The European mind is capitulating. It is capitulating out of weakness, out of [intellectual] sloth, out of apathy, out of lack of imagination
Indolence is the sleep of the mind.
The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live.
Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind.
Mental effort, I would argue, is relatively rare. Most of the time we coast.
A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.
A people numerically large may attain to ways of thought and enterprise that no political censure can reduce to a minimum; but under narrower conditions, it may easily come about that the whole people will fall asleep.
There's much to be said for feeling numb. Time passes more quickly. You eat less, and because numbness encourages laziness, you do fewer things, good or bad, and the world's probably a better place for it.
