Cyril Bennett

“Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.”
—Walt Whitman.

CHAPTER VI.
INTRODUCTORY.

IN individual cases of nerve-trouble, the illness is generally traced to some cause, serious or trivial, real or imaginary, as the case may be. Quite as much harm as good is wrought by the practice. If the patient has suffered from some accident or malady leaving nerve-weakness as its legacy, the large development of the supposed phrenological organ called “Causality” on the part of the patient’s attendants will probably have its uses. The invalid will not then be considered a criminal. If his ailments cannot be cured, at all events he will meet with a certain amount of consideration, and his sufferings will not be aggravated by harshness. But if the cause of the mischief defy investigation, then a false one will assuredly be invented to take its place; the natural love of detraction, constantly recurring in consequence of the feeling of superiority which indulgence in detraction gives us, will find an outlet in action; and the sorrows of the patient, already great enough, will be increased tenfold. Since all intelligent human beings like to know the reason of the phenomena they observe, however imperfectly; since a belief in non-existent causes brings with it disastrous results; it behoves us to open our eyes to the true causes of nerve-deterioration in our community, with a view to removing them as completely as lies in our power.

In the first place, we must recognise the fact that we have contracted the habit of transposing causes and symptoms. Evil practices, such as drunkenness, for example, are blamed for the deterioration, instead of being regarded as the outcome of nerve-instability; while, on the other hand, nerve-instability itself is often regarded as criminality and the outcome of an evil disposition, punishments and deterrents are resorted to, time, money, and brains are wasted, criminal and lunatic classes are perpetuated, jails and lunatic asylums are multiplied, simply because we lack the knowledge to recognise that no amount of modification will ever put right the nerve-structure which is radically wrong from the birth. Excepting ignorance, the foundation of all woe, the first great cause of neurasthenia which we must honestly face is HEREDITY.

We shall find, I think, that the second great cause is to be sought in IMPERFECT SOCIAL CONDITIONS, and the third in AN IMPERFECT SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

Other minor causes we may easily enumerate, but they will all be more or less secondary to these three, and dependent upon them. I propose, therefore, to consider each of these in turn.

CHAPTER VII.
HEREDITY.

ALL those to whose lot it has fallen to minister to the wants of sufferers from nervous disease must have come across cases which they were expected to benefit, but for whom, manifestly, very little could be done. So great is human perversity, that though cases of epilepsy and nervous exhaustion are every day regarded as incurable merely because the most efficacious modes of treatment remain untried, these persons of defective nervous system and perverted growth are often supposed capable of development into ordinary people after a few weeks or months of special attention on the part of those to whose care they are confided.

It seems useless to point out the wide difference between the two classes. The non-medical mind cannot or will not understand it. Our ignorance on such matters is boundless.

It has always appeared to me that these unfortunate defective people are truly our sin-bearers, for they reap to the full the consequences of our mistakes; they inherit the results of a pernicious order of affairs. The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. Cursed from their infancy with a fatal blight; expected to arrive at a moral standard which is wholly beyond them; tormented in childhood by vain attempts to force them to the level of other children; the small stock of intelligence—which love, the great educator, might in some instances have developed to a limited extent—dwarfed and dissipated by impatient ignorance; objects too often of the heteropathy of which Miss Cobbe speaks so feelingly in her exquisite work entitled “Duties of Women;” these unhappy sufferers are surely spectacles fit to move the pity of gods and men.

Yet, in cases where the nerves, by means of which alone the moral sense can manifest itself, are altogether wanting, these are the very persons who are glibly declared to be utterly bad. Just because they are deficient, just because reformatory efforts can have no effect upon them, it is thought excusable, and even laudable, to bestow upon them hatred and scorn. And it frequently happens that those who so readily mete out their hatred and scorn, believe that the Carpenter of Nazareth ate with publicans and sinners, and consorted with those who were possessed of devils; that the woman taken in adultery was not condemned; that the dying thief on the cross was admitted to Paradise.

To care for the defective; to bestow on them the love that has been withheld; to reverence them as the bearers of our common sins; to mitigate their sufferings and shield them from injustice; this seems to me the most Christlike work that can be undertaken by any philanthropist in any age.

But some of these cases are not hopeless. If we have but knowledge and patience enough to place them in the best conditions, much may be done for the greater number of distorted beings. The longer we withhold our aid, the less are our chances of success. Their original surroundings are generally bad, owing to the same tendencies being inherited more or less by other members of their families. And we must remember that, in the treatment of nervous disease, we may show our wisdom quite as much by what we refrain from doing as by what we do. We must not start with the idea that we have to work a sudden reformation, but that we have to allow the organism room to grow naturally and in the right direction. We cannot create moral growth, or growth of any kind, but we can minister to it and promote it by placing the organism in the conditions where it shall absorb the largest amount of nutriment—of vitality,—and we can then direct the pressure which determines its form.

We constantly see around us instances of persons, not naturally defective, who have been subjected to lifelong distortion. In an enlightened community this should be impossible. Place in a low conservatory a plant that has a capacity for growing into a forest tree; withhold from it the needed nutriment, and it will remain dwarfed; deprive it altogether either of the food which it must assimilate in order to maintain vitality, or of the light and air without which waste cannot be promoted and function performed, and our plant must die. Give it all these necessaries, but keep it in the low conservatory, and when it reaches the roof of the building it will remain stunted or grow awry. Perhaps the nutriment that ought to have enabled it to shoot upwards will go into the lower branches, and the tree will become misshapen.

Does not this often happen to the human plant? Is not its lower nature developed at the expense of the higher, because bounds are set to its upward development?

The highest type of human being, then, is not merely that which has the most vitality, but also that which can distribute it in due proportion to its various parts, and that which has been permitted to expand naturally in right directions. The extent to which we possess this vitality,—the power we have of assimilating the force stored up in our food, to repair waste and ensure growth,—is largely determined by heredity.

True, this fact is in some quarters violently disputed; but not, I think, in quarters deserving of much attention. Distorted people are generally vehement, and resort to bare assertion and flat contradiction when observation, analogy, and rational argument are all with their opponent. It is well, perhaps, when the perverted force-current can steam off so harmlessly instead of working mischief in other channels; just as it is well when excitable political speeches and articles save us from dangerous secret organisations.

A young lady once declined to entertain the idea of heredity for a moment, on the ground that, supposing her to be the unfortunate possessor of a grandmother who was a monster of wickedness, she would be expected to prove herself a monster of wickedness likewise. It was in vain for a gentleman present to point out that we usually have more than one grandmother, and that if her other grandmother happened to be an angel of light, she might with equal justice be expected to develop angelic characteristics. She saw her side of the argument, but not his. As a matter of fact, we know so little of the numbers of ancestors from all of whom we may inherit, and we understand so little of the conditions determining the inheritance of given characteristics, that we are not yet in a position to entertain expectations at all. All we know is, that we do not generally get so far as finding grapes on thorns and figs on thistles. The interesting subject of heredity still offers a wide field to the observer. So far, physiological revelation does but prove the truth of the Biblical revelation—that nothing is of ourselves, but that all is of God.

On the one hand too much has been made of heredity, and on the other hand too little. Sometimes its warnings are wholly disregarded; sometimes disease is regarded as inevitable if it has already existed in a family, and if there are any symptoms of its recurrence, wise precautions being consequently neglected. Good education would often avert the evil. Unfortunately, it is in families displaying neurotic tendencies that education is usually most hopelessly bad. It would be easy to give numbers of instances in the upper classes where nervous disease is, with the best intentions, literally being coined. Heredity does not mean that certain hard and fast qualities are displayed by the parents and inherited by the children, but that certain tendencies may develop—pathologically or otherwise—in suitable surroundings. Insane persons may have no insanity in their families, but may yet have resulted from a combination of neurotic stocks, the conditions in which the utmost might have been made of their defective structure having been denied them. Indeed, the means resorted to in order to reform such people would be ridiculous were not the whole affair so infinitely pathetic. The smile of derision would be oftener on our lips but for the tear of pity which follows close behind it.

