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J v^*-..- <J(- .L J.. ^.A. '-■.<(. L J,-**' <-<< L'^ £. '<J The Influence of the 
Mind on the Body 
By DOCTOR PAUL DUBOIS 
Professor in the University of Berne 
Author of " The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders" 
Translated from the Fifth French Ration 
By 
L. B. GALLATIN 
SIXTH EDITION 
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
19H Copyright, 1906 
By 
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
^Printed in^the United States of America^ 
Published June, 1906 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
MIND ON THE BODY 
1K7HATEVER may be the opinions 
' * which one professes in the matter of 
philosophy, whether one is a spiritualist or 
a scientific materialist, each one recognizes 
the reciprocal influence which the spirit 
and the body, the moral and the physical, 
exert upon each other. 
It will certainly be interesting to attempt 
a precise definition of these words which 
one employs so frequently, and to show the 
transformations which the notion of the 
soul undergoes when one passes from the 
dualism of religions to the unity of nat- 
ural philosophy. 
But that will not be the object of my 
conference to-day, and I shall content my- 
self, for the moment, with a summary 
3 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
definition. When I speak of the mind, 
of morality, of the soul, if you will, I 
understand by that the ideas, mental 
representations, sentiments, all these things 
which we do not see, of which we take 
cognizance only through the conscience. 
The physique of man is the entire body, 
comprising in it the brain with its thousands 
of cells and fibers, with the organs of feel- 
ing, these delicate antennae which put it 
in communication with the outside world. 
This body exists; we can see it, can touch 
it. We have no doubts of its reality, its 
materialism, in spite of the specious rea- 
soning of some philosophers who have 
pushed idealism to the extreme. 
To say that the physical has an influence 
over the moral is then to affirm that the 
state of our body can modify our ideas, 
our sentiments, the condition of our soul. 
Inversely, if we admit the influence of the 
mind over the body that is declaring that 
the mental representations which we make, 
4 MIND ON THE BODY 
the feelings which animate us, can influence 
the body and modify the functions of its 
organs. 
My object is, before all, to show the 
influence of the mind over the body, but 
to understand it better, it is necessary to 
examine the matter inversely and analyze 
fully the influence of the physical over the 
mental. 
The dependence of the soul upon the 
body commences in the cradle and finishes 
only in the grave. 
By the fact of heredity and of atavism 
we are born already influenced in a cer- 
tain direction; we enter this world more 
or less well endowed. That is a heritage 
which we are obliged to accept without 
liability to debts beyond the assets inher- 
ited and during all our existence we shall 
live only on this capital and the interest 
which we shall know how to draw from 
it by a wise administration. 
There are unhappy beings who are 
5 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
bom idiots; their brain is arrested in its 
development, deformed, and it is with 
infinite trouble that the devoted educators 
succeed in developing in these poor crea- 
tures some manifestations of intelligence. 
In a less degree the cerebral malady is 
shown by imbecility. Less advanced still 
it produces these states of mental want of 
balance which often become more exag- 
gerated in successive generations and tend 
to a degeneracy of the family. 
One willingly recognizes that our intel- 
lectual faculties are controlled even by the 
formation of our brain. We say of a 
man who manifests a superior intelligence 
that he has a well-organized head. We 
suppose him to have a well-developed 
brain, working easily, capable of regular 
work, of logical reflection. There are 
people who have memory, others who 
have imagination; some work with facility, 
others distinguish themselves by their per- 
severance. 
6 MIND ON THE BODY 
We fully understand that if it is possible 
for us to cultivate these qualities to a cer- 
tain extent or to allow them to become 
useless from want of practise, they are 
given to us after all at birth. 
One forgets too often that it is absolutely 
the same with moral qualities. 
From the first years of life; before 
educational influences have been able to 
exert themselves; before the powerful 
contagion of example has been felt; we 
surprise in children the germs of future 
moral qualities and faults. 
One child is, from the beginning of his 
life, docile and sweet, sensible and good; 
another is rebellious and hard, indifferent, 
or even cruel. Egotism and tendency to 
falsehood often manifest themselves very 
early. The child can not yet reason, we 
dare not speak to it of responsibility yet, 
and already we see in him the often indel- 
ible taint of heredity, the innate moral 
blemish. 
7 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
Often the cerebral imperfection extends 
itself to both the intelligence and the moral 
sentiment; the subject is as little intel- 
ligent as he is vicious. On the other hand, 
one sees poor creatures who are disin- 
herited in an intellectual point of view, 
but who present the touching contrast of 
a good heart, of a quick sensibility to affec- 
tion which renders them sympathetic. 
Finally, much more often than we think, 
the most brilliant gifts of intelligence are 
matched to a total absence of moral feel- 
ing. The moral fool, or rather the fool 
of feeble morality, exists. He can domi- 
nate by the brightness of his cold intelli- 
gence, by his indomitable energy, by his 
imperturbable cold blood, but his intel- 
ligence is temporary, fragmentary, it will 
not allow him to see the difference between 
good and evil. In spite of education these 
notions are totally strange to him. As 
there are persons entirely destitute of all 
musical feeling, for whom music is only 
8 MIND ON THE BODY 
the most disagreeable of noises, there are 
beings who have never felt the impulse of 
goodness, whose heart has never beat 
with a noble idea. These are the most 
unendowed, no matter what enviable sit- 
uation they may occupy in the world. 
And let us never forget that this intel- 
lectual and moral heritage is physical in 
its essence. It is not finished qualities or 
faults which procreation transmits. We 
are not bom poets, musicians, scientists, 
statesmen; we are not predestined at the 
first onset to be a great man or a criminal. 
We are born simply with a brain more or 
less well organized, more or less apt to act 
under the influence of the stimulus which 
will come to it and which will keep up a 
constant play of the association of ideas 
which we call the life of the soul. I will 
go much further and say that all thought 
being necessarily bound to the physical 
or the chemical phenomena of which the 
brain is the seat, the slavery is still more 
9 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
complete and that all the most elevated 
manifestations of thought, all our intel- 
lectual and moral life, depend above all 
on the state of our brain. 
It will appear to you, perhaps, that this 
theory is acceptable only to the most abso- 
lute partizans of materialism. Without 
doubt the doctrinal materialists, the posi- 
tivists, will be the first to give their adhe- 
sion to it. 
