When you have conceived the phantasm of some pleasure, guard yourself that you be not rapt-away by it, but delay with yourself a little and let the thIng await you for a while. And then bethink yourself of the two periods of time, the one in which you will enjoy the pleasure, the other, in which, after having enjoyed it, you will repent of it, and reproach yourself; and set over against this how you will rejoice and commend yourself if you have abstained. But if it shall seem fitting to you to do the thing, beware lest you have been conquered by the flattery and the sweetness and the allurement of it. But set on the other side how much better would be the consciousness of having won that victory.