t, would
have been most precious. The words of Macbeth to the physician often
occurred to my thoughts. But there was no one on whom I could build the
faintest hope 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 pai