Certainly repression is only apparent progress.  No good physician would allow it in bodily disease, and, on careful observation, the law seems to hold good in other phases of life.

There must be a practical way by which these stones, these survivals of barbaric times, may be stepped over and made finally to disappear.

The first necessity is to take the practical way, and not the sentimental.  Thus true sentiment is found, not lost.

The second is to follow daily, even hourly, the process of stepping over until it comes to be indeed a matter of course.  So, little by little, shall we emerge from this mass of abnormal nervous irritation into what is more truly life itself.

II.

Physical care.

Rest, fresh air, exercise, and nourishment, enough of each in proportion to the work done, are the material essentials to a healthy physique.  Indeed, so simple is the whole process of physical care, it would seem absurd to write about it at all.  The only excuse for such writing is the constant disobedience to natural laws which has resulted from the useless complexity of our civilization.

There is a current of physical order which, if one once gets into it, gives an instinct as to what to do and what to leave undone, as true as the instinct which leads a man to wash his hands when they need it, and to wash them often enough so that they never remain soiled for any length of time, simply because that state is uncomfortable to their owner.  Soap and water are not unpleasant to most of us in their process of cleansing; we have to deny ourselves nothing through their use.  To keep the digestion in order, it is often necessary to deny ourselves certain sensations of the palate which are pleasant at the time.  So by a gradual process of not denying we are swung out of the instinctive nourishment-current, and life is complicated for us either by an amount of thought as to what we should or should not eat, or by irritations which arise from having eaten the wrong food.  It is not uncommon to find a mind taken up for some hours in wondering whether that last piece of cake will digest.  We can easily see how from this there might be developed a nervous sensitiveness about eating which would prevent the individual from eating even the food that is nourishing.  This last is a not unusual form of dyspepsia,—­a dyspepsia which keeps itself alive on the patient’s want of nourishment.

Fortunately the process of getting back into the true food-current is not difficult if one will adopt it The trouble is in making the bold plunge.  If anything is eaten that is afterwards deemed to have been imprudent, let it disagree.  Take the full consequences and bear them like a man, with whatever remedies are found to lighten the painful result.  Having made sure through bitter experience that a particular food disagrees, simply do not take it again,