PART I.

THE PHYSICAL BASIS.

LETTER I.

TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED EXCESSIVELY.

Mental labor believed to be innocuous to healthy persons—Difficulty of testing this—Case of the poet Wordsworth—Case of an eminent living author—Case of a literary clergyman—Case of an energetic tradesman—Instances of two Londoners who wrote professionally—Scott’s paralysis—Byron’s death—All intellectual labor proceeds on a physical basis.

So little is really known about the action of the nervous system, that to go into the subject from the physiological point of view would be to undertake a most difficult investigation, entirely beyond the competence of an unscientific person like your present correspondent. You will, therefore, permit me, in reference to this, to leave you to the teaching of the most advanced physiologists of the time; but I may be able to offer a few practical suggestions, based on the experience of intellectual workers, which may be of use to a man whose career is likely to be one of severe and almost uninterrupted intellectual labor.

A paper was read several years ago before the members of a society in London, in which the author maintained that mental labor was never injurious to a perfectly healthy human organization, and that the numerous cases of break-down, which are commonly attributed to excessive brain-work, are due, in reality, to the previous operation of disease.

This is one of those assertions which cannot be answered in a sentence. Concentrated within the briefest expression it comes to this, that mental labor cannot produce disease, but may aggravate the consequences of disease which already exists.

The difficulty of testing this is obvious; for so long as health remains quite perfect, it remains perfect, of course, whether the brain is used or not; and when failure of health becomes manifest, it is not always easy to decide in what degree mental labor may have been the cause of it. Again, the accuracy of so general a statement cannot be proved by any number of instances in its favor, since it is universally admitted that brain-work is not the only cause of disease, and no one affirms that it is more than one amongst many causes which may impede the bodily functions.

When the poet Wordsworth was engaged in composing the “White Doe of Rylstone,” he received a wound in his foot, and he observed that the continuation of the literary labor increased the irritation of the wound; whereas by suspending his work he could diminish it, and absolute mental rest produced a perfect cure. In connection with this incident he remarked that poetic excitement, accompanied by protracted labor in composition, always brought on more or less of bodily derangement. He preserved himself from permanently injurious consequences by his excellent habits of life.

A very eminent living author, whose name I do not feel at liberty to mention, is always prostrated by severe illness at the conclusion of each of his works; another is unwell every Sunday, because he does not write on that day, and the recoil after the mental stretch of the week is too much for him.

In the case of Wordsworth, the physical constitution is believed to have been sound. His health at seventy-two was excellent; the two other instances are more doubtful in this respect, yet both these writers enjoy very fair health, after the pressure of brain-work has been removed for any considerable time. A clergyman of robust organization, who does a good deal of literary work at intervals, told me that, whenever he had attempted to make it regular, the consequence had always been distressing nervous sensations, from which at other times he was perfectly free. A tradesman, whose business affords an excellent outlet for energetic bodily activity, told me that having attempted, in addition to his ordinary work, to acquire a foreign language which seemed likely to be useful to him, he had been obliged to abandon it on account of alarming cerebral symptoms. This man has immense vigor and energy, but the digestive functions, in this instance, are sluggish. However, when he abandoned study, the cerebral inconveniences disappeared, and have never returned since.

Two Londoners who followed literature as a profession, and who both worked to excess, had cerebral attacks of a still more decided kind. One of them, after his recovery, resolved to regulate his work in future, so that it might never pass the limits of moderation. He is now living, and in possession of a remarkably clear and richly furnished intellect. The other, who returned to his old habits, died in two years from softening of the brain. I am not aware that in these cases there was any other disease than that produced by an immoderate use of the mental powers.

The health of Sir Walter Scott—we have this on his own testimony—was uncommonly robust, and there is every reason to believe that his paralysis was brought on by the excessive labor which resulted from his pecuniary embarrassments, and that without such excessive mental labor and anxiety he would have preserved his health much longer. The death of Byron was due, no doubt, quite as much to habits of dissipation as to poetical excitement; still it is probable that he would have borne either of these evil influences if it had not been accompanied by the other; and that to a man whose way of life was so exhausting as Byron’s was, the addition of constant poetical excitement and hard work in production, may be said without exaggeration to have killed him. We know that Scott, with all his facility, had a dread of that kind of excitement, and withdrew from the poetical arena to avoid it. We know, too, that the brain of Southey proved ultimately unable to endure the burden of the tasks he laid upon it.

Difficult as it may be in some instances to ascertain quite accurately whether an overworked man had perfectly sound bodily health to begin with, obvious as it may be that in many breakdowns the final failure has been accelerated by diseases independent of mental work, the facts remain, that the excessive exercise of the mental powers is injurious to bodily health and that all intellectual labor proceeds upon a physical basis. No man can safely forget this, and act as if he were a pure spirit, superior to physical considerations. Let me then, in other letters on this subject, direct your attention to the close connection which exists between intellectual production and the state of the body and the brain; not with the authority of a physician, but with the sympathy of a fellow-laborer, who has learned something from his own experience, and still more from the more varied experience of his friends.

LETTER II.

TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED EXCESSIVELY.

Mental labor rarely compatible with the best physical conditions—Wordsworth’s manner of composition—Mr. W. F. A. Delane—George Sand working under pressure—Sir Walter Scott’s field-sports—Physical exercise the best tranquillizer of the nervous system—Eugène Sue—Shelley’s love of boating—Nervousness the affliction of brain-workers—Nature’s kindly warning—Working by spurts—Beckford—Byron—Indolence of men of genius fortunate—Distressing nature of cerebral fatigue.

It is possible that many of the worst results of intellectual labor may be nothing more than indirect results. We may suffer, not from the work itself, but from sedentary confinement, from want of exercise, from insufficient variety and amusement.

Mental labor is seldom compatible with the best physical conditions; it is so sometimes, however, or may be made so by an effort of will and resolution. Wordsworth composed his poetry in the open air, as he walked, and so preserved himself from the evil of close confinement to the desk. Mr. W. F. A. Delane, who did so much for the organization of the Times newspaper when it was under his management, began by doing law reports for that paper, in London and on circuit. His appearance of rude health surprised other members of his profession, but he accounted for it by the care he took to compensate for the bad air and sedentary labor in the courts of law by travelling between the assize towns on horseback, and also by a more than commonly temperate way of life, since he carefully avoided the bar dinners, eating and drinking for health alone. It is possible to endure the most unhealthy labor when there are frequent intervals of invigorating exercise, accompanied by habits of strict sobriety. The plan, so commonly resorted to, of trying to get health in stock for the rest of the year by a fortnight’s hurried travelling in the autumn, is not so good as Mr. Delane’s way of getting the week’s supply of health during the course of the week itself.

