reshold than to abolish the roosters. There
was one woman who complained especially about being disturbed by
early-morning Chanticleers. I explained that the crowing called for no
action on her part, and that therefore she should not allow it to come
into consciousness. "Do you mean," she said, "that I could keep from
hearing them?" As it happened, she was sitting under the clock, which
had just struck seven. "Did you hear the clock strike?" I asked. "No,"
she said; "did it strike?"

This poor little woman, who suffered from a very painful back and
other distressing symptoms, had been married at sixteen to a roue of
forty; and, without experiencing any of the psychic feelings of sex,
had been immediately plunged into the physical sex-relations. Since
sex is psycho-physical and since any attempt to separate the two
elements is both desecrating and unsatisfactory; it is not surprising
that misery, and finally divorce, had been her portion. Another
equally unpleasant experience had followed, and the poor woman in the
strain and disappointment of her love-life, and in the lowering of the
thresholds pertaining to this thwarted instinct, had unconsciously
lowered the thresholds to all physical stimuli, until she was no
longer master of herself in any line. When she saw the reason for her
exaggerated reactions, she was able to gain control of herself, and to
find outlet in other ways.

Too many persons fall into the way of being disturbed by noises which
are no concern of theirs. As nurses learn to sleep through all sounds
but the call of their own patients, so any one may learn to ignore all
sounds but those which he needs to hear. Connection with the outside
world can be severed by a mental attitude in much the same way as this
is accomplished by the physical effect of an anaesthetic. Then the
usual noises, those which the subconscious recognizes as without
significance, will be without power to disturb. The well-known New
York publisher who spent his last days on his private yacht, on which
everything was rubber-heeled and velvet-cushioned, thought that he
couldn't stand noises; but how much more fun he would have had, if
some one had only told him about thresholds!

SUMMARY

There are two kinds of people in the world,--masters and puppets.
There is the man in control of his thresholds, at leisure from himself
and master of circumstance, free to use his energy in fruitful ways;
and there is the over-sensitive soul, w