Cymro a'r Celt Llundain

the individual's feelings makes all the difference to his world. I will mention only briefly the two other manifestations mentioned above, for they are so common that we all know them in either our fellows or ourselves. First is that attitude of the mind that is called irrita- bility. Here there is a variety of symptoms, such as querulousness, snappish inconsidera- tion, complaining habits, selfishness, ex- asperation, and in general, all that we in- clude under the term bad temper. All these have been proved by psychologists to be due to mental suffering, which has a definite cause, and not, as used to be thought, to moral perverseness. Unfortunately for the individual concerned, such symptoms are hardly ever treated by the one thing essential for their cure, namely, through sympathy and understanding. They are only too often looked upon as something that can be pre- vented by the individual, who therefore should be treated with what is called a firm hand-a process that usually consists in a mixture of scolding and bullying-until he makes up his mind to mend his way. Any idea of sympathy with or respect for the condition is quite alien to the minds of the person's friends, so that his mental condition steadily deteriorates, ending often enough in the callousness of despair, or sometimes in actual insanity. The third manifestation mentioned was the production of bodily symptoms in the interesting and common disease known as neuragthenia. This is not the place to detail such symptoms, but many of you will recognise what I mean when I refer to sleep- lessness, aching pains in the back and neck, curious sensations in the head and limbs, and inability to concentrate on any work. This condition, like the last, usually receives scant sympathy, even sometimes, I am sorry to say, from doctors. It is often thought that in some remarkable way these symp- toms have no legitimate existence, and that if there is nothing wrong with the body itself, and the patient says he has pain he must be pretending. Such patients often drift to faith healers and quacks of different sorts, which is very unfortunate, for of course such untrained persons are unable to distinguish bodily from mental 'symptoms, and therefore neglect, often with disastrous results, the treatment of important diseases. We can now bring together all the different manifestations of unhappiness into one single group of mental suffering, due to unsatisfactory working on the part of the mind. Individuals in this condition are clearly suffering from maladaptation to their environment. The detailed manner in which this maladaptation is brought about I cannot go into here, as 1 am merely trying to trace in a broad way its consequences. Probably the chief cause is the unnecessarily unsatis- factory state of social arrangements, which results in such possibilities as fear about unemployment, anxiety about the future, cares about the proper performance of family duties, complicated relationships between the two sexes with entangled love affairs that cause heart-wrenching pangs in the young and only smiles in the old. All these matters break up the nerves" of one person while they hardly affect another. In fact we may divide mankind roughly into two main classes, those sensitive to social maladjustments and those insensitive to them. The first class includes our group of sufferers that have occupied our attention this evening; the second includes the average hard, coarse, rough, unfeeling Philistine, whose hide is case-hardened against the jarring perplexities of life, and who is often what the world calls successful. It is generally assumed that the Philistine is in the right, that he is better suited to his environment, and therefore ought to and does survive. This doctrine is especially taught by the successful Philistine. Those who agree with him seem to me to overlook two all-important matters; first that the environment itself may be funda- mentally unsatisfactorily; and secondly, that we have an almost unlimited power to modify it if we choose to combine and exer- cise that power. Of course, we will not so choose unless we are sensitive enough to perceive its jars and frictions. Those who look deeply into social life and think that they can intellectually perceive this general unsatisfactoriness will naturally consider that the sensitive groups of mankind, who intuitively perceive it also, are the most valuable to the race. All real progress in the development of ethical and altruistic feeling has been made by the sensitive Christ himself was called the man of sorrows. I therefore maintain on purely scientific grounds that the sensitive, delicate, un- happy, miserable individuals who are falling in the struggle for life as at present con- ducted should receive greater consideration from their so-called stronger brethren than they are at present accorded. It may well be that in a future state of society they will prove the most valuable members. In the meantime the teaching of science affords ample support to the view that the funda- mental message of Christianity, namely, universal charity and love, is of overwhelm- ing importance to the race.