It happened once that George Sand was hurried by the proprietor of a newspaper who wanted one of her novels as a feuilleton. She has always been a careful and deliberate worker, very anxious to give all necessary labor in preparation, and, like all such conscientious laborers, she can scarcely endure to be pushed. However, on this occasion she worked overtime, as they say in Lancashire, and to enable herself to bear the extra pressure she did part of the work at night in order to keep several hours of daylight clear for her walks in the country, where she lived. Many writers, in the same situation, would have temporarily abandoned exercise, but George Sand clung to it all the more at a time when it was especially necessary that she should be well. In the same way Sir Walter Scott counterbalanced the effects of sedentary occupation by his hearty enjoyment of field-sports. It has been supposed that his outdoor exercise, which to weaker persons appears excessive, may have helped to bring on the stroke of paralysis which finally disabled him; but the fact is, that when the stroke arrived Sir Walter had altered his habits of life in obedience to what he believed to be his duty, and had abandoned, or nearly so, the active amusements of his happier years. I believe rather that whilst he took so much exercise his robust constitution not only enabled him to endure it without injury, but required it to keep the nervous system healthy, in spite of his hard work in literary composition. Physical exercise, when the constitution is strong enough to endure it, is by far the best tranquillizer of the nervous system which has yet been discovered, and Sir Walter’s life at Abbotsford was, in this respect at least, grounded on the true philosophy of conduct. The French romancer, Eugene Sue, wrote till ten o’clock every morning, and passed the rest of the day, when at his country house, either in horse-exercise, or field-sports, or gardening, for all of which he had a liking which amounted to passion. Shelley’s delight was boating, which at once exercised his muscles and relieved his mind from the weariness of incessant invention or speculation. It will generally be found, that whenever a man of much intellectual distinction has maintained his powers in full activity, it has been by avoiding the bad effects of an entirely sedentary life.

I well believe that a person naturally robust, with a clear and powerful brain, could bear twelve or fourteen hours’ work every day for years together so far as the work itself is concerned, if only so large an expenditure of time left a sufficient margin for amusement, and exercise, and sleep. But the privation of exercise, by weakening the digestive and assimilative powers, reduces the flow of healthy and rich blood to the brain—the brain requires an enormous quantity of blood, especially when the cerebral matter is rapidly destroyed by intellectual labor—and usually brings on nervousness, the peculiar affliction of the over-driven mental laborer. This nervousness is Nature’s kindly warning, preserving us, if we attend to it in time, from much more serious consequences. The best preventive of it, and often the only cure, is plenty of moderate exercise. The customs of the upper classes in England happily provide this in the best shape, that of amusement enjoyed in society, but our middle classes in large towns do not get nearly enough of it, and the most studious are always strongly tempted to neglect it altogether.

Men of great imaginative power are commonly addicted to a habit which is peculiarly dangerous. They work as race-horses work, with the utmost intensity of effort during short spaces of time, taxing all their powers whilst the brilliant effort lasts. When Beckford wrote the wonderful tale “Vathek” in his twentieth year, he did it at a single sitting, which lasted for three days and two nights, and it cost him a serious illness. Several of the best poems by Byron were written, if not quite with equal rapidity, still on the same principle of composition at white heat. In cases of this kind, Nature provides her own remedy in the indolence of the imaginative temperament, which leaves large spaces of time for the action of the recuperative processes. The same law governs the physical energies of the carnivora, which maintain, or recover, their capacity for extraordinary effort by intervals of absolute repose. In its long spaces of mental rest the imaginative temperament recruits itself by amusement, which in England usually includes physical exercise of some kind.

This fortunate indolence of men of genius would in most instances ensure their safety if they were not impelled by necessity to labor beyond the suggestions of inclination. The exhausted brain never of itself seeks the additional exhaustion of hard work. You know very well when you are tired, and at such times the natural man in you asks plainly enough for rest and recreation. The art is so to arrange our lives that the natural man may sometimes have his way, and forget, if only for a time, the labors which lead to weariness—not to that pleasant weariness of the body which promises soundest sleep, but the distressing fatigue of the exhausted spirit which is tortured by the importunity of ideas which it is unable to express, and apprehensions that it cannot dismiss, which fights through the sleepless night the phantoms of unconquerable horror.

Note.—The bad effect of literary composition on the physical state which was observed by Wordsworth in his own case was also noticed by Shelley during the composition of the “Cenci,” which, he said, had been a fine antidote to nervous medicines, and kept, he believed, the pain in his side “as sticks do a fire.” These influences are best observed in people whose health is delicate. Although Joubert, for example, had an extremely clear intellect, he could scarcely write at all on account of the physical consequences. I have come to the conclusion that literary work acts simply as a strong stimulant. In moderate quantities it is not only innocent, but decidedly beneficial; in excess it acts like poison on the nervous system. What constitutes excess every man has to find out by his own experience. A page was excess to Joubert, a chapter was moderation to Alexandre Dumas.

LETTER III.

TO A STUDENT IN UNCERTAIN HEALTH.

Habits of Kant, the philosopher—Objection to an over-minute regularity of habit—Value of independence of character—Case of an English author—Case of an English resident in Paris—Scott an abundant eater and drinker—Goethe also—An eminent French publisher—Turgot—Importance of good cookery—Wine drinking—Ale—The aid of stimulants treacherous—The various effects of tobacco—Tea and coffee—Case of an English clergyman—Balzac—The Arabia custom of coffee-drinking—Wisdom of occasionally using stimulants.

Immanuel Kant, who was a master in the art of taking care of himself, had by practice acquired a dexterous mode of folding himself up in the bed-clothes, by passing them over and under his shoulders, so that, when the operation was complete, he was shut up like the silkworm in his cocoon. “When I am thus snugly folded up in my bed,” he would say to his friends, “I say to myself, can any man be in better health than I am?”

There is nothing in the lives of philosophers more satisfactory than this little passage. If Kant had said to himself, “Can anybody be wiser, more learned, more justly deserving of immortal fame than I am?” we should have felt, that however agreeable this opinion might have been to the philosopher who held it, his private satisfaction stood in need of confirmation from without; and even if he had really been all this, we might have reflected that wisdom and learning still leave their possessor exposed to the acutest kinds of suffering. But when a philosopher rolls himself up at night, and congratulates himself on the possession of perfect health, we only think what a happy man he was to possess that first of blessings, and what a sensible man to know the value of it! And Kant had a deeper happiness in this reflection than any which could spring from the mere consciousness of possessing one of the unearned gifts of nature. The excellence of his health was due in part to a sufficiently good constitution, but it was due also to his own extreme carefulness about his habits. By an unceasing observation of his own bodily life, as far as possible removed from the anxiety of hypochondriacs, he managed to keep the physical machine in such regular order, that for more than thirty years he always rose precisely at the same minute. If his object had been health for health’s sake, the result would still have been well worth any sacrifices of momentary inclination that it cost him; but Kant had a higher purpose. He well knew that the regularity of the intellectual life depended entirely on the regularity of the bodily functions, and, unlike the foolish men alluded to by Goethe who pass the day in complaining of headache, and the night in drinking the wine that produces it, Kant not only knew that regular health was necessary to his work as a philosopher, but did everything in his power to preserve it. Few intellectual laborers have in this respect given evidence of such persistent strength of will.

