ys, when it will soon fall asleep, and awake refreshed
and calm.
Proceed gently but with absolute firmness, _start early_, and remember that
example is better than precept.
Religion. Offering advice on this subject is skating on very thin ice, and
we do so but to give grave warning against neuropathic youth being allowed
to contract religious "mania", "ecstasy", or "exaltation".
Neuropaths are given naturally to "see visions and dream dreams", and if
this tendency be exaggerated an unbalanced moral type results. Jones says:
"The epileptic is apt to be greatly influenced by the mystical or
awe-inspiring, and is disposed to morbid piety. He has an outer
religiousness without corresponding strictness of morals; indeed the
sentiment of religious exaltation may be in great contrast to his
habitual conduct, which is a mixture of irritability, vice and
perverted instincts."
Lay stress on the simple moral teaching of the New Testament, and avoid
cranky creeds, cross references, or Higher Criticism. Teach them to
practise the moral precepts, not to quote them by the page.
Without this practical bent, a "Revival" meeting is apt to result in a
transient but harmful "conversion"; a form of religious sentiment which
finds outlet, not so much in works as in morbid excitement. In these
people, as in the insane, there is often a weird mixing-up of religious and
sexual emotion.
Teach these children that the greatest good is not to sob over their
fancied sins at "salvation" meetings, but to love the just and good, to
hate the unjust and evil, and to do unto others as they would others should
do unto them.
It is better for them to join one of the great churches, than become
members of those small sects which maintain peculiar tenets.
A word of special warning must be given against Spiritualism. There may or
may not be a foundation for this belief, but it is highly abnormal, and has
led thousands into asylums.
The medium and the majority of her audience are highly neurotic, and a more
unwholesome environment for an actual or potential neuropath could not be
imagined.
The educated neuropath often peruses certain agnostic works, the result
usually being deplorable, for this class are dependent on some stable base
outside themselves, such as is found in a calm religion manifested in a
steadfast attempt to overcome the weakness of the flesh, by ordering life
in accordance with the teachings of th
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