Idleness

Use in the book

Burton makes purposeful occupation both a subject and a reason for the Anatomy: he writes about melancholy to avoid it by keeping busy. The causal chapter expands the opposition between excessive exercise and inactivity. Idleness becomes the “badg of gentry,” a supposed mark of rank that Burton treats as destructive. His attack extends to people who count useful work a disgrace, and even to the difficulty of dressing or writing a letter. The rhetoric combines moral blame with descriptions of impaired activity; it should not be converted into a modern judgement that distressed people merely refuse effort.

The bodily and mental branches receive different images. Bodily idleness permits waste and obstruction in the historical humoral account. The idle mind is compared to rust, stagnant water and a commonwealth turning its violence inward. Mind is not literally without activity: its unoccupied powers can multiply cares and false fears. Burton’s imagined remedies redirect that activity. The later distinction between refreshing the overworked and occupying the excessively idle prevents a universal prescription of additional labour.

“Cozen German to Idleness” introduces excessive solitude as its first cousin and accompanying cause. Enforced and voluntary solitude follow as separate cases. This preserves the kinship metaphor without identifying all time alone with inactivity. The same verbal family can carry a much milder judgement elsewhere: the book is useful work done at “idle hours”. The phrase “idle questions,” by contrast, reproaches learning judged pointless in a crisis, while the compound “idle headed” describes disordered thought after sleeplessness in Burton’s interpretation of Hilarion.

Burton’s “idlenes with idlenes” makes the book itself paradoxical: the supposed cause becomes material for its antidote. Useful learned and religious retreat receives a different defence. Scipio seems idle while being especially busy, so appearance of leisure is not proof of inactivity.

The same cause-and-remedy pattern governs later arguments about love and jealousy. Idleness nourishes love in the literary catalogue; labour and occupation are then proposed against it. Jealousy’s causal statement is conditional on idleness joining melancholy. Nevisanus’s accompanying presumption about women belongs to the gendered claim Burton adopts, not an independently established fact. The remedy passage promises cure or at least mitigation through timely resistance, then proposes occupation and friends’ counsel. The final injunction, “Be not solitary, be not idle,” returns to these counsels for people distressed by melancholy.

Related entries

Exercise: Activity is governed by measure, not maximum effort.

Solitude: The accompanying but distinct condition.

Leisure: Free time can be used productively.

Calling: Occupation and social provision.