In his manner of living he did not consult custom, but the needs of his individual nature. It is not always easy for great brain-workers to follow with perfect fidelity the customs of the people about them. These usages have been gradually formed by the majority to suit the needs of the majority; but there are cases where a close adherence to them would be a serious hindrance to the highest and best activity. A good example of this is Kant’s intense antipathy to beer. It did not suit him, and he was right in his non-conformity to German usage on this point, but he was mistaken in believing beer to be universally injurious. There is a very general belief in England that what is called a good breakfast is the foundation of the labor of the day. Kant’s breakfast, which he took at five in the morning at all seasons of the year, consisted of a cup of tea and a pipe of tobacco. On this he worked eight hours, either in lecturing or writing—a long stretch of uninterrupted labor. He dined at one, and this was his only meal, for he had no supper. The single repast was a deviation from ordinary usage, but Kant found that it suited him, probably because he read in the evening from six till a quarter to ten, and a second meal might have interfered with this by diminishing his power of attention. There exists a strong medical objection to this habit of taking only one meal in twenty-four hours, which indeed is almost unknown in England, though not extremely rare on the Continent. I know an old gentleman who for forty years has lived as Kant did, and enjoys excellent health and uncommon mental clearness.

A detail which illustrates Kant’s attention to whatever could affect his physical life, is his rule to withdraw his mind from everything requiring effort fifteen minutes before he went to bed. His theory, which is fully confirmed by the experience of others, was, that there was a risk of missing sleep if the brain was not tranquillized before bed-time. He knew that the intellectual life of the day depended on the night’s rest, and he took this precaution to secure it. The regularity of his daily walk, taken during the afternoon in all weathers, and the strict limitation of the hours of rest, also helped the soundness of his sleep.

He would not walk out in company, for the whimsical reason that if he opened his mouth a colder air would reach his lungs than that which passed through the nostrils; and he would not eat alone, but always had guests to dinner. There are good physiological reasons in favor of pleasant society at table, and, besides these, there are good intellectual reasons also.

By attention to these rules of his, Kant managed to keep both body and mind in a working order, more uninterrupted than is usual with men who go through much intellectual labor. The solitary objection to his system is the excessive regularity of habit to which it bound him by chains of his own forging. He found a quiet happiness in this regularity; indeed, happiness is said to be more commonly found in habit that in anything else, so deeply does it satisfy a great permanent instinct of our nature. But a minute regularity of habit is objectionable, because it can only be practicable at home, and is compatible only with an existence of the most absolute tranquillity. Kant did not travel, and never could have travelled. He was a bachelor, and could not have ceased to be a bachelor, without a disturbance that would have been intolerable to him. He enjoyed the full benefits of his system without experiencing its disadvantages, but any considerable change of situation would have made the disadvantages apparent. Few lives can be so minutely regulated without risk of future inconvenience.

Kant’s example is a good one so far as this, that it proved a sort of independence of character which would be valuable to every student. All who need to keep their minds in the best possible condition ought to have resolution enough to regulate their living in a manner which experience, in their case, proves to be most favorable. Whatever may be the authority of custom, a wise man makes himself independent of usages which are impediments to his best activity. I know an author who was always unwell about eleven o’clock in the morning—so unwell that he could do nothing but lament his miserable fate. Knowing by experience the powerful effect of regimen, I inquired whether he enjoyed his breakfast. “No, he did not.” “Then why did he attempt to eat any breakfast?” It turned out that this foolish man swallowed every morning two cups of bad coffee and a quantity of greasy food, from a patriotic deference to the customs of his country. He was persuaded to abandon this unsuitable habit and to eat nothing till half-past ten, when his adviser prescribed a well-cooked little déjeuner à la fourchette, accompanied by half a bottle of sound Bordeaux. The effect was magical. My friend felt light and cheerful before déjeuner, and worked quite happily and well, whilst after déjeuner he felt like a horse that has eaten his corn. Nor was the good effect a transitory one; the bad symptoms never returned and he still adheres to his new arrangement. This little reform made a wretched existence happy, and has had for its result an increase in production with a diminution of fatigue. The explanation is that the stomach did not ask for the early breakfast, and had a hard fight to overcome it, after which came exhaustion and a distaste both for food and work. There are cases where an opposite rule is the right one. An Englishman living in Paris found the French déjeuner unsuitable for him, and discovered that he worked best on a substantial English breakfast, with strong tea, at eight in the morning, after which he went on working all day without any further nourishment till dinner at six in the evening. A friend of Sir Walter Scott’s, who had stayed with him at Abbotsford, told me that Sir Walter ate and drank like everybody else as to times and seasons, but much more abundantly than people of less vigorous organization. Goethe used to work till eleven without taking anything, then he drank a cup of chocolate and worked till one. “At two he dined. This meal was the important meal of the day. His appetite was immense. Even on the days when he complained of not being hungry he ate much more than most men. Puddings, sweets, and cakes were always welcome. He sat a long while over his wine. He was fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles.” An eminent French publisher, one of the most clear-headed and hard-working men of his generation, never touched food or drink till six in the evening, when he ate an excellent dinner with his guests. He found this system favorable to his work, but a man of less robust constitution would have felt exhausted in the course of the day.

Turgot could not work well till after he had dined copiously, but many men cannot think after a substantial meal; and here, in spite of the example set by Scott and Goethe, let me observe that nothing interferes so much with brainwork as over-eating. The intellectual workman requires nourishment of the best possible quality, but the quantity ought always to be well within the capacity of his digestive powers. The truth appears to be, that whilst the intellectual life makes very large demands upon nutrition—for cerebral activity cannot go forward without constant supplies of force, which must come ultimately from what we have eaten—this kind of life, being sedentary, is unfavorable to the work of digestion. Brain-workers cannot eat like sportsmen and farmers without losing many hours in torpor, and yet they need nutrition as much as if they led active lives. The only way out of this difficulty is to take care that the food is good enough for a moderate quantity of it to maintain the physical and mental powers. The importance of scientific cookery can hardly be exaggerated. Intellectual labor is, in its origin, as dependent upon the art of cookery as the dissemination of its results is dependent upon paper-making and printing. This is one of those matters which people cannot be brought to consider seriously; but cookery in its perfection—the great science of preparing food in the way best suited to our use—is really the most important of all sciences, and the mother of the arts. The wonderful theory that the most ignorant cookery is the most favorable to health is only fit for the dark ages. It is grossly and stupidly untrue. A scientific cook will keep you in regular health, when an ignorant one will offer you the daily alternative of starving or indigestion.

