Social Duties.--So-called social duties are, in this respect, very like reading. When we meet new people who are interesting, we get diversion of mind in their company. When the people with whom we are, however, already familiar, and perhaps most of them a little tiresome, then what is presumed to be a social diversion becomes merely a bore, all the problems of the day obtrude themselves, of real rest there is none, and re-creation can scarcely be possible. Nearly the same thing is true of the present-day theater, after we have become used to its offerings. A serious play, well constructed and with life's problems touched deeply, may grip us and take us out of ourselves, constituting a complete and magnificent diversion. For a limited number of people music accomplishes this purpose. Unfortunately, the number is very limited, and for those for whom music is the greatest diversion, it sometimes constitutes in itself a poignant source of mental exhaustion. Music may be a very trying thing, especially for women, and for those who have souls extremely sensitive to its manifold effects. Upon these considerations, the importance of unconscious cerebration is brought home to the physician. It is impossible for a great many people to keep their minds inactive, and this is particularly true of two classes of people: those who have superabundant mental energy and those who lack self-control. To both of these classes of men and women, the physician must point out the dangers of unconscious cerebration--the occupation of mind with some subject, even at times while they imagine they are occupied with something else, or even during sleep. Such continuous occupation with a single subject is dangerous. Physicians must emphasize that many supposed {140} mental occupations are really so superficial that they allow other more exhausting processes to continue below them in the sphere of consciousness. As a consequence, the mind, instead of being relaxed, is really more tense than before, because occupied with two sets of thoughts. Very often it would be better for such people to continue with the more serious problem until its solution came, or until they realized that they must divert themselves. MENTAL RELAXATION What is important for mental relaxation, apparently, is not that a man shall try to set his mind at absolute rest, for that seems to be impossible, if a man really has a mind; nor that he shall occupy it with trivial things (because his interest will not be caught by them and will revert to the last serious thing that he was doing), but that he shall have an outlet for mental activity in entirely another direction from that to which he usually devotes himself. In other words, it is important that a man shall have a hobby, and that he shall ride that hobby whenever his ordinary business, whatever that may be, will permit him, and the more interesting the hobby, the better. REMEDIAL MEASURES