152 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



alleged impediments, no doubt, are really inherent 

 in their organization, but nine-tenths of them are 

 artificial — the products of their modes of life. I 

 believe that nothing would tend so effectually to 

 get rid of these creations of idleness, weariness, 

 and that "over stimulation of the emotions" which, 

 in plainer- spoken days, used to be called wantonness, 

 than a fair share of healthy work, directed towards 

 a definite object, combined with an equally fair share 

 of healthy play, during the years of adolescence ; 

 and those who are best accjuamted w^ith the acquire- 

 ments of an average medical practitioner will find 

 it hardest to believe that the attempt to reach that 

 standard is like to prove exhausting to an ordinarily 

 intelHgent and well-educated young woman. 



cccxxv 



The only good that I can see in the demonstration 

 of the truth of "Spiritualism" is to furnish an 

 additional argument against suicide. Better live a 

 crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk 

 twaddle by a "medium" hired at a guinea a 



cccxxvi 



I ask myself — suppose you knew that by inflicting 

 prolonged pain on loo rabbits you could discover a 

 way to the extirpation of leprosy, or consumption, 

 or locomotor ataxy, or of suicidal melancholia among 

 human beings, dare you refuse to inflict that pain ? 

 Now I am quite unable to say that I dare. That 

 sort of daring would seem to me to be extreme moral 

 cowardice, to involve gross inconsistency. 



For the advantage and protection of society, we 

 all agree to inflict pain upon man—pain of the most 

 prolonged and acute character— in our prisons, and 

 on our battlefields. If England were mvaded, we 



