[22] And how would you have sent me away? surely, as you boast, using pompous language, with a joy which to me would have been sorrowful, with music which would have been no music, with dances, and noises destitute of articulate sound and of reason, striking blows on the soul through the medium of the ears, and with the harp, and with sounds unsuited to the lyre, and unsuited to harmony, not being so much organs, as the actions of a whole life. But these are the things by reason of which I meditated flight; but you, as it seems, contemplated dragging me back from my flight, in order that I might return on account of the deceitful and seductive nature of the external senses, by which I was scarcely able to permit myself to be carried forward.