:, ^ \ - % A ^ »'\ "V C> V & 1 ^ ^ "> 1>^ i ^ -^ ^ c5> ^ v* which induces weak-minded persons to think that they have seen supernatural apparitions. Thus a gentleman, mentioned by Dr. Hibbert, having been told of the sudden death of a friend, saw him dis- tinctly when he walked out in the evening. " He was not in his usual dress, but in a coat of a differ- ent color, which he had left off wearing for some months. I could even remark a figured vest which he had worn about the same time, also a colored handkerchief around his neck, in which I had used to see him in the morning." The power of the mind to imbody whatever it strongly conceives is strikingly demonstrated in those cases in which a number of persons have imagined themselves to have seen the same appa- rition. Thus a whole ship's crew were thrown into consternation by the ghost of the cook, who had died a few days before. He was distinctly seen by them all, walking on the water, with a peculiar 124 THE ACTION OF MIND ON gait by which he was distinguished, one of his legs being shorter than the other. The cook, so plainly recognized, was only a piece of old wreck. In such instances, which are common, it is manifest that the mind so impresses the sense of sight with past realities, that it perceives only what imagina- tion presents. " Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy ; Or, in the night imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear." — Shakspeare. Now it is clear, from every example of recol- lection, that ideas do not affix themselves in any structure of the body, for every atom of it is suc- cessively removed in the processes of vital action. A man's body does not continue to exist of the same identical materials; therefore it follows, as an inevitable conclusion, that memory is not a record written there ; the store of ideas must be- long to an independent, unchanging being; for whenever they are reproduced they are found un- altered, and must therefore have existed in that which does not change, namely, the undecaying soul. Those things which belong to our moral being most powerfully affect our minds, and most strongly cleave even to our ordinary memory ; and if it were not so, religious truth could not regenerate the world. Mr. Moffat, the missionary, says, that when he had concluded a long sermon, to a great number of African savages, his hearers divided into companies, to talk the subject over. " While thus engaged, my attention was arrested by a sim- THE NERVOUS ORGANIZATION. 125 p e-looking young man, at a short distance. The person referred to was holding forth, with great animation, to a number of people, who were all attention. On approaching, I found, to my sur- prise, that he was preaching my sermon over again, with uncommon precision and with great solemnity, imitating, as nearly as he could, the gestures of the original. A greater contrast could scarcely be conceived, than the fantastic figure and the solemnity of his language — his subject being eternity, while he evidently felt what he spoke. Not wishing to disturb him, I allowed him to finish the recital, and seeing him soon after, told him that he could do what I was sure T could not, — that was, preach again the same sermon verbatim. He did not appear vain of his superior memory : - When I hear any thing great/ he said, touching his forehead with his finger, ' it remains there.' " This anecdote affords us an interesting evidence that memory, in connection with the intuitive ap- preciation of vast truths, is characteristic of savage as well as civilized man ; in short, it shows that the mind was created for truth, and to be governed by it. The rapid and immense improvement in the social and religious condition of these and other degraded tribes of mankind, under the per- suasive operation of doctrines calculated to direct the will, especially by their hold upon the memory, and thence to inspire the conduct with command- ing and ennobling motives, is a beautiful fact ; at once proving the fitness of the Christian doctrines for the moral constitution of man, and the unreason- 126 THE ACTION OF MIND ON ableness of that philosophy which, in spite of the world's experience, attempts to teach us that the brain of a man must be remodeled before he can be mentally regenerated. If this be true, what a sudden development of new organs or new ac- tivities of brain must have happened in the South Sea Islands, and what a new state of cranium must the sensual atheist experience, who, by a flash of thought, is struck from his elevation of self-conceit and self-adoration into an humble con- viction of dependence on his God and Savior ! Man's spiritual nature is rooted in his knowl- edge or memory, and as he believes, so will he act ; as he receives truth, so is he influenced ; and truth penetrates like the sword of the Spirit, open- ing every mind that it strikes for the reception of a world of new realities. Let the will be arrested, and the attention fixed to look upon the Grospel, and its grandeur becomes manifest and influential. As, when a man like Newton, having the idea of gravitation forced upon his attention, gradually be- holds the universe hanging together and in motion thereby, and makes all his calculations in keeping with that knowledge ; so the Christian sees in one grand truth the harmonizing power of all worlds, and calculates only on the force of love as the gov- erning principle of Heaven. A man never forgets, however he may neglect, the truth which he has willingly admitted to his mind as a ruling principle — that is, a truth com- mended to his conscience. As the poor African said, "When I hear any thing great it remains ;" so whatever we feel to be morally true will cleave THE NERVOUS ORGANIZATION. 127 cither to torment or to delight us, according to its nature, and according to our felt obedience to the master truths — the demands of God upon our being. Memory, then, is not the spontaneous action of an apparatus, like Babbage's calculating machine, with figures that revolve in endless combination. It is a state of mind. Mind produces it. Even those figures, thus revolving and combining, ex- isted in all their power of infinite reproduction in the mind that conceived the method of thus evolv- ing " numbers beyond number numberless," from the transportations and combinations of only nine remembered units. Thus, perhaps, from the vast but limited multitude of ideas derived from the impressions in time, eternity may be filled with thoughts. The order and happiness resulting from their endless multiplication will depend on the few regulating principles which God has given to us in his law, and if this continue to be broken, the con- fusion and misery of our spirits will be as endless as our capacity of thinking. CHAPTER XV. THE CONNECTION OF MEMORY WITH THE HABIT AND CONDITION OP THE BRAIN, AND THE USE OF THE BODY. Intimacy with facts and things in their mutual influence on each other constitutes our individual world of knowledge, and this acquaintance with circumstances or things remains in our minds with- out a necessary connection with language. Ideas must generally be presented by words from one mind to another in this state of being; but, that ideas once produced exist in the mind, independ- ently of their conventional associates, is testified by a great variety of facts, especially in the history of disease, as it affects the manifestation of mind ; and this it does, more or less, in every instance, as we have already seen; because what is called health is nothing more than the state of body best adapted for the exercise and training of the soul in its inter- course with the material world. Memory, like all other mental manifestation, is suspended by press- ure on the brain, and in fact by any thing which powerfully disturbs its functions ; hence it is pre- sumed by some physiologists that memory has no existence but as a function of the brain, and many CONNECTION OF MEMORY WITH THE BRAIN. 129 wonderful cases of recovery from cerebral injury, with restoration of this faculty, are referred to in proof that the brain is the sole cause of remem- brance. The brain of course is necessary to con- scious existence, such as we experience, and there- fore of course it is essential to memory in connec- tion with the active manifestation of this life ; but yet the very facts which are quoted as evidences that memory is a function of the brain, also afford us positive proof that it is something more. I knew an intelligent lady, who suddenly lost all association between ideas and language. She be- came as completely destitute of speech as a new- born infant. Under medical treatment, however, she gradually recovered ; she again learned to speak, read, and write, just as a child learns, until some months after the attack, when her former in- formation and faculty rapidly returned. She told me that her remembrance of facts was as clear as ever during this speechless state— all she had lost was language. Even her recollection of music was perfect, and she performed elaborate pieces with her accustomed skill, although not a single idea in her mind could present itself in words. She soon afterward died suddenly of apoplexy, and the cause of the impediment was then proved to exist in dis- ease of the brain. A degree of this disorder occurs when the brain has suffered from fatigue, as in the case of Spald- ing, a celebrated scholar in Germany, who being called on to write after great exertion and distrac- tion of mind, found himself incapable of proceeding correctly beyond the first two words. The char-* 9 130 CONNECTION OF MEMORY WITH THE acters he continued to make were not what he meant, but he knew not where the fault lay. His speech failed in the same manner ; he spoke other words than he intended, although he knew every thing around him, and his senses continued perfect. On resting and refreshing his nervous system the confusion was removed. This loss of association between words and ideas is often observed in paralytics. It is probable that persons laboring under such malady are always conscious that the sounds they utter are unintelli- gible to those whom they address, and their dis- tress is greatly aggravated by the fact. This was the case with the lady just mentioned. Patients are rarely able to give us a distinct account of their sensations under such circumstances. Dr. Holland, however, also relates an instance to the point, in which loss of memory and articulation of words followed an accident in an aged gentleman. " He could not remember the names of his servants ; nor, when wishing to express his wants to them, could he find right words to do so. He was con- scious of uttering unmeaning sounds, and reasoned on the singularity at the time, as he afterward stated." The organs influenced by the will are more or less disordered when the power of recol- lection is morbidly defective, as in palsy. This dis- ease is accompanied by an unsteadiness and tremor, or rigidity of the muscles, as well as an incapacity of fixing the attention. There is some interference with the muscular sense, by which we prepare our- selves for the use of our other senses. Here ^t may not be inappropriate to observe HABIT AND CONDITION OF THE BRAIN. 131 the connection between attention, memory, and muscular action. All the voluntary activities of our bodies are modified by the state of our memo- ries in relation to our senses, more particularly to the muscular sense, or that feeling by which we regulate our movements in regard to gravita- tion and avoid danger. Although we seem not to attend to our ordinary muscular actions, yet we really do attend to them, and in fact exercise a power of comparison in every intentional move- ment. We walk according to our experience in the use of our legs and feet, and we handle ob- jects as we have before felt. We balance our muscles instinctively in every effort, according to the necessity which former circumstances may have suggested. We take not a cup in our hand without previously preparing ourselves, and the will braces the muscles for the purpose, in keep- ing with our preconceived notion of the weight of the body to be lifted. Let a person, unac- quainted with its weight, attempt to take up a cup of mercury, and he will probably spill its contents. Other complicated and rapid movements of the hand, in the delicate execution of works of art and manufacture, require an apt and ready memory, as well as a well-trained and active hand. An impairment of memory destroys the steady quick- ness that is required. We find that, in the cotton mills, the activities of the brain are tried to such a degree by steam and ingenuity, that certain movements of the machinery can only be followed by persons possessed of quick memory and cor- responding nervous energy; and hence that these 132 CONNECTION OF MEMORY WITH THE parts of the work can only be accomplished or tolerated by individuals from puberty to manhood; because, £t that period alone is the association be- tween memory and action sufficiently electric to suit the market^ Mental education improves the grace and ex- pressiveness of the body, at least of the features, to so great an extent as to be commonly acknowl- edged as a powerful cause of the influence which men maintain over each other. The specific dis- tinction between an educated and an uneducated man is in the power of reflection ; the memory of the former having been trained, that of the latter being left wild. This training of memory affects the whole tone, character, and bodily deportment of a man. As a voluntary effort of memory is attended by a peculiar fixedness of the body, and a steadiness of the senses, which are necessary to preserve the attention to associated ideas, the habit of this effort imparts a deliberative expres- sion to the features, and causes even a man's mus- cular movements to partake of the more measured and sedate tendency of his mind. Hence also it may fairly be concluded, that one who has been accustomed rationally to apply this faculty, is bet- ter qualified to control his instincts, to govern his passions, and to regulate all those impulses which spring immediately from his physical constitution. Hence, too, natural philosophers, men who remem- ber, collect, and think on facts, are less disposed to insanity than are poets and persons who de- light in imagination without an orderly and proper cultivation of memory. In short, proper applica- HABIT AND CONDITION OF THE BRAIN. 133 tion of this endowment is the foundation of physi- cal as well as mental and moral improvement. Those nations have the best formed heads who have been possessed of the best histories or tradi- tions, and who have been called to the highest exercise of memory ; for in this consists the prin- cipal means of advancing the arts of civilization and of maintaining the dominion of truth and religion both over mind and body. The very act of acquiring, recording, or recollecting true knowl- edge is attended by a state of brain and a sobriety of manner which tend at once to imbody, imper- sonate, and fix its advantages in the individual so employed, and to perpetuate the benefit in his off- spring. If therefore the increase of schools did nothing more than demand a general employment of youthful memory in acquiring truth, it would accomplish immense good, for this is always asso- ciated more or less with control of the body, and it will moreover be the groundwork of right reason when coming circumstances shall require severer exercise of intellect. M CHAPTER XVI. THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL HABIT ON THE CHARAC- TER OF THE MEMORY. It is remarkable that persons endowed with an energetic and busy imagination have been fre- quently most defective as regards verbal memory, at least in the power of recollecting words. Thus Rousseau and Coleridge always found it difficult to remember even a few verses, although composed by themselves. The reason seems to be, that their minds quickly caught hold of the ideas expressed, and at once associated them with others, much in the same manner that we find delirious persons do under certain conditions of the nervous system ; the powers of perception being entire, but the at- tention being occupied by mental objects rather than sensible ones, as already described under the head of , abstraction. The nervous system of such persons is employed in other relations than those best adapted to the use of memory. The celebrated Porson was a man of a contrary stamp. Recollection was the habit of his mind, and his life was a mixed commentary on profane and sacred learning, and his genius was like a phosphorescence on the graves of the dead. It INFLUENCE OF HABIT ON MEMORY. 135 is said of him that nothing came amiss to his mem- ory. " He would set a child right in his two- penny fable-book, repeat the whole of the moral tales of the Dean of Badajoz, a page of Athenaeus on cups, or of Eustathius on Homer. He could bring to bear at once on any question every pass- age from the whole range of Greek literature that could elucidate it ; and approximate on the instant the slightest coincidence in thought or ex- pression ; and the accuracy was quite as surprising as the extent of his recollection.' ' This facility was the result of early and continued habit. Dr. Arnold had a remarkable memory. He quoted from Dr. Priestley's Lectures on History, when in the professor's chair at Oxford, from the recollection of what he had only read when no more than eight years of age. His memory ex- tended to the exact state of the weather on par- ticular days, or the exact words and position of passages which he had not seen for twenty years. This faculty was more particularly acute on sub- jects of history and geography, from the early habit of exercising it on these subjects ; having been taught to go accurately through the stories of the pictures and portraits of the successive English reigns before he was eight years old, and being at that age accustomed to recognize at a glance the different counties of a dissected map of England. The power of memory, provided the brain be in a healthy state, will be proportioned to the determination with which an individual attends to the subject he would remember; that is, in pro- 136 INFLUENCE OF MENTAL HABIT ON portion to the motive. If fancy interfere, memory is disturbed. This strength of purpose has always characterized those who have been celebrated for power of memory, and this will of course mainly arise from the feeling of importance which habit or teaching may attach to the object in view. Thus Cyrus is said to have learned the name of every soldier in his army, that he might be able to command them the better ; and Mithridates, for the same reason, became acquainted with the lan- guages of the twenty-two nations serving under his banners. It is stated by Eusebius that Esdras restored the sacred Hebrew Volumes by memory, when they had been destroyed by the Chaldeans. St. Anthony, the Egyptian hermit, could not read, but knew all the Scriptures by heart from having heard them. Pope Clement V. impaired his mem- ory from a fall on the head, but by dint of appli- cation he recovered its powers so completely, that Petrarch informs us that he never forgot any thing that he had once perused. Are we to conclude that this principle of the mind assumes varieties of manifestation, according to the facility which different conformations of brain or sense afford; or are w^e to infer that mind is created with diversified degrees and kinds of this capacity 1 Facts point to the conclusion that the manifestation of memory is modified by the state of the nervous system in relation to the power of attending. Hence memory is matured by habit ; for, in order to a perfect reminiscence, the mind must act upon the nervous organization in such a manner as to excite in it a sense of the images re- THE CHARACTER OF THE MEMORY. 137 called. This is sometimes so powerfully excited, that we unintentionally imitate in our action that which we would describe. Circumstantial signs are associated in our ideas, and they often pro- duce the effect, not only in our minds, but in our features. Thus Descartes, being fondly in love with a girl who squinted, never spoke of her with- out squinting. If the brain be occupied or excited by disease, or distracted by mental perturbation, the will has but little power in directing the attention, either to the recollection of past impressions or to the observation of things present. A man is then said to be discomposed ; the healthy order of his thoughts is broken, his memory is confused, his attention dis- turbed. The habit of using the mind in any particular direction, or on any class of objects, gives a prom- inence and readiness to that part of the nervous system which is called into exercise, and therefore the memory employed in daily reasoning is facile, in proportion to habit, as long as we continue in health. The habit of mind, then, actually alters the condition and power of the instruments , of mental manifestation, and, within certain limits, qualifies it for use, according to the extent and kind of demand made upon it ; thus proving, beyond controversy, that ordinary memory de- pends on mental determination in the use of a healthy organization. The power itself originates in that which attends, intends, wills, and not in that which is acted on by the will. Seeing, then, that mental confusion arises from inaptitude of M* 138 INFLUENCE OF MENTAL HABIT ON the brain, as relates to trie senses under the action of the will, we may fairly conclude that when the will shall act only in that which retains ideas, and deals with pure memory, there will be no confusion, but that all experienced facts will stand clearly in their exact order, as originally presented. As we advance in this subject we shall discover further reason for this conclusion. However excellent the development of a man's brain may be, he will be incapable of exercising his faculties to good purpose unless . he is ha- bituated to their control under the excitement of moral motives. The brain does not respond to the demands of reason but by degrees. It is not brought into a state suitable to the proper mani- festation of our faculties but by long habits. In fact the brain is not fully developed, as the instru- ment or medium of intellect, unless the mind have been regularly educated and drawn out by appro- priate employment during the period of its growth. The will, in exercising attention while acquiring knowledge and in reflection, that is, in using memory, really produces such a change in the size and order of the nervous fibrils of the brain, as to render it better and better adapted for use, as long as the laws of its formation allow or until disease interfere. We find then, instead of mind and memory resulting from brain, that brain, as far as it has relation to the mind, is developed and regulated in subserviency to the will : for, how- ever good the natural formation of a child's brain may be, he must grow up an idiot if his will be not called into action by moral influences ; that is, by THE CHARACTER OF THE MEMORY. 139 sympathy with other spirits. The histories of Cas- par Hauser, Peter the Wild Boy, and others, eluci- date this subject and confirm this conclusion. The desperate shifts to which materialists are driven to avoid an acknowledgment of spiritual existence, appears most palpably in their endeav- ors, physiologically, to account for memory. They say, sensation is the only source of faculty. But then they fail to show what experiences sensa- tion. They add, sensation would be sterile, un- productive of will and memory, if it did not remain impressed on the tissue of the brain, so as to be found after many years. All we see, hear, feel, taste, conceive, — is, say they, incorporated and constitutes part and parcel of our brains. What " a book and volume" a well-stored brain must be, all alive with indelible sensations ! This theory, like many others, is indebted to poetry rather than logic, and it certainly was stolen from Shakspeare, who makes Hamlet thus philosophically promise the ghost of his royal father :— " Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial, fond records, All saws of books, all forms of pleasures past, That youth and observation copied there ; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter." But it is surmised that the great dramatist in- tended, in the character of Hamlet, to represent a philosophical, poetical madman; and this theory of memory certainly appears well to become such a character; especially as he, at the same time, attributes a supremacy to the individual's will 140 INFLUENCE OF MENTAL HABIT ON which it does not and can not possess; for how- ever we may desire it, to wipe away the record, however fond or trivial, is impossible, although we may indeed become for a time unconscious of its existence by a full occupation of the mind on new objects of thought. It must, however, be acknowledged, that the material hypothesis of memory has been presented in so beautiful a manner as to fascinate, if not to satisfy, the understanding. We need not be sur- prised at the almost infinite ideas which may be interwoven into the fibrils of the brain, since micro- scopic observers assure us that the smallest visible point of its substance is not more than the l-8000th of an inch in diameter; it is therefore estimated that eight thousand ideas may be represented on every square inch of the thinking nerve-matter; so that, considering the large surface of such mat- ter in man, he may be supposed in this manner capable of receiving some millions of simple ideas or impressions. It seems vain to say, as do some advocates of this notion, that such broad methods of accounting for ideas do not favor materialism. Surely, if ideas exist only in the brain and spinal marrow, to die is to lose them. But let us in- quire what is an idea 1 It is a mind-act, which can not be but in a conscious being. Something more than atoms must be required for the production and recognition of our mental impressions ; some- thing consenting — beside brain. As images on the retina are not ideas until a man attend to them — for he does not see them while his mind is intently engaged about other things — so whatever THE CHARACTER OF THE MEMORY. 