It not only makes one more genuinely
appreciative of the best health, and the way to keep it, it opens
the sympathies and gives a feeling for one's fellow-creatures which,
having once found, we cannot prize too highly.
It would seem hard to believe that all must suffer to find a
delicate sympathy; it can hardly be so. To be always strong, and at
the same time full of warm sympathy, is possible, with more thought.
When illness or adverse circumstances bring it, the gate has been
opened for us.
If illness is taken as an opportunity to better health, not to more
illness, our mental attitude will put complaint out of the question;
and as the practice spreads it will as surely decrease the tendency
to illness in others as it will shorten its duration in ourselves.
XIII.
SENTIMENT _versus_ SENTIMENTALITY.
FREEDOM from sentimentality opens the way for true sentiment.
An immense amount of time, thought, and nervous force is wasted in
sentimentalizing about "being good." With many, the amount of talk
about their evils and their desire to overcome them is a thermometer
which indicates about five times that amount of thought Neither the
talk nor the thought is of assistance in leading to any greater
strength or to a more useful life; because the talk is all talk, and
the essence of both talk and thought is a selfish, morbid pleasure
in dwelling upon one's self.
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