Part 3

—_Aeschylus, Agememnon, line 186._

Among the British philosophers who were physical sufferers we find the great Francis Bacon, who from childhood was always weak and delicate.

John Locke became world-famous by reason of his still celebrated “Essay concerning Human Understanding.” He was also of political importance, having occupied for years the position of confidential adviser to the great Earl of Shaftesbury. Professor Campbell says of him: “Locke is apt to be forgotten now, because in his own generation he so well discharged the intellectual mission of initiating criticism of human knowledge, and of diffusing the spirit of free enquiry and universal toleration which has since profoundly affected the civilized world. He has not bequeathed an imposing system, hardly even a striking discovery in metaphysics, but he is a signal example in the Anglo-Saxon world of the love of attainable truth for the sake of truth and goodness. If Locke made few discoveries, Socrates made none. But both are memorable in the record of human progress.”

Robert Boyle, the natural philosopher, was the seventh son and fourteenth child of the great Earl of Cork. His scientific work procured him extraordinary reputation among his contemporaries. It was he who “first enunciated the law that the volume of gas varies inversely as the pressure, which among English-speaking people is still called by his name.” Great as were his attainments they were almost over-shadowed by the saintliness of his character, the liveliness of his wit and the incomparable charm of his manner. Boyle was a man of the most feeble health. This is what Evelyn says of him: “The contexture of his body seemed to me so delicate that I have frequently compared him to Venice glass, ... [which] though wrought never so fine, being carefully set up, would outlast harder metals of daily use.”

Robert Hooke, the experimental philosopher, was both deformed and diseased. He was not a great man and his scientific achievements would have been “more striking if they had been less varied.” Nevertheless he was renowned in his day, and his contribution of real importance for, although “he perfected little he originated much.” I mention him, and shall mention several others, who have been forgotten by all but scholars, because I wish to show how large an army stands behind its illustrious chiefs. Besides, if we contemplate only the giant luminaries of the firmament of fame, we shall become discouraged. They paralyze us by the very intensity of the admiration they evoke. Lesser men, on the contrary, for the reason that they are nearer our own orbit, are more likely to stir us into emulation.

Herbert Spencer’s achievements are too well known to necessitate further comment. He was exceedingly delicate and at his best only able to work three hours a day.

Descartes, the foremost French philosopher, had a feeble and somewhat abnormal body. “Yet he considered it” (I am quoting Mr. Edmund Gosse) “well suited to his own purposes, and was convinced that the Cartesian philosophy would not have been improved, though the philosopher’s digestion might, by developing the thews of a plough-boy.”

Nicholas Malebranche, the great French Cartesian philosopher, was the tenth child of his parents. Although deformed and constitutionally feeble he was one of the most sought after men of his day. From all countries of the world, but more especially from England (be it said in her honour) scholars, writers and philosophers flocked to his door. The German princes voyaged to Paris expressly to see him. The philosopher Berkeley was probably the cause of his death by forcing himself on Malebranche when the latter had been ordered absolute quiet. His influence has been variously estimated. Spinoza is undoubtedly one of his disciples. Mons. Emile Faguet says of him: “Malebranche est un des plus beaux (metaphysiciens) que j’aie rencontrés. Si l’on veut ma pensée, je trouve Descartes plus grand savant et plus vaste ésprit; mais je trouve Malebranche plus grand philosophe, d’un degré au moins que Descartes lui-Même.” Speaking of his character he writes: “Il n’y eut jamais homme de plus d’ésprit, ni plus homme de bien, ni plus seduisant.”

Blaise Pascal, the great French religious philosopher, still holds a position of immense importance in the history of literature as well as philosophy. His “Provincial Letters” are the “first example of polite controversial irony since Lucian and they have continued to be the best example of it during more than two centuries in which style has been sedulously practised and in which they have furnished a model to generation after generation.” His “Pensées,” published after his death, is “still a favorite exploring ground ... to persons who take an interest in their problems.” In philosophy his position is this: “He seized firmly and fully the central idea of the difference between reason and religion, but unlike most men since his day who, not contented with a mere concordat, have let religion go and contented themselves with reason,” Pascal, though equally dissatisfied, “held fast to religion and continued to fight out the questions of difference with reason.” From the age of eighteen, Pascal never passed a single day without pain. Nevertheless, in the worst of his sufferings he was wont to say: “Do not pity me; sickness is the natural condition of Christians. In sickness we are as we ought always to be ... in the suffering of pains, in the privation of goods and of all the pleasures of the senses, exempt from all passions which work in us during the whole course of our life, without ambition, without avarice, in the continual expectation of death.”

Voltaire suffered frequent attacks of illness. It was said of him that “he was born dying.”

