PHILOSOPHICAL in the highest degree is the question I propose to discuss, namely whether the Inspired Reason is supreme ruler over the passions; and to the philosophy of it I would seriously entreat your earnest attention.
2For not only is the subject generally necessary as a branch of knowledge, but it includes the praise of the greatest of virtues, whereby I mean self-control.
3That is to say, if Reason is proved to control the passions adverse to temperance, gluttony and lust, it is also clearly shown to be lord over the passions, like malevolence, opposed to justice, and over those opposed to manliness, namely rage and pain and fear.
4But, some may ask, if the Reason is master of the passions, why does it not control forgetfulness and ignorance? their object being to cast ridicule.
5The answer is that Reason is not master over defects inhering in the mind itself, but over the passions or moral defects that are adverse to justice and manliness and temperance and judgement; and its action in their case is not to extirpate the passions, but to enable us to resist them successfully.
6I could bring before you many examples, drawn from various sources, where Reason has proved itself master over the passions, but the best instance by far that I can give is the noble conduct of those who died for the sake of virtue, Eleazar, and the Seven Brethren and the Mother.
7For these all by their contempt of pains, yea, even unto death, proved that Reason rises superior to the passions.
8I might enlarge here in praise of their virtues, they, the men with the Mother, dying on this day we celebrate for the love of moral beauty and goodness, but rather would I felicitate them on the honours they have attained.
9For the admiration felt for their courage and endurance, not only by the world at large but by their very executioners, made them the authors of the downfall of the tyranny under which our nation lay, they defeating the tyrant by their endurance, so that through them was their country purified.
10But I shall presently take opportunity to discuss this, after we have begun with the general theory, as I am in the habit of doing, and I will then proceed to their story, giving glory to the all-wise God.
11Our enquiry, then, is whether the Reason is supreme master over the passions.
12But we must define just what the Reason is and what passion is, and how many forms of passion there are, and whether the Reason is supreme over all of them.
13Reason I take to be the mind preferring with clear deliberation the life of wisdom.
14Wisdom I take to be the knowledge of things, divine and human, and of their causes.
15This I take to be the culture acquired under the Law, through which we learn with due reverence the things of God and for our worldly profit the things of man.
16Now wisdom is manifested under the forms of judgement and justice, and courage, and temperance.
17But judgement or self-control is the one that dominates them all, for through it, in truth, Reason asserts its authority over the passions.
18But of the passions there are two comprehensive sources, namely, pleasure and pain, and either belongs essentially also to the soul as well as to the body.
19And with respect both to pleasure and pain there are many cases where the passions have certain sequences.
20Thus while desire goes before pleasure, satisfaction follows after, and while fear goes before pain, after pain comes sorrow.
21Anger, again, if a man will retrace the course of his feelings, is a passion in which are blended both pleasure and pain.
22Under pleasure, also, comes that moral debasement which exhibits the widest variety of the passions.
23It manifests itself in the soul as ostentation, and covetousness, and vain-glory, and contentiousness, and backbiting, and in the body as eating of strange meat, and gluttony, and gormandizing in secret.
24Now pleasure and pain being as it were two trees, growing from body and soul, many offshoots of these passions sprout up; and each man's Reason as master-gardener, weeding and pruning and binding up, and turning on the water and directing it hither and thither, brings the thicket of dispositions and passions under domestication.
25For while Reason is the guide of the virtues it is master of the passions.
26Observe, now, in the first place, that Reason becomes supreme over the passions in virtue of the inhibitory action of temperance.
27Temperance, I take it, is the repression of the desires; but of the desires some are mental and some physical, and both kinds are clearly controlled by Reason; when we are tempted towards forbidden meats, how do we come to relinquish the pleasures to be derived from them?
28Is it not that Reason has power to repress the appetites? In my opinion it is so.
29Accordingly when we feel a desire to eat water-animals and birds and beasts and meats of every description forbidden to us under the Law, we abstain through the predominance of Reason.
30For the propensions of our appetites are checked and inhibited by the temperate mind, and all the movements of the body obey the bridle of Reason.