Power Through Repose | Page 9

with the business of others,
the community is quiet, orderly, and successful. Imagine the state of a
deliberative assembly during the delivery of a speech, if half-a-dozen of
the listeners were to attempt to help the speaker by rising and talking at
the same time; and yet this is the absurd action of the human body
when a dozen or more parts, that are not needed, contract "in
sympathy" with those that have the work to do. It is an unnecessary
brace that means loss of power and useless fatigue. One would think
that the human machine having only one mind, and the community
many thousands, the former would be in a more orderly state than the
latter.
In listening attentively, only the brain and ears are needed; but watch
the individuals at an entertaining lecture, or in church with a stirring
preacher. They are listening with their spines, their shoulders, the

muscles of their faces. I do not refer to the look of interest and attention,
or to any of the various expressions which are the natural and true
reflection of the state of the mind, but to the strained attention which
draws the facial muscles, not at all in sympathy with the speaker, but as
a consequence of the tense nerves and contracted muscles of the
listener. "I do not understand why I have this peculiar sort of asthma
every Sunday afternoon," a lady said to me. She was in the habit of
hearing, Sunday morning, a preacher, exceedingly interesting, but with
a very rapid utterance, and whose mind travelled so fast that the words
embodying his thoughts often tumbled over one another. She listened
with all her nerves, as well as with those needed, held her breath when
he stumbled, to assist him in finding his verbal legs, reflected every
action with twice the force the preacher himself gave,--and then
wondered why on Sunday afternoon, and at no other time, she had this
nervous catching of the breath. She saw as soon as her attention was
drawn to the general principles of Nature, how she had disobeyed this
one, and why she had trouble on Sunday afternoon. This case is very
amusing, even laughable, but it is a fair example of many similar
nervous attacks, greater or less; and how easy it is to see that a whole
series of these, day after day, doing their work unconsciously to the
victim, will sooner or later bring some form of nervous prostration.
The same attitudes and the same effects often attend listening to music.
It is a common experience to be completely fagged after two hours of
delightful music. There is no exaggeration in saying that we should be
rested after a good concert, if it is not too long. And yet so
upside-down are we in our ways of living, and, through the mistakes of
our ancestors, so accustomed have we become to disobeying Nature's
laws, that the general impression seems to be that music cannot be fully
enjoyed without a strained attitude of mind and body; whereas, in
reality, it is much more exquisitely appreciated and enjoyed in Nature's
way. If the nerves are perfectly free, they will catch the rhythm of the
music, and so be helped back to the true rhythm of Nature, they will
respond to the harmony and melody with all the vibratory power that
God gave them, and how can the result be anything else than rest and
refreshment,--unless having allowed them to vibrate in one direction
too long, we have disobeyed a law in another way.
Our bodies cannot by any possibility be _free,_ so long as they are

strained by our own personal effort. So long as our nervous force is
misdirected in personal strain, we can no more give full and responsive
attention to the music, than a piano can sound the harmonies of a sonata
if some one is drawing his hands at the same time backwards and
forwards over the strings. But, alas! a contracted personality is so much
the order of the day that many of us carry the chronic contractions of
years constantly with us, and can no more free ourselves for a concert
at a day's or a week's notice, than we can gain freedom to receive all the
grand universal truths that are so steadily helpful. It is only by daily
patience and thought and care that we can cease to be an obstruction to
the best power for giving and receiving.
There are, scattered here and there, people who have not lost the natural
way of listening to music,--people who are musicians through and
through so that the moment they hear a fine strain they are one with it.
Singularly enough the majority of these are fine animals, most perfectly
and normally developed