties and to keep from watching his heart and thus further interfering with its activities. There is even a possibility of life to the eighties or, as I have known at least one case, to the nineties, where the irregular heart was first noted under thirty. But it is well recognized that close concentration of attention on the heart will hamper its action. It has been demonstrated that it is possible by will power to cause the missing of heartbeats and while only those who have {238} practised the phenomenon can demonstrate it, there are a number of well-authenticated examples of it. There is no doubt, however, that anxiety about the heart will quicken or slow the pulse rate. When a patient comes to be examined for suspected heart trouble the pulse rate is almost sure to be higher than normal, even though there may be nothing the matter with the heart; the increase or decrease of the pulse beat is due to the anxiety lest some heart lesion should be discovered. This makes it necessary as a rule not to take too seriously the pulse rate that is discovered on a first consultation and makes it always advisable to wait until the patient has been reassured to some extent before the pulse rate is definitely taken. It is easy to see, then, what a large place there is for the will in heart therapeutics. Courage is an extremely important element in keeping the heart from being disturbed and maintaining it properly under control. Scares of various kinds with regard to this all-important organ are prone to get hold of people and then to disturb it. Many a heart that is actually interfered with in its activities by drugs of various kinds would respond to the awakening of the will of the patient {239} so as to control solicitudes, anxieties, dreads and the like that are acting as disturbing factors on the heart. When taken in conjunction with the will to eat and to exercise properly so often necessary in these cases, the will becomes the therapeutic agent whose power must never be forgotten, because it can always be an adjuvant even when it is not curative and can produce excellent auxiliary effects for every form of heart treatment that we have. {240} CHAPTER XVII THE WILL IN SO-CALLED CHRONIC RHEUMATISM "I should do it With much more ease; for my good will is to it." _The Tempest_. In popular estimation, rheumatism is one of the commonest of affections. When a physician asks a patient, especially if the patient is over forty years of age, "Have you ever suffered from rheumatism?" the almost invariable response is, "Yes", though but little further inquiry is needed to show that what the patient means is that he has suffered from some painful conditions in the neighborhood of his joints, or that his muscles have been sore or inclined to ache in rainy weather, or that he has undergone some other vague discomforts connected with dampness. Chronic rheumatism is a term that includes a great many of the most varied conditions. True rheumatism, that is, acute articular rheumatism, is now recognized as an infectious disease which runs a definite course, usually with {241} fever, for some ten days to ten weeks, and requires confinement to bed usually for a month or more. Very rarely will any connection be found between this affection, which presents always Galen's four classic symptoms of inflammation, swelling, redness, heat and pain (_tumor, rubor, color, et dolor_), and the usual conditions which are broadly characterized as rheumatism. Just as soon as patients are asked if their rheumatism included these symptoms there is denial, yet the idea of their having had rheumatism remains. As a matter of fact, there are a number of sore and painful conditions in connection with muscles and particularly in and around joints that have, without any scientific justification at least, been called chronic rheumatism. Any painful condition that is worse in rainy weather is sure to be so named. As old dislocations, sprains and wrenches of joints, broken bones, as well as muscular conditions of all kinds, including flat foot and other yielding of joints, all produce this effect, it is easy to understand that there is an immense jumble of all sorts of painful conditions included under the term "chronic rheumatism." Some of them, particularly in older people, produce lameness or at least inability to walk {242} distances without showing the disability; a great many of them produce distinct painful conditions during the night following the use of muscles and often disturb patients very much, because they arouse the dread that they are going to be crippled as they grow older. Indeed, one of the most serious effects of these recurring painful conditions is the dread produced lest they should cause such progressive affections in and around joints as would eventually make the patients bed-ridden. There are a certain number of cases of so-called rheumatoid arthritis which produce very serious changes in joints with inevitable crippling and quite beyond all possibility of repair. These cases are often spoken of as chronic rheumatism and it is the solicitude produced by the dread of them that makes the worst part of the discomfort in many a so-called chronic rheumatic case. If their affection is to be progressive, then the patients foresee a prolonged confinement to bed in the midst of severe pain, hopeless of ultimate cure. It may be said at once that these cases of rheumatoid arthritis have nothing to do with rheumatism, represent a special acute infection, are never a sequela of any of the rheumatic conditions and are {243} fortunately very rare. This assurance of itself is quite sufficient to make ever so much better a great many patients who feel that they suffer from rheumatism. The painful conditions that are described under the term chronic rheumatism would seem to be quite beyond any power of the will to affect. They are at least supposed to represent very definite changes in the tissues, usually of chronic character and therefore not amenable to any remedies except those of physical influence. Besides, they are so frequent that surely if there were any question of the will being able to control them or bring relief for them, most sufferers would discover this fact for themselves and apply the remedy from within. It is not to be expected that a very great many people would suffer pains and aches that are worse in rainy weather if all that was needed was the exertion of their will power either to throw off the affection or to perform such exercises and activities as would gradually make their conditions better. In general it is felt that painful conditions of this kind cannot be affected by the will and that distinctly material and not psychic therapeutics must be looked to for their relief. Now it so happens that the best illustration {244} of the power of the will to "cure" people, that is, to relieve them completely of their affections and start them afresh in life with the feeling that they are no longer handicapped by disease, is to be found exactly in the group of cases that have almost from time immemorial been called chronic rheumatisms. We have had more "cures" of various kinds announced for these--chemical, electrical, physical, hydriatic, movement therapy and so forth--than for almost any other group of diseases. More irregular practitioners of medicine all down the ages have made a reputation by curing these affections than have won renown by treating any other set of ills to which humanity is heir. Like the poor, these ills are still with us, in spite of all the "cures" and probably nowhere is the expression of the old French physician that "the therapeutics