The Virtue of Temperance

A virtue is a habit which disposes and inclines aperson to act in accordance with reason. Now, reason indicates the need of measure and moderation; what supplies this need rightly is therefore a virtue. This is the virtue of temperance.

In one way temperance can be regarded as a general virtue, for ordinateness or moderation, which is the object of temperance, is found in all the moral virtues. Yet the virtue of temperance has a special phase of good in view: it holds back theappetites from inordinateness in their drive for what is most alluring. Hence, temperance is a special virtue.

Temperance controls desires and pleasures. It moderates the appetites for sensible and bodily delights; it also moderates the appetites that shrink from bodily evils. Fortitude controls the fear of evils. Temperance controls the pursuit of pleasurablegoods, and also moderates the sorrow or distress caused by the lack of such goods.

Bodily goods cannot give pleasure unless they are somehow brought into contact with the bodily person of the one who enjoys them. Chief of such bodily goods are the goods of nutriment (food and drink) and of sex. Since bodily contact is involved in the use of these goods, the virtue which regulates their use, which is temperance, has to do with the tactile sense, the sense of touch or contact.

The principal use of the bodily and tactile goods with which temperance deals is the preserving of the human individual and the human species. And, as we have said, these goods are more a matter of the sense of touch than of sight, hearing, taste, or smell. That food, for instance, should have a pleasing taste or aroma, or that it should look attractive, is entirely a secondary matter in the service that it renders. For the essential point about food is that it supports life. Yet, since the sense of taste is closely allied with the tactile sense (for food comes into complete bodily contact with the organ of taste), the savors and flavors and amounts of food are proximately subject to regulation by the virtue of temperance.

Temperance regulates the use of bodily goods which belong to the order of man’s natural and normal needs. This virtue, therefore, moderates and ordinates man’s appetites tothe end that he should use pleasurable goods according to the needs of life.

Since moderation, which is the characteristic of temperance, is required for virtue in general, temperance is a principal or cardinal virtue.

Temperance, in point of excellence, comes fourth in the list of cardinal virtues. These virtues, in the descending order of excellence, are: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance.