ware, or reacting emotionally to situations
which call for no such response. It means, in short, feeling our
feelings and liking to feel them. There seems to be nothing
particularly praiseworthy or desirable about this kind of
sensitiveness. If this is what it means to be a "finely-wrought
violin," it might even be better to be a bass drum which can stand a
few poundings without ruin to its constitution.

"But," says the sensitive person, "are we not born either violins or
drums? Is not heredity rather than choice to blame? And what can a
person do about it?" These questions are so closely bound up with the
problems of nervous symptoms of indigestion, fatigue, a woman's ills,
hysterical pains and sensations, and with all the problems of
emotional control, that we shall do well to look more carefully into
this question of sensibility, which is really the question of the
relation of the individual to his environment.

SELECTING OUR SENSATIONS

=Reaction and Over-Reaction.= Every organism, if it is to live, must
be normally sensitive to its environment. It must possess the power
of response to stimuli. As the sea-anemone curls up at touch, and as
the tiny baby blinks at the light, so must every living thing be able
to sense and to react to the presence of a dangerous or a friendly
force. Only by a certain degree of irritability can it survive in the
struggle for existence. The five senses are simply different phases of
the apparatus for receiving communications from the outside world.
Other parts of the machinery catch the manifold messages continually
pouring into the brain from within our bodies themselves. These
communications cannot be stopped nor can we prevent their impress on
the cells of the brain and spinal cord, but we do have a good deal to
say as to which ones shall be brought into the focus of attention and
receive enough notice to become real, conscious sensations.

=Paying Attention.= If a human being had to give conscious attention
to every stimulus from the outer world and from his own body, to every
signal which flashes itself along his sensory nerves to his brain, he
would need a different kind of mind from his present efficient but
limited apparatus. As it is, there is an admirable provision for
taking care of the messages without overburdening consciousness. The
stream of messages never stops, not even in sleep. But the conscious
mind has its private secretary, the subconscious, to receive the
m