of any generation is always absurd to the second succeeding generation" better illustrated than in regard to them. These cases serve to emphasize very clearly, however, the fact that the pains and aches of mankind are largely under the control of the will. The more one studies these cases of so-called chronic rheumatism the easier it is to {245} understand how they become the signal "cures" which attract attention to the quacks and charlatans who promise much, but do nothing in particular, though they may give medicines or treatment of some kind or another. They only arouse the patient's will to be better and the determination to use his will with confidence, now that the much praised treatment is doing something which will surely make him better. Cases of this kind have constituted a goodly part of the clientele of the great historic impostors who succeeded in making large sums of money out of curing people by methods that in themselves had no curative power. A review of some of the chapters of that very interesting department of human history, the history of quackery, is extremely suggestive in that regard. The only way to get a good idea of the basic significance of these cases is to realize by what they were cured and by whom they were cured. One of the most interesting illustrations of that phase of human credulity is the story of Greatrakes, the Irish adventurer who had been a soldier in Flanders, and who when his campaigns were over set up to be a healer of mankind. He chose his opportunity during {246} the time while Cromwell, as Lord Protector of Great Britain, had refused to continue the practice of touching the ailing which the Kings of England had pursued for hundreds of years since the Confessor's time. Cromwell did not impugn the efficacy of the Royal Touch but he refused to have anything to do with it himself. Greatrakes found it an opportune moment to announce that for three nights in succession he had been told in a dream by the Holy Spirit that in the absence of the King he was to touch people and cure them. One might possibly think that with no better credentials than this and no testimony except his own claim in the matter Greatrakes would receive but scant attention. Any one who thinks so, however, does not understand human nature. It was not long before some of the people who had been sufferers for longer or shorter periods went to Greatrakes and allowed him to try his hand at healing them. They argued that at least if it did them no good it could do them no harm, and it was not long before some of them declared that they had been benefited by his ministrations. Very soon then he was able to furnish what seemed to be abundant evidence of Divine Mission in the cures {247} that were worked by his more than magic touch. Above all, people who had been sufferers for prolonged periods, who had gone the rounds of physicians, who had tried all sorts of popular remedies, and some of whom had been declared incurable were healed of their ills after a series of visits to Greatrakes. No wonder then that patients came more and more frequently, until his name went abroad in all the country and in spite of the difficulties of travel people came from long distances just to be treated by him. All that he did was to ask the patient to expose the affected part and then Greatrakes would stroke it with his hand, assure the patient that a wonderful new vitality would go into them because of his Mission from on High and promise them that they would surely get better, explaining of course that betterment would be progressive and that it would start from this very moment. The stroking was the important part of the cure and so he is known in history as "Greatrakes the Stroker." It may be said in passing that while those who were touched by the English kings in the exercise of the prerogative of the Royal Touch were usually presented with a gold coin which had been particularly {248} coined for that purpose as a memorial, a corresponding gold piece, a sovereign as a rule, in Greatrakes' method of treatment passed from the patient to the healer. It was a case of metallotherapy with extraction of the precious metal from the patient, as is always the case under such circumstances. Here in America we had a similar experience, though ours had science as the basis of the superstition in the case instead of religion. The interest aroused by Galvani's experience with the twitching of frogs' legs when exposed nerve and muscle were touched by different metals led Doctor Elisha Perkins to invent a pair of tractors which would presumedly apply Galvani's discovery to therapeutics. These were just plain pieces of metal four or five inches long, shaped more or less like a lead pencil and tapering to a blunt point. With these, as Thatcher, one of our earlier historians of medicine, tells us, Perkins succeeded in curing all sorts of ailments, but particularly many different kinds of painful conditions. He was most successful in the treatment of "pains in the head, face, teeth, breast, side, stomach, back, rheumatism and so forth." In a word, he cured the neuralgias and the rheumatic pains and the chronic {249} rheumatisms which are the source of so much trouble--and especially complaint--for the old, and which so often physicians, in any time of the world's history, have been unable to cure. For a time his success was supposed to be due to some curious electrical power that he was using. Learned pamphlets were issued to show that animal magnetism or animal electricity or Galvanism was at work. Professors at no less than three universities in America gave attestations in favor of its efficacy. Time has of course shown that there was absolutely no physical influence of any kind at work. The only appeal was to the mind. Elisha Perkins was a Yale man of education and impressive personality, "possessing by nature uncommon endowments both bodily and mental ", and he succeeded in impressing on his patients the idea that they would surely be cured; he thus overcame the dreads, released the will power, gave new hope and a tonic stimulus to appetite, created a desire for exercise, and then the will kept this up and before long the patient was cured. When animal magnetism, as it was called about the middle of the nineteenth century, {250} was practised without apparatus, one of its most important claims to the consideration of physicians was founded on its power to heal chronic painful affections which had previously resisted all therapeutic efforts. The power of neuro-hypnotism, as it came to be designated, to accomplish this, will be best appreciated from the fact that this state was being used as a mode of anaesthesia for surgical operations. When the news of the use of ether to produce narcosis for surgical purposes at the Massachusetts General Hospital first came to England, it did not attract so much attention as would otherwise have been the case, because English physicians and surgeons were just then preoccupied with the discussion of neuro-hypnotic anaesthesia, and those who believed in it thought that ether would not be necessary, while those who refused to believe thought the report with regard to ether just another of these curious self-delusions to which physicians seemed to be so liable. Perkins' declarations of the curative value of his tractors were, after all, only a succeeding phase of what Mesmer had called to the attention of the medical profession and the public in Paris not quite a generation before. Mesmer seated his patients around a tub {251} containing bottles filled with metallic materials out of which wires were conducted and placed