Book 3
2
Now we must make a distinction between pleasures of the body and pleasures of the soul: Take for instance ambition, or love of learning: the lover of honor or of learning takes pleasure in the thing he loves without his body being affected at all; the experience is purely mental. But we do not speak of men as either temperate or profligate in relation to the pleasures of ambition and of learning. Nor similarly can these terms be applied to the enjoyment of any of the other pleasures that are not bodily pleasures: those who love hearing marvellous tales and telling anecdotes, and who spend their days in trivial gossip, we call idle chatterers, but not profligates; nor do we call men profligate who feel excessive pain for the loss of fortune or friends.
3
Temperance therefore has to do with the pleasures of the body. But not with all even of these; for men who delight in the pleasures of the eye, in colors, forms and paintings, are not termed either temperate or profligate, although it would be held that these things also can be enjoyed in the right manner, or too much, or too little.
4
Similarly with the objects of hearing: no one would term profligate those who take an excessive pleasure in music, or the theater, nor temperate those who enjoy them as is right.
