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The Temperance of the Greeks, [Greek: sophrosunae] involves the idea
of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as
inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He
opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which
is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania,] or inspiration; but he
most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term
[Greek: ubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various
intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the
image of a black, vicious, diseased and furious horse, yoked by the side
of Prudence or Wisdom (set forth under the figure of a white horse with a
crested and noble head, like that which we have among the Elgin Marbles)
to the chariot of the Soul. The system of Aristotle, as above stated, is
throughout a mere complicated blunder, supported by sophistry, the
laboriously developed mistake of Temperance for the essence of the
virtues which it guides. Temperance in the mediaeval systems is generally
opposed by Anger, or by Folly, or Gluttony: but her proper opposite is
Spenser's Acrasia, the principal enemy of Sir Guyon, at whose gates we
find the subordinate vice "Excesse," as the introduction to Intemperance;
a graceful and feminine image, necessary to illustrate the more dangerous
forms of subtle intemperance, as opposed to the brutal "Gluttony" in the
first book.
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