Nietzsche recognized that this age is one in which Will is not merely diseased, but almost paralyzed. Everywhere he saw men and women, youths and girls, who are unable to resist a stimulus, however slight; who react with excessive speed in the presence of an irritant, and who bedeck this weakness and this irritability with all the finest gala dresses and disguises that they can lay their hands on.[4] In Determinism he saw the philosophical abstract of this fact; in our novels and plays he saw its representation under the cloak of passion and emotion; in the Darwinian theory of the influence of environment, he saw it logged out in scientific garb, and in the modern artist's dependence upon an appeal to Nature for inspiration--i. e. for a spur to react upon, he recognized its unhealthiest manifestation. "The power of resisting stimuli is on the wane," he says; "the strength required in order to stop action, and to cease from reacting, is most seriously diseased."[5] "Man unlearns the art of _doing_, and _all he does is to react_ to stimuli coming from his environment."[6] Speaking of the modern artist, he refers to "the absurd irritability of his system, which makes a crisis out of every one of his experiences, and deprives him of all calm reflection,"[7] and, while describing Europeans in general, he lays stress upon their "spontaneous and changeable natures."[8] In calling our attention to these things, Nietzsche certainly laid his finger on the root of a good deal for which the other more general causes which I shall adduce fail to account. There can be no doubt that this irritability does exist, and that it causes large numbers of unrefined and undesirable men and women to enter the arts to-day, who are absolutely mistaken in their diagnosis of their condition. We are all only too ready to conceal our defects beneath euphemistic interpretations of them, and we most decidedly prefer, if we have the choice, to regard any morbid symptoms we may reveal, as the sign of strength rather than of weakness. There is some temptation, therefore, both for our friends and ourselves, to interpret our natures kindly and if possible flatteringly; and, if we suffer from a certain "sickly irritability and sensitiveness" in the presence of what we think beautiful, we prefer to ascribe this to an artistic temperament rather than to a debilitated will.