But it is not the metaphysical ques- 
tion which I wish to dwell upon here. It 
matters little to me whether one considers 
thought as the product of cerebral activity 
or as a convinced spiritualist one perceives 
in the brain only the marvelous instrument 
which the immaterial soul uses to mani- 
fest itself. These questions are impos- 
sible to solve. 
In both cases, mark well, the defective 
working of the brain is shown by troubled 
thoughts. We are, on reckoning up, all 
obliged to admit the constant concomitance 
10 MIND ON THE BODY 
of the acting of conscience and of brain 
work, in other words, psychophysical 
parallelism. 
I shall easily find among the protestant 
philosophers, defenders of free will, writers 
who remark this slavery of the soul to the 
body, but their testimony may appear sus- 
picious; it is tainted with too much free- 
dom of examination. I prefer to turn to 
one who represents Catholic orthodoxy. 
Listen to what a French prelate, Mgr. 
d'Hulst, says on this subject in his "Phil- 
osophical Medley"-"We have all been 
educated in admiration of a formula of 
which M. de Bonald is the author, but of 
which Descartes is the inspirer: 'The 
soul is an intelligence served by the organs.' 
The least fault of this definition is that it 
is very incomplete. The intelligence is 
served by the organs; served, yes, without 
doubt, but is subjected also. 
"It is true that every master of a house 
is subjected to his servants more or less. 
11 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
But in consenting to serve himself he could 
free himself from this dependence. 
" The soul has not this resource. And 
the dependence goes further. If the ques- 
tion was only of the inferior part of the 
psychical life, sensation, that is the feel- 
ings of the body, one could say: The soul 
depends on the organs in all the operations 
which have their origin outside. But in 
its own life, its intellectual working, it is 
mistress and not servant, it does not de- 
pend upon the body. Unhappily for the 
theory, this is not always true. Even in 
the most simple act of intelligence there 
is a necessary concurrence; a concurrence 
of the organs which is important. The 
brain works in the skull of a thinker. 
There are vibrations of the cells in the 
cortical bed of the brain; there is, to render 
these possible, a sanguinary afflux as much 
more abundant as the intellectual effort 
is more intense; there is a rise in the tem- 
perature which results from it; there is 
12 MIND ON THE BODY 
finally a combustion of organic matter. 
The more the soul thinks the more the 
brain bums its own substance. It is thus 
that head work as much as muscular work 
gives rise to a sensation of hunger. 
" Finally, if this work is excessive there is 
fatigue, pain in the head; and if this ex- 
cess is prolonged it will lead to a morbid 
condition, sometimes even to material 
lesions which autopsy can recognize after 
death and which will be the terrible signa- 
ture of the animal nature which does not 
permit one to forget it when one wishes to 
do the work of the mind." We know not 
how this language can be improved. 
But, you say, this slavery is revolting. 
What! all that we are, mentally and moral- 
ly, depends upon the material state of 
our brain? Yes! Every state of the soul 
supposes a cerebral correspondence, and 
whatever may be the metaphysical doc- 
trines to which we wish to .attach our- 
selves, the soul remains pinned to the 
13 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
body during all the continuance of our 
existence. 
Not only are we born already endowed 
with certain good qualities or deformed by 
nature, but we bear, however slackly, to an 
advanced age the yoke of heredity; then 
we may hope to have escaped from it. 
It is thus that one sees foolishness or 
epilepsy, which also leads to mental trou- 
ble, attack successively, at the same age, 
members of the same family. Without 
appreciable cause, other than that of an 
inborn predisposition which has been la- 
tent, one suddenly sees an intelligence fail 
which appeared to be developing normally. 
Illness of the body modifies the condition 
of the soul, we suffer from the delirium of 
fever, we succumb mentally under the in- 
fluence of poison. Heat, cold, air pure or 
vitiated, barometrical pressure, the food 
which we assimilate all act upon our phys- 
ical and moral condition. 
Think of the state of mind which alco- 
14 MIND ON THE BODY 
holic intoxication creates and you will 
instantly understand the trouble which the 
intoxication of the cerebral tissue produces 
in the thoughts, in the spirit. 
A typical example of this action of the 
body upon the mind is furnished to us by 
the destruction of the thyroid gland. In 
other times in operations for goiter, which 
have become so frequent to-day, the whole 
gland was removed, upon the pretext that 
it was useless. It has become necessary 
to retract this opinion. It has happened 
that people who were normal before have 
fallen after the operation into a state of 
imbecility. Not only are the features 
swollen, the forehead wrinkled, the lips 
heavy, the face even taking a senile look; 
but the intelligence has suffered and the 
patients have fallen into a state of intel- 
lectual torpor. The same condition can 
occur without an operation by the atrophy 
of the thyroid gland. 
Now in both cases we can give back to 
15 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
the patient his intelligence, his vivacity of 
spirit, by making him eat the thyroid 
gland of a sheep or take pills made of the 
extract of that gland! We can plunge 
him again into idiocy by stopping his pills 
and render him intelligent anew by giv- 
ing him a prescription for the chemist. 
This will demonstrate the influence of the 
body over the mind so long as this influence 
has need of being proved. 
Are we then condemned always to sub- 
mit to the yoke of heredity and the action 
of physical agents, as a tree which shall 
be not only well grown or stunted accord- 
ing to the germ which has given it birth, 
but must suffer also from bad temperature ? 
Can we not here call in the intelligent 
gardener who will correct the first devia- 
tion of the branches, put them en espalier, 
and execute the grafting which will im- 
prove the fruit ? 
Yes, we can combat to a certain degree 
the effects of fatal heredity and escape the 
16 MIND ON THE BODY 
noxious influence of exterior agencies. We 
shall accomplish this by the education o) 
ourselves. 
I have said, without hesitation, the 
education of ourselves because I esteem 
this personal culture to be the most effica- 
cious. But it is necessary to understand 
it. 
More or less imperfect from birth, we, 
mentally, can not be our own educator in 
the true sense of the word. 
It is by intercourse with our kind, by 
the ideas which they suggest to us, that we 
can correct our faults and cultivate our 
good qualities. 