141 may exist actively or passively in the brain, affects not the consciousness till the mind is in corre- spondence with it. Conceive a man, say Milton, using imagination, memory, judgment, day after day, until the body is no longer convenient. He chooses, observe, to "justify the ways of God to man," but he does not meditate on knowledge really belonging to himself, but on the play of nerve-fibrils, which put him in mind of the past and present; for they in fact contain all his ideas, all his works, his experience, emotions, affections, thoughts. Now, if such be true, what was Milton when his body died ? Is there no answer ] Yes ! As that immortal spirit, when present in a com- modious body saw the " Paradise Lost" in the light which shone amid his darkness, so that same spirit, endowed with larger love and liberty and intellect, walks with God in the " Paradise Re- gained." His knowledge and inwrought history did not perish in the grave. Supposing that sensation and ideas were capable of being engraved, or cast, or daguereotyped on the leaves of the brain, the question still returns, what perceives them there ] The only possible answer is supplied in the Sacred Scripture : " No man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of man which is in him." The recurrence of the same ideas is only the recurrence of the same state in that which thinks ; but of course the same state in ordinary manifestation implies the return of simi- lar relations with regard to objects of attention. To experience exactly the same state of mind, we must exactly recall the past impressions in their original 142 INFLUENCE OF HABIT ON MEMORY, order, or we must be placed again in precisely the same circumstances in regard to the brain and the senses. A case will illustrate this observation. It may be found at full in the " Assembly Missionary Magazine." The Reverend William Tennant, while conversing in Latin with his brother, fainted and apparently died. His friends were invited to his funeral; but his physician, examining the body, thought he perceived signs of life : he remained in this state of suspended animation for three days longer, when his family again assembled to the funeral, and, while they were all sitting around him, he gave a heavy groan, and was gradually re- stored. Some time after his resuscitation he ob- served his sister reading : he asked what she had in her hand. She answered " a Bible :" he re- plied, " what is a Bible V 9 He was found to be totally ignorant of every transaction of his past life. He was slowly taught again to read and write, and afterward began to learn Latin under the tuition of his brother. One day while he was reciting a lesson from " Cornelius Nepos," he suddenly felt a shock in his head. He could then speak the Latin fluently as before his illness, and his memory was in all respects completely restored. His brain was no longer so diseased or disordered in its circulation as to prevent his mind from returning to its former relations. Objects again excited their appropriate associations with recorded ideas, and he recollected what he previously knew ; his will was as capable of acting on his brain as it did when acquiring Latin at first — his nervous system was again obedient. CHAPTER XVII. THE CONNECTION OF MEMORY WITH DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. Although memory is evinced in very different degrees, and under. various modifications in differ- ent individuals, we must not conclude that this en- dowment is essentially diversified in its nature and extent, as it appears to be. Many facts tend to prove that persons may possess large stores of re- corded impressions without being aware of it. Perhaps every image or idea received through the senses is really so preserved that, under circum- stances yet to come, they may each and every one be perceived and recognized in their proper con- nection with each other, so as to enable the cor- rected and unclouded reason hereafter to read the wisdom and providence of God as permanently written in the minutest circumstances of each one's experience, to discern distinctly the eternal contra- riety between truth and falsehood, good and evil ; to trace their operation on the mind, to perceive how the human will is rendered responsible by knowledge, and how hopes and efforts are excited by mental associations, and, consequently, how just and beautiful is the royal law of loving our neigh- 144 THE CONNECTION OF MEMORY bor as ourselves. In short, we may hereafter be able to understand the force of circumstances in the development of character, the full weight of education and accountableness, and from the intelli- gence growing out of the feeling and reflection of the past, to converse without restraint with higher or more advanced intelligences, and to exercise our faculties aright in new and loftier regions where we shall learn that our living spirits have been ex- posed in this world of trial and darkness to nothing accidental, to nothing trivial ; but that other spirits have been permitted to be busy with our sensations and ideas for specific purposes of temptation, in just relation to our own moral state, for spiritual exaltation, or even, may we not say, for the more mysterious abandonment of the soul to evil ; there- by the better to exhibit the awful sublimity of di- vine government, which will ultimately subdue to the vengeance of love the most opposing elements, and render darkness itself the medium of glory. We know that persons may, during sleep and m certain conditions of disease, exercise a memory of which they are wholly unconscious in their waking hours, or while enjoying ordinary health ; in short, a memory which has no purpose in con- nection with present existence. There is an illustrative case related by Dr. Dyce, of Aberdeen. The patient was an ignorant servant girl, and the affection began with fits of sleepiness, which came suddenly upon her. After these paroxysms had been frequently renewed, she ;egan to talk a great deal during their continuance, without being sensible of any thing that was passing WITH DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. 145 about her. In this state she on one occasion dis- tinctly repeated the baptismal service of the Church of England, and concluded with an extemporary- prayer. In her case a circumstance was remarked, which in other instances has also been observed, namely, that she perfectly recollected during the paroxysm what took place in former paroxysms, though she had no remembrance of it during the intervals. This is exactly what occurs in many cases of insanity and delirium. I have frequently conversed with persons under both forms of disor- der, during fits of excitement, and have found them perfectly at home concerning fancies and impres- sions which passed before their minds while con- versing with me in previous paroxysms ; but, in their lucid periods, their whole existence during the fits was quite a blank to them. Dr. Pritchard mentions a lady who was liable to sudden attacks of delirium. They often com- menced while she was engaged in interesting con- versation ; and on such occasions it happened that, on her recovery from the state of delirium, she in- stantly recurred to the conversation she was engag- ed in at the time of the attack. To such a degree was this carried on, that she could even complete an unfinished sentence. During one paroxysm she would pursue the train of ideas which had occu- pied her mind in a former fit. The human spirit uses the brain as long as this organ is fit for its purposes, md therefore conscious associated memory is the result of mental action on the brain ; and whenever the thinking principle is remembering and directed to the body and its 10 N 146 THE CONNECTION OF MEMORY senses, there is probably a reproduction of that very state of nerve or of brain which accompanied the first impression of each remembered idea ; and, probably, the brain being again put in the same condition, or nearly so, by any cause, as for instance by a stimulus, would facilitate the act of the mind in recalling any impression which had occurred in a similar state of brain ; because a return of this state is necessary while mind is acting with the senses. Dr. Abercrombie relates the following case, on the authority of a respectable clergyman of the Church of England, which aptly illustrates this point. A young woman of the lower rank, aged nineteen, became insane. She was gentle, and ap- plied herself eagerly to various operations. Before her insanity, she had learned to read and form a few letters, but during her insanity she taught herself to write perfectly, though all attempts to teach her had failed, as she could not attend. She had in- tervals of reason, which frequently continued for three weeks or longer, during which she could neither write nor read; but immediately on the return of her insanity, she recovered her power of writing and reading perfectly. Other cases might be related, on the best autho- rity, in which individuals have, during one state, retained all their original knowledge, but during the other state, that only which had been acquired after the first attack. The following history, ab- breviated from Dr. Abercrombie's statement, will further illustrate the fact that memory, as well as other faculties, may exist to a greater extent than WITH DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. 147 our ordinary use of recollection would warrant us to suppose. A girl, seven years of age, employed in tending cattle, was accustomed to sleep in an apartment next to one which was frequently occu- pied by an itinerant fiddler, who was a musician of considerable skill, and who often spent a part of the night in performing pieces of a refined descrip- tion. These performances were noticed by the child only as disagreeable noises. After residing in this house for six months she fell into bad health, and was removed by a benevolent lady to her own home ; where, on her recovery, she was employed as a servant. Some years after she came to reside with this lady, the wonder of the family was strongly excited by hearing the most beautiful music during the night, especially as they spent many waking hours in vain endeavors to dis- cover the invisible minstrel. At length the sound was traced to the sleeping room of the girl, who was fast asleep, but uttering from her lips sounds exactly resembling those of a small violin. On further observation it was found, that after being about two hours in bed she became restless, and began to mutter to herself; she then uttered tones precisely like the tuning of a violin, and at length, after some prelude, dashed off into elaborate pieces of music, which she performed in a clear and ac- curate manner, and with a sound not to be dis- tinguished from the most delicate modulations of that instrument. During the performance she sometimes stopped, imitated the re-tuhing her instrument, and then began exactly where she had stopped, in the most correct manner. These par- 148 THE CONNECTION OF MEMORY oxysms occurred at irregular intervals, varying from one to fourteen, or even twenty nights ; and they were generally followed by a degree of fever. After a year or two her music was not confined to the imitation of the violin, but was often exchanged for that of a piano, which she was accustomed to hear in the house where she now lived; and she then also began to sing, imitating exactly the voices of several ladies of the family. In another year from this time she began to talk a great deal in her sleep, in which she seemed to fancy herself instructing a younger companion. She often des- canted with the utmost fluency and correctness on a great variety of topics, both political and religious ; the news of the day, the historical parts of Scripture, of public characters, of members of the family, and of their visitors. In these discussions she showed the most wonderful discrimination ; often combined with sarcasm, and astonishing powers of memory. Her language through the whole was fluent and correct, and her illustrations often forcible and even eloquent. She was fond of illustrating her subjects by what she called a fable, and in these her imagery was both appropriate and elegant. "She was by no means limited in her range — Buonaparte, Wellington, Blucher, and all the kings of the earth, figured among the phantasmagoria of her brain; and all were animadverted upon with such freedom from restraint, as often made me think poor Nancy had been transported into Madame Grenlis's Palace of Truth." She has been known to conjugate correctly Latin verbs, which she had probably heard in the school-room of the family, WITH DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. 149 and she was once heard to speak several sentences very correctly in French, and at the same time stating that she heard them from a foreign gentle- man. Being questioned on this subject when awake, she remembered having seen this gentle- man, but could not repeat a word of what he said. During her paroxysms it was almost impossible to awake her; and when her eyelids were raised, and a candle brought near her eye, the pupil seemed insensible to the light. During the whole period of this remarkable affection, which seems to have gone on for at least ten or eleven years, she was, when awake, a dull and awkward girl, very slow in receiving any in- struction, though much care was bestowed upon her; and, in point of intellect, she was much infe- rior to the other servants of the family. She show- ed no kind of turn for music, and had not any recollection of what passed during her sleep. We are not surprised to find that this singular and interesting girl afterward deviated from the path of virtue and became insane. The surprise is, that those persons who exhibited kindness to her in the early history of her life, should have abandoned her when disposed to self-abandonment. This is not the manner of a true Christian spirit, which exerts itself to counteract ignorance and de- lusion, and deems those most pitiable and most worthy of watchful care, who are farthest removed from the enjoyment of truth and purity. She had evidently labored under disease of the brain, es- pecially that part which is influenced by the higher intellectual faculties ; therefore the greater should 150 THE CONNECTION OP MEMORY have been the care of her friends to protect her from the persuasions of sensual temptation, which always becomes mighty in proportion to the de- velopment of the animal propensities, unless con- trolled by motives derived from superior knowledge and expectations. Double consciousness is curiously tested in the case of a person who can not preserve attention to his body, or to things around him, in conse- quence of being overpowered by fatigue. He sits, we will suppose, in some uneasy position, not allowing him to resign himself to sleep, but keeping him in a state of alternation between im- perfect sleeping and waking; so that he is con- stantly correcting the aberrations of consciousness that occur in the mind, when the will ceases to act on the senses, by the returning consciousness of his situation when slightly roused. Here the in- dividual recognizes the double mode of his exist- ence, and in the course of a few minutes passes several times from the one state to the other, dreaming one instant and reasoning the next. However the fact may be explained, he is con- scious of transition and loses not the sense of his identity, although the memory associated with the exercise of the senses is distinctly seen to differ from that which exists during their suspense ; for, in reality, the perceptions of the difference be- tween the objects of the memory in the dreaming and in the wakeful conditions, constitutes all by which the mind knows the difference between sleep and vigilance. When the exercise of memory is disordered, as, WITH DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. 151 for instance, by disease of the brain, it is often difficult for the patient to awake to a conscious- ness of realities ; and he is apt, as in cases of in- sanity, to blend the memory of dreams with the impressions of objects on his senses; or even, while apparently gazing at a real scene, to be attending only to an imaginary or remembered one. This state was exemplified in the case of an aged gentleman, whose remarkable affection was lately the subject of public inquiry, and who, while looking out of a window on a wide prospect in England, described it to his housekeeper as a scene in Barbadoes, where he had an estate, and the different parts of that estate he pointed out very minutely. This individual suffered from dis- ease which often rendered him incapable of com- paring ideas with present impressions, or dreaming with wakefulness, and of course rendered his mem- ory almost as uncertain when awake as when in a dream. CHAPTER XVIII. FURTHER FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS IN PROOF OF THE IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. We daily experience the recurrence of past im- pressions to be entirely independent on the will, and we are often surprised at the distinctness with which scenes that had long been lost in oblivion suddenly reappear without the possibility of our detecting the cause of their revival. That such resurrections of thought and impression result from some constant law of our existence, there can not be a doubt; but that the recognized influence of association is insufficient for the purpose of ex- plaining the fact, we possess abundant proof, in those examples of renewed recollection or its loss, which are so common in consequence of disease. Sir Astley Cooper relates the case of a sailor who was received into St. Thomas's Hospital, in a state of stupor, from an injury in the head, which had continued some months. After an operation he suddenly recovered, so far as to speak, but no one in the hospital understood his language. But a Welsh milk- woman, happening to come into the ward, answered him, for he spoke Welsh, which was his native language. He had, however, been IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. 153 absent from Wales more than thirty years, and previous to the accident had entirely forgotten Welsh, although he now spoke it fluently, and recollected not a single word of any other tongue. On his perfect recovery, he again completely forgot his Welsh, and recovered his English. An Italian gentleman, mentioned by Dr. Rush, in the beginning of an illness spoke English; in the middle of it, French ; but, on the day of his death, spoke only Italian. A Lutheran clergy- man, of Philadelphia, informed Dr. Rush that Germans and Swedes, of whom he had a large number in his congregation, when near death, always prayed in their native languages, though some of them, he was confident, had not spoken them for fifty or sixty years. An ignorant servant girl, mentioned by Coleridge, during the delirium of fever, repeated, with perfect correctness, pass- ages from a number of theological works in Latin, Greek, and Rabbinical Hebrew. It was at length discovered that she had been servant to a learned clergyman, who was in the habit of walking back- ward and forward along a passage by the kitchen, and there reading aloud his favorite authors. Dr. Abercrombie relates the case of a child, four years of age, who underwent the operation of trepanning while in a state of profound stupor from a fracture of the skull. After his recovery, he retained no recollection either of the operation or the accident ; yet, at the age of fifteen, during the delirium of a fever, he gave his mother an exact description of the operation, of the persons present, their dress, and many other minute par- 154 IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. ticulars. Dr. Pritchard mentions a man who had been employed with a beetle and wedges, splitting wood. At night he put these implements in the hollow of an old tree, and directed his sons to ac- company him the next morning in making a fence. In the night, however, he became mad. After several years his reason suddenly returned, and the first question he asked was, whether his sons had brought home the beetle and wedges. They, being afraid to enter into an explanation, said they could not find them ; on which he arose, went to the field where he had been to work so many years before, and found, in the place where he had left them, the wedges and the iron rings of the beetle, the wooden part having moldered away. It is a remarkable fact that, in many instances, disorder of faculty, more particularly of memory, having resulted from extensive organic disease of the brain, yet individuals so afflicted have, never- theless, had lucid intervals and a perfect restoration of memory. This has been so marked, in some cases, as to have induced the hope of recovery when death has been near at hand, and has even rapidly ensued, from the increase of the very dis- ease which led to the mental incapacity. Mr. Marshall relates, that a man died with a pound of water in his brain, who, just before death, became perfectly rational, although he had been long in a state of idiocy. Dr. Holland refers to similar cases, and I have witnessed one. Now, unless we con- clude that mind has been re-created on such occa- sions, in accommodation to the organic defects, we IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. 155 must conclude that the mind exists in its integrity, when once formed, distinct as the light of heaven ; though, like it, subject to eclipse and cloud in its earthly manifestations. Many such cases might be adduced, but the foregoing facts suffice to prove that, though a healthy condition of the brain is essential to the proper manifestation of mind in this state of being, or in keeping with the use of the senses, yet that a history of events lies hidden in the soul, which only requires suitable excitement and appropriate circumstances to cause it to be unfolded to the eye of the mind, in due order, like a written roll. And, moreover, these facts indicate that our bodies and our minds are mercifully constituted, in mutual fitness and accommodation to each other and the world we dwell in. They also show that the active employment of the will, and bodily health with diversified bodily engagements, are the best means of correcting that tendency to mental ab- sence which precedes and accompanies insanity. Moreover, these cases, as well as many others equally well authenticated, " furnish proofs and instances that relics of sensation may exist for an indefinite time in a latent state, in the very same order in which they were originally impressed.' " Indeed, activity and intensity of all mental power seems to depend on the removal of bodily impedi- ment. At least we see that certain states of body allow the mind to act, without the consciousness of difficulty or effort. Thus Dr. Willis relates the case of a gentleman, who expected his fits of in- 156 IMMATERIAL NATURE OP MEMORY. sanity with impatience, because of the facility with which he then exercised his memory and imagina- tion. He said, " every thing appeared easy to me. No obstacles presented themselves, either in theory or practice. My memory acquired, all of a sud- den, a singular degree of perfection. Long pass- ages of Latin authors occurred to my mind. In general, I have great difficulty in finding rythmical terminations ; but then I could write verses with as great facility as prose." I knew a clergyman, of fine intellect, who was remarkable for fits of hesi- tancy in preaching; but who, in his dreams, was accustomed to express himself with intense and most fluent eloquence. Dr. Haycock, professor of medicine, in Oxford, would give out a text, and deliver a good sermon on it, in his sleep, but was incapable of such discourse when awake. A wri- ter in Frazer's Magazine mentions a lady who performed every part of the Presbyterian service in her sleep. Some of her sermons were pub- lished. They consist principally of texts of Scrip- ture appropriately strung together. In the Edinburgh Journal of Science, a lady is described as being subject to disease, during which she repeated great quantities of poetry in her sleep, and even capped verses for half an hour at a time, never failing to quote lines beginning with the final letter of the preceeding, till her memory, or rather her brain, was exhausted. We can not rationally suppose that the peculiar states of the brain, under which memory has thus recurred, acted in any other way than either as a IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. 157 stimulus or medium of action to something always ready to act. These facts, therefore, contribute to make it probafcle that all thoughts are in them- selves imperishable ; " 4 yea, in the very nature of a living spirit, it may be more possible that heaven and earth should pass away than that a single thought should be loosened or lost from that living chain of causes, to all whose links, conscious or unconscious, the free will, — our only absolute itself, — is co-extensive and co-present. " # How awful is the conviction, that the book of judgment is that of our life, in which every idle word is recorded ; and that no power but His who made the soul can obliterate our ideas and our deeds from our remembrance, or blot out trans- gressions and purify our spirits from the actual in- dwelling of evil thoughts ! Every individual experience amply testifies that the forgotten incidents of long-past years require only the touch of the kindling spirit to start up, in all their pristine freshness, before us. How often do we remember having recognized in our dreams those feelings and circumstances which had been lost to our waking consciousness, in the accumu- lated events which passing time had impressed upon our minds ! And although we can not say that we acknowledge, as belonging to our own actual experience, all the visionary combinations which are thus presented to our notice in dreams, we yet feel that every object in them is familiar to our knowledge. Some persons, as we have said, * Coleridge. o 158 IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. on the near approach of death have spoken of the incidents of their lives as being simultaneously pre- sented before them as if in a magic mirror, every line as if fixed upon a tablet by the light, exactly as that revealing light fell on it. The portrait of the soul is the perfect reflection of itself, and every man must see his own character thus for ever visi- ble to the eye of God, and, probably, hereafter to angels and to men. The present consciousness of life is but a condi- tion of mind, and our enjoyments are but expres- sions of the state of our wills ; therefore a change of state makes no alteration in our characters, but serves only to exhibit them in new aspects. Thus variety of circumstances tests the stability of our moral principles ; but these can be modified only by the relation in which the soul stands with regard to God, the source of moral law ; for death is but a change of state, not of moral character. In connection with this subject it is interesting to remember that immediately preceding death the mind is commonly occupied about those things with which it has been most intimate during health. Thus Napoleon's last words words were " Head" — " Army." Those of a celebrated judge were " Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharged." Cardinal Beaufort cried, "What, no bribing death!" Reason and revelation agree, then, in asserting, that absolute forgetfulness, or obliteration, is im- possible ; and that all the events of our history are written in our living spirits ; and, whether seen or IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. 