13. Why time cures some disorders in the mind, which reason cannot cure.
When this combination is settled, and
while it lasts, it is not in the power of reason to help us, and relieve us from the effects of it. Ideas in our minds,
when they are there, will operate according to their natures and circumstances. And here we see the cause why
time cures certain affections, which reason, though in the right, and allowed to be so, has not power over, nor is
able against them to prevail with those who are apt to hearken to it in other cases. The death of a child that was
the daily delight of its mother's eyes, and joy of her soul, rends from her heart the whole comfort of her life, and
gives her all the torment imaginable: use the consolations of reason in this case, and you were as good preach ease
to one on the rack, and hope to allay, by rational discourses, the pain of his joints tearing asunder. Till time has by
disuse separated the sense of that enjoyment and its loss, from the idea of the child returning to her memory, all
representations, though ever so reasonable, are in vain; and therefore some in whom the union between these
ideas is never dissolved, spend their lives in mourning, and carry an incurable sorrow to their graves.