We have, it is true, the sensation of 
originating our thoughts, of ourselves de- 
ciding the regulating of our conduct. But 
take care! The mental capital which we 
attribute to ourselves, from which we draw 
interest, comes to us from others, from the 
education which we have received, not only 
from voluntary education, that of the fam- 
17 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
ily, that of the school, that of the priest, 
but the insensible education which is given 
by the world and by life. 
It is sometimes good, sometimes bad, 
and it is upon this foundation of borrowed 
ideas that all the scaffolding of our thoughts 
and our sentiments is built. 
If one reflects well upon it, all education 
can be looked upon as an influence of the 
mind over the body. Without doubt there 
are ideas which we transmit to our fellow- 
creatures by words, by looks; these are the 
ideas which we store up under the empire 
of foreign suggestions. But, as every one 
knows, all thought is accompanied by ma- 
terial phenomena in the brain; it is in the 
main a physical change which determines 
mental representations. 
Education kneads our brain, if we can 
use such an expression, and renders it 
apt to respond to favorable influences. 
The materialism of the ultimate phenom- 
ena is symbolized by the popular expression 
18 MIND ON THE BODY 
which makes us say, apropos of a moral 
habit, " The step has been taken." 
But, in expressing this idea, I have not 
wished to enter upon delicate psycholog- 
ical analyses. I have a practical end in 
view and the question which presents it- 
self is this: 
Can we, by means of the mind, by our 
moral deportment, escape illness, prevent 
certain inborn functional troubles, dimin- 
ish or suppress those which already exist? 
To this question I boldly answer "Yes." 
It is needless to say that I set aside surgi- 
cal maladies, infectious diseases, and those 
innumerable organic affections which are 
the fruit either of heredity or unfavorable 
hygienic conditions. Against these evils 
which torment humanity we can do al- 
most nothing through the mind. We can 
combat them by the ordinary means of 
medicine, by drugs, by physical treatment. 
We can finally oppose them with a noble 
stoicism, but that is all. 
19 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
But we often suffer from functional trou- 
bles which are not caused by organic 
changes and in the development of which 
the mind plays an immense part. Even 
in the course of purely bodily illness there 
is often the mediation of psychical symp- 
toms which depend above all on the con- 
dition of our spirit. Man, in short, suf- 
fers quite differently from the animals and 
he suffers more than they. He does not 
content himself, so to speak, with brute 
suffering which is adequate for the phys- 
ical disorders; he increases them by im- 
agination, aggravates them by fear, keeps 
them up by his pessimistic reflections. 
It is man who has the sad privilege of 
being tormented by nervous maladies, by 
the nervosity which is so frequent to-day. 
He alone knows in illness mental suffering 
in its highest degree and if he feels it with 
such acuteness it is not only because his 
spiritual life permits him to feel it, which 
would be only a superiority, but it is he 
20 MIND ON THE BODY 
himself who creates, or at least exagger- 
ates, this suffering. 
Since we seek, above all, means to fight 
morally against illness, we must recognize 
the enemy and specify the means by which 
exterior influences, physical as well as 
moral, can act upon us and lead to func- 
tional troubles. 
We are particularly vulnerable in two 
places, our sensibility and our emotion- 
alism. I have already said that outside 
agents act upon us. Too intense cold, 
above all when damp, paralyzes us, afflicts 
us; heat when it passes a certain degree 
strikes us down. A too brilliant light, a 
too intense and long-continued noise, tires 
us, enervates us. Our exposed nerves 
bring us a crowd of painful or sad sensa- 
tions. Fatigue, whether corporal, intel- 
lectual, or emotional, reaches the nerve 
centers and creates morbid conditions of 
which the mental symptoms are sadness 
and sullenness. 
21 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
If these influences were purely bodily 
they would be incurable and we should 
passively suffer all the consequences. But 
it is here that the mistake is made. Yes, 
by means of our senses the ambient me- 
dium acts upon us; but if these sensations 
take such a reality, such a power, if they 
determine far-distant actions, it is above 
all because of the attention which wTe be- 
stow upon them. It is by thinking of it 
that we render more fatal this influence 
of surrounding mediums; it is then by 
thought that we can fight against it, dimin- 
ish it in place of exaggerating it. 
I must remark, first of all, that the 
diverse sensations which our five senses 
furnish us with, sight, hearing, taste, smell, 
and touch, exist in all their plenitude only 
thanks to the intervention of the attentive 
mind. 
One well says that when a ray of light 
penetrates to the eye we feel a sensation of 
light, that we perceive a sound when the 
22 MIND ON THE BODY 
tympanum is put in vibration. All that 
is true, but on condition that our attention 
is awakened. 
Among the thousands of noises which 
in one day reach our ears there are many 
of which our understanding takes no cog- 
nizance. Has it never happened to you to 
answer some one only the second, third, 
or even fourth question which has been 
addressed to you in a loud and intelligible 
voice ? 
Yes; you were distrait, preoccupied 
with something else, you have not heard. 
We often look for an object and do not see 
it, altho it is before us and its image may 
have been ten times reflected in our eyes. 
When you are before the glass door of a 
library a crowd of books and objects of 
art are in your field of vision. A photo- 
graphic camera put in your place would 
register all these details in an instant. As 
for you, you have only seen the romance 
of the day and an interesting engraving. 
23 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
All the rest has struck your eye, but has not 
reached your understanding. In order to 
see, to hear, to feel, it is necessary to look, 
to listen, to give attention. If the light is 
brilliant, if the noise is intense, the pain 
severe, the attention is immediately awa- 
kened. But the more moderate impres- 
sions can be effaced and remain ignored 
if we pay no attention to them. This 
notion that one can overlook a sensation 
even if the cause which produced it remains 
is not new to the public; one now and 
then hears the picturesque expression of 
it in popular language. I mount in winter 
upon the tramway; a workman jumps 
upon it crying, "Oh! how cold my feet 
are! They hurt me!" "Oh! bah!" the 
conductor answers energetically, "you must 
not think about them." 
And in another world; at the five o'clock 
tea the ladies rebel against the tyranny of 
the Paris fashions which in summer impose 
upon them the carrying of boas and ruches; 
24 MIND ON THE BODY 
they find the heat intolerable. "Ah, well," 
says a pretty woman, "I do not agree with 
you. I look in the mirror and if the boa is 
becoming I am no longer warm!" 
