Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/462

444 The defects and diseases of the brain itself show themselves in many ways, ranging from oddity or folly to the extreme of idiocy or mania. Most of the "psychic phenomena" along "the border land of spirit," which occupy a large part in current discussions, are characters of insanity. The phenomena of hysteria, faith-cure, openness to suggestion, subjective imagery, mysticism, are not indications of spiritual strength, but of decay and disintegration of the nerves. The ecstasy of unbalanced religious excitement and a stupor of a drunken debauch may belong to the same category of mental phenomena. Both point toward moral and spiritual decay. There are no occult or "latent powers" of the mind except those which have become useless or which belong to the process of disintegration. If a man crosses his eyes, and is thus enabled to see objects double, we do not regard him as having developed a "latent power" of vision. He has simply destroyed the normal co-ordination of such powers. In like manner, one does not increase the strength of a rope by untwisting its many strands. The effectiveness of life depends upon the co-ordination and co-operation of the parts of the nervous system. Its strands must be kept together. To move in a state of reverie, "to live in two worlds at once," to be unable to separate memory pictures from realities, all these are forms of nervous disintegration. Every phase of them can be found in the madhouse. The end of such conditions is death. The healthy mind should combat all tendencies toward disintegration. It can be clean and strong only by being true.

In like manner the influence of all drugs which affect the nervous system must be in the direction of disintegration. The healthy mind stands in clear and normal relations with Nature. It feels pain as pain. It feels action as pleasure. The drug which conceals pain or gives false pleasure when pleasure does not exist, forces a lie upon the nervous system. The drug which disposes to reverie rather than to work, which makes us feel well when we are not well, destroys the sanity of life. All stimulants, narcotics, tonics, which affect the nervous system in whatever way, reduce the truthfulness of sensation, thought, and action. Toward insanity all such influences lead; and their effect, slight though it be, is of the same nature as mania. The man who would see clearly, think truthfully, and act effectively, must avoid them all. Emergency aside, he can not safely force upon his nervous system even the smallest falsehood. And here lies the one great unanswerable argument for total abstinence; not abstinence from alcohol alone, but from all nerve poisons and emotional excesses. The man who would be sane must avoid all nerve excitants, nerve soothers, and "nerve foods," as well as trances, ecstasies, and similar influences. If he would keep his