34 Analyses of Books, [January, 
the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences, and the mental 
activity of women. Elsewhere he goes more into detail, and 
adds as causes of nervelessness the political machinery of free 
countries, the religious excitements which are the sequels of 
Protestanism, the activity of philanthropy made necessary by the 
increase of poverty and certain forms of disease, the complexity 
of modern education, the over-strained division of labour in 
manufactures, the necessity of punctuality, the effeCt of noise 
on the nerves, the increase in the amount of business done in 
modern times, and the repression of emotion. We notice in 
particular the following remark : — “ A modern philosopher of the 
most liberal* school states that he hates to hear one laugh aloud, 
regarding the habit, as he declares, a survival of barbarism ! ” 
We may now comment briefly upon some of these faCtors in 
the production of nervousness. We may first notice how com- 
pletely the introduction of certain mechanical facilities and 
appliances has disappointed the hopes with which it was at first 
greeted. When the steam-engine made its appearance as a sub- 
stitute for manual labour we were told by the poets and the 
philanthropists that mankind would have more leisure, — there is 
a world-wide difference between leisure and idleness, — and con- 
sequently more scope for thought, for self-cultivation, and for all 
those innumerable phases of work which, however important to 
the community at large, have no immediate market-value. In- 
stead, however, of doing as we might have done, getting through 
our former quota of work in a fraction of the time previously 
required, and devoting ourselves to “ plain living and high 
thinking,” we have eleCted still to devote our whole time to 
business, and to accumulate luxuries which we have neither time 
nor energies to enjoy. 
The distressing effeCts of noises on the nerves are also noticed, 
though the author omits the most irritating of all, i.e., the barking 
of dogs, church bells, and street music. 
On political and theological excitement Dr. Beard writes : — 
“ The experiment attempted on this continent of making every 
man, every child, and every woman an expert in politics and 
theology, is one of the costliest of experiments with living human 
beings, and has been drawing on our surplus energies with cruel 
extravagance for the last hundred years.” It is a remarkable faCt 
that insanity is rarer under an absolute government than in a 
constitutional or a republican country, — rarer, too, in Catholic or 
Islamite than in Protestant nations. Spain furnishes few cases 
for the asylum. Madness is far less frequently met with in 
devout and royalist Bretagne than in the free-thinking depart- 
ments around Paris and the other great towns of France. It 
becomes a serious question whether the predominant and growing 
attention paid to politics is not a grave mistake, and whether it 
* Might not a definition of the term “ liberal ” be useful in these days ? 