in the hands of patients seated in a circle around it. Mesmer called this apparatus a _baquet_ or battery and it was thought to have some wonderful electric properties. A great many people who received the treatment were cured of chronic pains and aches that had sometimes lasted for years. So many prominent people were involved that the Government finally ordered an investigation to be made by French scientists with whom, because he was the Minister from the colonies at the time, our own Benjamin Franklin was associated. They declared that there was not a trace of electricity or any other physical force in Mesmer's apparatus. He was forbidden to continue the treatment and there was a great scandal about the affair, because a large number of people felt that he was doing a great deal of good. When hypnotism came in vogue again at the end of the nineteenth century, it was a case of chronic rheumatism that gave it its first impetus in scientific circles. Professor Bernheim of Nancy had tried in vain all of his remedies in the treatment of a patient suffering from lumbago. The patient disappeared {252} for a time and when Bernheim next saw him, he was cured. Bernheim had treated him futilely for months and was curious to know how he had been cured. The patient told him that he had been cured by hypnotism as practised by Liebault. This brought Bernheim to investigate Liebault's method of hypnotism and made him a convert to its practice. It was the interest of the school of Nancy in the subject that finally aroused Charcot's attention and gave us the phase of interest in hypnotism which attracted so much public attention some thirty years ago. Many other cases of those very refractory affections--lumbago and sciatica--have been cured by hypnotism when they have resisted the best directed treatment of other kinds over very long periods. It is these chronic rheumatisms, so called, the chronic pains and aches in muscles in the neighborhood of joints, that were cured by the Viennese astronomer, Father Maximilian Höll, in the eighteenth century. He simply applied the magnet and saw the result, and felt sure that there must be some physical effect, though there was none. His work was taken up by Pfarrer Gassner of Elwangen who, after using the magnets for a time, found {253} that there was no need of their application, provided the patients could by prayer and other religious means be brought into a state of mind where they were sure that they were going to get better. They then proceeded to use their muscles properly in spite of the pain that might result for a time, and as a result it was not long before they were cured of their affections. The Church forbade his further practise because of his expressed idea that pain came from the power of evil and dropped from men when they turned to God, which was the eighteenth-century anticipation of Eddyism. Dowie's cures were largely of similar affections, and patients sometimes dropped their crutches and walked straight who could not walk before. A great many of the so-called chronic rheumatisms are really the result of dreads to use muscles in the proper way because for the moment something has happened to make their use painful. A direct injury, a wrench, or some incident causes a joint for a time to be painful when used. In sparing it, the muscles around it are used differently than before and as a consequence become sensitive and painful. It is quite easy, then, for people to form bad habits which they cannot break {254} because they have not the strength of will to endure the sore and tender condition which develops when they try to use muscles properly once more. The young athlete who wants to get his muscles in good condition knows that he must pass through a period of soreness and tenderness, sometimes of almost excruciatingly painful character. He does so, however, and does not speak of his condition as involving pains and aches but only soreness and tenderness. Older people, however, who have to get their muscles back into good condition after a period of disuse following an injury or some inflammatory disturbance, find this period of discomfort very difficult to bear and so keep on using their muscles somewhat abnormally and at mechanical disadvantage. As a consequence, these muscles remain tender, are likely to ache in rainy weather and often give a good deal of discomfort. Until the sufferers can be brought to use their wills properly, so as to win back their muscles to normal use, they will not get well. An application of magnets or a Leyden jar or Mesmer's battery of the eighteenth century, or Perkins' tractors, or neuro-hypnotism, or animal magnetism, or later hypnotism, or {255} Dowie's declaration of their cure, enables them to use their will in this regard and then they proceed to recover. It is surprising how many presumedly intelligent people--at least they have received considerable education--have been cured of conditions that they have endured for years by some remedy or mode of treatment that actually had no physical effect. St. John Long, the English charlatan who has been mentioned in the chapter on tuberculosis, also succeeded in making a name for himself in connection with the chronic rheumatisms and the so-called rheumatic pains and aches of older people. Between consumption and these conditions, he caught both the young and the old, and thus rounded out his clientele. For consumption he provided an inhalant; for rheumatic conditions, a liniment. This liniment became very famous in that generation for its power to relieve the pains and aches, both acute and chronic, of mankind. So many people were cured by it and above all, so many of them were people of distinction--lords and ladies and the relatives of the nobility--that Parliament was finally petitioned in the interests of suffering humanity to buy the secret of the {256} liniment from its inventor and publish it for the benefit of the world. I believe that a substantial sum, representing many, many thousands of dollars in our time, was actually voted to St. John Long and the recipe for his liniment was published in the British pharmacopeia. In composition, it was, I believe, only a commonplace turpentine liniment made up with yolks of eggs instead of oil, as had been the custom before. Just as soon as this fact became known, the wonderful cures which had occurred in connection with its use ceased to a great extent, for distinguished members of the nobility and their relatives would not be cured by so common-place a medium as an ordinary turpentine liniment. St. John Long was even accused of not having sold his real secret to the Government, but there was no reason at all to think that. He had been producing his cures not by his liniment but by the strong effect of his prestige and reputation as a healer upon the minds of his patients and the consequent release of will power which enabled them to do things which they thought they could not do before. We have had many wonderful curative oils of various kinds since then, with all sorts of names from Alpha to Omega and {257} very often called after a saint,--though St. John Long was as far as possible from being a saint in the ordinary acceptance of that word. These modern curative oils and liniments have been merely counter-irritants, but at times, owing to a special reputation acquired, they have been counter-irritants for the mind and stimulants for the will which have enabled old people to persist through the periods of soreness and tiredness until they reacquired the proper use of their muscles. {258} CHAPTER XVIII PSYCHO-NEUROSES "Look, what I will not, that I