§ 4. Concerning Luxury

— Notion. 1. Luxury is the inordinate appetite of venereal things, concerning which elsewhere expressly.

2. As a capital vice, it begets in the intellect: blindness of mind, alienated from heavenly thoughts; precipitation of one acting without counsel; inconsideration of one acting, which things disgrace his state or person; inconstancy in good purposes. But in the will of the luxurious person there grows false love of self, because of the custom of referring all things to oneself; hatred of God the avenger of sins is prepared; affection of the present age is fostered from inordinate fear of death. The four latter effects, but not the former, are grave from their kind.

The opposite virtue is chastity.