360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



And then, there is " disappointment " — in love, in business, in 

 politics, in health, in preparation for life, in church affiliation, in 

 children ; disappointment in man's sense of honor, in woman's high soul, 

 in the constancy of friends, in all ambitious prospects — for which we so 

 glibly say, " show thyself a man," or " wait patiently on the Lord " — 

 and think that we have said it all ; and so we probably have, until we, in 

 turn, direfully find ourselves learning very differently, through what 

 our would-be friends call just our " own doing." Then, how different 

 does pooh-poohed disappointment seem; how revelational, too, in that 

 now we can see how others did actually suffer while we were regarding 

 them as merely " weak " and consequently as but " poor things," at best. 

 Kor does it matter really, if " one has brought it all on one's self " ; 

 indeed, all the more should we see how much does this but add to his 

 distress, and how much does it have to do in prolonging and deepening 

 this indefinitely; indeed, until it may most unexpectedly result in such 

 permanent registerings, as may quite absolutely unfit him for any 

 further useful accomplishment in life. For, first and last and all the 

 time, it must be remembered that the outcome of psychalgia, unless 

 acting upon exceptional constitutions, is unfitness for even the common- 

 places of life. Of course, the exceptionally endowed individuality reacts 

 differently, at least for a time, and for the most part, constructively; 

 but the common cry of the victim of mental pain is, " I no longer can 

 do as I once could ; I'm not really fit for anything now " ; and his sub- 

 sequent life is apt only too conclusively to prove the correctness of his 

 cry, and the predictive fear which accompanies it. 



Morbid " self-consciousness," too, — how wide, vague, mysterious is 

 this, yet how fearfully painful, especially when subject to misunder- 

 standing, neglect, or brutality. Shall any one say that here is something 

 that is not a source distinctively of the most interfering if not destruc- 

 tive kind of psychalgia ? Try to get a definite appreciation of the flashy 

 personal commotions, the wide-spread vaso-motor reactions, the stage- 

 fright, the unaccountable antipathies and fears and obfuscations and 

 general overwhelmings, that such a one suffers from; try to get a 

 clear vision of all the futile efforts of intellect and feeling and will to 

 ward off and overcome these ; try to get a fellow-feeling of all that this 

 means to the personality which would be something and do something 

 and feel something like other people; and then see if it be possible to 

 regard mental pain as less significant than physical pain, either dis- 

 tinctly, or side by side. Certainly, no one who has never suffered the 

 pangs of morbid self-consciousness should stupidly deny their existence ; 

 for there are many, many people who go through life virtually conscious 

 of nothing else, in any vividly continuing sense. With every glimpse of 

 their own bodies, with every movement, with every contact with others, 

 with every thought of planning or doing anything, with all their hopes 



