WORRY
A 1,004,319
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DISEASE
OF THE
AGE
SALEEBY
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5
WORRY
THE DISEASE OF THE AGE
616
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1837
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1
WORRY:
THE DISEASE OF THE AGE
1
·
:
WORRY:
THE DISEASE OF THE AGE
BY
C. W. SALEEBY, M.D.
F. R. S. (EDIN.)
Author of The Cycle of Life," "Evolution the Master-Key"
etc.
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY.
COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY SMITH PUBLISHING HOUSE.
All rights reserved.
This edition published in April, 1907.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESs, cambridge, U.S.A.
J.
018 037
193407
This Book
Is dedicated to those whom it may serve
ኒ
CONTENTS
ITS SIGNIFICANCE
·
CHAPTER I
Man looks "before and after," and tends to do so
more every day-The futility of worry, its relations to
disease, work, and the religious life-Its cure must be
psychical.
CHAPTER II
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY
•
A disease peculiar to man, and most potent in our own
times The cause of nervous disease, insanity, alcohol-
ism, suicide, infection, sleeplessness, and hysteria - The
seed of much religion.
CHAPTER III
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE
A description of health, bodily and mental
of disease and its consequences
bility to disease
The fear
Worry and suscepti-
Worry lowers resistance Worry
and insomnia-Worry and indigestion - Excess of atten-
tion - Nervousness, organic and functional disease —
Worry and the general nutrition of the body - Nervous
debility.
WORRY IN ILLNESS
CHAPTER IV
The power of mind in illness - Explanation of the vis
medicatrix naturæ - The danger of a little knowledge-
The personality of the physician - He transmits a sense
of power-Suggestion - The personality of the nurse
- Worry as a cause of fatigue.
PAGE
Ι
8
23
• 43
viii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
MIND AND BODY IN HEALTH AND DISEASE
•
"The influence of the mind upon the body "— Its
neglect by contemporary medicine Quotation from a
famous old writer on worry - Brief summary of rèla-
tions Hypnotism and its power Hypochondria, its
cure and prevention.
R
CHAPTER VI
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND
The hygiene of the mind, the philosophy of holidaying
What is a holiday? - What a holiday is not-To
holiday is to be free from normal worry - Hobbies
and their value" Hard work" and health of mind
Worry contrasted with brain-work-Worry as a cause
of insanity.
•
57
63
CHAPTER VII
WORRY AND BOREDOM
80
Boredom is a sign of high civilisation - It is the half-
way house to fretfulness,
CHAPTER VIII
INSANE WORRY
85
Fixed ideas and obsessions, delusions of fear, delu-
sions of suspicion - "Triple murder and suicide"
Melancholia, its causes and treatment-Insane worry,
its cardinal symptom.
CHAPTER IX
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
The charm of drugs-alcohol, tea, coffee, tobacco, opium
Stimulants and sedatives Pseudo-stimulants
Drugs and peace of mind—Caffeine, the invaluable
stimulant The abuse of hypnotics or narcotics-
Narcomania - Narcotics, including alcohol, false
friends one and all The use of caffeine (tea and coffee)
is justifiable.
J
"
• 93
CONTENTS
ix
CHAPTER X
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION
The emotions move the will-Worry may paralyse the
will "Nervousness - Worry and hasty action
Worry and irritability - Worry and social efficiency
Worry about "getting on."
A CASE OF WORRY
CHAPTER XI
An actual instance - Worry destroyed sleep, produced
fatigue, injured digestion, lowered the weight, thinned
the hair Then the injured body reacted upon the mind,
produced more worry - A vicious circle.
CHAPTER XII
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD
•
No worry in babyhood - Worry unnatural in childhood
- Fear of ridicule, in boys and girls - Religious worry
in, childhood— Government by fear and by love.
DOMESTIC WORRY
CHAPTER XIII
Worry and woman Its effect on the face - Beauty is
not skin-deep-Worry about servants Worry about
children Means of avoiding it - Boarding-schools -
The duties of motherhood.
CHAPTER XIV
WORRY AND OLD AGE
Regret Serene old age Its rarity Change in type
of old age — Religious worry in old age - Fretfulness
The remedy Cultivate the whole man - Care of the
old by the young.
III
126
139
153
174
WORRY AND SEX.
CHAPTER XV
Blackguardly advertisers - Their lies and the disastrous
consequences.
189
X
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XVI
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY.
Most worry a disease of the mind, a perversion of the
supreme faculty of self-consciousness, which is the dis-
tinguishing character of man-man alone "looks before
and after". Animals don't worry, since they live in the
Worry thus an emotional state of self-
Worry a fact co-extensive with human
life, and dependent upon the desire to live Optimism
the active opposite of worry-Its nature and varieties.
present alone-
consciousness
CHAPTER XVII
THE VARIETIES OF WORRY
Normal and morbid worry - Selfish and unselfish worry
- Anticipative and retrospective worry - Material and
spiritual worry.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY
The importance of sleep - The production of "organic
optimism "
Morbid optimism - The "organic sense
of well-being " Sound digestion.
CHAPTER XIX
PRACTICAL MATERIALISM
195
209
214
230
- Its
Philosophic and practical materialism distinguished
The modern prevalence of practical materialism
production of worry - Is life for work or work for life?
- Spiritual activity the true activity
of society, the "spiritual type” — The
the game for its own sake.
RELIGIOUS WORRY
Worry about sin
CHAPTER XX
—
The future type
ideal is to play
-The fear of hell -The fear of death
―Their part in human life in the past and to-day-Their
decline The "death agony Professor Osler's ob-
servations The moral fear of death.
""
240
CONTENTS
xi
CHAPTER XXI
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS.
"Fear first made the gods"-Delusions about the
happy savage -The "feare of things invisible
Superstition Primitive ancestor-worship — Primitive
religion in our own time— Palmistry and crystal-
gazing -The tragedy of past superstition, and present.
""
257
CHAPTER XXII
WORRY AND PRAYER
278
Prayer about material worries, its futility— Prayer about
spiritual worries, its success.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FUTURE OF THE RACE
284
Unselfish worry about the future-Our duty to the
future- Our fears about it - Charles Darwin's letter
- Eugenics.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION
The modern criticism of dogma- The philosophy of
religion The triumphs of religion - Professor Höff-
ding's book The permanence of the good The
triumph of true religion over death-The death of
Socrates — The poets' faith — Browning, Shelley, and
Wordsworth -"To the good man no evil thing can
happen."
INDEX
288
303
WORRY
I
ITS SIGNIFICANCE
OUR "being's end and aim" is happiness not
necessarily the material happiness of the inebriate
or the epicure, but happiness of some kind, having
its highest form in the spiritual exaltation of those
rare souls who, in this world of shadows and half-
lights, have seen a vision and follow the gleam.
Thus to worry is to miss the purpose of one's
being it is to fail to fail for self, to fail for
others, and it is to fail gratuitously. "It is worse
than a crime, it is a blunder "; but the blunder is
almost universal, and is the characteristic symptom
of an age, which the laudator temporis acti not-
withstanding I believe to be the greatest in
human history hitherto. To the evolutionist no
other belief is open.
66
What a piece of work is a man! How noble
in reason! . . . in apprehension how like a god!"
Certainly none has a greater right to praise him
than his greatest poet. But alas, how significant
is the change in meaning of one of Hamlet's words.
When Shakespeare wrote "apprehension," he
I
2
WORRY
meant understanding, but to us, three centuries
later, the word means worry! To worry, indeed,
is human: my concern may be with my butcher's
bill or with the threatened extinction of the sun;
I may worry for myself or for my child or for my
creed, but worry, it would seem, I must; and yet
happiness is my being's end and aim.
Good and evil, we know, are complementary.
To love implies the possibility of hate; to look
before and after, to anticipate, to hope, implies the
possibility of fear.
-
"Yet if we could scorn hate and pride and fear,"
we should live upon a new earth. And men have
scorned these things; they have known "that con-
tent surpassing wealth, the sage in meditation
found, and walked with inward glory crowned."
The wise of all ages have been the captains of their
souls. Of these wise, the wisest few have founded
great religions which their substance, not their
form, accepted-have redeemed many genera-
tions, and wiped the tears from many eyes. Even
pagan stoicism has some claim to be counted with
these. In our own time, as in all preceding times,
there is necessity, but in our own time it is pre-
eminent necessity, for the irradiation amongst the
peoples of that fine temper, half philosophic, half
religious, half intellectual, half emotional, half
rational acceptance, half faith - the faith of Soc-
rates that to the good man no evil thing can happen
-the temper that possessed the soul of Words-
worth, who, whilst others were distressed, dis-
ITS SIGNIFICANCE
3
1
heartened, at the betrayal of a patriot, addressed
him in these great words:
"There's not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.”
In the succeeding chapters it is my purpose ade-
quately to demonstrate, if possible, the importance
of worry and of its acuter form, which we call
fear; to seek for an analysis of its causes; and,
more especially, to discuss the means by which it
has been controlled, cured, or transfigured in the
past, and which, well directed and employed, may
perform a like service for us and our heirs.
The wisest thinkers of all times have seen that
worry, apprehension, and fear condemn the many
to futility, to real or imaginary disease, to prema-
ture death, to everything that is the negation of
abundant life. But it is only quite lately that the
double aspect of the importance of worry has been
capable of due recognition. It is indeed easy to
assert in a philosophic way that since it is well to
be happy, it is ill to fret or fear; but what has not
been sufficiently recognised is the importance of
worry, not merely in itself as implying the absence
of happiness, but as the cause of ills far greater
than itself the cause predisposing to disease
which would otherwise have been escaped alto-
gether; the cause determining the fatal issue of
illnesses which would otherwise have been recov-
ered from; a potent cause, probably the most im-
4
WORRY
portant of all causes, of sleeplessness; a great
consumer of the bodily energies, both directly and
by reason of its effect upon sleep. This brief list is
very far from exhausting or even adequately sug-
gesting the physical consequences of worry. It is
quoted merely as some indication of the influence
of the mind upon the body, an influence which has
always been credited, and which unfortunately has
given rise to innumerable mysticisms and super-
stitions, but which has only lately, only indeed
since the destruction of materialism thirty years
ago, been elevated to the rank of a scientifically
appraised truth. Worry, then, is not only a disease
in itself, it is the precursor or predisposing cause
of many bodily diseases, as also of many mental
disorders of far greater gravity than its own. But
this disease, hitherto deemed unworthy of serious
consideration, is not only potent in influencing the
health and happiness and accomplishments of those.
whom it affects, but those whom it affects are the
entire community, with very rare exceptions. I
have said that the wise of all ages have been the
captains of their souls the masters of their fate.
But the wise of any age are the minority, the
numerically insignificant minority. Very few of
us have time for reflection, for philosophic medi-
tation. The overwhelming majority of men and
women are unable, usually through no fault of
their own, to free themselves from this ailment -
an ailment which, as we shall see when we come
to consider its causes, is an all but inevitable con-
ITS SIGNIFICANCE
5
sequence of the supreme characteristic of the human
mind, the power of contemplating itself, the past
and the future. This is thus an ailment which
plays a more or less malign part in almost every
life. The variations of its influence are very wide,
depending largely upon differences of what we
vaguely call temperament. But I question whether
there is any life in which it does not have some
say. One man it may merely prevent from the
full enjoyment of his work and play. Another
man it hurts rather in interfering with the quality
of his work, causing him to make mistakes due to
over-anxiety or want of sleep. In another case it
interferes with the sum total of a man's output;
in yet another and a very frequent case, it inter-
feres with his domestic happiness or his sociability,
making him an irritable husband and father and an
unloved guest. But it would be absurd to attempt
to discuss here in detail the multitudinous conse-
quences of worry or to insist upon their many ram-
ifications. Merely I would insist at the moment
upon the importance of worry, afterwards to be
demonstrated, not so much in the melancholic nor
in persons having vast responsibilities nor at the
great crises of life, but rather its importance as a
common, constant, commonplace fact, influencing
body and mind, in greater or less degree, through-
out the lives of the ordinary people with ordinary
affairs, who constitute the overwhelming bulk of
humanity.
I have therefore deliberately avoided the more
6
WORRY
obvious of the two logical arrangements which
my chapters might display. I propose to deal not
first of all with the causes of worry and then with
its consequences and cure, but first of all with its
consequences, incidentally with its causes, there-
after with its cure. This order, however, may be
logically defended; it corresponds to the defining
of your subject before you expatiate upon it. First
of all, we must know what worry is and what it
signifies to human life; then, since its curableness
is a matter of history, we must observe the modes.
in which men have cured it, and consider how their
experience may serve our own need. Also, we
shall consider the more abstract problem - a prob-
lem in pure psychology of the causation of
worry. From some points of view this is the most
interesting question of all, but it is interesting only
because we know how much worry signifies, and
so our discussion of it need not come first.
In seeking the fundamental, though not the only
cure for worry, our guide, I believe, will be the
closing lines, which I have quoted, of the sonnet
to Toussaint L'Ouverture. Mind and body, as
we shall see, are inextricably one, and yet are not
identical. Primarily, worry is a mental fact, and
is to be dealt with by mental, not material, means,
by dogmas rather than by drugs.
They must be true dogmas, else they cannot
survive the onslaught of "man's unconquerable
mind." Yet again, our philosophy must recognise
that the soul of man has more than its intellec-
ITS SIGNIFICANCE
7
tual component; it has "exultations, agonies, and
love." These, as well as our mind, our emotions
as well as our reason, are our friends, if we will
have them. We shall cure worry neither at the
cost of our intellectual chastity, as by cozening our-
selves to believe that which we know to be untrue,
nor by striving to effect our end with the aid of the
dry light of reason alone, casting scorn on the
emotional nature. If we are to live completely
and throw worry to the dogs, we must honour and
recognise our complex nature in its completeness.
The stoicisms have failed because they denied the
emotions, and the emotionalisms have failed be-
cause they were opposed to man's mind and the
truth which it worships. The cures that have en-
dured, the optimisms that have survived, are those
which have affronted no essential part of human
nature, the sufficient vindication for both aspects.
of which, the intellectual and the emotional — for
the evolutionist, at any rate is the fact of their
survival, their survival with increase, their triumph
indeed, after the supreme test imposed upon them
for countless ages by the struggle for existence.
II
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY
He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast. - PROV.
XV., 15.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
- Paradise Lost.
THE supreme and unique character of the mind
of man is self-consciousness. This it is which, as
Hamlet says, makes him a being of "such large
discourse, looking before and after." If he loses
it, he ceases to be human. Thus, at bottom, the
cause of worry is life: its cure is death. To live
is to care, and therefore necessarily, at times, to
live is to worry. But the end of life is happiness,
whether for self or for others, and therefore worry,
fear and care, though inevitable, are in direct
opposition to the end for which we live. For what
do they count in human life?
The two quotations, one ancient and one mod-
ern, which I have placed at the head of this chapter,
indicate clearly enough what must necessarily be
the case that the importance of the mind and of
the manner in which it looks upon life has been
recognised by the wise of all ages. Before we
attempt to classify the various states of mind which
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 9
we are to study: before we consider whether there
is any worry that may be called normal and neces-
sary, or study the worry that is the product of
disease, or ill-health, or the worry of which disease
is a product, let us first ask ourselves what this
fact of worry signifies in human life in our own
age and civilisation.
not, when
But if we
self-con-
I have called it the disease of the age. This is
by no means to assert that worry is
widely defined, a disease of every age.
consider the psychological condition
sciousness upon which the possibility of worry
depends, we shall see that, as evolution advances,
as man becomes more civilised and more thought-
ful, as he comes to live less in the present, more in
the past, and yet more in the future, as his nervous
system undergoes a higher organisation, becomes
more delicate and sensitive in a word, as man
becomes more self-conscious and therefore more
human, so he becomes more liable to that disease
of the mind which is certainly unique in this re-
spect, that, alone of all human diseases, there is
no analogy to it whatever in the case of any of the
lower animals.
Every access of civilisation increases the im-
portance of this malady. Printing must have mul-
tiplied it a hundred fold; cities, with their pace and
their competition and their foul air, have done the
like and we are all becoming citi-fied, if not
civilised to-day. I write not for the easy-going
bucolic who, happy fellow, takes no thought for the
10
WORRY
morrow, realising that sufficient unto the day are
the evil and the good thereof; nor do I write for
any other whom the swirling tide of the evolu-
tionary struggle has passed by, to lead a quiet life
quiet but insignificant for the future of the race
- far from the madding crowd. I write for those
to whom the struggle for existence is a stern ne-
cessity those who have others dependent upon
them: those who fear forty and grey hair, and
death and consumption and cancer; and, beyond
all these, “the dread of something after death."
And I submit that worry is pre-eminently the
disease of this age and of this civilisation, and
perhaps of the English-speaking race in particular.
We do well to be "strenuous," we do well to
"strive and agonise," we do well to know the dis-
content that is divine, that precious seed of insur-
rection, of which all progress is the fruit. We do
well to think of the morrow. Far be it from me
to suggest that we should emulate the modern
Spaniard or Greek or Italian. To renounce the
struggle for life is not really to live, but to vege-
But we must pay the price and indeed we
tate.
are doing so.
Year by year, worry and fear and fretting
increase the percentage of deaths that are self-
inflicted surely the most appalling of all com-
ments upon any civilisation. Year by year, men
and women show their need for psychic help by
the invention of new religions, every one of which,
in so far as it brings peace and content of mind,
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 11
has a serious claim upon the respect of the phi-
losopher. Year by year we seem more steadily to
lose our fathers' faith that "underneath are the
Everlasting Arms.” And we turn to Christian
Science and the Higher Thought and Psycho-
Therapeutics and Occultism and Materialism, or
to sheer Epicureanism (“Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die ") — to arms that are shortened
and cannot save.
Meanwhile, all experts tell us that the struggle
for existence is becoming too severe and is telling
upon the mind of the race. In olden days men
fought with their muscles or their teeth, directly
and indirectly. The prizes of life and survival
went to him who had the strongest teeth and the
most vigorous digestion, or to him who was the
fleetest or wiriest. Those who were beaten in such
competition had indeed to do without the lion's
share. But a beaten muscle is merely beaten: it
is as good as it was, and probably better.
Not so with the beaten mind. Infinitely higher
in organisation - or rather in the organisation of
the nervous system on which it depends the
beaten mind is much more than beaten: it tends to
undergo vital injury. Unlike a muscle, it can
recognise or brood over its own loss or disgrace.
"In ten years,” says a prophet of evil, "the hos-
pitals will be on the rates." He is a Cassandra, I
fear—whose prophecies came true. Yet the death
rate from the filth diseases falls every year. Thank
goodness our wise fathers wisely worried over
12
WORRY
sanitation. Every condition, however, which elim-
inates the physical in the struggle for existence
merely increases the importance of the psychical;
for there is no discharge in that war. Hence, the
more we control infectious diseases and the like,
the greater is the strain which we throw upon those
psychical instruments with which the struggle for
life is now waged. In olden days some could not
stand the physical strain: they had to work long
hours for poor gain and early graves. Nowadays
many cannot stand the psychical strain. They
are injured partly by fatigue, partly by worry. It
is a proved and accepted physiological truth that
the adult is much more gravely injured by worry
than by fatigue. Hence our nerve doctors are kept
busy. Hence the incessant discovery of new ner-
vous diseases.
Of these, two explanations are possible. One is,
that observers in the past were not acute and skil-
ful enough to detect them. But this is on the face
of it incredible. Men of the stamp of Sydenham
had trained powers of clinical observation which
probably no physician of the present day can rival.
On the contrary, it is generally admitted that the
introduction of new (and immensely important)
methods into medicine, such as all those which
depend upon the discovery of microbes, has gravely
tended to lessen our skill in clinical observation.
The only reasonable explanation of these new
nervous diseases is that they are new. I believe
that on this point Dr. Max Nordau is undoubtedly
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 13
correct. Their victims represent the consequences
to society and to the individual of the increasing
strain to which the nervous organisation of men is
now subjected. And I repeat that the general
truth, long recognised by wise men, that nothing
kills so surely as care, has now received physiolog-
ical confirmation. These patients are not the vic-
tims of over-work as such. I very much question
whether mere mental over-work ever killed or
injured anybody. Amid the chaos of error and
fallacy which embodies the popular conception of
insanity as of all other subjects
we may find
a fairly definite impression that mental "over-
work" is the cause of much insanity and pre-
mature decay. Now let me assert, as dogmatically
as words will permit, that this is the most arrant
nonsense, unsupported by facts or logic. The case
is simply not so. Do you beg to differ? Well, look
up any text-book on insanity, or neurology, or
make arrangements for studying the facts of
asylums; thereafter you will agree with what is
not an individual opinion of mine but a simple
statement of scientific truth. Brain-work-as
such never killed or harmed anybody. Brain-
work in a stuffy room will kill you of tuberculosis,
brain-work plus worry has killed thousands, brain-
work plus worry plus insomnia many thousands
more, but if the brain-work had been omitted the
impure air or the worry and the consequent loss
of sleep would have had just the same result. If
you are prepared to believe a simple assertion that
14
WORRY
32.
you hear or read this year, pray believe me, for this
is a matter of personal, national and planetary con-
sequence, as we shall see.
I have passed from nervous disease, as ordi-
narily understood, to insanity, but surely it scarcely
needs to be said at this time of day that the transi-
tion is merely from one part of the same subject
to another. Mental disease, in a word, is physical
disease or nervous disease, and there is no mental
disease that is not. If obscure paralyses and losses.
of muscular control or muscular co-ordination are
increasing, so also, it must unfortunately be ad-
mitted, are diseases of the mind as that term is
usually understood. For some years I have tried
to do my share in attempting to relieve the public
mind on this score. To infer that insanity was
increasing, merely because the number of the cer-
tified insane was increasing, and increasing out
of proportion to the natural increase of the popu-
lation, was a worthless argument. A great meas-
ure of the apparent increase of insanity is only
apparent due to the fact that a larger proportion
of the insane are nowadays certified as such and
treated in asylums or homes. This results partly
from increased public confidence in such places,
partly from the increase in all varieties of accom-
modation. But, even when these considerations
are fully allowed for, it appears to be certain that
insanity is increasing amongst us. Recent articles
on this subject in the Times have drawn very nec-
essary attention to it. How, then, are we to ac-
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 15
count for the "growth of insanity"? — and even
if it be not growing, it is by universal admission
pre-eminently a disease of civilisation, and is al-
ready formidable enough in all conscience.
Unquestionably we must recognise that insanity
is in no small measure a consequence or symptom
of what I have called the disease of the age. But,
without emphasising the obvious, I would pass on
to consider those many causes of mental disorder
which are not commonly looked upon or treated
as cases of insanity. The medical profession knows
these as "borderland cases." They exhibit neither
sanity nor insanity as these terms are generally
understood; but furnish living instances of the
absurd fallacy which leads us to imagine that men
can be classified like cheeses, into this brand and
that. Between complete sanity and complete in-
sanity there are all conceivable stages, and of all
such stages many instances everywhere - whereas
probably of complete sanity or complete insanity it
would be difficult to find ten specimens in as many
years. The most that can be said of many of us is,
as Stevenson puts it, "Every man has a sane spot
somewhere." The recognition of these borderland
cases and of the problem which they present is
urgently required by society; that their number is
increasing, and rapidly, I suppose no one would
dream of questioning. Without any desire to
magnify my office or to seek for simple but false
explanations, I am willing to assert that worry,
directly and indirectly, plays an enormous and
16
WORRY
constantly increasing part in the production of
these cases.
Very commonly worry acts indirectly. The un-
fortunate seeks to drown his care in drink, to stifle
it with morphia or to transmute it with cocaine. A
noteworthy fact of the day is the lamentable in-
crease of self-drugging, not only amongst men but
also amongst women the mothers of the race
that is to be. Alcohol and morphia and cocaine,
sulphonal, trional, and even paraldehyde; these
and many other drugs are now readily far too
readily - accessible for the relief of worry and of
that sleeplessness which, as a symptom of worry
and as a link in the chain of lamentable events to
which worry leads, must hereafter be carefully
dealt with. These are friends of the falsest, one
and all, as none know better than their victims.
Hence borderland cases, misery, suicide, and death
incalculable. There are no causes of worry so
potent as foolish means for relieving it. To this
vastly important matter I must return in a chapter
devoted to it.
As the belief in dogmatic religion undergoes that
decline which, whether for good or for evil, is un-
questionably characteristic of our time, the im-
portance of worry increases. A recent writer has
shown how the increase in suicide is correlated
with religious belief and disbelief. In European
countries the proportion of suicide is least where
the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches prevail,
and highest amongst the Protestants. The num-
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 17
ber in Paris, as compared with those in all France,
is enormous "the irreligious city in a partially
religious country. Italy and Spain are examples
of less suicide in countries where Roman Cathol-
icism yet holds her own, but Italy has begun to
think while Spain remains priest-trammelled, and,
therefore, the Italian average is twice as high.
Germany and Switzerland, having very high num-
bers, may indicate the mental unrest in countries
where two religions clash.
term here
"Protestantism-a
here inclusive of
Lutheran, Calvinist, and other forms invariably
has a high number as compared with Greek and
Roman Catholic churches; this probably points to
the dark and hopeless Calvinistic principle of pre-
destination, and also to the need of guidance in
mental disquietude, the divine touch of human
sympathy, of which every soul at some time is in
need, being met, more or less well, by the system
of confession." 1
But the increase of suicide is merely the most
complete and important result of the decline of
dogmatic religion as an antidote to worry. Many
lives are blighted by doubt or sorrow or fear for
which, five hundred years ago, the Church would
have provided a remedy. Hence it is unquestion-
ably true that the consequences of worry, both as
an individual and a social phenomenon, become
more apparent as men tend to pass further and
further from beliefs and practices such as pri-
1 Miss C. F. Yonge, in the International Journal of Ethics.
2
18
WORRY
vate and family prayer - against which worry
has often been powerless to prevail in times past.
The consequences of worry in relation to ordi-
nary physical disease are familiar to every physi-
cian. Not a few non-infectious diseases are known
which seem frequently to be predisposed to by
worry. Amongst these are gout, diabetes, and a
certain form of goitre. My friend Dr. Schofield is
of opinion that worry about cancer, in any particu-
lar site, may actually determine its occurrence
there; but personally I am unable to share this
opinion.
Directly we turn, however, to infectious diseases,
the facts are seen to be evident and indisputable.
All kinds of infection which depend upon lowering
of the standard of general health are unquestion-
ably predisposed to by worry. We know now that
in the case of such a disease as consumption the
microbe is encountered by every one. Those pass
on unscathed who can resist it. That the bodily
resistance is definitely affected by the state of mind
— and notably, in the case of nurses and doctors,
for instance, by the fear of infection - no one who
is acquainted with the facts can for a moment ques-
tion. In other words, worry about disease is a
predisposing cause of disease, and so is worry
about anything whatever. It is the repeated lesson
of experience that, other things being equal, infec-
tious disease tends to seize upon those who fear it
and to pass over those who keep their flag flying.
The nurse or doctor or relative who knows that the
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 19
disease is infectious, and who has always feared its
name, does, in point of fact, more frequently suc-
cumb than he or she who takes no thought for self
at all.
As a direct cause of the kinds of nervous disease
which we call functional, worry is, of course, all-
important. Many people cannot sleep because they
worry about their inability to sleep. The more
vigorously such persons set themselves to coax
sleep-meanwhile becoming more apprehensive
of failure the more likely does failure become.
The case is notoriously the same with nervous dys-
pepsia. Indeed, any part or function of one's body
is apt to become disordered if we pay it too much
attention. The higher part of the nervous system,
that which is associated with consciousness, is wise
when it leaves the lower levels to do their own
business in their own way.
Hysteria in all its many forms seems to be in-
creasing, and worry is one of its most potent
causes. The patient has lost his or her power of
volition. As Sir James Paget puts it, "the patient
says 'I cannot'; her friends say 'she will not';
the truth is she cannot will." In other words, she
has lost her self-confidence. But space does not at
present avail for considering, at this moment, the
value of self-confidence as an attribute of self-
consciousness. Suffice it to observe that worry and
self-confidence cannot co-exist.
If proof of the power of the mind in relation to
hysteria and all forms of functional nervous dis-
20
WORRY
ease be desired, the mere progress of Christian
Science will provide it. Christian Science, which
we must afterwards discuss, is increasing and is
even threatening, as Mark Twain declares, to be-
come the dominant religion, because it meets a real
need. It teaches that to worry and to fear must
be attributed all the ills that flesh is heir to. And
this is true of such an amazing proportion of these
ills that Christian Science cures them. The reli-
gion that has this kind of survival value will sur-
vive, and is quite independent of the good luck
which I, for one, wish it. That the thing must be
purged of quackery and of the lies with which it
abounds is certainly true. But this must not blind
us to a recognition of the great truth which, how-
ever unworthily Christian Science enshrines it, as-
suredly is as true as it was nineteen hundred years
ago, "Thy faith hath made thee whole." That
there is or may be a true religion, though I am a
professed student of science, I do assuredly believe.
Such a true religion will recognise, as religion ever
has recognised with less or greater admixture of
falsity, that faith is a supreme power.
The relations of religion and worry are most
singular and striking. The true religion and the
truths perceived by present and past religion are
cures of worry and preventives of its consequences.
On the other hand, many religions have been
causes of worry, laying stress upon the sinfulness
of sin, and the doctrine of future punishment, and
immeasurably increasing the fear of death. Yet,
THE CONSEQUENCES OF WORRY 21
again, since we are here summarising the conse-
quences of worry, we have to name religion itself,
in many of its aspects, as one of these. I will ven-
ture on the generalisation that most religions show
signs of having been produced in order to relieve
and avert worry whether about the past or the
future, life or death, this world or the next. Many
a mighty fane, many a mighty church, testifies to
the means which man has consciously or uncon-
sciously adopted in order to meet the needs created
by his unique psychical characteristic, the recog-
nition of the self, and of the past, and of the
future.
For, after all, the worth of life is to be estimated,
whatever materialists of a certain school may
think, by one criterion alone. Human life is worth
living, not in virtue of great discoveries or empires
or banking accounts, or armies or navies or cities.
"Only in the consciousness of individuals is the
worth of life experienced": it may do for the ants
and the bees to achieve mere social efficiency, but
this, as such, is nothing in the eyes of self-conscious
In the words of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, “every man is entitled to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness." When one dares to
mention happiness as the end of life, foolish people
commonly speak as if one were thinking of race-
courses or low music-halls, or wine, or worse. But
the word happiness, as used in the Bible and other
classics, has no such base meaning" But and if
ye suffer for righteousness' sake happy are ye."
man.
22
WORRY
There is no human end but happiness, high or low.
Its one absolute negation is neither poverty nor ill-
health, nor material failure, nor yet starvation-
"he that is of a merry heart hath a continual
feast." The one absolute negation of happiness is
worry or discontent. A prosperous society, con-
sisting of strenuous worried business men who
have no time to play with their children, or listen
to great music, or gaze upon the noble face of the
sky, or commune with the soul from which we
have quoted above, and of which another poet,
Wordsworth, said that it was "like a star and
dwelt apart
such a society may be as efficient
as a bee-hive, as large as London and as wealthy,
but it stultifies its own ends, and would be better
not at all. Better is an handful with quietness
than both the hands full with travail and vexation
of spirit."
""
Such, in brief, are the main consequences of
worry which, in a word, is the negation of all that
makes life worth living. As I believe that life is
worth living, or may be, I propose to consider the
matter further hereafter.
III
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE
ONE should not use such a term as disease with-
out an attempt to define it, and this I propose to do
by as brief a description as possible of its opposite
ease, or health.
So accustomed are the majority of people to a
standard of their own which custom has led ther.
to regard as normal, that any plain statement of
what constitutes real health will perhaps be re-
garded as too rigid and overdrawn. Neverthe-
less, it surely seems reasonable to assert something
like the following as the condition of health. The
reader will notice that I do not include any esti-
mate as to the number of foot-pounds of work that
a healthy man should be able to perform in a day,
or as to the number of hours that he should be able
to spend in intellectual labour. These things de-
pend upon a thousand factors, varying in almost
every individual. Of such variations my definition
of health will take no heed. I am not satisfied with
the definition of health as freedom from disease.
That affords me no more visible enlightenment than
the proposition that disease may best be defined as
a departure from the state of health. But without
drawing upon my imagination, or attempting to
24
WORRY
set any standard that is not realised by many per-
sons, I will offer some such description as the fol-
lowing, of the man whom I regard not necessarily
as robust or energetic, but merely as well. My
concern here is not with what we call rude health,
but merely with health.
When the healthy man wakes in the morning he
should have no recollection of any state of partial
or entire consciousness later than, say, half an hour
after he went to bed the night before; that is to
say, his sleep has been unbroken, continuous, com-
plete: if he has had any dreams at all, he has, at
any rate, no recollection of them. This is the kind
of sleep that refreshes a healthy animal, and that
is possible for a healthy man. The sleep that is
broken or that is not readily attained when the hour
comes and light is banished, is so, not because it
is in the inherent nature of human sleep to be
broken, but because there has been too much strain,
either upon the brain or the stomach, or both, be-
fore sleep was sought. We need say no more upon
this subject at present. Having waked as one
really should do, because one has slept enough, and
not because it is time to get up, and an earlier
riser has told one so- the healthy man wants to
be up and doing. That is a sign of health which
I admit very nearly entails an effort of my imagin-
ation. Nevertheless, this should be so. One should.
wake because one has slept long enough and should
no more want to lie abed than one wants to be in
prison. The healthy man's next business is to per-
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 25
form his toilet without delay, for he is hungry, and
has visions of breakfast. This over, his concern,
like that of the two kings in the "Gondoliers," is
to proceed without delay to the business of the day.
This business may be great or small, mental or
physical, long or short; but he leaves it with a
surplus of energy, in disposing of which by a happy
paradox he recreates himself. I will not dogmatise
as to whether he should walk, or play with his
children, or read; but I am sure that the healthy
man has more energy to dispose of every day than
he is compelled to dispose of. At some time or
other during the day he indulges in work or play
of his own choosing. If, like most of us, he has
compulsory work, and leaves it ready only for din-
ner and bed, he cannot hope to answer to my
description, for he is over-worked, and if over-
worked he cannot be healthy. His work done, and
contented with his recreation, my model man goes
to bed. I have already said how long he takes to
get to sleep, and what sort of sleep it is that he
gets. During the whole of his conscious day his
health has been marked not only by positive
achievement, but by certain negations. Bored he
may have felt, perhaps, but never weary. He has
had no pains of any kind, neither headache nor
backache, nor any other. Throughout the entire
day, he has been totally unconscious of his own
person and of all its parts, save incidentally, as
when washing and dressing. He has never once
thought about his digestion, and all the informa-
26
WORRY
tion that he can afford on that score would amount
simply to this: that at intervals during the day he
deposited certain pleasant materials in the largest
aperture of his face, but that of their subsequent
history he has no record whatever. As for his
tongue, he does not remember ever having seen it.
The reader will freely grant, I fear, that if this
be health, there be many who know it not. Yet
after all, I have described nothing that is not pos-
sible, nothing that requires a unique brain, or
Herculean muscles, or even exceptional inherited
vigour. The question arises for every individual,
how much work he is capable of doing whilst at the
same time conforming to this standard. One may
be able to do only four hours' work without defect
somewhere in sleep or digestion or internal sen-
sations. Another man regularly does three times
as much. But whatever the amount of work the
man does, he is certainly departing from health
if his daily history does not answer to my de-
scription.
Now, when there is set a standard so severe, yet
after all so entirely reasonable, we begin to realise
the enormous total measure of ill-health chronic
continuous ill-health that is to be found in any
civilised community of to-day. Perhaps the ma-
jority of the people who suffer are unconscious of
their disability. Many of them have known no
other state since they were children, and have come
to regard their present state as normal and not
unsatisfactory. Nevertheless their health is imper-
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 27
fect, and though they may continue for years in
such a state, and though it may by no means evi-
dently shorten life, yet it alters the whole com-
plexion of the lives of only too many. Evidently,
therefore, we must return to this subject when we
come to consider the Physical Cures of Worry.
Having recognised the existence of minor ill-health
as one of its most important causes, we must con-
sider whether this cause cannot be removed (see
Chap. XVIII., “The Physical Cures of Worry ").
If the desirable state above described be health,
it is little wonder that, as we know, the fear of
disease is a kind of worry that has played a part
in men's minds since the earliest times. The his-
tory of medicine was, until quite recent times, the
history of a superstition, and the superstitious be-
liefs and practices to which worry about disease.
has given rise are without number. Of late years
we have come to a rational understanding of dis-
ease, and the manner in which we worry about
it has undergone corresponding modification. No
longer do we conceive disease as hurled upon us
by an avenging providence, nor by outraged and
slighted divinity. Nor do we any longer believe
in the evil eye, nor in the pestilent influence of bad
air, such as has coined for us the name of the
disease "malaria." Nowadays we universally ac-
cept the germ theory of disease. We know that an
overwhelming proportion of all disease is due to
the fact that the world is inhabited by a host of
invisible creatures, many of which have need of
28
WORRY
man's body as their host and diet. We believe that
these creatures are not generated in the body, but
enter it from without; and we see that our busi-
ness, if we would be free from disease, is to obviate.
such entrance, which we call infection. We thus
have a very definite process to worry about, and
only too many must do so to much purpose.
The purpose served, however, is not our own,
but that of the microbes which we fear. Let us
consider the curious but true proposition that worry
about a given disease may be the deciding factor
whereby it is enabled to attack and even to slay us.
When first the microbic origin of disease was
discovered, the problem of infection seemed to be
a simple one; if you met the microbe you suc-
cumbed, if not you went free. But nowadays we
know that the case is by no means so simple. The
bacilli of tuberculosis are now known to be scarcely
less than ubiquitous. They must repeatedly gain
entrance to the throat and air passages of every
city dweller. More alarming still, the discovery of
the bacillus of diphtheria has led us to the remark-
able conclusion that the immediate and exciting
and indispensable cause of this terrible disease is
apparently a normal inhabitant of the mouth and
throat of many healthy people. Not so long ago
this last proposition would have seemed to imply
that such a bacillus could not possibly be the cause
of this disease. But we are discovering that the
microbe of pneumonia may similarly be found in
the throats of healthy people. The doctors and
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 29
nurses who work in hospital wards containing cases
of the three diseases I have mentioned and many
others, are quite frequently found to have abun-
dant supplies in their mouths and noses of the
causal organisms.
It is plain, therefore, that there must be another
factor than merely the presence of the seed in the
production of any case of disease, and plainly that
factor must be the suitability of the soil. The char-
acters of the human soil in relation to any disease
are expressed by the correlative terms, immunity
and susceptibility. It is now known to be not
enough that the seed be sown. It may die; it may
be killed where it falls.
I
The whole problem of immunity is perhaps the
most complicated and obscure in the whole field
of the medical sciences. It varies in different cases
according to a thousand circumstances; age, race,
temperature, diet, habits, previous attacks, the
strain of microbes, and so on. Of these circum-
stances there is one which, though of great impor-
tance, is entirely ignored by bacteriologists.
am not acquainted with any work on immunity —
not even that which has lately been published by
Professor Metchnikoff wherein the importance
of the mind in relation to infectious disease is duly
recognised. It is true that experiment cannot be
made upon this subject; it is true also that no ex-
actitude can be hoped for in its study. But though
we are confined to more or less casual observation,
and though we cannot express these consequences
30
WORRY
of mental state in terms of the reactions per kilo-
gram of rabbit, we may be assured that the mind
does play a most important part in determining
whether or not an individual shall suffer from a
given disease. Doubtless, infectious diseases may
be divided for convenience into two classes. There
are some, such as malaria in the case of the white
man and measles in the case of every child, to
which the individual must succumb, so soon as he
encounters the microbes upon which they depend.
In such cases we must admit that the influence of
the mind, if it has any place at all, is practically
negligible. But on the other hand, we know that
there is a large number of diseases, susceptibility
to which is determined by the general health, as we
may conveniently if vaguely term it; so long as
we conform to a certain standard of vigour we may
harbour the tubercle bacillus, the diphtheria bacil-
lus, and the pneumococcus in our mouths and suffer
no harm. Doubtless they multiply but slowly, and
live either upon one another or upon the secretions
of the mucous membrane near which they lie; at
any rate, they make no inroads upon the living
tissues. But if there comes a chill or a bout of
drunkenness, or an attack of influenza, or any other
devitalising factor, the resistance of the individual
is diminished, and he may well fall before the
attacks of microbes which he has housed for months
without hurt. In the case of such diseases, then,
it would appear that it is simply the general vital-
ity or lack of vitality that determines immunity or
susceptibility.
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 31
The reader will draw for himself the obvious
conclusion. If there be diseases which depend for
their instance upon failure of general health - the
exciting microbic causes being unable to act save
with the co-operation of predisposing causes
then it is plain that any factor which lowers the
general health may turn the scale in favour of the
attacking forces. Now, if there is one fact more
indisputable than another, it is that worry is able
to weaken the bodily defences. It was care that
killed even the nine-lived cat.
Whenever it is possible, I dearly love to support
a proposition by distinct lines of argument — the
argument which asserts that the proposition must
be true because it necessarily follows from other
propositions assumed to be true, and the more
properly scientific argument that the proposition is
true because when we come to look at the facts
they confirm it. Now by the first or a priori
method, we have already convinced ourselves, I
think, that if the accepted theories of disease be
correct, worry about disease must necessarily be a
predisposing cause of disease. But it is also pos-
sible to quote the evidence of experience and ob-
servation in support of this proposition.
I must insist upon the manner in which I have
qualified this statement. It is impossible to assert
that lack of fear will protect an unvaccinated per-
son from smallpox. In such a case, immunity and
susceptibility depend not at all upon the general
health, but exclusively upon the circumstance
32
WORRY
whether the threatened individual has or has not
previously suffered from the disease or any of its
modifications. The rôle of worry in the causation.
of infectious disease is confined entirely to those
diseases which depend for their power upon failure
of general health. Worry acts not in any mystical
fashion, but merely in virtue of its effect upon
general vitality, and if the state of the general
vitality be irrelevant, as it appears to be in the case.
of a large number of diseases, then worry must
count for very little, one way or another. This
admission does not at all prejudice the fact that in
a very large number of instances worry counts for
a great deal in this connection.
But when we have exhausted the consideration
of worry and fear in relation to diseases of micro-
bic origin, we are very far indeed from having
reached the end, for we have yet to consider the
innumerable diseases or disordered conditions of
the nervous system, and these, as might be ex-
pected, are profoundly affected by worry.
It must not be supposed that all we have here
to say is simply that if one worries long enough
about a nervous disease the worry will be justified
at last. For, let us take the instance of the modern
curse of sleeplessness. It is the fact that worry
about sleep, as distinguished from worry about
one's affairs, is in itself sufficient only too often to
cause a sleepless night. In attempting to control
a case of sleeplessness, nothing is of more impor-
tance than, if possible, to restore the patient's con-
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 33
fidence in his power to sleep. Only too many
people, whose sleep tends to be uncertain, begin to
worry about their prospects directly they get into
bed, and their apprehension justifies itself.
The case is the same with many other nervous
functions, as, for instance, digestion. The more
conscious attention one pays to it, the less likely is
it to succeed.
Indeed, we may now recognise a general truth
which is of very great psychological interest: that,
in general, those bodily processes and functions
which are under the control of the lower levels of
the nervous system are best performed when those
lower levels are left undisturbed by orders from
above. This is true, not only of such functions as
sleep and digestion, but also of other functions.
which, at one time in the history of the individual,
have required the most direct and painstaking
efforts of conscious attention. This is conspicu-
ously true of various games and arts. When play-
ing billiards, for instance, the trained organism
may be trusted to perform simple strokes, almost
automatically. If the player begins to devote too
much attention to them, he is the more likely to fail.
But the most conspicuous instance of my proposi-
tion is furnished by singing. It is the common ex-
perience of, I suppose, every singer that he is
capable of attacking and sustaining without diffi-
culty, provided that he be unaware of their pitch,
notes which, as a rule, he does not dare to essay.
A bass singer knows, for instance, that his upper
3
34
WORRY
limit of comfort is E; if he knows that there is
an F coming he begins to worry about it, and often
pays the penalty. But if a song which he usually
sings in E major be played for him without his
knowledge in F, he will take the upper tonic with
ease, simply because he thinks it is E. Similarly,
in the case of variations in pitch between different
pianos; if one has a piano of the sensible French
pitch one does not venture on an F, but will easily
take an E elsewhere, though as a matter of fact it is
almost identical with the F, on which one never
ventures at home.
This suffices to illustrate the proposition that
excess of attention and this is an accurate defi-
nition of certain kinds of worry-interferes at
least as markedly as carelessness with the perform-
ance of many subconscious or semi-automatic acts.
In the case of sleep and digestion, we cannot pay
too little attention. In the case of organised com-
pound acts, like violin playing and singing, a
measure of attention is necessary, but directly that
measure is exceeded and the consciousness becomes
too eager (which means that it begins to worry)
failure is imminent. But every one who knows
anything about executive art or sport knows the
difference between performing with confidence and
without it.
This digression will suffice abundantly to prove
that the behaviour of the nervous system, whether
in relation to the necessary functions of life, or
to its arts and sports, is capable of very great
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 35
modification by means of the mere direction of
consciousness thereto. In its popular meaning, the
word self-consciousness precisely signifies that ex-
cess of attention to self, always with the emotional
tone of apprehension or worry, which so often leads
to failure. "Nervousness" again, in its popular
meaning, implies a similar emotional tone, and
we all know its consequences. Now, if we once
admit the fact that the functions of the nervous
system are somehow modifiable by the mere direc-
tion of consciousness to them, it must necessarily
follow that worry about any nervous function may
cause disease. Such disease, for convenience, we
may call a disease of function or a functional dis-
ease, and in point of fact the distinction between
organic and functional nervous diseases is every-
where recognised by neurologists. From every
point of view, practical and theoretical alike, the
distinction is one of the first importance, and we
cannot begin to make any progress in our study of
the relations of worry to disease until we have the
clearest possible conception of the difference between
these two great classes of nervous disorder.
With the general structure of his nervous sys-
tem the reader is doubtless familiar. A cerebro-
spinal axis, consisting of brain and spinal cord
continuous with it; a series of nerves passing to
and from all but the highest portions of this axis;
and a broad division of nervous tissues into cellu-
lar or grey matter, and conducting or white mat-
ter, every such conducting fibre being really a
36
WORRY
linear continuation of a nerve cell
these are the
outline facts of the nervous system. It is a material
structure or complex of structures, to be handled,
seen, or eaten, as in the case of the brain of the
calf. And though the anatomy of the nervous
system is a matter for many volumes, we may say
that, even in the minute anatomy of the nerve cell,
there is nothing which does not or might not con-
ceivably yield to patient and expert study. As far
as the anatomist is concerned, the nervous system.
of a Shakespeare or a Newton is simply so much
matter arranged in a certain way. However com-
plex the arrangement, there is nothing in it which
suggests itself to be inherently insoluble.
Nor does the morbid anatomist or pathologist
find anything at which his intellect chokes in his
study of the nervous system. He simply finds
matter in the wrong place: a clot of blood pressing
a volitional tract and causing paralysis or speech-
lessness; a thickened projection of bone pressing
upon a certain area and depriving it of its function;
a fluid accumulation in the cavities of the brain
causing a hydrocephalus - and so on.
You may
spend a lifetime on this study and be a learner at
the end of it; but you will never be brought up
sharply at a problem the terms of which you can-
not even frame. Your difficulties, like those of the
anatomist proper, are at any rate never unthinkable.
