Nearly every seeming misfortune with which we are afflicted can be turned to our benefit. We never take a step upward until we are mentally prepared for it; we never become mentally prepared until we have passed through a certain amount and kind of experience. [Sidenote: Education defined] Education reduced to its last analysis is merely the accumulation and co-ordination of useful knowledge; useful knowledge is accumulated only by and through the art of comparison. The more experience we have, the more comparisons we can make. [Sidenote: Ability to make comparisons, measures, ability to enjoy] Country-raised people control the great industries of the city and lead in the nation's great work because they never become _blase_. They have always their homely and primitive child life to draw upon for comparisons. Every good thing, every invention, every step forward and upward, every advancement is appreciated and realized exactly according to their ability to compare these things with their opposites. If the patient should be suffering from mental disturbances called worry, he should be reminded that he is merely a floating mote in the abyss of space, and if the matter composing his form should change from organic to inorganic, from active to inactive; in other words, if he should die, the great planets would move on in their majestic courses and the cosmic scheme would in nowise be interfered with. NEURASTHENIA--THE CAUSE Neurasthenia is caused by a violation of the laws of nutrition, such as overeating, taking intoxicants, tea, coffee, tobacco, stimulating and sedative drugs; an oversupply of certain elements of nourishment and an undersupply of others; failure to eliminate waste; a lack of activity or motion, and improper oxidation. These causes removed, nervousness and all neurasthenic tendencies disappear, and Nature asserts herself and produces physical normality. NEURASTHENIA--THE SYMPTOMS Neurasthenic symptoms are excitability, irritability, mental depression, insomnia, fatigue, exhaustion, emaciation and sometimes hysteria, which very often result in other local disorders, such as extreme constipation or chronic hyperchlorhydria, with a tendency toward weakened sexuality. NEURASTHENIA--THE REMEDY In medical literature there are hundreds of alleged remedies for nervous disorders, yet not one of them attempts to ascertain the causes and to suggest their removal. Drugs only paralyze and stupify the delicate, sensitive nerve fibers that are conveying the intelligence to the brain that something is wrong, and the average man mistakes this for a remedy or a cure. [Sidenote: Unbalanced diet, a primary cause]