14 NATIONAL TRENDS IN BIOLOGY 



9. Psychic trauma: this is becoming more and more 

 thoroughly understood. While there, too, we must look 

 for underlying physical insufficiencies, inherited or ac- 

 quired, it is no doubt true that the psyche may become so 

 profoundly injured as to react upon the physical state 

 and shorten life. Fear, grief, and emotional excess are, 

 however, more destructive than mental effort or mental 

 work. 



10. Physical apathy: lack of muscular effort and faulty 

 muscular development are justly charged with degenera- 

 tive effects. 



1 1 . Psychic apathy : this is evidently the cause, as well 

 as the result, of failing physical powers ; lack of interest 

 in life induces physical apathy with its attendant evils. 



You will notice that every one of these eleven catego- 

 ries refers only to a production of the individual cells or 

 an injury to the individual cells. 



But the biologist is not working only to overcome dis- 

 ease and add a few more years to life. When someone was 

 hurrying that great Chinese statesman, Li Hung Chang, 

 along so that an especially fast train could be caught, he 

 stopped dead still to ask why they had to catch that 

 particular train to begin with, and when told that they 

 would thus save ten minutes, the whole wisdom of the 

 Orient came forth in his query, "What are you going to 

 do with the ten minutes?" 



"To the biologist the measure of success in living is the 

 accuracy with which living things fit themselves into 