Of these "gross lesions
gross lesions" of the nervous system,
then, much is definitely known. They are respon-
sible for what we call organic disease of the ner-
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 37
vous system, meaning thereby that there is some
matter of some sort out of place in the material
organ of our study. And to cure the malady you
must re-arrange the matter involved, in the normal
way. This you may roughly do in a few instances
as by the removal of a tumour of the brain.
This may be difficult or impossible; but the prob-
lem presents no inherent difference from that of
the watchmaker when, let us say, some dirt has got
into a watch. It is simply a question of altering
the position in space of certain portions of matter.
In contrast with all the organic diseases of the
nervous system, the neurologist recognises an in-
definite number of other maladies which he calls
functional. Morbid anatomy, aided even by the
microscope and chemistry, reveals nothing in such
cases. There is no organic change to be discerned,
but there is disorder of function, which may be,
and often is, quite as grave as that done by a
structural change which you could see ten yards
away, were it exposed.
Typical of these functional maladies — the num-
ber of which appears to be constantly undergoing
addition in civilised communities is the protean
disorder which is called hysteria. Despite ety-
mology, hysteria is met with in both sexes and at
all ages. It is a reality, to be confused with maling-
ering or shamming only by those who know
nothing of it. Though nothing does the hysterical
patient more harm than sympathy, he is as much
entitled to it as if he had a cerebral tumour as big
38
WORRY
as your fist. But, though to assert the reality of
hysteria or any other functional disease of the ner-
vous system is easy, to define its nature is, in the
last analysis, not only impossible, but as impossible
as it is to define the relation of mind and matter
-the unknowable, unframeable, unthinkable prob-
lem. The physician may glibly say of his patient's
malady, "Oh, it is only functional" but he has
not solved the ultimate problem with that phrase.
We cannot believe, indeed, that any "func-
tional” malady is not the symptom of an organic
or material change a change too subtle for any
of our methods. That we may hold as a pious.
belief; but we possess, with a very different con-
viction, the knowledge that in the cure of the two
classes of nervous malady there is a difference as
profound as the difference between mind and mat-
ter. This may readily be shown.
You have before you two persons who are un-
able to move the right arm the inability in the
two cases being identical. The first is a case of
organic disease. You remove the tumour which
is pressing on the arm area on the left side of the
patient's brain, and he regains the use of his arm
forthwith. The expert who removes an obstacle
to the movement of your watch performs a pre-
cisely comparable operation. But the second pa-
tient has a functional paralysis. You will not cure
him by altering the position in space of any por-
tions of matter whatsoever. But if you act on his
mind as in the instance of the miracle wrought
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE 39
((
on the Sabbath Day - and say, Stretch forth
thine hand," the paralysis is no more. In attempt-
ing to review an enormous subject in a few lines,
I may therefore say that in all diseases of the
nervous system insanity of every kind included
a cure is conceivable by an action on matter or
an action on mind.
4.
The piles of crutches at Lourdes indicate real
cures of real diseases. The cures wrought by
Christian Science are real cures. Faith-healing is
a fact. Neither faith nor Mrs. Eddy can remove
mountains or kill a bacillus but mind can act
on mind. Terrible maladies exist which the united
wisdom of every physician on the earth might be
impotent to affect, but which would yield instantly
and finally to the nonsensical jabbering of an im-
moral imbecile, if only the patient's mind were
affected thereby. These are scientific facts, as cer-
tain and as important as the infectiousness of
cholera, the germ-causation of tuberculosis or the
triumphs of Listerian surgery.
But my assertion of these facts will not delude
any reader into forgetting the immeasurable dis-
tinction between a description and an explanation.
The first we have already, the second would ex-
plain not only hysteria, but the cosmos in its
entirety. If Tennyson could say as much of the
flower in the crannied wall, it may certainly be said
of an explanation which, in answering one ques-
tion, would leave none unanswered.
Having thus attempted to define, as clearly as
40
WORRY
possible, the difference between organic and func-
tional nervous disease, we must now note some
qualifying considerations which complicate the mat-
ter in practice. For instance, there is often found
what we call a functional element superadded to
cases of organic disease, as in the case of dissem-
inated sclerosis of the brain and spinal cord. Such
cases frequently deceive the physician, who is apt
to regard the disease as entirely functional, because
of the functional element which it displays, and
because he is familiar with functional disorders
which exactly simulate this disease. On the other
hand, functional disorder by interfering with the
general nutrition may lead to organic disease, and
thus introduce the converse complication. Hence
we find that in practice it is impossible to maintain
any ultimate distinction between the two classes
of disease.
We have already hinted that the distinction be-
tween malingering or shamming and hysteria is a
real one. When the patient is pretending to be ill
his disease is fictitious; when he suffers from hys-
teria we may describe it as factitious, but none the
less real therefore. With fictitious disease we have
here no concern at all.
I have just used the masculine pronoun, and the
reader may think it out of place in relation to
hysteria, but there is such a thing as male hysteria,
and the derivation from the name of a distinctively
feminine organ implies a libel upon the gentle sex.
Doubtless hysteria is more common amongst wo-
WORRY AND PHYSICAL DISEASE
41
men, but that is all that can be said. No real dis-
tinction can be maintained between the various
forms of what it is usually agreed to call hysteria,
and the countless other forms of functional ner-
vous disease, and we may consider them all together
indifferently. Now what are the relations of worry
to the two classes of nervous disease?
We may say that worry does not directly cause
organic disease. I cannot subscribe to the opinion.
that the organic disease (not nervous) called can-
cer may be induced in any organ by the constant
fear of its occurrence there. Worry can only cause
organic disease such, for instance, as the burst-
ing of a blood-vessel in the brain indirectly by
its influence upon general nutrition. On the other
hand, worry may, and constantly does, cause func-
tional nervous disease. We have already seen that
worry about the possibility of disorder, such as
sleeplessness, may induce the very disorder in ques-
tion. But worry about anything, whether in this
world or the next, is a potent cause of functional
nervous disease. It is only consistent with this
fact that such disease should be curable by mental
influences. It may be fairly argued that, even in
these cases, the worry may cause the disorder by
its interference with appetite or sleep or both; but
the manner of its operation is not so important as
the fact that it does so operate.
We have already said that the distinction be-
tween organic and functional disease, all important
though it be, cannot be universally maintained.
42
WORRY
An instance of this is now furnished by the com-
mon disorder which goes by the good name of
neurasthenia the Greek for nerve weakness.
This has gone by various names-general debil-
ity, nervous debility, nervous exhaustion, l'état
nerveux, the vapours, and so on. It is unquestion-
ably distinct from typical hysteria; yet on the
other hand it is equally distinct from definite or-
ganic disease, such as that due to a tumour or a
hæmorrhage, and it is curable in a way in which
ordinary organic disease is not.
Both hysteria and neurasthenia are frequently
caused by worry. In both cases, however, we have
to recognise that worry, the exciting cause, cannot
act without the help of a predisposing cause, which
is very difficult to define, but which is undoubtedly
a reality. It is a matter of inheritance, and we may
call it inherited nervous instability, or the neurotic
tendency; but if we use this word neurotic, we
really must guard ourselves against attaching any
unpleasant or sinister meaning to it. It is largely
the neurotic people that do the work of the world,
and fortunate are those who have the finely strung,
delicately organised nervous system which that ad-
jective indicates. This definitely asserted, we may
go on to assert that worry can scarcely cause hys-
teria, neurasthenia, or any other functional nervous
disease in people of the phlegmatic or even the
average type. But it is, of course, the neurotic
people who are temperamentally inclined to worry.
IV
WORRY IN ILLNESS
In the preceding chapter we saw the intimacy of
the relations between worry and physical disease.
We saw what the consequences of the fear of dis-
ease may be consequences showing themselves in
lowered resistance to the attacks of microbes on the
one hand, and in the production of various kinds of
nervous disease on the other hand. But now we
must consider a further aspect of the same subject.
Given a case of illness of any kind, what are the
relations which worry about it will display?
I do not speak of worry on the part of friends
nor yet on the part of the doctor; such worry,
indeed, if it leads to care and judicious action, is
normal, necessary, and useful. Indeed, we may
say that it is in the patient's first interests that his
friends and his doctor shall endure this vicarious
worry. They should worry in order that he may
not. For let us consider the consequences of worry,
in him.
Just as it is indisputable, however we choose to
explain the facts, that worry may lower the resist-
ance to an initial infection by microbes, so it is cer-
tain that when the infection has already occurred ——
that is to say, during the course of an illness due
44
WORRY
to infection - its consequences will be markedly
influenced by worry upon the part of the patient.
At first, indeed, one is inclined to say that the best
kind of patient is a dog or a cow. Here there is
complete ignorance and complete lack of apprehen-
sion: things are simply taken as they come. There
are not a few doctors who might well desire all
their patients to be of this class the more nearly
vegetable the better.
But to admit this as a complete statement of the
truth would be to see only one side of the question.
These are certainly the best patients for those
doctors who, whatever their other gifts may be, do
not possess the supreme gift of the doctor, which
is not scientific insight, nor power of diagnosis, nor
knowledge of drugs, nor even the ability to work
hard and forget nothing, but is the power of en-
listing the patient's mind upon the side of the
forces that make for life and recovery.
This power is one of the most remarkable and
potent realities in the whole of medicine. It is
not necessary that it should be exercised by the
doctor; there may be something in the patient
himself — some happy optimism, some religious
faith, some determination to recover and finish
his work, some will to be well" which will serve
the same purpose; or the power may be exercised
by the friends or the nurse, and certain it is that
the nurse is scarcely less important if, indeed,
she be not more important than the doctor in
this respect.
WORRY IN ILLNESS
45
We may or may not possess a theory which
serves to explain how it is that the mind of the
patient is able to influence his recovery even from
a disease which consists in the introduction of ma-
terial, tangible poisons into his blood. For myself
I think that a perfectly reasonable theory can be
constructed. The more we study the processes of
recovery, the more we are convinced that they
depend, not upon the introduction of drugs from
without, but upon the activity of forces within the
body. This power of the body to heal itself has
been recognised for ages under the name vis medi-
catrix naturae - the healing power of nature. In
modern times we have come to discover that this
power depends upon the ability of various organs
in the body to produce protective and antidotal
substances which destroy the poisons produced by
microbes or even kill the microbes outright; such
a substance may be produced in the liver or in the
pancreas or in the bone-marrow or in the thyroid
gland or elsewhere. But these tissues, like all
others, are subject to the control of the nervous
system. Their nutrition — upon which their ac-
tivity depends - is absolutely at the mercy of the
nutritive or, to use the technical term, the trophic,¹
influence which the nervous system sheds upon
them by means of the special nutritive or trophic
nerves that are distributed to every part of the
body. If we clearly bear this mechanism in mind
we can readily discern a rational explanation -
1 Cf. the word atrophy.
46
WORRY
perhaps here completely stated for the first time —
of the manner in which the mind is able to control
the processes of disease. We can readily under-
stand that the trophic influence of the nervous
system is diminished by worry and is multiplied
by hope.
But really no theory matters in practice. Fas-
cinating though the intellectual interest of the sub-
ject may be, the facts are the all-essential things,
and they are independent of any theory. Some-
how or other though probably in the fashion
I have described the mind is a potent force
whence may spring that healing power or force of
nature whereby recovery from infectious disease is
so frequently obtained.
Thus worry in illness directly makes for death
for it directly interferes, at their very fountain-
head, with the forces that make for life. Now the
history of the last fifty years is of the greatest
interest in this respect.
Half a century ago, patients and doctors alike
were deeply ignorant of the causes of disease and
of the explanation of the symptoms which mani-
fested themselves. Of the two, doubtless the pa-
tient was the more ignorant. Thus, in those days,
there was little to induce him to keep any very close
watch over his own condition. What he did
closely observe, however, was and still is the
manner of the doctor. That was certainly as it
should be. Nowadays, however, most patients
possess that little knowledge which is a dangerous
WORRY IN ILLNESS
47
thing. Thus they want to know the why and the
wherefore of everything; they show the deepest
interest in their own chart and in every change in
diet or medicine. Sometimes this tendency dis-
plays itself in the most ludicrous fashions, as in the
case of a patient who consulted a well-known
professor of surgery regarding a rupture, and
breathlessly inquired whether it consisted of large
intestine or small intestine. Again, cases are not
infrequent nowadays where a patient practically
dies with his finger upon his own pulse.
The question how this tendency should be met
is at first sight a very difficult one to answer. The
spread of physiological knowledge is undoubtedly
beneficial on the whole. There are certain facts of
very simple character, knowledge of which, if com-
mon to the general public, would create a public
opinion able immediately to abolish a very large
proportion of all disease. On the other hand, this
physiological knowledge is often very far from
beneficial to the individual sufferer.
Undoubtedly the true remedy, when it is avail-
able, is to be found in the personality of the physi-
cian. This was important enough fifty years ago,
and its importance is greater now on account of
several reasons. The first is that the physician has
to reckon with a greater amount of average knowl-
edge on the part of his patients; the said knowledge
leading simply to useless worry. Again, the pro-
portion of disease that is entirely nervous in origin
and nature is yearly increasing in civilised com-
48
WORRY
munities, and this is the kind of disease in which
the personality of the physician, always a major
factor, becomes almost the only factor of any im-
portance. Yet again, the psychical type is under-
going a modification in the direction of increased
self-consciousness and nervousness and increased
remoteness from the vegetable.
The successful physician is born and not made
-no, not by the finest curriculum in the world.
It is true that the curative manner may be assumed
and cultivated in a certain degree, but the value of
such a manner can never equal that of the man in
whom it is inborn and natural. The object of the
wise physician is that the patient shall be directly
the better for his visit as such. There should be
something characteristic and conscious of power
even in the way in which he knocks at the door or
rings the bell. With him there enter hope and
confidence. Of course the reader will readily
understand, what only the born physician accom-
plishes in practice, that the manner must be adapted
to the requirements of the individual patient. In
not a few cases the physician will effect his end by
a boisterous, hearty manner. He enters the room
like a hurricane, and his tones can be heard all over
the house. He treats every suggestion or com-
plaint of the patient with gigantic and emphatic
contempt. He gives the impression of brute force
that will not be gainsaid. When he leaves, the
patient feels that this man will smash the disease.
But a nervous, sensitive woman, whose ears are
WORRY IN ILLNESS
49
liable to be injured by any but the lowest tones,
would probably succumb at once to such a manner.
In order to effect in her precisely the same conse-
quences, the born physician will adopt quite a dif-
ferent manner. There is nothing artificial about
this change, any more than there is anything arti-
ficial about the difference of manner you adopt in a
drawing-room as compared with the dressing-room
after a football match. The physician enters this
room very quietly. He suggests power as he did
in the last case; that is essential. But he does not
suggest it by physical violence. He does not dump
himself down on the edge of the bed, but quietly
draws a chair to the patient's side. Whereas in
shaking hands on the previous occasion he gave
the impression that at a moment's notice he would
be prepared to squeeze the hand off altogether, in
this case his pressure is gentle though firm. Firm
it must always be. The physician who places in
his patient's palm a hand that suggests a dead fish
would be better heaving coals. That sort of hand-
shake will be quite sufficient to make a sensitive
patient prepare for death. But in the case we are
considering, the suggestion of power is conveyed
by subtler means than the purely mechanical. The
tones are low, sympathetic, clear. No question is
ever repeated a very characteristic fault which
clearly shows that the physician has been thinking
of something else instead of listening to the answer
on the first occasion. The satisfactory statements
of the patient or the nurse are received with evi-
4
50
WORRY
dent pleasure but without surprise. The physician
clearly shows that he expected nothing less.
But I need not spend more time upon this matter.
'Any observant reader is as familiar with these
things as I am myself. The observant nurse, also,
accustomed to working with a successful physician,
will have noticed how in one case he is boisterous,
in another subdued and grave, in another almost
oily" but how, by these varying means in every
case he effects the same result the transmission
to the patient of a sense of power that is deter-
mined, confident, and irresistible.
The reader who has studied the modern views
of such a disease as pneumonia or diphtheria, the
invasion of the microbe, the manufacture of its
poisons or toxins, and the production in the blood
of antidotes or antitoxins, may doubt whether the
physician's manner can have any bearing upon the
issue of such a disease. To such a reader I would
submit the theory advanced above of the fashion
in which the personality of the physician may and
does work for cure even in such cases. As for the
reader who can recall a serious illness of his own,
and who was fortunate enough to be attended by a
physician or a nurse or both, whom nature pre-
destined for this service he is beyond the need.
of any remarks of mine.
The power by which the physician or the nurse
affects the mind of the patient is known to psycho-
logists as suggestion. We may define suggestion
WORRY IN ILLNESS
51
as the influence exercised upon the body and its
functions by the subtle power of ideas or of per-
sonality. The individual influenced may be wholly
unaware of the occurrence; for the feature of
suggestion is that it acts less upon the conscious.
part of the mind than upon the subconscious mind.
There are scarcely any limits to its power. It
can kill outright, as in well attested cases, where,
for instance, the joke has been played of blindfold-
ing a schoolboy, telling him that he is to be be-
headed, and then striking his neck, at the word
of command, with a wet towel. In such circum-
stances a boy has been known to die instantly.
It can cause unconsciousness, as when the nurse
injects ten drops of a solution of common salt
under the soporific name of morphia and in a
few moments the patient is asleep. It can de-
termine immunity or susceptibility to infectious
disease, as when the person who fears infection
is struck down, whilst he or she who does not fear
or does not care, escapes. That these things
happen there is no possible doubt. That sugges-
tion can produce or relieve pain every one knows.
That it can produce subcutaneous hæmorrhages
and severe ulcerations is proved by the cases of the
stigmata" of St. Francis and others.
66
If this thing be so potent, is it not worth our
while to make more definite and intelligent ac-
quaintance with it? Assuredly it is, for though
the power of suggestion may certainly be exer-
cised unconsciously, yet there is no question that
52
WORRY
it is much more potent when the suggester
deliberately determines to exercise what influence
may be possible upon the mind of the subject.
And here is my point. The medical profession
is only now beginning to discover that there is
something to be learned from the Christian Scien-
tists and their like. As for the nurse, it is only
when she has been exceptionally fortunate that
her full potentialities in this respect have been
revealed to her by her tutors. But more and more
and especially since infectious disease will ever
be a diminishing quantity, whilst the nervous sys-
tem becomes of ever greater importance in medi-
cine and therapeutics the doctor will learn to
use his personality judiciously.
Undoubtedly the doctor has this advantage over
the nurse as a therapeutic mind that he is sup-
posed, in virtue of his skill, to hold the keys of life
and death; but the nurse has other advantages.
I believe that her sex is a great advantage, in the
first place, this, perhaps, more especially with
male patients, for the ill man has a sound
organic instinct, which makes him lean upon a
woman standing to him as his mother once stood.
Again, the nurse has far more opportunities than
the doctor; and the nursing instinct, in its highest
manifestations, certainly includes the instinctive
knowledge how to exercise suggestion.
I wish to insist upon the importance of these
facts for the wise nurse, and my points are simply
these: that suggestion is a reality of very great
WORRY IN ILLNESS
53
importance in medicine, and that its importance
tends to increase; that it may and should be exer-
cised by the nurse, who is probably more impor-
tant than the doctor as what I have elsewhere called
a "therapeutic mind"; that at present the nurse
is not explicitly taught the possibilities and func-
tions of suggestion, and that she should be taught
that the power may and often does turn the scale,
even in cases of grave infectious or microbic
disease, such as pneumonia; that it is much more.
efficient when consciously and deliberately exer-
cised than when unconsciously; and that, in the
not distant future, the systematic but diplomatic
and subtle suggestion by the nurse to the patient
of the probability of recovery, of the potency of his
drugs, of the evanescent character of his pains, and
of many facts more which will be facts if only he
believes, will be recognised as amongst the essen-
tial and indispensable duties of the complete nurse.
Certain interesting facts are worthy of record
in illustration of the theory that the influence of
worry, and its opposite self-confidence, in illness is
largely effected through the action of the nervous
system upon the secretions of the body. Utterly
impossible as it is for us to understand the rela-
tions of "mind and body," we may sometimes feel
inclined, especially under the influence of the psy-
chology of the present day, to the view that no
purely mental state can affect the body: but a
further study of psychology will teach us that there
54
WORRY
is no purely mental state. Every mental state is
associated with a physical state of the physical
organ called the brain, and it is by this that further
bodily results are made possible.
Recent study of the dog by the celebrated physi-
ologist, Professor Pavlov (or Pawlow) of the
Military Academy of Medicine, St. Petersburg,
has shown that such influences occur even in the
lower animals. It has been proved that the mere
spectacle or lively expectation of food in a hungry
dog causes active secretion not only of the saliva
but also of the gastric juice. The phrase, “It
made my mouth water," indicates our recognition
of this amongst ourselves.
This instance, however, leads us to another,
which is much more striking, and for which, as
might be expected, we must have recourse to the
case of man. It is a common practice in India,
when some servant out of a large number is sus-
pected of having committed a theft, to employ the
influence of worry upon the body as a means of
identifying the offender. The servants are all
ordered into a room where they are publicly com-
pelled to take a large mouthful of some very dry
powder or the like. The problem is to swallow
this, and it is the rule that the fear of detection and
the consciousness of guilt completely arrest the
secretion of saliva by the offender, so that he can
readily be detected; for, unlike his innocent fel-
lows, he cannot swallow his mouthful.
This well-known fact has only to be applied to
WORRY IN ILLNESS
55
our consideration of the influence of worry in ill-
ness for us to recognise that this psychical state.
may gravely interfere with the production of those
internal secretions in terms of which, as we have
seen, the vis medicatrix naturae must now be
expressed at any rate, in large degree.
The same is true of fatigue. Now in many ill-
nesses, such as pneumonia there is no better or
more frequent and serious instance the practical
problem is simply this to keep the patient's heart.
going until the crisis is past. Heart failure at or
immediately before the crisis is the actual cause of
death in nearly all fatal cases of this extremely
fatal disease; and the failure is due not merely to
the fact that the muscular tissue of the heart is
being poisoned, but also to the fact that it has
been terribly hard worked owing to the interfer-
ence with the circulation through the inflamed
lungs. How, then, are fatigue and exhaustion of
this vital organ to be averted? Partly, beyond a
doubt, by a practical recognition of Shakespeare's
couplet -
"A merry heart goes all the day
Your sad tires in a mile-a."
""
We do well to express courage by the phrase "a
stout heart." If the patient says, "I will not die,"
or “I will not die until my son arrives to see me,'
or if he is heartened, as we well say, by faith, then
his courage will avert heart fatigue, and his
chances of surviving the crisis are increased. Many
and many a time have doctors observed the amaz-
56
WORRY
ing power of sheer determination and courage to
keep a patient alive when all the hopes of his at-
tendants have been abandoned.
But in order that we may see the subject
steadily and whole," it will be well for us to
devote a special chapter to its broader aspects.
V
MIND AND BODY-IN HEALTH
AND DISEASE
IN 1873 there was published at Philadelphia a
pioneer book, the full title of which was "The
Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Health
and Disease, designed to elucidate the action of
the Imagination.” The author was Dr. Hack
Tuke, grandson of the founder of the Retreat,
York, and himself a loyal servant of that institu-
tion, and later of Hanwell Asylum, London. His
name is familiar to students of the mind-diseased
everywhere. Copies of this remarkable book are
nowadays hardly obtainable, but the wisdom of it
is more than ever worthy of wide dissemination
in these days when Christian Science, for instance,
is compelling the attention of the medical pro-
fession to truths too long left for exploitation by
charlatans.
In his “Anatomy of Melancholy," Burton very
well states the two aspects of the relation between
mind and body in disease:
"Some are molested by Phantasie; so some, again,
by Fancy alone and a good conceit, are as easily re-
covered. . . . All the world knows there is no vertue
in charms, etc, but a strong conceit and opinion alone,
58
WORRY
which forceth a motion of the humours, spirits,
and blood; which takes away the cause of the malady
from the parts affected. The like we may say of the
magical effects, superstitious cures, and such as are
done by mountebanks and wizards. As by wicked
incredulity many men are hurt . . . we find, in our
experience, by the same means, many are relieved.”
So far as this quotation goes, at any rate, there
is no room for me to criticise my famous predeces-
sor of the seventeenth century; this old writer on
worry saw the main facts clearly. It would not
have been wise for me to leave the last chapter
unbalanced by this, for we must clearly recognise
that the influence of
worry in illness" is com-
plemented by the influence of faith, sanguine imag-
ination, or self-confidence, "by the same means
[i. e., by the power of Phantasie'] many are
relieved."
(6
These, in brief, are the propositions which Dr.
Tuke sets himself to consider, fortified in his ap-
preciation of the worthiness of the task by this
quotation from John Hunter, one of the acutest
medical observers of any age: "There is not
a natural action in the body, whether involuntary
or voluntary, that may not be influenced by the
peculiar state of the mind at the time." Plainly
we must consider this subject, having elsewhere
devoted much attention to the influence of the
body upon the mind, and especially in the produc-
tion of the mental state called worry.
Even to-day, the medical curriculum, though it
becomes longer and more complicated every year,
MIND AND BODY
59
and includes a whole host of specialisms, lacks not
merely a formal course on Psychology, an ex-
traordinary omission to which I have frequently
called attention, but also any systematic study
of the power of the mind as a therapeutic agent.
Indeed, even after the lapse of a generation, these
words of Dr. Tuke's are as applicable as ever:
(C
The medical reader, I hope, may be induced to
employ Psycho-therapeutics in a more methodical way
than heretofore, and thus copy nature in those in-
teresting instances, occasionally occurring, of sudden
recovery, from the spontaneous action of some power-
ful moral cause, by employing the same force de-
signedly, instead of leaving it to mere chance. The
force is there, acting irregularly and capriciously.
The question is whether it cannot be applied and
guided with skill and wisdom by the physician.
Again and again we exclaim, when some new nos-
trum, powerless in itself, effects a cure, It's only
the Imagination!" We attribute to this remarkable
mental influence a power which ordinary medicines
have failed to exert, and yet are content, with a shrug
of the shoulders, to dismiss the circumstance from
our minds without further thought. I want medical
men who are in active practice to utilise this force,
to yoke it to the car of the Son of Apollo, and, rescu-
ing it from the eccentric orbits of quackery, force it
to tread, with measured step, the orderly paths of
legitimate medicine.”
So much, then, by way of reference to the
book in which the influence of the mind upon the
body was first adequately dealt with. We accept
as an axiom the proposition that the mind can
and commonly does influence or control bodily
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WORRY
processes of the most manifold and various kinds,
both in health and disease. Elsewhere we consider
the influence of the same or similar bodily processes
upon the mind, both in health and disease-pro-
ducing in health an organic optimism, and in
disease, as a rule, an organic pessimism, depression
or worry, though, in certain diseases, actually pro-
ducing an abnormal optimism or exaltation.
Two distinct subjects remain, however, for brief
reference in the present chapter: each of them
must find a place somewhere in a book on worry.
These are hypnotism and hypochondria.
Hypnotism, of course, could properly be dealt
with only in an entire volume. Here I merely
state established facts. Hypnotism has nothing
to do with " animal magnetism
animal magnetism" or any other
physical entity; it is a purely psychical power.
Hypnotism is a state of abnormal consciousness
produced by what we know as suggestion: this
may proceed from a hypnotist, from a sensation,
or from an idea-"auto-suggestion," producing
self-hypnotisation, is an established fact. There
is no function of the nervous system that may not
be modified during the hypnotic state, and there-
fore no state of the body at large that may not
thereby be modified. Despite such objections as
the opportunities it affords for quackery, hypnotism
is unquestionably a state in which the mind may
influence the body in such a way as to remove
physical causes of worry (e. g., nervous indiges-
tion); it provides a condition in which, by sug-
MIND AND BODY
61
gestion, worry-producing ideas may be caused to
vanish, and it often enables the hypnotist to van-
quish that potent predisposing cause of worry,
insomnia.
Brief and passing references are made to hypo-
chondria or hypochondriasis in other parts of this
book; here I refer to it for the sake of formal
completeness. Elsewhere we discuss worry in ill-
ness: hypochondria is simply worry about illness.
The hypochondriac has a healthy body, but he
suffers from a mental disease-a variety of mor-
bid worry which consists in a baseless apprehen-
sion of physical disease. Either he fears that some
terrible malady is about to overtake him, or he
magnifies into a mountain a mere molehill of dis-
comfort; a distorted toenail, or a white tongue.
before breakfast (when nearly all tongues are
white) may cause him more mental perturbation
than grave disease will cause in another man. In
its milder forms hypochondria is closely allied with
valetudinarianism.
This baseless worry about disease may partly
yield to change of air or occupation, to pleasant
company and nourishing food; but it is a psychical
disorder, and the true remedy for it is psychical.
The "born physician," whom I discuss elsewhere,
has only to bring his irresistible personality to bear
upon it, and the cure is wrought.
I devote a special chapter to the vile manner in
which sexual hypochondria is brought into being
and fostered in young persons by the advertisers
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whom an ignorant and careless standard of social
ethics permits to do their dirty work with the aid
of our public prints. I may add that much hypo-
chondria is nowadays caused, also, by the ad-
vertisements of quack medicines, which teach, for
instance, in utter defiance of the facts, that every
trivial pain in the back is a symptom of grave
kidney disease. The time will come when public
opinion, educated at last, will make an end of these
offensive nuisances.
VI
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND
IN studying the influence of worry upon infec-
tious diseases and upon the process of infection
itself, we are concerned, after all, with that kind
of disease which is becoming less and less im-
portant; whilst there remains another kind of
disease, the importance of which is daily increasing.
In the present chapter I wish to consider worry in
its relation to the mind diseased, and we shall use
this phrase to cover the whole realm of mental dis-
order, ranging from even the mere inability to
work as hard as usual to insanity itself.
But first I purpose to throw in the very forefront
of this article the question of what may be called
the hygiene of the mind in so far as worry bears
upon it. It would be useless merely to say that the
mind must be protected from the influences of
worry by a careful adherence to the injunction not
to worry.
This would be of no more practical
value than would a mere unsupplemented demon-
stration of the potency of worry in this respect.
But fortunately there is an extremely familiar
practical question which recurs in regular fashion
in the experience of each of us, and which has an
immediate bearing on this question. Let us here
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WORRY
inquire, without further delay, into the philosophy
of holidaying. Let us ask what a holiday really is
worth, and what are the conditions in which its.
worth may be most fully realised. This is a subject
true notions of which must necessarily be of value
to every one who possesses them.
The first question to answer is as to what con-
stitutes the essential of a holiday: What is a holi-
day? We must reject any definition which does
not cover all the cases, and, if possible, must find
one which gets to the heart of the matter. If we
do get there we shall find, I wager, that our whole
conception of all real and necessary holidaying
must be framed in terms of worry.
For some men a holiday may consist in rest
from any kind of set occupation. Their holidays
are constituted by lying in a hammock with a hand-
kerchief over the head, an unread book slipping
from the fingers, and the senses occupied by noth-
ing more than the sleepy hum of summer flies. If,
in the course of such a holiday, one sleeps very
nearly the round of the clock, it is none the worse
for that. This may not constitute the reader's
notion of a holiday, and it is very far from con-
stituting mine; but for those whom it happens to
suit, the dolce far niente is a holiday of the best.
On the other hand, another man's holiday — by
which he may profit no less than his lazy neighbour
by his may consist in a cricket tour, including
enormous amount of physical work. Yet
another will travel, covering almost impossible
an
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 65
distances and seeing an incredible number of
things. Judged in physical terms, such holidays.
as these are the very antithesis of the first kind of
holiday I have described. In the one case there
is the minimum expenditure of physical energy;
in the other cases, there is the expenditure of per-
haps a dozen times the customary amount. Yet,
as every one knows, these varying procedures all
constitute true holidays for those whom they re-
spectively suit.
Plainly, then, any physical or
merely muscular criterion of a holiday is a matter
of accident and not of essence. In answering the
question, What is a holiday? we must turn from
the physical to the psychical- from matter to
mind.
Is a holiday, then, constituted by freedom from
mental work? Directly we think of it, we see that
we have not yet reached an essential definition.
One man's idea of a holiday is freedom for mathe-
matical research; another longs for his holiday
because he is to have the pleasure of writing a book
therein; yet another will swear to read no printed
word that he can avoid for six weeks, nor ever to
take a pen in hand, and he also may obtain a
genuine and effective holiday. Plainly, then, as
the physical method of estimating a holiday failed
us, so also does the method by estimation of mental
work done or not done.
Yet certainly it is in the realm of mind that we
must remain if we are to discover the one fact
which is common to, and which is the only essential
5
66
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of, all forms of holiday. It is some state of mind
or other that really constitutes a holiday- and
what is that? Well, it is certain that one may lock
one's self up in one's room and have a superb holi-
day; one may go to bed with some not too un-
reasonable illness, such as a simple fracture, and
may have a holiday of the best; or, on the other
hand, one may travel abroad, meeting one's busi-
ness letters at each Poste Restante, covering many
miles, seeing many new things, and yet not holi-
daying at all. As I have repeatedly stated else-
where, the business man on holiday, if he is wise,
will not let any one know where he is. He is to be
pursued neither by post nor telegraph nor tele-
phone. "If his business worries are to follow him,
he will do much better to stay at home and tackle
them with the conveniences which that implies.
The deadly thing in modern life is worry, and
worry is more deadly on holiday than anywhere
else, besides making the name a farce. Worry and
responsibility are very nearly one; and thus the
wise doctor on holiday will not be caught revealing
his profession."
We have discovered, then, what really constitutes
a holiday, and the discovery is a capital one, lead-
ing to many interesting conclusions. To holiday
is to be free from worry. Every kind of holiday,
wherever and however spent, possesses this charac-
ter, and no proceedings which do not possess it
can constitute a holiday. It follows that the un-
employed rich, for instance, or such of them as
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 67
are free from any kind of responsibility or cause
of worry, cannot holiday; it is not merely that
they cannot enjoy a holiday, but that they can-
not holiday at all. No matter what devices they
employ or expenditure they .undertake, they can-
not obtain that sense of freedom from normal
worry which is the essence of a holiday, and which
is reserved for those who have work and duties
and cares.
Again, it follows from our discovery that, even
in the case of those who do a large amount of men-
tal work, a holiday, as the term is commonly under-
stood, may be totally unnecessary. Many men.
who lead the intellectual life work their brains as
hard as ever during their holidays. There are
countless instances on record of such men who
never wanted or took what is commonly understood
by a holiday, and who lived to an old age, physi-
cally and intellectually green. The happy few
whose work so called involves no worry, no fear,
no apprehension, make holiday every day, or are
beyond the need of holidays-which you please.
For convenience we may express our conclu-
sions in a very terse form, if we use the word
"work" in its most common sense. Work is best
defined as anything that one has to do; everything
else, however much intellectual or physical activity
it may entail, is occupation, employment, diver-
tissement, or anything else you care to call it, but
not work. The essence of a holiday, then, is the
complete suppression of the normal struggle-for-
68
WORRY
existence aspect of the mind's work. This once.
granted, it matters not at all how strenuously you
employ yourself at anything whatever that you do
for the love of it.
I fancy that some readers will expect me, in dis-
cussing worry, to insist that the modern civilised
man is apt to overstrain his mind, never giving it
a real rest. I may have been expected to declare
that strenuous folk must learn how to do nothing,
how to take a "real holiday." But I do not be-
lieve for a moment that the reality of a holiday
depends upon mental rest. I believe that a man
with a competent and active mind is in no more
need of resting that mind than a batsman who has
already made ninety-nine runs, and finds himself
master of the bowling, is in need of resting his
muscles. On the contrary, I incline to the view
that it is good for the body and for the mind
alike to exercise those functions of which they are
capable. The batsman about to make his century
will be in no wise benefited by being deprived of
his opportunity to complete his tale of runs. The
student who has written all but the crowning chap-
ter of a book will be in no wise benefited by being
deprived of his opportunity. The man with good
muscles, the man with a good mind, the man with
a good voice—in short, the man who is capable
of exercising without strain any function what-
ever, does well in general to do so. In contraven-
tion of the common views on the subject may be
noticed the very common cases of men, active,
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 69
vigorous, and eager in mind, who have done abund-
ance of hard work for years and thrived on it, and
who then, retiring from business, become a nui-
sance to themselves and their families, begin to
overeat themselves, fret, fuss, and worry about
trifles, and deteriorate in body and in mind - all
in consequence of a holiday which was premature,
and was therefore not wanted.
More persistently than ever, civilisation is tend-
ing to produce the type of man whose mind will
not be content with doing nothing. My point is
that there is no need for him to do nothing. If,
like the vast majority of us, he has work to do —
work in the sense of whatever has to be done willy-
nilly he must certainly have his annual holiday,
his annual period of discharge from such worry
as is normal and incidental to his work. But if
this be granted it does not matter how hard he
employs his brain for fun. He may play as much
chess as he pleases, or may toy with algebraic for-
mulæ, may write the most un-Miltonic of blank
verse, or compose the most stale and effete and
laboured of music; he may drive his brain as hard
as he pleases in any direction whatever, provided
that there be no must driving him, no worry, no
fear of consequences, should his task not be done
or not be done well. On the other hand, he may
be one of those unfortunate people who will worry
about their play, who thus transform into work,
as we have defined work, everything that they do.
Such a man on holiday joins in a local cricket
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WORRY
match; he is in a state of nervous perspiration
before he goes in to bat, and he mopes all the after-
noon because his partner ran him out. Precious
little good the cricket has done him! I know a
man, very dear to me, who rather fancies his bat-
ting, and who sometimes finds it difficult to get
to sleep at night because he happened to come
down a fraction of a second too late upon a fast
worry.
yorker" a few hours before. The more fool he!
Plainly he is on the way to taking his cricket too
seriously, converting it into work and a source of
Most people will rightly say that cricket
is an ideal recreation for the brain-worker; but
in the case I have instanced the brain-worker would
be much better to work his brains harder than ever,
as at chess, rather than worry when he fails to get
runs. Furthermore, I believe that there is no evi-
dence to support the doctrine which assures us that
men kill themselves by overwork. Men kill them-
selves by worry every day, but not by overwork as
such. For most brain-workers there is no better
holiday than a novel intellectual occupation, pro-
vided that it be absolutely careless. I incline to
believe that intellectual labour without worry never
injured any one yet, and never will. I also believe
that, just as the successful business man, when he
retires, is apt to become a poor, querulous creature,
worrying about the most ridiculous domestic trifles,
so also the ordinary brain-worker who accepts the
common doctrine that in order to holiday it is
necessary to give the brain rest, may do himself
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 71
far more harm than good. If Satan finds some
mischief still for idle hands to do, he certainly
finds some worry still for the idle mind to endure
- unless, of course, it be the mind of an idler, with
which I have no interest or concern here. The
true holiday of the brain-worker must not consist
of replacing something by nothing, for Nature
abhors a vacuum, and will fill it with worry. It
must include the provision of a novel mental occu-
pation in sufficient quantity, the essential character
of that occupation being not its novelty, but the
fact that there is no worry associated with it it
is done for fun.
This is not merely a question of the difference
between working for money and not working for
money. A man of an egoistic type, such as my
friend, may do the greater part of his ordinary
work for glory, and may play cricket with the same
motive. When his cricket is not successful he
worries just as he would worry if his work were
not successful. There is all the difference in the
world between this state of mind and that of the
cricketer who plays the game for love of it alone,
and who, if he fails to score, is merely disap-
pointed. He will sleep none the worse for that.
Having defined the process of holiday-making,
not in terms of matter and motion, as is commonly
done, but in terms of mind, we shall find, I think,
that the truer definition is not merely true, but
useful. It will enable us to include under our idea
of holiday-making certain occupations which would
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WORRY
never be associated with holidaying in the opinion
of those who think that the essential of a holiday
is the motion of a certain amount of matter — one's
body through a not too small amount of space.
I wish the reader to include, as part of the hygienic
or health-preserving process which we now under-
stand holidaying to be, the habit of hobby-hunting.
The importance of this habit daily increases, just
as the importance of our whole subject daily in-
creases. Natural selection acts nowadays not so
much upon the plane of muscle as upon that of
mind; not upon brawn, but upon brain. More
and more, therefore, the normal or average mental
type departs from what we may call the bucolic
or rustic standard and approximates to the civic
standard. The man who is happy doing nothing
becomes scarcer, whilst the man of curious, busy,
and active mind becomes more common. Now,
such a man is more and not less prone to worry,
and is more, not less, in need of freedom from
worry; but that need is to be met by a positive
rather than a merely negative process. The annual
holiday is highly desirable, but it is very necessary
for the modern man to remember that he must not
count upon it too exclusively. Every day should
include a period of holiday-making; and this is
where the hobby comes in. I am only at one with
practical psychologists and physicians in general
when I insist upon the value of hobbies. We may
distinguish hobbies from sports, perhaps, by de-
scribing the first as mental recreations and the
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 73
-
second as physical recreations. It is because of the
needs of the modern mind that hobbies are so
valuable. I have already spoken of the man of
active mind who retires from business on some
particular birthday as if years, of all things in
the world, constituted the criterion of age- and I
have shown how such a man may suffer accord-
ingly. But if he has a hobby, some form of mental
occupation which he does for the love of it
anticipating the happy future state to which I look
forward when all human occupations will be ends
in themselves, and when no one will do uncon-
genial work because he must-the case is totally
changed. Such a man is in no danger of suffering
rapid psychical degeneration. Similar, also, is the
case of the man who has to work for his daily
bread at something from which worry cannot be
always dissociated. Such a man very frequently
will find that sports or physical recreations do not
avail to banish from his mind the thought of
business worries. It is, indeed, quite natural that
as mind becomes more important and body less im-
portant in the constitution of man, amusements
that are merely physical or bodily should cease to
be as useful as they are in the case of the kitten or
the child. In short, the average worried man needs.
something more than mere sport or play as such.
His imperative demand is for a new mental interest.
I have already said that Nature abhors a vacuum;
and this aphorism may be especially applied to the
modern mind. It must be filled with something,
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WORRY
and business cares will not be dispossessed from it
merely because the body which it owns happens to
be swinging dumb-bells. They must be pushed out
by something else. Certainly the dumb-bells will
suffice, or golf, or any form of sport, if they hap-
pen to arouse sufficient mental interest to banish
any consciousness of the ordinary worries of life.
The mere element of competition in sport is often
quite sufficient for this end, since man is a com-
peting animal if he is anything. The struggle-for-
existence and sexual selection between them have
seen to that. Hence, very often we find that the
best relief from the serious competitions of life,
entailing serious worries, is to be found in the
mock-serious competition of games and sports
with their mock worries. I have already adverted
to the danger that in some people the mock worries
may become real worries; but that must not be
permitted. Nothing, I fancy, will dispossess a
real worry better than a mock worry of which
one knows quite well, even whilst making the most
of it, as every sportsman does when he tries to win
a game for his side, that it is "only a game, after
all,” and does not matter. To lose gloriously in
the field of sport is not the same as to lose, glori-
ously or ingloriously, in the field of real life.
But many men find, especially as they become
older, that they cannot take sport even mock seri-
ously enough for it to displace the ordinary cares
of life from their minds. It is for such men that
a hobby is a real salvation. As a man grows older.
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 75
he begins to "funk fast bowling," or to find that
his golf becomes worse, and so soon as he becomes
less skilful he will derive less enjoyment and bene-
fit. Fortunately, however, the mind takes much
longer to grow old than the body, and when the
sports of youth or even of middle age fail, a man
may turn to one or other of a thousand hobbies,
and find in them that mental interest which will
give him every day a holiday or period of freedom
from worry. Let the man beware, then, who too
thoughtlessly permits all his intellectual interests
to atrophy, save those which are concerned with
his work. Do not let him be caught saying, “I
have no time for music nowadays," or for any of
a thousand other things. It is an imperative
necessity for the average modern man, and is of
the nature of an investment for coming years, that
he shall persistently cultivate some other mental
interest than that with which the worry of the
struggle-for-existence is associated. Such a mental
interest, though apparently not utilitarian, and
though not cultivated for any utilitarian purpose,
will yet prove to be a valuable weapon in the
struggle-for-existence itself.
I have already said, what I here repeat as for-
cibly as possible, that an utterly false influence has
been accredited to brain-work as such in the pro-
duction of nervous breakdown and of insanity. I
do not for a moment believe that any case of ner-
vous breakdown or of actual mental disease was
ever caused in a person of average nervous consti-
76
WORRY
tution by mere intellectual labour as such. It is
not work but care that kills; but it is highly de-
sirable that we should examine somewhat more
critically than is customary the proposition that
men are driven mad by worry. If I were merely
to emphasise this statement in this form I should
be doing my readers a grave disservice in tending
to perpetuate the utterly false notion of insanity
which still prevails even amongst highly educated
people. The public has yet to learn the paradox
that mental disease is physical disease. The causes
that produce physical disease in stomach, or lung,
or heart, may produce physical disease in the brain,
and the expression of that physical disease is men-
tal disease or insanity. The overwhelming major-
ity of cases of insanity depend absolutely upon
material changes in the brain due to the circulation
of some poison or other in the blood. Of these
poisons the most important is alcohol
following an old teacher of mine, I have elsewhere
called the toxin of the yeast plant. Scarcely less
effective are the poisons or toxins produced by
many other forms of lowly plant life which we
know as bacteria. These poisons produce physical
changes in the brain upon which the insanity de-
pends. The doctrine that worry as such can
produce mental disease is unintelligible to any one
acquainted with these matters.
which,
Nevertheless, we can state the facts in a more
rational form. We begin by reiterating that, con-
trary to opinion, overwork as such cannot cause
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND
777
insanity, but can do so only by first causing worry.
We must then proceed to say that worry as such
cannot be conceived to cause insanity, and, in point
of fact, does not cause insanity. (I am now using
the word in its common sense, to indicate the really
grave forms of mental disease.) But worry has
its ways and means by which it can and does cause
insanity; they are only too easily enumerated, and
only too abundantly illustrated in common expe-
rience. In the first place, worry is a potent cause
of insanity because it leads to the use of drugs, and
especially alcohol. Other aspects of this distress-
ing subject are treated in another article. Here
I need merely note that alcohol stands out far
beyond any other one factor as a cause of insanity,
and that worry is responsible for an enormous
amount of drinking. Indirectly, then, worry is a
terribly common cause of insanity, and any success
that may conceivably attend our study of it will
be, in its measure, success in attacking one of the
most appalling problems of our civilisation.
Again, worry is a most potent foe of sleep, and
lack of sleep is a most potent foe of sanity. I am
sometimes inclined to think that the importance of
sleep in preserving the mental health has been ex-
aggerated by some writers. We know that before
an attack of acute mania, only too often resulting
in murder and suicide, a man commonly passes.
several sleepless nights. The sleeplessness is not
a cause of his madness, however, but an early symp-
tom of it. I am, indeed, inclined to think that
i
78
WORRY
physical health suffers more than mental health
from lack of sleep as such, but if the lack of sleep
depends upon worry, and, still more, if drugs are
resorted to in order that sleep may be obtained,
the cause of the worry not being removed, then
certainly we have a potent factor in the produc-
tion of insanity. Though lack of sleep in itself
is insufficient, I believe, to cause insanity as is
surely proved by the countless bad sleepers who do
not lose their mental health - yet it is certainly
a most important contributory factor in the pro-
duction of insanity in that it makes the brain far
more susceptible than it would otherwise be to the
action of such poisons as may beset it. In a word,
it lowers brain resistiveness. The use of alcohol
and other drugs, then, and interference with sleep,
constitute most frequent and effective means by
which worry leads to mental disease of the graver
kinds.
I have spoken at but short length of the actual
relations between worry and grave mental disease.
This has been possible since the intermediate links
in the chain of causation are discussed elsewhere.
