Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/366

 This debility in the mind consists in indolence, or a want of occupation. Bunyan has justly said, in support of this remark, that "an idle man's brain is the devil's work-shop." The young woman, whose moral derangement I mentioned a little while ago, was always inoffensive when she was busy. The employment contrived for her by her parents was, to mix two or three papers of pins of different sizes together, and afterwards, to oblige her to separate, and sort them. The near relation of debility and vice has been expressed by the schoolmen in the following words, "non posse, est malum posse." To do nothing, is generally to do evil.

2. Do we prevent disease, by removing the body out of the way of exciting causes acting upon debility? In like manner, we prevent vice, by removing the mind, in its debilitated state, out of the way of bad company, and thus abstract it from the stimulus of vicious motives upon the will

3. Does bodily disease consist in morbid excitement, or irregular action? Vice consists, in like manner, in undue excitement of the passions and will, and in their irregular, or, to use a scriptural epithet, in their "crooked" actions.