Part 4

Erasmus spent the greater part of his life in agony. For twenty years he was unable to sit down either to read, write or even to take his meals. He could eat but little and only of the most delicate meats. He could neither eat nor bear the smell of fish. “My heart,” he said, “is Catholic, but my stomach is Lutheran.” Nevertheless, his various biographers exclaim at the amount of work he accomplished. One of them writes, “Through the winter of 1514–1515 Erasmus worked with the strength of ten. In Venice ... he did the work of two men.”

Montaigne was never strong but, after a few years at the court of Paris, his health gave way completely and he retired to his castle, resolved to devote the rest of his life to study and contemplation. We undoubtedly owe his immortal essays to his invalidism.

The same is true of Brantôme. He was a soldier until a fall from his horse compelled him to retire into private life. This fortunate accident is directly responsible for his “Memoirs,” which are not only delightful reading but of the greatest historical value.

Fénelon, the famous tutor to the duke of Burgundy, had an enormous influence, not only on his own but on the succeeding generations. His “Treatise on the Education of Girls” guided French opinion on the subject for almost two centuries. This book brought him literary glory together with the position of tutor to the grandson and heir of Louis XIV. During the eight years at court he published the “Fables,” the “Dialogues of the Dead” and finally “Télemaque.” These books were intended primarily for the instruction of his pupils; they became, however, universally popular. Fénelon was banished from Paris as a result of a doctrinal difference with Bossuet. Pope Innocent XIII, while upholding the latter, gave this verdict: “Fénelon errs by loving God too much and Bossuet by loving his neighbor too little.” Excessively delicate from childhood, Fénelon’s health grew more and more feeble. While Archbishop of Cambrai, to which city he had retired after his disgrace, we read that he was forced to make his bed his retreat from whence to say his offices and administer his diocese.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, French “philosopher,” occupied during three years of his youth the position of footman in various houses. From his own account, he made an uncommonly bad one, impertinent, mean, untruthful and dishonest! Rousseau had a most despicable character, and although he never lacked patrons, quarrelled with each in turn. Rousseau leapt into fame in 1749, when he was thirty-seven years old, by reason of an article extolling the savage over the civilized state. His two most celebrated books are “Le Contrat Social” and “La nouvelle Heloise.” Only the indulgence of his contemporaries would have granted him the title of “philosopher,” but as a “man of letters” he occupies “a place unrivalled in literary history.” His fame, great as it was during his lifetime, reached to vertiginous heights after his death. Rousseau’s health was execrable and like Voltaire it was said of him that he “was born dying.”

It might have been better for Lord Chesterfield if he had not dabbled with medicine; he would perhaps not have “been so often his own patient, or entrusted his health to the care of empirics.” Even before reaching middle age, his debilitated constitution had given him repeated warning of what he had to expect. When he wrote the renowned letters to his son, he was a deaf, solitary, sick man, who had to resort almost habitually to drugs to help him to endure his sufferings.

Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson” is so universally familiar that I need only remind you that Dr. Johnson was scrofulous and half-blind.

Horace Walpole occupied a curiously large place in the literary as well as the social life of the eighteenth century. Despite his prolific pen the only one of his books which achieved popular success during his lifetime was “The Castle of Otranto.” It was translated into both French and Italian and has been frequently republished. It is a strange book, and I doubt if it will ever again be read with pleasure. Whatever significance it has for us lies in the fact that it forms the starting point of the great romantic revival. Walpole’s diary, published after his death, is of the utmost historical importance. It is, however, chiefly by his letters that he will be remembered, for he is undoubtedly the greatest of the English letter-writers. Walpole suffered all his life from frequent attacks of gout which at times completely crippled him.

Winckelmann, the famous German archæologist, was the son of a poor shoemaker. He became librarian to Cardinal Passioni in 1754, and while occupying this position he gave to the world a succession of admirable books. It was from him that scholars first obtained accurate information as to the treasures excavated at Pompeii. His greatest contribution to European literature is the “History of Ancient Art.” It is a delightful book, written with a free and impassioned pen and marked an epoch by “indicating the spirit in which the study of Greek art should be approached and the methods by which investigators might hope to obtain solid results.” He was a great friend of Goethe and many, if not all, of their letters have been preserved. Winckelmann was so delicate that he could never partake of anything but a little bread and wine. His gentle, blameless life was cut short by the hand of a murderer, who killed him for the sake of a few ancient coins, the gift of the Empress Maria Theresa.

Herder, one of the most influential writers Germany has produced, was exceedingly delicate; so also was our own Washington Irving, which perhaps accounts for the extreme sensitiveness of the latter’s impressions.

