Chapter 109
Temperance and self-control; moderation, sobriety and excess.
480 passages · 138 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Temperance is the virtue that governs our relation to pleasure. In the narrowest sense it is measure in eating and drinking. In wider senses it is the rule of reason over every appetite and passion: lust, anger, the love of finery, even the appetite for knowledge. Franklin noticed this elasticity. Some writers confined the name to food and drink, while others stretched it to the moderating of all the passions1. Mill’s father gave it an equally extended application in his son’s education2,3. The idea runs through nearly every kind of book in the Harvard Classics. Philosophers define it, saints wrestle with it, and comic poets mock its absence. Economists and legislators also take it up, because one person’s excess becomes a question for the whole society. Few ideas show so plainly how a private discipline and a public problem shade into each other.
The oldest formulation is the rule of measure. In the Odyssey, Menelaus says that due measure is best in all things, since a host should neither love nor hate his guest overmuch4, and Alcinous repeats the maxim5. Aeschylus makes the middle way dearest to God, and has wantonness beget impiety6. Euripides gives the same rule a darker turn. His Nurse commends “Naught-too-much” over unswerving thoroughness, but she does so to soften Phaedra’s resistance7. The rule is not confined to Greece. The Bhagavad-Gita asks for moderation in eating, resting and sport8, and Confucius observes how rare the follower of the golden mean is9. The moderns keep the formula and widen it. Descartes chose moderate opinions for practice because “all excess is generally vicious”10. Pascal held that excess even in truth or pleasure harms us11, and Milton’s Michael prescribes “Not too much” in food and drink as the road to an easy death12. Burke carries the mean into politics, and he notes bitterly that popular factions brand moderation the virtue of cowards13,14.
A second conception treats temperance less as measure than as mastery. In the Phaedo the soul restrains the body’s desires, sometimes harshly and sometimes gently15, and the philosopher disdains any indulgence beyond what nature needs16. The Gita’s sage draws in his senses as a tortoise draws in its limbs17. Paul sounds the same note when he says that all things may be lawful but he will not be brought under the power of any18. Epictetus reduces the whole matter to “Bear and forbear”19. Marcus Aurelius admired in his father the Socratic ability both to abstain and to enjoy without excess20. Mastery may also need cunning. Odysseus has himself bound to the mast against the Sirens21. Bacon counsels gradual restraint, as in reducing one’s wine to a single draught at meals22. Franklin put temperance first among his virtues because it gives the clear head needed to guard against old habits23.
The deepest controversy concerns which abstinence deserves the name of virtue. Plato’s Socrates argues that common temperance is intemperance in disguise. Men forgo some pleasures only because other pleasures master them24. True philosophers, by contrast, abstain not from fear of poverty or dishonour25,26. Later writers keep the distinction and give it new grounds. Thomas à Kempis prizes the mortifying of the passions over a merely temperate disposition27. Montaigne thinks it better to abstain from evil by will than by want of ability28. Schiller asks that the impulses be tempered by a free act of the person, not by impotence or blunted sensation29. Locke makes a social point of it: the poor are temperate only from want, while rich households breed gluttony30. Milton’s Samson shows the limit of partial virtue. He drank only water, yet his temperance failed before a more enticing object31.
Where does temperance stand among the virtues? Marcus Aurelius finds in the constitution of reason a virtue opposed to love of pleasure, namely temperance, though none opposed to justice32. Cicero holds that where pleasure reigns, self-control cannot hold its ground33. Bacon names temperance the virtue of prosperity34, and Pascal’s sister praises him as temperate in prosperity and patient in adversity35.
The commonest field of the virtue is the table. The ancients tied spare eating to health. Cicero says decay comes more from an intemperate youth than from age36. Pliny argues that a host who moderates his own appetite can serve all his guests the same fare, and that temperance saves more than stinginess37. Chaucer’s poor widow needs no medicine beyond a moderate diet and a contented heart38. The moderns add a concern for the mind and for education. Penn says one should eat to live, not live to eat39. Franklin found that a vegetable diet gave him a clearer head for study40. Locke would have children kept to plain food without spice, to no more drink than thirst requires, and away from sweetmeats41,42,43. Milton asks the same plainness for his pupils44.
Gluttony, on the other side, is condemned and punished. Dante’s gluttons are wasted by the scent of fruit they cannot reach45, and an angel blesses those whose appetite is not inordinate46. Harrison denounces long Elizabethan feasts as good only for physicians47. Plutarch’s Antony and his “Inimitable Livers” show such extravagance as a mark of character48. Augustine gives the subject its most searching treatment. He wages a daily war against the pleasure that comes with necessary food. He fears the lust in eating, not the food itself, and he holds the bridle of the throat between slackness and stiffness49,50. Comedy turns the same struggle to laughter. Massinger’s Justice Greedy sets dinner before every duty51,52, and Franklin’s friend Keimer, sworn to a meatless diet, devours a whole roast pig53.