On the other hand, I have spoken at very consider-
able length of the condition by which worry - such
as most of us must daily encounter may be pre-
vented from causing the minor degrees of mental
unhealth or mental lack of fitness. In a word, I
have written less of the pathology than of the
hygiene of the subject. This is right, I think,
since my aim here is primarily to be useful, and
WORRY AND HEALTH OF MIND 79
only secondarily to present a complete account of
the subject. It is my honest belief that what has
been said regarding the preservation of mental
health by means of well-devised holidays-that
is to say, periods of perfect freedom from worry
- can scarcely fail to be of real utility, especially
to many hard-working and conscientious readers,
whose ideal of duty scarcely permits them any
leisure for mental recreation; and I can certainly
ask for no higher reward than to serve such readers
as these.
VII
WORRY AND BOREDOM
""
WORRY in the widest sense may be defined as
a "maladie des beaux esprits. The un-self-con-
scious animal does not worry, nor does the properly
educated child nor does the savage. The case is
the same with a psychical state closely allied to
worry and known as boredom or ennui.
It is true that we commonly conceive of boredom
as a neutral or negative state, whilst worry is cer-
tainly a positive and active state; but such an
analysis is not adequate. The truly neutral state
of the emotional nature is not boredom but apathy
or un-self-conscious content. Ennui, on the other
hand, is an active state of consciousness and may
very soon pass into positive irritability. Like
worry itself, it is peculiar to highly developed
minds.
No one ever yet saw a bored dog, and no one
can conceive of a bored cow. A very young baby
is incapable of experiencing boredom, but a child
belonging to any of the higher races will show
signs of boredom as early as the second year of
its life. Physicians who practise amongst children
WORRY AND BOREDOM
81
are familiar with the phenomenon of the preter-
naturally "good" child. They are consulted about
some mental defect observed or suspected and they
are told that the child — aged say two years
never gives the slightest trouble; provided with the
simplest toy or with none it will remain happy
and contented for hours, never getting into mis-
chief or needing the slightest attention. This is
an extremely bad sign, and the physician discovers
only too readily that the child is an idiot — either
of the "cretin" or the "Mongolian" type.
type. A
child that will develop into a healthy adult member
of one of the higher races should not be unnatu-
rally "good." I have occasion to observe a baby,
nearly two years old, that is very readily bored;
no toy will keep it quiet for long; when it has
been upstairs and awake for a short time it wants
to come downstairs; and the expiry of half an
hour downstairs finds it eager to go upstairs again.
If it is not provided with plenty of change it soon
becomes bored and irritable; and it is not safe to
leave the child alone for a moment, for one never
knows what it will be "up to " next. These char-
acters, trying though they may sometimes be, augur
extremely well for the future mental development
of that child.
I have unique opportunities, also, for the study
of the child's father, who is more easily bored than
any one else I know. He was always addicted to
reading at table, and no one has ever observed
him taking a solitary meal without a book or a
6
82
WORRY
.
newspaper. Rather than do so he would forgo
the meal altogether. Until he learnt to drive him-
self, he would not ride in his own motor-car with-
out a book. He dresses carelessly because he
becomes bored and irritable after five minutes of
the process. Even the pleasant organic sensations
due to the easy digestion of a good dinner-sen-
sations which suffice most people - do not avert
boredom and irritability, with quite unnecessary
worry about his work, unless he has active con-
versation or a book to amuse him. If he ever lay
awake in bed he would probably explode. On the
rare occasions when he finds himself in a public
vehicle without something to read, every stoppage
annoys him; and after such a journey he suffers
from cramps in the thighs and calves, due to the
continuous contraction of the muscles of the legs
in the attempt to accelerate the movement of the
vehicle. He has never taken a solitary, goal-less
walk, and when he has to walk somewhere always
takes a book with him. For some time he thought
it inconsiderate to keep his chauffeur waiting for
him at a concert with nothing to do," until he
discovered that this lack of occupation, so far from
converting the man into an irritable source of
profanity, caused him no distress whatever. Dolce
far niente is for him a contradiction' in terms.
Nothing exhausts him but repose.
·
66
My friend is only an extreme case of a type
which is highly characteristic of our time. We
who more or less markedly belong to it know bet-
WORRY AND BOREDOM
83
ter than to suppose that ennui is a merely neutral
state of mind. We know, also, that, though it
is not identical with worry, yet it cannot long be
endured without leading to irritability and even
actual worry.
I have described the type to the best of my
ability, but I have no practical suggestions to make.
The type should be definitely recognised, however,
for its existence has an important bearing upon
that exodus from the country into the cities which
is so marked a social feature of the age. Keen
observers are assured that civilisation is well named
-it means city-fication and the kind of mind
that is produced by civilisation can only be con-
tented in cities. An important factor in the de-
pletion of our rural districts is the sameness, the
tameness, the monotony of country life. City-
dwellers acquire a factitious love of the country,
as a change, but they would be very sorry to be
condemned to permanent rustication. The modern.
mind is too active for country life to be tolerable.
Before long it produces a boredom, with only tem-
porarily pent-up irritation, which may actually
cause more nervous wear and tear than the noise
of "streaming London's central roar." And since
confession is good for the soul, and especially since
one concrete instance is worth reams of generalisa-
tion, I may freely admit that, after working in the
quiet of St. John's Wood until, say, four o'clock
in the afternoon, I often find myself becoming
bored and, in order to avert the irritability which
84
WORRY
would soon follow, hie me, on the smallest pretext,
to such a neighbourhood as Oxford St., where the
delightful crash of the motor-buses has lately made
the Metropolis even dearer to at least one Lon-
doner, and soon restores his mental satisfaction!
VIII
INSANE WORRY
HERE we must discuss the aggravated cases
in which what we elsewhere call morbid worry
actually reaches the pitch of insane worry, with its
most terrible expression in all the various forms
of melancholia itself. We may call morbid all
worry except that which has a reasonable relation
to some future evil that is feared. Now in certain
cases probably occurring only in consequence of
actual instability of the brain, hereditary or ac-
quired some particular object of morbid worry
may assume the character of what the French call
a fixed idea. The possibility of bankruptcy, let us
say, is so frequently presented to the mind that at
last it becomes permanently fixed there-form-
ing what, in other language, is called an obsession.
Such cases, unfortunately, are far easier to describe
than to cure; but at least it is possible to utter
a grave warning to the reader that when he finds
any sources of worry assuming this character of
permanency, or all but permanency, and of an
actual dominance over the whole sphere of con-
sciousness something must be done, and that
right early. For instance, a mental specialist should
be consulted. There is, of course, no sharp line
86
WORRY
between sanity and insanity, except in the public
mind; and it is thus impossible to assert the exist-
ence of any definite point, even in a particular case,
where a merely unnecessary, futile, and' injurious
worry becomes a fixed idea bordering upon the
insane. But it is quite certain that, in many
amongst us, the mind is able so to prey upon itself
that at last no close observer will question the case
to be one of insane worry.
The actual category of insanity is indisputably
entered when the fixed idea or obsession is found
to bear no reasonable correspondence with its ob-
ject. When this point is reached, the patient
as he must now certainly be called is the victim.
of what is technically called a delusion.
Delusions may be of many kinds, including, for
instance, delusions of grandeur, as when the pa-
tient fancies himself to be a king or millionaire;
but here we are concerned with the much more
frequently encountered delusions that have the
stamp of worry upon them. Amongst these are,
in the first place, delusions of fear of all kinds. In
persons especially young persons and women-
who have heard much of religious beliefs, these
may be of a religious character- delusions of
having committed the unpardonable sin, of doom
to eternal punishment, and so forth. Or they may
be delusions as to imminent bankruptcy, to recur to
our former illustration, in a man whose finances are,
and are likely to continue, perfectly satisfactory.
Again, they may be bodily delusions. The pa-
INSANE WORRY
87
tient may worry from morning till night - and
from night till morning, poor fellow-because
he believes that he has swallowed a cannon-ball, or
the egg of some reptile that has reached maturity
within him and is now gnawing at his vitals. Cases
of this kind of insane worry have sometimes been
relieved by the performance of a sham surgical
operation, and the subsequent demonstration of
the offending object to the patient; but, even so,
the delusion, or another, is apt to recur. In cases
of this kind it will commonly be found that the
patient's organic sense of well-being is disordered.
There are also only too frequent cases of worry
about some supposed disease, notably cancer, which
have given rise to the term cancer-phobia, or fear
of cancer.
Extremely common and familiar to the student
of the mind diseased are delusions of suspicion. It
is, of course, evident that suspicion is a form of
worry, and baseless suspicion is one of the com-
monest forms of insane worry. Even in reasonably
sane people of the artistic temperament, so called,
there may occur times when they think that
their friends are becoming cold, or repeating mali-
cious gossip; and it is well for ordinary, sober,
people who have such friendsoften the most
delightful and beautiful of souls to remember
this peculiarity of their character, and be ready to
make allowances for it. In its definitely insane
forms the suspicion is of a more serious kind. The
husband doubts the fidelity of a "true and honour-
88
WORRY
able wife"; there is a plot to destroy his reputa-
tion; attempts are being made to poison him; his
children are being taught to despise him, and so
on.
(C
At the present time the general public is lament-
ably ignorant of the significance of such phenomena
as these; with the consequence that they are not
taken seriously. Well-nigh every day we read of
terrible domestic tragedies, such as Triple Mur-
der and Suicide," and the like. These are cer-
tainly no less common than we think, and they are
theoretically preventable. Not so long ago they
were looked upon as crimes, pure and simple. The
present writer possesses monographs written by his
grandfather, for forty years visiting physician to
the first humane asylum for the insane in Great
Britain,¹ and accounts of criminal trials at which,
in the witness-box, he endeavoured to avert the
vengeance of the law from unfortunate wretches
who had committed deeds of this kind but had
failed to complete the act by suicide. The protests
of humane science were commonly unavailing,
however, even in those not distant days. Now,
however, we recognise that, in such cases, the mur-
der is the result of madness; and the fact-lam-
entable or fortunate according to the manner in
which it is dealt with is that the symptoms of
this madness, when it is still merely incipient and
nɔt dangerous, are quite sufficiently striking and
well-marked to be recognised by any one who has
1 The Retreat, York.
INSANE WORRY
89
—
heard of them, and who lives in daily contact with
the patient. Therefore I say that these terrible
tragedies are theoretically—and actually pre-
ventable. No one suffering from grave physical
disease, threatening death not only to himself but
also to his nearest and dearest, would be permitted
to go untended, whilst displaying symptoms no
more definite and threatening than morbid fears
and suspicions are in these cases. It is my hope
that, if this book serves no other purpose, at least
it will direct public attention to the need for recog-
nising the significance of such suspicions and the
possibility of averting the last consequences. Many
a man, suffering from such suspicions, and aware,
in his lucid intervals, that they were baseless, would
spontaneously place the facts before a doctor, if he
had any realisation of the appalling sequel that
threatens.
In short, insane worry, showing itself in such
ways as I have named, ought to be regarded as
an invaluable danger-signal, to be immediately
profited by, instead of being constantly treated
with an apathy that will prove fatal.
As to how it could be that presumably humane
and intelligent men, such as those who undertook
the administration of the criminal law fifty years
ago, could have such cases as these brought before
them and could fail to recognise that such purpose-
less and unnatural deeds indicated insanity as
to how that could be I am not prepared to say.
But it teaches a lesson of humility to us, who may
90
WORRY
fancy that we, at least, are too enlightened to
make such monstrous errors.
Lastly, there is insane worry as it is encoun-
tered in completely developed cases of melancholia
in our asylums. Melancholia is a general name.
for a large and various group of diseases of the
mind. Properly speaking, it is not a disease but
a symptom, just as we now recognise that jaundice
is not a disease but a symptom. Nevertheless it is
so marked and frequent and dominant a symptom
of mental disease that the name may still be con-
veniently employed in the old fashion. Worry, in-
sane worry, is the characteristic of melancholia.
Now I must not be misunderstood. I do not
assert that worry is apt to undergo aggravation in
certain people, and so to cause melancholia. That
is not at all what happens. Elsewhere we discuss
the physical states that lead to worry, and the dis-
cussion is relevant here. We speak of mental dis-
ease, but in reality all mental disease is physical
disease or bodily disease, the diseased organ being
the brain. It is not the rule that worry causes
melancholia, but that certain physical causes pro-
duce the brain disease or brain disorder of which
melancholia or insane worry is the symptom.
The physical causes of melancholia are very nu-
merous. In recent years influenza has been respon-
sible for a very large number of cases. Then,
again, it is apt to occur, in brains of unstable type,
as a consequence of physical strain. Then there
is the melancholia that follow's on childbirth, and
INSANE WORRY
91
that which is due to the strain of too prolonged
nursing, and is known as lactational melancholia.
These cases are very commonly curable. Insane
worry is their cardinal symptom, and is frequently
so intense as to drive the victim to suicide, unless
this be prevented by timely precautions. When
the physical health, including that of the brain, has
been restored, by recovery from the effects of
the poison of influenza, or the effects of too fre-
quent child-bearing, or many other causes then
the insane worries vanish. They never had any
external warrant, and they cannot outlast their
internal cause.
-
The forms which insane worry may assume in
cases of melancholia are similar to those, some of
which have already been detailed.
I would insist again on the all-important fact
that insane worry is worry produced by insanity
not worry producing insanity. On the other
hand, insanity so produced — and usually insanity
of the melancholic type- must certainly be recog-
nised, though its importance is subsidiary.
It follows that, in general, the cure of insane
worry consists in the cure of the brain disease of
which it is the expression. The amateur may be
inclined to argue with the patient, expecting to
convince his reason that his worry is unwarranted.
But the expert knows this to be useless; he prefers
milk, for instance, to argument in the case of
insane worry. He feeds the patient liberally, and
provides him with sleep, and when the brain is
92
WORRY
thus restored to health and strength, the insane
worry bred of its weakness vanishes like the base-
less fabric of a vision.
Just as it is impossible to underestimate the
importance of hard brain-work, in itself, as a cause
of insanity, so it is easy to overestimate the im-
portance even of worry as a cause of insanity.
This point was discussed in the last chapter, but
it is worth while to observe here that popular com-
mentators as, for instance, Lord Rosebery in a
speech that excited much attention in October, 1906,
are not supported by facts when they arraign
the pace and cares of city life as prime causes of
the contemporary increase of insanity. The fact
which has to be reckoned with is that the insanity
rate is higher in rural than in urban districts. It is
not my business to attempt an explanation of this
fact here, but it shows, at any rate, that we may
easily exaggerate the influence of worry as a cause
of insanity. On the other hand, few who have not
lived amongst the insane can adequately realise
how terrible and abundant is the production of
worry by insanity-i.e., by disease or disorder of
the brain.
IX
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
It is recorded of certain bees who had an oppor-
tunity of making acquaintance with alcohol in the
form of fermented honey that they partook greedily
thereof, and thereafter displayed the symptoms of
excitement and loss of equilibrium, only too often
exhibited by creatures whose nervous organisation
is even higher than that of a bee. But it is further
recorded that no amount of temptation, persuasion,
nor yet starvation, would induce those bees again
to make adventure with the honeyed poison.
Very different is the case with man. In all
times and places he has been susceptible to the
charm of drugs that markedly affect the nervous
system drugs of a very definite class. Beyond
a doubt the fundamental fact of the human mind
upon which the charm of these drugs depends is
the fact of self-consciousness, the power of "look-
ing before and after," which we have already seen
to be the first condition of worry. All animals less
than man live in and for the present. They may
make apparent calculation for the future, but this
is sub-conscious or instinctive not rational. We
may say that nervine drugs have no particular pur-
pose or use except for the self-conscious being,
94
WORRY
man, whose attitude towards them markedly con-
trasts with that of the bees whom I have cited.
It is certain that men have used alcohol when-
ever and wherever they have been able to make
it, and that the alcoholic strength of the liquids
they have consumed has been limited merely by
their chemical knowledge. There is clear evidence
that alcohol was extensively used in Egypt six or
eight thousand years ago. In these days it has
found certain rivals, some of them of very great
importance for us. In addition to the drugs which
properly belong to the same class as alcohol, there
is at least one powerful drug, of unique properties,
which is the active principle of tea and coffee, and
is daily consumed in all but incredible quantities
in every part of the world where it can be obtained.
These various drugs must carefully be considered
in the course of our study of Worry.
They must be considered because their charm, as
we have seen, is for man the worrying animal
alone, and because it is their influence upon the
mind that constitutes their value and their charm.
If to alcohol and to the caffeine of tea and coffee
we add the nicotine of tobacco and the morphine
of opium, we find ourselves faced with a series of
substances which are daily employed by the over-
whelming majority of human beings, and which,
though they are not foods, nor in any way neces-
sary to life, play a very large part indeed in modi-
fying the state of men's minds and tempers and
actions which are, after all, the only interesting
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 95
things in the whole world. Now if man were no
more mentally than even such a wonderful crea-
ture as the bee, these drugs, I think it is safe to
say, would have no more charm for him than for
the bee. But man is a reflecting mind; he can and
does conjure up the past and anticipate the future;
and in both cases there is the constant risk that
his so doing will arouse unpleasant emotions in
a word, that he will worry about the past or the
future or both. As long as man is man he will
continue to live less in the present than out of the
present. Now the drugs which man employs so
largely have been welcomed by him not on any
theoretical nor economic grounds, but simply and
solely because he finds that they exercise an in-
fluence, which he rightly or wrongly welcomes,
upon the emotional tone of his mind. Every one
is familiar with the famous German students'
drinking song for a bass voice, the substance of
which is the statement that every kind of fear and
care and worry vanishes whilst "drinking, drink-
ing, drinking." There you have the facts in a nut-
shell. There are scores and scores of drugs which
exercise marked properties upon the muscles, the
nerve ends, the glands, the heart, the lungs, and
all the other tissues and organs of the body. There
are hosts of drugs which markedly affect, in vari-
ous ways, the lower levels of the nervous system.
But survey mankind from the dawn of civilisation
till to-day and from China to Peru - you will not
find that any of these drugs has taken a place in his
96
WORRY
life. The drugs which he wants and has taken
good care to obtain are those which affect con-
sciousness those which modify the emotional
tone of his mind, those which banish care and
drown sorrow, those which give him what he values
more than any other thing that can be named, the
organic sense of well-being with which life is worth
living, and without which life is worthless.
After what has already been said the reader will
not expect me to launch into a general denunciation
of all these drugs. Some may say that it is not
consonant with human dignity to drink alcohol,
smoke tobacco and opium, or sip tea; man should
be above the need of modifying his consciousness.
by these artificial means. This argument may be
supported by the general conviction that the use of
these drugs has always worked, and still works, a
great deal of harm. But, on the other hand, many
considerations may be urged and must here be
detailed. In the first place, it is certain beyond
certainty that neither denunciation, nor warning,
nor legislation, nor any other measures whatever
will wean mankind as a whole from its addiction to
one or other of these drugs. Wherever and when-
ever they have been obtainable they have been used.
They are more obtainable to-day than ever before,
and are more widely used than ever before. The
reasonable argument would seem to be that they
must serve some human purpose. If their effects
were noxious in all respects, they would scarcely
have been heard of. The fact of their employment,
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
97
universal as it is, constitutes a proof of the fact
that men find or seem to find them more or
less useful. Perhaps, then, it will be better for us
to recognise these facts, and to ask ourselves
whether it is possible to distinguish between one
of these drugs and another, to discover whether
there is any which is wholly useful, or at any rate,
to arrange them in some sort of scale which will
indicate the proportions between the good and the
evil that they accomplish.
And, first of all, let us ask ourselves exactly
what it is that they do. The word commonly ap-
plied to these drugs is stimulants, and it is unques-
tionably true that, for many purposes and on many
occasions, men welcome substances which increase
the rapidity of their vital processes. Such sub-
stances are conspicuously contained in many ar-
ticles of diet; but when we come to consider the
leading case of alcohol, we shall find that the com-
mon belief requires criticism. Alcohol is commonly
spoken and thought of as a stimulant, and we
know, of course, that the first result of its action
is to cause an increased rapidity of the pulse, an
increased activity of many glands, and a very
definite degree of mental excitement. In these
respects alcohol is strictly comparable with opium,
which plays a corresponding part in the life of
an enormous section of mankind. It may be
said, in general, that a race employs either alcohol
or opium, but not both, for both are not needed.
Whether the one or the other be used, however,
7
98
WORRY
it is not long before the stage of stimulation or
excitement gives place to one which is distinguished
by precisely opposite characters. The tide of life
now flows more slowly, the various physical func-
tions are depressed, the mind becomes less active,
and if a sufficiency of either drug has been taken,
sleep or unconsciousness ensues. If the dose be
well calculated, this last stage may not be quickly
reached, but the subject will remain for a long
period in a state which indicates that he has taken
a sedative, and not a stimulant.
Now no man takes a sedative in order that his
pulse may beat more slowly, or in order that the
number of his respirations per minute may be re-
duced. He takes a sedative in order that he may
attain that particular state of mind which it is the
characteristic of a sedative to produce. Undoubt-
edly alcohol may be taken at times for its supposed
stimulant effect upon the powers of work, but it is
indisputable that the action of alcohol and of
opium, which has led these drugs to play their part
in human life, is their power of producing peace of
mind. That is why I must consider them here.
What men want in all times and places is hap-
piness conscious and self-conscious happiness.
Yet, because they are men, able to look before and
after, this state which they desire is constantly
threatened by the presence of regrets, fears, and
cares, depression and apprehension — in a word,
by worry. It has long since been discovered that
alcohol and opium are antagonistic to worry.
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
99
Never yet was the unhappy state of mind that
would not yield to an adequate dose of one or
other of them. I submit, then, that there is a very
grave and very stupid fallacy in the common con-
ception of alcohol in the West or opium in the East
as stimulants. They are taken and used not as
stimulants, but as sedatives.
In order to clear up our views on this subject
it is necessary to see whether they are in accord
with what is actually known concerning the actions
of these drugs on the body. Now, it has been
demonstrated in the case of both of them that their
stimulation of the body is, so to speak, preliminary
and accidental, and that a depression or soothing
or sedation of the bodily functions, and with them
the mental functions, is their essential character.
As every one knows, opium is very largely used in
medicine; more especially nowadays in the form
of its chief active principle morphia. But no doctor
thinks of morphia as a stimulant, or uses it as a
stimulant. The doctor is aware of its preliminary
stimulant action, and takes measures to alleviate
or obliterate that action in order that he may ob-
tain the sedative action which is the true character
of the drug and which he desires.
Extremely significant, but yet unknown to the
public in general, are the similar facts in regard
to alcohol. This is a substance of paradoxes; in
general, what it does is just the reverse of what
it seems to do. It is still called a stimulant, as it
was half a century ago. At that time not only was
100
WORRY
it called a stimulant, but it was widely used as a
stimulant by doctors. It was supposed to increase.
vital activity in all directions, and was used as an
aid to the body in its fight against disease of all
kinds. But in these days of scientific medicine our
whole conception of alcohol has changed. As we
have already seen, the public speaks of it as a
stimulant, but, in point of fact, uses it as a seda-
tive uses it because it is able to calm the worry-
ing mind, to banish care, and to bring peace.
Similarly, nowadays, the most scientific physicians
both speak of alcohol and use it as a sedative.
Some think, for instance, that when the body tem-
perature tends to become too high in consequence of
the excessive activity of the vital processes, alcohol
may be of use, for it lowers the temperature.
Similarly, it may produce sleep, both in fever and
at other times. True, like many other sedatives,
it causes a period of preliminary excitement, but
that must be shortened or neutralised as far as
possible.
If now we turn to the fundamental chemistry of
alcohol and opium, we find that it confirms my
doctrines as to the true character of these drugs
and as to the true explanation of their universal
employment. The fundamental fact of the chem-
istry of the body is the fact of burning, combustion,
or oxidation. The more rapidly we burn, the
more rapidly we live. Both alcohol and opium have
been proved to interfere with oxidation or com-
bustion in the body. They markedly retard the
pp=6-100
repeatre!
VIII
INSANE WORRY
HERE we must discuss the aggravated cases
in which what we elsewhere call morbid worry
actually reaches the pitch of insane worry, with its
most terrible expression in all the various forms.
of melancholia itself. We may call morbid all
worry except that which has a reasonable relation
to some future evil that is feared. Now in certain
cases probably occurring only in consequence of
actual instability of the brain, hereditary or ac-
quired some particular object of morbid worry
may assume the character of what the French call
a fixed idea. The possibility of bankruptcy, let us
say, is so frequently presented to the mind that at
last it becomes permanently fixed there form-
ing what, in other language, is called an obsession.
Such cases, unfortunately, are far easier to describe
than to cure; but at least it is possible to utter
a grave warning to the reader that when he finds
any sources of worry assuming this character of
permanency, or all but permanency, and of an
actual dominance over the whole sphere of con-
sciousness something must be done, and that
right early. For instance, a mental specialist should
be consulted. There is, of course, no sharp line
86
WORRY
between sanity and insanity, except in the public
mind; and it is thus impossible to assert the exist-
ence of any definite point, even in a particular case,
where a merely unnecessary, futile, and injurious
worry becomes a fixed idea bordering upon the
insane. But it is quite certain that, in many
amongst us, the mind is able so to prey upon itself
that at last no close observer will question the case
to be one of insane worry.
The actual category of insanity is indisputably
entered when the fixed idea or obsession is found
to bear no reasonable correspondence with its ob-
ject. When this point is reached, the patient
as he must now certainly be called is the victim
of what is technically called a delusion.
Delusions may be of many kinds, including, for
instance, delusions of grandeur, as when the pa-
tient fancies himself to be a king or millionaire;
but here we are concerned with the much more
frequently encountered delusions that have the
stamp of worry upon them. Amongst these are,
in the first place, delusions of fear of all kinds. In
persons especially young persons and women-
who have heard much of religious beliefs, these
may be of a religious character - delusions of
having committed the unpardonable sin, of doom
to eternal punishment, and so forth. Or they may
be delusions as to imminent bankruptcy, to recur to
our former illustration, in a man whose finances are,
and are likely to continue, perfectly satisfactory.
Again, they may be bodily delusions. The pa-
INSANE WORRY
87
tient may worry from morning till night— and
from night till morning, poor fellow because
he believes that he has swallowed a cannon-ball, or
the egg of some reptile that has reached maturity
within him and is now gnawing at his vitals. Cases
of this kind of insane worry have sometimes been
relieved by the performance of a sham surgical
operation, and the subsequent demonstration of
the offending object to the patient; but, even so,
the delusion, or another, is apt to recur.
In cases
of this kind it will commonly be found that the
patient's organic sense of well-being is disordered.
There are also only too frequent cases of worry
about some supposed disease, notably cancer, which
have given rise to the term cancer-phobia, or fear
of cancer.
Extremely common and familiar to the student
of the mind diseased are delusions of suspicion. It
is, of course, evident that suspicion is a form of
worry, and baseless suspicion is one of the com-
monest forms of insane worry. Even in reasonably
sane people of the artistic temperament, so called,
there may occur times when they think that
their friends are becoming cold, or repeating mali-
cious gossip; and it is well for ordinary, sober,
people who have such friends—often the most
delightful and beautiful of souls to remember
this peculiarity of their character, and be ready to
make allowances for it. In its definitely insane
forms the suspicion is of a more serious kind. The
husband doubts the fidelity of a
" true and honour-
88
WORRY
able wife"; there is a plot to destroy his reputa-
tion; attempts are being made to poison him; his
children are being taught to despise him, and so
on.
66
At the present time the general public is lament-
ably ignorant of the significance of such phenomena
as these; with the consequence that they are not
taken seriously. Well-nigh every day we read of
terrible domestic tragedies, such as Triple Mur-
der and Suicide," and the like. These are cer-
tainly no less common than we think, and they are
theoretically preventable. Not so long ago they
were looked upon as crimes, pure and simple. The
present writer possesses monographs written by his
grandfather, for forty years visiting physician to
the first humane asylum for the insane in Great
Britain,¹ and accounts of criminal trials at which,
in the witness-box, he endeavoured to avert the
vengeance of the law from unfortunate wretches
who had committed deeds of this kind but had
failed to complete the act by suicide. The protests
of humane science were commonly unavailing,
however, even in those not distant days. Now,
however, we recognise that, in such cases, the mur-
der is the result of madness; and the fact-lam-
entable or fortunate according to the manner in
which it is dealt with is that the symptoms of
this madness, when it is still merely incipient and
not dangerous, are quite sufficiently striking and
well-marked to be recognised by any one who has
1 The Retreat, York.
INSANE WORRY
89
1
heard of them, and who lives in daily contact with
the patient. Therefore I say that these terrible
tragedies are theoretically and actually pre-
ventable. No one suffering from grave physical
disease, threatening death not only to himself but
also to his nearest and dearest, would be permitted
to go untended, whilst displaying symptoms no
more definite and threatening than morbid fears
and suspicions are in these cases. It is my hope
that, if this book serves no other purpose, at least
it will direct public attention to the need for recog-
nising the significance of such suspicions and the
possibility of averting the last consequences. Many
a man, suffering from such suspicions, and aware,
in his lucid intervals, that they were baseless, would
spontaneously place the facts before a doctor, if he
had any realisation of the appalling sequel that
threatens.
In short, insane worry, showing itself in such
ways as I have named, ought to be regarded as
an invaluable danger-signal, to be immediately
profited by, instead of being constantly treated
with an apathy that will prove fatal.
As to how it could be that presumably humane
and intelligent men, such as those who undertook
the administration of the criminal law fifty years.
ago, could have such cases as these brought before
them and could fail to recognise that such purpose-
less and unnatural deeds indicated insanity — as
to how that could be I am not prepared to say.
But it teaches a lesson of humility to us, who may
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WORRY
fancy that we, at least, are too enlightened to
make such monstrous errors.
Lastly, there is insane worry as it is encoun-
tered in completely developed cases of melancholia
in our asylums. Melancholia is a general name
for a large and various group of diseases of the
mind. Properly speaking, it is not a disease but
a symptom, just as we now recognise that jaundice
is not a disease but a symptom. Nevertheless it is
so marked and frequent and dominant a symptom
of mental disease that the name may still be con-
veniently employed in the old fashion. Worry, in-
sane worry, is the characteristic of melancholia.
Now I must not be misunderstood. I do not
assert that worry is apt to undergo aggravation in
certain people, and so to cause melancholia. That
is not at all what happens. Elsewhere we discuss
the physical states that lead to worry, and the dis-
cussion is relevant here. We speak of mental dis-
ease, but in reality all mental disease is physical
disease or bodily disease, the diseased organ being
the brain. It is not the rule that worry causes
melancholia, but that certain physical causes pro-
duce the brain disease or brain disorder of which
melancholia or insane worry is the symptom.
$
The physical causes of melancholia are very nu-
merous. In recent years influenza has been respon-
sible for a very large number of cases. Then,
again, it is apt to occur, in brains of unstable type,
as a consequence of physical strain. Then there
is the melancholia that follows on childbirth, and
INSANE WORRY
91
that which is due to the strain of too prolonged
nursing, and is known as lactational melancholia.
These cases are very commonly curable. Insane
worry is their cardinal symptom, and is frequently
so intense as to drive the victim to suicide, unless
this be prevented by timely precautions. When
the physical health, including that of the brain, has
been restored, - by recovery from the effects of
the poison of influenza, or the effects of too fre-
quent child-bearing, or many other causes then
the insane worries vanish. They never had any
external warrant, and they cannot outlast their
internal cause.
The forms which insane worry may assume in
cases of melancholia are similar to those, some of
which have already been detailed.
I would insist again on the all-important fact
that insane worry is worry produced by insanity
-not worry producing insanity. On the other
hand, insanity so produced- and usually insanity
of the melancholic type- must certainly be recog-
nised, though its importance is subsidiary.
It follows that, in general, the cure of insane
worry consists in the cure of the brain disease of
which it is the expression. The amateur may be
inclined to argue with the patient, expecting to
convince his reason that his worry is unwarranted.
But the expert knows this to be useless; he prefers
milk, for instance, to argument in the case of
insane worry. He feeds the patient liberally, and
provides him with sleep, and when the brain is
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WORRY
thus restored to health and strength, the insane
worry bred of its weakness vanishes like the base-
less fabric of a vision.
Just as it is impossible to underestimate the
importance of hard brain-work, in itself, as a cause
of insanity, so it is easy to overestimate the im-
portance even of worry as a cause of insanity.
This point was discussed in the last chapter, but
it is worth while to observe here that popular com-
mentators as, for instance, Lord Rosebery in a
speech that excited much attention in October, 1906,
are not supported by facts when they arraign
the pace and cares of city life as prime causes of
the contemporary increase of insanity. The fact
which has to be reckoned with is that the insanity
rate is higher in rural than in urban districts. It is
not my business to attempt an explanation of this
fact here, but it shows, at any rate, that we may
easily exaggerate the influence of worry as a cause
of insanity. On the other hand, few who have not
lived amongst the insane can adequately realise
how terrible and abundant is the production of
worry by insanity—i.e., by disease or disorder of
the brain.
IX
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
It is recorded of certain bees who had an oppor-
tunity of making acquaintance with alcohol in the
form of fermented honey that they partook greedily
thereof, and thereafter displayed the symptoms of
excitement and loss of equilibrium, only too often
exhibited by creatures whose nervous organisation
is even higher than that of a bee. But it is further
recorded that no amount of temptation, persuasion,
nor yet starvation, would induce those bees again
to make adventure with the honeyed poison.
Very different is the case with man. In all
times and places he has been susceptible to the
charm of drugs that markedly affect the nervous
system drugs of a very definite class. Beyond
a doubt the fundamental fact of the human mind
upon which the charm of these drugs depends is
the fact of self-consciousness, the power of "look-
ing before and after," which we have already seen
to be the first condition of worry. All animals less
than man live in and for the present. They may
make apparent calculation for the future, but this
is sub-conscious or instinctive not rational. We
may say that nervine drugs have no particular pur-
pose or use except for the self-conscious being,
94
WORRY
man, whose attitude towards them markedly con-
trasts with that of the bees whom I have cited.
It is certain that men have used alcohol when-
ever and wherever they have been able to make.
it, and that the alcoholic strength of the liquids
they have consumed has been limited merely by
their chemical knowledge. There is clear evidence.
that alcohol was extensively used in Egypt six or
eight thousand years ago. In these days it has
found certain rivals, some of them of very great
importance for us. In addition to the drugs which
properly belong to the same class as alcohol, there
is at least one powerful drug, of unique properties,
which is the active principle of tea and coffee, and
is daily consumed in all but incredible quantities
in every part of the world where it can be obtained.
These various drugs must carefully be considered
in the course of our study of Worry.
They must be considered because their charm, as
we have seen, is for man- the worrying animal
- alone, and because it is their influence upon the
mind that constitutes their value and their charm.
If to alcohol and to the caffeine of tea and coffee
we add the nicotine of tobacco and the morphine.
of opium, we find ourselves faced with a series of
substances which are daily employed by the over-
whelming majority of human beings, and which,
though they are not foods, nor in any way neces-
sary to life, play a very large part indeed in modi-
fying the state of men's minds and tempers and
actions — which are, after all, the only interesting
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
95
things in the whole world. Now if man were no
more mentally than even such a wonderful crea-
ture as the bee, these drugs, I think it is safe to
say, would have no more charm for him than for
the bee. But man is a reflecting mind; he can and
does conjure up the past and anticipate the future;
and in both cases there is the constant risk that
his so doing will arouse unpleasant emotions — in
a word, that he will worry about the past or the
future or both. As long as man is man he will
continue to live less in the present than out of the
present. Now the drugs which man employs so
largely have been welcomed by him not on any
theoretical nor economic grounds, but simply and
solely because he finds that they exercise an in-
fluence, which he rightly or wrongly welcomes,
upon the emotional tone of his mind. Every one
is familiar with the famous German students'
drinking song for a bass voice, the substance of
which is the statement that every kind of fear and
care and worry vanishes whilst "drinking, drink-
ing, drinking." There you have the facts in a nut-
shell. There are scores and scores of drugs which
exercise marked properties upon the muscles, the
nerve ends, the glands, the heart, the lungs, and
all the other tissues and organs of the body. There
are hosts of drugs which markedly affect, in vari-
ous ways, the lower levels of the nervous system.
But survey mankind from the dawn of civilisation
till to-day and from China to Peru - you will not
find that any of these drugs has taken a place in his
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WORRY
life. The drugs which he wants and has taken.
good care to obtain are those which affect con-
sciousness those which modify the emotional
tone of his mind, those which banish care and
drown sorrow, those which give him what he values
more than any other thing that can be named, the
organic sense of well-being with which life is worth
living, and without which life is worthless.
After what has already been said the reader will
not expect me to launch into a general denunciation
of all these drugs. Some may say that it is not
consonant with human dignity to drink alcohol,
smoke tobacco and opium, or sip tea; man should
be above the need of modifying his consciousness
by these artificial means. This argument may be
supported by the general conviction that the use of
these drugs has always worked, and still works, a
great deal of harm. But, on the other hand, many
considerations may be urged and must here be
detailed. In the first place, it is certain beyond
certainty that neither denunciation, nor warning,
nor legislation, nor any other measures whatever
will wean mankind as a whole from its addiction to
one or other of these drugs. Wherever and when-
ever they have been obtainable they have been used.
They are more obtainable to-day than ever before,
and are more widely used than ever before. The
reasonable argument would seem to be that they
must serve some human purpose. If their effects
were noxious in all respects, they would scarcely
have been heard of. The fact of their employment,
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
97
universal as it is, constitutes a proof of the fact
that men find or seem to find them more or
less useful. Perhaps, then, it will be better for us
to recognise these facts, and to ask ourselves
whether it is possible to distinguish between one
of these drugs and another, to discover whether
there is any which is wholly useful, or at any rate,
to arrange them in some sort of scale which will
indicate the proportions between the good and the
evil that they accomplish.
And, first of all, let us ask ourselves exactly
what it is that they do. The word commonly ap-
plied to these drugs is stimulants, and it is unques-
tionably true that, for many purposes and on many
occasions, men welcome substances which increase
the rapidity of their vital processes. Such sub-
stances are conspicuously contained in many ar-
ticles of diet; but when we come to consider the
leading case of alcohol, we shall find that the com-
mon belief requires criticism. Alcohol is commonly
spoken and thought of as a stimulant, and we
know, of course, that the first result of its action
is to cause an increased rapidity of the pulse, an
increased activity of many glands, and a very
definite degree of mental excitement. In these
respects alcohol is strictly comparable with opium,
which plays a corresponding part in the life of
an
enormous section of mankind. It may be
said, in general, that a race employs either alcohol
or opium, but not both, for both are not needed.
Whether the one or the other be used, however,
7
98
WORRY
it is not long before the stage of stimulation or
excitement gives place to one which is distinguished
by precisely opposite characters. The tide of life
now flows more slowly, the various physical func-
tions are depressed, the mind becomes less active,
and if a sufficiency of either drug has been taken,
sleep or unconsciousness ensues. If the dose be
well calculated, this last stage may not be quickly
reached, but the subject will remain for a long
period in a state which indicates that he has taken
a sedative, and not a stimulant.
Now no man takes a sedative in order that his
pulse may beat more slowly, or in order that the
number of his respirations per minute may be re-
duced. He takes a sedative in order that he may
attain that particular state of mind which it is the
characteristic of a sedative to produce. Undoubt-
edly alcohol may be taken at times for its supposed
stimulant effect upon the powers of work, but it is
indisputable that the action of alcohol and of
opium, which has led these drugs to play their part
in human life, is their power of producing peace of
mind. That is why I must consider them here.
What men want in all times and places is hap-
piness conscious and self-conscious happiness.
Yet, because they are men, able to look before and
after, this state which they desire is constantly
threatened by the presence of regrets, fears, and
cares, depression and apprehension in a word,
by worry. It has long since been discovered that
alcohol and opium are antagonistic to worry.
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
99
Never yet was the unhappy state of mind that
would not yield to an adequate dose of one or
other of them. I submit, then, that there is a very
grave and very stupid fallacy in the common con-
ception of alcohol in the West or opium in the East
as stimulants. They are taken and used not as
stimulants, but as sedatives.
In order to clear up our views on this subject
it is necessary to see whether they are in accord
with what is actually known concerning the actions
of these drugs on the body. Now, it has been
demonstrated in the case of both of them that their
stimulation of the body is, so to speak, preliminary
and accidental, and that a depression or soothing
or sedation of the bodily functions, and with them
the mental functions, is their essential character.
As every one knows, opium is very largely used in
medicine; more especially nowadays in the form
of its chief active principle morphia. But no doctor
thinks of morphia as a stimulant, or uses it as a
stimulant. The doctor is aware of its preliminary
stimulant action, and takes measures to alleviate
or obliterate that action in order that he may ob-
tain the sedative action which is the true character
of the drug and which he desires.
Extremely significant, but yet unknown to the
public in general, are the similar facts in regard
to alcohol. This is a substance of paradoxes; in
general, what it does is just the reverse of what
it seems to do. It is still called a stimulant, as it
was half a century ago. At that time not only was
100
WORRY
it called a stimulant, but it was widely used as a
stimulant by doctors. It was supposed to increase
vital activity in all directions, and was used as an
aid to the body in its fight against disease of all
kinds. But in these days of scientific medicine our
whole conception of alcohol has changed. As we
have already seen, the public speaks of it as a
stimulant, but, in point of fact, uses it as a seda-
tive uses it because it is able to calm the worry-
ing mind, to banish care, and to bring peace.
Similarly, nowadays, the most scientific physicians
both speak of alcohol and use it as a sedative.
Some think, for instance, that when the body tem-
perature tends to become too high in consequence of
the excessive activity of the vital processes, alcohol
may be of use, for it lowers the temperature.
Similarly, it may produce sleep, both in fever and
at other times. True, like many other sedatives,
it causes a period of preliminary excitement, but
that must be shortened or neutralised as far as
possible.
If now we turn to the fundamental chemistry of
alcohol and opium, we find that it confirms my
doctrines as to the true character of these drugs
and as to the true explanation of their universal
employment. The fundamental fact of the chem-
istry of the body is the fact of burning, combustion,
or oxidation. The more rapidly we burn, the
more rapidly we live. Both alcohol and opium have
been proved to interfere with oxidation or com-
bustion in the body. They markedly retard the
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 101
rate at which the oxygen we take in from the air
is combined with the tissues. In the midst of the
confusion which reigns as to the classification of
drugs, it seems to me that we have here a funda-
mental, chemical distinction. The drug the net
result of which is to increase the rate at which we
burn away is essentially a stimulant; the drug the
net result of whose action is to diminish the rate
at which we burn away is essentially a sedative.
For convenience we may apply the term pseudo-
stimulant to those sedatives, such as alcohol, opium,
or morphia, which display a preliminary transient
stage of stimulation.
Ere we conclude it will be necessary to pro-
nounce judgment upon these substances, and the
recent additions to the same group. But before
doing so, we must consider the case of caffeine
(or theine), which is the active principle of tea
and coffee, as also of the kola nut and Paraguay
tea or Maté, and of some other substances which
are similarly employed in various parts of the
world. The importance of the subject may be
suggested by the fact that of tea alone there is
consumed in Great Britain about four million
gallons every day. Consider that an ordinary cup
of tea contains about a grain of caffeine, and then
calculate how many millions of grains of this
potent alkaloid daily enter into the blood of the
British people. To this add all the caffeine con-
tained in coffee, and it will be evident that the
subject is of some practical interest. Now the
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WORRY
contrast between alcohol and caffeine very soon
suffices to show how foolishly the word stimulant
is commonly employed. Caffeine is a true stimu-
lant and has no other action. It has been proved
to increase the amount of combustion in the body
in whatever dose it be taken; it tends to raise
the temperature. Its truly stimulant action is still
more conspicuous if we consider the mind, and
mind is the only important matter. The larger the
dose of opium or alcohol that be taken, the more
certainly and rapidly will you sleep; the larger
the dose of this true stimulant that be taken, the
more certainly and persistently will you keep
awake. About fifteen grains of caffeine will en-
tirely abolish both the desire for and the possibility
of sleep, for a whole night and longer, and will
make it possible to do hard intellectual work at
high speed, and of the best quality possible for
the brain in question, during the hours which
sleep would otherwise have certainly claimed.
These facts will abundantly suffice to show how
superficial and stupid is the common application
of the same term "stimulant" to drugs so pro-
foundly contrasted as alcohol and opium on the
one hand, and caffeine on the other. I am tempted
to go much further into this question because the
distinction which I have demonstrated is not rec-
ognised even in text-books that deal with these
subjects. And yet it is a fundamental one. What
could well be more absurd than to apply one and
the same name on the one hand to drugs which
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 103
in sufficient doses will infallibly arrest conscious-
ness, even in cases of great bodily pain or of
violent mental excitement or both; and, on the
other hand, to a drug which in adequate doses
will infallibly prevent that normal recurrence of
unconsciousness which we call sleep? Obviously
there is no word that can possibly include both
sets of drugs, unless it be the word antagonists.
Of nicotine, the active principle of tobacco, it
is unfortunately impossible to speak in any such
dogmatic fashion. The statements I have made
regarding opium, alcohol, and caffeine are scientific
facts, admitted and recognised by all competent
students. There is no dispute about them-a
circumstance which makes it the more remarkable,
perhaps, that the radical opposition between the
sets of facts in the two cases is so commonly
ignored. But nicotine appears to act in various.
fashions upon various persons. For some it ap-
pears to be a stimulant, for others a sedative, and
the individual differences have not yet been ex-
plained. In passing, then, to consider those ques-
tions for which all that has been said hitherto is
merely preparation, we shall find that it is impos-
sible to lay down the law regarding nicotine as
might be desired.
These questions, of course, are concerned with
the actual as distinguished from the apparent value
of the representative drugs which have been con-
sidered. Here is this great fact of worry, fear,
regret, apprehension, and grief, which constantly
104
WORRY
attends upon or threatens the mind of man and
against which these and many other drugs are
known to operate. Is their use worth while?
·
Now if the reader remembers or believes nothing
else whatever that I say here on this subject, or
that I have said or may say on any other subject
anywhere else, I beseech him at least to believe
this: the habitual use of sedatives such as
alcohol, opium, morphia, sulphonal, trional, ver-
onal, paraldehyde, chloral, cocaine, and their allies,
-is to be condemned without qualification as false
in principle and fatal in result. It is true that these
drugs will one and all relieve worry, banish care,
and procure peace of mind, but it is as true that
the worry, the care, and the dispeace will return,
bringing seven devils with them, and that the
latter end of the man who uses them for this
purpose is not peace. They are false friends. For
every unit of mental unrest that they remove they
will inevitably create many such units. They are
false in principle because they make no attack
whatever upon the cause of the worry. That
cause may be ill-health; these drugs will most
assuredly aggravate it. That cause may be over-
work; these drugs will most assuredly lessen the
power of work. That cause may be the loss of
the organic sense of well-being, which is the first
and only condition of bodily and mental happi-
ness; these drugs will, for the time, by their
sedative action arrest those internal sensations
which are found displeasing, and which make men
t
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK
105
into pessimists, but the after result of their action is
invariably to cause these sensations to return more
abundantly than ever, demanding a larger and an
accelerated second dose of the drug. Worry is
curable because it has causes which are removable.
In all ages and places, the chief cure adopted by
men has been the use of these sedatives, which are
no cure, because they do not begin to remove the
causes of worry. They merely drown or submerge
the worry for a time, as ill weeds may be sub-
merged with water. But when the drug or the
water has passed away the ill weeds are found to
have grown apace.
