Part 12

To me it appears that we are, for the most part, in greater peril from other faults, because they are less looked for, less discussed and recognised, and we are, therefore, less put upon our guard against them: and also because their consequences are less immediately and obviously detrimental to our own comfort. Besides that all persons grow up on the look-out for irritability of temper, and therefore are more or less on the watch against it when they come to be ill, it is clear to the idlest and most selfish mind, that the whole hope of comfort in the sick-room depends on the freedom and cheerfulness of the intercourse held in it,--a freedom and cheerfulness forfeited by irritability on the part of the sufferer,--necessarily forfeited, even if he were tended by the hands of angels. Children are the brightest, if not the tenderest, angels of the sick-room; and the alternative between their coming springing in, not only voluntarily but eagerly, and their being brought, for observance’ sake, with force and fear, is of itself inducement enough to self-control on the part of the most fretted patient, in the most feverish hour. Even in the middle of the night, when no one is by but the soundly sleeping nurse, the invalid feels admonished to suppress the slightest moan, when he sees in fancy his little friends the next morning either leaping from their beds at the joyful thought that they may visit him, or asking, with awe and gravity, whether they must go, and how soon they may come away. It is the sweetest of cordials to the heart of an invalid to learn, by chance, that children count the days and hours till they may come, and that all their gravity is about having to go away. It is the most refined flattery to let one know it: and the knowledge of it may well be almost a specific against ill-temper. And then again, the nurse. It is by no means sufficient for one’s comfort that one’s nurse should be well qualified,--ever so trust-worthy, and ever so kind: it is necessary too that she should be free and happy. There must be no fear in her tread,--no reserve in her eye,--no management in her voice--no choice in her tidings. There is no ill-temper in that jealousy of the invalid’s spirit which requires assurance of being no burden, and no restraint. It is a righteous jealousy, and among the most effectual safeguards against the indulgence of ill-humour. That there are disorders, and seasons of illness, which almost compel the forfeiture of the mental and moral freedom and ease of the sick-room, is a painful truth; and those who suffer under such irresistible or unresisted irritation are supremely to be compassionated, whether their actual pain of body be more or less. But it is quite as certain that a large number of sufferers are exempt from temptation to this kind of failure, being subject, the while, to some other,--more tolerable, as affecting only, or chiefly, their own happiness.

The very opposite failure to that of irritability,--which shows itself in dissatisfaction with others,--is no less common,--unreasonable dissatisfaction with one’s self. This lowering, depraving tendency to self-contempt requires for its establishment as a fault of temper, long protraction or permanence of illness: but when once established, it is as serious a fault of temper as can be entertained. Where religious faith and trust are insufficient for the need, this temper is almost a necessary consequence of any degree of mental and moral activity in a sick prisoner. The retrospect of one’s own life, from the stillness of the sick room, is unendurable to any considerate person, except in the light of the deepest religious humility; and the strongest faith in the all-wise ordering of the moral world, is no more than sufficient to counteract that sickening which spreads from the distressed body to the anxious heart, when intervals of ease and lightness are few and brief. When to the pains and misgivings of such perpetual retrospect are added the burdens of a sense of present and permanent uselessness, and of overwhelming gratitude for services received from hour to hour,--there is no self-respect in the world that will, unaided, support cheerfulness and equanimity.

Without self-respect, there can be none of that healthy freedom of spirit which animates others to freedom, and exerts that influence which is ascribed to “a good temper,” which removes hesitancy from the transaction of the daily business of life, and so permits life to appear in its natural aspect. Instead of this, where the spirit has lost its security of innocence, unconsciousness, or self-reliance, and become morbidly sensitive to failures and dangers,--where it has become cowardly in conscience, shrinking from all moral enterprise, and dreading moral injury from every occurrence, the temper of anxiety must spread from the sufferer to all about him, whether the causes of his trouble are intelligible to them or not. Moral progress, or even holding what he has gained, seems out of the question for one so shaken; for, constantly feeling, as he does, that he cannot afford to do the least questionable thing, and every act being questionable in one aspect or another, he can only preserve one incessant shrinking attitude before the fearful ghost of Conscience, instead of bestirring himself to prove and use his new opportunities of spiritual exertion and conquest. This abasement may co-exist with the most perfect sweetness and gentleness of speech and manners, and the sufferer may enjoy great credit for not being irritable, when he is in a far lower moral state than often co-exists with irritability.

