§ 12.—_Law._
The understanding of man is extremely limited, and, therefore, all
sensations resulting from its action must of necessity be also limited.
In order, therefore, to give these sensations greater impulse, and with
redoubled force to attract the will to good and restrain it from evil,
both natures, the spiritual and the animal, are so intimately connected
with each other that their modifications, being mutually interchanged,
impart strength to one another. Hence arises a fundamental law of mixed
natures, which, being reduced to its primary divisions, runs thus: the
activities of the body correspond to the activities of the mind; that
is, any overstraining of a mental activity is necessarily followed by an
overstraining of certain bodily actions,—just as the equilibrium, or
harmonious action, of the mental powers is associated with that of the
bodily powers in perfect accord. Further: mental indolence induces
indolence in the bodily actions; mental inaction causes them to cease
altogether. Thus, as perfection is ever accompanied by pleasure,
imperfection by the absence of pleasure, this law may be thus expressed:
Mental pleasure is invariably attended by animal pleasure, mental pain
by animal pain.[23]
§ 13.—_Mental Pleasure furthers the Welfare of the Human Frame._
Thus, a sensation which embraces within its range the whole spiritual
being agitates in the same measure the whole framework of the organic
body,—heart, veins and blood, muscles and nerves, all, from those mighty
nerves that give to the heart its living impulse of motion down to the
tiny and unimportant nerves by which hairs are attached to the skin,
share equally its influence. Everything tends to a more violent motion.
If the sensation be an agreeable one, all these parts will acquire a
higher degree of harmonious activity; the heart’s beat will be free,
lively, uniform, the blood will flow unchecked, gently or with fiery
speed, according as the affection is of a gentle or violent description;
digestion, secretion, and excretion will follow their natural course;
the excitable membranes will pliantly play in a gentle vapor-bath, and
excitability as well as sensitiveness will increase. Therefore the
condition of the greatest momentary mental pleasure is at the same time
the condition of the greatest bodily well-being.
As many as there may be of these partial activities (and is not every
beat of the pulse the result perhaps of thousands?) so many will be the
obscure sensations crowding upon the soul, each one of which indicates
perfection. Out of this confused complexity arises entire sensation of
the animal harmonies, that is, the highest possible combined sensation
of animal pleasure, which ranges itself, as it were, alongside of the
original intellectual or moral sensation, which this addition infinitely
increases. Thus is every agreeable affection the source of countless
bodily pleasures.
This is most evidently confirmed by the examples of sick persons who
have been cured by joy. Let one whom a terrible home-sickness has wasted
to a skeleton be brought back to his native land, and the bloom of
health will soon be his again; or let us enter a prison in which
miserable men have for ten or twenty years inhabited filthy dungeons and
possess at last barely strength to move,—and let us tell them suddenly
they are free; the single word of freedom will endow their limbs with
the strength of youth, and cause dead eyes to sparkle with life.
Sailors, whom thirst and famine have made their prey during a long
voyage, are half cured by the steersman’s cry of “Land!” and he would
certainly greatly err who ascribed the whole result to a prospect of
fresh food. The sight of a dear one, whom the sufferer has long desired
to see, sustains the life that was about to go, and imparts strength and
health. It is a fact, that joy can quicken the nervous system more
effectually than all the cordials of the apothecary, and can do wonders
in the case of inveterate internal disorders denied to the action of
rhubarb and even mercury. Who then does not perceive that the
constitution of the soul which knows how to derive pleasure from every
event and can dissipate every ache in the perfection of the universe,
must be the most beneficial to the whole organism? and this constitution
of the soul is—virtue.
§ 14.—_Mental pain undermines the Welfare of the Whole Organisms._
In the very same way, the opposite result is brought about by a
disagreeable affection of the mind. The ideas which rule so intensely
the angry or terrified man may, as rightly as Plato called the passions
a fever of the soul, be regarded as convulsions of the organ of thought.
These convulsions quickly extend through the nervous system, and so
disturb the vital powers that they lose their perfection, and all
organic actions lose their equilibrium. The heart beats violently and
irregularly; the blood is so confined to the lungs that the failing
pulse has barely enough to sustain it. The internal chemical processes
are at cross-purposes; beneficent juices lose their way and work harm in
other provinces, while what is malignant may attack the very core of our
organism. In a word, the condition of the greatest mental distress
becomes the condition of the greatest bodily sickness.
