62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of mental pain will in time give way to conceptions that will be much 

 more nearly correct, as they will be less cruel and dangerous. 



However this may be, one need not hesitate to affirm to-day that 

 we already know enough to make it absolutely unjustifiable in any case 

 to make a " snap " diagnosis in favor of some " imaginary " disease 

 which may be ignored or crudely managed, as ignorance, or whim, or 

 presumption may dictate. If it be criminal to misinterpret or neglect 

 physical ailments, it certainly is no less so thus to seriously neglect or 

 bungle the more delicate matters of the diseased mind. 



At the outset, then, every sufferer from mental distress has one 

 inalienable right as well as the greatest need, namely, that his trouble 

 shall be thoroughly understood, and that this understanding shall be 

 based upon adequate investigation of all the facts involved in its origin 

 and development. This, for one very important thing, will reveal 

 unmistakably that every one of these poor sufferers from dire inade- 

 quacy, apprehension or discouragement, and from slowing and shallow- 

 ing of faculties, and glooming of every outlook, are really experiencing 

 a kind of suffering whose original and persisting causes are not less 

 real than are those of physical suffering, although such causes may 

 often, if not always, lie altogether too deep in the personality to be 

 either self-discovered, or " intuitively divined," or superficially or too 

 promptly judged. Again it will soon appear, even not less con- 

 vincingly, that if such sufferers presume to rely upon self-investigation 

 or self-treatment alone, or upon the offers of even the shrewdest igno- 

 ramus or most devoted " curest," they will most likely find themselves 

 from the first but painfully misled and thwarted at every step, and even- 

 tually becoming more and more deeply sickened and more thoroughly 

 discouraged than ever. It must be remembered that this kind of pain, 

 the pain of mental disease, is always so indissolubly a part of the inner- 

 most self and bound up with its every impulse and movement; is withal 

 so unexpectable and incalculable, so dominant and threatening, so 

 undermining and degrading, and positively intrusive ; in fact, so devilish 

 and selfishly excluding; so monopolizing in all its tendencies and 

 demands, that the sufferer must necessarily find himself, no matter how 

 skilful in even his most resolute attempts at self-relief, much more fre- 

 quently in the position of one who would lift himself by tugging at his 

 boot-straps, than otherwise, and eventually not thus to be especially 

 helped, no matter how much he tries; while as to the outcome of the 

 hit-or-miss remedies and practises of every sort of unqualified remedi- 

 alist, whether " regular " or otherwise, to which the discouraged invalid 

 so often goes, it must be said that ultimate failure applies equally often, 

 and with even more force. Practically speaking, it quite regularly 

 occurs in these cases that there develops eventually the firm, almost 

 immovable conviction of the futility of everything which might other- 



