Absence of work, and no less absence of play,—the mere opportunity to brood, is dangerous to those subject to the blues. When we are in the busy haunts of men, their activity inspires ours, and keeps our thoughts away from introspection and baleful notions; but if we are alone, even with Nature in her loveliest aspects, the mind is apt to seek the profundities, and to drag the spirits with it.
Interest in this subject has brought me some confidences. I knew a man beyond middle life, who had long longed for more opportunities of study and meditation. At last he obtained the cherished desire in the most desired way—in a lovely home amid the loveliest scenery. He took three solid months of it, and found himself low-spirited, ailing, and in need of tonics. But when he was called to the city, the first time he walked down Fifth Avenue, he felt that he didn’t need any other tonic. Yet the habit of years had put him, all unconsciously, in chronic need of that one. He took it at monthly intervals, and it did its work. But it cost time. As he approached old age, he realized in himself a tendency to melancholy, that, in spite of the city life that had been efficacious for himself, had given the declining years of one of his parents much unhappiness. He was frightened: he felt that external aid, like all tonics, must lose its effect in time; and so he worked hard to develop powers in himself that would put him above the need of it. After a few years, circumstances led again to three months away from the city, and so effectually had he enlightened and trained himself that it was a period of greater cheerfulness, health and fruitfulness than he had ever known.
His bottom principle was: “Kill the thing at the start. Watch! As soon as the serpent’s head shows itself through the egg, scotch it. If you don’t, your mind will become the abode of monsters.”
Of course to those who believe in immortality, a faith in the ultimate goodness of the universe is almost unescapable. Beliefs cannot be made to order, but looked at in the most Philistine way, this one fills so many otherwise apparent gaps in the order of the universe, saves so many apparent wastes, changes so much chaos into kosmos, that, when relieved of some of its absurd accompaniments from the past, the belief seems, in the broadest view, almost a matter of course; and the narrowing of one’s view of existence by physical death appears absurd. The belief in immortality is such a simple and inexpensive machine for settling bad problems that, as in the case of any simple and inexpensive machine that throws out good results, there is a presumption in favor of investing in it. This, I suppose, is what they call Pragmatism. It has its dangers: for its principle is apt to be misconstrued, and Hope tells such flattering tales! But apparently Pragmatism has no direct business with hopes, but only with cold hypotheses; and if one must choose between hypotheses, the preferable one is that which strings the facts into the most orderly coherence; and certainly without immortality, the universe is much nearer chaos than with it.
Most of our upsets come from lack of health, or money or friends. Now if the universe holds for us ultimately an existence where we shan’t have to bother with such vile bodies, or such demands as they make for money, and where we may recover all the friends we have lost here, and if our troubles here aid in our development, as they certainly do, the universe appears much more orderly, and our worst problems are fairly settled. Perhaps a strong proud effective soul might not care much for a future existence that, in such brief outline, seems so easy; but I don’t know that our wide and exact knowledge of that existence contains anything to indicate that in it one will not have at least as good a chance as here to make his own way, or the way of those he cares for; and while doing this, to make his own additions to the gayety of nations, or their celestial equivalent. I don’t see, either, any indication warranting any shameless, weak and impotent soul—one like yours and mine when we have the blues—in refraining from doing its little best here, on the ground that everything will be made straight there, and that therefore it is just as well to wait. For there appear more and more weaknesses in the demonstration that even shining garments and harps and halos are to be passed around free, or indeed that anybody will start there with anything more than he takes with him. There does not seem, however, aught to negative the guess already hazarded regarding health and fortune and friends—that what capacity for winning them one does take, may have a better chance for activity there than it has here. And as capacity improves by practice, all this plain paragraph is an argument for doing one’s best here, and not sitting around indulging in the blues.
I freely admit, however—most freely—that such views, especially regarding the gayety, have not the sanction of very old or very wide acceptance; but with the decay of Puritanism, they seem on the way to more.
Before we leave old-fashioned remedies, under however new-fashioned aspects, it may be well to consider another one that greatly helped our ancestors—the belief in an over-ruling Providence that really does help those who help themselves. In the form the belief was known to them, it is not known to many of us; but we may have it in a better form. For the narrow conception of an anthropomorphic god constantly tinkering at the universe, we can substitute the idea of an intelligence so great that it does not need to watch each act, and specifically adjust each result; but has established a law so comprehensive as to give each of our motives its legitimate consequences—a law that in some ways rewards each of our good intentions, even when it seems to fail, and punishes each of our evil ones, even when it seems to succeed. Faith in such a law makes us feel secure in spite of the haunting anxiety lest we break through the volcano’s crust. The sparrow’s flight may be free if compensation awaits its fall. And we may know a higher freedom and a fuller meaning, even a creative joy, in the feeling that when we shape our acts toward the best ends we know, we can leave the rest to a benign law that goes deeper into motive than human gropings can, gives rewards better than we can devise, and punishments that do not merely afflict but tend to cure.