_The effects of solitude on a melancholy mind._
A disposition to enjoy the silence of sequestered solitude, and a glowing
distaste of the noisy tumults of public life, are the earliest and most
general symptoms of approaching melancholy. The heart, on which felicity
was used to sit enthroned, becomes senseless to the touch of pleasure;
the airy wing of high delight sinks prostrate to the earth on broken
pinions: and care and anxiety, chagrin, and regret, load the mind with
distempering ideas, and render it cheerless and forlorn. The dawning sun,
and heaven lighted day, give no pleasure to the sickened senses of the
unhappy sufferer. His only pleasure is to “commune with his own griefs;”
and for this purpose he seeks some gloomy glen,
“Where bitter boding melancholy reigns
O’er heavy sighs and care disordered thoughts.”
But a mind thus disposed, however it may for a time console its sorrows,
by retiring from the world, thereby becomes more weak and helpless.
Solitude in such cases, increases the disorder, while it softens its
effects. To eradicate the seeds of this dreadful malady, the imagination
should be impressed with some new, contrary, and more powerful bias than
that which sways the mind, which can only be turned from its course of
thought by shifting the object of its reflection, and giving entrance to
new desires. A melancholy mind therefore, should be weaned by degrees
from its disposition to solitude, should be agreeably interrupted in its
musings, and be induced to relish the varying pleasures of the world.
But, above all, those scenes and subjects which have any connexion,
however remotely, with the cause of the complaint, must be cautiously
avoided. The seeds of this dreadful malady are, in general, very deeply
planted in the constitution of the patient, however accidental the
circumstances may be when relieved from its oppression, is, if left
to itself, always in danger of relapsing into its former habit. This
circumstance alone is sufficient to show how unfriendly solitude must be
to the cure of this complaint. If, indeed, the patient be so far gone
as to leave no hope of recovery; if his desponding heart be incapable
of any new impression; if his mind forgoes all custom of mirth; if he
refuse to partake of any healthful exercise or agreeable recreation:
and the soul sinks day after day into deeper dejection, and threatens
nature with madness or with death, solitude is the only resource. When
melancholy seizes, to a certain degree, the mind of an Englishman, it
almost uniformly leads him to put a period to his existence; while
the worst effect it produces on a Frenchman, is to induce him to turn
Carthusian. Such dissimilar effects, proceeding from the operation of
the same cause, in different persons, can only be accounted for from the
greater opportunities which there is in France than in England to hide
the sorrows of the mind from the inspection of the world. An English
hypochondriac would, perhaps, seldom destroy himself, if there were in
England any monastic institution to which he could fly from the eye of
public observation.
The mind, in proportion as it loses its proper tone, and natural
elasticity, decreases in its attachments to society, and wishes to recede
from the world and its concerns. There is no disorder of the mind, among
all the various causes by which it may be affected, that destroys its
force and activity so entirely as melancholy. It unties, as it were,
all the relations, both physical and moral, of which society, in its
most perfect state, consists, and sets the soul free from all sense of
obligation. The private link which unites the species is destroyed;
all inclination to the common intercourse of life is lost; and the
only remaining disposition is for solitude. It is for this reason that
melancholy persons are continually advised to frequent the theatres,
masquerades, operas, balls, and other places of public diversion; to
amuse themselves at home with cards, dice, or other games; or to infuse
from the eyes of female beauty new life into their drooping souls.
Certain it is, that great advantages may be derived by detaching the
mind from those objects by which it is tortured and consumed; but to run
indiscriminately, and with injudicious eagerness, into the pursuit of
pleasures, without any predisposition to enjoy them, may rather tend to
augment than diminish the disease.
The eye of melancholy views every object on its darkest and most
unfavorable side, and apprehends disastrous consequences from every
occurrence. These gloomy perceptions, which increase as the feelings
become more indolent, and the constitution more morbid, bring on habitual
uneasiness and chagrin upon the mind, and render every injury, however
small and trifling it may be, irksome and insupportable. A settled
dejection ensues; and the miserable patient avoids every scene in which
his musings may be liable to interruption; the few enjoyments he is yet
capable of feeling in any degree impeded; or which may call upon him to
make the slightest exertion; and by withdrawing himself from society
into solitude, neglects the exercises and recreations by which his
disease might be relieved. Instead of endeavoring to enlighten the dark
gloom which involves his mind, and subdues his soul, by regarding with
a favorable eye all that gives a true value and high relish to men of
sound minds and lively dispositions, he fondly follows the phantom which
misleads him, and thereby sinks himself more deeply into the moody fanes
of irremediable melancholy: and if the bright rays of life and happiness
penetrate by chance into the obscurity of his retreat instead of feeling
any satisfaction from the perception of cheerfulness and content, he
quarrels with the possessor of them, and converts their enjoyments into
subjects of grievance, in order to torment himself.
