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THE
UNTROUBLED MIND
BY
HERBERT J. HALL, M.D.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HERBERT J. HALL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published May 1915_
PREFACE
A very wise physician has said that "every illness has two parts--what
it is, and what the patient thinks about it." What the patient thinks
about it is often more important and more troublesome than the real
disease. What the patient thinks of life, what life means to him is also
of great importance and may be the bar that shuts out all real health
and happiness. The following pages are devoted to certain ideals of life
which I would like to give to my patients, the long-time patients who
have especially fallen to my lot.
They are not all here, the steps to health and happiness. The reader may
even be annoyed and baffled by my indirectness and unwillingness to be
specific. That I cannot help--it is a personal peculiarity; I cannot ask
any one to live by rule, because I do not believe that rules are
binding and final. There must be character behind the rule and then the
rule is unnecessary.
All that I have written has doubtless been presented before, in better
ways, by wiser men, but I believe that each writer may expect to find
his small public, his own particular public who can understand and
profit by his teachings, having partly or wholly failed with the others.
For that reason I am encouraged to write upon a subject usually shunned
by medical men, being assured of at least a small company of friendly
readers.
I am grateful to a number of friends and patients who have read the
manuscript of the following chapters. These reviewers have been frank
and kind and very helpful. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Richard C.
Cabot, who has given me much valuable assistance.
CONTENTS
I. THE UNTROUBLED MIND 1
II. RELIGIO MEDICI 10
III. THOUGHT AND WORK 20
IV. IDLENESS 30
V. RULES OF THE GAME 38
VI. THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT 50
VII. SELF-CONTROL 59
VIII. THE LIGHTER TOUCH 65
IX. REGRETS AND FOREBODINGS 73
X. THE VIRTUES 81
XI. THE CURE BY FAITH 88
I
THE UNTROUBLED MIND
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
MACBETH.
When a man tells me he never worries, I am inclined to think that he is
either deceiving himself or trying to deceive me. The great roots of
worry are conscience, fear, and regret. Undoubtedly we ought to be
conscientious and we ought to fear and regret evil. But if it is to be
better than an impediment and a harm, our worry must be largely
unconscious, and intuitive. The moment we become conscious of worry we
are undone. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we cannot leave conscience to
its own devices unless our lives are big enough and fine enough to
warrant such a course. The remedy for the mental unrest, which is in
itself an illness, lies not in an enlightened knowledge of the
harmfulness and ineffectiveness of worry, not even in the acquirement of
an unconscious conscience, but in the living of a life so full and good
that worry cannot find place in it. That idea of worry and conscience,
that definition of serenity, simplifies life immensely. To overcome
worry by substituting development and growth need never be dull work. To
know life in its farther reaches, life in its better applications, is
the final remedy--the great undertaking--_it is life_. We must warn
ourselves, not infrequently, that the larger life is to be pursued for
its own glorious self and not for the sake of peace. Peace may come, a
peace so sure that death itself cannot shake it, but we must not expect
all our affairs to run smoothly. As a matter of fact they may run badly
enough; we shall have our ups and downs, we shall sin and repent, and
sin again, but if in the end we live according to our best intuitions,
we shall be justified, and we need not worry about the outcome. To put
it another way, if we would have the untroubled mind, we must transfer
our conscientious efforts from the small details of life--from the worry
and fret of common things--into another and a higher atmosphere. We must
transfigure common life, dignify it and ennoble it; then, although the
old causes of worry may continue, we shall have gained a stature that
will make us unconscious masters of the little troubles and in a great
degree equal to the larger requirements. Life will be easier, not
because we make less effort, but because we are working from another and
a better level.
If such a change, and it would be a change for most of us, could come
about instantly, in a flash of revelation, that would be ideal, but it
would not be life. We must return again and again to the old uninspired
state wherein we struggle conscientiously with perverse details. I would
not minimize the importance and value of this struggle; only the sooner
it changes its level the better for every one concerned. Large serenity
must, finally, be earned through the toughening of moral fibre that
comes in dealing squarely with perplexing details. Some of this struggle
must always be going on, but serener life will come when we begin to
concern ourselves with larger factors.
How are we to live the larger life? Partly through uninspired struggle
and through the brave meeting of adversity, but partly, also, in a way
that may be described as "out of hand," by intuition, by exercise of the
quality of mind that sees visions and grasps truths beyond the realms of
common thought.
