274 LETTERS TO BROTHER JOHN. 



cause which, slightly exerted, would yield plea- 

 sure, will, if its force be sufficiently increased, be 

 productive of pain. This requires no illustration. 

 But, to increase our impression-receiving power is 

 the same thing as to increase the force of the im- 

 pressing cause. By increasing, therefore, our sen- 

 sibility, we virtually increase the force where- 

 with external objects impress us. And thus it is, 

 that persons whose sensibility is morbidly acute 

 derive only pain from those causes from which 

 the robust and healthy receive only pleasure. The 

 natural relation between themselves and the exter- 

 nal world is destroyed; and they are living in a 

 sphere for which they have become no longer fitted 

 with which they no longer possess the necessary 

 and natural affinity. They are now " three- cor- 

 nered men, thrust into round holes" they do not 

 fit their position. This morbid sensibility is a 

 source of immeasurable calamity. To all, it is the 

 cause of continual irritation and painful sensation : 

 to some, it is a fountain of exhaustless misery: 

 witness the lives of J. J. Rousseau, Gilbert, Zim- 

 mermann, Cowper, and numerous others; amongst 

 whom, I think, I might mention the late Lord Byron. 

 But sensibility, being the impression-receiving 

 power, and the sanguineous circulation being the 