159 unseen, will there remain forever, unless removed by the act of a merciful Omnipotence ! It is true, that a thousand incidents will spread a veil between our present consciousness and the record on the soul, but there the record rests waiting the judg- ment of God. These sublime facts deeply warn us as to the manner in which we suffer our facul- ties to be engaged, not only as their exercise affects ourselves, but also in their influence on the destiny of others. Viewing the subject, then, both physiologically and metaphysically, we must infer that memory has relation to another mode of existence ; and that though, as regards this sphere of being, recollection is greatly influenced by the will, yet that much lies stored in latency, which can only be called into ex- ercise under coming circumstances, when the will shall be more largely endowed, in a manner corre- sponding with its new relations, and thus be ena- bled to connect new facts with past impressions. The reasoning and undisturbed spirit shall then un- derstand the meaning of all associated knowledge, and memory shall preserve within us a conscious- ness of all we have experienced through this life, and add it to that which is to come. Memory, in- deed, seems intended to qualify us to treasure im- pressions in all worlds, and to carry on the record and history of our feelings from time to eternity. But if the experience of earth is to be our all, then memory is without a sufficient purpose. Is death indeed to end the scene in perpetual oblivion ? Is knowledge itself, though the result of a laborious 160 IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. life of attention and of effort, to close forever, like a beautiful symphony, significant of richer harmony to come, but yet terminating, we know not why, in abrupt and eternal silence % Is the stream to be lost, not in ocean, but in nothing ! No. The ever- lasting future grows upon the past ; remembrance is the basis of eternal knowledge. In fact, the full purpose of any one of our intellectual endowments does not appear to be fulfilled in the limited and broken exercise which is afforded to it in the pres- ent stage of being, since the utmost advantage we derive from the employment of our faculties now is to become religious, that is, to be re-bound to the worship and enjoyment of God. Can it be that this re-binding of the prodigal soul to the Eternal Father is only for deatK, like the victim bound to the altar, to be sacrificed and consumed to ashes, from which no Phoenix-life arises ] Our best ratiocination, under the stimulus of the highest and purest affections, is only an ability to reason from things past to things future, and from experience to analogy ; thence obtaining the promise, the desire, the assurance of enlarged capacity for understanding and blessedness ; since hope and doubt, in equal balance, are otherwise the only ends of our utmost knowledge here. But expectation and inquiry are purposeless, if there be not a futurity in the mind of God for us, which shall illuminate the chaos and satisfy the trustful soul. Can it be that our Maker has given us a life so rich in promise and excitation merely to terminate in a question that must receive no IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. 161 answer. Is it not most consonant with simple reason, as well as with revelation (which is God's response to reason), to believe that our holy desires are properly directed forward to coming events for their fruition ; and that /what we know, or think we know, now, is intended only to excite our longing for the larger knowledge reserved for hereafter. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all who live for Him live in Him — the life itself; and what we taste of life in this world is but the covenant and agreement of God with our spirits, — a covenant that can not be broken. As we can not believe that Omnipotence ever created even an atom of matter and afterward an- nihilated it, so we can not believe that mind and spirit, created in his own likeness, capable of communion with Himself, and so far partaking of his own nature, should ever perish. Every im- pression, every idea, every sensation has a place in the individuality of every soul's experience, and is appropriate and necessary to the growth and edification of that soul, and can not be destroyed without the undoing of the work which Divine Wisdom and power have accomplished ; so that to suppose a human being annihilated, or any part of his experience forever blotted out, is to imagine providence without a purpose, and omniscient wisdom without an object or an end worthy of human creation. And are not the facts we have related concerning attention and memory in per- fect agreement with this conclusion of our reason ? 11 o* 162 IMMATERIAL NATURE OF MEMORY. Here, then, let us pause and ponder on the wonders of our mental and moral being, and the vastness of our destiny as the offspring of the Everlasting Father. PART II. THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL DETERMINATION AND EMOTION OVER THE BODY. CHAPTER I. THE POSITIVE ACTION OF THE MIND ON THE BODY, ASSERTED AND EXEMPLIFIED IN THE EFFECTS OF EXCESSIVE ATTENTION. Physiology teaches us, by a multitude of facts, that every atom of the animal structure is sub- jected to perpetual change ; and that every motion, every action of the body, is the consequence of alteration in the vital condition of one or more of its parts, ^ot a thought, not an idea, not an affection or feeling of the mind can be excited without positive change in the brain and in the secretions ; for every variation in the state of the whole, or any portion, of the nervous system, is of course accompanied by a correspondent change in those organs and functions which it furnishes with energy. "^ The body can be influenced only by four kinds of force, — chemical, mechanical, vital, and mental. Health and enjoyment may be destroyed mechani- 164 ACTION OF MIND ON BODY cally, as by a blow. Any thing which acts chemi- cally may also injure the body, . as fire. No ar- guments can be required to show that the life of the body is maintained in spite of a constant ten- dency to death ; that is, the resident life is inces- santly counteracting the common chemical and mechanical influences which are around it. De- composition and decay commence the moment life leaves the body. So then life appears to be a distinct power. But what is it 1 We know not. It is neither tangible nor visible. It can not be weighed nor tested. Like the soul, it is discover- able only by its effects on chemical and mechan- ical agents. It is not the production of the body, for without it the body itself could not have com- menced. It operates on one body, through another, so as to produce a third. It is something capable of being communicated, and is probably~independ- ent on organization, at least some fluids are im- bued with it. The purpose of vitality, as regards man, is to bring inert matter into such relations to the mind as that the mind may be developed through it, by making physical organization sub- servient to consciousness and volition. Life is the source of the body's growth, preservation, and reproduction. It exhibits itself in modifying the action of external influences, and by the evolution of new forms under the power of impregnation. But the mind acts as clearly and distinctly on the body as either chemical, mechanical, or vital agen- cy ; therefore the mind must possess a distinct ex- istence, action, and force, capable of being super- added to life as life is to matter. Mind, in fact, ASSERTED AND EXEMPLIFIED. 165 is the mightiest power we know, and perhaps, properly speaking, the only power. Chemical ac- tion is but relative, and the result of some power constantly ready to act on matter according to cir- cumstances. Sulphuric acid and potash combine when brought into contact under ordinary circum- stances, because something produces a reciprocal change in their particles when within a certain distance of each other ; but this change is prevent- ed altogether by causing a galvanic current to in- fluence these bodies, and sulphuric acid may thus be passed through a solution of potash without their combining. We see, then, that chemical ac- tion is dependent on electrical action, and elec- trical action is dependent on some superior power ; the same, it may be, as that which causes gravita- tion, magnetism, polarity, heat, light, and which pervades all elements ; a power which can not be called material, and which obeys only that will which evoked the universe and still sustains it. In short, all power may be traced up directly to the mind that created and manages all things. This view of the action of matter may easily be earned on to a comparison with that of mind ; for we at once perceive the reasonableness of conclud- ing that created mind, as well as matter, may exist in a quiescent state until brought into relation with certain arrangements and conditions of matter, or with other minds, according to affinities and laws which operate only under the direct influence of some superior, all-pervading power. Such a notion is consistent with the facts within our knowledge, and brings us at once to the necessity of acknowl- 166 ACTION OF MIND ON BODY edging our total dependence, for all the purposes of our being, on the will that wisely and benevo- lently determines how and when we shall feel, so that under one set of circumstances we shall be un- conscious, and under another be thoroughly kindled with emotion. We have already observed the power of the will in directing and enforcing the motions of the mus- cles, but if we further reflect on the various ways in which will operates, we shall not fail to be struck with the vast extent of its influences, not only over the muscles, but also over the source of bodily life itself, for its exercise modifies the action both of the brain and the heart — taking possession, so to speak, of the fountains of energy, and regulating in some measure the supply of blood and life to different parts of the body. This is said not merely of the ordinary power of emotion, but of voluntary em- ployment of the body ; not of sudden impulse, but of steady purpose, such as the determined student or the artist evinces in his patient labor with the book, the pen, the pencil, or the graver. We will confine our observation for a moment to the more mechanical work of the engraver as an example of simple attention. He sits with his eye and mind intent upon the fine lines of his copper or steel plate; and, as he looks more earnestly he holds his breath; and as his attention strengthens in its fixedness, his breathing becomes audible and irregular. Now and then he is forced to sigh to re- lieve his burdened and excited heart ; for the blood is retarded in the lungs and brain, and if they be not soon relieved by some change of object or of ASSERTED AND EXEMPLIFIED. 167 action he turns faint and dizzy. Being wrought up to the same intensity day after day, he comes at length upon the extreme verge of danger. The right ventricle of the heart becomes oppressed in consequence of imperfect action of the lungs, while the general circulation is quickened, and thus dila- tation of the heart soon follows, with disordered liver and accumulation of black blood in the abdo- men, bringing on a long train of morbid sensations, with „ constant dread of coming death. Moderate, but frequent exercise in the open air, with cheerful society, as it would have prevented this miserable condition, will also still relieve it ; but if this duty be neglected the evil rapidly increases. The pa- tient's heart palpitates excessively when either the mind or the body is hurried; he is " tremblingly alive' ' in every limb, and his nervous system com- pletely fails him. Pallid, weak, timid, and tremu- lous, he is apt to become too sensitive to endure the anxieties of domestic duty ; and, if he be not sustained by high religious or moral principles, he seeks a respite from his wretchedness in the sooth- ing, yet aggravating narcotism of opium or tobacco, or in the insidious excitement of some fermented liquor; and thus gradually casts himself out from all happy and natural associations, and ends his days either as a hypocondriac, a madman, or a drunkard. This is not an exaggerated, but alas ! a common picture. The evil is aggravated in these cases by the state of the mind and that of the body being equally irritable, they act and react on each other, and the passions of the one, as well as the functions of the other, become so disordered that 168 ACTION OF MIND ON BODY perfect sleep can not be obtained, and the persistent exhaustion produces a chronic fever, for which rest, the only remedy, is sought in vain, except in the grave. The failure of the nervous system, and the fear- ful recourse to narcotics and stimulants for its re- lief, are often witnessed where the tyranny of Mam- mon exacts too long an attention to the mechanical and anxious business of art. Its results are still visible in a frightful degree among the operatives of our great manufactories, where the eye must be quick, and the hand ever ready for one monotonous action, hour after hour and day after day, with the mathematical precision and rapidity of machinery, even through all that period of life when nature most demands a cheerful diversity of object and action. But the commercial Moloch demands the perpet- ual sacrifice of almost the whole bodily and mental being of those who are providentially so poor as to have nothing to sell but themselves. The millions sterling which their labors have won from many lands belong to those who employ them ; how then shall they be protected % Ceaseless toil is their pro- tection, say some, because it preserves their morals ! This subject, however, is too large for these pages. The great fact which we would observe, is, the power of his will over the body, for a man dies from voluntary fatigue, in the determination to em- ploy his muscles. Whether he thus exhausts his vital energy in duty or for the indulgence of his ap- petites, he still demonstrates the dominance of his will, since he undergoes the extremity of toil to ASSERTED AND EXEMPLIFIED. 169 answer his own purpose, under whatever circum- stances he may be constrained to exert himself. I The will, then, is the master principle, even in a 1 I slave, and therefore its moral state must determine | every man's moral destiny. CHAPTER II. INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. If the nervous system allowed the mind to at- tend, reason would appear in its power as much at six years of age as at sixty. The child does reason then, and that correctly, to the extent of its knowl- edge; and is as capable of enjoying intellectual truth as in maturer years, provided the faculties be cultivated in an appropriate manner. Perhaps the most beautiful instance of such premature enjoy- ment is that furnished by Washington Irving, in his memoir of Margaret Davidson, a child, of whom it is stated that, when only in her sixth year, her lan- guage was elevated, and her mind so filled with poetic imagery and religious thought, that she read with enthusiasm and elegance Thomson's Seasons, The Pleasures of Hope, Cowper's Task, and the writings of Milton, Byron, and Scott. The sacred writings were her daily study ; and notwithstand- ing her poetic temperament, she had a high relish for history, and read with as much interest an ab- struse treatise, that called forth the reflective pow- ers, as she did poetry or works of imagination. Her physical frame was delicately constituted to receive impressions, and her mother was capable INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. 171 of observing and improving the opportunity afford- ed to instruct her. Nothing was learned by rote, and every object of her thought was discussed in conversation with a mind sympathizing with her own. Such a course, however, while it demon- strates the power of the mind, proves also that such premature employment of it is inconsistent with the physiology of the body ; for while the spirit revel- ed in the ecstasies of intellectual excitement, the vital functions of the physical frame-work were fatally disturbed. She read, she wrote, she danced, she sung, and was the happiest of the happy ; but, while the soul thus triumphed, the body became more and more delicate, and speedily failed alto- gether under the successive transports. The brain of a child, however forward, is totally unfit for that intellectual exertion to which many fond parents either force or excite it. Fatal dis- ease is thus frequently induced ; and where death does not follow, idiocy, or at least such confusion of faculty ensues, that the moral perception is ob- scured, and the sensative child becomes a man of hardened vice, or of insane self-will. Many ex- amples of this may be found, particularly among the rigid observers of formal imitations of religion and the refined ceremonies of high civilization. There are numerous manuals to lead the infant mind from nature up to nature's God, as if it were in the nature of childhood to need manuals and catechisms of Botany, Geometry, and Astronomy to teach them the goodness of the Creator and the Savior. Fathers and mothers rather need manu- als to teach them how to treat their children, see- 172 INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. ing that nearly half of those brought forth die In infancy, and the majority of the survivors are mor- bid, both in mind and body. It is the parental character, in wisdom and love-watching, to bring the child into sympathy with true knowledge and affection, that represents and imitates the Divine Mind, as commended to our study by His acts. Even the persuasives of religious discipline, in- stead of falling like the gentle dew from heaven, are too frequently made hard, and dry, and harsh, as if the Gospel were the invention of a mathe- matical tyrant, to fashion souls by geometric rules, and not the expression of the mind of love, in- spiring by example. The contrast, in personal appearance and manner, between a child trained under the winning management of a wise, firm, commanding love, and another subjected to the despotic control of fear, is very striking. In the former, we observe a sprightly eye and open coun- tenance, with a genial vivacity and trustfulness in the general expression of the body ; a mixture of confiding sociality with intelligence, an alacrity of movement, and a healthiness of soul, evinced in generous activity and smiles. Even if the body be enfeebled, still a certain bright halo surrounds, as it were, the mental constitution. But physical, as well as intellectual vigor and enjoyment, are usually the happy result of that freedom of heart and generosity of spirit, which skillful affection endeavors to encourage. Then, in youth and manhood, a noble intelligence confirming the pro- priety of such early training; but the child who finds a tyrant instead of a fostering parent, if INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. 173 naturally delicate, acquires a timid bearing, a languid gait, a sallow cheek, a pouting lip, a stupid torpidity, or a sullen defiance ; for nature's defense from tyranny is either hard stupidity or cunning daring. In this country the feeble slave too often skulks through life a cowering and cowardly hypocrite ; defending himself from the craft and violence of others' selfishness by every meanness, and seeking his enjoyment by the sly, as if he feared to be found susceptible of pleasure. His character is engraven on his face. The child of robust frame will, however, learn to face the tyrant, and, acquir- ing his worse features, at length be fit only to associate with ruffians, or to drive slaves. Children are not formed for monotony and fix- edness : their nervous systems will not bear it with impunity, and even their very bones are intolerant of the erect position for any length of time. They are made to be restless and active, and are not healthy if forced to be otherwise. The system of excessive restraint is therefore unchristian, because it is unnatural ; for Christianity is not opposed to nature ; it is not a violence, but a superior influ- ence in correspondence with an inferior. It is a spirit that subdues by possessing the will, and which educates by inducing and fostering the sweet sympathies of religious love, — like the gen- tle dew, and the light and warmth of heaven, evolving the living seed. The government of fear and force is the plan of every imaginable hell, where each evil begets a greater, and terror and hatred torment each other. If, then, we would 174 INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. know how to manage a little child, let us imagine how Jesus would have treated it. Would he not have engaged its happiest feelings and affections, won its heart, and blessed it ? While sitting on his knee, would not the child have gazed into that "human face divine," and learned the gentleness and power of its Heavenly Father % Let it not be forgotten that the Savior said, " whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me : but whoso shall offend one of these little ones that belie veth in me, it were better that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck and he drowned in the depth of the sea." If the words from which we obtain the notion do not deceive us, superior and holy beings are concerned about our offspring, and each child has its guardian angel, who be- holds the face of God. How would that angel, if conversing with it, in visible beauty, talk to the child, and kindle its affections % Surely by show- ing the might of graciousness with sublime sim- plicity ; like that of the disciple whom Jesus loved, when he said, " little children love one another." That angel would be more successful in his teach- ing only, because he would be more accommo- dating to the body, more earnest, more gentle, more attractive, and more sympathizing. He would have no greater truths to inculcate than we have, but knowing more clearly than we do the delicacy of our mysterious constitution, and the worth of a soul, with its intellect and affections formed for eternity, he would act more gently and cautiously with its bodily temperament. Let us imitate the loving angel — the loving Savior — the INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. 175 loving God — in kindness toward little children, and show them nothing but love ; since they will respond to that spirit, but be repulsed into sin and agony by every other. Piety itself is not unfrequently rendered terrible by a perverted application of memory, to descrip- tions in which Omnipotence is associated with the final judgment and the terrors of guilt. Many a little child, whose susceptible heart is as ready to yield to the gentlest breath of affection as the aspen-leaf to the zephyr, and whose spirit sparkles with love as readily as a dew-drop with the light, acquires the habit of terror, and scarcely dares to look up because he is taught as soon as he can speak to repeat — " There's not a sin that we commit, Nor wicked word we say, But in the dreadful book 'tis writ, Against the judgment day." And the thoughtless and fond parent too frequently makes that appear to be wickedness and sin which, however proper to childhood, is inconvenient to those who should tenderly train it. Surely that is a dangerous expedient for the correction of a child, conscious of having offended the only being he has learned to love, and while perhaps in agony of heart begging pardon from a mother, to be told to remember " There is a dreadful hell And everlasting pains, Where sinners must forever dwell In darkness, fire, and chains — " And can a wretch as I Escape this cursed end," &c. ? Divine Songs for Children. 176 INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. There is reason to believe that insane despondency and a disposition to suicide, may often be traced to abuse of religious discipline, if religious it may be called, especially that form of it just alluded to. Thus the impression of despair is apt to be burned into the very brain, to " grow with its growth, and strengthen with its strength ;" so that in after-life the divine remedy scarcely effaces the callous scar, or else the youth thus ill-treated in his childhood, endeavors to escape from the haunting terror by persuading himself that re- ligion is invented only to keep wretches in order. Hence the glowing and glorious words of the liv- ing oracle — " There is joy among the angels in the presence of God over one sinner that repenteth" — is regarded only as an exquisite hyperbole. It falls dead upon the ear, as if it could not be, as it is, quickening truth from the lips of Him who is the Life. There is another abuse here demanding remark. No treatment can be more injudicious and inju- rious than that often resorted to, even in schools of high character, namely, the exertion of mem- ory, not for the sake of acquiring and retaining a knowledge of facts, which must always be useful, but merely to punish some dereliction. What good can arise from thus fatiguing the brain, by excessively straining that faculty, in the happy and spontaneous associations of which all the value of every acquirement consists ] No plan is more likely to disable the mind and impair the body, as the servant of mind; for by this practice the idea of fixing the attention on words becomes INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. 177 peculiarly irksome. The very countenance of a boy thus distressed is apt to assume an ex- pression of vacancy or irritability, and every func- tion of his life to indicate the mischief arising from a debilitated brain under disorderly asso- ciations. As the emulative success of classical education is generally dependent on an excessive determina- tion of mind, for the purpose of rapidly loading the memory, it is of course attended for the most part with a correspondent risk to the nervous sys- tem of aspirants after academic honors. Men- tally speaking, those who bear the palm in severe universities rarely survive the effort necessary to secure the distinction. Like phosphorescent in- sects their brilliance lasts but a little while, and is at its height when on the point of being extin- guished forever. The laurel crown is commonly for the dead ; if not corporeally, yet spiritually ; and those who attain the highest honors of their AlmcB Matres are generally diseased men. Having reached the object of their aim, by concentrating their energies in one object, an intellectual palsy too often succeeds, and their bodies partake of the trembling feebleness. If their ambition survive, and instead of slumbering away a dreamy exist- ence in some retired nook, they occupy promi- nent stations in public life, disease of the brain, heart, or lungs soon quenches their glory, and they fade away. The impression of undue determina- tion remains upon the brain, which continues sub- servient to the ambitious will until its structure and its functions fail together. The early effort 12 178 INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. opened a fountain of energy abruptly. It can not be perennial; the waste is more rapid than the supply ; and, like water bursting from its channel, it must run to waste, until violence ends in ex- haustion. It happens, too, that those sanguine spirits, who acquire knowledge with facility, and scatter it in wit, are rather the despisers of solid diligence; and therefore the great readers are mostly heavy-brained men, who make up in dog- ged determination and perseverance for lack of readiness in acquiring. With patience, equal to their ambition, they plod on for the prize. If they win it, their deadly passion is confirmed ; if they lose it, again they roll the stone against the hill and it returns to crush them. Yet who would depreciate mental effort 1 The memory must be trained, the soul must be determined to conquer its impediments, the moral being will, starve with- out a store of facts, the faculty of recollecting and arranging must be powerfully and regularly em- ployed, or the mind becomes a desultory vagrant. Without mental exertion in acquiring habits of thought, youth would pass into manhood with the medley intellect and ungovernable nervous system of the savage, with all the corresponding dis- orderly habits of bodily action. Education distin- guishes the energetic citizen from the fitful barba- rian ; the man who governs his body from the man who obeys it ; the man of principles from the man of impulses. But we ought not to forget that true healthy education consists in the motives which naturally and quietly educe or lead out the mind to think for itself, in sympathy with those who INJUDICIOUS EDUCATION. 