A MIND DISEASED 69 



prehensive measure, such as change of environment, work, study, read- 

 ing, etc., as will naturally effect, step by step, the completion and fixity 

 of the mental and emotional reorganization so obviously needed. For, 

 no matter how effective the initial catharsis and substitution may be, if 

 the remedialist does not know enough or has not spirit enough to follow 

 up this concededly important ministry by subsequent adaptive effort, 

 persisted in until the end is attained, his labor will be mostly in vain. 

 Here it is, undoubtedly, that so many of the "practitioners" of the 

 various systems of "transcendental medicine," pseudo-science, rampant 

 humbuggery, "queer" theology, and vicious imposition generally, are 

 not able to secure the permanent results predicted of them from their 

 temporary success. Many of these can give and often do give a good 

 enough start toward relief to warrant the confidence which such a course 

 engenders ; but they break down entirely as soon as anything additional 

 is required, and so, either lose their influence at once, or else are forced, 

 by maintaining a series of illusions which in time fatefully show them- 

 selves to be such, to continue to doggedly sustain some other sort of 

 equally temporary measure, if not base imposition, which deservedly 

 brings its dire reward upon their heads in the end. In these cases a 

 single measure or practise of any kind, no matter how good or true, 

 when persistently inculcated or exercised without timely and appropri- 

 ate variation or addition, soon comes to the end of its chief usefulness; 

 for the nature of the human mental and nervous organization prede- 

 termines that atrophy and decay in the realm of feeling and willing just 

 as surely follow closely upon the over-exercise which produces an initial 

 hypertrophy, as it does similarly in the physical realm. But the igno- 

 rant or indifferent practitioner does not consider this ; and so pushes on 

 unvaryingly with his initiatory measures only, or with others of simi- 

 lar or greater misleading import, and consequently finds that the orig- 

 inal condition of his patient often comes to have duly added thereto, 

 certain other abnormalities, which, although newly acquired, may yet 

 prove to be not less distressing or less persistent than the original ones. 

 So trite an injunction, then, as " Overcome evil with good " when ap- 

 plied to the needs of a mind diseased, is thus seen to necessitate a right 

 kind of persistent overcoming, wherein the void repeatedly secured by 

 eliminating the evil is continuously filled with restorative "good," the 

 strength gained from time to time is constructively exercised, and all 

 the psychic pathological conditions are thus led or made to give way 

 eventually to normal states and activities. 



Perhaps this is quite sufficient to enable us to conclude, finally, that 

 permanent satisfactory results in this important field of remedial min- 

 istry can seldom be secured, unless due attention be given, first, to get- 

 ting at the real sources of the sufferer's breakdown; second, to correct- 

 ing, contributing and hindering physical diseases; third, to purging 