Many persons rebel against the doctrine of heredity because they consider it destructive of faith in God. Surely their own faith must rest on very insecure foundations. Belief in an all-loving God can but be strengthened by a knowledge of the means by which He develops and guides His creations. Kinematics, mathematics, biology, all natural and physical science—the means by which we study His great and continuous “Act,” the universe—should serve to increase our faith, since in Him we live and move and have our being. Even denying scientists do but reveal Him. If it be true that when we would do good evil is present with us, it is also true that when we do what seems evil we often bring about good results. How can there be conflict between the laws of Nature and the laws of Nature’s God?

Again, it is contended that it is possible for us to live an evil life, and, by means of scientific knowledge, avert the suffering which, in a God-fearing community is the reward of evil, the race being thereby saved from destruction. A very little consideration will suffice to show us that such contentions are without justification. The laws of God are not to be evaded. We bring ourselves to nothing when we “kick against the pricks.” We have seen that if any part be disused, nutriment can no longer be attracted to it. Let that part of the organism by which the moral sense manifests itself fall into disuse, and disintegration has begun in that part—that is to say, a larger amount of waste than can be repaired by nutrition. Supposing the defect to be counterbalanced by excessive activity of another part of the organism, this is no true compensation. No development of the lower part can atone for the loss of the higher. We should, at best, have one-sided beings, who lack the social instinct and must run counter to one another’s aims. Mutual destruction would result from their downward progress, and regulations previously agreed upon would be disregarded as the higher nature deteriorated. Moreover, no excessively one-sided organism can remain healthy. In such cases we commonly see the development of suicidal tendencies.[8] Our degenerate tribe would thus be suicidal both collectively and individually. In the most favourable circumstances imaginable, their career would resemble that of “The-do-as-you-likes” in Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies;” but, as a matter of fact, no selfish tribe could have such a good time of it as even these unfortunates had, since roast pigs are not usually found running about in convenient proximity to the lazy.

It cannot be too widely taught, then, that the moment we withdraw ourselves from the paring and shaping action of life’s sieves, and choose only what is pleasant, our deterioration begins. Physical disease follows close at the heels of moral lethargy, just as physical disease may impair the moral sense. And the degenerative process being begun, our children and our children’s children, even unto the fourth generation, may bear the burden of our shortcomings.

In our efforts to raise a healthy race, we are apt to make one very serious blunder. We forget that the word nervous has two meanings. In its truer sense it implies strength, not weakness. Persons suffering from nerve-trouble have come to be called nervous, and so the sensitive organisation,—the finest, most highly developed organisation,—is quite unjustly depreciated. The healthy sea-anemone is less sensitive than the healthy human being. Would it therefore be preferable to be a sea-anemone?

The confusion between the large and complex nervous organisation and a diseased or defective condition has been aided by the fact that the genius—the truly nervous man in the higher sense, the largest offshoot from the great force-current—is invariably placed in hard conditions in youth. He pays the penalty for being before his time. He belongs to a higher standard than that into which he is forced. In the family nest he is the ugly duckling; in the world he is persecuted. When his marvellous insight and keen intelligence enable him to foresee the remote but lasting pernicious effects of practices that are clung to by his fellows for the sake of their immediate advantage, he falls by the hand of the assassin or is universally credited with madness. Centuries after his death, when his community has painfully toiled to his level, his greatness is recognised, and he is deified or canonised.

It is perhaps well that the growth of such offshoots is limited in every age by a mental atmosphere as real as the atmosphere surrounding our globe and limiting our aerial flights. Apparently it is not decreed that human progress shall be rapid. Nevertheless, a too wholesale destruction of our most highly organised members must certainly ensure that evolution backwards of which I spoke in another chapter.

The fact is, we find it hard to distinguish between genius and eccentricity. The uncontrolled eccentricities of the matured do so much harm, that it is found necessary to suppress them. But we should remember that the genius is always eccentric in youth unless he is allowed a very wide area for development—and this is the last service his friends are willing to do him. He has, as it were, to develop into a large circle. His great vitality and many-sidedness enable him to take advantage of any chance diminution of pressure, and in each direction where resistance is least he shoots out long points and angles. If any of these angles be lopped or violently discouraged, he may be a one-sided or distorted being. Let him alone, however, and in due course he will fill in the spaces between his angles and grow into a finely rounded being. But the magnificent virtue of letting one another alone is still little cultivated by our community.

Now, persons who are merely eccentric do not shoot out their angles in a variety of directions and fill in the spaces as soon as opportunity is granted them. They have only one or two long angles, to which they continue to add till they become such a nuisance that the peace and safety of the community demand their control. Both genius and eccentricity being hereditary, and the logical outcome of extreme eccentricity in one generation being insanity in the next, we need to exercise care in our dealings with these abnormal developments. To drive men of genius into the ranks of the eccentrics is a very dangerous policy. Let us honestly recognise the fact that we are all of us potential madmen.

Curiously enough, those who have the least pretension to sound organisation and rounded development are most often lauded as men of genius. Talent in one special direction developed at the expense of more essential parts of the organism, not an exceptional vitality, secures them this distinction. We should be cautious as to the objects we choose for admiration, since, by a natural law, that which we admire becomes prevalent.

Some persons propose to reform the world by means of checking reproduction from unfit types. But this measure would be useless so long as our conditions continue to coin the thing we would destroy. And if we could alter our conditions, the measure would be unnecessary, as the unfit already existing would soon die a natural death or be suitably modified. In some cases the wholesale change suggested would have very bad results, for the children of misdirected geniuses may possibly revert to the former standard and inherit the original genius of the parent without his recent aberrations. Our measures would but serve therefore to check the reproduction of these highly desirable types. In the midst of our black ignorance on such matters, our wisest course is to refrain from violent and irrevocable action. Instead of hurrying to lop people’s angles, it would be well if we were first to try the effect of removing pressure from the spaces between them.

The genius is proverbially known by his quick pulse, though the same symptom may be observed in many defective people. Waste and repair alike go on quickly. He is eminently adaptable; he takes any shape. But the great test of the genuineness of the article is his sincerity. Above all things must his higher moral sense remain intact.

History has given us one splendid example of the highest type of genius in the great Dutch hero, William the Silent; the man who, to use the words of his biographer, bore the burden of a nation’s sorrows on his shoulders with a smiling face. A homeless wanderer with a price set upon his head, poor, friendless and unsupported, this man opposed himself to the trained legions of Spain, the wealth of Brazil, and the tremendous machinery of the Inquisition.

The result was the independence of the United Provinces!

And the cause of it?

Here let us quote Father William’s own words.

“Before seeking to conclude a treaty with any earthly potentate,” he writes to his brother Louis, “I had entered into an alliance with the King of Kings.”

We are not surprised to learn that this man fell by the hand of an assassin, with a prayer for others on his lips.

CHAPTER VIII.
IMPERFECTIONS OF OUR SOCIAL SYSTEM.

TO treat such a subject adequately in so small a space is obviously an impossibility. It must suffice to point out some of the chief causes of nerve-deterioration in present conditions, and the directions in which some improvement may gradually be wrought. The notion that evils can be remedied merely by passing laws is happily exploded. The law is now seen to be evidence and ratification of public opinion, and also a means of putting public opinion into action. Without this agreement on the part of the majority, the law becomes a dead letter, or is enforced only at the expense of dire catastrophe.

There is, however, one justification of the efforts of those who wish to pass laws condemning certain abuses: they actually influence the public mind by means of the agitation raised for the purpose of attaining their ends; and so they create the opinion they would ratify. It also frequently happens that the agitators arouse disgust at their bigotry and fixity of idea, and so produce an opposite effect to that which they intended. Indeed, though devotion to a Cause is generally supposed to be an ennobling thing, it sometimes happens that it is a debasing and demoralising thing. For, instead of Self being sunk in the Cause, the Cause becomes with many a very excuse for selfishness. Persons considered high-principled, who would on no account misrepresent or defraud for their own confessed advantage, will nevertheless think almost any expedient justifiable in what they are pleased to term the public good.

In this loss of moral sense and judgment we find the secret of much of the nerve-trouble of our day. The Self, having found a plausible excuse for its assertion, loses no time in becoming as suicidal in its tendencies as the uncontrolled Self usually is. Once committed to a course of action, that course of action must be adhered to throughout all opposition. Public support having in a weak moment been enlisted on some false pretext, our utmost efforts must thenceforth be used to prove this pretext true. Having gained a certain height, we dread to be cast from our elevation. Then come harassing worries, overwork, disappointment, and harmful excitement—all the sorrows, in fact, that tend to lower vitality and injure the nervous system.