179 have thought, not in the routine of school-tasks and verbal drudgery. Intellectually speaking, man is not gregarious, but every mind has a track of its own as well as a body of its own ; therefore, those who have felt the value of mental culture, and have taken their course untrammeled by task- work, have generally shown their intellectual vigor by a greater capacity of endurance as well as by freedom, boldness, and healthiness of thought. We may as well look for easy walking in a Chinese lady, whose feet have grown in iron shoes, and those very small ones, as for easy thinking in a mind that has been cast in a mold constructed to suit the minimi of the million. The reflective and perceptive faculties are too generally sacrificed at school for the sake of mere verbal memory ; and hence those who were really most highly endowed appeared, while there, most deficient scholars — such as Liebig, Newton, and Walter Scott. ' In conclusion of this chapter we may observe, that the modern system of education appears to be altogether unchristian ; undoubtedly it contrib- utes much to swell the fearful list of diseases, for it is founded on an unhealthy emulation, which ruins many both in body and in soul, while it qualifies none the better either for business knowledge, useful- ness, or enjoyment ; but, rather, together with the influence of the money valuation of the intellect, causes the most heroic spirits of our age to hang upon vulgar opinion and the state of the market. CHAPTER III. PECULIAR EFFECTS OF INORDINATE MENTAL DETERMINATION. The strongest brain will fail under the continu- ance of intense thought. All persons, who have been accustomed to close study, will remember the utter and indescribable confusion that comes over the mind when the will has wearied the brain. A curious example has already been given in the case of Spalding, who tells us that his attention having been long kept on the stretch, and also greatly distracted, he was called upon to write a receipt, but he had no sooner written two words than he could proceed no further. For half an hour he could neither think consecutively, nor speak, except in words which he did not intend. Afterward he recovered, and found that instead of writing on the receipt " fifty dollars, being half a year's rate," &c, he had written " fifty dollars, through the salvation of Bra — ," the last word be- ing left unfinished, and without his having the least recollection of what he intended it to be. This state presents a specimen of partial delirium or UNDUE MENTAL DETERMINATION. 1S1 waking dream ; the will still acting, but incapable of controlling the thoughts or connecting memory with present impression. This must depend on the state of nerve produced by the mental intensity, which, when continued to extreme exhaustion, we know to be capable of so altering the sensation as that objects presented to the eye assume appear- ances which do not belong to them. Thus Sir Joshua Reynolds, after being occupied many hours in painting, saw trees in lamp-posts, and moving shrubs in men and women. This kind of inability to command attention is most readily induced by monotonous study. Persons of lymphatic tem- perament are peculiarly liable to this kind of ex- haustion, and should therefore employ their minds with great caution, or otherwise their determina- tion will prove the destruction of their reason ; for, in fact, a persistence of this want of control over attention is insanity, as we see in those instances in which persons confound things together of an in- congruous nature ; as when the anatomist, having fatigued his nervous system by a long-continued dissection, talked of a town to which he referred as situated in the deltoid muscle. Disorder from excessive attention is sometimes manifested in a still odder manner, as in the case of the celebrated Dr. Watts, who, after great exertion of mind, thought his head too large to allow him to pass out at the study door. A gentleman, after delivering a lecture at the College of Surgeons, said that his head felt as if it filled the room. Sometimes fatigue produces permanent insanity. Thus, in the Ger- man Psychological Magazine, a case is related of a Q 182 PECULIAR EFFECTS OF UNDUE soldier who, after great fatigue, happened to read the book of Daniel, and from that moment believ- ed that he could perform miracles, such as plant an apple-tree which, by his power, should bear cher- ries. Determinate effort of mind sometimes in- duces a peculiar insanity, when the nervous system becomes habituated to extreme exhaustion. A cer- tain form of this malady occurs in paroxysms of ecstatic abstraction suddenly seizing the person and fixing him like a living statue ; with the body slight- ly bent, every limb rigid with rapture, the arms elevated, the fore-finger pointed to some imagined object, the eyelids staring wide, the eyes turned up with an intense and motionless expression, and the lips a little separated; in short, the whole attitude and countenance expressive of the most awful admiration. This is the description of a real case arising from intense concentration of thought, continued without regard to bod- ily exercise or proper change in the mental ob- ject.^ It is remarkable that similar states may be pro- duced by the will of another, even in those who have not shown any tendency to it, when they sur- render their wills to the impressions produced by another's action. Baron Dupotet, who lately made some noise in London by his feats of mesmerism, had the power, by his manoeuvers, of speedily throwing certain individuals either into sleep, or convulsions, or a rigid condition, such as that just described. This was effected without any collusion, and in many cases without the slightest idea on the patient's part of what was likely to follow. Such MENTAL DETERMINATION. 183 facts are never disputed by physiologists now, and, perhaps, they may be generally accounted for by the direct action of the mind on the body, or, at least, by mental excitement in connection with some disorder of the nervous system ; since they are quite in keeping with what we observe to arise indepen- dently of those tricks of hand called animal magnet- ism. In these cases, as far as I have witnessed them, there appears to be a propagation of impres- sion from the senses, especially sight, to the center of the individual's nervous system, thereby altering the direction of nervous energy. Intense and eager attention, with undefined dread, and with the eye fixed on the hand or eye of a person apparent- ly set upon bewitching one, is a process which few could submit to for any length of time without strange sensations being produced. Hence it has happened that a firm man, who knew nothing about the matter, has sat down with laughter, but soon his attention has been fixed upon the wizard's hand, and ere long he has looked unutterably stupid, like a drunkard, then turned pale, then became immov- able, except just as the magician before him was pleased to point — now with his nose to the ground — now upward — now aslant — now with body twist- ed this way — now that— now standing — now sit- ting—and now walking, or rather stalking, just as the pantomimic indications of the enchanter; and all this, as it appeared, simply from the effect of an unnatural and overpowering atten- tion on a brain unprepared by a habit of healthy action. In ecstasy or trance, the patient's mind is ab- 184 PECULIAR EFFECTS OF UNDUE sorbed on some object of imagination ; as the term ecstasy implies, persons so impressed are out of the body, engrossed in spiritual contemplations. The muscles are sometimes relaxed, at other times rigid ; the will, however, often continues to exert an influence over certain parts of the body, such as the organs of voice ; for though they are incapable of moving a limb, or being excited by any external stimulus, they nevertheless occasionally give ex- pression to their feelings by singing or speaking. This kind of entrancing delirium is apt to occur in persons afflicted by nervous disorder, especially where the will is wayward; and may frequently be produced in them by powerful excitement of the imagination, or by mesmeric manipulations. It is stated by individuals well qualified to detect im- position, that in these cases there exists a kind of transference and concentration of intelligence in certain parts of the nervous system, so that a sort of oracular faculty is developed, and the subjects of this affection become capable of describing things beyond the range of their senses, and of foretelling events. Dr. Copland states that many of the Ital- ian improvisatori possess their peculiar faculty only in this state of ecstasy, or, as it may be called, abnormal consciousness, from resolute attention to ideas. Probably the mind and the nervous system are intensely excited for some time previous to the development of ecstasy. There is a morbid acute- ness of feeling and thought, an inordinate employ- ment of the attention, kept up by preceding sen- sations, or some absorbing train of ideas, which MENTAL DETERMINATION. 185 exhaust the sensorium, and bring it into that state in which it often appears to be in those persons who accustom themselves to abstract studies and revery. This condition is more apt to occur when strong passions are associated with a weak body. A frequent and exhausting repetition of pleasurable feelings begets a marked predisposition to this dis- ordered action of the brain. If all that is stated concerning ecstasy be true, we are forced to the conclusion that, after the ex- haustion of brain is carried to a certain extent, the mind begins voluntarily to exert itself in a new and enlarged manner, so as to exhibit phenomena which have been named lucidity, exaltation of faculty, clairvoyance, &c. The transition state may pre- sent appearances like those of common delirium, dreaming, somnambulism, and madness. It is often accompanied by convulsions. A few cases of an extraordinary kind may best illustrate this curious subject. It has been testified that cat- aleptic patients often manifest a clairvoyant fac- ulty. A patient of Petetin, President of the Medical Society of Lyons, in this state, is said to have distinguished in succession several cards laid on her stomach under the bed-clothes ; she told the hour of a watch held in the closed hand of an inquirer, and recognized a medal grasped in the hand of another; she read a letter placed under the waistcoat of her physician, and mentioned the number of gold and silver coins contained in each end of a purse which had been slipped there by a skeptic. She told each of the persons present what he possessed about him most remarkable, and 186 PECULIAR EFFECTS OF UNDUE perceived through a screen what one person was doing. According to the testimony of the committee of the medical section of the French Royal Academy, a man named Paul, having been mesmerized, be- side many other equally wonderful things, read a book opened at random while his eyes were forci- bly closed by M. Jules Cloquet. He had been mesmerized by M. Foissac. The committee also bear evidence that other individuals in the same state could read distinctly and play at cards with the greatest dexterity and correctness. Their report also declares, " that in two somnambu- lists they found the faculty of foreseeing. One of them announced repeatedly, several months previously, the day, the hour, and the minute of the access and return of epileptic fits. The other announced the period of his cure. These previsions were realized with remarkable exact- ness.' ' Those who are curious in these marvels may find abundance of them in many modern works. It certainly would be passing strange should such re- lations all prove false, since the acutest observers of all ages have declared them to be true. At least, Hippocrates, Aretaeus, Aristotle, &c, de- scribe with great minuteness, and in strict accord- ance with the statements of recent and competent believers, a state of the body in which the powers of the soul are exalted. Thus, Hippocrates says, " there is a class of diseases in which men discourse with eloquence and wisdom, and predict secret and future events ; and this they do though they are MENTAL DETERMINATION. 187 ignorant rustics and idiots." Aretaeus states that the mind under certain circumstances of disease be- comes clear and prophetic, for some patients " pre- dict their own end and certain events of interest to those around, who think them talking deliriously, but nevertheless are amazed to find their predic- tions true." Alsaharavius says, he has known many epileptics who had a knowledge of things which he was sure they had never learned. The occasional prevision of the dying has been credited by almost every na- tion, and the faculty of second sight has been almost as universally acknowledged. In most of the cases related in this chapter, it is probable that the attention was kept so long in- tensely fixed on one set of objects, that at length the brain took on a new action, as if from physio- logical necessity, or because the law of its organi- zation demanded a change, violent in proportion to its abuse. We know that there is, while awake, a tendency to repeat sensations and ideas in an ac- customed manner, and that there is also, during the suspension of outward attention, a tendency to a state contrary to that previously existing ; thus a man who has been almost maddened by vain de- sire, say for food, will, during his sleep, enjoy a fancied feast. From this and many similar facts we learn that the mind possesses the power of se- curing its own satisfaction when withdrawn from the demands of the body ; that one train of ideas can be displaced only by substituting another ; that obedience to the laws of our bodily and mental 188 UNDUE MENTAL DETERMINATION. economy is imperative ; and hence, that there is a necessity for exercising the will in a judicious, moral, and religious manner, if we would enjoy a healthy habit of thinking and acting. CHAPTER IV. THE EFFECTS OF UNDUE ATTENTION TO ONE'S OWN BODY. It has been already observed, that the education of the senses is a mental act, in which attention and comparison are busily at work, to determine the relation of objects to each other and to the individ- ual regarding them. Where the organs are per- fect, the power of perception or the acuteness of sensation is in proportion to the power of the mind in directing attention, or in proportion to the degree in which the particular sense is used, hence we find microscopic observers, for instance, acquire such a command over their sight, in the use of their in- struments, as to detect the minutest variations in objects, and. such slight shades of difference as would be altogether overlooked by persons unaccustomed to such investigations. This education of sense, under the tuition of the will, is displayed in the most remarkable manner among those savage tribes, whose very existence depends upon the keenness of their senses, in discovering indications of danger or of safety among the wilds in which they dwell, and where civilized men would be wholly at a loss either to track prey or to avoid an enemy. The 190 UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. dominion of the mind over certain organs of the body is beautifully shown in such instances ; but there are curious facts in connection with this sub- ject well worthy of observation. It is not the senses merely that may be rendered more acute by effort of mind. Attention to any part of the body is capable of exalting the sensibility of that part, or of causing the consciousness concerning its state to be affected in a new manner. Thus a man may attend to his stomach till he feels the process of di- gestion ; to his heart, till conscious of its contrac- tions ; to his brain, till he turns dizzy with a sense of action within it ; to any of his limbs, till they tin- gle ; to himself, till tremblingly alive all over ; and to his ideas, till he confounds them with realities. We have remarked that persons of high intellect- ual endowment are capable of abstracting the at- tention from external objects, and of so applying it to the objects of thought as to become almost insen- sible to those of sense. On this power of abstrac- tion depends the degree and success of studious habit. By it reason expands the scope of her vis- ion, and acquires increased sagacity in every fresh exercise of her faculties. Fixing the attention on abstract truths is like lifting the veil between the world of sense and the world of spirit. By endeav- oring to look, we see farther along the vista of life, and by abstraction we place ourselves in a position to be actuated by new influences. By striving and urging after truth, we get more and more familiar with her footsteps. When we would leam more of some mystery important to us, we turn away from all other subjects, and cast our attention in UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. 191 upon the consciousness of our own spirits, as if ex- pecting there to discover a reply to our inquiry; and. by thus standing, as it were, in the attitude of expectation, to observe thoughts as they pass before us, we often discover great secrets, and find our moral nature enlightened and enlarged by new con- victions and new desires ; for by this mental retire- ment we become most susceptible of spiritual im- pressions. But, by some mysterious reaction, this strong awakening of the mind renders it more con- scious of the body, when the abstraction is over, and hence the most intellectual are generally also the most sensitive of mortals. Many diseases are produced, increased, and perpetuated by the attention being directed to the disordered part ; but employment which diverts the attention from disease, often cures it. Every one who has had a tooth drawn, knows the charm of expecting the final agony; a sight of the oper- ator or the instruments has put the pain to flight. The celebrated metaphysician, Kant, was able to forget the pain of gout by a voluntary effort of thought, but it always caused a dangerous rush of blood to the head. We may compare sensibility to a fluid, as Cabanis did, and suppose it to exist in a deter- minate quantity, capable of being diverted from one channel into another, according to the state of the mind and nervous system ; thus causing an accumulation of exalted sensibility in one part of the body and a proportionate diminution in other parts. This state existed in the cases cited in a former chapter. In ecstasies the brain and 192 UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. sympathetic nerves appear to become highly ener- getic, while the vital feeling seems to have forsaken other parts of the system. Something akin to this must have taken place in those violent fanatics, the Convulsionists of St. Medard, who submitted with impunity and pleasure to severe wounds from swords and hatchets, which, in the ordinary state of sensibility, would have destroyed life. But these ecstatic and ascetic beings called such blows their consolations, and entreated to be mangled and beaten by the strongest men and the largest weapons. The mesmeric magic also, by giving a strong and new determination to the mind, seems to endow it with new power of action, by calling into exercise a concentrated or intense sensibility, and a mode of nervous energy to which the organs have not been accustomed, and which therefore induces an apparently supernatural train of phe- nomena ; for function and orgasm seem to be due to the unknown agent which confers sensibility and action upon structure. The attention being unduly fixed upon the body itself, instead of being employed in controlling the limbs and senses in active exercise about the proper business of life, causes, or at least often ag- gravates, the morbid consciousness which torments the hypochondriac. The sensation of disease of course may precede this, and is perhaps necessary to the first excitement of attention to the vital functions in an unnaturally acute manner, but perverted consciousness commences the instant we fail to obey the laws of our constitution, which UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. 193 require us to attend to other objects rather_.th.an. to ourselves. If we use not our faculties on their proper objects, improper thoughts will present themselves, and the moral equilibrium will thus be destroyed by inward and selfish attention, and the intellectual eyesight become confirmed in its obliquity ; for we are intended to be healthy and happy only as long as our minds are occupied in acquiring intelligence from things around us, or by reciprocal interest with other beings. It would indeed appear that our Creator designed us to be employed rather on objects around us, and in as- sociation with the activities of other minds, than on the operations of our own ; for we find that our efforts to concentrate attention on the pro- cess of our own thoughts speedily begets a most painful confusion; nor can we even summon our memory for the restoration of a forgotten idea and search with any diligence for its recovery, without such fatigue as either compels us soon to relinquish the pursuit, or else, if we obstinately persist, induces a nervous headache and imbe- cility, nearly approaching to aberration of intel- lect. The mastery over our own minds, except in obedience to social laws, is denied to us. Healthy thinking and mental association are one. If we would think safely we must think naturally ; that is, in relation to others, and our thoughts must lead to action. There must be a degree of spontaneous readiness and submission of mind to the common course of association and feeling. Not that we possess no power of selecting from the ideas which present themselves to our imagi- 13 I 194 UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. nation. Far otherwise — the gift and extent of reason consists in this selection ;. but the success with which we employ our faculties depends not on desire, but on training, that is, on the habit of our intellect in sympathy with other minds, and according to our familiarity with facts, appear- ances, and employments. In short, observation is the basis of our ability, and outward exertion is its security ; but self-consciousness, or attentive analysis of the operations and sensations of our own minds, endangers the well-being of our rea- son, and is the frequent cause of insanity. Hence, then, we learn the paramount importance of our sympathies being suitably excited, for this is proper mental cultivation. To this end it is essential that the growing mind should be educated in truth under the direction of those who themselves feel and obey it. The will of one is influenced by the will of others, and the union of a body of persons, under the same proper convictions, is, especially to youthful reason and affection, the strongest safeguard and most per- suasive government. Hence the value of some central truth attracting together individuals, who will test all their opinions by their one uniting faith. Christianity is founded on this principle ; for it is a central light which imparts due color to all objects, and it is evermore successful in proportion as its one grand truth is insisted on and believed. The sanity of society, as well as of individual minds, is secured only by faith in some common object of regard, and the commencement both of UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. 195 personal and social hypocrisy is the abstraction of regard from the common interest, for the purpose of attending to self. Here schism and confusion begin, but here they do not end ; for party spirit, or endemic hypocrisy, is but extended selfishness, and personal moral derangement made more gen- eral and infectious. We see, then, that obedience alone is safety; but the idea of obedience implies a belief in the revelation of a supreme will; a pow- er regarding which we can not dispute ; for, as long as we question the existence of supreme pow- er and appointment, we deny the right to govern, even in the Almighty. It follows then, that, in order to the formation of true moral impressions, correct thinking, and hence correct conduct, there must be a true revelation of God's will. The legitimate end of this argument, then, appears to be, that, if God has revealed himself, as we believe He has in nature, naturally, in the Bible, explicitly, then our business with regard to both revelations is to learn and to obey, since nothing more is need- ed for our happiness. In fact our faculties are fit for nothing else, and if we insist upon employing them in any other manner, we must meet the pen- alty — madness and misery. " All declare For what the Eternal Maker has ordained The powers of man : we feel within ourselves His energy divine : he tells the heart He meant, he made us to behold and love What he beholds and loves, the general orb Of life and being — to be great like him, Beneficent and active." — Akenside. But to return to. the eifect of attention on the body. 196 UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. There is an artificial mode of producing sleep, by fatiguing the muscles of the eye, which is effected by a strained and intent gaze at any object, real or ideal, viewed under an acute angle. Perhaps, by this effort, the irritability of those muscles becomes exhausted, and also that of the optic nerve — the result is giddiness, mistiness of sight, and, soon after, sleep. Congestion is induced in the eyes, and car- ried thence to the optic and other nerves of the eyes, and, owing to their proximity to the origin of the nerves of respiration and circulation, sympa- thetically affects these also, and thus enfeebles the action of the heart and lungs. If the mind resign itself to sleep, an orderly, slow breathing takes place, and the whole body soon becomes com- posed ; but if mental effort continue to resist the disposition to drowsiness, another order of phe- nomena occurs, similar to those frequently arising from mesmerism. The heart's more feeble action first produces coldness of the extremities and gen- eral pallor of the surface ; the blood is consequent- ly accumulated in the region of the heart. The brain, and probably the spinal and sympathetic system of nerves, become congested in consequence, and then many strange and curious phenomena, re- sulting from irregularity in the circulation of the blood and nervous energy, speedily follow. The inability to raise the upper eyelid, under these cir- cumstances, arises from a kind of paralysis of its muscles ; a paralysis which is apt, at the same time, to affect other parts. Of course morbid conscious- ness, in various organs of the body, is manifested according to the different modifications of mental UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. 