ntal law of
psychology which I will therefore proceed to assume.
* * * * *
A Viennese neurologist of considerable reputation has recently written
about the _Binnenleben_, as he terms it, or buried life of human beings.
No doctor, this writer says, can get into really profitable relations
with a nervous patient until he gets some sense of what the patient's
_Binnenleben_ is, of the sort of unuttered inner atmosphere in which his
consciousness dwells alone with the secrets of its prison-house. This
inner personal tone is what we can't communicate or describe
articulately to others; but the wraith and ghost of it, so to speak, are
often what our friends and intimates feel as our most characteristic
quality. In the unhealthy-minded, apart from all sorts of old regrets,
ambitions checked by shames and aspirations obstructed by timidities, it
consists mainly of bodily discomforts not distinctly localized by the
sufferer, but breeding a general self-mistrust and sense that things are
not as they should be with him. Half the thirst for alcohol that exists
in the world exists simply because alcohol acts as a temporary
anaesthetic and effacer to all these morbid feelings that never ought to
be in a human being at all. In the healthy-minded, on the contrary,
there are no fears or shames to discover; and the sensations that pour
in from the organism only help to swell the general vital sense of
security and readiness for anything that may turn up.
Consider, for example, the effects of a well-toned _motor-apparatus_,
nervous and muscular, on our general personal self-consciousness, the
sense of elasticity and efficiency that results. They tell us that in
Norway the life of the women has lately been entirely revolutionized by
the new order of muscular feelings with which the use of the _ski_, or
long snow-shoes, as a sport for both sexes, has made the women
acquainted. Fifteen years ago the Norwegian women were even more than
the women of other lands votaries of the old-fashioned ideal of
femininity, 'the domestic angel,' the 'gentle and refining influence'
sort of thing. Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have
been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious
creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who
are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and
delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every
educati
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