Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Affliction

AFFLICTION, as opposed to a state of joy and prosperity, cannot be called a disease, though when indulged to excess, it may be productive of many mental and bodily affections. For whatever tends to excite anger, hatred, envy, &c. cannot fail to bring on disorders arising from tense or rigid fibres; as, on the contrary, fear, grief, and excessive joy, engender those maladies which are the consequence of relaxation.

Hence we cannot be too much on our guard against the invasion of passions, which may be truly styled the greatest enemies of mankind. Lord Bolingbroke, in his letters "on the study and use of history," gives the following pertinent advice: "Let us set all our past and our present afflictions at once before our eyes. Let us resolve to overcome them, instead of shrinking from the contest, or of wearing out the sense of them, by long and ignominious patience. Instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incision-knife and the caustic; probe the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate and radical cure." Uninterrupted misery, continues this stoic philosopher, has this good effect, that, as it continually torments, it finally hardens the sufferer.