pe of such assistance. My father, to whom it would have been natural
to me to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last
person to whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Everything
convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as I was
suffering from, and that even if he could be made to understand it, he
was not the physician who could heal it. My education, which was wholly
his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of
its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of
thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably
irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of _his_ remedies. Of
other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making
my condition intelligible. It was, however, abundantly intelligible to
myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.

My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral
feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the
results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take
pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another
sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those
things, from the effect of education or of experience. As a corollary
from this, I had always heard it maintained by my father, and was myself
convinced, that the object of education should be to form the strongest
possible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure
with all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all
things hurtful to it. This doctrine appeared inexpugnable; but it now
seemed to me, on retrospect, that my teachers had occupied themselves
but superficially with the means of forming and keeping up these
salutary associations. They seemed to have trusted altogether to the old
familiar instruments, praise and blame, reward and punishment. Now, I
did not doubt that by these means, begun early, and applied unremittingly,
intense associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain, might be
created, and might produce desires and aversions capable of lasting
undiminished to the end of life. But there must always be something
artificial and casual in associations thus produced. The pains and
pleasures thus forcibly associated with things, are not connected with
them by any natural tie; and it is therefore, I thought, essential to
the durability