practical wisdom. Every one must be aware, that the wise pursuit
of happiness must be preceded by the preserving of health. The
wise ancients justly made the _mens sana in corpore sano_, to
be the condition, if not the essence of human happiness. Most
treatises upon health have oppressed the subject by too many, and
too intricate rules. It would be difficult to add to the author’s
precepts, brief as they are, so far as they relate to the moral and
intellectual regimen necessary to health. I add a remark, or two,
touching some physical appliances, that should be appended to the
moral rules.
So far as my reading and observation extend, there are but three
circumstances, which have almost invariably accompanied health and
longevity. The favored persons have lived in elevated rather than
in low and marshy positions; have been possessed of a tranquil and
cheerful temperament, and active habits; and have been early risers.
It is related that the late King George the Third, who made the
causes of longevity a subject of constant investigation, procured
two persons, each considerably over a hundred years of age, to
dance in his presence. He then requested them to relate to him
their modes of living, that he might draw from them, if possible,
some clue to the causes of their vigorous old age. The one had been
a shepherd, remarkably temperate and circumspect in his diet and
regimen; the other a hedger, equally noted for the irregularity,
exposure, and intemperance of his life. The monarch could draw
no inference, to guide his inquiries, from such different modes
of life, terminating in the same result. On further inquiry, he
learned, that they were alike distinguished by a tranquil easiness
of temper, active habits, and early rising.
After all the learned modern expositions of the causes of
dyspepsia, I suspect that not one in a thousand is aware how much
temperance and moderation in the use of food conduce to health.
There are very few among us who do not daily consume twice the
amount of food, necessary to satisfy the requisitions of nature.
The redundant portion must weigh as a morbid and unconcocted mass
upon the wheels of life. Every form of alcohol is unquestionably
a poison, slow or rapid, in proportion to the excess in which it
is used. Disguise it is as we may, be the pretexts of indulgence
as ingenious and plausible, as inclination and appetite can frame,
it retains its intrinsic tendencies under every sophistication.
Wine, in moderation, is, doubtless, less deleterious than any
of its disguises. In declining age, and in innumerable cases of
debility, it may be indicated as a useful remedy; but even here,
only as a less evil to countervail a greater. Pure water, all other
circumstances equal, is always a healthier beverage for common use.
Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind, and active
habits, I place early rising, as a means of health and happiness. I
have hardly words for the estimate which I form of that sluggard,
male or female, that has formed the habit of wasting the early
prime of day in bed.--Laying out of the question the positive loss
of life, the _magna pars dempta solido de die_, and that too of the
most inspiring and beautiful part of the day, when all the voices
of nature invoke man from his bed; leaving out of the calculation,
that longevity has been almost invariably attended by early rising;
to me, late hours in bed present an index to character, and an omen
of the ultimate hopes of the person who indulges in this habit.
There is no mark, so clear, of a tendency to self-indulgence. It
denotes an inert and feeble mind, infirm of purpose, and incapable
of that elastic vigor of will which enables the possessor always
to accomplish what his reason ordains. The subject of this
unfortunate habit cannot but have felt self-reproach, and a purpose
to spring from his repose with the freshness of the dawn. If the
mere indolent luxury of another hour of languid indulgence is
allowed to carry it over this better purpose, it argues a general
weakness of character, which promises no high attainment or
distinction.--These are never awarded by fortune to any trait, but
vigor, promptness and decision. Viewing the habit of late rising,
in many of its aspects, it would seem as if no being, that has
any claim to rationality, could be found in the allowed habit of
sacrificing a tenth, and that the most pleasant and spirit-stirring
portion of life, at the expense of health, and the curtailing of
the remainder, for any pleasure which this indulgence could confer.
Note 17, page 76.
From personal experience and no inconsiderable range of
observation, I am convinced that the author has by no means
overrated the influence of imagination upon health and disease. It
is indeed astonishing, at this late period, when every physiologist
and physician is ready to proclaim his own recorded observations
upon the medicinal influence of the moral powers, the passions, and
especially the imagination, that so few medical men have thought
it an object to employ them as elements of actual application.
Hitherto these unknown and undefined powers of life and death
have been in the hands of empirics, jugglers, mountebanks and
pretended dispensers of miraculous healing. It is, at the same
time, matter of regret, that scientific physicians, instead of
questioning their undeniable cures, and pouring attempted ridicule
upon them, have not separated the true from the false, and sought
access to the real fountain of the efficacy of their practice,
the employment of confident faith, hope, and the unlimited agency
of the all pervading power of the imagination. Many physicians
are sufficiently wise, and endowed with character, to exercise
circumspection in giving their opinions and pronouncing upon
the prognostics of their patients. They regulate their words,
countenance and deportment with a caution and prudence which speak
volumes in regard to their conviction of the influence which
imprudence in these points might have.
