There is no doubt that education, circumstances, our state of health, predisposes us more or less to the action of these sympathetic powers, for then our feelings are actually more or less morbid. Affliction, for instance, predisposes to tender sentiments. There is perhaps much psychological matter of fact in the old story of the Ephesian widow; and our immortal Shakspeare felt the truth not only of the contagion of grief, but of its consoling power when reciprocally felt, although no doubt the reciprocity has often been assumed to woo and win.
Grief best is pleased with grief’s society.
True sorrow then is feelingly surprised,
When with like feeling it is sympathized.
Fortunately for our frail race, sympathies are liable to be worn out by their own exhausting powers. Attrition polishes but indurates at the same time: thus does social intercourse harden our gentle predispositions. The mathematical world dispels the illusions of our fervent youth, as chilling truth banishes fancy’s flattering dreams. Experience is to man what rust is to iron; it corrodes, but at the same time protects the metal to a certain degree, from the magnet’s mighty power.
Although the nature of sympathies most probably will never be ascertained, their study is essential both to the moralist and the physician, and both may be materially aided in their vocations by the temperament of the pupil or the patient; for, as I shall endeavour to show in a subsequent sketch, our temperaments generally indicate individual characteristics. It is in vain that some philosophers may deny the power of innate faculties and dispositions. The very expression ‘human nature’ implies their existence. To encourage their growth, or to check their developement, becomes the duty of those who are entrusted with the education of youth, when yielding to, or counteracting propensities, becomes as necessary as the care the horticulturist devotes to his plants. By the inclination that trees have taken, we can generally learn the prevalent winds of a district. The plastic hand of our early teachers may, in most instances, obtain a similar result; though in the vegetable kingdom, as well as in the animal kingdom, there will be constantly found stubborn trunks that will resist all influence. Were we to admit that our material organism cannot be counteracted, we should inevitably fall into many lamentable errors, and many a crime would be extenuated on the plea of fatalism. It is to be feared that some of our ingenious theorists have too frequently tortured organism on a Procrustean couch, to suit their favourite phantasies. We might reply to the visions of these enthusiasts in the words of Iago, “Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners—either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry. The power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to the most preposterous conclusions.”
THE ARCHEUS OF VAN HELMONT.
One of the most ingenious fictions of those speculators who have endeavoured to explain the mysteries of our wonderful organization, was perhaps the Archeus of Van Helmont, a term derived from αρχη, origin, principle, authority, power. According to the doctrines of this physician, the archeus was an internal agent that commanded and regulated all the vital functions. I cannot better describe it than by partly borrowing the language of the founder of the doctrine.
The archeus and matter are the natural causes of all. The molecules of matter, essentially inert, receive from this principle their movements, their order, their distribution, their conformation: the archeus is the internal agent that penetrates them, the nucleus of their inspiration; it is the mould in which they are elaborated, brought into form by this plastic influence meeting in this material substance the requisite docility to realize its ideas of perfection. Thus the archeus is an active and an intelligent power, possessing the faculty of amalgamating and identifying itself with matter; penetrating its inmost recesses, it modifies and changes each particle of matter, producing that incomprehensible series of oscillations of spontaneousness and equilibrium, that catenation and marvellous automatism, that constitute the consciousness of our existence, and whence springs the only notion we can form of its causation. It is the archeus that presides over our sense of smelling, of tasting, and consequently the selection of our food; it is he that dissolves it in our digestive organs, liquefies it, and prepares it for due assimilation; it is he that imparts a conservative action to the blood, and converts this vital fluid into bone and muscle. Should any particle of our aliments have escaped from this transforming power, these substances become foreign bodies, irritating by their presence this sovereign power, calling forth his energies and his activity, and exciting his indignation and wrath by their repeated provocations. His just fury stimulates and accelerates the vital functions; but, instead of wreaking its vengeance on external matter, it overwhelms all internal obstacles, whether diffused in the system or concentrated on any given point. It is this tumultuous confusion that constitutes maladies, which arise from two evident causes,—an alteration in matter and a reaction of the archeus.
Of these two morbid elements, the first is susceptible of a thousand varieties both in nature and extent, and therefore produces as many modifications in the corrective power. Then does the archeus, threatened on different points in different manners, regulate his plans and operations both of defence and of attack, selecting his weapons according to the nature of his antagonists. In this mutual struggle our archeus wisely checks the impetuosity of his onset, husbands his forces, and merely detaches them from the main body according to the circumstances of the conflict; thus ever keeping a powerful reserve. It is this wisdom of conduct that ultimately restores tranquillity, and compels the rebellious molecules to submit to the laws of organization. For what constitutes the cure of a disease, whether obtained by nature or by art? Nothing more than the dignified repose of the mighty archeus, when the fire of his wrath has consumed his foes. Diseases, therefore, are simply the execution of vast and complex projects that inspire the archeus, and which he carries into execution as the statuary embodies on the marble the conceptions of his genius. When the morbid idea is in conformity with his plans, a favourable result will ensue; if, on the contrary, the archeus labours under a misconception, if he is thrown by erroneous impressions into disordinate steps, then may this power, excited without a just motive, or a determinate and proper object, turn its arms against itself, and destroy the ties that united it to matter. It is then that art, whose aim it is to meet the foe with his own weapons, must have recourse to medicine for the purpose of rousing the torpor of the archeus, reanimate his energies if he droops, overthrow him if he becomes unruly, and finally compel him to yield, by a salutary terror; forcibly bringing him back to that judicious equilibrium in action, when all the functions contribute in harmony and concert to the general welfare of the system.
Such were the truly poetical ideas of Van Helmont, who might have written an epic on the government, revolutions, and battles, in the archean state, similar to the Holy War of our ingenious Bunyan; for, like the cobler poet, our theorist divided and subdivided his legions and their officers. The archeus is merely the sovereign commander, whose head-quarters and throne were in the stomach; all the other viscera have distinct commandants, receiving their orders from their chief, who employed the nerves of his aides-de-camp. Nor was it an easy matter to keep all these captains in a proper state of discipline. Their irregularities occasioned constant tumults; for the court of the archeus, like all other courts, was most depraved and capricious in its practices, and intriguing in all its machinations, and the archeus had great trouble in keeping his subordinates in a proper state.