Drink offers the most vivid evidence of what intemperance does to reason. Homer already knows the danger. Wine drives even the wise to say unspoken words54, Elpenor dies heavy with it55, and the Cyclops’ greed for it undoes him56. In the Edda, drink steals men’s wits and brings brawling57. The moderns trace the same ruin in prose. Franklin watches Collins lose employment and friendship to drink58,59, and Johnson notes that Addison, drinking to relieve his timidity, became enslaved to the aid he had called in60. Manzoni’s Renzo, normally temperate, loses his self-government and then his discretion61,62,63. Woolman and Channing write as moralists of the poor. For them strong drink disorders understanding and wastes laborers’ earnings and minds64,65. Emerson calls stimulants a counterfeit of inspiration66. Observers also find drunkenness clustered in peoples and trades. Tacitus says of the Germans that they could be conquered by their vices as easily as by arms67, and Luther still calls drink the German vice68. Hamlet deplores the Danish carousing69. Dana records sailors’ brawls as “sailor’s pleasure”70.
Yet the books also sing the bottle. Burns praises Scotch drink as the poor man’s wine and the cheerer of the heart71. Sheridan’s Charles mocks abstainers as the degeneracy of the age72. Cowley argues against the “man of morals” that drinking is universal and natural73. Even the celebrants supply their own morals. Tam o’ Shanter’s tale warns that such joys are bought too dear74. Carlyle calls the carousing that interrupted Scott’s household worship not exemplary75. Between praise and blame lies moderate drinking. Confucius drank without getting fuddled76. Monica carried a single small cup of diluted wine77, and Penn holds that small drink clears the head78. Franklin’s water-drinking converted fellow workmen79,80. The struggle against relapse is told with sympathy. Ibrahim’s thirteen years of abstinence give way cup by cup81,82. Dana’s Harris renounces drink by his own resolve for life, while the tailor relapses and returns ruined83,84.
Deliberate abstinence raises the question of how far discipline should go. Paul buffets his body lest he be rejected85, and he takes the athlete’s self-control as his model86. Luther wants the body subdued by fasting, watching and labour. These works, he says, do not justify; they purify87,88. Epictetus would have desire conformed to reason by fasting89. Both writers also set limits. Epictetus says such discipline is worthless when done for display90, and Luther measures fasting by what suffices to curb wantonness91. The Buddhist middle course avoids both sensual gratification and self-torture92. Legend and poetry dramatize the heroic fast. Malory’s Bors keeps to bread and water before a rich table93, and Milton’s Christ declines the Tempter’s feast94,95. Emerson offers a gentler ideal. His hero’s temperance is elegant rather than austere96.
The same virtue extends to dress and possessions. Marcus Aurelius praises men who wanted little in food, clothes and houses97,98, and Long describes Antoninus living like the poorest philosopher99. Penn and Woolman ask that clothing be for use and decency, since anything more robs the poor100,101. Smith turns frugality into an economic principle. Parsimony increases capital, while prodigality wastes it102.
Chastity is temperance in its most contested field. Augustine first believed continence lay in his own power. Only later did he learn that it is God’s gift, to be sought in prayer103,104. Bacon’s New Atlantis likens unlawful lust to a furnace and makes self-reverence the chief bridle of vice after religion105. The Koran’s Joseph prefers prison to yielding106. Shakespeare’s Prospero binds Ferdinand to restraint before the wedding107. Macduff calls boundless intemperance a tyranny that has toppled kings108. Anger calls for a parallel restraint. Pericles has a servant light the man who abused him all day safely home109, and Epictetus treats the reviler as a trainer of patience110. Bacon compares the angry man to a bee that dies in its sting111, and Manzoni’s Cristoforo swallows insults for his cause112.
Finally the virtue becomes a matter of law. The Koran forbids wine as Satan’s abomination113. The Constitution once prohibited intoxicating liquors114, and Darwin reports a Tahitian temperance society115. Emerson notes the pledge of total abstinence among the new reforms116. Against coercion stands Milton, who holds that God left the diet of body and mind alike to each mature man’s discretion117, and adds that licensing cannot cure gluttony or drunkenness118. Mill would punish drunkenness only when it harms others. He warns that forced temperance provokes rebellion, though he allows restraints on dealers who profit from excess119,120,121. Smith suggests that price works better than prohibition, since cheap wine makes for sobriety122, and that taxes on luxuries act as sumptuary laws123. Dana adds a test of fairness. Temperance without a substitute, or imposed on crews while the captain drinks, is hollow124,125. Behind these quarrels lies an older fear that luxury ruins states. Plutarch saw it in Athens126, Pliny lamented it at Rome127, and Penn would tax it128.
The questions remain open. One is whether temperance is a measure or a mastery. Another is whether it is achieved by reason, as Epictetus held, or received as a gift, as Augustine came to believe. A third is whether it is enforced by law or left to discretion, the point on which Milton and Mill part from the prohibitionists. These texts agree that excess degrades, but they disagree about almost everything else.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Philosophy 1b
See also: Medicine 2a
See also: Medicine 2b · Habit 3a · Education 3c
See also: Diversion 9b
See also: Virtue and Vice, Desire, Pleasure and Pain, Diversion, Hospitality, Habit