" The poor child knows it already in the wrong way.
It is certainly better that she should know her nerves by learning a
wholesome, natural use of them. The mother's remark is common with
many men and women when speaking of themselves,--common with
teachers when talking to or of their pupils. It is of course quite
natural that it should be a prevailing idea, because hitherto the
mention of nerves by man or woman has generally meant perverted
nerves, and to dwell on our perversions, except long enough to shun
them, is certainly unwholesome in the extreme.
II.
PERVERSIONS IN THE GUIDANCE OF THE BODY
SO evident are the various, the numberless perversions of our powers
in the misuse of the machine, that it seems almost unnecessary to
write of them. And yet, from another point of view, it is very
necessary; for superabundant as they are, thrusting their evil
results upon us every day in painful ways, still we have eyes and
see not, ears and hear not, and for want of a fuller realization of
these most grievous mistakes, we are in danger of plunging more and
more deeply into the snarls to which they bring us. From nervous
prostration to melancholia, or other forms of insanity, is not so
long a step.
It is of course a natural sequence that the decadence of an entire
country must follow the waning powers of the individual citizens.
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