পাতা:বঙ্কিমচন্দ্রের গ্রন্থাবলী (নবম ভাগ).djvu/৯১

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ৰষ্ট্ৰভৰ । exercise, consequent ill-health, inefficiency, anxiety and unhappiness. It is supposed that ethics has no verdict to give in the matter. A student who is plucked because he has spent in amusement the une and money that should have gone in study, is blamed for thus maklug parents unhappy and preparing for himself a miserable future, but another, who thinking exclusively of claims on him, reads night after night with hot or aching head, and, breaking down, cannot take his degree, but returns home shattered in health and unable to support himself, is named with pity only, as not subject to any moral judgment or rather, the mɔral judgment passed, is wholly favourable. Thus recognizing the evils caused by some kinds of conduct only, men at large, and moralists as exponents of their beliefs, ignore the suffering and death daily caused 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 Chris Ian ascetios,that we are sx duab?lically orgvmized that pleasures are injurious and palns beneficial, people on all siden yield extmples of lives blasted by persusting in actions against which thore sensati 2na rebel. Here is one who drenched to the skin and sitting in a cold wind, poohpoohs his shiverings and gets rheumatic fever with subsequent heart-disease, which makes worthless the short life remaining to him. Here is another who, disregarding painful feelings, works too son after a debilitating ileness, and establishes disordered health that lasts the rest of his dugs, and makes him useless to himself and others. Now the accrun is of a youth who, persisting in gymnastic feats in spite of scracely bearable, straining bursts a blood vessel, and, long laid on the shelf, is for Ն> permanently damagei, 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 over-study 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 care-worn 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 ın bad aır, the anaemic, flat-chested schoolgirls, bending over many lessons and "forbidden boisterous play, no less than grundars, who die of suffocating dust, and peasants crippled with rheumatism due to exposure, show us the widespread miseries caused by psrsevering in actions repugnant to the sensations and neglecting actions which the sensations prompt. Nay the evidence is stil more extensive and conspicuous. What are the puny malformed children, seen in paverty-striken districts, but children whose appetites for ford aud desires for warmth have not been adequately satisfied ? What are populations stunted in growth and premuturely aged, such as parts of France show us, but populations injured by work in excess and food in defect, the ons implying pnsitive paun the other negative

  • I can count up more than a dozen such cases amung those parsonally wellknown to me.