952 INFLUENCE OF THE MIND 



Influence of the Mind on Health. 



Nothing contributes more essentially to health 

 and longevity, than a happy and tranquil state 

 of mind, which must be sought in a temperate 

 exercise of all the physical, intellectual, and 

 moral faculties. Benevolence, friendship, love, 

 a good conscience, with tender, refined, and ele- 

 vated thoughts, are never failing sources of health 

 and delight ; whereas, pride, envy, jealousy, 

 covetousness, anger, and all the passions when 

 habitually indulged to excess, not only embitter 

 our own happiness, and that of all around us, 

 but sap the foundations of health, and shorten 

 the period of existence. It is therefore manifest, 

 that the connexion between vice and misery, 

 virtue and happiness, depends on the radical 

 laws of our organization, which cannot be vio- 

 lated with impunity, and that a due regulation 

 of the passions is no less important to our well 

 being, than temperance in eating, drinking, 

 muscular exercise, &c.* 



* Dr. James Johnson observes in his Treatise on the Economy 

 of Health, that a great majority of our corporeal disorders, in the 

 present state of civilized society, spring from, or are aggravated 

 by mental perturbations, that the passions are the tempests of 

 life, which too often set at defiance the rudder of reason, driving 

 the vessel on shoals and -quicksands, and ultimately wrecking it 

 altogether, that the bench, the hustings, nay, even the pulpit, 

 pour forth the destructive elements of discord, that the fury of 

 political strife, the hazards of commerce, the jealousies, envies, 

 and rivalries of the professions, the fear of poverty, the terrors of 

 superstition, and the hatreds of sectarianism, are perpetual sources 