In fact, it is only necessary to observe the intense and painful
earnestness with which the patient and the friends watch his
countenance and behaviour, to be aware what an influence may
be thus exerted. It is only requisite to understand with what
prying anxiety the sick man questions those around him, what the
physician thinks and predicts of his case, to make him sensible
how vigilantly he should be on his guard, in spending his judgment
rashly in the case. All this negative wisdom, in the application
of moral means, is sufficiently common. Not to possess it, in a
considerable degree, would indicate a physician unacquainted with
the most common etiquette of a sick chamber.
But, as yet, we see the positive employment of these means almost
wholly interdicted by custom to regular physicians. We contend
for their exercise only within the limits of the most scrupulous
veracity and the most severe discretion. What powers would he not
exert, who, snatching these moral means from the hands of empirics,
and who, to thorough acquaintance with all that can be known in
regard to physical means, should join the wise and discriminating
aid of an imagination creating a healing world of hope and
confidence about the patient? Such a benefactor of our species
will, ere long, arise, who will introduce a new era into medicine.
Who can doubt that implicit faith in the healing powers of prince
Hohenlohe may have wrought cures, even in cases of paralysis,
without the least necessity for introducing the vague and
misapplied term, a miracle; or that some out of many persons in an
asylum of paralytics would find themselves able to fly when bombs
fell upon the roof of their receptacle?
The influence of a vigorous will upon the physical movements of
our frame has scarcely been conjectured, much less submitted to
the scrutiny of experiment. Yet it would be easy, I think, to
select innumerable cases where, by its means, men have exerted
powers previously unknown to themselves. We see the immediate
application of almost superhuman energy upon the access of frenzy
to the patient; and this affords conclusive proof that, upon the
addition of the due amount of excitement, the body and mind become
capable of incredible exertions, and yet sink into infantine
debility the moment that the excitement is withdrawn. Every one
has been made aware of what mere resolution can do, in sustaining
the frame in cases of cold, exposure, hunger and exhaustion. All
these instances are only different forms of proof, which might
be multiplied indefinitely, of the agency of moral powers upon
physical nature. Under similar influences, omens and predictions,
in weak and superstitious minds, become adequate causes of their
own completion. Since perfect knowledge alone can deliver the mind
from more or less susceptibility of this influence, it is important
that it should be wisely directed to bear, as far as it may, upon
the imagination, in kindling it to confidence, cheerfulness and
hope.
Note 18, page 79.
‘Why drew Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath,
When the air sickened, and each gale was death?’
Because he was sustained by a cheerful reliance upon Providence,
a firm determination to do his duty, and have no fear of
consequences. The whole scope of my own observation, beside the
sick bed, perfectly coincides with these views. I do not say that
there are not numberless exceptions. But of this I am confident,
that the general rule is, that persons who attend the sick and
dying, in cases of epidemic disease of a mortal type, with a
fearless and cheerful mind, escape; while the timid, who are
alarmed and have an implicit belief in the danger of contagion,
succumb.
Note 19, page 83.
If there ever was an age when invalids and the suffering might
promise themselves sympathy in the dolorous detail of their
symptoms, which is questionable, it certainly is not now, during
the era of labor-saving machinery, political economy, and the
all-engrossing influence of money and corporate achievement. He who
now suffers from acute pain, in any form, will do wisely to summon
all his strength and philosophy to suppress any manifestation in
his countenance and muscles, rather than task his eloquence in
framing his tale of symptoms.
This whole chapter upon health abounds in the highest practical
wisdom, and the hints in it might easily be expanded to a volume. I
only add, that I earnestly recommend a poem upon the same subject,
one, as it seems to me, among the most classical and beautiful
in our language, and which has become strangely and undeservedly
obsolete--Dr Armstrong’s Art of Health.
Note 20, page 83.
How often have similar thoughts pressed upon my mind, as I have
stood over the bed of the sick and dying! Here is the peculiar
empire of minds truly and nobly benevolent, where the head and main
prop of a family is preparing to conflict with the last enemy:
where pain and groans, terror and death, fill the foreground, and
the dim but inevitable perspective of desolation, struggle and
want, in contact with indifference and selfishness, opens in the
distance before the survivors. Let us thank God for religion.
Philosophy may inculcate stern endurance and wise submission; but
knows not a fit and adequate remedy. The hopes and the example
imparted by him _who went about doing good_, are alone sufficient
for the relief of such cases, of which, alas! our world is full.
Note 21, page 86.
