h
and its hurry than the American people; and yet what an abundance of
time is leisurely wasted that would have to be used for work if the
country could not live from its richness. Moreover our life has probably
become cooler, there is less emotionalism, less sentimentality, more
business-like attitude, and that all means less inner friction and
excitement; in public life too, less fear of war and less religious
struggle. All has become a question of administration and efficiency.
Our time is certainly not worse off on the score of neurasthenia than
its predecessors.

Above all the intensity of mental stimuli is always relative. The
psychologist knows the experiments which determine that we perceive the
difference of impressions as alike when the stimuli are proportional.
If I have a ten-pound weight in one hand, I may find that I must have
one pound more in the other hand to discriminate the difference. Now if
I take twenty pounds in the one hand, then it is not sufficient to have
one pound more in the other, but I must have twenty-two pounds in the
other to feel a difference, and if I take thirty pounds, the other
weight must be thirty-three. We feel equal differences when the weights
stand in the same relation. The man who owns a hundred dollars will
enjoy the gain of five and regret the loss of five just as much as the
owner of a hundred thousand dollars would feel the gain or loss of five
thousand. This fundamental law of the relativity of psychical
impressions controls our whole life. The rush of stimuli which might
mean a source of nervous disturbance for the villager whose quiet
country life has brought about an adjustment to faint impressions may
cause very slight stimulation for the metropolitan accustomed for a
lifetime to the rhythm of the surroundings. Yet that quiet countryman
may react in his narrow system not less when the modest changes in his
surroundings provoke him. The gossip of his neighbor may undermine his
nervous system just as much as a political fight or the struggles of the
exchange that of the city man.

The same holds true for the purely intellectual engagements. The work
which the scholar undertakes should not be measured by the effect which
the same appeal to concentrated attention would make on the average man
of practical life. There, too, an adjustment to the demand has resulted
during the whole period of training and professional work. Every effort
should be estimated with reference