Another point is worthy of careful consideration. Certain professions were once held to be unlawful for women on the ground that their intellectual faculties were of too inferior an order to enable them to follow masculine callings successfully. Women thereupon attained eminence in these very professions, thereby proving that their intellects, at all events, were equal to the occasion. An intimate acquaintance with some of the women who have thus proved their mental capacity has convinced me that they are not, on that account, very highly organised people. So far from having enlarged their whole circle, they seem to have shot out a long angle on one side of their natures at the expense of drawing to a corresponding extent on the other side. The emotional part of them appears to be defective, and the defect manifests itself chiefly in a lamentable want of sympathy, and in an annoying, though often amusing, deficiency of humour. It may be that the sieves of these professions are of a particularly distorting order, and that the sensitive organisations of women are more easily injured by them than are the tougher organisations of men. Distortion is apt to produce nerve-deterioration in both sexes, but especially in the highly strung nervous systems of women.
Unfortunately, the Modern Malady is at present so little understood, that the very people who are betraying the most serious symptoms of nervous weakness are often declared by those about them to be in excellent health, a mistake which the sufferers themselves, eager to avoid the imputation of nervousness, are careful to foster. On one occasion I remarked to friends on the enfeebled state of nerve to which a clever and energetic woman had been reduced, owing in part to her labours in an arduous profession. Although the symptoms were unmistakable, my words were received with derision.
“Mrs. T—— nervous!” exclaimed my friends. “What an idea! As if such a thing could be possible!”
The notion that nervous weakness was a species of illness to which any one might fall a victim if placed in conditions calculated to produce it, was entirely beyond the mental range of these good people. And following the natural law, in proportion to their ignorance was their conviction of profound wisdom. Mrs. T—— had more and more earned for herself a wide reputation for “strong-mindedness.” She was popularly supposed to be “hard,” and judging from my own experience of her character, I should say that the popular judgment was in that instance more correct than usual; though why so noble a quality as mental strength should be associated with defectiveness, with the terrible process of loss of feeling—a continual lopping of the sensitive tendrils by means of which the human plant keeps itself in touch with its environment and draws from it its mental nutriment—I am unable to imagine. Now, my friends were convinced that the defect of emotional nature commonly called hardness, and a condition in which emotional symptoms are often manifested, were things incompatible. They therefore bestowed ridicule upon me, and considered that they had “fixed that matter up.” My belief is that the dear ladies would have “fixed up” with equal alacrity any matter in the whole of this wide universe.
But Dame Nature, always stern in carrying out her threats, slowly but surely brought Mrs. T——’s downward career to its logical conclusion. She was compelled to give up work and seek seclusion for a season. Her friends and acquaintance were surprised, but the tragedy was by no means astonishing. Ambition, and consequent overwork, began the mischief; the hardness which was supposed to be her safeguard completed it. Once out of sympathy with her fellow-creatures, her sorrows were endless. Loving herself more than them, she tried to act in her own interests in opposition to theirs. Her fellow-creatures took their revenge. The perception that is born of sympathy now being blunted, she estimated their characters wrongly; she confided in the untrustworthy and was suspicious of the trustworthy. Her blunders were productive of suffering not only to herself but to others. Blame, friction, and harassing cares followed, in the midst of which her brain gave way.
There are those who, cursed by the taint of insanity in their families, pray daily to God to preserve them from this frightful evil, and who, even while they are praying, turn their backs upon the road that leads to sanity. That road is the enlarging of the sympathies.
It is sometimes urged that much sympathy is a bad thing, not only for its possessor, but for those with whom he comes in contact. Persons who give indiscriminately to beggars, who make a great show of superficial pity and affection, or who shed tears on the smallest provocation—all, in short, who, from nervous disorder or congenital weakness, are wanting in judgment and self-control, are almost invariably classed with highly developed people of large emotional natures.
As a matter of fact, the two classes have nothing in common. Any poor lunatic, whose injured nerve-centres are incapable of disposing healthily of the full amount of energy generated, can manifest an excess of superficial emotion. It is noteworthy that the very people who save themselves trouble by giving to beggars without careful inquiry into the merits of the case will save themselves trouble in other respects at the expense of their fellow-creatures, and that those who harrow others by a needless and self-indulgent emotional display are precisely those who will abundantly prove their selfishness and shallowness of feeling so soon as any sacrifice is demanded of them.
On the other hand, we sometimes find that the most truly sympathetic people earn for themselves a quite undeserved reputation for hardness, for it is not always either wise or kind to show all the sympathy we feel. Only the largest natures can rise superior to their innate love of approbation; only those who are really actuated by a desire to benefit humanity can resist the temptation to flatter weakness when there is anything to be gained by so doing. The most successful in this respect run the greatest risk of misconception. Self-control is regarded as want of feeling; unselfishness may appear like indifference. In dealing with the nervous, virtue must often be satisfied with its own reward. After all, the reward is a large one. It is nothing less than the cure of our patient.
Continued unselfish action is the only sufficient test of deep feeling. The tree is known by its fruit. The world is full of mimetic people who can speak so well and write so well as to deceive the very elect, should these be so simple as to judge them by their professions. Unhappily the elect too often forget the injunction to acquire the wisdom of the serpent.