This new evil seems no less deadly in its effects than an exaggerated personal ambition. Our complex social conditions render us in many respects more dependent on one another than formerly. We have associations and co-operations for everything. Increase of population and means of communication bring us more into contact with our fellows. Division of labour makes us indispensable to one another. We all govern one another. We all have, in some form, a voice in public concerns. Under the guise of advancing the common good, we have special opportunities for advancing Self; and it is the element of self-deception introduced into our striving after self-advancement, and our consequent habit of deceiving others, which are specially injurious to our moral sense. Marcus Aurelius tells us that that which is not for the interest of the whole hive is not for the interest of a single bee. He might with equal truth have said that that which is not for the higher interests of a single bee cannot in the long-run benefit the hive.

It may be questioned whether our exceeding unrest, our yearning for notoriety, our eagerness to overwork ourselves, i.e., to draw on our nerve-capital at the risk of breaking the bank, are not symptoms of widespread nervous disease in the community rather than its causes; just as, in the individual, the restless excitement regarded often as the cause of the after-malady is in reality but a symptom of the disintegration which has already begun. We may console ourselves with the reflection that, neurasthenia in the individual being curable, neurasthenia in the community is curable also; the community being but a collection of individuals.

To go still deeper into the matter, we find that we are living in an age of exceptionally rapid change, and all rapid changes have great dangers because of the difficulty we find in adapting ourselves to altered conditions. And the result of partial failure is seen not merely in complete break-downs, but also in a general lowering of the vitality of the nation. We are nearly all more or less nervous in the more usual signification of the misused word. We have less of the calm confidence that our fathers had; we indulge in alternate and spasmodic conceit and cowardice; self-doubt one moment, self-assertion the next. The way in which we skulk through life in terror of one another is truly ridiculous. Our sensitiveness to the opinion of others is extreme. Can we not realise that the opinion of others is of little moment? It matters, indeed to themselves, though not to us; for the mode in which people accustom themselves to think inevitably alters their nervous structure. It is for them we should be concerned if they think wrongly; not for ourselves. And while we spend our precious time in doubting and fearing, in disputing as to whether men have wills or women have minds, the great force-current flows tranquilly onwards, men and women alike being but fleeting forms, capable of infinite development or of utter degeneration.

One fertile source of danger to our stability has been the marvellous speed at which human thought has advanced in this century. Owing to recent scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions, the minds of our younger generations have, in some respects, become more enlightened than the less plastic minds of their elders. This inequality has produced a great strain in many relations of life. Old theories have been tested by the light of fresh information, and much misery and nerve-deterioration have been occasioned in families by the rejection by the younger members of tenets held sacred by their parents; real high principle having, on both sides, prevented the sacrifice of belief, which alone could effect a compromise. Each side seems to the other to be cruel and unreasonable; yet both are right, even if both are wrong. The elder, owing to their lack of faith, close their eyes to God’s ever-progressive revelation; the younger, in their determination to believe only what is demonstrable, lose sight of the value of much that they deem worthy of rejection.

The position may be illustrated by the following allegory.

THE STORY OF THE AMPHIBIANS.

The streams of God flowed ever from the hills and watered the plain, and the waters of one of the streams gathered themselves together in a hollow place, and formed a lake where dwelt the great Amphibians. Now the Amphibians flourished in this lake and on its shores because its waters were brackish, and they believed it to be in this respect far superior to any other lakes of the plain.

But the time came when, owing to successive geological and atmospheric changes, the waters from the hills changed their course, and the streams which had flowed into the Amphibian abode dried up, so that the lake grew stagnant. And the sun’s heat falling upon it, caused the water to evaporate, while there was now no friendly stream to supply the waste. The waters therefore dwindled rapidly.

At first the Amphibians were unaware of any change in themselves consequent on the too brackish condition of the lake. But the fact was, that as the lake grew shallower and shallower, its inhabitants grew more and more torpid, and more and more inactive. Some of their children, however, who had inherited the former energetic disposition of their parents, and had not yet been reduced to a lethargic state by their surroundings, expressed great alarm at the stagnancy of the water, and consulted as to the means to be adopted to bring about a reform. They not only complained that the water was constantly evaporating, but that it was too salt.

They complained with reason. The brackish water had once been a source of health and energy to the Amphibians, but it was evident that the salt carried down into the lake by the stream had no means of escape, so that, as the water diminished by evaporation, the proportion of salt in the lake became far too great.

The children were convinced that the extreme saltness of the water was the chief cause of the torpidity of their parents and of the deterioration which they began to perceive in themselves, and this conviction caused them so much alarm, that they openly suggested emigration to one of the other lakes, which they believed to be fresh, as the only possible remedy for their ills. A few of them actually attempted the feat, but the distance to the nearest lake being great, and the Amphibians being unable to live long on land, some of them died by the way. Two or three of them gave up the toilsome journey in despair, and returned to the salt lake to report the unfortunate end of their friends. Their example was then held up as a warning to other aspiring spirits who had dreamed of fresh streams and waters new.

One or two of the emigrants, however, succeeded in reaching the nearest lake. How they fared there was not at first known to the conservative Amphibians, but during this period of uncertainty all who endeavoured to leave their old home were persecuted by their timorous companions, and those who succeeded in making their escape did so only after a prolonged and exhausting struggle. In spite of all opposition, the number of malcontents increased daily, and at last a new mode of remedying the unsatisfactory state of affairs was resorted to. The younger Amphibians in the old home seriously set to work to cut a canal from their own lake to that in which some of them believed their companions to be living happily.

The elder Amphibians, horrified at the work of destruction, continued their persecutions with renewed vigour. They refused to believe that the water of the lake was too salt; indeed, they even refused to believe that it was stagnant. They not only declared that a stream still flowed into it as of yore, but that no other stream flowed from the hills. Though ignorant of the fact that they themselves were degenerating, they were convinced that the restlessness and discontent of their children were due to a disease which should be discouraged. They urged that, even if they were to succeed in reaching the new lake, they would be unable to live in the fresh water, and that by cutting a canal between the two, they would flood the old lake, and thus diminish its saltness so considerably that the whole race would cease to thrive there.

Notwithstanding these arguments, the children persevered in their labours. The canal was finished sooner than they had anticipated, for those who had emigrated had been similarly employed, and the workers from the two lakes met in the middle of the strip of land which had formerly divided them. The results of the undertaking gave universal satisfaction. The old lake was rendered healthier by the influx of fresh water; the water of the new lake was improved by the saline flavour now imparted to it. The parents swam contentedly from one lake to the other, and saw with their own eyes the stream which flowed down from the hills and replenished the new lake.

Who could they have been, these timid, sceptical creatures, who accused their children of the want of faith which was destroying themselves?

We have seen in the above story that some of those who valiantly endeavoured to gain the new lake perished by the way, and so we find that our recent scientific advances have been a cause of nerve-trouble, apart from the persecutions they have entailed. The mental strife we have gone through in our attempt to reconcile the ideas stored in our minds, by no will of our own, with God’s ever-progressive revelation, should teach us not to instil into the minds of our children as absolute truth that which must necessarily be but approximate truth, changing always with our own development. Seeming scientific facts themselves assume a different complexion so soon as scientific discovery goes still further. Even the axiom that two straight lines continued to infinity cannot meet, ceases to be a fact to us, and is relegated to the region of rational hypothesis, when we realise that we have never so much as seen a straight line, all seeming straight lines being but parts of curves; and that the mental picture we have been accustomed to form of a straight line is but a picture of one of these curving lines. Almost the hardest thing we have to learn is the impiety of putting cherished beliefs in the place of the great God of the universe. Like Abraham, we are called upon to sacrifice our Isaac. Like Abraham, we no sooner freely consent to do so, than we find the ram ready for the sacrifice. Directly we close our eyes to God’s progressive revelation and accustom ourselves to inconsistency and to fallacious reasoning, we unconsciously deteriorate.

