concerning Human Understanding.” He was also of political importance,
having occupied for years the position of confidential adviser to the
great Earl of Shaftesbury. Professor Campbell says of him: “Locke is apt
to be forgotten now, because in his own generation he so well discharged
the intellectual mission of initiating criticism of human knowledge, and
of diffusing the spirit of free enquiry and universal toleration which
has since profoundly affected the civilized world. He has not bequeathed
an imposing system, hardly even a striking discovery in metaphysics, but
he is a signal example in the Anglo-Saxon world of the love of
attainable truth for the sake of truth and goodness. If Locke made few
discoveries, Socrates made none. But both are memorable in the record of
human progress.”
Robert Boyle, the natural philosopher, was the seventh son and
fourteenth child of the great Earl of Cork. His scientific work procured
him extraordinary reputation among his contemporaries. It was he who
“first enunciated the law that the volume of gas varies inversely as the
pressure, which among English-speaking people is still called by his
name.” Great as were his attainments they were almost over-shadowed by
the saintliness of his character, the liveliness of his wit and the
incomparable charm of his manner. Boyle was a man of the most feeble
health. This is what Evelyn says of him: “The contexture of his body
seemed to me so delicate that I have frequently compared him to Venice
glass, ... [which] though wrought never so fine, being carefully set up,
would outlast harder metals of daily use.”
Robert Hooke, the experimental philosopher, was both deformed and
diseased. He was not a great man and his scientific achievements would
have been “more striking if they had been less varied.” Nevertheless he
was renowned in his day, and his contribution of real importance for,
although “he perfected little he originated much.” I mention him, and
shall mention several others, who have been forgotten by all but
scholars, because I wish to show how large an army stands behind its
illustrious chiefs. Besides, if we contemplate only the giant luminaries
of the firmament of fame, we shall become discouraged. They paralyze us
by the very intensity of the admiration they evoke. Lesser men, on the
contrary, for the reason that they are nearer our own orbit, are more
likely to stir us into emulation.
Herbert Spencer’s achievements are too well known to necessitate further
comment. He was exceedingly delicate and at his best only able to work
three hours a day.
Descartes, the foremost French philosopher, had a feeble and somewhat
abnormal body. “Yet he considered it” (I am quoting Mr. Edmund Gosse)
“well suited to his own purposes, and was convinced that the Cartesian
philosophy would not have been improved, though the philosopher’s
digestion might, by developing the thews of a plough-boy.”
Nicholas Malebranche, the great French Cartesian philosopher, was the
tenth child of his parents. Although deformed and constitutionally
feeble he was one of the most sought after men of his day. From all
countries of the world, but more especially from England (be it said in
her honour) scholars, writers and philosophers flocked to his door. The
German princes voyaged to Paris expressly to see him. The philosopher
Berkeley was probably the cause of his death by forcing himself on
Malebranche when the latter had been ordered absolute quiet. His
influence has been variously estimated. Spinoza is undoubtedly one of
his disciples. Mons. Emile Faguet says of him: “Malebranche est un des
plus beaux (metaphysiciens) que j’aie rencontrés. Si l’on veut ma
pensée, je trouve Descartes plus grand savant et plus vaste ésprit; mais
je trouve Malebranche plus grand philosophe, d’un degré au moins que
Descartes lui-Même.” Speaking of his character he writes: “Il n’y eut
jamais homme de plus d’ésprit, ni plus homme de bien, ni plus
seduisant.”
Blaise Pascal, the great French religious philosopher, still holds a
position of immense importance in the history of literature as well as
philosophy. His “Provincial Letters” are the “first example of polite
controversial irony since Lucian and they have continued to be the best
example of it during more than two centuries in which style has been
sedulously practised and in which they have furnished a model to
generation after generation.” His “Pensées,” published after his death,
is “still a favorite exploring ground ... to persons who take an
interest in their problems.” In philosophy his position is this: “He
seized firmly and fully the central idea of the difference between
reason and religion, but unlike most men since his day who, not
contented with a mere concordat, have let religion go and contented
themselves with reason,” Pascal, though equally dissatisfied, “held fast
to religion and continued to fight out the questions of difference with
reason.” From the age of eighteen, Pascal never passed a single day
without pain. Nevertheless, in the worst of his sufferings he was wont
to say: “Do not pity me; sickness is the natural condition of
Christians. In sickness we are as we ought always to be ... in the
suffering of pains, in the privation of goods and of all the pleasures
of the senses, exempt from all passions which work in us during the
whole course of our life, without ambition, without avarice, in the
continual expectation of death.”