Melancholy: The causal vocabulary belongs to Burton’s larger account.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 4The causal reversal motivates Burton’s own writing about melancholy.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 5Playful labour makes leisure useful.
3. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 6Writing as mental exercise.
4. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 7Relief through writing.
5. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 8The paradox of answering idleness with idleness.
6. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 10The book’s relation to theological studies.
7. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 11Burton locates useful writing in time outside his principal studies.
8. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 13Learning contrasted with amendment of conduct.
9. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 14The adjective attacks scholarly inquiries judged worthless beside civic and spiritual danger.
10. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 15Transition from scholars to lovers.
11. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 16Excess at the opposite extreme.
12. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 19The apposition makes idleness both a regimen category and a social badge under attack.
13. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 20Comparison with excessive bodily exercise.
14. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 21Idleness as a sufficient cause in reported examples.
15. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 22Occupation and difficulty undertaking ordinary tasks.
16. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 23Abrupt withdrawal from accustomed business.
17. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 24Activity and congenial company compared with isolation.
18. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 25Bodily idleness.
19. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 26Neglected land and confined animals.
20. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 27The stagnant pool and rust images explain how a restless but unoccupied mind feeds troubling thoughts.
21. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 28Civil-war image of inward torment.
22. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 29Sweeping moral-medical generalization.
23. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 30Social criticism of idle nobility.
24. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 1The family metaphor makes excessive solitude a companion, not a synonym, of idleness.
25. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 2Imposed solitude under religious rules.
26. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 3Prison and isolated households.
27. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 4Poverty and fear of disgrace.
28. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 5Abrupt loss of usual companions.
29. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 6Initially attractive voluntary solitude.
30. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 12The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
31. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 13The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
32. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 14The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
33. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 15The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
34. Subsection 6 Excessive Exercise as a Cause, and How It Acts. Solitude And… · paragraph 16Scipio’s paradox distinguishes fruitful withdrawn activity from the idleness others suppose.
35. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraph 20More’s protection against overwork.
36. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraph 21A proposal for servants’ recreation.
37. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraph 22The idle need occupation while the overworked need refreshing recreation.
38. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraph 23Recreation varies with condition and season.
39. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraph 34The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
40. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraph 35The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
41. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraph 36The cause is applied specifically to love in a sequence about leisure, abundance and lust.
42. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraph 37The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
43. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraph 38The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
44. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraph 39The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
45. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraph 40The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
46. Member 2. Subsection 1. Causes of Heroic Love: Bodily Temperament, Plentiful… · paragraph 41The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
47. The Cure of Love Melancholy by Work, Diet, Medicine, Fasting and Other Means · paragraph 7The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
48. The Cure of Love Melancholy by Work, Diet, Medicine, Fasting and Other Means · paragraph 8The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
49. The Cure of Love Melancholy by Work, Diet, Medicine, Fasting and Other Means · paragraph 9Removing idleness is the remedy-side counterpart to its alleged role in love.
50. The Cure of Love Melancholy by Work, Diet, Medicine, Fasting and Other Means · paragraph 15The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
51. Causes of Jealousy. Who Are Most Susceptible. Idleness, Melancholy, Impotence… · paragraph 21The condition combines idleness with melancholy before alleging increased jealousy.
52. The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good… · paragraph 19The surrounding argument qualifies the indexed cause, remedy or apparent-idleness example.
53. The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good… · paragraph 20Important occupation is proposed to counter jealous fears and suspicions.
54. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions… · paragraph 9In Burton’s recasting of Hilarion’s story, sleeplessness produces disordered perception.
55. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions… · paragraph 10A qualification against condemning contemplation itself.
56. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions… · paragraph 11Attributed accounts of religious melancholy.
57. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraph 32The concluding precept joins companionship with occupation.

In this edition

“Cozen German to Idleness” becomes “First cousin to idleness,” and “too much solitariness” becomes “too much being alone” in the same passage. The metaphor and the limiting too much are both essential. The edition distinguishes “at idle hours” → “In my spare hours” from “became idle headed” → “his mind became disordered”. Its rendering of sole cause as a cause sufficient by itself preserves the claim without making idleness Burton’s exclusive explanation of melancholy.

idle · local use 1

Printed “idle” (English; lemma).

Unoccupied or available, rather than necessarily blameworthy.

Here: Burton locates useful writing in time outside his principal studies.

Context: Burton’s personal explanation of the book’s relation to theology.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: at idle hours

Modern rendering: In my spare hours

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

idle · local use 2

Printed “idle” (English; lemma).

Fruitless or pointless.

Here: The adjective attacks scholarly inquiries judged worthless beside civic and spiritual danger.

Context: Burton’s polemical question, framed by the Archimedes example.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: idle questions

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

idle · local use 3

Printed “idle” (English; lemma).

Insufficiently occupied, here qualified by excess.

Here: The idle need occupation while the overworked need refreshing recreation.

Context: Burton distinguishes patients’ conditions instead of prescribing more work to everyone.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: over idle on the other, to keep themselves busied

Modern rendering: to keep the excessively idle occupied on the other

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

idle · local use 4

Printed “idle” (English; lemma).

Unoccupied or at leisure.

Here: Scipio’s paradox distinguishes fruitful withdrawn activity from the idleness others suppose.

Context: Burton invokes Cicero’s Scipio after defending useful learned and religious retreats, not every isolated life or monastic practice.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: never more busie, then when he seemed to be most idle

Modern rendering: never busier than when he seemed most idle

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

idle headed

Printed “idle headed” (English; phrase).

Mentally disordered.

Here: In Burton’s recasting of Hilarion’s story, sleeplessness produces disordered perception.

