anxiety. Occupation of a quiet kind, exercise, rest, are the best
medicine.

Sometimes these anxieties take a different form, and betray
themselves by suspicion of other people's conduct and motives. That
is of course allied to insanity. In sane and sound health we
realise that we are not, as a rule, the objects of the malignity
and spitefulness of others. We are perhaps obstacles to the
carrying out of other people's plans; but men and women as a rule
mind their own business, and are not much concerned to intervene in
the designs and activities of others. Yet a man whose mental
equilibrium is unstable is apt to think that if he is disappointed
or thwarted it is the result of a deliberate conspiracy on the part
of other people. If he is a writer, he thinks that other writers
are aware of his merits, but are determined to prevent them being
recognised out of sheer ill-will. A man in robust health realises
that he gets quite as much credit or even more credit than he
deserves, and that his claims to attention are generously
recognised; one has exactly as much influence and weight as one can
get, and other people as a rule are much too much occupied in their
own concerns to have either the time or the inclination to
interfere. But as a man grows older, as his work stiffens and
weakens, he falls out of the race, and he must be content to do so;
and he is well advised if he puts his failure down to his own
deficiencies, and not to the malice of others. The world is really
very much on the look out for anything which amuses, delights,
impresses, moves, or helps it; it is quick and generous in
recognition of originality and force; and if a writer, as he gets
older, finds his books neglected and his opinions disdained, he may
be fairly sure that he has said his say, and that men are