physician well understands the advantage of encouraging this salutary feeling in the breasts of his patients. Hippocrates uttered the opinion, verified by all succeeding physicians, that, other things equal, the practitioner who has the fullest confidence of his patients, will be most successful. Hence it is, that like medicines from a physician of fame, will oftentimes prove more successful than from others of less celebrity. On the same principle may oftentimes be explained the frequent improvement observed in a patient. on a change of his physician; and also the benefit not rarely derived from newly-discovered and much-talked-of remedies. It is to the faith and hopes awakened in the credulous minds of the sick by his dogmatical promises, that the empiric owes his chief success in disease. That the patient then should possess faith in medicine, and confidence in his physician, is of no little moment as respects his recovery. "It is of little consequence," it has been remarked, "whether a man be healed through the medium of his fancy or his stomach."

I have previously shown that sudden transports of joy may be attended with serious, and even fatal consequences; is it unreasonable therefore to suppose, that the pleasurable feelings may, in some rare instances, continue to exist with too great ardor, consuming with an unnatural rapidity the mysterious forces of life? I have occasionally met with individuals, and I dare say my readers will call some such to mind, who appeared to live almost continually in an unnatural state of felicity; whose every thought and feeling seemed pregnant with an enthusiasm of delight; who were

predisposed, physically predisposed to be happy, intensely happy; and these seemingly favored beings have generally come to an early grave: it appearing as though nature had ordained that none of us should exceed a limited sum of enjoyment, and that in proportion, therefore, as she heightens its intenseness, does she curtail its duration.

The human constitution was manifestly never designed for acute excitements, whether of a pleasurable or painful character; hence its energies soon waste under their too constant operation. Even our good desires, then, may be too impetuous, and our virtuous zeal outrun the limits of healthful moderation. It is an apt saying that "the archer who shoots beyond the mark, misses it as much as he that comes short of it." There is no privilege more to be desired, there is nothing more conducive to health, longevity, and true enjoyment, than a just equanimity of mind, a quiet harmony among the various passions; wherefore it is that most philosophers have made our sovereign good to consist in the tranquillity of soul and body, leaving ecstatic pleasures and rapturous feelings to beings of a different nature from our own.

"A constant serenity," says Dr. Mackenzie, "supported by hope, or cheerfulness arising from a good conscience, is the most healthful of all the affections of the mind." And the same author, in enumerating the natural marks of longevity, mentions a calm, contented, and cheerful disposition.* Haller also, in speaking of longevity, says: "Some

*The History of Health and the Art of preserving it.

prerogative seems to belong to sobriety, at least in a moderate degree, temperate diet, peaceable disposition, a mind not endowed with great vivacity, but cheerful, and little subject to care."

As old age comes on, the pleasurable susceptibilities all become weakened, and the keenness of passion in general is blunted. Not, however, that the aged, as some would seem to fancy, are left destitute of enjoyment, for each period of our being has its characteristic pleasures. They have parted, to be sure, with the eager sensibilities which mark the freshness of existence, but then they have gained a moral tranquillity with which earlier years are seldom blessed. The storms of youthful passion have subsided within their breasts, and if life has passed well with them morally and physically, they now repose placidly amid the calm of its

decline.

CHAPTER XIII.

GENERAL PHENOMENA OF THE PAINFUL PASSIONS AS MANIFESTED IN THE BODILY FUNCTIONS.

THE second class of passions, now to be examined, are distinguished by phenomena very different from those which have just been described. As the emotions based on pleasure determine the blood to the surface, equalize the general circulation and vital action, expand the body, lighten and cheer the heart, and animate all the functions; those founded on pain induce a series of results precisely opposite in their character. Under the active influence of these latter, the whole body appears, as it were, to shrink or contract. The blood abandons the surface, and so being thrown in undue quantity upon the internal organs, there follows that inward oppression, that painful sense of stricture and suffocation, and the consequent desire for fresh air, which always mark the intensity of this class of passions. Hence the frequent sighing under severe grief, which act consists in a deep inspiration, succeeded by a corresponding expiration, and thus by expanding freely the chest, and affording a larger supply

of air, it alleviates, in some measure, the heart and lungs of their suffocative load. There are few, however, so privileged beyond the ordinary lot of humanity, but must be well acquainted with that painful sense of tightness and weight at the chest, that panting and struggling of the breath, and laboring of the heart, the certain accompaniments of aggravated sorrow.

As an equable distribution of the blood to the various organs, and its free circulation through the capillary vessels of the surface are, as stated under the pleasurable emotions, salutary to the physical economy; an inequality, on the other hand, in the dispensation of this vital fluid, or partial determinations of it, must always prove detrimental to its welfare. Whenever the blood is disproportionably accumulated upon the internal viscera-which has been shown to happen from the operation of the painful and depressing passions their functions quickly become disturbed, and even the integrity of their organization endangered.

The painful passions also act immediately on the nervous system, depressing, disordering, expending, and sometimes. even annihilating its energies. A morbid concentration of the nervous influence upon the internal organs, has likewise been supposed to take place under the operation of the painful passions, and to which have been referred those distressing internal sensations which they so generally occasion.

The painful and depressing emotions exercise a striking influence on the various secretions—increasing, diminishing, and depraving them. Thus dryness of the mouth, from suppression of the salivary secretion, almost always attends