No view of human life is more consoling or just than that presented
in these paragraphs. Yet no human calculation will ever reach
the sum of agony that has been inflicted by the jealousy, envy
and heart-burning that have resulted from that most erroneous
persuasion, that certain conditions and circumstances of life bring
happiness in themselves. Beautifully has the bible said, that ‘God
has set one thing over against another’--has balanced the real
advantages of the different human conditions. The result of my
experience would leave me in doubt and at a loss, in selecting
the condition which I should deem most congenial to happiness. I
should have to balance abundance of food, on the one hand, against
abundance of appetite, on the other; the habit superinduced by the
necessity of being satisfied with a little, with the habit of being
disgusted with the trial of much. There are joys, numerous and
vivid, peculiar to the rich; and others, in which none but those
in the humbler conditions of life can participate. In the whole
range of the enjoyment of the senses, if there be any advantage,
it belongs to the poor. The laws of our being have surrounded the
utmost extent of human enjoyment with adamantine walls, which one
condition can no more overleap than another. It is wonderful to
see this admirable adjustment, like the universal laws of nature,
acting everywhere and upon everything. Even in the physical world,
what is granted to one country is denied to another; and the
wanderer who has seen strange lands and many cities, in different
climes, only returns to announce, as the sum of his experience
and the teaching of years, that light and shadow, comfort and
discomfort, pleasure and pain, like air and water, are diffused in
nearly similar measures over the whole earth.
Note 21a, page 88.
It needs but little acquaintance with human condition to perceive,
in the general adjustment of advantages settled by Providence,
that great proportions of them have been thrown into opposite
scales, and so contrasted that the selection of one class implies
the rejection of the other. For example, smitten with the thousand
temptations of wealth, you are determined to be rich. Be it so.
Industry, frugality and the convergence of your faculties to
this single point will hardly fail to render you so. But then
you will not be so absurd as to envy another the fame of talents
and acquirements which required absorbing devotion to pursuits
incompatible with yours.
You are rich, and complain of satiety and _ennui_. Knew you not,
when you determined to be rich, that poor people sing and dance
about their cabin fires? You have gained power and distinction
and discovered the heartless selfishness of your competitors and
dependents. Were you ignorant that friendship can only be purchased
by friendship; and that, in selecting your all-engrossing pursuit,
you have precluded yourself from furnishing your quota of the
reciprocity? The choices of life are alternatives. You may select
from this scale, or that. But, in most cases, you cannot take from
both. How much murmuring would be arrested if this most obvious
truth were understood and men would learn to be satisfied with
their alternative! Choose wisely and deliberately; and then quietly
repose on your choice. Say, ‘I have this; another has that. I am
certain that I have my choice. I do not know but his condition was
forced upon him.’
Note 22, page 89.
If I have ever allowed myself the indulgence of envy, it is after
having tasted the pleasure of rewarding merit, or relieving
distress, in thinking how continually such celestial satisfactions
are within the reach of the opulent. What a calm is left in the
mind after having wiped away tears! What aspirations are excited
in noting the joy and gratitude consequent upon misery relieved!
How delightful to recur to the remembrance during the vigils of
the night watches! How it expands the heart to reflect upon the
consciousness of the all powerful and all good Being, measuring the
circuit of the universe in doing good! Unhappily, the experience
of all time demonstrates that the possession of opulence and power
not only has no direct tendency to inspire increased sensibility
to such satisfactions, but has an opposite influence. For one,
rendered more kind and benevolent by good fortune, how many become
callous, selfish and proud by it! Kindly and wisely has Providence
seen fit to spare most men this dangerous trial.
Note 23, page 92.
This chapter of the author, among the rest, has been obnoxious
to severe strictures. I am sensible that the young require the
exercise of cautious discretion in few questions more than in
this, ‘How far is it wise to disregard public opinion?’ To press
the point too far is to incur the reputation of eccentricity
and arrogant confidence in our own judgment. Implicitly to
copy the expressions and habits of the multitude precludes all
pursuit of happiness by system; and reduces the whole inquiry to
the injunction, to walk with the rest, and add our _ennui_ and
disappointment to the mass of the unhappiness of all those who
have gone before. If certain modes appear to me, after the most
deliberate examination, conducive to my happiness, why should I
be deterred from adopting them, because I am not countenanced by
the general opinion and example of a crowd, each individual of
which I should altogether reject as a teacher and an example? If
I avow that the ten thousand, in all time, have formed the most
erroneous judgments, touching the wisdom of human pursuits, why
should I continue blindly to copy their errors? He is certainly
the most fortunate man who, if an exact account of his sensations
and thoughts could be cast into a sum at his last hour, would be
found to have enjoyed the greatest number of agreeable moments,
pleasurable sensations and happy reflections. If to court
retirement, repose, the regulation of the desires and passions,
and the cultivation of those affections which are best nurtured in
the shade, be the most certain route to happiness, why should I
be swayed from choosing that path by the suggestions of ambition,
avarice and the spirit of the world, which enjoin the common course?
