We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles, we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.

Bulwer-Lytton contrasts the apparent “progress” of modern life—greater longevity—with a subtler decline in well-being. Earlier generations, he suggests, were worn down chiefly by physical labor (“the muscles”), while modern people are depleted by manufactured pressures: social competition, financial precarity, information overload, and the constant self-management demanded by complex institutions. The key opposition is between bodily fatigue and nervous exhaustion: the modern age shifts strain from the visible and measurable to the internal and psychological. The passage anticipates later critiques of industrial modernity and “neurasthenia,” framing anxiety as a byproduct of civilization’s refinements rather than a simple personal failing.