ected energy--resulting in
Harmony--resulting in
Readjustment to the environment.

If the reader is beginning to feel somewhat bewildered by these
general statements, let him take heart. So far we have tried merely to
suggest the outline of the whole problem, but we shall in the future
be more specific. Nervous troubles, which seem so simple, are really
involved with the whole mechanism of mental life and can in no way be
understood except as these mechanisms are understood. We have hinted
at some of the causes of "nerves," but we cannot give a real
explanation until we explain the forces behind them. These forces may
at first seem a bit abstract, or a bit remote from the main theme, but
each is essential to the story of nerves and to the understanding of
the more practical chapters in Part III.

As in a Bernard Shaw play, the preface may be the most important part
of this "drama of nerves." Nor is the figure too far-fetched,
because, strange as it may seem, every neurosis is in essence a drama.
It has its conflict, its villain, and its victim, its love-story, its
practical joke, its climax, and its denouement. Sometimes the play
goes on forever with no solution, but sometimes psychotherapy steps in
as the fairy god-mother, to release the victim, outwit the villain,
and bring about the live-happily-ever-after ending.

PART II: "HOW THE WHEELS GO ROUND"

CHAPTER III

_In which we find a goodly inheritance_

THE STORY OF THE INSTINCTS

EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE

A fire mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod;
Some call it evolution
And others call it God.[4]

If we begin at the beginning, we have to go back a long way to get our
start, for the roots of our family tree reach back over millions of
years. "In the beginning--God." These first words of the book of
Genesis must be, in spirit at least, the first words of any discussion
of life. We know now, however, that when God made man, He did not
complete His masterpiece at one sitting, but instead devised a plan by
which the onward urge within and the environment without should act
and interact until from countless adaptations a human being was made.

[Footnote 4: William Herbert Carruth.]

As the late Dr. Putnam of Harvard University says, "We stand as the
representative of a