"Thou hast taught me, O my God," he says, "to look upon food as upon a remedy. But when I pass from the suffering of hunger to the repose of satiety, even in this passage from the one to the other does concupiscence lay its snares for me; for this passage is a pleasure, and there is no other means to reach the end which by necessity we must reach. And although real hunger and thirst--eating and drinking be but a matter of health, yet does pleasure join itself thereto as a dangerous companion, and sometimes it even takes the lead and induces me to do from a sense of pleasure, what I only wish to do for my health. What is enough for health, is not enough for pleasure, and it is often difficult to decide whether it is the wants of the body that require to be met, or the deceiving voluptuousness of concupiscence which subjugates us. In this incertitude our miserable soul rejoices because she finds therein a defense and an excuse, and, not knowing what is sufficient for the maintenance of health, she places the interests of voluptuousness under the shadow of this pretext. Every day I endeavor to resist its temptations and invoke thy hand to save me, and I lay at thy feet my incertitudes, because, alas! my resolution is not yet strong enough." It will be seen that the two moralists use both the same principle (namely, the will of Providence) to arrive at entirely different conclusions. According to one, pleasure was instituted by God only as a means to arrive at the satisfaction of bodily wants. It is, then, this satisfaction alone we should have in view. According to the other, God allowing necessity to be accompanied by pleasure, invites us thereby to enjoy pleasure. It seems to us that the two moralists fall here into an excess: for, according to us, we should not too much distrust pleasure nor delight in it too much: pleasure, not being an evil in itself, there is no reason why we should reproach ourselves for enjoying it: for it is as essential to the nature of our being as life itself. We may even say that pleasure is already a superior degree of existence, and it is for this reason that the animal is found to be superior to the plant. The scruples of St. Augustine in regard to pleasure are, therefore, exaggerated. On the other hand, I do not approve of Montaigne's refinement either; it is not proper to bring the reflective faculties to bear upon sensual pleasures in order to enhance them: to have one's self waked up in order to take cognizance of the sweetness of sleep is an unjustifiable refinement of sensuality unless one admits pleasure to be the end of life. In one word, it is necessary here to avoid at the same time exaggerated _scruples_ and _self-gratification_, as occupying the mind more than is necessary with what has but a very inferior value.[95]