Unfavorable, however, as a dreary and disconsolate solitude certainly
is to the recovery of a mind labouring under this grievous affliction,
it is far preferable to the society of licentious companions, and to
wild scenes of inebriating dissipation. Worldly pleasures, and sensual
gratifications of every description, when intemperately pursued, only
drive a melancholy mind into a more abject state of dejection. It is from
rational recreation, and temperate pleasures alone, that an afflicted
mind can receive amusement and delight. The only scenes by which the
mudded current of his mind can be cleared, or his stagnated system of
pleasure refreshed, must be calm, cheerful, and temperate, not gay.
Melancholy is of a sedate and pensive character, and flies from whatever
is hurrying and tumultuous. How frequently do men of contemplative
dispositions conceive a distaste for the world, only because they have
unthinkingly engaged so ardently in the pursuits of pleasure, or of
business, that they have been prevented for a length of time, from
collecting their scattered ideas, and indulging their natural habits of
reflection! But in striving to reclaim a melancholy mind, it is necessary
to attend to the feelings of the heart, as well as the peculiar temper
of the mind. A gloomy, disturbed, unquiet mind, is highly irritated, and
its disease of course increased, by the company and conversation of those
whose senseless bosoms are incapable of feeling the griefs it endures,
or the complaints it utters. This, indeed, is another cause which drives
melancholy persons from society into solitude; for how few are there
whose tenderness leads them to sympathize with a brother in distress,
or to contribute a kind aid to eradicate the thorns which rankle in
his heart! Robust characters, in whose bosoms nature has planted the
impenetrable shield of unvarying health, as well as those whose minds are
engrossed by the charms of uninterrupted prosperity, can form no idea
of the secret but severe agonies which shake the system of valetudinary
men: nor feel any compassion for the tortures which accompany a
wounded and afflicted spirit, until the convulsive frame proclaims the
dreadful malady, or increasing melancholy sacrifices its victim on the
altar of self-destruction. The gay associates of the unfeeling world
view a companion suffering under the worst of nature’s evils, with
cold indifference, or affected concern; or, in the career of pleasure,
overlook the miseries he feels until they hear that exhausted wo has
induced him to brave the anger of the Almighty, and to rush from mortal
misery, uncalled, into the awful presence of his Creator. Dreadful state!
The secrecy and silence, indeed, with which persons of this description
conceal the pangs that torture their minds, is among the most dangerous
symptoms of the disease. It is not, indeed, easy to hide from the anxious
and attentive eye of real friendship the feelings of the heart; but to
the careless and indifferent multitude of common acquaintances, the
countenance may wear the appearance not only of composure, but even of
gayety, while the soul is inwardly suffering the keenest anguish of
unutterable wo. The celebrated Carlini, a French actor of great merit,
and in high reputation with the public, for the life, whim, frolic,
and vivacity with which he nightly entertained the Parisian audiences,
applied to a physician to whom he was not personally known, for advice,
and represented to him that he was subject to attacks of the deepest
melancholy. The physician advised him to amuse his mind by scenes of
pleasure, and particularly directed him to frequent the Italian Comedy;
“for,” continued he, “your distemper must be rooted, indeed, if the
acting of the lively Carlini does not remove it.” “Alas!” exclaimed the
unhappy patient, “I am the very Carlini whom you recommend me to see; and
while I am capable of filling Paris with mirth and laughter, I am myself
the dejected victim of melancholy and chagrin.”
Painful as it may be to a person who is laboring under the oppression of
melancholy, to associate with those who are incapable of sympathizing
with his feelings, or who neglect to compassionate his sufferings, yet
he should not fly from the presence of men into solitude; for solitude
will unavoidably aggravate and augment his distress inasmuch as it tends
to encourage that musing and soliloquy to which melancholy is invariably
prone. It is the most dangerous resource to which he can fly; for, while
it seems to promise the fairest hope of relief, it betrays the confidence
reposed in it; and instead of shielding its votary from that conflict
which disturbs his repose, it renders him defenceless, and delivers him
unarmed to his bitterest enemy.
The boldest spirits and firmest nerves cannot withstand the inroads of
melancholy merely by their own strength. It damps the courage of the
most enterprising mind, and makes him who was before upon all occasions,
fearless and unawed, shrink even from the presence of his fellow
creatures. Company of every description becomes displeasing to him; he
dreads the idea of visiting; and if he is induced to quit the domestic
solitude into which he retires, it is only when the glorious, but to him
offensive, light of heaven is concealed in congenial darkness; and the
shades of night hide him from the observation of man. An invitation to
social entertainment alarms his mind; the visit even of a friend becomes
painful to his feelings; and he detests every thing which lightens the
gloom in which he wishes to live, or which tends to disturb his privacy,
or remove him from his retreat.