Reflect, analyze your own sensations, 
and you will see that it is not rare for a 
sensation to disappear because the atten- 
tion is elsewhere. Very painful feelings, 
even very sad ones, can thus vanish under 
the influence of a powerful distraction by 
the conviction that they do not exist. 
Every one knows that when going to the 
dentist's certain persons suddenly lose their 
toothache. I often see patients who ac- 
knowledge to me that their headache dis- 
appears when they receive an agreeable 
visit. I never conclude from that that 
their suffering is slight or their pain imag- 
inary. No; the pain is really the outcome 
of a psychical phenomenon, therefore 
cerebral, and all change in the state of mind 
can modify the ultimate phenomenon of 
conscious perception. We do not feel 
25 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
blows when we are the prey of violent 
anger, and we see persons submit to pain- 
ful operations, drawing teeth, for instance, 
because it has been suggested to them that 
under the influence of a wash of cocaine 
they would feel no pain. On the other 
hand, by giving our attention, by fixing it, 
we are able to seize feeble impressions, to 
make them more distinct, as if we had 
used a magnifying glass. It is even pos- 
sible to create these sensations, to feel 
them through pure mental representation. 
We have often said a mental representa- 
tion is a beginning of a real sensation, it is 
even an act commenced. It is sufficient to 
be intimately persuaded that a phenomenon 
is about to be produced, that we are about 
to see or hear something, for us to feel the 
sensation with all the intensity of reality. 
It is thus that people who are normal 
in other respects feel strange sensations in 
touching an electrical machine even when 
it is not charged. 
26 MIND ON THE BODY 
One has been able to make students who 
are working with the microscope see things 
which are not there but which one tells 
them are there. Experiments sometimes 
improve upon a great scale. One hundred 
and twenty years ago Mesmer made the 
great ladies of the highest Parisian society 
experience the most strange sensations 
and provoked the most different functional 
troubles. How ? he made them seize 
metallic bars which came out from a so- 
called magnetic tub! It was the imagina- 
tion, the preconceived idea which gave 
birth to the sensation and led to trouble 
in the action of the organs. 
We are easily made victims by these 
auto-suggestions, as they are called to-day, 
when we have some plausible reason to 
believe them. I have often felt heat ra- 
diating from a stove which I was passing. 
I had understood that it was heated; when 
touched it was cold. There are people 
who have felt the oil and smelled the odor 
27 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
of petroleum when lifting a new lamp 
which has never contained any. 
One can recall thousands of examples 
of these errors of the senses which show 
the influence of imagination, the incred- 
ible power of mental representations. 
The success of hypnotism abundantly 
demonstrates this influence. 
Physicians of hospitals which give them- 
selves up to this class of practise can ac- 
tually put to sleep eighty to ninety per cent, 
of their patients by pure verbal suggestion, 
by the following simple words pronounced 
with convincing power, "Sleep, sleep, 
sleep." 
One can often in this hypnotic sleep, 
where credulity is increased by the sup- 
pression of the control of reason, suggest 
to the subjects all sorts of sensations: 
make them shiver with cold, perspire with 
heat, make them tremble before a mena- 
cing lion, recoil with fear before an imag- 
inary rising sea. One can paralyze his 
28 MIND ON THE BODY 
tongue, his arms, his legs, fix his feet to 
the earth by suggesting to him that he 
can not pass the line which has been drawn 
with chalk upon the floor. Even in a 
waking state we can provoke analogous 
phenomena. It suffices that the person 
upon whom we operate should be at the 
time in a condition of mind which responds 
to suggestion and persuasion. This state 
of mind may be natural and reasonable. 
For example: I saw,at Nancy, a workman 
to whom Professeur Bernheim proposed 
to employ hypnotism to soothe rheumatic 
pains. "I am willing," the man simply 
said; "I do not know what hypnotism is; 
but my comrades have told me that it 
will do me good." In the twinkling of an 
eye he was asleep, in the happy conviction 
that having gone to sleep he would awake 
having received great good from that pro- 
ceeding! Another example of suggestion 
in a wide-awake condition. A young 
soldier presented himself at the hospital; 
29 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
the professor examined him, verified a 
sore throat, and gave him a gargle. Then, 
desirous of showing his class the power 
of verbal suggestion, he takes the young 
man's arm and says to him point blank, 
"Since when has your arm been para- 
lyzed?" The astonished patient declares 
positively that there is nothing the matter 
with his arm. But the professor stands 
firm. "See, gentlemen," says he to the stu- 
dents, " here is a young man who has been 
attacked by a rare affection, pyschic par- 
alysis of the right arm. You see how this 
limb hangs, without life, by the side of the 
body and falls back again when it is lifted," 
and joining the action to the word he raised 
the arm, which really fell back like a club. 
The arm was really and truly paralyzed 
and it was necessary next day to restore 
it by inverse suggestion, which was quite 
as easy. 
Numerous examples of auto-suggestions 
have been cited which show how a sensa- 
30 MIND ON THE BODY 
tion can be created by pure mental repre- 
sentation. I will cite one of them which 
is typical. 
A healthy man is present at an operation 
performed upon his brother, which con- 
sists of straightening, when under chloro- 
form, a twisted knee. At the moment in 
which, under the treatment of the surgeon, 
the joint straightens itself with a snap, who 
is it who feels the pain? It is not the 
patient, plunged in sleep, but his brother, 
and he retains this painful affection for 
a year! 
When one has fully grasped the power 
of fancy one understands how nervous 
ills can arise from the contagion of 
example. In the middle ages it was 
seen that nearly all the women of a 
town fell into hysterical crises and unan- 
imously gave themselves up to foolish 
dances. 
Even to-day we see hysteria under the 
form of a kind of dance of St. Guy invade 
31 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
boarding-schools for little girls. It has 
been seen at Basle and at Baden within a 
few years. In the settlement of Kehrsatz 
thirty young girls were taken with pains 
in the joints and convulsive movements 
of the arms and legs. It was necessary 
to isolate them, to separate them from 
each other, in order to stop this epidemic 
of nervousness. 
You all know the contagion of yawning 
and of the involuntary grimaces which our 
children make when they are present at 
the tricks of a clown or in a theater of 
marionettes. They live through all the 
scenes, they feel the sensations so fully 
that they spontaneously translate them by 
gesture and mimicry. 