The great question of drinks is scarcely less important. Sound natural wines, not strengthened by any addition of alcohol, are known to supply both stimulus and nourishment to the brain. Goethe’s practice was not irrational, though he drank fifty thousand bottles in his lifetime. Still it is not necessary to imitate him to this extent. The wine-drinking populations have keener and livelier wits than those who use other beverages. It is proved by long experience that the pure juice of the grape sustains the force and activity of the brain. The poets who from age to age have sung the praise of wine were not wholly either deceivers or deceived. In the lands of the vine, where the plant is looked upon as a nursing mother, men do not injure their health by drinking; but in the colder North, where the grape can never ripen, the deaths from intemperance are frequent. Bread and wine are almost pure gifts of nature, though both are prepared by man after the old traditional ways. These are not poisons, but gin and absinthe are poisons, madness poured out from a bottle! Kant and Goethe loved the pure Rhine wine, and their brains were clear and vigorous to the utmost span of life. It was not wine that ruined Burns and Byron, or Baudelaire, or Alfred de Musset.

Notwithstanding Kant’s horror of beer, that honest northern drink deserves our friendly recognition. It has quite a peculiar effect upon the nervous system, giving a rest and calm which no other drink can procure for it so safely. It is said that beer drinkers are slow, and a little stupid; that they have an ox-like placidity not quite favorable to any brilliant intellectual display. But there are times when this placidity is what the laboring brain most needs. After the agitations of too active thinking there is safety in a tankard of ale. The wine drinkers are agile, but they are excitable; the beer drinkers are heavy, but in their heaviness there is peace. In that clear golden drink which England has brewed for more than a thousand Octobers, and will brew for a thousand more, we may find perhaps some explanation of that absence of irritability which is the safe-guard of the national character, which makes it faithful in its affections, easy to govern, not easy to excite to violence.

If I have spoken favorably of beer and wine as having certain intellectual uses, please remember that I recommend only the habitual use of them, not mad rites of Bacchus, and even the habitual use only just so far as it may suit the individual constitution. The liberal regimen of Scott and Goethe would not answer in every case, and there are organizations, often very robust, in which intoxicating drinks of all kinds, even in the most moderate quantity, impede the brain’s action instead of aiding it. Two of the most able men I have ever known could not drink pure wine of any kind because it sent the blood to the head, with consequent cerebral oppression. And whilst on this subject I ought to observe, that the aid which these stimulants afford, even when the body gratefully accepts them, is often treacherous from its very acceptability. Men who are over-driven—and the number of such men is unhappily very great in these days—say that without stimulants they could not get through their labor; but the stimulants often delude us as to the limits of our natural powers and encourage us to attempt too much. The help they give us is not altogether illusory; under certain limitations it is real, but many have gone farther than the reality of the assistance warranted. The ally brings to us an increase of forces, but he comes with appearances of power surpassing the reality, and we undertake tasks beyond our strength. In drinking, as in eating, the best rule for the intellectual is moderation in quantity with good quality, a sound wine, and not enough of it to foster self-delusion.

The use of tobacco has so much extended itself in the present generation that we are all obliged to make a decision for ourselves on the ancient controversy between its friends and enemies. We cannot form a reasonable opinion about tobacco without bearing in mind that it produces, according to circumstances, one of two entirely distinct and even opposite classes of effects. In certain states of the body it acts as a stimulant, in other states as a narcotic. People who have a dislike to smoking affirm that it stupefies; but this assertion, at least so far as the temporary consequences are concerned, is not supported by experience. Most of the really brilliant conversations that I have listened to have been accompanied by clouds of tobacco-smoke; and a great deal of the best literary composition that is produced by contemporary authors is wrought by men who are actually smoking whilst they work. My own experience is that very moderate smoking acts as a pleasant stimulus upon the brain, whilst it produces a temporary lassitude of the muscular system, not perceptible in times of rest, but an appreciable hindrance in times of muscular exertion. It is better therefore for men who feel these effects from tobacco to avoid it when they are in exercise, and to use it only when the body rests and the mind labors. Pray remember, however, that this is the experience of an exceedingly moderate smoker, who has not yet got himself into the general condition of body which is brought on by a larger indulgence in tobacco. On the other hand, it is evident that men engaged in physical labor find a muscular stimulus in occasional smoking, and not a temporary lassitude. It is probable that the effect varies with individual cases, and is never precisely what our own experience would lead us to imagine. For excessive smokers, it appears to be little more than the tranquillizing of a sort of uneasiness, the continual satisfaction of a continual craving. I have never been able to ascertain that moderate smoking diminished intellectual force; but I have observed in excessive smokers a decided weakening of the will, and a preference for talking about work to the effort of actual labor. The opinions of medical men on this subject are so much at variance that their science only adds to our uncertainty. One doctor tells me that the most moderate smoking is unquestionably injurious, whilst others affirm that it is innocent. Speaking simply from self-observation, I find that in my own case tea and coffee are far more perilous than tobacco.

Almost all English people are habitual tea-drinkers, and as the tea they drink is very strong, they may be said to use it in excess. The unpleasant symptoms which tea-poisoning produces in a patient not inured by habit, disappear in the seasoned tea-drinker, leaving only a certain exhilaration, which appears to be perfectly innocuous. If tea is a safe stimulant, it is certainly an agreeable one, and there seems to be no valid reason why brain-workers should refuse themselves that solace. I knew a worthy clergyman many years ago who from the most conscientious motives denied himself ale and wine, but found a fountain of consolation in the tea-pot. His usual allowance was sixteen cups, all of heroic strength, and the effect upon his brain seems to have been altogether favorable, for his sermons were both long and eloquent, and to this day he is preaching still, without any diminution of his powers. French people find in coffee the most efficacious remedy for the temporary torpor of the mind which results from the processes of digestion. Balzac drank great quantities of coffee whilst he wrote; and this, it is believed, brought on the terrible nervous disease that accelerated his end. The best proof that tea and coffee are favorable to intellectual expression is that all nations use one or the other as aids to conversation. In Mr. Palgrave’s Travels in Arabia there is never any talk without the inevitable coffee, that fragrant Arabian berry prepared with such delicate cunning that it yields the perfect aroma.

The wisdom of occasionally using these various stimulants for intellectual purposes is proved by a single consideration. Each of us has a little cleverness and a great deal of sluggish stupidity. There are certain occasions when we absolutely need the little cleverness that we possess. The orator needs it when he speaks, the poet when he versifies, but neither cares how stupid he may become when the oration is delivered and the lyric set down on paper. The stimulant serves to bring out the talent when it is wanted, like the wind in the pipes of an organ. “What will it matter if I am even a little duller afterwards?” says the genius; “I can afford to be dull when I have done.” But the truth still remains that there are stimulants and stimulants. Not the nectar of the gods themselves were worth the dash of a wave upon the beach, and the pure cool air of the morning.