Rousseau, toward the latter part of his life, abandoned all intercourse
with society under a notion, which was the effect of his melancholy
disposition, that the world had conceived an unconquerable antipathy
against him; and that his former friends, particularly Hume, and some
philosophers in France, not only had entered into confederacy to
destroy his glory and repose, but to take away his life. On departing
from England, he passed through Amiens, where he met with Gresset,
who interrogated him about his misfortunes, and the controversies in
which he had been engaged; but Rousseau only answered, “You have got
the art of making a parrot speak, but you are not yet possessed of the
secret of giving language to a bear:” and when the magistrates of the
city wished to confer on him some marks of their esteem, he refused
all their offers, and considered these flattering civilities like the
insults which were lavished in the same form on the celebrated Sancho
in the island of Barataria. To such extent, indeed, did his disordered
imagination carry him, that he thought one part of the people looked upon
him like Lazarillo de Tormes, who being fixed to the bottom of a tub,
with only his head out of water, was carried from one town to another to
amuse the vulgar. His bad health, a strong and melancholy imagination,
a too nice sensibility, a jealous disposition, joined with philosophic
vanity, and his uncommon devotion to solitude, tended to prepossess
him with those wrong and whimsical ideas. But it must be confessed that
the opposition he met with from different ranks of persons, at several
periods of his life, was extremely severe. He was driven at one time
from France, in which he had before been distinguished by his writings,
and highly honored. At another time he was chased from Geneva, the
place of his nativity, and of his warmest affection. He was exiled from
Berne with disgrace; expelled, with some appearance of injustice, from
Neufchatel; and even banished from his tranquil solitude on the borders
of the lake of Bienne. His disposition therefore to avoid society, must
not be entirely attributed to his melancholy disposition; nor his love
of solitude to a misanthropic mind. Every acute and scientific observer
of the life and character of this extraordinary man will immediately
perceive that the seeds of that melancholy disposition, and fretful
temper, which through life destroyed his repose, were sown by nature in
his constitution. He confesses indeed, to use his own words, that “a
proud misanthropy, and peculiar contempt for the riches and pleasures of
the world, constituted the chief traits of his character.” This proud
spirit and contemptuous mind were mixed with an extreme sensibility of
heart, and an excessive indolence of disposition; and his body, which
was naturally feeble, suffered, from ill health, the keenest agonies,
and most excruciating disorders, to which the human frame is incident.
Persecution also had levelled the most pointed and severely barbed shafts
against him; and he was forced to endure, amidst the pangs of poverty,
and the sorrows of sickness, all that envy, hatred, and malice, could
inflict. It has been said, that the persecutions he experienced were not
so much excited by the new dogmas, or eccentric paradoxes, which, both
on politics and religion, pervade all his writings, as by the refinement
of his extraordinary talents, the wonderful splendor of his eloquence,
and the increasing extent of his fame. His adversaries certainly pursued
him, not only with bigotry and intolerance, but with an inconsistency
which revealed, in a great degree, the secret motives by which they were
actuated; for they condemned, with the sharpest virulence, the freedom
of his religious tenets, even in places where the religious creed of
Voltaire was held in the highest admiration, and where atheism had
collected the most learned advocates, and displayed the very standard
of infidelity and disbelief. Harassed by the frowns of fortune, and
pursued with unrelenting enmity by men whose sympathy and kindness he
had anxiously endeavored to obtain, it is scarcely surprising that the
cheerfulness of his disposition, and the kindness of his heart, should be
subdued by those sentiments of aversion and antipathy which he fancied
most of his intimates entertained against him: and the invectives
from the pen of his former friend and confidant, Voltaire, together
with many others that might be adduced, particularly the letter which
was fabricated in the name of the king of Prussia, for the purpose of
exposing him to ridicule, prove that his suspicions on the subject were
not unfounded. The voice, indeed of mankind, seems ready to exclaim that
this eccentric philosopher was not only a misanthrope, but a madman;
but those who are charitably disposed, will recollect that he was a
martyr to ill health; that nature had bestowed upon him a discontented
mind; that his nerves were in a continued state of irritation; and that
to preserve equanimity of temper when goaded by the shafts of calumny
and malice, requires such an extraordinary degree of fortitude and
passive courage as few individuals are found to possess. His faults are
remembered, while the wonderful bloom and uncommon vigor of his genius,
are forgotten or concealed. The production from which his merits are in
general estimated, is that which is called “The Confessions:” a work
written under the pressure of calamity, in sickness and in sorrow; amidst
fears, distresses, and sufferings; when the infirmities which accompany
old age, and the debility which attends continued ill health, had injured
the tone of his mind, overpowered his reason, and perverted his feelings
to such a degree, as to create an almost total transformation of the
character of the man, and deprive him of his identity: but this degrading
work ought, in candor, to be considered as a deplorable instance of the
weakness of human nature, and how unable it is to support its own dignity
when attacked by the adversities of fortune, and the malice of mankind.
