(4) A man who drank too much of that which is limpid, often came to the point when he lost both his senses and his selfrespect. Once, a friend came across him in this deplorable state, lying on the road. So he got a sack and put him in feet first and put the sack on his shoulder and set off for home. On the way, another drunk appeared, reeling along, supported by a companion. At this, the man whose head hung out of the sack, woke up, and seeing the other in this pitiable state said reprovingly: 'Ah, unhappy man, in future drink two cups of wine less, then you will be able to walk as I do now - free and alone.'

Our own state is not different. We see faults because we do not love. If we had the least understanding of real love, the faults of those near to us would appear as good qualities.

(430) temperance, and then justice which is the end of our search. Very true. Now, can we find justice without troubling ourselves about temperance? I do not know how that can be accomplished, he said, nor do I desire that justice should be brought to light and temperance lost sight of; and therefore I wish that you would do me the favour of considering temperance first. Certainly, I replied, I should not be justified in refusing your request. Then consider, he said. Yes, I replied; I will; and as far as I can at present see, the virtue of temperance has more of the nature of harmony and symphony than the preceding. How so? he asked. Temperance, I replied, is the ordering or controlling of certain pleasures and desires; this is curiously enough implied in the saying of ‘a man being his own master;’ and other traces of the same notion may be found in language. No doubt, he said. There is something ridiculous in the expression ‘master of himself;’ for the master is also the servant and the servant the master; and in all these modes of speaking the same person is denoted. Certainly. The meaning is, I believe, that in the human soul there is a better and also a worse principle; and when the better has the worse under control, then a man is said to be master of himself; and this is a term of praise: but when, owing to evil education or association, the better principle, which is also the smaller, is overwhelmed by the greater mass of the

(20) Now if any one should in drunkenness or fulness fall upon them, and plunge himself into perdition, let him bear his own blame; he has need of a light in his heart, that his understanding and mind may be well governed.

(6) Let a man be lifted up by his own self; let him not lower himself; for he himself is his friend, and he himself is his enemy.

(105) A man can search into its will, and know what it willeth, or how it is: For it proceedeth in the sweet quality, and the light riseth up in the sweet quality in the sweet water, but not in the other qualities.

(17) 'The Person not larger than a thumb, the inner Self, is always settled in the heart of men. Let a man draw that Self forth from his body with steadiness, as one draws the pith from a reed. Let him know that Self as the Bright, as the Immortal; yes, as the Bright, as the Immortal.'

(7) 'And he who desires the world of food and drink, by his mere will food and drink come to him, and having obtained the world of food and drink, he is happy.

(71) For a Man is many Times (in the outward) so very evil natured, [or malicious, froward Conditioned,] from the Stars, that he becomes loathsome to himself; but when he considers himself, then he enters into himself, into the inward Man, and reaches after Abstinence [or Forbearance of Evil,] and yet cannot be quite loosed from, [or rid of] the outward wicked malicious Man, but must continually (with the inward) break the Head of (the outward) the Serpent.

(107) But when the bitter quality riseth up therein, then it divideth and formeth itself, as if it were alive or lively, or as if the life did rise up there, in a greenish flourishing manner and form, like a green flash of lightning, to speak after the manner of men, so that it dazzleth a man's eyes, and blindeth him.

(9) Hence come the seas and all the mountains, from him flow the rivers of every kind; hence come all herbs and the juice through which the inner Self subsists with the elements.

(44) ["Here is meant or understood out of or from a quite Godless seed, whereout there often grows a thistle; though yet there were a remedy, if the will were but once broken; but it is a rare and precious thing; however, indeed on a good tree it is often so, that some branches do also wither."] Note.

(101) Then thou seest that the body upon the root is dead also; for when the virtue is gone out of the root, then the body is but a dead carcass and can operate or effect nothing at all. And that is because the astringent spirit and the bitter have killed or destroyed the body of the water and attracted the fatness or unctuosity thereof to themselves; and thus they have drawn or sucked up the spirit thereof into the dead body.

(24) "Above the gods' best gift to men ranks wine, In measure drunk; but in excess the worst."

(51) And the bitter quality also loveth all the other fountain-spirits. And first the sweet. For in the sweet water the bitter spirit is refreshed, and therein it quencheth its great thirst; and its bitterness is therein mitigated; also it obtaineth its lightlife therein: In the astringent it has its body, wherein it triumpheth, cooleth and mitigateth itself; and in the heat it has its power and strength, wherein its joy stands.

(11) Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

(23) Pythagoras being asked, how a lover of wine might be cured of intoxication, answered, if he frequently surveys what his actions were when he was intoxicated. Stob. p. 165.

(25) If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

(88) Now when that is done, then the astringent and bitter qualities rejoice in their son, understand, in the sweat, and both of them give to it their power, virtue and life, and stuff it like a greedy gormandizing hog, so that it soon comes to grow full and swelled: For the astringent quality, and also the bitter, always draw the sap out of the earth, and stuff it into their young son.

(149) There the bitter quality raveth and rageth, and seeketh for rest and food, and finds it not, and moveth or boileth in the body as a lingering poison.

(91) So now, when the astringent grappleth with the bitter, the bitter leaps aside, and taketh the son's sap along with it; and then the astringent everywhere presseth hard after it, and would fain captivate it. Then the bitter rusheth out from the body, and extendeth itself as far as it can.