THE IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL PAIN 359 



be solved, but also a standard could be established whereto similar mor- 

 bid experiences of others could be profitably compared. 



From cases of border-land psychalgia we often get descriptive phrases 

 which throw light upon the intensity of the suffering, and leave no 

 doubt as to its reality, as well. One of the most frequent of these 

 phrases is, " Oh, I am so lonely — (or fearful, or depressed, or weak, etc.) 

 — this unceasing, day after day, year after year, loneliness — etc." Here, 

 as much as anything, for want of the simple instruction that as the 

 " uniqueness " of any given individual must always carry with it a 

 fundamental detachment from every other individuality, so must neces- 

 sarily a natural loneliness reside forever in the substratum of every 

 one's consciousness, and must normally or abnormally emerge only as 

 endurable pathos, on the one hand, or as dire pain on the other, the 

 sufferer necessarily goes on day by day accumulating a feeling of out- 

 of-the-world-ness which in time gets to be so painful, that the all of 

 life may and often does come to be subordinated to it, entirely beyond 

 self-emancipation. Surely, it were not humane, to say nothing of its 

 not being good sense, or scientific, simply to ignore or scout the evi- 

 dence of, or to jeer at, or malign, or to continue to misunderstand the 

 distinctive importance of such a condition of suffering as this. 



Again, there is the expression, " Just show me how I can have a 

 little bit of happiness, even for an hour, and I'll bless you as never 

 before," and all the changes rung on this, everywhere and everywhen. 

 For purposes of truth it must be conceded that a reasonable amount of 

 frequently recurring happiness together with the ever-present feeling 

 that such experiences are truly prophetic of the future, is simply a basic 

 necessity to the perpetuity of a reasonable state of well-being; and this 

 in spite of Carlyle's demand : " By what act of Parliament was it decreed 

 that Thou shouldst be Happy ?" The simple fact is, that all energizing, 

 all hoping, all accomplishing which does not have an inspiring element 

 of happiness in more or less conscious suffusion, is not satisfactory, but 

 the reverse; and this, notwithstanding so much seems directly to the 

 contrary. Happiness of some kind — positively ecstatic, mildly expect- 

 ant, a glowing interest, realistic energizing, comforting self-conscious- 

 ness, vision of growing possessions, personal ease, enlargement of the 

 family circle, faith that sees heavenly things — happiness of some kind, 

 is the motive force of human life; and once let the enjoyable self-tone 

 be lowered unduly for any length of time, or its rightful possessor be 

 too frequently or too permanently cheated or denied, and he ceases at 

 just this point to be fully what he ought to be either by divine right 

 or by natural law. And the consciousness of all such cessation of full- 

 well-being — how many degrees of psychalgia are included therein ! And 

 how wide-spread too is just this same consciousness of every other form 

 of unhappiness, with never a respite, and with no encouraging prospect. 



