ON ILL HEALTH, AND ITS CONSOLATIONS.

WE do not enough consider our physical state as the cause of much of our moral — we do not reflect enough upon our outward selves: — What changes have been produced in our minds by some external cause — an accident — an illness! For instance, a general state of physical debility — ill health in the ordinary phrase, — is perhaps among the most interesting subjects whereon to moralize. It is not — like most topics that are dedicated to philosophy — refining and abstruse; — it is not a closet thesis — it does not touch one man, and avoid the circle which surrounds him; — it relates to us all — for ill health is a part of Death; — it is its grand commencement. Sooner or later, for a longer period or a shorter, it is our common doom. Some, indeed, are stricken suddenly, and Disease does not herald the Dread Comer; — but such exceptions are not to be classed against the rule; and in this artificial existence — afflicted by the vices of custom — the unknown infirmities of our sires — the various ills that beset all men who think or toil — the straining nerve — the heated air — the overwrought or the stagnant life — the cares of poverty — the luxuries of wealth — the gnawings of our several passions — the string cracks somewhere, and few of us pass even the first golden gates of Life ere we receive the admonitions of Decay. “Every contingency to every man and every creature doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old Sexton Time throws up the earth and digs a grave where we must lay our sins, or our sorrows.”

Life itself is but a long dying, and with every struggle against disease “we taste the grave and the solemnities of our own funerals. Every day’s necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which Death fed on all night when we lay on his lap, and slept in his outer chambers.” (Jeremy Taylor on Holy Dying.)

As the beautiful mind of Tully taught itself to regard the evils of Old Age, by fairly facing its approach, and weighing its sufferings against its consolations, so, with respect to habitual infirmities, we may the better bear them by recollecting that they are not without their solace. Every one of us must have observed that during a lengthened illness the mind acquires the habit of making to itself a thousand sources of interest—” a thousand images of one that was” — out of that quiet monotony which seems so unvaried to ordinary eyes. We grow usually far more susceptible to commonplace impressions: — As one whose eyes are touched by a fairy spell, a new world opens to us out of the surface of the tritest things. Every day we discover new objects, and grow delighted with our progress. I remember a friend of mine — a man of lively and impetuous imagination — who, being afflicted with a disease which demanded the most perfect composure, — not being allowed to read, write, and very rarely to converse, — found an inexhaustible mine of diversion in an old marble chimney-piece, in which the veins, irregularly streaked, furnished forth quaint and broken likenesses to men, animals, trees, &c. He declared that, by degrees, he awoke every morning with an object before him, and his imagination betook itself instantly to its new realm of discovery. This instance of the. strange power of the mind, to create to itself an interest in the narrowest circles to which it may be confined, may be ludicrous, but is not exaggerated. How many of us have watched for hours with half-shut eyes the embers of the restless fire? — nay, counted the flowers upon the curtains of the sick-bed, and found an interest in the task! The mind has no native soil; its affections are not confined to one spot, — its dispositions fasten themselves everywhere, — they live, they thrive, they produce, in whatever region Chance may cast them, however remote from their accustomed realm. God made the human heart weak, but elastic; — it hath a strange power of turning poison into nutriment. Banish us the air of Heaven — cripple the step — bind us to the sick couch — cut us off from the cheerful face of men — make us keep house with Danger and with Darkness — we can yet play with our own fancies, and after the first bitterness of the physical thraldom, feel that despite of it we are free!

It has been my lot to endure frequent visitations of ill-health, although my muscular frame is strong, and I am capable of bearing great privation and almost any exertion of mere bodily fatigue. The reason is that I reside principally in London, and it is only of late that I have been able to inure myself to the close air and the want of exercise that belong to the life of cities. However languishing in the confinement of a metropolis, the moment I left the dull walls, and heard the fresh waving of the trees, I revived, — the nerves grew firm — pain fled me — I asked myself in wonder for my ailments! My bodily state was, then, voluntary and self-incurred, for nothing bound or binds me to cities: I follow no calling, I am independent of men, sufficiently affluent in means, and, from my youth upward, I have learnt myself the power to live alone. Why not then consult health as the greatest of earthly goods? But is health the greatest of earthly goods? Is the body to be our main care? Are we to be the minions of self? Are we to make any corporeal advantage the chief end —

 

“Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.”

