Of Moral Virtue (5-6)

Now mean and mediocrity may be differently understood. For there is one mean which is compounded and made up of the two simple extremes, as in colors, gray, of white and black; and another, where that which contains and is contained is the medium between the containing and the contained, as, for instance, the number eight, between twelve and four. And a third sort there is also,

which participates of neither extreme, as for example, all those things which, as being neither good nor evil in themselves, we call adiaphorous, or indifferent. But in none of these ways can virtue be said to be a mean, or mediocrity. For neither is it a mixture of vices, nor, comprehending that which is defective and short, is it comprehended by that which runs out into excess; nor yet is it exempt from the impetuosity and sudden efforts of the passions, in which excess and defect do properly take place. But moral virtue properly doth consist in a mean or mediocrity (and so it is commonly taken), most like to that which there is in our Greek music and harmony. For, whereas there are the highest and lowest musical notes in the extremities of the scale called nete and hypate; so likewise is there in the middle thereof, between these two, another musical note, and that the sweetest of all, called mese (or mean), which does as perfectly avoid the extreme sharpness of the one as it doth the over-flatness of the other. And so also virtue, being a motion and power which is exercised about the brutal and irrational part of the soul, takes away the remission and intention—in a word, the excess and defect—of the appetites, reducing thereby every one of the passions to a due mediocrity and perfect state of rectitude.

For example, fortitude is said to be the mean between cowardice and rashness, whereof the one is a defect, as the other is an excess of the irascible faculty; liberality, between sordid parsimony on the one hand, and extravagant prodigality on the other; clemency between insensibility of injuries and its opposite, revengeful cruelty; and so of justice and temperance; the former being the mean between giving and distributing more or less than is due in all contracts, affairs, and business between man and man, and the latter a just mediocrity between a stupid apathy, touched with no sense or relish of pleasure, and dissolute softness, abandoned to all manner of sensualities.

And from this instance of temperance it is, that we are most clearly given to understand the difference between the irrational and the rational faculties of the soul, and that it so plainly appears to us that the passions and affections of the mind are quite a distinct thing from reason. For otherwise never should we be able to distinguish continence from temperance, nor incontinence from intemperance, in lust and pleasures, if it were one and the same faculty of the soul wherewith we reason and judge, and whereby we desire and covet. Now temperance is that whereby reason governs and manages that part of the soul which is subject to the passions (as it were some wild creature brought up by hand, and made quite tame and gentle), having gained an absolute victory over all its appetites, and brought them entirely under the dominion of it. Whereas we call it continence, when reason has indeed gained the mastery over the appetites and prevailed against them, though not without great pains and trouble, they being perverse and continuing to struggle, as not having wholly submitted themselves; so that it is not without great difficulty able to preserve its government over them, being forced to retain and hold them in, and keep them within compass, as it were, with stripes, with the bit and bridle, while the mind all the time is full of nothing but agony, contentions, and confusion. All which Plato endeavors to illustrate by a similitude of the chariot-horses of the soul, the one whereof, being more unruly, not only kicks and flings at him that is more gentle and tractable, but also thereby so troubles and disorders the driver himself, that he is forced sometimes to hold him hard in, and sometimes again to give him his head,

Lest from his hands the purple reins should slip,

as Simonides speaks.

And from hence we may see why continence is not

thought worthy to be placed in the number of perfect virtues, but is taken to be a degree under virtue. For there is not therein produced a mediocrity arising from a symphony of the worst with the better, nor are the excesses of the passions retrenched; nor yet doth the appetite become obedient and subservient to the reasonable faculties, but it both makes and feels disorder and disturbance, being repressed by violence and constraint, and (as it were) by necessity; as in a sedition or faction in a city or state, the contending parties, breathing nothing but war and destruction and ruin to one another, do yet cohabit together (it may be) within the compass of the same walls; insomuch that the soul of the incontinent person, with respect to the conflicts and incongruities therein, may very properly be compared to the city,

Where all the streets are filled with incense smoke,

And songs of triumph mixed with groans resound.