197 and bodily constitution in the various persons sub- jected to such experiments. A case is related by Dr. George Cheyne, which affords a very curious illustration of the voluntary influence of the mind over the body in modifying vital action and sensibility. A Colonel Townsend, residing at Bath, sent for Drs. Baynard and Cheyne, and a Mr. Skrine, to give them some account of an odd sensation which he had for some time felt, which was, that he could expire when he pleased, and, by an effort, come to life again. He insisted so much on their seeing the trial made, that they were forced at last to comply. They all three felt his pulse, which was distinct and had the usual beat. He then composed himself on his back for some time. By the nicest scrutiny they were soon unable to discover the least sign of life, and at last were satisfied that he was actually dead ; and were just about to leave him, with the idea that the ex- periment had been carried too far, when they ob- served a slight motion in the body, and gradually the pulsation of the heart returned, and he quite recovered. In the evening of the same day, how- ever, he composed himself in the same manner and really died. Disease of the heart, under unnatural attention to the organ, caused the phenomena. Cardan must have been subject to some singular disease, for he says, " Whenever I wish it, I can go out of my body so as to feel no sensation whatever, as if I were in ecstasy. When I enter this state, or, more properly speaking, when I plunge myself into ecstasy, I feel my soul issuing out of my heart, and, as it were, quitting it, as well as the rest of 198 UNDUE ATTENTION TO THE BODY. my body, through a small aperture formed at first in the head and particularly in the cerebellum. This aperture, which runs down the spinal column, can only be kept open by great effort. In this sit- uation I feel nothing but the bare consciousness of existing out of my own body, from which I am dis- tinctly separated. But I can not remain in this state more than a very few moments." Some strange philosophers have entertained so daring an idea of the mightiness of the will over the vital organization, as to declare, that if a man determined not to die, he would not. The will, however, has scarcely any thing to do with the matter; for it is a fact, that the bodily condition immediately preceding death generally produces, or at least is accompanied by, such a quiescence of mind, that volition itself seems to slumber or con- sent to death, and there is almost always after long and great debility a peaceful anticipation of the coming event. CHAPTER V. MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. The foregoing facts forcibly teach us, as indeed does every man's experience, that rest is as neces- sary as action, and neither body nor mind continue fit for the business of this life without an occasional withdrawal of the will, either in sleep, or in a little quiet castle-building, or brown-study. "The understanding takes repose In indolent vacuity of thought, And sleeps and is refreshed." The mind thus proceeds dreamily, and therefore without that determination of blood to the brain which the continued exercise of volition and de- sire always occasions ; for the will demands a large supply of blood in order to evolve nervous power for the energizing of the muscles, as volition is peculiarly associated with muscular function, proving that healthy will is necessarily connected with bodily activity. This indolent vacuity, how- ever, may become habitual, and then a legion of evils of a worse kind crowd in upon the soul, for irritability takes the place of natural action when the body is not duly employed, 200 MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. Neglect of education often causes permanent inability to maintain attention. If the faculties be not strengthened by occasional exercise under proper teaching, the soul becomes at length the slave of imagination, and is apt to dally with any empty fancy that may attract it. Some ignis fatuus, some foolish glitter of false light, is the only object likely to be pursued by a person who has not been taught from childhood the use of reason, or who has not enjoyed the blessing of high motives and encouragement imparted by ex- ample. If such a one read, it is for amusement, without the smallest power of grasping argument ; and he being, from the idle habit of the brain, at the mercy of vulgar or ludicrous associations, the most serious subjects provoke loose ideas, instead of conducing to thoughtfulness and improvement. This kind of madness is very common with ill- educated young persons, before the trials of life correct their vagrant fancies, and subdue their selfishness. Frivolity of mind sometimes settles into permanent insanity in such persons, and a multiplicity of unmeaning, unprofitable, unapplied thoughts succeed each other with ungoverned ra- pidity ; for imagination must act when the will and judgment decline their duty ; and thus at length the poor, imbecile trifler, by the abuse of his nervous system, has his life converted into a miserable dream, and he becomes visibly a fool ; for his form and features, action and expression, correspond with his mental imbecility. The pur- suit of sensual exciting and enervating pleasures, — another turn which the mind not intellectually MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. 201 employed is apt to take, — speedily conducts the giddy youth, as many such cases testify, to the worst cells of the madhouse. The stock of enjoy- ment being soon exhausted, the brain becomes useless ; and worn in body and debased in mind, the wretched victim of imaginative sensuality is early subjected to every species of morbid sensa- tion and desire. Having neither taste nor energy for rational pursuit, without resource in intellect, affection, or religion, he becomes, at length, the prey of a terrible despair, which terminates only in idiocy or death. Sentimentalism, and all other mental extrava- gances, are but the different directions which uncultivated minds are accustomed to take, and unhappily these dispositions are highly contagious. " There is nothing so absurd, false, prodigious, but, either out of affection of novelty, simplicity, blind zeal, hope and fear, the giddy-headed mul- titude will embrace it, and without examination approve it."* All these are evinced by bodily peculiarities and disorders in keeping with their mental causes, and thus men's creeds and fancies are almost expressed in their bodies. The conta- gion of folly, moreover, spreads widely and rapidly ; because the physical constitution of fallen man is in direct sympathy with those passions which most readily manifest themselves in the features, the attitude, the action, the language, the tone of voice, the turn of a hand. We are all more or less moved by what we witness of feeling in others ; and as, when the body is weakened by * Burton. I* 202 MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. fatigue, nervous disorders — =-such as hysteria, con- vulsions, and epilepsy — may be communicated to multitudes by their compliance with the instinct of imitation; so the powerful exhibition of any passion or enthusiasm is apt to impress all those who witness it with a potency, proportioned to the vigor of their nerves, and the degree of control which their reason is accustomed to exercise over their sensations. We may thus readily account for the wide and almost universal diffusion of the dancing mania, and other maladies, partaking both of a moral and a physical character, during the dark ages, and among people unblessed by the restrain- ing habits and elevating associations of rational and religious education. All history is full of evidence that ignorant minds yield at once to the force of sensual impressions ; and that, because the brain and nerves, when not governed by indwelling in- telligence, are predisposed to obey whatever im- pulse from without may demand their sympathy. Hence, also, every species of violent emotion is irresistably propagated among such persons ; for insanity, and the most obstinate forms of nervous disorder, thus become epidemic ; and, like the swine possessed by the legion of demons, those who are not fortified by truth rush, one after another, over the precipice to destruction. When considering the influence of sympathy, we shall find further illustrations of this subject. But not only are such thoughtless, ill-trained persons apt to suffer in this manner, but also all who live rather in lonely speculation than in active usefulness. Such individuals are exceedingly liable to a disorder MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. 203 called hypochondriasis, which is manifestly con- nected with bodily disease, arising from injudicious employment of the brain, in solitary musings and deep and protracted study, or anxieties without the relief of frequent social intercourse and cheer- ful exercise. Luther, speaking of his own tendency to this malady, arising from excessive and anxious application, says, " Heavy thoughts do enforce rheums : when the soul is busied with grievous cogitations, the body must partake of the same. When cares, heavy cogitations, sorrows, and pas- sions, do exceed, then they weaken the body ; which, without the soul, is dead, or like a horse without one to rule it. But when the heart is at rest and quiet, then it taketh care of the body. Whoso is possessed with these trials, should in no case be alone nor hide himself, and so bite and torment himself with his and the devil's cogitations and possessings ; for the Holy Ghost saith, ' Wo to him that is alone.' " Of course, as the mind is always employed while a person is awake, one train of ideas can not be displaced but by substituting another. Hence the importance of change of place and of object when the affections or emotions are morbidly excited, or the nervous system enervated by the continued ac- tion of one train of thought. Hypochondriasis presents itself in the most whimsical forms, in consequence of the morbid condition of those nerves which conduce to sensa- tion. Thus some imagine themselves dead, and others declare their bodies to be the abode of un- heard-of maladies. One thinks his stomach is full 204 MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. of frogs, and he hears them croak ; another thinks his body a lump of butter, and he is afraid to walk in the sun, lest he should be melted. A lady, who had led an idle life, imagined herself a pound of candles, and dreaded the approach of night, fear- ing the maid should take a part of her for use. That illusive convictions are all more or less as- sociated with actual disorder of that part of the nervous system on which perception depends, is evident from sensation being so blunted in many bad cases, that persons so afflicted do not feel any thing applied to the skin. This is exemplified to the greatest extent in a case related by Foville. A man was wounded at the battle of Austerlitz, and ever after he was insanely convinced that he had no bodily existence ; and there seemed to be no method of convincing him to the contrary ; for, in fact, he was not sensible of any thing done to his body, unless he saw the action : feeling was quite absent. Whether this affection arose from impres- sion first received on his mind, or on his body, it is difficult to discover ; but it is certain that such mal- adies are sometimes cured by merely convincing the mind of its mistake. Nervous diseases, being disorders of sensation as well as of will, are to be treated with great pa- tience and forbearance ; although the whimsicali- ties of the complaint are frequently so ludicrous that "to be grave exceeds all power of face." Many droll stories might be written concerning them, but who can deem them fit to be laughed at ] It will be found that nervous exhaustion, from over attention, or repeated sensation without proper in- MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. 205 tervals of rest, is the common cause of this strange malady. These states of mind may perhaps be sometimes the result of violent, long-continued, and irresistible emotion; yet we must not be unmind- ful that they are frequently the inevitable conse- quence of neglecting the early discipline of the will; for the dominion of passion over judgment generally presupposes a moral dereliction. The potency of emotion over our bodies is every- where visible ; for our whole active life is alto- gether an exhibition of passions at their work, and our projects and our plans are directed to no other end than the gratification of desire. The most restless spirit soonest destroys the body, but the most bustling is not the busiest soul — mental inten- sity is silent. It is the mind that uses life, and the law of our earthly existence is equally broken both by inaction and by excess. The motive power re- quires regulation ; for whether too rapid or too slow, if the action be irregular, the machinery is equally endangered. We are formed for moderation ; and our safety consists only with the steady employment of vital power under moral restraints ; hence, dis- tinctness of object and purpose is essential to health of mind, and for the preservation of that orderly ac- tion of the nervous system without which we are dis- eased in body also. Every faculty and function, therefore, requires its appropriate exercise, for inac- tion is scarcely more liable to be followed by a mor- bid train of miseries than is disappointed or distracted activity. The interruption of a mental purpose or desire involves the material through which the mind acts in its own disorder, as the machinery suffers S 206 MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. when the power which puts it into motion is fitfully employed, or unduly excited or misdirected. Our experience testifies that the greatest mental confu- sion and distress of brain arise not so much from steadily continued and determined effort of the mind, in a rational manner, as from interruption to the purpose of the will. Thus, when some daily vexation breaks the chain of thought, or draws the attention off from the intellectual pursuit on which the spirit had earnestly been bent, displeasure and distraction take the place of complacency, and the cause of the disturbance is apt, when thus fre- quently returning, to take complete possession of the mind, and to haunt the attention like a hateful goblin, blighting the soul with its cloudy presence. Hence the soured misanthrope often appears when the philosopher might have been expected ; for un- less the man of thought has his heart soothed by affectionate and comfortable appliances, in a suita- ble and seasonable manner, his resolute and per- plexed spirit, incapable of resting from reflection, is very likely to find successive vexations terminate in madness, or some milder form of mental de- rangement or unhappy eccentricity, which con- strains him to seek pleasure only in imagination and with solitude. Those who are connected with persons consti- tutionally prone to reflectiveness can not be too cautious in their manner of opposing the bias of their dispositions, or too gently endeavor to win them from the danger of absorbing study, for both their sensibilities and affections are generally fine in proportion to the intensity with which they ha- MISEMPLOYMENT OF THE MIND. 207 bitually contemplate the objects of their attention. Men of genius, whatever the direction of their minds, are usually as full of feeling as of thought, their intellect being urged on under the dominion of that love which can not rest without constant approval. Their habit of abstraction may cause them to appear selfish, unsocial, or absurdly whim- sical, but they are only engaged too intensely to ex- hibit in an ordinary manner the appearance of passing interest. They are, however, exactly those who are most subject to insanity, as their minds are kept unavoidably busy to the full extent of nervous endurance. Yet persons of this deep style of thinking and feeling are most devoted to the well- being of others, and are the first to demonstrate the nobility of their nature by those self-sacrifices which have distinguished the best names in his- tory. Cowper and Byron may be instanced as oppo- site examples of bad modes of education, termina- ting in morbid habits of thinking, and exhibiting by fits and starts the finest traits of generous nature in the most contrary and inconsistent manners. CHAPTER VI. CHAGRIN AND SUICIDE. We know that determination must vastly excite the brain when the student or the statesman is in- duced, by desire for doubtful distinction, to spend his days and his nights in the distractions of vacil- lating hopes and fears. Under the strain of these conflicting passions, how many a mighty mind sinks into insanity, amid the mysterious darkness of which some demon whispers close upon the ear, " No hope, no aim, no use in life, the knife is now before you." Long, however, before this terrific state of mind occurs, the body gives unheeded warning of the growing danger, by irregular appe- tites, tormenting visions, and unaccountable sensa- tions ; for insanity is always a bodily malady, al- though perhaps in most cases moral delinquency is superadded, and the will has been disordered be- fore the body. Although the destructive propen- sity may sometimes cause suicide under a sudden impulse, or it may even arise from a morbid dispo- sition to imitate, yet it is probable that the irrita- bility of the body, which allows not a respite to the soul, from the constant stimulus to attention and will, most frequently drives the melancholy maniac CHAGRIN AND SUICIDE. 209 to commit suicide. Death seems in these cases the only refuge from the weary vigilance of morbid sensibility. This awful remedy is frequently sought under the impulse of a kind of instinct, when the mind becomes so possessed by its misery as to be quite incapable of comparing the desire felt with previous convictions, and so the patient is blindly urged on, by longing for relief, to use the first op- portunity for self-destruction which may present itself, association only serving to connect the means of death with the idea of escape from a tormenting body, or some haunting impression. The frequent connection of the disposition to suicide with the de- spondent forms of insanity, warrants the supposi- tion that despair, if not met by the solace of affec- tion, would always lead its subject to the same dark resort, as the scorpion is said to destroy itself with its own stingy when encircled by dangers from which it can not escape. The love of approbation, which is closely con- nected with the love of society, is generally the strongest of our passions, and is that by which the lower passions are restrained within the limits of common decorum. It is the disappointment of this passion, or chagrin, which most frequently disposes to suicide. Man's hell is the feeling of solitude, or the dread of being despised ; and if his associates cast him out of their pale, or appear completely to excommunicate him from their sympathies, he seems as if at once possessed by Satan. Should this wounding of his proud desire deprive him of all hope of restoration, to the heart at least of some one being who can love him in spite of his faults, he 14 s* 210 CHAGRIN AND SUICIDE. will rush unbidden into the darkness of another world, the apprehension of which is less terrible to him than the loneliness in which he suffers. So common is this catastrophe, that it appears like the result of a natural law of the guilty mind, when un- acquainted with divine truth, and unsustained by the hopeful consciousness of spiritual and eternal life. Hence heathenism and infidelity have always approved self-murder as the proper remedy of ex- treme vexation. If we may credit report, it would appear that mere animals are also impelled by the same feel- ing under similar circumstances : thus it is related in the Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet, the truth of which is avouched by Captain Marry at, that he saw horses, that had been tyrannized over by other horses, and treated by the whole herd as outcasts, commit suicide. When tired of their jparia life, they walk round and round some large tree, as if to ascertain the degree of hardness re- quired, measure their distance, and darting with furious speed against it, fracture their skulls, and thus get rid of life and oppression together. He says that squirrels sometimes persecute one among their number till he destroys himself; and he states, that " one day while we were watching this outcast of a squirrel, we detected a young one slowly creeping through the adjoining shrubs; he had in his mouth a ripe fruit, at every moment he would stop and look if he were watched, just as if he feared detection. At last he arrived near the paria, or outcast, and deposited before him his offering to misery and old age. We watched this spectacle CHAGRIN AND SUICIDE. 211 with feelings which I could not describe : there was such a show of meek gratitude on the one side, and happiness on the other, just as if he enjoyed his good action. They were, however, perceived by the other squirrels, who sprung by dozens upon them ; the young one with two bounds escaped, the other submitted to his fate. I rose. All the squirrels vanished except the victim ; but that time, contrary to his habits, he left the shrub and slowly advanced to the bank of the river, and ascended a tree. A minute afterward, we observed him at the very extremity of a branch projecting over the rapid waters, and we heard his plaintive shriek. It was his farewell to life and misery.' * This story will serve as a parable expressive of human conduct — but one among a multitude runs the risk of showing kindness to the outcast, while the rest are bent upon driving the wretched to destruction. The association between neglect, ill-usage, de- spondency, and suicide, is of great practical im- portance, especially in relation to those who suffer from the terrors of that most awful malady, re- ligious despair, which usually commences with seclusion, and a state the reverse of self-com- placency, conjoined with strong affection insuffi- ciently regarded. Happy is it if the suicidal catastrophe be avert- ed by such a failure of some organ or function of the body as shall arrest the ambitious, the way- ward, or the lonely spirit even with the stroke of death ; but more blessed still to find association with calm and loving minds, and, like Kirke White, to take admonishment from the uncer- 212 CHAGRIN AND SUICIDE. tainty and comparative worthlessness of this world's honors and attachments, to prepare for the untiring activities of a nobler state. " Come, Disappointment, come ! Though from hope's summit hurled, Still rigid nurse thou art forgiven, For thou severe, wert sent from heaven, To wean me from the world ; To turn mine eye From vanity, And point to scenes of life, that never, never die." This reference to Kirke White reminds us that the influence of the mental state is remarkably ex- hibited in the progress of organic diseases. Medi- cal practitioners can bear ample testimony to the fact, that religious feeling, that is, calm resignation to the supreme will, soothes and tranquilizes the sufferer's frame more than all medical appliances. Often does he witness the triumph of faith over bodily affliction, as consumption for instance, with slow and fatal hand steals away the life-blood from the youth who lately, perhaps in the height of moral danger, adorned the drawing-room, or bore the palm of academic strife. While in the bloom and brilliancy of body and mind, when most sensitive and alive to all the passionate and beautiful associations of affection and of in- tellect, the spoiler stealthily crept in, but pre- viously a light from heaven had entered his heart, and therefore, while the malady built up the bar- rier between time and his spirit, the patient re- lied upon the hand that chastened him; he felt that pain, and weakness, and weariness, and disap- pointment, and death are not fortuitous occur- CHAGRIN AND SUICIDE. 