The greatness of Rousseau ought to be erected on a different basis: for
his earliest works are certainly sufficient to support the extent of his
fame as an author, however they may, on particular subjects, expose his
integrity as a man.
The anxieties which a vehemence of imagination, and a tender texture of
the nervous system at all times produce, are highly injurious to the
faculties of the mind; and, when accompanied by sickness or by sorrow,
wear out the intellect in proportion to its vigor and activity. To use
the popular metaphor upon this subject, “The sword becomes too sharp for
the scabbard;” and the body and the mind are thereby exposed to mutual
destruction.
Religious melancholy is, of all other descriptions of this dreadful
disease, most heightened and aggravated by solitude. The dreadful idea
of having irretrievably lost the divine favor, and of being an object
unworthy of the intercession of our Saviour, incessantly haunts the mind,
laboring under religious despondency; and the imagination being left, in
solitude, entirely to its own workings, increases the horrors which such
thoughts must unavoidably inspire.
Her lash Tisiphone that moment shakes,
The mind she scourges with a thousand snakes,
And to her aid, with many a thundering yell;
Calls her dire sisters from the gulf of hell!
These mutual tortures, even when heightened by the gloominess of
solitude, are frequently still further increased by the mischievous
doctrines of bigoted priests, who by mistaking the effects of nervous
derangement, or theological errors, for the compunctious visitings of
a guilty mind, establish and mature, by the injudicious application of
scriptural texts, and precepts of casuistry, the very disease which they
thus ignorantly and presumptuously endeavor to remove. The wound, thus
tainted by the most virulent and corrosive of the intellectual poisons,
becomes extremely difficult to cure. The pure and uncontaminated tenets
of the Christian faith furnishes, perhaps, the surest antidotes; and
when these balms of true comfort are infused by such enlightened and
discerning minds as Luther, Tillotson, and Clark, the most rational hope
may be entertained of a speedy recovery. The writings of those holy
teachers confirm the truth of the observation, that the deleterious gloom
of superstition assumes a darker aspect in the shades of retirement, and
they uniformly exhort the unhappy victims of this religious error to
avoid solitude as the most certain enemy of this dreadful infirmity.
Solitude, however, is not the only soil in which this noxious weed
springs up, spreading around its baleful glooms; it sometimes appears
with deeply rooted violence in minds unused to retirement of every
kind. In the course of my practice as a physician, I was called upon
to attend a young lady, whose natural disposition had been extremely
cheerful, until a severe fit of sickness damped her spirits, and rendered
her averse to all those lively pleasures which fascinate the youthful
mind. The debility of her frame, and the change of her temper were not
sufficiently attended to in the early stages of her convalescence. The
anxiety of her mind was visible in the altered features of her face; and
she was frequently heard to express a melancholy regret that she had
consumed so many hours in the frivolous, though innocent, amusements
of the age. Time increased, by almost imperceptible degrees, these
symptoms of approaching melancholy; and at length exhibited themselves
by penitential lamentations of the sin she had committed with respect to
the most trifling actions of her life, and in which no shadow of offence
could possibly be found. At the time I was called in, this superstitious
melancholy was attended with certain indications of mental derangement.
The distemper clearly originated in the indisposition of the body, and
the gloomy apprehensions which disease and pain, had introduced into the
mind, during a period of many months. This once lively, handsome, but now
almost insane female, was daily attacked with such violent paroxysms of
her complaint, that she lost all sense of her situation, and exclaimed,
in horrid distraction and deep despair, that her perdition was already
accomplished, and that _the fiends were waiting to receive her soul,
and plunge it into the bitterest torments of hell_. Her constitution,
however, still fortunately retained sufficient strength to enable me, by
the power of medicine, gradually to change its temperament, and to reduce
the violence of the fever which had been long preying upon her life.
Her mind became more calm in proportion as her nerves recovered their
former tone; and when her intellectual powers were in a condition to be
acted on with effect, I successfully counteracted the baleful effects of
superstition by the wholesome infusion of real religion, and restored by
degrees, a lovely, young, and virtuous woman, to her family and herself.
Another instance of a similar nature occurred very recently, in which
the patient experienced all those symptoms, which prognosticate the
approach of religious melancholy, and the completion of whose sorrow and
despondency would quickly have been effected, if good fortune had not
deprived her of the advice of an ignorant and bigoted priest, to whom
her friends, when I was called in, had resolved to apply. This young
lady, whose mind remained pure and uncorrupted amidst all the luxuries
and dissipations which usually accompany illustrious birth and elevated
station, possessed by nature great tranquillity of disposition, and lived
with quietude and content, far retired from the pleasures of the world.
