is now beginning to be distinctly felt. I should
like, therefore, at the risk of being tedious, to re-examine this
question--to see if it be true that the nervous system of certain
classes of Americans is being sorely overtaxed--and to ascertain how
much our habits, our modes of work, and, haply, climatic peculiarities,
may have to do with this state of things. But before venturing anew
upon a subject which may possibly excite controversy and indignant
comment, let me premise that I am talking chiefly of the crowded
portions of our country, of our great towns, and especially of their
upper classes, and am dealing with those higher questions of mental
hygiene of which in general we hear but too little. If the strictures I
have to make applied as fully throughout the land--to Oregon as to New
England, to the farmer as to the business man, to the women of the
artisan class as to those socially above them--then indeed I should cry,
God help us and those that are to come after us! Owing to causes which
are obvious enough, the physical worker is being better and better paid
and less and less hardly tasked, while just the reverse obtains in
increasing ratios for those who live by the lower form of brain-work; so
that the bribe to use the hand is growing daily, and pure mechanical
labor, as opposed to that of the clerk, is being "levelled upward" with
fortunate celerity.

Before attempting to indicate certain ways in which we as a people are
overtaxing and misusing the organs of thought, I should be glad to have
the privilege of explaining the terms which it is necessary to use, and
of pointing out some of the conditions under which mental labor is
performed.

The human body carries on several kinds of manufacture, two of
which--the evolution of muscular force or motion, and intellection with
all moral activities--alone concern us here. We are somewhat apt to
antagonize these two sets of functions, and to look upon the latter, or
brain-labor, as alone involving the use or abuse of the nervous system.
But every blow on the anvil is as distinctly an act of the nerve centres
as are the highest mental processes. If this be so, how or why is it
that excessive muscular exertion--I mean such as is violent and
continued--does not cause the same appalling effects as may be
occasioned by a like abuse of the nerve-organs in mental actions of
various kinds? This is not an invariable rule, for, as I may point out
in the way of illustrati