But this receding from material affections is brought about partly by force, and partly by persuasion; and by the assistance of reason the affections languish, and are, as it were, buried in oblivion, or in a certain philosophical death; which is, indeed, the best mode of desertion, without oppressing the terrene bandage from which the soul departs. For in things which are the objects of sense, a violent devulsion cannot take place without either a laceration of some part, or at least a vestige of separation. But vice steals in upon the soul through continual negligence: and carelessness is produced by not sufficiently attending to intelligible objects; the affections in the mean time being excited by the drowsy perceptions of sense, among which must be also reckoned the sensations arising from food. We must therefore abstain, not less than from other things, from such food as usually excites the passions of our soul. Let us then in this particular enquire a little farther. There are two fountains, whose noxious streams detain the soul in matter, and with which, as if saturated with lethargic potions, she forgets her own proper speculations: I mean pleasure and grief, the artificer of which is sense and its perceptions, together with the operations attendant on the senses, imaginations, opinions, and memory. The passions, roused by the energies of these, and the irrational part, now fattened with noxious nutriment, draw down the soul, and avert her inclinations from her native love of true being. It is requisite, therefore, that we revolt from these to the utmost of our ability. But true defections can alone take place by avoiding the passions and rash motions produced by the senses. But, sensation respects whatever moves the sight, or the hearing, or the taste, or the smell. And sense is, as it were, the metropolis of that foreign colony of passions which reside in the soul, and which must be expelled by him who wishes, while connected with body, to become an inhabitant of the royal regions of intellect. Let us then enquire how much fuel of the passions enters into us through each of the senses; and this either when we behold the spectacles of horses in the race, and the labours of the athletic, or the contests of those who twist and bend their bodies in leaping, or when we survey beautiful women. For all these insnare us, unconscious of the danger, and subject to their dominion the irrational appetite, by proffered inchantments of every kind.