 

I confess that I see not how men can arrogate to themselves the Catholic boast of Immortal Hopes — how they can utter the old truths of the nothingness of life — of the superiority of mental over physical delights — of the paramount influence of the soul and the soul’s objects — and yet speak of health as our greatest blessing, and the workman’s charge of filling up the crannies of this fast mouldering clay as the most necessary of human objects. Assuredly health is a great blessing, and its care is not to be despised; but there are duties far more sacred, — obligations before which the body is as nought. For it is not necessary to live, but it is necessary to live nobly! And of this truth we are not without the support of high examples. Who can read the great poet “who sung of heaven,” and forget that his acts walked level with the lofty eminence of his genius — that he paid “no homage to the sun,” that even the blessing of light itself was a luxury, willingly to be abandoned — but the defence of the great rights of earth, the fulfilment of the solemn trust of nations, the vindication of ages yet to come, was a necessity, and not to be avoided — and wherefore? because it was a duty! Are there not duties too to us — though upon a narrower scale — which require no less generous a devotion? Are there not objects which are more important than the ease and welfare of the body? Is our first great charge that of being a nurse to ourselves? No: every one of us who writes, toils, or actively serves the state, forms to himself, if he knoweth anything of public virtue, interests which are not to be renounced for the purchase of a calmer pulse, and a few years added to the feeble extreme of life. Many of us have neither fortune, nor power, nor extrinsic offerings to sacrifice to mankind; but all of us — the proud, the humble, the rich, the poor — have one possession at our command; — we may sacrifice ourselves! It is from these reasons that, at the time I refer to, I put aside the hope of health; — a good earnestly indeed to be coveted,- but which, if obtained only by a life remote from man, inactive, useless, self-revolving, may be too dearly bought: and gazing on the evil which I imagined (though erroneously) I could not cure, I endeavoured to reconcile myself to its necessity.

And first, it seems to me that when the nerves are somewhat weakened the senses of sympathy are more keen — we are less negligent of our kind: — that impetuous and reckless buoyancy of spirit which mostly accompanies a hardy and iron frame, is not made to enter into the infirmities of others. How can it sympathize with what it has never known? We seldom find men of great animal health and power possessed of much delicacy of mind; their humanity and kindness proceed from an overflow of spirits — their more genial virtues are often but skin deep, and the result of good humour. The susceptible frame of women causes each more kindly and generous feeling to vibrate more powerfully on their hearts, and thus also that which in our harsher sex sharpens the nerve, often softens the affection. And this is really the cause of that increased tendency to pity, to charity, to friendship, which comes on with the decline of life, and which Bolingbroke has so touchingly alluded to. There is an excitement in the consciousness of the glorious possession of unshaken health and matured strength which hurries us on the road of that selfish enjoyment, which we arc proud of our privilege to command. The passions of the soul are often winged by our capacities, and are fed from the same sources that keep the beating of the heart strong, and the step haughty upon the earth. Thus when the frame grows slack, and the race of the strong can be run no more, the Mind falls gently back upon itself — it releases its garments from the grasp of the Passions which have lost their charm — intellectual objects become more precious, and, no longer sufficing to be a world to ourselves, we contract the soft habit of leaning our affection upon others; the ties round our heart are felt with a more close endearment, and every little tenderness we receive from the love of those about us, teaches us the value of love. And this is therefore among the consolations of ill-health, that we are more susceptible to all the kindlier emotions, and that we drink a deeper and a sweeter pleasure from the attachment of our friends. If, too, we become, as the body progressively declines from the desire of external pursuits, more devoted to intellectual objects, new sources of delight are thus bestowed upon us. Books become more eloquent of language, and their aspect grows welcome as the face of some dear consoler. Perhaps no epicure of the world’s coarse allurement knows that degree of deep and serene enjoyment with which, shut up in our tranquil chambers, we surround ourselves with the WISDOM, the POETRY, the ROMANCE of past ages, and are made free, by the Sybil of the world’s knowledge, to the Elysium of departed souls. The pain, or the fever, that from time to time reminds us of our clay, brings not perhaps more frequent and embarrassing interruptions, than the restlessness and eager passion which belong to the flush of health. Contented to repose — the repose becomes more prodigal of dreams.

