CL 249 - being useful vs. laziness & sloth

CL 249

Human beings were created to be useful,

because useful service

is the containing vessel of goodness and truth,

and a marriage of good and truth

is the origin both of creation and also of married love.

By pursuit or business

we mean any effort to be useful. 

When . . . a person is engaged in some pursuit

or business or other useful activity,

his mind is fenced around and circumscribed

as though with a circle,

within whose bounds it is progressively ordered

into truly human form. 

Then, from this vantage point,

as though looking out from its house,

it sees various impure passions lurking outside,

and from the sanity of its reason within, 

banishes them,

thus banishing as well

the wild insanities of licentious lust. 

Because of this,

conjugial warmth lasts better and longer in such people

than it does in others.

[2]    The contrary happens in the case of people

who surrender themselves to laziness and sloth. 

Their mind is not fenced around or set within bounds;

a person like that

consequently throws open the whole of it

and lets in every sort of nonsense and foolishness

which flows in from the world and the body

and draws him into a love of them. 

It is apparent that conjugial love is also then

cast out and banished. 

For laziness and sloth 

dull the mind and numb the body,

and the whole person becomes unresponsive

to any vitalizing love - especially conjugial love,

from which, as from a fountain,

spring active and energetic states of life.