Voltaire suffered frequent attacks of illness. It was said of him that
“he was born dying.”
Comte, the French Positive philosopher, accomplished the bulk of his
work after recovering from an attack of insanity during which he threw
himself into the Seine. Perhaps it is too soon to judge of the ultimate
value of his system of philosophy. It has had impassioned adherents as
well as scornful critics. His main thesis seems to be “that the
improvement of social conditions can only be effected by moral
development and never by any political mechanism, or any violence in the
way of an artificial redistribution of wealth.” In other words, he
preached that a moral transformation must precede any real advance. Yet
he was not a Christian. An enemy defined Comtism as “Catholicism without
Christianity.”
Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss philosopher and critic, whose chief work,
the “Journal Intime,” published after his death, obtained for him
European reputation, was a valetudinarian. Amiel wrote but little, but
all he accomplished has the quality of exquisite sensitiveness.
The great Kant was a wretched little creature barely five feet high with
a concave chest and a deformed right shoulder; his constitution was of
the frailest, though by taking extraordinary precautions he escaped
serious illness.
VIII
ASTRONOMERS AND MATHEMATICIANS
Johann Kepler, the great German astronomer, was a contemporary of Tycho
Brahe and Galileo with both of whom he was in correspondence. Kepler’s
contributions to science were of the utmost importance. It was he who
established the two cardinal principles of modern astronomy—the laws of
elliptical orbits and of equal areas. He also enunciated important
truths relating to gravity. In spite of the backward condition of
mechanical knowledge, he attempted to explain the planetary evolutions
by a theory of vortices closely resembling that afterwards adopted by
Descartes. He also prepared the way for the discovery of the
infinitesimal calculus. His literary remains were purchased by Catherine
the Second of Russia and were only published during the latter half of
the Nineteenth Century. It is impossible to consider without
astonishment the colossal amount of work accomplished by Kepler, despite
his great physical disabilities. When only four years old an attack of
small-pox had left him with crippled hands and eyesight permanently
impaired. His constitution, already enfeebled by premature birth, had to
withstand successive shocks of illness.
Flamstead, the great British astronomer, was obliged to leave school in
consequence of a rheumatic affection of the joints. It was to solace his
enforced idleness that he took up the study of astronomy. The extent and
quality of his performance is almost unbelievable when one considers his
severe physical suffering.
Nicholas Saunderson lost his sight before he was twelve months old, yet
he became professor of mathematics at Cambridge. He was an eminent
authority in his day, an original and efficient teacher and the author
of a book on algebra. His knowledge of optics was remarkable. “He had
distinct ideas of perspective, of the projection of the sphere, and of
the forms assumed by plane or solid figures.”
D’Alembert was not only a mathematician but also a philosopher of the
highest order. He was made a member of the French Academy at the age of
twenty-four. He was so frail that his life was continually despaired of
and he remained a valetudinarian to the end.
IX
STATESMEN AND POLITICIANS
We now come to the statesmen and politicians. Robert Cecil, first Earl
of Salisbury, Secretary of State under Queen Elizabeth and Lord
Treasurer under James I, was a statesman who all his life wielded
immense power to the undoubted benefit of his country. Yet in person he
was in strange contrast to his rivals at court, being deformed and
sickly. Elizabeth styled him her pigmy; his enemies vilified him as
“wry-neck,” “crooked-back” and “splay-foot.” In Bacon’s essay “Of
Deformity” he paints his cousin to the life.
John Somers, Lord Keeper under William and Mary, “was in some respects”
(I am quoting Macaulay) “the greatest man of his age. He was equally
eminent as a jurist, as a politician and as a writer.... His humanity
was the more remarkable because he received from nature a body such as
is generally found united to a peevish and irritable mind. His life was
one long malady; his nerves were weak; his complexion livid; his face
prematurely wrinkled.”
