Power Through Repose | Page 8

corner, or nearing a railroad track. If your feet are not
pressed forcibly against the floor of the carriage, the tension will be
somewhere else. You are using nervous force to no earthly purpose,
and to great earthly loss. Where any tension is necessary to make things
better, it will assert itself naturally and more truly as we learn to drop
all useless and harmful tension. Take a patient suffering from nervous
prostration for a long drive, and you will bring him back more
nervously prostrated; even the fresh air will not counteract the strain
that comes from not knowing how to relax to the motion of the
carriage.

A large amount of nervous energy is expended unnecessarily while
waiting. If we are obliged to wait for any length of time, it does not
hurry the minutes or bring that for which we wait to keep nervously
strained with impatience; and it does use vital force, and so helps
greatly toward "Americanitis." The strain which comes from an hour's
nervous waiting, when simply to let yourself alone and keep still would
answer much better, is often equal to a day's labor. It must be left to
individuals to discover how this applies in their own especial cases, and
it will be surprising to see not only how great and how common such
strain is, but how comparatively easy it is to drop it. There are of course
exceptional times and states when only constant trying and thoughtful
watchfulness will bring any marked result.
We have taken a few examples where there is nothing to do but keep
quiet, body and brain, from what should be the absolute rest of sleep to
the enforced rest of waiting. just one word more in connection with
waiting and driving. You must catch a certain train. Not having time to
trust to your legs or the cars, you hastily take a cab. You will in your
anxiety keep up exactly the same strain that you would have had in
walking,--as if you could help the carriage along, or as if reaching the
station in time depended upon your keeping a rigid spine and tense
muscles. You have hired the carriage to take you, and any activity on
your part is quite unnecessary until you reach the station; why not keep
quiet and let the horses do the work, and the driver attend to his
business?
It would be easy to fill a small volume with examples of the way in
which we are walking directly into nervous prostration; examples only
of this one variety of disobedience,--namely, of the laws of_ rest._ And
to give illustrations of all the varieties of disobedience to Nature's laws
in activity would fill not one small book, but several large ones; and
then, unless we improve, a year-book of new examples of nervous
strain could be published. But fortunately, if we are nervous and
short-sighted, we have a good share of brain and commonsense when it
is once appealed to, and a few examples will open our eyes and set us
thinking, to real and practical results.

V.
THE USE OF THE BRAIN

LET us now consider instances where the brain alone is used, and the
other parts of the body have nothing to do but keep quiet and let the
brain do its work. Take thinking, for instance. Most of us think with the
throat so contracted that it is surprising there is room enough to let the
breath through, the tongue held firmly, and the jaw muscles set as if
suffering from an acute attack of lockjaw. Each has his own favorite
tension in the act of meditation, although we are most generous in the
force given to the jaw and throat. The same superfluous tension may be
observed in one engaged in silent reading; and the force of the strain
increases in proportion to the interest or profundity of the matter read.
It is certainly clear, without a knowledge of anatomy or physiology,
that for pure, unadulterated thinking, only the brain is needed; and if
vital force is given to other parts of the body to hold them in unnatural
contraction; we not only expend it extravagantly, but we rob the brain
of its own. When, for purely mental work, all the activity is given to the
brain, and the body left free and passive, the concentration is better,
conclusions are reached with more satisfaction, and the reaction, after
the work is over, is healthy and refreshing.
This whole machine can be understood perhaps more clearly by
comparing it to a community of people. In any community,--Church,
State, institution, or household,--just so far as each member minds his
own business, does his own individual work for himself and for those
about him, and does not officiously interfere