The mystery of pain : a book for the sorrowful.

  • Hinton, James, 1822-1875.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mystery of pain : a book for the sorrowful. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    in those portions of our life whence all joy- now is banished. But further, this view not only guards us from the arbitrary choice of pain, it enables us to trace how that abuse arose, and whence sprang that ascetic and self-denying spirit, which, while not without its grandeur, has inflicted so many injuries on men. Mankind have always recognised a goodness in things that are painful. In no time or place has the feeling been wholly absent; but they have not always understood the reason. It was not recognised that these things are good only because they are sacrifice, and subserve others' welfare, and are therefore the true source of gladness; that they are good in a familiar and human sense, because they are adapted to give joy. Hence men unavoidably mistook, and attributed the goodness they could not but recognise in them to that which is em- phatically not good—to that which is the sign of our own evil—the pain that was connected with them. They ascribed to pain the good- ness which belongs to sacrifice as the giver, above all other things, of joy. A strange and