William III, I have already mentioned, and now comes a name to conjure
with, the great Lord Clive, founder of the British Empire. At eighteen
he went out to India and shortly afterwards the effect of the climate on
his health began to show itself in those fits of depression during one
of which he ended his life. We see in his end the result of physical
suffering, of chronic disease which opium failed to abate.
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, one of the greatest statesmen England
ever had, suffered from hereditary gout. The attacks continued from
boyhood with increasing intensity to the close of his life. He was for
two years mentally unbalanced, yet after that he returned to Parliament
and directed for eight years all the power of his eloquence in favor of
the American Colonies. Dr. Johnson said: “Walpole was a minister given
by the King to the people, but Pitt was a minister given by the people
to the King.”
Whatever we may think of Marat as a man, we cannot deny that he occupies
a large place in the history of his time. Yet he was always delicate, so
much so that after the completion of one of his books he lay in a stupor
during thirteen days. In 1788 he was attacked by a terrible malady, from
which he suffered during the whole of his revolutionary career.
Pitt, the younger, was a sickly child and although he grew into a
healthy youth, his constitution was early broken by gout.
Owing to an accident in early childhood Talleyrand was lamed for life.
At the time this seemed a great misfortune, for owing to his disability
he forfeited his right of primogeniture and the profession of arms was
closed to him. “No Frenchman of his age did so much to repair the
ravages wrought by fanatics and autocrats.”
Henry Fawcett, the English politician and economist, was accidentally
blinded at the age of twenty-five. The effect of his blindness was, as
the event proved, the reverse of calamitous. By concentrating his
energies, it brought his powers to earlier maturity than would otherwise
have been possible, and “it had a mellowing influence on his character,
which in youth had been rough and canny, and inclined to harshness.”
Gladstone appointed him Postmaster-General in 1880 and not England
alone, but the world as well, is deeply indebted to him for the reforms
he inaugurated. He instituted the parcel post, postal orders, sixpenny
telegrams, the banking of small savings by means of stamps and increased
facilities for life insurance and annuities.
Kavanaugh was an Irish politician and member of the privy council of
Ireland. He had only the rudiments of legs and arms but in spite of
these physical defects he had a remarkable career. He learned to ride in
the most fearless fashion, strapped to a special saddle and managing his
horse with the stumps of his arms; he also fished, shot, drew and wrote,
various mechanical devices supplementing his limited physical
capacities.
X
THE FREEDOM OF ILL-HEALTH
One of the greatest advantages of invalidism is that it frees us from
petty obligations, unworthy pleasures, and meaningless conventions. The
blessed freedom of ill-health is something few people appreciate;
neither have they learned to make full use of its unearned leisure. Yet
we are always clamoring for time; in America, apparently, it can be
found only in the sick-room.
How many people do we not know, who are so busy making, what they are
pleased to call a living, that they never find time to live! As a matter
of fact, only the small minority of the inefficient are obliged to
sacrifice all possibility of leisure to the exigency of obtaining a
livelihood; the majority, which include men and women of every class and
of every vocation—plumbers and captains of industry, stenographers as
well as débutantes—are occupied in accumulating superfluities. By
superfluities I do not mean everything which is not normally necessary
for the existence of the body, but everything that is not essential to
the perfect expansion of separate individuality.
The tendency of the day is to pour all mankind into the same mould; to
fetter great and small to the one ideal of obvious achievement. We have
degraded success by popularizing it; we are suppressing individuality
instead of fostering it; and unless a change comes before long, and the
individual is again able to liberate himself and to germinate, we shall
perish as other civilizations have perished without leaving more than a
scratch on the page of history. For nations are ultimately judged, not
by their numbers, their riches or their power, but solely by the glory
of the individuals they have produced. Think of the empires which have
so completely vanished that but for a few broken stones we could not
even guess the sites of their vast cities, and compare these nations
either to the Jews or Greeks who during their flowering gave birth to
men who have conferred immortality on their respective races.