Thierry, the eminent French historian, ransacked the archives with such unremitting zeal that on the eve of beginning to write his history, he became totally blind. “But he never lost heart and in making friends with darkness,” as he puts it, he returned to his work, and by means of dictation was able to finish the masterpiece that was to prove the foundation of a new school of history!... Thierry said: “If, as I believe, the progress of science is to be numbered among the glories of our land, I should again take the road that brought me to this pass. Blind and suffering, without any respite or hope of recovery, I can still witness to one point, that, coming from me, admits of no doubt; that there is something in the world of higher value than material enjoyment, nay, even than bodily health, and that is—devotion to science.” Thus was the road discovered which was to be followed by Prescott, Sismondi, Macaulay and many others, including Professor Ranke.

Charles Lamb had a mental breakdown at the age of nineteen, and Mary Lamb suffered from frequent attacks of insanity.

Sir W. F. P. Napier’s health was permanently injured during a campaign which carried hostilities into Spain. This obliged him to retire from the army at the age of thirty-four. This unwelcome leisure was an inestimable benefit not only to himself but to the world, as it permitted him to become the greatest military historian that England has ever produced.

Carlyle became a chronic invalid in his twenty-fourth year. The precise nature of his ailment it is impossible to ascertain, but he declared that a rat was continually gnawing at the pit of his stomach.

A most remarkable example of achievement in the face of terrible physical disabilities is presented by the historian, Francis Parkman. He was unable to open his eyes except in the dark, so that all his information had to be read aloud to him while he made notes with his eyes shut, by means of a machine he had invented as a guide to his hand. For years he suffered so intensely that half an hour’s application exhausted him. The superb works he left behind, composed despite such incredible physical obstacles, have been a splendid legacy to his country.

Prescott, the eminent American historian, suffered, while at Harvard, an accident which changed the course of his life. A hard piece of bread, thrown at random in the commons hall, struck his left eye and destroyed the sight. Nevertheless he graduated honourably, but when he entered his father’s office as a student of law the uninjured eye showed dangerous symptoms of inflammation. He was urged, therefore, to travel and it was at the Azores where he had to spend much of his time in a darkened room, that he “began the mental discipline which enabled him to compose and retain in memory long passages for subsequent dictation.” His secretary gives this picture of him, while writing the “History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella”—“seated in a study lined on two sides with books and darkened by screens of blue muslin, which required readjustment with every cloud that passed across the sky.” Prescott trained his memory until he was able to retain sixty pages of printed matter, “turning and returning them as he walked or drove.” After fifty his remaining eye showed serious symptoms of enfeeblement and his general health also gave cause for alarm. Nevertheless he gallantly set to work on his “History of Philip II.” The third volume was, however, not through the press, before an attack of apoplexy put an end to his life.

Alfred Ainger, English divine and man of letters, chiefly remembered for his sympathetic writings on Charles Lamb and Thomas Hood, was often speechless with prostration from headaches and sickness. Ainger was no more than a charming writer. I only insert him because his handicap is one of the most difficult to overcome.

Synge, the remarkable Irish dramatist, was delicate and died young.

XVI PROTESTANT REFORMERS

Luther stands out as the most powerful figure of the Reformation. Protestant churches of every denomination owe to him their inception, not so much on points of dogma, as because the success of his revolt made theirs possible. Luther was afflicted with epilepsy and at times from other disabilities, the exact nature of which I have been unable to ascertain. Like so many other renowned invalids, we are struck with the amount of work he accomplished. During the last ten years of his life he suffered from continuous ill health, yet he spent them in incessant labor. He was preaching with vehemence and fervor on February 19, 1546, when suddenly he said, quietly, “This and much more is to be said about the Gospel; but I am too weak and will close here.” Four days later he was dead.

Calvin suffered constant bodily pain, yet he was a man of incessant activity and of supreme courage. At one time, not only the council but the people of Geneva revolted against his authority; a riot was imminent. Calvin at once set out alone for the council-chamber where he was greeted with yells and threats of death. Advancing slowly into their midst he bared his breast, saying: “If you will have blood, strike here!” Not an arm moved and, turning his back on his enemies, he slowly mounted the stairs to the tribune.

