A patient suffering from neurasthenia was once lying ill at a small nursing home, undergoing massage. A visitor at the house inquired of its owner, a trained nurse, what ailed the lady.
“Oh, there’s nothing the matter with her,” replied the trained attendant glibly. “She is only a little odd.”
What a vista of ignorance was opened up by this remark! How could a patient who was ill enough to be subjected to theWeir Mitchelltreatment have nothing the matter with her, unless indeed she had simply been condemned to imprisonment for the sake of the loaves and fishes she would thereby be forced to dispense?
Two nurses at a hospital were once puzzling over the case of a neurasthenic woman then under treatment there. They were perplexed, with reason, because the woman appeared to be in pain, although the harsh medical verdict was to the effect that she had no disease. They were nice, kindly women, and were sorry for the patient. So they found a middle course between the rival evidences by coming to the conclusion that, though there was nothing the matter with her, her pains were “real to her,” and they ought to treat her with gentleness. All I can say is, if I ever get ill, may I be nursedby those two women. There is something genuinely heroic about people who refuse to follow powerful superiors to do evil.
Nevertheless, though their resolution was right and praiseworthy, their conclusion was wrong. If we are unduly conscious of any part of our bodies, that part is not in a healthy state. Wherever there is pain, there is disintegration—disease, and because the medical advisers in this instance could not find the disease, it by no means followed that it was not there. “The fact is, we know very little about nerves,” said a medical man the other day. His candour merits our respect. To say that a patient can fancy pain is absurd. Pain is but a condition of the nerves. If it is not there, we cannot feel it. It is objected that, if we take a patient’s thoughts off her aches and pains, she ceases to feel them, consequently the pain must be imaginary. But if we cut a finger while in a state of excitement, we feel no pain. Not because the pain is there and we are unconscious of it, but that while nervous energy is diverted into another channel, there can beno pain. Read the account of the burning of the martyrs of Valenciennes at the time of the Spanish persecution in the Netherlands.[5]Those brave people were in a state of ecstasy in which pain was impossible. If there is one thing certain in past history, it is that they suffered absolutely nothing. The contemporary evidence on the subject is overwhelming.
But, as far as the neurasthenic are concerned, the practice of taking their attention off their pains has its dangers. The process is apt to be fatiguing, so that the patients only have more pain as soon as the distraction ceases. This fact is very exasperating to the more ignorant of their attendants. “She was well enough as long as she was thinking of something else,” the disappointed folks will tell you with an aggrieved air. One woman, possessing many good qualities, informed me that what such patients wanted was a “thrashing.” This nurse was amasseusein the habit of “Weir Mitchelling” patients. Without supposing that her viewsever took a practical form, their existence could hardly conduce to a kindly consideration for suffering invalids.
One very favourite notion about the nervous is, that they ought not to be sympathised with. If any one will try this treatment for a little while himself, even in health, he will find it necessary to fly pretty quickly to people possessing natural human feeling, in order to avoid drifting into permanent lunacy. In disease the danger is still greater. I have always found that when I sympathised cordially with real causes of distress, and simply disregarded unmistakably simulated ones, the simulated ones died a natural death without more ado.
But which symptoms are real and which are simulated? Here the tough or toughened organisation is usually hopelessly at sea. Here no information will enlighten, no rules will guide. If we are by nature incapable of making simple observations correctly, we had better give the whole thing up and go into another line of business. Even the so-called simulated symptoms are in a sense realsymptoms of a morbid condition of brain; so, however good observers we may be, if we have not the wisdom and the patience to deal with these wisely and gently, we are still disqualified. “But nervous patients are so trying!” Why, of course they are. “Trying” is not the word. They are sometimes maddening. And nurses who are overworked, which they ought not to be, will be saints if they always contrive to keep their temper with them. We must remember, however, that lunatics and delirious people are trying also, and why should it be criminal to mismanage one kind of nervous disorder and not another?