Comte, the French Positive philosopher, accomplished the bulk of his work after recovering from an attack of insanity during which he threw himself into the Seine. Perhaps it is too soon to judge of the ultimate value of his system of philosophy. It has had impassioned adherents as well as scornful critics. His main thesis seems to be “that the improvement of social conditions can only be effected by moral development and never by any political mechanism, or any violence in the way of an artificial redistribution of wealth.” In other words, he preached that a moral transformation must precede any real advance. Yet he was not a Christian. An enemy defined Comtism as “Catholicism without Christianity.”

Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss philosopher and critic, whose chief work, the “Journal Intime,” published after his death, obtained for him European reputation, was a valetudinarian. Amiel wrote but little, but all he accomplished has the quality of exquisite sensitiveness.

The great Kant was a wretched little creature barely five feet high with a concave chest and a deformed right shoulder; his constitution was of the frailest, though by taking extraordinary precautions he escaped serious illness.

VIII ASTRONOMERS AND MATHEMATICIANS

Johann Kepler, the great German astronomer, was a contemporary of Tycho Brahe and Galileo with both of whom he was in correspondence. Kepler’s contributions to science were of the utmost importance. It was he who established the two cardinal principles of modern astronomy—the laws of elliptical orbits and of equal areas. He also enunciated important truths relating to gravity. In spite of the backward condition of mechanical knowledge, he attempted to explain the planetary evolutions by a theory of vortices closely resembling that afterwards adopted by Descartes. He also prepared the way for the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus. His literary remains were purchased by Catherine the Second of Russia and were only published during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. It is impossible to consider without astonishment the colossal amount of work accomplished by Kepler, despite his great physical disabilities. When only four years old an attack of small-pox had left him with crippled hands and eyesight permanently impaired. His constitution, already enfeebled by premature birth, had to withstand successive shocks of illness.

Flamstead, the great British astronomer, was obliged to leave school in consequence of a rheumatic affection of the joints. It was to solace his enforced idleness that he took up the study of astronomy. The extent and quality of his performance is almost unbelievable when one considers his severe physical suffering.

Nicholas Saunderson lost his sight before he was twelve months old, yet he became professor of mathematics at Cambridge. He was an eminent authority in his day, an original and efficient teacher and the author of a book on algebra. His knowledge of optics was remarkable. “He had distinct ideas of perspective, of the projection of the sphere, and of the forms assumed by plane or solid figures.”

D’Alembert was not only a mathematician but also a philosopher of the highest order. He was made a member of the French Academy at the age of twenty-four. He was so frail that his life was continually despaired of and he remained a valetudinarian to the end.

IX STATESMEN AND POLITICIANS

We now come to the statesmen and politicians. Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, Secretary of State under Queen Elizabeth and Lord Treasurer under James I, was a statesman who all his life wielded immense power to the undoubted benefit of his country. Yet in person he was in strange contrast to his rivals at court, being deformed and sickly. Elizabeth styled him her pigmy; his enemies vilified him as “wry-neck,” “crooked-back” and “splay-foot.” In Bacon’s essay “Of Deformity” he paints his cousin to the life.

John Somers, Lord Keeper under William and Mary, “was in some respects” (I am quoting Macaulay) “the greatest man of his age. He was equally eminent as a jurist, as a politician and as a writer.... His humanity was the more remarkable because he received from nature a body such as is generally found united to a peevish and irritable mind. His life was one long malady; his nerves were weak; his complexion livid; his face prematurely wrinkled.”

William III, I have already mentioned, and now comes a name to conjure with, the great Lord Clive, founder of the British Empire. At eighteen he went out to India and shortly afterwards the effect of the climate on his health began to show itself in those fits of depression during one of which he ended his life. We see in his end the result of physical suffering, of chronic disease which opium failed to abate.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, one of the greatest statesmen England ever had, suffered from hereditary gout. The attacks continued from boyhood with increasing intensity to the close of his life. He was for two years mentally unbalanced, yet after that he returned to Parliament and directed for eight years all the power of his eloquence in favor of the American Colonies. Dr. Johnson said: “Walpole was a minister given by the King to the people, but Pitt was a minister given by the people to the King.”

Whatever we may think of Marat as a man, we cannot deny that he occupies a large place in the history of his time. Yet he was always delicate, so much so that after the completion of one of his books he lay in a stupor during thirteen days. In 1788 he was attacked by a terrible malady, from which he suffered during the whole of his revolutionary career.

Pitt, the younger, was a sickly child and although he grew into a healthy youth, his constitution was early broken by gout.

Owing to an accident in early childhood Talleyrand was lamed for life. At the time this seemed a great misfortune, for owing to his disability he forfeited his right of primogeniture and the profession of arms was closed to him. “No Frenchman of his age did so much to repair the ravages wrought by fanatics and autocrats.”