Another outcome of recent rapid changes has been a great increase of wealth, together with its unequal distribution. Whether this unequal distribution might have been prevented, and whether it may or may not now be remedied, cannot here be discussed. We have but to inquire whether it has anything to do with the prevalent nerve-trouble; and I think we must admit that excessive luxury on the one hand, and excessive poverty on the other, are largely productive both of monotony and overwork. At all events, it is principally amongst the well-to-do classes that ennui is complained of.

It cannot be doubted that monotony is a fertile source of nervous disease. The fact is not always received, because the nature of the evil is not understood. We fail to realise that monotony is an actual strain upon the nerves, often an even greater strain than extreme fatigue; for those who are overworked are supposed to require a holiday or change of occupation, while those who are suffering from monotony often get no relief until so much harm is done that mere change of scene or of occupation is inadequate to repair the damage done to the ill-treated nerves. In such cases the mischief wrought in the individual is similar to the mischief now being wrought in the community—in each there is excessive use of one part and disuse of another.

If we doubt that monotony is really a mode of overstrain, let us consider the very meaning of the word. Why do we speak of a preacher’s voice as monotonous, and why do we find the monotony of it tiring? Is it not because a strain is thrown upon one part? If his preaching were more varied, a number of smaller impressions would be made upon other parts. If all the light which falls upon our eyes in the course of the day were concentrated into one single flash, we should be blinded. And supposing that all the impressions we receive throughout the day by means of hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, were to be concentrated into stimulus of the brain passing through our eyes, we should probably still be blinded, even though the process occupied the whole twelve hours. But we fondly imagine that, though we have faculties to develop and sympathies to enlarge by means of active life in the world and contact with our fellows, we can shut ourselves off from the duties and occupations which are as essential to our health as our daily food, and yet escape the deterioration and suffering which must naturally follow our over-use of one part and our disuse of another. We forget that we can never cease to receive impressions unless we actually close our senses, as when we shut our eyes and stop our ears. All we can do is to determine what set of impressions we will receive. And if we are always attracting nutriment to one particular part of our nervous system to the exclusion of others, we are going the right way to become ill-balanced. Not only are we rendering ourselves liable to mental disease by choosing bad mental surroundings, but to physical disease also, since no bodily function can be performed without the co-operation of the nervous system. Highly organised persons suffer more from monotony than others, because they have more faculties demanding healthy exercise, and also because the greater the sensitiveness of our nerve-structure, the less can we bear constant fatigue of one part.

The greatest sufferers from this species of folly and ignorance are, and always have been, women. That curious form of neurasthenia which passes under the singularly inappropriate name of “hysteria” is largely the outcome of our modern ill-usage of the nervous system—the overstrain of one part and the starvation of another. And owing to a marvellous tendency of the human mind to add insult to injury, this very affliction, which should most command our sympathy and aid because it originates in cruel and idiotic injustice, is commonly regarded as fair game for our sneers and reproaches. More than that, the female sex, having been especially subjected to this kind of injustice, is often reproached with inferiority because of the liability of women to fall victims to the malady. It is as though we were to cut off a man’s arm, and then laugh at him for having only one. Even women themselves, galled by the contempt shown to their sex on account of its supposed “hysterical” tendencies, display a lamentable want of feeling when dealing with cases of nerve-trouble. They should bear in mind that if their attempts at putting themselves on an equality with men seem to destroy their womanly sympathies, they are not likely to attain their end.

But we are now realising that the sons of “hysterical” women are apt to suffer from neurasthenia, or even from epilepsy or insanity; so there is hope that their sufferings may at last receive adequate attention and consideration.

It is sometimes argued that in these enlightened days women are no longer compelled to endure the miseries of monotony that have so recently been their portion. This is, I think, a mistake. In large towns, doubtless, outlet is usually found for their activities, but numbers of women of the educated classes reside in the country and undergo a sad process of deterioration, owing to the prejudices entertained by those about them against their leaving home or seeking congenial employment. The complaints I have to listen to from ladies who have nothing to do are heart-rending. Tell them to cook their dinners, and you find that some foolish convention stands in the way; urge their entering some useful calling, and you are informed that their family will cut them if they do anything of the sort. Possibly the only occupation open to them is one for which training is necessary; and they have not been trained. And then, because an evil naturally generates its opposite, we find that when these women do succeed in finding employment, they rush to a pernicious extreme and overdo themselves.

When mischief is once set up, and an unhappy sufferer falls into the hands of unsympathetic doctors and nurses, her trials increase and multiply. If she be suffering from seeming inactivity, she is reproved, “roused,” and ordered to exert herself; the actual strain on the nerves of monotony, and the need in many cases of absolute repose, being wholly ignored. On the other hand, total inactivity is sometimes prescribed as a remedy for overwork, when restlessness is so great that enforced idleness maddens. The patience to gain the confidence of the sufferer, and the sympathy to understand her ills and their causes, are attributes of the higher order of mind that our sieves so often weed out.

The evils of overwork are too well known to need much comment. Those who have to earn their living cannot always avoid excessive fatigue, and they are specially liable to suffer from it if cursed by congenitally feeble organisations. But the strange thing is, that persons not obliged to work hard, and not rendered restless by previous enforced inactivity, should nevertheless deliberately make themselves ill. Nervous exhaustion, however, is extremely insidious. We can draw on our capital for a length of time without being made unpleasantly aware of growing weakness; and though self-destructive tendencies do not usually originate in a healthy, well-organised mind, people of good constitution do sometimes break down in consequence of the physiological ignorance in which they have been reared, or under the stress of a combination of exceptionally untoward circumstances.

Sometimes the true cause of the evil is to be found in an exaggerated personal ambition, showing none the less an ill-balanced mind; for, what truly sane person would sacrifice health to such chimeras as wealth and fame? All who have experienced wealth know perfectly well that it means simply an accumulation of bothers and a sense of responsibility; that we cannot, with our best endeavour, spend more than a certain amount upon ourselves, and that the possession of great wealth really means our acceptance of the arduous and thankless task of distributor to other people. The only remaining reward possible to us is the answer of a quiet conscience, and even that, we are aware, depends largely upon the liver, which organ luxury is apt to upset. It is chiefly from the wealthy that the ranks of the pessimists are recruited; and naturally so. For just as perfect health cannot long exist without self-forgetfulness, so all genuine happiness is to be found in working for a worthy object. Happiness of this kind and health of the nervous system go hand in hand;—at least, I have never found a prolonged divorce between the two possible.

As to the other chimera, fame, those who trouble about it must surely have a twist in their brains somewhere. The thing is a mere delusion of our own. Let us consider how far our greatest English writer, William Shakespeare, is known to the world. Of the vast populations of Africa, Arabia, India, China, Japan, and Polynesia, to say nothing of the inhabitants of Northern Asia, the native races of Australia and the Americas, and the peasantry of the Continent, few have so much as heard his name. And out of the small minority who have heard of it, how many have read a line of him? Even to the mass of our own population he is little known. Yet he lived but a couple of centuries ago and wrote as few men have written.

The earliest historical record takes us back only four thousand years or so—about a hundred generations—a mere flash of time compared to the ages during which our planet must have endured; and of all who lived before this brief period we know absolutely nothing.

For what, then, are we sacrificing our health, strength, and happiness?

CHAPTER IX.
AN IMPERFECT SYSTEM OF EDUCATION.

WE mould the clay while it is soft, that it may not be chipped or pulverised when it is hard by contact with obstacles which it has not been fitted to overcome. Is the process usually effectual? With how little destruction to life, with how little injury to character, do we graduate the sieves of our younger members? Do we succeed in moulding them into sane, capable citizens, or are we so careful to impart special kinds of instruction, to develop the part at the expense of the whole, that our interference is positively detrimental to the individual, and consequently to the community at large also?

I fear we can hardly be acquitted of this grave charge. The physiological demands made by growth and development on the vitality of the child are so great, that not only are abundant fresh air and nutrition required for the work, but also a considerable supply of surplus nervous energy. To use up this surplus energy for purposes other than that for which it is intended, is to stunt growth, or to limit the development of the mental faculties, or to diminish nerve-power; one of the three inevitably. And the diminution of nerve-power must bring with it physical, mental, or moral atrophy, according to the part on which the greatest strain has been put and the conditions in which the victim has been placed.

