"These are false views of life," said I—"overstrained and morbid. I must teach you to think better. You have a daughter who will comfort you, and whom you are bound to support and protect."
"True, true," he cried; "I hae a dochter, and a better never sacrificed her ain thochts and feelins to the comforts o' a faither. The idea o' leavin her, young, faitherless, poor, and full o' sorrow, in the midst o' a bad world, has before this" (lowering his voice) "brought down that rebellious hand from this throat. But, alas for the inconsistency and mutability o' man's fancies!—dearly as I love that creature, and she is now my only comfort, my very affection for her sometimes sinks me deeper into that sorrow which produces the dreadfu purpose o' takin awa my ain life; for I think—oh! how weak is man's proud reason, when the heart is broken wi' grief!—that an auld parent under the ban o' poverty is a burden to a child. His death (so in these unhappy moments do I think) relieves the unhappy bairn o' twa evils—that o' toilin maybe in vain to support him, and that o' witnessin age, decrepitude, pain, misery, and want, wringin frae his shrivelled and diseased body groans o' agony, strikin the heart o' his child wi' mair pain than would be caused by the knell o' his death."
He now sank his face in the bedclothes, which he grasped with a spasmodic hand, and groaned so deep and loud that the sounds might have reached the passage. I again heard a noise from that quarter, as if of stifled sighs and hysterical sobs. I was placed between the groans of a father bent against his own judgment on self-destruction, and the terrors and griefs of a daughter listening to the horrible recital of her parent's designs against his life. The loneliness of the house, and the solitude of the unhappy pair—with no one to aid the young woman, in the event of any appalling extremity to which the unnatural purpose of her father might drive him—struck me forcibly. I had no recollection of ever experiencing a scene of grief so peculiar, with such fearful and uncertain issues, so irremediable and heart-stirring. The groans of the one and the sobs of the other seemed to vie with each other in the effect they produced upon me; but, great as the pain of the father was, the sufferings of the daughter, perhaps as peculiar and touching as any that could be conceived, engaged to the greatest extent my sympathy. It was my duty and wish to try to remove the fundamental cause of all this suffering; and I waited the end of the paroxysm of the father's sorrow in order to resume the conversation.
"These views," said I, as he calmed, "which you take of life, and its duties and affections, are all false and distorted. It is our duty to try to regulate our thoughts as well as our actions by some steady supporting principle, which mankind have agreed in considering as true, whether it be derived from the direct Word of God or from the written tablets of the heart. The taking away of our life—originally given to us as a trust, or imposed on us by the Author of all good, for certain ends and purposes which are veiled from our view—is undoubtedly in many respects, as regards God himself, ourselves, our children, and our neighbours, a great, flagrant, horrible crime. It is against the law of God, the law of our country, the organic law of our physical constitution, and the moral law of our minds. It is indeed the only act that can be mentioned that is against all these. It does not require me to tell you that suicide, with other murders, was denounced by God himself, speaking in words that all mankind have heard, from the 'thick cloud' that hung over Mount Sinai. You are, I presume, a Christian, and the Sacred Book containing that denunciation lies at your side; and yet you have made the dreadful confession to me, that you have dared to meditate on the breaking, the despising, the contemning of the command of Him who by less than a command—ay, than even a word, by the lifting up of his finger—may consign you to an eternity of agony, in comparison of which all the sorrow you now suffer is less than a grain of sand to the sandbanks of the sea."
"It is true, it is true!" replied the unhappy man. "I know, I feel that every word you have uttered is true, maist true and undeniable as are the sentiments o' this holy book," grasping again the Bible; "but can ye—wha, by the command o' books and education, can dive farther into the nature o' the mind than ane like me—explain this mystery, that, when my soul is filled wi' the darkness o' sorrow, and my rebellious purpose o' self-murder whispers in my mind treachery and war against God, thae truths ye hae uttered, for they hae occurred to me before, tak flight like guid angels, and leave me to warsle wi' a power that subdues me? It is then that I am in danger, and the hand that has held up to my throat that fatal instrument I had under my pillow, has the moment before been lifted up vainly in prayer to God, to throw owre my mind the light o' thae grand truths. What avails it, then, that there are times when I love them, and am guided by them, and thank Heaven for the precious gift o' knowin, feelin, and appreciatin them, if there are other moments when they flee frae me, and I am left powerless in the grasp o' my enemy?" Pausing, and falling again into a fit of dejection. "I fear, I fear the best o' us are only the slaves o' some mysterious power. But"—starting up, as if recollecting himself—"I put a question to you—answer me in the name o' Heaven; for if I gie mysel up to the belief o' an all-powerful necessity, I am a lost man and a self-murderer."
He was now clearly approaching a rock whereon many a gallant bark has been shivered to atoms. Even healthy-minded men cannot look at the question of the necessity of the will without staggering and reeling; and hypochondriacs love to get drunk by inhaling the vapours of mysticism that rise from it, destroying as they do all moral responsibility, and concealing the vengeance of heaven and the terrors of hell. It was necessary to lead him from this dangerous subject, which it was clear he had been studying and dreaming about, with all that love of subtlety and mysticism which melancholy generates.
"No sensible man," said I, "believes in the absolute necessity of the will. After the will is fixed, the liberty is already exercised, and there is indeed no will in the mind at all, until it takes the form of an active, moving, propelling principle. But these are abstruse fancies, which you must fly, if you wish to possess a healthy mind. Sorrow, or any other feeling of pain, will extinguish while it lasts the burning lights of principle or sentiment. The pain of the amputation of a limb prevents, while it lasts, the natural working of the mind; but grief may be averted, and the great healing secret of that is, that the mind must be occupied. Renounce all abstruse thinking, all day-dreaming, all sorrowful remembering, all sentimental musing—look upon application, exercise, work, as a duty and a medicine, and I will answer for your expelling from your mind that dreadful purpose that entails upon you misery, and disgraces the nature of man."
"Your advice is excellent," replied he, somewhat roused; "but, unfortunately, I hae got the same frae my ain mind; and, what is mair, I hae tried it—I hae tried it again and again;—the medicine is worth nae mair to me than a bread pill. My efforts to exercise my mind, when a fit o' sorrow presses upon it, only mak the sorrow the heavier, by makin the mind less able to bear it. My soul is for ever bent on that question o' the necessity o' the will which you despise and avoid. I will, God is my witness, argue it with you, calmly and reasonably."
"Unless you agree to renounce that question," said I, "I can do you no good."
"Then," replied he, with a groan, "I am left to Heaven and my unavoidable fate. May God have mercy on my soul!"