fear for them nothing so much as slap-dash, short-sighted social legislation. [Sidenote: _THE WILL TO LIVE_] The man matters more than his circumstances. The poor man's _Courage to Live_ is his most valuable distinctive quality. Most of his finest virtues spring therefrom. Any material progress which tends to diminish his _Courage to Live_, or to reduce it to mere _Will to Live_, must prove in the long run to his and to the nation's disadvantage. And the _Courage to Live_, like other virtues, diminishes with lack of exercise. Therefore every material advance should provide for the continued, for an even greater, exercise and need of the _Courage to Live_. If not, then the material advance is best done without. That is the main constructive conclusion to be drawn. Somewhat akin to it is another conclusion of a more critical nature. In Nietzsche's _Beyond Good and Evil_ there is an apophthegm to the effect that, "Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." And whilst, on the one hand mental specialists have been extending the boundaries of insanity to the point of justifying the popular adage that everyone is a bit mad, they have, on the other hand, tended to narrow down the difference between sanity and its reverse until it has become almost entirely a question of mental inhibition, or self-control. The highest aim of Mental Hygiene should be to increase the power of mental inhibition amongst all men and women. Control is the basis of all law and the cement of every social system among men and women, without which it would go to pieces.... _Sufficient power of self-control should be the essence and test of sanity._[20] [20] "The Hygiene of Mind," by T. S. Clouston, M.D., F.R.S.E., (London, 1906). Without an extension which Dr Clouston provides, though not in so many words, the definition I have italicized is psychologically a little superficial. Mental inhibition, generally, needs dividing into self-control and, say, auto-control. Where one man may _self-control_ himself by an effort of will, another man, in the same predicament, might _auto-control_ himself instinctively, without a conscious effort of will. Which is the saner, and likelier to remain so, under ordinary circumstances and under extraordinary circumstances, would be most difficult to determine. Many people are only sane in action because they know that they are insane in impulse, and take measures accordingly. They keep a sane front to the world by legislating pretty sternly for themselves. [Sidenote: _SOCIAL HYGIENE_]