Suffering quickens individuality by removing the pressure of
circumstance, custom and occupation. Moreover, in the sick-room the
intellect as well as the soul has not only the liberty but the time to
mature.
It always surprises me to hear people complain of insomnia. Why should
they consider it a misfortune to live precious hours instead of spending
them in unconsciousness? By sleeping even as much as five hours instead
of nine, we gain twenty-one hours a week. Think of it! Almost three
working days!
The reason the average person is so exhausted by lying awake a few hours
longer that he is accustomed to do, is because he turns and twists in
his bed bemoaning his sad fate, until he has worked himself into a
fever. Stay awake; enjoy the night,—it is quite as wonderful as the day.
Taste the charm of the silence as it steals by degrees over your weary
spirit. Be grateful for these hours; they are a gift from fate. Read,
write, think, meditate, and when morning comes you will wake more
refreshed after two hours’ sleep than you used to after nine. Napoleon
and other great men never slept more.
XI
ARTISTS
The great painters and sculptors seem to have been strangely healthy and
normal. I say that they seem to have been so, because of the extreme
difficulty of getting any accurate information on the subject. It sounds
incredible, but I read a long life of Petrarch in which everything was
mentioned but his health and only discovered quite accidentally that he
had been an epileptic.
I am, therefore, convinced that there are many examples I might cite if
I could only unearth the truth, yet even so, I have been able to ferret
out four artists who were physically handicapped. Navarette, called the
Spanish Titian and celebrated under the name of “El Mudo,” was dumb.
They say that Guercino squinted so badly that he could focus only one
eye.
Antoine Watteau suffered all his life from tuberculosis, which no doubt
accounts for a certain “wistful gaiety” which characterizes his work.
Watteau’s position in French art is of unique importance. He became the
founder—as the culmination—of a new school which marked a revolt against
the pompous classicism of the preceding period. “The vitality of his art
was due to the rare combination of a poet’s imagination with a power of
seizing reality. In his treatment of landscape background and the
atmospheric conditions surrounding his figures we find the germ of
Impressionism.” From the middle of the Eighteenth Century until about
1875 Watteau’s work fell into disrepute. It was chiefly owing to the
efforts of the brothers de Goncourt that a reaction set in which has
slowly carried Watteau to the summit of fame. He died in his
thirty-seventh year.
Aubrey Beardsley flashed into fame with black and white drawings of
extraordinary originality and beauty. His peculiar technique has been
widely imitated but never approached. After twenty years his reputation
has not yet reached its zenith. Aubrey Beardsley during the whole of his
meteoric career suffered from consumption. He died at the age of
twenty-six.
XII
MUSICIANS
One would expect deafness to be an insuperable obstacle to a musician,
yet Beethoven produced a large part of his work while handicapped by it,
and some of his greatest compositions when his deafness had become
complete. Mozart was delicate and subject to fevers; his last work and
his best was written just before his death. It was said of Händel: “He
was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death,
and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the
great works which have made his name immortal in music.” Schubert was
barely five feet one and walked with a strange shuffling gait; his
eyesight was so defective that he slept in his spectacles. He suffered
from digestive trouble and died young. So also did Chopin, having been
an invalid the greater part of his short life. Mendelssohn was very
frail and delicate. Carl Maria von Weber was not only ravaged by disease
but also deformed and lame. Paganini, the most extraordinary violinist
the world has ever heard, suffered from phthisis of the larynx and was
constantly ill.
The case of Robert Schumann is very curious. He was studying to be a
pianist, when, in attempting to strengthen his fingers, he accidentally
paralyzed his right hand. To this apparent misfortune we owe one of the
greatest composers.
XIII
THREE PHYSICIANS, A NATURALIST AND A CHEMIST
“Physician, heal thyself,” might have been said to Sir William Harvey,
the famous discoverer of the circulation of the blood; and to Albert von
Haller, the great Swiss doctor, who is considered the father of modern
physiology.
To Louis Pasteur the world is indebted for the introductions of methods
which have already worked wonders and bid fair to render possible the
preventive treatment of all infectious disease. His most sensational
discovery was the cure of hydrophobia, which he accomplished despite the
fact that the special microbe causing this dread disease had not yet
been isolated. Pasteur’s motto was, “Travaillez, travaillez toujours.”
