The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1917-04-06
PAIN is OUR FRIEND
Physical Suffering a Blessing In
Disguise For Mankind.
A DANGER WARNING TO HEAD.

n leiis Os mat r1eaitns Waynapg 10
Menaced, and 1t Enables Man to
Maintain His Proud Position at the
Highest Pinnacle of Creation.
OF all organized beings man possesses
the greatest capacity for suffering pain.
This is the price he pays for the supe-
riority Of organization that makes him
the king of nature. Dr. Lawrence Ir-
well writes on The Meaning and Use
of Pain" and bids us regard all this
susceptibility to suffering and even the
suffering itself as blessing in dis
guise. 1t Is pain, he assures US, that
enables us to maintain our proud posi-
tion at the top Of creation.
Pain keeps us alive, signals the ap-
proach of countless dangers, thus ena-
bling US to avoid them, and is a spur
to wise action In the process of human
adjustment, helping to endow us with
courage, devotion, sympathy and count
less other virtues 1t is kindness In
mask, and It's abolition might mean the
loss not only OF that suffering which
has ever been the nursery of virtue,
but even Of life itself. Dr. Irwell says:
"If the touch of redhot body did
not cause instant pain any one might
be fatally burned before he was aware
Of the danger. II hunger produced no
pain one might not care to eat. If 1t
were not painful to look directly at
the gun at noon blindness would afiict
those who examined it with the naked
eye at that time.
Serving as it does the self conserva-
ton Of the organism pain Is most
useful danger signal the outcry Of In
jured and life threatened organic ele-
ment which has no language apart
from that cry. That may be the rea-
son why pain has short and bad
memory 1t indicates disOrganization,
imminent or actual while conscious
memory implies functioning organiza-
tion-defnitely organized associations,
whose dissertations are dismember-
ments and therefore not rememberable.
"No one has ever recalled a pain as
he actually felt It, He can, OF course,
recollect that he suffered 1t, that 1t
was eXcruciating at the time and all
circumstances of his suffering, but to
remember it as it was in feeling would
| be to revive it so vividly as to refeel 1t
to have it again. Being disorganized,
/ there is nothing with which it Is con-
nected with organized associations, and
1 therefore when it has passed its pang
lis lost to memory"
If the function Of pain is self con-
4 seVvation by giving warning Of menace
] to life, DR. Irwell asks, why does 1t not
cease its function when the warning Is
futile? Death takes many forms, and
almost all Of them are painful. Why
might not matters have been so benevo-
lently ordained that when the newt
able end began the unavailing pain al
ways ended? The writer replies:
"The obvious answer Is that by that
method the function of pain would
have been annulled. 1t signals danger
and destruction, and what greater dan,
ger and destruction to an organism
can there be than its decay and death
That the organism no longer does any
thing to preserve its existence when
warned is not the monitors affair; Its
work is done when it has given the
warning, which is a warning to pre-
pare to go out of existence. The warn
Ing becomes in most instances less urg
ent, duller, more faint as gradually IN
creasing decay feels neither desire nol
power to attend to it's call.
"Considering what pain has done as {
spur to wise action in the process o.
human adjustment to surrounding mel
and things, how it has helped to In
graft courage, patience, self sacrifice
devotion, sympathy and charity upol
human nature it's seeming cruelty be
ing in reality masked kindness, it Il
impossible to assert that its abolition
would be a benefit and that men coul(
be strong and thrive without it. Sor
rows and sufferings have been the nurs
cries of virtue afflictions good teach
ers-minds have been chastened, dis
ciplined, purified and more or less per
fected by trials and pains. LITERARY
Digest.