I remember an elderly gentleman who had lived a vigorous and
unselfish life, and was indeed a man of force and character, whose
activity was entirely suspended in later years by his fear of
catching cold or of over-tiring himself. He was a country
clergyman, and used to spend the whole of Sunday between his
services, in solitary seclusion, "resting," and retire to bed the
moment the evening service was over; moreover his dread of taking
cold was such that he invariably wore a hat in the winter months to
go from the drawing-room to the dining-room for dinner, even if
there were guests in his house. He used to jest about it, and say
that it no doubt must look curious; but he added that he had found
it a wise precaution, and that we had no idea how disabling his
colds were. Even a very healthy friend of my own standing has told
me that if he ever lies awake at night he is apt to exaggerate the
smallest and most trifling sense of discomfort into the symptom of
some dangerous disease. Let me quote the well-known case of Hans
Andersen, whose imagination was morbidly strong. He found one
morning when he awoke that he had a small pimple under his left
eyebrow. He reflected with distress upon the circumstance, and soon
came to the rueful conclusion that the pimple would probably
increase in size, and deprive him of the sight of his left eye. A
friend calling upon him in the course of the morning found him
writing, in a mood of solemn resignation, with one hand over the
eye in question, "practising," as he said, "how to read and write
with the only eye that would soon be left him."

One's first impulse is to treat these self-inflicted sufferings as
ridiculous and almost idiotic. But they are quite apt to beset
people of effectiveness and ability. To call them irrational does
not cure them, because they lie deeper than any rational process,