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And therefore, your men of imagination are generally given to sensual pleasure, because the objects of sense yield them a more delicate touch, and a livelier sensation, than they do others. But if they happen to live so long (which is hardly possible), in the decline of life they pay dearly for the youthful days of their vanity. Those rigid, stiff and unyielding fibres, have less warm sensations, because it requires a greater resistance. Those excel most in the labours of the understanding, or the intellectual faculties, retain their impressions longest, and pursue the farthest; and are most susceptible of the slow and lasting passions, which secretly consume them as chronic diseases do. And lastly, those whose organs of sensation are (if I may speak so) unelastic, or entirely callous, resty for want of exercise, or any way obstructed, or naturally ill-formed, as they have scarce any passions at all, or any lively sensations, and are incapable of lasting impressions; so they enjoy the firmest heath, and are subject to the fewest diseases: such are ideots, peasants, and mechanics, and those we call indolent people.
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