213 rences, but the process by which the wisdom of God affects the weaning and separation of the believing soul from sin, sorrow, and distracting attachments, to fill it forever with intelligence, peace, and perfection. Hence, with becoming composure, he submitted to the purifying trial of his faith, and said, while his features reflected the divine love which he contemplated — " Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight." No fever of the mind added to the hectic which con- sumed his body, and the disease was not only better borne, but really much retarded and ame- liorated by the " strong consolations" of Christian faith. CHAPTER VII. IRRITABLE BRAIN, INSANITY, ETC. Many terrible nervous diseases are but the natu- ral disturbance of a bad conscience. Such a course of conduct before Grod and man as secure approval of heart, will often cure such diseases without the aid of a physician. The cordial of daily duty, properly fulfilled, is the proper remedy. How often have we seen the haggard hypochon- driac, both in hut and mansion, cured of all his anomalous maladies by a true view of religion and by the activity which springs from it. The terrors that haunted his darkened spirit have been dissi- pated by the light of Heaven; his shaken nerves have been tranquilized, and the peace of faith has brought new brightness into his eye ; a pleasant buoyancy has lifted his heart, and a resistless im- pulse of good- will has diffused a healthful vigor through every fiber and every feature. So pow- erful is the habit of a man's faith on his person, that sagacious physicians often correctly infer the religious state and persuasion from the patient's appearance. IRRITABLE BRAIN, ETC. 215 That bodily disorder which favors the mani- festation of the mind in an insane manner may be produced by any of our passions, when unre- strained by a holy understanding ; the best bless- ings may thus be converted into curses — the best gifts into the most injurious agents. Some say religion is a frequent cause of insanity. No ; true religion is the spirit of love, of power, and of a sound mind ; ever active in diversified duties and delights, always busy in a becoming manner and in decent order. But the wild notions, unmeaning superstitions, spiritual bondage, unrequired and forbidden attempts to reconcile the rites and cere- monies which wayward men have substituted for the liberty of God, begin in disobedience and end in darkness. It is strange fire in the censer which brings down the flaming vengeance, and opens a passage to the infinite abyss. Excessive employment of the body, and that anxiety which springs from too earnest a pur- suit of our own wills, are, when acting together, exceedingly likely to disorder the organism of the mental faculties ; and whether one be truly religious or only superstitious, the result will be the same ; because excess of any kind is a direct infringement of the invariable law of God. Delirium may arise either from mental stimu- lants or from mental sedatives, in a weakened and wearied state of the brain. In either case the same effects follow; as the organization is so dis- turbed that it consents not in due order to the force, which, in its proper condition, is formed to 216 IRRITABLE BRAIN, ETC. actuate it, namely, the mind. To make a mental exertion when the brain is wearied or unduly ex- cited, is only to aggravate disorder and endanger the fine fabric thus violently acted upon. Thus it is that men of mental determination, under the force and pressure of urgent business, instead of yielding to the indications of weariness, continue to work on till delirium takes the place of healthy attention. The secretary of an extensive and use- ful institution, for instance, suffers from bad health; his mind and heart find no rest at home ; at this juncture the directors call for accounts and a multitude of correspondents are urgent for replies. He finds some one of these agents is guilty of defalcation. He grows miserable; his digestion fails, he appears flushed and hurried, his head aches, he can scarcely connect his thoughts, his hand trembles, he uses wrong words both in speaking and in writing; he retires, and imme- diately begins to connect the feeling of his own inability to attend to business with the idea of robbing his employers, and at length fancies that he is the defaulter, by whose case his mind has been excited. He thinks himself the guilty per- son, and haunted by the worst consequent phan- toms, he becomes intolerable to himself, and feels as if called on to expiate his crime by destroying his life with his own hand. His pious habit still prevails, and he executes the horrible deed in calm and devout resignation to what he deems the will of Heaven. This is a true case, and is no un- common result of disobedience to the natural law, which insists on our seeking rest when wearied, IRRITABLE BRAIN, ETC. 217 and submitting patiently to infirmity as our daily portion. All disobedience to the Divine laws, whether natural or moral, must, of course, be inevitably fol- lowed by suffering and disorder ; nor can any one who exposes himself to its causes be exempt, un- less by miracle, from insanity or hallucination, as long as mind acts through matter, and manifests itself in keeping with its condition. Remarkable intellectual energy is so often asso- ciated with enthusiasm, or intensity of mental char- acter and extravagance of conduct, that it has be- come a proverb : " Great wit to madness is allied." And probably the excessive activity of mind some- times springs from actual disorder of brain, although the habit and education of the will of the individual may enable him so far to control its influence as that a degree of disease which, in another worse train- ed, might produce decided symptoms of insanity, shall, in this case, only prove a powerful stimulus to manageable imagination. The susceptibility of genius to the excitement of society generally be- trays itself in eccentricities, which minds less en- dowed regard with amazement ; as if these odd traits were some inexplicable mystery and contra- diction, instead of the necessary result of the nerv- ous tension, to which such morbid beings are con- stantly subject. It may appear, at first sight, un- reasonable to connect genius with disease, but an intimacy with the history of notable men will dem- onstrate their relation to each other ; not that they are necessarily associated, as cause and conse- quence, but that the direct operation of intense T 218 IRRITABLE BRAIN, ETC. motives, such as stimulate master minds, leads to disorder of the brain, and disorder of the brain re- acts to maintain a perverted bias or injurious habit of application. Those who are restrained in their ambitious or pleasurable pursuits by moral or re- ligious principles, are happily preserved from the danger of catering to the public appetite for mar- velous, monstrous, and startling exhibitions of tal- ent; but gifted persons, who submit to the enor- mous demand, and ransack the regions of invention for new wonders and striking combinations, are always running the risk of losing the mastery over their own faculties, simply because it is a law of the human mental constitution to confirm a chosen habit into an absolute necessity; because the brain, constantly used in one manner, whether naturally or artificially, can not act in any other; but, en- thralled by a task-tyrant of its own choice, it works on in chains like a galley-slave, and dies early of its chosen toil. This effect of habit in determining genius accounts for the progress of deception un- der the control of designing men of great enthu- siasm, such as Mohammed and Joseph Smith, the inventor of Mormonism. They began by some trick to help themselves, and thus discover- ing their power over the simple-minded, they per- sisted in deception till they became unable to think or act but as deceivers. At length, prob- ably, the habit was confirmed by their becoming insane converts to their own lies, believing the whims of their own imaginations to be the espe- cial revelations of Heaven. Like a horse in a mill, the mind thus goes round and round in the same IRRITABLE BRAIN, ETC. 219 circle, till it turns blind and incapable of straight- forward exertion. Its very dreams are of the beaten track. An accumulated irritability of brain results from incessant effort of mind ; and to such an extent are poets subject to this infirmity that they have won the cognomen of a distinct race — genus irritabile. But all imprudent thinkers are obnoxious to the same suffering. Even our great philosopher, New- ton, sometimes gave vent to ill-temper or soothed his nerves by the bane of tobacco, instead of taking rest or appropriate change. And many of our best artists, whether in words or more solid materials, have been martyrs to head ache and the fashion of excitement. Thus Wilkie was often obliged to shut himself up in a dark room, because light was too stimulant for his brain, and Paganini paid dear- ly for his consummate excellence as a musician. Speaking to a friend, he stated that he scarcely knew what sleep was ; and his nerves were wrought to such almost preternatural acuteness, that harsh, even common sounds, often became torture to him. He was sometimes unable to bear a whisper in his room. His passion for music he described as an all-absorbing, a consuming one ; in fact he looked as if no other life than that ethereal one of melody were circulating in his veins ; but he added, with a glow of triumph kindling through deep sadness — u Mais c'est un don du del"* Byron, after an intellectual debauch, was ac- customed to mope in total laziness. What this intense poet says of himself is very instructive— * Mrs. Hemans's Life. 220 IRRITABLE RRAIN, ETC. " I feel a disrelish more powerful than indifference. If I rouse, it is into a fury. I presume I shall end like Swift — dying at top. But Swift had hardly begun life at the very period (thirty-three) when I feel quite an old sort of feel. I have been consid- ering why I always awake at a certain hour in the morning, and always in very bad spirits — I may say in actual despair and despondency in all re- spects. I have drank fifteen bottles of soda- water in one night, after going to bed, and still been thirsty. A dose of salts has the ef- fect of a temporary inebriation, like light cham- pagne, upon me. But wine and spirits make me sullen and savage to ferocity; silent, how- ever, and retiring, and not quarrelsome if not spoken to." These facts prove that his genius was associated with a diseased brain, of which, indeed, he died ; but whether the disease was the result of undue mental action, or the cause of it, we need not now inquire : it is sufficient to point out the connection. Byron is but a strong example of the poetic tem- perament, and in many respects of the other orders of genius also, - for they are all distinguished by extraordinary determination of will; subject, how- ever, to paroxysms, like an intermittent fever, a succession of cold and hot fits, with healthier inter- vals, since the nervous system will not tolerate a constant enthusiasm. All violence is but the ex- ception to natural order, and the mighty afflatus or mental inspiration, which the world so much ad- mires, can no more be commanded or expected as a matter of course, than can the hurricane or the IRRITABLE BRAIN, ETC. 221 earthquake ; and their continuance is alike de- structive. Virgil's description of the inspired Pythoness presents a glowing picture of the mind's excite- ment, kindling the body, for a time, into unnatural action, and then leaving it exhausted, and power- less, — an effect that equally follows every great, enthusiastic, intellectual, or passionate exertion of the will. " Aloud she cries This is the time ! inquire your destinies, He comes ! behold the god ! Thus while she said (And shivering at the sacred entry staid), Her color changed ; her face was not the same, And hollow groans from her deep spirit came. Her hair stood up ; convulsive rage possessed Her trembling limbs, and heaved her laboring heart ; Greater than human kind she seemed to look, And with an accent more than mortal spoke ; Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll, When all the god came rushing on her soul ; Swiftly she turned, and foaming as she spoke, At length her fury fell ; her foaming ceased, And ebbing in her soul the god decreased." The common sense of mankind, before the ma- terialists extinguished the soul, which gave life even to the doctrines of heathens, naturally as cribed ail bodily and mental agitations to some indwelling spirit, and regarded, visible actions a> v the result of invisible agencies, so as always to con- nect the physical with the spiritual ; and doubtless, therefore, they more firmly realized the fact of their immediate relation to an immaterial exist- ence. A far more beautiful and ennobling philos- ophy was theirs than the mere materialists enjoy, 222 IRRITABLE BRAIN, ETC. because nearer that of divine truth than the notion that traces mind no farther than to chemical affini- ties, and views the death of the vigilant soul in the destruction of its dwelling-place. Dr. Wollaston, who was a Christian philosopher, died of disease of the brain. He preserved to the close of his life the philosophic habit of observation which distinguished his character. Sublime is the lesson, to see how he exercised the higher faculties of his intellect in reasoning on the causes and prog- ress of his malady, in the disorder of his sensations, memory, and the power of motion, as it advanced in its incursion upon one part after another of those portions of the brain which subserve the mind in relation to will and consciousness. He noted the phenomena of death, as it gradually took posses- sion of his body, and experimented on his faculties to ascertain the amount of living power remaining. Here we witness an intelligent being watching the gradual destruction of the instruments with which it was accustomed to seek and communicate intel- lectual enjoyment. The spirit takes its last look at its material residence, and seems voluntarily to withdraw from an abode so incommodious, while reasoning about the causes of its unfitness. Up to the very verge of this life's horizon we see that the willing and reasoning man remains a willing and reasoning being still. Shall we dare to say we have traced the footsteps of that man to the limit of his being ] As well might we say a star is extinguished because it has set to our sight. The invisible spirit evinced itself here by using earthly elements, and in wise communion with the won- IRRITABLE BRAIN, ETC. 223 ders of creative skill, and its departure was but an entrance into existence more in keeping with its nature. What the philosopher observed decaying was not himself, the observer, and that which died was not that which enjoyed life. CHAPTER VIII. A GENERAL VIEW OP THE EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS ON HEALTH. Our passions are the grand conservators as well as disturbers of the healthy action of our bodies ; and they exercise so direct an influence over the functions of life as to be properly classified with medicinal agents. Indeed they often act with no less power than the most heroic medicines, and are as rapid, and sometimes as fatal in their operation, as prussic acid or any other deadly poison. A brief review of the prominent effects of our passions on our bodies will afford a striking illustration of the independent existence of the mind, and at the same time present a subject of the highest practical consideration. Medically speaking, the emotions are regarded either as depressing or exciting, — sedative or stimulant ; but probably their influence, although always acknowledged, is yet too generally undervalued in the treatment of disease. Hope is the cordial by which our benevolent Creator cheers every heart that is not resolutely set against the reception of his goodness. A re- markable, and consequently often-quoted instance, of the curative influence of hope occurred during EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS ON HEALTH. 225 the siege of Breda, in 1625, when the garrison was on the point of surrendering from the ravages of scurvy, principally induced by mental depression. A few vials of sham medicine were introduced, by order of the Prince of Orange, as an infallible specific. It was given in drops, and produced as- tonishing effects. Such as had not moved their limbs for months before were seen walking in the streets — sound, straight, and well. Not to refer to the long list of pseudo-miracles by royal touch, and at the tombs of common saints, sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, with the cure of every sickness, were said to have been conferred on the faithful devotees who flocked to the tomb of Abbe Paris, the famous Jansenist; and, what is most extraordinary, these cases were proved on the spot, before judges of integrity, at- tested by witnesses of credit in a learned age (a.d. 1724), and on the most eminent theater in the world. Among a multitude of similar cures, it is testified that a hunch-backed girl was kicked and trampled into a beautiful shape, by being stretched on the ground, while a number of stout men trod and jumped with all their might on her stomach and ribs. The treatment was in all cases of so rough a kind that it required a confidence amount- ing to lunacy to submit to it, and the exercise of a power as supernatural at least, if not as deceptive, as Satan's, in order to survive it. However, as Pascal said, " we must believe those who are ready to have their throats cut to prove their faith. ,, The priests appealed to the remains of their saint in at- testation of their own sanctity, and of course mira- 15 226 EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS cles followed; and then what more natural than that the lame, the halt, and the blind, should, in hopeful crowds, surround the wonder-working bones of St. Paris I What more natural, except that many of them, under the violent persuasion of their own desire, and many heavy blows, should speedily depart miraculously healed] Eloquence is not needed to describe the mighti- ness of Hope. She speaks for herself to every mortal, and supplies, gratis, to every sufferer a well- authenticated universal remedy ; far safer, in- deed, without the vaunted vegetables, aloes and gamboge, than with them. It may be indulged with little risk, which can not be said of wholesale Morrisonian pill-taking, nor even of the recent but now exploded catholicon brandy and salt, i Hope, like an angel, can concentrate her healing virtue in a homoeopathic globule, or diffuse it through all the multitudinous baths, douches, arid wet bandages of hydropathic establishments. Her bright face is seen in every stream. If we listen, we hear her voice whenever the breath of heaven visits us. " Hope, enchanted, smiles and waves her golden hair," as she dances before us on the hills and in the valleys ; health and laughter are in her steps, and while we gaze upon her joyous beauty a lithe-* some spirit animates our limbs, and the blooming hilarity of her features is reflected from our own. Fear is also sometimes curative. The great Boerhaave had a number of patients seized with epileptic fits in a hospital, from sympathy with a person who fell down in convulsions before them. This physician was puzzled how to "act, for the ON HEALTH. 227 sympathetic fits were as violent and obstinate as those arising from bodily disease ; but, reflecting that they were produced by impression on the mind, he resolved to eradicate them by a still stronger impression, and so directed hot irons to be prepared and applied to the first person who subsequently had a fit ; the consequence was, that not a person was seized afterward. An officer in the Indian army was confined to his bed by asthma, and could only breathe in an erect posture ; but a party of Mahrattas broke into the camp, and fearing certain death, he sprung out with amazing activity, mounted his horse, and used his sword with great execution, although the day before he could not draw it from its scabbard. A beautiful example of the curative operation of affec- tionate apprehension is given by Wordsworth, in his singular story of the Idiot Boy. Hildanus relates that a man, disguised as a ghost, took another laboring under severe gout, from his bed, and carried him on his back down the stairs, dragging his painful and swollen feet down the steps, and placed him on the ground. He immediately recovered the use of his limbs, and swiftly ran up stairs under the strongest terror, and never had the gout again. In these cases fear act- ed with all the stimulating force of necessity, which is proverbially powerful. But the gentler and more pleasing emotions sometimes effect the same apparently miraculous restoration. The case of an old man, who labored under shaking palsy, was related by Mr. Kingdon, at the Medical Society of London. This person 228 EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS had been long unable to walk. The child of a friend was admitted to see him, and so greatly de- lighted was he that he arose, walked across the room, took some paper, went to another part of the room, filled the paper with small shells, gave it to the child, and then sat down as paralytic as before. Terror causes the blood suddenly to leave the extreme parts of the frame ; the countenace be- comes livid, the brain excited, the large arteries distended, the heart swells, the eyes start, the mus- cles become rigid or convulsed, and faintness, and perhaps sudden death, ensue. Fear, whether it be from a real or an imaginary object, is equally in- fluential on the body. A woman had her gown bitten by a dog ; she had heard of hydrophobia, and immediately fancied that she had it ; and, what is most surprising, she actually died of symptoms so like canine madness, that skillful physicians could not discover any difference. John Hunter, the celebrated anatomist, attributed the disease of the heart, of which he ultimately died in a fit of anger, to the fear of having caught hydrophobia while dissecting the body of a patient who died of that disease. Dr. Holland states that a young man was so severely affected by the continual intrusion of illusory images of a frightful kind, that in a few weeks his hair turned from black to white. As recollected ideas often follow the same train as when first impressed, a lively remembrance of past effects is apt to renew the same actions of the body. Probably the same state of nerve is again produced. Hence the dispositions to repeat ac- ON HEALTH. 229 tions in an accustomed manner. Van Swietan in- forms us of a child, being frightened into epilepsy by a large dog leaping on it, in whom the fit re- turned whenever the dog was heard to bark. Had the child been capable of mental effort, the associa- tion might perhaps have been broken ; as we find that epilepsy is often arrested by diverting the nerv- ous power by some strong voluntary action of the body, or other determination of the will ; and hence too, several popular remedies for this disease exert a powerful influence over it, by their effect on the imagination ; as that of the hand of a felon, recently hanged, applied to the patient's brow while on the scaffold. The hand of a murderer, applied while hanging from the gibbet, is said to be especially efficacious. For the same purpose, Pliny advised the blood of a dying gladiator, drank warm, and Scribonius Largus directs a portion of his liver to be eaten. Aretaeus prefers the raw heart of a coot and the brain of a vulture. The nail taken from the arm of a crucified malefactor was an efficacious- amulet according to Alexander. Not two centu- ries since, the authentic remedy among English physicians, was the lichen which grew on a decay- ing human skull. Other nervous disorders are cured on the princi- ple of breaking the mental association ; thus cramp is cured by rings made from the nails of an old coffin, and all sorts of nerve-ache are now within reach of art, since the magic galvanic rings of cop- per and zinc, a mixture which must have prevailed in the constitutions of their inventors, are declared to be nothing short of miraculous, but of course U 230 EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS they are intended especially for those who have only heard of science. There is no doubt, however, that a feeling of awe will modify the circulation, and probably the mystery-men or medecins of the American Indians, with its help, perform cures almost as wonderful as those ascribed to Parr's life pills, or any other imposing pretension. Hence, also, the potency of charms. This feeling of awe seems to partake somewhat of the nature of horror, which is demon- strated to act powerfully on the blood-vessels, as is seen not only in the pallid appearance of individu- als suffering from it, but also in the common suc- cess of a vulgar remedy for haemorrhage, namely, a living toad hung about the neck. The disgusting contact almost instantly arrests slight bleedings. But, perhaps, this remedy is not more efficacious than the^ cold key ; and it certainly is not more in demand, and, therefore, it may be presumed not more successful among our peasantry than the vil- lage blood-stancher, who is generally some shrewd old woman that sees a little through her neighbors, and is near akin to a witch. She is " great myste- ry," as the Indians say, and arrests bleedings by an awful xnanner, a muttered, unmeaning prayer, and a call for faith. Extreme joy and extreme terror act in a man- ner equally energetic. Occasionally the exhaustion produced by them is so sudden that the nervous system seems to be discharged of its power in an instant. Culprits have received the tidings of par- don, when standing under the gallows, and have fallen dead in a moment as by a lightning stroke. ON HEALTH. 231 That most stimulating of the passions, cmger, rouses the heart, produces a glow all over the body, especially in the face ; causes the eyes to glare ; strengthens the voice, and increases the muscular power ; hence it has now and then suddenly cured gout and palsy, but much more frequently it has proved fatal, by rupturing some blood- Vessel. The blood, fevered by rage, rushes with delirium over the burdened brain ; the heart for a while beats ■fiercely, but " the acrid bile soon chokes the fine ducts;" every vessel is exhausted; the irritability ceases ; every muscle shakes ; the whole strength is prostrated ; and then, if palsy do not happen, obstinate faintings ensue ; then convulsions — then death— and the angry man meets his God face to face, Broussais and other eminent physiologists are of opinion that rage is capable of generating a most virulent and subtil poison, especially in the saliva. They refer to numerous instances in which wounds from enraged animals have been followed by effects only to be accounted for by supposing a virus com- municated. This opinion coincides with vulgar belief, and if true, as facts seem to affirm, the pow- er of the mind in altering the chemistry of life in a direct manner is thus most clearly demonstrated. But, indeed, the same fact is equally evinced by the common influence of emotion over secretion. The classical reader will remember Ovid's fine de- scription of Envy. M Pallor in ore sedet ; macies in corpore toto ; Nusquam recta acies ; livent rubigine dentes : Pectora felle virent ; lingua est suffusa venemo." 232 EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS The description of a well-known disease will not be here out of place. It begins with indulgence in despondency, then follow loss of appetite, constant pain in the stomach, difficulty of breathing, pale- ness of the face and palms of the hands, whiteness of the tongue with inky spots on it, white lips, and inability to move. Then the white of the eye be- comes glassy, the skin turns of an olive color and cold to the touch, water collects in every part of the body, and the sufferer can not breathe, except in an erect position. The glands then become in- flamed, the liver hardened ; and the blood, poor, vapid, and colorless, no longer stimulates the heart, and death soon terminates the scene. This is not the home-sickness, or nostalgia, which sprung up among the Swiss soldiers at the sound of their na- tive music, from a passion for home ; and which the kindliest associations often failed to cure, with- out returning to the hills and valleys, the sights and sounds, the domestic enjoyments, and familiar de- lights, so endeared to the heart by the strong sym- pathies of childhood, as to localize the spirit of the man and fill his memory with so delicious a sense of what he loved and had lost, that his soul could perceive no joy but in home, sweet home ! The malady above described is a more violent dis- ease of the same kind, and it is dignified by the title Cachexia Africana, because, alas ! it has killed thousands on thousands of the children of Africa, when " forced from home and all its pleas- ures." Are there not, however, many among us no less pitiable, the victims of frivolity, of fashion, of evil ON HEALTH. 