Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Spectator, No. 100

London

Monday, June, 1711

"The indolent Man descends from the Dignity of his Nature, and makes that Being which was Rational merely Vegetative: His Life consists only in the meer Encrease and Decay of a Body, which, with relation to the rest of the World, might as well have been uninformed, as the Habitation of a reasonable Mind."

It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the History of their Pains and Aches; and imagine such Narrations their Quota of the Conversation. This is of all other the meanest Help to Discourse, and a Man must not think at all, or think himself very insignificant, when he finds an Account of his Head-ach answer'd by another's asking what News in the last Mail? Mutual good Humour is a Dress we ought to appear in whenever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns our selves, without it be of Matters wherein our Friends ought to rejoyce: But indeed there are Crowds of People who put themselves in no Method of pleasing themselves or others; such are those whom we usually call indolent Persons. Indolence is, methinks, an intermediate State between Pleasure and Pain, and very much unbecoming any Part of our Life after we are out of the Nurse's Arms. Such an Aversion to Labour creates a constant Weariness, and one would think should make Existence it self a Burthen. The indolent Man descends from the Dignity of his Nature, and makes that Being which was Rational merely Vegetative: His Life consists only in the meer Encrease and Decay of a Body, which, with relation to the rest of the World, might as well have been uninformed, as the Habitation of a reasonable Mind.
(I, 420-421)

Architecture::Habitation Population::Inhabitant

Searching "mind" in Project Gutenberg e-text.

See Donald Bond's edition: The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

03/22/2013