On his death-bed he turned to his devoted pupils and exclaimed: “Oú en
êtes-vous? Que faîtes-vous?” and ended by repeating: “Il faut
travailler.” He once said: “In the field of observation, chance only
favors those who are prepared.” This great benefactor of the human race,
though loaded with honors, remained to the last simple and affectionate
as a child. Pasteur was subject to fits of apoplexy and it is curious
that some of his most important discoveries were made immediately after
such attacks.
Darwin, from the age of thirty, was a great sufferer. His daughter
writes: “No one indeed, except my mother, knows the full amount of
suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience.” Dr.
Darwin, however, once said to a friend: “If I had not been so great an
invalid, I should not have done nearly so much work as I have
accomplished.”
Dr. Trudeau, who worked such miracles for the cure of consumption, was
himself consumptive.
XIV
INVENTORS
Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning jenny, though a man
of great personal strength, suffered from wretched health.
James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was continually ailing
until he approached old age. He had a prodigious memory and as an
inventive genius he has never been surpassed.
Ill health and failing eyesight forced Joseph Niepce to retire from the
army at the age of twenty-eight. It was during this opportune leisure
that the idea of obtaining sun-pictures first suggested itself to him.
In 1826 he learnt that Daguerre was working on the same lines and three
years later they cooperated in order to perfect what was, however,
Niepce’s discovery.
XV
HISTORIANS AND MEN OF LETTERS
Aristides, surnamed Theodosius, was a Greek rhetorician and sophist. He
was so celebrated that in many places statues were erected during his
lifetime to commemorate his talents. He suffered for many years from a
mysterious disease, which was, however, a positive benefit to his
studies as they were prescribed as part of his cure.
Pliny, the Younger, was far from robust. He suffered from weakness of
the eyes, throat and chest. He himself speaks of his delicate frame.
It has been said of Erasmus that he was the first man of letters since
the fall of the Roman Empire. He occupied during his lifetime the
position of supreme pontiff to an elect public which the ardors of the
Renaissance had called into being. His admirers were to be found in
every country and among all ranks. Presents were continually sent to him
by great and small. We hear of a donation of two hundred florins from
Pope Clement XII and of a contribution of comfits and sweetmeats from
the nuns of Cologne. From England in particular, he obtained constant
supplies of money. “I receive daily,” he writes, “letters from the most
remote parts, from kings and princes, prelates and men of learning, and
even from persons of whose existence I have never heard.”
His position as regards the Reformation has been for centuries a subject
of passionate contention. It was said of him, “Erasmus laid an egg, and
Luther hatched it.” This, however, is only partly true. As a matter of
fact, Erasmus had but one passion, the passion for learning. When he
found that Luther’s revolt aroused a new fanaticism—that of evangelism,
he recoiled from the violence of the new preachers. “Is it for this,” he
exclaimed, “that we have shaken off bishops and popes that we may come
under the yoke of such madmen as Otto and Farel?”
Erasmus’ works are too numerous to enumerate separately. His greatest
contribution is undoubtedly his Greek Testament.
Erasmus spent the greater part of his life in agony. For twenty years he
was unable to sit down either to read, write or even to take his meals.
He could eat but little and only of the most delicate meats. He could
neither eat nor bear the smell of fish. “My heart,” he said, “is
Catholic, but my stomach is Lutheran.” Nevertheless, his various
biographers exclaim at the amount of work he accomplished. One of them
writes, “Through the winter of 1514–1515 Erasmus worked with the
strength of ten. In Venice ... he did the work of two men.”
Montaigne was never strong but, after a few years at the court of Paris,
his health gave way completely and he retired to his castle, resolved to
devote the rest of his life to study and contemplation. We undoubtedly
owe his immortal essays to his invalidism.
The same is true of Brantôme. He was a soldier until a fall from his
horse compelled him to retire into private life. This fortunate accident
is directly responsible for his “Memoirs,” which are not only delightful
reading but of the greatest historical value.