Note.—What is said in the above letter about the employment of stimulants is intended to apply only to cases in which there is no organic disease. The harm which diseased persons do to themselves by conforming to customs which are innocent for others is as lamentable as it is easily avoidable. Two bottles of any natural wine grown above the latitude of Lyons are a permissible daily allowance to a man whose organs are all sound; but the doctors in the wine districts unanimously forbid pure wine when there is a chronic inflammatory tendency. In these cases even the most honest Bordeaux ought to be diluted with twice its volume of water. There are many chronic diseases which tobacco irritates and accelerates. Both wine and tobacco are injurious to weak eyes.

LETTER IV.

TO A MUSCULAR CHRISTIAN.

Muscular and intellectual tendencies in two boys—Difficulty of finding time to satisfy both—Plato on the influences of music and gymnastics—Somnolence and digestion—Neglect of literature—Natural restlessness of the active temperament—Case of a Garibaldian officer—Difficulty of taking a sufficient interest in exercise—A boar hunt.

I know two little boys, sons of a near neighbor, who have from, childhood exhibited opposite tendencies. One of them is incessantly active, always out of doors in any weather, busy about horses, and farming, and game, heedless of his books, and studying only under positive compulsion. The other sits at home with his lessons or a story book, and only goes out because he is incited by the fraternal example. The two lads represent two distinct varieties of human life, the active and the intellectual. The elder is happiest during physical exertion; the younger is happiest when his brain is fully occupied. Left entirely to themselves, without the equalizing influence of the outside world and the ways of living which general custom has established, they would lead the most opposite lives. The elder would inevitably become a farmer, that he might live in the country and take exercise all day long, or else he would seek adventure in wild travel, or in romantic warfare; but the younger would very quickly be taken possession of by some engrossing intellectual pursuit, and lead the life of a sedentary student. The problem which these two young lives have before them is the reconciliation of their tendencies. Since they come of cultivated parents, the intellectual lad has the better chance of following his own bent. Both will have to take their University degrees, and the younger has the advantage there. Still there are powerful influences in favor of the elder. His activity will be encouraged by the admiration of his companions, and by the example of the country gentlemen who are his neighbors. He can ride, and row, and swim; he is beginning to shoot; at twenty he will be a sportsman. When once he has taken his degree, I wonder what will be the advances in his intellectual culture. Fraternal and social influences will preserve the younger from absolute physical inaction; but there are not any influences powerful enough to keep the elder safe from intellectual rust.

If you, who are a distinguished sportsman and athlete, would kindly inform us with perfect frankness of the line which your studies have followed since you quitted Eton, we should be the wiser for your experience. Have gymnastic exercises hardened you, as Plato said they did, when pursued excessively? and do you need the musical studies which he both valued and dreaded as the most powerful of softening influences? If you have energy enough to lead both lives, pray how do you find the time?

As to Plato’s musical influence, you invite it, and yet you treacherously elude its power. After being out all day in the pursuit of sylvan pleasures (if shooting on treeless wastes can be called a sylvan pleasure), you come home at nightfall ravenous. Then you do ample justice to your dinner, and having satisfied your faim de chasseur, you go into the drawing-room, and ask your wife to play and sing to you. If Plato could witness that pretty scene, he would approve your obedience to his counsels. He would behold an athletic Englishman stretching his mighty limbs on a couch of soft repose, and letting his soul grow tender as his ears drank ravishing harmonies. If, however, the ancient sage, delighted with so sweet a picture of strength refined by song, were to dwell upon the sight as I have done, he would perceive too soon that, although your body was present indeed, your soul had become deaf in sleep’s oblivion. So it happens to you night after night, and the music reaches you no more than the songs of choristers reach the dead in the graves below.

And the elevating influences of literature? You have books, of course, in abundance. There is a library, amongst other luxuries of your home. But the literature your intellect feeds upon is in the columns of the Field, your newspaper. Yet this neglect of the means of culture is not due to any natural feebleness of the mind. Your brain, by its nature, is as vigorous as your vigorous body. It is sleep, and weariness, and the great necessary business of digestion, that drown your intellectual energies. The work of repairing so great a destruction of muscle is nature’s chief concern. Since you became the mighty hunter that you are, the wear and tear have been enormous, and the necessary rapidity of reconstruction has absorbed your rich vitality.

I will not question the wisdom of your choice, if there has been any deliberate choice, though perhaps the life of action that you lead may have grown rather out of circumstances determining habit than from any conscious resolution. Health is so much more necessary to happiness than culture, that few who could choose between them would sacrifice it for learning, unless they were impelled by irresistible instincts. And beyond the great delight of health and strength there is a restlessness in men born to be active which must have its outlet in activity. I knew a brave Italian who had followed Garibaldi in all his romantic enterprises, who had suffered from privation and from wounds, who had not only faced death in the wildest adventures, but, what is even more terrible to the active temperament, had risked health from frequent exposure; and when I asked him whether it was affection to his famous chief, or faith in a political creed, or some more personal motive that had led him to this scorn of prudence, he answered that, after honest self-examination, he believed the most powerful motive to be the passion for an active life. The active temperament likes physical action for its own sake, and not as a means of health. Activity renews itself and claims larger and larger satisfaction, till at last the habit of it absorbs the whole energy of the man.

Although such a life as yours would be incompatible with the work I have to do, it would be an unmixed benefit to me to take a greater interest in exercise. If you could but communicate that interest, how willingly would I become your pupil! The fatal law of the studious temperament is, that in exercise itself it must find some intellectual charm, so that we quit our books in the library only to go and read the infinite book of nature. We cannot go out in the country without incessantly thinking about either botany, or geology, or landscape painting, and it is difficult for us to find a refuge from the importunate habit of investigation. Sport is the only refuge, but the difficulty is to care about it sufficiently to avoid ennui. When you have not the natural instinct, how are you to supply its place by any make-believe excitement? There is no position in the world more wearisome than that of a man inwardly indifferent to the amusement in which he is trying to take part. You can watch for game with an invincible patience, for you have the natural instinct, but after the first ten minutes on the skirts of the wood I lay my gun down and begin to botanize. Last week a friendly neighbor invited me to a boar-hunt. The boar was supposed to be in the middle of a great impenetrable plantation, and all I did during the whole morning was to sit in my saddle awaiting the exit of the beast, cantering from one point of the wood’s circumference to another, as the cry of the dogs guided me. Was it pleasure? A true hunter would have found interest enough in expectation, but I felt like a man on a railway-platform who is waiting for a train that is late.

LETTER V.

TO A STUDENT WHO NEGLECTED BODILY EXERCISE.

Difficulty of conciliating the animal and the intellectual lives—Bodily activity sometimes preserved by an effort of the will—Necessity of faith in exercise—Incompatibility between physical and intellectual living disappears in large spaces of time—Franklin’s theory about concentration in exercise—Time an essential factor—Health of a rural postman—Pedestrian habits of Wordsworth—Pedestrian and equestrian habits of Sir Walter Scott—Goethe’s wild delight in physical exercise—Alexander Humboldt combated early delicacy by exercise—Intellectual utilities of physical action.

“We have done those things which we ought not to have done; we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.”