cannot do." _Measure for Measure_. The psycho-neuroses, that is, the various perversions of nervous energy and inability to supply and conduct nervous impulses properly, consequent upon a mental persuasion which interferes with these activities, have come to occupy an ever larger and larger place in the field of medicine. The war has been illuminating in this matter. A psycho-neurosis is, after all, a hysterical manifestation and it might very well be expected that very few of these would be encountered in armies which took only the _men_ of early adult life and from among those, only persons who had been demonstrated to be physically and, as far as could be determined, mentally normal. Neurologists would seem scarcely to have a place in the war except for wounds of nerves {259} and the cerebral location of missiles and lesions. Certainly none of the army medical departments had the slightest premonition that neurology would bulk larger in their war work than any other department except surgery. That proved to be the case, however. The surprise was to have, from very early in the war, literally thousands of cases of psycho-neuroses, "shell shock" as unfortunately they came to be called, which included hysterical symptoms of all kinds, mutism, deafness, blindness, paralysis, and contractures. France and England after some time actually had to maintain some fifty thousand beds in their war hospitals mainly for functional nervous diseases, the war neuroses of many kinds. During the first half of the war, one seventh of all the discharges from the British army or actually one third of all the discharges, if those from wounds were not included, were for these war neuroses. They attacked particularly the better educated among the men and were four times as prevalent among officers as among the privates. In proportion to the whole number of those exposed to shells and "war's alarms and dangers" generally, these war neuroses were {260} more common among the men than among the women. Nurses occasionally suffered from them, but not so frequently as the men who shared their dangers in the hospitals and stations for wounded not far from the firing line. In the treatment of this immense number of cases, a very large amount of the most valuable therapeutic experience for psychoneuroses was accumulated. It was found that suggestion played a very large role in making the cases worse. If these patients were placed in general hospitals where there was much talk of wounds and injuries and the severe trials of battle life they grew progressively worse. They talked of their own experiences, constantly enlarging them; they repeated what they had heard from others as if these represented their own war incidents and auto-suggested themselves into ever worse and worse symptomatic conditions. This was, after all, only the familiar _pseudologia hysterica_ which occurs in connection with hysteria, and which is so much better called by the straightforward name of pathological self-deception or perhaps even just frankly hysterical lying. If these patients were examined frequently by physicians, their {261} symptoms became more and more varied and disabling and their psycho-neurosis involved more external symptoms. In a word, it was found that their minds were the source of extremely unfavorable factors in their cases. The original shock or the severe trials of war life had unbalanced their self-control and suggestions of various kinds made them still worse. Much attention to their condition from themselves and others simply proved to be constantly disturbing. As was pointed out by Doctor Pearce Bailey, who had the opportunity as United States Chief of the Division of Neurology and Psychiatry attached to the Surgeon General's office to visit France and England officially to make observations on the war neuroses, the experience of the war has amply confirmed Babinski's position with regard to hysteria. The distinguished French neurologist has shown that the classic symptoms of hysteria are the results of suggestion originating in medical examinations or from misapplied medical or surgical treatment. He differs entirely from Charcot in the matter and points out that it was unfortunate misdirected attention to hysterical patients which led to the creation of the many cases of _grande hystérie_ which {262} used to be seen so commonly in clinics in France and have now practically disappeared. They were not genuine pathological conditions in any sense of the word, but merely the reflection of the exaggerated interest shown in them by those interested in neurology, who came to see certain symptoms and were, of course, gratified in this regard by the patients, always anxious to be the center of attention and, above all, the focus of special interest. The successful treatment of the war neuroses was all founded on the will and not on the mind. Once a careful examination had determined absolutely that no organic morbid condition was present, the patient was given to understand that his case was of no special significance but on the contrary was well understood and had nothing exceptional in it. The unfortunate frequent demonstration of these patients at the beginning of the war as subjects of special interest had been the worst possible thing for them. After experience had cleared the way, they were made to feel that just as soon as the attending physician had the time to give them, he would be able to remove their symptoms without delay. This was almost the only appeal to the mind {263} that was made. It represented the suggestive element of the treatment. The two other elements were reeducation and discipline. Once suggestion had brought the patient to believe firmly that he would be cured, he was made to understand that his cure would be permanent. Then reeducation was instituted to overcome the bad habit of lack of confidence that had been formed, while discipline broke down the psychic resistance of the patient to the idea of recovery. In such symptoms as mutism or deafness, the patient was told that electricity would cure him and that as soon as he felt the current when the electrode was applied, his power of speech or of hearing would be restored, _pari passu_, with sensation. The same method was used for blindness and other sensory symptoms. Paralyses were favorably affected the same way, though tremors were harder to deal with. A cure in a single treatment was the best method, for the patient readily relapsed unless he was made to feel that he had recovered his powers completely and that it would be his own fault if he permitted his symptoms to recur. The most interesting phase of the successful treatment of these war neuroses for us was {264} the fact that the ultimate dependence was placed by the French on a system of management which was called _torpillage_. _Torpillage_ consists in the brusque application of faradic currents strong enough to be extremely painful in hysterical conditions, and the continuance of the procedure to the point at which the deaf hear, the dumb speak, or those who believe themselves incapable of moving certain groups of muscles come to move them freely. The method has proved highly effective and requires but little time and practically no personnel except the medical officer who applies the treatment and the non-commissioned officer who takes the patient at the end of the treatment and continues the exercise of the afflicted parts. One treatment suffices. The apparatus is of the simplest, the only accessory to the electric supply and the electrodes consisting of an overhead trolley which carries the long connecting wires the whole