"Who would," says Bossuet, "dare think of other excesses which reveal themselves in a still more dangerous manner? Who, I say, would dare speak of them, or dare think of them, since they cannot be spoken of without shame nor thought of without peril, though it be but to condemn them? O God, once more, who would dare speak of this deep and shameful plague of nature, this concupiscence which binds the soul to the body with bonds so tender and so violent--bonds man can scarcely defend himself against, and which cause such frightful disorders among the human race! Woe to the earth! woe to the earth, from whose secret passions rise continually vapors so thick and black, concealing from us both sky and light, but of which we are reminded through the lightnings and thunder-bolts they send forth against the corruption of the human race!"[94] The abuse of the pleasures of the senses is in general called _intemperance_, and the proper use of these pleasures, _temperance_. Gormandizing is the abuse of the pleasures of eating; intoxication or drunkenness, the abuse of the pleasures of drinking; immodesty or lust, the abuse of the pleasures attached to the reproduction of the species. The opposites of these three vices are, to the first two, _sobriety_, to the last, _chastity_. The duty of temperance is enforced by two considerations: 1, intemperance being, as experience shows, the ruination of health, is thereby contrary to the duty of self-preservation; 2, intemperance destroying the intellectual faculties, and making us unfit for any energetic and manly action, is contrary to the duty imposed on us to respect our moral faculties and protect against all injury within us the free personality which constitutes the essence of humanity. Kant does not admit that the first of these considerations--that, namely, which is deduced from the interest of our health--has any validity in morals: "Vice," he says, "should not be judged from the damage it does to man, for to resist it would then be resisting it for reasons of comfort and commodity, which could never be a principle to found a duty on, but only a measure of prudence." This is true; but if we have in the foregoing pages established that self-preservation is one of man's duties, that he should not destroy his health or abridge his life, an evident corollary of this principle is to avoid intemperance, because intemperance abridges life. This consideration is then as legitimate from the standpoint of morality as from that of interest. The ancients have spoken admirably about temperance. Socrates in particular, in Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, showed clearly that temperance makes of man a free man, and intemperance, a brute and a slave.