LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MELANCHOLY.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR:]
Sia,—May I make two remarks on the interesting article on "Melancholy," in the Spectator of May 3?
1. You suggest that a disparity of brain-muscle with the work unconsciously required of it may be a principal cause of that melancholy which, to those who live in certain circles, seems to be markedly on the increase. Why, then, should it be equally felt by persons who, though no doubt cultivated, are still not contemplating any special effort at fresh development P To make your explanation strictly true, this melancholy should necessarily be felt, in a small degree, after the first steps taken in the road of cultivation, whereas the reverse is the case. Until middle-life,. at least, each new effort after knowledge, and each fresh interest awakened, is so much the more happiness added to individual existence. If we watch narrowly what gives us the most, genuine and purest enjoyment in life, I think we shall find it to be the glow of satisfaction that comes from the fact that in acquiring new knowledge we have acquired a new faculty,. —a fresh source of interest to ourselves, and a fresh power of sympathy with those already in possession of the coveted knowledge. Possibly it may be a question to different minds which of the two gives us the greater happiness,—the increased interest to ourselves, or the greater sympathy with others attained by each fresh acquirement; but one of the two- it surely will be. Now, this would not hold good, if the melan- choly of the present day could be traced to the fact that our powers for acquiring knowledge do not equal what we desire should be attained by them. This our ancestors must have felt as well as ourselves, and this must also be felt by the- Italians, whom you quote as having a high estimation of this present life.
2. The reason that Mr. Trail gives for the growing melancholy seems to me the truer one. Though it may tell differently on different nations at different periods of their existence, it is in the fact that the loss of faitlr in the present day is a loss that makes us differ from the Stoics- and others in the past, who, in learning for the first time the power and happiness of righteous living, needed no more to make life grand and ennobling. To them, as Mr. Traill says, death and pain were no evils in themselves ; they came as a fresh experience, or as a fitting end to a life which shrank from nothing which was not enervating or debasing. The Stoics had never known a faith which makes a future world as real as the present world, and it is the sense of having lost this faith that gives its peculiar melancholy to The. nineteenth century. The men of the eighteenth century may have felt it, too, but the necessity for action carried them through. Church and State both needed reform, and they had no time to be melancholy. But with us it is different. To us,. Stoical virtue has been surpassed by Christian virtue. The most perfect of modernStoics can have no higher aim than the least of Christian saints, and Church and State are alike reformed, so far at least as outward abuses go. To the Christian, the will of God becomes with each successive effort after conformity to it a more real and increasing enjoyment, through the belief that a future life will only develope that enjoyment more per- fectly. Consequently, it is the loss of belief in God that makes the chasm between the ideal and the actual self, which Chris- tians and Agnostics must alike feel, specially bitter to the latter..
Nor can we Christians but catch the morbid infection when, as often happens, we live among and love those who have lost their hope. Even believing, as we do, that hereafter our friends may come to a clearer knowledge, we cannot but feel the gulf which separates us now; and we are turned back upon ourselves by the sense that to them we appear dreamers, and "dupes of vain desire." The strongest faith may well find it hard to be- joyful, in face of the weariness that is all around.—I am, Sir, Sm.,.
BERTHA LATHB1TRT.
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