Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/73

Rh measure, such as change of environment, work, study, reading, etc., as will naturally effect, step by step, the completion and fixity of the mental and emotional reorganization so obviously needed. For, no matter how effective the initial catharsis and substitution may be, if the remedialist does not know enough or has not spirit enough to follow up this concededly important ministry by subsequent adaptive effort, persisted in until the end is attained, his labor will be mostly in vain. Here it is, undoubtedly, that so many of the "practitioners" of the various systems of "transcendental medicine," pseudo-science, rampant humbuggery, "queer" theology, and vicious imposition generally, are not able to secure the permanent results predicted of them from their temporary success. Many of these can give and often do give a good enough start toward relief to warrant the confidence which such a course engenders; but they break down entirely as soon as anything additional is required, and so, either lose their influence at once, or else are forced, by maintaining a series of illusions which in time fatefully show themselves to be such, to continue to doggedly sustain some other sort of equally temporary measure, if not base imposition, which deservedly brings its dire reward upon their heads in the end. In these cases a single measure or practise of any kind, no matter how good or true, when persistently inculcated or exercised without timely and appropriate variation or addition, soon comes to the end of its chief usefulness; for the nature of the human mental and nervous organization predetermines that atrophy and decay in the realm of feeling and willing just as surely follow closely upon the over-exercise which produces an initial hypertrophy, as it does similarly in the physical realm. But the ignorant or indifferent practitioner does not consider this; and so pushes on unvaryingly with his initiatory measures only, or with others of similar or greater misleading import, and consequently finds that the original condition of his patient often comes to have duly added thereto, certain other abnormalities, which, although newly acquired, may yet prove to be not less distressing or less persistent than the original ones. So trite an injunction, then, as "Overcome evil with good" when applied to the needs of a mind diseased, is thus seen to necessitate a right kind of persistent overcoming, wherein the void repeatedly secured by eliminating the evil is continuously filled with restorative "good," the strength gained from time to time is constructively exercised, and all the psychic pathological conditions are thus led or made to give way eventually to normal states and activities.

Perhaps this is quite sufficient to enable us to conclude, finally, that permanent satisfactory results in this important field of remedial ministry can seldom be secured, unless due attention be given, first, to getting at the real sources of the sufferer's breakdown; second, to correcting, contributing and hindering physical diseases; third, to purging