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:--

“Over the mountain-growths, disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, High in the purer, happier air.

“From imperfection’s murkiest cloud Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, One flash of heaven’s glory.

* * * * *

“All, all for immortality, Love like the light silently wrapping all, Nature’s amelioration blessing all, The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain, Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.

“Give me, O God, to sing that thought, Give me, give him or her I love, this quenchless faith,

* * * * *

Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in time and space, Health, peace, salvation universal.

“Is it a dream? Nay, but the lack of it the dream, And failing it life’s lore and wealth a dream, And all the world a dream.”

THE END.

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* * * * *

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.

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EDWARD ARNOLD, 18 WARWICK SQUARE, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

* * * * *

_IN PREPARATION._

ANIMAL LIFE AND INTELLIGENCE.

BY C. LLOYD MORGAN,

Professor of Zoology and Geology at University College, Bristol, Author of “A Text-Book of Biology,” &c.

One Vol., Demy 8vo; Illustrated.

CONTENTS.

THE NATURE OF ANIMAL LIFE. THE PROCESS OF LIFE. THE SENSES OF ANIMALS. MENTAL PROCESSES IN MAN. MENTAL PROCESSES IN ANIMALS. THE FEELINGS OF ANIMALS. ANIMAL ACTIVITIES: THEIR HABITS AND INSTINCTS. REPRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT. VARIATION AND NATURAL SELECTION. HEREDITY AND THE ORIGIN OF VARIATIONS. ORGANIC EVOLUTION. MENTAL EVOLUTION.

_IN PREPARATION._

EPOCHS OF INDUSTRY.

By M. E. SADLER, M.A.,

Steward of Christ Church, Oxford, and Secretary of the University Extension Scheme.

LONDON:

EDWARD ARNOLD, 18 WARWICK SQUARE, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Hinton’s “Life in Nature.”

[2] The form of neurasthenia which most frequently receives this label is cerebrasthenia with emotional symptoms. It often exists without myelasthenia or any kind of bodily exhaustion.

[3] I have known the term “hysteria” applied to cases of well-marked brain disease, to cases of brain exhaustion from internal disease or disorder, to states of bodily weakness without disorder of the brain, to mere habitual eccentricity,--in fact, to anything and everything.

[4] See Tyrrell’s “Tonic Treatment of Epilepsy.”

[5] Motley’s “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”

[6] The more highly developed the organism, the greater its sensitiveness.

[7] By this I do not mean that higher perception of the similarity underlying all differences, which comes much later in life, when differences have been fully appreciated.

[8] Not merely tendencies to actual suicide, but an inability to recognise true advantage.

[9] We reason only from sensation. Knowledge is but “registered feeling.”

[10] Professor Weismann draws attention to the fact, that the development of a faculty by the parent, on the most generally approved method, by no means ensures its transmission to the offspring.

[11] See Dr. Maudsley’s “Essay on Hamlet.”