One effect, deplorably mean and perilous, of such a tendency, is immediately opposed to the mood which prompts hasty words and complaints. The sufferer’s spirits rise in proportion to the pain he experiences. He is never so happy as when he feels his paroxysms coming on,--not only because pain of body acts as relief from the gnawing misery of his mind, but because every tangible proof that he is under chastening and discipline, conveys to him a sense of his dignity--reassures him, as a child of Providence. From this may follow too naturally his learning to regard pain as a qualification for ease--as a purchase-money of future good--a superstition as low and depraving as almost any the mind can entertain.

To persons in health, and at ease, this detail of the tempers of a sick-room may well appear fanciful, irrational, and shocking enough. But the time may come when they may recognise it as true; and, meanwhile, it will be their wisest and kindest way to receive it with belief. It may possibly prove the key, even now, to a mystery which otherwise they can make nothing of, when they see one under tedious suffering, gentle but low when at ease--evidently borne down by speechless sadness--while, on the first return of pain, the spirits rise, and the more restless is the distressed body, the more at ease does the spirit appear. Such a state may be morbid and perilous; but, the more it is so, the more desirable it becomes that the attending friend should have an insight into the case, and a respectful and tender sympathy with it.

As to the remedy, it is easy to say that it is to be found in a cheerful trust in the Ordainer of our lot. While no one questions this, who can show how this trust is to be made available at every need, when the workings of the spirit are all confused, its vision impaired, and its powers distorted? The only advice that even experience can give in such an instance, is to revive healthy old associations, to occupy the morbid powers with objects from without, and to use the happiest rather than the lowest seasons for leading the mind to a consideration of its highest relations. As the case is opposite to that most commonly discoursed of in connexion with the sick-room, so must a wise ministration be also opposite to common notions; the appeal must be, in seasons of ease and enjoyment, to the sense of dependence on God; and, in times of mental distress, to the principles of endurance and self-mastery.

Other tempers of the sick-room are more easily understood by those without. The particularity about trifles is one. This, though often reaching a point of absurdity, should be scrupulously indulged, because no one but the sufferer can be fully aware of the annoyance of want of order in so confined a space and range of objects. A healthy person, who can go everywhere at pleasure, leaving litters to be put away by servants during absence, can have no idea of the oppression felt by a feeble invalid, when looking round upon the confusion left in one little room by careless visitors,--chairs standing in all directions, books thrown down here and there, and work or papers strewed on the floor. It is easy to laugh at such trifles--easy to the invalid himself at times; but if any healthy person will recal his feelings during convalescence from any former illness, he will remember the sort of painful sympathy with which he saw the servants going about their work--how his frame ached at hearing of a long walk, or even at seeing his friends sitting upright upon chairs. If he considers what it must be to have this set of feelings for life, he will think the particularity of the invalid not only worth indulging, but less absurd than in the eye of reason it appears; and if it be too much to expect of men, it may be hoped that women visiting the sick may be careful to leave the spaces of the room clear, not to shake the sofa or the table, to put up books upon their shelves, and leave all in such a state that the invalid may, immediately on being left alone, sink down to such rest as can be found.

