IT

XXXIII.

A PLEA FOR THE WEAKLY.

ROMANS XV. I; I THESSALONIANS V. 14.

T is, upon apostolic authority, the duty of the strong to bear the infirmities of the weak. And in another epistle, the brethren are exhorted to "comfort the feeble-minded" and to "support the weak." Whatever the special drift of either passage may have been, there is obviously in the general spirit of both of them a plea for the weakly. And we may be allowed to take the spirit of them as opposed to what once threatened to become the predominant tone of, socalled, Muscular Christianity,—in that phase of it, at least, which developed muscle at the expense of Christianity, and so may be said to have made more of the gift than of the altar which sanctifieth the gift-to have made more of the gold than of the temple which sanctifieth the gold. In pride of muscle there were certain Christians who seemed to wax so strong, that they could not bear, could not put up with, the infirmities of the weak. And instead of supporting the weak, they seemed inclined to suppress them. Instead of comforting the feeble, they seemed disposed to make away with them altogether.

Heathen philosophy, even Plato's own, had taken up this strain long before. It was systematically hard upon the weakly. It anticipated modern theories and practice in such matters as the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, and happy despatch. In the exercise of the art of medicine, for instance, what was Plato's teaching? It might serve to cure the occasional distempers of men whose constitutions are good; but as to those who have bad constitutions, let them die; and the sooner the better: such men are unfit for war, for magistracy, for the management of their domestic affairs, for severe study and speculation; and the best thing that can happen to such wretches is to have done with life at once. Contrasting Bacon's view of the matter with Plato's,

Lord Macaulay observed, that the humane spirit of the English school of wisdom altogether rejected the notion that a valetudinarian who took great pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished his boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales, should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the Timæus without a headache. And as Plato had cited the religious legends of Greece to justify his contempt for the more recondite parts of the art of healing, Bacon vindicated the dignity of that art by appealing to the example of Christ, and reminded men that the great Physician of the soul did not disdain to be also the Physician of the body. Hawthorne somewhere asserts that most men-nor would he always claim to be one of the exceptions-have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely hostile feeling, towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity of any kind, causes to falter and faint, amid the rude jostle of our selfish existence. The education of Christianity, he owned, the sympathy of a like experience, and the example of women, may soften, and possibly subvert, this ugly characteristic of the less gentle sex; but it is originally there, and has its analogy in the practice of our brute brethren, who hunt the sick or disabled member of the herd from among them, as an enemy. Mort aux faibles! "Si quelque volatile est endolori parmi ceux d'une basse-cour, les autres le poursuivent à coup de bec, le plument et l'assassinent." Faithful to which code of action, the world at large, says Balzac, in his Etudes Philosophiques, is lavish of

hard words and harsh conduct to the wretched who dare come to spoil the gaiety of its fêtes and to cast a gloom over its pleasures: whoever is a sufferer in mind or body, or is destitute of money and of power, is to it a pariah. "Ainsi le monde honore-t-il le malheur: il le tue ou le chasse, l'avilit ou le châtie." Is there not Spartan precedent for such sharp practice? The weakly or deformed child of a Spartan was thrown by order into the cavern called apothetæ,—in the belief that its life could be of no advantage either to itself

or to the State.

The worst of charity is, complains Emerson,

that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.

"History can tell of early ages dim,

When man's chief glory was in strength of limb;
Then the best patriot gave the hardest knocks,

The height of virtue was to fell an ox :
Ill fared the babe of questionable mould,
Whom its stern father happen'd to behold;
In vain the mother with her ample vest
Hid the poor nursling on her throbbing breast;
No tears could save him from the kitten's fate,
To live an insult to the warlike state."

In the great school of the world it is as in those others of which
Cowper wrote in his Tirocinium:

"The rude will scuffle through with ease enough,

Great schools suit best the sturdy and the rough.'

A disposition to despise weakness, observed the late Mr. Fonblanque, seems to be a law of nature, which humanity prevails against with effort, by urging the sympathies, and stimulating them by the imagination. Poor Boswell again and again makes piteous record of Johnson's unimaginative contempt for the sufferings of frailer constitutions; and he philosophizes on the fact that, in full health, men can scarcely believe their ailing neighbours suffer much, "so faint is the image of pain upon our imagination," and so difficult is it to make allowance for sensations in others which we ourselves have not at the time. Thus, in May 1763, when Boswell shivered in the night air on the Thames as they returned together from Greenwich, "Johnson, whose robust frame was not in the least affected by the cold, scolded me, as if my shivering had been a paltry effeminacy, saying, 'Why do you shiver?'"+

"Rassemblez-vous des enfants dans un collége? Cette image en raccourci de la société, mais image d'autant plus vraie qu'elle est plus naïve et plus franche, vous offre toujours de pauvres ilotes, créatures de souffrance et de douleur, incessamment placées entre le mépris et la pitié : l'Évangile leur promet le ciel."—Le Peau de Chagrin, § iii.