I am more and more impressed with the necessity of inspiration in life
if we are to be strong and serene, and so finally escape the pitfalls
of worry and conscience. By inspirations I do not mean belief in any
system or creed. It is not a stated belief that we need to begin with;
that may come in time. We need first to find in life, or at least in
nature, an essential beauty that makes its own true, inevitable response
within us. We must learn to love life so deeply that we feel its
tremendous significance, until we find in the sea and the sky the
evidence of an overbrooding spirit too great to be understood, but not
too great to satisfy the soul. This is a sort of mother religion--the
matrix from which all sects and creeds are born. Its existence in us
dignifies us and makes simple, purposeful, and receptive living almost
inevitable. We may not know why we are living according to the dictates
of our inspiration, but we shall live so and that is the important
consideration.
If I urge the acquirement of a religious conception that we may cure
the intolerable distress of worry, I do what I have already warned
against. It is so easy to make this mistake that I have virtually made
it on the same page with my warning. We have no right to seek so great a
thing as religious experience that we may be relieved of suffering.
Better go on with pain and distress than cheapen religion by making it a
remedy. We must seek it for its own sake, or rather, we must not seek it
at all, lest, like a dream, it elude us, or change into something else,
less holy. Nevertheless, it is true that if we will but look with open,
unprejudiced eyes, again and again, upon the sunrise or the stars above
us, we shall become conscious of a presence greater and more beautiful
than our minds can think. In the experience of that vision strength and
peace will come to us unbidden. We shall find our lives raised, as by an
unseen force, above the warfare of conscience and worry. We shall begin
to know the meaning of serenity and of that priceless, if not wholly to
be acquired, possession, the untroubled mind.
I am aware that I shall be misunderstood and perhaps ridiculed by my
colleagues when I attempt to discuss religion in any way. Theology is a
field in which I have had no training, but that is the very reason why I
dare write of it. I do not even assume that there is a God in the
traditional sense. The idea is too great to be made concrete and
literal. No single fact of nature can be fully understood by our finite
minds. But I do feel vaguely that the laws that compass us, and make our
lives possible, point always on--"beyond the realms of time and
space"--toward the existence of a mighty overruling spirit. If this is a
cold and inadequate conception of God, it is at least one that can be
held by any man without compromise.
The modern mind is apt to fail of religious understanding and support,
because of the arbitrary interpretations of religion which are
presented for our acceptance. It is what men say about religion, rather
than religion itself, that repels us. Let us think it out for ourselves.
If we are open to a simple, even primitive, conception of God, we may
still repudiate the creeds and doctrines, but we are likely to become
more tolerant of those who find them true and good. We shall be likely
in time to find the religion of Christ understandable and
acceptable--warm and quick with life. The man who ungrudgingly opens his
heart to the God of nature will be religious in the simplest possible
sense. He may worry because of the things he cannot altogether
understand, and because he falls so far short of the implied ideal. But
he will have enlarged his life so much that the common worries will find
little room--he will be too full of the joy of living to spend much
conscious thought in worry. Such a man will realize that he cannot
afford to spend his time and strength in regretting his past mistakes.
There is too much in the future. What he does in the future, not what he
has failed to do in the past, will determine the quality of his life. He
knows this, and the knowledge sends him into that future with courage
and with strength. Finally, in some indefinable way, character will
become more important to him than physical health even. Illness is half
compensated when a man realizes that it is not what he accomplishes in
the world, but what he _is_ that really counts, which puts him in touch
with the creative forces of God and raises him out of the aimless and
ordinary into a life of inspiration and joy.
II
RELIGIO MEDICI
At all events, it is certain that if any medical man had come to
Middlemarch with the reputation of having definite religious
views, of being given to prayer and of otherwise showing an
active piety, there would have been a general presumption
against his medical skill.
GEORGE ELIOT.
When a medically educated man talks and writes of religion and of God,
he is rightly enough questioned by his brothers--who are too busy with
the hard work of practice to be concerned with anything but material
problems. To me the word "God" is symbolic of the power which created
and which maintains the universe. The sunrise and the stars of heaven
give me some idea of his majesty, the warmth and tenderness of human
love give me some idea of his divine love. That is all I know, but it is
enough to make life glow; it is enough to inspire the most intense
devotion to any good cause; it is enough to make me bear suffering with
some degree of patience; and it is enough, finally, to give me some
confidence and courage even in the face of the great mystery of death.
Why this or another conception of God should produce such a profound
result upon any one, I do not know, except that in some obscure way it
connects the individual with the divine plan, and does not leave him
outside in despair and loneliness. However that may be, it will be
conceded that a religious conception of some kind does much toward
justifying life, toward making it strong and livable, and so has
directly to do with certain important problems of illness and health.
The most practical medical man will admit that any illness is made
lighter and more likely to recover in the presence of hope and serenity
in the mind of the patient.
