The Intellectual Life

This is one of those assertions which cannot be answered in a sentence. Concentrated within the briefest expression it comes to this, that mental labor cannot produce disease, but may aggravate the consequences of disease which already exists.

The difficulty of testing this is obvious; for so long as health remains quite perfect, it remains perfect, of course, whether the brain is used or not; and when failure of health becomes manifest, it is not always easy to decide in what degree mental labor may have been the cause of it. Again, the accuracy of so general a statement cannot be proved by any number of instances in its favor, since it is universally admitted that brain-work is not the only cause of disease, and no one affirms that it is more than one amongst many causes which may impede the bodily functions.

When the poet Wordsworth was engaged in composing the "White Doe of Rylstone,