The Spirit |
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Author:
| Streeter, Burnett Hillman |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-37226-8 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2009 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $20.40 |
Book Description:
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POWER The increasing pressure of modern life, with its anxieties and cares, constitutes an ever-augmenting tax upon our strength. It is hardly surprising that nervous breakdowns are common, and that neurasthenia, or nerve fatigue, is the most significant disease of the age. Yet while,...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POWER The increasing pressure of modern life, with its anxieties and cares, constitutes an ever-augmenting tax upon our strength. It is hardly surprising that nervous breakdowns are common, and that neurasthenia, or nerve fatigue, is the most significant disease of the age. Yet while, on the one hand, we see men and women so ill-adapted to face the demands of life that the slightest exertion produces fatigue; on the other, we are called upon to witness exhibitions of power which fill us with wonder. The increasing demand for the power and energy requisite to face the strain compels us to investigate the sources of their supply. The purpose of my study is to direct attention to the problem of the sources of human energy and power. It is commonly supposed that in each of us there is a reservoir, as it were, containing a certain supply of energy. This energy is said to be derived from the food we eat and the air we breathe, and to be, therefore, strictly limited in amount. When our expenditure is excessive our supply of energy runs very low, and we consequently suffer from a feeling of fatigue. Such is the theory of the physicist. The natural consequence of this belief in the physical character and the limited supply of our energy is that we are careful to economise our little store of strength, to husband our resources, lest by excess of expenditure we find the springs of our life run dry. In contrast with this view, there have been men, and chiefly among them religious men, who have held that if our powers seem to fail, it is not because all the energy available is used up, but because its flow is checked, either by the channel being blocked up or by our inabil- / ity to use it aright. The chief cause of fatigue is not x exhaustion but stagnatio...