Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rousseau's path. All Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in this work-a-day world; but woe to him who can only recognize them when he thinks them in their pure and abstract form! The habit of excessive novelreading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of the Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterward in some way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world — speaking genially to one's grandmother, or giving up one's seat in the horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers but let it not fail to take place.

These latter cases make us aware that it is not simply particular lines of discharge, but also general forms of discharge, that seem to be grooved out by habit in the brain. Just as, if we let our emotions evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating; so there is reason to suppose that if we often flinch from making an effort, before we know it the effort-making capacity will be gone; and that, if we suffer the wandering of our attention, presently it will wander all the time. Attention and effort are, as we shall

see later, but two names for the same psychic fact. To what brain processes they correspond we do not know. The strongest reason for believing that they do depend on brain processes at all, and are not pure acts of the spirit, is just this fact, that they seem in some degree subject to the law of habit, which is a material law. As a final practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every

smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-solittle scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well! he may not count it and a kind heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering it, and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have an anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faintheartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together.

GOOD HEALTH

LETTER FROM A MEDICAL MAN TO HIS NIECE

CHARLES D. LOCKWOOD, M.D.

As you are just entering upon your college career I want to give you some advice about your health. Good health is the most precious possession you have, for not only your happiness is dependent upon it, but also your efficiency and usefulness as a member of society. To be sure, there have been some indomitable souls, such for example as Robert Louis Stevenson, who have risen above their physical handicaps and have made great contributions to society. But they are the exceptions, and it is probable that their lives would have been much more productive had they been blessed with robust health.

At the same time that I am counseling you to pay heed to your health, I wish also to warn you against overanxiety about your bodily functions. This latter leads to a condition known as "neurasthenia," a condition even worse than genuine ill health. Such an abnormal state of mind renders you a prey to a thousand groundless fears, robs you of the normal enjoyments of life, and makes you more or less of a nuisance to your friends. The normal, healthy girl should be unconscious of the physiological processes going on in her body and yet wise enough to recognize serious disturbances and to seek advice. The

thought I am trying to convey to you is well expressed by the great French scientist, Pierre Curie, when he says: "We must eat, drink, sleep, love, be idle, touch the sweetest things of life, and yet not succumb to them."

There is a far more important reason than the purely personal and selfish one why you should conserve your health. This is the obligation that every young person of sound physical and mental endowment owes to the state. Upon you devolves the solemn duty of transmitting those qualities of mind and body that shall ensure the perpetuity of the race. Scientists who have made a careful study of our national life and tendencies, find that there has been a rapid decline in the past two generations in America, of those intellectual traits essential to national greatness and stability. We are rapidly approaching a time when there will be a paucity, in the United States, of men and women of genius and creative ability who can furnish leadership and guidance to the nation. Biologists and physiologists are agreed that the only hope of race progress is through heredity, and that there has been an alarming decline in the characteristics essential to racial advancement. Health, sanity, and creative energy are the most important of these inherited traits, and the preservation and transmission of them is the highest duty of citizenship.1 Jazz, alcohol, and sexual immorality are sapping the vitality of the race; we are nearing the precipice over which all previous civilizations have plunged, but it is not too late to save ourselves if we can conserve these precious inheritable qualities for future generations. The principal factors, apart from heredity, which con1 See The New Decalogue of Science, Wiggam.