Temperance

Meeting the unfamiliar

An imagined exploration

The community garden has opened another strip of ground. Its application form will let you request several beds, and your planting sketch has already grown a second fold. Some longtime neighbors have not yet heard about the opening. You choose a share you can tend, ask how the remaining space will be offered, and help pass the notice along. The garden in your drawing gets smaller. The garden you can join gets more interesting.

Temperance moderates an appetite that could otherwise govern the encounter. New ground can awaken a wish to possess every possibility before anyone else arrives. A measured claim lets you enjoy growing things, learn the place and contribute without treating available space as a command to acquire it. Enough leaves room for care: a bed you can tend well, a season you can follow and neighbors whose plans are not merely obstacles to yours.

Temperance: finding the balance

Different needs and capacities can justify different shares. Temperance asks whether appetite or judgment is choosing; the garden’s allocation belongs to its agreed process.

Temperance gives…

The pleasure of a manageable commitment. You can learn what grows here without making the whole garden your unfinished task.

What Temperance makes possible

A new pursuit can bring both satisfying work and relationships with people whose knowledge changes your plans.

Temperance in ordinary life

A shared opportunity

Before claiming several optional places, consider which you can use well and how others will learn they are available.

A new interest

Begin with resources suited to the activity, then let experience guide what you add.

Nearby virtues, different work

Self-Command

Self-Command restrains a particular impulse; Temperance cultivates a measured appetite.

Generosity

Generosity gives; Temperance can leave something unclaimed in the first place.

Temperance and its counterfeits

Strategic modesty is a counterfeit of Temperance: request less only to win praise for restraint.

Possession disguised as commitment is a counterfeit of Temperance: claim every resource now and promise that you will somehow become able to care for it.

How to cultivate Temperance

• Notice when possibility becomes an urge to secure everything.
• Choose a share that serves the purpose and your capacity.
• Attend to the opportunities your claim leaves for others.

Try it today

In a low-stakes shared opportunity, consider what you can use well before requesting optional extras. Follow the agreed allocation process.

Moderate optional appetites, not essential food, rest, care or access. Different needs can justify different shares.

Questions worth returning to

• What can I actually care for?
• Does arriving early entitle me to all that is available?

Keep the practice proportionate

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.

1. Men that undertake only one district are much more likely to advance natural knowledge than those that grasp at more than they can possibly be acquainted with: every kingdom, every province, should have its own monographer.

   Gilbert White · The Natural History of Selborne
   Letter VII
   Gilbert White · Project Gutenberg #1408; captured English text; print edition not identified in capture

   White values depth within a bounded scope. A smaller contribution can teach more than a display whose reach exceeds its understanding.

2. Is anything brought round to you? Put out your hand, and take a moderate share.

   Epictetus · The Works of Epictetus
   Enchiridion XV; printed p. 381; scan leaf 405
   Epictetus · Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865; translation based on Elizabeth Carter, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
   Greek original; English translation based on Elizabeth Carter, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1865).

   The banquet image makes a sufficient share visible. Its wider Stoic detachment is not a rule to deny essential needs or erase different circumstances.

3. the love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril and temptation.

   Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) · The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation
   I. The Great Mystery
   Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) · Project Gutenberg #340; captured English transcription; print edition not identified in capture

   Eastman explains a religious objection to accumulation and follows it with a duty to share. This is his account of ancestral ideals, not a claim that all Indigenous people hold one view or that material security is wrong.

4. But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or furthest end of knowledge.

   Francis Bacon · The Advancement of Learning
   THE FIRST BOOK OF FRANCIS BACON; OF THE PROFICIENCE AND ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, DIVINE AND HUMAN.
   Francis Bacon · Cassell & Company, 1893; edited by Henry Morley; Project Gutenberg #5500

   Bacon goes on to contrast reputation and gain with human benefit. The expanding planting plan invites a question about whether acquiring space still serves the activity.

5. for I did not want to go across the continent, and I do not hanker after Zanzibar,

   Mary H. Kingsley · Travels in West Africa
   PREFACE TO THE ABRIDGED EDITION OF TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA.
   Mary H. Kingsley · Project Gutenberg #5891; captured English text

   Kingsley explains why extensive help did not turn her journey into a continental crossing. A purpose can be specific without expanding to every available possibility.

6. Yet desires and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being, as beliefs and restraints:

   John Stuart Mill · On Liberty
   CHAPTER III. OF INDIVIDUALITY, AS ONE OF THE ELEMENTS OF WELL-BEING.
   John Stuart Mill · Walter Scott Publishing Co.; introduction by W. L. Courtney; captured edition undated; Project Gutenberg #34901

   Mill defends cultivated energy against uniform repression. Temperance directs enjoyment and interest; it need not make the explorer joyless.

7. But we soon found that the white men were growing rich very fast, and were greedy to possess everything the Indian had.

   Chief Joseph (published as Young Joseph) · An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs
   Printed p. 416; scan leaf 81
   Chief Joseph (published as Young Joseph) · North American Review, vol. 128, no. 269 (1879), pp. 412–433; preserved original scan
   Published English account; interpreter/recorder not identified in inspected pages. Editorial mediation unresolved.

   Joseph describes settler greed and dispossession, not an ordinary disagreement about portions. His account gives the wish to possess unfamiliar ground a serious limit: other people’s homes and rights are already there.

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