A devotion to the common pleasures of sense is better than a state of absolute indifference; for even if these give no kind of pleasure, whilst all higher pursuits are neglected, there is danger lest a man become of the same opinion as Dr. Darwin’s patient, “that all which life affords is a ride out in the morning, and a warm parlour and a pack of cards in the afternoon;” and, like him, finding these pleasures not inexhaustible, should shoot himself because he has nothing better to do! The miserable man should endeavour to make himself practically acquainted with the distresses of others. However desperate the circumstances of a person may be, he may still have it in his power to whisper a word of consolation to one whose situation may be more humiliating than his own. Human nature is accused of much more selfishness than it has any just claim to; a thousand kindly emotions break in upon and redeem our daily and interested life. “The poorest poor Long for a moment in a weary life When they can know and feel that they have been Themselves the fathers and the dealers out Of some small blessings; have been kind to such As needed kindness; for this single cause, That we have all one human heart.”[51] How few have anything like a proper conception of the power which the will can be made to exercise over the physical and mental ailments.[52] The stimuli which we all more or less have at command, if properly directed, will often subdue the early dawnings of disease, which, if permitted to take its own course, would have assumed a most formidable character. It is our duty to combat with the first menace of disordered feeling. Once the enemy is allowed to take up a favourable position, it will be fruitless to enter single-handed into the contest. “I will be good,” says the child, when he sees the rod ready to direct the will into the way of goodness; and “I will be cheerful,” ought the dull and dyspeptic to say, who observes a cloud of hypochondriacal fancies ready to burst upon his head. It may be said it is useless to struggle against the natural tendencies of the mind and body, or to declare war with habits which have become firmly rooted in the constitution. In reply to this we would say, let not the patient yield to the influence of those causes which have formed the habit; let him not hug to his bosom the viper which is preying upon his mind; let him not exclaim to gloom, “Henceforth be thou my god.” The hypochondriac may say, when advised to rouse himself from his state of mental despondency, and to exhibit the attributes of a free agent— “Go, you may call it madness, folly; You shall not chase my gloom away: There’s such a charm in melancholy, I would not, if I could, be gay.” But it is exercising a _conscientious duty_ to resist the encroachments of those ideal pleasures which sap the foundation of our moral constitution.