The soul is informed of the threatened ruin of the organs that should
have been her good and willing servants by a thousand obscure
sensations, and is filled with an entire sensation of pain, associating
itself to the primary mental suffering, and giving to this a sharper
sting.
§ 15.—_Examples._
Deep, chronic pains of the soul, especially if accompanied by a strong
exertion of thought—among which I would give a prominent place to that
lingering anger which men call indignation—gnaw the very foundations of
physical life, and dry up the sap that nourish it. Sufferers of this
kind have a worn and pale appearance, and the inward grief betrays
itself by the hollow, sunken eyes. “Let me,” says Cæsar, “have men about
me that are fat”:—
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights;
Yond’ Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much—such men are dangerous.
Fear, trouble, distress of conscience, despair, are little less powerful
in their effects than the most violent fevers. Richard, when in deepest
anxiety, finds his former cheerfulness is gone, and thinks to bring it
back with a glass of wine. But it is not mental sorrow only that has
banished comfort, it is a sensation of discomfort proceeding from the
very root of his physical organism, the very same sensation that
announces a malignant fever. The Moor, heavily burdened with crimes, and
once crafty enough in absolving all the sensations of humanity—by his
skeleton-process—into nothing, now rises from a dreadful dream, pale and
breathless, with a cold sweat upon his brow. All the images of a future
judgment which he had perhaps believed in as a boy, and blotted out from
his remembrance as a man, assail his dream-bewildered brain. The
sensations are far too confused for the slower march of reason to
overtake and unravel them. Reason is still struggling with fancy, the
spirit with the horrors of the corporeal frame.[24]
_Moor._—No! I am not shaking. It was but a dream. The dead are not
beginning to rise. Who says I tremble and turn pale? I am quite well,
quite well.
_Bed._—You are pale as death; your voice is frightened and hesitating.
_Moor._—I am feverish. I will be bled to-morrow. Say only, when the
priest comes, that I have fever.
_Bed._—But you are very ill.
_Moor._—Yes truly; that is all. And sickness disturbs the brain and
breeds strange mad dreams. Dreams mean nothing. Fie on womanish
cowardice! Dreams mean nothing. I have just had a pleasant dream.
[_He falls down in a faint._
Here we have the whole image of the dream suddenly forcing itself upon a
man, and setting in motion the entire system of obscure ideas, stirring
up from the foundation the organ of thought. From all these causes
arises an intense sensation of pain in its utmost concentration, which
shatters the soul from its depth, and lames _per consensum_ the whole
structure of the nerves.
The cold horror that seizes on the man who is about to commit some
crime, or who has just committed one, is nothing else than the horror
which agitates the feverish man, and which is felt on taking nauseous
medicines. The nightly tossings of those who are troubled by remorse,
always accompanied by a high pulse, are veritable fevers, induced by the
connection between the physical organism with the soul; and Lady
Macbeth, walking in her sleep, is an instance of brain delirium. Even
the imitation of a passion makes the actor for the moment ill; and after
Garrick had played Lear or Othello he spent some hours in convulsions on
his bed. Even the illusion of the spectator, through sympathy with acted
passion, has brought on shivering, gout, and fits of fainting.
Is not he, then, who is plagued with an evil temper, and draws gall and
bitterness from every situation in life: is not the vicious man, who
lives in a chronic state of hatred and malevolence; is not the envious
man, who finds torture in every excellence of his neighbor,—are not
these, all of them, the greatest foes to their own health? Has vice not
enough of the horrible in it, when it destroys not only happiness but
health.
§ 16.—_Exceptions._
But a pleasant affection has sometimes been a fatal one, and an
unpleasant one has sometimes worked a marvellous cure. Both facts rest
upon experience: should they remove the limits of the law we have
expounded?
Joy is fatal when it rises into ecstacy: nature cannot support the
strain which in one moment is thrown upon the whole nervous system. The
motion of the brain is no longer harmony, but convulsion, an extremely
sudden and momentary force which soon changes into the ruin of the
organism, since it has transgressed the boundary line of health (for
into the very idea of health there enters and is essentially interwoven
the idea of a certain moderation of all natural motions). The joy as
well as the grief of finite beings is limited, and dare not pass beyond
a certain point without ruin.
As far as the second part is concerned, we have many examples of cure,
through a moderate fit of anger, of inveterate dyspepsia; and through
fright—as in the case of a fire—of rheumatic pains and lameness
apparently incurable. But even dysentery has sometimes resolved an
internal stoppage, and the itch has been a cure for melancholy madness
and insanity: is the itch, for this, less a disease?—is dysentery
therefore health.
