Pangloss, _que tout est au mieux dans ce meilleur
des mondes possibles_. I have found that to grow acquainted with the
class that is the chief object of social legislation is to see more
plainly the room for improvement, and also to see how much better, how
much sounder, that class is than it appeared to be from the outside:
how much might be gained, of material advantage especially, and at the
same time how much there is to be lost of those qualities of character
which have been acquired through long training and by infinite
sacrifice. To learn to care for the poor, for their own sake, is to
fear for them nothing so much as slap-dash, short-sighted social
legislation.

[Sidenote: _THE WILL TO LIVE_]

The man matters more than his circumstances. The poor man's _Courage to
Live_ is his most valuable distinctive quality. Most of his finest
virtues spring therefrom. Any material progress which tends to diminish
his _Courage to Live_, or to reduce it to mere _Will to Live_, must
prove in the long run to his and to the nation's disadvantage. And the
_Courage to Live_, like other virtues, diminishes with lack of
exercise. Therefore every material advance should provide for the
continued, for an even greater, exercise and need of the _Courage to
Live_. If not, then the material advance is best done without.

That is the main constructive conclusion to be drawn. Somewhat akin to
it is another conclusion of a more critical nature.

In Nietzsche's _Beyond Good and Evil_ there is an apophthegm to the
effect that, "Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups,
parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." And whilst, on the one
hand mental specialists have been extending the boundaries of insanity
to the point of justifying the popular adage that everyone is a bit
mad, they have, on the other hand, tended to narrow down the difference
between sanity and its reverse until it has become almost entirely a
question of mental inhibition, or self-control.

The highest aim of Mental Hygiene should be to increase the power
of mental inhibition amongst all men and women. Control is the
basis of all law and the cement of every social system among men
and women, without which it would go to pieces.... _Sufficient
power of self-control should be the essence and test of
sanity._[20]

[20] "The Hygiene of Mind," by T. S. Clouston, M.D.,
F.R.S.E., (London, 1906). Without an extension