Irritability is, more than most unlovely states, a sin of the flesh. It
is not, like envy, malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may suppose
to belong equally to an embodied or a disembodied spirit. In fact, it
comes nearer to being physical depravity than anything I know of. There
are some bodily states, some conditions of the nerves, such that we
could not conceive of even an angelic spirit confined in a body thus
disordered as being able to do any more than simply endure. It is a
state of nervous torture; and the attacks which the wretched victim
makes on others are as much a result of disease as the snapping and
biting of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia.
Then, again, there are other people who go through life loving and
beloved, desired in every circle, held up in the church as examples of
the power of religion, who, after all, deserve no credit for these
things. Their spirits are lodged in an animal nature so tranquil, so
cheerful, all the sensations which come to them are so fresh and
vigorous and pleasant, that they cannot help viewing the world
charitably and seeing everything through a glorified medium. The
ill-temper of others does not provoke them; perplexing business never
sets their nerves to vibrating; and all their lives long they walk in
the serene sunshine of perfect animal health.
Look at Rover there. He is never nervous, never cross, never snaps or
snarls, and is ready, the moment after the grossest affront, to wag the
tail of forgiveness,--all because kind Nature has put his dog's body
together so that it always works harmoniously. If every person in the
world were gifted with a stomach and nerves like his, it would be a far
better and happier world, no doubt. The man said a good thing who made
the remark that the foundation of all intellectual and moral worth must
be laid in a good healthy animal.
Now I think it is undeniable that the peace and happiness of the
home-circle are very generally much invaded by the recurrence in its
members of these states of bodily irritability. Every person, if he
thinks the matter over, will see that his condition in life, the
character of his friends, his estimate of their virtues and failings,
his hopes and expectations, are all very much modified by these things.
Cannot we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, persecuted
individuals, all whose friends were unreasonable, whose life was full of
trials and crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-singing morning to
find all these illusions gone with the fogs of the night? Our friends
are nice people, after all; the little things that annoyed us look
ridiculous by bright sunshine; and we are fortunate individuals.
The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must
consist of two things: first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily
states; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we
cannot ward them off.
Of course, the first of these is the most important; and yet, of all
things, it seems to be least looked into and understood. We find
abundant rules for the government of the tongue and temper; it is a
slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cart-loads of wholesome
instructions have been thrown; but how to get and keep that healthy
state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the temptation to
ill-temper and anger is a subject which moral and religious teachers
seem scarcely to touch upon.
Now, without running into technical, physiological language, it is
evident, as regards us human beings, that there is a power by which we
live and move and have our being,--by which the brain thinks and wills,
the stomach digests, the blood circulates, and all the different
provinces of the little man-kingdom do their work. This something--call
it nervous fluid, nervous power, vital energy, life-force, or anything
else that you will--is a perfectly understood, if not a definable thing.
It is plain, too, that people possess this force in very different
degrees: some generating it as a high-pressure engine does steam, and
using it constantly, with an apparently inexhaustible flow; and others
who have little, and spend it quickly. We have a common saying, that
this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous, irritable states
of temper are the mere physical result of a used-up condition. The
person has overspent his nervous energy,--like a man who should eat up
on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week, and go
growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of nervous
force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its parts is
seized on by some one monopolizing portion, and used up to the loss and
detriment of the rest, Thus, with men of letters, an exorbitant brain
expends on its own workings what belongs to the other offices of the
body: the stomach has nothing to carry on digestion; the secretions are
badly made; and the imperfectly assimilated nourishment, that is
conveyed to every little nerve and tissue, carries with it an acrid,
irritating quality, producing general restlessness and discomfort. So
men and women go struggling on through their three-score and ten years,
scarcely one in a thousand knowing through life that perfect balance of
parts, that appropriate harmony of energies, that make a healthy, kindly
animal condition, predisposing to cheerfulness and good-will.
We Americans are, to begin with, a nervous, excitable people. Multitudes
of children, probably the great majority in the upper walks of life, are
born into the world with weaknesses of the nervous organization, or of
the brain or stomach, which make them incapable of any strong excitement
or prolonged exertion without some lesion or derangement; so that they
are continually being checked, laid up, and invalided in the midst of
their drugs. Life here in America is so fervid, so fast, our climate is
so stimulating, with its clear, bright skies, its rapid and sudden
changes of temperature, that the tendencies to nervous disease are
constantly aggravated.
