25
And there exists in pleasure a malicious disposition, which is the most multiform of all the affections.
26
In the soul it is arrogance, and love of money, and vaingloriousness, and contention, and faithlessness, and the evil eye.
27
In the body it is greediness and gormandizing, and solitary gluttony.
28
As pleasure and pain are, therefore, two growth of the body and the soul, so there are many offshoots of these passions.
29
And reasoning, the universal husbandman, purging, and pruning these severally, and binding round, and watering, and transplanting, in every way improves the materials of the morals and affections.
30
For reasoning is the leader of the virtues, but it is the sole ruler of the passions. Observe then first, through the very things which stand in the way of temperance, that reasoning is absolute ruler of the passions.
31
Now temperance consists of a command over the lusts.
32
But of the lusts, some belong to the soul, others to the body: and over each of these classes the reasoning appears to bear sway.
33
For whence is it, otherwise, that when urged on to forbidden meats, we reject the gratification which would ensue from them? Is it not because reasoning is able to command the appetites? I believe so.
34
Hence it is, then, that when lusting after water-animals and birds, and fourfooted beasts, and all kinds of food which are forbidden us by the law, we withhold ourselves through the mastery of reasoning.
35
For the affections of our appetites are resisted by the temperate understanding, and bent back again, and all the impulses of the body are reined in by reasoning.