No one challenges this particularity when it relates to hours. The most careless observer must know that it is illness of itself to a sick person to have to wait for food or medicines, or to be put off from regular sleep. Meantime, the invalid cannot keep too careful a watch upon the increase of his own particularity--his refuge in custom. There is something shocking to us invalids, when we fix our meditation upon this, in our attachments to our own comforts, and cowardice about dispensing with them. I have myself observed, with inexpressible shame, that, with the newspaper in my hand, no details of the peril of empires, or of the starving miseries of thousands of my countrymen, could keep my eye from the watch before me, or detain my attention one second beyond the time when I might have my opiate. For two years, too, I wished and intended to dispense with my opiate for once, to try how much there was to bear, and how I should bear it: but I never did it, strong as was the shame of always yielding; and I have now long given up all thoughts of it. Moreover, though as fully convinced as ever of the moral evil and danger of being wedded to custom and habits, I have now a far too decided and satisfactory impression that the sick-room is not the place for a conquest of that kind, and that it is enough if the patient breaks through his trammels when he casts off his illness, and emerges again into the world, which is the same thing as acquiescing in the invalid for life being a life-long slave to custom and habit. Bad as this is, I do not see how it is to be helped; for the suffering and injury caused by irregularity of methods, and uncertainty of arrangements in the sick-room, seem to show that freedom of this kind does not belong to an invalid life: and perhaps the most that ought to be required or desired of the sick person is, rather to welcome than complain of any necessary interruption to his ways, by a change of nurse, or other accidental interference with ordinary comforts,--not to extend his particularity beyond the bounds of his own little domain, and no more to expect the healthy and active to be, in their own homes, as strict and punctual as himself, than to desire the servants to leave off rubbing tables and lighting fires, because it makes his frame ache to think of such work. If he can preserve sympathy enough in the impulses of the active abroad, he may hope for indulgence in his particularity at home.

There are other liabilities which may be clear to observers, or easily conceivable when mentioned. I hardly know whether we may allude, under the head of Tempers, to the despair which I believe to be universally felt (however discountenanced), by all, on the assault of very severe pain. The reason may speak, and even through the lips, of hope and courage; but the sensation of which I speak is peculiar, so peculiarly connected with bodily agony, that I cannot but believe it felt wherever bodily agony is felt. It has nothing to do with the courage of the soul; affords not the shadow of contradiction to patience, fortitude, religious trust. I mean simply that when extreme pain seizes on us, down go our spirits, fathoms deep; and, though the soul may yet be submissive and even willing, the sickening question rises,--“How shall I bear this for five minutes? What will become of me?” And if the imagination stretches on to an hour, or hours, there is no word but despair which expresses the feeling. The by-standers can never fully understand this suffering; no, though they may themselves have suffered to extremity. The patient himself, in any interval, when devoutly ready to endure again, cannot understand, nor believe in his late emotion, or fancy that he can feel it again. As it is thus peculiar and transient, there could be no use in mentioning it, except for two possibilities; that some sufferer may, in the moment of anguish, remember that the sensation has been recognised and recorded; and that attendants, on witnessing a sudden abasement of high courage, on seeing horror of countenance succeed a calm determination, may remember, at the right moment, that there is that passing within of which they can have no conception, and certainly no right to judge.

I might add, as a justification for allusion to so painful a subject, that it may teach us to honour, in some less faint degree, the strength of soul of those who, with any composure, die of sheer pain,--of the most torturing diseases. If, amidst successive shocks of this despairing sensation, their power of reaction, in the intervals, remains unimpaired, and they retain their spiritual dignities to the end, no degree of admiration can transcend their claims.

One strong peril to temper, in the case of a permanent invalid, I do not remember to have seen noticed, while, I am sure, none can be more worthy of being guarded against. By our being withdrawn from the disturbing bustles of life in the world; by our leisure for reading and contemplation of various sides of questions, and by our singular opportunities for quiet reflection, we must, almost necessarily, see further than we used to do, and further than many others do on subjects of interest, which involve general principles. Through the post, we hold the best kind of correspondence with the society from which we are withdrawn; we have the opinions of the wise, and the impressions of the active, transmitted to us, stripped of much of the passion and prejudice in which they would have been presented in conversation. Instead of one newspaper or pamphlet, we now have time to look over several, and can hear all sides. Far removed from the little triumphs or disappointments of the day, which warp the judgments of all men who have hearts to feel, whatever may be their abstract wisdom; endowed with long night hours of wakefulness, when our spirit of Humanity is all alive; permitted sequestered days, when our review of historical periods may be continuous, and when some great new idea, a stalactite of long formation, at length descends to our level, and touches our heads, or a diamond of thought, slowly distilled, drops into our hand as we penetrate and explore;--when some such gain--the guerdon of our condition--is frequently occurring, it cannot be but that--unless we are fools, our judgments of things must be worth something more than formerly. If formerly we associated with our equals, it cannot be but that we must now see further than they, on such questions of the time as interest us.

