The eye of melancholy views every object on its darkest and most unfavorable side, and apprehends disastrous consequences from every occurrence. These gloomy perceptions, which increase as the feelings become more indolent, and the constitution more morbid, bring on habitual uneasiness and chagrin upon the mind, and render every injury, however small and trifling it may be, irksome and insupportable. A settled dejection ensues; and the miserable patient avoids every scene in which his musings may be liable to interruption; the few enjoyments he is yet capable of feeling in any degree impeded; or which may call upon him to make the slightest exertion; and by withdrawing himself from society into solitude, neglects the exercises and recreations by which his disease might be relieved. Instead of endeavoring to enlighten the dark gloom which involves his mind, and subdues his soul, by regarding with a favorable eye all that gives a true value and high relish to men of sound minds and lively dispositions, he fondly follows the phantom which misleads him, and thereby sinks himself more deeply into the moody fanes of irremediable melancholy: and if the bright rays of life and happiness penetrate by chance into the obscurity of his retreat instead of feeling any satisfaction from the perception of cheerfulness and content, he quarrels with the possessor of them, and converts their enjoyments into subjects of grievance, in order to torment himself.
Unfavorable, however, as a dreary and disconsolate solitude certainly is to the recovery of a mind labouring under this grievous affliction, it is far preferable to the society of licentious companions, and to wild scenes of inebriating dissipation. Worldly pleasures, and sensual gratifications of every description, when intemperately pursued, only drive a melancholy mind into a more abject state of dejection. It is from rational recreation, and temperate pleasures alone, that an afflicted mind can receive amusement and delight. The only scenes by which the mudded current of his mind can be cleared, or his stagnated system of pleasure refreshed, must be calm, cheerful, and temperate, not gay. Melancholy is of a sedate and pensive character, and flies from whatever is hurrying and tumultuous. How frequently do men of contemplative dispositions conceive a distaste for the world, only because they have unthinkingly engaged so ardently in the pursuits of pleasure, or of business, that they have been prevented for a length of time, from collecting their scattered ideas, and indulging their natural habits of reflection! But in striving to reclaim a melancholy mind, it is necessary to attend to the feelings of the heart, as well as the peculiar temper of the mind. A gloomy, disturbed, unquiet mind, is highly irritated, and its disease of course increased, by the company and conversation of those whose senseless bosoms are incapable of feeling the griefs it endures, or the complaints it utters. This, indeed, is another cause which drives melancholy persons from society into solitude; for how few are there whose tenderness leads them to sympathize with a brother in distress, or to contribute a kind aid to eradicate the thorns which rankle in his heart! Robust characters, in whose bosoms nature has planted the impenetrable shield of unvarying health, as well as those whose minds are engrossed by the charms of uninterrupted prosperity, can form no idea of the secret but severe agonies which shake the system of valetudinary men: nor feel any compassion for the tortures which accompany a wounded and afflicted spirit, until the convulsive frame proclaims the dreadful malady, or increasing melancholy sacrifices its victim on the altar of self-destruction. The gay associates of the unfeeling world view a companion suffering under the worst of nature’s evils, with cold indifference, or affected concern; or, in the career of pleasure, overlook the miseries he feels until they hear that exhausted wo has induced him to brave the anger of the Almighty, and to rush from mortal misery, uncalled, into the awful presence of his Creator. Dreadful state! The secrecy and silence, indeed, with which persons of this description conceal the pangs that torture their minds, is among the most dangerous symptoms of the disease. It is not, indeed, easy to hide from the anxious and attentive eye of real friendship the feelings of the heart; but to the careless and indifferent multitude of common acquaintances, the countenance may wear the appearance not only of composure, but even of gayety, while the soul is inwardly suffering the keenest anguish of unutterable wo. The celebrated Carlini, a French actor of great merit, and in high reputation with the public, for the life, whim, frolic, and vivacity with which he nightly entertained the Parisian audiences, applied to a physician to whom he was not personally known, for advice, and represented to him that he was subject to attacks of the deepest melancholy. The physician advised him to amuse his mind by scenes of pleasure, and particularly directed him to frequent the Italian Comedy; “for,” continued he, “your distemper must be rooted, indeed, if the acting of the lively Carlini does not remove it.” “Alas!” exclaimed the unhappy patient, “I am the very Carlini whom you recommend me to see; and while I am capable of filling Paris with mirth and laughter, I am myself the dejected victim of melancholy and chagrin.”
Painful as it may be to a person who is laboring under the oppression of melancholy, to associate with those who are incapable of sympathizing with his feelings, or who neglect to compassionate his sufferings, yet he should not fly from the presence of men into solitude; for solitude will unavoidably aggravate and augment his distress inasmuch as it tends to encourage that musing and soliloquy to which melancholy is invariably prone. It is the most dangerous resource to which he can fly; for, while it seems to promise the fairest hope of relief, it betrays the confidence reposed in it; and instead of shielding its votary from that conflict which disturbs his repose, it renders him defenceless, and delivers him unarmed to his bitterest enemy.
The boldest spirits and firmest nerves cannot withstand the inroads of melancholy merely by their own strength. It damps the courage of the most enterprising mind, and makes him who was before upon all occasions, fearless and unawed, shrink even from the presence of his fellow creatures. Company of every description becomes displeasing to him; he dreads the idea of visiting; and if he is induced to quit the domestic solitude into which he retires, it is only when the glorious, but to him offensive, light of heaven is concealed in congenial darkness; and the shades of night hide him from the observation of man. An invitation to social entertainment alarms his mind; the visit even of a friend becomes painful to his feelings; and he detests every thing which lightens the gloom in which he wishes to live, or which tends to disturb his privacy, or remove him from his retreat.