And there is another circumstance usually attendant on ill-health. We live less for the world — we do not extend the circle of friendship into the wide and distracting orbit of common acquaintance — we are thus less subject to ungenial interruptions — to vulgar humiliations — to the wear and tear of mind — the harassment and the vanity, — that torture those who seek after the “gallery of painted pictures,” and “the talk where no love is.” The gawd and the ostentation shrink into their true colours before the eye which has been taught to look within. And the pulses that have been calmed by pain, keep, without much effort, to the even tenor of philosophy. Thus ill-health may save us from many disquietudes and errors — from frequent mortification — and “the walking after the vain shadow” Plato retired to his cave to be wise; sickness is often the moral cave, with its quiet, its darkness, and its solitude, to the soul.

I  may add also, that he who has been taught the precariousness of life, acquires a knowledge of its value. He teaches himself to regard Death with a quiet eye, and habit (Exilia, tormenta, bella, niorbos, naufragia, meditare, ut nullo sis malo, Tyro. — Senec. Epist.) gifts him with a fortitude mightier than the stoicism of the Porch. As the lamb is shorn so the wind is tempered. Nor is the calm without moments of mere animal ecstasy unknown to the rude health, which, having never waned from its vigour, is unconscious of the treasure it inherits. What rapture in the first steps to recovery — in the buoyant intervals of release! When the wise simplicity of Hesiod would express the overpowering joy of a bridegroom, in the flush of conquest hastening to the first embraces of his bride, he can compare him only to one escaped from some painful disease, or from the chains of a dungeon. The release of pain is the excess of transport. With what gratitude we feel the first return of health — the first budding forth of the new spring that has dawned within us! Or, if our disease admit not that blessed regeneration, still it has its intervals and reprieves: moments, when the Mind springs up as the lark to heaven, singing and rejoicing as it bathes its plumage in the intoxicating air. So that our state may be of habitual tranquillity, and yet not dumb to raptures which have no parallel in the monotony of more envied lives. But I hold that the great counterbalancing gift which the infirmity of the body, if rightly moralized upon, hath the privilege to confer, is, that the mind, left free to contemplation, naturally prefers the high and the immortal to the sensual and the low. As Astronomy took its rise among the Chaldæan shepherds, whose constant leisure upon their vast and level plains enabled them to elevate their attention undivided to the heavenly bodies, — so the time left to us for contemplation in our hours of sickness, and our necessary disengagement from the things of earth, tend to direct our thoughts to the Stars, and impregnate us half unconsciously with the Science of Heaven.

Thus while, as I have said, our affections become more gentle, our souls also become more noble, and our desires more pure. We learn to think, with one of the most august of our moralists, that “earth is an hospital, not an inn — a place to die, not live in.” Our existence becomes a great preparation for death, and the monitor within us is constant, but with a sweet and a cheering voice.

Such are the thoughts with which in the hour of sickness I taught myself to regard what with the vulgar is the greatest of human calamities! It may be some consolation to those who have suffered more bitterly than I have done, to feel that, by calling in the powers of the mind, there may be good ends and cheerful hopes wrought out from the wasting of the body; and that it is only the darkness — unconsidered and unexplored — which shapes the spectre, and appals us with the fear.