Such divergences of opinion as hence arise require care on the part both of sick and well, if a perfectly just and generous understanding is to be preserved between friends.

The liability of us sick is double. We are in danger of forgetting, amidst the inevitable consciousness of our own improved insight and foresight, that the activities of life have a corrective as well as a disturbing influence; and that transient incidents and emotions which do not reach us, may form real elements of a great question for the week or the year, though lost in our abstract view of it. In this way, our judgment may involve great imperfections, which it behoves us to remember all the more, the less we can supply them. A worse liability is that to our tempers, of impatience at others not seeing so far as we do. There is something strange, disappointing and irritating, in finding those whom we have always regarded as sensible and clear-headed, holding some expectation which we see to be unreasonable, and offering to our consideration some fallacy or misty notion, whose incorrectness is to us as distinct as a cloud in the sky. While religiously careful not to fret ourselves “because of evil doers,” being so expressly desired, we are sadly prone to the far worse weakness of fretting ourselves because of mistaken thinkers. We long to send by a carrier-pigeon the answer or refutation which seems to us so clear: the post is too slow for us; and if we do not disburden our minds of their weight of wisdom, we are apt to spend the night in reiterating to ourselves our triumphant arguments, in the strongest and most condensed language we can find, till, exhausted by such efforts, at last the thought occurs to us whether truth cannot wait,--whether, supposing us ever so right intellectually, we are not morally wrong in our perturbation. This confession looks foolish and humbling enough in black and white; but I cannot escape making it, if, as I intend, I complain of some little injustice on the other hand, sustained by us.

Where such divergences of opinion arise, men of activity (and women, no less) are apt, whatever may be their abstract respect for closet speculators, and reverence for sequestered sufferers, to speak with regret, or at least with respectful compassion, of the warping influences of seclusion and illness, as particularly illustrated by the case in point. They attribute all differences to these causes, and never doubt that the old agreement would exist, by the invalid’s views being the same as their own, but for the distorting medium through which the sick are compelled to regard events; or but for the influence which certain parties have obtained over his mind, by service or sympathy. This may be more or less true, in individual cases. Still, it is for the interests of truth and temper to remind the healthy and busy that the warp may possibly not be all on one side, and the enlightenment on the other; and that there may be influences in the life of the meditative invalid which may render his views more comprehensive, and his judgments more, rather than less, sound than heretofore. If there is any practicable test of this, it must be looked for in his habitual tone of mind and life. Unless this proves perversion or folly, his mind must, in justice, be held as at least as worthy of consideration as at any former season of his life. If his fundamental opinions have undergone no change, but rather enlargement with special modifications, they are decidedly worthy of more respect than ever.