Naturally the great bulk of medical practice calls for no handling other
than that of the straight medical sort. A man comes in with a crushed
finger, a girl with anaemia--the way is clear. It is only in deeper, more
intricate departments of medicine that we altogether fail. The
bacteriologist and the pathologist have no use for mental treatment, in
their departments. But when we come to the case of the nervously
broken-down school teacher, or the worn-out telegrapher, that is another
matter. Years may elapse before work can be resumed--years of dependence
and anxiety. Here, a new view of life is often more useful than drugs, a
view that accepts the situation reasonably after a while, that does not
grope blindly and impatiently for a cure, but finds in life an
inspiration that makes it good in spite of necessary suffering and
limitations. Often enough we cannot promise a cure, but we must be
prepared to give something better.
A great deal of the fatigue and unhappiness of the world is due to the
fact that we do not go deep enough in our justification for work or
play, or for any experience, happy or sad. There is a good deal of a
void after we have said, "Art for art's sake," or "Play for the joy of
playing," or even after we have said, "I am working for the sake of my
family, or for some one who needs my help." That is not enough; and
whether we realize it or not, the lack of deeper justification is at the
bottom of a restlessness and uncertainty which we might not be willing
to acknowledge, but which nevertheless is very real.
I am not satisfied when some moralist says, "Be good and you will be
happy." The kind of happiness that comes from a perfunctory goodness is
a thing which I cannot understand, and which I certainly do not want. If
I work and play and serve and employ, making up the fabric of a busy
life, if I attain a very real happiness, I am tormented by the desire to
know why I am doing it, and I am not satisfied with the answer I
usually get. The patient may not be cured when he is relieved of his
anaemia, or when his emaciation has given place to the plumpness and
suppleness and physical strength that we call health. The man whom we
look upon as well, and who has never known physical illness, is not well
in the larger sense until he knows why he is working, why he is living,
why he is filling his life with activity. In spite of the elasticity and
spring of the world's interests, there must come often, and with a kind
of fatal insistence, the deep demand for a cause, for a justification.
If there is not an adequate significance behind it, life, with all its
courage and accomplishment, seems but a sorry thing, so full of pathos,
even in its brightest moments, so shadowed with a sense of loss and of
finality that the bravest heart may well fail and the truest courage
relax, supported only by the assurance that this way lies happiness or
that right is right.
What is this knowledge that the world is seeking, but can never find?
What is this final justification? If we seek it in its completeness, we
are doomed always to be ill and unsatisfied. If we are willing to look
only a little way into the great question, if we are willing to accept a
little for the whole, content because it is manifestly part of the final
knowledge, and because we know that final knowledge rests with God
alone, we shall understand enough to save us from much sorrow and
painful incompleteness.
There is, in the infinitely varied and beautiful world of nature, and in
the hearts of men, so much of beauty and truth that it is a wonder we do
not all realize that these things of common life may be in us and for us
the daily and hourly expression of the infinite being we call God. We do
not see God, but we do feel and know so much that we may fairly believe
to be of God that we do not need to see Him face to face. It is
something more than imagination to feel that it is the life of God in
our lives, so often unrecognized or ignored, that prompts us to all the
greatness and the inspiration and the accomplishment of the world. If we
could know more clearly the joy of such a conception, we should dry up
at its source much of the unhappiness which is, in a deep and subtle
way, at the bottom of many a nervous illness and many a wretched
existence.
The happiness which is found in the recognition of kinship with God,
through the common things of life, in the experiences which are so
significant that they could not spring from a lesser source, the
happiness which is not sought, but which is the inevitable result of
such recognition--this experience goes a long way toward making life
worth living.
If we do have this conception of life, then some of the old, old
questions that have vexed so many dwellers upon the earth will no longer
be a source of unhappiness or of illness of mind or body. The question
of immortality, for instance, which has made us afraid to die, will no
longer be a question--we shall not need to answer it, in the presence of
God, in our lives and in the world about us. We shall be content finally
to accept whatever is in store for us--so it be the will of God. We may
even look for something better than mere immortality, something more
divine than our gross conception of eternal life.
This is a religion that I believe medical men may teach without
hesitation whenever the need shall arise. I know well enough that many a
blunt if kindly man cannot bring himself to say these words, even if he
believes them, but I do think that in some measure they point the way to
what may wisely be taught.
There is a practice of medicine--the common practice--that is concerned
with the body only, and with its chemical and mechanical reactions. We
can have nothing but respect and admiration for the men who go on year
after year in the eager pursuit of this calling. We know that such a
work is necessary, that it is just as important as the educational
practice of which I write. We know that without the physical side
medicine would fail of its usefulness and that disease and death would
reap far richer harvests: I only wish the two naturally related aspects
of our dealing with patients might not be so completely separated that
they lose sight of each other. As a matter of fact, both elements are
necessary to our human welfare. If medicine devotes itself altogether to
the cure and prevention of physical disease, it will miss half of its
possibilities. It is equally true that if we forget the physical
necessities in our zeal for spiritual hygiene, we shall get and deserve
complete and humiliating failure. Many men will say, "Why mix the two?
