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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ary reception speech, expressed also 

 his quite emphatic disagreement with 

 Spencer, and his admiration of the spirit 

 of American enterprise and the splendid 

 activity of the American people. As 

 to the injury done by overwork, he did 

 not believe in it, and the eminent phy- 

 sician, Sir William Gull, told him he 

 had never known a man who had died 

 from it. It is worry, not work, which 

 kills, said Mr. Iladen. 



Undoubtedly, but is not the deadly 

 worry one of the inevitable accompani- 

 ments and consequences of the over- 

 work under the conditions of competi- 

 tive enterprise in this country ? It is 

 work carried to such extremes as to 

 engender anxiety and harassment under 

 the fierceness of business struggles and 

 the eagerness of unchecked ambition 

 that is condemned. It is not claimed 

 that the man who kills himself at fifty 

 by unremitting labor has done it by too 

 much physical exertion. He has done 

 it by assiduous mental solicitudes with- 

 out break or reaction, and the neglect 

 of the conditions of health which that 

 absorption of thought and strain of 

 the feelings imply. Spencer's criticisms 

 were leveled at the want of regulation 

 and of a corrective in the shape of sys- 

 tematic relaxations that shall give more 

 contrast in life, and greater freedom to 

 the play of agreeable feeling, in place of 

 the vexatious solicitudes which spring 

 from devotion to work. To say that it 

 is not overwork that kills, but the worry 

 that is entailed, is merely to quibble 

 with the subject. Sir William Gull 

 might as well have declared that he 

 had never known a case of death from 

 cholera or consumption because it is 

 the lack of power in the constitution to 

 resist these diseases that is really the 

 cause of death. It is only by such cav- 

 iling that the notorious fact can be 

 evaded, that thousands of men in this 

 country sacrifice health and life to the 

 passionate eagerness of business pur- 

 suits. Every observing person can give 

 examples within the sphere of his own 



acquaintance of such premature break- 

 downs by the score. 



The New York " Sun " gives an edi- 

 torial to the subject, and maintains that 

 the warning of Mr. Spencer is quite 

 mistaken, as the Americans are far from 

 being an overworked people. " There 

 may be more fret and worry about 

 money-making due to the haste to get 

 rich, and the greater dissatisfaction with 

 a position in mediocrity, but real over- 

 work is not among our vices/' But it 

 would have been well to point out how 

 " fret t and worry about money-making," 

 " haste to get rich," and " dissatisfac- 

 tion with a position in mediocrity," op- 

 erate to produce discretion in the regu- 

 lation of our activities! 



But the " Sun " gives expression to 

 a criticism of Mr. Spencer which has 

 been heard in various quarters, and re- 

 quires atteution. It intimates that he 

 is under an objective illusion, and has 

 simply generalized from his own mor- 

 bidities to the condition of everybody 

 else whom he saw. The editor says : 

 "It is not at all remarkable that Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer took this view of us, 

 and that he made it the subject of the 

 only speech he delivered while in the 

 United States. Himself suffering from 

 the lack of rest, he was naturally dis- 

 posed to"discover symptoms of the same 

 trouble among the men in the strange 

 country to which he had come on an 

 unavailing search for repose. He had 

 found in his American travels many 

 nervous sufferers who could sympathize 

 with him, just as every victim of a 

 chronic malady, no matter how seem- 

 ingly peculiar to himself, is sure to 

 meet others who are more or less in 

 the same state. His disease is natu- 

 rally foremost in his thoughts, and his 

 conversations are likely to lead up to 

 it, so that he gets in the way of hear- 

 ing of similar cases. There is a strong 

 sympathy which brings together inva- 

 lids of like kinds. They like to com- 

 pare symptoms." 



This is a very easy theory of the 



