For the indulgences of intemperance and gluttony, and whatever other vices the immoderate and insatiable pleasures, when completely filled with an abundance of all external things, produce and bring forth, do not allow the soul to proceed onwards by the plain and straight road, but compel it to fall into ravines and gulfs, until they utterly destroy it; but those practises which adhere to patience, and endurance, and moderation, and all other virtues, keep the soul in the straight road, leaving no stumbling block in the way, against which it can stumble and fall. Very naturally, therefore, has Moses declared that temperance clings to the right way, because it is plain that the contrary habit, intemperance, is always straying from the road.

This road they say is very like pleasures, for almost from their earliest birth to extreme old age men proceed and walk along it, and with great indolence and easiness of temper spend all their lives in it, and not men only, but every species of animal whatever; for there is no single thing which is not attracted by the allurements of pleasure, and which is not, at times, entangled in its multifarious nets, from which it is very difficult to escape.

But the paths of prudence, and temperance, and the other virtues, even though they may not be utterly untravelled, are, at all events, not beaten much; for the number of those who proceed by those roads, and who philosophise in a genuine spirit, and who form associations with virtue alone, disregarding, once for all, all other allurements, is very small.

Therefore he sits constantly in the road, and not once only, who has an eagerness for, and a care for, patient endurances, in order to watch from his ambush and attack pleasure, to which men in general are accustomed, that fountain of everlasting evils, and so to keep it off, and to eradicate it from the whole district of the soul.