CHAPTER XXX

WE LEARN TO DO BY DOING

Sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn.

GOOD

YOUNG.

OOD health and good sleep are so interdependent that it is as difficult to separate them into cause and effect as to determine "which came first, the hen or the egg?"

If it be true that life may be wonderfully prolonged as soon as we have learned to avoid disease and exhaustion, and that we may learn to avoid both by avoiding excess, then it is as much within our power to live long and well as to sleep long and well, if we so wish. Senility, the disease of old age, is now believed to be caused by germs which flourish in the waste matter left in the system through improper or excessive eating.

Metchnikoff, the noted bacteriologist, alleges that the large intestine is the breeding-place of these destructive germs. A Dr. Hall arrived at the same conclusion earlier and combated his germs with copious water-flooding of the bowels. So far, Metchnikoff's experiments point to the conclusion that lactic acid

destroys them. That is why he recommends the use of pure buttermilk and has invented a tablet that, dropped into milk, will convert it into a wholesome drink for adult man. Discoveries and inventions of this sort are of great interest to all who enjoy and seek to prolong life. But purely physical things cannot take the place of the mental attitude. The youngest woman of seventy-nine that I have ever known is one who says, "Tell me more; I must not get into such a rut that I cannot grow." No discovery or invention will do us much good if we allow habit to cramp our thought and custom to stale it.

Science may show us how to avoid disease and to prolong life, but, if we turn a deaf ear to her teaching, we shall get no benefit from it. It is the alert, open mind that profits from discovery or experience. The sun may shine with life-giving power, but, if the house be shuttered and darkened, it will not benefit the dwellers. So with the mind. If we resolutely shut it against new ideas, if we refuse to take even the gift of life and health from an unaccustomed hand, then we must expect to suffer.

If we would rid ourselves of sleeplessness, of disease, and dissatisfaction, we must be willing to let go of every habit, every thought, every feeling that may injure us. To hug them to us is merely to invite further suffering, to lessen our own vigor and our own enjoyment.

Nevertheless, we must hug our habits to us, if we can see or understand nothing better. No one can help us beyond what we are willing to receive anyone can lead a horse to the water, but no one can make him drink. If the end in view seems to us worth the price we must pay, we pay it. We have no choice; for our desires push us that way. We often take credit to ourselves for things for which no credit is due us. However self-denying an act may seem, it is, after all, the thing we want most to do, else we would not do it.

In the same way, if we refuse to profit by the discoveries and experiments of others, if we prefer to go on in our old way of suffering, nobody can really prevent us. It is all a matter that we must decide. This book does not pretend to cure any ill. It intends merely to show what investigation and experience have proved; to point to possible ways of escape from the ills with which men now suffer. If it looks desirable to you, you will only read it; but, until you have tried it, you cannot say whether it is good or not.

CHAPTER XXXI

VAIN REGRETS

Thou hast been called, O Sleep! the friend of woe; But 'tis the happy that have called thee so.

SOUTHEY.

SOMETIMES we lie awake at night to regret

some action of our own because the result has not been what we desired or expected. "John the Unafraid " says that "if your misfortune is not your own fault, you have much to be glad of. If it is your own fault you have more to be glad of, since you can prevent that misfortune from occurring again."

In either case, therefore, you may follow the advice given so many years ago, “Rejoice evermore." At least it is evident that in neither case need you lose sleep over it: for, according to your light, you did what seemed to you at the time best for you to do.

For, to quote Epictetus again, it is not possible" to judge one thing to be best for me and seek another." The thing you did, you did because it seemed best to do that, and to regret now and wish you had done something else is, in reality, to wish that you had been a different

person from what you were, which is a foolish regret, or, that you had done something different from what seemed best to do. That would be a mild form of insanity. You don't really regret that you were not insane?

It has no bearing on the case that the outcome has proved that you were mistaken. You might never have learned that your course was not best for you or for others, except by doing just as you did. Now you have that much more knowledge than you had before, and you can use it to help you another time. A man can't do any better than he can. You cannot do more than you know, and you only know what you have learned by experience. The great majority of us learn only in the school of personal experience; the few wise ones learn some things through the experience of others, by relating or applying their own experience to the events in the lives of others. Comparing and reflecting, they come to see the close relation of act and consequence, and thus recognize the universal laws in operation.

Such wisdom may be yours, but it will not come through regretting that you did not possess it ready-made. Besides, no misfortune, whether we are ourselves directly responsible for it or not, is ever in vain. No matter how hard and almost unendurable the "misfortune" may have seemed at the time, we shall find in looking back that it was no unmixed evil.