Why not let the preachers and the philosophers preach and the doctors
follow their own ways?" For the most part this may have to be the
arrangement, but the doctor who can see and treat the spiritual needs of
his patient will always be more likely to cure in the best sense than
the doctor who sees only half of the picture. On the other hand, the
philosopher is likely to be a comparatively poor doctor, because he
knows nothing of medicine, and so can see only the other half of the
picture. There is much to be said for the religion of medicine if it can
be kept free from cant, if it can be simple and rational enough to be
available for the whole world.
III
THOUGHT AND WORK
I wish I had a trade!--It would animate my arms and tranquilize
my brain.
SENANCOUR.
"Doe ye nexte thynge."--_Old English Proverb_.
Since our minds are so constantly filled with anxiety, there would seem
to be at least one sure way to be rid of it--to stop thinking.
A great many people believe that the mind will become less effective,
that life will become dull and purposeless, unless they are constantly
thinking and planning and arranging their affairs. I believe that the
mind may easily and wisely be free from conscious thought a good deal of
the time, and that the greatest progress and development in mind often
comes when the thinker is virtually at rest, when his mind is to all
intents and purposes blank. The busy, unconscious mind does its best
work in the serenity of an atmosphere which does not interfere and
confuse.
It is true that the greatest conceptions do not come to the untrained
and undisciplined mind. But do we want great conceptions all the time?
There is a technical training for the mind which is, of course,
necessary for special accomplishments, but this is quite another matter.
Even this kind of thought must not obtrude too much, lest we become
conscious of our mental processes and so end in confusion.
One of the greatest benefits of work with the hands, or of objective and
constructive work with the mind, is that it saves us from unending hours
of thinking. Work should, of course, find its fullest justification as
an expression of faith. If we have ever so dim a vision of a greater
significance in life, of its close relationship to infinite things, we
become thereby conscious of the need of service, of the need of work. It
is the easy, natural expression of our faith, the inevitable result of
a spiritual contact with the great working forces of the world. It is
work above all else that saves us from the disasters of conflicting
thought.
A few years ago a young man came to me, suffering from too much
thinking. He had just been graduated from college and his head was full
of confused ideas and emotions. He was also very tired, having
overworked in his preparation for examinations, and because he had not
taken the best care of his body. The symptoms he complained of were
sleeplessness and worry, together with the inevitable indigestion and
headache. Of course, as a physician, I went over the bodily functions
carefully, and studied, as far as I might, into the organic conditions.
I could find no evidence of physical disease. I did not say, "There is
nothing the matter with you"; for the man was sick. I told him that he
was tired, that he had thought too much, that he was too much concerned
about himself, and that as a result of all this his bodily functions
were temporarily upset. He thought he ought to worry about himself,
because otherwise he would not be trying to get well. I explained to him
that this mistaken obligation was the common reason for worry, and that
in this case, at least, it was quite unnecessary and even harmful for
him to go on thinking about himself. That helped a little, but not
nearly enough, because when a man has overworked, when he has begun to
worry, and when his various bodily functions show results of worry, no
reasoning, no explanations, can wholly relieve him. I said to this young
man, "In spite of your discomforts, in spite of your depression and
concern in regard to yourself, you will get well if you will stop
thinking about the matter altogether. You must be first convinced that
it is best for you to stop thinking, that no harm or violence can
result, and then you must be helped in this direction by going to work
with your hands--that will be life and progress, it will lead you to
health."
Fortunately I had had some experience with nervous illness, and I knew
that unless I managed for this man the character and extent of his work,
he would not only fail in it, but of its object, and so become more
confused and discouraged. I knew the troubled mind, in this instance,
might find its solace and its relief in work, but that I must choose the
work carefully to suit the individual, and I must see that the nervously
fatigued body was not pushed too hard.
In the town where I live is a blacksmith shop, presided over by a genial
old man who has been a blacksmith since he was a boy, and in whose hands
iron is like clay. I took my patient down to the smithy and said, "Here
is a young man whom I want to put to work. He will pay for the chance. I
want you first to teach him to make hand-wrought nails." This was a
good deal of a joke to the smith and to the patient, but they saw that I
was in earnest and agreed to go ahead. We got together the proper tools
and proceeded to make nails, a job which is really not very difficult.
After an hour's work, I called off my patient, much to his disgust, for
he was just beginning to be interested. But I knew that if he were to
keep on until fatigue should come, the whole matter would end in
trouble. So the next day, with some new overalls and a leather apron
added to the equipment, we proceeded to another hour's work. We went on
this way for three or four days, before the time was increased.
