Vices Opposed to Temperance

Nature has associated pleasure with the operations necessary for life. Man is to make use of these pleasures in so faras they are required for his well-being. To reject pleasure to the extent of omitting what is necessary for preserving nature, whether in the individual or in the race, would be the vice ofinsensibility. Insensibility is a vice opposed to temperance. Now,insensibility is not to be confused with abstinence, which is useful and sometimes necessary even in the natural order. In the supernatural order it is right and reasonable, and hence virtuous,freely to renounce all use of sex, and much of the pleasure of the table, so that one may devote oneself more completely to the life of spiritual perfection.

Intemperance is the direct opposite to temperance. Aristotle calls it (Ethic. iii 12) a childish vice. The adjective is justified; intemperance, like an ill-trained and unruly child, is unreasonable, headstrong, willful, wanting its own way, knowing not where to stop, and growing stronger in its disgusting qualities the more it is indulged. Finally (and still like an unruly child), intemperance is corrected only by having its tendencies curbed and restrained.

Intemperance is a more grievous vice than cowardice,for there is in it more of a person’s own choice. It is lessexcusable than cowardice, for of the two vices it is the more readily cured.

Intemperance is the most disgraceful of vices, for itindulges pleasures that men and animals have in common; it tends to level a man to the state of a beast. And intemperance so dims the light, and weakens the control of reason, that it makes a man slave to his bodily cravings. Hence, intemperance is both inhuman andslavish; it shames and disgraces its victim in the eyes of hisfellowmen.