Moreover, children of large natural capabilities, whose complex nervous systems require an exceptional amount of nutriment, and whose sensitiveness and plasticity cause them to respond readily to instruction, are just those who will first break down under prolonged strain; and thus we may easily weed out the finer organisations, and continue the race from the less highly developed types.

Observation of nervous patients shows us that their small stock of available nerve-force may be attracted to one part to the detriment of another. For this reason nervous disease is specially difficult to understand. One patient told me he could get on fairly well if he used his body and not his brain, or if he used his brain and not his body; but if he tried to use both in the same day, he became ill. Of course, he did in reality use both at the same time; what he meant was that, if he exerted a fair amount of activity in the brain, he had only strength to exert a very small amount of activity in the rest of the body, and vice versÂ. He was right in saying that his available store of energy was so small that he could not expend even a moderate amount of it in both physical and mental labour during the same day.

Others have told me that if they devoted themselves for a few days to book-work and abstained from bodily labour, their studies became easy and were performed without fatigue; but that if they began to take exercise, they were compelled by exhaustion to abandon the book-work. Moreover, the physical exertion caused great fatigue for a day or two, until they grew accustomed to the altered mode of expending energy; and when it had become easy to them, the same weariness was experienced for a short time on their return to the book-work, even though the bodily exercise was then totally discontinued. By no effort of will could the two modes of activity be carried on together, unless only a very small amount of power was expended in each, the rest of the day being given up to repose. Total collapse followed the attempt, for the necessary nerve-force was wanting.

We thus learn when we are weak a truth which is less apparent in health, viz., that our available energy is a strictly limited quantity, dependent on nutritive supply. How great, then, is the folly of those who would urge to exertion persons in whom the nutritive supply is defective! But how much greater is the folly of those who, during the early years of the individual’s life, when the constitution is being formed and future health in great measure determined, will persistently compel him to expend his nerve-force in a particular direction, to the detriment of other parts of the organism, or who put such a strain upon the whole that the constitution is permanently injured! The partial injury is perhaps the more dangerous because it is the less easily observed. If a child begins to break down altogether under the stress of his school course, we become aware of the fact, and by timely interference sometimes—not always—put a stop to the work of destruction. But many delicate boys and girls contrive to struggle through their school course with little apparent harm, because the greater amount of their spare nerve-force being attracted to the part on which the strain is put, the allotted tasks can be performed. Whether growth is thereby stunted; whether nerve-force in general be decreased; whether perceptive power be dulled; whether the child have been withdrawn from the active experience of life necessary to healthy development; whether his various physiological needs have been fully supplied—all these questions frequently remain unasked, provided that the child have learnt a specified number of the more or less erroneous notions of his ignorant fellow-creatures, and have put them down on paper. And if he become neurasthenic, or succumb to some complaint to which his lowered vitality makes him fall an easy prey, or if he grow up with feeble powers of observation, or without the self-control dependent on the firm will that can only be developed by means of the right expenditure of a considerable amount of nerve-force, little connection is traced between his defective education and his defective nerve-structure. The children whose education has consisted chiefly of instruction from books cannot properly be said to be educated at all. In most cases their minds are warped by fixed ideas.

This is not saying that children should not be taught in the best sense of the word; that they should not be disciplined and trained to self-control, to habits of attention, and to ready observation; that they should not have an intelligent interest awakened in them concerning the universe in which they live. But mere book-learning will never do this. It is, unhappily, possible to be a walking encyclopedia of so-called knowledge, and yet to be an imperfect reflector of the life of our time.

And of the wonders and glories of Nature that surround us every moment from the cradle to the grave, how much are we taught? Yet these can be studied at our leisure out in God’s blessed air and under God’s blessed heaven. In the garden, at the river-bank, on the hill-side, by the sea-shore, in the lonely desert, there we may find health and wisdom and knowledge and happiness; and how many of us go to seek them there?

“A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books,” says Walt Whitman. Few of us ever see this morning glory; indeed, very few of us even take the trouble to look at an evening glory. I have stood day after day on the parade at a small seaside place, and have watched the sun sink below the watery horizon; sea, sand, rocks and sky all being illumined with magnificent colouring. Well-dressed people would pass and repass, some averting their eyes from the splendid spectacle lavished on them by prodigal Nature, others glancing at it vacantly with irresponsive countenances, others gazing on the ground or at one another, and talking of the cut of their new dresses or of the prices of stocks. Hardly any ever paused to look and admire. Poor creatures! All this joy—joy showered abundantly on me—was simply rejected by them. The essential God-like part of their natures had been starved; they had been taught in stuffy schoolrooms by wearied teachers and out of musty books; appreciation of the works of the good God had not been included in the curriculum. Carlyle mourns the extinction of the lamp of the soul. He is premature. In most of us it is never so much as lighted.

Yet we have within us somewhere the capability for seeing—though as in a glass darkly—a dim reflection of the Lord of Glory. We have but to look—to be taught how to look aright—and to us the Lord shall be in the earthquake and in the storm. We have but to listen—to be taught to listen aright, and throughout the universe we shall hear the still, small voice.

To Carlyle it was a tragedy that one man should die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge. And are not the majority of us ignorant even of the very things which lie most easily within our reach—of the air we breathe, of the ground on which we tread, of the skies on which we gaze? There is something known approximately about all of these which no man hath taught to us. After all our years of nerve-deterioration in stifling schoolrooms, few of us know anything of the very simplest facts of life, of the composition of our own bodies, of the most ordinary conditions of our own existence.

If any one doubts this assertion, let him ask two or three very elementary questions in very elementary affairs of his neighbours and acquaintance, and note the answers he obtains. The thing is easily tested. Persons regarded as educated—persons who know all about the doings of a certain aggressive warrior of past times, who from mere greed of conquest cruelly attacked harmless savages, and then had the hardihood to describe his own misdoings in writing—are hopelessly lost and bewildered if you say to them, “What is your brain composed of?” “What is a choanite?” “What makes the leaves grow on the trees?” “Where does the soil in the garden come from?” “How does the dew find its way on to the grass?” “Why does a ball bounce?”—or some such questions which sound elementary and unscientific enough.

But perhaps the knowledge required to answer these questions correctly belongs to departments of science which in most schools are regarded as extra subjects, and only taught occasionally and perfunctorily. It is certainly strange that information which ought surely to be imparted early, and which may be imparted in a most interesting and enjoyable way, should be put on one side for dry dates and grammar, a superfluity of arbitrary arithmetical rules, and the record of immoral conduct on the part of antique conquerors,—things which few wish to remember, and which sensible persons mostly take pains to forget.

After all, we have only a limited space in which to store our knowledge. As we grow up, we have to learn the things that are suited to our several professions. We have no room for useless lumber, and must cast it out. It never ought to have cumbered the ground. Let the dates be for the historian, the grammar for the grammarian, the immoral records for the classical scholar, and the endless arbitrary rules for the dull. By the time we have specialised, we shall know what uninteresting details we are forced to master, and what we may safely leave to the encyclopÆdias. We shall not then have disquieted ourselves for nought. Our early education should before all things mean for us “the harmonious development of all the faculties.” For each of us and all of us should be laid the foundation of the love of God and the knowledge of such of His works as daily surround us. No other foundation can be secure.

As matters at present stand, we learn quite as much out of school as we do in it. The training of the eye, and the hand, and the judgment in games is not usually considered a necessary part of education, but it is a very important part of it nevertheless. I am not sure that, up to a certain age, it is not the most important part. We are apt to forget that we go through life rapidly calculating weight, distance, and balance, and that our success in many branches depends on our power of ready attention, on our promptness of action, on our quick observation of natural phenomena and the ways of our fellow-creatures, on our delicacy of manipulation and on our perseverance and self-control, quite as much as it does on the knowledge we have learnt from books.

