CHAPTER II.

_A THIEF IN THE NIGHT._

Our life and progress may be aptly compared to the passage of collections of particles through a fine sieve. The particles that will not crumble are inevitably cast out, while those that succeed in passing through it are rendered finer in the process. It would perhaps be apter still to say, that we are passing continually through a series of sieves, some coarse, some fine, and that the particles which survive the ordeal, though refined in their passage, are perpetually losing something they possessed before. Whether this be an advantage or a disadvantage to them depends on the nature of that which is lost. Those who survive the longest, in spite of constant paring and shaping, fitting them for still finer passages, must have had their sieves carefully graduated for them, each preceding sieve fitting them for the next in order of progression.

Just as it is not the loudest things that have the most substance, so it is not the largest things that contain the most power. We are told that there is sufficient force holding together the particles composing a single drop of water to make a whole flash of lightning. In the same way, there may be more force concentrated in a small portion of the nervous system than is diffused throughout all the rest of the body. And our progress through the sieves may be a condensation of great forces into our small compass. Leaving the matter of mere size of body out of the question, one man of coarse organisation (A) may possess more physical strength than a man of fine organisation (B). But B may rule the world while A is a nonentity. B may, by means of his superior mental capacity, subdue the powers of Nature to his will, and thus be master of a force compared to which A’s physical strength is as a drop in the ocean. B’s complex nervous system is the storehouse of a tremendous energy.

Now, though we have been shaped in the past by sieves over which we have had no control, we are nevertheless conscious of having acquired some power of selecting and shaping the sieves of the future. Whether or no our action in the matter is predetermined by the shape already given us, the fact that we possess this power is indubitable.

In our age it would seem that we have arrived at a sieve that is either exceptionally small or of an exceptional shape. Numbers of particles are just now being rejected, not necessarily suddenly, but often subsequent to unusually protracted, painful, and futile efforts at forcing a passage through.

The question arises, Is this state of affairs inevitable? Have we not power to graduate our sieves more effectually? And granting this power of selection and modification, is it not possible that the sieve through which we are endeavouring to force ourselves may be ill-shapen, and calculated therefore to occasion needless destruction and deformity?

In some mode or other, we are all of us constantly considering this problem. Pass through the sieves we must, if we would survive. The process seems never-ending. We may be able to select or modify our sieves, hurry our progress or retard it, but we can neither stand still nor turn back. If we cannot or will not fit ourselves to the sieve, or if mankind, by their combined action, cannot or will not fit the sieve to us, then we must be cast out.

This casting out, if sudden, we term death; if slow, disease and death. We have habituated ourselves to regard life and health as natural--death and disease as unnatural if premature; but for our mode of thought in the latter case there seems little justification. The process of disintegration that we call disease is wholly natural. The result of two opposing forces is the path of our planet in space; the result of two opposing forces is our life. Let either force gain the ascendancy, and our life goes, or begins to go.

Sooner or later, then, we must be rejected from a sieve. But our early rejection and our late rejection are two very different matters. Our sudden rejection or our slow rejection are two very different matters also. Disintegration is always going on, but if we absorb sufficient nutriment to repair the waste adequately, we are in health. If, owing to disease of any part, the waste is more than we can repair, one of the opposing forces has gained the ascendancy, and death has begun.

We justly regard this slow death in life as a most terrible fate: we will do anything to avert it. To death itself we may be resigned; to some it is an escape from suffering; by some it is regarded as the entrance to a higher life. But all alike shrink from the prospect of dragging out long years of pain and hopeless misery in the sick-room. And just as we are becoming better acquainted with the causes and prevention of disease in various forms, one form of it has recently spread in our midst to an alarming extent, our ignorance of its nature and origin rendering us powerless against its incursions.

Nervous prostration encounters us on all sides. It finds victims in all classes of life. It has come amongst us like a thief in the night.

