are merely tired nerves. In problems, the useless nervous element
often plays a large part. If the "problems" were dropped out of mind
with sufferers from nervous prostration, their progress towards
renewed health might be just twice as rapid. If they were met
normally, many nervous men and women might be entirely saved from
even a bowing acquaintance with nervous prostration. It is not a
difficult matter, that of meeting a problem normally,--simply let
it solve itself. In nine cases out of ten, if we leave it alone and
live as if it were not, it will solve itself. It is at first a
matter of continual surprise to see how surely this self-solution is
the result of a wholesome ignoring both of little problems and big
ones.
In the tenth case, where the problem must be faced at once, to face
it and decide to the best of our ability is, of course, the only
thing to do. But having decided, be sure that it ceases to be a
problem. If we have made a mistake, it is simply a circumstance to
guide us for similar problems to come.
All this is obvious; we know it, and have probably said it to
ourselves dozens of times. If we are sufferers from nervous
problems, we may have said it dozens upon dozens of times. The
trouble is that we have said it and not acted upon it. When a
problem will persist in worrying us, in pulling and dragging upon
our nerves, an invitation to continue the worrying until it has
worked itself out is a great help towards its solution or
disappearance.
I remember once hearing a bright woman say that when there was
anything difficult to decide in her life she stepped aside and let
the opposing elements fight it out within her. Presumably she
herself threw in a little help on one side or the other which really
decided the battle. But the help was given from a clear standpoint,
not from a brain entirely befogged in the thick of the fight.
Whatever form problems may take, however important they may seem,
when they attack tired nerves they must be let alone. A good way is
to go out into the open air and so identify one's self with Nature
that one is drawn away in spite of one's self. A big wind will
sometimes blow a brain clear of nervous problems in a very little
while if we let it have its will. Another way out is to interest
one's self in some game or other amusement, or to get a healthy
interest in other people's affairs, and help where we can.
Each individual can find his own favorite escape. Of course we
should never shirk a problem that must be decided, but let us always
wait a reasonable time for it to decide itself first. The solving
that is done for us is invariably better and clearer than any we
could do for ourselves.
It will be curious, too, to see how many apparently serious
problems, relieved of the importance given them by a strained
nervous system, are recognized to be nothing at all. They fairly
dissolve themselves and disappear.
XV.
SUMMARY.
THE line has not been clearly drawn, either in general or by
individuals, between true civilization and the various perversions
of the civilizing process. This is mainly because we do not fairly
face the fact that the process of civilization is entirely according
to Nature, and that the perversions which purport to be a direct
outcome of civilization are, in point of fact, contradictions or
artificialities which are simply a going-over into barbarism, just
as too far east is west.
If you suggest "Nature" in habits and customs to most men nowadays,
they at once interpret you to mean "beastly," although they would
never use the word.
It is natural to a beast to be beastly: he could not be anything
else; and the true order of his life as a beast is to be respected.
It is natural to a man to govern himself, as he possesses the power
of distinguishing and choosing, With all the senses and passions
much keener, and in their possibilities many degrees finer, than the
beasts, he has this governing power, which makes his whole nervous
system his servant just in so far as through this servant he loyally
obeys his own natural laws. A man in building a bridge could never
complain when he recognized that it was his obedience to the laws of
mechanics which enabled him to build the bridge, and that he never
could have arbitrarily arranged laws that would make the bridge
stand. In the same way, one who has come to even a slight
recognition of the laws that enable him to be naturally civilized
and not barbarously so, steadily gains, not only a realization of
the absolute futility of resisting the laws, but a growing respect
and affection for them.
It is this sham civilization, this selfish refinement of barbarous
propensities, this clashing of nervous systems instead of the
clashing of weapons, which has been largely, if not entirely, the
cause of such a variety and extent of nervous trouble throughout the
so-called civilized world. It is not confined to nervous
prostration; if there is a defective spot organically, an inherited
tendency to weakness, the nervous irritation is almost certain to
concentrate upon it instead of developing into a general nervous
break-down.
With regard to a cure for all this, no superficial remedy, such as
resting and feeding, is going to prove of lasting benefit; any more
than a healing salve will suffice to do away with a blood disease
which manifests itself by sores on the surface of the skin. No
physician would for a moment inveigle himself into the belief that
the use of external means alone would cure a skin disease that was
caused by some internal disorder. Such skin irritation may be easily
cured by the right remedy, whereas an external salve would only be a
means of repression, and would result in much greater trouble
subsequently.
Imagine a man superficially cured of an illness, and then exposed
while yet barely convalescent to influences which produce a relapse.
That is what is done in many cases when a patient is rested, and
fattened like a prize pig, and then sent home into all the old
conditions, with nothing to help him to elude them but a well-fed,
well-rested body. That, undeniably, means a great deal for a short
period; but the old conditions discover the scars of old wounds, and
the process of reopening is merely a matter of time. From all sides
complaints are heard of the disastrous results of civilization;
while with even a slight recognition of the fact that the trouble
was caused by the rudiments of barbarism, and that the higher
civilization is the life which is most truly natural, remedies for
our nervous disorders would be more easily found.
It is the perversions of the natural process of civilization that do
the harm; just as with so-called domesticated flowers there arise
coarse abnormal growths, and even diseases, which the wholesome,
delicate organism of a wild flower makes impossible.
The trouble is that we do not know our own best powers at all; the
way is stopped so effectually by this persistent nervous irritation.
With all its superficiality, it is enough to impede the way to the
clear, nervous strength which is certainly our inheritance.
After all, what has been said in the foregoing chapters is simply
illustrative of a prevalent mental skin-disorder.
If the whole world were suffering from a physical cutaneous
irritation, the minds of individuals would be so concentrated on
their sensations that no one could know of various wonderful powers
in his own body which are now taken as a matter of course. There
would be self-consciousness in every physical action, because it
must come through, and in spite of, external irritation. Just in so
far as each individual one of us found and used the right remedy for
our skin-trouble should we be free to discover physical powers that
were unknown to our fellow-sufferers, and free to help them to a
similar remedy when they were willing to be helped.
This mental skin-disorder is far more irritating and more
destructive, and not only leads to, but actually is, in all its
forms, a sort of self-consciousness through which we work with real
difficulty.
To discover its shallowness and the simplicity of its cure is a boon
we can hardly realize until, by steady application, we have found
the relief. The discovery and cure do not lead to a millennium any
more than the cure of any skin disease guarantees permanent health.
For deeper personal troubles there are other remedies. Each will
recognize and find his own; but freedom, through and through, can
never be found, or even looked for clearly, while the irritation
from the skin disease is withdrawing our attention.
"But, friends,
Truth is within ourselves: it takes no rise
From outward things; whatever you may believe,
There is an inmost centre in us all
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect clear perception which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Blinds it, and makes all error; and TO KNOW
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without."
Browning's "baffling and perverting carnal mesh" might be truly
interpreted as a nervous tangle which is nothing at all except as we
make it with our own perverted sight.
To help us to move a little distance from the phantom tangle, that
it may disappear before our eyes, has been the aim of this book. So
by curing our mental skin-disease as a matter of course, and then
forgetting that it ever existed, we may come to real life. This no
one can find for another, but each has within himself the way.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's As A Matter of Course, by Annie Payson Call