I had been long acquainted with her family, and entertained for them
the warmest esteem. The dangerous condition of her health gave me great
anxiety and concern; for whenever she was left one moment to herself,
and even in company, whenever she closed her eyes, a thousand horrid
spectres presented themselves to her disordered mind, and seemed ready
to devour her from every corner of the apartment. I inquired whether
these imaginary spectres made any impression upon the affections of her
heart: but she answered in the negative, and described the horrors which
she felt from the supposed fierceness of their eyes, and the threatening
gesticulations of their bodies. I endeavored to compose her by assuring
her that they were the creatures of fancy, the wild chimeras of a
weakened brain; that her long course of ill health had affected her mind;
and that when a proper course of medicine, dietic regimen, and gentle
exercise, had restored her strength, these dreadful appearances would
give way to the most delightful visions. The course I pursued succeeded
in a short time beyond my most sanguinary expectations, and I raised
her languid powers to health and happiness. But if she had confided
the anxieties of her mind to her confessor, instead of her physician,
the holy father would, in all probability, have ascribed her gloomy
apprehensions to the machinations of the devil, and have used nothing
but pure spiritual antidotes to destroy them, which would have increased
the melancholy, and possibly have thrown her into the darkest abyss of
madness and despair.
This grievous malady, indeed, is not the exclusive offspring of mistaken
piety and religious zeal; for it frequently invades minds powerful by
nature, improved by science, and assisted by rational society. Health,
learning, conversation, highly advantageous as they unquestionably are to
the powers both of the body and the mind, have, in particular instances,
been found incapable of resisting the influence of intense speculation,
an atrabilarius constitution, and a superstitious habit. I have already
mentioned the thick cloud of melancholy which obscured the latter days
of the great and justly celebrated Haller, which were passed under the
oppression of a religious despondency, that robbed him not only of all
enjoyment, but almost of life itself. During the long period of four
years, immediately antecedent to his death, he lived (if such a state
could be called existence) in continual misery; except, indeed, at those
short intervals when the returning powers of his mind enabled him, by
the employment of his pen, to experience a temporary relief. A long
course of ill health had forced him into an excessive use of opium, and
by taking gradually increased quantities of that inspissated juice, he
kept himself continually fluctuating between a state of mind naturally
elevated and deeply dejected; for the first effects of this powerful
drug are like those of a strong stimulating cordial, but they are soon
succeeded by universal langour, or irresistable propensity to sleep,
attended with dreams of the most agitated and enthusiastic nature. I
was myself an eyewitness of the dreary melancholy into which this great
and good man was plunged about two years before the kind, but cold, and
though friendly, yet unwelcome hand of death, released him from his
pains. The society, which, during that time, he was most solicitous to
obtain, was that of priests and ecclesiastics of every description:
he was uneasy when they were not with him: nor was he always happy in
his choice of these spiritual comforters; for though, at times, he was
attended by some of the most enlightened and orthodox divines of the
age and country in which he lived, he was at others surrounded by those
whom nothing but the reduced and abject state of his faculties would
have suffered him to endure. But during even this terrible subversion
of his intellectual powers, his love of glory still survived in its
original radiance, and defied all the terrors both of hell and earth
to destroy or diminish their force. Haller had embraced very deep and
serious notions of the importance of Christianity to the salvation of
the soul, and the redemption of mankind, which, by the ardency of his
temper, and the saturnine disposition of his mind, were carried into a
mistaken zeal and apprehension; and, instead of affording the comfort
and consolation its tenets and principles are so eminently calculated to
inspire, aggravated his feelings and destroyed his repose. In a letter
which he wrote a few days before his death, to his great and good friend,
the celebrated Heyne, of Gottingen, in which he announces the deep sense
he entertained from his great age and multiplied infirmities, of his
impending dissolution, he expressed his firm belief of revelation, and
his faith in the mercy of God, and the intercession of Jesus Christ;
but hints his fears lest the manifold sins, and the various errors and
transgressions which the natural frailty of man must have accumulated
during a course of seventy years, should have rendered his soul too