Disease, like any other adversary, finds out the most vulnerable part. The most vulnerable part of our machinery is that about which we are most ignorant. We are lamentably ignorant about our nervous systems; our adversary, repulsed in other quarters, effects an entrance there. It is far more difficult to expel him when once he has made his abode with us, than to fortify the stronghold against him. Prevalent as this particular form of disease is at the present moment, that is not the worst of the evil. It is alarming and disheartening to be told that it is still on the increase; but such is nevertheless the fact.

Professor Huxley very wisely says, that Nature gives us a blow and leaves us to find out its meaning. More than that, she never stops giving us blows until we have succeeded in doing so. It must be candidly admitted that we are inexpressibly dull and require many very hard knocks, and that when some one else is knocked and not ourselves, we are apt to be extremely heartless.

It is only lately that the majority of non-medical people have become conscious of possessing a nervous system at all. We still hear even educated persons talk of their nerves as though they were something spiritual--as though nervous disorder were not a physical disease. Such inexcusable ignorance leads to shadowy, pernicious ideas about the impossibility of curing the malady, or, supposing it to be regarded as curable, to the adoption of cruel and fantastic methods of treatment. If only we were forced to have all our remedies tried on ourselves before trying them on others, patients would henceforth have a better time of it. Unfortunately, many supposed remedies which are not unpleasant to the healthy are torture to the diseased.

I regret to say, that I still come across people who regard nervous prostration as sheer wickedness and obstinacy on the part of the sufferer. Indeed, I have even heard the grace of God and a change of heart talked about by excellent women as the only cure for cases that had come under their notice. Far be it from me to underrate the power of any good influence; but you have only to suggest that asthma shall be treated by spiritual influence, and you will find that the good folks regard you as a lunatic or as a profane person. Asthma being undoubtedly a nervous disease, these distinctions are a little puzzling. I have even heard of church-going being suggested as a remedy for nervous excitability, regardless of the ventilation of the building, the length of the sermon, and the tunefulness of the singing. Now, with all due respect for church-going, I sometimes cannot help regretting that the friends and advisers of the nervous do not believe in charms, like the Neapolitans. If charms do no good, at all events they do no harm; and if ignorant superstition must find vent, it is well if we can, at least, render it innocuous.

The spiritual treatment of the diseased is nothing new; on the contrary, it is hallowed by ancient custom. Anna of Saxony, the insane wife of William the Silent, was shut up by her father in a miserable room, and by his orders preached to daily, through a hole in the door, by a minister of religion. But perhaps the poor lady suffered from insomnia! Unfortunately the preaching proved ineffectual, for she died raving mad.

An intelligent Italian gentleman, interested in the case of an English friend suffering from nervous prostration, once endeavoured to console him by saying that, in his opinion, it was only clever people who suffered from nerves. Stupid people had the same things the matter with them, he said, but they were too stupid to find it out. An original notion, certainly. Unhappily, however true it may be that we lack the wits to diagnose our ills, I know of many persons belonging to the labouring classes who could scarcely be considered clever even by their best friends, yet who are not only afflicted with the universal malady, but are painfully conscious of the fact. Indeed, no rank or occupation secures immunity from the visitations of our modern foe. In these days of ready communication and rapid rise and fall of families, influences affecting one part of the community quickly affect the whole. True, certain conditions may be more fatal to fine organisations--to the noblest and the best, to the most useful and the most intelligent--than to the ill-developed; but of this more hereafter.

When I see people dropping out of the ranks one after another, each probably having been confident that to him, at any rate, the disease would never come, I am reminded of De Quincey’s “Klosterheim,” where citizen after citizen was stolen away by the unseen foe. We understand so little of the causes of these break-downs, that we will not be warned in time; our partial but growing weakness is so gradual, that we become accustomed to it, and think that nothing worse will befall us; and yet the final collapse is often so sudden, that it at last comes upon us unawares, and our total prostration is a surprise to ourselves. Perhaps some shock or accident is blamed for the disaster, the long period of weakness preceding it being ignored; or we fall a victim to some well-known illness, and regard it as the judgment of Heaven, which we were powerless to avoid, instead of telling ourselves that we might have avoided it, and ought to have avoided it, by acting wisely in the first instance, and fortifying ourselves against its inroads.