Under these circumstances, unless men and women make a conscience, a
religion, of saving and sparing something of themselves expressly for
home-life and home-consumption, it must follow that home will often be
merely a sort of refuge for us to creep into when we are used up and
irritable.
Papa is up and off, after a hasty breakfast, and drives all day in his
business, putting into it all there is in him, letting it drink up brain
and nerve and body and soul, and coming home jaded and exhausted, so
that he cannot bear the cry of the baby, and the frolics and pattering
of the nursery seem horrid and needless confusion. The little ones say,
in their plain vernacular, "Papa is cross."
Mamma goes out to a party that keeps her up till one or two in the
morning, breathes bad air, eats indigestible food, and the next day is
so nervous that every straw and thread in her domestic path is
insufferable.
Papas that pursue business thus day after day, and mammas that go into
company, as it is called, night after night, what is there left in or of
them to make an agreeable fireside with, to brighten their home and
inspire their children?
True, the man says he cannot help himself,--business requires it. But
what is the need of rolling up money at the rate at which he is seeking
to do it? Why not have less, and take some time to enjoy his home, and
cheer up his wife, and form the minds of his children? Why spend himself
down to the last drop on the world, and give to the dearest friends he
has only the bitter dregs?
Much of the preaching which the pulpit and the Church have levelled at
fashionable amusements has failed of any effect at all, because wrongly
put. A cannonade has been opened upon dancing, for example, and all for
reasons that will not, in the least, bear looking into. It is vain to
talk of dancing as a sin because practised in a dying world where souls
are passing into eternity. If dancing is a sin for this reason, so is
playing marbles, or frolicking with one's children, or enjoying a good
dinner, or doing fifty other things which nobody ever dreamed of
objecting to.
If the preacher were to say that anything is a sin which uses up the
strength we need for daily duties, and leaves us fagged out and
irritable at just those times and in just those places when and where we
need most to be healthy, cheerful, and self-possessed, he would say a
thing that none of his hearers would dispute. If he should add, that
dancing-parties, beginning at ten o'clock at night and ending at four
o'clock in the morning, do use up the strength, weaken the nerves, and
leave a person wholly unfit for any home duty, he would also be saying
what very few people would deny; and then his case would be made out. If
he should say that it is wrong to breathe bad air and fill the stomach
with unwholesome dainties, so as to make one restless, ill-natured, and
irritable for days after, he would also say what few would deny, and his
preaching might have some hope of success.
The true manner of judging of the worth of amusements is to try them by
their effects on the nerves and spirits the day after. True amusement
ought to be, as the word indicates, recreation,--something that
refreshes, turns us out anew, rests the mind and body by change, and
gives cheerfulness and alacrity to our return to duty.
The true objection to all stimulants, alcoholic and narcotic, consists
simply in this,--that they are a form of overdraft on the nervous
energy, which helps us to use up in one hour the strength of whole days.
A man uses up all the fair, legal interest of nervous power by too much
business, too much care, or too much amusement. He has now a demand to
meet. He has a complicate account to make up, an essay or a sermon to
write, and he primes himself by a cup of coffee, a cigar, a glass of
spirits. This is exactly the procedure of a man who, having used the
interest of his money, begins to dip into the principal. The strength a
man gets in this way is just so much taken out of his life-blood; it is
borrowing of a merciless creditor, who will exact, in time, the pound of
flesh nearest his heart.
Much of the irritability which spoils home happiness is the letting-down
from the over-excitement of stimulus. Some will drink coffee, when they
own every day that it makes them nervous; some will drug themselves with
tobacco, and some with alcohol, and, for a few hours of extra
brightness, give themselves and their friends many hours when amiability
or agreeableness is quite out of the question. There are people calling
themselves Christians who live in miserable thraldom, forever in debt to
Nature, forever overdrawing on their just resources, and using up their
patrimony, because they have not the moral courage to break away from a
miserable appetite.
The same may be said of numberless indulgences of the palate, which tax
the stomach beyond its power, and bring on all the horrors of
indigestion. It is almost impossible for a confirmed dyspeptic to act
like a good Christian; but a good Christian ought not to become a
confirmed dyspeptic. Reasonable self-control, abstaining from all
unseasonable indulgence, may prevent or put an end to dyspepsia, and
many suffer and make their friends suffer only because they will persist
in eating what they know is hurtful to them.
