We may begin even with the very justifiable doubt whether nervousness really has increased in our time. Earlier periods had not so many names for those symptoms and were not able to discriminate them with the same clearness. Above all, the milder forms of abnormities were not looked on as pathological disturbances. If a man has a pessimistic temperament, or has fits of temper, or cannot get rid of a sad memory idea, or imagines that he feels an illness which he does not have, or has no energy to work, even today most people are still without suspicion that a neurasthenic or a psychasthenic or a hysteric disturbance of the nervous system may be in its beginning. Earlier times surely may have treated even the stronger varieties of this kind as troublesome variations in the sphere of the normal. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that, for instance, the Middle Ages developed severe diseases of the nervous system in an almost epidemic way which is nearly unknown to our time. As to the conditions of life itself, there are certainly many factors at work which secure favorable influences for our cerebral activity. The progress of scientific hygiene has brought everyone much nearer to a harmonious functioning of the organism, and the progress of technique has removed innumerable difficulties from the play of life. Of course, we stand today before a much more complex surrounding than our ancestors but still more quickly than the complexity have grown the means to master it. We have to know more: yet the effort has not become greater since it has become easier to acquire knowledge. We have to endure much disturbing noise, and yet we forget how the sense organs of our forefathers must have been maltreated, for instance, by flickering light. We are in a rush of work and stand in thousandfold connections; and yet the neural energy which is demanded is not large because a thousand devices of our technical life have become our obedient servants. There is no nation on earth which is more proud of its rush and its hurry than the American people; and yet what an abundance of time is leisurely wasted that would have to be used for work if the country could not live from its richness. Moreover our life has probably become cooler, there is less emotionalism, less sentimentality, more business-like attitude, and that all means less inner friction and excitement; in public life too, less fear of war and less religious struggle. All has become a question of administration and efficiency. Our time is certainly not worse off on the score of neurasthenia than its predecessors.