IN the first part of this work I have dwelt on the errors in our mode of treating Neurasthenia, consequent on the wide ignorance of the subject which still prevails; in the second part, I have drawn attention to the principal causes of the malady. The allegory forming the Introduction to Part I. gives a brief history of nervous exhaustion and the modes of treatment which have at various times been thought suitable to this most painful and trying disease.

A friend, to whom I read the Introduction, criticised the quotation with which I have concluded it. She objected that I thereby gave too high a place to mere knowledge. I replied that I referred to the highest kind of knowledge. This argument, however, fails to satisfy those who persistently remind one of Eve’s transgression. In my humble opinion, the point of that great and instructive history has always been missed. Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden for eating of the tree of knowledge, but if they had not been cast out of Eden, how could they have been received into heaven? It was necessary to eat of the tree of knowledge in order to desire to eat of the tree of life.

Again, before we can even desire to eat of the tree of knowledge, we must be ignorant; and thus we see our ignorance itself to be a needed stage in our upward evolution. We see in a glass darkly; we must become fools that we may be wise. In our imperfect condition we do but catch brief glimpses and fleeting shadows of the one mighty Truth. Just as our nervous system must waste that it may be nourished, as the pendulum must fall on the one side that it may rise on the other,[1] so must our ignorance precede our half-knowledge, and our half-knowledge precede the fuller revelation.

It is almost needless to add that I am oppressed with a sense of my own incapacity for the task which I have here undertaken. But the most ignorant may teach something to the most learned, if he go through life by a different path. My only hope is that, in dealing with a subject about which so little is known, even my observations—conscientious as they are, however faulty—may be of some slight use to the community to which I owe so much.

In preparing this work for the press, I have had the advantage of Mr. Horace Hutchinson’s kind and generous assistance.

C. B.