the reality of things, and keep down our exorbitant opinions of its importance. The same perpetual recurrency of vibrations, affecting one and the same part of the brain, in nearly one and the same manner, must irritate it at last, so as to enter the limits of pain, and approach to the states peculiar to fear, anxiety, despondency, peevishness, jealousy, and the rest of the tribe of hypochondriacal passions.
Sleep, which presents ideas at hazard, as one may say, and with little regard to prior associations, seems to be of the greatest use in keeping off the hypochondriacal distemper in such persons: however, without a change of studies, this, with great narrow-mindedness, will probably come at last.
It follows from the same method of reasoning, that since the concerns of religion are infinite, so that we can never over-rate them, we ought to make the ideas, motives, and affections, of this kind, recur as often as possible. And if this be done in a truly catholic spirit, with all that variety of actions which our duty to God, our neighbour, and ourselves, requires, there will be no danger of introducing either narrow-mindedness or hypochondriacism. And it ought to be esteemed the same kind and degree of alienation of mind to undervalue a thing of great importance, as to over-value one of small.
Persons that are under the influence of strong passions, such as anger, fear, ambition, disappointment, have the vibrations attending the principal ideas so much increased, that these ideas cling together, i.e. are associated in an unnatural manner; at the same time that the eagerness and violence of the passion prevent the formation of such associations, or obscure them, if already formed, as are requisite for the right apprehension of the past and future facts, which are the objects of this passion. Violent passions must therefore disorder the understanding and judgment, while they last; and if the same passion return frequently, it may have so great an effect upon the associations, as that the intervention of foreign ideas shall not be able to set things to rights, and break the unnatural bond. The same increase of vibrations makes all the principal ideas appear to affect self, with the peculiar interesting concerns supposed to flow from personal identity; so that these vibrations exert a reflected influence upon themselves by these means. And thus it appears, that all violent passions must be temporary madnesses, and all habits of them permanent ones, agreeably to the judgment of the wise and good in these things. It appears also, that violent fits of passion, and frequent recurrences of them, must, from the nature of the body, often transport persons, so that they shall not be able to recover themselves, but fall within the limits of the distemper called madness emphatically.