The interest of the patient was always fresh, he was eager for more, and
he did not taste the dregs of fatigue. Yet he did get the wholesome
exercise, and he did get the strong turning of the mind from its worry
and concern. Of course, the rest of the day was taken care of in one
way or another, but the work was the central feature. In a week, we were
at it two hours a day, in three weeks, four hours, and in a month, five
hours. He had made a handsome display of hand-wrought nails, a superior
line of pokers and shovels for fireplaces, together with a number of
very respectable andirons. On each of these larger pieces of handiwork
my patient had stamped his initials with a little steel die that was
made for him. Each piece was his own, each piece was the product of his
own versatility and his own strength. His pride and pleasure in this
work were very great, and well they might be, for it is a fine thing to
have learned to handle so intractable a material as iron. But in
handling the iron patiently and consistently until he could do it
without too much conscious thinking, and so without effort, he had also
learned to handle himself naturally, more simply and easily.
As a matter of fact, the illness which had brought this boy to me was
pretty nearly cured by his blacksmithing, because it was an illness of
the mind and of the nerves, and not of the body, although the body had
suffered in its turn. That young man, instead of becoming a nervous
invalid as he might have done, is now working steadily in partnership
with his father, in business in the city. I had found him a very
interesting patient, full of originality and not at all the tedious and
boresome person he might have been had I listened day after day, week
after week to the recital of his ills. I was willing to listen,--I did
listen,--but I also gave him a new trend of life, which pretty soon made
his complaints sound hollow and then disappear.
Of course, the problem is not always so simple as this, and we must
often deal with complexities of body and mind requiring prolonged
investigation and treatment. I cite this case because it shows clearly
that relief from some forms of nervous illness can come when we stop
thinking, when we stop analyzing, and then back up our position with
prescribed work.
There may be some nervous invalids who read these lines who will say,
"But I have tried so many times to work and have failed." Unfortunately,
such failure must often occur unless we can proceed with care and with
understanding. But the principle remains true, although it must be
modified in an infinite variety to meet the changing conditions of
individuals.
I see a great many people who are conscientiously trying to get well
from nervous exhaustion. They almost inevitably try too hard. They think
and worry too much about it, and so exhaust themselves the more. This is
the greater pity because it is the honest and the conscientious people
who make the greatest effort. It is very hard for them to realize that
they must stop thinking, stop trying, and if possible get to work
before they can accomplish their end. We shall have to repeat to them
over and over again that they must stop thinking the matter out, because
the thing they are attempting to overcome is too subtle to be met in
that way. So, if they are fortunate, they may rid themselves of the
vagueness and uncertainty of life, until all the multitude of details
which go to make up life lose their desultoriness and their lack of
meaning, and they may find themselves no longer the subjects of physical
or nervous exhaustion.
IV
IDLENESS
O ye! who have your eyeballs vex'd and tir'd,
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea.
KEATS.
Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market,
is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness
implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal
identity.
STEVENSON.
It is an unfortunate fact that very few people are able to be idle
successfully. I think it is not so much because we misuse idleness as
because we misinterpret it that the long days become increasingly
demoralizing. I would ask no one to accept a forced idleness without
objection or regret. Such an acceptance would imply a lack of spirit, to
say the least. But idleness and rest are not incompatible; neither are
idleness and service, nor idleness and contentment. If we can look upon
rest as a preparation for service, if we can make it serve us in the
opportunity it gives for quiet growth and legitimate enjoyment, then it
is fully justified and it may offer advantages and opportunity of the
best.
The chief trouble with idleness is that it so often means introspection,
worry, and impatience, especially to those conscientious souls who would
fain be about their business.
I have for a long time been accustomed to combat the worry and fret of
necessary idleness--not by forbidding it, not by advising struggle and
fight against it, but by insisting that the best way to get rid of it is
to leave it alone, to accept it. When we do this there may come a kind
of fallow time in which the mind enriches and refreshes itself beyond
our conception.
I would rather my patient who must rest for a long time would give up
all thought of method, would give up all idea of making his mind follow
any particular line of thought or absence of thought. I know that the
mind which has been under conscious control a good deal of the time is
apt to rebel at this freedom and to indulge in all kinds of alarming
extravagances. I am sure, however, that the best way to meet these
demands for conscious control is to be careless of them, to be willing
to experience these extravagances and inconsistencies without fear, in
the belief that finally will come a quiet and peace which will be all
that we can ask. The peace of mind that is unguided, in the conscious
and literal sense, is a thing which too few of us know.
Mr. Arnold Bennett, in his little book, "How to Live on Twenty-four
Hours a Day," teaches that we should leave no time unused in our lives;
that we should accomplish a great deal more and be infinitely more
effective and progressive if we devoted our minds to the definite
working-out of necessary problems whenever those times occur in which we
are apt to be desultory. I wish here to make a plea for desultoriness
and for an idleness which goes even beyond the idleness of the man who
reads the newspaper and forgets what he has read. It seems to me better,
whether we are sick or well, to allow long periods in our lives when we
think only casually. To the good old adage, "Work while you work and
play while you play," we might well add, "Rest while you rest," lest in
the end you should be unable successfully either to work or play.
