r power! Then Curiosity comes
swimming by, making signs to her companions to follow; they plunge
into the current. Imagination sits dreaming on the bank. She follows
the torrent with her eyes and transforms the fragments of straw and
reed into masts and bowsprit. And scarcely has the transformation
taken place, before Desire, holding in one hand her skirt drawn up
even to her knees, appears, sees the vessel and takes possession of
it. O ye drinkers of water, it is by means of that magic spring that
you have so often turned and turned again the world at your will,
throwing beneath your feet the weak, trampling on his neck, and
sometimes changing even the form and aspect of nature!"

If by this system of inaction, in combination with our system of diet,
you fail to obtain satisfactory results, throw yourself with might and
main into another system, which we will explain to you.

Man has a certain degree of energy given to him. Such and such a man
or woman stands to another as ten is to thirty, as one to five; and
there is a certain degree of energy which no one of us ever exceeds.
The quantity of energy, or willpower, which each of us possesses
diffuses itself like sound; it is sometimes weak, sometimes strong; it
modifies itself according to the octaves to which it mounts. This
force is unique, and although it may be dissipated in desire, in
passion, in toils of intellect or in bodily exertion, it turns towards
the object to which man directs it. A boxer expends it in blows of the
fist, the baker in kneading his bread, the poet in the enthusiasm
which consumes and demands an enormous quantity of it; it passes to
the feet of the dancer; in fact, every one diffuses it at will, and
may I see the Minotaur tranquilly seated this very evening upon my
bed, if you do not know as well as I do how he expends it. Almost all
men spend in necessary toils, or in the anguish of direful passions,
this fine sum of energy and of will, with which nature has endowed
them; but our honest women are all the prey to the caprices and the
struggles of this power which knows not what to do with itself. If, in
the case of your wife, this energy has not been subdued by the
prescribed dietary regimen, subject her to some form of activity which
will constantly increase in violence. Find some means by which her sum
of force which inconveniences you may be carried off, by some
occupation which shall entirely absorb her strength. Without setting
your w