The curious thing with regard to animal energy, however, is that it does not accumulate in the body beyond a certain limited extent, and all energy that is manufactured beyond that seems to have a definite tendency to dissipate itself throughout the body, producing discomfort of various kinds instead of doing useful work. The process is very like what is called short-circuiting in electrical machinery, and this enables us to understand how much harm may be done. Making ourselves comfortable, therefore, may in the [{15}] end have just exactly the opposite effect, and often does. This is not noted at first, and may escape notice entirely unless there is an analysis of the mode of life which is directed particularly to finding out the amount of exertion of will and energy that there is in the daily round of existence.

The will, like so many other faculties of the human organism, grows in power not by resting but by use and exercise. There have been very few calls for serious exercise of the will left in modern life and so it is no wonder that it has dwindled in power. As a consequence, a good deal of the significance of the will in life has been lost sight of. This is unfortunate, for the will can enable us to tap sources of energy that might otherwise remain concealed from us. Professor William James particularly called attention to the fact, in his well-known essay on "The Energies of Men", that very few people live up to their maximum of accomplishment or their optimum of conduct, and that indeed "as a rule men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions."

It is with the idea of pointing out how much the will can accomplish in changing things for [{16}] the better that this volume is written. Professor James quoted with approval Prince Pueckler-Muskau's expression, "I find something very satisfactory in the thought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force of his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent." [Footnote 1]

[Footnote 1: "Tour in England, Ireland and France.">[

It is this power, thus daringly called omnipotent, that men have not been using to the best advantage to maintain health and even to help in the cure of disease, which needs to be recalled emphatically to attention. The war has shown us in the persons of our young soldiers that the human will has not lost a single bit of its pristine power to enable men to accomplish what might almost have seemed impossible. One of the heritages from the war should be the continuance of that fine use of the will which military discipline and war's demands so well brought into play. Men can do and stand ever so much more than they realize, and in the very doing and standing find a satisfaction that surpasses all the softer pleasant feelings that come from mere comfort and lack of necessity for physical and [{17}] psychical exertion. Their exercise of tolerance and their strenuous exertion, instead of exhausting, only makes them more capable and adds to instead of detracting from their powers.

How much this discipline and training of the will meant for our young American soldiers, some of whom were raised in the lap of luxury and almost without the necessity of ever having had to do or stand hard things previously in their lives, is very well illustrated by a letter quoted by Miss Agnes Repplier in the Century  for December. It is by no means unique or even exceptional. There were literally thousands of such letters written by young officers similarly circumstanced, and it is only because it is typical and characteristic of the spirit of all of these young men that I quote it here. Miss Repplier says that it came from "a young American lieutenant for whom the world had been from infancy a perilously pleasant place." He wrote home in the early spring of 1918:

"It has rained and rained and rained. I am as much at home in a mud puddle as any frog in France, and I have clean forgotten what a dry bed is like. But I am as fit as a fiddle and as hard as nails. I can eat scrap iron and sleep standing. Aren't there things [{18}] called umbrellas, which you pampered civilians carry about in showers?" If we can secure the continuance of this will exertion, life will be ever so much heartier and healthier and happier than it was before, so that the war shall have its compensations.

[{19}]

CHAPTER II
DREADS

"O, know he is the bridle of your will.
There's none but asses will be bridled so."
A Comedy of Errors.