SOME ASPECTS OF ILLNESS. "E VERY man is a rascal when
he is sick," said Dr. Johnson. If it is true, the high death-rate and prevailing illness must have marked a very high tide of rascality in England during the last few weeks. The death- rate in London has leaped up some fourteen per thousand, while in the twin naval ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth the death record has been over forty-nine per thousand. The chief cause of this state of things is our now pa;nftlfly
familiar visitor, which some foolish person christened "influenza," but which is really a variety of malarial fever. There mast be few persons now in England who have not had some experience of this terrible complaint, whose pre- valence and devastating power must be counted among the serious social factors of the time. For, while many forms of illness come and go, and the patient not only recovers, but may even be the better for his sufferings, the " grippe " seems to accomplish nothing but pure mischief. Few of its victims are ever quite the same afterwards, and as for most of them, their system is weakened and demoralised for years perhaps for life. If, too, there is anything in Dr. Johnson's theory as to the connection of illness with rube ,lity, the prevailing epidemic suggests it more than most ailments. For, in addition to the bodily weakness resulting, all victims know only too well the even more distracting mental depression which follows. The world seems wrapped in gloom, every little difficulty in life looms up before the mind in gigantic proportions, the slightest task appears a burden too heavy to be borne. The vitality of the entire organism is so thceaughly depressed that the mind is conscious of the fact that the bodily organs are no longer its efficient ministers, and it is apt to take counsel of despair. Now, nothing is worse for the moral nature than that, for it is the crime against the Holy Spirit, the fatal unbelief against the restorative forces of the universe. It is, of course, quite possible that the bodily powers may be gone, that the earthly tabernacle may be about to be dissolved, that the organs are no longer of use for the mind to function upon. If that be so, we must meet the final fact in Nature with all the courage and faith we can summon. But we are not, of course, thinking of those about to die, bat of the victim who knows he shall lire on, and who yet feels that life will not be worth living. He is the person who is in danger of moral degeneration, and to whom Dr. Johnson's harsh words come as a possibly needed and wholesome moral tonic.
For the sick man loses much of that which supports moral life. He loses courage; be is frightened by the shadows round about him, he takes alarm at the rude health of the world in general, and almost fears the bracing contact of those who are well. He loses faith, for he finds, or seems to find, here and there, the supports of life on which he has so long leaned, giving way, and he feels an alai ss of uncertainty beneath his feet. He loses that blissful insouciance which is one of the greatest blessings of health, and which does so much to keep an erring world alive. It is so good and right to be able to forget a great deal in life; above all, to forget oneself. But the mind of the invalid is self-centred, his intense self-consciousness is as great a disease as his bodily infirmities; his entire organism becomes a plexus of painful sensations,— those wakeful nights in which the ghastly failures of life are all enacted over again; those monotonous days when, left alone to oneself, the black shadows glide between one and the sun. This introspection works a deadly effect on the charac- ter, for it aims at the very springs of life. The invalid becomes selfish ; everything must for the time make way for him, every person must be converted into his agent. The kindnesses done by others are apt to be taken as matters of
course, and often wonder is expressed that more was not done. Again, it is oneself that is at the centre of things, a poor tortured Prometheus who deserved a better fate, and a whole planetary system of men and women circling round him, —a system whose entire purpose is to shield that bedside, and to furnish forth the creature comforts. The sick man suffers also, and suffers heavily, from the suspension of the normal relations between himself and his fellow-men. He is not so much a man among men as a special object of interest, like a new-born infant. He does not see other people on the usual terms; he feels he has a right to exact, under these circum- stances, from them what he would not attempt to claim when well, and he knows that what he exacts will be conceded because he is weak, not necessarily because he is respected or loved. "To be weak is to be miserable," and to be miserable is to be more or less bad. This, we think, is the general moral diagnosis underlying Johnson's bold assertion, round and direct as a cannon-ball, that every man is a rascal when he is sick.
But these sharp, dogmatic sayings are, after all, but half- suths. We know no more of the origin of disease than we do of sin, but we cannot think either purposeless. Indeed, there is good scientific ground for holding that disease is an integral and inevitable factor in life ; while it is certain that many diseases which seem when they come dire misfortunes
really rid the system of some fatal tendency and prepare the way for health. We do not say that all diseases have that useful function to perform ; for we have already admitted that, from our finite point of view, we can see only mischief in this mysterious and persistent epidemic of influenza. Many diseases there are which seem to have existed to urge on mankind discoveries of a remedial character, and so disease has greatly enlarged the knowledge and raised the powers of mankind. However, we are considering the subject now from the individual rather than from the universal point of view. Is there anything to be said for disease from the moral standpoint of the individual ? Is it good, as the Psalmist said, to have been afflicted? How should we appreeiate, were it a possibility, a world where every one was entirely healthy, where every muscle, every nerve, every organ, was in completest vigour, where no ache nor pain ever troubled a single human being until death came naturally at the end of a very long life ? Such a prospect seems at first to one whose life has been prostrated by suffer- ing quite enchanting; it seems like the lost Paradise come back, or a foretaste of the Happy Isles beyond the golden and crimson clouds of sunset. But would it mean that in reality ? Would not the world of absolute health be for men as they are as unsatisfactory as the ideal of " Tithonns," the ideal of earthly immortality ? Apart from the fact that all motive into further deep research into the laws of physical life would have disappeared, think of the effect on character. It seems to us that the race would become terribly hardened. That cold selfishness which one often observes in a very handsome and brilliant man or woman, self-satisfied, self- secure, as little satisfies the soul as the regular features fail to satisfy the msthetic sense. However we may philosophise about it, bodily perfection has not generally gone with the noblest spiriwal or intellectual endowment. Indeed, Lombroso, loving his paradox, has claimed disease and genius as almost inseparable. Our own feeling may be thus summed up : In the first place, illness may be a moral educational agency ; in the second place, the race as a whole has not yet earned the moral right of immunity from disease. If the sick-bed tarns many men into rascals, it has also turned some into saints. It works, as we have said, lack of courage, of faith, bat it also produces the truest of Christian virtues, humility and resignation. The pride of the strong is brought down, the mighty of this world become as little children. The self-revelation of character has often been made by illness when all else had failed to draw forth those elusive but celestial gleams. The young life freely surrendered as a nurse or watcher to the infirm shines with a tender beauty which surpasses mere physical loveliness; and the mother bending over her sick child gives us a nearer suggestion as to the eternal love which, as poets have said, brought this universe into being, than aught else we know. But, as we have already suggested, the world has not yet earned the right to be well. We must not be giants until we have ceased to use our strength as giants; it is not well for us to be perfectly strong until we are also perfectly tender towards one another. If the boy, with his absence of keen feeling and sympathetic imagination, were endowed with the physical prowess of the full-grown man, the result would not be more unfortunate than would a world of Apollos and Amazons with the half-developed moral natures which even the best of us only possess. We are being educated by our diseases as by our sins. Whether we shall ever eliminate either in this world we do not know; bat Shelley's lovely vision of "King- less continents sinless as Eden" does not seem more, but less, substantial to thoughtful men as they feel their way among the thorns and rocks of this painful world. The sole anchor of hope is to feel the world as a real education to the human spirit, and part of that education is surely the mystery of disease.
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