to the standard of the particular
case. This relativity of the mental reaction on the demands of life must
always be in the foreground of the psychotherapeutic regime. Even the
best physicians too often sin against this principle and accuse the life
which a man or woman leads as too exhausting and overstraining simply
because it would be overstraining and exhausting to others who are not
adjusted to that special standard. Simply to withdraw a patient from the
one kind of life and to force on him a new kind with new standards may
not be a gain at all. A new adjustment begins and smaller differences
from the standard may bring about the same strong intensities of
reaction as the large differences brought before. Complete rest, for
instance, for a hard brain-worker hardly ought to be recommended unless
a high degree of exhaustion has come on. If routine prescriptions are to
be admitted at all, they should not be complete rest or complete change
of life for any length of time but a continuation of the life for which
adjustment has been learned with a reasonable reduction of the demands
and stimulations. The intellectual worker ought to decrease his work,
the overbusy society woman ought to stay in bed one day in the week, the
man in the midst of the rush of life ought to cut down his obligations,
but probably each of them does better to go on than simply to swear off
altogether.

Their rest ought to have the character of vacation; that means
interruptions without the usual activity ought to be short periods spent
with the distinct feeling that they are interruptions of that which must
last and that they are not themselves to become lasting states. Thus the
inner adjustment to the work ought to be kept up and ought not to be
substituted by a new adjustment to a less exacting life. In this way the
episode of the vacation rest ought to be in a way included in the
strenuous life almost as a part of its programme. Strenuosity must not
mean an external rush with the gestures of overbusy excitement, but
certainly the doctrine of the lazy life is wretched psychotherapy, as
long as no serious illness is in question. By far the best alteration
is, therefore, even in the periods of interruption, not simply rest but
new engagements which awaken new interests and stimulate neglected
mental factors, disburdening the over-strained elements of mental life.
The most effective agency for this task is contact with beauty, beauty
in nature an