How applicable, my dear brother, are these words which the Church, in her wisdom, has seen to be adapted to all sinners—how applicable, I say, are they to students most especially! They have quite a personal applicability to you and me. We have read all day long, and written till three o’clock in the morning; we have taken no exercise for weeks, and there is no health in us. The doctor scrutinizes our wearied eyes, and knows that our brains are weary. Little do we need his warnings, for does not Nature herself remind us of our disobedience, and tell us in language not to be misinterpreted, to amend the error of our ways? Our digestion is sluggish and imperfect; we are as nervous as delicate ladies, and there is no health in us.

How easy it is to follow one of the two lives—the animal or the intellectual! how difficult to conciliate the two! In every one of us there exists an animal which might have been as vigorous as wolves and foxes, if it had been left to develop itself in freedom. But besides the animal, there existed also a mind, and the mental activity restrained the bodily activity, till at last there is a serious danger of putting an end to it altogether.

I know two men, about fifty-five years old both of them, and both of them admirably active. They tell me that their bodily activity has been preserved by an effort of the will; that if they had not resolutely kept up the habit of using legs and arms in daily work or amusement their limbs would have stiffened into uselessness, and their constitutions would have been unable to bear the call of any sudden emergency. One of them has four residences in different parts of the same county, and yet he will not keep a carriage, but is a pedestrian terrible to his friends; the other is at the head of a great business, and gives an example of physical activity to his workpeople. Both have an absolute faith in habitual exercise; and both affirm that if the habit were once broken they could never afterwards resume it.

We need this faith in exercise—this firm conviction of its necessity—the sort of conviction that makes a man go out in all weathers, and leave the most urgent intellectual labor for the mere discipline and hardening of the body. Few students possess this faith in its purity. It is hard to believe that we shall get any good from exercise proportionate to the sacrifice of time.

The incompatibility between the physical and the intellectual lives is often very marked if you look at small spaces of time only; but if you consider broader spaces, such as a lifetime, then the incompatibility is not so marked, and gives place to a manifest conciliation. The brain is clearer in vigorous health than it can be in the gloom and misery of sickness; and although health may last for a while without renewal from exercise, so that if you are working under pressure for a month the time given to exercise is so much deducted from the result, it is not so for the life’s performance. Health sustained for many years is so useful to the realization of all considerable intellectual undertakings, that the sacrifice to the bodily well-being is the best of all possible investments.

Franklin’s theory about concentrating his exercise for the economy of time was founded upon a mistake. Violent exertion for minutes is not equivalent to moderate exercise for hours. The desire to concentrate good of various kinds into the smallest possible space is one of the commonest of human wishes, but it is not encouraged by the broader economy of nature. In the exercise of the mind every teacher is well aware that time is an essential factor. It is necessary to live with a study for hundreds or thousands of hours before the mind can assimilate as much of the subject as it may need; and so it is necessary to live in exercise during a thousand hours of every year to make sure of the physical benefits. Even the fresh air itself requires time to renovate our blood. The fresh air cannot be concentrated; and to breathe the prodigious quantities of it which are needed for perfect energy, we must be out in it frequently and long.

The inhabitants of great cities have recourse to gymnastics as a substitute for the sports of the country. These exercises have one advantage—they can be directed scientifically so as to strengthen the limbs that need development; but no city gymnasium can offer the invigorating breezes of the mountain. We require not only exercise but exposure—daily exposure to the health-giving inclemencies of the weather. The postman who brings my letters walks eight thousand miles a year, and enjoys the most perfect regularity of health. There are operatives in factories who go through quite as much bodily exertion, but they have not his fine condition. He is as merry as a lark, and announces himself every morning like a bearer of joyful tidings. What the postman does from necessity an old gentleman did as regularly, though more moderately, for the preservation of his health and faculties. He went out every day; and as he never consulted the weather, so he never had to consult the physicians.

Nothing in the habits of Wordsworth—that model of excellent habits—can be better as an example to men of letters than his love of pedestrian excursions. Wherever he happened to be, he explored the whole neighborhood on foot, looking into every nook and cranny of it; and not merely the immediate neighborhood, but extended tracts of country; and in this way he met with much of his best material. Scott was both a pedestrian and an equestrian traveller, having often, as he tells us, walked thirty miles or ridden a hundred in those rich and beautiful districts which afterwards proved to him such a mine of literary wealth. Goethe took a wild delight in all sorts of physical exercise—swimming in the Ilm by moonlight, skating with the merry little Weimar court on the Schwansee, riding about the country on horseback, and becoming at times quite outrageous in the rich exuberance of his energy. Alexander Humboldt was delicate in his youth, but the longing for great enterprises made him dread the hindrances of physical insufficiency, so he accustomed his body to exercise and fatigue, and prepared himself for those wonderful explorations which opened his great career. Here are intellectual lives which were forwarded in their special aims by habits of physical exercise; and, in an earlier age, have we not also the example of the greatest intellect of a great epoch, the astonishing Leonardo da Vinci, who took such a delight in horsemanship that although, as Vasari tells us, poverty visited him often, he never could sell his horses or dismiss his grooms?

The physical and intellectual lives are not incompatible. I may go farther, and affirm that the physical activity of men eminent in literature has added abundance to their material and energy to their style; that the activity of scientific men has led them to innumerable discoveries; and that even the more sensitive and contemplative study of the fine arts has been carried to a higher perfection by artists who painted action in which they had had their part, or natural beauty, which they had travelled far to see. Even philosophy itself owes much to mere physical courage and endurance. How much that is noblest in ancient thinking may be due to the hardy health of Socrates!

LETTER VI.

TO AN AUTHOR IN MORTAL DISEASE.

Considering death as a certainty—The wisdom learned from suffering—Employment of happier intervals—The teaching of the diseased not to be rejected—Their double experience—Ignorance of Nature’s spoiled children—Benefit of disinterested thought—Reasons for pursuing intellectual labors to the last—Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

When Alexandre Bixio lay on his death-bed, his friend Labrousse visited him, and exclaimed on entering the room, “How well you are looking to-day!” To this, Bixio, who was clearly aware of his condition, answered in these words:—“Voyons, mon pauvre Labrousse; tu viens voir un homme qui n’a plus qu’un quart d’heure a vivre, et tu veux lui faire croire qu’il a bonne mine; allons, une poignée de main, cela vaut mieux pour un homme que tous ces petits mensonges-lá.”

