him in his last years as "of good complexion; more muscular and
bony than fat or fleshy in his person: healthy above all
things, as well by reason of his natural constitution as of the
exercise he takes, and habitual continence in food and sexual
indulgence." His temperance and manual industry and his
"extraordinary blamelessness in life and in every action" had
been his source of preservation. He was miserly, suspicious,
quarrelsome and pessimistic, but the effects of these faults
were balanced by his better habits of thought and action. That
he, like most great men, felt keenly the value of health, is
evidenced not only by his own practice, but by his oft repeated
warnings to his nephew when choosing a wife to see that
whatever other qualities she might have she be healthy. The
blemish of nearsight he considered a no small defect and
sufficient to render a young woman unworthy of entry into the
proud family of the Buonarroti. To his own father he wrote:
"Look to your life and health, for a man does not come back
again to patch up things ill done."

One of those who look beneath unusual human phenomena for signs
of the pathologic finds Michelangelo "affected by a degree of
neuropathy bordering closely upon hysterical disease." What a
pity that more of us do not suffer from such degrees of
neuropathy--and how much better for most of us if we had such
enthusiasm for perfection, and such mania for work, at least of
that health-bringing sort in which there is absorbing colabor
of brain and hand. True it is that "there is no better way of
keeping sane and free from anxiety than by being mad."