Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/134

98 up to now, the moral law was to rise supreme above discretion; they did not really want to set up this law for themselves, but to take it from somewhere, or to find it somewhere, or have it ordered from somewhere.

— I find only six essentially different methods for combatting the impetuosity of a craving. First, we may shun the opportunities for the gratification of the craving and, by long and ever-lengthening periods of non-gratification, weaken and mortify it. Secondly, we may make a strict regularity in our gratification, a law to ourselves; by this regulating the craving itself and encompassing its flux and reflux within fixed periods, we gain intervals, during which it ceases to disturb, us, and thence we may perhaps pass over into thefirst method. Thirdly, we may intentionally giveourselves over to a will and in moderate gratification of it craving in order to grow disgusted, and, by means of our distrust, to obtain a command over the craving: provided we do not act like the rider who races his horse to death and, in so doing, breaks his own neck, which, unfortunately, is the rule in this method.Fourthly, there is an intellectual trick, namely, so rigidly to connect a very painful idea with the gratification in general, that, after some practice, the very idea of the gratification is forthwith felt as a very