Unless a way out can be found, the struggle ends in what psychologists call 'frustration', an unwholesome state of mind, leading to cynicism, envy, hatred, and malice towards the more fortunate, and bitter discontent. The sharpest sting to my mind was the consciousness that the years were passing, that the keen powers of mind and body, the vigour and ambition of youth, do not last forever. Above all, the brightness of the imagination clouds in the thick mists of age and experience, and the night cometh when no man can work.
“I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.” — Hazlitt
28 June 2012
An Unwholesome State of Mind
Margaret Nevinson, Life's Fitful Fever (London: A & C Black, 1926):