When we first witness idle lands, they are rich and fertile, abound in a hundred thousand kinds of wild and useless herbs. To keep them fertile, they must be tended to and their seeds continually replanted. And we also witness women produce shapeless lumps and pieces of flesh all by themselves, but to produce offspring, they must be occupied with seed.
Thus it is with our minds. If they are not occupied with a certain subject, which restrains and constrains them, they throw themselves about, here and there, in the vague field of the imagination,
Like water trembling on the lips where the light of brass, Reflected by the sun, or by the radiant image of the moon, It flies through all wide places, and now under the breeze, It rises, and strikes the highest ceilings of the roof. (Virgil)
The soul without a stable goal loses itself: for, as they say, it is not sufficient to be anywhere, it desires to be everywhere.
The sick man dreams, vainly; All appearances are imagined. (Horace)
Lately, I have retired to my estate, determined to meddle with nothing but to pass in peace the little that remains of my life. It seemed to me that I could do no greater favor to my spirit, than to leave it in full idleness, to allow it to entertain itself, and to stop and sit back in itself: which I hoped my soul could handle more easily, becoming poised and calm over time. But I find,
Whoever lives everywhere, Most High, lives nowhere. (Lucan)
On the contrary, like a freed, runaway horse, my mind gives itself a hundred times more attention than it took for others. It gives birth to so many chimeras and whimsical monsters, one after the other, without order or purpose. So I can contemplate my mind’s ineptitude and strangeness, at my leisure, I have begun to list those furies, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself.