USES OF ADVERSITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1941, Page 7

USES OF ADVERSITY

MEETING TROUBLES OF THE HOUR

The unfortunate people who were shut up in the “Black Hole of Calcutta” died not from lack of air, but from lack of air movement —that is to say, from lack of the accustomed stimulation of the skin by air currents, writes a medical correspondent of “The Times” (London). In the absence of these currents the skin lost its tone and the circulation became impeded. Men whose circumstances are too easy tend to fall into the same distresses. Many a great army—the stock example is the army of Hannibal —has become ruined by too prolonged a period of inaction; many a great enterprise has fallen by weight, so to speak, of its own prosperity. In this last year we have witnessed the ruin which can follow when men sot their faith upon supposedly impregnable positions. The “Maginot mind” is almost always ruinous. It was said of Napoleon that, with his faults, he made life interesting to Europeans during some 18 years. They were healthy years, and they were followed by a burst of creative activity which is proof in itself of the vigour of mind that was everywhere in evidence. The year before the Four Years’ War, on the contrary, were almost sterile so far as considerable artistic or literary achievement is concerned. It is probable that the struggle now in progress will release a fresh burst of energy which may be expected to manifest itself after peace has been restored. For not only does stimulation evoke responses; it effects also a storing up of memory images which may be looked upon as stimuli held in store for future use. A man’s thoughts are capable, as we all know, of exerting upon him influences which correspond closely to the buffetings of life, and, indeed, reproduce these buffetings. Thus out of the treasures of memory come the means of facing the troubles of the hour.