Considering the imperfection of our present system of education; considering how we dwarf, stunt, and starve the noblest and best part of each individual, and the noblest and best individuals of the community, the wonder is, not that there is so much nervous disease amongst us, but that there is not more. Fortunately the tide has begun to turn, and we are at last becoming alive to the fact that our method of instruction is not all that could be wished. But we wake up slowly, and “cramming” is still the order of the day. Indeed, competitive examinations seem to be multiplying while we are cogitating. This is much to be regretted. If ever the time arrives when all public posts and places of trust are filled by persons who have gone through this extraordinary process of mental stuffing, and who are about as fitted to understand the needs of our race and the conditions of our right development as Strasburg geese are fitted to set an example as athletes, then may God have mercy on us all! In our complex social state, the nimble wit, the ready invention, the adaptive disposition, are specially needed to find out for us the best means by which the resources of Nature may more and more be used for our service and to the support of our ever-increasing populations. Persons who survive a process which destroys the most sensitive and adaptive minds are but the intellectual lees and dregs of our community. To perpetuate these at the expense of the more highly organised is literally suicide. We are scarcely alive to our danger, because those who have been trained on a different pattern still take the lead amongst us, and the full results of the system of “cram” are not yet seen.

I was talking the other day to a lady who had recently been passing her time in preparing lady candidates for examinations. She herself had survived several of these ordeals; and, without falling into the error of those who have eternally saddled on the innocent Tenderden steeple the sole responsibility for the appearance of the Goodwin Sands, it may be casually observed that she was in a frightfully nervous condition, rendering her society a real trial to all but those skilled in the care of nervous invalids. She answered candidly some questions which I had the hardihood to put to her. I give both questions and answers almost word for word:—

Comment is needless.

I have had some opportunity of observing the cramming system in Germany, and have been struck by the unsatisfactory nature of the results of what goes by the name of education amongst girls of the well-to-do classes. A German lady, who had had experience as a teacher in a large public school, told me that she considered the present system of teaching an entire mistake. “Look at the results,” she said. “How many German women ever open any book but a novel? What do they care for culture? The teacher has no time to interest the girls in what they learn. All there is time for is to cram them with the facts without which they cannot pass the examination. As if true education could be tested by an occasional examination! And the sacrifice of health amongst these young girls is terrible!”

For my own part, I heartily sympathise with German ladies who read nothing but novels. In my childhood I was taught French in England on the most approved methods and at the cost of much hard toil. I afterwards picked up German in Germany itself and in a pleasurable manner. Ever since, the sight or sound of a French word has brought to my mind the recollection of weariness, of being bored, of dry grammar that has been of no earthly use to me, of a deplorable waste of sunshiny hours. But the sight or sound of a German word recalls the soft thud of my horse’s hoofs as I galloped along the natural Rotten Row of the German pine forest; the ring of my skates as I glided swiftly over the frozen meadows; the picturesque old houses standing out against a frosty sky; the band in the Casino gardens; the voice of the soprano at the opera; the magnificent chorus, “Heilig, heilig ist Gott der Herr,” sung at the sacred concert in the old Marktkirche. And so it has come about that while I am fairly well read in German literature, I am lamentably ignorant of French literature. The study of the one is pleasure; the study of the other is pain.

The mental impressions which delight are those that weave themselves healthily into our structure and form a groundwork for future impressions of a like order. Our happiness is composed, not only of the joys of the present, but of the joys of the past. Learning, if it is to be of the highest benefit to us, must before all things be made pleasurable. In a few schools this principle is being recognised, but owing to the low value still put by the community upon the best kind of teaching, the reform is often carried out at the expense of throwing a great strain upon an inadequate teaching staff. In the best of our high schools for girls, the number of teachers is insufficient because the funds are insufficient. We have not yet learnt to appreciate our advantages and to pay a reasonable price for them.

We willingly spend our money on luxuries. Money represents so much energy. And if the energy of the country be spent on that which enervates, while that which improves and develops be left to languish, how are we to avoid deterioration?

But before we spend our money on so called education, let us be sure that it is worthy of the name. Cramming with detail is not beneficial instruction; book-lore is not always wisdom; pedantry has nothing to do with culture. It is a trite saying, but none the less true, that the only positive knowledge we are capable of acquiring is a knowledge of our own boundless ignorance. The first stepping-stone to a right understanding is humility.

CHAPTER X.
SECONDARY CAUSES OF NERVE-DETERIORATION.

MANY minor causes of nervous exhaustion have been so often cited, and such serious warnings have been uttered against them, that it is scarcely worth while to draw attention to them here. It may suffice to enumerate those which are more frequently ignored.

Of the infectiousness of nervous disease it seems almost useless at present to speak, for few will listen. Probably the malady will, for some time to come, continue to be spread abroad by those who suffer from it, as certainly as leprosy is spread by the leper. The early symptoms not being readily observed and recognised by the uninitiated, great mischief can be wrought while all around remain unconscious of the impending disaster. To young persons, and to those who inherit a predisposition to nerve-weakness, the danger of infection is specially great. Moreover, the predisposed often aid one another in the development of the malady, a fact which is sufficiently proved by observation of families exhibiting neurotic tendencies.

It has been fully recognised that imperfect recovery from some attack of illness is a frequent cause of neurasthenia. It is not fully recognised that the cause is usually a preventible one. A very common blunder is generally at the root of the mischief. It is thought necessary to hurry on the convalescent lest she should “drift into chronic invalidism,” as the saying goes. The result is that the patient recovers to a certain extent, only to fall a victim later to chronic nervous weakness. Patients who are making a natural and healthy recovery are over-eager to exert themselves, and require to be kept back. Should this eagerness not be manifested, it is a mistake to say that the patient must be roused in order to preserve her from neurasthenia. Neurasthenia is already there, and unless the building up of the nervous system go hand in hand with the patient’s exertions, those exertions will assuredly be productive of harm. Unfortunately the patient is frequently removed from the watchful care of the doctor and the nurse just as watchful care is most urgently needed.

It does not occur to many of us, but it is nevertheless true, that whenever we foster wrong theories of life, we render ourselves liable to nerve-trouble. If we make mistakes in our drawing of the chart by the guidance of which we mean to steer our bark,—if we omit to note down the most dangerous rocks, and imagine obstacles in a course which we might follow with safety,—small wonder that we suffer shipwreck. Mr. Laurence Oliphant has pointed out how foolishly we encourage erroneous notions in the children in our schools; how persistently we teach them that the road to happiness is to be found in selfishness, and award honour and approbation to those who have succeeded in getting the better of their fellows. In the wider school of the world the same principle is adhered to. The man who amasses a fortune, however selfishly, is the man to whom the peerage is offered, and for whom we manifest admiration. Nemesis follows. Those who are plunged into conditions for which they have not been gradually fitted necessarily suffer in the change. Unaccustomed luxury brings its own deterioration, while the excessively unequal distribution of wealth thus encouraged brings inevitable misery on the whole community. To the Shakespeare and the Newton no peerage is offered and scant admiration is accorded, though by their individual genius the whole race be raised. Consequently, the Shakespeare and the Newton are rare birds; not because it matters to themselves whether they are rewarded or no; not because the heaven-sent genius requires any earthly inducement to do his heavenly work; but because we create, for that which we admire and reward, an atmosphere in which it can arise and flourish.

There is one very serious result of our refusal to honour those to whom honour is due. The task of raising and training healthy and capable people to the work of the world and the service of God, and—as the orthodox believe—in the very likeness of God, is surely not the least noble task to which human beings can devote themselves. And this, though in a degree men’s work, is, in a greater degree and in a more special manner, the work of women. What honour is awarded to women who guard their health, develop their faculties and enlarge and enrich their minds, that they may be fitted to perform the community’s highest work? Absolutely none. True, it is not their only work; it does not fall to the lot of all to perform it; but every good and well educated woman, knowing herself to be a potential mother, tries conscientiously to fit herself for the part she may be called upon to play, and in so doing becomes aware of her own value. That so few women thus prove themselves to be good and well educated is scarcely the fault of women in particular. It is the fault of the whole community. Just as a Shakespeare and a Newton may rise superior to inadequate appreciation, so do some great women. But these women are, and must be, exceptions. The majority of women, no less than men, depend in large measure on the sympathy, approbation, and esteem of others.

Perhaps women need these incentives even more than men need them, because for centuries their love of approbation has been developed abnormally by their dependence on men, and by the need they have experienced of securing their approval. Natural feelings, denied egress by the front door, find their way out at the back door. By reprehensible means, and greatly to the detriment of both sexes, women have continually forced themselves into notice, while fulsome flattery and exemption from work demanding the healthy employment of their faculties, have taken the place of legitimate and inspiring honour.

