IN order to enjoy Ease of Mind in our intercourse with the world, we
should introduce into our habits of business punctuality, decision, the
practice of being beforehand, despatch, and exactness; in our pleasures,
harmlessness and moderation; and in all our dealings, perfect integrity
and love of truth. Without these observances we are never secure of
ease, nor indeed taste it in its highest state. As in most other things,
so here, people in general do not aim at more than mediocrity of
attainment, and of course usually fall below their standard; whilst many
are so busy in running after what should procure them ease, that they
totally overlook the thing itself.
Ease of mind has the most beneficial effect upon the body, and it is
only during its existence that the complicated physical functions are
performed with the accuracy and facility which nature designed. It is,
consequently, a great preventive of disease, and one of the secret means
of effecting a cure when disease has occurred; without it, in many
cases, no cure can take place. By ease of mind many people have survived
serious accidents, from which nothing else could have saved them, and in
every instance is much retarded by the absence of it. Its effect upon
the appearance is no less remarkable. It prevents and repairs the
ravages of time in a singular degree, and is the best preservative of
strength and beauty. It often depends greatly upon health, but health
always depends greatly upon it. The torments of a mind ill at ease seem
to be less endurable than those of the body; for it scarcely ever
happens that suicide is committed from bodily suffering. As far as the
countenance is an index, “the vultures of the mind” appear to turn it
more mercilessly than any physical pain; and no doubt there have been
many who would willingly have exchanged their mental agony for the most
wretched existence that penury could produce. From remorse there is no
escape. In aggravated cases probably there is no instant, sleeping or
waking, in which its influence is totally unfelt. Remorse is the extreme
one way; the opposite is that cleanliness of mind which has never been
recommended any where to the same extent that it is by the precepts of
the Christian religion, and which alone constitutes “perfect freedom.”
It would be curious if we could see what effect such purity would have
upon the appearance and actions of a human being—a being who lived, as
Pope expresses it, in the “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.”
Goldsmith has beautifully said:
How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consign’d,
Our own felicity we make or find.
Shakspeare observes: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so.”[131]
Charles James Fox, who was, from infancy, a spoiled child, would spend
night after night in gambling, and wasting his sweet nature in the
orgies of Bacchus. Then he would flee away to the delightful scenery and
refreshing air of St. Anne’s Hill, and there betake himself to
gardening, in a blue apron; or to the learned leisure of his study, in
the bosom of conjugal felicity and friendship.
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Footnote 131:
_The Original._ By Thomas Walker, M.A.
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