Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/63

Rh the susceptible mind, it may eventually prove to be more useful in obviating and relieving the "mind diseased," than almost any other simple measure that can be thought of.

Third, let us now consider another different yet quite as prolific source of mental pain and its resulting invalidism, namely, that which is to be found in the ever-insistent consciousness of misfit into the ever-growing complexity and demands of the life of to-day, the necessarily consequent failure to realize what has been legitimately expected and striven for, and all the mental wear and tear which so necessarily follows or accrues.

For instance, when a sensitive man actually finds himself buffeted about in this world, with little or no ability to get anything like a sure foothold, and can think of no definite prospect of final prosperity for his encouragement, he naturally enough wears out his will-power as well as his sense of well-being long before his time, and consequently becomes the unresisting if not fully assenting prey to every depressing and perplexing influence about him. Or, when a woman finds that all her unique wealth of natural instincts and endowments promises to be of little demand in this conventional world, and so must go from day to day to tasks from which she derives little profit and no inspiration, she also rapidly develops a mental and emotional pain and weakness—a veritable soul-sickness—so deep and abiding, often, that the wonder is that either she or so many of her sisters ever have the courage requisite to go on and achieve so successfully as they do. Of course it were easy to say that the needed refitting in many of these cases is practically impossible; or that, even ideally, it is altogether too elevated, in any case, to be within ordinary application. Of course, too, every step on the way to securing the necessary changes of attitude in the individual's mind toward the real possibilities of his unusuedunused [sic] or wrongly used powers and toward full acceptation of suggested ideals, or toward the determined devotion that sees success from the beginning, no matter how far from the purposed end—every step of this long way may only too generally prove, not only very arduous, but quite too discouraging for weak and wavering humanity to progress therein, or to succeed in the end. Yet could everybody as well as the sufferer himself once be led to see how such inappropriate fittings and placings and consequent failures necessarily contribute to the development of mental suffering and invalidism, and especially if they could once get an informed, vivid view of the interfering, destroying character of every such experience in its bearing upon ultimate success and happiness, not alone of the individual sufferer, but of the entire community, in every vital respect, there would undoubtedly result not only a prompt but effectual uprising against the common ineptitude and neglect in this respect. That such a true vision is widely needed is confirmed by the