She only made pretence at life.
The book fell idly from her hands,
In which not one word had she read.”
“She only made a pretence at life.” How many die to-day who have never lived at all!
Even our health has suffered from the reaction of our moral weakness. Nervous illnesses, which for several years have been making such alarming progress, are nothing else than the result of disabled wills, of weakened personalities. Doctor Grasset, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier, who has gained universal renown by his special study of these diseases, clearly states the necessity of recourse to a moral treatment which consists in building up the personality and strengthening the will. “We must,” he says, “give a patient the desire and the ambition to cure himself, and with that purpose we must show him the object that life still holds for him, the mission that he still has to fulfil in this world.”
“A nervous subject, who does not understand life, who will not admit that life is worth the trouble of living, who goes to sleep at night without wishing to think of the next day, with no satisfaction beyond that of having one day less to live ... this nervous subject will never be cured.
“The doctor must awaken and develop in his patient the ideas of duty, of sacrifice, of sociability. All these great thoughts must replace the morbid ones.
“The patient must be prevented from limiting himself to the fruitless brooding over a past which cannot be altered. Whatever are the injustices, apparent or real, of different lots, every man has before him a part to play, be it small or be it distinguished, in the interests of his fellow men and of humanity in general.
“We must, in other words, take the patient out of himself and turn him more and more towards altruism, by showing him that the cure lies there, and only there.
“A healthy man is an altruistic animal. Egotism and self-centredness are allied to disease; they are the causes and symptoms of disease. As long as one remains an egoist, one is not and cannot be cured.”