I will vex you with none of these well-meant but wearisome little falsehoods. We both of us know your state; we both know that your malady, though it may be alleviated, can never be cured; and that the fatal termination of it, though delayed by all the artifices of science, will certainly arrive at last. The cheerful courage which enables you to look this certainty in the face has also enabled you to extract from years of suffering that profoundest wisdom which (as one of the wisest of living Englishmen has told us) can be learned from suffering alone. The admirable elasticity of your intellectual and moral nature has enabled you, in the intervals of physical uneasiness or pain, to cast aside every morbid thought, to enter quite fully and heartily into the healthy life of others, and to enjoy the magnificent spectacle of the universe with contented submission to its laws—those beneficent yet relentless laws which to you bring debility and death. You have continued to write notwithstanding the progress of your malady; and yet, since it has so pitilessly held you, there is no other change in the spirit of your compositions than the deepening of a graver beauty, the addition of a sweeter seriousness. Not one sentence that you have written betrays either the injustice of the invalid, or his irritability. Your mind is not clouded by any mist from the fever marshes, but its sympathies are far more active than they were. Your pain has taught you a tender pity for all the pain that is outside of you, and a patient gentleness which was wanting to your nature in its days of barbarian health.

Surely it would be a lamentable error if mankind were to carry out the recommendation of certain ruthless philosophers, and reject the help and teaching of the diseased. Without undervaluing the robust performance of healthy natures, and without encouraging literature that is morbid, that is fevered, impatient, and perverse, we may still prize the noble teaching which is the testament of sufferers to the world. The diseased have a peculiar and mysterious experience; they have known the sensations of health, and then, in addition to this knowledge, they have gained another knowledge which enables them to think more accurately even of health itself. A life without suffering would be like a picture without shade. The pets of Nature, who do not know what suffering is, and cannot realize it, have always a certain rawness, like foolish landsmen who laugh at the terrors of the ocean, because they have neither experience enough to know what those terrors are, nor brains enough to imagine them.

You who are borne along, slowly but irresistibly, to that Niagara which plunges into the gulf of death,—you who, with perfect self-possession and heroic cheerfulness, are counting the last miles of the voyage,—find leisure to study and think as the boat glides onwards silently to the inevitable end. It is one of the happiest privileges of the high intellectual life that it can elevate us—at least in the intervals of relief from complete prostration or acute pain—to regions of disinterested thought, where all personal anxieties are forgotten. To feel that he is still able, even in days of physical weakness and decline, to add something to the world’s inheritance of knowledge, or to bequeath to it some new and noble thought in the pearl of complete expression, is a profound satisfaction to the active mind that is lodged in a perishing body. Many diseases fortunately permit this activity to the last; and I do not hesitate to affirm, that the work done in the time of physical decline has in not a few instances been the most perfect and the most permanently valuable. It is not accurately true that the mind and the body invariably fail together. Physicians who know how prevalent chronic diseases are, and how many eminent men are physically inconvenienced by them, know also that minds of great spiritual energy possess the wonderful faculty of indefinitely improving themselves whilst the body steadily deteriorates. Nor is there anything irrational in this persistent improvement of the mind, even to the extremest limit of material decay; for the mind of every intellectual human being is part and parcel of the great permanent mind of humanity; and even if its influence soon ceases to be traceable—if the spoken words are forgotten—if the written volume is not reprinted or even quoted, it has not worked in vain. The intellectual light of Europe in this century is not only due to great luminaries whom every one can name, but to millions of thoughtful persons, now utterly forgotten, who in their time loved the light, and guarded it, and increased it, and carried it into many lands, and bequeathed it as a sacred trust. He who labors only for his personal pleasure may well be discouraged by the shortness and uncertainty of life, and cease from his selfish toil on the first approaches of disease; but whoever has fully realized the grand continuity of intellectual tradition, and taken his own place in it between the future and the past, will work till he can work no more, and then gaze hopefully on the world’s great future, like Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, when his blind eyes beheld the future of zoology.

LETTER VII.

TO A YOUNG MAN OF BRILLIANT ABILITY, WHO HAD JUST TAKEN HIS DEGREE.

A domestic picture—Thoughts suggested by it—Importance of the senses in intellectual pursuits—Importance of hearing to Madame de Stael—Importance of seeing to Mr. Buskin—Mr. Prescott, the historian—How blindness retarded his work—Value of all the five senses—Self-government indispensable to their perfection—Great value of longevity to the intellectual life.

It is always a great pleasure to me to pass an evening at your father’s house; but on the last occasion that pleasure was very much enhanced because you were once more with us. I watched your mother’s eyes as she sat in her place in the drawing-room. They followed you almost without ceasing, and there was the sweetest, happiest expression on her dear face, that betrayed her tender maternal love for you and her legitimate maternal pride. Your father was equally happy in his own way; he was much more gay and talkative than I have seen him for two or three anxious years; he told amusing stories; he entered playfully into the jests of others; he had pleasant projects for the future, and spoke of them with facetious exaggeration. I sat quietly in my corner, slyly observing my old friends, and amusing myself by discovering (it did not need much perspicacity for that) the hidden sources of the happiness that was so clearly visible. They were gladdened by the first successes of your manhood; by the evidence of your strength; by the realization of hopes long cherished.

Watching this charming picture with a perfect sympathy, I began to have certain thoughts of my own which it is my present purpose to communicate to you without disguise. I thought, first, how agreeable it was to be the spectator of so pretty a picture; but then my eyes wandered to a painting that hung upon the walls, in which also there were a mother and her son, and this led me a long way. The painting was a hundred years old; but although the colors were not quite so fresh as when they left the palette of the artist, the beautiful youth who stood radiant like a young Apollo in the centre of the composition had not lost one of the great gifts with which his cunning human creator had endowed him. The fire of his eye had not been quenched by time; the bloom of his cheek still flushed with faint vermilion; his lip was full and imperious; his limbs athletic; his bearing haughty and dauntless. All life seemed spread before him like a beautiful rich estate of which every acre was his own. How easily will he conquer fame! how easily kindle passion. Who shall withstand this pink and perfection of aristocracy—this ideal of the age of fine gentlemen, with all the gifts of nature helped by all the inventions of art?

Then I thought farther: “That splendid young nobleman in the picture will look just as young as he does now when we shall be either superannuated or dead.” And I looked at you and your mother again and thought: “It is just five minutes since I saw these two living beings, and in this little space of time they have both of them aged a little, though no human observer has enough delicacy of perception to detect so inappreciable an alteration.” I went gradually on and on into the future, trying to imagine the changes which would come over yourself more especially (for it was you who were the centre of my reverie), till at last I imagined pretty accurately what you might be at sixty; but there it became necessary to stop, because it was too difficult to conceive the processes of decay.

After this, one thought grew upon me and became dominant. I thought, at present he has all the senses in their perfection, and they serve him without a hitch. He is an intelligence served by organs, and the organs are all doing their duty as faithfully as a postman who brings letters. When the postman becomes too infirm to do his work he will retire on his little pension, and another will take his place and bring the letters just as regularly; but when the human organs become infirm they cannot be taken out and replaced by new ones, so that we must content ourselves to the end, with their service, such as it may be. Then I reflected how useful the senses are to the high intellectual life, and how wise it is, even for intellectual purposes, to preserve them as long as possible in their perfection.