Thus does my experience moralize for both parties. If, in ordinary life, there is no peace of mind for those whose happiness depends on the good opinion of everybody, much less can there be tranquillity of mind in the sick-room for such. When we are in the world, our presence breaks down mistaken or slanderous allegations, and we are sure to be seen as we are, and to be rightly understood, by large numbers of persons,--by all, indeed, whose opinion is of value to us. But, while sequestered in the sick-room, we are, in point of reputation, wholly at the mercy of those who speak of us. It is true, most persons are so humane, and those about us are so touched by our affliction, as that the best construction is put on our manners and conduct by the greater number of reporters. But it is strange and fortunate if there be not, among our acquaintance, some intrusive person whom we have to keep at a distance,--some meddler whom we have to check, some well-meaning mischief-maker, of impenetrable complacency, who will most affectionately and compassionately report us as sadly changed, unable to value our best friends, or to estimate the most important services. Whether charges like these arise, or old misrepresentations reappear, while we are invisible and defenceless, we may be miserable enough if we let such things trouble us. Those least in danger, as to temper, are persons of note, who have had former experience of the diversities of the world’s opinion. They can smile and wait. But it may be easily conceived that such incidents may be trying to invalids who are the subjects of notoriety for the first time,--of that sort of notoriety which affliction creates, through the universal sympathy of human hearts. Under so new an experience, the sufferer may feel more vexation by the accidental knowledge of one unjust representation of his state of temper, than cheered by a hundred evidences of the esteem and sympathy of those about him. For the evil there is no help; but there are abundant resources against the vexation,--the same resources which enable the humble and hoping Christian, whether strong or weak, rich or poor in outward blessings, to go through good or evil report with a heart tranquil in Divine Trust, and occupied with human love.

BECOMING INURED.

“Sunt homines qui cum patientiâ moriuntur: sunt autem quidam perfecti qui cum patientiâ vivunt.” ST. AUGUSTIN.

“No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep Crowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep: But reverend discipline, religious fear, And soft obedience find sweet biding here!

The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers Her kindred with the stars: not basely hovers Below--but meditates the immortal way Home to the source of light and intellectual day.” CRASHAW.

We hear, every day, benevolent and compassionate persons, in discussing the woes of sufferers, dwelling on the thought of such sufferers becoming inured; and we see them, if possible, reposing on this as the closing and conclusive idea. How natural this is! How often and how undoubtingly we did it ourselves, in our days of ease! But how differently it sounds now! How quickly do we detect in it the discharge and dismissal of uneasy sympathies! How infallibly do we see how far it may be true; and what a tale could we tell of what is included in the phrase, “becoming inured,” where it may be most truly applied! of what experience is involved in the process, where it is shortest and easiest!

I was lately speaking to a tender-hearted woman, who had known suffering, but not torment, of more than one case of persons who, dying slowly under a torturing disease, simply and naturally declared, shortly before death, the season of their illness to have been the happiest part of their lives. There are different ways of explaining this fact, which, though I always believed it, I did not till lately understand. My friend, however, found no difficulty. She said, in a tone of pitying tenderness, but of perfect decision, “O! they become inured to it.” I replied by some slight description of the suffering in the case which had impressed me most, and asked if she thought use and experience could soften pain like that. “O yes,” she again said, “they become inured to it. That is certainly the thing.”

Is it so? I am persuaded it is not. To the great majority of evils men may become inured; but not to all. To almost every kind, and to vast degrees of privation, moral and physical, they may become inured; and to chronic sufferings of mind and body; but I am convinced that there is no more possibility of becoming inured to acute agony of body than to paroxysms of remorse--the severest of moral pains. For the sake of both sufferers and sympathisers, it would be well that this should be thoroughly understood, that aid may not fall short, nor relief be looked for in the wrong direction.

The truth is, as all will declare who are subject to a frequently recurring pain, a familiar pain becomes more and more dreaded, instead of becoming lightly esteemed in proportion to its familiarity. The general sense of alarm which it probably occasioned when new, may have given way and disappeared before a knowledge of consequences, and a regular method of management or endurance; but the pain itself becomes more odious, more oppressive, more feared, in proportion to the accumulation of experience of weary hours, in proportion to the aggregate of painful associations which every visitation revives. When it is, moreover, considered that the suffering part of the body is, if not recovering, growing continually more diseased and susceptible of pain, it will appear how little truth there is in the supposition of tortured persons becoming inured to torture.

