palace." Yet this consolation is not therefore unkindly, but often is accompanied with sympathy and pity: "When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes. "2 When that which makes me bend makes the king bow; (3) The laws that we have just considered seem to be closely connected with two others, and often to be confused with them. The first is that (67) In proportion as the event which causes sorrow is both sudden and unexpected, it tends also to arouse surprise, and therefore to increase the intensity or strength of the sorrow; and the second that (68) In proportion as the event which causes sorrow either occurs gradually or is foreseen, the sorrow on that account tends to be felt with less intensity or strength. We are so well aware of these two laws that when any great and sudden disaster has to be communicated to another we break the news gradually to him, so that his mind may be prepared for it, and the shock be less violent. For even if he do not foresee it, yet by withdrawing his mind from amusements, or by preparing it for serious thought, the contrast between the emotion and the feeling that precedes it will be less marked, and therefore, in accordance with the preceding law, the sorrow will not be felt with the same intensity. But further by leading the mind gradually and partially to anticipate the event we have to announce its suddenness and unexpectedness is diminished, and with them the surprise; and with their diminution the immediate intensity of sorrow will be also diminished. For, as we shall notice in a later chapter, surprise tends to intensify every emotion with which it blends. Hence it is that these different causes of the intensity of sorrow being often implicated with one another, are often confused. For the more one state of mind con2 Shakespeare, 'King Lear,' a. iii. sc. vi. 1 'De Ira,' l. iii. xxv. trasts with another, the more it is apt to surprise us, and the less, the less. If we are already in a sorrowful state of mind, a new misfortune, however suddenly imparted, and however unexpected its particular form may be, will surprise us less because the preceding state of mind makes us not only feel sorrow, but also prone to anticipate it in the future; whereas if imparted to us in the same way in the midst of enjoyment, it surprises us the more because the mind is then without the thought of sorrow. For the same reason that we break bad news to people by degrees, do some natures try to familiarise their minds with the thought of the certain or probable evils in store for them. There are others who adopt the opposite course, and try not to think of such evils, either feeling confident that when the time comes they will have the courage for dealing with them, or because they prefer to live in a fool's paradise. It is of the latter that Seneca is thinking when he says: we never expect that any evil will befall ourselves before it comes; we will not be taught by seeing the misfortunes of others that they are the common inheritance of all men, but imagine that the path we have begun to tread is free from them . . . When, therefore, misfortunes befall us, we cannot help collapsing all the more completely, because we are struck as it were unawares: a blow which has long been foreseen falls much less heavily upon us." For "by looking forward to the coming of our sorrows we take the sting out of them when they come." "He who has not been puffed up by success," he thinks, "does not collapse after failure . . . . ; for even in the midst of prosperity he has experimented on his powers of enduring adversity." 3 Thus does surprise render it more difficult for us to control sorrow when it comes. But the observation of Adam Smith that we cannot realise a sudden misfortune at once though it holds of many, yet does not exempt them from the influence of surprise, which, when they have grasped the situation, still tends to intensify their sorrow. At first, the shock of surprise tends to confuse the mind so that we cannot understand what 2 lbid. 1 'Of Consolation,' ix. 3 Of Consolation: To Helvia, v. has taken place; and sometimes, when it is extreme, we do not recover from the effects. Upon this Montaigne remarks: "Voila pourquoi les Poetes feignent cette miserable mere Niobé, ayant perdu premierement sept fils, et puis de suite autant de filles, sur-chargée de pertes, avoir esté enfin transmuée en rocher, diriguisse malis: pour exprimer cette morne, muette et sourde stupidité, qui nous transsit, lorsque les accidens nous accablent, surpassans nostre portée. De vray, l'effort d'un desplaisir, pour estre extreme, doit estonner toute l'ame, et lui empescher la liberté de ses actions." 