Rousseau, toward the latter part of his life, abandoned all intercourse with society under a notion, which was the effect of his melancholy disposition, that the world had conceived an unconquerable antipathy against him; and that his former friends, particularly Hume, and some philosophers in France, not only had entered into confederacy to destroy his glory and repose, but to take away his life. On departing from England, he passed through Amiens, where he met with Gresset, who interrogated him about his misfortunes, and the controversies in which he had been engaged; but Rousseau only answered, “You have got the art of making a parrot speak, but you are not yet possessed of the secret of giving language to a bear:” and when the magistrates of the city wished to confer on him some marks of their esteem, he refused all their offers, and considered these flattering civilities like the insults which were lavished in the same form on the celebrated Sancho in the island of Barataria. To such extent, indeed, did his disordered imagination carry him, that he thought one part of the people looked upon him like Lazarillo de Tormes, who being fixed to the bottom of a tub, with only his head out of water, was carried from one town to another to amuse the vulgar. His bad health, a strong and melancholy imagination, a too nice sensibility, a jealous disposition, joined with philosophic vanity, and his uncommon devotion to solitude, tended to prepossess him with those wrong and whimsical ideas. But it must be confessed that the opposition he met with from different ranks of persons, at several periods of his life, was extremely severe. He was driven at one time from France, in which he had before been distinguished by his writings, and highly honored. At another time he was chased from Geneva, the place of his nativity, and of his warmest affection. He was exiled from Berne with disgrace; expelled, with some appearance of injustice, from Neufchatel; and even banished from his tranquil solitude on the borders of the lake of Bienne. His disposition therefore to avoid society, must not be entirely attributed to his melancholy disposition; nor his love of solitude to a misanthropic mind. Every acute and scientific observer of the life and character of this extraordinary man will immediately perceive that the seeds of that melancholy disposition, and fretful temper, which through life destroyed his repose, were sown by nature in his constitution. He confesses indeed, to use his own words, that “a proud misanthropy, and peculiar contempt for the riches and pleasures of the world, constituted the chief traits of his character.” This proud spirit and contemptuous mind were mixed with an extreme sensibility of heart, and an excessive indolence of disposition; and his body, which was naturally feeble, suffered, from ill health, the keenest agonies, and most excruciating disorders, to which the human frame is incident. Persecution also had levelled the most pointed and severely barbed shafts against him; and he was forced to endure, amidst the pangs of poverty, and the sorrows of sickness, all that envy, hatred, and malice, could inflict. It has been said, that the persecutions he experienced were not so much excited by the new dogmas, or eccentric paradoxes, which, both on politics and religion, pervade all his writings, as by the refinement of his extraordinary talents, the wonderful splendor of his eloquence, and the increasing extent of his fame. His adversaries certainly pursued him, not only with bigotry and intolerance, but with an inconsistency which revealed, in a great degree, the secret motives by which they were actuated; for they condemned, with the sharpest virulence, the freedom of his religious tenets, even in places where the religious creed of Voltaire was held in the highest admiration, and where atheism had collected the most learned advocates, and displayed the very standard of infidelity and disbelief. Harassed by the frowns of fortune, and pursued with unrelenting enmity by men whose sympathy and kindness he had anxiously endeavored to obtain, it is scarcely surprising that the cheerfulness of his disposition, and the kindness of his heart, should be subdued by those sentiments of aversion and antipathy which he fancied most of his intimates entertained against him: and the invectives from the pen of his former friend and confidant, Voltaire, together with many others that might be adduced, particularly the letter which was fabricated in the name of the king of Prussia, for the purpose of exposing him to ridicule, prove that his suspicions on the subject were not unfounded. The voice, indeed of mankind, seems ready to exclaim that this eccentric philosopher was not only a misanthrope, but a madman; but those who are charitably disposed, will recollect that he was a martyr to ill health; that nature had bestowed upon him a discontented mind; that his nerves were in a continued state of irritation; and that to preserve equanimity of temper when goaded by the shafts of calumny and malice, requires such an extraordinary degree of fortitude and passive courage as few individuals are found to possess. His faults are remembered, while the wonderful bloom and uncommon vigor of his genius, are forgotten or concealed. The production from which his merits are in general estimated, is that which is called “The Confessions:” a work written under the pressure of calamity, in sickness and in sorrow; amidst fears, distresses, and sufferings; when the infirmities which accompany old age, and the debility which attends continued ill health, had injured the tone of his mind, overpowered his reason, and perverted his feelings to such a degree, as to create an almost total transformation of the character of the man, and deprive him of his identity: but this degrading work ought, in candor, to be considered as a deplorable instance of the weakness of human nature, and how unable it is to support its own dignity when attacked by the adversities of fortune, and the malice of mankind. The greatness of Rousseau ought to be erected on a different basis: for his earliest works are certainly sufficient to support the extent of his fame as an author, however they may, on particular subjects, expose his integrity as a man.
The anxieties which a vehemence of imagination, and a tender texture of the nervous system at all times produce, are highly injurious to the faculties of the mind; and, when accompanied by sickness or by sorrow, wear out the intellect in proportion to its vigor and activity. To use the popular metaphor upon this subject, “The sword becomes too sharp for the scabbard;” and the body and the mind are thereby exposed to mutual destruction.
Religious melancholy is, of all other descriptions of this dreadful disease, most heightened and aggravated by solitude. The dreadful idea of having irretrievably lost the divine favor, and of being an object unworthy of the intercession of our Saviour, incessantly haunts the mind, laboring under religious despondency; and the imagination being left, in solitude, entirely to its own workings, increases the horrors which such thoughts must unavoidably inspire.
Her lash Tisiphone that moment shakes,
The mind she scourges with a thousand snakes,
And to her aid, with many a thundering yell;