he kisses brows that ache from earthly care;

he soothes to peace the indignant souls of slaves.

edgar fawcett.

sometimes we are kept awake by pain. some persons suffer pain that has no remission, except the temporary deadness that comes from nervous exhaustion—and sleep.

but sometimes the hardest torture is the thought that the pain is unnecessary or useless. i went once to visit a friend, whom i found suffering from the worst abscesses on the back of the neck that i ever saw, so frightful that the sight of them made me, who am a strong man, feel faint. i asked sympathetically what was the matter. “oh,” he said, “i’m getting some experience.” that consciousness that such pain was useful helped to make the agony less unendurable. in fact, though he did not see it all then, he was getting just what he and those about him needed. he was a vigorous man, who took to rural work in a place where the food was excellent; he was naturally gluttonous67 and overate, hence the boils. this he learned; and also how to bear pain.

there are ways of bearing pain more easily. we must consider the pain philosophically, and treat it from all three sides—the bodily, the intellectual, and the spiritual.

however advanced we may be, it is foolish to deny that, in common with the rest of mankind, we are more or less in what paul called the bonds of the flesh. to try to treat an aching tooth without physical means is like trying to grow a new leg instead of getting an artificial one. there was a stage in man’s pre-adamite progress from the amœba when, like the crab, he could grow new legs. possibly, by discarding all other faculties, men might again be able to grow new legs: but it would not pay.

a man who makes hammers may at one time have made his own files, had a shop for that. but, as trades became specialized, he found it better and cheaper to buy his files. perhaps the supply is suddenly cut off. now he could reassemble from the scrap-heap the file machinery and make files again, but it would be at the cost of putting so much time and energy into that branch as to paralyze the hammer factory.

so, nature found that men rarely lost their legs and that it was more economical to divert the organization and the energy that reproduced legs into the brain, which enables men to supply themselves and their fellows, when occasion arises, with artificial legs. accordingly we have lost much of the power of automatic self-healing and have gained much power of deliberate self-healing.

while distrusting crutches and drugs, therefore, because we see the immediate effect of them, but cannot know the remote effects of them, we cannot refuse a hot-water bottle or an anæsthetic when the pain, the symptom of the disorder, becomes dangerous in itself. the fever of typhoid represents a battle within which must be fought out to a conclusion—successful or not. but, when the patient is in danger of dying from the high temperature, it is no inconsistency for a mental or spiritual healer to cool the room or sponge the patient with alcohol.

before we resort to the dentist for the aching tooth, we may reduce the inflammation by abstaining from food and starving the blood corpuscles, which hasten to the diseased part, until, perhaps, they feed upon the weaker and obnoxious tissues. this abstinence will go far toward removing the restlessness that is so torturing an accompaniment of the pain. these are the physical remedies.

the mental ones consist mainly in trying to isolate the aching member, to realize that it is the tooth, not you, that aches, and to watch it as if it were a separate person. a little boy was asked how he felt after a feast of green apples. “i have a pain in the middle of my stomach,” he said, “but the rest of me feels fine.” a further mental remedy is to send to that separated part, the nerve, the assurance that you have already its message, which is that there is inflammation in the tooth and that you will attend to it as speedily as possible. the nerve gets tired, as it were, of repeating a message that gets no attention just as it gets tired of reporting the ticking of a clock so that we become unconscious of it; although, if we suspected that it was the knocking of a burglar’s tool, we should be kept awake by it night after night.

and we must not complain. the japanese think it rude to complain. if you are miserable, why make others miserable, too? better not even let it be known, if you can help it without creating unpleasantness, that you suffer. to solicit sympathy is weakening and the constant inquiry, “how are you now?” concentrates your attention on yourself and on your feelings. if we complained to everyone of the ticking clock, we would never forget it; it would become less and less endurable.

the spiritual treatment is harder to make clear. it is the unwillingness to have pain that makes it hard to bear. to illustrate again from the dentist, because that experience is still common to nearly everyone: we go to the operating chair, not gladly, but willingly, believing that it is wise and necessary and we bear the pain without complaining, knowing that it is the common lot of man. but suppose you were seized, strapped into the chair, and then your teeth were drilled and sawed to no good purpose, how much more frightful would be the pain. that would be because you believed it to be unnecessary and useless. it would be quite different if you trusted the operator. we must realize, then, that, if there is a controlling and benevolent power in the universe, which we all, rightly or wrongly, believe in our hearts, we never can have any pain that is useless or needless to ourselves, or to others, our other selves.

we may not see it at the time, but, if we look for it, we usually shall see it. while writing this the author was attacked with a violent toothache: he had exercised ordinary prudence in attending to his teeth, so that it did not seem as if the pain were needed to teach care. but when the toothache came he remembered that, seldom having pain himself, that subject had been overlooked among the many chapters of the book. that was a reason; but, notwithstanding the efforts of an excellent dentist, the torture continued. why?

why, that he might try these things; and he did practice them so as to lose no sleep. in addition he concluded that it was needful just then that he should feel just such pain in order to revive his sympathy and patience with those whose harassed nerves account for so much of their unreasonableness.

with that sense, that one is in a manner suffering for men, comes something of the exaltation of the martyr, even with prosaic toothache. with that certainly disappears all impatience with the pain.

perhaps he will be accounted superstitious in adding that, when these lessons were learned, the dentist found the trouble and the pain melted away. but he has had exactly similar experiences before: a new lesson or a renewal of it was needed. when the pain was no longer necessary it ceased. why should it continue?

sweet and low

sweet and low, sweet and low,

wind of the western sea;

low, low, breathe and blow,

wind of the western sea!

over the rolling waters go,

come from the dying moon, and blow,

blow him again to me;

while my little one,

while my pretty one,

sleeps.

sleep and rest, sleep and rest;

father will come to thee soon.

rest, rest on mother’s breast;

father will come to thee soon.

father will come to his babe in the nest,—

silver sails all out of the west

under the silver moon!

sleep, my little one;

sleep my pretty one,

sleep.

tennyson.