Note (return) — NOTES OF A READER.
Reading edition
Plato has remarked, with reference to the influence of the mind on the corporeal frame, "Where the action of the soul is too powerful, it attacks the body so powerfully that it throws it into a consuming state; if the soul exerts itself in a peculiar manner on certain occasions, the body is made sensible of it, for it becomes heated and debilitated." An Italian physician also observes on this subject, that the union of the soul with the body is so intimate, that they reciprocally share the good or evil which happens to either of them. The mind cannot put forth its powers when the body is tired with inordinate exercise and too close application to study destroys the body by dissipating the animal spirits which are necessary to recruit it.2