Even we, adults of sedate mind, shed 
tears at the theater when we know that all 
which passes before our eyes is fictitious, 
imaginary, and that we need not pity the 
fate of the heroes. Our voices tremble 
when reading an affecting page, even when 
32 MIND ON THE BODY 
it is from a work of pure imagination; 
even when the recital has no historical 
foundation and awakens no retrospective 
sympathy. 
This human suggestibility, already so 
marked when it regards pure sensation, 
becomes extreme as soon as emotion is 
joined to it. Fear establishes itself, pessi- 
mistic thoughts crop up, and it is then that 
one verifies apropos of the least indisposi- 
tion the enormous influence of the mind, 
not only over the sensations, but also over 
the organic functions. 
There are no organs which escape this 
influence, for all the organs have nerves 
and are in intimate relation with the 
cerebral center. 
Not only tears (the habitual means of 
emotional expression) can flow, but the 
heart beats more quickly or more irregu- 
larly, the breathing is accelerated, becomes 
panting, the face pales or flushes; the 
appetite goes, the digestive functions are 
33 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
deranged, and we know the effect upon the 
intestines of a child, even upon those of a 
soldier, which the well-known sentiment 
of fear can have. 
Emotion as a river which has broken 
its bounds spreads itself everywhere in 
different torrents and can carry trouble 
into the working of all our organs. 
At the same time emotion fatigues. It 
does not only create functional trouble by 
the vivacity of the mental representations 
to which it leads; it engenders also, by 
nervous exhaustion, real sensations, dis- 
agreeable or painful, which furnish new 
food to the unquiet mind of the patient, 
give rise to other fears, other vexatious 
auto-suggestions. 
One can thus understand how a passing 
and trivial sensation which should have 
been neglected and would have disap- 
peared if one had voluntarily distracted 
his attention, persists, increases in the 
mind of the person, leads to unhealthy 
34 MIND ON THE BODY 
fear, and gives birth to troubles which are 
disproportioned to the first cause. 
There are no imaginary sick people; 
they all suffer and are worthy of our com- 
passion. But there are legions of these 
sick in whom the most careful examina- 
tion can verify no physical trouble, to whom 
one can deliver a favorable certificate for 
the life-insurance company, and who during 
months and years, and often all through 
life, suffer martyrdom and present the most 
curious functional troubles. 
It is owing to their sensibility and their 
exaggerated emotionalism that they must 
go through a life of infirmity. 
Such an one who has felt a weight in 
his stomach, has seen his tongue coated, 
believes himself afflicted with a cancer, 
and from that time uneasy and fearful, 
he experiences all the subjective symptoms 
of that disease. It is often difficult to 
rescue him from this fixed idea which 
constitutes all the disease. 
35 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
Nothing is more frequent than to see 
patients who, under pretext that they have 
a dilatation of the stomach, which is now 
the fashionable disease, submit for years to 
a painful and debilitating regimen. And 
this dyspepsia is so much of mental origin, 
so much imaginary in its mode of develop- 
ment, that often the doctor who possesses 
a sufficient gift of persuasion can gradu- 
ally restore these invalids to their ordi- 
nary food. It is the same with the working 
of the heart. 
A woman is taken, no one knows why, 
perhaps under the empire of a forgotten 
nightmare, with palpitations. She has, for 
for example, one hundred pulsations. 
Forthwith she asks herself what is the 
matter, she is frightened, fears a mortal 
swoon; if unhappily some one of her 
family, of her acquaintance, has died of 
heart disease the anxiety appears still 
more justifiable. The family circle also 
becomes frightened and agitated, which 
36 MIND ON THE BODY 
is not tranquilizing for the invalid. Now 
as emotion suffices to make the heart beat 
faster, the pulse mounts to one hundred 
and twenty. At this figure the anguish is 
still more marked, the emotion increases, 
and the pulse reaches one hundred and 
forty. I have seen it rise to two hundred 
through this succession of increasing emo- 
tions. Then the doctor is called in, often 
in the middle of the night. He comes 
good-naturedly, altho sometimes sorry 
to have been awakened out of his sleep. 
He examines carefully, questions, feels 
the pulse, takes the temperature. There 
is no organic trouble, only the nervous 
beating of the heart. He gives his advice 
tranquilly, supports his opinion with en- 
couraging examples, affirms that there is 
no danger, that no one dies of this. Little 
by little conversation with the invalid be- 
comes more easy and cheerful, pleasantry 
follows, a smile appears upon the lips of 
the patient, the relations become calm, and 
37 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
if the doctor has well filled the role of con- 
soler the pulse has already become slower, 
the agony has ceased, and the patient will 
sleep for the rest of the night without the 
necessity for awakening the chemist at the 
corner. 
Take another example. A lady suffers, 
through the action of an impertinent ser- 
vant, from a sharp contrariety. Anger 
reaches its height and suddenly, under 
the influence of this emotion, her legs 
give way under her. This would not have 
happened if she had not lost her head, 
but she wras fatigued, perhaps felt out of 
sorts; she could not control herself and 
at once thinks that she is really paralyzed. 
If, unhappily, the physician who sees her 
does not know how to dissipate her fears, 
to strengthen this unsettled will power, it is 
all over with her; hysterical paralysis will 
be established and may last for months and 
years. I should never finish if I were to 
particularize all the numerous apparently 
38 MIND ON THE BODY 
physical affections which arise through 
psychical means, by attention concen- 
trated upon oneself, by the calling into 
play of sensibility and emotionalism. 
These maladies are sometimes grave 
as symptoms, lasting, and often lead to 
the unhappiness of the invalids and their 
families. 
I do not hesitate to say that these ner- 
vous affections which are accessible to 
mind-cure are more frequent than bodily 
illnesses and that great progress would be 
made in the public health if by a volun- 
tary influence of the mind over the body 
we knew how to stop in their development 
these strange evils which are more mental 
than physical. 
In these various examples I have spoken 
only of one emotion, that of fear, of appre- 
hension which is insufficiently justified 
by some unimportant ailment. There are 
also others. 
