CHAPTER III

NERVOUS PROSTRATION AND WORRY.


Nervous prostration is generally understood to mean weakness of the
nerves. It invariably comes to those who have extra strong nerves,
but who do not know how to use them properly, as well as those whose
nervous system is naturally weak and easily disorganized. Nervous
prostration is a disease of overwork, mainly mental overwork, and in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, comes from worry. Worry is
the most senseless and insane form of mental work. It is as if a
bicycle-rider were so riding against time that, the moment after he
got off his machine to sit down to a meal he sprang up again, and
while eating were to work his arms and legs as if he were riding.
It is the slave-driver that stands over the slave and compels him to
continue his work, even though he is so exhausted that hands, arms and
legs cease to obey, and he falls asleep at his task.

The folly, as well as the pain and distress of this cruel
slave-driving is that we hold the whip over ourselves, have trained
ourselves to do it, and have done it so long that now we seem unable
to stop. In another chapter there is fully described (in Dorothy
Canfield's vivid words) the squirrel-cage whirligig of modern society
life. Modern business life is not much better. Men compel themselves
to the endless task of amassing money without knowing _why_ they amass
it. They make money, that they may enlarge their factories, to make
more ploughs, to get more money, to enlarge their factories, to make
more ploughs, to get more money, to enlarge more factories, to make
more ploughs, and so on, _ad infinitum_. Where is the sense of it.