A man is not necessarily condemned to tortures of mind because he must
rest for a week or a month or a year. I know that there must be anxious
times, especially when idleness means dependence, and when it brings
hardship to those who need our help. But the invalid must not try
constantly to puzzle the matter out. If we do not make ourselves sick
with worry, we shall be able sometime to approach active life with
sufficient frankness and force. It is the constant effort of the poor,
tired mind to solve its problems that not only fails of its object, but
plunges the invalid deeper into discouragement and misunderstanding. How
cruel this is, and how unfortunate that it should come more commonly to
those who try the hardest to overcome their handicaps, to throw off the
yoke of idleness and to be well.
When you have tried your best to get back to your work and have failed,
when you have done this not once but many times, it is inevitable that
misunderstanding should creep in, inevitable that you should question
very deeply and doubt not infrequently. Yet the chances are that one of
the reasons for your failure is that you have tried too hard, that you
have not known how to rest. When you have learned how to rest, when you
have learned to put off thinking and planning until the mind becomes
fresh and clear, when you are in a fair way to know the joy of idleness
and the peace of rest, you are a great deal more likely to get back to
efficiency and to find your way along the great paths of activity into
the world of life.
It is not so much the idleness, then, as the attempt to overcome its
irksomeness, that makes this condition painful. The invalid in bed is in
a trap, to be tormented by his thoughts unless he knows the meaning of
successful idleness. This knowledge may come to him by such strategy as
I have suggested--by giving up the struggle against worry and fret; but
peace will come surely, steadily, "with healing in its wings," when the
mind is changed altogether, when life becomes free because of a growth
and development that finds significance even in idleness, that sees the
world with wise and patient eyes.
In a way it does not matter, your physical condition or mine, if our
"eyes have seen the glory" that deifies life and makes even its waste
places beautiful. What is that view from your window as you lie in your
bed? A bit of the sea, if you are fortunate, a corner of garden, surely,
the top of an elm tree against the blue. What is it but the revelations
of a God in the world? There is enough that is sad and unhappy, but over
all are these simple, ineffable things. If the garden is an expression
of God in the world, then the world and life are no longer meaningless.
Even idleness becomes in some degree bearable because it is a part of a
significant world.
Unfortunately, the idleness of disability often means pain, the wear and
tear of physical or nervous suffering. That is another matter. We cannot
meet it fully with any philosophy. My patients very often beg to know
the best way to bear pain, how they may overcome the attacks of "nerves"
that are harder to bear than pain. To such a question I can only say
that the time to bear pain is before and after. Live in such a way in
the times of comparative comfort that the attacks are less likely to
appear and easier to bear when they do come. After the pain or the
"nervous" attack is over, that is the time to prevent the worst features
of another. Forget the distress; live simply and happily in spite of the
memory, and you will have done all that the patient himself can do to
ward off or to make tolerable the next occasion of suffering. Pain
itself--pure physical pain--is a matter for the physician's judgment. It
is his business to seek out the causes and apply the remedy.
V
RULES OF THE GAME
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be.
BEN JONSON.
It is a good thing to have a sound body, better to have a sane
mind, but neither is to be compared to that aggregate of virile
and decent qualities which we call character.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
The only effective remedy against inexorable necessity is to
yield to it.
PETRARCH.
When I go about among my patients, most of them, as it happens,
"nervously" sick, I sometimes stop to consider why it is they are ill. I
know that some are so because of physical weakness over which they have
no control, that some are suffering from the effects of carelessness,
some from wilfulness, and more from simple ignorance of the rules of the
game. There are so many rules that no one will ever know them all, but
it seems that we live in a world of laws, and that if we transgress
those laws by ever so little, we must suffer equally, whether our
transgression is a mistake or not, and whether we happen to be saints or
sinners. There are laws also which have to do with the recovery of poise
and balance when these have been lost. These laws are less well observed
and understood than those which determine our downfall.
The more gross illnesses, from accident, contagion, and malignancy, we
need not consider here, but only those intangible injuries that disable
people who are relatively sound in the physical sense. It is true that
nervous troubles may cause physical complications and that physical
disease very often coexists with nervous illness, but it is better for
us now to make an artificial separation. Just what happens in the human
economy when a "nervous breakdown" comes, nobody seems to know, but mind
and body cooeperate to make the patient miserable and helpless. It may
be nature's way of holding us up and preventing further injury. The
hold-up is severe, usually, and becomes in itself a thing to be managed.
