IKE, PRAISE OF INSENSIBILITY.
1)0 we not in modern times pride ourselves a great deal too much on our sensitiveness ? The story told in these columns last week by Mrs. Bracey, of the Maori youth who, finding that he could not adapt his boots to his feet, straight- way adapted his feet to his boots by cutting off a large piece of the big the of each foot, stanching the wound with the coarse flax of the country, and keeping the boots on for three or four days till the wounds had quite healed, takes one back to the Spartan traditions of indifference to pain. Perhaps the Spartan boy who, rather, than betray his theft of the fox, let the fox eat away a sensible portion of his side without betraying the pain it gave him, did not, after all, suffer very much more than the Maori felt no scruple in inflicting on himself rather than sacrifice the pleasure of displaying his fine pair of booth. There both are and have been races which do not suffer any- thing like what the same physical operations would inflict upon most of us, and whose members are all the more at liberty to go where they please and do what they will with their bodies, for the insensibility of their nerves. Yet we usually regard insensibility, as a sort of discredit, classing it with blindness, deafness, dullness of touch, and all the various incapacities which, however, can hardly be got rid of without admitting a whole host of other incapacities to do what we please. The blind man is incapable of seeing, but he is also incapable of being inconvenienced by a glare of light. The deaf man is incapable of hearing, but he is also incapable of being stunned by the noises of a great manufactory or a paved city. The thick-skinned man is incapable of distinguishing between the touch which will bring music out of the violin, and the touch which elicits from it the harshest of discords ; but then, he is also insensible to the miseries of a hard bed, and can sleep as soundly on a table or floor as on a mattress or a feather bed. It is clear that almost every shade of insensibility has a side of advantage as well as a side of disadvantage ; and it is, we imagine, a great question whether the tendency of modern refinement, as it is called, is not greatly to overrate the dis- advantages of various kinds of insensibility, and greatly to underrate their advantages. There are sensibilities, and a great many of them, which involve very much greater in. capacitiesthan capacities, which disqualify for most necessary duties much more than they qualify for the higher apprecia- tions. No doubt an organisation which is so indifferent to its own integrity that portions of it are sliced away without hesita- tion to gratify a petty vanity, is not in itself a desirable kind of organisation, for such insensibility might lead to the destruc- tion of organs essential to the health of the body itself, and no one could transmit to posterity a more aangerous variation of. sensibility than that. Instead of conferring an advantage in the conflict for existence, it would impose the kind of dis- advantage which the disappearance of every really important warning against destruction necessarily involves. An eyelid that did not shut at the approach of a spark of fire to the eye, would hardly be more useless than a nerve which did not recoil at the sort of suffering which seriously threatens life. Never- theless, the praise of sensibility of all kinds is in the present day excessive. Sensibility to physical pain is almost regarded as a distinction; sensibility to mental and moral pain is almost assumed to be a virtue ; and the world entirely forgets how very much this sensibility often interferes not only with the calm judgment necessary for right action, but with the cool presence of mind which is essential to effective execution. We do not assume for a moment that insensibility of any sort is essential to a great soldier; but assuredly a certain phlegm has distinguished some of the very greatest soldiers of all ages, soldiers whom it would be difficult to conceive doing their duty as they did it, if that phlegm had been replaced by a higher physical and moral seneitive,neas. What shall we say, again, even of the surgeon or the nurse who is so sensitive, that the sight of Buffering disturbs the judgment and makes the hand tremble when a steady hand is most essential to efficient work ? It is perfectly obvious that for the very purpose of alleviating pain itself, a certain measure of in- sensibility to sympathetic pain is in the highest degree advantageous, if not necessary. Every one knows that the best nurses are the calmest imrses, and the calmest nurses are very seldom indeed the nurses who really suffer most at the sight of their patients' suffering. "I try to do my duty, but I don't trouble myself too much about pain which I cannot remove," said one of the best of nurses the other day. And the doctor who was praising her said:—" She has the four great qualifications of a nurse,—health, youth, conscientiousness, and intelligence. Perhaps one would like to see a little heart, too. But there must not be too much heart in the average nurse. It interferes with the equanimity which is of all qualifications one of the most useful in a nurse." That, no
doubt, is one of the reasons why it is so desirable in our great hospitals to have lady-superintendents as well as nurses. The superintendents can safely allow themselves to enter a little more into the feelings of the various sufferers than the regular nurses are likely to do, or even than it would be generally desirable for them to do ; nor will it injure the lady-superin- tendents' efficiency as it might that of the nurses ; it would, if not too keen, even increase it. But even for the lady- superintendents or sisters of the various wards, a certain measure of professional insensibility is just as necessary as for the resident surgeons and physicians themselves. It would never do, for instance, if they felt as keenly as the relatives of the sufferers feel. The patients themselves would be the first to wish it otherwise. One of the great advantages which the patients themselves feel in entering a hospital, is that their sufferings do not come back reflected from the faces of those around them, that the sympathy they excite is only a mild sympathy, and not one which heightens their own pain.
And it is equally true of insensibility to very different kinds
of suffering,—moral and spiritual suffering,—that a certain measure of insensibility, as well as of sensibility, to it, is the first condition of the power to do good. The teacher or priest who wants to lead a penitent to a truer and higher view of his life, must not be insensible to the keenness of his anguish and the bitterness of his shame ; but, at the same time, he must not enter into it so deeply as to be unnerved by it, and to be haunted by it in all his sally duties. If he is, he will be quite incompetent for his spiritual work, and will be an inefficient, not an efficient guide in spiritual things. No discerning man, however deep his own shame and remorse, would go for guidance to one. who was likely to suffer almost as much as himself, out of sympathy with him,—as some very near relative perhaps might. Such a guide would be a bad guide, and a bad guide just because his sensibility would be too vivid, and his judgment would be thereby perverted. It is the same even with sufferings that are not moral, and where the sufferers do not require guidance. It is quite a mistake for those who live with such sufferers to reproach themselves, as they often do, with their own insensibility. We may be absolutely certain that those who would wish to feel more than they do, really feel quite as much as they ought, quite as much as the purpose of God intends that they should. There is an unworthy pride in great sensibility which is not consistent with either true humility or true usefulness. Hardly a sufferer exists who is not the better instead of the worse for seeing that those around him are not utterly overwhelmed by his sufferings,—that so far as he can go out of himself at all, he may get a little relief by entering into the less over- shadowed lives round him, and tasting indirectly another's enjoyments. We ought to be grateful not only for being able to enter into the sufferings of others, but for not being allowed to enter into them too keenly. The self-reproach which one so often hears uttered that the sufferings of others do not reflect themselves vividly enough in the hearts of the bystanders, is an ungrateful self-reproach for a limitation for which we have great reason to be thankful. Not only would a suffering that reflected itself adequately in other hearts be fatal to the work of the world, but it would be fatal, too, to the best and almost the only alleviation of which that suffering itself admits. A really patient and humble-minded' man will be quite as thankful for his insensibility as for his sensibility, and will recognise that it is to the former at least as much as to the latter, that his power to alleviate suffering is due. The law which says to sympathy, "Thus far shalt
thou go, and no farther," is quite as divine a law as the law. which assigns its impassable limits to-
" The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea."
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