John Knox began his career as a Catholic priest and we have so little knowledge of his early life that we are ignorant as to what occasioned the startling change in his views. After his accession to the ranks of Protestantism he had at first no idea of preaching but confined himself to instructing his friends’ children. His friends, however, recognized his capacity and on his refusing “to run where God had not called him,” they planned a solemn appeal to Knox from the pulpit to accept “the public office and charge of preaching.” At the close of this exhortation Knox burst into tears and shut himself in his chamber, “in heaviness, for many days.” The call had at last found a leader of men. Yet it was an invitation to danger and to death. Shortly afterwards St. Andrews was attacked by the French fleet and Knox was among the prisoners taken. He was thrown into a galley and for nineteen months remained in irons and subject to the lash. When he was finally released, he was a man almost forty-five years old and completely broken in health, by reason of the hardships and cruelty to which he had been subjected. Yet his career was only just beginning. “To Knox more than to any other man Scotland owes her religion and individuality.” He was of great political importance and one of the most powerful enemies of Maria Stuart. As an historian he occupies an important place. His “History of the Reformation in Scotland” is a remarkable book. It was said of him “he neither flattered nor feared any flesh.” He was an inspired preacher. Elizabeth’s very critical ambassador wrote from Edinburgh that “this one man was able in one hour to put more life in us than five hundred trumpets.”

Richard Baxter was diseased from head to foot; nevertheless, he became celebrated as the most eminent of the English Protestant schoolmen. He was also of political importance and instrumental in bringing about the Restoration of Charles II.

XVII THE SAINTS

“When we look into God’s Face we do not feel His Hand.”

Health is a form of capital, and like any other capital may be either well or ill invested. Moreover, we can squander it foolishly or convert it into the supreme oblation, and to most of us life itself is a less difficult sacrifice. The tragedy of war is not so much the toll of the dead as the lists of the disabled.

Few of us are given the chance of dying for others, but to all of us is offered the privilege of spending ourselves for humanity, either individually or collectively. Countless parents, fathers as well as mothers, purchase with their own lives and health, life, vigor and opportunity for their children. The instinct of sacrifice is to a greater or less degree universal to parenthood, and although I do not wish to belittle their offering, I think it even more admirable when placed on a less obvious altar. Numberless people are daily overspending their physical resources in the service of mankind, by the furtherance of knowledge, the improvement of material conditions, by widening the door of opportunity or carrying the message of the spirit into teeming slum and arid desert. Others give themselves with equal prodigality in the more limited and less glorious field of their personal contacts; not merely to their homes, their dependents and friends but to all who come even casually within the radius of their fellowship.

It seems to me difficult to live at the height of our possibilities more especially if our activities are purely selfless, without being at times tempted to overdraw our health account. The soldier is only one of a great host whose bodies have been sacrificed in the performance of an imperative duty. Health is often purchased at the price of ignominious refusal.

It is therefore not surprising that a large proportion of the saints were men and women with ruined bodies,—bodies that had been rapturously spent in the service of God and man. I will mention only a few of the most renowned.

St. Jerome, one of the greatest of the early Christian Fathers, lived an unregenerate life until a severe illness induced a complete change in him and he resolved to renounce everything that kept him back from God. His greatest temptation was the study of the literature of Greece and pagan Rome, and he determined from thenceforth to devote all his vast scholarship to the Holy Scriptures and to Christianity. To him we owe the first translation of the Bible into Latin, commonly known as the “Vulgate.”

Very few men have ever wielded greater power over the minds of men than St. Augustine. He is to-day a living force, yet he struggled all his life against consumption. He lived, however, to be seventy-six.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the most famous monk and preacher of the Middle Ages, was a martyr to so many physical infirmities that at first sight he appeared “like one near unto death.” All this suffering, however, never quelled his ardent spirit or his overmastering zeal for purging the world of sin. It was St. Bernard who said, “Nothing can work me damage but myself; the harm I sustain I carry about with me, and I am never a real sufferer but by my own fault.”

St. Francis of Assisi was a gay, dissipated youth when a severe illness put a stop to his pleasures, and gave him time to reflect, so that he became dissatisfied with his mode of life. On his recovery he set out on a military expedition, but at the end of the first day’s march he fell ill and had to return to Assisi. This disappointment brought on another spiritual crisis and shortly afterwards he went on a pilgrimage to Rome. Before everything he was an ascetic and a mystic,—an ascetic who though gentle to others wore out his body in self-denial, so much so that when he came to die, he begged pardon of “brother Ass, the body,” for having unduly ill-treated it.

