The modern malady : $b or, Sufferers from "nerves"Bennett, Cyril
Science
The modern malady : $b or, Sufferers from "nerves"
Bennett, Cyril
Neurasthenia
This new evil seems no less deadly in its effects than an exaggerated
personal ambition. Our complex social conditions render us in many
respects more dependent on one another than formerly. We have
associations and co-operations for everything. Increase of population
and means of communication bring us more into contact with our fellows.
Division of labour makes us indispensable to one another. We all govern
one another. We all have, in some form, a voice in public concerns.
Under the guise of advancing the common good, we have special
opportunities for advancing Self; and it is the element of
self-deception introduced into our striving after self-advancement, and
our consequent habit of deceiving others, which are specially injurious
to our moral sense. Marcus Aurelius tells us that that which is not for
the interest of the whole hive is not for the interest of a single bee.
He might with equal truth have said that that which is not for the
higher interests of a single bee cannot in the long-run benefit the
hive.
It may be questioned whether our exceeding unrest, our yearning for
notoriety, our eagerness to overwork ourselves, _i.e._, to draw on our
nerve-capital at the risk of breaking the bank, are not symptoms of
widespread nervous disease in the community rather than its causes; just
as, in the individual, the restless excitement regarded often as the
cause of the after-malady is in reality but a symptom of the
disintegration which has already begun. We may console ourselves with
the reflection that, neurasthenia in the individual being curable,
neurasthenia in the community is curable also; the community being but a
collection of individuals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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