e, the hard and monotonous labor in our
modern mills and mines for the lower classes, the over-excitement
brought to everybody by the sensationalism of our newspapers and of our
public life all injure the brain cells and damage the equilibrium. That
is a story which we hear a thousand times nowadays. Yet it is doubtful
whether there is really much truth in such a claim and whether much wise
psychotherapy can be deduced from it.

We may begin even with the very justifiable doubt whether nervousness
really has increased in our time. Earlier periods had not so many names
for those symptoms and were not able to discriminate them with the same
clearness. Above all, the milder forms of abnormities were not looked on
as pathological disturbances. If a man has a pessimistic temperament, or
has fits of temper, or cannot get rid of a sad memory idea, or imagines
that he feels an illness which he does not have, or has no energy to
work, even today most people are still without suspicion that a
neurasthenic or a psychasthenic or a hysteric disturbance of the nervous
system may be in its beginning. Earlier times surely may have treated
even the stronger varieties of this kind as troublesome variations in
the sphere of the normal. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that,
for instance, the Middle Ages developed severe diseases of the nervous
system in an almost epidemic way which is nearly unknown to our time.

As to the conditions of life itself, there are certainly many factors at
work which secure favorable influences for our cerebral activity. The
progress of scientific hygiene has brought everyone much nearer to a
harmonious functioning of the organism, and the progress of technique
has removed innumerable difficulties from the play of life. Of course,
we stand today before a much more complex surrounding than our ancestors
but still more quickly than the complexity have grown the means to
master it. We have to know more: yet the effort has not become greater
since it has become easier to acquire knowledge. We have to endure much
disturbing noise, and yet we forget how the sense organs of our
forefathers must have been maltreated, for instance, by flickering
light. We are in a rush of work and stand in thousandfold connections;
and yet the neural energy which is demanded is not large because a
thousand devices of our technical life have become our obedient
servants. There is no nation on earth which is more proud of its rus