guilty to expect the promised mercy to repentant sinners, and earnestly
requests of him to inquire of his acquaintance Less, the virtuous
divine of that place, whether he could not furnish him with some pious
work that might tend to decrease the terrors he felt from the idea of
approaching death, and relieve his tortured spirit from the apprehension
of eternal punishment. The sentiments which occupied the mind of this
pious philosopher when the dreaded hour actually arrived, whether it was
comforted by the bright rays of hope, or dismayed into total eclipse by
the dark clouds of despair, those who surrounded his dying couch have not
communicated to the world. Death, while it released both his body and
his mind from the painful infirmities and delusions under which they had
so long and so severely suffered, left his fame, which, while living,
he had valued much dearer than his life, exposed to the cruel shafts of
slander and malevolence. A young nobleman of the canton of Berne, either
moved by his own malice, or made an instrument of the malice of others,
asserted in a letter, which was for a long time publicly exhibited in
the university of Gottingen, that Haller had in his last moments denied
his belief of the truth of Christianity. But those by whom he was then
surrounded, betray, by the propagation of this falsehood, the fears they
entertain of the firm support which his approbation would have given to
that pure and pious system of religion, which they, it is well known,
are so disposed to destroy. For certain it is, that Haller never doubted
any of the attributes of the Deity, except his mercy; and this doubt was
not the offspring of infidelity, but a crude abortion of that morbid
melancholy which, during his latter days, settled so severely on his
distempered mind. The same dread which he entertained of death, has been
felt with equal if not greater horror, by minds as powerful and less
superstitious. He candidly confessed the important and abstruse point
upon which he had not been able to satisfy himself. His high sense of
virtue made even his own almost exemplary and unblemished life appear,
in his too refined speculations, grossly vicious. Mercy, he knew, must
unavoidably, be correlative with justice; and he unfortunately conceived
that no repentance, however sincere, could so purify the sinful, and, as
he imagined, deplorable corruption of his soul, as to render it worthy
of divine grace. So utterly had the melancholy dejection of his mind
deprived him of a just sense of his character, and perfect knowledge of
the nature of the Almighty. The mournful propensity of this great man
must, if he had passed his days either in pious abstinence, or irrational
solitude, have hurried him rapidly into irrecoverable frenzy; but Haller
enjoyed the patronage of the great, the conversation of the learned,
the company of the polite; and he not only suspended the effects of his
malady, and of the medicines by which he attempted to relieve it, by
these advantages, but by the sciences, which he so dearly loved and so
successfully cultivated. The horrible evil, however, bowed him down in
spite of all his efforts, and particularly oppressed him whenever he
relaxed from his literary pursuits, or consulted his ghostly comforters
on the lost condition of his soul.
Solitude, to a mind laboring under these erroneous notions of religion,
operates like a rack, by which the imagination inflicts the severest
tortures on the soul. A native of Geneva, a young man of very elegant
manners, and a highly cultivated mind, some time since consulted me
upon the subject of a nervous complaint, which I immediately discovered
to be the consequence of a mistaken zeal for religion, a disposition
naturally sedentary, and a habit which is too frequently indulged in
solitude by unthinking youth. These circumstances had already made the
most dreadful inroads both on his body and his mind. His emaciated
frame was daily enfeebled by his paralyzed intellects, and he at length
fell into a settled melancholy, which continued four years to defy the
power of medicine, and finally destroyed his nervous system. A strong
conviction of the heinous sin into which the blindness of his passion
and evil example, had led him, at length flashed suddenly on his mind,
and he felt, with the keenest compunctions of a wounded conscience, how
impious he must appear to the all-seeing eye of the great Creator.
Consternation and dismay seized his guilty mind; and the sense of virtue
and religion, which he was naturally disposed to entertain, served only
to increase his horror and distraction. He would have sought a refuge
from the arrows of remorse under the protecting shields of penitence
and prayer, but a scrupulous apprehension interposed the idea that it
would be profanation in so guilty a sinner to exercise the offices of a
pure and holy religion. He at length, however, proceeded to confession;
but recollecting, after every disclosure, that he had still omitted
many of his transgressions, additional horror seized upon his mind and
tortured his feelings on the irrecoverable condition of his guilty soul.
