The best thing is to describe
the condition integrally as a characteristic affection to which
our nature is liable, a region in which we find ourselves at
home, a sea in which we swim; but not to pretend to explain its
parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another. Like love
or fear, the faith-state is a natural psychic complex, and
carries charity with it by organic consequence. Jubilation is an
expansive affection, and all expansive affections are
self-forgetful and kindly so long as they endure.
We find this the case even when they are pathological in origin.
In his instructive work, la Tristesse et la Joie,[162] M. Georges
Dumas compares together the melancholy and the joyous phase of
circular insanity, and shows that, while selfishness
characterizes the one, the other is marked by altruistic
impulses. No human being so stingy and useless as was Marie in
her melancholy period! But the moment the happy period begins,
"sympathy and kindness become her characteristic sentiments. She
displays a universal goodwill, not only of intention, but in act.
. . . She becomes solicitous of the health of other patients,
interested in getting them out, desirous to procure wool to knit
socks for some of them.
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