There is a form of exaggerated emotion- 
39 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
alism which I must point out to you; it 
is that which consists of disquieting one- 
self about everything and nothing. There 
are beings who are true virtuosos in the 
art of making the lyre of the emotions vi- 
brate. Their life is passed in tormenting 
themselves, in making tragic the least events 
of their life. When a lady, for example, 
is endowed with this grievous impression- 
ability she is wasted by excitement from 
morning to night and often from night to 
morning. On awaking she is in a state 
of anxious agitation which opens the day; 
she feels herself already crushed under the 
weight of all that she has to do and of all 
that she will have to bear; she suffers 
from it by anticipation. The little vexa- 
tions which every mistress of a house has 
to bear are not for her simple annoyances; 
they are catastrophes and the morning is 
already full of them. At noon one of the 
boys has not returned. In place of sup- 
posing that he has loitered with his little 
40 MIND ON THE BODY 
comrades the mother gets it into her head 
that he has been run over by a tram car 
and the servant must go and look for him. 
During this time the soup or the roast is 
burned. 
If the husband, also unnerved by his 
work, comes home a little sullen and fault- 
finding, which will happen, alas! madame 
takes offense. In the afternoon there are 
new emotions apropos of a letter in which 
is read between the lines that which is not 
there, or because of a telegram which is 
opened vzith trembling hands, but which 
proves only to contain some insignificant 
news. 
At the end of the day the unhappy 
woman has supported twenty sorrows 
which were only imaginary, but emotion 
has produced them. She has weakened her 
nervous system in spite of the futility of 
the causes. They affect her sleep, which 
is troubled by painful dreams. The in- 
valid rises with a heavy head, made more 
41 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
sensitive by fatigue, still more incapable 
of controlling herself, and the next day the 
interminable succession of emotional com- 
motions recommences. 
Think to what a degree this weakness 
of the nerves will extend when to all that 
are added real cares, sad events, and when 
incompatibility of temper comes to trouble 
the family relations. 
Life then becomes a hell and under 
these influences we see the most serious 
nervous maladies arise. With many wom- 
en this impressionability takes an altru- 
istic character which partly excuses it 
and represents it as a good quality. 
One sees mothers always anxious about 
their own, their husband or their children, 
whose breathing they listen to. The senti- 
ment is certainly not blamable in itself, 
but it is disastrous in its effects. 
Under the empire of emotion one loses 
self-possession, renders himself ill, and 
only complicates the situation in which 
42 MIND ON THE BODY 
he is placed. Among men we find less 
often the slightly puerile emotionalism 
which I have described. They have not 
the multiplicity of little duties of the wom- 
an, neither have they her conscientious- 
ness in fulfilling them. 
As to altruism, that does not trouble 
them. Men often love their ease, enjoy- 
ment, the money which procures it, and 
success. But, as the Chinese say, they 
easily lose countenance. 
The least difficulties, real or imaginary, 
produce discouragement. A boy has been 
known to commit suicide after failing in 
an examination or for a slight reprimand. 
Suicide from insufficient moral elasticity 
is the most common of all. This despair 
can spring from trifling causes, as shown 
by the Parisian family which had recourse 
to charcoal fumes (I believe several years 
ago) because they had an income of only 
twenty thousand francs, unhappy crea- 
tures! 
43 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
Often also in this condition of egotisti- 
cal weakness some drink and others take 
morphia. They hope thus to find strength, 
but it is only forgetfulness which they find, 
and under the influence of these poisons 
they hasten their mental downfall. 
You will easily understand that all these 
nervous victims must do more than use 
medicaments and physical methods of 
treatment. They may, in some cases, have 
need of prolonged repose, but, above all, 
there is need for them, as for well people 
who do not wish to become nervous, of a 
good physical and, also above all, mental 
hygiene. Physical hygiene is very simple. 
It consists in letting oneself live well. 
Varied food is necessary for man, suffi- 
cient to make up each day the loss entailed 
upon the human machine by work. En 
passant I may remark that the importance 
of meat has been exaggerated. We gener- 
ally eat too much of it and it would be well 
to give a larger place to vegetable food. 
44 MIND ON THE BODY 
The greatest moderation in alcoholic 
drinks is imperative. There should be a 
just proportion of work and healthy amuse- 
ment, of action and repose. But of what 
use are these commonplaces? We all 
know very well what are the rules for a 
good life and if we do not follow them it 
is sometimes because we are prevented by 
our duties, but more often because the pre- 
scriptions of hygiene oppose our passions. 
It is these latter which render so difficult 
what has been called the hygiene of the 
soul. What then should be our moral 
deportment if we wish to escape all these 
maladies which arise by means of the 
mind? 
The first thing necessary, tho this is 
often forgotten, is a good constitution 
mentally. Has it not been jestingly said 
rather apropos of the bodily health that 
it is necessary to be judicious in the choice 
of one's parents ? 
My advice is aimed at these last. The 
45 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
parents must take upon themselves the 
duty of watching over their own health 
and not ruin it by wrong habits of life, 
in order to transmit to their descendants 
a healthy mind in a healthy body. 
This is not always considered, and every 
day we see the sad spectacle of children 
blemished physically, intellectually, and 
morally by the misconduct of their parents, 
especially by alcoholism. 
A second duty imposed upon parents 
who are careful of the future of their 
children is that of giving them a good 
education; I do not say instruction. Now 
the best one is that of example. The 
child profits little from lessons, does not 
relish exhortations, he has a logical mind, 
and actions are what he appreciates. 
In this domain of nervous diseases it 
is easy to prove the contagion of example. 
We see little girls already imitate their 
nervous father or hysterical mother, throw- 
ing themselves upon a sofa at the slightest 
46 MIND ON THE BODY 
fatigue and complaining of backache and 
headache. They are sensible to all ex- 
terior influences, can not take food which 
they do not like, and become unnerved 
like their mother. They play so well the 
part of little nervous women that they 
are caught in the snare and become so 
really. Nervous Parents, think of this 
danger of moral contagion! 
When we have arrived at the age of 
reason personal education begins and our 
greatest task is to retain command over 
ourselves. It is necessary, above all, for 
one to believe in his good health and his 
power to resist morally as well as physically. 
As soon as a man believes himself to be 
ill he is so. He is not only so in imagina- 
tion, be becomes so really, physically. 
All those which have been justly called 
the unhappy passions-fear, inquietude, 
discouragement, anger-lower the nervous 
tension and, as all organs work under 
the influence of the nervous system, they 
47 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
can all suffer from the rebound of our 
moral feebleness. 
