s and inert. They lie on the spirit with
a leaden dullness, which takes from us all possibility of energy and
motion. Who does not know the instinct, when one is crushed and
tortured by depression, to escape into solitude and silence, and to let
the waves and streams flow over one. That is a universal instinct, and
it is not wholly to be disregarded; it shows that to torture oneself
into rational activity is of little use, or worse than useless.

When I was myself a sufferer from long nervous depression, and had to
face a social gathering, I used out of very shame, and partly I think
out of a sense of courtesy due to others, to galvanise myself into a
sort of horrid merriment. The dark tide flowed on beneath in its sore
and aching channels. It was common enough then for some sympathetic
friend to say, "You seemed better to-night--you were quite yourself;
that is what you want; if you would only make the effort and go out
more into society, you would soon forget your troubles." There is
something in it, because the sick mind must be persuaded if possible
not to grave its dolorous course too indelibly in the temperament; but
no one else could see the acute and intolerable reaction which used to
follow such a strain, or how, the excitement over, the suffering
resumed its sway over the exhausted self with an insupportable agony. I
am sure that in my long affliction I never suffered more than after
occasions when I was betrayed by excitement into argument or lively
talk, and the worst spasms of melancholy that I ever endured were the
direct and immediate results of such efforts.

The counteracting force in fact must be an emotional and instinctive
one, not a rational and deliberate one; and this must be our next
endeavour, to see in what direction the counterpoise must lie.

In depression then, and when causeless fears assail us, we must try to
put the mind in easier postures, to avoid excess and strain, to live
more in company, to do something different. Human beings are happiest
in monotony and settled ways of life; but these also develop their own
poisons, like sameness of diet, however wholesome it may be. It is, I
believe, an established fact that most people cannot eat a pigeon a day
for fourteen days in succession; a pigeon is not unwholesome, but the
digestion cannot stand iteration. There is an old and homely story of a
man who went to a great doctor suffering from dyspepsia. The doctor
asked him what he ate, and