Prologue

TEMPERANCE requires the whole man, since it has Touch, which it moderates, in the whole body, and Taste in the tongue, which it has more frequently to bridle. Hence the Argument of this treatise will turn chiefly upon Fasting and Chastity; since the latter restrains illicit Touch; the former forbids excess in Taste beyond due measure according to the reason of time: But among the other virtues, this is the more difficult of experience, inasmuch as it above all emulates the mean of all, and consists rather in the mode of action than in the very substance: For man has a vehement and innate appetite for preserving himself in the being of an individual by nutrition, and in the being of the species by generation; if he were to abstain from these entirely, he would without doubt unjustly invert the right of nature: Yet since nutrition is supremely necessary to each one for the being of the individual, but not so generation for the being of the species — since the species has been propagated everywhere most diffusively by many abstaining from all time — hence it is that the obligation of preserving one's own individual is greater in each one than that of propagating his species, although the titillations of pleasure are greater toward this than toward that; whence it is clear that the virtue which moderates Touch is more excellent than that which moderates Taste, since it is occupied about a thing more arduous. Moreover TEMPERANCE can be considered, either as it is a political virtue, or as purgatorial, or finally as of the purged soul; according to the first, nothing requiring repentance is sought, as I shall say below; according to the second, it abandons all things necessary for the use of the body, as far as nature permits; but inasmuch as it is the virtue of the purged soul, it forgets all these things; as the Seraphic Doctor has it, to be cited below, where he heaps up the several parts of Temperance, which we shall enumerate here, quaest. 3.