I have had one of my savage headaches. For a day and a night I was in
blind torment. Have at it, now, with the stoic remedy. Sickness of the
body is no evil. With a little resolution and considering it as a
natural issue of certain natural processes, pain may well be borne. One's
solace is, to remember that it cannot affect the soul, which partakes of
the eternal nature. This body is but as "the clothing, or the cottage,
of the mind." Let flesh be racked; I, the very I, will stand apart, lord
of myself.
Meanwhile, memory, reason, every faculty of my intellectual part, is
being whelmed in muddy oblivion. Is the soul something other than the
mind? If so, I have lost all consciousness of its existence. For me,
mind and soul are one, and, as I am too feelingly reminded, that element
of my being is _here_, where the brain throbs and anguishes. A little
more of such suffering, and I were myself no longer; the body
representing me would gesticulate and rave, but I should know nothing of
its motives, its fantasies. The very I, it is too plain, consists but
with a certain balance of my physical elements, which we call health.
Even in the light beginnings of my headache, I was already not myself; my
thoughts followed no normal course, and I was aware of the abnormality. A
few hours later, I was but a walking disease; my mind--if one could use
the word--had become a barrel-organ, grinding in endless repetition a bar
or two of idle music.
What trust shall I repose in the soul that serves me thus? Just as much,
one would say, as in the senses, through which I know all that I can know
of the world in which I live, and which, for all I can tell, may deceive
me even more grossly in their common use than they do on certain
occasions where I have power to test them; just as much, and no more--if
I am right in concluding that mind and soul are merely subtle functions
of body. If I chance to become deranged in certain parts of my physical
mechanism, I shall straightway be deranged in my wits; and behold that
Something in me which "partakes of the eternal" prompting me to pranks
which savour little of the infinite wisdom. Even in its normal condition
(if I can determine what that is) my mind is obviously the slave of
trivial accidents; I eat something that disagrees with me, and of a
sudden the whole aspect of life is changed; this impulse has lost its
force, and another which before I should not for a moment have
entertained, is all-powerful over me. In short, I know just as little
about myself as I do about the Eternal Essence, and I have a haunting
suspicion that I may be a mere automaton, my every thought and act due to
some power which uses and deceives me.
Why am I meditating thus, instead of enjoying the life of the natural
man, at peace with himself and the world, as I was a day or two ago?
Merely, it is evident, because my health has suffered a temporary
disorder. It has passed; I have thought enough about the unthinkable; I
feel my quiet returning. Is it any merit of mine that I begin to be in
health once more? Could I, by any effort of the will, have shunned this
pitfall?