HOW to live at peace with others is a problem which, if practically
solved, would relieve the nervous system of a great weight, and give
to living a lightness and ease that might for a time seem weirdly
unnatural. It would certainly decrease the income of the
nerve-specialists to the extent of depriving those gentlemen of many
luxuries they now enjoy.

Peace does not mean an outside civility with an inside dislike or
annoyance. In that case, the repressed antagonism not only increases
the brain-impression and wears upon the nervous system, but it is
sure to manifest itself some time, in one form or another; and the
longer it is repressed, the worse will be the effect. It may be a
volcanic eruption that is produced after long repression, which
simmers down to a chronic interior grumble; or it may be that the
repression has caused such steadily increasing contraction that an
eruption is impossible. In this case, life grows heavier and
heavier, burdened with the shackles of one's own dislikes.

If we can only recognize two truths in our relations with others,
and let these truths become to us a matter of course, the worst
difficulties are removed. Indeed, with these two simple bits of
rationality well in hand, we may safely expect to walk amicably side
by side with our dearest foe.

The first is, that dislike, nine times out often, is simply a
"cutaneous disorder." That is, it is merely an irritation excited by
the friction of one nervous system upon another. The tiny tempests
in the tiny teapots which are caused by this nervous friction, the
great weight attached to the most trivial matters of dispute, would
touch one's sense of humor keenly if it were not that in so many