How subtle are the laws that
govern consolation! I suppose they must ultimately be connected
with reproduction--the consoling idea being a kind of small cross
which RE-GENERATES or RE-CREATES the sufferer. It is important,
therefore, that the new ideas with which the old are to be crossed
should differ from these last sufficiently to divert the attention,
and yet not so much as to cause a painful shock.
There should be a little shock, or there will be no variation in
the new ideas that are generated, but they will resemble those that
preceded them, and grief will be continued; there must not be too
great a shock or there will be no illusion--no confusion and fusion
between the new set of ideas and the old, and in consequence, there
will be no result at all, or, if any, an increase in mental
discord. We know very little, however, upon this subject, and are
continually shown to be at fault by finding an unexpectedly small
cross produce a wide diversion of the mental images, while in other
cases a wide one will produce hardly any result. Sometimes again,
a cross which we should have said was much too wide will have an
excellent effect. I did not anticipate, for example, that my
saying "chow" would have done much for the poor woman who had lost
her daughter; the cross did not seem wide enough; she was already,
as I thought, saturated with "chow." I can only account for the
effect my application of it produced by supposing the word to have
derived some element of strangeness and novelty as coming from a
foreigner--just as land which will give a poor crop, if planted
with sets from potatoes that have been grown for three or four
years on this same soil, will yet yield excellently if similar sets
be brought from twenty miles off.
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