The rules we have wittingly or unwittingly broken are often unknown to
us, but they exist in the All-Wise Providence, and we may guess by our
own suffering how far we have overstepped them. If a man runs into a
door in the dark, we know all about that,--the case is simple,--but if
he runs overtime at his office and hastens to be rich with the result of
a nervous dyspepsia--that is a mystery. Here is a girl who "came out"
last year. She was apparently strong and her mother was ambitious for
her social progress. That meant four nights a week for several months at
dances and dinners, getting home at 3 A.M. or later. It was gay and
delightful while it lasted, but it could not last, and the girl went to
pieces suddenly; her back gave out because it was not strong enough to
stand the dancing and the long-continued physical strain. The nerves
gave out because she did not give her faculties time to rest, and
perhaps because of a love affair that supervened. The result was a year
of invalidism, and then, because the rules of recovery were not
understood, several years more of convalescence. Such common rules
should be well enough understood, but they are broken everywhere by the
wisest people.
The common case of the broken-down school teacher is more unfortunate.
This tragedy and others like it are more often, I believe, due to unwise
choice of profession in the first place. The women's colleges are
turning out hundreds of young women every year who naturally consider
teaching as the field most appropriate and available. Probably only a
very small proportion of these girls are strong enough physically or
nervously to meet the growing demands of the schools. They may do well
for a time, some of them unusually well, for it is the sensitive,
high-strung organism that is appreciative and effective. After a while
the worry and fret of the requirements and the constant nag of the
schoolroom have their effect upon those who are foredoomed to failure in
that particular field. The plight of such young women is particularly
hard, for they are usually dependent upon their work.
It is, after all, not so much the things we do as the way we do them,
and what we think about them, that accomplishes nervous harm. Strangely
enough, the sense of effort and the feeling of our own inadequacy damage
the nervous system quite as much as the actual physical effort. The
attempt to catch up with life and with affairs that go on too fast for
us is a frequent and harmful deflection from the rules of the game. Few
of us avoid it. Life comes at us and goes by very fast. Tasks multiply
and we are inadequate, responsibilities increase before we are ready.
They bring fatigue and confusion. We cannot shirk and be true. Having
done all you reasonably can, stop, whatever may be the consequences.
That is a rule I would enforce if I could. To do more is to drag and
fail, so defeating the end of your efforts. If it turns out that you are
not fit for the job you have undertaken, give it up and find another, or
modify that one until it comes within your capacity. It takes courage to
do this--more courage sometimes than is needed to make us stick to the
thing we are doing. Rarely, however, will it be necessary for us to give
up if we will undertake and consider for the day only such part of our
task as we are able to perform. The trouble is that we look at our work
or our responsibility all in one piece, and it crushes us. If we cannot
arrange our lives so that we may meet their obligations a little at a
time, then we must admit failure and try again, on what may seem a
lower plane. That is what I consider the brave thing to do. I would
honor the factory superintendent, who, finding himself unequal to his
position, should choose to work at the bench where he could succeed
perfectly.
The habit of uncertainty in thought and action, bred, as it sometimes
is, from a lack of faith in man and in God, is, nevertheless, a thing to
be dealt with sometimes by itself. Not infrequently it is a petty habit
that can be corrected by the exercise of a little will power. I believe
it is better to decide wrong a great many times--doing it quickly--than
to come to a right decision after weakly vacillating. As a matter of
fact, we may trust our decisions to be fair and true if our life's
ideals are beautiful and true.
We may improve our indecisions a great deal by mastering their unhappy
details, but we shall not finally overcome them until life rings true
and until all our acts and thoughts become the solid and inevitable
expression of a healthy growing regard for the best in life, a call to
right living that is no mean dictum of policy, but which is renewed
every morning as the sun comes out of the sea. However inconsequential
the habit of indecision may seem, it is really one of the most disabling
of bad habits. Its continuance contributes largely to the sum of nervous
exhaustion. Whatever its origin, whether it stands in the relation of
cause or effect, it is an indulgence that insidiously takes the snap and
sparkle out of life and leaves us for the time being colorless and weak.
Next to uncertainty, an uninspired certainty is wrecking to the best of
human prospects. The man whose one idea is of making himself and his
family materially comfortable, or even rich, may not be coming to
nervous prostration, but he is courting a moral prostration that will
deny him all the real riches of life and that will in the end reward
him with a troubled mind, a great, unsatisfied longing, unless, to be
sure, he is too smug and satisfied to long for anything.