In western countries generally, alcohol is at
once the commonest cure for worry, and amongst
the most potent of the causes of worry. It is not
my concern here to speak in detail of the effect
of this and similar drugs upon character, upon
the ability to work, or even upon physical health,
except in so far as these influence the state of the
mind. The great fact is that, ignoring all external
considerations, and directing our attention solely
to the actions of these drugs upon the body and the
mind, we find that their sedative action upon worry
is such as to be invariably and necessarily followed
by bodily and mental changes of which the product
is worry multiplied manifold. If my condemna-
tion of the use of these drugs, in ministering to
the mind diseased or distressed, be less unqualified
or less vigorous than it might be, the cause is to
be found not in my estimate of the facts, but in
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WORRY
my defective power of expressing that estimate.
I accuse these drugs as irreconcilable foes of human
happiness; so essentially detestable that their mas-
querade as friends of man can scarcely make one
detest them more.
Let us turn now from the sedatives to the
stimulants, the terms being used not in the com-
mon unscientific, but in the uncommon scientific
sense. Must caffeine, as represented by tea and
coffee, fall under a like condemnation? This
would be somewhat paradoxical if it were so, be-
cause we have already seen that these two groups
of drugs are essentially opposed in their physio-
logical properties. The sedatives we have con-
demned because they do nothing for the life of
the body but are opposed to it. The stimulant,
caffeine, on the other hand, as we have seen,
favours the life of the body, promotes the processes
of combustion on which life depends, increases
vitality, and that power to work which is the ex-
pression of vitality. Everywhere men find that
a cup of tea or coffee is refreshing; it produces
renewed vigour; it heightens the sense of organic
well-being, the consciousness of fitness and ca-
pacity. This is utterly distinct from the action of
alcohol or opium in deadening the sense of ill-
being. Tea antagonises the sense of ill-being not
by deadening one's consciousness of it, but by
stirring the sources of vitality and by the pos-
itive substitution for it of that sense of well-
being which is the index of vitality. Here is a
*
ini
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 107
true stimulant something that favours life.
How, then, will its use affect worry and the
causes of worry? Is the plan of employing it
superior to the plan of employing sedatives or is
it even worse?
The answer is, of course, that the plan is im-
measurably superior. But before I insist upon this
assertion, let me make certain qualifications. In
the first place, I recognise that the ideal would be
neither to need nor to employ any drugs whatso-
ever; but here our concern is not with the ideal,
but the real. Again, I will admit, of course, that
every good thing except, perhaps, the spiritual
goods, like love - depends for its goodness upon
a fitness of proportion. The sun is the source and
condition of all earthly life, yet men have died of
sunstroke. Caffeine is a good thing in its essence
because, like sunlight itself, it is a true stimulant
in that it favours the essential processes of life;
but, like sunlight itself, it is capable of abuse,
though the remarkable fact is that it is very diffi-
cult to obtain symptoms of abuse even when this
drug is employed in large quantities. Tea and
coffee have had many hard words said of them.
The trouble is that people will not distinguish.
Tea, for instance, as commonly understood in this
country, is more nearly a decoction than an infu-
sion of the tea leaf, and contains besides the theine
or caffeine a very large proportion of tannin or
tannic acid. Now the action of this substance
upon the body is wholly deleterious; it interferes
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WORRY
with the activity of every tissue with which it
comes in contact; it markedly interferes with the
digestion in at least two ways-first, by tanning
many of the proteids of the food, so that, like other
forms of leather, they can scarcely be digested at
all; and secondly, by interfering with the produc-
tion of the digestive juices by the walls of the
stomach. As long as the present vitiated taste for
tea persists, large numbers of people will continue
to do themselves great injury by drinking it; but
it is ludicrously unscientific to assume that the evil
consequences of drinking improperly made tea are
necessarily to be attributed to the valuable caffeine
which it contains. If we consider the gigantic
amount of tea and coffee that we daily drink and
allow for the injurious effects of the tannin which
abounds in improperly made tea that is to say,
in nine-tenths of all tea we must acquit caffeine
of any very deadly properties. There will remain
to its credit the many desirable consequences with
which every one is familiar.
I assert, then, that whereas all sedatives are to
be condemned in the relief of worry on the ground
that they do not attack the causes of worry, on the
ground that, in proportion to their immediate po-
tency, they establish a craving for themselves, and
on the further ground that their after effects
invariably include the production of more worry
than was relieved in the first place, the stimulant
caffeine, on account of which we consume so much
tea and coffee, may be excused, if not justified and
WORRY, DRUGS, AND DRINK 109
applauded. Taken in reasonable quantities, such
as very few people desire to exceed, it differs fun-
damentally from all the sedatives in that it does
not produce a need for a continuous increase of
the dose. It relieves worry not by a temporary
and actually nutritive and fostering submergence
of it, but by attacking its causes. The man who is
worried because his work is too much for him finds
his work facilitated and its accomplishment accel-
erated under the influence of caffeine. Assuming
that his work ought to be done, what better way
of dealing with his worry could be conceived?
Again, a great deal of worry is caused by defective
vitality. The man of radiant health and almost
offensive energy, who is "always at it," has no
time to worry. He has too many other things to
do. Mental unrest afflicts rather those whose vital
processes are slower, and especially those whose
vital processes are too slow. Under the influence
of a true stimulant, such persons may often be
tided over a period of threatening depression
simply in virtue of the fact that their vital proc-
esses which have become too tardy are accel-
erated, with a consequent access of energy and a
more due prominence of the organic sense of
well-being.
In so far, then, as the subject of these articles
is concerned with the use of drugs, we may say
that it is necessary first to search below appear-
ances, and to distinguish between drugs that are
really sedatives and those that are really stimulants.
110
WORRY
The sedatives are to be condemned without reserve.
This condemnation applies to tobacco in the case
of those persons, relatively few, I think, on whom
it acts as a true sedative, retarding vital processes;
but it is so difficult to find the truth about tobacco
that I regret having to mention it at all. On the
other hand, the true nerve stimulant, caffeine-
which is in a class by itself cannot be similarly
condemned, but its judicious use may be regarded
as justifiable and profitable.
In surveying this chapter my fear is that any
portions of it may have prevented me from throw-
ing into the boldest relief what is by far the most
important fact that it contains the fact that
alcohol has no place, use, or purpose, in the relief
of worry, and that its so-called use — in this con-
nection, at any rate is never anything but abuse
or misuse, always dangerous, always productive of
more evil than it relieves, and only too frequently
suicidal.
X
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION
It is very commonly, yet curiously, supposed
that the actions of men and women are determined
by their beliefs that the will, with all its results,
is the servant of the intellect. Students of the
mind, however, know that this is not so; the rela-
tion of the intellect to the will is merely that of an
adviser or guide which investigates and suggests
the means by which the will may accomplish its
will. Creeds, beliefs, opinions, and what is com-
monly understood by education- these are not
the mainsprings of human action. Any belief or
opinion may act as a pilot, but something else is
the gale.
Plainly, it is a matter of the utmost moment to
discover this something else which determines the
acts of men and so gives human life its characters
and decides its consequences. The man in the
street may know that psychology is the study of
the mind, and by the mind he understands the
reason or the intellect; but psychologists of to-day
are far more concerned with other aspects and atti-
tudes of the human spirit, since they realise that
elsewhere than in merely intellectual processes are
to be found the causes of human action. The
112
WORRY
extraordinary idea that the mind consists of the
intellect alone still pervades the legal and popular
notion of insanity, which considers that the hold-
ing of erroneous opinions is the sole test of insanity,
and is unaware that a man may have a keen and
balanced intellect, and yet be utterly and danger-
ously mad.
In all that has been said I am trying to show the
importance of my present subject, as we shall
immediately see. The real causes of human action
are not rational convictions, such as the conviction
that two and two make four, which in themselves
are powerless to affect the will, and have never
yet caused (though they continually direct) any
human action whatever; but are states of feeling
or emotion. Emotion, as the word suggests, is
the cause of human motion: the emotion of love
causes motion towards the beloved object; the
emotion of fear causes motion from the feared
object; the emotional state known as courage will
cause one act, the emotional state known as hate
will cause another. The mainspring of will is
emotion. Students of the mind diseased are ac-
quainted with cases of what they call apathy, which
literally means no feeling. These result in what is
called aboulia, which means no will. The utterly
apathetic person does nothing. Feeling neither
the emotion of hate, nor that of love, or ambition,
or fear, or apprehension, or jealousy, or even a
desire to live such a person becomes like a veg-
etable. Danger does not affect him. The cry of
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION
113
fire will not cause him to stir a finger. He will
remain motionless whilst his child is drowning
before his eyes, and even ambition, the last infir-
mity of noble minds, stirs him not at all. He is
in the state aimed at by the ascetic, Buddhist, or
Christian, who has conquered all desire, and who
has therefore conquered his own will. He has no
emotions, no motives, and therefore no motions,
which are the outward manifestations of will.
Plainly, therefore, any one who desires to under-
stand or explain human life, to read the hearts of
men, like Cassius, to know why men and women
do wise or foolish things, must make himself a
student not of the part of the mind which we call
the intellect, but of the part which we call the
emotional nature. This alone will give him the
key to human action, since this alone is the cause of
human action.
Books have been written on the manner in which
the acts of men and women are determined by
love, by fear, by ambition, by the desire to assert
self, and by the desire to renounce self. But no
one has yet written a book on the way in which the
acts of men are determined by one of the most
potent and frequent and malign of all emotional
states- that state which we call worry. If it
were possible, I should devote a whole book to this
new, and yet old subject; but, as things are, I must
content myself with a brief chapter, hoping to be
suggestive rather than final in my treatment of
this vast subject.
8
114
WORRY
Sometimes the influence of worry upon the con-
duct of its victim may be negative rather than pos-
itive; its action is paralytic. This consequence of
worry is most commonly manifested in those who
lead the intellectual life. The man who has a book
to write, or plans to make, or a practical problem
to solve by his wits, may find that worry paralyses
thought. He "cannot give his mind to his work."
The power of sustained attention to his business is
utterly destroyed by his emotional state of mind.
There can be no question that the world has
suffered incalculable loss by the influence of worry
upon men of genius. The typical genius- such
as Schubert, let us say is a man little appreci-
ated by his own age, and little fit for the practical
tide of life. He is constantly the prey of worry-
temporarily eased, perhaps, as in Schubert's case,
by the benefactions of a publisher who gave him
ten pence apiece for songs to which men will listen
as long as ears can hear. The idea of a home for
geniuses has often been ridiculed, and people have
declared that no works of art would be produced
save under the influence of the need of money,
forgetting that the true genius must do his work
or die. One of our indictments against worry,
then, is certainly its paralytic effect upon the most
valuable functions of the human mind, and espe-
cially upon the creation of works of genius — the
worth of which in human life is daily increasing.
We are all familiar with the paralytic effect of
worry in other conditions. Excess of self-con-
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION
115
sciousness tends to produce what we call "ner-
vousness,” and every one who has played games or
spoken or sung or acted in public knows what are
the effects of this minor species of worry. In
games we know that confidence is half the battle;
that "nervousness," lack of confidence, worry
about one's capacity, and apprehension of failure
are all but certain to produce that which they fear.
If the relative importance of the subject merited
further consideration it would be of interest to
consider how it is that worry is enabled to inter-
fere in those delicate muscular co-ordinations upon
which success in most games of skill depends, and
how it is that lack of worry, and, better still, the
presence of its opposite a judicious self-confi-
dence provides the best condition for success,
whether in singing or playing billiards or public
speaking. But it is not with these negative influ-
ences of worry upon human actions that I am
here mainly concerned, interesting though they are,
and serious though they may often be in many a
case.
Having shown that the positive acts of men are
determined by their emotions, I wish to classify
and describe the kinds of acts that men perform
under the influence of the emotion we are study-
ing. In general, it may be safely said of any
emotion, such as love or even its opposite, hate,
that it may lead to desirable acts or to undesirable
acts. This is obviously true of the case of love,
and is no less true of its opposite, for hatred of
116
WORRY
evil may lead to desirable action, just as other kinds
of hate may lead to evil action. But I summarily
assert that the influence of worry upon the will of
man is wholly and invariably bad. No qualifica-
tion is needed for the assertion that this potent
motor force invariably tends to drive us to wrong
action.
The very smallest indictment to be laid against
the door of worry in this respect is that it leads to
too hasty action. In general, we know that we
want happiness of one kind or another. It is the
business of the reason to decide, in any given case,
how that end may best be attained. Under the
pressure of worry we only too often act hastily
and without adequate use of the reason, and so
we do the wrong thing. We feel that it is far
better to make some decision
any decision
than to continue in a state of suspense, doubt,
anxiety, worry; and so we make our decision
before we are able to ensure that it is the wisest
decision. Here the real motor, precipitating our
action, is worry, and the consequence, as like as
not, will be yet more worry.
But the graver aspects of the influence of worry
upon human conduct will be realised if we consider
the fashion in which worry causes us to meet every-
day difficulties of life. When the mind is at peace
with itself and circumstances, the ordinary calls of
life upon our patience, our forbearance, our per-
severance, and our power of overcoming difficulties,
are adequately met. We do not lose our sleep,
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION
117
or fly to alcohol or other drugs; and a difficulty
may even act as a not unwelcome stimulus, fit to
make us realise the best of which we are capable.
But contrast the fashion in which the victim of
worry meets life's demands. Even the slightest
of them suffice to make him irritable. Now, irri-
tability is a terribly powerful influence for evil in
too many lives, and its chief cause is worry. I will
not forget that many a man and many a woman
becomes irritable in consequence of various kinds.
of physical disease, or in consequence of insomnia.
But it is pre-eminently the worried man that is
the irritable man. Let us, then, consider a typical
instance of the practical influence of worry upon
conduct.
The worried business man returns home in the
evening, but brings his business worries with him.
When he is not worried he is a considerate and
affectionate husband and father; his wife's little.
requests, the noise of his children's play, do not
disturb his equanimity. On the contrary, it is a
pleasure to be able to serve his wife, and an enjoy-
ment to hear his children enjoying themselves.
But how different is the effect of precisely the
This
same influences upon the worried man!
noise in which he would otherwise find the sweetest
music falls upon other ears ears made hyper-
sensitive, no doubt, by the strain to which his ner-
vous system has been subjected; and he displays
what physiologists call the "irritability of weak-
ness." The noise is actually louder than it would
118
WORRY
otherwise appear, and he cannot tolerate it. The
wise wife may soon see that "something has wor-
ried Jack to-day," and she will prevent her children
from exposing themselves to the consequences,
whilst she will defer her request for a new hat until
a more auspicious occasion. But this is not always
possible, nor is it always done when it is possible;
and the result will be disaster. The noisy little boy
may receive a blow when he expected a smile, and
his drum may come to an untimely end. Doubtless
the father's worries depend upon the fact that he
has to support a wife and children whom he loves;
but the influence of worry is invariably malign, and
will show its malignancy even in the case of those
whose interests have caused it. If the worry is a
daily and persistent force, the children may be-
come intolerable; their father seems to love them
less, and therefore they love him less. They suffer,
and so does he.
But the burden is far worse for the wife and
mother, even though she is better able to under-
stand its cause. The very sight of her may suffice,
or almost suffice, to rouse the latent irritation of
which worry is the cause, and happiness leaves the
home.
To these considerations we must add the conse-
quences of that very constant foe to womankind
domestic worry.
The burden of life by no means
falls entirely upon the sex which groans most.
loudly under it. It is the peculiar character of a
woman's work, of course, that it is never done.
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION
119
The man has at least the change, as a rule, from
the environment of business to the environment of
home, and this may suffice-in accordance with
what was said when we were discussing holidays
-to change the mental currents, so that business.
worries disappear. The woman has not this ad-
vantage; the environment of home and of busi-
ness are one and the same for her.
The escape
from domestic worry is thus specially difficult.
The conscientious, diligent, and hard-pressed
housekeeper of all ages and places is apt, like
Martha, to be troubled about many things; and
small blame to her. That she should become irri-
table in consequence of domestic worry is quite
inevitable at times, and then everybody suffers-
husband, children, servants, and herself. These
are all commonplaces, I admit, but a necessary
condition for the cure of domestic worry and its
consequence is an impartial, detached recognition
of the facts and their origin. It may fairly be
said, I think, that women have only themselves to
blame for a very considerable proportion of domes-
tic worry, with its consequences of irritability and
bad temper, leading to worse things. Even after
fully recognising that the ordinary housewife is
specially subject, at any rate at times, to unavoid-
able worry, we must surely grant that the common
practice of living up to the very limit of one's
means, if not beyond it, is responsible for a great
deal of woman's worry that might be avoided.
One says especially woman's worry, because it
120
WORRY
would appear that the wife, rather than the hus-
band, is more often responsible for the neglect of
that margin of income which, as Mr. Micawber
knew, spells happiness. Hence it is worth while
yet again to point out the commonplace facts —
that the happiness attained by keeping three ser-
vants when one can only afford two is most lament-
ably outweighed, not merely by the worry in-
volved in the incessant effort to make both ends
meet, but also by the consequences of that worry
upon sleep, health, digestion, and temper these,
again, injuring every member of the family, and
possibly leading to its utter destruction.
For it cannot be doubted that mere petty worry,
acting like the "cumulative poisons" with which
doctors are familiar, only too often forms a neces-
sary link in the chain of causation which leads to
estrangement between parents and children, or
estrangement between themselves, leading to sep-
aration or even divorce. This is a terrible in-
dictment against worry that it not infrequently
destroys the family, which is the necessary unit of
society, and the stability and security of which con-
stitutes the first condition of any stable and secure
society.
We have already spoken of worry as the state
of emotion which often produces in men the will
to end their own lives.
Having considered the fashion in which worry
affects the actions of the individual as an indi-
vidual, and his or her actions as a member and
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION
121
constituent of the family, let us observe how society
as a whole is affected by the action of worry upon
its individual units.
What has already been said will suffice to enable
us to realise that part of the cost of worry is a great
loss of individual and therefore of social efficiency.
It is commonly supposed that the welfare and suc-
cess of an individual is his affair alone, just as
it is commonly supposed that a nation can thrive
only by injuring other nations. But it is not so.
On the contrary, it is certain that the failure, the
premature death, the diminished efficiency of any
individual, act in general as an injury to every
member of the society of which he forms part. A
force, then, which makes for inefficiency, often
paralysing and arresting or destroying desirable
acts and accomplishments on the part of individ-
uals, has a personal interest even for the fortunate
few whom it does not directly affect. The malign
action of worry upon the deeds of individuals must
be reckoned, then, as an injury to the body politic.
Worry raises the death rate, very notably the dis-
ease rates, for each of which, and especially the
latter, society has to pay. It raises the accident.
rates: we have seen how it interferes with the ner-
vous balance and co-ordination, and with the self-
confidence which are necessary in all games, arts,
and duties involving muscular skill. Society, also,
has to pay for the hospitals and the asylums and
many other charities, the need for which is largely
increased by worry. The individual, the family,
122
WORRY
and society at large, then, are injured by the effects
of worry upon human actions.
There remains one other notable fashion in which
worry affects human action, and, as in every other
case, affects it for the worse. Our final subject
here, then, is worry in its relation to the great
goddess of getting on. Worry as the servant of
this goddess seems to be more potent nowadays
than ever heretofore, and it is important for us to
consider how far this kind of worry
worry about
getting on, or ambitious worry- depends upon a
false conception of the true means to our common
end-life and happiness.
I decline to say that this kind of worry depends
upon a false philosophy. In all likelihood the
reader is familiar with the most popular books of
Dr. Samuel Smiles, such as "Self Help." Since
his death we have read many jibes at the lowness
of his ideals and the contemptible character of his
teaching. But, after all, those who penned these
jibes would doubtless have jumped at the chance
of bettering themselves as readily as their fellows.
I venture to say that every normal person, in virtue
of the common human inheritance, has a greater
or less desire to get on; ambition is the last infirm-
ity of noble minds. We desire to get on simply
because we suppose that in doing so we shall get
happiness, and it is quite idle to pretend that, up
to a point, our argument is not well-founded. We
are familiar with the millionaire who assures us
that he was happier as a ragged boy, and we do
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION 123
not doubt his word. He speaks of the burden of
wealth, but we do not observe that he seeks to
relieve himself of the burden. We say that there
is a compensating balance in life, and we quite
properly recognise that the poor man does not
suffer from his poverty as the rich man would do
if his riches left him. We recognise that there is
a principle of adaptation to the environment, and
that one does not miss what one has never known.
But this very principle - that happiness as condi-
tioned by material circumstances depends very
largely upon what one is accustomed to — is in
itself the very best argument for the desire to get
on, since he who succeeds in getting on is con-
stantly enjoying new advantages which, just be-
cause they are new, mean much more to him than
they do to others born with a silver spoon in their
mouths. As far as I can learn from biology,
Nature not only sanctions, but also aids and abets.
in every possible way the desire for happiness, and
if getting on is going to serve happiness, I am not
prepared outright to condemn it.
But that is the whole question. It is an almost
universal human character to glorify the means
at the ultimate expense of the end. We see it in
its most piquant form in the miser, starving, shiv-
ering, dirty, unattended, clutching his useless gold.
We see it in the bibliomaniac who purchases first
editions, and covers his shelves with wisdom, into
which he never dips. It is enough for him to own
the book. He does not care to read it, much less
124
WORRY
would he disfigure its immaculate pages with mar-
ginal notes. And the case is the same with "get-
ting on." It is not an end in itself, but a means
and certainly not an entirely contemptible and
negligible means to the true end of happiness;
but our general tendency betrays us here, and we
make of the means an end. Happiness or no hap-
piness, we will get on," and it is at this point
that worry takes its place.
66
To worry about getting on is plainly to forfeit
happiness on account of that which is to bring hap-
piness. This is no bargain for a rational man.
Observe that I am not speaking here of the attempt
to earn a competence or such an income as may
make marriage possible. Worry on these scores
may be recognised as futile, but it can scarcely be
called irrational. The irrational worry about get-
ting on is that which implies the inability to be
content or to enjoy the present. Directly it is
so defined, every one must admit the justice of the
adjective "irrational "; besides, it is of its very
nature to be deprived of satisfaction, for it has no
definite goal. I think there is little doubt that this
kind of worry is a very insidious trap for many
young men whose incomes are not fixed, but vary
in proportion to the amount of labour which they
are prepared to expend. The fact that money is
only a means to an end tends to be forgotten. The
symbol, as ever with symbols, is exalted at the ex-
pense of the thing symbolised. Men who have no
occasion to overwork, find themselves prematurely
WORRY, WILL, AND ACTION
125
senile, or temporarily incapacitated, in consequence
of the extraordinary delusion that it is a man's duty
to make as big an income as he can. I do not say
that this doctrine is definitely formulated by all of
us, but in point of fact we nearly all subscribe to it.
We know perfectly well that the income is not an
end in itself, but we know that it is a very effective
means to the only end we care about, and before
we know where we are we have been trapped
into the practical, if not the theoretical, acceptance
of the doctrine that the means of happiness are
worth purchasing at the cost of happiness.
We shall afterwards see that the cure of this
kind of worry is such commonsense as that of
Thoreau, Stevenson, and Spencer. We shall see,
I hope, that, as Spencer put it, life is not for work,
but work is for life; whilst life itself is for happi-
ness the higher the better, but, whether high or
low, happiness. To worry about "getting on," or
to multiply domestic worry in the effort to appear
successful in getting on, is to lose the object of
work and of life. I repeat, then, that part of our
cure for worry will consist in recognising that
the means of happiness are not worth purchasing
at the cost of happiness.
XI
A CASE OF WORRY
No generality, as such, can ever breed convic-
tion: that result is always reserved for the con-
crete, individual, observed, realisable instance.
The statement of Newton's law of gravitation
sounds probable enough to us: but it would mean
very little to any one who had not, for himself,
observed that unsupported objects fall to the earth.
It is so with generalities about worry. One
might discourse at length concerning the effects of
the body upon the mind, and the mind upon the
body; upon worry and digestion, worry and sleep,
and kindred subjects, without ever bringing home
their reality to the fortunate and unobservant
reader — if such there were - who had never
experienced or observed the ways of worry for him-
self. I propose, therefore, to recount a case of
worry, observed by myself, with what Mr. Gilbert
makes Pooh-Bah call "a wealth of corroborative
detail, calculated to give an air of artistic verisim-
ilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing
narrative." 1
A young lady, enjoying excellent health, ex-
pressed alike in good spirits, sound sleep, and un-
1 I do not vouch for this quotation to a syllable.
A CASE OF WORRY
127
obtrusive digestion, became engaged to be married.
The period of engagement lasted for little over a
year, but during it there arose a grave cause of
worry, supplemented by the uncertainty of her
fiancé's prospects, resulting in the otherwise un-
desirable protraction of an engagement which,
unlike most engagements, had no need to be tried
by the test of time. During this period there was
no change in physical habits; the same occupa-
tions were followed, the same diet taken, the
same hours of sleep observed as had been cus-
tomary. There was no physical cause of ill-health:
but an overwhelming mental cause. In accordance
with the general truths elsewhere stated in this
book, the purely psychical cause, an altered emo-
tional tone, produced marked results, both psychi-
cal and physical, illustrating the effects of the mind.
upon the body. The customary good spirits were,
of course, replaced by low spirits, with frequent
periods of marked depression which, at first, had
none but the psychical cause worry. This cause
alone, unaided by any physical cause, or by any
intellectual, as distinguished from an emotional,
cause, sufficed utterly to destroy the power to sleep
of the patient as she had now become. In the
first place, the sleep became shallower, as was
proved by the occurrence of dreams, ultimately tak-
ing the character of nightmare. The facts illus-
trated the general proposition that determination
of the quality of sleep may be accurately made by
observation of the dreams experienced.
"If a
128
WORRY
dream was a connected series of events, and was
recollected as such after waking, it was clear that
the mental rest was impaired. The more coherent.
and the more realistic the dream, and the more
directly it was concerned with events in the recent
past, the less restful was the sleep in which it
occurred. The quantity as well as the quality of
the sleep was all-important." 1
Later the patient found it almost impossible to
sleep at all; and this condition became worse until
the engagement terminated in marriage. All the
psychical causes of insomnia were then immediately
arrested, as we shall see; but the insomnia per-
sisted in consequence of the physical changes which
must now be described, and which were entirely
due to those same psychical causes.
Another striking consequence of worry, in this
case as in so many others, was an entirely new sus-
ceptibility to fatigue. Before her engagement this
young lady was a very good walker and worker;
but her worry led to the most noteworthy altera-
tion in these respects. Lack of sound sleep was a
partial explanation, no doubt; but very constantly
it was observed that, at different times of the same
day, fatigue was experienced, both of mind and of
body, so soon as she began to worry, and vanished
if her mind was diverted from its cares by any
engrossing occupation or interest. Very much
more might be said as to the effects of worry upon
1 Professor Gotch, of Oxford, at the British Association, York,
1906.
A CASE OF WORRY
129
working power, whether of brain or of the muscles;
but this must suffice for the nonce.
·
more
Most striking of all it cannot be called re-
markable, for it is a commonplace was the effect
of worry upon the digestion, which had never
before shown any sign of defect or difficulty. The
oncoming of the dyspepsia due to worry was almost
dramatic, for it showed itself in a sudden access.
of pain -never before experienced so disabling
as entirely to arrest the patient when walking.
From that very date until the present time
than four years later the patient has never been
entirely free from symptoms of dyspepsia for a
single day, and scarcely for a single night. The
ordinary causes of digestive pain were all excluded;
there was no change or indiscretion of diet; it is
certain that worry alone was its cause. The pain
only recurred on a few occasions, and the dys-
pepsia very soon assumed the definite nervous
type, dependent upon weakness of the nerves of
digestion, or rather, of the cells in the central ner-
vous system, from which those nerves spring.
Other physical consequences of this purely
psychical cause are equally characteristic. For
instance, the patient lost weight very markedly
indeed. This, it is true, may be put down to the
dyspepsia; but the same cannot be said of the
extraordinary loss of hair that marked the most
severe part of her illness.
This loss of hair may well be noted carefully,
for it followed the custom of nervous baldness.
9
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WORRY
In this and in other cases known to the present
writer and any one may have observed them--
the nutrition of the whole scalp was almost equally
interfered with. Worry will very frequently affect
the hair, either by causing it to fall out, or by
causing it to turn grey. There is some basis, at
any rate, for the familiar phrase, exaggerated
though it be "his hair turned white in a single
night."
Now the commoner causes of failure of nutri-
tion in the case of the hair are local and circum-
scribed. More usually the hair turns grey, not
over the whole head equally, but at the temples --
which derive their name from tempus, time, in allu-
sion to this fact. Again, in the case of ordinary
senile baldness, the hair is lost altogether at cer-
tain parts whilst it persists elsewhere, as every one
knows. Similarly, in the cases of premature bald-
ness, so exceedingly common nowadays amongst
quite young men, the loss of hair begins in certain
parts at the crown, or at the sides of the brow,
or both
and spreads therefrom as the local cause
extends.
But when the hair falls out or turns grey from
worry, the failure is usually general. I can recall,
for instance, the case of a young man in whom
worry caused the hair of the whole head to turn
grey; and in the case which we are discussing the
hair simply became thin; it was so thin that its
bulk was reduced by quite two-thirds, but there was
no bald patch. Again, in another case, I have seen
A CASE OF WORRY
131
a young man's hair become exceedingly thin, and
almost uniformly so, as a marked and immediate
consequence of the loss of his patrimony.
Further we may note that, as in the case of the
patient whose history I am describing, the loss of
hair is not necessarily permanent. There has been
no destruction of the hair-bulbs, as commonly oc-
curs in cases where the scalp has been neglected;
merely there has not been sufficient nervous energy
available for the growth and support of the hairs.
The consequence is their atrophy, due to lack of
that trophic energy, as it is called, in virtue of
which the nerves enable every part of the body, in
health, to do its work. Failure of trophic energy
is a highly characteristic consequence of worry
in many parts of the body of more consequence
than the scalp.
But when the nervous system begins to recover
its tone, and enough trophic energy is available, the
lost hair may be abundantly replaced; and this
was so in the particular case I am describing.
Many other physical consequences of worry,
more or less short of positive disease, were ob-
served in this case; but those I have named may be
taken as indicating their character, and I will not
pause to enumerate them.
The patient was married and abruptly lost all
her former cause for worry. It might be thought
that her case would have ended in a steady re-
covery. But that is not the way of worry. Hith-
erto the case has merely illustrated the effects of
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WORRY
the worried mind upon the body; but now we
have to take account of the missing half of a
vicious circle the effects of the body upon the
mind.
I have said that the patient abruptly lost, on her
wedding-day, all her former causes for worry, and
that is true. Nor did these causes, nor any other
external causes, return. But we must not assume
that therefore she never worried again, even though
we admit, as we must, that worry, like every other
fact in the Universe, invariably has a cause. The
victim of the effects of the mind upon the body
now had to reckon with the effects of the body,
thus injuriously modified, upon the mind. The
external causes of worry had disappeared, but there
remained internal causes of worry causes which
were themselves consequences of the former worry.
Every fact in the Universe is both a consequence
of prior causes and a cause of further consequences.
In the case in question, not merely had all the
old causes of worry vanished, but the patient fully
and joyously recognised the fact. She did not
worry about her former worries, as some people
do the most futile and pathetic, surely, of all
conceivable occupations. She fully recognised that
she had “nothing to worry about," and rejoiced
thereat. Just as, in the first place, she had no
physical causes for worry, so now she had no
psychical causes. But this is of little avail to the
dyspeptic. So far as everything without her was
concerned, she should have been an optimist; and
A CASE OF WORRY
133
so she was, when nothing within her prevented.
She regained, at such times, her characteristic high
spirits, her energy and enthusiasms.
But she had to reckon with the dyspepsia which
her former worry had caused. Now the case of
dyspepsia is profoundly different from the case
of baldness. In the latter there is no vicious circle;
unless one is so foolish as to worry about one's
hair, even though all else be well. Nor does ner-
vous loss of hair lead to organic injury of the
scalp.
But any nervous dyspepsia, persisting long
enough, must necessarily lead to an organic dyspep-
sia — one that no longer depends entirely upon the
nervous system for its causation. The food that
is not digested, owing to purely nervous causes,
necessarily acts as an irritant to the wall of the
stomach. Now persistent irritation of any living
membrane must lead to positive organic injury,
quite distinct from mere failure of function due to
lack of nervous energy. Hence, in this case as in
countless others, a persistent nervous dyspepsia led
to organic dyspepsia; and when the nervous causes
disappeared the organic causes remained. The
gastric membrane was no longer normal, and seri-
ous consequences ensued. Elsewhere I have dis-
cussed at some length the difference between
organic and functional disease. Here we see how
they may interact with one another. There was
produced in this instance a case of organic dys-
pepsia with undoubted changes of a morbid kind
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WORRY
in the lining of the stomach- and yet its sole
efficient cause was a state of mind. This is far from
being the only instance in which a purely psy-
chical cause, by leading to nervous disorder, may
result in morbid states of other than nervous tis-
sues. In other words, we have to recognise that,
whilst the distinction between functional and or-
ganic disease is undoubtedly fundamental and
valid, yet purely functional disease may cause or-
ganic disease; and this may persist even when its
original cause has been removed. A more general
recognition of the possibility of this sequence would
lead us to estimate cases of persistent hysteria, for
instance, at their due importance. It does not do
to say of any disorder, "Oh! it is only functional,"
or "Oh! it is only psychical." We should realise
that the persistence of such conditions is incom-
patible with the continuance of merely physical
health. Here we have a case in point.
And now we must observe the manner in which
the digestion, thus disordered, acted upon the psy-
chical well-being of the patient whom we are con-
sidering. She had now within her a cause, only
too efficient, of mental ill-health. It is the humili-
ating truth that scarcely in the most rational and
philosophic of human beings can the mental equi-
librium be maintained if the digestive equilibrium
fails. It is a pitiable business that the mind should
be thus at the mercy of the stomach, but it is so.
In this patient, all reasonable causes for worry
had been removed; but unreasonable causes had
A CASE OF WORRY
135
been induced, and they were effective. The state
of the digestion varied, of course, with a hundred
circumstances; and the state of the mind varied
with it. Just as, formerly, the variations in the
state of mind produced variations in the state of
the body, so now, variations in the state of the body
produced variations in the state of the mind. When
the digestion was at its best, organic optimism was
possible, and since there was also every reason for
rational optimism, the patient was happy at such
times. But when the digestion was unsatisfactory,
and the organic sense of well-being was therefore
destroyed, the patient began to worry, even though
no rational cause for anything but optimism
existed.
Be it remembered that worry due to internal
causes always finds some external pretext to war-
rant it; there may be, as in this case, no adequate
pretext, but something can always be found. The
case is precisely the same with irritability or bad
temper of internal origin. The man who worries
because his indigestion has interfered with his or-
ganic sense of well-being never acknowledges
explicitly that he is worrying because he is out of
sorts; he must always provide himself with some
external circumstance to serve as a pretext for
worry. The man who is made irritable by gout
never simply "is irritable"; he always vents his
irritation on something. A noisy child, a delayed
meal, the colour of his wife's dress, any the most
trivial and inconsequent thing will serve; but there
136
WORRY
must be something. The fact that it does not mat-
ter what, and that something can always be found,
is all-significant. This morning the ostensible
cause may be the incivility of a servant; this after-
noon he explains his irritation on the ground that
he cannot stand an obsequious servant; at one
moment he will say, "I wish the devil you would n't
contradict me," and at the next, "I wish the devil
you would n't always agree with me; have n't you
a mind of your own?" In short whatever his
fellows do is wrong; which would be absurd did
we not realise that the unchanging cause of the
irritation is within him, and is independent of what
is without.
Similarly with the worry that is caused by in-
digestion. It must always have an external pretext
for its existence, but it does not matter a straw
what that pretext may be. When this patient's
digestion went wrong, she would worry about
whatever happened or whatever did not happen.
She very soon realised perfectly the state of
affairs; just as the angry man who savagely kicks
a stone realises that on no ordinary occasion would
he have suspected it of lying there on purpose to
trip him up. This patient was perfectly well aware
that the objects of her worry were quite unworthy
of a moment's least concern but her recognition
of this counted for nothing at all. Such recogni-
tion is an act of the reason; but we are not con-
trolled by the reason, and nothing in the world is
less relevant to the emotional state of our minds.
A CASE OF WORRY
137
Your reason tells you that the non-arrival of an
expected letter is not worth worrying about; that,
indeed, your correspondent could not be expected
to reply so soon; or it may even tell you that you
would not have worried about the matter for a
moment had it been yesterday when you were well,
and not to-day when you are out of sorts; you
admit the propriety of your reason's observations
and then you simply ignore them. Thus this pa-
tient would allow the merest trifles to prey upon
her mind when her digestion was out of order,
though she fully realised that this and this alone
was the cause of her anxiety.
Here we see illustrated, in the fullest degree,
that action and reaction between mind and body,
which most perfectly demonstrates the meaning
of the phrase, a vicious circle. In this case, which
followed an absolutely typical course, a purely
mental disturbance caused a physical disorder, and
this produced a mental disturbance similar to the
original one, but utterly different in causation.
The problem now was to break the circle by at-
tacking the physical disorder; and the difficulty of
doing so depended upon the fact that it was a
vicious circle which had to be dealt with. For
all the physical means such as regulation of the
diet, drugs, massage, and so forth — appropriate
to the physical disorder, had to contest the ground,
inch by inch, with the opposing influence of the
worry which that disorder had engendered, and
which in turn tended to perpetuate it. In the case
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WORRY
which I am describing, patience and prudence and
practical philosophy ultimately won the day, and
the patient was restored, after years of suffering,
psychical and physical, to something like her former
health; but my pen must fail to express the dis-
tressing cost of the patient's experience. After
all, though youth is resilient and hard to beat, and
though such a long lane may at last reveal a turn-
ing, nothing can compensate for the years that
might have been should have been wholly
happy, and were not. There was so much lost,
and it is lost for ever.
XII
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD
FOR convenience we have been studying our
subject as if the worrier were always an adult
man; but now it is time for us to remember the
special cases of women and children. These are
worthy of separate study, since they show special
characters, have a special significance, and require
specially adapted treatment.
I propose first of all to deal with the worrying
child, since this subject precedes the other in logical
order.
Self-
The reader is doubtless acquainted with the cele-
brated doctrine that the history of the developing
individual is, in general, a modified recapitulation
of the history of the race to which it belongs;
each individual "climbs its own ancestral tree."
This doctrine applies to our present case.
consciousness, the power of "looking before and
after," is a very late and recent acquirement of
our species; and, like other such, it develops only
at a relatively late stage in the history of each one
of us.
It is evidently impossible to conceive of a
worrying baby. The idea of a baby excludes the
possibility of worry. Very slowly there emerges
the power of self-consciousness in virtue of which
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the child is — or becomes human. At first the
baby begins to recognise its hands and features as
its own, and later it identifies its feet as part of
itself. Then it completely identifies itself as an
individual, comparable to its father or mother;
but it does not at once make the crowning identi-
fication of that individual with itself. At first it
says, "Baby loves you"; some time must pass.
before it can make the first assertion of the supreme
dignity of our kind by saying, "I love you."
When self-consciousness is acquired, worry be-
comes possible. But we find, as might be expected,
that the child does not exercise this faculty of pro-
jecting the self into the past or the future in
anything like the degree that is common to its
elders. Indeed it is fair to say that a child has no
business to worry at any time. Its sleep and di-
gestion should be perfect; it has no worldly cares,
has no interest in a Stock and Share List, need
take no thought for the morrow. There is such a
thing, unquestionably, as normal worry in the case
of adult men and women; but there is no such thing
as normal worry in the case of a child.
Nevertheless, children do worry, and in so doing
afford a spectacle alike pitiable and unnatural.
Whatever may be expected at other ages, childhood
should be sunny"; and a worrying child must
be a source of distress to every one who has a heart
for children.
(6
It is easy, I fancy, to recognise the two principal
causes of worry in childhood - and it is good to
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD
141
recognise that, since there is no natural reason for
worry in children, its causes, factitious and man-
made, are easily removable.
I have said that children but rarely exercise the
faculty of self-consciousness. A child should
scarcely look before and after; it should live in
the present. But the two meanings of the word
self-conscious may lead to confusion here. Every
one knows that children may be extremely self-
conscious in the popular sense of the word - may,
for instance, be exceedingly shy with strangers.
Self-consciousness in this popular sense is often,
I believe, due to the unwisdom of parents. I fancy
that parental wisdom may not inaccurately be
gauged by the simple, un-self-conscious ease with
which an unsophisticated child will approach a
stranger, or even enter a crowded drawing-room.
But the fact remains that children, whether by
nature or imitation or suggestion or what not, are
very liable to an artificial exaggeration of the
faculty of self-consciousness and this in two dis-
tinct directions.
The first, and by far the least important, is con-
cerned with the child's fear of ridicule. As every
one knows, this is very characteristic of childhood.
The small boy who fears to be ridiculous at a new
school, because he cannot catch a ball, or has an
unusual name or appearance, may suffer agonies.
of worry - none the less painful because in his
elders' eyes the occasion seems unworthy of them.
This applies more especially, no doubt, to sensitive,
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highly-evolved children - but such children are,
of course, the most precious members of their kind.
One cannot appeal to big boys, that they should
cease from teasing little ones, but one can certainly
appeal to parents, that they should do what in
them lies to spare their children the misery, highly
injurious to their physical, mental, and moral de-
velopment, that accrues from excessive exposure
to ridicule. In the case of sensitive children, very
little exposure indeed may prove to be excessive.
I have not specially referred to girls, but what
I have said certainly applies to them. I fear that
big girls are no more merciful to little ones than
are big boys to little boys; and an eccentric cos-
tume, provided by a thoughtless parent, who
takes precious good care not to wear last season's
sleeves herself, - may embitter the life of a girl
for weeks. I have blamed big boys and girls for
their deliberate cruelty in these matters; but it
may also be remembered that similar cruelty is
wrought, though unwittingly, by the careless re-
marks of adults, who forget the sensitiveness of
children to ridicule, the keenness of their hearing,
and the retentiveness of their memories.
And now let us turn to a far more serious and
important cause of worry in children. This is
religious worry, to which I elsewhere devote a
special chapter. But here I must refer especially
to the subject of religious worry in childhood,
since it constitutes the most distressing and in-
jurious kind of worry at this time of life.
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD
143
Religion is most emphatically for a self-conscious
creature. A dog has no need of a religion. Man,
"with such large discourse, looking before and
after," cannot do without some sort of religion
unless he be merely anthropoid rather than truly
human. It follows that the child, scarcely self-
conscious in the true sense, but living in and for
the present, as a child should, if it is to become
a healthy and worthy adult is essentially an irre-
The
ligious, or rather, a non-religious creature.
religious period will assuredly come in any case.
As surely as puberty and adolescence arrive, with
their intense discovery and contemplation of the
self, so surely will the religious consciousness de-
velop. There exists not the smallest occasion for
the endeavour to anticipate this period. The re-
ligious parent need not be concerned who discov-
ers that his child is just a little pagan. The normal
healthy child is such a little pagan, and should be.
Nevertheless, when the critical period arrives-
and it does well to arrive late the religious con-
sciousness will infallibly develop itself, though no
sign of it seemed to exist before.
Now, in the first place, let us make the prelimi-
nary note that all psychologists and every parent
should be a psychologist in his or her measure
are agreed as to the desirability of postponing the
period of puberty- or, at any rate, scrupulously
avoiding anything that will tend to hasten its com-
ing. The sexual and the religious life are so con-
nected at any rate during the developmental
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period that premature religiosity is apt to lead
to premature puberty, and thus to interference with
the normal course of development. This important
subject is no immediate concern of mine in the
present volume, and therefore I can spend no fur-
ther time upon it. I can merely take the op-
portunity to remind the thoughtful parent of the
indisputable facts which I state, and to recommend
them to his consideration. If he be really a
thoughtful parent he will thank me for recom-
mending to him in this connection the study of
Prof. Stanley Hall's book on “Adolescence,” and
Prof. William James's equally valuable book on
"The Varieties of Religious Experience."
And now as to the far more important matter
of the causation of religious worry in children. In
his great work on the Philosophy of Religion,
Prof. Harald Höffding, of the University of
Copenhagen, describes religion as having been, in
the past, like a pillar of fire, moving in advance of
humanity, and urging it onwards; but as being,
in our own time, like an ambulance that travels in
the rear of humanity, and picks up and tends those
who have fallen by the way. For the child religion
has neither of these functions. Let us essay, as
best we may, the all but impossible task of under-
standing what religion means and is worth to a
child.
Religion has two contrasted aspects: one of
consolation, guidance, help, encouragement in the
battle of life; and another that is sinister, mina-
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD
145
tory, terrible. The latter aspect of religion is daily
falling into discredit in our day; though for ages
past it has been the dominant aspect of religion,
and is or was the only aspect worth mentioning in
the case of primitive religions.
Now for the consolatory, peace-bringing, worry-
destroying aspect of religion a child has very little
use. The existence of the normal child is already
happy, free from worry and care, and without
dark anticipations. Thus this aspect of religion
has little influence upon a child. The time has
not yet come when its value can be appreciated.
Come it surely will but it has not come yet.
-
And whether or not because this aspect of
religion is seen to influence a child but little this
is the aspect which is commonly subordinated in
the presentation of religion to a child. In general,
religion does not appear to a child as a consoler,
a source of joy and the peace which passeth all
understanding. Let him who passed his childhood
in Scotland, or in a Puritan, Evangelical, or Cal-
vinistic home, testify to the truth of this assertion.
Was religion to him a source of joy or of fear?
The truth is that we tend to preserve for the
"benefit" of our children a conception of religion
which we have ourselves outgrown. The religion
which adult men and women need is not one that
adds new fear, worries, or terrors to life. Such a
religion has no survival-value for the adult; it
does not serve his life, and therefore it cannot sur-
vive. In these days of headlong, fearful, hard-
IO
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working life, when humanity is multiplying so
rapidly on an earth that is meanwhile ever shrink-
ing, this aspect or conception of religion is quickly
losing the survival-value which it once had as a
moral agent — and it must shortly go. It makes
no appeal to us; it is a moralising agent only in
the case of those whose psychical development is
relatively small.
But we keep it for our children. Or even if we
represent religion to them in both of its aspects, the
minatory aspect is that which naturally appeals to
them. For the other a sunny, careless child has little
use; but this makes an appeal to its imagination and
to its capacity for terror. The "devil," who is to us
merely a convenient name wherewith to express
irritation or surprise, is to a child a terrible reality.
Prof. Alexander Bain of Aberdeen, the great
psychologist, records in his Autobiography his
childish conception of the Deity. He seemed to
see in the heavens a replica of a sort of desk, upon
which lay a large open book — probably a ledger
in the original-such as he had seen on earth.
At this desk sat the Deity, pen in hand, His all-
seeing eye fixed upon hapless little Alec, His right
hand ready to record, in indelible characters await-
ing the Day of Judgment, the least wrongful act
or thought that might emerge from the heart of a
boy. Than this picture, no more appalling and
horrible indictment could be conceived, of the la-
mentable system of religious education to which
poor young Bain had been subjected.
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD
147
Again, many a reader must remember almanacs
and the like, at the top of which was depicted a
large and awful eye, to suggest the principal exer-
cise of the Almighty Eavesdropper. And I, for
one, retain a vivid recollection of one night when,
at the age of seven or eight, I started up in bed,
covered with great drops of perspiration — I re-
member the dripping of them because I believed
that I had committed the unpardonable sin of
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Many are the
sensitive children who have been haunted by that
awful phrase, "the unpardonable sin."
Yet again, I recall my childish horror of such
phrases as "the second death," and "the worm
that dieth not"; and I shall never forget my first
conception of hell. It was a circular hell, dark
but yet luridly luminous, with sky-high, smooth,
and absolutely precipitous walls; there was no
climbing them. And eternity was passed in an
endless passage along this closed circle. The reader
may laugh; but how many are the children whose
young imaginations have been forced to such con-
ceptions by the carelessness of parents, or the un-
intentional brutality of their "spiritual advisers.
