The measure of gain for every man is the body, as the foot is of the shoe. If you take this as your standpoint, you will preserve the measure. But if you go beyond it, you must thenceforward of necessity be borne, as it were, down a steep for the rest of the way. And so it is with the shoe; if you go beyond [what is proper for] the foot, you will have your shoe first gilded, then dyed purple, then embroidered. For there is no end to that which has once transgressed its measure.