A fresh result of the determined withholding from women of the distinction and approbation which has been honestly earned, is manifesting itself in a curious manner in these modern times. Women too noble by nature to indulge in ignoble ways the faculties within them that cried out for exercise, stung by taunts of inferiority, chafed by the deprivation of means for obtaining the rational education and the experience of the world which were to them as the very breath of life, conscious of talents no whit inferior to those of the men about them, have flung themselves into the whirl of public affairs, and, with truly admirable perseverance and indomitable pluck, have won for themselves the only honours open to them.

Some good has thereby been wrought. Employments suited to women, and hitherto closed to them, have now been thrown open; book-learning—too often a miserable system of cram, but perhaps better than nothing at all—has been placed within their reach. Public attention has been attracted to long-standing injustice; and considering the immense importance to the whole race of the full development of all the faculties of women, it was, and still is, to the interest of the public to give the fullest attention to the subject which it can manage to spare.

Unfortunately the affair has another aspect which here closely concerns us. The over-eagerness with which some women have thrown themselves into the struggle for existence has in some quarters earned for the sex as a whole the reputation of possessing more self-feeling, less disinterestedness, and more sordidness of aim than men. It has been rashly assumed that because the pioneers of a movement have acted foolishly, because they have been injured in fighting a battle harder than any that will have to be fought by those for whom they prepare the way, all women are necessarily unfit for active life in the world. Alarm on the one side generates deleterious irritation on the other side. Faculties which might be devoted to the creditable performance of valuable work are dissipated in fighting for the privilege of doing the work at all. It should be remembered that those who have been starved always devour food with injurious avidity when it is at last brought within their reach, unless they are mercifully restrained by wise well-wishers.

It cannot be doubted, however, that women who conscientiously perform their own special work in the world must have less strength at their disposal for other work than the majority of men. So far from this being to their discredit, the extreme importance of their own special functions ought to be more generally recognised. At the present time, the women who neglect their duties are apparently held in as much esteem as the women who render the State the highest possible service.

Another point is worthy of careful consideration. Certain professions were once held to be unlawful for women on the ground that their intellectual faculties were of too inferior an order to enable them to follow masculine callings successfully. Women thereupon attained eminence in these very professions, thereby proving that their intellects, at all events, were equal to the occasion. An intimate acquaintance with some of the women who have thus proved their mental capacity has convinced me that they are not, on that account, very highly organised people. So far from having enlarged their whole circle, they seem to have shot out a long angle on one side of their natures at the expense of drawing to a corresponding extent on the other side. The emotional part of them appears to be defective, and the defect manifests itself chiefly in a lamentable want of sympathy, and in an annoying, though often amusing, deficiency of humour. It may be that the sieves of these professions are of a particularly distorting order, and that the sensitive organisations of women are more easily injured by them than are the tougher organisations of men. Distortion is apt to produce nerve-deterioration in both sexes, but especially in the highly strung nervous systems of women.

Unfortunately, the Modern Malady is at present so little understood, that the very people who are betraying the most serious symptoms of nervous weakness are often declared by those about them to be in excellent health, a mistake which the sufferers themselves, eager to avoid the imputation of nervousness, are careful to foster. On one occasion I remarked to friends on the enfeebled state of nerve to which a clever and energetic woman had been reduced, owing in part to her labours in an arduous profession. Although the symptoms were unmistakable, my words were received with derision.

“Mrs. T—— nervous!” exclaimed my friends. “What an idea! As if such a thing could be possible!”

The notion that nervous weakness was a species of illness to which any one might fall a victim if placed in conditions calculated to produce it, was entirely beyond the mental range of these good people. And following the natural law, in proportion to their ignorance was their conviction of profound wisdom. Mrs. T—— had more and more earned for herself a wide reputation for “strong-mindedness.” She was popularly supposed to be “hard,” and judging from my own experience of her character, I should say that the popular judgment was in that instance more correct than usual; though why so noble a quality as mental strength should be associated with defectiveness, with the terrible process of loss of feeling—a continual lopping of the sensitive tendrils by means of which the human plant keeps itself in touch with its environment and draws from it its mental nutriment—I am unable to imagine. Now, my friends were convinced that the defect of emotional nature commonly called hardness, and a condition in which emotional symptoms are often manifested, were things incompatible. They therefore bestowed ridicule upon me, and considered that they had “fixed that matter up.” My belief is that the dear ladies would have “fixed up” with equal alacrity any matter in the whole of this wide universe.

But Dame Nature, always stern in carrying out her threats, slowly but surely brought Mrs. T——’s downward career to its logical conclusion. She was compelled to give up work and seek seclusion for a season. Her friends and acquaintance were surprised, but the tragedy was by no means astonishing. Ambition, and consequent overwork, began the mischief; the hardness which was supposed to be her safeguard completed it. Once out of sympathy with her fellow-creatures, her sorrows were endless. Loving herself more than them, she tried to act in her own interests in opposition to theirs. Her fellow-creatures took their revenge. The perception that is born of sympathy now being blunted, she estimated their characters wrongly; she confided in the untrustworthy and was suspicious of the trustworthy. Her blunders were productive of suffering not only to herself but to others. Blame, friction, and harassing cares followed, in the midst of which her brain gave way.

There are those who, cursed by the taint of insanity in their families, pray daily to God to preserve them from this frightful evil, and who, even while they are praying, turn their backs upon the road that leads to sanity. That road is the enlarging of the sympathies.

It is sometimes urged that much sympathy is a bad thing, not only for its possessor, but for those with whom he comes in contact. Persons who give indiscriminately to beggars, who make a great show of superficial pity and affection, or who shed tears on the smallest provocation—all, in short, who, from nervous disorder or congenital weakness, are wanting in judgment and self-control, are almost invariably classed with highly developed people of large emotional natures.

As a matter of fact, the two classes have nothing in common. Any poor lunatic, whose injured nerve-centres are incapable of disposing healthily of the full amount of energy generated, can manifest an excess of superficial emotion. It is noteworthy that the very people who save themselves trouble by giving to beggars without careful inquiry into the merits of the case will save themselves trouble in other respects at the expense of their fellow-creatures, and that those who harrow others by a needless and self-indulgent emotional display are precisely those who will abundantly prove their selfishness and shallowness of feeling so soon as any sacrifice is demanded of them.

On the other hand, we sometimes find that the most truly sympathetic people earn for themselves a quite undeserved reputation for hardness, for it is not always either wise or kind to show all the sympathy we feel. Only the largest natures can rise superior to their innate love of approbation; only those who are really actuated by a desire to benefit humanity can resist the temptation to flatter weakness when there is anything to be gained by so doing. The most successful in this respect run the greatest risk of misconception. Self-control is regarded as want of feeling; unselfishness may appear like indifference. In dealing with the nervous, virtue must often be satisfied with its own reward. After all, the reward is a large one. It is nothing less than the cure of our patient.

Continued unselfish action is the only sufficient test of deep feeling. The tree is known by its fruit. The world is full of mimetic people who can speak so well and write so well as to deceive the very elect, should these be so simple as to judge them by their professions. Unhappily the elect too often forget the injunction to acquire the wisdom of the serpent.

Amongst the most serious secondary causes of nerve-deterioration in modern times we find one to which attention has recently been drawn by many writers of distinction. It is not merely overwork, hurry, and excitement that are injurious to our organisms, but a lack of the solitude and calm in which impressions are combined and ideas created. Many of us live in the midst of such a whirl of rapidly succeeding sights, sounds, and sensations, that only a confused recollection of them is left in our minds. It is as though we were to eat incessantly, leaving no leisure for digestion; as though we were so eager to know, that we should refuse to wait to learn. We forget that the sure test of knowledge and progress is the power to reproduce the impressions we have assimilated; not the very elementary capability of putting down on paper the undiluted and undigested detail which has been stuffed into the outer chamber of our minds for that purpose. We must create; we must see, and show to others, “the light that never was on sea or land.”

How is this to be accomplished? In attempting to answer the question, let us consider what we do when we wish to obtain the photograph of a face that does not exist. We photograph a number of faces one over the other on the same plate. Is that enough? Does it suffice us to obtain a series of impressions on our plate? No; we now need the dark room, the developing and fixing solutions, and the presiding genius of a higher intelligence, before we can obtain the negative of a face that never yet was seen.