The larger life leads us inevitably away from ourselves, away from the
super-requirements of our families. It demands of them and of ourselves
an unselfishness that is born of a love that finds its expression in the
service of God. And what is the service of God if it is not such an
entering into the divine purposes and spirit that we become with God
re-creators in the world--working factors in the higher evolution of
humanity? While we live we shall get and save, we shall use and spend,
we shall serve the needs of those dependent upon us, but we shall not
line the family nest so softly that our children become powerless. We
shall not confine our charities to the specified channels, where our
names will be praised and our credit increased. We shall give and serve
in secret places with our hearts in our deeds. Then we may possess the
untroubled mind, a treasure too rich to be computed. We shall not have
it for the seeking; it may exist in the midst of what men may call
privations and sorrows; but it will exist in a very large sense and it
will be ours. The so-called hard-headed business man who never allows
himself to be taken advantage of, whose dealings are always strict and
uncompromising, is very apt to be a particularly miserable invalid when
he is ill. I cannot argue in favor of business laxity,--I know the
imperative need of exactness and finality,--but I do believe that if we
are to possess the untroubled mind we must make our lives larger than
the field of dollars and cents. The charity that develops in us will
make us truly generous and free from the reaction of hardness.
It is a great temptation to go on multiplying the rules of the game.
There are so many sensible and necessary pieces of advice which we all
need to have emphasized. That is the course we must try to avoid. The
child needs to be told, arbitrarily for a while, what is right, and what
is wrong, that he must do this, and he must not do that. The time comes,
however, when the growing instinct toward right living is the thing to
foster--not the details of life which will inevitably take care of
themselves if the underlying principle is made right. It must be the
ideal of moral teaching to make clear and pure the source of action.
Then the stream will be clear and pure. Such a stream will purify itself
and neutralize the dangerous inflow along its banks. It is true that
great harm may come from the polluted inflows, but they will be less and
less harmful as the increasing current from the good source flows down.
We shall have to look well to our habits lest serious ills befall, but
that must never be the main concern or we shall find ourselves living
very narrow and labored lives; we shall find that we are failing to
observe one of the most important rules of the game.
VI
THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT
Beyond the ugly actual, lo, on every side,
Imagination's limitless domain.
BROWNING.
He that too much refines his delicacy will always endanger his
quiet.
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
The great refinement of many poetical gentlemen has rendered
them practically unfit for the jostling and ugliness of life.
STEVENSON.
It has been my fortune as a physician to deal much with the so-called
nervous temperament. I have come both to fear and to love it. It is the
essence of all that is bright, imaginative, and fine, but it is as
unstable as water. Those who possess it must suffer--it is their lot to
feel deeply, and very often to be misunderstood by their more practical
friends. All their lives these people will shed tears of joy, and more
tears of sorrow. I would like to write of their joy, of the perfect
satisfaction, the true happiness that comes in creating new and
beautiful things, of the deep pleasure they have in the appreciation of
good work in others. But with the instinct of a dog trained for a
certain kind of hunting I find myself turning to the misfortunes and the
ills.
The very keenness of perception makes painful anything short of
perfection. What will such people do in our clanging streets? What of
those fine ears tuned to the most exquisite appreciation of sweet sound?
What of that refinement of hearing that detects the least departure from
the rhythm and pitch in complex orchestral music? And must they bear the
crash of steel on stone, the infernal clatter of traffic? Well, yes,--as
a matter of fact--they must, at least for a good many years to come,
until advancing civilization eliminates the city noise. But it is not
always great noises that disturb and distract. There is a story told of
a woman who became so sensitive to noise that she had her house made
sound-proof: there were thick carpets and softly closing doors;
everything was padded. The house was set back from a quiet street, but
that street was strewn with tanbark to check the sound of carriages.
Surely here was bliss for the sensitive soul. I need not tell the rest
of the story, how absolutely necessary noises became intolerable, and
the poor woman ended by keeping a man on the place to catch and silence
the tree toads and crickets.
There is nothing to excuse the careless and unnecessary noises of the
world--we shall dispose of them finally as we are disposing of
flamboyant signboards and typhoid flies. But meanwhile, and always, for
that matter, the sensitive soul must learn to adjust itself to
circumstances and conditions. This adjustment may in itself become a
fine art. It is really the art by which the painter excludes the
commonplace and irrelevant from his landscape. Sometimes we have to do
this consciously; for the most part, it should be a natural, unconscious
selection.
I am sure it is unwise to attempt at any time the dulling of the
appreciative sense for the sake of peace and comfort. Love and
understanding of the beautiful and true is too rare and fine a thing to
be lost or diminished under any circumstances. The cure, as I see it, is
to be found in the cultivation of the faculty that finds some good in
everything and everybody. This is the saving grace--it takes great bulks
of the commonplace and distils from the mass a few drops of precious
essence; it finds in the unscholarly and the imperfect, rare traces of
good; it sees in man, any man, the image of God, to be justified and
made evident only in the sublimity of death, perhaps, but usually to be
developed in life.