Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1888-11-02
Modern Civilization.
IT TENDS To UNDUE NERVOUS ExCITEMENT-AN
AGE OF RUSH.

IT TENDS TO UNDUE NERVOUS ExCITEMRNT-AN
AGE OF RUSH.
From the North China News.
1t is very significant aspect of modern civ
ilization which is expressed in the word ''nerv-
ous." Its original meaning is possessing
nerve, sinewy, strong, vigorous" One of its
derivative meanings, and the one which we by
far most frequently meet. is ''having the nerves
weak or diseased subject to or suffering from
undue excitement of the nerves; easily excited
weakly" The varied and complex phraseology
by which the peculiar phases of nervous dis
eases are expressed has become by this time
familiar in our ears as household words
There is no doubt that civilization, as ex-
hibited in its modern form, tends to undue
nervous excitement, and that nervous dis
eases are relatively more common than they
were century ago. But what we have now to
say does not concern those who are specially
subject to nervous diseases, but to the general
mass of occidentals, who, while not in any
specific condition of ill health, yet continu-
ally reminded in great variety of ways, that
their nervous systems are a most conspicuous
part of their organization. We allude, in
short, to people who are nervous, and we I'M
derstand this term to include all our readers,
and. In general, all the people who live in the
lands from which we have come. To the
Anglo-Saxon race at least it seems a matter of
course that those who live in an age of steam
and electricity must necessarily be in a differ
ent condition as to their nerves from those who
lived in the old, slow days of sailing packets
and of mail coaches.
Ours Is an age Of extreme activity. It is an
age OF rush. There Is no leisure, so much as
to eat, and the nerves are kept in a state of
constant tension, with results which are suffi-
GENTLY well known. Business men in our time
have an eager, restless air-at least those who
do their business in occidental lands-as if
they were In momentary expectation of a tele-
gram-as they often are-the contents of which
may affect their destiny in some fateful way
We betray this unconscious state of mind in n
multitude of acts. We cannot sit still but we
must fidget. We finger our pencils while we
are talking as if We ought at this particular
instant to be rapidly inditing something ere
it be forever too late. We rub our hands
together as if preparing for some
all our energies. We twirl our thumbs, we
turn our heads with the swift motion of the
Wild animal which seems to fear that some
thing dangerous may have been left unseen.
We have a sense that there is something which
we ought to be doing now, and into which we
shall proceed at once to plunge as soon as we
shall have dispatched six other affairs of even
more pressing Importance
The effect OF overworking our nerves shows
itself, not mainly in such affections as I'D
dlers cramp, "telegraphers cramp," writer
cramp," and the like, but in general tension
We do not sleep as we once did, either as re-
CARDS length OF time or soundness of rest We
are awakened by slight causes, and often BY
those which are exasperatingly trivial, such as
the twitter of bird in a tree, chance raw of
light struggling into our darkened rooms, the
motion of shutter in the breeze, the sound of
voice. and, when sleep is once interrupted, it
Is banished. We have taken our daily life to
rest with US, and the result is that we have no
real rest. In an age when it has become kind
of aphorism that bank never succeeds until
it has president who takes it to bed with him,
II Is easy to understand that while the aha
holders reap the advantages, it is bad for the
president.