Henry Fawcett, the English politician and economist, was accidentally blinded at the age of twenty-five. The effect of his blindness was, as the event proved, the reverse of calamitous. By concentrating his energies, it brought his powers to earlier maturity than would otherwise have been possible, and “it had a mellowing influence on his character, which in youth had been rough and canny, and inclined to harshness.” Gladstone appointed him Postmaster-General in 1880 and not England alone, but the world as well, is deeply indebted to him for the reforms he inaugurated. He instituted the parcel post, postal orders, sixpenny telegrams, the banking of small savings by means of stamps and increased facilities for life insurance and annuities.

Kavanaugh was an Irish politician and member of the privy council of Ireland. He had only the rudiments of legs and arms but in spite of these physical defects he had a remarkable career. He learned to ride in the most fearless fashion, strapped to a special saddle and managing his horse with the stumps of his arms; he also fished, shot, drew and wrote, various mechanical devices supplementing his limited physical capacities.

X THE FREEDOM OF ILL-HEALTH

One of the greatest advantages of invalidism is that it frees us from petty obligations, unworthy pleasures, and meaningless conventions. The blessed freedom of ill-health is something few people appreciate; neither have they learned to make full use of its unearned leisure. Yet we are always clamoring for time; in America, apparently, it can be found only in the sick-room.

How many people do we not know, who are so busy making, what they are pleased to call a living, that they never find time to live! As a matter of fact, only the small minority of the inefficient are obliged to sacrifice all possibility of leisure to the exigency of obtaining a livelihood; the majority, which include men and women of every class and of every vocation—plumbers and captains of industry, stenographers as well as débutantes—are occupied in accumulating superfluities. By superfluities I do not mean everything which is not normally necessary for the existence of the body, but everything that is not essential to the perfect expansion of separate individuality.

The tendency of the day is to pour all mankind into the same mould; to fetter great and small to the one ideal of obvious achievement. We have degraded success by popularizing it; we are suppressing individuality instead of fostering it; and unless a change comes before long, and the individual is again able to liberate himself and to germinate, we shall perish as other civilizations have perished without leaving more than a scratch on the page of history. For nations are ultimately judged, not by their numbers, their riches or their power, but solely by the glory of the individuals they have produced. Think of the empires which have so completely vanished that but for a few broken stones we could not even guess the sites of their vast cities, and compare these nations either to the Jews or Greeks who during their flowering gave birth to men who have conferred immortality on their respective races.

Suffering quickens individuality by removing the pressure of circumstance, custom and occupation. Moreover, in the sick-room the intellect as well as the soul has not only the liberty but the time to mature.

It always surprises me to hear people complain of insomnia. Why should they consider it a misfortune to live precious hours instead of spending them in unconsciousness? By sleeping even as much as five hours instead of nine, we gain twenty-one hours a week. Think of it! Almost three working days!

The reason the average person is so exhausted by lying awake a few hours longer that he is accustomed to do, is because he turns and twists in his bed bemoaning his sad fate, until he has worked himself into a fever. Stay awake; enjoy the night,—it is quite as wonderful as the day. Taste the charm of the silence as it steals by degrees over your weary spirit. Be grateful for these hours; they are a gift from fate. Read, write, think, meditate, and when morning comes you will wake more refreshed after two hours’ sleep than you used to after nine. Napoleon and other great men never slept more.

XI ARTISTS

The great painters and sculptors seem to have been strangely healthy and normal. I say that they seem to have been so, because of the extreme difficulty of getting any accurate information on the subject. It sounds incredible, but I read a long life of Petrarch in which everything was mentioned but his health and only discovered quite accidentally that he had been an epileptic.

I am, therefore, convinced that there are many examples I might cite if I could only unearth the truth, yet even so, I have been able to ferret out four artists who were physically handicapped. Navarette, called the Spanish Titian and celebrated under the name of “El Mudo,” was dumb. They say that Guercino squinted so badly that he could focus only one eye.

Antoine Watteau suffered all his life from tuberculosis, which no doubt accounts for a certain “wistful gaiety” which characterizes his work. Watteau’s position in French art is of unique importance. He became the founder—as the culmination—of a new school which marked a revolt against the pompous classicism of the preceding period. “The vitality of his art was due to the rare combination of a poet’s imagination with a power of seizing reality. In his treatment of landscape background and the atmospheric conditions surrounding his figures we find the germ of Impressionism.” From the middle of the Eighteenth Century until about 1875 Watteau’s work fell into disrepute. It was chiefly owing to the efforts of the brothers de Goncourt that a reaction set in which has slowly carried Watteau to the summit of fame. He died in his thirty-seventh year.