And if in this age we expose ourselves to an abundance of impressions, but ignore or underrate the solitude of the dark room, the imaginative faculty which combines and develops, to say nothing of the presiding genius of a higher intelligence, what is to become of our creative power? What, indeed, is to become of our sanity? Moreover, we must remember that there is one great difference between ourselves and the photographic plate. The plate is sensitised once for all; it receives its picture and its work is done. But we are, or may be, always absorbing into ourselves that which sensitises us more and more highly, and of receiving more and more perfect pictures. In addition to which great privilege, we may not only communicate to others, but eventually hand down to others, the faculty thus obtained.

How much reason is there in the creed that we should believe only in the existence of that which is borne witness to by our five senses? In that case we must consider ourselves as perfectly developed as it is possible for creatures to be. All evolution has been a course of rendering ourselves, and being rendered, more and more capable of discerning that which is; and, considering how feeble an atom is man in the midst of so mighty a universe, it is unlikely that the process can yet be finished. Perhaps the deaf bee believes itself to be perfectly constituted, yet a whole world of sound is cut off from it. Just because it has so tremendous a defect, it is unable to comprehend its own loss. From how much in the universe are we also cut off? How far do we injure ourselves by ignoring the existence of that which it is important to us to learn? It is argued, however, that reliable evidence should correct the evidence of each man’s individual senses.[9] When we inquire more closely what is meant by this, we find merely that the experience of the majority of mankind in the past is the source of light which is to illumine individual darkness. A strange source truly! Supposing that the most highly developed of the bees—and the most highly developed are necessarily a small minority—were to obtain some inkling of the nature of sound, and were to attempt to impart it to their companions, would they not be told that the universal experience of bee-kind was against their theories? Would not the deaf creatures be angered by the insinuation of their deafness and consequent inferiority?

And so we may in time discover that, though the honest agnostic may be, and often is, far superior to the dogmatic religionist, it is only persons of a certain degree of development (of all classes) who are capable of belief in the unseen, and that this development has little to do with the faculty of passing examinations. It is possible that the higher faculties are not best developed as we imagine; that what we most usually call brain-work is often rather a means of using up our store of intellectual power than of developing it. The fact that our greatest men of genius have come from the lower ranks of life rather than from the higher should lead us to ask whether the nobler part of mind grows better in the school of the pedagogue or in the school of Nature.[10]

There are cases on record of animals who have been taken by a circuitous route to a distant land, which they had never before visited, and who, on being released, have returned home as straight as the crow flies. In like manner, people have been known to find their way direct to their destination through portions of crowded cities to which they were strangers. Others walk confidently in the dark without hurting themselves. They feel when they are near an obstacle or a precipice. Others approach the most savage beasts and receive no hurt.

If these instances are rejected as fables, we must in consistency reject many supposed scientific facts which we have accepted on no better evidence. Yet what sense or faculty possessed by the majority can account for them?

The man whose measure of the universe is largest, whose development is the widest and most symmetrical, is the man who, having once reached maturity, is the least liable to fall a victim to neurasthenia; not only because his knowledge of quicksands is greatest, but because he has proved his adaptability. The success or failure of the large nature to reach maturity depends quite as much upon circumstance as upon the rate and method of his development. One great poet may survive detraction, but a Chatterton destroys himself. If the detraction be equal in both cases, other circumstances are very different. Coleridge survived a mistaken and injurious mode of education, but he survived it—an opium-eater.

Observation and experience teach us that human beings may be divided into two classes. (1.) Those who act; (2.) Those who are acted upon.[11] The first class, whether so regarded by the world or not, are essentially sane. The second, whether so regarded by the world or not, are essentially insane. The first have a will; the second have none—to speak of. The first are responsible; the second are irresponsible. The first, through self-sacrifice, develop and progress; the second, through self-seeking, fail and deteriorate. Accidental illness may cause members of the first to drop to the second; helpful influence may enable members of the second to climb to the first.

The second class may be subdivided into those who drift helplessly before circumstance, and those who break themselves in pieces before the circumstances that are too strong for them. These latter cannot be persuaded to leave off trying to accommodate the whole universe in their own little measure. Strange to say, they are often credited with possessing strength of will, whereas they merely possess its hostile counterfeit, self-will.

Conquest where conquest is possible, and submission without exhausting struggle where conquest is impossible, are doubtless true wisdom. But wisdom implies knowledge; and knowledge, right education; and education, the divinely imparted faculty for receiving instruction.

To gain the victory over self on the one hand, and to yield submission to God’s eternal laws on the other hand, this is liberty—the glorious liberty of the children of God.

It is surely our capacity for development, our power to rise, even at the cost of much suffering, to a knowledge of God, to the likeness of God, that constitutes the great hope of the universe. The idea is admirably expressed in an exquisite chant, entitled “Song of the Universal,” by the well-known American poet-philosopher, Walt Whitman:—

THE END.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON

THE MASSAGE CASE.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
(2 Vols. T. Fisher Unwin.)
THE HOSPITAL.

“The author of this decidedly clever novel seems to have written ‘The Massage Case’ as a reminiscence of a very unpleasant personal experience.... From this point of view it is noteworthy for its studious moderation of tone. Not only have we the contrast between the two doctors and nurses, the good and the bad, but the good qualities of Dr. Broadley and the woman employed by him are honestly stated. There is no attempt to depict either as an impostor, and the doctor’s energy and force of character are spoken of with frank admiration, although these are the main instruments in bringing the patient to the verge of madness.... Such a character is perfectly real, perfectly possible; and while the mischief that results from his somewhat pachydermatous honesty and lack of fine perception is plainly stated—while we are shown that the very force and strength of character which had won him his place in the front of the profession tend to overawe his patient, and make her submit in silence to wrong judgment of her symptoms—there is no attempt to vilify Dr. Broadley himself, nor the profession to which he belongs.... If this book, which, under the guise of a story, points out clearly, but with a not unfriendly hand, the errors into which both branches of the medical profession are apt to fall, and makes doctors and nurses more careful and kind, we, at least, will bid it welcome.”

REVIEWS OF “THE MASSAGE CASE.”
By CYRIL BENNETT.

THE BOSTON MEDICAL AND SURGICAL JOURNAL.

“This is the first novel that has come to our notice in which massage takes a prominent part. It is a very good story, told with the simplicity and earnestness of truth, and probably part, if not all of it, is founded on fact.... We need not go from home to find nursing homes and private hospitals of this kind. There are some keen delineations of character in the book. The eminently successful practitioner, who overwhelms people with his powerful individuality, and compels them into saying and doing what he means them to say and do, is well described. So also is the highly appreciated old-fashioned nurse, who has become a little too knowing.... But what became of the patient? That is just how our readers can while away a few hours very pleasantly in finding out for themselves.”

THE SPECTATOR.

“The best part of the story is the description of the nursing home. Here we are sometimes reminded of Charles Reade.”

THE ZOOPHILIST.

“This is a pleasantly readable novel of a very praiseworthy type, chiefly remarkable, from our point of view, for the pen and ink portraits of two very dissimilar medical men, and an exposure of the evils which may ensue to a nervous patient from falling into unsympathetic hands.... We presume the moral is that massage, like certain doctors, does not suit everybody.”

THE GUARDIAN.

“The author apparently desires to show that an eminent physician ... may easily become the tool of a determined woman who has made up her mind that the course of true love shall not run, smoothly or otherwise, to a conclusion that she deems undesirable; that ‘nursing homes’ may be so manipulated as to serve temporarily as places of confinement for persons whose relations find it inconvenient that they should be at liberty; and that the ‘Weir Mitchell System,’ whatever excellences it may possess, is not a panacea for every disorder to which humanity is subject.”

THE STANDARD.

“These volumes are apparently written to warn the public that nefarious persons find very easily, in massage ‘homes,’ all the conveniences for getting their uncongenial relations put out of the way and tortured, which used to be the speciality of private lunatic asylums. If so, we hope that Cyril Bennett may be the Charles Reade to rouse the world to open the doors of these new and hitherto unsuspected Bastilles.”

ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS.

“Picturesque and animated scenes of Eastern life.”

WHITEHALL REVIEW.

“His two volumes are amusing and interesting, and written in a style which promises much in the future.... There are truth, life, and colour throughout the book.”

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