Imatges de pàgina
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as being prima facie evidence of undue excitability of the brain, which should be treated on exactly the same principle as the same condition of any other of the bodily organs. If the eye were thus affected, it would be less used, lest the excitability should lead to irritation, and this to disease; and the same observation is essentially applicable to the case of the brain, with the additional risk, that the diversion of so much nervous power to the purposes of the intellect, might so far diminish the amount of nervous power needful to the organic necessities of the system, as to lead to disorder and disease of other vital organs. And a lesson might be derived from noticing the damaged health of many a boy and girl in their teens; supposing them to have escaped from all the perils of an earlier cachexia: tracing the ailings of a period, that should be marked by peculiar health, and peculiar physical capability, to the unwise diversion of nervous powers in the intellectual exertions, from the no less important business of building up firm and strong systems, fit to encounter the wear and tear of existence. Much of the dyspepsia, the biliousness, the headaches, the palpitations, the sensitiveness to cold, the shortness of breath, the incapability of sustained exertion, and the eventual hysteria, chlorosis, spinal curvature, and final disease of heart, lungs, or brain, that occurs between puberty and the age of forty years, may be directly referred to the premature and undue use of the faculties of the mind, without reference to the development and condition of the nervous organism, or to the powers

PREMATURE USE OF MIND.

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and requirements of the system at large. It has been well noticed, in illustration of the effects of an unwise or a premature exercise of the intellect, that Tasso, at the age of twenty-two, was the author of the greatest epic poem of modern times, but was always melancholy, or else devoured by passion, and died at the age of fifty-one; that Pascal, who also enjoyed a premature celebrity as an author, was always hypochondriacal, ever imagining that he saw a gulf open at his side, and died at the age of thirty-nine; that Byron, who wrote so early, and so much, and so greatly as to originality and high desert, and in part so unhealthily and unwholesomely, was the victim of dyspepsia and hypochondriasis, and died, of diseased brain, in his thirty-seventh year; that Pope, who notoriously began to write poetry at twelve years old, and became famous at sixteen, was the victim of extreme feebleness, morbid sensitiveness to cold, dyspepsia, headache, and eventual dropsy, whose life is well characterised as having been one long disease, and that he died in his fifty-eighth year. And an early precocity is no necessary condition of genius or intellectual eminence in the after-life; for the youth of Sheridan was pronounced to be "dull," and that of Goldsmith unpromising." In his boyhood, Sir Isaac Newton was "inattentive to study, and ranked very low in the school until the age of twelve;" in his boyhood, Napoleon was in no way distinguished from other boys; in his boyhood, Sir Walter Scott gave no indications of his future eminence; in their boyhoods, neither Shakspeare, nor Gibbon, nor Davy, appear

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Such lists may be easily extended, by reference to the biographies of eminent men; and it will be found, that, to restrain precocity instead of encouraging it, should be the continual endeavour; that the more feeble, delicate, and cachectic the child's constitution, the longer should the intellectual or scholastic education be deferred; and that the mere circumstance of a slow and tardy development of the intellectual powers, affords no certain indication of the future capabilities of the mind. During the last year or two of the school-time, more is often gained, as to progress and capability, than during all the preceding years of life.

There is no room for doubt, that the use of the faculties of mind, if neither premature nor excessive, neither antecedent to the due development of the system, nor in degree beyond its strength, necessarily promotes the health, vigour, and life-probability. The exercise of the mind is capable of producing the most useful effect on the whole system, of serving as a stimulus to all the organic processes, of benefiting the condition and powers of the motor system, of promoting nutrition, usefully increasing the expenditure, diminishing congestive and plethoric tendencies, and largely conducing to the general health. The due exercise of the mind may subserve as much the organic economy, as the use of the locomotive powers notoriously contributes, if not excessive in its degree, to the activity and equilibrium of the mental endowments. The character of a child's system may be

EXCESSIVE USE OF THE PROPENSITIES.

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sluggish, the organs may be prone to become congested, the physical development may be slow, or even seem to be stationary, until the spur of intellectual occupation arouses the whole economy into a more active, and advancing, and healthy condition. That the expectation of life, and the healthiness of its character, are increased by due exercise of the mental faculties, is in some degree proved by the longer lives of the intellectual classes; although this must be largely referable to other causes likewise; among which the diminished dependence on sensual indulgence for the means of happiness, deserves an important position. The growth of general intelligence, the advancing appreciation of intellectual pleasures, the increasing cultivation of the taste, has not only diminished the general intemperance; but, in this and in other ways, must have contributed to the doubling of the probable expectation of life in London, within the last century; and have aided in lowering the general mortality of this kingdom by not less than one-fourth, during the same period.

The three great classes of endowments by which the mind of man is characterised, must not only be called into exercise according to their progressive development, but must continue to be made use of in due proportion and relation to one another, if the conditions of health and long life are to be truly fulfilled.

If the sentiments and the intellectual faculties are inadequately cultivated and exercised, in the same proportion is the individual the slave and the victim

of his propensities: sensual indulgence becomes the passion and object of existence; the restraints of the moral nature and the higher intelligence are so far insufficient for the regulation and controul of the appetites; and the man becomes a sot, or a glutton, or something worse. Living as it were for the gratification of the propensities, they become his only source of happiness; having no higher object for which to live, no just sense of the consequences, no restraining thought of the injury he must be doing to those around him, no abiding or controlling feeling of the wrong done to those dependent upon him, no realisation of his worse than useless life and character, he may be justly said to be living for himself alone,—if indeed it be to live for himself, to sacrifice all the objects and privileges of his being, for the sake of revelling in species of enjoyment that the very brutes have in common with himself. And the

miserable game is soon played out; the health falls a victim to the excesses; all the physical powers are weakened; the functions become disordered; some of the vital structures become disorganised; and, no longer able to find happiness or consolation in the indulgence of the favourite propensity, the man sinks, gradually sinks, disappointed and miserable,— and it may be dies unpitied, as he must die degraded, -having been worse than useless in the great hive of society.

An excessive use of the moral or of the intellectual faculties, is no less certain to be followed by injurious consequences. In these instances, as in every

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