its roots are spiritual rather than physical. It is a condition of explicitly spiritual dejection that has given up on the pursuit of God, the true, the good, and the beautiful. Sloth is inner despair at the worthwhileness of the worthwhile that finally slumps into an attitude of “Who cares?” Defined in this way, it is plain, as Evelyn Waugh observed, that “sloth is not primarily the temptation of the young.” It is what the medievals spoke of as “the noonday demon.” It is a sluggishness of spirit,