NERVOUS HEALTH AND MORAL HEALTH. 417 



much has been destroyed as makes him weary, he ought to drop down 

 and go to sleep on the high-road, if the argument he worth much ! As 

 a matter of fact, of course, a man may destroy a great deal more of the 

 supply of either brain or muscular tissue than he ought to destroy, be- 

 fore the process of reparation begins, just as he may live for days of 

 comparative starvation on a great deal less food than he needs to keep 

 his system in health, or even on the flesh he has made in past days. 

 The brain-work done under such conditions may not be quite as sound, 

 but yet it may draw a certain hectic fire from the glow of anxiety, 

 which, to many a taste, would more than replace the defective sound- 

 ness of thought. Indeed, the writer of the Times article admits anxi- 

 ety as one of the causes of ill-health, through its effect in preventing 

 sleep and proper nutrition ; and why, if it prevents sleep, should it not 

 prevent the sleepiness which alone prevents the destruction of more 

 nervous tissue than is desirable at any one time ? The writer is hardly 

 consistent with himself ; but we mention his argument, not for its own 

 sake, but because his able paper represents the rise of a physiological 

 school of ethics, which is, as we believe, gaining rapid ground and do- 

 ing a great deal to supplant a true ethical doctrine. The real drift of 

 all this skilful argument, partly indorsed by the Lancet, against the 

 possibility of overworking the brain, is to strike a blow at the root of 

 all ethics the limited freedom of the human will. The physiologists, 

 want to identify moral action so completely with the physiological, 

 conditions of moral action, as to represent all life as the mere result of 

 the growth and destruction of tissue, and as containing no provision^ 

 for any real alternative choice at all. If a man can't overwork, as- 

 this writer says, but can very easily underwork, and can be overwor- 

 ried by any involuntary spring of care, the natural inference would 

 seem to be that the secret of what looks like "will" in life is really not 

 " will " at all, but some involuntary emotion which plays our actions as. 

 we play chessmen ; and hence the rules of right action will have more and 

 more to be sought in the manipulation of the influences to which our 

 bodies and tastes are subjected, rather than in useless appeals to the' 

 will to do what the will has no power to do. 



What would be the kind of ethics which would spring out of such 

 a theory ? We find traces of it in plenty of medical journals, and' 

 pretty distinct traces in the able paper on " Brain-work and Longevi- 

 ty " itself. " One who is insulted or offended," said the writer, " feels 

 an instantaneous impulse to attack the offender. A mere brute, 

 whether human or bestial, acts upon the impulse without reflection. A 

 man may either act upon it after reflection, or restrain himself, and 

 perhaps go peacefully away. If so, he will probably bang the door 

 after him ; and will feel better for doing it. A child or a woman will 

 obtain the same relief from a gush of tears. In either case, the impris- 

 oned force is discharged, is gone out from the system. Whatever may- 

 be the nature of an emotion, its repression is hurtful ; but the repreS' 

 vol. n. 27 



