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 in their senses.  When the intellect begins to assert itself to any extent, then the nervous strain comes.  So noticeable is this, in many cases, that nervous excitement seems often to be from misdirected intellect; and people under the control of their misdirected nervous force often appear wanting in quick intellectual power,—­illustrating the law that a stream spreading in all directions over a meadow loses the force that the same amount of water would have if concentrated and flowing in one channel.  There are also many cases where the strained nerves bring an abnormal intellectual action.  Fortunately for the saving of the nation, there are people who from a physical standpoint live naturally.  These are refreshing to see; but they are apt to take life too easily, to have no right care or thought, and to be sublimely selfish.

Another way in which the brain is constantly used is through the eyes.  What deadly fatigue comes from time spent in picture galleries!  There the strain is necessarily greater than in listening, because all the pictures and all the colors are before us at once, with no appreciable interval between forms and subjects that differ widely.  But as the strain is greater, so should the care to relieve it increase.  We should not go out too far to meet the pictures, but be quiet, and let the pictures come to us.  The fatigue can be prevented if we know when to stop, and pleasure at the time and in the memory afterwards will be surprisingly increased.  So is it in watching a landscape from the car window, and in all interests which come from looking.  I am not for one instant condemning the natural expression of pleasure, neither do I mean that there should be any apparent nonchalance or want of interest; on the contrary, the real interest and its true expression increase as we learn to shun the shams.

But will not the discovery of all this superfluous tension make one self-conscious?  Certainly it will for a time, and it must do so.  You must be conscious of a smooch on your face in order to wash it off, and when the face is clean you think no more of it.  So you must see an evil before you can shun it.  All these physical evils you must be vividly conscious of, and when you are so annoyed as to feel the necessity of moving from under them self-consciousness decreases in equal ratio with the success of your efforts.

Whenever the brain alone is used in thinking, or in receiving and taking note of impressions through either of the senses, new power comes as we gain freedom from all misdirected force, and with muscles in repose leave the brain to quietly do its work without useless strain of any kind.  It is of course evident that this freedom cannot be gained without, first, a consciousness of its necessity.  The perfect freedom, however, when reached, means freedom from self-consciousness as well as from the strain which made self-consciousness for a time essential.