length of the room, thus making it impossible for the patient to get away from the current which is destined to cure him. In a word, the man who would insist on maintaining a false attitude of mind towards himself, though that attitude of mind was not {265} deliberate, and least of all not malingering, was simply made to give it up. Sufficient pain was inflicted on him so that he was willing to accept instead of his own false opinion the opinion of his physician that he could accomplish certain functions. _Torpillage_ was, in other words, simply "a method of treatment which gave authority to a medical officer to inflict pain on a patient up to the point at which the patient yields up his neurosis." As a rule, the infliction of very little suffering is needed, for once the demonstration is made that he will have to suffer or give in, it does not take him very long to give in. There is no doubt at all that the method is eminently effective, particularly in those cases which were entirely refractory to other modes of treatment. It would remind us of some old modes of treatment which were in popular use long ago, but which had gone out entirely in our milder generation because we thought their use almost unjustified. It was not an unusual thing three or four generations ago to rouse a young woman out of an hysterical tantrum, once it was perfectly clear from previous experiences that it _was_ really an hysterical tantrum, by dashing a pitcher of cold water {266} over her. Sir Thomas More relates that he saw a number of people suffering from various forms of possession--and any neurologist will confess that some hysterics must have a devil--who were cured by being roundly whipped. Certain men and women who complained that they were unable to walk or to work and thus became a care for relatives or for the community, were cured by this, as it seemed to later generations, heartless mode of treatment. Now, we have turned to curing the war hysterias by punishment, that is, by the infliction of severe pain, in just the same way. A great many of these patients who suffer from neuroses and psycho-neuroses, and especially from hysterical inhibitions so that they cannot hear or cannot walk or cannot talk, represent inabilities similar to many which are seen in civil life. Patients complain that they cannot do things; their friends say that they will not do them; and the physician sees that the root of the trouble is that they cannot _will_. Now, however, that war has permitted the use of such remedies, physicians have found that they can, to advantage, force the patients to will and that once the will has been recalled into action, its energy can be maintained. {267} Of course the compulsory mode of treatment was not represented as a punishment, but on the contrary it was always presented as a form of treatment which was extremely painful but necessary for the condition. Presented as punishment, it would have been resented, and the patient would probably have set about sympathizing with himself and perhaps seek the sympathy of others, and this would prevent the effectiveness of the treatment. It is very evident that as the result of compulsory methods of treatment, and of the recognition of the fact that major hysterical conditions are largely the result of suggestion and must be cured by enabling the patient to secure control over himself again, the outlook for the treatment of the psychoneuroses will be very different as a consequence of the experience that has been gained. Above all, the place of the will will be recognized, and there will no longer be that coddling of patients and that analysis of their minds for long distant psychic insults of various kinds which will explain their condition, that has done so much harm in a great many ways in recent years. Another feature of the French treatment was that the neurotic patients should be {268} isolated. This isolation was complete. It had been found that association with other patients, the opportunity to tell their troubles and be sympathized with, did them harm invariably and inevitably, so that those whose neurotic symptoms continued were taken absolutely away from all association with others. Not only this, but all other modes of diversion of mind were denied them. They were placed in rooms without reading or writing materials and even without tobacco. This solitary confinement would remind one of the enforced privacy of the old-fashioned rest cure in which the patient was absolutely secluded from all association with relatives or others who might in any way sympathize with them. The soldier patients were kept in this complete isolation until such time as they showed themselves amenable to treatment. This was usually not very long. As a matter of fact, the isolation rooms had to be used very little but were found necessary and especially effective in the management of relapsed cases. Just as soon as soldier patients learned that such isolating rooms were available, they became much more ready to give up their neuroses, and as a consequence, in most places, the isolating department did {269} not have to be used, and in some places they could even be given over to the lodgment of attendants. It was quite sufficient, however, that they had fulfilled their purpose of changing patients' attitude of mind towards themselves and giving their will control over them. As Colonel Pearce Bailey, M.C., says, in most of these patients, persuasive measures and contrary suggestion were quite sufficient, but when they failed, disciplinary measures proved effective. How are we going to be able to make such disciplinary measures available in civil life is another question, but at least the war has made clear that neurotic patients who claim that they cannot do something and actually will not do it, _must be made to do it_, for this will prove the beginning of their cure. It seems probable, as Doctor Bailey adds, that the reason why the treatment of officers was more difficult--and it must not be forgotten that in proportion to their numbers, four times as many officers suffered from so-called shell shock as privates--was exactly because these modes of discipline, amounting practically to compulsion, were not used with them. {270} CHAPTER XIX FEMININE ILLS AND THE WILL "Oh, undistinguished space of woman's will!" _King Lear_. It is probable that the largest field for the employment of the will for the cure of conditions that are a source of serious discomfort or at least of complaint is to be found among the special ills of womankind. The reason for this is that the personal reaction has so much to do with the amount of complaint in these affections. Not infrequently the individual is ever so much more important than the condition from which she is suffering. Women who have regular occupation with plenty to do, especially if they are interested in it and take their duties seriously, who get sufficient exercise and are out of doors several hours each day and whose appetites are as a consequence reasonably good, suffer very little from feminine ills, as a rule. If an infection of some kind attacks them, they will, of {271} course, have the usual reaction to it, and this may involve a good deal of pain and even eventually require operation. Apart from this, however, there is an immense number of feminine ills dependent almost entirely on the exaggerated tendency to react to even minor discomforts which characterizes women who have no occupation in which they are really interested, who have very little to do, almost no exercise, and whose appetite and sleep as a consequence are almost inevitably disturbed. Above