Blushing is the direct effect of a more or less powerful stimulus passing to the brain from one of the special senses. Flushing is the effect of a stimulus from one of the internal organs, usually the stomach.
Anæmia, indigestion, constipation, and various other ailments cause flushing, and very rarely they produce blushing.
This is all we have to say of the physical causes of blushing and nervousness, except that people who are ill or run down are often irritable and nervous. But the illness is not the cause of the nervousness, it only paves the way for it to become manifest; it only reduces the force by which nervousness is normally overcome.
It is in the workings of the mind that we must seek the causes of nervousness.
We are not all born with the same mental powers. Each inherits from her parents certain hereditary tendencies. We all know that insanity runs in families; so does nervousness; so does every kind of mental inclination, but only to a certain extent. We do not inherit the virtues, the vices, the powers or the mental shortcomings of our parents; we inherit a tendency to them—a tendency which may develop and reproduce in us the minds of our fathers. Or these tendencies may be modified or suppressed by education; or they may be overwhelmed by some individual peculiarity which we have not inherited from our parents, but which had its beginning in our own minds.
The mind of anyone is an individual in itself. It has its own passions and inclinations different from those of any other, but it must be educated. Each of us must have a solid basis of general knowledge ere she can use her mind. In other words we must all be educated.
And in education, or rather in the lack of some portion of education, you will find the causes of blushing and nervousness.
Nervousness is more common amongst the highly educated classes than amongst others. And yet you say that nervousness is caused by defective education. How can this be?
You have not got a true notion of education! You say education but you mean study; you confine the term to that part of education which is learnt at school and from books; you have fallen into the common error of the age by supposing that education is synonymous with schooling!
At school we learn to read, to write. We learn a little science, perhaps a smattering of art and the elements of a language or two. Is this all the education required by man? Is this sufficient food for the mind of man for threescore years and ten? Do you learn nothing else in your life than this little handful of unimportant subjects? No, you do not! Far more than nine-tenths of your education is gained without your knowing how: not without effort, but without your knowing that you are educating yourself.