“The poorest poor
Long for a moment in a weary life
When they can know and feel that they have been
Themselves the fathers and the dealers out
Of some small blessings; have been kind to such
As needed kindness; for this single cause,
That we have all one human heart.”[51]
How few have anything like a proper conception of the power which the will can be made to exercise over the physical and mental ailments.[52] The stimuli which we all more or less have at command, if properly directed, will often subdue the early dawnings of disease, which, if permitted to take its own course, would have assumed a most formidable character. It is our duty to combat with the first menace of disordered feeling. Once the enemy is allowed to take up a favourable position, it will be fruitless to enter single-handed into the contest. “I will be good,” says the child, when he sees the rod ready to direct the will into the way of goodness; and “I will be cheerful,” ought the dull and dyspeptic to say, who observes a cloud of hypochondriacal fancies ready to burst upon his head. It may be said it is useless to struggle against the natural tendencies of the mind and body, or to declare war with habits which have become firmly rooted in the constitution. In reply to this we would say, let not the patient yield to the influence of those causes which have formed the habit; let him not hug to his bosom the viper which is preying upon his mind; let him not exclaim to gloom, “Henceforth be thou my god.”
The hypochondriac may say, when advised to rouse himself from his state of mental despondency, and to exhibit the attributes of a free agent—
“Go, you may call it madness, folly;