all, it must not be forgotten that whenever women do not get out into the air regularly every day--and this means for a time both morning and afternoon--they are likely to become extremely sensitive to pains and aches. This is true of all human beings. Those who are much in the open air complain very little of injuries and bodily conditions that would seem extremely painful to those living sedentary lives and who are much indoors. Riding in the open air is better than not being in the open air at all, but it does not compare in its power to desensitize people with active exercise in the open air. In the older days, when women occupied themselves very much indoors with {272} sewing, knitting and other feminine work, and with reading in the evenings, and when it was considered quite undignified for them to take part in sports, neurotic conditions were even more common than they are at the present time, and young women were supposed to faint readily and were quite expected to have attacks of the "vapors" and the "tantrums." The interest of young women in sports in recent years and the practice of walking has done a great deal to make them ever so much healthier and has had not a little to do with decreasing the number and intensity of the so-called feminine ills, the special "women's diseases" of the patent medicine advertisements. Much remains to be done in this regard, however, and there are still a great many young women who need to be encouraged to take more exercise in the open than they do and thus to live more natural lives. It is particularly, however, the women of middle age, around forty and beyond it, who need to be encouraged to use their wills for the establishment of habits of regular exercise in the open air as well as the creation of interests of one kind or another that will keep them from thinking too much about {273} themselves and dwelling on their discomforts. These are thus exaggerated until often a woman who has only some of the feelings that are almost normally connected with physiological processes persuades herself that she is the victim of a malady or maladies that make her a pitiable object, deserving of the sympathy of her friends. A great many of the operations that have been performed on women during the past generation have been quite unnecessary, but have been performed because women felt themselves so miserable that they kept insisting that something must be done to relieve them, until finally it was felt that an operation might do them some good. It would surely do them no harm or at least make them no worse, and there was always the possibility that the rest in the hospital, the firm persuasion that the operation was to do them good, the inculcation of proper habits of eating during convalescence might produce such an effect on their minds as would give them a fresh start in life. Undoubtedly a great many women who were distinctly improved after operations owed their improvement much more to the quiet seclusion of their hospital life, their own strong expectancy {274} and the care bestowed upon them under the hospital discipline without exaggerated sympathy which brought about the formation of good habits of life, than to their operation. Many a woman gained weight after an operation simply because her eating was properly directed, and this was the main part of the improvement which took place. Operations are sometimes needed and when they are the patient will probably not get well without one; but as a distinguished neurologist, Doctor Dercum of Philadelphia, said in a paper read before the American Medical Association last year, the neurologist is constantly finding patients on whom one or several operations have been performed, some of them rather serious abdominal operations, the source of whose complaints is a neurosis and not any morbid condition of the female or other organs. Occasionally one sees something like this in men, and I shall never forget seeing at Professor Koenig's clinic in Berlin a sufferer from an abdominal neurotic condition on whom no less than three operations for the removal of his appendix had been performed, until finally Professor Koenig felt that he would be justified in tattooing over the right iliac region the words "No Appendix {275} Here." The condition developed in a young soldier as the result of a fall from a horse and his affection resembled very much some of the neuroses that came to be called, unfortunately, "shell shock" during the present war. The principal trouble in securing such occupation of mind as will prevent exaggerated neurotic reactions to even slight discomforts in women is the creation for them of definite interests in life. The war taught a notable lesson in this regard. Many a physician saw patients whose complaints had been a great source of annoyance to them--and their friends--proceed to get ever so much better as the result of war interests. In one women's prison in an Eastern State, just before the war, a series of crises of major hysteria was proving almost unmanageable. By psychic contagion it had spread among the prisoners until scarcely a day passed without some prisoner "throwing a fit" with screaming and tearing of clothes and breaking of articles that might be near. Prominent neurologists had been consulted and could suggest nothing. When the war began, the prisoners were set to rolling bandages, knitting socks and sweaters and making United States flags for the army. As if by magic, the neurotic {276} crises disappeared. For months there were none of them. The prisoners had an abiding interest that occupied them deeply in other things besides themselves. The reduction of nervous complaints of various kinds among better-to-do women was very striking. As might be expected, their rather strenuous occupation with war activities kept them from thinking about themselves, though it is true that now they complain about all the details that they had to care for and the lack of coöperation on the part of certain people. It would seem as though many of them had so much to do that they would surely exhaust their energies and so be in worse condition than before, but this very seldom proved to be the case. Literally many thousands of women improved in health because they became interested in other people's troubles instead of their own. David Harum once said that "It is a mighty good thing for a dog to have fleas because it keeps him from thinking too much about the fact that he is a dog." That seems a rather unsympathetic way of putting the case, but there is no doubt at all that what many women need is serious interests apart from themselves in order to prevent the law of {277} avalanche from making minor ills appear serious troubles. What most women need above all are heart interests rather than intellectual occupations. That was why occupation with war activities did so much good. That is the reason, too, that club life and reading and other similar pursuits often fail to be helpful to women in their ills to the extent that might possibly be expected. Above all, women need interests in children and the ailing, and these can be supplied by visits to hospitals or by taking an active interest in nurseries, though this is often not personal enough in its appeal to catch a woman's deepest attention. One of the great reasons why there are more nervous diseases among women in our time than in the past is because children are fewer, and because so many women are without children and the calls that they inevitably make on their mothers. Unfortunately, the traditions of the present day are to a great extent in opposition to that family life with