Have you ever heard someone say that you can’t have too much of a good thing?
Well, they’re wrong. A temperate man understands that good things are not made better by excess—they are spoiled by it.
Food is a good thing, necessary for life—but consuming an excess is called gluttony, and it not only is unhealthy; it begins to take the pleasure away from eating. A record from the reign of Nero in ancient Rome chronicles that there lived a glutton named Arpokras who ate: a roasted wild boar, a live hen with feathers, 100 eggs, 100 mussels, shoemakers’ nails, broken glass dishes, young shoots from a palm branch, 4 canvases, a suckling piglet, a bundle of hay and, surprisingly, he was still hungry.
Or what about money? It is a good thing that allows us to buy what we need, to help others, and invest for the future. But too much money can make a man lazy and wasteful. Barbara Hutton, heir to the Woolworth department store fortune, inherited $900 million in today’s money—after spending lavishly on jewelry, parties, and other frivolities, she died with only $3,000 left to her name.
Even the virtues themselves must be moderated by Temperance. Too much courage makes a man rash and reckless; too much prudence leads to cowardice or idleness.
Temperance isn’t just about avoiding the bad things; its about moderating the good things. Too much is always too much.
Have a wonderful day.
