For by all such inchantments the soul, as if driven into fury, compels the compound man to leap rashly, and without reason, and full of the brutal nature to bellow and exclaim. In the mean time, the perturbation appearing from without, being inflamed by the internal, which was first of all roused by sense. But the vehement motions excited by the hearing, arise from certain noises and sounds, from base discourse, and mixed assemblies; so that some, exiled from reason, behave as if struck mad; and others, enervated by effeminate softness, agitate themselves by a multitude of trifling gesticulations. And who is ignorant how much the soul is fattened, and infested with material grossness, by the ointments and perfumes which commend lovers to each other? But why is it necessary to speak of the passions originating from the taste: in this respect especially, binding the soul in a double band; one of which is thickened by the passions excited by the taste; the other becomes strong and powerful by the different bodies which we receive in food. For as a certain physician observed, those are not the only poisons which are prepared by the medical art, but such things as we daily receive for food, as well liquid as solid, are to be reckoned among this number; and much greater danger arises to our life from these, than to our bodies from poisons. But the touch does all but transmute the soul into body, and excites in it, as in a dissonant body, certain broken and enervated sounds. The remembrance, imagination, and cogitation of all these raise a collected swarm of passions, i. e. of fear, desire, anger, love, emulation, cares, and griefs, they fill the soul with perturbations of this kind, cloud its intellectual eye with oblivion, and bury its divine light in material darkness. On which account it is a great undertaking to be purified from all this rout of pollutions; and to bestow much labour in meditating day and night, what measures we shall adopt to be freed from these bonds, and this because we are complicated with sense, from a certain necessity. From whence, as much as our ability will permit, we ought to recede from those places in which we may (perhaps unwillingly), meet with this hostile rout; and it is requisite we should be solicitous not to engage in combat with these dangerous foes, lest, through too great a confidence of victory and success, instead of vigorous contention, we produce only unskilfulness and indolence.”