Practical Essays | Page 6

continue for the time
in comparative abeyance. Now, the maintenance of a high strain of
elated feeling, unquestionably costs a great deal to the forces of the
system. All the facts confirm this high estimate. An unusually copious
supply of arterial blood to the brain is an indispensable requisite, even
although other organs should be partially starved, and consequently be
left in a weak condition, or else deteriorate before their time. To
support the excessive demand of power for one object, less must be
exacted from other functions. Hard bodily labour and severe mental
application sap the very foundations of buoyancy; they may not entail
much positive suffering, but they are scarcely compatible with
exuberant spirits. There may be exceptional individuals whose total of
power is a very large figure, who can bear more work, endure more
privation, and yet display more buoyancy, without shortened life, than

the average human being. Hardly any man can attain commanding
greatness without being constituted larger than his fellows in the sum
of human vitality. But until this is proved to be the fact in any given
instance, we are safe in presuming that extraordinary endowment in one
thing implies deficiency in other things. More especially must we
conclude, provisionally at least, that a buoyant, hopeful, elated
temperament lacks some other virtues, aptitudes, or powers, such as are
seen flourishing in the men whose temperament is sombre, inclining to
despondency. Most commonly the contradictory demand is reconciled
by the proverbial "short life and merry".
Adverting now to the object that Helps had so earnestly at
heart--namely, to rouse and rescue the English population from their
comparative dulness to a more lively and cheerful flow of existence--let
us reflect how, upon the foregoing principles, this is to be done. Not
certainly by an eloquent appeal to the nation to get up and be amused.
The process will turn out to be a more circuitous one.
The mental conformation of the English people, which we may admit
to be less lively and less easily amused than the temperament of
Irishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or even the German branch
of our own Teutonic race, is what it is from natural causes, whether
remote descent, or that coupled with the operation of climate and other
local peculiarities. How long would it take, and what would be the way
to establish in us a second nature on the point of cheerfulness?
Again, with the national temperament such as it is, there may be great
individual differences; and it may be possible by force of circumstances,
to improve the hilarity and the buoyancy of any given person. Many of
our countrymen are as joyous themselves, and as much the cause of joy
in others, as the most light-hearted Irishman, or the gayest Frenchman
or Italian. How shall we increase the number of such, so as to make
them the rule rather than the exception?
[SOLE MEANS OF ATTAINING CHEERFULLNESS.]
The only answer not at variance with the laws of the human
constitution is--Increase the supports and diminish the burdens of life.

For example, if by any means you can raise the standard of health and
longevity, you will at once effect a stride in the direction sought. But
what an undertaking is this! It is not merely setting up what we call
sanitary arrangements, to which, in our crowded populations, there
must soon be a limit reached (for how can you secure to the mass of
men even the one condition of sufficient breathing-space?), it is that
health cannot be attained, in any high general standard, without worldly
means far above the average at the disposal of the existing population;
while the most abundant resources are often neutralised by ineradicable
hereditary taint. To which it is to be added, that mankind can hardly as
yet be said to be in earnest in the matter of health.
Farther: it is especially necessary to cheerfulness, that a man should not
be overworked, as many of us are, whether from choice or from
necessity. Much, I believe, turns upon this circumstance. Severe toil
consumes the forces of the constitution, without leaving the remainder
requisite for hilarity of tone. The Irishman fed upon three meals of
potatoes a day, the lazy Highlander, the Lazaroni of Naples living upon
sixpence a week, are very poorly supported; but then their vitality is so
little drawn upon by work, that they may exceed in buoyancy of spirits
the well-fed but hard-worked labourer. We, the English people, would
not change places with them, notwithstanding: our ideal is industry
with abundance; but then our industry sobers our temperament, and
inclines us to the dulness that Helps regrets. Possibly, we may one day
hit a happier mean; but to the human mind extremes have generally
been found easiest.
Once more: the light-hearted