Burton cites idleness as both a symptom and cause of melancholy and enlists the authority of Rhasis, Plutarch, Homer, Montaltus and Mercurialis who account idleness as melancholy's greatest cause. Here is Burton's description of idleness written in 1628:"…. idleness (the badge of gentry), the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, step mother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, and the sole cause of this [melancholy] and many other maladies, the devil's cushion...his pillow and chief reposal.... Nothing begets it [melancholy] sooner, increaseth and continueth it oftener, than idleness; a disease [melancholy] familiar to all idle persons, an inseparable companion to such as live at ease, a life out of action, and have no calling or ordinary employment to busy themselves…As fern grows in untilled grounds, and all manner of weed, so do gross humours in an idle body….An idle dog will be mangy….wit without employment is a disease, the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself, the greatest danger of the soul.”
---Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (with the Latin completely given in translation and embodied in an All-English text), edited by Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan-Smith, Tudor Publishing Company, New York, MCMXLVVIII pages 210-213.
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