St. Catherine of Siena was not only a very great saint, but one of the greatest women that ever lived. The daughter of a poor dyer who learned to read when she was twenty and to write when she was twenty-seven or eight, she dictated books and letters celebrated not only for their spiritual fragrance and literary value, but also for their great historical importance. No empress ever wielded greater power than this extraordinary woman. Towards the end of her life her court consisted of pilgrims who flocked daily by the thousands to visit her. The miracle of her personality had its effect on all who approached her. A young libertine, belonging to one of the most aristocratic families of Siena, after one interview with this dyer’s daughter, abandoned his former life and became her humble follower until the day of her death. She converted a notorious robber, who for years terrorized the vicinity of Siena and had almost paralyzed its commerce. As a proof of the sincerity of his repentance he gave her his stronghold, together with all the spoils he had accumulated. The abandonment of Avignon as the seat of the Papal court undoubtedly changed not only the map, but also the history of Europe, and it was solely owing to St. Catherine’s passionate insistence that Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome, despite his own reluctance and the opposition of his cardinals. During her short life she was continually ill and during the period of her greatest activity she was dying.

St. Ignatius Loyola, one of the most remarkable and influential personages in the history of the Catholic Church, led the adventurous life of a courtier and a soldier until he received a wound at the siege of Pamplona. According to an old chronicler this “was the occasion of his conversion to God.” A cannon-ball hit his legs, shattering one. Serious illness followed the most painful operation, and for weeks his life was despaired of. It was on the bed of torment which he eventually left, lame for life and constitutionally enfeebled, that grace came to him. The saint himself said, when he returned from the Valley of the Shadow: “I have seen God face to face and my soul has been saved.” From that time onward he devoted himself to a spiritual life, wandering far and accomplishing much. Chief among his achievements was the founding of the Order of Jesuits. I must mention here a very remarkable fact that has, however, nothing to do with my thesis. In his will he bequeathed to the order he founded this legacy: “that all men should speak ill of it.” It is also curious that he who had benefited by illness should have said: “A sound mind in a sound body is the most useful instrument with which to serve God.”

St. Theresa of Jesus, the great Spanish saint, whose personality and writings have never lost their influence, was always extremely delicate, and during the period of her greatest accomplishments not only ill but old.

With St. Theresa closes my list of those gallant souls who, apparently unfit for the battle of life, have nevertheless left their mark on history and civilization. And I wish to remind you again that I have mentioned no one whose height of achievement has not been coincident with ill-health, or reached after the suffering of some serious physical disability. Neither have I thought it proper to cite any of the numerous instances of handicapped genius among our living contemporaries.

I am certain that many other names might be presented to your consideration, if it were not for my own ignorance as well as the extreme difficulty of getting any reliable data on the subject.

XVIII PAIN, THE GREAT TEACHER

“What does he know,” said a sage, “who has not suffered?”

That we may be benefited by physical suffering is no new idea,—it is not even a forgotten idea. From the time when civilization first expressed itself in terms of Christianity until the Reformation, the spiritual value of pain has been an undisputed axiom. The Catholic Church has never ceased to preach the mortification of the flesh, and all religious communities, heathen as well as Christian, consider a certain degree of asceticism necessary for the perfect manifestation of a spiritual life.

As to the merits of voluntary suffering inflicted for the purpose of subjugating the appetites of the body, Christendom differs fundamentally, but until recently, it has been united in regarding illness as one of the means by which Providence purifies as well as punishes its children.

The discovery of the germ, even more than the preaching of Mrs. Eddy, dealt a terrific blow to this ancient belief, with the result that the masses no longer regard physical suffering as a remedial agency but as something not only unprofitable but purely destructive. For more than thirty years the final abolition of pain has been the Mecca towards which doctors and Christian Scientists have passionately journeyed; moreover, their ranks have been swelled by numerous sects, schools or religious bodies that have been called into existence by the rallying cry of this New Hope. They pointed to the declining death rate as an irrefutable testimony of battles already won, and as disease after disease disappeared before the advance of sanitation, of serums or of Right Thought; as surgery developed unheard-of possibilities, the most limitless expectations seemed not unjustified. The natural infirmities of age must eventually yield before the onslaught of knowledge. Bolder spirits even dreamed of conquest over death.

And then the World War came.

Their boasted death-rate mounted to unheard-of heights. The maimed and blind overflowed from the hospitals unto the farthest corners of the earth. Still the havoc was not complete. Infantile paralysis came from the north, killing and crippling our children by thousands. Finally, influenza mowed down old and young in such numbers that even here in America it was impossible to care for all the victims.

One would have expected these facts to be a staggering blow to our theorists. Could they not have realized—if only dimly—that they were battling against some fundamental law? Evidently not, for according to them war is to be abolished. Not only that, but Dr. Voronoff now offers an infallible cure for old age!

Now, as I said before, I neither believe that physical suffering will ever be abolished nor do I even hope it. For pain is one of the great human and humanizing experiences and, since the beginning of time, each generation has learned in its school the same fundamental lessons.