If, as the sequence of a malady contracted in pursuit of illegitimate
gratification, an attack of iritis injures vision, the mischief
is to be counted among those entailed by immoral conduct; but if,
regardless of protesting sensations, the eyes are used in study too
soon after ophthalmia, and there follows blindness for years or for
life, entailing not only personal unhappiness, but a burden on others,
moralists are silent. The broken leg which a drunkard's accident causes
counts among those miseries brought on self and family by intemperance,
which form the ground for reprobating it; but if anxiety to fulfill
duties prompts the continued use of a sprained knee spite of the pain,
and brings on a chronic lameness involving lack of exercise, consequent
ill-health, inefficiency, anxiety, and unhappiness, it is supposed that
ethics has no verdict to give in the matter. A student who is plucked
because he has spent in amusement the time and money that should have
gone in study, is blamed for thus making parents unhappy and preparing
for himself a miserable future; but another who, thinking exclusively
of claims on him, reads night after night with hot or aching head, and,
breaking down, cannot take his degree, but returns home shattered in
health and unable to support himself, is named with pity only, as not
subject to any moral judgment; or rather, the moral judgment passed is
wholly favorable.
Thus recognizing the evils caused by some kinds of conduct only, men
at large, and moralists as exponents of their beliefs, ignore the
suffering and death daily caused around them by disregard of that
guidance which has established itself in the course of evolution. Led
by the tacit assumption common to Pagan stoics and Christian ascetics,
that we are so diabolically organized that pleasures are injurious and
pains beneficial, people on all sides yield examples of lives blasted
by persisting in actions against which their sensations rebel. Here is
one who, drenched to the skin and sitting in a cold wind, pooh-hoohs
his shiverings and gets rheumatic fever, with subsequent heart-disease,
which makes worthless the short life remaining to him. Here is another
who, disregarding painful feelings, works too soon after a debilitating
illness, and establishes disordered health that lasts for the rest of
his days, and makes him useless to himself and others. Now the account
is of a youth who, persisting in gymnastic feats spite of scarcely
bearable straining, bursts a blood-vessel, and, long laid on the shelf,
is permanently damaged; while now it is of a man in middle life who,
pushing muscular effort to painful excess, suddenly brings on hernia.
In this family is a case of aphasia, spreading paralysis and death,
caused by eating too little and doing too much; in that, softening of
the brain has been brought on by ceaseless mental efforts against
which the feelings hourly protested; and in others, less serious brain
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