Context: This is Burton’s historical physiological interpretation of a transmitted devotional narrative, not a diagnosis verified here.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: became idle headed

Modern rendering: his mind became disordered

Word and construction: The compound idle headed means mentally disordered. The original predicates it of Hilarion; the modern supplies his mind as grammatical subject and predicates disordered of that mind.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Idleness · local use 1

Printed “Idleness” (English; lemma).

Inactivity or want of worthwhile employment.

Here: The apposition makes idleness both a regimen category and a social badge under attack.

Context: Burton’s moral-medical rhetoric; “a sole cause” later in the paragraph means sufficient by itself, not the only cause in his whole work.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Idleness (the badg of gentry) or want of Exercise

Modern rendering: idleness—the badge of gentility—or lack of exercise

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Idleness · local use 2

Printed “Idleness” (English; lemma).

Lack of purposeful employment.

Here: The stagnant pool and rust images explain how a restless but unoccupied mind feeds troubling thoughts.

Context: Burton ranks this above bodily inactivity in harm; the severity is his historical judgement.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Idleness of the minde

Modern rendering: Idleness of mind

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Idleness · local use 3

Printed “Idleness” (English; lemma).

Lack of occupation, distinguished from solitude.

Here: The family metaphor makes excessive solitude a companion, not a synonym, of idleness.

Context: Burton explicitly limits solitude by excess and then divides imposed from voluntary forms.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cozen German to Idleness

Modern rendering: First cousin to idleness

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

idlenesse

Printed “idlenesse” (English; lemma).

Lack of occupation.

Here: The causal reversal motivates Burton’s own writing about melancholy.

Context: Burton attributes the medical maxim to Rhazes and applies it to his own undertaking.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: no greater cause of melancholy then idlenesse, no better cure then businesse

Modern rendering: Nothing causes melancholy more than idleness, and nothing cures it better than activity

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “idlenes” (English; lemma).

Citation key: idleness.

Inactivity or unoccupied leisure.

Here: The repeated noun makes a paradox of writing about melancholy as an antidote produced from its supposed cause.

Context: Burton describes his own writing through the scorpion, nail and theriac analogies; this does not endorse unoccupied withdrawal in general.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: idlenes with idlenes

Modern rendering: idleness with idleness

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Idleness” (English; lemma).

Citation key: idleness.

Lack of occupation.

Here: The cause is applied specifically to love in a sequence about leisure, abundance and lust.

Context: Burton’s sweeping assertion relies on literary and moral examples, not a present-day causal finding.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Idleness overthrowes all

Modern rendering: Idleness overthrows everything

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “idleness” (English; lemma).

Citation key: idleness.

Lack of occupation.

Here: Removing idleness is the remedy-side counterpart to its alleged role in love.

Context: Burton supplies an English verse after altered Ovidian Latin; this is historical counsel.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: Take idleness away

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “idleness” (English; lemma).

Citation key: idleness.

Lack of occupation.

Here: The condition combines idleness with melancholy before alleging increased jealousy.

Context: The ensuing presumption about idle women is Nevisanus’s gendered claim, endorsed here by Burton, not an established fact.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: If idleness concurr with melancholy

Modern rendering: If idleness joins melancholy

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “idleness” (English; lemma).

Citation key: idleness.

Lack of occupation.

Here: Important occupation is proposed to counter jealous fears and suspicions.

Context: The preceding claim is cure or at least mitigation if resisted in time; Burton’s historical counsel is qualified.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: avoiding idleness

Modern rendering: avoid idleness

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “idle” (English; lemma).

Citation key: idle.

Without occupation.

Here: The concluding precept joins companionship with occupation.

Context: Burton addresses those distressed by melancholy and repeats the book’s counsel, not an unconditional judgment on every use of leisure.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Be not solitary, be not idle

Modern rendering: Do not be solitary; do not be idle

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

solitariness

Printed “solitariness” (English; lemma).

Being alone.

Here: The excessive solitude compared to idleness is separately named and qualified.

Context: Burton’s comparison, followed by the imposed/voluntary division.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: too much solitariness

Modern rendering: too much being alone

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.