en largely, if not entirely, the
cause of such a variety and extent of nervous trouble throughout the
so-called civilized world. It is not confined to nervous
prostration; if there is a defective spot organically, an inherited
tendency to weakness, the nervous irritation is almost certain to
concentrate upon it instead of developing into a general nervous
break-down.

With regard to a cure for all this, no superficial remedy, such as
resting and feeding, is going to prove of lasting benefit; any more
than a healing salve will suffice to do away with a blood disease
which manifests itself by sores on the surface of the skin. No
physician would for a moment inveigle himself into the belief that
the use of external means alone would cure a skin disease that was
caused by some internal disorder. Such skin irritation may be easily
cured by the right remedy, whereas an external salve would only be a
means of repression, and would result in much greater trouble
subsequently.

Imagine a man superficially cured of an illness, and then exposed
while yet barely convalescent to influences which produce a relapse.
That is what is done in many cases when a patient is rested, and
fattened like a prize pig, and then sent home into all the old
conditions, with nothing to help him to elude them but a well-fed,
well-rested body. That, undeniably, means a great deal for a short
period; but the old conditions discover the scars of old wounds, and
the process of reopening is merely a matter of time. From all sides
complaints are heard of the disastrous results of civilization;
while with even a slight recognition of the fact that the trouble
was caused by the rudiments of barbarism, and that the higher
civilization is the life which is most truly natural, remedies for
our nervous disorders would be more easily found.

It is the perversions of the natural process of civilization that do
the harm; just as with so-called domesticated flowers there arise
coarse abnormal growths, and even diseases, which the wholesome,
delicate organism of a wild flower makes impossible.

The trouble is that we do not know our own best powers at all; the
way is stopped so effectually by this persistent nervous irritation.
With all its superficiality, it is enough to impede the way to the
clear, nervous strength which is certainly our inheritance.

After all, what has been said in the foregoing chapters is simply
illustrative of a prevalent mental skin-diso