Of mental disorders there are two sorts, one madness, the other
ignorance, and they may be justly attributed to disease.
Excessive pleasures or pains are among the greatest diseases, and
deprive men of their senses. When the seed about the spinal
marrow is too abundant, the body has too great pleasures and
pains; and during a great part of his life he who is the subject
of them is more or less mad. He is often thought bad, but this is
a mistake; for the truth is that the intemperance of lust is due
to the fluidity of the marrow produced by the loose consistency
of the bones. And this is true of vice in general, which is
commonly regarded as disgraceful, whereas it is really
involuntary and arises from a bad habit of the body and evil
education. In like manner the soul is often made vicious by the
influence of bodily pain; the briny phlegm and other bitter and
bilious humours wander over the body and find no exit, but are
compressed within, and mingle their own vapours with the motions
of the soul, and are carried to the three places of the soul,
creating infinite varieties of trouble and melancholy, of
rashness and cowardice, of forgetfulness and stupidity. When men
are in this evil plight of body, and evil forms of government and
evil discourses are superadded, and there is no education to save
them, they are corrupted through two causes; but of neither of
them are they really the authors. For the planters are to blame
rather than the plants, the educators and not the educated.
Still, we should endeavour to attain virtue and avoid vice; but
this is part of another subject.