“Furthermore,
we should often withdraw into ourselves; for mixing with persons of dissimilar
natures throws into disorder our settled composure and wakens our passions
anew, exacerbating whatever is weak in the mind and not properly healed. It is,
however, necessary to combine the two things, solitude and the crowd, and to
have recourse to them alternately: the former will make us long for people, the
latter for ourselves, and the one will be a cure for the other: our distaste
for the crowd will be cured by solitude, our boredom with solitude by the
crowd.”