233 genius, of anxious and ungodly trade, and of every vice; led captive at the will of him who pays his slaves for all their toils with grievous pen- alty and death, without the hope of home be- yond it ? The slow fever of anxiety presents the Pro- tean symptoms which everywhere obtrude them- selves. " The broad consumptive plague Breathes from the city to the farthest hut." And its ravages are miserably visible in the union houses, dispensaries, and hospitals of our land. Every madhouse also furnishes instances of its effects ; and, moreover, strangely presents the most terrible examples of remorse and religious despair; proving that Christianity is often taught by mis- taken men rather as a system of terror than as good news of gracious forgiveness to all those who faithfully repent. Fear and anxiety affect all the functions of the body, but especially of the stomach. They seem to suppress the secretion of the fluid on which digestion depends, and also arrest the flow of sa- liva. A curious illustration of this fact is afforded in the method which the conjurers in India some- times adopt for detecting theft among servants. When a robbery has been committed a conjurer is sent for, and great preparations are made. If in a few days the property be not restored, he pro- ceeds with his mysterious operations, one of which is as follows : — The suspected are all required to masticate a quantity of boiled rice for some time, and then to spit it upon separate leaves for in- u* 234 EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS spection. He examines the masticated rice very knowingly, and immediately points out the culprit ; the rice which he masticated being perfectly dry, while that which was masticated by the others is moistened by saliva. Deferred and fruitless longing for a beloved object is a frequent malady which often tends to produce a remarkable deterioration of the blood, thus of course impairing the function of every organ. As the nervous system is most susceptible, the evil is first revealed by distressing nervous sensations. All periods and all conditions of life are liable to this disease ; but the more artificial the society the more prevalent the malady ; that being considered the most natural society in which the natural affections are most suitably engaged. The prosperous fulfillment of our proper desires is not only the best preservation of the joys of re- lationship and the blessings of the social compact, but the best security for the health of bod} and of mind, both in parent and offspring ; for the state of the blood, on which health mainly depends, is influenced almost as much by our feelings as by our food. The grand straggle of the multitude is excited neither by ambition nor covetousness ; nor that nicer torment, a morbid love of approbation, which racks the sensitive genius ; nor by the delirium of an entrancing affection, nor by the tyranny of grosser passion ;— but the common aim of the majority in their daily toil, is rather for means to sustain a bare and comfortless existence. The weariness of the scarcely successful effort is visible ON HEALTH. 235 in almost every face. The vast increase of heart and nervous diseases arises from the distracting excitement and stretch of mind which now pre- vails throughout society, especially in large cities, where great competition exists, and where an un- certain commerce furnishes a precarious support, and wealth and pride too often take mean advan- tages of laborious poverty. The votaries of pleasure are scarcely more ex- posed to the causes of mental disquietude than the devotees of Mammon, and both alike waste the energies of life in excitement, and alike suffer the penalty of breaking those laws which natu- rally regulate the uses both of mind and body. The gambling spirit as constantly haunts the ex- change and corn-market as the play- table ; and, by perplexing and distracting the mind, soon saps the basis of health and anticipates old age. Hence, in large commercial towns, we often wit- ness, even in persons who have barely reached the middle period of life, the haggard face, sunken eye, hoary hair, and feeble gait, which properly belong to " wearied eld." Nor can the results be surprising to those who reflect that anxiety is but a chronic kind of fear ; a sort of intermittent fever or ague, which as manifestly disorders the circulation and secretions as that which arises from the poisonous malaria of the marshes, and which is scarcely more deadly than that of the market, in these days of desperate speculation and grasping monopoly. As Syrach says, " Sorrow also killeth many people, and melancholy consumeth marrow and 236 EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS bone." "We have all heard of those who have be- come "Gray-haired with anguish in a single night." But that is but a small part of the bodily evidence of mental agony. Grief has a very marked influence over the cir- culation ; probably by its direct action on the heart, which may be so violently affected as really to break, not metaphorically but physically. Pro- longed distress of mind invariably produces a great preponderance of the venous over the arterial blood; hence there arises a general feebleness. We are assured, on the testimony of their medical attendants, that convicts frequently die of broken hearts, and it requires more than ordinary care and skill to restore them to any degree of health, if once attacked by illness; as the absence of hope, especially among those transported for life, causes them to sink rapidly, whatever be the disease. They seldom recover, or, if partially restored, it is only to relapse from the slightest circumstances, and such as would not in the least affect persons enjoying liberty and hope. Strong emotion often produces the germ of disease, which for a long time may not become apparent. The majority of what are called nerv- ous diseases are probably of this class. Some grief, like a thorn at the heart, as Hippocrates says, by its secret and incessant irritation gradu- ally wears out the vital energy. Some vulture preys upon almost every heart, and it needs not the pride and ambition of a Napoleon, fastened to the lonely rock, to feel its gnawings, for dis- ON HEALTH. 237 appointment as keenly follows every intense and absorbing passion. Every part of the body testifies to the potency of emotions over the organism of life, though the phys- iologist may not always detect their effects in visible lesions or alterations. Tiie first causes, or earliest physical impressions of disorder, are indeed beyond fbe ken of the dissector. In vain he searches into minute anatomy for the cause of functional de- rangement ; it must be sought among agents which he can not handle. An idea has frequently force enough to prostrate the strongest man in a moment. A word has blasted all his dearest, fondest, most habitual hopes. His only child has died — the part- ner of his life is snatched away ; — he has but heard it; nothing has touched his body, but the "iron has entered his soul." He reels — he trembles — some demon grasps his brain — sleep is gone — he dares not look at the light. A dull pain and a heavy cloud fix themselves over his eyes, and if the efforts of nature and art are unavailing, or if the balmy spirit of religion breathe not healing through his soul, and speedily bind up the broken heart, some fatal malady of the brain more or less rapidly ensues, and the man of energy and affec- tion becomes an outcast from society till death re- leases his spirit. Next to the brain the stomach suffers from con- tinued mental distress. The appetite fails ; diges- tion is suspended; atrophy succeeds, and perhaps some nerve-ache racks the sufferer. Sometimes pulmonary consumption, or disease of the heart, the liver, or the bowels, is induced. The secre- 238 EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS tions are, of course, proportionally affected. Thus the milk of a nurse is often entirely suppressed by mental disquietude. Hence a nervous, excitable woman is hardly fit to suckle her own children ; for the fluid that should nourish her infant under- goes so many changes, from the mother's mental variations, as greatly to distress the child, and per- haps even to destroy it. Ninety-eight out of a hun- dred deaths from convulsions are of children, thus proving them to be especially liable to this disor^ der ; and as the majority die in early infancy, it is not unlikely that the state of the mother's mind may be the secret cause of this unnatural mor- tality. Under mental depression the nervous energy be- comes exhausted, the conservative power of nature is wanting, and the body is rendered especially ob- noxious to external influences. Captain Ross, in the narrative of his arctic voy- age, particularly alludes to the circumstance of mental depression increasing susceptibility to cold. The disastrous retreat from Moscow also affords a striking and extensive instance. This kind of sus- ceptibility to " the skyey influences'' is most mark- ed, but it equally exists in other forms; thus those who are depressed by any cause are most likely to take contagious diseases. Now look at him who is emphatically the miser : that is the wretch. He seems as if all his affec- tions had been congealed by a dip in Lethe, as Dr. M. Good observes. Yet some demon of anxiety, some cunning fiend, sits like a nightmare on his bosom and will not let him sleep, while whispering ON HEALTH. 239 in his ear of robberies and of destitution. No cor- dial cheers — no wealth makes him comfortable — he grows thinner and thinner — his limbs totter and his nerves ache. Even if the charitable, whom he cheats, consent to feed him, though in the home of plenty, he can not gather strength ; his soul starves him. This poor, pitiable being has been the sub- ject of sarcasm/ from age to age ; but many who laugh and point the finger at him are doubtless his descendants, for they bear a strong family like- ness in their features, even to him of whom Va- lerius Maximus relates, that he took advantage of a famine to sell a mouse for two hundred pence, and then died famished, with the money in his pocket. Duty to our neighbor, our country, and our God, requires us to be diligent in business and fervent in spirit. With a right motive, we shall find our utmost efforts to be healthy and happy; but are there not many, however, who ask not with a mockery of prayer for their daily bread, until they have plotted some scheme upon their beds by which they may file a fortune from the wages of industry, or cheat their less crafty breth- ren of some part of their due portion % How can these be healthy ] Perhaps it is possible that such contrivers may be rubicund in their success, but it is more likely that the money-mania will at last absorb all the cheering springs of kindly sympa- thy, and leave them weak and weary in the dry desert of their selfishness, — their whole being a disease. This is a common termination of a vicious course, 240 EFFECTS OF THE PASSIONS ON HEALTH. whatever form of selfishness the vice assume ; for vice is always selfish, and, therefore, apt to be in- creasingly anxious and wretched, till habit dries the heart up in despair. CHAPTER IX. SYMPATHY. Sympathy is the natural check which the Al- mighty puts upon uncharitable self. In spite of themselves, there are few who have not felt com- passion for others. This affords a beautiful proof both of the beneficence of our Maker, and of the power of mind over the body. Pity, like love, imparts a sedate tenderness to the carriage, and if it can not be relieved, the face be- comes pale and wan, the appetite fails, and the slumber is invaded with frightful dreams, and thus a broken heart from pity as from grief is no fiction. Mr. Quain detailed the following case of sympa- thy at the Westminster Medical Society. A gen- tleman who had constantly witnessed the sufferings of a friend afflicted with stricture of the sesophagus, had so great an impression made on his nervous system, that after some time he experienced a sim- ilar difficulty of swallowing, and ultimately died of the spasmodic impediment produced by merely thinking of another's pain. A curious and interesting effect of pathetic feel- ing is the production of tears, which are never gen- erated but by sorrow or sympathy. There is a particular nerve supplying that part which causes 16 X 242 SYMPATHY. the formation of tears, and it seems to be naturally stimulated only by the suffering of the mind. It is commonly observed that deep grief is apt to be dangerous if the brain be not relieved by tears ; in fact, it indicates that the blow has been so severe as to paralize that part of the nervous system which causes them to flow. Hence we so often hear lam- entations from the wounded heart that it can ob- tain no relief from its overwhelming sorrow, be- cause the fountain of tears seems dried up. There is a form of sympathy which compels us to imitate what we witness in others. This ten- dency is greatly aggravated under certain circum- stances, as when persons are secluded from the do- mestic and social duties of life. Thus a French medical practitioner of great merit relates, that, in a convent of nuns, one of the fair inmates was seized with a strange impulse to mew like a cat, and soon the whole sisterhood followed her exam- ple, and mewed regularly every day for hours to- gether. This diurnal caterwauling astounded the neighborhood, and did not cease to scandalize more rational Christians, until the nuns were informed that a company of soldiers were to surround the convent, and to whip all the holy sisterhood with rods till they promised to mew no more : a reme- dy which would be equally serviceable in many other mental epidemics. Cardan relates that, in another nunnery, a sis- ter was impelled to bite her companions, and this disposition also spread among the sisterhood; but instead of being confined to one nunnery, it spread from cloister to cloister throughout the whole of SYMPATHY. 248 Europe. There is a kind of biting mania, not con- fined to nunneries or to the fair sex, and which may often be witnessed in almost every coterie ; it is backbiting ; a malignant sort of insanity, which spreads worse than the plague, and disorders alike the body and the mind, both collectively and indi- vidually. Morbid and imitative sympathy is scarcely less powerful among men than women, but it usually takes a different form in the different sexes : a good example has already been given in the case of epi- leptic fits. The dancing mania of the fourteenth century in- fected men almost as readily as women. We have but to witness a congregation of Jumpers at their devotions, or even a mob of senseless partisans at a stoutly-contested election, to be convinced that the contagion of sympathy finds the presence of the lordly sex no barrier to its extension. The evils of this kind of contagion, in connection with irra- tional enthusiasm, whether excited by true religion or by delusive assumptions, are of a nature to de- mand our most serious consideration, because the interests of truth are often sacrificed in consequence of confounding her accidental with her constant effects. In 1800, a blaze of apparently religious enthusiasm spread with great velocity through many parts of the United States. It began in a crowded congregation, who were rendered pecu- liarly susceptible by extreme fatigue and ignorance. After remaining in the same spot day and night, instead of worshiping, they commenced crying laughing, singing, and shouting, with every variety 244 SYMPATHY. of convulsive contortion and gesticulation. They continued to act from necessity whatever character they had assumed from choice, and the disease ex- tended in every direction with vast rapidity, as an affected person frequently communicated it to the greater part of a crowd collected by curiosity around him. Children are more especially liable to this sort of sympathy, of which instances must be familiar to every reader. The fact, however, is of vast import- ance in connection with the training of children, as a single evil example may counteract all our teach- ing. The imitative propensity is frequently exhib- ited in the diseases of children. A writer in the British and Foreign Medical Review states that he was consulted respecting a child who, when spoken to, instead of answering, always repeated what was said. Degrees of this disease are very common. The same writer mentions a case, elsewhere pub- lished, in which an adult had from infancy irresisti- bly imitated all the muscular movements of those about him. When this dotterel-like propensity was forcibly restrained, he complained that his heart and brain were vexed. It is this imitative tendency which favors the rapid propagation of fanatic outrage, whether po- litical or religious, whether of Jumpers or of Jan- senists. But, happily, the susceptibility of those who so readily submit to outward impressions, and yield their souls to the government of transitory impulses instead of abiding principles, furnishes in itself a check to their extravagance, since some new form of such folly is ever presenting itself, and SYMPATHY. 245 their nervous systems are ever open to fresh sym- pathies ; so that succeeding excitements destroy each other, and error, always imitating and never self-possessed, assumes, as many shapes as the father of lies himself — " every thing by turns, but nothing long." Truth alone is qualified to settle, compose, and establish the form of society, and to hold as well as to obtain universal dominion over the minds and bodies of mankind. We are naturally organized in sympathy rather with the holy than the evil ; as we see that children, not infected by bad example, always love the good and beautiful. "We may, therefore, believe that when society shall be more imbued with the practical spirit of truth, each succeeding generation shall sympathetically, as well as from conviction, exhibit more perfectly the beauties of individual and social obedience to divine law, which is the proper basis of education, and requires all the superstructure to be conform- ed to its outline. Instruction in all knowledge and action will be successful only in proportion as rule and example are divested of the disguises with which men have concealed Truth, the most persua- sive and engaging of all teachers, because really the sole mistress of our constitutional sympathies. We are governed by appearances, and we seem intuitively to act upon this principle ; and, without intending it, we express the pleasure we feel and desire to convey by meeting our friend with a con- stant smile. The outward signs of passion and emotion, which are so wonderfully expressed in every attitude and feature, constitute the language of the soul, the bond of interest and union between 246 SYMPATHY. mind and mind. Men are qualified to influence others just in proportion as they are gifted with the power of feeling lofty emotions and of expressing them with anatomical precision, and appropriate compass of face, of voice, and of action. Hence the success of the actor's or the orator's art de- pends on the facility with which his nerves and muscles assume a truthfulness of expression in the imbodiment of feeling, which, indeed, can never be fully and satisfactorily accomplished without an actual participation, in some degree, of the passion represented ; for the effort to imitate will every now and then be manifest where the feeling does not somewhat animate the gesture and expression. The best actors, therefore, are those that are least like actors, and it is a fact that such as have been most successful on the stage have often been near- ly unconscious of acting, in their realizing concep- tion of the scene in which they placed themselves and the characters they have assumed. Thus real tears are not uncommon with a good tragedian, nor is hearty laughter with a comic actor. Preach- ers might here learn a useful lesson. It is in vain for a man to endeavor to persuade others till he has persuaded himself 1 He can not convince his audience that he is influenced by emotion unless they see it ; which they can not while he is merely endeavoring to imitate the action that belongs to emotion, instead of feeling what he speaks. Real hypocrites are really poor orators, and they are always ready to suspect more successful persuaders of more art than themselves, whereas they have only more nature active within them. The unfeeling SYMPATHY. 247 preacher egregiously fails, and so does he, howev- er feeling, who imitates others instead of express- ing himself. If, however, he suitably contemplate the subject or passion that he would describe, and make an effort to regard it steadfastly, he will at length be moved by it as he would by a living ex- ample of the passion or subject before his face ; for he can not fix his attention sufficiently on a subject not interesting to him. His own sympathies will thus be roused, and he will also rouse others almost to the extent of his own enthusiasm, if his power of language correspond with his feeling, which it generally will. This want of actual emotion in the speaker causes the sublimest truths and the most thrilling relations of great facts to fall lifelessly from the lips, so that the sentences uttered come forth like wreaths of sleepy mist instead of living forms of light. Those who are most commanding among orators do not appear to be so much addressing their au- dience as to be contemplating and expressing some subject of vast interest to themselves, and which inspires their very souls and features with language and significance, like a Pythoness. It is this kind of inspiration with which an audience is most en- thralled, as those can testify who have heard such men as Robert Hall. But the force and fervor of the possessing influence must be visible in the coun- tenance, as well as heard in the intonations of the voice. The kindling eye, especially, must speak. The features, when excited, are so nicely ex- pressive of the variations in mental emotion, that by looking on them we at once read the state of 248 SYMPATHY. the mind in which the individual appears before us, unless, indeed, he artfully conceal himself; but even then constraint will be visible. The skill of the painter is most highly evinced by his seizing the evanescent play of feeling, which though unstable as a ray of light upon the trem- bling water, yet in a moment reveals the emotion of the soul ; and it is the exquisite accordancy be- tween this index and the intelligence that moves it, which characterizes the man of eloquent features, and imparts, with the addition of appropriate lan- guage and utterance, an almost supernatural fas- cination to the gifted orator. Even without the auxiliaries of living energy, tone, and language, the actions of the muscles of the face and eyes are so marvelously fashioned to respond to the touch of passion on the nerves, and so completely calculated to excite our sympathy, that the features even of a dead man may be automatically played upon by galvanism, so that spectators shall feel their sensi- bilities uncontrollably disturbed. Dr. Ure relates an instance in which rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles united their hideous expression in the face of a murderer lately executed, in a manner surpassing the wildest representations of a Fuseli or a Kean. So powerful was the effect that several of the spectators were forced to leave the room from terror, and one gentleman fainted. The missionary martyr, Williams, gives a good example of the power of acting, in exciting sym- pathy. During the lanching of a ship by the natives of Eimeo, an old warrior stood on a little eminence to animate the men at the ropes. " His SYMPATHY. 249 action was most inspiring. There seemed not a fiber of his frame which he did not exert ; and, merely from looking at him, I felt as though I was in the very act of pulling.' ' Young children are strongly affected by facial expression, and they learn the features of passion long before they learn any other part of its lan- guage. Their imitative faculties are so active, and their sympathies so acute, that they uncon- sciously assume the expression of face which they are accustomed to see and feel. Hence the im- portance that children be habituated to kindliness, beauty, and intellect, in those with whom they are domesticated. Even their playthings and pictures should be free from depraved meaning and violent expression, if we wish them to be lovely ; and all the hideous, grotesque, and ludicrous portraiture, which now vulgarize the public mind, should be excluded from the nursery. The gothic and su- perstitious condition of mind will return with the prevalence of pictorial deformities, and the demand for the unnatural will increase with the continu- ance of degraded art ; for which deforming epi demic there can be no remedy, but in familiarizing the common mind with nobler objects. CHAPTER X. SOLITUDE. It is by sympathy with each other that minds become either corrupted or improved; and how- ever advantageous occasional solitude may be for the purpose of familiarizing the mind with its own actings, and however necessary it may be for the arrest of pernicious associations, still it is not by solitude, but by mind acting on mind, through the living medium of sight, sound, and touch, that erroneous humanity is led to right thinking. Where shall it find a pathway out of the mysterious desert of its temptations, while left alone or without a companion, except the tempter % It was in the separation of those whom God had joined together that the serpent beguiler was first able to triumph ; and when a human being is alone, that evil spirit still haunts him with the likeliest hope of conform- ing the soul to his own purposes. Without suitable response to his social desires, the mind of fallen man will conjure up a thousand beings to converse with its thoughts, and to give sentiment and language even to inanimate objects. All the world is alive to man's imagination. Hence the solitudes of the wilderness, where the Indian SOLITUDE. 