Meditations

When we have meat before us and other eatables, it is a good idea to take in, as a felt impression, the knowledge that this is the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead body of a bird or a pig. And again, that this wine is only a little grape juice. And in the carnal act, that it is no more than the rubbing of a membrane and the emission of mucus.

Such felt knowledge reaches well to the core of a thing, and by penetrating through it, we see what kind of thing it really is. Just in the same way, we ought to act all through life, and where there are things that appear most worthy of our approbation, we ought to leave them bare, look at their worthlessness, and strip them of all the words by which they are exalted.