§ i. I propose to discuss what is called and…

is defective is it contained by that which is excessive, nor is it again altogether free from, emotional storms of passion, wherein are excess and deficiency. But it is, and is commonly so called, a mean like that in music and harmony. For as in music there is a middle note between the highest and lowest in the scale, which being perfectly in tune avoids the sharpness of the one and the flatness of the other; so virtue, being a motion and power in the unreasoning part of the soul, takes away the remissness and strain, and generally speaking the excess and defect of the appetite, by reducing each of the passions to a state of mean and rectitude. For example, they tell us that bravery is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness, whereof the former is a defect, the latter an excess of anger: and that liberality is the mean between stinginess and prodigality: and that meekness is the mean between insensibility and savageness: and so of temperance and justice, that the latter, being concerned with contracts, is to assign neither too much nor too little to litigants, and that the former ever reduces the passions to the proper mean between apathy (or insensibility) and gross intemperance. This last illustration serves excellently to show us the radical difference between the unreasoning and reasoning parts of the soul, and to prove to us that passion and reason are wide as the poles asunder. For the difference would not be discernible between temperance and continence, nor between intemperance and incontinence, in pleasure and desires, if the appetite and judgement were in the same portion of the soul. Now temperance is a state, wherein reason holds the reins, and manages the passions as a quiet and well-broken-in animal, finding them obedient and submissive to the reins and masters over their desires.⁸ Continence on the other hand is not driven by reason without some trouble, not being docile but jibbing and kicking, like an animal compelled by bit and bridle and whip and backing, being in itself full of struggles and commotion. Plato explains this by his simile of the chariot-horses of the soul, the worse one of which ever kicking against the other and disturbing the charioteer, he is obliged ever to hold them in with all his might, and to