Page:OptimismBlood.djvu/131

no fault with any man, though he be seeking an opposite extreme from what we are, whereby what are his virtues may appear vices to us, and would be vices if by us adopted. One man may seek to increase, and another to diminish the passion-stuff in their respective compositions, with equal virtue and piety; but such is the narrow dogmatism of this age, and mainly of all ages, that, upholding some special set of rules, men dictate their own necessities as the virtues of all other men, unmindful of the variety and self-dependence of the race, and in defiance of an old and excellent proverb, that one man's meat is another man's poison. "Let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth."

There is a limit of intellectuality in the native capacity of every man, above which exercise may suddenly carry him too far; and the instances of this excess are as notorious as those of its opposite. What is this we hear of the melancholy of genius, but confirmation of our truth? Should the perception of beauty make a man sad? or is it the brain over-wrought, the digestion spoiled, and the whole nervous system prostrated, which do the mischief? Bacon and Copernicus, Shakspeare and Milton, these were not melancholy men, for they were men of temperance, and healthy brain. But Rosseau, and Byron, and Keats, and others of the hot and solid brain, and the unhealthy blood and nerves, have been melancholy from over-exertion, or personal excess.

Equally notorious are the instances of derangement in the direction of conscientiousness. Void of the proper confidence and tranquillity of life, men have