Mental Diseases

The disorders of the soul depend on the body and originate as follows.

The disease of the mind is caused by a lack of intelligence. It has two kinds:

• madness
• ignorance

These are mental diseases. Excessive pains and pleasures are the greatest diseases of the soul.

For a man who is in great joy or in great pain, in his unreasonable eagerness to attain the one and to avoid the other, is not able to see or to hear anything rightly.

But he is mad, and is utterly incapable of any reason.

He who has the seed about the spinal marrow too plentiful and overflowing, like a tree overladen with fruit, has many throes, and also obtains many pleasures in his desires and their offspring, and is for the most part of his life deranged, because his pleasures and pains are so very great.

His soul is rendered foolish and disordered by his body.

Yet he is seen not as mentally diseased, but as one who is voluntarily bad. This is a mistake.

The truth is that the intemperance of love is a disease of the soul due chiefly to the moisture and fluidity which is produced in one of the elements by the loose consistency of the bones.

Generally, the incontinence of pleasure and is deemed a reproach under the idea that the wicked voluntarily do wrong is not justly a matter for reproach.

No man is voluntarily bad.

But the bad become bad through:

• a bad disposition of the body and
• bad education

Everyone hates such things.

Similarly, the soul suffers much evil from the body when it feels bodily pain.

Diseases arise when the acid and briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours:

• wander about in the body
• find no exit or escape and are pent up within
• mingle their own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are blended with them

These are carried to the 3 places of the soul and create infinite varieties of:

• ill-temper and melancholy
• rashness and cowardice
• forgetfulness and stupidity.

More people become bad when this evil constitution of body is the base for:

• evil forms of government
• evil discourses which are uttered in private and public
• education for the youth which has no cure for these evils

In such cases:

• the planters are to blame rather than the plants
• the educators rather than the educated.

We should endeavour as far as we can by education, studies, and learning to avoid vice and attain virtue.

How can mind and body be made good?

Everything that is good is fair. The fair has proportions. The animal which is to be fair must have due proportion.

The due proportion of mind and body is the fairest and loveliest of all sights to him who has the seeing eye.

A body which has a leg too long, or is unsymmetrical is unpleasant to look at.

sight, and also, when doing its share of work, is much distressed and makes convulsive efforts, and often stumbles through awkwardness, and is the cause of infinite evil to its own self—in like manner we should conceive of the double nature which we call the living being;

When in this compound there is an impassioned soul more powerful than the body, that soul, convulses and fills with disorders the whole inner nature of man. When eager in the pursuit of some sort of learning or study, causes wasting; or again, when teaching or disputing in private or in public, and strifes and controversies arise, inflames and dissolves the composite frame of man and introduces rheums.

The nature of this phenomenon is not understood by most professors of medicine, who ascribe it to the opposite of the real cause.

The 2 desires natural to man are:

1. Food for the sake of the body
2. Wisdom for the sake of the diviner part of us

The soul becomes dull, stupid, and forgetful when a large body, too strong for the soul, is united to a small and weak intelligence. The motions of the stronger body get the better and overpowers the intelligence.

Ignorance is the greatest of diseases.

A protection against both kinds of disproportion is that we should not move the body without the soul or the soul without the body.

Thus, they will be on their guard against each other, and be healthy and well balanced.

Therefore:

• the mathematician or intellectual must allow his body also to have due exercise, and practise gymnastic.
• the athelete should should cultivate music and all philosophy in its soul

The separate parts should be treated in the same manner, in imitation of the pattern of the universe; for as the body is heated and also cooled within by the elements which enter into it, and is again dried up and moistened by external things, and experiences these and the like affections from both kinds of motions, the result is that the body if given up to motion when in a state of quiescence is overmastered and perishes.

But if any one, in imitation of that which we call the foster-mother and nurse of the universe, will not allow the body ever to be inactive, but is always producing motions and agitations through its whole extent, which form the natural defence against other motions both internal and external, and by moderate exercise reduces to order according to their affinities the particles and affections which are wandering about the body, as we have already said when speaking of the universe, he will not allow enemy placed by the side of enemy to stir up wars and disorders in the body, but he will place friend by the side of friend, so as to create health.

Of all motions that is the best which is produced in a thing by itself, for it is most akin to the motion of thought and of the universe.

But that motion which is caused by others is not so good. Worst of all is that which moves the body, when at rest, in parts only and by some external agency.

1. Gymnastic is the best mode of purifying and re-uniting the body
2. The next best is a surging motion, as in sailing or any other mode of conveyance which is not tiring.
3. The purgative treatment of physicians is the third best sort of motion. This can be used in extreme necessity. But normally, it will not be adopted by anyone.

Every disease is akin to the living being, whose complex frame has an appointed lifespan. Thus, only the very dangerous ones should be irritated by medicines.

Each individual—barring inevitable accidents—comes into the world having a fixed span.

The triangles in us are originally framed with power to last for a certain time, beyond which no man can prolong his life.

This also is true for the constitution of diseases. If any one regardless of the appointed time tries to subdue them by medicine, he only aggravates and multiplies them.

We should always manage diseases by regimen, as far as a man can spare the time, and not provoke a disagreeable enemy by medicines.