Nothing could be further from that conception of libertinage than the idea of a free choice made in a reasoned manner, all spoke instead of the bondage into which reason had been forced, to the flesh, to money and the passions, and when Sade, for the first time in the eighteenth century, tried to come up with a coherent theory of a form of libertinage that until then had led a secret existence, it was exactly that slavery that was exalted: any libertine who wished to enter the Society of the Friends of Crime had to agree to commit any actions 'to which the slightest passing whim might lead him, no matter how revolting it might be'.