In this loss of moral sense and judgment we find the secret of much of the nerve-trouble of our day. The Self, having found a plausible excuse for its assertion, loses no time in becoming as suicidal in its tendencies as the uncontrolled Self usually is. Once committed to a course of action, that course of action must be adhered to throughout all opposition. Public support having in a weak moment been enlisted on some false pretext, our utmost efforts must thenceforth be used to prove this pretext true. Having gained a certain height, we dread to be cast from our elevation. Then come harassing worries, overwork, disappointment, and harmful excitement—all the sorrows, in fact, that tend to lower vitality and injure the nervous system.
This new evil seems no less deadly in its effects than an exaggerated personal ambition. Our complex social conditions render us in many respects more dependent on one another than formerly. We have associations and co-operations for everything. Increase of population and means of communication bring us more into contact with our fellows. Division of labour makes us indispensable to one another. We all govern one another. We all have, in some form, a voice in public concerns. Under the guise of advancing the common good, we have special opportunities for advancing Self; and it is the element of self-deception introduced into our striving after self-advancement, and our consequent habit of deceiving others, which are specially injurious to our moral sense. Marcus Aurelius tells us that that which is not for the interest of the whole hive is not for the interest of a single bee. He might with equal truth have said that that which is not for the higher interests of a single bee cannot in the long-run benefit the hive.
It may be questioned whether our exceeding unrest, our yearning for notoriety, our eagerness to overwork ourselves, i.e., to draw on our nerve-capital at the risk of breaking the bank, are not symptoms of widespread nervous disease in the community rather than its causes; just as, in the individual, the restless excitement regarded often as the cause of the after-malady is in reality but a symptom of the disintegration which has already begun. We may console ourselves with the reflection that, neurasthenia in the individual being curable, neurasthenia in the community is curable also; the community being but a collection of individuals.
To go still deeper into the matter, we find that we are living in an age of exceptionally rapid change, and all rapid changes have great dangers because of the difficulty we find in adapting ourselves to altered conditions. And the result of partial failure is seen not merely in complete break-downs, but also in a general lowering of the vitality of the nation. We are nearly all more or less nervous in the more usual signification of the misused word. We have less of the calm confidence that our fathers had; we indulge in alternate and spasmodic conceit and cowardice; self-doubt one moment, self-assertion the next. The way in which we skulk through life in terror of one another is truly ridiculous. Our sensitiveness to the opinion of others is extreme. Can we not realise that the opinion of others is of little moment? It matters, indeed to themselves, though not to us; for the mode in which people accustom themselves to think inevitably alters their nervous structure. It is for them we should be concerned if they think wrongly; not for ourselves. And while we spend our precious time in doubting and fearing, in disputing as to whether men have wills or women have minds, the great force-current flows tranquilly onwards, men and women alike being but fleeting forms, capable of infinite development or of utter degeneration.
One fertile source of danger to our stability has been the marvellous speed at which human thought has advanced in this century. Owing to recent scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions, the minds of our younger generations have, in some respects, become more enlightened than the less plastic minds of their elders. This inequality has produced a great strain in many relations of life. Old theories have been tested by the light of fresh information, and much misery and nerve-deterioration have been occasioned in families by the rejection by the younger members of tenets held sacred by their parents; real high principle having, on both sides, prevented the sacrifice of belief, which alone could effect a compromise. Each side seems to the other to be cruel and unreasonable; yet both are right, even if both are wrong. The elder, owing to their lack of faith, close their eyes to God’s ever-progressive revelation; the younger, in their determination to believe only what is demonstrable, lose sight of the value of much that they deem worthy of rejection.
The position may be illustrated by the following allegory.
THE STORY OF THE AMPHIBIANS.
The streams of God flowed ever from the hills and watered the plain, and the waters of one of the streams gathered themselves together in a hollow place, and formed a lake where dwelt the great Amphibians. Now the Amphibians flourished in this lake and on its shores because its waters were brackish, and they believed it to be in this respect far superior to any other lakes of the plain.
But the time came when, owing to successive geological and atmospheric changes, the waters from the hills changed their course, and the streams which had flowed into the Amphibian abode dried up, so that the lake grew stagnant. And the sun’s heat falling upon it, caused the water to evaporate, while there was now no friendly stream to supply the waste. The waters therefore dwindled rapidly.
At first the Amphibians were unaware of any change in themselves consequent on the too brackish condition of the lake. But the fact was, that as the lake grew shallower and shallower, its inhabitants grew more and more torpid, and more and more inactive. Some of their children, however, who had inherited the former energetic disposition of their parents, and had not yet been reduced to a lethargic state by their surroundings, expressed great alarm at the stagnancy of the water, and consulted as to the means to be adopted to bring about a reform. They not only complained that the water was constantly evaporating, but that it was too salt.