To be able to see and hear well—to feel healthy sensations—even to taste and smell properly, are most important qualifications for the pursuit of literature, and art, and science. If you read attentively the work of any truly illustrious poet, you will find that the whole of the imagery which gives power and splendor to his verse is derived from nature through one or other of these ordinary channels. Some philosophers have gone much farther than this, and have affirmed that the entire intellectual life is based ultimately upon remembered physical sensations; that we have no mental conception that is really independent of sensuous experience; and that the most abstract thought is only removed from sensation by successive processes of substitution, I have not space to enter into so great and mysterious a subject as this; but I desire to draw your attention to a truth very commonly overlooked by intellectual people, which is the enormous importance of the organs of sense in the highest intellectual pursuits. I will couple together two names which have owed their celebrity, one chiefly to the use of her ears, the other to the use of his eyes. Madame de Stael obtained her literary material almost exclusively by means of conversation. She directed, systematically, the talk of the learned and brilliant men amongst whom she lived to the subject which for the moment happened to occupy her thoughts. Her literary process (which is known to us in detail through the revelations of her friends) was purposely invented to catch everything that she heard, as a net catches fish in a river. First, she threw down on paper a very brief rough draft of the intended literary project. This she showed to few, but from it she made a second “state” (as an engraver would say), which she exhibited to some of her trusted friends, profiting by their hints and suggestions. Her secretary copied the corrected manuscript, incorporating the new matter, on paper with a very broad margin for farther additions. During all the time that it took to carry her work through these successive states, that ingenious woman made the best possible use of her ears, which were her natural providers. She made everybody talk who was likely to be of any use to her, and then immediately added what she had caught on the wide margin reserved for that purpose. She used her eyes so little that she might almost as well have been blind. We have it on her own authority, that were it not out of respect to custom, she would not open her window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whereas she would travel five hundred leagues to talk with a clever man whom she had never met.

Now since Madame de Stael’s genius fed itself exclusively through the faculty of hearing, what an enormous difference it would have made to her if she had been deaf! It is probable that the whole of her literary reputation was dependent on the condition of her ears. Even a very moderate degree of deafness (just enough to make listening irksome) might have kept her in perpetual obscurity.

The next instance I intend to give is that of a distinguished contemporary, Mr. Ruskin. His peculiar position in literature is due to his being able to see as cultivated artists see. Everything that is best and most original in his writings is invariably either an account of what he has seen in his own independent inimitable way, or else a criticism of the accurate or defective sight of others. His method of study, by drawing and taking written memoranda of what he has seen, is entirely different from Madame de Stael’s method, but refers always, as hers did, to the testimony of the predominant sense. Every one whose attention has been attracted to the subject is aware that, amongst people who are commonly supposed, to see equally well, and who are not suspected of any tendency to blindness, the degrees of perfection in this sense vary to infinity. Suppose that Mr. Ruskin (to our great misfortune) had been endowed with no better eyes than many persons who see fairly well in the ordinary sense, his enjoyment and use of sight would have been so much diminished that he would have had little enthusiasm about seeing, and yet that kind of enthusiasm was quite essential to his work.

The well-known instance of Mr. Prescott, the historian, is no doubt a striking proof what may be accomplished by a man of remarkable intellectual ability without the help of sight, or rather helped by the sight of others. We have also heard of a blind traveller, and even of a blind entomologist; but in all cases of this kind they are executive difficulties to be overcome, such that only the most resolute natures would ever dream of encountering them. When the materials for the “Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella” arrived in Prescott’s house from Europe, his remaining eye had just suffered from over-exertion to such a degree that he could not use it again for years. “I well remember,” he wrote in a letter to a friend, “the blank despair which I felt when my literary treasures arrived, and I saw the mine of wealth lying around me which I was forbidden to explore.” And although, by a most tedious process, which would have worn out the patience of any other author, Mr. Prescott did at last arrive at the conclusion of his work, it cost him ten years of labor—probably thrice as much time as would have been needed by an author of equal intellectual ability without any infirmity of sight.

Although, of the five senses which God has given us, sight and hearing are the most necessary to the intellectual life, it may easily be demonstrated that the lower ones are not without their intellectual uses. Perfect literature and art can only he produced by men who are perfect in all their natural faculties. The great creative intellects have never been ascetics; they have been rightly and healthily sensitive to every kind of pleasure. The taste of fruits and wines, the perfume of flowers are a part of the means by which the spirit of Nature influences our most secret thoughts, and conveys to us suggestions, or carries us into states of feeling which have an enormous effect upon our thinking, though the manner in which the effect is produced is one of the deepest mysteries of our mysterious being. When the Caliph Vathek added five wings to the palace of Alkoremmi, on the hill of Pied Horses, for the particular gratification of each of his five senses, he only did on a uselessly large scale what every properly-endowed human being does, when he can afford it, on a small one.

You will not suspect me of preaching unlimited indulgence. The very object of this letter is to recommend, for intellectual purposes, the careful preservation of the senses in the freshness of their perfection, and this is altogether incompatible with every species of excess. If you are to see clearly all your life, you must not sacrifice eyesight by over-straining it; and the same law of moderation is the condition of preserving every other faculty. I want you to know the exquisite taste of common dry bread; to enjoy the perfume of a larch wood at a distance; to feel delight when a sea-wave dashes over you. I want your eye to be so sensitive that it shall discern the faintest tones of a gray cloud, and yet so strong that it shall bear to gaze on a white one in the dazzling glory of sunshine. I would have your hearing sharp enough to detect the music of the spheres, if it were but audible, and yet your nervous system robust enough to endure the shock of the guns on an ironclad. To have and keep these powers we need a firmness of self-government that is rare.

Young men are careless of longevity; but how precious are added years to the fulness of the intellectual life! There are lives, such as that of Major Pendennis, which only diminish in value as they advance—when the man of fashion is no longer fashionable, and the sportsman can no longer stride over the ploughed fields. The old age of the Major Pendennises is assuredly not to be envied: but how rich is the age of the Hunboldts! I compare the life of the intellectual to a long wedge of gold—the thin end of it begins at birth, and the depth and value of it go on indefinitely increasing till at last comes Death (a personage for whom Nathaniel Hawthorne had a peculiar dislike, for his unmannerly habit of interruption), who stops the auriferous processes. Oh, the mystery of the nameless ones who have died when the wedge was thin and looked so poor and light! Oh, the happiness of the fortunate old men whose thoughts went deeper and deeper like a wall that runs out into the sea!

Note.—One of the most painful cases of interruption caused by death is that of Cuvier. His paralysis came upon him whilst he was still in full activity, and death prevented him from arranging a great accumulation of scientific material. He said to M. Pasquier, “I had great things still to do; all was ready in my head. After thirty years of labor and research, there remained but to write, and now the hands fail, and carry with them the head.” But the most lamentable instances of this kind of interruption are, from the nature of things, unknown to us. Even the friends of the deceased cannot estimate the extent of the loss, for a man’s immediate neighbors are generally the very last persons to become aware of the nature of his powers or the value of his acquirements.