so grievously
afflicts the rich and luxurious. These complaints arise chiefly from
a deficiency of mental stimuli. The most common cause of them, and
whose effects are the most difficult to remove, is to be looked for
in the mind.

The passions and emotions, when exercised with moderation, and kept
within proper bounds, are the sources of life and activity; without
these precious affections, we should be reduced to a kind of
vegetation, equally removed from pleasure and from pain. For want of
these elastic springs, the animal spirits lose their regularity and
play; life becomes a lethargic sleep, and we fall into indifference
and languor.

If then the passions are so necessary to the support of the health of
the body, when in a proper degree, can we expect, that when they are
inordinate or excessive, or even deficient, we shall escape with
impunity? tumultuous passions are like torrents, which overflow their
bounds, and tear up every thing before them; and mournful experience
convinces us, that these effects of the mind are easily communicated
to the body. We ought, therefore, to be particularly on our guard
against their seduction.

"'Tis the great art of life to manage well
The restless mind."

It is particularly in their infancy, if it may be so called, that we
ought to be upon our guard against their seduction; they are then
soothing and insidious; but if we suffer them to gain strength, and
establish their empire, reason, obscured and overcome, rests in a
shameful dependence upon the senses; her light becomes too faint to
be seen, and her voice too feeble to be heard; and the soul, hurried
on by an impulse to which no obstacle is presented, communicates to
the body its languor and debility. The passions, by which the body is
chiefly affected, are, joy, grief, hope, fear, love, hatred, and
anger. Any others may be reduced to some of these, or are compounded
of them. The pleasurable passions produce strong excitement of the
body, while the depressing passions diminish the excitement; indeed
it would seem that grief is only a diminution of joy, as cold is of
heat; when this passion exists in a proper degree, then we feel no
particular exhilarating sensation, but our spirits and health are
good: we cannot doubt, however, that we are excited by a pleasant
sensation, though we are unable to perceive it. In the same manner,
when heat acts moderately, or is about the degree we call temperate,
we do not perceiv