I was once travelling in a railway carriage in France. The stuffiness of the place was poisonous, and I ventured to lower one of the windows a few inches. Instantly a French gentleman, seated opposite to me, well out of the draught, reared himself up and descended upon me with indignation and with a positive sense of injury. He could not stand the cold. Why had I opened the window? He must really be permitted to shut it.
An English gentleman explained that we wished for air. The Frenchman was amazed.
“It surely cannot hurt you,” he said, with violent gesticulation, “to have the windows shut. But I, when they are open, Isuffer.”
It would have been impossible to convince him of the fact that I suffered when the window was shut as much as he did when it was open.
Some of our nurses are very like this French gentleman. Let the patient have a cold, and they are quite pleased for her to put her feet in mustard and water. Let her have a shattered nervous system, and nine out of ten of them feel injured if they are told to stop their chatter. I have known women who were in many respects capable nurses rendered useless, as far as nervous patients were concerned, by the erroneous notions with which they had been impregnated. One nurse told me seriously that the proper way to manage a nervous invalid was to make her afraid of you. She had had no personal experience in the matter, and the little prattling monkey was hardly likely toinspire much terror; but that was what she had been taught.
Doctors, too, sometimes indulge in whimsical ideas about these cases. A nurse, who had recently “Weir Mitchelled” a neurasthenic patient, told me that the lady, like many others suffering from disorder of the medulla, had a difficulty in swallowing, and could not take the pills that were ordered for her. I inquired what happened. She replied that the doctor, evidently impressed with the belief that the difficulty was all sham, insisted that she should get those pills down somehow. It was done. But the nurse informed me that, in the effort, the poor lady swallowed a whole bottle of water every day, and it was very bad for her.
A gentleman once asked me if I knew what Beau Brummell was then employed in doing in the other world. Much surprised at the question, I replied that I could not imagine.
“Eating raw onions with a steel knife,” he said solemnly. “By and bye, he will get to cabbage. For a long time he will be allowed no other food.”
On this principle, what will happen to that doctor who made a sick person swallow a whole bottle of water daily? But perhaps Beau Brummell is not suffering merely for having spoken contemptuously of the “creature” who ate cabbage, but for his indifference to the needs of others throughout his life. As to the doctor, let us hope he will be able to show a counterbalancing array of kind actions as a set-off against his misdemeanour, and so escape penance.
After all, it requires little skill to find fault. The thing is to do better. Unfortunately, it is just those medical men who have recognised nervous exhaustion and done their best to treat it who, in the nature of things, have made the most blunders and have been most blamed. This was inevitable. It is by failure that we learn. There is all the more need to draw attention to our failures and to point the moral. We have often tried hard to treat the person and not the disease; we have even tried to treat the disease and not the person. We must accustom ourselves to attacking the enemy on all sides at once. We must realisethat not only the food that we eat and the air we breathe act upon the nervous system, but every impression conveyed to it through our senses. We may think it is of little consequence whether we say certain words to a patient or not. We think they will soon be forgotten, or the damage done by them be repaired. But no impression on anything in nature can be done away, not even the impression of the faintest particle of light. The whole universe throughout eternity is altered by our uttering one sentence or leaving it unsaid.
Supposing we put a photographic plate into the camera and expose it, then take it to the dark room and look at it. Can we see any change? None whatever. But immerse it in the developing solution, and the change it has undergone becomes apparent,—there is a picture on our plate. If we take it out into the light without first fixing it, the picture fades away. Is the plate therefore the same as it was before we took our picture? No, it is entirely different, and nothing in the world can ever restorethe film on the plate precisely to its former condition.
In like manner outer impressions are every moment altering our nervous structure, and life’s clock cannot be put back.
WEmust bear in mind the fact that all observation is difficult, not only because of our lack of perception, but because impressions already received project themselves, so to speak, on to the objects to be observed, and prevent our seeing these as they really are. Here lies the true interpretation of the “fixed idea,” and the “subjective” order of mind. The mind must not only be large enough and elastic enough to receive new impressions, but must also combine them with the old, so as to modify the former idea; for that which can only receive a new impression at the cost of casting out former and equally truthful impressions is deficient in retentiveness, and must always be wanting in thoroughness. We see examples of this order of mind in persons who eagerly takeup one subject after another, but who permanently assimilate nothing. Mental growth is manifestly of little advantage to us if, while gaining on the one side, we are continually losing on the other. Again, if we cut ourselves off from outer impressions we lose mental power, for it is only by use of a part that nutriment can be attracted to it; and if our impressions are too exclusively of one particular order, our minds become ill-balanced.
