QUESTION OF PHYSICAL DEGENERATION 265 



disputing the truth of this altogether, I cannot but think that 

 there is some exaggeration through the omission from the cal- 

 culation of the force of habit. It is the unfamiliar danger, 

 magnified ten times by the imagination, that tries the nerves. 

 What is familiar ceases to be terrible. A dweller in the country 

 when he first tries bicycling in London fixes a glassy eye on 

 every vehicle and every side street as a possible source of 

 danger. But the habitue proceeds unperturbed upon his way. 

 And so with any causes of worry and anxiety. An architect 

 who has once been hardened does not care though he is responsible 

 for a building that will disfigure the landscape for ages. A 

 minister for foreign affairs is able, probably, to decide without a 

 tremor questions on which peace and war depend, because such 

 questions present themselves so often. And thus the racket of 

 modern life is not so trying as it might be thought to be. Yet 

 no doubt the armour of habit does not fend off the whole of the 

 evil. Though you may learn to sleep with the night-long 

 rumble of vehicles outside your window, yet probably you do 

 not sleep so soundly as you would if there were nothing to 

 disturb you till the farmyard woke up. 



So much for the amount of the nerve strain where it exists. The 

 But we cannot possibly deal with the general question unless we atfy^t 

 first decide what classes of the population are sufferers from the suffer 

 high tension of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Un- 

 doubtedly it is the professional and business men. The keener 

 competition and the highly speculative character of business in 

 the present day must cause a wear and tear of nerve tissue out 

 of proportion to the actual work done. Nor must we leave out 

 of consideration the strain that competitive examinations put 

 upon the boys of the higher social strata, though it is much 

 mitigated by the healthy environment in which they work. 

 But when we are considering the future of the race, the con- 

 ditions under which the small percentage of the population 

 forming the upper classes live are of very small account. What 

 we want to know is whether life is hard or easy for the vast 

 mass of the people from whom the upper classes are constantly 

 recruited. And thus we come back to a subject with which I 



