stillness. A nightmare is an excellent means of inducing a
desire for dreamless sleep. But normal, natural humanity shuns complete
rest. Hence the notorious failure--mental and physical--of complete
holidays. We must attack something, and if there is no work to attack,
we attack the inanimate stupidity of our surroundings. It is strange
that the laborious task once achieved should so often become the thing
abhorred. Scales fall from our eyes, perspective is restored, and we see
what a trumpery affair held us enthralled. I have often thought with
dismay of the effect on scores of reformers, whom I know, if the reform
to which they have sworn allegiance should be accomplished. To many this
would be a personal disaster of the gravest kind. For years they have
poured their mental energy and their devotion into one channel. The
enemy was always there, to be beaten at sunrise and cursed at sunset.
The cause inspired high ideals and hard work; self and selfish matters
were neglected in the pursuit of victory. Life eventually became
identified with the cause and its vicissitudes, and, like the picture in
Olive Schreiner's story, the work took on brighter and more wonderful
colour, whilst the painter became paler and paler. Narrowness of vision
and purpose became essential conditions of efficiency, and gradually
human attributes became sharpened into fanatical weapons of assault. Few
reformers live to see the triumph of their cause, and fewer still
succeed in preserving equilibrium of judgment.

There is, verily, every excuse for the pointed energy of reformers. The
world is full of horrors that cry aloud for extirpation; one head
cannot easily harbour knowledge of all the strongholds of wickedness.
True, those who are called by the spirit to become missionaries of mercy
can harbour a greater measure of sympathy than the average man. The
average man suffers through incapacity to reach the fountain of
spiritual replenishment at which the saints refresh their parched
throats. An acute sensitiveness to the suffering of others, without a
corresponding power to reach the sources of comfort, leads to the abyss
of madness. Nature imposes limits to sympathy in most minds, barriers of
forgetfulness without which healthy thought is impossible. The danger to
the mind of indulging in unlimited sympathy has been emphasized by the
most divergent students of psychological law. Herbert Spencer analysed
it with characteristic thoroughness. Nietzs