1 We have, therefore, to take into account a limiting condition of the law that surprise intensifies sorrow. The effect of surprise on the nervous system must not be so great as permanently to deprive us of the degree of intelligence required to estimate misfortunes. (4) Another of the familiar laws of the increase and diminution of sorrow is that (69) Sorrow tends to be diminished by the knowledge that another sorrows with us. And the complementary law is that (70) Sorrow tends to be increased by the knowledge that another rejoices at our suffering. "To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal, "A principal fruit of friendship," says Bacon, "is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart. . . ." "Friendship works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves." 8 It has been usual in modern times to refer this diminution of sorrow to the influence of sympathy. Sympathy in this sense means something more than the mere fact that the emotion of another corresponds with our own, though even the knowledge of this correspondence tends, as we have seen, to diminish sorrow. But the sympathy referred to means the disinterested use to which such sympathetic emotion is put, as shown by the readiness of the other to afford us help in misfortune. 1 'Essais,' 1. i. ch. ii. De la Tristesse.' 2 Shakespeare, 'Titus Andronicus,' A. iii. Sc. i. 1. 245. 3 Bacon, Essays, 'Friendship.' Now we should anticipate that this would tend to alleviate sorrow, because sorrow is the emotion of weakness, and its fundamental impulse is the appeal for help; and the knowledge that someone is willing to help us is a partial fulfilment of its appeal. On the other hand, the knowledge that, when we are so weak, our enemy is ready to take advantage of our weakness, will tend to increase sorrow by obstructing its impulse, and, when anger is aroused, to make it bitter. (5) There are two other complementary laws closely connected with those we have been considering. (71) Sorrow tends to become more painful through being kept secret; and (72) Sorrow tends to become less painful through being disclosed. "Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak, "Strangulat inclusus dolor." "Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd, "2 Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is." 3 "La douleur, qui se tait n'en est que plus funeste." 4 "He oft finds med'cine who his griefe imparts." 5 996 "So sorrow is cheered by being poured from one vessel to another." "And yet unless we mourned in Thine ears, we should have no hope left." 7 With regard to the second and complementary law there is a condition which plainly limits it. It does not ease sorrow to tell it to one who receives it with ridicule and contempt. The recipient must feel sympathetically the emotion, or be thought to feel it, and the universal appeal of sorrow for help must seem to be favourably received. Thus the law must be re-stated so as to take into account this condition: 1 Shakespeare, 'Macbeth,' A. iv. Sc. iii. 2 Ovid, ‘Tristium,' v. i. 63. 3 Shakespeare, 'Titus Andronicus,' A. ii. Sc. v. 4 Racine Androm, iii. 3. 5 Spenser, Faery Queen,' B. i., C. ii., St. xxxiv. 6 Hood, 'Poems,' 'Miss Killmansegg,' 'Her Misery.' 7 St. Augustine, 'Confessions,' b. iv. 10. (72A) Sorrow tends to become less painful by being disclosed, so far as it seems to evoke pity in the recipient, or at least sympathetic emotion. It seems to be also a law that (73) Sorrow, like other painful states, becomes less painful and less intense when its emotion is controlled, and more intense and painful when uncontrolled. But we must distinguish between that control of sorrow which consists in concealing it from others and the control of the emotion itself. The first, as we have seen, increases it under certain conditions: the second diminishes it. Yet sorrow is often said to be relieved by tears and sobs and sighs; because, sometimes at least, it works itself out in this way and comes to an end. There are those in whom it is intense but shallow, like the anger of the "irascible." In other cases loss of self-control has not this compensating advantage. "Le chagrin du peuple," says Dostoievsky, "est ordinairement taciturne et patient. Mais quelquefois il éclate en pleurs, en lamentations qui ne cessent plus, surtout chez les femmes. Ce chagrin-là n'est pas plus facile à supporter que le chagrin silencieux."1 "L'espèce de soulagement que procurent ces lamentations est factice et ne fait qu'aggrandir la blessure du cœur, comme on irrite une plaie en la touchant. C'est une douleur qui ne veut pas de consolations: elle se nourrit d'elle-même." 2 (6) There is another law frequently expressed in fables, that sorrow is increased when we recognise that our misfortunes are partly caused by our own folly, or even by something that belongs or, once belonged, to us. "An eagle that was watching upon a rock once for a hare, had the ill-hap to be struck with an arrow. This arrow, it seems, was feather'd from her own wing, which very consideration went nearer her heart, she said, than death itself."3 In "A Tree and a Wedge," and in "A Thrush taken with Birdlime," 5 Æsop expresses the same truth: "I am not half so much troubled, says the thrush, at the thought of dying, as at the fatality of 1 'Les Frères Karamazof.' 2 Op. cit. 6 3 Æsop's Fables,' xlviii. (Ed. Sir R. L'Estrange). 4 Ibid., xlvii. 5 Ibid., xlix. |