Man was created to perform services, because these hold good and truth; and their marriage is the source of creation, and also of conjugial love, as was demonstrated in the chapter on this subject [V]. By any study or business we mean any way in which these can be applied to be service. So when a person devotes himself to any study or business, when, that is, he is performing a service, his mind is bounded and, as it were, has a circle drawn around it, within which it is by stages arranged to become a truly human form. From this, as from its home, it can see various desires outside itself, and is brought by soundness of reason to banish them, and as a result also the wild follies of scortatory lust. That is why in such people the warmth of marriage lasts better and longer than in others.

[2] The result for those who abandon themselves to sloth and idleness is the reverse. In their case the mind is unbounded and uncircumscribed, and so a person allows into it all the empty and absurd ideas emanating from the world and the body, and causes it to love them. It is obvious that then conjugial love too is sent into exile. For the result of sloth and idleness is a mental stupor and a bodily numbness, the whole personality becoming incapable of feeling any vital love, and above all, conjugial love. For this is the source from which industry and keenness in life pour forth. But coldness in marriage in their case is different from that in other cases; it is certainly being deprived of conjugial love, but as the result of their failure.