Pass ye this round of being! Know ye not,
Of all ye toil for, Nature nothing asks,
But for the body freedom from disease,
And sweet unanxious quiet for the mind?”
Like human beings, the sciences are closely connected with, and are mutually dependent upon, one another. The link in the chain may not be apparent, but it has a real and palpable existence. Medical and moral science are more nearly allied than we should, à priori, conclude. We speak of the science of medicine, not the practice of it; for, like judgment and wit, or, as the author of the School for Scandal ironically observes, like man and wife, how seldom are they seen in happy union. Garth feelingly alludes to this unnatural divorce:—
“The healing art now, sick’ning, hangs its head,
And, once a science, has become a trade.”
Psychological medicine has been sadly neglected. We recoil from the study of mental philosophy as if we were encroaching on holy ground. So great is the prejudice against this branch of science, that it has been observed, that to recommend a man to study metaphysics was a delicate mode of suggesting the propriety of confining him in a lunatic asylum!
In order to become a useful physician, it is necessary to become a good metaphysician; so says a competent authority. It was not, however, Dr. Cullen’s intention to recommend that species of philosophy which confounds the mind without enlightening it, and which, like an ignis fatuus, dazzles only to lead us from the truth. To the medical man we can conceive no preliminary study more productive of advantage than that which tends to call into exercise the latent principle of thought, and to accustom the mind to close, rigid, and accurate observation. The science of mind, when properly investigated, teaches us the laws of our mental frame, and shews us the origin of our various modes and habits of thought and feeling—how they operate upon one another, and how they are cultivated and repressed; it disciplines us in the art of induction, and guards us against the many sources of fallacy in the practice of making inferences; it gives precision and accuracy to our investigations, by instructing us in the nicer discriminations of truth and falsehood.
The value of mental philosophy as a branch of education will be properly appreciated when we consider that this ennobling principle was given to us for the purpose of directing and controlling our powers and animal propensities, and bringing them into that subjection whereby they become beneficial to the individual and to the world at large, enabling him to exchange with others those results which the power of his own and the gigantic efforts of other minds have developed; maintaining and perpetuating the most dignified and exalted state of happiness, the attribute of social life; unfolding not only treasures which the concentrated powers of individuals are enabled to discover, but developing those more quiet and unobtrusive characteristics of virtuous life, those social affections, which are alone calculated to make our present state of being happy.