Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Of Imagination [from Dissertations Moral and Critical]

London

Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell ... and W. Creech

1783

"I shall only remark, that too much study will in time shatter the strongest nerves, and make the soul a prey to melancholy. "

It may seem, in these days, an unnecessary advice; and yet I should not do justice to my subject, if I did not recommend moderate application to the studious in general, and to those of them chiefly whose fancy has become ungovernable from a depression of mind. I will not, however, enter upon a detail of the miseries that take their rise from excessive study. Tissot has written an elegant book on this subject; but let it not be recommended to every one's perusal; for the cases recorded by that author are so many, and so dreadful, as would go near to frighten the valetudinary student out of his wits. I shall only remark, that too much study will in time shatter the strongest nerves, and make the soul a prey to melancholy. The want of air and exercise, with interrupted digestion, unhinges the bodily frame: and the mind, long and violently exerted in one direction, like a bow long bent, loses its elasticity, and, unable to recover itself, remains stupidly fixed in the same distorted posture. One set of ideas are then continually before it; which, being always of the disagreeable kind, [end page 203] bring along with them and unvaried interchange of horror and sorrow. When it is thus far advanced, the disorder is alarming. Study must be altogether relinquished; or at least all those studies; that are either severe, or in any way related, in their objects, or method of procedure, to those that occasioned the malady: and new employments must be contrived to force the mind out of its old gloomy tract, into path more chearful and less difficult.
(V, p. 203-4)

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Reading

At least 2 entries in ESTC (1783).

Beattie, James. Dissertations Moral and Critical. Printed for Strahan, Cadell, and Creech: London, 1783. Facsimile-Reprint: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1970.

07/26/2005