MENTAL DISEASE.

Ir is not yet sufficiently recognised, that the mind has its health and disease, exactly like the body, dependent on fixed natural laws. The term, mental disease, is restricted to insanity; but it must be viewed in a much wider sense, comprehending every case in which a mind suffers by erring against any natural law. If our thoughts and our feelings are in harmony with truth and nature, our minds will be healthy and happy; if not, they will be unhappy and diseased. Sorrow in the mind corresponds to pain in the body; wherever it is found it is a mark of sin and disease.

Whenever we observe, either in ourselves or in others, any grief, we may be certain that some evil is the cause of it. Happiness is the sign of moral health; it is one grand gaol for human aspiration, just as physical happiness or health is in the material world. Joy and sorrow are our guides to truth, showing us where we are right, and where wrong, in the exploration of our being. Wherever we find joy, we should seek the cause and follow it; wherever sorrow, the reverse is our duty.

But sorrow, in another light, may be regarded as a kind of good; thus having an exact analogy with bodily disease. It is now well known, that the body never works for its own destruction, but constantly for its preservation; and thus, that all disease is an effort of nature to regain health. Thus if a man receive a bodily injury-for instance, a blow, inflammation or pain will follow. These consequences constitute a disease; but still they are necessary for the restoration of the part to health; therefore they may be called a healthy disease.

In

In like manner let us analyse all the destructive processes of the most complicated forms of disease-of cancer, consumption, &c.; we will invariably find that all of them, though they are rapidly destroying life, are yet used and intended by nature to save it—one of the most wondrous and instructive paradoxes in our being. exactly the same way, sorrow, fear, and all the evil or diseased states of the mind, are nature's remedies for an injury received by it; and in their most unlimited and destructive developement we shall still invariably recognise the natural and necessary struggles for good, to

which man's nature, physical and moral, is essentially bent, like the plant to the light. Thus we feel sorrow naturally, for any calamity which befalls us, or those we love: this sorrow is always a disease in us; while it remains, we are in a state of imperfection, or sin, if you will. Still, without it, as in the case of the bodily inflammation, we could not be restored to our healthy equilibrium, and thus it may be called a healthy disease, or a good evil. The inflammation was a thing heartily to be deprecated and prevented; so was the

sorrow.

But the inflammation, or other bodily disease, may far overstep the limits necessary for the restoration of health; the injury received may have been too severe, or the constitution too feeble to resist it. The consequences may become themselves causes of new evils, and endanger the safety of the whole economy. In the same way the sorrow may pass all healthy bounds, and become itself the main cause of disease. The physician is always on the watch to see that the inflammation do neither more nor less than is necessary to restore health, and so must we watch over sorrow. If it become chronic and linger in the mind, we must use all means to eradicate it.

All the depressing and sorrow-causing passions and feelings are also diseases of the mind. Fear, jealousy, anxiety, or ennui, are all signs to us that there is evil somewhere, of which we must seek out the cause, however obscure, and remove it, before the suffering mind regain its health. Nay, more, every error in judgment, every untruth of thought is, like every untruth of bodily conduct, a cause of disease.

The mind and the body are inseparably linked together, so that the health and happiness of the one involves that of the other. Thus if the mind be diseased by any of the evil moral states, the body will also become diseased; while all bodily disease equally necessitates a want of sanity of mind. Every imperfect moral state, at once reacts on the body, and if it be very intense, or long continued, the body will be deeply injured. Thus does our mental element play as important a part as any other, in the causation of physical disease, and to cure the latter it is just as often requisite to apply remedies to the mental, as the bodily state. To do this, we must first be able to recognise what is mental disease, and then to treat it according to the principles of mental health.

But men, in general, do not recognise moral disease, they do not allow sorrow, fear, &c., to be diseases; and instead of wishing, or feeling it their duty, to escape from them, often hug them to their bosoms and glory in them. There is as yet, scarcely any defined or tangible moral science; we think and feel according to the caprice of the hour, and when long-continued misery, arising from our ignorance of the laws of our mind, has involved us, body and soul, in ruin, we pride ourselves on our woes, and glory in our contempt of them! Truly this is carrying paradox rather too far. We say sorrow is good, for it chastens and elevates the mind, teaches it new lessons and sympathies, and gives it a loftiness and intensity of aspiration, which we should not have had without it. This may be true in some cases, but

shall we say, because good has come out of evil, that the evil itself is good? Let us take the parallel case of bodily suffering, of which too many of us have had so sad experience.

To have passed through a long and tedious illness, may have given us some insight into the mysteries of humanity, that would else have been hid from us, may have purified our hearts and intensified our love and sympathy for our fellow-beings; but for all these blessings, however dear to us, and however loath we should be to part with them, can we say that the bodily disease which caused them, was not of itself an evil to be shunned and prevented in every possible way? The more we have suffered from it, and therefore the stronger influence it has had in moulding, possibly in some respects for good, our moral character, the more earnestly will we seek to prevent any human being again suffering, as we have done. What else is the value and consolation of experience? It is not the disease, not the sorrow, which is good, but the power we may have gained by it, to serve our fellow-beings, and to give them the fruits without the thorns of our experience.