Undoubtedly the time has passed for ever when
the Scottish child dreaded the approach of Sunday
not merely because of its dulness unrelieved by
the teaching that Heaven would be a perpetual
Sunday - but because of the utter horror which
the good old-fashioned Scottish sermon was cal-
culated, designed, intended to inspire in the hearts
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of young and old alike. Yet children will form
their own conceptions on these matters, and the
parent, who is at a loss to imagine what ails a
child who should be happy, will do well to inquire.
whether the explanation is not to be found in
religious worry.
In many cases though it was certainly not so
in mine it is only too easy to recognise why the
worry-causing conception of religion is so prom-
inent in the minds of children. In all ages human
beings have had the choice of two means by which
to govern one another fear and love. Each is
effective in certain cases. The latter has the dis-
advantage that it requires love and patience on the
part of him who would govern. As every one of
us must happily know whether from personal
experience or by observation-love may be ab-
solutely, gloriously, triumphantly successful for
this purpose. Charles Darwin, to quote a classic
instance, records that, in the upbringing of his
children now famous men of science — he used
love alone. The only reward was the father's
smile; the only punishment was the withholding
of it. No rod or birch, no boxes of chocolates,
could have succeeded better; or a millionth part
as well. But in order to rule by love one must
love - even with something of the love that en-
dureth all things and never faileth. And, again,
the capacity for love must be present in those
whom you would govern. The method is inapplic-
able in the case of a wild beast; it is even inapplic-
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD
149
able in only too many human beings-though
there is probably always the might-have-been in
such cases.
Take, then, the case of the ordinary parent, who
is a parent merely because certain physiological
consequences tend to follow certain physiological
causes; or take the case of the hireling nurse. The
utter patience of love is not available in such cases;
or the would-be governor may be such a drunken
father, for instance as cannot rule by love be-
cause it is inconceivable that he should evoke the
love of any child towards him, even were he cap-
able of feeling love towards the child. Such a
nurse or parent must plainly use the method of
rule by fear, since rule he must, and rule by love
is impossible.
And religion is prostituted to this end. Corruptio
optimi pessima- the corruption of the best is the
worst corruption — and the proverb is true in this
case. The All-seeing eye intent upon the pecca-
dilloes of childhood, the recording angel, — whose
record of good deeds is perfunctory but who never
misses a bad one, the fear of hell, the conscious-
ness of “sin” — all these furnish effective weapons
in the rule of childhood by fear.
And so the children worry. Before now children
have been driven to suicide by religious worry
by this abominable prostitution of the power which
should make earth Heaven. The little boy who
steals a chocolate-cream from a forbidden box, or
the little girl who forgets to say her prayers or
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shams a headache at church-time, — in such, if
they be sensitive children, either ruled by fear
using religion as one of its weapons, or else curi-
ous and eager, reading the Bible independently,
and mercilessly applying certain of its passages to
themselves, there may be engendered a degree of
religious worry that may blight the young life or
distort it for all future years. To those who,
thoughtlessly or selfishly or even with the highest
and most deliberate intention, are responsible for
such cruelty we may most solemnly quote the
words of One who loved little children: "But
whoso shall offend one of these little ones which
believe in me, it were better for him that a mill-
stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depth of the sea."
Some may answer that this is all very well, but
that children must be taught to be conscientious;
and to be conscientious is to be susceptible to worry
over misdeeds. Certainly I am the last person in
the world to suggest that its moral education is not
a vital matter in the case of every child. But the
government of a child by fear is brutal and danger-
ous, no matter whether the fear be concerned with
this life or the next; there is no valid distinction.
Parents are apt to forget the vividness of the child's
imagination and the terrible character of its crea-
tions under the influence of what is called religious.
teaching. Thus many a parent who would shudder
at the notion of brutally treating his child's body
by way of correction, will not hesitate brutally to
WORRY IN CHILDHOOD
151
maltreat its mind; which, in the case of many
children, may be a far graver cruelty than the
other; its soul being more sensitive than its skin.
Furthermore, there is the future to think of. If
the child be governed by love—whether directed
to its parents or to such Deity as a child is capable
of conceiving, or to both the psychical changes
and the intellectual development of later years.
offer no menace to its moral consciousness. But
if the more facile method of government by re-
ligious fear be employed, there is to-morrow to
reckon with. The child's hell and Satan may be
real enough to effect that obedience which — for
your own convenience you regard as the chief
virtue of childhood; and it is very improbable
that you have sufficient imagination (if you have
used this method) to enable you to realise the
agonies of religious worry from which your child
has suffered — especially in the dark. But the
child will as surely outgrow this crudely material-
istic creed as the race has outgrown it. The time
will come when your child will worry about Satan
no more than you do — and when its idea of Hell
will become at any rate as vague and insubstan-
tial, if not inoperative, as your own. Except in
comparatively few cases, the child will not be gov-
erned by supernatural fears for ever; and the
question arises whether, when he puts away the
old notions with other childish things, he may not
find himself without any moral anchorage. If this
be so, at whose door will his sins lie?
-
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WORRY
Sometimes the future may have another fate in
store. Some physical illness at adolescence, or the
presence of some inherent mental flaw, may lead to
derangement of the mind- temporary or per-
manent. Then the religious worry that was de-
veloped and fostered in childhood will reassert
itself in a degree, the horror of which even the
unimaginative parent will be able to realise. Your
innocent daughter may have to be fed, for weeks
at a time, by a tube passed through her nose, be-
cause the seed sown years before has fructified in
the belief that she has committed the unpardonable
sin, is for ever a castaway, and is therefore un-
worthy to eat. These cases of religious melan-
cholia in young people are quite common. I am
not prepared to say that their efficient cause is to
be found in the religious worry of earlier years;
but it is quite certain, first, that such religious worry
predisposes to the melancholia of which the ex-
citing cause is perhaps merely influenza; and,
second, that the early teaching entirely determines
the peculiarly horrible and distressing form which
the melancholia assumes; and if melancholia of
any kind be grievous enough, religious melancholia
is grievous in the very last degree. Consider how
different the course, intensity, and duration of the
illness might have been, if "religion," instead of
aggravating it, had been the true religion which
might well have proved either a complete preven-
tive, or at any rate the most potent means of cure.
XIII
DOMESTIC WORRY
THE responsible head of a household is apt too
lightly to assume that he alone has any occasion or
excuse for worry. It is a revelation to the young
married man to discover that part of his wife's
pleasure in a holiday lies in the fact that not only
does she not know what is coming for dinner but
she has had no concern in ordering it. I observe
also that, though one thinks it absurd for one's
wife to worry about a mere dinner, one expects
unlimited variety thereat and is apt to grumble if
expectation be disappointed.
I have called this chapter Domestic Worry, and
not Worry and Woman, because the only kind of
worry that is characteristic of woman as distin-
guished from man is domestic worry. A woman
has most or all of a man's causes for worry, but
these do not need special consideration with refer-
ence to her; she has, in addition, a kind of worry
which he has not. Indeed, it may be said that
women worry about the affairs of the home in
order that men may not. It is supposed
lend their able support to this convenient notion —
that a man's cares are so many and contrived on
so heroic a scale that at least he must be spared
and men
154
WORRY
any worry at home; the petty details of domesticity
must show only their smooth side to him.
And since the good wife sees to it that her mate
is never bothered with domestic affairs, he is only
too apt to think that such affairs involve no worry
and he is gravely in error.
The average healthy business man should be
able, as we observe elsewhere, to leave his busi-
ness behind him when he comes home. His return
to his own hearth should mean the beginning of
that holiday-period or time of freedom from worry,
which I believe to be a necessary part of every
well-spent day. His wife is undoubtedly right in
wishing to ensure him the enjoyment of this
period; but it by no means follows that her own
case is always an easy one.
It is notorious that a woman's work is never
done,” and this is true even of the lady who does
no work in the ordinary sense of that word. Such
a lady may provide many sources of worry for
herself, in the course of entertaining, or trying to
outshine her neighbours and friends, or trying to
make a braver show in the world than her hus-
band's income warrants. My concern here, how-
ever, is not with such worries, but with the worries.
which are inevitable in the life of the most sensible
woman - the domestic worry which is insepar-
able from domesticity. When Emerson declared,
in his "English Traits," that their domesticity was
the tap-root of all the powers exhibited by the
English people, he spoke a profound truth, - true
DOMESTIC WORRY
155
not merely of England alone. Domestic Worry
is therefore a subject worthy of the wisest pen and
the wisest reader, and need not be disdained of us.
Domestic worry both makes a woman older and
makes her look older. I have no great liking for
the woman whose best friend is her mirror, but I
am not so foolish as to imagine that the details of
a woman's appearance are unimportant — affecting
as they do her own happiness, the happiness of her
husband, and therefore the happiness of her chil-
dren. Let us, therefore, first consider the effects of
worry upon a woman's face. In so doing, I avail
myself of what is incomparably the greatest book
ever written upon the subject with which it deals
-Charles Darwin's "Expression of the Emotions
in Man and Animals."
Certain facial characters are commonly seen
in the various emotional states which Darwin
enumerates as "Low Spirits, Anxiety, Grief, De-
jection, Despair." Primarily, of course, these
characters are merely temporary, disappearing
with the emotion which they express. But the
frequent repetition of any facial expression causes
permanent alterations in the expression, and these.
correspond, with, and suggest to the beholder, the
emotional state that has predominated; so that the
man who is always laughing comes to look "a
jolly man," the thinker a thoughtful man, and the
woman who worries begins to wear a worried look
that persists.
When a woman worries, the muscles of her face.
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WORRY
tend to lose the "tone" which is characteristic of
healthy muscles, and thus "the lips, cheeks, and
lower jaw all sink downwards from their own.
weight. Hence all the features are lengthened;
and the face of a person who hears bad news is
said to fall . the eyes become dull and lack
expression. The eyebrows not rarely are ren-
dered oblique, which is due to their inner ends
being raised. This produces peculiarly formed
wrinkles on the forehead, which are very different
from those of a simple frown; though in some
cases a frown alone may be present. The corners
of the mouth are drawn downwards, which is so
universally recognised as a sign of being out of
spirits, that it is almost proverbial.
"" 1
Darwin goes on to describe in detail the be-
haviour of the muscles which cause these wrinkles
and says that "they may be called, for the sake
of brevity, the grief-muscles." Equally correct
would it be to call them the worry-muscles. Fur-
ther he says what is of special interest to us: "As
far as I have been able to observe, the grief-muscles
are brought into action much more frequently by
children and women than by men. They are rarely
acted on, at least with grown-up persons, from
bodily pain, but almost exclusively from mental
distress." Darwin also observes that this expres-
sion is to be found in certain works of art, such as
the famous statue of the Laocoön and Fra Angel-
¹ Darwin, "Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,"
popular edition, pp. 181, 182.
DOMESTIC WORRY
157
ico's "Descent from the Cross," in Florence. Sir
James Crichton-Browne informed Darwin that
these muscles "may constantly be seen in energetic
action in cases of melancholia, and especially of
hypochondria; and that the persistent lines or
furrows, due to their habitual contraction, are char-
acteristic of the physiognomy of the insane be-
longing to these two classes."
1
To say that a person is "down in the mouth" is
synonymous with saying that he is out of spirits;
and the permanent depression of the corners of the
mouth is characteristic of the woman who worries.
This is very characteristic, also, of the melancholic
insane, as many observers have noted. Darwin
observes: "It is remarkable how small a depres-
sion of the corners of the mouth gives to the
countenance an expression of low spirits or de-
jection, so that an extremely slight contraction of
these muscles would be sufficient to betray this
state of mind."
It is time, perhaps, that some one should draw
the attention of women to the psychical factor of
good looks. Now, as ever, women are concerned
about their appearance, and it ill becomes any man
who knows a pretty face from a plain one, and
knows which he prefers, to jeer at them for this.
When Dr. Arthur Evans unearthed in Crete the
palace of King Minos, dating from an age when
Moses was still in the womb of time, he discovered
that the Minoan women of that remote age used
1 Italics mine.
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WORRY
corsets and cosmetics just for all the world like the
women of thirty-five centuries after them. But the
observation of any man whether of the women
whose faces he himself admires, or of the women
whom he finds to be admired - will teach him a
lesson which is also taught by the contemporary
accounts of most of the fascinating women of his-
tory. It is not the form of her nose, nor the
smoothness of her skin, nor the length of her eye-
lashes, that endows a woman with the empire that
she loves. Such beauty is only skin-deep. But
there is another beauty to which Herbert Spen-
cer alluded when he said, "The saying that beauty
is but skin-deep, is but a skin-deep saying." And
the determining factor of the beauty which age
cannot wither nor custom stale is the factor of
mind. Here, as everywhere else, mind is the only
important matter — appearances notwithstanding.
There is no cosmetic yet known, nor will any such
be revealed by the chemistry of the future, that
can for a moment compare with a merry heart, a
lucid mind, and a loving soul. And of all the
ravages that can be worked in a fair face there are
none against which your chemistry is more impo-
tent — and your electricity and massage and chin-
straps and depilatories and their like than the
ravages of worry. Let the reader look out, in the
next crowd in which he finds himself, for a woman's
face marked in mouth and brow as I have so
minutely described with Darwin's aid, and he will
recognise that one might as well attempt to cure
-
DOMESTIC WORRY
159
a cancer with sticking plaster as attempt to erase
with any cosmetic these indelible lines.
The beauty that is more than skin-deep, the
beauty that lasts, and the beauty that counts in the
long run, is a creation of the mind, and by the mind
alone can it be destroyed.
We all know these things; we have all read that
the dominant women of history had a beauty not
merely cutaneous, but psychical. Yet women ha-
bitually ignore what they know, or should know, so
well. I will add no more words of my own to
propositions which merely need statement to find
immediate acceptance; but I would remind the
reader of one of the most poignant and perfect.
poems ever written. Every one has read the five
poems on Lucy, which Wordsworth wrote in Ger-
many. In the longest and greatest of these,
"Three years she grew in sun and shower," the
poet pictures Nature as planning and describing
the means by which she is to make a perfect
woman. The child is to be a friend of the stars
and the brooks, "And beauty born of murmuring
sound shall pass into her face." Not in crowded,
worried cities, but in communion with Nature,
placid and benign, is the child to acquire that beauty
of expression which will endear her to all that have
seeing eyes, and, at the last, will look out even
from her shroud.
That worry shortens life is, of course, a com-
monplace; and I have already said that worry not
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WORRY
merely makes a woman look older but actually
makes her older. The same is true of a man; and
so, also, is what I have said regarding the effects
of worry upon the face, though in his case they are
of smaller importance. Nor need I say anything
specially here, regarding the effects of domestic
worry upon a woman's health, since these effects.
are in no way peculiar to her sex.
But it is necessary to consider with some care
the varieties of domestic worry. Servants, chil-
dren, and finance, I suppose, constitute the chief
causes of offence. Regarding the last I will say
nothing, since it is not peculiar to domestic worry,
and has the same causes and most of the same
consequences in a woman's case as in a man's. But
servants and children are especially the woman's
concern, and the time will be well occupied if we
can say anything useful about them here.
Now the general proposition which I would sub-
mit is that, in both cases, the occasion for worry,
when worry arises, is more frequently to be found
in the woman herself than in the servants or the
children whom she blames. Let us first consider
the servants.
The average mistress, having only an average
imagination, is scarcely able to realise how dull
and undesirable is the life of the average servant.
It is doubtless better for the morals of the ordinary.
girl of the class from which domestic servants are
drawn that she should become a housemaid or
66
general" than a factory-hand, and it is probably
DOMESTIC WORRY
161
better for her body. But the life, as regulated by
the ordinary mistress, is a poor one; and such a
mistress is nowadays experiencing much difficulty
in finding good servants or in keeping them when
found. But it is a significant fact that, though
similar means of selection be employed in different
cases, one mistress will constantly have occasion to
worry about her servants, whilst another comes
across "treasures," and is able to retain them.
Doctors know how high is the proportion of illness
amongst domestic servants, how liable they are to
bloodlessness and varicose veins, flat feet, con-
sumption, and heart weakness. They fill the gen-
eral hospitals, they furnish a large proportion of
his patients to the doctor in poor practice, and from
their scanty earnings they combine to swell the
enormous incomes of the owners of patent medi-
cines. Probably a majority of all mistresses at-
tempt to exact from their female servants an
amount of work of which the average female
organism is incapable, meanwhile allowing an
amount of time out "that is quite inadequate
for recuperation the more so because, being
scanty, and the working time being so dull, it is
usually spent in places of amusement as abom-
inably ventilated as nearly all our public resorts
are. Thus the sympathy of the doctor is with the
servant rather than the mistress, and he is inclined
to think that the worry about servants from which
the average mistress is rarely free is well earned
and quite unworthy of his condolence. Regarding
II
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domestic worry about servants, then, I would say
to the average mistress that, until she begins to
treat her servants as she might reasonably expect
to be treated were she a servant, her worry is
thoroughly well deserved, and that the contempla-
tion thereof is a source of gratification to me and
to all who have had sufficient experience-espe-
cially experience in medical practice to enable
them to realise how hard the lot of the average
domestic servant is.
Finally, let us consider domestic worry about
children. The modern solution of this problem
is similar to Mr. Wells's proposed solution for
the servant-problem do without them. This is
abundantly proved by the steadily falling birth-
rate of all civilised countries except Japan and
Russia, if that unhappy land falls within the cate-
gory. People who do not know sometimes suggest
that the fall in our birth-rate is due to a decline
of national fertility or to other physiological
causes; but people who do know are well aware
that parentage is declining because it is unpopular,
and that the one or two child marriage is very
rarely an instance of acquired sterility, but is a
phenomenon the origin of which is to be traced to
the deliberate volition of men and women.
What, then, is the judgment which must be
passed upon the popular remedy or preventive for
the kind of domestic worry that is caused by the
care and upbringing of children? Many difficul-
ties and uncertainties are to be encountered in the
DOMESTIC WORRY
163
study of this subject; but one thing at least is
certain that critics who express an unqualified
approval, and those who express an unqualified
disapproval, are both out of court. Such a judg-
ment as that of the bachelor Bishop, with his in-
come of ten thousand pounds a year, merely
serves to add to the gaiety of nations, which is,
of course, a service of sorts.
If ever it is true that circumstances alter cases,
it is true here. Let us consider certain familiar and
well-defined sets of circumstances.
In the first place, there are the circumstances of
the housewife, already over-worked and burdened
with the care of a "large family." Any further
increase of her responsibilities may definitely urge
her into the grave towards which she is already
speeding far too fast. The doctrines of ecclesiasti-
cism and its votaries, who quote the command, " Be
fruitful and multiply," would here have the effect
not merely of injuring or killing the mother, but
of thereby injuring her husband, and the children
whom she already possesses. After all, there are
physical limits to what even a devoted mother can
accomplish; and it is surely better to bring up
four children by a mother's loving care than to
leave ten motherless.
In a word, it is my deliberate and responsible
conviction that there is a vast deal of domestic
worry, borne by women and occasioned by the size
of their families, which should have been prevented
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WORRY
by practical recognition of the facts which I have
stated. The truth is that the doctrine, " Be fruitful
and multiply," as taught for many centuries past,
is a fruit of that horrible thing which men now call
militarism. The powers that be must have food
for powder, and to this end the birth-rate must be
kept as high as possible. But the era of militarism
is coming to an end, even though Europe be still.
an armed camp; and its doctrines will be replaced.
by others, saner, more humane, more solicitous of
human life and its worth, more appreciative of
quality and less appreciative of quantity. A wil-
derness of bishops notwithstanding, I for one will
dare to assert that much domestic worry, with all
its disastrous results for mothers and children alike,
will be prevented in years to come, to the lasting
benefit of all concerned.
•
But there is another answer to be returned in
other circumstances, and the disastrous fact is that
hitherto it is only the very few who have attempted
to discriminate. If we examine and compare the
birth-rates of different classes, as, for instance, by
contrasting the birth-rate of Kensington with that
of Whitechapel, we find, in general, that the less
the excuse or warrant for a low birth-rate, the
lower the birth-rate is. Where the circumstances
are such that we know women to be suffering from
domestic worry that shortens their lives, and thus
injures the rising generation - for whom the
influence of the mother transcends all other influ-
ences there we find the birth-rate exceedingly,
DOMESTIC WORRY
165
excessively high. On the other hand, where there.
is room for the children, leisure for their care,
abundance of money for their up-bringing, and no
occasion whatever for any substantial worry on
account of them, there we find the birth-rate ex-
ceedingly, excessively low.
perous classes have come to the conclusion, it would
appear, that motherhood is not worth the trouble
which it involves, and to them the rebuke of the
Bishop of London is surely applicable.
The wives of the pros-
For it is true that, no matter how prosperous
and favourable the circumstances be, the upbring-
ing of children involves some worry. Let us, then,
briefly enumerate the various means by which this
worry may be prevented, and then let us inquire
as to the consequences.
First of all, and most effectively, these worries
may be prevented by renunciation of the oppor-
tunity of parenthood altogether, as we have seen.
Thus relief from domestic worry is purchased-
but at what cost?
The price is national or racial, and personal.
The nation or the race must pay, for the duty of
its continuance is relegated to its lower classes.
Both on the score of heredity and on the score of
environment the national consequences are disas-
trous. They are disastrous on the score of he-
redity because the thus-purchased freedom from
domestic worry of the wives of the prosperous
classes means that the better stocks of the nation
contribute less than their share, whilst the inferior
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WORRY
stocks contribute more than their share, to the
replenishment of the race. My friend Mr. Francis
Galton, the distinguished cousin of the immortal
Darwin, has proved that individual ability and
worth are largely determined by inheritance. His
scheme of Eugenics proposes that the best indi-
viduals in a nation must be the chief factors in the
upkeep of the birth-rate; but the current practice.
of purchasing freedom from domestic worry is
precisely the reverse of what he desires. Thus the
freedom of selfish individuals from worry is pur-
chased at the threatened cost of racial deterioration.
But on the score of environment, also, the na-
tional consequences are disastrous; for where the
environment is good, well fitted for the successful
nurture of children, there the children do not
appear; whereas they appear only too abundantly,
not only in perpetuation of the inferior stocks, but
also in the circumstances such as poverty and
over-crowding-where children cannot properly
be reared. Hence another potent cause of national
danger.
And, as I have said, the price at which freedom
from domestic worry is purchased is also personal.
The renunciation of the joys of parenthood, be-
cause its worries are held to more than counter-
balance them, involves an injury to the character
of the selfish individual. It injures marriage and
married life, rendering it incomplete, and depriving
it of its great opportunity for the ripening and
ennoblement of character.
DOMESTIC WORRY
167
I submit that relief from domestic worry is not
worth purchasing on these terms.
Secondly, these domestic worries may be pre-
vented, as many a mother mistakenly thinks, by
neglect to perform that maternal duty which
Nature has indicated in the person of every woman.
Doctors know that the proportion of mothers who
cannot nurse their babies is really very small; but
the proportion of those in the prosperous classes
who will not is large and constantly increasing.
The price paid for the shirking of this source of
worry or inconvenience is constantly expressed by
the actual death of the baby, or permanent injury
to its health in consequence of malnutrition: whilst
the neglect of this duty inflicts an irreparable injury
upon the moral nature of the mother an injury
which is only too likely to react for evil upon the
remote future as well as upon the immediate future
of her child, should it survive.
Thereafter much domestic worry may be averted
by the mother in prosperous circumstances, by the
unlimited employment of hirelings to look after
her children. This will leave her freedom for the
following of her own desires; incidentally it can
scarcely fail to injure her children. She would not
like it said that she neglects their education - yet
the child's nurse constitutes a vastly important
factor therein. Elsewhere I have defined educa-
tion as "the provision of an environment" - the
dominant factor of which is the child's constant
companion. The mother who prefers a hireling
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WORRY
to herself as her child's companion admits either
that she regards herself as inferior to the pur-
chased nurse for the purpose of her child's edu-
cation, or else that the trouble of providing the
child with the best companion does not seem to her
worth the candle. It is an unpleasant dilemma,
but there are only too many mothers to whom it is
applicable.
The necessity for constant care of a child must
necessarily become irksome, of course, and the
opportunity of sending it away to school, even for
only a few hours a day, is heartily and very often
prematurely welcomed. But when the child of
either sex has reached the age of seven years the
various elements of its brain structure are in their
place, and it is ready to begin what is commonly
understood by the word "education." If the school
be wisely chosen, even at the cost of no small
worry, perhaps, to the mother, and if the moral
character of the child, even at a similar cost, hast
previously been well trained, the beginning of
school life will undoubtedly mean to the mother
a very considerable relaxation of worry and anxiety
regarding her child. But if she has not worried.
as she should, either in preparing the child for
school or in choosing a school for the child, she
may receive her deserts in the shape of more
trouble, anxiety, annoyance and worry than ever,
when the school period arrives.
A few years later there comes the powerful and
popular temptation to which many readers will be
•
DOMESTIC WORRY
169
surprised to find me applying that sinister term-
I mean the boarding-school.
If there be sufficient money to spare there is no
question that the sending of a boy or a girl to a
boarding-school will save the mother a great deal
of worry. In short, she pays some one else to
worry for her.
The reader will observe that I
treat this subject under Domestic Worry, and that
I refer to the mother rather than the father. I do
so because it is my belief that the mother rather
than the father is the vital factor and the naturally
appointed factor in the care and education of a
child of either sex for many years. This always
remains true, of course, of the girl, but it remains
true of the boy also, until, at any rate, he begins
definitely to approach the period during which he
will develop into a man. And in criticising the
boarding-school system of avoiding domestic worry
it is especially the mother of whom I think, in the
case of a boy particularly. It is the loss of the
womanly influence which is at its highest, need
I say, in the maternal influence that constitutes
the most serious and fatal of all the many serious
and fatal objections that may be urged against the
boarding-school system. I will freely admit that
boarding-schools are an unfortunate necessity for
children whose parents are dead or drunken or
exiled or otherwise incapable of performing the
supreme duties of parenthood, but I am only in
line with medical men and practical psychologists
and educationists generally, when I say that the
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boarding-school, as an institution for boys and girls
whose parents are living and capable of perform-
ing the duties of parenthood, is an evil thing.
Furthermore, I honestly believe that boarding-
schools are consequences of worry-invented for
its avoidance. The long and the short of it is
that it requires care and love and patience to look
after one's own children, and that at best this
can never be accomplished without much anxiety,
trouble, and worry. The well-to-do parent is at
least aware of this elementary fact. The neces-
sary cheque is written, and the honourable and
responsible burden is transferred to hired shoul-
ders. It is an effective means for the fashionable
mother, whereby she may dispose of a chief source
of domestic worry. It is true that there are
always the holidays, which are a nuisance; but
one can usually get away from home at such times,
and when they come to their welcome end one
can heave a sigh of relief as the youngster is
safely packed off in a train for another few months
to come.
We have seen elsewhere that worry may be
normal or morbid. Much domestic worry, I insist,
is normal worry. The selfish avoidance of it works
disaster in a woman's character and produces that
lamentable decadence of motherhood which is so
characteristic of certain classes in our time and
civilisation. "What has posterity done for me?"
asked Napoleon a highly characteristic question.
The modern mother only too often acts as if she
DOMESTIC WORRY
171
1
had put some such question regarding her imme-
diate posterity her own children. She recks
nothing for the price which she pays for the avoid-
ance of worry or rather, she estimates it by the
cheque-book method. The cheque-book, however,
furnishes no calculus of character, and does not
express the birth-rate of the well-to-do classes, nor
the fact that these classes are in continuous process
of extinction and replacement from below. In
order to support by an unbiassed and highly
qualified witness, the estimate of boarding-schools
which is so commonly held amongst medical men
and psychologists, I will quote the words of an
article by Dr. Gray, the Headmaster of Bradfield
College. They are to be found in the "Hibbert
Journal" for July, 1906, and the most remarkable
fact about them is that the writer shows no signs
elsewhere in his article of any recognition of their
gravity. I have read them again and again in
amazement. Had I dared I might have written
them myself, except that I might have failed to
express myself with such force.
It must be re-
membered, says Dr. Gray:-
I
"(1) That we have to deal with a society of im-
mature minds and plastic morality.
"(2) That this society is artificially constituted;
that is, it does not proceed on the lines of family
relations, which nature intended should be followed
throughout life, but is isolated and monastic."
CC
Here, then, at the most critical stage of a boy's
life, at a time when, along with violent physical
changes, the character is being formed with at least
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equally startling rapidity, when reason is often com-
paratively weak, and sentiment and emotion are
always strong, a boy is taken away from the forma-
tive influences of the other sex, from the mother and
sister, and thrust into a community composed of one
sex only, where all do the same things, think the
same thoughts, and talk round the same confined
circle of subjects."
Nothing is here said about the effects upon the
parents' character; and yet enough is said to be
beyond answer.
Let us sum up, so far.
The worries of motherhood may be most effec-
tively prevented, no doubt, by the renunciation of
motherhood; but similarly life's little ills may be
prevented by suicide, or the trouble of keeping
one's nails clean by amputation of the arm. My
comparisons will not seem extreme to any true
mother who reads them.
Or the worries of motherhood may be prevented
by the relegation of the mother's duties to succes-
sive hirelings at successive stages, and here a simi-
lar objection applies: the cost to the mother and
the cost to her child are immeasurably too high.
There is, indeed, no absolute preventive that is
worth its cost; only the mother who does not care
does not worry sometimes. But it is the assured
fact of experience that the mother will reduce her
occasion for worry to the minimum, who regards
her function as a noble vocation, worthy of the
utmost, both mentally and morally, of which she
is capable. Such a mother will have many little
DOMESTIC WORRY
173
worries in her children's earlier years, for her ideals
will be unattainably high- she would have her
children perfect; but here as everywhere the stitch
in time saves nine; you may bend the twig though
you cannot incline the tree, and the mothers whose
sons and daughters, as they reach the years of wil-
fulness and experiment and danger, cause them the
worry that scars the heart and tells upon the very
gait, or even drags down their grey hairs with
sorrow into the grave, are only too often the
mothers who spared themselves little worries when
the growing plant was young and tractable. The
question for the mother is this: Will you worry
a little now, and act, or will you worry, even to
despair, hereafter, when you cannot act though
you would?
XIV
WORRY AND OLD AGE
Just as worry in childhood, and worry in woman
or domestic worry, show special characters and
need special consideration, so worry in old age is
distinct in certain respects, and forms a type of its
own. Worry differs in its objects and its charac-
ter at different ages, and in the two sexes, and, of
course, in different individuals in accordance.
—
with the psychological differences many of which
are familiar to all of us. Every one knows, for
instance, how largely youth lives in the future, and
old age in the past. Hence, if we divide worry,
according as to whether it looks before or looks.
after, into anticipative worry and retrospective
worry, we may expect to find, and we do find, anti-
cipative worry predominating in youth, whilst old
age displays retrospective worry, and especially
that variety of it which we call regret.
Babyhood worries not at all, for it cannot, worry
being dependent upon self-consciousness, which
babyhood does not possess. Childhood should
never worry, and does so, as we have seen, only
when its elders maltreat it, wilfully or otherwise.
Youth is more self-conscious, and worries not a
little; but it is resilient, elastic, enthusiastic; and
WORRY AND OLD AGE
175
not merely has it only a brief past to survey with
regrets, but regret is alien to the normal psy-
chology of youth, whose mottoes are always "Ex-
celsior," and "En avant." Regret in youth may
be poignant for a brief space, but it is always evan-
escent in health. And youth sleeps well, takes
little thought for the morrow, and has few
responsibilities.
Adult life sees a further access of proneness to
worry. The struggle for existence becomes keen,
the might-have-beens cannot always be forgotten
or dismissed, responsibilities multiply, the future
is often uncertain. Worry, both retrospective and
anticipative, has many opportunities in men and
in women alike. Yet adult life is, for most of us,
a period of very fair health, and some conscious-
ness of fitness. Further, one's time is usually well
occupied; it does not hang heavy on one's hands;
there are a thousand interests in this manifold
world of ours, and the average man or woman is
scarcely likely to become too self-centred or self-
conscious.
Now old age, we know, should be green and hale
and peaceful. "Life's fitful fever" is burning
low, there is little need for hurry, the tide of op-
portunity may have been taken at the flood, or may
have been allowed to pass unused; but, at any rate,
it has passed. Years should bring the philosophic
mind, an outlook calm, serious, not easily per-
turbed, an old age serene and bright." Wise old
Adam puts it well in "As You Like It," when he
"
176
WORRY
says, "Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty but kindly." But I cannot do better than
resort to Wordsworth for descriptions of old age
as it should and may be, in man and in woman.
For the first, I quote the last few lines of "The
Happy Warrior": -
Who, not content that former worth stand fast
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fail, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name —
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause :
This is the happy Warrior, this is He
That every Man in arms should wish to be."
And for the second, I quote the last stanza of
"She was a phantom of delight":-
"And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light."
1
Doubtless it is true and well that we can each
of us point to examples of such old age; but it is
also the lamentable truth that these examples are
the exception and not the rule. Indeed, it is when
WORRY AND OLD AGE
177
old age creeps on that worry finds its chance at
last. I do not attribute the contrast between old
age as we most commonly see it and old age as it
should and might be, to any moral degeneration
of the race, but rather to inevitable causes that are
not in themselves to be regretted.
The fact is that the average type of humanity
is undergoing a change in these days. Civilisation
literally means city-fication, and the psychical type
of the citizen is not the same as that of the rustic.
To put the matter bluntly, the nearer a man is to
the vegetable, the less will he worry. A vegetable
marrow has no difficulty in preserving its mental
repose, I fancy; and the man who is more or less
a perambulating vegetable marrow is similarly
favoured. Worry is the disease of the age, as I
have called it, because it is a disease that specially
affects the kind of men and women whom the age
is producing. Like migraine, it is a "maladie des
beaux esprits," and we are all becoming "beaux
esprits" nowadays. Shakespeare's Adam was
happily named, for he was a primitive type. He
did not know the meaning of "nerves"; he was
as little likely to suffer from the "jumps" as a
vegetable marrow. His mental and nervous pro-
cesses were very slow, and probably nothing in the
world could hurry them. Like a baby, he lived
mainly in the present. When old age came upon
him, his vital speed, never anything but leisurely,
merely became a little slower still. His simple
wants were assured, and he, like the baby we dis-
12
178
WORRY
cussed in another chapter, had no interest in a
Stock and Share List. He did not stamp about
his room, as some of us do, waiting for the late
edition of the evening paper.
It was an easy
matter for him to preserve his mental peace; he
had nothing to worry about, and scarcely had the
mental apparatus for doing so, even if there had
been occasion to use it.
But the ordinary old man, or elderly man, of
to-day is of a very different type. Our civilisation
is producing men and even women, too, in these
later years
who cannot content themselves with
the ordinary vegetative processes of eating and
sleeping and sitting in the sun that satisfied their
ancestors. The woman who has led a busy life in
the control and direction of her home and children
finds herself destined to pass her declining years
in the home of a married child, perhaps, where
she has no duties of any kind to perform. The
best thing that can happen to her is that she shall
soon have grandchildren to think about and help
to care for. There is a very definite and very
much to be pitied class of the community for whom,
only quite lately, and only amongst the most ad-
vanced nations, is any adequate mental occupation
provided the elderly women, whose children have
taken wing, but whose activities, and especially
their mental activities, are potentially unabated
but have nothing to act upon. They have ex-
perience, patience, insight, and their invaluable
feminity; but society does not yet choose to avail
WORRY AND OLD AGE
179
itself of them. As the years advance, such women
run a grave risk of becoming self-centred, losing
their sense of proportion, and, since they have.
nothing worth while to concern themselves with,
worrying about things that are not worth while.
More familiar is the case of the man of the same
type, who, being no student of psychology, has
thought to enjoy his latter years by giving up his
business, or who has been superannuated by some
automatic arrangement. Time now hangs heavy
on his hands, creeps with leaden pace, and the
active mind, since it has no external outlet, begins
to prey upon itself. The psychical characters of
the old age of such a man cannot conceivably be
the same as those of the man who has never used
his mind at any time the rustic, the cowherd, the
agricultural labourer.
Thus it is that the most familiar type of old age
in our day is only too far from the ideal. Old age,
as we are apt to meet it, has its own grievances;
more than ever, we meet the laudator temporis
acti, to whom each succeeding innovation is a new
annoyance. Furthermore, a noteworthy disadvan-
tage of the modification of mental type to which I
have referred, is that the young and the active seem
to have become for reasons which we can now
understand — less tolerant than ever of the foibles
and frailties of age. We live at such high speed
that the slow pace of age seems slower and more
stupid than ever. We find it more difficult to
sympathise, and our lack of sympathy necessarily
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WORRY
makes old age more burdensome than ever. The
idea of the family is waning, family ties are weak-
ened by modern ease of locomotion and modern
speed; we have no particular sentiment for a
patriarch as such; the faster we move the wider
must become the gap between ourselves and those
who, like the aged, have ceased to move; and if we
were to be visited by bears, as were the children
who mocked the bald-head in the Old Testament
tale, few of us would escape the fatal hug. Even
to the present writer, who is not exactly a veteran,
it seems that reverence for age is less generally
inculcated into children than it was when he was
a child.
In short, old age is probably less tolerated and
less tolerable to-day than ever in the past.
66
No wonder, then, that worry assumes a dire
importance when age creeps on. In all times the
old have been out of it," and now they are more
out of it " than ever. We were all contented with
a jog-trot formerly; now we must have the motor-
car and old age would jog-trot still.
It might be expected that, as death loomed
nearer, religious worry would play a larger and
larger part in the mental life of the aged. But
this is entirely contrary to general experience. The
youth who feared the "wrath to come" when it
was relatively far away, is found to worry very
little about it when it is presumably coming nearer.
Old age is commonly merciful, and its religious
outlook for itself sees less vengeance and more
WORRY AND OLD AGE
181
compassion than it used. A distinguished Ameri-
can psychologist experimented with children of
various ages, inquiring into the kind and measure
of punishment which they allotted for various
imaginary misdeeds. He found the youngest chil-
dren vindictive, harsh, merciless; like the older
that is to say, the younger-penal legislation,
which would hang a boy for stealing a sheep. The
older children were more merciful, and the older
more merciful still, like the modern school of
penology thus affording one more illustration
of the parallelism between racial and individual
development. Thus old age begins to realise, as
youth cannot, that "tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner," and it expects some such allowances
for itself when Death comes, as it now makes for
others. Hence it is, as I have said, that religious
worry, often so potent a factor in the psychical
life of the young, is commonly much alleviated in
old age.
Now the worry of old age is not anticipative
but retrospective; it is regret rather than appre-
hension. There is also the querulous fretfulness
about present trifles that is so unfortunately famil-
iar to most of us who have lived with old people.
The worry of old age, then, is regret and fret-
fulness.
I used to know an old man who had played
cricket regularly, and played it very well, until he
was over sixty when a serious and nearly fatal
illness put an end to his cricket for ever. The sum-
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WORRY
mer was a miserable time for him. He could not
keep away from a cricket match, and there he
would sit, scornfully criticising the "form" of the
youngsters, and telling, to inattentive ears, the tale
of the sudden arrest of his own cricketing days.
Ever his sad refrain was, "I was playing cricket
two years ago." Alas! what word of comfort
could be said?
"Absence of occupation is not rest,
The mind that 's vacant is a mind distrest,"
said Cowper. The lines are not exactly poetry,
but they express a psychological truth, and it is
especially applicable to old age.
When one talked, or rather, when one listened
to that poor old cricketer that had been and never
again would be, one was afflicted with a sense of
impotence to help; and also, sometimes, when
imagination was astir, with a sense of foreboding:
"How shall I feel when I can play cricket no
more?"
"
There is only one practical suggestion to make,
and it is not new, but it is a good one. Elsewhere
we have discussed the importance of hobbies in the
preservation of the mental health. The curse of
old age is precisely that "absence of occupation
of which Cowper wrote. He was a victim to mel-
ancholia himself, poor fellow, and spoke of what
he knew. The moral is that the wise man, just as
he lays a little money by, in provision for the ma-
terial wants of old age, will also lay a little mental
riches by, for the mental wants of old age. If you
WORRY AND OLD AGE
183
live solely for cricket and billiards, like the old
gentleman whom I have described, you will find
your mind bankrupt when these are at last denied
you; your old age will be a protracted and weari-
some effort to occupy time without the means of
doing so; trivialities will become important, mem-
ory a burden, life worthless to yourself and worth-
less to your companions.
As with the man who lives solely for sport, so
with him who lives solely for business. His fate
is vitam perdere propter causas vivendi - to lose
all that makes life worth living on account of his
efforts to obtain the means of living. He has had
no time for reading, or gardening, or music, or
poetry, or for the "flower of the mind" in any
of its fragrant, lovely, and various forms. He has
developed his psychical potentialities in one direc-
tion alone — and when superannuation comes, his
soul is bankrupt. His bank account is doubtless
opulent; he has accumulated in abundance the
material conditions which may be used for happi-
ness and mental ease, but he has stunted, and ulti-
mately strangled beyond revival, the psychical
powers which should now enable him to utilise
those means. He has time and money to spend,
but he cannot spend his money in such a way as
to make his time well-spent. Therefore he will
have resort to the obvious device of increasing his
material comforts; he will try to purchase hap-
piness and the joy of life by complicated dinners,
rare wines, fine cigars, and the like. He has had
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WORRY
"C
no time" to cultivate the love of Nature, and so
a walk in the country offers no attractions to him.
Instead, he purchases a motor-car and tries to find
joy in speed. Thus he neglects to take the neces-
sary physical exercise, and as he is also over-eating
and over-drinking, he beckons effectively, did he
know it, to premature old age- senescence be-
comes senility before it need. His bodily health
suffers, he becomes stout and gouty and scant of
breath; his sleep is impaired. In short, he uses
his money to provide him with the physical state
that predisposes to worry. Everything loses its
flavour; long ago he starved his palate for poetry
and high-thinking and flowers and music; now
even his food becomes insipid, though his chef
cook never so cunningly, and multiply condiments
to the last degree; high living is no substitute for
high thinking, nor condiments for the power to
enjoy the companionship of children.
My purpose in this book is not academic but
practical; my desire is not to demonstrate any-
thing, except in so far as the demonstration will
effect something. If I were in medical practice as
a psychologist - which I expect to be the new
function of my profession in the coming days
when physical disease is exterminated — and an
old man were brought to me for my advice as to
the means whereby to cure his fretfulness and irrit-
ability, and make his life worth living, I should
endeavour, I suppose, to discover the least atro-
WORRY AND OLD AGE
185
-
phied of his psychical potentialities a not wholly
wasted ear for music or interest in gardens and
should prescribe a serious attempt to develop it,
even at the eleventh hour, so that he might find a
new interest in life. But it is to the prevention
rather than the cure of worry in old age that I
would direct the reader's attention here.
Plainly, the moral of the preceding pages is that,
if a man desires to avoid a burdensome, irritable,
fretful old age, it behoves him duly to cultivate
more than one, or even two, of the psychical pos-
sibilities that are within him. Men of a former
type could content themselves with a vegetable ease
in their declining years; but men of the nervous,
mental type that is characteristic of our time re-
quire more than this. It is not only in Heaven that
the wise man can lay up riches which neither moth
nor rust can corrupt, and which are stored where
thieves cannot break through and steal. There
are few more pathetic sights than the old man or
old woman, who cannot find means whereby to
wile away even the few remaining years. If, how-
ever, we aim at what Herbert Spencer called "com-
plete living," to prepare us for which, and for no
less, he said, is the function that education has to
discharge, we need not fear the empty old age.
which, in accordance with a psychological law only
too familiar, is necessarily a fretful, irritable old
age, ever occupied with futile regrets or equally
futile worrying about the merest futilities. If we
strive to develop the whole mind, then there will
186
WORRY
always be something left, that will serve for inter-
est and happiness, even to the last.
Beyond a doubt, the most beautiful attribute of
old age is its sympathetic interest in youth, — the
fashion in which the old man lives again in his
children and grandchildren. This characteristic
of old age at its best is the natural means whereby
this period of life is made happy and interested, and
worth living. Thus it is lonely old age that furn-
ishes us with the saddest instances of fretfulness
and what the Preacher meant by vanity. Very
few, indeed, are the old men and women who do
not find their lives worth clinging to in the com-
panionship of affectionate grandchildren. The
company of youth is of the very first value for age,
and undoubtedly the company of age is of the
utmost educative value for youth. The funda-
mental social institution, which is the family,
should normally provide for these needs; pity 't is
that our present civilisation so often displays a
tendency to interfere with this great institution --
the decadence of which has led to the destruction of
so many previous civilisations. If old people are
confined to the company of other old people, they
hasten each other's downward course; there was
a sound psychological truth symbolised in the old
notion that the company of a young girl was the
best means for the rejuvenescence of an old man.
Probably never, however, was the tendency to
abandon old age to its own devices so strong as
it is to-day; and thus it is that the importance of
WORRY AND OLD AGE
187
worry in relation to old age is particularly evident
in our time. It seemed to Herbert Spencer, when
he was studying the practical application of ethical
principles, that the care of the aged by their young
descendants formed the fitting complement and
return, for the care which, in previous years, they
had devoted to those descendants when they were
very young indeed; and he regarded the imperfec-
tion of this return, witnessed in our times, as the
most conspicuous direction in which our practical
morals are in need of improvement. There is as
yet little sign of that improvement; and I doubt
whether the aged were ever so much to be pitied
as they are to-day. I have tried to show how, in
consequence of the change in temperamental type,
the psychical needs of old age are greater now than
they used to be; and it is this same change which,
instanced in those members of the community who
are not yet old, makes more difficult for them what
has doubtless been difficult enough at all times
the tolerance of the whims and foibles of age, and
the attempt to gratify them; as I have said, we
live so rapidly that the contrast between the pace.
of youth and the leisurely canter of age is even
more marked than it used to be. Observers tell
us that the millions of sermons which are preached
from Christian pulpits every year are undergoing
a definite and, I doubt not, permanent change in
the direction of a greater attention to questions of
practical ethics rather than selfish questions con-
cerned with the future of the hearer's own soul.
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WORRY
Now that the number of those who live to an old
age is becoming so very much greater, in conse-
quence of amplified physiological and medical
knowledge, it is much to be desired that those
whose business it is to act as the moral mentors of
the people should pay a very special attention to
this question of practical morals a more due ob-
servance of which would tend, in the first place, to
inculcate many old-fashioned virtues which are not
too frequently illustrated in the young people of
our time; and would tend, in the second place, to
a very great amelioration of the lot of the aged.
XV
WORRY AND SEX
THERE are certain matters about which it is
equally difficult to speak either in explicit or in
veiled language; and yet they demand speech.
The bodily functions which are concerned with the
continuance of the race are important on every
conceivable ground; and they cannot be ignored
here. I must therefore write a chapter which I
would gladly omit if the doing so were not the
neglect of an opportunity. I shall be exceedingly
brief, but my brevity is in no sense an index to
the importance of the subject.
It is a commonplace amongst physicians that
the functions to which I refer are the cause of an
amount of youthful worry wholly out of propor-
tion to any reasonable warrant that can be imagined
for it. But the ways of worry, as we are continu-
ally observing, reck little of reason or unreason.
They obey organic laws which lie deeper than the
reason, are æons older than the reason, and admit
no appeal to it.
But that is an exaggeration. In point of fact
we find that if a sufficiently powerful appeal be
made to the reason in many a case of worry, the
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WORRY
effort may be rewarded. If it were not so, there
would be no possibility of use whatever in the
writing of this chapter. I have only one point to
make and I will quit further preamble.
