Nimia Solitudo

Según Robert Burton, en su Anatomía de la Melancolía...

A young man is like a fair new house; the carpenter leaves it well built, in good repair, of solid stuff; but a bad tenant lets it rain in, and for want of reparation fall to decay, etc. Our parents, tutors, friends, spare no cost to bring usw up in our youth in all manner of virtuous education; but when we are left to ourselves, idleness as a tempest drives all virtuous motions out of our minds, et nihili sumus; on a sudden, by sloth and such bad ways, we come to naught.

Cousin-german to idleness, and a concomitant cause which goes hand in hand with it,  is nimia solitudo, too much solitariness, by the testimony of all physicians, cause and symptom both; but as it is here put for a cause, it is either coact, enforced, or else voluntary. Enforced solitariness is commonly seen in students, monks, friars, anchorites, that by their order and course of life must abandon all company, society of other men, and betake themselves to a private cell: Otio superstitioso seclusi [recluses thorugh superstition], as Bale and Hospinian well term it, such as are the Carthusians of our tiem, that eat no flesh (by their order), keep perpetual silence, never go abroad; such as live in prison, or some desert place, and cannot have company, as many of our country gentlemen do in solitary houses, thay must either be alone amongst them, rectified such inconveniendes, and not so far to have raved and raged against those fair buildings and ever-lasting monuments of our forefathers' devotion, consecrated to pious uses; some monasteries and collegiate cells might have been well spared, and their revenues otherwise employed, here and there one, in good towns or cities at least, for men and women of all sorts and conditions to live  in, to sequester themselves from the cares and tumults of the world, that were not desirous or fit to marry, or otherwise willing to be troubled with common affairs, and know not well where to bestow themselves, to live apart in, for more conveniency, good education, better company sake, to follow their studies (I say), to the perfection of arts and sciences, common good, and, as some truly devoted monks of old had done, freely and truly to serve God.