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And upon the same grounds it is, that incontinence is held to be something less than vice also, but intemperance to be a complete and perfect vice, for therein not the appetite only but reason likewise is debauched and corrupted; and as the former incites and pushes forward the desires and affections to that which is evil, so this, by making an ill judgment, is easily led to consent and agree to the soft whispers and tempting allurements of corrupt lusts and passions, and soon loseth all sense of sin and evil. Whereas incontinence preserves the judgment, by the help of reason, right and sound; but yet, by irresistible force and violence of the passions, is even against judgment drawn away. Moreover, in these respects following it differeth also from intemperance:—inasmuch as reason in that is overpowered by passion, but in this it never so much as struggleth; the incontinent person, after a noble resistance, is at last forced to submit to the tyranny of his lusts, and follow their guidance, while the intemperate approves them, and gladly goes along with and submits to them; one feels remorse for the evil he commits, while the other prides in lewdness and vice. Again, the one wilfully and of his own accord runs into sin; while the other, even against his will, is forced to abandon that which is good.

And this difference between them is not to be collected only from their actions, but may as plainly also be discovered by their words. For at this rate do intemperate persons use to talk:

What mirth in life, what pleasure, what delight,

Without content in sports of Venus bright?

Were those joys past, and I for them unmeet,

Ring out my knell, bring forth my winding-sheet.

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And thus says another:

To eat, to drink, to wench are principal,

All pleasures else I accessories call;

as if from his very soul he were wholly abandoned and given up to pleasures and voluptuousness, and even over whelmed therein. And much of the same mind was he, and his judgment was as totally depraved by his passions, who said,

Let me, ye dull and formal fops, alone,

I am resolved, ’tis best to be undone.

But quite another spirit do we find running through the sayings of the incontinent:

Blame Nature only for it, blame not me,

Would she permit, I then should virtuous be,

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says one of them. And again,

Ah! ’tis decreed by Fate. We know, ’tis true,

We know those virtues, which we ne’er pursue.

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And another,

What will my swelling passions’ force assuage?

No more can I sustain this tempest’s rage,

Than anchor’s fluke, dropt on loose ground, a storm;

where not improperly he compares the fluke of an anchor dropped in loose ground to that ill-grounded, feeble, and irresolute reason, which by the vanity, weakness, and luxury of the mind is easily brought to forsake the judgment. And the like metaphor has the poet made use of happily enough in these verses:

To us, in ships moored near the shore who lie,

Though strong the cables, when the winds rise high

Cables will prove but small security;

where by the cables the poet means the judgment opposing itself against all that is evil or dishonest, which is, however, oftentimes disturbed and broken by violent and sudden gusts of the passions. For, indeed, the intemperate are borne away directly and with full sail to their pleasures; to them they deliver up themselves entirely, and thither it is they bend their whole course. While the incontinent, indirectly only, as endeavoring to sustain and repel the assaults of the passions and withstand their temptations, either is allured and as it were slides into evil, or else is plunged violently into it whether he will or no. As Timon, in his bitter way of raillery, reproaches Anaxarchus,

When first the dogged Anaxarchus strove

The power of virtue o’er his mind to prove,

Firm though he seemed, and obstinately good,

In vain th’ impulse of temper he withstood.

Nature recoiled, whatever he could do;

He saw those ills, which yet he did pursue;

In this not single, other sophists too

Felt the same force, which they could ne’er subdue.

And neither is a wise man continent, but temperate; nor a fool incontinent, but intemperate; the one taking true pleasure and delight in good, the other having no displeasure against evil. And therefore incontinence is said to be found only in a mind which is sophistical (or which barely makes a show of being governed and directed by prudence), and which has indeed the use of reason, but in so weak and faint a manner, that it is not able to persevere in that which it knows to be right.