i42 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



noble than serenity amid trouble and distracting effort. There is 

 nothing more selfish than the serenity which is bred by immunity from 

 pain. But to many people, existence without pain, without sensation 

 and without action represents an ideal of the soul. Many well-to-do 

 women of leisure are devoting their lives to the cultivation of this 

 condition, and incidentally neglecting their children and driving their 

 husbands wild by the process. It is not alone faith in a theory of 

 disease or a theory of non-existence which may produce this result. 

 Faith in a celery-compound, an electric belt, or a mud idol may produce 

 the same sweet serenity, the same maddening indiffeience to all that is 

 real or moving in life. The walls of certain churches in Mexico are 

 covered with the offerings and pictures of those who were saved by 

 their vows or by appeals to some saint. ' But where,' said Lord Bacon, 

 long ago, ' are the pictures of those who were lost in spite of their 

 vows ? ' 



" It is true that to cultivate a cheerful temper, to look on the bright 

 side of things, to laugh when we can and be hopeful under all conditions 

 is good for the body. The food is better assimilated, the blood runs 

 faster, one can do more and better things, and come in closer relations 

 with the realities of life. But conversely, when one meets most man- 

 fully the needs of life, his pulse beats more quickly, his brain works 

 better, his liver gives him less trouble and he is naturally cheerful and 

 hopeful. The cheerful man does not dodge pain, he overcomes it. He 

 does not selfishly shrink from reality and turn to introspection and 

 dreaming. He faces the world and makes it his own and takes man- 

 fully the pain his efforts cause or which in the progress of life he can 

 not avoid. 



" It is possible to go much farther in the direction of the banish- 

 ment of pain through the thought that pain does not exist. Then take 

 more pain and it will become at last an intense pleasure ; when the mind 

 is in the grasp of absolute torture, it is possible for the brain to feel 

 it as with spasms of absolute delight. It is not easy to do this but can 

 be produced by excessive belief in the unreality of common things. The 

 brain half-maddened by pain is open to suggestions from other mad- 

 dened brains till a fierce wild ecstasy is the final result. This fact 

 explains the strange rites of those sects of self-destroyers which rose in 

 the middle ages, the flagellantes, penitents and the rest. Even yet, the 

 last of the penitent brothers at San Mateo in New Mexico in the passion 

 week torture themselves in the most revolting fashion by crucifixion, 

 whipping and the binding of huge cactuses on their backs. By hideous 

 tortures they expiate in one week their many heinous sins of the whole 

 year. Just as the suggestion that disease is an illusion may conceal 

 pain, for those who give up everything else for healing, so does the sug- 

 gestion of infinite pleasure conceal for a time the most exquisite pain. 

 But in the one case, as I believe, the disease goes on unchecked, so in 



