108 THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AXD ITS CONSERVATION 



tion should, so far as possible, bo avoided. This teaching 

 now appears to have much more biologic truth in its favor 

 than it seemed to have when first published. If the occa- 

 sion- in the live- of animals when emotion is stirred are occa- 

 sions for decisive action, we must heed the moral and not 

 too radically break with our inheritance. If the primitive 

 expression is out of the question, we may -till be ingenious 

 en.mgh to find a harmless or even a profitable substitute. 



Specialists are now laying all possible stress on the 

 connection between nervous disorders and the suppressed 

 or unsatisfied tendencies which are believed to work harm 

 during long periods of latency. The curbing of a wish, 

 when this means not only the check but the annihilation 

 of the de-ire, is a noble exercise of inhibition. The denial 

 of expression simultaneously with the continued enter- 

 tainment of the wish is exceedingly hurtful. The frequent 

 experience of emotions which do not secure any motor 

 outlet is also abnormal. Anger may not lead to fighting, 

 nor even to scolding, but it may be turned into a motive 

 for vigorous action. Some one has shrewdly suggested 

 that the boy who is heartily vexed at being set to chopping 

 wood or weeding the garden will work all the more swiftly 

 and energetically for his irritation. If this is the actual 

 result, and not an ill-natured dallying over the task, he 

 will be much better off at the close than if he had sulked 

 and idled until excused. "Emotion" and "motion" are 

 w.trds nearly related, and the conditions for which they 

 stand should be related as closely. 



The emotion of sympathy is one which we readily 

 recognixe a- peculiarly exhausting to bear when it cannot 

 be translated into acts. "Let us love not in word, neither 

 in tongue, but in deed ;md in truth" there is hygiene as 

 well as humanity behind the injunction. Sympathy with 

 suffering may in many cases subject the one who feels it to 



a torture re keen than that which has occasioned it. 



Such vicarious p.-iin i- not to be .-ivo'ided altogether, but it 

 is greatly alleviated when one find- -oinething to do for 

 the sufferer. How the u<ele-- torment of viewing dis- 



