And here comes in the peculiarly paralysing effect of these baser
emotions. As Victor Hugo once said, in a fine apophthegm, "Despair
yawns." Fear and anxiety bring with them a particular kind of
physical fatigue which makes us listless and inert. They lie on the
spirit with a leaden dullness, which takes from us all possibility
of energy and motion. Who does not know the instinct, when one is
crushed and tortured by depression, to escape into solitude and
silence, and to let the waves and streams flow over one. That is a
universal instinct, and it is not wholly to be disregarded; it
shows that to torture oneself into rational activity is of little
use, or worse than useless.
When I was myself a sufferer from long nervous depression, and had
to face a social gathering, I used out of very shame, and partly I
think out of a sense of courtesy due to others, to galvanise myself
into a sort of horrid merriment. The dark tide flowed on beneath in
its sore and aching channels. It was common enough then for some
sympathetic friend to say, "You seemed better to-night--you were
quite yourself; that is what you want; if you would only make the
effort and go out more into society, you would soon forget your
troubles.
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