§ 17.—_Indolence of Mind brings about greater Indolence in the Organic
Movements._
As, according to the testimony of Herr von Haller, activity of mind
during the day tends to quicken the pulse towards evening, will not
indolence of mind make it more sluggish, and absolute inactivity
completely stop it? For, although the circulation of the blood does not
seem to be so very dependent on the mind, is it altogether unreasonable
to suppose that the heart, which, in any case, borrows from the brain
the larger portion of its strength, must necessarily, _when the soul
ceases to maintain the action of the brain_, suffer thereby a great loss
of power? A condition of phlegm is accompanied by a sluggish pulse, the
blood is thin and watery, and the circulation defective in the abdomen.
The idiots, whom Muzell has described for us,[25] breathed slowly and
with difficulty, had no inclination to eat and drink, nor to the natural
functions; the pulse was slow, all bodily movements slumberous and
indicative of weariness. The mental numbness which is the result of
terror or wonder is sometimes accompanied by a general suspension of all
natural physical activity. Was the mind the origin of this condition, or
was it the body which brought about this torpid state of mind? But these
considerations lead to subtleties and intricate questions, and, besides,
must not be discussed in this place.
§ 18.—_Second Law._
All that has been said of the transferrence of the mental sensations to
the animal holds true of the transferrence of animal affections to the
mental. Bodily sickness—for the most part the natural result of
intemperance—brings its punishment in the form of bodily pain; but the
mind also cannot escape a radical attack, in order that a twofold pain
may more powerfully impress upon it the necessity of restraint in the
desires. In like manner the feeling of bodily health is accompanied by a
more lively consciousness of mental improvement, and man is thus the
more spurred on to maintain his body in good condition. We arrive thus
at a second law of mixed natures—that, with the free action of the
bodily organism, the sensations and ideas gain a freer flow; and learn
that, with a corrupted organism, corruption of the thinking faculty and
of the sensations inevitably follows. Or, more shortly, that the general
sensation of a harmonious animal life is the fountain of mental
pleasure, and that animal pain and sickness is the fountain of mental
pain.
In these different respects, or from their consideration, soul and body
may not unaptly be compared with two stringed instruments tuned by the
same hand, and placed alongside of one another. When a string of one of
them is touched and a certain tone goes forth, the corresponding string
of the other will sound of itself and give the same tone, only somewhat
weaker. And, using this comparison, we may say that the string of
gladness in the body wakes the glad string in the soul, and the sad
string the string of sadness. This is that wonderful and noteworthy
sympathy which unites the heterogeneous principles in man so as to form
one being. Man is not soul and body—but the most inward and essential
blending of the two.
§ 19.—_Moods of Mind result from Moods of Body._
Hence the heaviness, the incapacity of thought, the discontented temper,
which are the consequence of excess in physical indulgence; hence the
wonderful effects of wine upon those who always drink in moderation.
“When you have drunk wine,” says Brother Martin, “you see everything
double, you think doubly easily, you are doubly ready for any
undertaking, and twice as quickly bring it to a conclusion.” Hence the
comfort and good humor experienced in fine weather, proceeding partly
from association of ideas, but mostly from the increased feeling of
bodily health that goes along with it, extending over all the functions
of our organism. Then it is that people use such expressions as, “I
_feel_ that I am well,” and at such a season they are more disposed
towards all manner of mental labor, and have a heart more open to the
humaner feelings, and more prompt to the practice of moral duties. The
same may be seen in the national character of different peoples. Those
who dwell in gloomy regions mourn along with the dismal scenery: in wild
and stormy zones man grows wild: where his lot is cast in friendly
climates he laughs with the sky that is bright above him. Only under the
clear heaven of Greece lived a Homer, a Plato, a Phidias; there were
born the Muses and the Graces, while the Lapland mists can hardly bring
forth men, and never a genius. While our Germany was yet a wild forest
or morass, the German was a hunter as wild as the beast whose skin he
slung about his shoulders. As soon as industry had changed the aspect of
his country began the epoch of moral progress. I will not maintain that
character takes its rise in climate only, but it is certain that towards
the civilization of a people one main means is the improvement of their
skies.
The disorders of the body may disorder the whole range of our moral
perceptions, and prepare the way for an outburst of the most evil
passions. A man whose constitution is ruined by a course of dissipation
is more easily led to extremes than one who has kept his body as it
should be kept. This is, indeed, the horrible plan of those who destroy
our youths, and that father of robbers must have known man well, who
said, “We must destroy both body and soul.” Catiline was a profligate
before he became a conspirator, and Doria greatly erred when he thought
he had no cause to fear a voluptuary like Fiesco. On the whole, it is
very often remarked that an evil spirit dwells in a sick body.