251 wanders alone, are peopled by him with spirits ; and hence, too, haunted places abound in the tra- ditions of thinly populated districts, among those people whose business requires them to pass much time in solitary walks and watchings among hills and valleys, where no sound of human association breaks the monotony of speechless existence. The Indian saying is true, " Fast in the wilderness and dream of spirits. " This superstitious tendency is equally manifested, whatever the nature of the soli- tude, that is, if the mind be developed, and has not previously been imbued with truth and holiness. The maddening terrors of young criminals who are confined to solitary cells, is thus to be ex- plained. Probably the solitude of stone walls is the most terrible of desolations ; for living nature, however wild, will suggest some thought of a benevolent and protecting spirit. But when vice is doomed to the dungeon, to hear no voice save that of a guilty conscience, and to see no smile but the ghastly smile of despair, what kind of superstition can there enter but that which makes visible the darkness of hell, and prompts the madman to seek refuge from his tormentors in self-murder. An author, of no common power and sagacity, tells us that, when at New York, he visited the prison where they cany out the solitary system, and held the following brief and significant conversation with the turnkey. " Pray why do they call this place the Tombs V 9 " Well, it's the cant name." " I know it is. Why V 252 SOLITUDE. " Some suicides happened here when it was first built. I expect it come about from that." I saw just now that the man's clothes were scattered about the floor of his cell. " Don't you oblige prisoners to be orderly, and put such things away ]." " Where should they put 'em V 9 " Not on the ground, surely : what do you say to hanging them up V 9 He stops and looks around to emphasize the answer : " Why, I say that's just it. When they had hooks they would hang themselves, so they are taken out of every cell, and there's only the marks left where they used to be !" The isolation of a human spirit is worse than death, for the author of humanity has constituted it for intercourse, and everywhere in nature has provided it with scope and occasion to receive and communicate impulses of affection and of thought. Even in hell there is companionship. Evil spirits are attracted to each other, and are permitted to know so much of mercy as to wander even in legions together. They associate in their misery and their mischief, but man has invented a new mode of punishment and destruction, by imprison- ing his wayward and ignorant brother in a tomb : " a breathing man gifted with voice and hearing is built up in a silent, solitary sepulcher of stone," as if to bury his very soul ; since there the pulse of another heart may not beat, and there the lonely spirit, thus cut off from the enjoyment of its own faculties, is tormented to madness by the clash of thoughts and passions without aim or SOLITUDE. 253 object. The improvement of even a wise man without any other fellowship than his own reflec- tion is impossible. He may arrange his knowl- edge and devise new schemes, but his heart is never the better, unless busied for the benefit of others, or, talking as it were with angels, he learns of them, or at least is roused by fellowship with feelings that neither originate nor terminate in self. If then the man accustomed to secluded meditation gains no moral progress or advance- ment but in the interchange of mind with mind, are we to expect the miserable being, who perhaps by his very criminality has demonstrated that he is so uncontrollably excited by association, so mas- tered by his passions that his own safety is of small moment in comparison with the pleasure of pleasing his associates, — are we to expect such a being to be conducted into right thinking, feel- ing, and acting, without another mind to approve, direct, and encourage him in his aspirations after a higher place in the scale of moral existence I What is needed in such a case is surely a friend, — one with a heart and soul, capable of appreci- ating the value of a redeemed and immortal spirit, of proving a true Christian devotedness to the service of a sinful man, and of loving him in hope of what he may be hereafter. Thus will he be drawn, if at all, by the mighty gentleness of heaven's charity, to follow in sympathy, love, and veneration, from the depths of vicious debasement even to the gates of heaven, and into its very glory. It is kindness that wins the heart. Hence the apostolic exhortation — "Be followers of God, Y 254 SOLITUDE. as dear children." Captain Sir W. E. Parry, commenting on these words, observes : " there is perhaps nothing even in the whole compass of Scripture more calculated to awaken contrition in the hardest heart than the Parable of the Prodigal Son. I knew a convict in New South Wales, in whom there appeared no symptom of repentance, in other respects, but who could never hear a ser- mon or comment on this parable without bursting into an agony of tears, which I witnessed on several occasions. Truly he who spoke it knew what was in man." Rational retirement is impossible to the irre- ligious mind. Such a mind perceives not the proper relation of any thing, and dares not dwell alone for the purpose of contemplation ; for all it can feel in solitude is the necessity of keeping up courage by some effort, like a school-boy at night among the tombs. The spontaneous phantasma- goria of the vigilant and guilty spirit rise like un- accountable goblins, unless such a one is busy with his senses. Solitude is therefore terror and madness to the uninformed ; but let a man be suitably instructed and furnished with the proper means of happy mental occupation, and then occa- sional seclusion will soothe and elevate his spirit. Retirement from the world is indeed the way to heaven, and it is when the soul is alone in the agony of its heavy necessities that God and the Son of God visit it with salvation. The separation of man from all his sympathies is death ; and soli- tude is fit for man only when man is fit for fellow- ship with God. But yet the Almighty has insti- SOLITUDE. 255 tuted separation in the dying hour, only to conduct the retiring and confiding spirit to the socialities of a sublimer life. The deadening influence of silent confinement is of course most rapidly destructive to the powers of both mind and body in youth, at which period nature is active with no other purpose but pleasure and development. These being suddenly arrested, the mental faculties, as well as the limbs, become useless. If not speedily emancipated, the child thus unnaturally treated, will soon be found both an idiot and a cripple. Such a process is like re- ducing an expanded human being to the state of Caspar Hauser, who, being concealed from his in- fancy in a small cellar, there grew to the stature of a young man, with less of bodily activity, and less of appearance of mind, than a child at its mother's breast. " The life of his soul could be compared only to the life of an oyster, which, adhering to its rock, is sensible of nothing but the absorption of its food, and perceives only the eternal, uniform dashing of the waves, and in its narrow shell finds no room even for the most confined idea of a world without it, still less of any thing above the earth, and above all worlds." Yet this interesting youth, under the benevolent, but very defective teaching of kindly associations, afterward manifested such exquisite delicacy of intellect, conjoined with such pure and beautiful blendings of affection, that those who could best read the character of his soul most tenderly loved him. Children become idiots in continued solitary con- finement, but adults more frequently become either 256 SOLITUDE. suicides or madmen ; because, in the former, there is the absence of guilty habit, but the will in the latter had been long perverted, and bent upon the attainment of some specific object, in which they promised themselves especial pleasure. Even self- amendment, and escape from the misery of their guilty course had often been hoped for as an end, with many of the worst inmates of our prisons ; when, therefore, such wretched men are deprived of the most distant expectation of being in any way respected or beloved, it is no wonder they become insane. Man, in constant banishment from fellowship, is almost beyond the reach of hope, and in proportion as he is without hope, he is without the natural stimulus and inducement to self-correction. A hu- man being so situated is already in the position of a melancholy madman. The one is deprived of all hope of enjoyment by disease, the other by his fellow-man ; and in both cases, the end can only be entire loss of intellect, or else suicide ; for the brain and nerves are robbed of their proper stimuli, and the body becomes the pregnant source of agonizing sensations. It is by activity that our faculties are preserved as well as developed, and their proper action is always- agreeable. Life, in fact, is not properly maintained, unless in some measure pleasurable. A feeling of unfitness for life always seizes the heart that is robbed of hope, and whenever despair gets possession, the soul desires death, and strug- gles for oblivion. There can be no spontaneous remedy in our disordered nature for the terrors of SOLITUDE. 257 guilt, but if we possess a true faith, despair appears impossible. Belief in God, as He is, not according to this mode or that, but simply as our God for- ever, is the only cure for every thorough heart- trouble. 17 Y* CHAPTER XL THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PASSIONS. We can not doubt that, as the life of this flesh hangs on a breath, so the power of controlling thought hangs on some delicate arrangement of atoms, with which the soul is so connected as to move it, and to be moved by it. The difference between the sublimest philosopher and the most groveling idiot, in regard to the exhibition and en- joyment of intellect, is, as far as we can discover, but the difference in their respective organization, and its state of health. This humbling view ought to cure us of intellectual conceit ; for who dares despise his brother's understanding, when he reflects that the Divine mind will hereafter judge us not for lack of power, but for its abuse ; not according to what we have not, but according to what we have ; and will distribute new endowments as each may have employed the capacity he held. The decisive crisis is but a result. How silly, then, is that com- mon adulation of talent which regards not moral principle, and values the play of wit more than a Godlike will, although this is indeed the only true dignity of our nature. What mere cant of bigotry and carping criticism must that be, which would GOVERNMENT OF THE PASSIONS. 259 alike depress all minds to their own low, dull, flat, unprofitable level of formality, as if the diversified workmanship of the Infinite could all be trimmed into the same shape by conceited man. As well may we endeavor to reduce creation to a monotony, as to bring all minds to perceive and act in the same manner. The spirit of each must vary as much from all others in power and intelligence, as the material medium, through which it works, must differ from all others in construction and circum- stances. The body is only a convenient form which the spirit uses, and we have the highest authority for believing that many spirits may occupy and em- ploy the same body. Nor can we discover any thing in nature that renders it difficult to credit this fact. Some persons, with most unphilosophi- cal audacity, have, however, denied its possibility, but, at least, it behooves them first to prove that they understand the mode of spiritual existence and operation, before they contradict the literal force of the New Testament, from which we learn that, if we use not our bodies according to divine law, they will he employed by other spirits to dishonor and destruction. But in no circumstances in which the moral integrity of the soul can be tried, does it necessarily succumb to the seductions of the body, nor, with right knowledge and reliance, to the per- suasions of perverse spirits. " Who reigns within himself and rules Passions, desires, and fears, is more than king." — Milton. But how are our passions to be governed, ex- cept by a dominant principle or attachment to 260 GOVERNMENT OF THE PASSIONS. some mighty truth, by which the will may be rec- tified, and nobler purpose be substituted for inferior desire. Superior motives are addressed to every understanding. Our Maker has implanted detect- ing conscience, self-respect, and social affections, in every mind elevated above the physical curtail- ments of idiotism. The passions, then, are the elements of our moral nature ; they can not be destroyed without our own destruction. The suspension of their influence is the sus- pension of consciousness. It is only by the con- sent of our wills that they are excited into disorder, and only by our obedience to the laws which our conscience acknowledges are our passions brought to act in harmony. They must be placed in their proper relations to their objects, before the per- fection of their purpose can be demonstrated : and as wisely might we say that disease and tempest frustrate divine wisdom, as impugn the Almighty because our moral being is liable to disturbance. Disorder must yet glorify the God that called light out of darkness. He will vindicate Himself by teaching the sinful soul in felt weakness to depend on Omnipotence, and to derive motive, encourage- ment, and means, to rise above all merely human affections, by submitting to the beauty and attract- iveness of divine example. It needs only the superintendence of a corrected understanding to preserve our passions in order, by keeping them employed in a proper manner. Even in a re- formed madhouse we may learn that occupation is the secret of enjoyment; for, however whimsical the delusion, or however impetuous the passion, it GOVERNMENT OF THE PASSIONS. 261 may be diverted or innocently gratified, by one mind gaining the attention of another. It is by partially yielding to the mistaken interests that absorb the disordered mind that we persuade and acquire the power of conducting it to right asso- ciations. It is by a demonstrated concern for the well-being of others that we secure their affections, and it is by contemplating the ways of Providence toward ourselves that we attain holier desires, and a full confidence in the hand that helps us. A little reflection will show us that the effect of one object of emotion can be removed only by the mind being directed to another. Thus anger, the fiercest of our passions, is often arrested by a word, a look, or a thought, reminding us of some tender and beloved association. The greatest agony which the body can endure is sustained for the sake of those we love. Even the lower animals furnish us with striking examples of the mastery of affection over physical suffering. Addison, in the Spectator, relates a touching in- stance. A skillful anatomist opened a bitch, and, as she lay in the most exquisite tortures, offered her one of her young ones, which she immediately began to lick, and for a time seemed insensible of her own pain : on its being removed, she kept her eye fixed on it, and commenced a wailing cry, which seemed rather to proceed from the loss of her young than a sense of her own torment. We may well blush to contrast the cruelty of the man with the affection of the dog. We are all governed by what we love, and are taught rather by what we witness in others than 262 GOVERNMENT OF THE PASSIONS. by what we experience in ourselves ; by what we see, rather than what we know ; and the manage- ment of our moral feelings is successful according to the demand upon our sympathies. The best moral education is familiarity with generous af- fections at work, and with the wisdom of law exemplified in society, endeavoring to prevent evil, and proving that God can not endure that one of his rational creatures should harm another. By contemplating in others the loveliness of self- government, for unselfish purposes, we find our wishes correspond with theirs, and we love them just in proportion as we understand our true interest, and believe in the puiity of motive. This is the divine method of teaching — " The life is the light of men." CHAPTER XII. THE HIGHEST TRIUMPH OF THE SOUL. CONCLUSION. The triumph of man over pain and difficulty is always achieved by fixing his desire upon the at- tainment of some prize, and the strength of his determination is proportioned to the value his un- derstanding puts upon the object at which he aims. The highest motive that can inspire the rational will is the approval of God ; being asso- ciated as it is with the assurance of His perfection and the bestowment of His favor. Hence we find a man, whether savage or civilized, heathen or Christian, ready to endure any suffering rather than forego his reliance upon the being whom he acknowledges as his God. The object of his worship may be false as Juggernaut, or as true as Jehovah, the conscientious votary is still faithful unto death ; but vast indeed the difference in the consolation and the reason of the faith : as widely separated as the persuasions of folly and terror from the attractiveness of perfect wisdom and love. Yet it is most interesting to reflect on the might of man's will in resisting temptation and endur- ing trial, in obedience of what he believes to be 264 HIGHEST TRIUMPH OF THE SOUL. the mandate of the divine mind. This submission of his being to supreme will most wonderfully exhibits man's constitution. He was made to obey God, and this power depends not on a re- fined education, for the most untutored exhibit it as heroically, if not so beautifully, as the most in- formed. It has been said that it is easier to act the martyr than to conquer one's temper; but these achievements are alike difficult, and require the same lofty conceptions of a higher and holier being, who has a right to demand our self-renun- ciation from love to His perfections. We may therefore include all sense of duty by which men are governed in the idea of supreme right ; and if we find men, as we do, willing to sacrifice them- selves, we at once perceive that they possess a power in their own wills to overcome every evil disposition by constant obedience to God, their chief good, and the author of their being. The mind and body are by Him so proportioned, that one can bear all that can be inflicted on the other, and virtue can stand its ground as long as life ; so that a soul well-principled will be sooner separated than subdued* The detail given by Catlin of the religious rites of the Mandan Indians, although presenting an awful picture of the horrors of ignorance and superstition, yet exhibit also a strong illustration of high moral motive, sustaining and enabling the mind to bear patiently the greatest sufferings of the body. He represents them as voluntarily un- dergoing the most excruciating agonies, for the * See Rambler, No, 32, HIGHEST TRIUMPH OF THE SOUL. 265 purpose of proving their devotedness in the dedica- tion of both body and soul to the Great Spirit. After a long fast, extensive wounds are inflicted in different parts of their bodies, into which skew- ers of wood are inserted, by which they are then suspended until the quiverings of the lacerated muscles cease, and all struggle and tremor are over; when, being apparently dead, or as they term it in the keeping of the Great Spirit, they are lowered to the ground, where they are allowed to lie till that Spirit enables them to get up and walk. Other horrid rites of an agonizing kind are added, but this is enough to show that these deluded heroes and voluntary martyrs, with due instruction and example, would have made fine Christians ; for they committed their souls to the keeping of the Great Spirit, apparently with as firm a confidence in his power, but alas ! without a knowledge of His love, as did Lambert, when consuming in a slow fire by order of the bigoted and cruel Henry, he cried in his torments and in his death, " None but Christ, none but Christ ;" or as did Cranmer, when repenting of the weak- ness that induced him to subscribe to papal doc- trines, he held his hand unflinchingly in the flames until entirely consumed, calling aloud, " This hand has offended, this hand has offended !" The history of martyrdom supplies a multitude of instances which so convincingly demonstrate the dominion of the soul over the body, as to induce a prevalent belief among those who consider not the might of the human will, that martyrs were gener- ally sustained in their sufferings by direct mirac- Z 266 HIGHEST TRIUMPH OF THE SOUL. ulous interference. Nor can we wonder at this notion, for a faith that triumphs over death ap- pears supernatural ; belonging not so much to this life as to another, and indeed taking possession of the soul to fix its affections on a nobler world to conduct it thither. It may be imagined that excessive bodily tor- ment would exhaust the nervous power and ter- minate in delirium, thus accounting for the raptures expressed on some of those occasions. This may sometimes happen, especially when the infliction is very gradual, and the brain has been previously wearied by feverish anxieties; for our merciful Maker has so ordered our connection with the body, that when suffering becomes too intense and too continued for the mastery of the will, through the nervous structure, the attention is drawn off from the bodily feeling by mental associations, and from sensible to spiritual impressions, and delight- ful thoughts then generally take the place of agony. But this delirious ecstasy seems very rarely to have happened with martyrs ; for their exalted determination in general maintained a tes- timony either in prayers or exhortations against demoniac persecution, with clearness and rational freedom till the very moment that death sealed their evidence. That the mind retained its integ- rity in the midst of flames until the moment of decease, is shown by many facts, as in the in- stances of Lambert and Cranmer above quoted. Mr. Hawkes, also, being entreated by his friends to give them some token that the fire was not so intolerable but that a man might keep his mind HIGHEST TRIUMPH OF THE SOUL. 267 quiet and patient, he assented; and, if so, he prom- ised he would lift his hands above his head before he died. An eye-witness states that at the stake he mildly addressed himself to the flames, and when his speech was taken away, and his skin drawn altogether, and his fingers consumed so that all thought him dead, he, in remembrance of his promise, suddenly lifted up his burning hands and clapped them together three times, as if in great joy. James Bainham, also, having half his arms and legs consumed, spake these words : " Ye look for miracles ! Here, now, ye may see one. This fire is a bed of roses to me." These witnesses for heaven knew what death is, but they never felt it. The Lord of life changed torment into delight for them, and converted the fury of flame into a gentle air that wafted their spirits to their kindred ; and ere He sent the chariot of salvation He had well assured them that the sep- aration of soul and body is only a symbolic part of death ; but that to dwell willingly in the darkness which the smile of perfect love can never dissipate, is death indeed. This struggling after unattainable objects, this fretting because we can not trust our faithful Creator, this turmoil of selfish passion — this is death. Reliance upon God for every good is life. The spirit, elevated and sustained by the divine strength of a Christian's faith, may walk above the turbulence of this world in a path of light, brighter and calmer than that which the moonbeam paves upon the waters, and which terminates only in the pure and serene glory of eternal heaven. 268 HIGHEST TRIUMPH OF THE SOUL. We find, then, that man, as regards both mind and body, is liable to disease from disturbance originating in the moral nature. His passions are his bane as well as his blessedness. Now these tendencies to disorder, existing in his constitutional emotions, are to be subdued only by appeals to a power of self-control, to some consenting principle which perceives the reasonableness of obedience to certain laws for the sake of preserving the well- being of one's self in the welfare of others. In short, an appeal to the understanding of the indi- vidual for his own benefit, only as a part of a grand system of united individuals. Conscience proves our personality, and indicates that our nature is not a random result, but that it may be improved or perverted in relation to a fu- ture state ; for if we have not, nor expect, another state of being, what is the consequence of this life ? Why should we regard any thing but our own con- venience or enjoyment ] What, then, is the value of that word which whispers inwardly — " Thou ehalt love thy God with all thy soul, and thy neigh- bor as thyself 7" The arguments of materialists go to establish the notion that health of mind depends on health of body ; but the truth seems to be, that what con- tributes to the one contributes also to the other; for neither can be preserved without obedience to moral as well as physical ordinances. Indeed, it may not be impossible to prove that perfect obedi- ence to moral law would insure the complete wel- fare of human nature ; and the more we study the operation of our passions on the body, the more we HIGHEST TRIUMPH OF THE SOUL. 269 discover of evi ^nce that health of soul is health to the body also at least we can not fail to discern that a holy WiM is the best regulator of desire and of action, and the only warrant of our qualification for an inheritance in light. The one conclusion of all research on this, as on every other subject, is inevitable. There is cer- tainly some end worthy of man's creation and suit- ed to his spirit, in his advancing struggle after knowledge and goodness, which the economy of earthly existence does not furnish. The purpose of being is not here explained ; intelligent desire is not satisfied ; the sunshine of truth is only reflected on earth ; there is no perfect day to the soul ; light direct from its source falls not on the sight ; we must imagine the delights of which we are capa- ble, but which we can not here realize ; we must live abstractedly if we would live reasonably in holy intimacy with Divine and human science ; we must look forward into futurity for the meaning of the past. The present adds but a stone to the grand erection, the design of which is to occupy our contemplation everlastingly; for each individ- ual mind, in its memory and experience, is adding material to material, in an order and for an end at present unknown to itself, but yet manifestly ac- cording to the plan of a mind that can not be dis- appointed. The very body, which in health so beautifully obeys us, while the soul seeks only perishing en- joyment, becomes an impediment to our nobler aspirations ; and when the spirit awakes to the con- sciousness of its infinite capacity, its very efforts to z* 270 HIGHEST TRIUMPH OF THE SOUL. be free tend to burst the bonds of the body, which becomes more and more irksome as the mind grows mature; at length the ruinous condition of the earth- ly tabernacle strengthens the desire for one that is heavenly and eternal; and when the body obeys not, then the attentive believing spirit begins to enjoy true liberty in acquaintance with God's pur- pose to his creature ; and already catching a gleam of glory from beyond the grave, the regenerated man passes through death, and finds it only one step to enter forever through that gateway into satisfying and endless life. THE END HARPER'S NEW MISCELLANY OF POPULAR STERLING LITERATURE. " Books that have an aim and meaning in them." 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