But it is not merely in worldly business, or fashionable amusements, or
the gratification of appetite, that people are tempted to overdraw and
use up in advance their life-force. It is done in ways more insidious,
because connected with our moral and religious faculties. There are
religious exaltations beyond the regular pulse and beatings of ordinary
nature, that quite as surely gravitate downward into the mire of
irritability. The ascent to the third heaven lets even the Apostle down
to a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him.
It is the temptation of natures in which the moral faculties predominate
to overdo in the outward expression and activities of religion till they
are used up and irritable, and have no strength left to set a good
example in domestic life.
The Reverend Mr. X. in the pulpit to-day appears with the face of an
angel; he soars away into those regions of exalted devotion where his
people can but faintly gaze after him; he tells them of the victory that
overcometh the world, of an unmoved faith that fears no evil, of a
serenity of love that no outward event can ruffle; and all look after
him and wonder, and wish they could so soar.
Alas! the exaltation which inspires these sublime conceptions, these
celestial ecstasies, is a double and treble draft on Nature,--and poor
Mrs. X. knows, when she hears him preaching, that days of miserable
reaction are before her. He has been a fortnight driving before a gale
of strong excitement, doing all the time twice or thrice as much as in
his ordinary state he could, and sustaining himself by the stimulus of
strong coffee. He has preached or exhorted every night, and conversed
with religious inquirers every day, seeming to himself to become
stronger and stronger, because every day more and more excitable and
excited. To his hearers, with his flushed sunken cheek and his
glittering eye, he looks like some spiritual being just trembling on his
flight for upper worlds; but to poor Mrs. X., whose husband he is,
things wear a very different aspect. Her woman and mother instincts tell
her that he is drawing on his life-capital with both hands, and that the
hours of a terrible settlement must come, and the days of darkness will
be many. He who spoke so beautifully of the peace of a soul made perfect
will not be able to bear the cry of his baby or the pattering feet of
any of the poor little Xs., who must be sent
"Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of his sight";
he who discoursed so devoutly of perfect trust in God will be nervous
about the butcher's bill, sure of going to ruin because both ends of the
salary don't meet; and he who could so admiringly tell of the silence of
Jesus under provocation will but too often speak unadvisedly with his
lips. Poor Mr. X. will be morally insane for days or weeks, and
absolutely incapable of preaching Christ in the way that is the most
effective, by setting Him forth in his own daily example.
What then? must we not do the work of the Lord?
Yes, certainly; but the first work of the Lord, that for which provision
is to be made in the first place, is to set a good example as a
Christian man. Better labor for years steadily, diligently, doing every
day only what the night's rest can repair, avoiding those cheating
stimulants that overtax Nature, and illustrating the sayings of the
pulpit by the daily life in the family, than to pass life in exaltations
and depressions.
The same principles apply to hearers as to preachers. Religious services
must be judged of like amusements, by their effect on the life. If an
overdose of prayers, hymns, and sermons leaves us tired, nervous, and
cross, it is only not quite as bad as an overdose of fashionable folly.
It could be wished that in every neighborhood there might be one or two
calm, sweet, daily services which should morning and evening unite for a
few solemn moments the hearts of all as in one family, and feed with a
constant, unnoticed daily supply the lamp of faith and love. Such are
some of the daily prayer-meetings which for eight or ten years past have
held their even tenor in some of our New England cities, and such the
morning and evening services which we are glad to see obtaining in the
Episcopal churches. Everything which brings religion into habitual
contact with life, and makes it part of a healthy, cheerful average
living, we hail as a sign of a better day. Nothing is so good for health
as daily devotion. It is the best soother of the nerves, the best
antidote to care; and we trust erelong that all Christian people will be
of one mind in this, and that neighborhoods will be families gathering
daily around one altar, praying not for themselves merely, but for each
other.
The conclusion of the whole matter is this: Set apart some provision to
make merry with _at home_, and guard that reserve as religiously as the
priests guarded the shew-bread in the temple. However great you are,
however good, however wide the general interests that you may control,
you gain nothing by neglecting home-duties. You must leave enough of
yourself to be able to bear and forbear, give and forgive, and be a
source of life and cheerfulness around the hearthstone. The great sign
given by the Prophets of the coming of the Millennium is,--what do you
suppose?--"He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and
the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the
earth with a curse."
