Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/417

THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE COURTIER My lord Ottaviano replied: " You have judged rightly ; and hence I tell you that continence may be likened to a captain who fights manfully, and although the enemy be strong and powerful, still conquers them, albeit not without great difficulty and danger. While temperance unperturbed is like that captain who conquers and rules without opposition, and having not only abated but quite extinguished the fire of lust in the mind where she abides, like a good prince in time of civil strife, she destroys her seditious enemies within, and gives reason the sceptre and whole dominion. " Thus this virtue does not compel the mind, but infusing it by very gentle means with a vehement belief that inclines it to right- eousness, renders it calm and full of rest, in all things equal and well measured, and disposed on every side by a certain self-ac- cord which adorns it with a tranquillity so serene that it is never ruffled, and becomes in all things very obedient to reason and ready to turn its every act thereto and to follow wherever reason may wish to lead it, without the least unwillingness ; like a tender lambkin, which always runs and stops and walks near its dam, and moves only with her. "This virtue, then, is very perfect and especially befitting to princes, because from it spring many others." i8.— Then messer Cesare Gonzaga said: " I do not know what virtues befitting to a lord can spring from this temperance, if it is the one which removes the passions from the mind, as you say. Perhaps this would be fitting in a monk or hermit; but I am by no means sure whether it would befit a prince (who was magnanimous, liberal and valiant in arms) never to feel, whatever might be done to him, either wrath or hate or good will or scorn or lust or passion of any kind, and whether he could without this wield authority over citizens or soldiers." My lord Ottaviano replied : " I did not say that temperance wholly removes and uproots the passions from the human mind, nor would it be well to do this, for even the passions contain some elements of good; but it reduces to the sway of reason that which is perverse in our passions and recu- sant to right. Therefore it is not well to extirpate the passions altogether, in order to be rid of disturbance; for this would be 257