Before we can be of special use as observers, therefore, education must have meant for us “the harmonious development of all the faculties.” We need to have our sense perceptions in good order that we may perceive quickly and accurately; we need the retentive power to enable us to store the impressions received; and we need the faculty of combining these impressions in our minds—the lower manifestation of which process we call imagination, and the higher, reasoning faculty.
Probably, in the cases where we generally attribute erroneous observations to excess ofimagination, the fault really lies in the defective perceptive power. Either the nervous structure lacks sufficient sensitiveness to respond readily to the stimulus, or it lacks the strength to retain the impression. In these respects we commonly note improvement with the amelioration of the general health. It is a question, however, whether, if the stimulus were to make an adequate impression, the impression would not be more effectually retained. Be that as it may, we find persons who observe isolated facts readily enough, and who remember them well, but who learn little thereby, because they lack combining power. Isolated facts are facts to them and nothing more. The notion oflawis a thing beyond them, and each fact has to be observed separately.
These are just the persons who are unfit to have the charge of nervous invalids, but for some mysterious reason they are just the persons into whose hands nervous invalids most often fall. Perhaps the explanation is, that ready combining power can exist only with a certain amount of sensitiveness ofnervous structure, and that the sieves through which we pass our nurses may cast out those who would be of the greatest value in nervous illness, besides tending to lessen the sensitiveness of those that remain.[6]At all events, I have been disappointed to find that women from whom I hoped great things as nurses—women of good organisation, and certainly not of delicate constitution—have broken down completely in the course of their hospital training; whilst women whom I consider positively injurious to any kind of invalid have passed through it triumphantly. The question arises, Are we not unwise so to shape our sieves as to exclude the very people by whom we ourselves would most prefer to be tended in sickness? Will any mere knowledge atone for the loss of that keen intelligence which we recognise in persons of so-called sympathetic disposition?
On inquiring the reason why so many highly desirable persons have been cast out from the sieve of their hospital training, Ihave been told that the fact causes no concern to the authorities, so numerous are the women pressing in to take the place of the defeated strugglers for existence. If this is no answer to the inquiries, it is at least as good as most of the replies one gets when seeking for information on this unsatisfactory subject. Supposing it to be true, we may well ask further whether a too great narrowing of the spaces of the sieve in a particular direction, combined probably with an extreme elongation in another direction, does not tend to produce ill-shapen and one-sided nurses? I saytend, because the present system is still new, and though it may have immediate advantages, we should not blind ourselves to its possible disadvantages in the future. We need always to remember that a process of selection which ensures the survival of the toughest does not necessarily ensure the survival of the fittest. There is such a thing as evolving backwards, like the cave-fish who have lost their sight during their long residence in the dark. The best things in life are not machine-made.
But correct observation being such a complicated performance, we should be very indulgent to people who make mistakes; especially so if we have ever made a mistake ourselves. In our plentiful abuse of individuals, we merely display our inability to recognise the limitations and imperfections of “the thing called human nature.” We have reached a certain landing-place in our upward climb by means of paying attention to our sieves, but we have a long way still to go.
A few very simple experiments will suffice to show us how hard a thing it is to see even what lies right under our very noses. We may then perhaps realise how rash it is to form hasty opinions about the complicated and invisible nervous systems of our suffering fellow-creatures. Having got thus far, it may even dawn upon us that to make our fanciful and erroneous theories (fanciful because founded on insufficient knowledge, and erroneous because founded on the defective observations of others) the excuse for ill-treating other people’s nerves by showinga want of consideration for their sufferings, by tormenting them with painful and fantastic tricks, and by indulging our own tyranny and self-righteousness, is to manifest to the world an extremely primeval species of childishness.
