The way to chastity is not to struggle directly with incontinent thoughts but to avert the thoughts by some employment, or by reading, or by meditating on other things.
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"For the best and safest way of philosophizing seems to be, first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and of establishing them by experiment, and then to proceed more slowly to hypothe…"
"Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy."
"If I am anything, which I highly doubt, it is due to hard work."
"Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth."
"Gravity must be caused by some agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers."
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Fighting unwanted thoughts directly makes them stronger. Instead, redirect your mind through purposeful activity — work, reading, or deliberate focus on something else. This is cognitive redirection: willpower alone fails against intrusive thoughts, but genuine engagement in meaningful tasks naturally crowds them out. It anticipates modern behavioral psychology's finding that thought suppression backfires while distraction through absorption is far more effective for mental discipline.
Newton was famously celibate his entire life, never marrying and likely dying a virgin. Deeply religious, he spent as much time on theology and biblical prophecy as on physics. He understood relentless intellectual work as moral discipline. His prescribed remedy — employment, reading, meditation — mirrors exactly how he lived: perpetually absorbed in mathematics, optics, alchemy, and scripture, using cognitive immersion as his personal strategy for maintaining a strictly ascetic existence.
Newton lived in late 17th-century England, where Puritan moral strictness collided with the open licentiousness of Charles II's Restoration court. Protestant theology placed enormous weight on mastering sinful impulses, while Stoic philosophy — widely read among educated men — framed bodily self-governance as an intellectual virtue. Debates about sin, celibacy, and worldly temptation were culturally urgent. Moral self-mastery was inseparable from religious standing and scholarly credibility in Newton's world.
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