The inuring process which I hold to be impossible in the cases mentioned is, however, practicable and frequent in almost all cases of inferior suffering. But, while all join in thanking God for this, there is a wide difference in the view taken of the fact by those who feel and those who only observe it. To the last, it is a clear and satisfactory truth, shining on the rock of futurity, which they can sit and gaze at from the window of their ease, commenting on the blessing of such a beacon-light to those who need it. To those who need it, meanwhile, it is far far off--sometimes hidden and sometimes despaired of, as the waves and the billows go over them, and the point can be reached only through sinkings and struggles, and fears and anguish, with scanty breathing-times between. Why is this not admitted in the case of the invalid as it is in that of the person losing a sense? One who is becoming blind or deaf is sure to grow inured in time; but through what a series of keen mortifications, of bitter privations! Every one sees and understands this; while in the case of the invalid, many spring to the conclusion, overlooking the process of discipline which has, in that case, as in the other, to be undergone. It should never be forgotten how different a thing it is to read off this lesson from the clear print of assertion or observation, and to learn it experimentally, at a scarcely perceptible rate, “line upon line and precept upon precept;” when every line is burnt in by pain, and the long series of precepts are registered by their degrees of anguish.

When the nature of the process has been sufficiently dwelt upon to be understood--that the hearts of the happy may be duly softened, and those of the suffering duly cheered by sympathy--then let all good be said of the inuring process; at least all the good that is true; and that is much. No wise man will declare that it is the best and healthiest condition for any one. No wise man will deny that the healthiest moral condition is found where there is the most abundant happiness. Happiness is clearly the native, heavenly atmosphere of the soul--that in which it is “to live and move and have its being” hereafter, and in proportion to its share of which, now and here, it makes its heavenly growth. The divinest souls--the loftiest, most disinterested and devoted--all unite in one testimony, that they have been best when happiest; that they were then most energetic and spontaneously devoted--least self-conscious. This must and may joyfully be granted. But, as the mystery of evil is all round about us, as we have no choice whether or not to suffer, we may be freely thankful next for the inuring process, as being the possible means, though inferior to happiness, of divine ends.

Far, indeed, does the sufferer feel from reaching those ends, when he contrasts his own state with that of the truly happy man. When he looks upon one so “little lower than the angels,” on his frame, so nerved and graced by health, his eye emitting the glow of the soul, his voice uttering the music of the heart, his hand strong to effect his purposes, his head erect in the liberty of ease, his intellect and soul free from perplexities and cares, and not only at leisure for the service of others, but restless to impart to them of his own overflowing good; when the sufferer contemplates such a being, and contrasts him with himself, he may well feel how much he has to do, to approach this higher order of his race. Aware of his own internal tremblings at the touch of the familiar pain, sinking in weakness before the bare idea of enterprise, abashed by self-consciousness, smarting under tenderness of conscience, perplexed and bewildered by the intricacy and vastness of human woe, of which his own suffering gives him too keen a sense, well may he who is in the bonds of pain look up humbly to him who walks gloriously in joy; and the humility might sink into abjectness if the matter ended here, if the inuring process were not at work. But herein is ample ground for hope now, and greatness in the future; and if a secondary, still a sufficient greatness.

The sufferer may well be satisfied, and needs be abashed before no mortal, if he obtains, sooner or later, the power to achieve divine ends through the experience of his lot. If, beginning by encountering his familiar pain, and putting down the dread of it by looking merely to the comfort of the reaction when it ceases, he attains at length to conquering pain by the power of ideas; if, ease of body being out of the question, he makes activity of spirit suffice him; if, his own future in this life being a blank, he becomes absorbed in that of other men; if, imprisoned by disease, kingdoms and races are not wide enough for his sympathies; if, as this or that sense is extinguished, or this or that limb is laid fast, his spirit becomes more alive in every faculty; if familiarity with pain enables him so to deal with it, as resolutely to cut off every morbid spiritual growth to which he has been made liable by pain; if, instead of succumbing to unfavourable conditions, he has struggled against dwarfage and distortion, and diligently wrought at the renewal of the inward man, while the outward frame was decaying day by day, he may surmount his humiliations, whatever cause for humility maybe left by so impaired an existence. For him the inuring process will have done its best.

For those who from constitutional irritability cannot become inured, there is, daily opening, and at shorter distance, the grave, where “the weary are at rest.”