Civilised communities are infested with a large
variety of thieves and blackguards and brutes.
Our recrimination of these is commonly confined
to those who do their work in an open and
simple fashion the pickpocket, the burglar, the
murderer. Public opinion would never permit a
pickpocket openly to use the public prints for the
purpose, let us say, of advertising a course of les-
sons in his nefarious art. But public opinion
that "chaos of prejudices," as Huxley called it
does permit a whole motley host of abominable
characters to use the public prints for the pursuit
of their disgusting end—the accumulation of
money by means which are immeasurably more
criminal, more injurious to the community as a
whole, and more fatal to many individuals, than
all the burglaries ever committed. I refer to the
advertisements dealing with sexual matters which,
to the indelible disgrace alike of the advertisers,
the proprietors, and editors of the advertising pub-
lications, and the complaisant public, are to be
found wherever one's eyes are turned.
But my
purpose is not the futile one, I fear, of expressing
my opinion of these advertisements, but the more
practical one of attempting, in so far as in me lies,
to defeat their ends.
These advertisers are well aware of the peculiar
WORRY AND SEX
191
fact of human nature to which I have referred -
the fact that there is a very marked relation
between worry and the bodily functions that con-
cern the future of the race. This is not the place
in which to attempt an explanation of the fact that
a man who will display no concern about any of
a hundred really serious or even desperate diseases,
will be reduced to an agony of apprehension about
the most ridiculously trivial, or even wholly imag-
inary, disorder of these functions. Here we simply
take it that the fact is so.
Now this worry,
whether warranted or unwarranted, is the prime
source of the income of the vile advertisers of
whom I speak. They have sufficient acuteness to
observe this peculiar source of worry, and to recog-
nise the importance of worry as a motor force in
human action. Accordingly they set themselves,
by every device that their filthy cunning can con-
ceive, to write advertisements that shall foster,
stimulate, and perpetuate this worry to the ut-
most; and they succeed most abundantly. Every
physician has again and again been consulted by
young men who tell how their study of these
advertisements affected them, as the advertiser
hoped.
The evil thus wrought cannot be fully expressed
even by such terms as misery or agony. Fully to
estimate it one would have to quote even the sta-
tistics of suicide. In the effort to battle against
it, I will strike two blows; would that I had more
power to my elbow.
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WORRY
The first is to state, for the consideration of all
serious and decent persons, the proposition that
no advertisements dealing with sexual matters
should appear in any public print of any kind.
Advertisements in general meet a public need; and
that is their sufficient warrant. These advertise-
ments meet no such need: they benefit absolutely no
one whatever but the advertiser. No one who pays
for the insertion of any such advertisement has any
knowledge, or drug, or anything else of the smallest
value to offer in exchange for the money of the
misguided persons who reply to him. Nowhere
throughout the Anglo-Saxon world is there a
single young man who cannot find some honest
and responsible medical man to advise him on
these matters. I personally am proud to ally
myself with the medical profession, though I do
not practise; and some reader may say that it is
easy to understand why I offer the doctor rather
than the advertiser for these cases: I am tak-
ing the chance of doing a good turn to my own
profession.
But such a reader will be utterly wrong. He will
be as wrong as wrong can be in the motive he
imputes to me though that is a detail. The
important thing is that he will be wrong in assum-
ing that my advice, if followed, would lead to
the aggrandisement of my professional brethren.
On the contrary, all these patients come to the
doctor at last; and, by the time they reach him,
there may very well be something really the matter,
WORRY AND SEX
193
something that it takes a long time and many
visits and fees to cure. If we are to reckon in terms
of mere money, the medical profession has few
better friends than these blackguards of whom I
speak.
66
I repeat, therefore, that no public or honest pur-
pose is served by these advertisements concerning
Lost Vitality" and the like; and that no adver-
tisements, openly or in indirect language, dealing
with sexual matters should be permitted in any
public print.
Lastly, let me attempt to outwit these advertisers
by simply insisting upon the fact already stated.
Their business is to produce as much worry as pos-
sible about these matters. They have the very great
advantage that such worry is very easily produced.
Let me, then, do what I can to convince every
reader whom the matter concerns that nine-tenths
or ninety-nine hundredths of all worry about such
things is without the smallest warrant or justifica-
tion. The notion that there is warrant is kept up
by, and for the benefit of, those who make their
living in consequence of it. If their lying mouths
were stopped, and if those whose professional duty
it is to have some acquaintance with these matters
were consulted, the sum of worry concerned with
matters of sex would immediately and properly
be reduced to trivial proportions. Let the reader
take my word as to this; and hereafter, when
his eyes light upon the kind of advertisement that
might otherwise have had a horrible fascination for
13
194
WORRY
him, and might have produced in him that “sink-
ing of the stomach" which the advertiser hoped
to produce, let him do as I do. Let him merely
murmur, “Liar, blackguard, and thief!" and be
at ease.
XVI
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY
THAT there is a profound difference between
man and the lower animals every sane person rec-
ognises. But the doctrine of evolution and the
great impetus it has given to the study of man's
poor relations has lately caused us to discard as
untrue many of the assertions that used to be made
as to the nature of the cardinal distinction between
man and all other creatures. Man can no longer
be regarded as unique in that he can speak, nor in
the fact that he stands erect, nor in the fact that he
forms societies, nor in his possession of less or
greater powers of reasoning.
These and many
other asserted means of distinction have had to be
abandoned, and there are very many thinkers at
the present day who are certain that, though there
are differences of degree, there is no real distinction
of kind between man and the lower animals that
can be absolutely maintained. But however plausi-
ble their arguments may appear, and I am far from
underrating their importance, no scientific consid-
erations so called can blind us to the fact that there
is a something, whatever its nature, which man
possesses, and which the lower animals do not,
and which, when discovered, must surely serve to
196
WORRY
explain the evident and indisputable abyss which
separates even the mediocre or inferior man from
even the most intelligent of dogs or bees.
Now there are many thinkers, both scientific and
anti-scientific, who declare that the cardinal mark
by which man may be distinguished from all his
inferiors is his possession of self-consciousness.
Mere consciousness, marvellous and inexplicable
though that may be, is no distinguishing mark of
man. The great French philosopher Descartes did
indeed maintain that the lower animals are mere
automata, destitute of consciousness, and indeed to
be ranked as no more than mere animated ma-
chines. But we can now guess that Descartes did
not really believe in this proposition of his, and
put it forward merely in order to protect himself
and his books from the odium theologicum. Every
fact which leads you to infer that your neighbour
is conscious will lead you to the same inference
in the case of your dog. Thus man is not dis-
tinguished in being conscious, nor yet in being
rational. This we may freely grant, and yet recog-
nise that man is profoundly distinguished in being
self-conscious. I for one believe that it is this
power which makes man man, and that to it are to
be traced all those characters, and affections, and
disorders, and disabilities of the human mind
which play such a gigantic part in human life,
and which it is my purpose to study in these
pages. If, therefore, we are to treat our subject
in philosophic fashion, the only fashion that is
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 197
likely to lead us to the truth,
it is necessary that
we make a very careful study of self-consciousness,
attempting to ascertain what it really means, in
what it really consists, and for what it counts in
human life.
Self-consciousness is the recognition by each of
us of the self that is in him the formal and
inflexible appreciation by his own mind of the fact
that he is an individual or a subject, moving in a
world which is not himself, but the object of his
mind. We may trace the development of self-
consciousness in the infant; indeed, I know no
study more interesting than that of the slow devel-
opment in a new human creature of that recognition
of himself upon which his claim to rank as human
really depends. Tennyson has well expressed the
difference between the conscious but not self-con-
scious infant, and the more highly developed crea-
ture, now definitely to be ranked as human, who has
attained to the recognition of his own individual-
ity.¹ The poet tells us how at last the child, in the
1 The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Has never thought that "this is I":
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of "I" and "me,"
And finds "I am not what I see
And other than the things I touch."
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
As thro' the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined.
In Memoriam. Canto XLV.
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WORRY
(6
course of his experience, is able to "learn himself,"
discovers his isolation and rounds to a separate
mind in which clear memory may be possible. The
dog, of course, has memory, but it is not the same
as that which Tennyson means by clear memory, -
the clear memory of the man who says, That
happened to me," or "I was there," in order to say.
which it is necessary first to have discovered the
Ego or the I. But this possession of clear memory
represents only one-half of the significance of self-
consciousness. It is, perhaps, the very clearness of
memory in man that enables him to discover him-
self, and this discovery thereafter gives new mean-
ing and importance to memory, but it does much
more. It enables man not only to look behind him,
sometimes with indifference, sometimes with the joy
of pleasing retrospection, sometimes with that dis-
tress which is one form of worry, sometimes with
that commingled joy and sorrow expressed by the
poet, who says that " a sorrow's crown of sorrow
is remembering happier things," and sometimes in
that mood of chastened joy in which one recalls.
the "tender grace of a day that is dead," - but
also to look forward, to project himself into the
future, to fear and to hope. "We look before and
after, and pine for what is not," says Shelley,
and Pope has declared that man never is but
always to be blest." Both of these poets were
hinting at what we call worry, and in doing so
they had to lay stress upon this power of self-
consciousness which enables man to transport him-
(C
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 199
self from the Here and Now, in which alone
the lower animals live, to the future and the
past, the may-be and the might-have-been. Shake-
speare has expressed the truth upon which I am
insisting in that final way which needs no comment
or amplification. Anatomists, biologists, psycholo-
gists, philologists, students of society and man-
ners, and literary triflers, these may all be coun-
selled to seek no further for the differentia, as
St. Thomas Aquinas would have said, that is the
appanage of man. All that can be said and is to
be said has been said once and for all by Shake-
speare, in words which are the highest poetry
because they are also the highest science, — the
product not merely of the unlicensed poetic im-
agination, but of what Tyndall called "the scien-
tific use of the imagination": Man is made with
such large discourse, looking before and after.
The prime condition, then, of worry in all its
forms is this self-consciousness which is the su-
preme characteristic of man. In popular speech,
self-consciousness has a specialised meaning, and
implies that undue recognition of consequences to
self which only too frequently brings about the
very consequences such as failure to make a
successful public appearance - which its subject
seeks to avoid. Elsewhere we consider this hu-
man failing at due length, but here we must rec-
ognise that this is not the proper meaning of
self-consciousness, which is none other than the
recognition and consciousness of the identity of the
200
WORRY
centre
""
self, a faculty which at least one philosopher,
Thomas Henry Green, of Oxford, has regarded as
the only reality in the universe, and as thus the
creator, for each individual, of the universe he
knows of his external world; the self-conscious.
Ego is the creator of all its objects: "I am the
and the maker 66
of my own uni-
verse." This is but the idle tale of a metaphysician,
but it will suffice to show us how fundamental and
necessary is this character of the human mind. It
is the prime condition of worry, which, without it,
could not exist; and the first fact which we have
to recognise is, therefore, the fact that, so long as
man is to be man, it must always be possible for
him to worry. If man is to be man, it is necessary
that he be able to look before and after. The next
thing for us to ascertain is evidently the purpose
with which he exercises this supreme function.
This question can be easily answered. The fun-
damental character of every conscious thing, lower
animal or man, is the desire for life, and this is
ultimately identifiable with the desire for happiness.
Of this character, it may or may not be possible to
give some philosophical explanation, in terms of
biology, perhaps, or in terms of one or another
religious creed; but for our purposes it will suffice
to accept it as a universal and indisputable fact.
Happiness is "our being's end and aim"; and we
differ from the un-self-conscious lower animals, in
that we are able to anticipate the future, to identify
ourselves as the subjects for happiness, and thus
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 201
-
to make it our conscious and recognised end and
aim. If you are worrying about something that
may happen next week, the truth of the matter is
that you want to be happy next week, it matters.
not whether your happiness is to be conditioned by
your own state next week, or by the fact that you
will be able to observe, and thus indirectly partici-
pate in, the happiness of those you love, and
you are worrying because of your fear that such
happiness may not be attained. Similarly, if you
fear that you may die next week, you are worrying
because, conscious of yourself, you are apprehensive
lest your self may fail of life and of the happiness
which life may bring you. As long as man is man,
it will always be possible for him to worry.
We have already reached a fact of the first im-
portance, — that worry, or, at any rate, what we
may agree to call anticipative, as distinguished
from retrospective, worry, is conditioned by two
fundamental characters of human nature, the fac-
ulty of self-consciousness, and the desire for life
and happiness. And it will be well to convince
ourselves that both of these characters are desirable.
and necessary. Of the first no more need be said:
to abolish self-consciousness would be to destroy
the dignity and the distinguishing mark of man,
and is, in any case, impossible. I Man alone has
the power to make himself ridiculous," and man
alone can worry; but these are the "defects of his
qualities." But that it is a similar necessity cannot
be dogmatically asserted of the desire for life and
202
WORRY
happiness. On the contrary, directly we come to
consider the subject, we find that various philo-
sophical and religious creeds have repudiated the
desire for life, and have denounced the search for
happiness; and incidentally we may discover, per-
haps for the first time, the stupendous importance
of worry in the life of our race, and the propor-
tionate measure of attention which has been paid
it by the makers of religions and systems of
thought. Worry is no merely local phenomenon; it
is no product of recent civilisation or of the in-
creased ardour of the " struggle for existence"; on
the contrary, it is common to all races and all times,
and has been recognised as one of the great facts
of human life in every age and place. I do not
say that the need for a sober and thoughtful dis-
cussion of worry is not particularly urgent to-day,
but I propose to show that it has ever been urgent;
and this for the very reasons upon which I have
endeavoured to insist, - that self-consciousness and
the desire for life and happiness are invariable
and universal facts of human nature in its natural
state.
If, in the first place, we seek the evidence fur-
nished by Christianity, we are readily rewarded.
In the course of the Sermon on the Mount, the
Founder of Christianity said, "Take therefore no
thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof." The assertion of the
futility of worry and of the reason of that futility,
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 203
is a leading principle of what may still claim to be
the greatest of all religions - which has dominated
the most important part of humanity for nearly
two thousand years. This quotation tends, there-
fore, strongly to support my proposition that worry
is an almost inevitable consequence of the facts of
human nature, to be avoided only by the power of
a living creed of some kind or other.
If now we turn our eyes still further to the East,
and to the still more distant past, we find fresh
evidence that worry is a fact coterminous with hu-
man life. The natural tendency to worry is fully
recognised in Buddhism. The attempt of this creed
to counteract the tendency is indeed more radical
than that of Christianity. Buddhism goes to the
very root of the matter by denying the validity of
the desire for life. Whilst Christianity promises
eternal life, free from all earthly cares, Buddhism
declares that life itself is no boon, and promises.
eternal annihilation to those who follow its precepts.
There is no more striking testimony to the univer-
sality and importance of worry than the Buddhist
doctrine of Nirvana. The authorities disagree as
to the exact meaning of this doctrine; some assert
that it means annihilation, some that it means ulti-
mate absorption of the individual in the universal;
but no matter how many and how various readings
of Nirvana we encounter, we are able to discern a
common element in them all, and it is certainly this
common element that is the very essence of the
conception. Whatever else Nirvana does or does
204
WORRY
not mean, it assuredly is a doctrine of ultimate
peace of mind. Now a foretaste of Nirvana may
be attained even here and now, if the adept will but
recognise the futility of life, and will thus succeed
in achieving the extinction of desire. Thus Buddh-
ism, recognising the futility of worry, and its all
but inevitable occurrence, if life be regarded as
worth living, sought to choke the stream at the
very fountain-head by denying this worth of life.
It is indeed a pessimistic creed; if you are to live
you must worry, and there is thus no remedy but
to cease to live, or at least merely to live under
protest, to endure life patiently, and welcome its
end as your reward. Here Buddhism anticipates
many subsequent forms of pessimism. The Stoics,
for instance, taught a very similar doctrine, and
the Cynics, with what Lewes calls their "osten-
tatious display of poverty,' "1 whilst neighbours
were worrying in their haste to be rich. The Stoic
doctrine was that "the pleasures and the pains of
the body are to be despised; only the pleasures and
pains of the intellect are worthy to occupy man.
By his passions he is made a slave." The passion
for happiness and for life-this must be sup-
pressed. Worry is a consequence of the most fun-
damental emotions or passions of man, and these
must be conquered.
Many more illustrations might be cited, but I will
content myself with two. In the Book of Ecclesias-
tes we find the same recognition of worry amongst
1 Biographical History of Philosophy.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 205
the Hebrews as amongst the Indians and the
Greeks; whilst a poet of our own race and time has
written of "the fret here . . . where but to think
is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs." 1
One and all, these teach us that life is inseparable
from cares, that it is better" to cease upon the mid-
night with no pain,' "wherefore I praised the
dead which are already dead more than the living
which are yet alive"; or, at the very least, that we
must extinguish that desire to live which is the
root condition of all care, and worry, and fear, and
apprehension whatsoever.
""
Thus it might be that we had already reached
the goal of our present inquiry. Again and again
there has been offered to men a solution of their
difficulty. It amounts simply to this: care and
worry are inseparable from self-consciousness and
from the desire to live, which necessarily implies
the fear that one may not live, or may not live
as one might live; but this very emotional state
which is generated by the desire for life deprives
life of any value that it might otherwise have had.
Life is thus not worth living, and may be made
bearable only by the recognition of this fact. Rec-
ognising that worry is inseparable from the desire
to live, you must extinguish this desire and so will
find peace, having lost what was, indeed, not worth
having.
But this is a cure for worry which, though effec-
tive for the purposes of those who employ it, cannot
1 Keats' "Ode to a nightingale."
206
WORRY
be accepted by us. We repudiate it because we
deny the truth of the assumption upon which it
rests. We believe that life is worth living, and
therefore worth desiring. We cannot sacrifice the
desire to live, even for release from the burden of
care, which is seemingly inseparable from that
desire.
Plainly, if life be not worth living, whether on
account of its inherent defects or on account of
the worry which is inseparable from it, we have
reached the end of our argument. The cause of
worry is life, and its cure is death. But if life be
worth living, and we can satisfy ourselves of this
truth, it is necessary to ask whether worry is
really necessary, whether it develops by continuous
evolution from a power of prevision which is es-
sentially benign, and whether, by some internal
discipline, or by a fresh orientation to the facts of
life, we may avoid the evil thing.org
Pleasures and pains, happiness and unhappiness,
cannot be subjected to quantitative study, that
is to say, their intensity and force cannot be accur-
ately measured, but we assume that some sort of
measurement is possible when we say that life must
be worth living if, on the average, it brings a sur-
plus of happiness. That it does bring such a surplus
only the very few and the very unfortunate will
dispute. In the sense that we think life is worth
living, we are nearly all optimists. But it is a
highly important thing to ascertain the manner in
which our opinion is formed, for, when we come
Phil
J 4:4
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WORRY 207
to analyse the varieties of optimism, we discover a
very important fact which directly bears upon the
genesis of worry. I have elsewhere argued that
we may recognise three varieties of optimism
rational, emotional, and sensory or organic. By
rational optimism I mean the deliberate acceptance
of the view that life is worth living, following upon
a sober, intellectual consideration of the facts of
life, more especially from the biological standpoint.
In this sense rational optimism is the creed of the
great majority of thinking men; they hold that
life is worth living- even this present mortal life
because we are so constructed that life brings us
a surplus of pleasurable feeling. They base their
optimism, not upon their individual sensations, not
upon any creed instilled into their uncritical youth,
but upon scientific observation alone. This is not
the place in which to rehearse the scientific argu-
ments in favour of the view that life is worth
living. I would merely ask the reader to accept
for our present purposes rational optimism as an
article of scientific faith, and a necessary outcome
of the theory of evolution. It is not the optimism
of Pope who teaches that all partial evil is universal
good, nor that of Socrates who avowed that to the
good man no evil thing can happen, nor that of
Browning who teaches that there shall never be one
lost good, nor that of Leibnitz who asserted that
this is the best of all possible worlds. Least of all
is it the optimism which asserts that whatever is
is right; but merely it asserts that, constructed as
208
WORRY
we are, life brings us, on the average, a surplus of
happiness, worry notwithstanding.
Emotional optimism I call that which depends
upon the possession of some creed, such as that of
Socrates, already quoted, or the belief in the con-
ventional Heaven, or that of the Persian poet:
"He's a good fellow, and all will be well." The
embodiment of some such creed in religion must be
considered in our final chapter.
XVII
THE VARIETIES OF WORRY
HERE we must include an academic chapter in
which we may attempt a formal classification of
worry.
Perhaps the foremost distinction for us to rec-
ognise is that between normal and morbid worry;
such a distinction must exist, difficult though it
may be in many instances to define the exact limita-
tions of the two classes.
It is plain that so long as man is self-conscious,
and capable of prevision and desirous of life and
happiness, he can scarcely banish from his mind
the consideration of forthcoming events which are
likely or certain to rob him of what he desires.
Such worry must be regarded as normal, nor will it
do offhand to say that such worry, though normal,
is undesirable and useless. Directly we come to
think of it, we see that it is impossible to draw any
absolute distinction between the wise and necessary
process of attempting to meet coming difficulties
with no appreciable depression of mind, and the
performance of the same process with consciousness
of fear or worry. Again, it may be certain that
though philosophic calm is often a very admirable
possession, yet there are times when it may be a
14
210
WORRY
curse, if not to self, then to others. 'We have to
take the world as we find it " has been the motto
of the impotent and the forgotten of all ages, but
it was a lie in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be. It is writ large in universal history that dis-
content and doubt are the seeds of all moral and
intellectual progress. Some may be disposed, hast-
ily, I think, to deny that worry for the sake of
self can ever be normal, or healthy, or reverend;
but few who have considered the lives of the great
reformers will dare to deny that worry for the sake
of others may be not only normal and healthy, but
adorable and potent - either the supreme agent or
a symptom of the supreme agent in the ameli-
oration of the world. Every prophet, Hebrew,
Christian, Buddhist, or Agnostic, whose words.
have earned the right to remembrance, has been
one who worried. As John Howard and Elizabeth
Fry worried about our prisoners, Florence Night-
ingale about our soldiers, General Booth about the
masses, so, in due reverence be it said, did the
Founder of Christianity: "O Jerusalem, Jerusa-
lem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them
which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye
would not! Behold, your house is left unto you
desolate."
To deny that worry may sometimes be not only
normal but necessary and salutary, is to accept
Stoicism, Quietism, the doctrine of laisser faire,
THE VARIETIES OF WORRY
211
and the noble thought, "It will be all one a century
hence." Unselfish worry has been one of the sav-
ing forces of history, one of the greatest friends of
mankind. That is the meaning of the word "agon-
ies in the final couplet of the sonnet to Toussaint
l'Ouverture, which we quoted in our first chapter.
""
Of course, our recognition of unselfish worry
and the part it has played ought to interest us in
the question of the personal consequences to the
prophet or philanthropist. The last thing we desire
is to cure his noble passion, but nevertheless we may
ask whether there is not some fine philosophy capa-
ble of shielding him from personal ill, such as
assuredly befalls those who worry for self alone.
Nature, we may hope, is on the side of him who
worries for others, but she never fails to avenge
herself upon him who worries for self. The self
cannot cheat disease and death for ever, but the
man whose desire is not for self but for the race
is immune from personal defeat; his apparent fail-
ure may mean the ultimate triumph of his cause, as
the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church.
If we are to be reasonable, we must agree to
recognise the existence of a selfish worry which,
whether useless or not, can scarcely be regarded as
morbid, though it is in a vastly different category
from the unselfish worry which we have just
admired. Doubtless the greater part of all worry
whatsoever is selfish worry which is somewhere on
the border-line between the morbid and the normal.
On the other hand, cases of morbid, unselfish worry
212
WORRY
are very rare, occurring only as a species of religi-
ous mania or fanaticism, and impossible of occur-
rence amongst any people that had abandoned the
morbid theological ideas which are fast sinking
into permanent decay.
Again, there is the classification of worry accord-
ing to time. It is the essence of worry that is not
concerned with the present, but either with the
future or the past. In our own generation, it is
the looking before that is most frequently accom-
panied by worry, and this is evidently the only kind
of worry that can possibly be of any use. The
proper attitude to adopt towards past incidents
that tend to induce worry is that of the admonition,
“Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead.”
There can be little doubt that the development of
the psychical nature of man has led to a progressive
change in the relative proportions of anticipative
and retrospective worry. The act of imagination
is involved in all worry; we either recall the past or
we body forth the future. Of these two processes,
the easier and older is undoubtedly that which in-
volves merely the fundamental power of memory.
But in these days we are learning more and more
the depth of wisdom contained in the philosophy,-
for it is a whole philosophy, - "Let byegones be
byegones." True it is that the past is unalterable,
but nothing can be more utterly false than to in-
fer that the influence of the past upon the future is
unalterable by the manner in which we contemplate
it. We cannot alter the past, but we can and con-
THE VARIETIES OF WORRY 213
stantly do control and determine the influence of
the past upon the future. Except in the very old,
it is usually its bearing upon the future that haunts
us when we worry over the past. We say to our-
selves, "If only I had done so and so, I should not
now be about to endure such and such." There is
too much good common sense in most of us to per-
mit of retrospective worry simply for its own sour
sake, and most healthy people possess the healthy
conviction regarding past sorrows that "it makes
no odds, and it shall not be permitted to make any
odds "; in a word, we worry over the past not for
itself but for its relation to the future; and the
remedy for futile worry of this sort is the recogni-
tion of the fact that we ourselves have to be reck-
oned with in the chain of sequence.
Elsewhere we considered the different kinds of
worry dependent upon its locale the worry
of worldliness and the worry, of other-worldliness.
Finally, we may note the distinction between ma-
terial and spiritual worry- the worry about mat-
ter and the worry about mind. Elsewhere we see
that a mark of the elevation of religion is the pro-
gressive decadence of worry about material things
and the progressive insurgence of worry about spir-
itual things.
XVIII
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY
WORRY is so complicated a phenomenon, having
so many varieties and causes, that the reader will
not expect it to be curable by means of any single
formula, or rule of life, or prescription. But the
means of treatment, many though they are, may
all be included under the two terms, physical and
mental. Now, though worry is a disease of the
mind, the physical or bodily aspects of its preven-
tion and cure are not by any means to be ignored;
so intimate is the relation of mind and body
that the merely physical, “materialistic" measures
which affect this mental disease are well worthy of
a chapter to themselves, and here I propose to con-
fine myself to them.
In a previous chapter we discussed at length some
of the most important means by which health of
mind may be maintained, and plainly the main-
tenance of mental health is equivalent to the pre-
vention of worry. We analysed the idea of a
66
holiday," which should have some part even in
every working-day; and we saw that holidaying
is one of the chief preventives of worry. Other
and still more potent means for the prevention of
worry there are, but these are not physical, but
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 215
mental or spiritual. Hence we may now pass on
to the cure of worry.
-
Certain physical means for the cure of worry
have already been discussed to be utterly con-
demned. These are drugs of various kinds, of
which by far the most important is alcohol. I refer
to them here merely in order that our discussion
of the subject may be systematic. Our concern
now is with physical cures of worry that do indeed
cure, and amongst these such drugs have no place.
In so far as a man worries about anything
whatsoever, he is a practical pessimist. It does
not matter in the least what his ostensible creed
may be. He may formally subscribe to the most
optimistic of creeds, and yet be a practical pessi-
mist. On the other hand, his creed may be the
most hopeless materialism, and yet he may be a
practical optimist. The question for us to consider,
then, is the physical means by which we may make
practical optimists, all questions of philosophic or
religious creed being for the present ignored.
Thus our main business will be to consider the
physical causes that make men into optimists
rather than pessimists. The facts of alcohol prove
abundantly that such physical causes do exist; and
we have to ask whether there are any which, like
alcohol, will convert a man into an optimist, to
whom worry is merely a name, but which, unlike
alcohol, will do so permanently and securely.
Now before we enter into the theory of the mat-
ter, which will be found of the first practical im-
216
WORRY
portance, let us consider one of the most valuable
and familiar means by which worry may be cured
and prevented. The means to which I refer is
sleep, and of course the first comment that springs
to the reader's mind is that worry is destructive of
sleep. It is of little avail to tell the victim of worry
and consequent insomnia that sound, refreshing
sleep will banish his cares. It is unfortunately
true that we have here an instance of a vicious
circle, and this fact makes it all-important that we
should learn, if possible, how the circle may be
broken. This is not the place, however, for a
treatise on insomnia, and it is only possible to lay
down a few salient propositions.
The man who realises that he has become or is
becoming a victim of worry must be advised con-
sciously and resolutely to direct himself to the
question of his sleep. It is safe to say that the
worrying man cannot sleep too much, and, as a
rule, he sleeps too little. If he would be cured,
then, he must attend to this matter. Insomnia may
well be the efficient cause of worry in his case, and
to remove the efficient cause is to cure the disease.
If the doctor's help is necessary it must be obtained.
There are very few cases of insomnia that cannot
be relieved. This holds true even if we declare
that hypnotic drugs are out of place in this con-
nection. Thus used, they are all false friends, as
we have already seen. It is worth recognising that
the overwhelming proportion of cases of insomnia
including, of course, those which result in worry
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 217
—are due to simple and easily remediable causes.
By far the most common of all the physical causes
of insomnia is indigestion. This may be such as
to cause scarcely any of the obvious symptoms of
indigestion; but this is no reason for not making
certain, in any case of insomnia, that indigestion
is not its cause. If this cause be looked for, it will
very often be found; and the mere lightening of
the last meal of the day, the exclusion of coffee
after it, or the use of some simple digestive drug
for a short period, may suffice to relieve the sleep-
lessness, and thus the mental dispeace which it is
causing. More vigorous measures may be neces-
sary in some cases, but, as a rule, the doctor may be
relied upon, if he is given a fair chance, to cure the
sleeplessness and thus avert its consequences.
The qualifying clause is necessary, since it is
only the few intelligent patients who do give the
doctor a fair chance in such cases. The men whose
profession it is to do the difficult work about
which it is so easy to write, are still hampered by
the fashion in which patients persistently regard
their prescriptions as all-important and their advice
as negligible. Nine times out of ten it is the
doctor's advice and this is peculiarly true of in-
somnia — that matters everything, whilst the pre-
scription, as likely as not, is a mere placebo
something to please the patient, since patients of
all classes closely resemble those who frequent dis-
pensaries and the out-patient departments of hos-
pitals, in that they display a pathetic belief in the
218
WORRY
value of the contents of a "bottle," especially if
those contents be highly coloured, and vigorously
assail the senses of smell and taste. But it is not
by the contents of such bottles that insomnia is
usually cured; the rather is it by some modifica-
tion of habits, such as the wise physician is wise.
because he is able to suggest and fortunate if
he is able to have his advice acted upon.
And now we must turn to the theory of the
matter. Why should sleep relieve worry, and
insomnia cause it? The answer is that the man
who sleeps well is, ipso facto, a practical optimist,
whilst the victim of insomnia is, ipso facto, a prac-
tical pessimist — a man who worries. And why
does sleep, or the lack of it, produce such results
in the sphere of the mind? The answer is to be
found in the study of the conditions which are
necessary to what I have elsewhere called sensory,
organic, or, if you like, gastric optimism.¹
Sensory or organic optimism I call that which
is scarcely so much a state of mind as a state of
the body. It is intimately dependent upon the
health of the digestion, and is derived from the
sensations transmitted by the nerves that run to
the brain from the internal organs. These, in
health, combine to give us what is called the
organic sense of well-being." In health, then,
as I have said, "every man has an organic bias
towards optimism"; and we must remember that
the incalculable practical value of organic optim-
66
1 See "Evolution the Master-key" (Harper & Bros., 1906).
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 219
ism is in itself an argument for rational optimism
the philosophic creed that life brings, on the
average, a surplus of happiness, and is therefore
worth living. But what I have called organic
optimism leads us on to a closer analysis of the
causes of worry than we have yet attempted.
Since we are all self-conscious we all look be-
fore and after; but nevertheless we do not all
worry in the same degree, nor about similar
things; whilst some of us, even without the aid of
any particular creed, or even without the aid of
smooth circumstances, scarcely worry at all.
Wherein does the difference subsist?
Plainly, if it is not to be found in circumstances,
it must be found in ourselves. We differ from one
another, not merely in external configuration, nor
in intellectual calibre, but also temperamentally
and emotionally. Our mutual differences in this
last respect are at least as great as the others.
Two persons, alike self-conscious, alike called
upon to face an imminent disaster, look upon it
with different eyes. Men have long recognised
this fact, and express it by the image which is
in defiance of medical experience, but serves the
purpose nevertheless that to the jaundiced eye
everything is yellow, and by the converse image
of "rose-tinted spectacles." It is the fact, then,
that the organic conditions, the nervous organisa-
tion, that determine our outlook, differ widely in
different men. This is one of the unappreciated
commonplaces which superficial people dismiss as
220
WORRY
platitudes. There has yet been no adequate study
of the psychology of temperament from the scien-
tific standpoint; and none other serves our purpose.
Whilst it is true that in virtue of self-consciousness
and the desire for life and happiness we are all
predisposed to worry, it is also true that the emo-
tional nature peculiar to each of us modifies this
predisposition in an extraordinary degree, height-
ening it in some and lowering it in others, quite
independently of external circumstances, the effect
of which upon the mind must be rigorously dis-
tinguished from the consequences of the mind's
own predisposition.
Now let us consider what we really mean by the
inherent predisposition of the mind itself. Accord-
ing to some unscientific systems of thought, such
an assertion is incapable of any further analysis.
The mind, according to them, is an indivisible, un-
analysable substance, its characters depending upon
nought but the Divine will. The number of people
who retain this wholly uncritical notion, however,
is fast diminishing; and certainly we have no place
for it here. On the contrary, we have to recognise
an absolute and complete, if not a necessary con-
nection between mind and body; whilst, for prac-
tical purposes and without attempting any deeper
inquiry, we must regard the mind and its characters
as conditioned by the state of the body. Practi-
cally we shall have to recognise the action of the
mind upon the body, and the action of the body
upon the mind; but this last phrase is inadequate
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 221
fully to express the truth it suggests. Mental states.
and bodily states are not identical, but yet they are
inseparable; and our descriptions of them are di-
verse but complementary ways of expressing the
same fact. When, therefore, we assert the exist-
ence of profound emotional or temperamental dif-
ferences between men, determining in very large
measure the manner in which they look before and
after in which they contemplate the facts of the
past and the possibilities of the future - we must
go on to ask ourselves what are the bodily facts by
which these emotional differences are conditioned.
"The mind is as deep as the viscera " (the internal
organs), said Herbert Spencer in the last chapter
of his priceless autobiography; and we shall soon
see the practical significance of that saying.
It means that, whilst we are all predisposed to
worry, the measure of that predisposition is capa-
ble of almost indefinite modification by our phys-
ical health. As that statement stands, it is not
adequate nor even correct. The question is not
merely one of health.
·
This is evident when we consider the facts of
two common and terrible diseases tuberculosis
of the lungs and general paralysis of the insane.
In the first of these often known as consumption
or phthisis the patient's tendency to look on the
bright side of things, to expect speedy recovery,
and to leave all worrying to his friends, is so con-
spicuous as to have led, long ago, to the coining
of the term spes phthisica — the phthisical hope -
222
WORRY
in order to indicate its characteristic association
with a disease which, until quite lately, was well-
nigh hopeless. Whether or not this state of mind
be explained by the common occurrence of slight
fever in this disease, at any rate it is a striking
instance of the manner in which physical disease
may affect the mental outlook.
But the case of general paralysis, or "paresis,"
is yet more striking. Here is a disease which, so
far as we have any record, is invariably fatal, death
commonly occurring within about two years of the
first symptoms. The patient rapidly and visibly
fails in every way, physical and mental. In the
later stages, he lies in a huddled heap, unable to
perform the simplest functions, his skin broken by
the mere pressure of his clothes, no external cir-
cumstances that can make for happiness present,
and none that can make for misery wanting. Yet,
throughout, the patient is happier than any king.
He cannot worry about anything whatever; his
peace of mind is alike non-conditioned by, and
immune to, all exterior circumstances. In the light
of these and similar facts, we certainly cannot say
that the measure of a man's predisposition to worry
is in direct proportion to his departure from the
standard of bodily health. Never was philosopher
yet that could endure the toothache patiently; yet
the general paralytic "suffering”—if that is the
word from a disease which is incalculably worse
than toothache, is more consistently and imperturb-
ably happy than he ever was in his days of health.
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 223
As I see them, these facts are extremely instruct-
ive. They do much more than teach us that peace
of mind is not necessarily correlated with health,
nor worry with disease. They teach us that there
may be a pathological, a morbid peace of mind.
Plainly the mental ease of the patient who is all
but moribund from general paralysis is morbid.
But more. What of the mental peace seen in the
man, suffering from early symptoms of insanity,
whose affairs are in a desperate state, yet who
evinces no concern thereat? His peace of mind is
evidently morbid; he ought to be worried.
I think we have discovered an important- if,
indeed, an evident - truth: that not all worry
is morbid. If there are times when not to worry
is to raise doubts of one's sanity, it is plain that
there are circumstances in which a judicious worry
is natural, normal, and right. We must distin-
guish, then, and not permit ourselves too roundly
to declare that worry is a disease of the mind,
since it may be answered that there are times
when not to worry indicates disease of the mind.
Hereafter, then, we must invariably distinguish,
whenever the distinction is as significant as it
certainly is true, between normal and morbid
worry.
I have quoted the two remarkable instances of
tuberculosis and general paralysis, partly because
they teach us that worry may be normal or morbid,
and its absence also, but chiefly because one has
to recognise facts, and because it would not do
224
WORRY
roundly to state that freedom from worry is pro-
portionate to the bodily health, when such striking
exceptions are to be found. Nevertheless, when we
allow their full value to such exceptions as these,
there does remain a rule which is generally true,
and which is of the utmost importance in any
understanding of worry. It is the rule that, in the
vast majority of all cases, morbid worry and a
morbid state of body go together, whilst peace of
mind is associated with bodily health. These prop-
ositions are so widely true, and so important, that
it is to be hoped that the reader will not attach
more than due importance to the exceptions which
I have felt bound to quote. But this indeed is
scarcely likely, for, after all, the main fact is a
commonplace of experience.
But it is well not only to recognise the fact, but
also to have a rational understanding of it. And
this will be easy if we remember what has already
been said of organic optimism. It was pointed out
that the organic sense of well-being, to which we
refer when we speak of "feeling fit," and which
explains the optimism, the peace of mind, and the
freedom from morbid worry which are begot of
good health and of good digestion, depends upon.
the combination in consciousness of the faint sen-
sations which reach us through the thousands of ·
nerve fibres that are distributed to the internal
organs of the body. Now, in health, the impres-
sions which these fibres convey to consciousness are
exceedingly faint. Indeed, as a rule they are rather
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 225
negative than positive. It is only the convalescent,
in whom the organic sense of well-being is return-
ing, that is able fully to appreciate it as a positive
fact, rather than merely the absence or negation
of discomfort. But though the sensitiveness of
these nerves is comparatively so slight, they are
able exquisitely to respond to every kind of dis-
order that may affect the organs to which they are
distributed. It would be a great mistake to im-
agine that this disorder must consist of some grave
disease before it is able to affect these nerves. The
very' slightest poisoning of the tissues such, for
instance, as that consequent upon spending an hour
or two in a badly ventilated room is more than
sufficient in many people to abolish the organic
sense of well-being, and to produce that state of
consciousness, misunderstood by itself, which leads.
a man to worry about external things, whereas the
real cause of his worry is within him.
Now, if we once recognise that even the very
smallest departure from health may suffice only too
easily, in virtue of its effect upon the internal
nerves, to produce the state of consciousness that
leads to worry, we shall be ready to understand the
prevalence of the symptom that we are studying.
If the smallest degree of ill-health, however tem-
porary or trifling, is sufficient to induce a morbid
and unjustified worry, then we can understand why
worry is so widespread; for minor degrees of ill-
health, in the present state of civilisation, are not
far short of universal. If there is any one fact in-
15
226
WORRY
sistence upon which would justify this chapter, it is
this fact that only a very small percentage of the
population of any city can be regarded as well.
The main condition predisposing to morbid worry
is a minor degree of physical ill-health, and such ·
ill-health is the rule rather than the exception to-
day. It is probably safe to assert that of the predis-
posing causes of morbid worry, none can be named
for importance beside the minor degrees of ill-
health, and especially of indigestion, which affect
such a large proportion of the citizens of any mod-
ern community. Eminent amongst the physical
cures of worry, then, will be attention to minor
degrees of ill-health in every case of worry where
this state of affairs can be recognised. Chief im-
portance attaches to disorder of any part of the
digestive tract, since there is to be found the dis-
tribution of those nerves upon the proper behaviour
of which the organic sense of well-being depends.
This is why I use the phrase gastric optimism, in
order to indicate the importance of the stomach
-the mere plebeian stomach-in determining
the emotional tone of its owner's mind, and decid-
ing whether he shall be a practical optimist or a
practical pessimist.
It follows, for instance, that a man may worry
because he upsets or overloads his digestive organs
by eating too much. Now it has lately been proved,
by the researches of Professor Chittenden, in
America, that those doctors were right who main-
tained that the great majority of well-to-do persons
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 227
eat too much; and here we have an explanation of
much meaningless and unnecessary worry.
Again, these facts explain the general relations
of optimism - practical optimism - with good di-
gestion, and of pessimism, such as is evidenced in
much of the writings of Carlyle, with dyspepsia.
They also afford a testimony to what is in no need
of further testimony, the supremacy of the reason
over all its enemies in the case of such thinkers as
Spencer and Darwin. Both of those men were
victims to chronic dyspepsia, and yet they were
optimists. But theirs was a rational optimism, the
reason defying those internal sensations which,
in ordinary men, would have inevitably led to
pessimism.
Again, these facts explain the inconsistency to
be found in the writings of many authors who were
artists rather than thinkers, in whom the reason
was not supreme, and who had the artistic tem-
perament, which is ever at the mercy of organic
sensations, leading to optimistic writing when the
digestion is in order, or when alcohol has modified
the organic sensations, and to an equally decided
pessimism in writings produced when the diges-
tion is out of order, or during the period of de-
pression that follows the transient stimulation of
alcohol.
The foremost physical cures of worry, then, are,
in the first place, such measures varying, of
course, according to circumstances as procure
abundant and normal sleep; and, in the second
228
WORRY
place, such measures similarly various as
procure easy, rapid, and complete performance
of the functions of the digestive tract — the
influence of which is always dominant in deter-
mining the presence or absence of that sense of
organic well-being which is the one physical
condition that excludes the possibility of morbid
worry.
·
This last statement has already been justified.
The case of two common and terrible diseases has
proved that even the gravest ill-health cannot pro-
duce worry if the conditions are such as to favour
-in some inexplicable way the organic sense
of well-being; and, on the other hand, we have
only to consider the countless people, in times past
and in the present, who have believed and believe
that an enormous proportion of their predecessors
are suffering eternal torment, but who neverthe-
less are happy, because the possession of a good
digestion and the enjoyment of sound sleep make
worry impossible, even in the presence of such an
appalling cause for worry.
Appalling I might well call it, even if I had
seen only one case of religious melancholia in my
life. For it is only necessary that some physical
cause shall interfere with the sense of organic well-
being, as it does in such cases, for the miserable
patients to pass days and nights of mental agony
in contemplation, sometimes of the fate which they
think to be in store for themselves, sometimes of
the fate which they fear that others have earned.
THE PHYSICAL CURES OF WORRY 229
When such a patient is cured, and the organic
sense of well-being returns, the belief, as a belief,
persists but it no longer causes any worry, either
for self or others.
Such is the empire of the body over the mind.
XIX
PRACTICAL MATERIALISM
THERE exists a stupid confusion, which we must
here avoid from the first, between practical and
philosophic materialism. The latter term is applied
to the doctrine that matter is the only reality, mind
being merely a transient phenomenon produced by
it. As most people know, this doctrine is essen-
tially childish, being the philosophy of children and
of adult persons who have never made the slightest
inquiry into the nature of knowledge, whilst the
latest discoveries in physical science have added
to it the last touch of absurdity. But a man who
does not interest himself with such matters may
passively accept the doctrine of philosophic mate-
rialism, even though the interests of his life are
wholly spiritual, whilst the follower of Berkeley
or Hegel, who holds matter to be an illusion, may
yet be a practical materialist.
Practical materialism is a constantly besetting
sin of man. We are all tarred with the same brush,
readers and writer alike, but beyond a doubt it is
a specially besetting sin of our own age and of
great cities.
For the majority of us the most
absorbing interests of life are more or less material,
and the true criterion of success is one's banker's
PRACTICAL MATERIALISM
231
pass-book. We do not at present live in one of
those periods, such as have certainly been, when
men - probably very similar to ourselves so far
as inherent characters were concerned found
their chief interests in intellectual disputation, in
the production of works of art, or in other non-
material ends. Even in Japan, where, until a recent
date, the craftsman was inspired chiefly by the love
of beauty and scarcely at all by any consideration
of the monetary value of his product, we find that
the æsthetic is yielding to the financial considera-
tion. On the other hand, the material activities.
of the age are by no means to be deplored in the
short-sighted fashion exhibited by Ruskin in his
denunciation of railways. It is necessary for us
to pass through a period of machinery and grime,
diminution of cost of production of material things,
and the simultaneous acceleration of the process.
With the continuous application of human ingen-
uity to these material ends, — which, be it remem-
bered, certainly serve the physical life, and therein
the necessary condition for the spiritual life,
and with a continuance of that diminution in the
birth-rate which is characteristic of all highly
developed communities, there must necessarily
come a time when the physical conditions of life.
are such that their production and maintenance.
need not, as at present they do, occupy the whole,
or very nearly the whole, of the time and energy
of all but the very few; and posterity will enter
into the fruit of our labours.
232
WORRY
""
Meanwhile we have our own lives to live, and
we are not called upon to sacrifice ourselves for
future generations. The man who entirely re-
nounces material ends and produces a noble "tone-
poem or a fine picture is as truly serving posterity
as he who cheapens the cost of the production of
steel. But the question for us, who are incapable
of creative art, or even of adding to the heritage
of imperishable thought which our ancestors have
bequeathed to us, is this: How in this material
age may we order our lives so that, whilst on the
one hand, by our labours, we justify our place in
society, on the other hand we make our lives of
the utmost value to ourselves?
Every practical materialist is a maker of worry.
It is a fact of nervous physiology that all physical
pleasures pall, and that none can confer permanent
contentment. It is a further fact that, once the
pursuit of material ends be entered upon, the goal
is found to recede as we approach it. It is true
that with spiritual ends the goal or the ideal is ever
unattainable, but the saying "it is the pursuit that
we pursue" is infinitely more true of spiritual than
material ends. The pursuit of mental enrich-
ment, though certainly not finite, is an end and a
joy in itself. The pursuit of material enrichment
can never satisfy and constantly disappoints us.
Shelley was assuredly right when he spoke of
"that content surpassing wealth, the sage in medi-
tation found."
Practical materialism with all its lamentable
PRACTICAL MATERIALISM
233
consequences, involving not merely atrophy of the
spiritual life but also the production of envy,
malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, is a tend-
ency to which most men need no urging. This
fact makes it particularly unfortunate that certain
great ethical teachers in recent times have urgently
insisted upon certain doctrines of practical mor-
ality which directly inculcate practical materialism,
and therefore defeat the only end of morality
which is the ennoblement and enrichment of life.
We may recognise the half-truth of these teach-
ings and thank the writers for their aim, whilst
wholly repudiating the application of their doc-
trines in practice.
These moral doctrines may all be summed up
in one very simple proposition, Life is for work.