We must take literally the popular ex- 
pressions to improve bad blood or, on the 
contrary, to improve good blood. When 
one is gay, contented, when one is able to 
believe fully in his good health, the circu- 
lation improves, the nutritious exchanges 
are accelerated, and the human machine 
works harmoniously. On the contrary, 
when one doubts his strength, it diminishes 
and all the organs manifest functional 
trouble, as in an electrical circuit where 
all the lamps burn badly because the cur- 
rent has lost its force. 
To keep this sound confidence in his 
own health it is necessary not to disquiet 
oneself with little ailments and hurts. 
The human body is so complicated, it 
submits to so many noxious influences, 
that it can not work one day without some 
perceptible grating of its innumerable 
wheels. It is necessary to know how to say 
48 MIND ON THE BODY 
"That is nothing. It will pass." For 
never forget that as soon as our attention, 
however little uneasy, dwells upon a sensa- 
tion it becomes greater; if we know how 
to turn away our mind from it it will 
diminish! One can truly say of nervous 
ills, fear calls them forth, gives birth to 
them. It is with nervous diseases as with 
dogs-they more readily attack those who 
fear them. 
Without doubt this tendency to neglect 
ills, to treat them with scorn, should not 
be carried too far; that would be to risk 
letting a serious affection develop through 
want of care. 
This stoicism on a small scale applies 
only to functional troubles which we under- 
stand and of which we admit the harm- 
lessness. In doubt it would be well to 
consult a physician, but one who thinks, 
who has other resources than drugs. It 
is for him to say whether it is the begin- 
ning of an organic malady or of a func- 
49 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
tional trouble, for him to seek the origin 
which is often psychological and to give 
the counsel of a friend. 
Many nervous symptoms arise under 
the influence of fatigue. Each one must 
learn to know himself and to fix the limits 
which he can not pass. A need of repose 
can become evident. But it is also neces- 
sary to avoid seeing fatigue through the 
magnifying glass of discouragement. One 
should know how, when duties present 
themselves, to shake off this fatigue, which 
is often more mental than physical. 
People who suffer have often a natural 
but fatal tendency to find out the cause 
of the pain which they feel and to estab- 
lish the relation of cause and effect be- 
tween the events which preceded it and the 
suffering. I truly wish this was logical, 
but there is danger in it. 
When the mind of the invalid has been 
struck by a succession of phenomena he 
is convinced of the reality of the link which 
50 MIND ON THE BODY 
he has established and will await with 
anxiety the expected result. Then, as I 
have said, the anxious and expectant atten- 
tion produces such vivid mental represen- 
tations that functional trouble follows. 
The history of nervousness is full of 
facts which show the danger of these 
hasty conclusions. 
Many invalids show, in the least change 
of weather, such sensitiveness that one 
can not prevent the conclusion that auto- 
suggestion is the most manifest cause of 
this sensibility. 
I often see invalids who can not stand 
the presence of some kinds of flowers in 
the room; they are immediately affected 
with headache. I have always succeeded 
in persuading these ultra-sensitive people 
to the contrary. Ladies have also been 
taken ill in a drawing-room and attributed 
their discomfort to a bouquet without dis- 
covering that the flowers were artificial! 
I have seen men take cold because a 
51 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
neighbor in turning the pages of his news- 
paper had created a current of air! I have 
seen a nervous attack produced from 
taking a glass of water between the thumb 
and forefinger! Because it was so cold, 
if you please! 
It is necessary to understand how to 
protect oneself mentally against this quite 
imaginary sensitiveness. We should know 
also that a brave and gay spirit allows us 
to resist even real influences. When we 
have high spirits we feel the cold less; 
we suffer from it, on the contrary, when we 
feel out of sorts, sad, and it is then above 
all that it can exercise its deleterious in- 
fluence. 
The joyous humor of a family holiday 
or of a gay banquet permits our stomach 
to digest a mixed repast which we could 
never undertake in ordinary times when 
our being is affected by daily preoccupa- 
tions. 
Our physical health, our resistance to 
52 MIND ON THE BODY 
illness is augmented by good moral con- 
trol. And it is important to keep and 
carefully cultivate this moral control as 
a precious possession. In the first place, 
one must believe in the possibility of sup- 
porting, without injury, the conditions of 
life in which we are placed. 
The world is full of people who in one 
way or another are persuaded of their 
want of power, and this conviction almost 
certainly leads to real want of strength. 
Look at all those unhappy creatures who, 
healthy in body, can not support the winter 
in our country and believe themselves 
obliged to take refuge on the Riviera! 
Others, whose heart and lungs are sound, 
can not breathe on the plain and as soon 
as it becomes a little warm move to a 
mountain spot. There are some who 
can not stand the noise of the city, others 
who can not live without continual worldly 
distraction. 
And, unhappily, it is not only the privi- 
53 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
leged in point of fortune who lead this 
wandering life and make their health 
depend only on their surroundings. We 
often see old parents who have worked 
hard at the most severe tasks bleed them- 
selves from four veins, as the saying is, 
to furnish their nervous sons and hysteri- 
cal daughters with the money necessary 
for their continual journeys. And our 
peasants, our servants are affected also. 
There are some who can not bear the food 
of the family they serve; others, strong in 
body, who must be spared heavy work. 
They are impressionable and whenever 
they hear a malady spoken of they at once 
feel all the symptoms of it. 
Still worse, I see vigorous butcher boys, 
farm hands, peasants who it seems to me 
would make superb grenadiers, complain 
of all the uneasy feelings of a fine lady. 
This nervousness is now felt in all 
classes, it has become universal, and it 
increases from day to day. 
54 MIND ON THE BODY 
To escape from it one must fight vigor- 
ously against it. It is a question of moral 
resistance and not of physical strength. 
Unhappy is he who can not straighten 
himself up morally, who too quickly de- 
clares himself ill! He takes his place 
among the innumerable followers of the 
body of the army and life is hard for him. 
In the combat of life as in a campaign we 
bury the dead with respect, we nurse 
with solicitude the wounded, but no one 
loves the lame who do not look ill and 
yet are always complaining. However, the 
physician understands and loves these 
feeble creatures. He recognizes in them 
the weaknesses against which he himself 
must fight; but if he is ready to help them 
with warm sympathy he must do it by 
showing them the only road, which is self- 
education ! 
