WORRY. 107 



the sense of hunger, present in the system, is for a time preternaturally 

 acute, and marks the fact that the demand is occasioned by loss of 

 power to appropriate, instead of any diminution of supply. The effort 

 to work becomes daily more laborious, the task of fixing the atten- 

 tion grows increasingly difficult, thoughts wander, memory fails, the 

 reasoning power is enfeebled ; prejudice the shade of defunct emo- 

 tion or some past persuasion takes the place of judgment ; physical 

 nerve or brain disturbance may supervene, and the crash will then 

 come suddenly, unexpected by on-lookers, perhaps unperceived by the 

 sufferer himself. This is the history of " worry," or disorder pro- 

 duced by mental disquietude and distraction, occasionally by physical 

 disease. 



The first practical inference to be deduced from these considera- 

 tions is that brain-work in the midst of mental worry is carried on in 

 the face of ceaseless peril. Unfortunately, work and worry are so 

 closely connected in daily experience that they can not be wholly 

 separated. Meanwhile the worry of work that which grows out of 

 the business in hand is generally a needless though not always an 

 avoidable evil. In a large proportion of instances this description of 

 disorder is due to the lack of education in brain-work. Men and 

 women, with minds capacious and powerful enough but untrained, 

 attempt feats for which training is indispensable, and, being unpre- 

 pared, they fail. The utilitarian policy of the age is gradually elimi- 

 nating from the educationary system many of the special processes by 

 which minds used to be developed. This is, in part at least, why cases 

 of sudden collapse are more numerous now than in years gone by. It 

 is not, as vanity suggests, that the brain-work of to-day is so much 

 greater than that exacted from our predecessors, but we are less well 

 prepared for its performance. The treatment of this form of affec- 

 tion, the break-down from the worry of work, must be preventive ; 

 the sole remedy is the reversal of a policy which substitutes results 

 for processes, knowledge for education. It is a serious cause of dis- 

 comfiture and sorrow in work that so much of the brain-power ex- 

 pended is necessarily devoted to the removal of extraneous causes of 

 worry. Labor is so fatal to life, because it is so difficult to live. The 

 deadly peril of work in the midst of worry must be confronted, be- 

 cause the disturbing cause can only be got rid of by persistent labor. 

 This is the crux of the difficulty, and, in the attempt to cure the evil, 

 the struggling mind finds its fate involved in a vicious circle of morbid 

 reactions. Nevertheless, it is the fact that work in the teeth of worry 

 is fraught with peril, and whenever it can be avoided it should be, let 

 the sacrifice cost what it may. 



The second deduction must be, that there is no excuse for idleness 

 in the pretense of fear of " overwork." There is some reason to ap- 

 prehend that the attention recently directed to this alleged cause of 

 mental unsoundness has not been free from a mischievous influence on 



