with their eyes tight shut to the
real cause of their suffering, and so hiding an increasing weakness
under an appearance of strength.

A ludicrous and gross example of this misuse of the will may be
observed in men or women who follow vigorously and ostentatiously paths
of self-sacrifice which they have marked out for themselves, while
overlooking entirely places where self-denial is not only needed for
their better life, but where it would add greatly to the happiness and
comfort of others.

It is curious a such weakness is common with people who are apparently
very intelligent; and parallel with this are cases of men who are
remarkably strong in the line of their own immediate careers, and
proportionately weak in every other phase of their lives. We very
seldom find a soldier, or a man who is powerful in politics, who can
answer in every principle and action of his life to Wordsworth's
"Character of the Happy Warrior."

Absurd as futile self-sacrifice seems, it is not less well balanced
than the selfish fortitude of a jealous woman or than the apparent
strength of a man who can only work forcibly for selfish ends. The
wisest use of the will can only grow with the decrease of
self-indulgence.

"Nervous" women are very effective examples of the perversion of a
strong will. There are women who will work themselves into an illness
and seem hopelessly weak when they are not having their own way, who
would feel quite able to give dinner parties at which they could be
prominent in whatever role they might prefer, and would forget their
supposed weakness with astonishing rapidity. When things do not go to
please such women, they are weak and ill; when they stand out among
their friends according to their own ideal of themselves and are
sufficiently flattered, they enter into work which is far beyond their
actual strength, and sooner or later break down only to be built up on
another false basis.

This strong will turned the wrong way is called "hysteria," or
"neurasthenia," or "degeneracy." It may be one of these or all three,
_in its effect,_ but the training of the will to overcome the cause,
which is always to be found in some kind of selfishness, would cure the
hysteric, give the neurasthenic more wholesome nerves, and start the
degenerate on a course of regeneration. At times it would hardly
surprise us to hear that a child with a stomach-ache crying for more
candy was being treated for "hysteria" and studied as