† When Perthes was engaged at Böhme's book-warehouse in Leipzig, the first winter left his feet frost-bitten. Böhme himself had never been ill

"At your age, sir, I had no headache,” snapped the Doctor at Sir William Scott once, when the future Lord Stowell ventured to complain of one.

With equal point and tenderness Madame de Sévigné writes, "Il faut aimer ses amis avec leurs défauts; c'en est un grand que d'être malade." When poor Fanny Burney fell ill at Court, and got no sympathy on that score, but sour looks rather, and chilly words, she wrote in her Diary: "Illness here, till of late, has been so unknown, that it is commonly supposed it must be wilful, and therefore meets little notice, till accompanied by danger, or incapacity of duty. This is by no means from hardness of heart-far otherwise; . . . but it is prejudice and want of personal experience." It is when the nerves are somewhat weakened that the senses of sympathy become more keen; for, as a distinguished essayist on the subject of illhealth remarks, that impetuous and reckless buoyancy of spirit which mostly accompanies a hardy and iron frame, is not made to enter into the infirmities of others. How can it sympathize with what it has never known? he asks. We seldom find men of great animal health and power possessed of much delicacy of mind; their humanity and kindness proceed from an overflow of spirits their more genial virtues are often but skin-deep, and the result of good-humour. Mrs. Gore's Hardynge was so happy in himself, that he was not to be tamed into serenity: the stirring, prosperous activity of the world he lived in seemed to allow no leisure for people to fall sick, and die, and be buried. Time enough when they grew old and gray and useless. For shattered nerves, these boisterous demonstrations of his were sadly too much. "Indisposition he could not compre

in his life, and scorned the indulgence of a stove, for he could keep himself comfortably warm by dint of stamping his feet and rubbing his hands. He saw young Frederick's distress, but took no notice of it till the lad could no longer stand upon his feet, and a surgeon had to be called in, who at once declared that the lapse of another day would have meant amputation. Now Böhme, for his part, had no notion of such weakling ways, and small patience with them. But,

"When men in health against physicians rail,

They should consider that their nerves may fail."

hend." Lord Beaconsfield tells us of Count Mirabel; "he had never been ill in his life, even for five minutes." Squire Western's notion of helping on a sick friend was by bouncing into his room with a view-halloo, and boisterously greeting him in stentorian tones,* whether he found him asleep or awake. Like one of Richardson's characters, "Tis a shocking creature, and enjoys too strong health to know how to pity the sick.” There is a stalwart country rector of Anne Brontè's painting, who, being a great despiser of tea and such slops, and a lover of malt liquors, bacon and eggs, ham, hung beef, and other strong meats, which agreed well enough with his digestive organs, maintained them to be good and wholesome for everybody without exception, and confidently recommended them to the most delicate convalescents or dyspeptics, who, if they failed to derive the promised benefit from his prescriptions, were told it was because they had not persevered, and if they complained of inconvenient results from the experiment, were assured it was all fancy. Even thus did Cato the elder write an essay on medical treatment for the use of his family: his own iron constitution bade defiance alike to physician and quack; but, as Plutarch drily remarks, both Cato's wife and their only son died at an untimely age. Stoical and muscular Christian as Samuel Johnson was, and, like Cato Censor, impatient of weakly folk and their ways, he was not, like Cato, proof against dumps. Macaulay writes of him, "Though his own health was not good, he detested and despised valetudinarians." He lacked the imagination that can make allowances. Miss Yonge's Theodora, in Heartsease, is an almost "awful example " of such an embodiment in the feminine

* A critical dissertator on Voices refers to certain men who do a good deal by a hearty, jovial, fox-hunting kind of voice, eloquent of a large volume of vitality and physical health; and declares this to be a good property for a medical man, as it gives the sick a certain fillip, and reminds them pleasantly of health and vigour-provided it is not overpowering. But it is agreed that a voice of this kind has a tendency to become insolent in its assertion of vigour, swaggering and boisterous; and then it is too much for invalided nerves, just as mountain winds or sea breezes would be too much.