34. For the soul, being agitated with Bacchic fury through all these by the irrational part, is made to leap, to exclaim and vociferate, the external tumult being inflamed by the internal, and which was first enkindled by sense. But the excitations through the ears, and which are of a passive nature, are produced by certain noises and sounds, by indecent language and defamation, so that many through these being exiled from reason, are furiously agitated, and some, becoming effeminate, exhibit all-various convolutions of the body. And who is ignorant how much the use of fumigations, and the exhalations of sweet odours, with which lovers supply the objects of their love, fatten the irrational part of the soul? But what occasion is there to speak of the passions produced through the taste? For here, especially, there is a complication of a twofold bond; one which is fattened by the passions excited by the taste; and the other, which we render heavy and powerful, by the introduction of foreign bodies [_i.e._ of bodies different from our own]. For, as a certain physician said, those are not the only poisons which are prepared by the medical art; but those likewise which we daily assume for food, both in what we eat, and what we drink, and a thing of a much more deadly nature is imparted to the soul through these, than from the poisons which are compounded for the purpose of destroying the body. And as to the touch, it does all but transmute the soul into the body, and produces in it certain inarticulate sounds, such as frequently take place in inanimate bodies. And from all these, recollections, imaginations, and opinions being collected together, excite a swarm of passions, viz. of fear, desire, anger, love, voluptuousness[26], pain, emulation, solicitude, and disease, and cause the soul to be full of similar perturbations. 35. Hence, to be purified from all these is most difficult, and requires a great contest, and we must bestow much labour both by night and by day to be liberated from an attention to them, and this, because we are necessarily complicated with sense. Whence, also, as much as possible, we should withdraw ourselves from those places in which we may, though unwillingly, meet with this hostile crowd. From experience, also, we should avoid a contest with it, and even a victory over it, and the want of exercise from inexperience.