Health Through Will Power. James Joseph Walsh
is not noted at first, and may escape notice entirely unless there is an analysis of the mode of life which is directed particularly to finding out the amount of exertion of will and energy that there is in the daily round of existence.
The will, like so many other faculties of the human organism, grows in power not by resting but by use and exercise. There have been very few calls for serious exercise of the will left in modern life and so it is no wonder that it has dwindled in power. As a consequence, a good deal of the significance of the will in life has been lost sight of. This is unfortunate, for the will can enable us to tap sources of energy that might otherwise remain concealed from us. Professor William James particularly called attention to the fact, in his well-known essay on "The Energies of Men", that very few people live up to their maximum of accomplishment or their optimum of conduct, and that indeed "as a rule men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions."
It is with the idea of pointing out how much the will can accomplish in changing things for the better that this volume is written. Professor James quoted with approval Prince Pueckler-Muskau's expression, "I find something very satisfactory in the thought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force of his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent."1
It is this power, thus daringly called omnipotent, that men have not been using to the best advantage to maintain health and even to help in the cure of disease, which needs to be recalled emphatically to attention. The war has shown us in the persons of our young soldiers that the human will has not lost a single bit of its pristine power to enable men to accomplish what might almost have seemed impossible. One of the heritages from the war should be the continuance of that fine use of the will which military discipline and war's demands so well brought into play. Men can do and stand ever so much more than they realize, and in the very doing and standing find a satisfaction that surpasses all the softer pleasant feelings that come from mere comfort and lack of necessity for physical and psychical exertion. Their exercise of tolerance and their strenuous exertion, instead of exhausting, only makes them more capable and adds to instead of detracting from their powers.
How much this discipline and training of the will meant for our young American soldiers, some of whom were raised in the lap of luxury and almost without the necessity of ever having had to do or stand hard things previously in their lives, is very well illustrated by a letter quoted by Miss Agnes Repplier in the Century for December. It is by no means unique or even exceptional. There were literally thousands of such letters written by young officers similarly circumstanced, and it is only because it is typical and characteristic of the spirit of all of these young men that I quote it here. Miss Repplier says that it came from "a young American lieutenant for whom the world had been from infancy a perilously pleasant place." He wrote home in the early spring of 1918:
"It has rained and rained and rained. I am as much at home in a mud puddle as any frog in France, and I have clean forgotten what a dry bed is like. But I am as fit as a fiddle and as hard as nails. I can eat scrap iron and sleep standing. Aren't there things called umbrellas, which you pampered civilians carry about in showers?" If we can secure the continuance of this will exertion, life will be ever so much heartier and healthier and happier than it was before, so that the war shall have its compensations.
CHAPTER II
DREADS
"O, know he is the bridle of your will. There's none but asses will be bridled so."
It must be a surprise to most people, after the demonstration of the power of the will in the preceding chapter, that so many fail to make use of it. Indeed, the majority of mankind are quite unable to realize the store of energy for their health and strength and well-being which is thus readily available, though so often unused or called upon but feebly. The reason why the will is not used more is comparatively easy to understand, however, once its activity in ordinary conditions of humanity is analyzed a little more carefully. The will is unfortunately seldom permitted to act freely. Brakes are put on its energies by mental states of doubt and hesitation, by contrary suggestion, and above all by the dreads which humanity has allowed to fasten themselves on us until now a great many activities are hampered. There is the feeling that many things cannot be done, or may be accomplished only at the cost of so much effort and even hardship that it would be hopeless for any but those who are gifted with extremely strong wills to attempt them. People grow afraid to commit themselves to any purpose lest they should not be able to carry it out. Many feel that they would never be able to stand what others have stood without flinching and are persuaded that if ever they were placed in the position where they had to withstand some of the trials that they have heard of they would inevitably break down under the strain.
Just as soon as a human being loses confidence that he or she may be able to accomplish a certain thing, that of itself is enough to make the will ever so much less active than it would otherwise be. It is like breaking a piece of strong string: those who know how wrap it around their fingers, then jerk confidently and the string is broken. Those who fear that they may not be able to break it hesitate lest they should hurt themselves and give a half-hearted twitch which does not break the string; the only thing they succeed in doing is in hurting themselves ever so much more than does the person who really breaks it. After that abortive effort, they feel that they must be different from the others whose fingers were strong enough to break the string, and they hesitate about it and will probably refuse to make the attempt again.
It is a very old story,—this of dreads hampering the activities of mankind with lack of confidence, and the fear of failure keeping people from doing things. One of his disciples, according to a very old tradition, once asked St. Anthony the Hermit what had been the hardest obstacle that he found on the road to sanctity. The story has all the more meaning for us here if we recall that health and holiness are in etymology the same. St. Anthony, whose temptations have made him famous, was over a hundred at the time and had spent some seventy years in the desert, almost always alone, and probably knew as much about the inner workings of human nature from the opportunities for introspection which he had thus enjoyed as any human being who ever lived. His young disciple, like all young disciples, wanted a short cut on the pathway that they were both traveling. The old man said to him, "Well, I am an old man and I have had many troubles, but most of them never happened."
Many a nightmare of doubt and hesitation disappears at once if the dread of it is overcome. The troubles that never happen, if dwelt upon, paralyze the will until health and holiness become extremely difficult of attainment.
There is the secret of the failure of a great many people in life in a great many ways. They fear the worst, dread failure, dampen their own confidence, and therefore fritter away their own energy. Anything that will enable them to get rid of the dreads of life will add greatly to their power to accomplish things inside as well as outside their bodies. Well begun is half done, and tackling a thing confidently means almost surely that it will be accomplished. If the dread of failure, the dread of possible pain in its performance, the dread of what may happen as a result of activity,—if all these or any of them are allowed to obtrude themselves, then energy is greatly lessened, the power to do things hampered and success becomes almost impossible. This is as true in matters of health and strength as it is with regard to various external accomplishments. It takes a great deal of experience for mankind to learn the lesson that their dreads are often without reality, and some men never learn it.
Usually when the word dreads is used, it is meant to signify a series of psychic or psychoneurotic conditions from which sensitive, nervous people suffer a great deal. There is, for instance, the dread of dirt called learnedly misophobia, that exaggerated fear that dirt may cling to the hands and prove in some way deleterious which sends its victims to wash their hands from twenty to forty times a day. Not infrequently they wash the skin pretty well off or at least produce annoying skin irritation as the result of their feeling. There are many other dreads of this kind. Some of them seem ever so much more absurd even than
"Tour in England, Ireland and France."