In diseases this sympathy is still more striking. All severe illnesses,
especially those of malignant nature and arising from the economy of the
abdominal regions, announce themselves, more or less, by a strange
revolution in the character. Even while the disease is still silently
stealing through the hidden corners of our mechanism, and undermining
the strength of nerve, the mind begins to anticipate by dark forebodings
the fall of her companion. This is a main element in that condition
which a great physician described in a masterly manner under the name of
“Horrores.” Hence their moroseness of disposition, which none can
account for, their wavering fancies and inclinations, their disgust at
what used to give them pleasure. The amiable man grows quarrelsome, the
merry man cross, and he who used to lose himself, and gladly, in the
bustle of the world, flies the face of man and retires into a gloomy
melancholy. But underneath this treacherous repose the enemy is making
ready for a deadly onslaught. The universal disturbance of the entire
mechanism, when the disease once breaks forth, is the most speaking
proof of the wonderful dependence of the soul on the body. The feeling,
springing from a thousand painful sensations, of the utter ruin of the
organism, brings about a frightful mental confusion. The most horrible
ideas and fancies rise from their graves. The villain whom nothing could
move yields under the dominant power of mere animal terror. Winchester,
in dying, yells in the anguish of despair. The soul is under a terrible
necessity, it would seem, of snatching at whatever will drag it deeper
into darkness, and rejects with obstinate madness every ray of comfort.
The string, the tone of pain is in the ascendant, and just as the
spiritual misery rose in the bodily disorder, so now it turns and
renders the disorder more universal and more intense.
§ 20.—_Limitations of the foregoing._
But there are daily examples of sufferers who courageously lift
themselves above bodily ills: of dying men who, amidst the distressful
struggles of the frame, ask, “Where is thy sting, O death?” Should not
wisdom, one might urge, avail to combat the blind terrors of the organic
nature? Nay, much more than wisdom, should religion have so little power
to protect her friends against the assaults springing from the dust? Or,
what is the same thing, does it not depend upon the preceding condition
of the soul, as to how she accepts the alterations of the processes of
life?
Now, this is an irrefragable truth. Philosophy, and still more a mind
courageous and elevated by religion, are capable of completely weakening
the influence of the animal sensations which assault the soul of one in
pain, and able, as it were, to withdraw it from all coherence with the
material. The thought of God, which is interwoven with death, as with
all the universe, the harmony of past life, the anticipation of an
ever-happy future, spread a bright light over all its ideas; while night
is drawn round the soul of him who departs in folly and in unbelief. If
even involuntary pangs force themselves upon the Christian and wise man
(for is he less a human being?), yet will he resolve the sensations of
his dissolving frame into happiness:—
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds.
It is precisely this unwonted cheerfulness on the part of those who are
mortally sick which has often a physical reason at the basis, and which
has the most express significance for the practical physician. It is
often found in conjunction with the most fatal symptoms of Hippocrates,
and without being attributable to any bygone crisis. Such a cheerfulness
is of bad import. The nerves, which during the height of the fever have
been most sharply assailed, have now lost sensation; the inflamed
members, it is well known, cease to smart as soon as they are destroyed;
but it would be a hapless thought to rejoice that the time of burning
pain were passed and gone. Stimulus fails before the dead nerves, and a
deathly indolence belies future healing. The soul finds herself under
the illusion of a pleasant sensation, because she is free from a
long-enduring painful one. She is free from pain, not because the tone
of her instrument is restored, but because she no more experiences the
discord. Sympathy ceases as soon as the connection is lost.
§ 21.—_Further Aspects of the Connection._
If I might now begin to go deeper—if I might speak of delirium, of
slumber, of stupor, of epilepsy and catalepsy, and such like, wherein
the free and rational spirit is subjected to the despotism of the
body—if I might enlarge especially on the wide field of hysteria and
hypochondria—if it were allowed me to speak of temperaments,
idiosyncrasies, and constitutions, which for physicians and philosophers
are an abyss—in one word, should I attempt to demonstrate truth of the
foregoing from the bed of sickness, which is ever a chief school of
psychology—my matter would be extended to an endless length. We have, it
seems to me, enough to prove that the animal nature is throughout
mingled with the spiritual, and that this combination is perfection.