The modern malady

by Cyril Bennett

WE mould the clay while it is soft, that it may not be chipped or pulverised when it is hard by contact with obstacles which it has not been fitted to overcome. Is the process usually effectual? With how little destruction to life, with how little injury to character, do we graduate the sieves of our younger members? Do we succeed in moulding them into sane, capable citizens, or are we so careful to impart special kinds of instruction, to develop the part at the expense of the whole, that our interference is positively detrimental to the individual, and consequently to the community at large also?

I fear we can hardly be acquitted of this grave charge. The physiological demands made by growth and development on the vitality of the child are so great, that not only are abundant fresh air and nutrition required for the work, but also a considerable supply of surplus nervous energy. To use up this surplus energy for purposes other than that for which it is intended, is to stunt growth, or to limit the development of the mental faculties, or to diminish nerve-power; one of the three inevitably. And the diminution of nerve-power must bring with it physical, mental, or moral atrophy, according to the part on which the greatest strain has been put and the conditions in which the victim has been placed.

Moreover, children of large natural capabilities, whose complex nervous systems require an exceptional amount of nutriment, and whose sensitiveness and plasticity cause them to respond readily to instruction, are just those who will first break down under prolonged strain; and thus we may easily weed out the finer organisations, and continue the race from the less highly developed types.

Observation of nervous patients shows us that their small stock of available nerve-force may be attracted to one part to the detriment of another. For this reason nervous disease is specially difficult to understand. One patient told me he could get on fairly well if he used his body and not his brain, or if he used his brain and not his body; but if he tried to use both in the same day, he became ill. Of course, he did in reality use both at the same time; what he meant was that, if he exerted a fair amount of activity in the brain, he had only strength to exert a very small amount of activity in the rest of the body, and vice versâ. He was right in saying that his available store of energy was so small that he could not expend even a moderate amount of it in both physical and mental labour during the same day.

Others have told me that if they devoted themselves for a few days to book-work and abstained from bodily labour, their studies became easy and were performed without fatigue; but that if they began to take exercise, they were compelled by exhaustion to abandon the book-work. Moreover, the physical exertion caused great fatigue for a day or two, until they grew accustomed to the altered mode of expending energy; and when it had become easy to them, the same weariness was experienced for a short time on their return to the book-work, even though the bodily exercise was then totally discontinued. By no effort of will could the two modes of activity be carried on together, unless only a very small amount of power was expended in each, the rest of the day being given up to repose. Total collapse followed the attempt, for the necessary nerve-force was wanting.

We thus learn when we are weak a truth which is less apparent in health, viz., that our available energy is a strictly limited quantity, dependent on nutritive supply. How great, then, is the folly of those who would urge to exertion persons in whom the nutritive supply is defective! But how much greater is the folly of those who, during the early years of the individual’s life, when the constitution is being formed and future health in great measure determined, will persistently compel him to expend his nerve-force in a particular direction, to the detriment of other parts of the organism, or who put such a strain upon the whole that the constitution is permanently injured! The partial injury is perhaps the more dangerous because it is the less easily observed. If a child begins to break down altogether under the stress of his school course, we become aware of the fact, and by timely interference sometimes—not always—put a stop to the work of destruction. But many delicate boys and girls contrive to struggle through their school course with little apparent harm, because the greater amount of their spare nerve-force being attracted to the part on which the strain is put, the allotted tasks can be performed. Whether growth is thereby stunted; whether nerve-force in general be decreased; whether perceptive power be dulled; whether the child have been withdrawn from the active experience of life necessary to healthy development; whether his various physiological needs have been fully supplied—all these questions frequently remain unasked, provided that the child have learnt a specified number of the more or less erroneous notions of his ignorant fellow-creatures, and have put them down on paper. And if he become neurasthenic, or succumb to some complaint to which his lowered vitality makes him fall an easy prey, or if he grow up with feeble powers of observation, or without the self-control dependent on the firm will that can only be developed by means of the right expenditure of a considerable amount of nerve-force, little connection is traced between his defective education and his defective nerve-structure. The children whose education has consisted chiefly of instruction from books cannot properly be said to be educated at all. In most cases their minds are warped by fixed ideas.

This is not saying that children should not be taught in the best sense of the word; that they should not be disciplined and trained to self-control, to habits of attention, and to ready observation; that they should not have an intelligent interest awakened in them concerning the universe in which they live. But mere book-learning will never do this. It is, unhappily, possible to be a walking encyclopedia of so-called knowledge, and yet to be an imperfect reflector of the life of our time.

And of the wonders and glories of Nature that surround us every moment from the cradle to the grave, how much are we taught? Yet these can be studied at our leisure out in God’s blessed air and under God’s blessed heaven. In the garden, at the river-bank, on the hill-side, by the sea-shore, in the lonely desert, there we may find health and wisdom and knowledge and happiness; and how many of us go to seek them there?

“A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books,” says Walt Whitman. Few of us ever see this morning glory; indeed, very few of us even take the trouble to look at an evening glory. I have stood day after day on the parade at a small seaside place, and have watched the sun sink below the watery horizon; sea, sand, rocks and sky all being illumined with magnificent colouring. Well-dressed people would pass and repass, some averting their eyes from the splendid spectacle lavished on them by prodigal Nature, others glancing at it vacantly with irresponsive countenances, others gazing on the ground or at one another, and talking of the cut of their new dresses or of the prices of stocks. Hardly any ever paused to look and admire. Poor creatures! All this joy—joy showered abundantly on me—was simply rejected by them. The essential God-like part of their natures had been starved; they had been taught in stuffy schoolrooms by wearied teachers and out of musty books; appreciation of the works of the good God had not been included in the curriculum. Carlyle mourns the extinction of the lamp of the soul. He is premature. In most of us it is never so much as lighted.

Yet we have within us somewhere the capability for seeing—though as in a glass darkly—a dim reflection of the Lord of Glory. We have but to look—to be taught how to look aright—and to us the Lord shall be in the earthquake and in the storm. We have but to listen—to be taught to listen aright, and throughout the universe we shall hear the still, small voice.