At intervals, indeed, he was able to perceive that the perturbations
of his mind were the produce of his disorganized frame and disordered
spirit; and he endeavored to recruit the one by air and exercise, and to
dissipate the other by scenes of festivity and mirth: but his disorder
had fixed his fibres too deeply in his constitution to be eradicated by
such slight and temporary remedies. From the inefficacious antidotes
of social pleasure and worldly dissipation, he was induced to try the
calm and sedentary effects of solitary study; but his faculties were
incapable of tasting the refined and elegant occupations of learning and
the muse; his powers of reasoning were destroyed; his sensibilities,
excepting on the subject of his complaint, were dried up; and neither the
sober investigations of science, nor the more lively charms of poetry,
were capable of affording him the least consolation. Into so abject a
state, indeed, did his intellectual faculties at length fall, that he
had not, during one period, sufficient ability to compute the change
due to him from any piece of coin in the common transactions of life;
and he confessed that he had been frequently tempted, by the deepness
of his distress, to release both his body and his mind from their cruel
sufferings, and “to shake impatiently his great affliction off” by self
destruction; but the idea of heaping new punishment on his soul, by the
perpetration of this additional crime, continually interposed, and saved
him from the guilty deed. During this state of mental derangement, he
fortunately met with a liberal minded and rational divine, who, free
from the errors of priestcraft, and possessed of a profound knowledge of
the virtues of religion and the structure of the human mind, undertook
the arduous but humane and truly philosophic task, of endeavoring to
bring back his mind to a rational sense of its guilt, and to a firm
hope of pardon through the intercession of our Saviour. Religion, that
sweet and certain comforter of human woes, at length effected a partial
recovery, and restored him to a degree of tranquillity and repose; but
he still continued to suffer, for years afterward, so great a misery
from the shattered condition of his nerves, that he could not even
compose a letter upon the most trifling and indifferent subject without
the greatest labor and pain. As his feelings had never been hurt by any
sense of injury received from mankind, he entertained no antipathy to
his species; but as he was conscious that his reduced state of health
prevented him from keeping up any rational or pleasing intercourse
with them, he felt a sort of abhorrence to society, and refused, even
when advised by his physicians and intimate friends, to mingle in its
pleasures, or engage in its concerns. The proposal, indeed, appeared
as extravagant and absurd to his feelings, as if a man, almost choking
under the convulsion of a confirmed asthma, had been told that it was
only necessary for him to breathe freely in order to acquire perfect
ease. This deplorable state of health induced him to consult several
Italian and English physicians; and being advised to try the effects of
a sea voyage, he set sail for Riga, where he safely arrived; but, after
a residence of six months, found himself unaltered, and precisely in the
same dreadful condition in which he had set sail. On his return, I was
called in to his assistance. There were at this period but very few of
those gloomy and noxious vapors of superstition which had so tormented
his mind, remaining; but his body, and particularly his nervous system,
was still racked with agonizing pains. I had the good fortune to afford
him great relief; and when at times his sufferings were suspended, and
his spirits enlivened by pleasing conversation, he was certainly one
of the most entertaining men, both as to the vivacity of his wit, the
shrewdness of his observations, the powers of his reasoning, and the
solidity of his judgment, that I had ever known.
These instances clearly evince how dangerous solitude may prove to
minds predisposed, by accident or nature, to indulge a misdirected
imagination, either upon the common subjects of life, or upon the more
important and affecting topic of religion; but it must not be concluded
from the observations I have already made, that a rational retirement
from the vices, the vanities, and the vexations of the world, is equally
unfriendly, under all circumstances, to a sickly mind. The cool and quiet
repose which seclusion affords, is frequently the most advantageous
remedy which can be adopted for the recovery of a disturbed imagination.
It would indeed be the height of absurdity to recommend to a person
suffering under a derangement of the nervous system, the diversions and
dissipations of public life, when it is known, by sad experience, as well
as by daily observation, that the least hurry disorders their frame,
and the gentlest intercourse palpitates their hearts, and shakes their
brains, almost to distraction. The healthy and robust can have no idea
how violent the slightest touch vibrates through the trembling nerves
of the dejected valetudinarian. The gay and healthy, therefore, seldom
sympathize with the sorrowful and the sick. This, indeed, is one reason
why those who, having lost the firm and vigorous tone of mind which is
so essentially necessary in the intercourses of the world, generally
abandon society, and seek in the softness of solitude a solace for their
cares and anxieties; for there they frequently find a kind asylum,
where the soul rests free from disturbance, and in time appeases the
violence of its emotions: for “the foster nurse of nature is repose.”
Experience, alas! sad experience, has but too well qualified me to treat
of this subject. In the fond expectation of being able to re-establish
my nervous system, and to regain that health which I had broken down,
and almost destroyed by intense application, I repaired to the Circle of
Westphalia, in order to taste the waters of Pyrmont, and to divert the
melancholy of my mind by the company which resorts to that celebrated
spring: but, alas! I was unable to enjoy the lively scene; and I walked
through multitudes of the great, the elegant, and the gay, in painful
stupor, scarcely recognizing the features of my friends, and fearful of
being noticed by those who knew me. The charms of wit, and the splendors
of youthful beauty, were to me as unalluring as age and ugliness, when
joined to the deformities of vice, and the fatiguing prate of senseless
folly. During this miserable impotence of soul, and while I vainly sought
a temporary relief of my own calamity, I was hourly assailed by a crowd
of wretched souls, who implored me to afford them my professional aid, to
alleviate those pains which time, alas! had fixed in their constitutions
and which depended more on the management and reformation of their own
minds, than on the powers of medicine to cure. For--
I could not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And, with a sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighed upon the heart.
