Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916. Vol. III. Seventeenth
Century The Pleasure of the Natural Affections By Lord
Shaftesbury (16711713) From An Enquiry concerning Virtue THERE
is no one of ever so little understanding in what belongs to a
human constitution, who knows not that without action, motion,
and employment, the body languishes and is oppressed; its
nourishment turns to disease; the spirits, unemployed abroad,
help to consume the parts within; and nature, as it were, preys
upon herself. In the same manner, the sensible and living part,
the soul or mind, wanting its proper and natural exercise, is
burdened and diseased. Its thoughts and passions being
unnaturally withheld from their due objects, turn against
itself, and create the highest impatience and ill-humour. In
brutes and other creatures, who have not the use of reason and
reflection (at least not after the manner of mankind) it is so
ordered in nature, that by their daily search after food, and
their application either towards the business of