sided view of things; he is
undergoing the misery of it acutely for the time, but by-and-by he will
see things from quite a different point. A very eminent man (there can
be no harm in referring to a case which he himself made so public)
wrote and published something about his _miserable home_. He was quite
sincere, I do not doubt. He thought so at the time. He _was_ miserable
just then; and so, looking back on past years, he could see nothing but
misery. But the case was not really so, one could feel sure. There
had been a vast deal of enjoyment about his home and his lot; it was
forgotten then. A man in very low spirits, reading over his diary,
somehow lights upon and dwells upon all the sad and wounding things; he
involuntarily skips the rest, or reads them with but faint perception
of their meaning. In reading the very Bible, he does the like thing.
He chances upon that which is in unison with his present mood. I think
there is no respect in which this great law of the association of ideas
holds more strictly true than in the power of a present state of mind,
or a present state of outward circumstances, to bring up vividly before
us all such states in our past history. We are depressed, we are
worried; and when we look back, all our departed days of worry and
depression appear to start up and press themselves upon our view to the
exclusion of anything else; so that we are ready to think that we have
never been otherwise than depressed and worried all our life. But when
more cheerful times come, they suggest only such times of cheerfulness,
and no effort will bring back the depression vividly as when we felt
it. It is not selfishness or heartlessness, it is the result of an
inevitable law of mind, that people in happy circumstances should
resolutely believe that it is a happy world after all; for, looking
back, and looking around, the mind refuses to take distinct note of
anything that is not somewhat akin to its present state. And so, if any
ordinary man, who is not a distempered genius or a great fool, tells you
that he is always miserable, don't believe him. He feels so now, but he
does not always feel so. There are periods of brightening in the darkest
lot. Very, very few live in unvarying gloom. Not but that there is
something very pitiful (by which I mean deserving of pity) in what
may be termed the Micawber style of mind,--in the stage of hysteric
oscillations between joy and misery. Thoughtless readers of "Davi