CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 105 



already referred to as modifying brain, skeleton, and 

 character. The children of parents who were subject 

 to severe rickets in early life occasionally suffer from 

 more or less inadequacy of nerve and inadequacy of 

 character. 



The more the brain matures and with it the intellect 

 and the emotions, the more it becomes subject to 

 injury from non -material suddenly acting causes, and 

 especially those producing intense fear or, though loss 

 frequently, intense pleasure. The larger, and more 

 precocious, and more active the brain, the graver are 

 the effects of powerful emotions. Probably the emo- 

 tional elements of the nervous apparatus are chiefly 

 acted upon in, what is called, mental shock. Neither 

 children nor adults are likely to be terrified by any 

 purely intellectual message however startling, while 

 fear, or joy, or anger may be so sudden and so extreme 

 as to change character-nerve for a life- time or even to 

 arrest those nerve functions which are essential to 

 the continuance of life itself. When non-physical 

 causes of shock are not fatal their less immediate 

 results are similar to those which follow the operation 

 of physical cause. They act, as I have elsewhere 

 stated, on the higher nerve functions in the order of 

 their importance and dignity : first the will is impaired 

 or enfeebled, then the ideas, then the emotions, then 

 the sensations. After quite early years have passed, 

 the immaterial or non -physical causes of nerve-trouble, 

 and therefore of character-trouble, are more frequently 

 met with and, in so far as frequency is concerned, are 

 more serious than the more suddenly acting immaterial 

 and material causes combined : such causes are, not 

 infrequently, enfeebling habits or occupations or 

 recreations, and the group of directly and indirectly 



