The ardor of lechery is very much subdued and check’d by frequent labor and continual toiling. For by painful exercises and laborious working, so great a dissolution is brought upon the whole body, that the blood, which runneth alongst the channels of the veins thereof, for the nourishment and alimentation of each of its members, hath neither time, leisure, nor power to afford the seminal resudation, or superfluity of the third concoction, which nature most carefully reserves for the conservation of the individual, whose preservation she more heedfully regardeth than the propagation of the species, and the multiplication of human land. [Illustration: Metropolitan Museum of Art EVE _by Rodin_ ] [Illustration: Metropolitan Museum of Art ETERNAL SPRINGTIME _by Rodin_ ] On the other part, in opposition and repugnancy hereto, the philosophers say, That idleness is the mother of luxury. When it was asked Ovid, why Aegisthus became an adulterer? he made no other answer but this, Because he was idle. Who were able to rid the world of loitering and laziness might easily frustrate and disappoint Cupid of all his designs, aims, engines, and devices, and so disable and appal him that his bow, quiver, and darts should from thenceforth be a mere needless load and burthen to him, for that it could not lie in his power to strike, or wound any of either sex, with all the arms he had. Again: The tickling pricks of incontinency are blunted by an eager study; for from thence proceedeth an incredible resolution of the spirits, that oftentimes there do not remain so many behind as may suffice to push and thrust forwards the generative resudation to the places thereto appropriated, and there withal inflate the cavernous nerve, whose office is to ejaculate the moisture for the propagation of human progeny. * * * * * The English herbalist John Gerarde, who wrote a Herbal that was published in 1633, suggests a stimulating drink composed of juniper berries steeped in water. The juniper shrub itself was used medicinally, in cordials, and as an element in philtres. * * * * * The medieval writer Andreas Cisalpinus states that the tree called gossypion produced a juice that aided amatory efforts. * * * * * Emblica honey was, in the opinion of the thirteenth century Arab philosopher Avicenna, endowed with venereal virtues. * * * * * A plant that is native to both North and South Africa produces as an exudation a gum resin called euphorbium, which was considered in the thirteenth century an invigorating agent. * * * * *