Mental hygiene: or, an examination of the intellect and passions, designed to illustrate their influence on health and the duration of life / by William Sweetser.

  • William Sweetser
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mental hygiene: or, an examination of the intellect and passions, designed to illustrate their influence on health and the duration of life / by William Sweetser. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    particularly in modesty and obedience, as the most summary method of ensuring the health of the body in future life. Our physical interest, then, had we no other motive, should of itself be a sufficient induce¬ ment for cultivating the good, and restraining the evil passions of our nature. And let me here urge, that children cannot be too early and vigilantly subjected to a discipline so essential to their present and future welfare. No error is more pernicious, and unfortunately more often committed, than that of delaying the moral education. Every day that this is neglect¬ ed will the baneful feelings be acquiring new force and obstinacy. It is in their very germ, in the weakness of their birth, that they are to be successfully combated. We are, as I have previously alleged, the subjects of moral feeling, and therefore of moral discipline, at an age far earlier than is usually imagined. That many children suffer in their health, and oftentimes to no slight extent, under the repeated and severe operation of passions which parents have neglected to reprove, is a truth unfortunately too plain for contradiction. And not only have they to undergo present suffering from such unpardon¬ able remissness, but too often does it become the cause of an afflictive train of infirmities, both of mind and body, in their future years ; and experience, frequently of the most painful nature, must teach them to bring under control feelings which should have been repressed in the impotence of their origin. “ We frequently,” says Mr Locke, “ see parents, by humouring them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.”—On Education. No duties or obligations have been more often and eloquently enforced, both by the moralist and divine, than those of the child to the parent; and I would not say aught that might serve in any degree to weaken their deep and binding character. Still, it appears to me, that those which the parent owes the child are really of a paramount nature, and that more serious con¬ sequences will be hazarded by their omission. Our parents bestow or impose existence upon us, and are therefore bound in the most solemn duty, to spare no sacrifice, to omit no efforts, which may contribute to render that existence a blessing. If, through their culpable neglect and mismanagement, they entail upon us a host of mental and bodily ills, we owe them little gratitude for the life with which they have burdened us. When we consider the carelessness and mis- judgment so often exhibited in the early training of the young—‘how many children are literally educated, by example if not by precept, to deception, pusillanimity, and intemperance in its widest sense ; in short, how many moral and physical vices are allowed to engraft themselves in the constitution even in the dawn of its development, w*e are led almost to wonder that human nature does not grow up even more cor¬ rupt than we actually find it. In concluding this volume let me again urge the important truth, that there is no period of our existence, from opening infancy to closing age, wherein a prudent government of our moral, will not contribute a propitious influence to our physical, constitution. Man, unrestrained by discipline, or abandoned to the turbulence of unbridled passion, becomes the most pitiable and degraded of beings. The well-springs of his health and happiness are poisoned, and all the comeliness and dignity of his nature marred and debased. His whole life, in reality, is but a succession of painful mental and physical stragglings and commotions, a curse, equally to himself and all around him. “ Of all God’s workes, which doe this worlde adorne, There is no one more faire and excellent, Than is man’s body both for powre and forme, Whiles it is kept in sober government; But none than it more fowle and indecent, Distempred through misrule and passions bace.” But although the passions implanted within us are the occasion of so great an amount of evil, both to the physical and moral constitu¬ tion, so prolific a source of disease, sorrow, and ignominy, yet fortunately are they the subjects of education, and, as when uncontrolled they become the bane and reproach of our nature, under a wise restraint and prudent culture they may be rendered our richest blessing and fairest ornament. 4 FINIS. MURRAY AND GIBB PRINTERS, GEORGE STREET. EDINBURGH.
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