Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/99

Rh a charming disposition, was docile and amiable, is wholly changed to-day. She will not endure the least observation, is discontented with everything, has a bad look for everybody, breaks all rules, and is quite ungovernable. Her indocility is the more surprising, because it arises suddenly without cause, and disappears in the same manner. Self-love is always extravagantly developed. The most trifling pleasantry often becomes a cruel offense, to be borne with indignation, which tears enough can not be shed to protest against. Everything becomes the subject of a drama. Existence appears like a scene in a theatre. The regular, quiet life of every-day routine is transformed by the hysterical woman into a series of grave events, adapted to all sorts of dramatic developments. The hysterical sufferers continually play with an equal success at tragedy and comedy amid the flat scenes of reality. They can not comprehend simplicity in life, but make life a complication. Terror, jealousy, joy, anger, love, everything is exaggerated out of proportion with the just and measured feelings which are becoming.

Every human being, I believe, is moved by two opposing forces, sentiment and will. With the will we succeed (or think we succeed, which amounts to the same thing) in taming the feelings, in silencing the instinctive and passionate exuberance of the brute nature, we become masters of ourselves, compos sui, as the ancients said. We know that it is good to tell this, to conceal that, that there are noble sentiments and base passions, that we ought to obey the former and crush the latter. Hysterical persons do not know this, they do not comprehend what is meant by the power of ruling the passions. Passion leads them, and they suffer themselves to be carried where passion takes them. If the wind of anger or jealousy blows, they give themselves up, without opposition, to anger or jealousy; if it is the wind of charity or obedience, they are charitable or obedient. If the fancy to say what is impertinent or incongruous crosses their brain, the impertinent or incongruous saying is uttered. They are somewhat like persons who have taken hasheesh, and float off on the waves of fancy or enthusiasm.

We can never know how to depend on the feelings of an hysterical person. Any attempt to forecast them would be rash, and we may have equally good reasons to expect to find her well disposed or discontented. Her feelings will be likewise of the most fleeting character, and she will not imagine that it is necessary to establish transitions between laughing and tears, anger and satisfaction. Her bad humor will last while you turn an hour-glass, and she will behave like children who burst out in laughing while the tears they have just shed are still rolling down their cheeks.

Notwithstanding this mobility, this irresistible spontaneity, the victims of hysteria are wholly wanting in sincerity. They are all more or less liars; not so much, perhaps, that they are ready to tell selfish