Not content with overlooking our phys- 
ical discomforts, we must also diminish 
our impressionability as to moral emotions. 
55 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
I do not mean by that to say that we 
must shut ourselves up in a cruel indif- 
ference, being moved by nothing. This 
would be egotism and that is one of the 
repugnant sides of a stoicism pushed to 
excess. 
We should react briskly, act enthusi- 
astically for good, obey the impulse of 
our better feelings. But however sponta- 
neous this reaction may be, we must nev- 
ertheless leave time for calm reason to 
exercise a rapid control. Our reason is 
that which as an arbiter judges finally the 
value of the emotions of sensibility which 
make us act. If it is a sentiment of good- 
ness, of pity, which carries us away, rea- 
son very quickly gives its approval. But 
when we are about to give way to a feeling 
of anger, envy, vexation, reason should 
intervene to correct the first impression and 
modify the final decision. 
It is the same when the emotion, with- 
out being morally unhealthy, is useless and 
56 MIND ON THE BODY. 
only keeps up, without profit for any one, 
a sickly condition. It is necessary every- 
where and at all times to know how to stop 
in time a tempest of emotional feeling as 
we stop the vibration of a glass by putting 
our finger upon its edge. 
I often hear people to whom I give this 
hygienic moral advice answer me with 
vivacity: "But I can not do it; I have 
always been like this; it is my tempera- 
ment." I do not doubt it. The tempera- 
ment is precisely that innate disposition 
which we show from birth, which educa- 
tion often exaggerates, and which always 
forms the foundation of our moral person- 
ality. 
But by rational education of ourselves 
we modify our ideas and our sentiments 
and we make our temperament of a noble 
character. 
It is by no means necessary for that to 
have a strong will, considered as a free 
power. It suffices to think well, to see 
57 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
clearly before us the path to be fol- 
lowed. 
When one is quite convinced of a truth 
it seizes upon him and leads him on. A 
French philosopher, Guyau, has well said,- 
"He who does not act as he thinks, thinks 
badly." 
This work of self-education is less dif- 
ficult than one would think. I see every 
day sick people who during all their lives 
have suffered cruelly from this impression- 
ability which renders them incapable of 
performing their duties. Often in some 
days, almost always in some weeks, they 
succeed in altering their point of view, 
in seeing things from another angle. In 
proportion as they recover their mental 
calm under the empire of healthy reflec- 
tions, functional troubles disappear, sleep 
returns, the appetite arises, the body be- 
comes stronger, and the success of this 
mental treatment demonstrates the su- 
premacy of the mind over the body. 
58 MIND ON THE BODY 
It is in this self-education that the sick 
should find a cure, and well people find 
a preservative against nervous diseases. 
They should begin in little things, in the 
good habit of overlooking trifles and going 
bravely forward without troubling too 
much about their own ease. 
With age anxiety increases. Practical 
life brings us annoyances of all kinds; new 
occasion to control our sensibility, volun- 
tarily to create an optimistic disposition 
which will make us, as the saying is, take 
everything by the good end. 
Finally, if, having reached a certain ma- 
turity of mind, we have, however little, suc- 
ceeded in creating this precious condition of 
the soul, our aspirations should rise higher 
still and we should face the duties which 
our presence in this world imposes upon 
us in our intercourse with our fellow beings. 
We see then clearly that the main ob- 
ject of our life should be the constant per- 
fecting of our moral self. 
59 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
In the absence of all religious conception, 
of all peremptory morality, the thinker 
feels the unspeakable trouble which results 
from a life where egotism prevails. To 
find complete happiness and health we 
must then turn our attention away from 
ourselves and fix it upon others; altruism 
should take the place of native egotism. 
This tendency can not carry us too far and 
We risk but little in forgetting ourselves 
completely. Is this not so ? 
In this domain of higher morality our 
step at best is as unsteady as in the mental 
hygiene which we should oppose to phys- 
ical ills and vexations. Here also we have 
need of all possible moral assistance. 
Those whose turn of mind still permits of 
a simple faith find a support in their relig- 
ious convictions if they are sincere and 
lived up to. Those whose reflections lead 
them to be freethinkers find in themselves, 
in a stoicism free from egotism, strength 
to resist all which life brings them. 
60 MIND ON THE BODY 
Wo to the indifferent ones-those who 
seek only the satisfaction of their own self- 
ish desires! 
It is dangerous to go through life with- 
out religion and without philosophy. 1 
can even, without doing any wrong to the 
believers, say plainly without philosophy; 
for religion itself can be efficacious only 
when it creates a living philosophy in him 
who practises it. 
The banner matters little if we carry it 
high enough! 
The influence of the physical over the 
moral is generally exaggerated and bio- 
logical science not well understood or well 
interpreted has encouraged a crude and 
gross materialism which can never avail 
in regulating the life. 
It is useless, in my eyes, to return, in 
order to solve the problem, to the ancient 
conceptions of a spiritual dualism, to turn 
the back on reason and substitute a blind 
faith for it. It suffices to recall the fact 
61 THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
that there is an ideal world and that we at 
the same time obey the impulses of sensi- 
bility and the incentives of reason. We can 
draw largely from the depths of moral con- 
ceptions which successive generations have 
created and work for the harmonious 
development of our personality. 
Our moral health depends upon it and 
as the body suffers in the rebound of the 
various conditions of our spirit we shall, 
without repeal, assure our physical health 
by the education of our reason. 
The day after the above lecture I re- 
ceived letters from some persons who told 
me that they had profited by my advice 
and who manifested their intention of ap- 
plying this mental treatment to their ills. 
I congratulate them and I beg them to 
remember well that in insisting upon the 
power of mental representations I have 
never wished to accuse their sufferings 
62 MIND ON THE BODY 
of being imaginary. I know all the effort 
which this stoical education demands. 
On the other side, I fear to have been 
misunderstood by others. I have been 
told of husbands who have recognized 
their wives in the cases which I have 
sketched and have not hesitated to tell 
them so with too little gentleness. 
I have seen young ladies a little sharply 
correct a too emotional friend. I should 
be distressed to have been the involuntary 
cause of such things. 
It is our own ills and not those of others 
which we should treat with this philosoph- 
ical disdain. 
We must not look for the mote in the eye 
of our neighbor and fail to see the beam 
which is in our own! 
THE END. 
63 DATE 
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