Of course, it is no part of my plan to suggest the proper
treatment for these ails. But it does come within its purview to offer some hints to those who, without assignable physical cause, are subject to periodic depression of spirits, to what we familiarly call “an attack of the blues.”
This is generally a reaction from mental overstrain or mental lethargy,—from the too intent pursuit of an object, or from having no object to pursue. A life without leisure and a life without labor are equally fatal to cheerfulness. The hurry and rush of business affairs, the atmosphere of excitement and unrest which surrounds them, are dangerous to a mind not extremely well poised. Not less so are the alternate phases of gloom and exaltation which attend religious revivals, prayer meetings, and the various manifestations of fanaticism. “That way madness lies,” and our asylums show a heavy percentage of inmates who have lost their reason from religious excitement. The prolonged concentration of attention on one’s heavenly interests is just as detrimental as on those of this world. Self-isolation is fatal; and anxiety for self-salvation is but one of its varieties.
While the multiplicity of rapid impressions leads to exhaustion and mental lassitude, variety and novelty are desirable. Change of diet is as salutary for the mind as for the body. One should have some agreeable occupation outside of his business, to which he can turn in his leisure moments and at the time when he quits active affairs. How many have I seen with enough to retire on, but with nothing to retire to! They are the unhappiest of mortals.
An occasional fit of depression can be broken by some simple measures. The hot bath is one of these. It is highly physiological, as its imperative summons of the nervous force to the periphery of the body breaks up the stagnation about the ganglionic centres. For the same reason the cold shower is excellent. No man leaves it in the same train of thought with which he entered it. Active exercise, society, games, and amusements will occur to all. Stimulants and narcotics are perilous palliatives. Better try Lord Lytton’s advice, and resolutely attack a new language; or Ruskin’s, to drive a restless horse or sail a cranky skiff, where the least inattention to what you have in hand means immediate danger to your life. You will have no time for the blues.
Self-preservation, I have said, is the prime condition of happiness. A long life, therefore, is the desire of all sane minds. Old age, that which all abhor, is the hope of all. It alone justifies a man to himself and before others. The sage is he whose life is a consistent whole, and who carries out in his age the plans which he laid in youth. They are not many; but even they deceive us by their number. On the ocean of existence, who counts the shipwrecked? We see the votive offerings of the saved displayed with ostentation, but who notes the number of the drowned? In the scenery of the drama of human life, the most conspicuous buildings are the hospitals and asylums, and into these sooner or later most of the actors disappear.
A learned French physician has maintained that the
normal duration of human life is one hundred years; only a fifth of those born reach one half that age. Longevity is partly a birthright; it runs in families; but it is still more a question of occupation, mode of life, and personal hygiene. The Jews of Frankfurt average ten years more of life than the non-Jewish citizens, because they avoid unsanitary avocations and observe wiser rules of diet. I know a skillful physician who claims that he can lengthen the life of an individual a decade beyond the average of his ancestors by a judicious system of safeguards. Such an adviser is acquainted with the special dangers to which age is exposed. He knows, for instance, that at seventy-five exposure to cold is thirty-two times more dangerous than it is at thirty years of age.
The sorrows of age are usually the returns of the investments of youth, these proving of that sort which levy assessments instead of paying dividends. “A short life and a merry one,” is the maxim of many a youngster. The hidden falsehood at the core of his philosophy is the belief that happiness belongs to youth alone. I have already referred to this dangerous fallacy. The bliss of youth, as portrayed by poets and romancers, did not belong to the youth I had, nor does it to the youths I know. The admiration of the early periods of life is one of a common class of illusions. There is greater charm in beauty half-concealed than wholly shown, in the dawn rather than in the day, in the promise of youth rather than in the maturity of manhood. Potentialities please
more than actualities, because they excite our imagination and release us from the fetters of facts.