Very often scruples are, as we have pointed out in the chapter on Nervous Diseases, only a manifestation of a nervous disposition sometimes on a hereditary, but sometimes on an acquired basis. The acquired basis is very often a lack of nutrition due to insufficient food, for people who are underweight are much more subject to dreads and obsessions of all kinds than are those who are up to weight. Living on the will, as it is called, when one is underweight and does not eat very much, certainly not sufficient to supply the energy for what has to be accomplished, is a fruitful source of irritability of any and every kind. It keeps people on edge, that is in a condition of unstable equilibrium, and almost anything that touches them has a tendency to put them into a state of disequilibrium. Bringing people up to normal health and especially up to normal weight is often the best possible means to lessen their tendencies to scruples and to various other manifestations supposed to be spiritual yet which represent only conditions and symptoms that are frequently seen in those who have no religion and no conscientious obligations with regard to anything. It is surprising how often a sluggish state of the bowels proves to be seriously disturbing to the spiritual life. {330} People find it hard to pray without distraction or to meditate without getting sleepy, and they are liable to think of themselves as perhaps being the object of very special attention on the part of certain evil spirits who make it their business to distract and obtund those who are trying to put themselves in communication with the Most High, when all that is really the matter is that they are absorbing certain materials which ought to be excreted promptly but which are being delayed in their intestinal tract longer than is good for the individual.