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"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"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Author

Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Work Title

Of Imagination [from Dissertations Moral and Critical]

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

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

Date

1783

Metaphor

"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"

Metaphor in Context

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)