To avoid these painful importunities, I flew from the tasteless scenes
with abrupt and angry violence; and confining myself to the solitude of
my apartments, passed the lingering day in dreary dejection, musing on
the melancholy group from which I had just escaped. But my home did not
long afford me an asylum. I was on the ensuing day assailed by a host of
hypochondriacs, attended by their respective advisers, who, while my own
nervous malady was raging at its full height, stunned me with the various
details of their imaginary woes, and excruciated me the whole day with
their unfounded ails and tormenting lamentations. The friendly approach
of night at length relieved me from their importunities; but my spirits
had been exhausted, my feelings so vexed, my patience so tried, and the
sensibilities of my mind so aggravated, by the persecution I had endured,
that--
“Tir’d nature’s sweet restorer, balmly sleep,”
fled from my eyes; and I lay restless upon my couch, alive only to my
miseries, in a state of anguish more insupportable than my bitterest
enemies would, I hope, have inflicted on me. About noon, on the ensuing
day, while I was endeavoring to procure on the sofa a short repose,
the princess Orlow, accompanied by two other very agreeable Russian
ladies, whose company and conversation it was both my pride and my
pleasure frequently to enjoy, suddenly entered my apartment, to inquire
after my health, of the state of which they had received an account
only a few hours before; but such was the petulance of temper into
which my disordered mind had betrayed me, that I immediately rose, and
with uncivil vehemence, requested they would not disturb me. The fair
intruders instantly left the room. About an hour afterward, and while
I was reflecting on the impropriety of my conduct, the prince himself
honored me with a visit. He placed himself on a chair close by the couch
on which I lay, and, with that kind affection which belongs to his
character, inquired, with the tenderest and most sympathizing concern,
into the cause of my disorder. There was a charm in his kindness and
attention that softened, in some degree, the violence of my pains. He
continued his visit for some time; and when he was about to leave me,
after premising that I knew him too well to suspect that superstition had
any influence in his mind, said, “Let me advise you, whenever you find
yourself in so waspish and petulant a mood, as you must have been in when
you turned the princess and her companions out of the room, to endeavor
to check the violence of your temper; and I think you will find it an
excellent expedient for this purpose, if, while any friend is kindly
inquiring after your health, however averse you may be at the moment to
such an inquiry, instead of driving him so uncivilly away, you would
employ yourself in a silent mental repetition of the Lord’s prayer: it
might prove very salutary, and would certainly be much more satisfactory
to your mind.” No advice could be better imagined than this was to
divert the emotions of impatience, by creating in the mind new objects
of attention, and turning the raging current of distempered thought into
a more pure and peaceful channel. Experience, indeed, has enabled me to
announce the efficacy and virtue of this expedient. I have frequently,
by the practice of it, defeated the fury of petulant passions, and
completely subdued many of those absurdities which vex and tease us in
the hours of grief and during the sorrows of sickness. Others also to
whom I have recommended it, have experienced from it similar effects.
The prince, “my guide, philosopher, and friend,” a few weeks after he
had given me this wise and salutary advice, consulted me respecting the
difficulty he frequently labored under in suppressing the violence of
those transports of affection which he bore toward his young and amiable
consort, and which, in a previous conversation on philosophic subjects,
I had seriously exhorted him to check, under a conviction, that a steady
flame is more permanent and pure than a raging fire. He asked me with
some concern what expedient I could recommend to him as most likely to
control those emotions which happy lovers are so anxious to indulge. “My
dear friend,” I replied, “there is no expedient can surpass your own;
and whenever the intemperance of passion is in danger of subverting the
dictates of reason, repeat the Lord’s prayer, and I have no doubt you
will foil its fury.”
When the mind is thus enabled to check and regulate the effects of the
passions, and bring back the temper to its proper tone and rational
basis, the serenity and calmness of solitude assists the achievement,
and completes the victory. It is then so far from infusing into the mind
the virulent passions we have before described, that it affords a soft
and pleasing balm to the soul; and instead of being its greatest enemy,
becomes its highest blessing and its warmest friend.
Solitude, indeed, as I have already observed, is far from betraying
well-regulated minds either into the miseries of melancholy, or the
danger of eccentricism. It raises a healthy and vigorous imagination
to its noblest production, elevates it when dejected, calms it when
disturbed, and restores it, when partially disordered, to its natural
tone. It is as in every other matter, whether physical or moral, the
abuse of solitude which renders it dangerous; like every powerful
medicine, it is attended, when misapplied, with most mischievous
consequences: but when properly administered, is pleasant in its taste,
and highly salutary in its effects. He who knows how to enjoy it can
… truly tell
To live in solitude is with truth to dwell;
Where gay content with healthy temperance meets,
And learning intermixes all its sweets;
Where friendship, elegance, and arts unite
To make the hours glide social, easy, bright:
He tastes the converse of the purest mind:
Though mild, yet manly: and though plain, refined;
And through the moral world expatiates wide
Truth as his end, and virtue as his guide.