Page:Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind - Benjamin Rush.djvu/367

 4. Is bodily disease a unit? So is vice. All its innumerable forms are derived simply from inordinate self-love.

5. Do high degrees of morbid bodily excitement require depleting remedies? High degrees of vice require remedies of a similar nature, such as the abstraction of company, and the excessive or criminal gratification of the passions and senses.

6. Do we overcome morbid action in a bodily disease in a highly vital part, by exciting it in a part less essential to life? In like manner we cure the odious vice of avarice, and a debasing love of pleasure, by the less odious and debasing vice of ambition.

7. Is it impossible to produce two sensations of unequal force, at the same time, in the body? It is equally impossible for the mind to act under the impression of two motives at the same time. Hence the truth of that declaration of our Saviour, "that no man can serve two masters, that is, God and Mammon." The predominance of the motive excited by one of them, will always destroy the other.