Yet every one is, more or less, a slave to the prevalent fashions
of thinking and acting. How much vile hypocrisy does this slavery
which covers the face of society with a vast mask of semblance,
engender? Contemplate the routine of all the professions which we
make and infringe in a single day, in the manifest violation of
our inward thought and belief; and we must admit that the world
agrees to enact a general lie, alike deceiving and deceived,
through terror of being the first to revolt against the thraldom of
opinion. The very persons, too, who cherish the profoundest secret
contempt for the judgment of the multitude, are generally the
loudest and the first in decrying any departure from the standard
of public opinion almost as an immorality.
I would by no means desire to see those most dear to me arrogantly
setting at defiance received ideas and usages. These have, as the
author justly remarks, a salutary moral sway in repressing the
influence of the impudent and abandoned. I am not insensible to
the danger of following our independent judgment beyond the limits
of a regulated discretion. But there is no trait in the young for
which I feel a more profound respect, than the fixed resolve to
consult their own light, in setting the rules of their conduct and
selecting their alternatives. A calm and reflecting independence,
an unshaken firmness in encountering vulgar prejudices, is what I
admire as the evidence of strong character, fearless thinking and
capability of self-direction.
Note 24, page 98.
How often must every reflecting mind have been led to similar
views of human nature! To form just estimates and entertain
right sentiments of our kind, we must not contemplate men under
the action of the narrowness of sectarian hate, or through the
jaundiced vision of party feeling. We must see them in positions
like those so happily presented by the author, when great and
sweeping calamities level men to the consciousness and the
sympathies of a common nature, and a sense of common exposure to
misery, and open the fountains of generous feeling. Who has not
seen men, on such occasions, forget their pride, their miserable
questions of rank and precedence, and meet with open arms and the
mingled tears of gratitude and relief, persons, the view of whom
under other circumstances, would have called forth only feelings of
scornful comparison and reckless contempt?
The incident of the hostile French and German posts is a singularly
touching one. In what a horrid light does it place the character
and passions of princes, generals, conquerors and warriors, in
all time, who for their measureless cupidity, or the whim of
their ambition, have used these amiable beings, formed with
natural sympathies to aid and love each other, as the mechanical
engines of their purposes, to meet breast to breast as enemies,
and plunge the murderous steel into each others’ hearts! Hence,
rivers of life blood have flowed as uselessly as rain falls upon
the ocean! It is difficult to determine whether we ought most to
execrate the accursed ambition of the few, or despise the weak
stupidity of the many who have been led, unresistingly, like
animals to the slaughter, only the more firmly to rivet the chains
of the survivors. What a view does war present, of the miserable
ignorance, the brute stupidity of the mass of the species, and the
detestable passions of those called the great, in all time! Who
does not exult to see the era, every day approaching, when men will
be too wise, too vigilant and careful of their rights to become
instruments in the hands of others; when the rational consciousness
of their own predominant physical power shall be guided by wisdom,
self-watchfulness and self-respect? Then, instead of being tamely
led out to slay each other, when invoked to this detestable sport
of kings, they will show their steel to their oppressors.
Note 24a, page 99.
I am as much impressed with the eloquence of this passage as
with its truth. I reserve more particular views of religion for
comments on the letter upon the subject. I wish to present in this
place, as consonant with the spirit of this passage, one view of
religion which has long been one of my most fixed and undoubting
conclusions. It is, that man is a religious being, by the organic
constitution of his frame, still more than by any intellectual
process of reasoning. I have no doubt, that a rightly organized
and well endowed man, born and reared in a desert isle, without
ever being brought into contact with man or any discipline to call
forth reason or speech, would be subject to precisely the same
emotions as, varied and moulded by the circumstances of birth and
education, constitute the substance of all the religions in the
world; in other words, that man is constituted a religious animal
in the same way as he clearly is an animal with other instincts
and passions. I am aware, that divines and moralists do not often
insist upon the religious instinct, as one of the most conclusive
and convincing arguments (to me, at least,) of the soul’s
immortality. It seems with them the favorite view to consider
religion a science that may be taught, like geometry or chemistry.
To me, this absorbing subject presents a very different aspect. I
see man everywhere religious in some form. The sentiment takes the
molding of his accidental circumstances. It is poetry, enthusiasm,
eloquence, bravery; but in every form an aspiration after the vast,
illimitable, eternal, shadowy conceptions of an unknown hereafter,
that the senses have not embodied. It is rational or fanciful, it
is respectable or superstitious, it is a pure abstraction or a
gorgeous appeal to the senses, according to one’s country, training
and temperament. But man, whether he be a dweller in the far isles
of the sea, or in the crowded mart, whether christian or savage,
is everywhere found, in some form, invoking a God and reposing the
hopes and affections of his worn heart in another and a better
world; and extending his faith to an immortal life and an eternal
sphere of action.