A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

injurious, to both mental and bodily health." "_Inactivity of intellect and of feeling_ is a very frequent predisposing cause of every form of nervous disease. For demonstrative evidence of this position, we have only to look at the numerous victims to be found, among persons who have no call to exertion in gaining the means of subsistence, and no objects of interest on which to exercise their mental faculties and who consequently sink into a state of mental sloth and nervous weakness." "If we look abroad upon society, we shall find innumerable examples of mental and nervous debility from this cause. When a person of some mental capacity is confined, for a long time, to an unvarying round of employment, which affords neither scope nor stimulus for one half of his faculties, and, from want of education or society, has no external resources; his mental powers, for want of exercise, become blunted, and his perceptions slow and dull." "The intellect and feelings, not being provided with interests external to themselves, must either become inactive and weak, or work upon themselves and become diseased." "The most frequent victims of this kind of predisposition, are females of the middle and higher ranks, especially those of a nervous constitution and _good natural abilities_; but who, from an ill-directed education, possess nothing more solid than mere accomplishments, and have no materials of thought," and no "occupation to excite interest or _demand_ attention." "The liability of such persons to melancholy, hysteria, hypochondriasis, and other varieties of mental distress, really depends on a state of irritability of brain, induced by imperfect exercise." These remarks, of a medical man, illustrate the principles before indicated;--namely, that the demand of Christianity, that we live to promote the general happiness, and not merely for selfish indulgence, has for its aim, not only the general good, but the highest happiness, of the individual of whom it is required. A person possessed of wealth, who has nothing more noble to engage his attention, than seeking his own personal enjoyment, subjects his mental powers and moral feelings to a degree of inactivity, utterly