What makes one lose the ability to enjoy things as Darwin lost his abilty to enjoy things?

Question

Up tp the age of 30 or beyond, poetry of many kinds.. gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took great delight in SHakespeare
Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it to be so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost any taste for pictures or for music... I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me exquisite delight which it formerly did... My mind seems to have become a machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. but why this should have cause that atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend I cannot concieve... the loss of these tastes, is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebleing the emotional part of our nature.. Charles Darwin in his autobiography

Answer 1

clinical depression.

Answer 2

There were probably painful emotional associations with these formerly highest forms of pleasure for him. Perhaps he had too many troubles that arose from partaking in creative endeavors, and as he aged he got out of the habit and became more practical. After a certain amount of time it became too hard to face creativity.

Answer 3

-I also love poetry and the muses-Being a cynic and being alone is what drove me to the same stage you are -am married but he is a total non-communicator, not speaking ill of him since he has suffered brain damage from a stroke at a early age but hey -he was not that great of a conversationalist anyway-just trying to matter in a non-passive way --PEACE

Answer 4

This is the fate of a doubting thomas. Nothing positive can manifest in the life of anyone who only allows negative emotions to circulate. This is Hell.

Answer 5

He died shortly there after. Sometimes the reality of this material existence is just to much for some to handle. Poor little rich man, had all and had nothing at all!!

Answer 6

Tell me, did you know Charles Darwin--I think not. If you had you might have learned:
Chameleon

"eye am ten, raised to the power: minus forty-three
seconds ago
eye am sixteen billion—Big Bang—years of sunsets since
call me Eastern Stardust Time
'fore eye was a cell, a clam, a crayfish
'fore eye was a frog, a turtle duck billed Dodo bird a
Platypus,
a dragon fly, a pollywog
'fore eye was a heron shy, a swallow full of sky, a
trilobite, a fire spark,
a meadowlark, a grain of sand, that grew into a stone,
a breath of air, & 'fore eye was a bone, eye was a
shadow:
a protozoariferacoelenterata,
plathyhelmintheaschelmenthemykindyourdermata
mollusannelidoidanthropodointegumentarychordata,
remember me, my flag it purple flowers fly:
forgetmenots my color
'fore eye was a bone, eye was a shadow,
dangling chromosomes of genus: You Know
oh swarthy Ethiopia, recall my own aunt Lucy
quand nous sommes: mille-huit cent-soixante quartorze
dawn Riot aegyptopithecus,
skull intact two million tears ago
sharper than mosquitoes "petahs"
32 teeth in Miocene Time
one prospector bone jumping Sapien
they never got it right,
but called us by another name
when no tail grew,
thirty thousand years of snow would go
dubbed 'em dignop-ragmop Rasta-Pongid-Missing Link
Big Foot, Yinee shot dice on a gene splice & Neanders
thawed
frostbite feet froze off Ice Age
stone flecks come the Peking man
then dropped like fire sticks
grew me & you & all the shades of them no one has seen
'em since
‘****** dice don't roll’
still Aunt Lucy says to say hello
Eyeball am here to testify: a Sapien,
a sole survivor, sweet Aunt Lucy's kin
come not she your aunt Lucy too
what solar system sky?
please tell me who? as what ? by how?
or whence? from where do your own ancestors fly?
whose jaws with skulls
the carbon dated bones back when?
you see, my friend
we are the spawn of saurs
no count tribes, whose thoughts grew out of grunts old
nods,
hand jive & screams--no word, odd signs,
engirdling tones the bread defined
the mantra said: yo-kee gee-ring-ho yo-mee-nam
our silence sings The Dream Time
to Ghaghaju-griot hearing aids
Sangria gun-gun great uncle juju Bushman kindled fire,

gathered roots his horse who rides me still
up a mountain-down the Belladonna shade
a million five ago & ashes
when the no name Mhamha's
announced us kin to cousin Taung's child
petrified like magma swirls
the garnet gleans a snowball stone
where once eye lay chameleon raw,
preserved in time, a lump of coal,
my jelly shook in oyster shells,
the progeny of apple cores--because:
'fore eye was a cell, a clam, a crayfish,
'fore eye was a frog,
a turtle, duck billed Dodo bird, a Platypus,
a dragon fly, a pollywog,
a trilobite, a heron shy, a meadowlark,
cyanogenic drop of rain, a fire spark,
'fore eye was a grain of sand that grew into a stone,
a breath of air 'fore eye was a bone,
eye was a shadow:
a protozoariferacoelenterata,
plathyhelmintheaschementheyourkindmydermata,
mollusannelidoidanthropodaintegumentarychordata
remember me, my flag, it purple flowers fly:
forgetmenots my color, 'fore eye was a bone eye was a
shadow."
#

Answer 7

Kill joy creeper. If you don't have the depth to compare things, the joy disappears.

Answer 8

you need to change it up, do something different every once in awhile

Answer 9

wasn't he ill in his later years? illness makes it hard to enjoy life. i am sure he did enjoy intellectual challenges