And we must not complain. The Japanese think it rude to complain. If you are miserable, why make others miserable, too? Better not even let it be known, if you can help it without creating unpleasantness, that you suffer. To solicit sympathy is weakening and the constant inquiry, “How are you now?” concentrates your attention on yourself and on your feelings. If we complained to everyone of the ticking clock, we would never forget it; it would become less and less endurable. The spiritual treatment is harder to make clear. It is the unwillingness to have pain that makes it hard to bear. To illustrate again from the dentist, because that experience is still common to nearly everyone: We go to the operating chair, not gladly, but willingly, believing that it is wise and necessary and we bear the pain without complaining, knowing that it is the common lot of man. But suppose you were seized, strapped into the chair, and then your teeth were drilled and sawed to no good purpose, how much more frightful would be the pain. That would be because you believed it to be unnecessary and useless. It would be quite different if you trusted the operator. We must realize, then, that, if there is a controlling and benevolent Power in the Universe, which we all, rightly or wrongly, believe in our hearts, we never can have any pain that is useless or needless to ourselves, or to others, our other selves. We may not see it at the time, but, if we look for it, we usually shall see it. While writing this the author was attacked with a violent toothache: he had exercised ordinary prudence in attending to his teeth, so that it did not seem as if the pain were needed to teach care. But when the toothache came he remembered that, seldom having pain himself, that subject had been overlooked among the many chapters of the book. That was a reason; but, notwithstanding the efforts of an excellent dentist, the torture continued. Why? Why, that he might try these things; and he did practice them so as to lose no sleep. In addition he concluded that it was needful just then that he should feel just such pain in order to revive his sympathy and patience with those whose harassed nerves account for so much of their unreasonableness. With that sense, that one is in a manner suffering for men, comes something of the exaltation of the martyr, even with prosaic toothache. With that certainly disappears all impatience with the pain. Perhaps he will be accounted superstitious in adding that, when these lessons were learned, the dentist found the trouble and the pain melted away. But he has had exactly similar experiences before: a new lesson or a renewal of it was needed. When the pain was no longer necessary it ceased. Why should it continue? SWEET AND LOW