The modern malady

by Cyril Bennett

Amongst the most serious secondary causes of nerve-deterioration in modern times we find one to which attention has recently been drawn by many writers of distinction. It is not merely overwork, hurry, and excitement that are injurious to our organisms, but a lack of the solitude and calm in which impressions are combined and ideas created. Many of us live in the midst of such a whirl of rapidly succeeding sights, sounds, and sensations, that only a confused recollection of them is left in our minds. It is as though we were to eat incessantly, leaving no leisure for digestion; as though we were so eager to know, that we should refuse to wait to learn. We forget that the sure test of knowledge and progress is the power to reproduce the impressions we have assimilated; not the very elementary capability of putting down on paper the undiluted and undigested detail which has been stuffed into the outer chamber of our minds for that purpose. We must create; we must see, and show to others, “the light that never was on sea or land.”

How is this to be accomplished? In attempting to answer the question, let us consider what we do when we wish to obtain the photograph of a face that does not exist. We photograph a number of faces one over the other on the same plate. Is that enough? Does it suffice us to obtain a series of impressions on our plate? No; we now need the dark room, the developing and fixing solutions, and the presiding genius of a higher intelligence, before we can obtain the negative of a face that never yet was seen.

And if in this age we expose ourselves to an abundance of impressions, but ignore or underrate the solitude of the dark room, the imaginative faculty which combines and develops, to say nothing of the presiding genius of a higher intelligence, what is to become of our creative power? What, indeed, is to become of our sanity? Moreover, we must remember that there is one great difference between ourselves and the photographic plate. The plate is sensitised once for all; it receives its picture and its work is done. But we are, or may be, always absorbing into ourselves that which sensitises us more and more highly, and of receiving more and more perfect pictures. In addition to which great privilege, we may not only communicate to others, but eventually hand down to others, the faculty thus obtained.

How much reason is there in the creed that we should believe only in the existence of that which is borne witness to by our five senses? In that case we must consider ourselves as perfectly developed as it is possible for creatures to be. All evolution has been a course of rendering ourselves, and being rendered, more and more capable of discerning that which is; and, considering how feeble an atom is man in the midst of so mighty a universe, it is unlikely that the process can yet be finished. Perhaps the deaf bee believes itself to be perfectly constituted, yet a whole world of sound is cut off from it. Just because it has so tremendous a defect, it is unable to comprehend its own loss. From how much in the universe are we also cut off? How far do we injure ourselves by ignoring the existence of that which it is important to us to learn? It is argued, however, that reliable evidence should correct the evidence of each man’s individual senses.[9] When we inquire more closely what is meant by this, we find merely that the experience of the majority of mankind in the past is the source of light which is to illumine individual darkness. A strange source truly! Supposing that the most highly developed of the bees—and the most highly developed are necessarily a small minority—were to obtain some inkling of the nature of sound, and were to attempt to impart it to their companions, would they not be told that the universal experience of bee-kind was against their theories? Would not the deaf creatures be angered by the insinuation of their deafness and consequent inferiority?

And so we may in time discover that, though the honest agnostic may be, and often is, far superior to the dogmatic religionist, it is only persons of a certain degree of development (of all classes) who are capable of belief in the unseen, and that this development has little to do with the faculty of passing examinations. It is possible that the higher faculties are not best developed as we imagine; that what we most usually call brain-work is often rather a means of using up our store of intellectual power than of developing it. The fact that our greatest men of genius have come from the lower ranks of life rather than from the higher should lead us to ask whether the nobler part of mind grows better in the school of the pedagogue or in the school of Nature.[10]

There are cases on record of animals who have been taken by a circuitous route to a distant land, which they had never before visited, and who, on being released, have returned home as straight as the crow flies. In like manner, people have been known to find their way direct to their destination through portions of crowded cities to which they were strangers. Others walk confidently in the dark without hurting themselves. They feel when they are near an obstacle or a precipice. Others approach the most savage beasts and receive no hurt.

If these instances are rejected as fables, we must in consistency reject many supposed scientific facts which we have accepted on no better evidence. Yet what sense or faculty possessed by the majority can account for them?

The man whose measure of the universe is largest, whose development is the widest and most symmetrical, is the man who, having once reached maturity, is the least liable to fall a victim to neurasthenia; not only because his knowledge of quicksands is greatest, but because he has proved his adaptability. The success or failure of the large nature to reach maturity depends quite as much upon circumstance as upon the rate and method of his development. One great poet may survive detraction, but a Chatterton destroys himself. If the detraction be equal in both cases, other circumstances are very different. Coleridge survived a mistaken and injurious mode of education, but he survived it—an opium-eater.

Observation and experience teach us that human beings may be divided into two classes. (1.) Those who act; (2.) Those who are acted upon.[11] The first class, whether so regarded by the world or not, are essentially sane. The second, whether so regarded by the world or not, are essentially insane. The first have a will; the second have none—to speak of. The first are responsible; the second are irresponsible. The first, through self-sacrifice, develop and progress; the second, through self-seeking, fail and deteriorate. Accidental illness may cause members of the first to drop to the second; helpful influence may enable members of the second to climb to the first.

The second class may be subdivided into those who drift helplessly before circumstance, and those who break themselves in pieces before the circumstances that are too strong for them. These latter cannot be persuaded to leave off trying to accommodate the whole universe in their own little measure. Strange to say, they are often credited with possessing strength of will, whereas they merely possess its hostile counterfeit, self-will.