Tag Archives: Whole Courage

The essence of Temperance is choosing moderation and deliberately avoid excess. In Indian Culture and Tradition, living in moderation and living in virtue are almost identical. Socrates suggests that one should “choose that which is orderly and sufficient and has a due provision for daily needs.” He compares the intemperate man “to a vessel full of holes because it can never be satisfied.” Socrates describes the temperate man as able to satisfy his limited desires, whereas the intemperate man of boundless desire, can never pause in his search of pleasure. According to Freud, when “the ego learns that it must inevitably go without immediate satisfaction, postpone gratification, learn to endure a degree of pain, and altogether renounce certain sources of pleasure”, it “becomes ‘reasonable’, is no longer controlled by the pleasure-principle, but follows the reality-principle”, which seeks, “a delayed and diminished pleasure, one which is assured by its realization of fact, its relation to reality.”