No sooner is this said than we recognise that for
not a few amongst us it is entitled to be called a
"Gospel of work." There are many amongst us,
men and women, young and old, who find life dull
and purposeless, who are fretful when they are not
bored and bored when they are not fretful, and to
whom life would assume a new aspect if only there
were set before them some work in which they
could take an interest. In such cases it is be-
yond dispute that the cure for worry is work.
The same applies, as every one knows, to the
grief aroused by bereavement. The sorrower
plunges into some active occupation which does
not leave him a moment to think and insures
the sound sleep that follows from physical fatigue,
234
WORRY
and for him it is certainly a gospel that life is for
work.
But it is when we come to erect this proposition
into a universal truth that we see its inadequacy.
Its great preacher was Thomas Carlyle. Curiously
enough this bitter opponent of utilitarianism was
also a bitter opponent of art. He had no words
too strong to express his scorn of those who be-
lieved in art as an end. "Life is for work," he
said. And the counsel is constantly repeated to
young men and women in our day, without dis-
crimination between those for whom, as we have
seen, it is really a gospel, and the vastly larger
number who find in it merely another encourage-
ment to the worship of Mammon.
For the question arises, If life be for work, for
what is work? The greater part of human work
at the present day conforms to the type best illus-
trated by the addition of a column of figures. This
in itself affords no spiritual nourishment; it does
not bring happiness; it is not an end in itself. It
is only a means to a further end
the proper
conduct of a business which is justified, why?-
because it serves human life. No one for a mo-
ment will question the proposition that work is
for life. But no one can admit its truth whilst
continuing to hold, without the most serious quali-
fications, the proposition that life is for work. If
life really be for work, as is so very commonly
taught by those who regard heaven as the ultimate
reward for that work, what is the meaning and
PRACTICAL MATERIALISM
235
purpose of the life hereafter where there is to be
no work (because there is no need for it)?
In short, the ethical basis of practical material-
ism is fundamentally false. Life is not for work
but work for life; and life is for happiness. In
the first place, then, experience proves that practi-
cal materialism does not achieve its end, and in the
second place, the ethical basis for that doctrine is
found to crack under the logical hammer.
But there is a profound truth embedded, though
distorted, in this ethical doctrine. It is the truth
that without activity — a more accurate word than
work in this connection -life cannot obtain hap-
Whether or not the activity brings in
piness.
money
-
that is to say, whether or not it is work
in the ordinary sense is a totally irrelevant
question. The poet who spends an afternoon in
polishing a stanza, which may never be printed
and will certainly never be paid for, is finding his
happiness in activity, and it is a higher happiness
than he would have obtained by exchanging for
a cheque verses which, as a poet, he knew to be
not poetry. Apart from death and disease and
sins against love, it is surely the chief defect of
human life at the present day, it is not a defect
which has always been, nor yet one which will
always be that only the happy few find in their
work both a means and an end. At the present time
this ideal is attained only by the thinker, the artist,
and the inventor, in all their various forms. These
have, in full degree, the pleasure of creation, which
236
WORRY
is, of course, the pleasure of self-expression; psy-
chologically it is identical, no matter whether the
product be a novelty in orchestration or an im-
provement in the internal combustion engine. In
both cases the accomplishment is a pleasure in itself,
as well as a fair exchange for material benefits.
The work is both a means and an end. But for the
vast majority of men the work itself conforms to
the type already illustrated. To have added up a
column of figures correctly affords scarcely more
satisfaction than is involved in the thought that it
will not have to be done again. There is some-
thing terrible in the contemplation of the fact that,
of the total conscious hours of the vast majority
of men, the greater proportion is entirely devoted
to activities which are put forth only because this
price must be paid in order that the few remaining
hours per week may really be lived.
Thus I look forward, as I have said elsewhere,
to a future type of society which will differ from
our own almost as light differs from darkness.
To-day we abuse the prosperous classes for prac-
tical materialism. Do we realise that practical
materialism is the necessary and inevitable phi-
losophy of the unprosperous many? They cannot
even worship the goddess of getting on. Their
urgent business from day to day is to keep body
and soul together, and all the time they are neces-
sarily losing life in the continued effort to obtain
the means for life. But I look forward to a type
of society which, in contrast to the past military
PRACTICAL MATERIALISM
237
type and the present military-industrial¹ and in-
dustrial types,² I will venture to call the spiritual
type in which, to use the words of Spencer, men
"will use the products of industry neither for
maintaining a militant organisation nor exclusively
for material aggrandisement, but will devote them
to the carrying on of higher activities." Indeed,
we may look even a little further to a time when
the products of industry will require for their pro-
duction only a quite insignificant proportion of the
whole sum of human activities. As I have said,
"In the spiritual type of society, where material
wants are easily satisfied, men will be justified in
devoting large portions of their time to those
activities with which most of us are now justified
in filling only the leisure part of life. International
competition will remain to show itself in a noble
patriotism, which rejoices to use the illustration
suggested by Carlyle more in our Shakespeare
than our India. . . . To the industrialism of the
present which is at present a legitimate means
to the legitimate end of the fulness of life—there
will succeed, in the spiritual type of society, a nobler
industry concerned with the accumulation of riches.
which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, stored
in the mansions of the mind, where thieves cannot
break through nor steal."
But let me remind the reader, ere we leave this
subject, why I quote these speculations here. It
is because of the immeasurable difference between
2 Switzerland.
1 Great Britain, Germany.
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WORRY
the relations which these two kinds of activities
display to worry. Practical materialism not merely
makes for worry but sometimes it actually goes so
far as to deify worry. This lamentable end can be
attained by slow degrees through stages which, if
they went no further, would be perfectly defensible.
A young man is told that he must take his work
more seriously; he does not care enough. If he
never worries about his work he will never do any
good work. How can he expect to get on if he
is more interested in poetry than in ledgers; and,
of course, how can he expect to be happy if he does
not get on? Indeed, the prophets of practical mate-
rialism sometimes seem to take a hint from the
theologians of a passing day in endeavouring to
inculcate a kind of feeling about the duty of "car-
ing," almost if not quite analogous to the feeling
of the "sinfulness of sin."
On the other hand, the man who finds his chief
pleasures in non-material ends has an incalculable
advantage in respect of worry. No better illustra-
tion of the difference can be found than in the
relatively trivial sphere of sport, where it fully
obtains. The occupations of life in an ideal world
should one and all be like the game which one plays
for the sake of the game. I sit down to play chess
with a friend, or I stand up to my old friend and
enemy at the wickets, and I mean to have the best
of it. If I do, well and good; if not, perhaps it
was his turn, and it may be mine again next time.
In any case, the game was worth playing. I play
PRACTICAL MATERIALISM
239
to win, but if I am beaten I am not sorry that I
played at all. But suppose that I make my living
by playing chess, and that the adequacy of my in-
come depends upon my winning prizes of a certain
value at certain tournaments. Obviously the whole.
aspect of the game is transformed. Now I can no
longer afford to lose; now I would as soon take
the prize, if I could, without playing for it. I am
no longer playing “a friendly "; one cannot afford
to be friendly when the struggle for existence is in
process.
But in the ideal world, which is by no means.
impossible of realisation, all our games and all our
work will be "friendlies." There will always
remain glory to fight for, and there will always be
those who worry at failing to obtain glory; but
this is not the worry that kills or scars except in
the case of very few. I need not illustrate my
meaning further, for all my readers are familiar
with the poem in which Mr. Rudyard Kipling has
expressed this idea.
In our last chapter we shall see reason to believe
that practical materialism is essentially irreligious,
for it involves a denial of the doctrine that the
good is imperishable.
XX
•
RELIGIOUS WORRY
THE relations of worry and religion in general
are manifold and remarkable. If we survey the
whole field of religion so far as is possible, includ-
ing not only the great modern religions in their
many forms but primitive religions, and including
the true and the false in each, we find that there
are three distinct relations for us to consider. The
first is that in certain of its forms forms which,
in these days, men are coming to regard as false
and morbid — religion is and has been a cause of
worry. The importance of this subject is daily
diminishing, as I shall hope to show. Secondly,
we find that a great proportion of the beliefs and
practices of men, coming under the general head
of religion, may be regarded as consequences of
worry. It may fairly be said, I think, that most
religions show signs of having been produced in
order to relieve and avert worry. I am using the
word in its large sense to include fretting, fear of
the future, fear of great natural phenomena, such
as thunder and earthquakes, and fear of death.
With these may also be included many other forms
of dis-ease ¹ of mind which are closely allied to
1
¹ Disease, of course, is properly dis-ease.
RELIGIOUS WORRY
241
worry and which certain kinds of religion in all
ages have sought to alleviate. Thirdly, it is certain
beyond certainty that true religion is a cure of
worry, a preventive of worry, and utterly incom-
parable in its power of performing these functions.
To attempt to compass this great field in a single
chapter would be most foolishly to underestimate
its importance and its extent. I purpose here
merely to deal with the first of the three relations
which I have indicated. My subject, therefore, is
Religious Worry.
It is necessary for each man to speak what he
believes, trusting surely that truth is great and will
prevail.¹ That I yield to none in my reverence for
true religion is already known to my readers; but
this reverence is accompanied, as it is in all who
share it, by an utter abomination of the falsities
which have injured religion so abundantly in time
past though their day of reckoning is now at
1 Says Herbert Spencer in one of his noblest passages:-
"Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest
truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may
reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of
view. . . . It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies
with some principles and repugnance to others. He with all his
capacities and aspirations and beliefs is not an accident but a
product of the time. While he is a descendant of the past, he is
a parent of the future and his thoughts are as children born to him,
which he may not carelessly let die. Not as adventitious there-
fore will the wise man regard the faith which is in him. The
highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter: knowing that let what
come of it he is thus playing his right part in the world."
I quote
these words not in the vain belief that what I have to say is worthy
of them, but because they consummately express one of the necessary
principles of all progress.
•
16
242
WORRY
hand. I write these words in the belief that they
will protect me from the untrue charge of hos-
tility to that which I revere, and the supreme value
of which I shall endeavour to indicate before our
study has come to an end.
The varieties of religious worry may thus per-
haps be summarised: worry as a product of the
religious conscience; worry about past sin, about
present sinfulness, and about "the sinfulness of
sin"; the fear of hell which in these days more
commonly takes the form of a vague apprehension
of future retribution; fear of the evil one; and
the fear of death. Whether for well or for ill it
is certain that each of these forms of religious
worry now plays an almost incredibly less part in
human life than was formerly the case. This
is not merely the opinion of one who welcomes
the fact, but is published and bewailed by many
leading ecclesiastics of a certain type at the
present time. There is no question, either, as
to the historical evidence. The first instance
that springs to mind is, of course, Buckle's fa-
mous and appalling chapter upon the sermons
preached in Scotland during the seventeenth cen-
tury. There yet remains a work to be written
by some philosophic and erudite historian con-
cerning religious worry, its origin and history,
its power in individual life, and as a factor in
human history. Here, however, we can attempt
merely to consider religious worry as a fact of
our own times.
RELIGIOUS WORRY
243
The past being unalterable, it is evident that
retrospective worry is absolutely futile; it is more
than evident, indeed, consciously or subcon-
sciously it is realised by all of us, and one is
almost inclined to doubt whether there ever was
or is any retrospective worrying not really de-
pendent upon anticipation of the future. If it
be absolutely certain that a past event, however
distressing or however unworthy, is utterly im-
potent to affect the future, either in this life or
in any other, no one, I believe (save possibly in
certain cases of insanity), will worry about it.
Hence I take it that retrospective worry must
always depend as it certainly does in the actual
victim of the disease known as religious mania –
upon the belief that that which is worried about
may or must work to the future detriment of
the individual. Almost all retrospective worry
depends upon the possibility of future punish-
ment, of future untoward consequence. I will
not utter such a libel as to say that a murderer
cannot be conceived to worry over his deed
even though he is absolutely certain that it will
never be revealed in a human or divine assize.
The last cry of his victim might well haunt
such a man though no punishment were to be
feared. But, in general, retrospective worry, I
maintain, does depend upon the fear of future
consequence.
This has ever been a potent weapon of the un-
worthy ecclesiastics of all churches and religions.
244
WORRY
I believe that the normal tendency of a healthy
man or woman, unmodified by dogmas, in the con-
sciousness of past wrong-doing, is a tendency to
forget, to "let byegones be byegones." I believe
not only the healthy but the natural attitude to be:
"It cannot now be undone, no purpose can be
served in thinking about it, I must try harder to
live more nobly in the future." I do not say that
these propositions are always formulated, but they
represent the subconscious attitude of the natural
healthy man.
Never yet was the priest, however, of any eccle-
siastical system, ancient or modern, who could
afford to permit wrong-doing such oblivion. On
the contrary, it has ever been the priest's business
to insist and to expatiate upon past wrong-doing,
to preach its awful though yet unrealised conse-
quences, to teach that the heart of man is desper-
ately wicked in its tendency to forget, and that
something must be done. There is no more fatal
error, says the priest, than to imagine that past
wrong-doing can ever safely be forgotten; on the
contrary, there is an approaching time when the
secrets of all hearts shall be opened. You would
like to forget and make a fresh start; but you
must not forget. If you do you will only earn a
terrible reminder. Your only chance lies in the
full realisation of the depth
and the immediate adoption
too late " of measures of
or payment of some kind.
of your wickedness
"to-morrow may be
sacrifice or penitence
"Know thou that
RELIGIOUS WORRY
245
for all these things God will bring thee into
judgment."
>> 1
Now certainly no student of science is prepared
to deny the truth of the doctrine of eternal con-
sequence. But also there is no student of science
who does not believe that there exists a necessary
proportion between consequence and cause. Thus,
though we are bound to admit that in a very true
sense the past is never dead, since it was the
parent of the present and the future was in its
womb, we are by no means prepared to admit, in-
deed we totally deny, that the chain of events is
constituted as some officials of all religions, ancient
and modern, would have us believe. In these pres-
ent days, when scientific ideas are beginning to
dominate men's thoughts, it is highly necessary
for the upholders of the old order to show, if pos-
sible, that their doctrines are in entire consonance
with scientific teaching. Thus we are assured that
the theological doctrine of retribution is proved
and demonstrated by the scientific doctrine of con-
sequence. On the contrary, I am prepared to assert
that the theological doctrine constitutes a denial
of the scientific doctrine. We students of science
believe in the unending power of the past, but
exactly because we believe in the continuity of
nature, we believe that its consequences will be
demonstrated in the natural order. But observe
1 Ecclesiastes, Chap. xi: 9. This is quoted from the Old Testa-
ment, be it remembered, not from the New Testament, with its
message of forgiveness and peace and consolation.
246
WORRY
what is the real gist of the theological doctrine.
It is a denial of natural consequence. Natural
consequence asserts that the past wrong-doing is
potent in proportion to the part it played in the
natural course of events. The natural man has
an unformulated belief in the continuity of nature
in certain cases, at any rate. If the wrong was a
slight one, if, for instance, it was no more than
a wrong thought or a wrong but unrealised inten-
tion, the natural man is inclined to the opinion
that it is not worth worrying about; its potency
in the natural order is so insignificant. So far as
any scientific doctrine is concerned, the natural man
is right. If now the ecclesiastic steps in with the
assertion that unless forgiveness is earned for that
wrong thought, whether by sacrifice or penitence.
or confession or money down,¹ the most disastrous
consequences will ensue, he is at liberty to prove
his case if he can, but he is certainly not at liberty
to invoke the aid of science. Science believes in
eternal natural consequence, and that belief in-
volves a denial of the doctrine of unnatural conse-
quence. Science, for instance, cannot comprehend
the doctrine of those theologians—now, happily,
almost extinct who used to assert that it is
possible to gain a spiritual paradise by a death-
bed repentance after years of villainy. It seems to
science that villainy brings its own necessary con-
sequences in moral if not physical degradation,
1 Money down is at the root of all this evil in the case of many
savage and primitive religions.
RELIGIOUS WORRY
247
and that these consequences are as inevitable as
are any other evidences of the working of natural
law. Science believes that vice, like virtue, is its
own reward. If the old theological doctrine be
sound, the scientific doctrine of consequence is a
myth.
I submit, then, that retrospective religious worry
is not a natural consequence of the natural consti-
tution of man's mind, but is an artificial and facti-
tious evil which depends upon dogmas that are
not only without scientific support but run directly
counter to the most assured and important of all
scientific generalisations that causation is uni-
versal and reasonable.
It may be admitted that persons of a certain
temperament are liable to brood over the past, and
to feel that their present happiness is prejudiced
by their memory of certain events which may, in-
deed, have gone for ever, but which cannot be for-
gotten or ignored. Looking at the matter in cold
blood, these people may admit that such and such
an event has no direct influence that is appreciable
in the present; but, nevertheless, the memory of
it darkens their present lives, and will not be
ignored. The object of their worry may have had
no relation to any doings of their own, and the
question of future punishment or retribution is not
raised. In such cases my proposition that the
greater part of retrospective worry depends upon
religious doctrines is plainly inapplicable. Their
only remedies are common-sense and new, worthy,
248
WORRY
and powerful mental interests. Yet I do not be-
lieve that such cases represent anything but a very
small proportion of retrospective worry, the greater
part of which depends, I hold, upon a false religious
doctrine, and is to be remedied by the establish-
ment in its place of beliefs that are true, and
healthy, and little dependent upon mere self-inter-
est. Retrospective worry is almost always selfish:
scarcely any one worries about another's past.
66
This is a truth of the greatest importance, for
if men once realised that religious worry is essen-
tially selfish, they would begin to cast doubt upon
its title to be regarded as religious at all. Love
is the fulfilling of the law," and not concern for
self. We are all familiar with George Eliot's sar-
castic phrase "other-worldliness." This is often
absurdly misquoted and misinterpreted to mean the
renunciation of material joys for spiritual blessed-
ness hereafter, but that is very far from being
what she meant. By other-worldliness she meant
something that can be distinguished only by its
locale from worldliness; the difference being merely
that instead of keeping an eye on the main chance
before death the other-worldling looks a little fur-
ther ahead. But this positive form of anxiety
about enjoyment of the next world is less defi-
nitely associated with worry than the negative form
which fears post-mortem disaster. It is distinctive
of the present age, as Cardinal Manning once
observed, that the locale of worry is being very
definitely moved from the after life to the present.
RELIGIOUS WORRY
249
It was to this change of outlook, which he much
regretted, that the Cardinal attributed the much
greater attention paid in these days to the possi-
bility of improving the conditions of human life
on this present earth. But it is somewhat difficult
to regret any change of opinion which, for in-
stance, no longer permits the rich to survey unper-
turbed the preventable miseries of the poor on
the ground that there will be compensation here-
after but, on the contrary, stirs men's con-
sciences to ask whether, in the presence of human
misery, they have not a duty here and now.
But it is in the fear of death that all forms of
religious worry find their most terrible and com-
plete expression; nor does the decline of religious
worry in general imply, so far as one can judge, a
corresponding decline in the fear of death amongst
Western peoples. The Oriental, as every one.
knows, knows no such fear a fact worthy of
much pondering, since it leads the serious student
to ask whether the difference is one of inborn
temperament or one of education and training. I
propose, then, to devote the rest of my space to
a study of this fear of death, well knowing that it
is possible to refute without reservation the greater
portion of common belief on this subject.
Human worry depends upon the presence, in
every living thing, of the "will to life" — the
desire for life and happiness. This universal prop-
osition is not invalidated by the facts of suicide,
250
WORRY
as will be seen if we carefully include the idea
of happiness in the proposition. Life, as such, is
not the object of desire, but life for what of hap-
piness it brings or may bring. And since, in the
overwhelming majority of cases, life is thought to
imply sufficient happiness, or the possibility of suf-
ficient happiness, to be worth while, we may here
take it that, practically speaking, since life is the
object of desire, the greatest and most necessary
object of worry and fear is death. The fear of
death is thus of the very essence of worry, exhibit-
ing it in its most cogent and universal and appar-
ently to Occidental people inevitable form.
By the fear of death I mean in the first place to
indicate neither "the dread of something after
death" nor the love of life; but the fear which
has given rise to such a term as death-agony."
It is commonly believed that the act of dying is
a painful one, attended with a cup of mortal bit-
terness such as can be drained by no man twice.
Death is the King of Terrors. I here summarily
deny the truth of this belief.
(C
In the first place I would have the reader take
the word of one who has witnessed many and
various deaths, that the term "death-agony" does
not correspond to any fact. The immediate cause
of death, in all but very exceptional cases, such as
accident, is the poisoning of the nervous centres
by carbonic acid, which accumulates in the blood
owing to the failure of the arrangements for its
removal. This gas, let us mark, is an anæsthetic,
RELIGIOUS WORRY
251
(C
and has indeed been employed as such, both locally
and otherwise. This property of carbonic acid
may be termed, without any philosophic criticism
of the assumptions implied in the words, a merci-
ful provision of Nature." Normal death, if the
phrase be permitted, is a painless occurrence,
usually preceded by gradual loss of consciousness,
entailing no more suffering than going to sleep,
which it most closely resembles, literally as well as
poetically. The accumulation of this merciful gas
often induces muscular contractions or spasms,
which are preceded by loss of consciousness, but
which may have suggested to uncritical observers.
that their moribund subject was in "agony.' It
is not merely that the pain of death is trifling as
compared with the physical pain of a scald; it is
non-existent. To this general assertion there are
very rare exceptions, as in the case of the agonis-
ing death by strychnine poisoning, in which the
mind is clear almost to the last.
""
But before dismissing the simple question of
physical pain, we may note the existence of the
unexamined idea that an instantaneous death
has something specially horrible and fearful
about it.
Numerous and well-devised psychological experi-
ments, supported by the testimony of thousands
of cases in battle and elsewhere, have conclusively
proved that in death by bullet or bomb the pos-
sibility of consciousness is annihilated before the
consciousness either of pain or of imminent dis-
252
WORRY
aster can be aroused. The interval of time neces-
sary to develop the feeling of pain is appreciable
and measurable by psychologists. The entry of a
directly lethal bullet into the brain causes death in
a shorter period than avails for any alteration of
consciousness. Death in this form assumes its
least painful shape. Obviously I speak of only one
point of view. I do not refer to the need for
preparation implied in the Churchman's petition to
be delivered from "sudden death."
In confirmation of my statements, let me quote
from Professor Osler of Oxford. His remarks
bear both upon the physical pain of death and
upon its mental phenomena, but I propose sharply
to distinguish between the two. He says:
((
'As a rule, man dies as he had lived, uninfluenced
practically by the thought of a future life. Bunyan
could not understand the quiet, easy death of Mr.
Badman, and took it as an incontestable sign of his
damnation. The ideal death of Cornelius, so beauti-
fully described by Erasmus, is rarely seen.
In our
modern life the educated man dies usually as did
Mr. Denner in Margaret Deland's story-wonder-
ing, but uncertain, generally unconscious and uncon-
cerned. I have careful records of about five hundred
death-beds, studied particularly with reference to the
modes of death, and the sensations of the dying.
The latter alone concern us here. Ninety suffered
bodily pain or distress of one sort or another, eleven
showed mental apprehension, two positive terror, one
expressed spiritual exultation, one bitter remorse.
The great majority gave no sign one way or the
other; like their birth, their death was a sleep and
a forgetting.' The Preacher was right: in this matter
RELIGIOUS WORRY
253
man 'hath no pre-eminence above the beast ’— ‘as
the one dieth, so dieth the other.'” 1
Attending first to the question of physical pain,
we see that rather more than one in six of the
cases recorded by Professor Osler suffered physical
pain or distress. Appropriate drugs would have
relieved these symptoms, though perhaps not with-
out risk of shortening life. But the quotation is
by no means incompatible with the more unquali-
fied statement I have already made regarding the
pain of death. For the pain and distress recorded
in a proportion of Professor Osler's cases were
not, the reader may be assured, related in any way
to the act of dying, nor were they experienced in
articulo mortis. They were just such pain and
distress as the patient would have experienced even
were he not about to die - and no worse. In
none of these cases did Nature's anæsthetic fail
at the last.
The physical pain of Death itself, then, is a
myth, and there is no such thing as "death-agony."
I have already hinted at one partial explanation of
the horrible delusion which has distressed so many
myriads of our kind. But I fear that the wide-
spread belief in the agony of death does not mainly
depend upon the erroneous inferences of watchers
beside a death-bed. Indeed, such watchers, how-
ever uncritical, are usually well aware of what is
indeed evident, that the dying man is not the sub-
1 Ecclesiastes iii, 19.
254
WORRY
ject of any agony. We have to attribute this dis-
tressing fiction largely to the base imitations of
true religion. But it can only be a false religion
that needs falsities for its support, and it is not
necessary for us to condemn dogmas which humane
and thoughtful people are now incapable of hold-
ing. The pain of death has long been an object
of human worry; but there is no such pain; and
thus I am able to give the surely excellent counsel
-Fear no longer the non-existent. Would that
all worry could be so disposed of! No cure for
worry can approach the demonstration that there
is nothing whereat to worry: it is worth a thou-
sand of the method which seeks to show that worry
is futile which we all know. When we consider
Christian Science we may appreciate the potency
of the cure for worry which denies the existence
of worry's object. That, at any rate, is open to
me, in the case of the worry which is concerned
with the physical pain of death.
Let us now pass on to consider a much more
difficult and important question - the moral fear
of death. It is, of course, obvious that this can
exist only in a self-conscious being; it is for those
who look before and after that the King has terrors.
No better illustration of this moral fear can be
found than in Sir Edward Elgar's inspired setting
of Cardinal Newman's "Dream of Gerontius."
Here the theme is death, the protagonist a dying
man. I know no demonstration of the fear of
death so poignant as Elgar's setting of this hor-
RELIGIOUS WORRY
255
-
rible poem.
The Cardinal's conception of the
ghastly visions of the dying man, when reinforced
by the power of composer and executant, is an
overwhelming and must surely be a perdurable and
final illustration of the influence of certain reli-
gious beliefs upon the minds of those who accept
them. Here, indeed, in the death of a pious and
fortified believer, is the veritable death-agony, the
moral-agony immeasurably worse than any phys-
ical agony of what Newman may be presumed
to have regarded as the orthodox death-bed. Be-
side this death of Gerontius, which I should like
to hope is but the morbid imagining of an abnor-
mal mind, without counterpart in human experi-
ence, the most fabulous tales of the horrors of the
"infidel death-bed" seem anæmic and trivial.
deed, they are mythical ex hypothesi, for only the
believer in future retribution can fear to die, much
though he may love to live or may sorrow for his
beloved ones' bereavement.
In-
The fear of death, then, may thus be briefly
analysed. In so far as it is a physical fear, it is
baseless; the only peaceful and painless part of a
fatal illness may be its termination.
In so far as it is a moral fear, it is conditioned
by the mental power of anticipation.¹ It follows
that there is no horror in the contemplation of
the countless millions of deaths that preceded the
1 "Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once."
-Julius Caesar, ii, 2.
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WORRY
advent of man upon the earth, or those of the
lower animals to-day. The death of a rose or a
kitten may be sad, but neither is horrible.
Nor is it horrible "to cease upon the midnight
with no pain." The fear of death, as death, is
due only when it is believed that thereafter may
or must be unhappiness — whether conditioned by
the worm that dieth not, or by eternal alienation
from the Deity.
I conclude that the fear of death is in full de-
cline. The genius of that most illustrious priest
Copernicus, nearly four centuries ago, dealt it a
terrible blow, by destroying the geography of the
Dantean Inferno. Since he made it impossible to
believe that hell is a place, it must be concluded
that it is a state. According to Petronius Arbiter
"it was fear first made the gods"- Primus in
orbe deos fecit timor, and it was assuredly the
vague fear so characteristic of early human think-
ing which has made that great cause for fear
which we now see to be nothing but the baseless
fabric of a nightmare. That nightmare has passed,
never to return; nor need the most orthodox be-
liever hesitate to accept the biblical word that "His
mercy endureth for ever." The religion of the
future will be no longer a cause of worry and fear
and agony of soul, but their supreme and final
conqueror.
XXI
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS
At the very moment that we begin to study the
beginnings of religion in the remote past of man-
kind, we discover a fact which is of extraordinary
significance to us. This fact, now well attested by
anthropological research in many fields, was dis-
cerned by the happy insight of certain writers, long
before anthropology, as we now know it, had come
into being. The old Roman writer, Petronius Ar-
biter, declared that "Fear first made the gods
Primus in orbe deos fecit timor: whilst we find it
stated in the "Leviathan" of Hobbes, that "the
feare of things invisible is the naturall Seed of
Religion." As Mr. Edward Clodd says in his
admirable little book upon Animism,¹ "In the
degree that anything is unknown, it remains a
source of dread, and therefore of evil, since from
'feare of the invisible' spring the feelings of in-
feriority, helplessness, and dependence which man's
surroundings quicken, and which are the raw mate-
rials of theologies and rituals."
As has been remarked elsewhere, it is only the
self-conscious creature that is religious: a dog has
1 "Animism, the Seed of Religion," in the series, Religions,
Ancient and Modern; Constable, 1905.
17
258
WORRY
no use for a religion; man is not only "a religious
animal," but the only religious animal. Now, in
studying the relations of worry and religion
the
word "
worry" being used in the wider sense-
we make the capital discovery that worry about the
unknown, the mysterious, the uncontrollable, is the
prime cause of all primitive religions. The self-
conscious creature is able to look before, able to
project himself into the future, even if, in early
stages, it be only into to-morrow, and the prospect
breeds within him certain emotions of apprehen-
sion, fear, or worry, from which spring religious
systems. The counsel to "Take no thought for
the morrow, sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof," can never be followed, even if it ought to
be followed, by human beings, who are truly human
not in virtue of the erect attitude, the opposable
thumb, or the large cerebrum, but in virtue of self-
consciousness.
man.
Let us briefly consider the outlook of primitive
Volumes of nonsense have been written
about the happy, careless, unsophisticated life of
the "child of Nature," the primitive, virtuous
savage, living "au plein air," the firmament his
ceiling, the stars his night-lights, his virtue his
only garment. It is argued that it is folly to be
wise ignorance is your true bliss. The happy
savage has simple and easily satisfied wants, he
does not suffer from ennui, which is peculiar to
highly developed minds a dog is never bored,
nor a rustic and he lives in happy communion
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 259
with his mother, Nature, who readily and gra-
ciously supplies his simple and honest needs. The
true fall of man," we are told, was the fall from
this "state of Nature," to the state of civilisation,
sophistication, and vice.
66
All such doctrines, however, belong to a pre-
scientific age; they may most succinctly and
accurately be described as tommy-rot❞— non-
sense," a purely negative term, is too good for
them. When we come to study the psychology of
primitive man, or of the primitive men who are
to be found in abundance amongst ourselves to-day,
though clothed as to the body, and veneered as to
the mind, we discover that ignorance is not bliss.
On the contrary, wherever there is ignorance there
is superstition. A primal law of the mind was for-
gotten by those who maintained that ignorance is
bliss, and that the ignorant savage was therefore
happy and enviable. Ignorance is literally not-
knowing-ness: but it implies a most ridiculous
lack of observation to suppose that a man who
is ignorant of any matter therefore holds no
beliefs on the subject. On the contrary, it is all
but a necessity of the mind that a man must
believe something: and superstition is the creed
of ignorance.
In late years, here a professional philosopher,
and there a wise man without such pretensions,
have been able to acquire that ability to suspend
judgment which, as Huxley remarked, is charac-
teristic only of the trained mind. These cases,
Dork
260
WORRY
however, are novel and exceptional, and may be
entirely left out of account here.
The truth, then, is that ignorance is not a neutral
state, but involves something positive; in general,
not to know the truth is to believe what is false,
and that is superstition. If you cannot catch a
savage and observe him, live with a child and learn
there how the mind of man develops.
If, then, we take a general view of superstition,
expressing itself in the beginnings of the countless
false religions which have played their malign part
in the history of mankind, we discover that its
prime cause is the emotional state called worry or
fear, and that the superstition, whatever its par-
ticular form may be, is invented in order, so far as
possible, to alleviate these fears by the invention
of some method which, if practised, will make them
unnecessary. We find little enough in primitive
religion of anything that can be called morality.
Most if not all primitive religions are rather im-
moral than moral, and morality, of course, is æons
older than any religion, for motherhood is æons
older than man, who is, indeed, its greatest prod-
uct. Thus the worry of the savage is not worry
about sin or the sinfulness of sin; it is not indeed
religious worry, as I have used that term in another
chapter. Religion has not yet reached the stage at
which it begins to create new causes for worry.
The fear of the savage is not retrospective but an-
ticipative. He lives in a constant state of uncer-
tainty, never knowing what may happen to him
C
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS
261
next. Every natural phenomenon of any magni-
tude is a source of alarm to him; lightning and
thunder, storms and clouds, eclipses, shooting stars,
even permanent phenomena such as rocks, moun-
tains, trees, and rivers, all these constitute for
him sources of fear. It is, perhaps, not themselves
that he fears, so much as the personal, maleficent
forces which he conceives to be behind them. There
is very positive evidence which leads us to believe
that for a long period in the history of man the
religion of fear was the only religion he knew.
New and greater terrors were added to primitive
life when ancestor-worship was invented. Says
Mr. Clodd, "The belief in spirits and in their sur-
vival after death is shown to have sufficing cause
of origin in dreams about them, and to be strength-
ened by the phenomena of shadows, reflections, and
echoes, and by sundry kinds of disease, all of
which, like death itself, are attributed to maleficent.
agents, theories of natural causes being impossible
to the savage mind." It would be entirely erro-
neous for us to conceive of primitive ancestor-
worship as the expression of a beautiful reverence
and affection for the departed. Ancestor-worship,
on the contrary, was a product of worry or fear.
There was reason to believe, the savage thought,
that the spirits of the dead retain an interest in the
affairs of the living, and are able to exact from the
living a terrible tribute unless their wishes are
regarded. Thus began that appalling sacrifice of
the living to the dead which, in its thousand forms,
262
WORRY
material and spiritual, is one of the few most salient
facts in the history of mankind.
Hence it comes about that the "feare of things
invisible" is invested with a new and more terrible
object. For things invisible do not now merely
consist of non-human powers, resident in lightning
or in rock, but consist of disembodied human spirits
which have a far greater interest in the affairs of
men, and which may reasonably be expected to
exert far greater powers. The chief who was a
mighty warrior in his lifetime, punishing the slight-
est disobedience with death, is far more to be
feared now that he himself, whilst still retaining
his love of power, has assumed a form which is
not merely invisible, so that it is impossible to
be certain that the smallest and most secret act is
not observed, but is also invulnerable, immune
alike to dagger or poison. Only those who interest
themselves in the close and detailed study of savage
ways of thought can realise how potent, how con-
stantly present, and how disabling is the " feare of
things invisible" when these come to include the
ghosts of the departed.
This fear, then, breeds the religion called ances-
tor-worship. The use of the word "ancestor" is
misleading, for it suggests ancestor-worship as we
see it in the teachings of Confucius and in the con-
temporary practice of the Chinese. But this, which
has many beautiful aspects, is a relatively modern
transfiguration and limitation of primitive ances-
tor-worship. It would be better to use the phrase
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 263
"the worship of the dead," and the point on which
I desire to insist is this, that the worship of the
dead is a product of the fear of the dead. We, who
regard our dead with feelings of affection and
regret, may find it difficult to realise the character
of the emotions from which the worship of the dead
originally sprang, but it is easy for me to produce
abundant authorities which prove that I am justi-
fied in ascribing to worry or fear the prime cause
of this most important ingredient of religious be-
liefs. I will content myself by quoting the conclu-
sion reached by Dr. J. G. Frazer, the author of
The Golden Bough," who is incomparably the
greatest living student of early religion. He says
that "the attentions bestowed on the dead sprang
not so much from the affections as from the fears
of the survivors. For, as every one knows, ghosts
of the unburied dead haunt the earth, and make
themselves exceedingly disagreeable, especially to
their undutiful relatives." "Ask the negro," says
Paul du Chaillu, "where is the spirit of his great-
grandfather, he says he does not know, it is done.
Ask him about the spirits of his father or brother
who died yesterday; then he is full of fear and
terror." 1
Primitive religion and primitive superstition are,
of course, one and the same, and we have to re-
member that the primitive character of a religion
is not dependent upon the particular century or
epoch in which it flourishes. The religion of a
1 For these quotations I am again indebted to Mr. Clodd.
264
WORRY
primitive or undeveloped mind will assuredly be
a primitive religion even though it be held by a
man of Anglo-Saxon blood in London or in Boston
in the year 1907. Now just as it has been easy to
show that worry played a great part in the causa-
tion of primitive religious superstitions, which
were organised into the religious systems of Red
Indians, Melanesians, Negroes, or Maoris, thus
affording historical warrant for the title of this
chapter so it is only too easy to show that even
in our own day in countless instances, worry and
fear operating upon the minds of the ignorant and
uneducated, produce in them by far the greater
part of their religion. There is a pathetic belief
abroad that if a professor of natural philosophy in
a Protestant theological college and an illiterate
senile Irishwoman both call themselves Christians,
their respective religions are one and the same.
This is only one more instance of the fashion in
which we are deceived by words. As George Mer-
edith somewhere says, naming saves a lot of
thinking," and it is true in this case. If we pierce.
below the common name we find differences of
belief and practice so vast that we realise the name
to be nothing less than false. The superstitions
typical of primitive religion flourish to-day amongst
the ignorant in forms which can be immediately
recognised as absolutely identical in origin and all
but identical in detail. It is true that the holder of
these beliefs may be known as an Episcopalian or
a Roman Catholic or an Esoteric Buddhist or a
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 265
Christian Scientist or a Calvinist. Ignorant people
of lowly mental stature are to be found included
under all these names, and the lower the type of
mind the smaller are the differences exhibited in
different specimens of it. Difference of opinion
can only exist where there is high mental develop-
ment. Primitive folk all think alike and all think
wrong.
Surveying, then, the whole field of contemporary
religions, and ignoring the fact that exponents of
Creed No. I constantly expatiate upon the funda-
mental differences which separate them from the
exponents of Creed No. 14 or 23, we may make
bold to draw a line which divides us all in an en-
tirely new direction. The obvious but superficial
manner of classifying mankind, so far as religion
is concerned, would be in a series of columns, each
headed by the name of a particular religion, such
as Mohammedanism or Buddhism. The adher-
ents of each cult might then be arranged in order
of social status, education, or the like. But sup-
pose that we had them arranged in order of mental
development; then the critical student would be
inclined to pay very scant attention to the vertical
division into columns and to make a new division
by means of horizontal lines. All above the first
line thus drawn would be men of fine minds; all
below the last line thus drawn would be men of
primitive minds. A moment's thought will show
that the essential resemblances in religious belief
between all the members of the first group, even
266
WORRY
though their religious labels varied widely, would
be far greater than those between the successive
members of any one column, even though they all
agreed so far as the label was concerned. In other
words, a Christian philosopher and a Buddhist
philosopher are immeasurably nearer to one another
in religion as each of them is well aware than
a Christian philosopher and an illiterate, mentally-
negligible Christian. For between the philosopher
and the illiterate, of whatever creed, there is no less
a gap than that between the thought of to-day and
the thought, if thought it could be called, of two
hundred thousand years ago.
Now, what I desire to maintain is this, that if
surveying the whole of mankind we include in one
group all that great majority which would come
below one or other of the horizontal lines in our
classification, we may fairly describe all these per-
sons as professing primitive religion. The mere
matter of the label which they affect will not con-
cern us. The primitive mind must have a primitive
religion. All primitive minds are alike, and there
is thus only one primitive religion — a multitude
of labels notwithstanding.
-
The chain of causation is very easily recognised;
the first link is the human power to "look before,"
exhibited in a being which loves life and happi-
ness; the second is the fear and worry thus gen-
erated. So far the factors are common to all men,
primitive or progressive; but in the case of those
whom we are now considering we have to recog-
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 267
nise the great factor of ignorance. The unknown
is the terrible; it is fair, though it seems hard, to
say that the intellect or reason may pràctically be
ignored in considering the psychical behaviour of
the lowest orders of man, including what we are
pleased to call civilised man. Amongst the rude
majority there may certainly be intelligence enough
for the purposes of reading and writing and a little
more, but this is only a very subordinate and im-
potent factor in the deeper life of such persons.
Unguided by reason, they fall strictly into line with
the primitive savage, and exhibit that "feare of
things invisible," which is alike the seed of his
religion and of theirs. This religion displays all
the characters familiar to students of what is com-
monly understood by primitive religion. This we
may readily understand if we recognise that what
we see before us is primitive religion produced in
primitive minds in our own day in precisely the
same fashion as it was produced in similar minds.
in the past which anthropologists are studying.
Indeed any anthropologist of repute might do
worse than devote himself to a systematic account
of primitive religion as it is generated by fear of
the invisible in the lowest orders of men and
women as they are to be found in various classes
of society to-day. It would be a matter of no small
interest, thereafter, to institute a critical compari-
son between the beliefs and practices thus dis-
covered and the beliefs and practices of the rapidly
disappearing Australian Aboriginal, the Kaffir, the
268
WORRY
Esquimaux or the Bushman. The differences would
be of detail merely.
I have used the phrase "classes of society," and
it is well to remember that the religious classifica-
tion of mankind which I propose has very small
concern with the vulgar classification to which
nearly all of us bow the knee. It costs me less.
than an hour and a half to accompany my wife
to Regent Street on a bright afternoon, and there,
in the centre of the largest and wealthiest city
in history, the heart of an Empire which would
scarcely notice the sudden addition to it of the
whole population of the Roman Empire at its
greatest, there, where, if anywhere, the naked
Australian black fellow would furnish a study in
contrast, what do I find? In a word, I find the
most blatant and indisputable evidence that such
a blackfellow — of whom we think as a curious
survival from an epoch so remote that Rome and
Athens and Knossos and Babylon and Susa were
far more remote than we are from them might
strike up a friendship, based on community of ideas,
with scores and scores of women in Parisian gowns,
who would look at him as they would look at a
baboon. True, there is little outward resemblance
between a pretty Englishwoman, the product of
dressmaking in Paris and manicure in Bond Street,
on the one hand, and a naked savage with long
black hair down to his waist, a flattened nose and
a black skin, on the other hand; but it is not phy-
sical resemblances or differences that count, and
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 269
sometimes one is apt to believe that the evolution
of the body is a much easier and more rapid affair
than the evolution of the mind, which we should
desire to be concomitant with it. So far as phy-
sique is concerned, there are æons of evolution
between the blackfellow and the Englishwoman.
Indeed, he is in many respects much nearer to
the ape than he is to her.
But so far as mind is concerned they might
walk down Regent Street arm in arm. It is true
that she can play bridge, whilst he, perhaps, can
only count up to five. There has been a superfi-
cial development of the reason in her which op-
portunity has denied to him; but that is a trifle.
Get deep down into the mind of each, and you find
the same outlook upon life, the same fear of the
invisible.
For witness take the sandwichmen of Regent
Street, who shamble in the gutter whilst my lady
walks on the pavement on one side of them or
glides in her electric brougham on the other. They
advertise the circumstance that this man and that
woman are prepared to read the hand or to gaze
into the future by means of a crystal or psy-
chometry" or the like. A study of the advertise-
ments in the newspapers confirms the evidence of
the gutters of Regent Street. Inquiry shows that
persons who thus live on the fear of the invisible
are able not merely to spend large sums on ad-
vertisements, but also to engage luxurious rooms.
in parts of London where rents are monstrous, and
270
WORRY
to enjoy expensive holidays. They charge fees
which the wealthy give only under protest and
with many grudges even to the most skilful and
conscientious of consulting physicians.
True it is that the women for they are
mostly women who consult these imposters, will
be found at a fashionable church on Sunday morn-
ing gracefully joining in the responses and enjoy-
ing the music, which to the blackfellow, I grant,
would be mere foolishness. It is by no means to
be compared with his own tom-tom. True it is,
also, that these women are included under the same
label as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and
Newman and Kingsley and Canons Driver and
Cheyne; but this only shows how much thinking
naming saves. The woman whose fear of the in-
visible, acting in an ignorant mind of low inherent
capacity, causes her to reject the most attractive
residence that is numbered 13, to consult palmists,
to avoid haunted houses, and so on, may call her-
self by the same title as the hard-headed "Angelic
Doctor" of the thirteenth century. But her reli-
gion is not really within æons of his. It is primi-
tive religion, the child of ignorance and worry.
She and the blackfellow may clasp hands at the
same altar.
Now there arises at this point a question which
must often have occurred to any thoughtful reader.
Let it be admitted for the sake of argument that,
under whatever name, the religion of the lowest
orders of the modern mind is none other than an
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 271
adaptation of primitive superstition. Let it be
granted, also, that primitive religion as we see
it amongst ourselves to-day is not really a product
of education or tradition, but is really a new crea-
tion of each primitive mind to-day as it was in
the past. Now or then, here or at the Antipodes,
given a primitive mind, ignorant of all essentials,
placed in contact with Nature, with darkness, light
and shadow, sound and silence-primitive religion
will be generated. But if this be so, and further-
more, if it can be shown that the religion even of
intermediate orders of intellect is built upon no
securer foundation, are we to accept the dictum of
a recent writer- himself a metaphysician.
boldly declares that no one but a metaphysician
has any right to a religion?
who
This is a hard saying, and we cannot accept it,
yet we must recognise the truth which the writer
so forcibly expresses. It is the fact that the really
vital and effective part of the religion of many
to-day is a tissue of credulities and practices -
whether or not introduced into one of the great
religious systems, such as Christianity, is imma-
terial that have no valid origin whatever. Cre-
ations of worry may take on a rational guise and
may even effect an alliance with philosophic or
logical systems, but they cannot be accepted at
their face value. Truth is not so discovered; the
origin of these beliefs suffices to damn them.
As every one is well aware, there exists what,
in academic language, may be called the pragmatic
272
WORRY
argument for religion. Readers of Prof. William
James and of lesser philosophers will know what I
mean. It is the argument expressed in the common
opinion of men that "religion is a good thing for
women and children "; whilst Tennyson expresses
it more subtly in the line "Leave thou thy sister
when she prays." The argument, in short, is that,
whether or not religion be true, at any rate it may
be tolerated, if not welcomed, so long as it proves
useful. This covertly involves the argument that
the false may be useful and raises indeed the whole
question of survival-value, which I must postpone
to a subsequent volume. It is possible here, how-
ever, to reach a very definite position regarding
the utility argument in favour of primitive or
puerile religious beliefs or superstitions as they are
seen amongst us to-day.
My position is that, accepting for the sake of
argument the utility doctrine- the doctrine that
the thing must be accepted if it is useful—we are
still able to condemn primitive religion as we see
it in our own times. As we have observed, this
is a product of worry and fear. It has little place
in the minds of those who scarcely know such
emotions: it is dominant in the minds of those
from whom they are rarely absent.¹ If, then, it
were possible to demonstrate that these supersti-
tions or let us call them falsehoods and be
frank did actually suffice to avert and relieve
1 We may recall Pope's fine line about a god "such as the souls
of cowards might conceive."
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 273
the worry and fear of which they are the fruit
- then, indeed, the utility argument would be
applicable.
But it is only too easy to demonstrate that these
falsehoods follow the custom of falsehoods in that
they do more harm than good. Primitive religion
is certainly a product of fear and worry, but they
are as certainly generated by it. The religion of
fear produces fear. Ignorance is not bliss, for
ignorance leads to superstition, and superstition
breeds more worry and misery and fear than were
ever produced merely by man's foreknowledge of
death or his intercourse with nature. The story
of Frankenstein is true the creations of man's
own mind are far more terrible to him than any
reality.
Sentences may be conceived and words written.
down and read, but fortunately the imagination
is unable to conceive the whole horror and pathos
of the unnecessary agony that man-made super-
stition has wrought in the life of man. The
powdered bones of the dead go to constitute the
soil upon which the living tread, and as we con-
template the emotions and the deeds of which the
life of our ancestors was composed, we feel anew
the force of Macbeth's tragic words:
"To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
Creeps in its petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.”
