349 CHAPTER VI. CHAGRIN AND SUICIDE. We know that determination must vastly excite the brain, when the student or the statesman is induced, by desire for doubtful distinction, to spend his days and his nights in the distractions of alternating hopes and fears. Under the strain of these conflicting passions, how many a mighty mind sinks into insanity, amidst the mysterious darkness of which some demon whispers close upon the ear, 'No hope, no aim, no use in life, the knife is now before you!' Long, however, before this terrific state of mind occurs, the body gives unheeded warning of the growing danger, by irregular appetites, tormenting visions, and unaccountable sensations; for insanity is always a bodily malady, although perhaps in most. cases moral delinquency is superadded, and the will has been disordered before the body. Although the destructive propensity may sometimes cause suicide under a sudden impulse, or it may even arise from a morbid disposition to imitate, yet it is probable that the irritability of the body, which allows not a respite to the soul, from the constant stimulus to attention and will, most frequently drives the melancholy maniac to commit suicide. Death seems in these cases the only refuge from the weary vigilance of morbid sensibility. This awful remedy is frequently sought under the impulse of a kind of instinct, when the mind becomes so possessed by its misery as to be quite incapable of comparing the desire felt with previous convictions, and so the patient is blindly urged on, by longing for relief, to use the first opportunity for self-destruction which may present itself, association only serving to connect the means of death with the idea of escape from a tormenting body or some haunting impression. The frequent connection of the disposition to suicide with the despondent forms of insanity, warrants the supposition that despair, if not met by the solace of affection, would always lead its subject to the same dark resort; as the scorpion is said to destroy itself with its own sting, when encircled by dangers from which it cannot escape. The love of approbation, which is closely connected with the love of society, is generally the strongest of our passions, and is that by which the lower passions are restrained within the limits of common decorum. It is the disappointment of this passion, or chagrin, which most frequently disposes to suicide. Man's hell is the feeling of solitude, or the dread of being despised; and if his associates cast him out of their pale, or appear completely to excommunicate him from their sympathies, he seems as if at once possessed by Satan. Should this wounding of his proud desire deprive him of all hope of restoration to the heart of at least some one being who can love him in spite of his faults, he will rush unbidden into the darkness of another world, the apprehension of which is less terrible to him than the gloomy loneliness he suffers. So common is this catastrophe, that it appears like the result of a natural law of the guilty mind, when unacquainted with divine truth, and unsustained by the hopeful consciousness of spiritual and eternal life. Hence heathenism and infidelity have always approved self-murder as the proper remedy for extreme vexation. The association between neglect, ill-usage, despondency, and suicide, is of great practical importance, especially in relation to those who suffer from the terrors of that most awful malady, religious despair, which usually commences with seclusion and a state the reverse of self-complacency, conjoined with strong affection insufficiently regarded. The agony of strife arises from convictions of sin without a full knowledge of God's Good News for sinners, of forgiveness with spiritual help and restoration; so the brain is overpowered by dread, and the worn wretch, forgetting his immortality, becomes a maniac and a self-murderer. The remedy as well as the preventive of this awful state is to know God —a sure Friend-and to rest in His love and restoring power. Happy is it if the suicidal catastrophe be averted by such a failure of some organ or function of the body as shall arrest the ambitious, the wayward, or the lonely spirit, even with the stroke of death; but more blessed still to find association with calm and loving minds, and, like Kirke White, to take admonishment from the uncertainty and comparative worthlessness of this world's honours and attachments, to prepare for the untiring activities of a nobler state. Come, Disappointment, come! Though from hope's summit hurled, To wean me from the world; To turn mine eye From vanity, And point to scenes of bliss that never, never die. This reference to Kirke White reminds us that the influence of the mental state is remarkably exhibited in the progress of organic diseases. Medical practitioners can bear ample testimony to the fact that religious feeling—that is, calm resignation to the Supreme will— soothes and tranquillises the sufferer's frame more than all medicinal appliances. Often do we witness the triumph of faith over bodily affliction-as consumption, for instance, with slow and fatal hand, steals away the life-blood from the youth who lately, perhaps in the height of moral danger, adorned the drawing-room, or bore the palm of academic strife. While in the bloom and brilliancy of body and mind, when most sensitive and alive to all the passionate and beautiful associations of affection and of intellect, the spoiler stealthily crept in; but previously a light from heaven had entered his heart, and therefore, while the malady built up the barrier between time and his spirit, the patient relied on the Hand that chastened him; he felt that pain and weakness, and weariness, and disappointment, and death, are not fortuitous occurrences, but the process by which the wisdom of God effects the weaning and separation of the believing soul from sin, sorrow, and distracting attachments, to fill it for ever with intelligence, love, and peace. Hence, with becoming composure, he submitted to the purifying trial of his faith, and said, while his features reflected the divine love which he contemplated -Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight.' No fever of the mind added to the hectic which consumed his body, and the disease was not only better borne, but really much retarded and ameliorated by the 'strong consolations' of Christian faith. Prayer is the balm of ease for wounded and disappointed hearts, the remedy for the dread of life's demands, and of death itself. If man knew that all events, in respect alike to mind and matter, were inexorably ordered, and that, whatever created will might do, it could only fulfil a destiny already determined by the fixed and inevitable laws of the universe, there would be no room for effort or for prayer against despondency. Faith would mean merely reliance on the nature of things, and would have nothing to do with divine covenants with man, and with the promises of God, as of a person ready to co-operate with us in respect to the cultivation of our own wills and the moral state of our minds. Were all things fixed to follow in a succession ordained by the fiat of laws written in matter, the Almighty himself could not promise anything. There could be no conditions, dependent on the working of man's will, and all man would have to do, in order to be right, physically and spiritually, would be to learn science, from what he might, of creation, and behave according to its teaching; and even then he could neither will nor do other than obey that which had already determined both his willing and his doing, so that to ask for guidance and power would be a preposterous inconsistency. But faith in God, as the source of our power, brings other light, enabling us so to hope in Him that we pray to Him; and in the act of prayer we feel our will fortified to endure and surmount trials that would otherwise disorder the brain. Of course disease that destroys our freedom of will refers us to the Healer of soul and body. The laws of nature leave occasion for the exercise of man's will, or there would be no possibility of his thinking, choosing, and doing either right or wrong. He has a will for the very purpose of his feeling dependent on instruction, and the use of proper means. All ideas of self-cultivation, and indeed the cultivation of the arts and sciences which ameliorate human condition, are connected with the fact that man is left to search out and discover how he may so employ the powers of nature as to prevent failure, and promote consequences favourable to the increase of life and happiness. He is constantly acting on the principle that he must exercise his will as skilfully as he may to obviate evils that are otherwise inevitable. In short, nature is so constituted in relation to man that civilisation is, so to say, dependent on his will to worship God, and to work A A |