I once drew a character called “Dr. Broadley,” who, excellent man though he was in some respects, put on a “stalk” when he came in contact with a nervous patient. Now, three different people thought they recognised Dr. Broadley, and informed me of the fact. They were all wrong. Not one of their three supposed models had sat to me for his portrait. I am forced, against my will, to the conclusion that there are in existence a superfluous number of persons who make the proximity of an invalid the excuse for displaying unnecessary airs. Surely it is not by such an influence, such an example, that the morals of our patients are to be improved.
I once put together two small prayer-books, so that the coloured edges of the leaves were divided only by the edge of thethin cover of each book. The leaves of one were of a bright golden colour; those of the other had been tinted a dull red. The books were momentarily held up for observation, with this interesting result. The leaves of the one book were seen correctly, so far, at least, as their colour was concerned; for they were unhesitatingly declared to be tinted with bright gold. The leaves of the other, however, were with equal readiness declared to be of agoldenred colour.
It is easy to understand how this mistake arose. The golden colour was the first perceived, and the impression made by the dull red was not strong enough in comparison to be correctly seen and retained in a brief moment. The bright gold of the one book had so powerfully affected the retina that the colour was cast, so to speak, on to the leaves of the other book. These therefore appeared to be golden red in tint, instead of the dull red they were in reality.
On another occasion a small smooth cake was placed in a dish together with several large almond-cakes. When attention wasattracted to it, it was mistaken for a cocoanut cake.
Here a rapid inspection had sufficed to show that one cake was smaller than the others. It had not sufficed to show the great difference in its construction. The large cakes had been first perceived, and their roughness was erroneously seen to be shared by the small cake.
Some people go through life with their minds so completely lined by a series of crystallised impressions, that no aftercomers have the smallest chance of even combining with them to produce a half-truth, to say nothing of overcoming them to a sufficient extent to drive out the errors and replace approximate truths by others still truer.
It may be objected that the above failures in perception of differences (a much more difficult thing than perception of similarities[7]) was occasioned solely by the speed with which the observations were made. I entertained acontrary belief, and my belief was confirmed by the following example of my own capacity for disgraceful blundering.
Shortly after the publication of “The Massage Case,” a friend asked me how I could have made such a mistake as to attribute to Elfie during her convalescence the strength to walk twenty miles in one day. I asked her to show me the passage wherein I had erred. She did so; and I read that Elfie really did walk twenty miles in the desert. I was amazed at my own stupidity, for, considering the length of time required for complete recovery from severe nervous exhaustion, it is evident that even the charm of Dr. Risedale’s society could not be expected to inspire her even temporarily with nerve-power for such a feat. I had looked steadily at the passage for a few seconds before the idea occurred to me that I might be seeing wrong. Then I scrutinised each word by the light of this suspicion, and having hit upon a correct theory, I found out the truth. It turned out that Elfie walked in the desert for twentyminutes, notmiles. An erroneous impression hadbeen conveyed to my brain through the ear; and by its disproportionate tenacity—disproportionate to my perceptive power at the moment—had prevented my receiving a new and truer impression through the eye.
I was overdone at the time, and took the warning; that is to say, I rested. But many of our doctors and nurses, whose observations are of the extremest importance, are supposed to do their work in a fatigued condition, and are considered fit objects of abuse if they do it badly. Why then do they overwork themselves? The answer to this question is that they are underpaid. The butcher and the baker must always receive the reward of their labours; the doctor and the nurse must often toil for nothing, though we are aware that, in order to obtain efficiency in any profession, it is essential that that profession should be well paid. The community may object that it cannot afford to pay more than it pays at present. Can it then afford to be kept ill or made ill by ignorant interference or by erroneous notions? It would surely be cheaper in thelong-run to pay to get well or to learn how not to get ill.