a number of children, which means not only the deepest interests for woman but also such inevitable occupations in the care of them that she has very little time to think about herself. It may seem quixotic, that is, {278} demanding unnecessary magnanimity to suggest that these modern ideas should be discarded by those who wish to assure themselves such interests in middle life as will prove definitely preventive of many neurotic conditions, but it is manifestly the physician's duty to make such suggestions. Life has really become full of dreads for many women in this regard. A gradual reduction in the birth rate which has deprived so many women of the heart interests that were particularly valuable at and after middle life; has been the source of a great deal more suffering without any satisfaction, than would be associated in any way with the care of children. It is extremely unfortunate, then, that this phase of social evolution should have taken place, for the quest of ease and pleasure has proved a prolific source of feminine ills. It is well recognized now that the reason for this reduction in the birth rate is not physical but ethical. It is a matter of choice and not necessity. There is a conscious limitation of the number of children in the family accomplished deliberately, and as a rule the women consider that they are justified in the procedure because they thus conserve their own health and provide such {279} few children as they have with healthier bodies than would otherwise have been the case. Indeed, child-bearing beyond one or two or perhaps three children has become a source of dread in modern times, a dread that supposedly centers around the health of the children, as well as the mother herself. The mother of a few children is supposed to be healthier and the children of small families to be heartier and more vigorous than when there are half a dozen or more children in the family. A woman is actually supposed by many to seriously imperil her life and her health if she has more than two or three children, though as a matter of fact, the history of the older times when families were larger shows us that women were then healthier on the average than they are now, in spite of all the progress that medicine and surgery have since made in relieving serious ills. Above all, it was often the mother of numerous children who lived long and in good health to be a blessing to those around her, and not the old maids nor the childless wives, for longevity is not a special trait of these latter classes of women. The modern dread of deterioration of vitality as the result of frequent child-bearing is quite without {280} foundation in the realities of human experience. Some rather carefully made statistics demonstrate that the old tradition in the matter is not merely an impression but a veritable truth as to human nature's reaction to a great natural call. While the mothers of large families born in the slums with all the handicaps of poverty as well as hard work against them, die on the average much younger than the generality of women in the population, careful study of the admirable vital statistics of New South Wales show that the mothers who lived longest were those who under reasonably good conditions bore from five to seven children. Here in America, a study of more favored families shows that the healthiest children come from the large families, and it is in the small families particularly that the delicate, neurotic and generally weakly children are found. Alexander Graham Bell, in his investigation of the Hyde family here in America, discovered that it was in the families of ten or more children that the greatest longevity occurred. So far from mothers being exhausted by the number of children that were born, and thus endowing their children with less vitality than if they {281} had fewer children, it was to the numerous offspring that the highest vitality and physical fitness were given. One special consequence of these is longevity. In a word, the dread so commonly fostered that the mothers of large families will weaken themselves in the process of child-bearing and unfortunately pass on to their offspring weakling natures by the very fact that they have to repeat the process of giving life and nourishment to them at comparatively short intervals, is as groundless as other dreads, for exactly the opposite is true. It is when nature is called upon to exert her amplest power that she responds most bountifully and dowers both children and mother with better health in return. Something of the same thing is true with regard to the age of mothers when their children are born. The infant mortality is lowest among the children of young mothers between twenty and twenty-five years of age, though it has been found out that "delay in child-bearing after that age penalizes the children." This is, of course, true particularly for first children. The successive children of young mothers are known by observation and statistics as being constantly in {282} better condition up to the seventh. There is on the average nearly a half a pound difference in weight at birth between succeeding children of the same mother, so that each infant is born sturdier and more vigorous than its predecessor. These recently collated facts remove entirely the supposed foundations of a series of dreads which were having an unfortunate effect upon our population, for the natives were disappearing before the foreigners because of the higher birth rate among the latter. Birth control has been producing a set of unfortunate conditions for both mothers and children. The one child in the family is sure to be spoiled, not only as a social being but often as regards health, and conditions are scarcely better when there are but two, especially if they are of opposite sexes. If anything happens to them, the mother has nothing to live for, and a little later in life the selfish beings that have been raised under the self-centered conditions of a small family are almost sure to be a source of anxiety and worry. Many a woman owes the valetudinarianism of her later years to the fact that she dreaded maternal obligations and avoided them, and so the latter part of her life is {283} empty of most of what makes life worth living. The will to make life useful for others rather than to follow a selfish, comfortable, easy existence is the secret of health and happiness for a great many women who are almost invalids or at least constantly complaining in the midst of idle lives. A woman who has nothing better to occupy her time than the care of a dog or two cannot expect to have any interests deep enough to divert her attention from the pains and aches of life that are more or less inevitable. The opportunity to dwell on them will heighten their intensity until they are almost torments. Many more of the feminine ills can be explained in this way than by learned pathological disquisitions. Every physician has seen the bitterest complaints disappear before some change of life that necessitated occupation and gave the patient other things to think about besides self. The will to face nature's obligations of maternity straightforwardly is probably the greatest preventive against the psycho-neuroses that prove so seriously disturbing to a great many women. Their affections, given a proper opportunity to develop, impel their {284} wills to such activity as prevents the development of morbid states. The dreads for themselves and their children, which so often make the excuse for a different policy in life than this, have proved unfounded on more careful study. Now that war activities