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HOW WE SHOULD STRUGGLE AGAINST APPEARANCES.--Every habit and faculty is
maintained and increased by the corresponding actions: the habit of
walking by walking, the habit of running by running. If you would be a
good reader, read; if a writer, write. But when you shall not have read
for thirty days in succession, but have done something else, you will
know the consequence. In the same way, if you shall have lain down ten
days, get up and attempt to make a long walk, and you will see how your
legs are weakened. Generally then if you would make anything a habit, do
it; if you would not make it a habit, do not do it, but accustom
yourself to do something else in place of it.

So it is with respect to the affections of the soul: when you have been
angry, you must know that not only has this evil befallen you, but that
you have also increased the habit, and in a manner thrown fuel upon
fire.

In this manner certainly, as philosophers say, also diseases of the mind
grow up. For when you have once desired money, if reason be applied to
lead to a perception of the evil, the desire is stopped, and the ruling
faculty of our mind is restored to the original authority. But if you
apply no means of cure, it no longer returns to the same state, but
being again excited by the corresponding appearance, it is inflamed to
desire quicker than before: and when this takes place continually, it is
henceforth hardened (made callous), and the disease of the mind confirms
the love of money. For he who has had a fever, and has been relieved
from it, is not in the same state that he was before, unless he has been
completely cured. Something of the kind happens also in diseases of the