To be dogmatic about that which is least known would appear to be an ineradicable characteristic of human nature in its present imperfect state. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” is still a true saying. In the treatment of nervous disease it is amply exemplified. Where we are most ignorant, there we are most uncompromising in our dealings. When we understood absolutely nothing of insanity, seeing little connection between madness and disease, we resorted to the whip and the chain. On waking to some conception of nervous disorder, we perceive similarities more readily than differences, and proceed to lump together all diseases of the nerves in the earlier stages under the name of “hysteria.” Having already some vague foolish fixed idea in our heads about “hysteria” being synonymous with idleness and general depravity, we drag our patients about, beat them with wet towels, give them frightful shocks, galvanic or otherwise, and then get rid of them as quickly as possible, soas not to have the burden of remote consequences.
But when more serious mischief is set up, what then? Why, then comes tardily a perception of differences, and we divide nervous disorders into hard and fast diseases, concluding that all had been different from the very first. The later perception of underlying similarity has as yet scarcely dawned. Some of these maladies are considered curable; others, without rhyme or reason, are considered incurable.
With regard to the curability of nervous disease, let us consider what happens when we travel by train from Eastbourne to London, and again from Eastbourne to Brighton. In each case we pass through Willingdon and Polegate, and stop at Lewes. We can get out at Lewes or at either of the previous stations and return to Eastbourne, but if we proceed as far as Lewes, our return journey will be longer than if we had got out at Polegate. In the same way nervous disease is more quickly cured in the early stages than in the later stages. Now, suppose that weare in a train which does not stop between Lewes and London. It is evident in this case that, if we have missed our chance of alighting at Lewes, we must go on to the final goal; no return being possible. Thus, there is a point in certain nervous diseases beyond which recovery is impossible. On the other hand, in travelling from Eastbourne to Brighton, we have several chances of retracing our steps even after leaving Lewes, where the ways diverge; and so we find that, in some cases of nervous disease, incurability is reached sooner than in others. And just as we must be content to take longer to return from Lewes than from Polegate, so we must be content with a slow cure in advanced nervous disorders, and remember that, in administering nerve-tonics, the weaker the patient, the weaker should be the dose; all attempts to hurry the cure being fatal to success. Moreover, just as, in journeying from Eastbourne to London, and from Eastbourne to Brighton, we travel along the same road as far as Lewes, so all nervous diseases have a common origin in nerve-deterioration which may be repaired.
Defective powers of observation bring with them this great evil,—we not only fail to reduce a terrible malady to a minimum, but we mete out unjust censure to those who seem to be responsible for the failure. Whereas the really responsible party is the community at large—in short, ourselves. We blame the doctor; but doctors are after all a small minority, and the minority can only expand and take shape in the direction in which the least pressure is put upon it by the majority. The grotesque modes of treatment resorted to in past times evidently gave satisfaction to all but the enlightened few, just as bad Governments have been tolerated in the countries fitted only to be governed badly.
But to be dissatisfied, to mete out blame, to expect a cure, are healthier symptoms than a passive acceptance of the evil and a lazy belief in incurability.
Medical science is unlimited. The law of our universe is progress.
“Whoever degrades another degrades me,And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.”—Walt Whitman.
“Whoever degrades another degrades me,And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.”—Walt Whitman.
“Whoever degrades another degrades me,And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.”—Walt Whitman.
INindividual 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 lunaticasylums 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 isHEREDITY.
We shall find, I think, that the second great cause is to be sought inIMPERFECT SOCIAL CONDITIONS, and the third inAN 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.
ALLthose 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 understandit. 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 manifestitself, 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 foresttree; 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 beexpected 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 infamilies 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 mustrest 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 ourselvesto 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 bothcollectively 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 wordnervoushas two meanings. In its truer sense it implies strength, not weakness. Persons sufferingfrom 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 hisdeath, 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 honestlyrecognise 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 hisrecent 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 shoulderswith a smiling face. A homeless wanderer with a price set upon his head, poor, friendless and unsupported, this man opposed himself tothe 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.
TOtreat 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 allopposition. 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 consequenthabit 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 exceptionallyrapid 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-currentflows 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; theyounger, 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.