NERVOUS HEALTH AND MORAL HEALTH. 419 



and keep their minds fixed on tranquillizing objects of contemplation. 

 That was the physiological ethics arrived at from a different side 

 from that side of the mind which yearns after unshaken intellectual 

 dignity, after calm self-possession. In other words, penitence for sin 

 of any thorough kind should be carefully eschewed, for it involves 

 strong emotion ; and the inexhaustible craving after a perfection that 

 cannot be attained shoidd also be kept down, for that implies an in- 

 ward gnawing of the heart which is dangerous to intellectual calm. 

 Thus, what the physiologist reaches through the doctrine of "tissue," 

 the apostle of culture reaches through the idolatry of intellectual calm. 

 Does it need to be said that any genuine ethical doctrine, while it will 

 listen to and not despise the lesson of physiology and the cultus of 

 serenity, will regard both the one and the other as utterly subordinate 

 considerations in relation to the moral ideal ? As it may be right to 

 lay down the life for others, so it may be right to endanger health, to 

 draw too heavily on the supplies of nervous tissue, to face the possi- 

 bility of a sacrifice of intellectual calm, in a word to run counter to the 

 admonitions both of physiology and of culture. "VVe should say, for 

 instance, that to look any pain that naturally befalls us intellectual, 

 moral, or only of the heart steadily in the face, and realize fully what 

 it is and means, is one of the most imperative of inward duties, and 

 that one is sensible of a certain unmanly cowardice in all the expe- 

 dients for escaping from it by taking refuge in lower though perfectly 

 innocent excitements, for hiding it away from one's self without learning 

 all it means. And yet to grasp the full meaning of any real pain, 

 whether due to one's own unexpected intellectual or moral shortcom- 

 ings whether it arises from shrinking of will, or failure of faculty, 01 

 the sin which brings remorse, or simply from the unfaithfulness of 

 others, or from death is one of the most " depressing" of the duties 

 of the inward life, and one from which the natural man usually turns 

 away without the need. of warning from the physiologist. And if the 

 comparative clearness of physiological science should ever lead to the 

 substitution of a physiological for a truly moral code of conduct, we 

 are quite sure that the very first result would be to render men less 

 sincere with themselves, not only less able to govern themselves, but 

 less willing even to face that which is painful or evil in their own na- 

 tures. Nervous health is one things and moral health is another. We 

 suspect that what is good for the one is often bad for the other, and 

 that the doctrine w T hich discourages the simple suppression of feelings 

 that are beneath us, and the steady encounter with forms of inward 

 pain from which Nature tempts us to escape, as a shying horse starts 

 away from an object it dreads, is a doctrine which would sacrifice the 

 highest part of man that for which life is given to the conservation 

 of the tissues of the brain, and the cultivation of that coolness of tem- 

 perament which is the best security for a somewhat ignoble longevity. 

 London Spectator. 