Thus much on avoiding unhealthy, irritable states.
But it still remains that a large number of people will be subject to
them unavoidably for these reasons.
_First._ The use of tobacco, alcohol, and other kindred stimulants, for
so many generations, has vitiated the brain and nervous system, so that
it is not what it was in former times. Michelet treats of this subject
quite at large in some of his late works; and we have to face the fact
of a generation born with an impaired nervous organization, who will
need constant care and wisdom to avoid unhealthy, morbid irritation.
There is a temperament called the HYPOCHONDRIAC, to which many persons,
some of them the brightest, the most interesting, the most gifted, are
born heirs,--a want of balance of the nervous powers, which tends
constantly to periods of high excitement and of consequent
depression,--an unfortunate inheritance for the possessor, though
accompanied often with the greatest talents. Sometimes, too, it is the
unfortunate lot of those who have not talents, who bear its burdens and
its anguish without its rewards.
People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency,
of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the
whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of
themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which
they have to do.
Now the highest philosophy for persons thus afflicted is to understand
themselves and their tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom and
depression are just as much a form of disease as a fever or a toothache,
to know that it is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind with
wretched illusions, to make them seem miserable and unlovely to
themselves, to make their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, to
make all events appear to be going wrong and tending to destruction and
ruin.
The evils and burdens of such a temperament are half removed when a man
once knows that he has it and recognizes it for a disease, when he does
not trust himself to speak and act in those bitter hours as if there
were any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. He who has not
attained to this wisdom overwhelms his friends and his family with the
waters of bitterness; he stings with unjust accusations, and makes his
fireside dreadful with fancies which are real to him, but false as the
ravings of fever.
A sensible person, thus diseased, who has found out what ails him, will
shut his mouth resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark thoughts
that infest his soul.
A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods,
once said to me, "My dear Sir, there are times when I know I am
possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak." And so this
wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, cheerful
reticence, leaving always the impression of a cheery, kindly temper,
when, if she had spoken out a tithe of what she thought and felt in her
morbid hours, she would have driven all her friends from her, and made
others as miserable as she was herself. She was a sunbeam, a life-giving
presence in every family, by the power of self-knowledge and
self-control.
Such victories as this are the victories of real saints.
But if the victim of these glooms is once tempted to lift their heavy
load by the use of _any stimulus whatever_, he or she is a lost man or
woman. It is from this sad class more than any other that the vast army
of drunkards and opium-eaters is recruited. The hypochondriacs belong to
the class so well described by that brilliant specimen of them, Dr.
Johnson,--those who can practise ABSTINENCE, but not TEMPERANCE. They
cannot, they will not be moderate. Whatever stimulant they take for
relief will create an uncontrollable appetite, a burning passion. The
temperament itself lies in the direction of insanity. It needs the most
healthful, careful, even regime and management to keep it within the
bounds of soundness; but the introduction of stimulants deepens its
gloom almost to madness.
All parents, in the education of their children, should look out for and
understand the signs of this temperament. It appears in early childhood;
and a child inclined to fits of depression should be marked as a subject
of the most thoughtful, painstaking physical and moral training. All
over-excitement and stimulus should be carefully avoided, whether in the
way of study, amusement, or diet. Judicious education may do much to
mitigate the unavoidable pains and penalties of this most undesirable
inheritance.
The second class of persons who need wisdom in the control of their
moods is that large class whose unfortunate circumstances make it
impossible for them to avoid constantly overdoing and overdrawing upon
their nervous energies, and who therefore are always exhausted and worn
out. Poor souls, who labor daily under a burden too heavy for them, and
whose fretfulness and impatience are looked upon with sorrow, not anger,
by pitying angels. Poor mothers, with families of little children
clinging round them, and a baby that never lets them sleep; hard-working
men, whose utmost toil, day and night, scarcely keeps the wolf from the
door; and all the hard-laboring, heavy-laden, on whom the burdens of
life press far beyond their strength.
There are but two things we know of for these,--two only remedies for
the irritation that comes of these exhaustions: the habit of silence
towards men, and of speech towards God. The heart must utter itself or
burst; but let it learn to commune constantly and intimately with One
always present and always sympathizing. This is the great, the only
safeguard against fretfulness and complaint. Thus and thus only can
peace spring out of confusion, and the breaking chords of an overtaxed
nature be strung anew to a celestial harmony.