no longer call women, it must not be forgotten that home duties are the only ones that can serve as a universal antidote for the poison of self-indulgence, which is much more productive of symptoms of disease than the autointoxications of which we have heard so much, but for which there is so little justification in our advancing science. The assumption of serious duties is the best possible panacea for the ills of mankind as well as womankind, only unfortunately in recent years women have succeeded in shirking duties more and have paid the inevitable price which nature always demands under such circumstances, when the dissatisfaction in life is much harder to bear than the work and trials involved in the pursuit of duty. {285} INDEX A Achylia Gastrica, 216 Activity, intestinal, 220 Adirondacks, 183 Agoraphobia, 27 Akrophobia, 27 Alcohol, narcotics, 191; in pneumonia, 190; in snake bite, 193 Alcoholic craving and food, 159 Algiers, 182 Angina pectoris, 230 Anthony, Saint, the Hermit, 21 Arctic regions, 205 Aridity, office building, 206 Aristotle, 71 Arnold, Matthew, 219 Arthritis, rheumatoid, 242 Ascesis, 77 Asceticism, 92 Asthma dread, 211 Attention, concentration of, 127 Auto-intoxication, 36 Autotoxemia, 226 Avalanche, Law of, 123 B Babinski, 261 Bailey, Dr. Pearce, 261, 269 Bain, Professor, 51 Bell, Alexander Graham, 280 Bernheim, 252 Betel nut, 45 Birth control, 282 Bismarck, 10 Brakes on energies, 19 Bright's disease, 102 C Cancer, 75 Cancer cures, 106 Carpenter, Doctor, 51 Cat asthma, 210 Catarrh, 31 Character, 66 Charcot, Professor, 252 Chesterfield, Lord, 224 Child bearing, 279 Chilliness, 197 Claustrophobia, 25 Coddling, 267 Conklin, Professor, 54 Consciousness, sphere of, 230; threshold of, 127 Consumption cures, 177 Cough remedies, 201 Coughing, unnecessary, 199; productive, 200 Coughs and cold air, 204 Cures, so-called, 244 D Danger, sense of, 129 "David Harum", 276 Death Valley, 206 Dercum, Doctor, 274 Diabetes, 164 Disheartenment, 104 Dowie, John A., 253 Dreads, 278 {286} E "Eat and grow thin", 163 Eating, 149 Eddyism, 253 Education, liberal, 55 Effort, faculty of, 92 Eliot, George, 67 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 67 Emmet, Thomas Addis, 11, 147 Energies of men, 15 English, Thomas Dunn, 10 Euphoria, 192 Evacuation, intestinal, 221 F Family, large, 74; eating, 160 Fermentation, 155 Flat foot, 141 Food and alcoholic craving, 159 Food prejudices, 152 Franklin, Benjamin, 251 Function, intestinal, 218 G Galen, 170, 241 Galvani, 248 Gas formation, 155 Gassner, Pfarrer, 252 Giving up, 2 Gouley, John W., 11 Greatrakes, 245 H Habits, 149 Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, 24 Hamlet, 82 Hard sayings, 66 Health, secret of, 283 Heart craves exercise, 235; interests, 277; irregular, 236: missed beats, 235; regularly irregular, 237 Heredity, 169; and environment, 54 Höll, Father Maximilian, 252 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 40 Horace, 224 "Horse, the outside of a", 138 Humboldt, Alexander von, 9 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 54 Hyde family, 280 Hypnotism, 251 Hypochondria, 30 Hysteria, major, 275 I Imperatives, 99 Insomniaphobia, 27 Instinct, 149 Insults, psychic, 267 Interests, feminine, 277 Intestinal stasis, 38 Intuition, 88 Invalids, chronic, 76 Isolation, 268 J James, William, Professor, 15, 60, 77, 92 Jesuits, General of, 119 K Koenig, Professor, 274 L Laxatives, 219 Leo XIII, 9 Libitina, 224 Long, St. John, 171, 255 {287} Longevity, 146 Lying, hysterical, 260 M Maistre, Xavier De, 122 Marmalade, 222 Matthew, Father, 47 Mesmer, Friedrich Anton, 172, 250 Metallotherapy, 248 Mexican border, 60 Misophobia, 23 Mitchell, S. Weir, 11 Mollycoddle, 63 Moltke, 10 Montreal, 204 More, Sir Thomas, 266 Mothers, young, 281 Mutism, 259 N Nansen, Fridtjof, 205 Nauheim, 233 Neuro-hypnotism, 250 New South Wales, 280 O Obesity, 162 O'Malley, Austin, 80 Optatives, 99 Orange skin, 222 P Pain and Refinement, 131 Pain, control, 116; dread of, 128 Palpitation, 228 Perkins, Elisha, 248 Personality, secondary, 88 Phthisis, 171 Physiology, study of, 35 Pneumonia, 104; alcohol in, 190 Possession, 266 Pseudologia hysterica, 260 Psychic contagion, 275 Psycho-analysis, 41 Pueckler-Muskau, Prince, 16 Q Quackery, History of, 245 Quinine and whisky, 201 Quitters, 169 R Ramon y Cajal, 123 Ranke, Leopold von, 11 Repplier, Agnes, 17 Resolution, 82 Respiration spasm, 209 Rest, 57 Rheumatism, chronic, 240 Rheumatoid arthritis, 242 Riviera, 182 Roosevelt, Theodore, 118 Roughage, 220 Royal touch, 246 S Saranac, 184 Scare, lifted, 193 Schlatter's case, 217 Self-drugging, 40 Self-pity, practice of, 70 Self-subliminal, 88 Sensation, diffusion of, 125 Sensitization, 135 Shell-shock, 64, 259 Skotophobia, 24 Smith, Stephen, 11 Snake bite, 193 {288} Stokes, Professor, 5 Stomach functions, 215 Subconscious, 85 Suffering, 68 Sybarite, 72 T Tantrum, 265, 272 Temperature variations, 181 Thatcher, 248 Therapeutics, absurd, 244 Thompson, William Hanna, 11 Torpillage, 264, 265 Tragedy, 71 Trait, family, 149 Trudeau, Doctor, 183 Tuberculosis, 103; curable, 178; early, 176; frequency, 168; takes quitters, 169 U Undereating, 160 Underweight, 149 V Valetudinarianism, 282 Vapors, 272 Virchow, Rudolf, 10 W Weber, Sir Hermann, 146 Wellington, Duke of, 43 Wilde, Oscar, 7 Will, and survival, 4; conscious use, 81; living on, 2; omnipotent, 16; sapping, 13 Women's diseases, 272 -------------------------- MIND AND HEALTH SERIES A Series of Medical Handbooks written by eminent specialists and edited by H. Addington Bruce, A.M., and designed to present the results of recent research and clinical experience in a form intelligible to the lay public and medical profession. 1. HUMAN MOTIVES. By James Jackson Putnam, M.D., Professor Emeritus, Diseases of the Nervous System, Harvard University; Consulting Neurologist, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. 179 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. A study of human conduct, using both the philosophical and the Freudian psychoanalytic methods of approach, with most attention to the latter method.--_A. L. A. Booklist_. 2. THE MEANING OF DREAMS. By Isador H. Coriat, M.D., First Assistant Visiting Physician, Nervous Diseases, Boston City Hospital. 194 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. The many examples that are analyzed and explained are taken from cases that have come under the author's observations.--_A. L. A. Booklist_. 3. SLEEP AND SLEEPLESSNESS. By H. Addington Bruce, A.M. 219 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. Popular chapters on the various theories of sleep and dreams; disorders of sleep, dreams and the supernatural; and on the causes and treatment of sleeplessness.--_A. L. A. Booklist_. 4. THE INFLUENCE OF JOY. By George Van Ness Dearborn, A.M., Ph.D., M.D. 223 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. Presents the latest findings as to the effects of joy on the human organism. The writer gives sensible, easily understood suggestions to students and teachers and something of the psychology underlying the suggestions.--_A. L. A. Booklist_. 5. NERVOUSNESS: ITS CAUSES, TREATMENT AND PREVENTION. By L. E. Emerson, Ph.D.. Psychologist, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. 184 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. A popular, psychological discussion of nervousness, and its treatment by psychoanalysis and mental readjustment. It should be of help to the nervous sufferer. A good introduction to the Freudian theory.--_A. L. A. Booklist_. 6. THE MENTAL HYGIENE OF CHILDHOOD. By William A. 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