Enough is not a quantity. It is a skill.
Where It Belongs
Temperance is the only virtue that sits on both of the great practical lists. Among the four cardinal virtues it is sophrosyne, named in Plato's Republic as the ordering of the appetites and prized by the Stoics as one of the four hinges of the good life — see Stoicism. Among the seven heavenly virtues it serves as the remedy for Gluttony. Plato gave it the humblest of the four cardinal roles — where wisdom rules and courage defends, temperance is the harmony by which every part of the soul consents to the arrangement — and the humility of the role is exactly its importance.
What It Is
Temperance is proportion in the appetites: the trained capacity to enjoy a good thing in its right measure and then stop, without either the seizure of excess or the flinch of scrupulosity. The Latin temperare means to mix rightly — the same word a smith uses for tempering steel and a musician for tempering a scale. Nothing is removed; everything is proportioned. This is why the temperate person tastes more than the glutton, not less: appetite in right measure can actually attend to its object, while appetite unbounded only attends to itself. Aquinas made it the virtue of self-possession — the one that keeps pleasure a servant instead of a sovereign.
The Sin It Answers
Temperance answers Gluttony — consolation bent into consumption, the refusal to let anything be enough. Dante's starving penitents circle fruit they cannot eat until craving itself is refined into proportion; temperance is that refinement made habit.
The Tarot Echo
The vault's Temperance card carries this virtue into the Major Arcana: the angel pouring between two cups, blending extremes into a third thing that is neither — mixture, measure, the middle way as an act of grace. Card and virtue share more than a name; both insist that balance is not stinginess but alchemy.
Related
- Gluttony — the sin it answers
- Temperance — the tarot trump
- Prudence, Justice, Fortitude — the other cardinal virtues
- Chastity — temperance in the register of eros
- Stoicism — the cardinal virtues' philosophical home
The steel is not weaker for being tempered. It is finally usable.