ক্রোড়পত্র। গ । - tధీ around them by disregard of that guidance which has established itself in the course of evolution. Led by the tacit assumption, common to Pagan stoics and Christian ascetics, that we are so diabolically organized that pleasures are injurious and pains benefielal, people on all sides yield examples of lives blasted by persisting in actions against which their sensations rebel. Here is one who, drenched to the skin and sitting in a cold wind, pooh-poohs his shiverings and gets rheumatic fever with subsequent heartdisease, which makes worthless the short life remaining to him. Here is another who, disregarding painful feelings, works too soon after a debilitating illness, and establishes disordered health that lasts for the rest of his days, and makes him useless to himself and others. Now the account is of a youth who, persisting in gymnastic feats spite of scarcely bearable straining, bursts a blood-vessel, and, long laid on the shelf, is permanently damaged ; while now it is of a man in middle life who, pushing muscular effort to painful excess, suddenly brings on hernia. In this family is a case of aphasia, spreading paralysis, and death, caused by eating too little and doing too much ; in that, softening of the brain has been brought on by ceaseless mental efforts against which the feelings hourly protested ; and in others, less serious brain-affections have been contracted by overstudy continued regardless of discomfort and the craving for fresh air and exercise.” Even without accumulating special examples, the truth is forced on us by the visible traits of classes. The careworn man of business too long at his office, the cadaverous barrister pouring half the night over his briefs, the feeble factory hands and unhealthy seamstresses passing long hours in bad air, the anaemic, flatchested school girls, bending over many lessons and forbidden boisterous play, no less than Sheffield grinders who die of suffocating dust, and peasants crippled with rheumatism due to exposure, show us the widespread miseries caused by persevering in actions repugnant to the sensations and neglecting actions which the sensations prompt. Nay the evidence is still more extensive and conspicuous. What are the puny malformed children, seen in poverty-stricken districts, but children whose appetites for food and desires for warmth have not been adequately satisfied ? What are populations stunted in growth and prematurely aged, such as parts of France show us, but populations injured by work in excess and food in defect: the one implying positive pain the other negative pain 2 What is the implication of that greater mortality which occurs among people who are weakened by prizations, unless it is that bodily miseries conduce to fatal illnesses 2 Or once more, what must we infer from the frightful amount of disease and death suffered by armies in the field, fed on scanty and bad provisions, lying on damp ground, exposed to extremes of heat and cold, inadequately sheltered from rain, and subject to exhausting efforts; unless it be the terrible mischiefs caused by continuously subjecting the body to treatment which the feelings protest against 7
- I can count up more than a dozen such cases among those personally well known to me,
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