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.
Such conduct has well been termed money-madness. It is an obsession, a
disease, a form of hypnotism, a mental malady.

The tendency of the age is to drive. We drive our own children to
school; there they are driven for hours by one study after another;
even when they come home they bring lessons with them--the lovers of
study and over-conscientious because they want to do them, and the
laggards because they must, if they are to keep up with their classes.
If the parents of such children are not careful, they (the children)
soon learn to worry; they are behind-hand with their lessons; they
didn't get the highest mark yesterday; the class is going ahead of
them, etc., etc., until mental collapse comes.

For worrying is the worst kind of mental overwork. As Dr. Edward
Livingston Hunt, of Columbia University, New York, said in a paper
read by him early in 1912, before the Public Health Education
Committee of the Medical Society of the County of New York:

There is a form of overwork, exceedingly common and
exceedingly disastrous--one which equally accompanies great
intellectual labors and minor tasks. I allude to worry. When
we medical men speak of the workings of the brain we make
use of a term both expressive and characteristic. It is to
cerebrate. To cerebrate means to think, to reason, and to
reach conclusions; it means to concentrate and to work hard.
To think, then, is to cerebrate. To worry is to cerebrate
intensely.

Worry is overwork of the most disastrous kind; it means to
drive the mental machinery at an unreasonable and dangerous
rate. Worry gives the brain no rest, but rather keeps the
delicate cells in constant and continuous action. Work is
wear; worry is tear. Overwork, mental strain, and worry lead
to a diminution of nerve force a