one has experienced at times that extraordinary rebellion, so to
speak, of cheerfulness against an attack of physical pain. There have
been days when I have suffered from some small but acutely disagreeable
ailment, and yet found my cheerfulness not only not dimmed but
apparently enhanced by the physical suffering. Of course there are
maladies even of a serious kind of which one of the symptoms is a great
mental depression, but there are other maladies which seem actually to
produce an instinctive hopefulness.

But the question is whether it is possible, by sustained effort, to
behave independently of one's mood, and what motive is strong enough
to make one detach oneself resolutely from discomforts and woes. Good
manners provide perhaps the most practical assistance. The people who
are brought up with a tradition of highbred courtesy, and who learn
almost instinctively to repress their own individuality, can generally
triumph over their moods. Perhaps in their expansive moments they lose
a little spontaneity in the process; they are cheerful rather than
buoyant, gentle rather than pungent. But the result is that when the
mood shifts into depression, they are still imperturbably courteous and
considerate. A near relation of a great public man, who suffered greatly
from mental depression, has told me that some of the most painful
minutes he has ever been witness of were, when the great man, after
behaving on some occasion of social festivity with an admirable and
sustained gaiety, fell for a moment into irreclaimable and hopeless
gloom and fatigue, and then again, by a resolute effort, became
strenuously considerate and patient in the privacy of the family circle.

Some people achieve the same mastery over mood by an intensity of
religious conviction. But the worst of that particular triumph is that
an attitude of chastened religious patience is, not unusually, a rather
depressing thing. It is so restrained, so pious, that it tends to
deprive life of natural and unaffected joy. If it is patient and
submissive in affliction, it is also tame and mild in cheerful
surroundings. It issues too frequently in a kind of holy tolerance
of youthful ebullience and vivid emotions. It results in the kind of
character that is known as saintly, and is generally accompanied by
a strong deficiency in the matter of humour. Life is regarded as too
serious a business to be played with, and the delight in trifles,
which is one of the surest