Aubrey Beardsley flashed into fame with black and white drawings of extraordinary originality and beauty. His peculiar technique has been widely imitated but never approached. After twenty years his reputation has not yet reached its zenith. Aubrey Beardsley during the whole of his meteoric career suffered from consumption. He died at the age of twenty-six.

XII MUSICIANS

One would expect deafness to be an insuperable obstacle to a musician, yet Beethoven produced a large part of his work while handicapped by it, and some of his greatest compositions when his deafness had become complete. Mozart was delicate and subject to fevers; his last work and his best was written just before his death. It was said of Händel: “He was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music.” Schubert was barely five feet one and walked with a strange shuffling gait; his eyesight was so defective that he slept in his spectacles. He suffered from digestive trouble and died young. So also did Chopin, having been an invalid the greater part of his short life. Mendelssohn was very frail and delicate. Carl Maria von Weber was not only ravaged by disease but also deformed and lame. Paganini, the most extraordinary violinist the world has ever heard, suffered from phthisis of the larynx and was constantly ill.

The case of Robert Schumann is very curious. He was studying to be a pianist, when, in attempting to strengthen his fingers, he accidentally paralyzed his right hand. To this apparent misfortune we owe one of the greatest composers.

XIII THREE PHYSICIANS, A NATURALIST AND A CHEMIST

“Physician, heal thyself,” might have been said to Sir William Harvey, the famous discoverer of the circulation of the blood; and to Albert von Haller, the great Swiss doctor, who is considered the father of modern physiology.

To Louis Pasteur the world is indebted for the introductions of methods which have already worked wonders and bid fair to render possible the preventive treatment of all infectious disease. His most sensational discovery was the cure of hydrophobia, which he accomplished despite the fact that the special microbe causing this dread disease had not yet been isolated. Pasteur’s motto was, “Travaillez, travaillez toujours.” On his death-bed he turned to his devoted pupils and exclaimed: “Oú en êtes-vous? Que faîtes-vous?” and ended by repeating: “Il faut travailler.” He once said: “In the field of observation, chance only favors those who are prepared.” This great benefactor of the human race, though loaded with honors, remained to the last simple and affectionate as a child. Pasteur was subject to fits of apoplexy and it is curious that some of his most important discoveries were made immediately after such attacks.

Darwin, from the age of thirty, was a great sufferer. His daughter writes: “No one indeed, except my mother, knows the full amount of suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience.” Dr. Darwin, however, once said to a friend: “If I had not been so great an invalid, I should not have done nearly so much work as I have accomplished.”

Dr. Trudeau, who worked such miracles for the cure of consumption, was himself consumptive.

XIV INVENTORS

Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning jenny, though a man of great personal strength, suffered from wretched health.

James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was continually ailing until he approached old age. He had a prodigious memory and as an inventive genius he has never been surpassed.

Ill health and failing eyesight forced Joseph Niepce to retire from the army at the age of twenty-eight. It was during this opportune leisure that the idea of obtaining sun-pictures first suggested itself to him. In 1826 he learnt that Daguerre was working on the same lines and three years later they cooperated in order to perfect what was, however, Niepce’s discovery.

XV HISTORIANS AND MEN OF LETTERS

Aristides, surnamed Theodosius, was a Greek rhetorician and sophist. He was so celebrated that in many places statues were erected during his lifetime to commemorate his talents. He suffered for many years from a mysterious disease, which was, however, a positive benefit to his studies as they were prescribed as part of his cure.

Pliny, the Younger, was far from robust. He suffered from weakness of the eyes, throat and chest. He himself speaks of his delicate frame.

It has been said of Erasmus that he was the first man of letters since the fall of the Roman Empire. He occupied during his lifetime the position of supreme pontiff to an elect public which the ardors of the Renaissance had called into being. His admirers were to be found in every country and among all ranks. Presents were continually sent to him by great and small. We hear of a donation of two hundred florins from Pope Clement XII and of a contribution of comfits and sweetmeats from the nuns of Cologne. From England in particular, he obtained constant supplies of money. “I receive daily,” he writes, “letters from the most remote parts, from kings and princes, prelates and men of learning, and even from persons of whose existence I have never heard.”

His position as regards the Reformation has been for centuries a subject of passionate contention. It was said of him, “Erasmus laid an egg, and Luther hatched it.” This, however, is only partly true. As a matter of fact, Erasmus had but one passion, the passion for learning. When he found that Luther’s revolt aroused a new fanaticism—that of evangelism, he recoiled from the violence of the new preachers. “Is it for this,” he exclaimed, “that we have shaken off bishops and popes that we may come under the yoke of such madmen as Otto and Farel?”

Erasmus’ works are too numerous to enumerate separately. His greatest contribution is undoubtedly his Greek Testament.