But if some gain, in a measure, by sorrow and disease, how many Iose utterly! What shall all his experience avail a man, if he is destroyed before he can use it, or if he be not conscious of its value, as is so often the case? Who does not feel on looking back on his life, that all its sufferings, physical and mental, arose from evil causes, that the beauty of his life is dimmed by every one of them, and that he might have been a far better and higher being, had they been all removed?

The physician's powers to save, are in great measure based on his acquaintance with disease: nay, unless there had been disease, he could not even understand health; but does he on that account wish to see disease in himself or in others? It is even so with the moralist too; without his knowledge of and sympathy with sorrow, and his experience of its causes, he cannot benefit the sufferer; but shall he on that account, desire to see sorrow that he may alleviate it? Every bodily disease in ourselves and others, takes away from the perfection of our common life; so does every sorrow that we may undergo, detract from the beauty and integrity of our moral nature. He that sorrows for others, confesses that he joins in the common lot and common imperfection of mankind; for we are so linked together, that if one suffer, all must suffer. There is no such thing as necessary, or therefore essentially beneficial, bodily disease; there is no such thing as necessary, or essentially beneficial sorrow. Therefore a man of sorrows must be a diseased, and cannot be an absolutely good man. The ideal of a perfect life, physical and moral, that to which humanity should aspire, is one that knows not disease or sorrow.

Any one, who has suffered bodily, or mentally, and who has not? will say, "Be not like me, I am sinful; whatever experience I may have got, my life is a blemished one, and the one character to which you should aspire, is that which is not tainted by disease or sorrow. There is none good but one, and that is the unattainable ideal, undimmed by the sorrows and sufferings of imperfection."

If it be asked, how do we know that sorrow is a disease or an evil? the answer is, by observing its effects on the body. The human body is the touchstone of moral truth, its health or disease istangible, and demonstrable; and through its means alone, do moral questions admit of full demonstration. We see that joy and all the allied feelings are linked most closely with physical health and well-being; whereas sorrow and all its ministers, cause derangement and ill health of the bodily functions, in a measure exactly proportional to their intensity and continuance. They interfere with the healthy performance of nutrition, reproduction, or secretion; under their influence the stomach becomes disordered, the bodily powers enfeebled, and if sorrow be much aggravated or prolonged, the sanity of the mind as well as the body may be completely destroyed.

If we have not a true idea of what is health and what disease, it is in vain to expect to attain the one or avoid the other. The physician of mind or body cannot cure a man if there be a disease lurking in the system, which is not recognised, and which may yet be at the bottom of all the symptoms. Thus, how often do we see vain attempts made to cure by physical remedies, diseases-as indigestion, debility, &c., which in reality may have their origin in a habitually depressed, anxious, or serious state of mind, and can be cured only by its removal. In this country especially, where such states of mind are so frequent, where emulation, over-work, serious views of this world and the next, so frequently cause a chronic state of mental anxiety and despondency, indigestion has, among the richer classes, much more frequently a mental than a bodily origin. The physician who does not recognise and pay equal attention to the mental diseases, with all their distinct natures and causes, is as incapable of treating a human being, as the moralist who neglects the physical. The treatment of mental is as infinitely difficult as that of bodily disease, and cannot be attained, but by the profoundest study of all the various causes of sorrow, and all the other imperfect and diseased mental states. Sorrow is not to be regarded any more than physical disease, as arising of itself, or sent to us by providence; that most unhappy error, which still blinds so many of us to its true nature, serving as a cover for our errors, and excuse for our supineness in not removing them. It invariably depends on some fault in us, or others, and on us it is incumbent to bear the blame, and to endeavour to remove the cause.

SPIRITUALISM.

ALTHOUGH I have already spoken on this subject in the first of these essays, yet it appears to me to be of such vital importance, that I would wish to add a few farther remarks.

By spiritualisin is to be understood the modes of thought and feeling, which seek to elevate mind above matter, and take a greater pleasure in mental than in physical pursuits, and in the cultivation of the moral than of the physical virtues.

Spiritualism is one of the most widely diffused of all diseased modes of feeling in the present day. It pervades the minds of almost all the educated classes in this country. If each of us, whether Christian or not, analyse our own thoughts and feelings, we shall find that we are deeply imbued with spiritualism; ingrained into us by our earliest education, and by the prevailing moral atmosphere around us. the educated classes instinctively prefer moral to physical excellencies, and aspire rather to the former than the latter.

All

To be a distinguished poet or thinker, to acquire renown by literary merits; to have a cultivated intellect, a warm heart, and deep sympathies-all of us aim at these, and regard with comparative indifference, if not contempt, the physical virtues of a powerful, athletic, and healthy frame, and the excellence in feats of bodily prowess. Little reverence is paid to these virtues, if possessed by any one, but all bow down in admiration before a man of superior mental powers. The tastes moreover of the great mass of the educated classes are thoroughly spiritual. Literary pursuits, intellectual enjoyments, poetry, morality, and spiritual religion, engross their attention; but the physical sciences, and bodily sports and exercises, have but little comparative interest for them, and the equal claims of the physical laws of life, to their study and religious obedience, are unfelt. The educated classes seem to think, that athletic frames and a keen relish for bodily excrcises and sports, are characteristics of the poorer classes, and that their own peculiar province is the cultivation of the mind and not of the body.

But there could not be a mistake more fatal to happiness or to the real culture of mankind. The consequence of this has been, that the two sets of virtues are rarely seen uuited in the same individual; but,