the soul, and to prove to us that passion and reason are wide as the poles asunder. For the difference would not be discernible between temperance and continence, nor between intemperance and incontinence, in pleasure and desires, if the appetite and judgement were in the same portion of the soul. Now temperance is a state, wherein reason holds the reins, and manages the passions as a quiet and well-broken-in animal, finding them obedient and submissive to the reins and masters over their desires.[227] Continence on the other hand is not driven by reason without some trouble, not being docile but jibbing and kicking, like an animal compelled by bit and bridle and whip and backing, being in itself full of struggles and commotion. Plato explains this by his simile of the chariot-horses of the soul, the worse one of which ever kicking against the other and disturbing the charioteer, he is obliged ever to hold them in with all his might, and to tighten the reins, lest, to borrow the language of Simonides, "he should drop from his hands the purple reins." And so they do not consider continence to be an absolute virtue, but something less than a virtue; for no mean arises from the concord of the worse with the better, nor is the excess of the passion curtailed, nor does the appetite obey or act in unison with reason, but it both gives and suffers trouble, and is constrained by force, and is as it were an enemy in a town given up to faction. "The town is full of incense, and at once Resounds with triumph-songs and bitter wailing."[228]