18
274
WORRY
Fools, indeed! Scribblers have amused them-
selves by calculating the number of hours or
months in the life of an average man that repre-
sent the time devoted to, let us say, shaving. But
would not the world stand appalled if some one
were to estimate in centuries or in hundreds of
thousands of years the total amount of time spent
by human beings calculated and added together
for each individual it would amount to billions
of years in praying for mercy to non-existent
gods, in agony of soul at the anticipation of pun-
ishments and tortures and unslaked fires which
do not exist, never have existed, and never will
exist, in murder and poison and actual torture
on behalf of doctrines which every educated man
of to-day knows to have been lies rotten from
end to end, in sacrifice, sacrifice of life, of the lives
of others, of sheep and cattle and children and little
babies, demanded to appease the wrath of deities
that were nothing; sacrifices, too, of slaves and
wives and warriors sent after some Chief or King
in order to serve his ghost; or, most pathetic of all,
the agonies endured by loving souls who have
thought that those who were dearer to them than
life itself had earned eternal doom by the infringe-
ment of some divine decree a decree made by
men, and for which there is no "credible god" 1 to
answer.
Indeed, the truth is that wisdom alone is justi-
fied of her children, and that superstition is not.
1 The phrase is Mr. George Meredith's.
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 275
Her abominable brood are things more accursed
than any spawn of cholera germs. E pur si muove,
I freely grant the world still moves on. Time
was when all belief was superstition, nor can that
time ever return, but the fact remains that primi-
tive religion or primitive superstition, the fruit of
fear, abounds amongst us to-day and is none the
less, but rather the more, hurtful because it is
often found to be the essential creed of "those who
profess and call themselves Christians." The bad
thing is none the better for being cloaked by a
great name.
Here, then, is this fruit of worry and seed of
more worry; what can we say to one who asks
whether there is a remedy? The answer plainly
must be that there is a remedy, and that it is the
remedy which has already proved effective in ban-
ishing such fears and worries and sources of im-
potence from the lives of those who lead the world
to-day. The remedy for superstition is knowledge,
the remedy for nescience is science. The gutters
of Regent Street bear witness that, despite all our
boast of education and higher education for men
and women too, we have yet far to go. Frankly, it
ought not to be possible that a sane Englishwoman,
living in London in the twentieth century, and able
to read and write, should consult a palmist in the
matter of her future. As Mr. Clodd remarks, in
an image which he will forgive me for saying-
he could not have made more accurate if he had
spent a couple of years in dissection of the human
276
WORRY
body, a man might as well try to predict the future
from the creases in his trousers creases in the
trousers and lines in the palm are due to precisely
the same causes and for the matter of that I
would much rather predict a man's future from
the state of his trousers than from the lines in his
palm, for whereas the latter are anatomical acci-
dents with which his mind and character have no
earthly connection, the creases in a man's trousers
will at any rate tell one whether or not he uses a
trousers' press, and from that something may be
inferred.
Palmistry, however, is only one leading example
of many imbecilities. I will not venture to intro-
duce parallels to it from so-called religious beliefs
which are commonly considered quite respectable
and conventional if not nowadays de rigueur.
But ere we conclude this chapter we must con-
sider the part which worry plays in the making of
certain religious beliefs which cannot be called
primitive cannot be labelled with the hard name.
of superstition. Whereas the lower religions are
the products of superstitious fear and, in their
turn, breed more fear, we may distinguish the
higher religions as those to which men are im-
pelled by more reasonable fears. One could not
well expect to get much good out of a religion
which took its origin in the fear of shadows or
eclipses, but the case is very different with reli-
gious beliefs and practices which owe their origin
WORRY AS A MAKER OF RELIGIONS 277
to reasonable worries and reasonable fears. Hence
it is that the value of religion for life is found
constantly to increase in proportion as the believer
rises in psychical development and in proportion
as his religion becomes reasonable and his deity
credible.
It is not necessary for us to choose in illustra-
tion any particular member of the group of higher
religions, but we may profit, I think, by simply
considering one type of religious practice, common
to all religions, high or low, ancient or modern,
and observing its character and value in various.
cases. Unless I am much mistaken this study is
worthy of a separate chapter.
XXII
WORRY AND PRAYER
THERE is no more common character and fea-
ture of religious practice than prayer, and there is
no better proof of the proposition that our judg-
ment upon worry as a maker of religions must
vary according to the psychical development of the
religious believer in successive cases. Without con-
fusing the issue by the use of labels, and without
reference to any particular country or any par-
ticular epoch, let us study the relations of worry
and prayer according as we find them in low minds
and in high minds.
It does not matter whether we choose as in-
stances of lowly mental development an illiterate
peasant of our own time, a savage of our own
time, a Babylonian of six thousand years ago, or
a child of any race or time. In all these cases we
find certain primitive religious ideas, generated by
worry concerning the unknown and the future or,
in the phrase of Hobbes, by "feare of the invis-
ible." In all such instances the practice of prayer
is witnessed, and in all such instances the prayer
is concerned with events which fall within the
WORRY AND PRAYER
279
sphere of natural causation, but which, by the
primitive mind, are not recognised to do so; and
in all such cases the prayer is directed to a being
or person or deity or god who does not exist.
There are thus two tremendous futilities involved
in each case, and these are worthy of closer
consideration.
It is recognised by us that there are certain
things about which it is idle to pray.
No one
prays that the sun shall not set. We realise that
that event is within the sphere of natural causa-
tion and that supernatural interference with it is
not to be expected. We still pray for fine weather
or for rain, in our churches, but that is merely
because meteorology is a backward science. Those
who study the subject know that the weather is as
definitely determined by natural causes as the fall
of an unsupported object to the earth or the suc-
cession of night and day.
But the fears and cares and worries of the lowly
mind are all concerned with these objective things,
- questions of weather or of health or of material
success. The Roman Catholic child is taught to
pray to St. Anthony when it has lost anything,
and is worried about that, and the intercession of
saints and angels is constantly besought on behalf
of mundane, material circumstances which are as
definitely determined by natural law as the seasons
or the tides.
Similarly with the case of many natural phe-
nomena which excite fear in the mind of the savage
280
WORRY
?
or the child or the illiterate.¹ Prayer will not
arrest a thunder storm nor hasten nor avert an
eclipse. In short, it is coming to be recognised by
all who have had anything worth calling an edu-
cation that within the sphere of natural causation
- of events outside the self-prayer has no place.
But it is entirely with such events that the prayer
of the primitive-minded in all ages and places is
concerned. We conclude, therefore, that religious
systems generated by the desires and fears of primi-
tive folk are unlikely to be of any substantial value
for life. Indeed they have been of far less than
no value, so far as happiness is concerned, and may
be regarded with respect by the sociologist only
in so far as he can recognise them to have been
of some disciplinary value in lowly stages of
civilisation.
But as man reaches higher levels, his concerns
become less material and more spiritual. The
really worthy man is much more seriously and
fundamentally interested in the state of his mind
than in the state of his banking account; in the
health of his outlook upon life, in the spiritual
sense, rather than in the fatness of the oxen which
his material eyes may see and may rejoice to own.
Now let us compare the mind of a man and the
banking account of a man in this respect.
The primitive man, including the primitive part
1 I use the word "illiterate" for want of a better. There are, of
course, thousands of people who can read and write, the primitive
quality of whose minds is in no wise elevated by the possession of
those very mechanical accomplishments.
?
WORRY AND PRAYER
281
even of the highly developed man, must neces-
sarily worry at times about material prosperity.
This worry may be a cause of the religious prac-
tice called prayer in many cases. It is true that
only very small children pray that they may find
a sixpenny piece in a pocket which they know to
be hitherto empty, but though the prayer may take
forms somewhat less naïve than this it is substan-
tially the same. This kind of prayer accomplishes
nothing, whatever the colour of the suppliant's skin
or the name under which he addresses his deity.
Secondly, the prayer generated by these material
kinds of worry is futile, not merely because it deals
with things and events which have natural causes
and natural consequences, but also because the
beings to whom it is addressed do not exist. For
thinking men there is no evidence whatever in
favour of the existence of any kind of powers that
interfere with natural causation. I am the last
person to assert that there is no Unseen Reality,
but I do positively assert that the seen and the
temporal cannot be placed in opposition to the
Eternal but are Its expressions. And we may
assume that It knows Its own business best.
But contrast the kind of worry that leads to the
religious practice called prayer in people of higher
psychical type. In the first place, a man of this
type will find no occasion to pray about shadows
or witcheries or darkness or the creases in the skin
of his palms. These things inspire no worry or
fear in him, and therefore produce no religious
ле
282
WORRY
bli
sentiment or practice. It is only primitive religion
that worry about such things inspires. Yet, again,
such a man is not found to pray to St. Anthony
or any one else about a mislaid purse nor yet about
an inadequate bank account. He recognises that
material questions are not fit subjects for prayer.
Material facts and, indeed, all exterior events, hap-
pen in accord with eternal iron laws of which the
law of gravitation is only one illustration. It is
not worth while to pray that a valuable watch
accidentally dropped from the top of a tower shall
not fall; and all the material things about which
primitive people pray are precisely comparable with
this. On the other hand, prayer is a spiritual
or psychical act, and it is therefore with the spirit-
ual that its proper concern lies. Religious people
of the higher type do not pray about their banking
accounts, nor about any such material things, for
these do not vitally concern them. The worries
and fears and anxieties and desires of such people
are in another realm altogether. They are con-
cerned about weakness of will, lack of fortitude,
selfishness, imperfection of sympathy, carelessness
about the highest things, preoccupation with the
material and the sordid, or lack of charity. These
are the things which worry such people; these are
the things about which they pray, and it is prayer
about these things that constantly and triumphantly
justifies itself.¹
1 How, is not my present concern.
WORRY AND PRAYER
283
Thus, after all the hard and cynical things which
were said in the last chapter about the kind of
religion produced by material worry in lowly and
material minds and about the disastrous conse-
quences of such materialism, for it is nothing
but practical materialism though it assumes the
name of religion, we now discern that, in loftier
minds which lead the inner life, there may be a
noble worry about spiritual things which, accord-
ing to the law that "like begets like," breeds a
noble and spiritual form of religious belief and
practice which in its turn is abundantly justified
of its children; and he would be an ignorant and
norrow-minded creature who was prepared to deny
the proposition that the name by which the Eternal
is addressed in such prayers which are as often
aspirations as prayers-is of little consequence.
There may or may not be a Yahweh as he was con-
ceived by the Semitic prophets; there may or may
not be a Buddha as his worshippers conceive him;
there may or may not be an Allah as the pious
Mussulman conceives him; - but the spiritual
religion which, in persons of the religious temper,
is bred of anxiety about spiritual things, does
assuredly correspond to some Reality in the very
heart of things, all discordance of labels notwith-
standing. "By their fruits ye shall know them."
XXIII
THE FUTURE OF THE RACE
WORRY is, in general, a wholly futile and evil
thing, but we have already seen that there is such
a thing as normal worry, and we cannot fail to
recognise that the reasonable anticipation of future
evil, urging to efforts for its prevention, is a wise
and effective means towards the happiness of man-
kind. It is such worry that I wish to consider in
this very brief chapter.
Disease and sin and sorrow were accepted by the
Greek philosophers and dramatists as necessary
and inevitable dispensations" of the higher
powers; they might be illustrated or commented
upon, or even fitted into a rational system of belief,
but the idea of removing them was never presented
to the Greek mind, a fact which is seen to be the
more remarkable and significant the more it is con-
sidered. The conception of posterity, as a fact of
the future, was recognised by them, as it has been
ever since, but we may long ponder over the curi-
ous fact that this conception, until modern days,
aroused only a selfish emotion. The single thought
seems to have been, "What will posterity think of
us?" Another form of it occurs in the case of
Francis Bacon, who left it to posterity to judge his
THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 285
case.
No idea of a duty to posterity, no recogni-
tion of the fact that the present is not only the child
of the past but also the parent of the future, played
any part in the thoughts of our ancestors. Their
only interest in us was concerned with the hope that
we would think well of them, as if we had
nothing better to think about, and it may be
presumed that the vast majority of our predecessors
would have been willing to echo the characteristic
reply of Napoleon, "What has posterity done for
me?"
In short, whilst our forefathers worried about
many things, necessary and unnecessary, at least
they never worried themselves with worry about
us!
The thought of our duty to the future is indeed
characteristic of our time; and it has added a new
and subtler cause of worry to life in these days.
We may still think of posterity's verdict upon us,
but we recognise that our only warrant for doing
so is that the thought may shame us into action on
their behalf.
The sense of our duty towards the future may
take various forms. Perhaps the least creditable,
though I am far from saying that it is not credit-
able, is an interest in the future of the nation to
which we belong, —a a form of patriotism. The
anxious patriot is a very interesting study. One
would write of this kind of worry with more respect
were it not that, as a rule, this form of patriotism
is ill-directed, either owing to defective knowledge,
286
WORRY
as in the case of those who think that the national
stock is degenerating; to defective recognition of
the effects of age, as in the case of the laudator
temporis acti, who thinks that everything is going
to the dogs because things are not done exactly as
they were when he was young; or to defects in the
moral nature, as in the case of those who think
that any decline in the spirit of militancy presages
coming evil. But I have no space for an essay on
the fascinating topic of anxious patriotism and
worried patriots.
A much higher form of a noble care for the
future is found in the case of those who concern
themselves with the immediately succeeding gen-
eration, the rare men and women, conscious of
some mental defect or tendency towards disease,
who deliberately renounce the joys of parentage
because they recognise their duty to the unborn.
Then, again, there is the sentiment expressed in
a letter of Charles Darwin's:
"I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress
of man is, but every one has his own pet horror, and
this slow progress or even personal annihilation sinks
in my mind into insignificance compared with the
idea, or rather I presume certainty, of the sun some
day cooling and we all freezing. To think of the
progress of millions of years, with every continent
swarming with good and enlightened men, all end-
ing in this, and with probably no fresh start until
this our planetary system has been again converted.
into red-hot gas. Sic transit gloria mundi, with a
vengeance." ...1
1 More Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 11., pp. 260, 261.
THE FUTURE OF THE RACE 287
Such concern about the future of the race is not
merely a form of worry new to our time, nor yet
is it merely a new and elevated form of moral sen-
timent; it is a force that makes for action, as we
have already seen many other forms of worry to
be. But in this case the force is to be welcomed,
for the action which it induces is beneficent. Our
children's children will rise up and call us blessed;
this very generation of ours will be remembered
"to the last syllable of recorded time" as the first
which consciously and deliberately made the future
the future which it would not live to see - its
own highest concern. It is a truly noble emotion,
well worthy of the being who can look before and
after.
Mr. Francis Galton is devoting the unchecked
energy of his later years to the study of what he
calls Eugenics, the possibility of improving the
human race mentally, morally, and physically, by
the selection of its best individuals, rather than a
mere haphazard assortment, for the supreme duty
of the continuance of the race. He suggests that
a passion for Eugenics is well worthy of incor-
poration in the religion of the future, and no
thoughtful person will be found to question the
proposition that our worry about the happiness.
and worth of those who are to follow us is a
noble emotion, promising great benefit of the high-
est order to them, and tending to elevate ourselves,
also, in the scale of moral and rational beings.
XXIV
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION
IN preceding chapters we have endeavoured to
study religious worry the mental distress of
various kinds which is the product of various relig-
ious dogmas; and secondly, the development of
religious systems as the consequences of fear and
worry. Here, however, we must approach the
question on a totally different and immeasurably
higher plane; from forms and externals let us
turn to the substance and essence of religion.
The great crisis through which many religious
dogmas have been passing during the last fifty
years is due, as the reader knows, to certain strik-
ing developments of science. Not a few people
"of little faith" have inclined to the view that
men would have been much better without these
scientific developments which, as they think, are
worth little or nothing in themselves, and seem to
threaten religion itself. At the other extreme are
many free thinkers whose attitude to the reli-
gious problem proves how little sense they have of
the deepest human needs. They think that a form
of life, such as was religion in her golden ages,
involving the concentrated interplay of all faculties
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION
289
and impulses, can be deleted from life without any
loss thereto. The whole spiritual life would suffer
were such a form of it to perish." Those who
fancy, then, that science has made an end of reli-
gion and those who welcome this supposition may
be contemptuously ignored here. Their thinking
upon the matter is as superficial as that of the
theologian who fancies, or seems to fancy, that
Christianity has no further message or purpose in
the world if the first chapter of Genesis be no
longer accepted as literal truth.
On the contrary, science has done a great ser-
vice to religion in accordance with the general
principle that every new truth serves all other
truth in causing it to examine anew its own
nature, validity, and purpose in the world. The
supremely great study thus indicated is now com-
monly known as the philosophy of religion. It
has lately been prosecuted by great and sincere
thinkers in every part of the world where thought
flourishes and is reverenced. Of these men some
have been professed theologians whilst others have
been psychologists or unattached philosophers.
They include representatives of many different
creeds and sects and they have obtained the most
magnificent agreement as to certain fundamental
truths. If we recognise that amongst these reli-
gious thinkers are included theologians of all
schools, philosophers of all schools, psychologists,
sociologists, students of ethics and anthropologists,
1 Höffding.
19
290
WORRY
we may realise, perhaps, how great is the signi-
ficance of this agreement.
As the highest thought now sees it, religion is,
in the first place, a thing that can never die out of
human life. It is a product of the deepest and the
In all its countless
forms even more
highest in the nature of man.
forms, ancient and modern
various than are indicated by the differing modes
of worship of the Roman Catholic and the Quaker
- religion expresses some fundamental truth which
would survive, though all past and present expres-
sions of it should utterly disappear. I have already
quoted from the latest, and, as I think, the greatest
contribution to this subject,¹ and I shall do well
indeed if I am able to direct any reader to feed
his soul from the same source. Let us turn now
to the historical facts of religion that bear upon
the subject of this book.
Our business is not to argue as to the truth of
any religious dogma- whether of Fetichism or
Methodism; it is the equally important business,
in practice at any rate, of ascertaining what reli-
gion has actually stood for in human life. We
have already seen the dark side of the account. It
may appear to some that the description of religion
so called as a cause of needless agony of soul con-
stitutes an appalling indictment against religion,
but it is not such. On the contrary, it is yet one
1 "The Philosophy of Religion," by Dr. Harald Höffding, Pro-
fessor of Philosophy in the University of Copenhagen. (English
translation, Macmillan & Co.)
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION 291
f
more terrible illustration of the truth expressed in
the Latin phrase, corruptio optimi pessima. The
more utterly beyond price is true religion, the more
disastrous are its corruptions; but if there is any
clear and irresistible prophecy in human thought
as we survey it to-day, it is that these corruptions
have had their day; in the deliberate desire to
hasten their end I have penned a previous chapter.
Let us now, with a gesture of relief and disgust,
cease to consider them further.
It is, then, the historic fact, demonstrated by
human experience everywhere and at all times, that
religion, “pure and undefiled," can make the desert
blossom as the rose, can conquer death and pain
and sorrow, can make earth Heaven and human
life Divine. It has done this under many guises,
or in spite of many guises. If the reader dare
question this, let him read the life of Buddha as
well as that of St. Francis, and Plato's account of
the death of Socrates as well as Bunyan's account
of the pilgrims' passage across the dark river:
"Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my
brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good." Bun-
yan himself, we may remember, died in perfect
peace. Despite all differences of time and place
and external form, differences of race and educa-
tion, and outlook upon the material world, it is
surely one and the same ultimate reality that can
accomplish such great deeds.
It is hard work reading much of Plato, and
some of my readers may have made the attempt
292
WORRY
and failed. Let me then quote for them the last
page of the dialogue (The Phædo) wherein he
describes the manner in which Socrates, its victim,
made imperishable the history of one of the black-
est judicial murders in history. Be it remembered,
also, that Socrates was impugned as a corrupter of
youth and as an opponent of religion; but eternity
is not on the side of the religions which such as
Socrates oppose.
After a long discussion about death and immor-
tality, there entered to Socrates in prison the ser-
vant of the magistrates, bearing the fatal hemlock.
The narrator continues:
"And at the same time ending his discourse, he
drank the poison with exceeding facility and alacrity.
And thus far, indeed, the greater part of us were
tolerably well able to refrain from weeping; but when
we saw him drinking, and that he had drunk it, we
could no longer restrain our tears. But from me, in-
deed, notwithstanding the violence which I employed
in checking them, they flowed abundantly; so that,
covering myself with my mantle, I deplored my mis-
fortune. I did not indeed weep for him, but for my
own fortune; considering what an associate I should
be deprived of. But Crito, who was not able to
restrain his tears, was compelled to rise before me.
And Apollodorus, who during the whole time prior
to this had not ceased from weeping, then wept aloud
with great bitterness; so that he infected all who
were present, except Socrates. But Socrates, upon
seeing this, exclaimed - What are you doing, ex-
cellent men? For, indeed, I principally sent away the
women, lest they should produce a disturbance of this
kind. For I have heard that it is proper to die joy-
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION
293
fully and with propitious omens. Be quiet, therefore,
and summon fortitude to your assistance.
When we heard this we blushed, and restrained
our tears. But he, when he found during his walk-
ing that his legs felt heavy, and had told us so, laid
himself down in a supine position. For the man had
ordered him to do so. And at the same time he who
gave him the poison, touching him at intervals, con-
sidered his feet and legs. And after he had vehe-
mently pressed his foot, he asked him if he felt it.
But Socrates answered he did not. And after this he
again pressed his thighs; and thus ascending with
his hand, he showed us that he was cold and stiff.
And Socrates also touched himself, and said, that
when the poison reached his heart he should then
leave us. But now his lower belly was almost cold,
when uncovering his face (for he was covered) he
said (which were his last words):
"Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius.¹ Discharge
this debt, therefore, for me, and do not neglect it.'
"It shall be done,' says Crito; but consider
whether you have any other commands.' To this
inquiry of Crito he made no reply; but shortly after
moved himself, and the man uncovered him. And his
eyes were fixed; which when Crito perceived, he closed
his mouth and eyes. This, Echecrates, was the end of
our associate; a man, as it appears to me, the best
of the men of that time with whom we were acquainted,
and, besides this, the most wise and just."
Thus we see how, in the very hour of its appar-
ent defeat by the forces of false religion, true
religion triumphed. And though Socrates was
murdered, yet he lives; "he being dead yet speak-
eth." True religion enabled him utterly to con-
1 The sacrifice paid on recovery from an illness.
294
WORRY
quer and overthrow the worry and fear which his
undeserved death and the apparent defeat of his
ideas must otherwise have caused, and the fact
that the account of his death will be read ten
thousand years hence affords yet one more proof
of the great doctrine which religion upholds and
by which it triumphs over worry and pain and
fear and even individual death the doctrine that
no good can perish out of the world.
A few centuries later the forces of false religion
seemed to achieve a still more brutal and con-
temptuous triumph. It is recorded that at the
darkest hour the faith of the Victim almost fal-
tered in the cry, "My God, my God, why hast
Thou forsaken me?" Yet here also true religion
triumphed. The Cross is raised on high, but where
is the Roman eagle?
Throughout the centuries true religion has sur-
vived and done its beneficent work in its only
citadel, the heart of man; true to its own great
principle that the good cannot perish, true religion
has never succumbed to external influences and
has never been even in danger. When Copernicus
upset the astronomical doctrines upon which the
dogmas of theology were based, true religion was
unhurt; and in our own day it has nothing to
fear from Darwin:
"Truth fails not, but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
That in the morning whitened hill and plain
And is no more
•
""
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION
295
There is some faith which does not fail and
which, however its forms may change, no scien-
tific discovery whatever can affect; what is this
faith?
In the great book to which I have referred, Pro-
fessor Höffding expresses the fundamental idea
of true religion as the conservation of values. Stu-
dents of science are familiar with such phrases as
the conservation of energy and the conservation of
matter. Höffding recognises as the perdurable
and constant element, which persists in all the vari-
ous forms of religion and throughout all their
various changes, a belief in the conservation of
values. To do justice to his thought would be to
quote his book from end to end. The serious
reader will long be grateful to me for directing his
attention to it. Here I must merely attempt to
express in my own words what he has taught me
and so many others.
But in the first place let us observe an apparent
contradiction; on the one hand we have the doc-
trine that the fear of things invisible is the seed of
religion, whereas now we are speaking of religion
as having an optimistic principle at the heart of it.
It is evident that we are darkening counsel by
means of the words we employ. When we employ
one and the same term for true religion and for
false religion, apparent contradiction is inevitable,
just as the false Ptolemaic astronomy contradicts
the true Copernican astronomy. Nevertheless from
the first the idea of the persistence, the indestructi-
296
WORRY
bility, the conservation of the good or the valuable
that which has value has held a more or less
definitely recognised place in religious systems,
and the higher the religion the more clearly is this
principle expressed. It has outlived the fear of the
invisible.
We are all familiar with the noble poem of
Browning, in which that poet's religious optimism
reaches full expression. Some such description
certainly might be applied to the poem "Prospice,"
but that was written to the poet's departed wife,
and though it is essentially religious, yet the truth
of it is a personal truth and it cannot be used
for the conveyance of a general lesson. The poem
of which I am thinking is "Abt Vogler." I am
surprised that Professor Höffding has not quoted
the poem which so consummately illustrates his
own great doctrine. The musician, the reader
remembers, has been extemporising upon his organ
and has created Beauty, which is, of course, a form
of the valuable. But he has ceased, and there re-
mains no record of what was "It is gone at
last. . . and the good tears start." This distress.
at the apparent loss of that which has value consti-
tutes the highest and noblest conceivable form of
worry. All men in all ages have experienced it,
and in deep natures it becomes a transcendent
emotion. I have instanced one form of it by a
quotation from a letter of Darwin in another chap-
ter. Here in "Abt Vogler" is an illustration from
the musician; there, where a mother mourns over
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION
297
a lost child and asks herself the meaning of it all,
is another illustration. The same emotion was
aroused in those who watched the death of Socrates
and in the women who knelt at the foot of the
Cross. There is only one conceivable tragedy, and
this is it.
If the reader desires to acquaint himself with
the expression of this emotion in its most poetic
form, let him read the first two-thirds of Shelley's
poem Adonais," where he mourns for John
Keats, who "is gone where all things wise and
fair descend."
But vital religion in all its forms believes in the
conservation of values. Let me quote from the
two poems I have named the expression of this
faith:
"There shall never be one lost good! .
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the
melodist,
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by."
"1
Now with this let us contrast and compare, for
the contrast teaches a profound truth, Shelley's
expression of his faith in the conservation of
values:
1 Cf. also Browning's "Apparent Failure."
298
WORRY
"Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change unquenchably the same.
He has outsoared the shadow of our night
He is made one with Nature
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely
And he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay
And of the past are all that cannot pass away
1
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly:
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity
Until Death tramples it to fragments."
All these lines lead up to the sublime peroration
of the last two stanzas, which I need not quote.
I have cited two great expressions of the belief
that there is something of the imperishable in all
that is good; but what is the lesson of the contrast
between those expressions, which may be described,
in the language of philosophy, as theistic and pan-
theistic respectively?
1 Cf. Wordsworth's expression of the same religious thought:
"There is
One great society alone on earth:
The noble Living and the noble Dead."
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION
299
It is the lesson of all religious history, the
lesson that so long as men vary religious con-
formity is as impossible as it is undesirable. This
is a hard saying for the theologian and the dog-
matist, who desires the aboriginal savage and the
Teutonic metaphysician to repeat one and the same
creed; but it is true nevertheless. Religion is a
matter not of objective truth but of personal truth.
If a man must express his religion truly he must
be true to his own self; he will not then be false
to any man nor yet to that man's religion. We see
through a glass darkly ay, even the philoso-
phers amongst us. When we recognise that even
the profoundest expression of the vital truths is
only symbolical at best, we shall see that the phi-
losopher is not so very much better off than the
child, though this does not lessen the monstrous
absurdity of asking the philosopher to express his
faith in the same terms as the child.
-
It may be answered that the substance of this
religious faith must stand the test of science, and
there will be many to maintain that in these days
science has made impossible, save at the cost of
intellectual chastity, any form of belief in the
conservation of value, the permanence of the
good. This view has been abundantly refuted
by Professor Höffding and others; but to state
the grounds of that refutation here would in-
volve a philosophic discussion which only with
difficulty could be compressed into a hundred
pages. I do not want the reader to take my
300
WORRY
•
word for it that that has been done but to inquire
for himself.
Whatever the form in which the doctrine of the
permanence of the good be held, the result is tri-
umphantly the same. When Spinoza's landlady
began to have doubts about her religion, that
mighty thinker and noble soul assured her that she
would do well to hold to her faith. It effected for
her, he knew, what his religion effected for him,
yet probably no two forms of faith could vary more
widely than hers and his. Blessed with this ulti-
mate and final optimism, men and women in all
times have, in a very real sense, conquered the
world. All fears and worries and apprehensions
and regrets and fretfulnesses vanish in the face of
it. "The free man thinks of nothing less than of
death," said Spinoza, whilst his own life proved
how utterly true religion may triumph over the
worries of daily life. He was cast off by his friends
and co-religionists; ¹ he earned a miserable liveli-
hood by polishing lenses; he died of a cruel and
chronic disease ere he had reached his prime; and
the measure of his appreciation by his fellowmen
may be inferred from the fact that his doctor cele-
brated his patient's death by promptly stealing his
watch yet the exultation of his words never fails
and will never be found to fail their readers. It is
utterly different in expression from Job's "though
1
1 There is sufficient irony in this term: As if the religion of a
Spinoza could ever be one and the same with the religion of those
who expelled him from the Synagogue!
THE TRIUMPH OF RELIGION
301
he slay me yet will I trust in him," whilst it is
significant that both belonged to the race which has
been endowed with a supreme genius for religion,
and which no terrestrial circumstances have yet
sufficed to crush yet the underlying faith is one
and the same. "To the good man," said Socrates,
no evil thing can happen.”
66
INDEX
A
"Abt Vogler," by Robert Browning, 296, 297.
"Adolescence," by Prof. Stanley Hall, 144.
"Adonais," by Shelley, 297, 298.
Advertisements, of quack medicines, 62; dealing with sexual matters
condemned, 190-194.
Alcohol, its effect on bees, 93; its effect on man, 93; its early use in
Egypt. 94; its action on the mind, 94-95; its stimulating and sed-
ative qualities discussed, 97-101; harmful use of, 104, 105, 106;
condemnation of, 108, 110.
"
Anatomy of Melancholy," by Burton, quotation from, 57-
"Animism, the Seed of Religion," by Edward Clodd, 257.
Antipodes, 271.
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 199, 270.
"As You Like It," quoted, 177.
Australia, aborigines of, 267, 268.
B
Babyhood, no worries in, 140, 174.
Babylon, 268.
Bacon, Francis, his attitude towards posterity, 284.
Bain, Prof. Alexander, of Aberdeen, his childish conception of the
Deity, 146.
Berkeley, George, doctrine of, 230.
Birth-rate, decline of, 162-166, 172.
Bishop of London, on the falling birth-rate, 163, 165.
Boarding-schools, condemnation of, 169, 170.
Booth, General, 210.
Boredom, discussed, 80-84.
Boston, 264.
Bradfield College, Dr. Gray headmaster of, 171.
Browning, Robert, optimism of, 207; "Abt Vogler" by, 296, 297.
Buckle, Henry Thomas, on Scotch sermons, during seventeenth
century, 242.
Buddha, 283; life of, 291.
Buddhism, the teaching of, 203, 204.
Bunyan, John, quoted, 291.
Burton, Robert, his "Anatomy of Melancholy," quoted, 57.
303
304
INDEX
C
Caffeine, active principle of tea and coffee, 101; stimulating effect
of, 101, 102; justifiable use of, 106, 109.
Cancer, effect of worry on, 41; fear of, 87.
Carlyle, Thomas, dyspepsia of, 227; his "gospel of work," 234;
quoted on industrialism, 237.
Chaillu, Paul du, quoted, 263.
Cheyne, Canon, 270.
Childhood, worry in, 139; causes of worry, 140; ridicule as a cause
of worry, 141; religion as a cause of worry, 142, 143.
Chittenden, Professor, on digestion, 226.
Chloral, habitual use of, condemned, 104.
Christian Science, II; progress of, 20; cures wrought by, 39, 52;
influence on the medical profession, 57; doctrine of, 254.
Christianity, its teaching on worry, 202, 289.
Clodd, Edward, quoted, 257, 261, 275.
Cocaine, habitual use of, condemned, 104.
Coffee, see Caffeine.
Confucius, teachings of, 262.
Copenhagen, University of, 144.
Copernicus, on the Dantean Inferno, 256; astronomy of, 294.
Cowper, William, quoted, 182.
Crete, palace of King Minos discovered on, 157.
Crichton-Browne, Sir James, quoted, 157.
Cynics, doctrine of, 204.
Dantean, Inferno, 256.
D
Darwin, Charles, on the upbringing of children, 148; on facial ex-
pression, 156, 158; optimism of, 227; his concern for the future
of the world, 286, 294.
Death, fear of, 242; physical aspect considered, 250-254; moral fear
of, 254-256.
Delusions, considered, 86-89.
Descartes, on consciousness, in animals, 196.
"Descent from the Cross," by Fra Angelico, 157.
Digestion, effect of worry on, 33, 34; impaired by worry; a case
recounted, 129-137, 217; organic optimism dependent on, 218-
229.
Disease, fear of, 27; germ theory of, 27, 28; immunity from, 29; in-
fectious, 30; organic and functional diseases described, 35-42;
control of mind over, 44-46; optimism in, 221.
Doctor, see Physician.
"Dream of Gerontius," by Cardinal Newman, 254.
Dreams, their effect upon sleep, 128.
Drink, see Alcohol.
Driver, Canon, 270.
INDEX
305
Drugs, increase in use of, 16; their effect on man, 93; alcohol, tea
and coffee, tobacco, opium, 94; their influence on the mind, 95, 96;
stimulating and sedative qualities of, 97-101; stimulating action
of tea and coffee; 101-103; nicotine, 103; condemnation of,
104, 105; justifiable use of caffeine, 106, 107; worry aided by,
108-110.
Dyspepsia, see digestion.
E
Ecclesiastes, Book of, quotation from, 204, 245.
Eddy, Mrs., founder of Christian Science, 39.
Egypt, early use of alcohol in, 94.
Elgar, Sir Edward, his setting of "The Dream of Gerontius," 254.
Eliot, George, her meaning of "other-wordliness," 248.
Emotion, the cause of human actions, 112-113; of worry, considered,
113-125.
Epicureanism, II.
Eugenics, Mr. Francis Galton's scheme of, 166, 287.
Evans, Dr. Arthur, his discoveries in Crete, 157.
"Evolution, the Master-Key," 218, see note.
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," by Charles
Darwin, 156.
F
Fear, its significance, 2, 3; government by, 151; of death, 242, 249-
256; as a maker of religions, 257; in primitive man, 261.
Florence, 157.
Founder of Christianity, quoted, 202, 210.
Fra Angelico, his "Descent from the Cross," 157.
Frazer, Dr. J. G., quoted, 263.
Fretfulness, in old age, 180.
Fry, Elizabeth, 210.
G
Galton, Francis, his study of Eugenics, 166, 287.
Genesis, Book of, 289.
Germany, high proportion of suicide in, 17.
Gilbert, W. S., quoted, 126.
"Golden Bough, The," by Dr. J. G. Frazer, 263.
Gotch, Professor, quoted on dreams, 128.
Gray, Dr., headmaster of Bradfield College, quoted on boarding-
schools, 171.
Greek attitude towards affliction, 284.
Green, Thomas Henry, of Oxford, quoted, 200.
20
306
INDEX
H
Hall, Prof. Stanley, on "Adolescence," 144.
Hamlet, quotation from, 1, 8.
Hanwell Asylum, 57.
Happiness, the aim of life, 1, 8; true meaning of, 21, 22; gained by
drugs, 98, 99, 116; the ambition of "getting on
" as a means to,
discussed, 122-125; man's desire for, 200, 201, 206, 207, 219.
Harper & Bros., "Evolution the Master-Key" published by, 218,
see note.
Health described, 23-26; its effect on the mind, 224-229.
Hegel, doctrine of, 230.
Hibbert Journal, article by Dr. Gray on, 171.
Hobbes, Thomas, the "Leviathan
by, 257.
Hobbies, use of, 72-75; value of in old age.
Höffding, Prof. Harald, his work on the Philosophy of Religion, 144;
his definition of religion, 295–299.
Holiday, true meaning of a, 64; various kinds of, 64, 65; freedom
from worry the essential of a, 66; rest not essential to a, 68; man
not content with doing nothing, 69; physical recreation, 70;
working for fun, 71; the use of hobby-hunting, 72-75; as a pres-
ervation of mental health, 79, 214.
Howard, John, 210.
Hunter, John, quoted, 58.
Huxley, Prof. T. H., quoted, 190, 259.
Hypnotism discussed, 60.
Hypochondria, 60, 61; its effect on the lines of the face, 157.
Hysteria, worry as a cause of, 19; described, 37-42; persistent, 134.
I
"In Memoriam," by Tennyson, quoted, 197.
"Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Health and Disease,
The" by Dr. Hack Tuke, 57.
Insanity, causes of, 13; increase of, 14; "borderland cases" of, 15;
causes of, 76, 77; its relation to sleeplessness, 77, 78; melancholia
and delusions considered, 86-92; erroneous ideas of, 112.
Insomnia, see Sleeplessness.
Italy, low proportion of suicide in, 17.
J
James, Prof. William, his book on "The Varieties of Religious Ex-
perience," 144, 272.
Japan, birth-rate in, 163; materialism in, 231.
Job, religion of, 300.
Julius Cæsar, quotation from, 255.
INDEX
307
K
Keats, John, quoted, 205; Shelley's poem to, 297, 298.
Kensington, birth-rate of, 164.
Kingsley, Charles, 270.
Kipling, Rudyard, 239.
Knossos, 268.
Kola nut, caffeine the active principle of, 101.
L
Leibnitz, optimism of, 207.
Leviathan," the, by T. Hobbes, 257.
Lewes, G. H., Biographical History of Philosophy by, 204.
Lourdes, the cures of, 39.
"
Lucy," Wordsworth's poems on, 159.
Macbeth, quoted, 273.
M
Manning, Cardinal, on the attention paid earthly condition, 248, 249.
Maté or Paraguay tea, 101.
Materialism, II; philosophic, defined, 230; evils of practical, con-
sidered, 231-239.
Melancholia discussed, 85, 90, 91; its effect on the lines of the face,
157: Cowper, a victim of, 182; religious, 228.
Meredith, George, quoted, 264, 274, see note.
Metchnikoff, Professor, on immunity from disease, 29.
Mind, influence of the, on the body, discussed, 57, 62; influence of
worry on, 63-79; effect of alcohol on, 94-99; its effect on the
body, 132, 134, 135, 137, inherent predisposition of the, 220;
influence of health on the, 224-229.
Minos, King, palace of, discovered, 157.
Morphia, its action on the mind, 94; sedative qualities of, 98, 102;
condemnation of, 108.
Motherhood, duties of, 168, 173.
N
Napoleon, quoted, 285.
Nervous system, described, 35, 52; impaired, 127-131.
Neurasthenia, caused by worry, 42.
Newman, Cardinal, his "Dream of Gerontius," 254, 270.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 126.
Nicotine, varying effects of, 103.
Nightingale, Florence, 210.
Nirvana, doctrine of, 203, 204.
Nordau, Dr. Max, on nervous diseases, 12.
Nurse, importance of personality of the, 44, 52, 53.
308
INDEX
→
Occultism, II.
"Ode to a Nightingale," by Keats, 205, see note.
Old age, worry in, 174; serene, 175; change in type of, 177; re-
ligious worry in, 180; fretfulness in, 181; value of hobbies in
182; needs of, 185; care of, 186.
Opium, see Morphia.
Optimism, 207; organic, discussed, 218-229.
Osler, Professor, of Oxford, quoted upon pain of death, 252, 253.
Oxford, 252.
P
Paget, Sir James, quoted on hysteria, 19.
"Paradise Lost," quotation from, 8.
Paraldehyde, habitual use of, condemned, 104.
Pavlov (or Pawlow), Professor, of Military Academy of Medicine,
St. Petersburg, 54.
Pessimism, physical causes of, 215.
Petronius Arbiter, quoted, 256, 257.
"Phædo, The," quotation from, 292.
Philadelphia, 57.
Physician, importance of the personality of the, 44-47; manner of
the successful, 48-52; power of suggestion, 52; his influence in
cases of hypochondria, 61.
Plato on the death of Socrates, 291-293.
Pope, quoted, 198; optimism of, 207.
Prayer considered, 278; for material things, 280; for spiritual
things, 282.
Primitive man, religion of, 260-262; prayers of, 280.
Proverbs, quotation from, 8.
Psychology, see Mind.
Psycho-Therapeutics, 11.
Quietism, 210.
Q
R
Regent street, different types to be seen in, 269.
Regret, in old age, 175, 181.
Religion, 2; its deterrent effects on suicide, 16, 17; its relation to
worry, 20, 21; as a cause of worry in childhood, 142-152; melan-
cholia caused by, 228; its relation to worry, 249; retrospective
worry, 243; its doctrine on past sin and retribution, considered,
244-249; moral fear of death, 249-256; made by fear, 257; in
primitive man, 260; ancestor-worship, 261; fear of the invisible
in primitive and modern man considered, 263-277; essence of,
INDEX
309
288; philosophy of, 289; utility of, 291-294; Professor Höffding's
definition of, considered, 295-301.
Retreat, The York, asylum for insane, Dr. Tuke's connection with,
57; humane treatment at, 88.
Ridicule, child's fear of, 141, 142.
Rome, 268.
Rosebury, Lord, comment on speech of, 92.
Ruskin, John, his denunciation of railways, 231.
Russia, birth-rate in, 163.
S
Schofield, Dr., quoted on the effect of worry on cancer, 18.
Scotland, sermons in, 242.
Schubert, hampered by worry, 114.
Self-consciousness, evils of, 8, 9, 35; in childhood, 139–142; as dis-
tinguishing quality of man, 196; deferred, 197; popular meaning
of, 199; as prime condition of worry, 200, 201; ce and worry
inseparable from, 205.
"Self Help," by Dr. Samuel Smiles, 122.
Servants, worry about, 160.
Sex, effect of worry on, discussed, 189–194.
Shakespeare, his use of the word apprehension, I; quoted, 199, 237 ;
quotation from Julius Cæsar, 255; quotation from "As you Like
It," 177.
"She was a Phantom of Delight," quoted, 177.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, quoted, 198, 232; "Adonais," by, 297, 298.
Sleeplessness, cause of, 19; effect of worry on, 32, 33; its relation
to insanity, 77, 78; effect of tea on, 102; discussed, 216–218.
Smiles, Dr. Samuel, on "getting on," 122.
Socrates, faith of, 2; optimism of, 207, 208; death of, 291–293;
quoted, 301.
(C
Spencer, Herbert, quoted, 125; on beauty, 158 ; on complete liv-
ing," 185, 187, 221; optimism of, 227; on industrialism, 237;
quoted, see note, 241.
Spain, low proportion of suicide in, 17.
Spinoza, religion of, 300.
Sport, 64, 68, 73.
St. Anthony, prayers to, 279, 282.
St. Augustine, 270.
St. Francis, the "stigmata " of, 51; life of, 291.
Statue of the Laocoön, 156.
Stevenson, R. L., quoted, 15, 125.
Stoics, doctrine of the, 204, 210.
Switzerland, high proportion of suicide in, 17.
Suggestion, definition of, 50-53.
Suicide, increase of, 16, 17, 249.
Sulphonal, habitual use of, condemned, 104.
Susa, 268.
Superstition, considered, 259-260, and religion, 263–277.
Sydenham, clinical observations of, 12.
310
INDEX
T
Tanin, harmful action of, 107.
Tea, stimulating qualities of, 101, 102; beneficial use of, 106;
harmful effect of tanin, 107, 109.
Tennyson, Alfred, quoted, 197, 198, 272.
"The Happy Warrior," quotation from, 176.
Times, The, articles on insanity in, 14.
Thoreau, H. D., 125.
Tobacco, varying effects of, 103.
Touissant L'Ouverture, sonnet to, 6; meaning of “agonies
2II.
Trional, habitual use of, condemned, 104.
in the,
Tuke, Dr. Hack, "The Influence of the Mind upon the Body in
Health and Disease," by, 57; quoted, 59.
Twain, Mark, on Christian Science, 20.
Tyndall, Professor, quoted, 199.
V
"Varieties of Religious Experience, The," by Prof. William James,
144.
Veronal, habitual use of, condemned, 104.
Wells, Mr. H. G., 163.
Whitechapel, birth-rate of, 165.
W
Wordsworth, William, character of, 2; quoted, 22; his poems on
"Lucy," 160; quotation from "The Happy Warrior" by, 177.
Worry, the effect of, 1-6; evils of self-consciousness, 8; its effect
on suicide, 10; psychical strain, 12; insanity caused by, 13-15;
increase of suicide, 16, 17; its effect on physical disease, 18; and
sleeplessness, 19; its relation to religion, 20, 21; the negation of
happiness, 22; a predisposing cause of disease, 31; of sleepless-
ness, 32; and of digestion, 33, 34; functional nervous disease
caused by, 41; its influence in illness, 43-45; control of mind
over disease, 44-46, 53; its effect on the secretions of the body,
53, 54, 55; its effect on heart failure, 56; influence of mind on
body, 57, 62; freedom from, essential to holidaying, 64-79; its
relation to boredom, 80-84; insane worry discussed, 85-92; in-
fluence of drugs on, 94, 96; action of drugs discussed, 97-104;
alcohol both cure and cause of, 105; beneficial effect of tea, 106,
107; alcohol productive of, 108, 110; the emotion of, 113, 114;
its evil influence on the will of man, 116; irritability caused by,
117; worried business man described, 117; woman's domestic,
118, 120; society affected by, 121; of "getting on "discussed,
122-125; generalities unconvincing, 126; a case of, recounted,
INDEX
311
126, 127; dreams cause unrestful sleep, 128; its effect on growth of
the hair, 129-131; its after effects on the mind, 132; results of im-
paired digestion, 133, 134; external pretexts for internal causes,
135-137; in childhood, 139; ridicule as a cause of, to a child, 141;
religion as a cause of, to a child, 142-153; and domesticity, 154; its
effect on the face, 156-161; about servants, 160; about children,
163-174; about old age, 175; about religion in old age, 180; its
influence on sex discussed, 189-194; self-consciousness prime
cause of, 199, 201; teaching of Christianity on, 202; teaching of
Buddhism on, 203; teaching of the Stoics on, 203; inseparable
from the desire to live, 205; classification of, 209; unselfish and
necessary, 210; selfish, 211; futility of, over past events, 212, 213;
cures of, considered, 214; necessity of sleep, 216, 217; necessity
of the "organic sense of well-being," 218; various temperaments,
219; inherent predisposition of the mind, 220; optimism in dis-
ease, 221, 222; normal and right, 223; ill-health cause of, dis-
cussed, 224-228; religious melancholia, 228; evils of practical
materialism considered, 230–239; religious, considered, 240; ret-
rospective worry and retribution, 240-249; about death, 249-
256; religion the product of fear and, 257; primitive man, 258;
ancestor-worship, 261; fear of the invisible in primitive and
modern man, considered, 263-277; prayer about material and
spiritual, considered, 278-283; for the future of the race, 284-
287.
Yahweh, 283.
Y
Yonge, Miss C. F., quoted on suicide, 17.
York, The Retreat at, 57, 88.
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