Mastering the Emotions

¹⁵It is evident that reason rules even the more violent emotions: lust for power, vainglory, boasting, arrogance, and malice. ¹⁶For the temperate mind repels all these malicious emotions, just as it repels anger—for it is sovereign over even this. ¹⁷When Moses was angry with Dathan and Abiram, he did nothing against them in anger, but controlled his anger by reason. ¹⁸For, as I have said, the temperate mind is able to get the better of the emotions, to correct some, and to render others powerless. ¹⁹Why else did Jacob, our most wise father, censure the households of Simeon and Levi for their irrational slaughter of the entire tribe of the Shechemites, saying, “Cursed be their anger”? ²⁰For if reason could not control anger, he would not have spoken thus. ²¹Now when God fashioned human beings, he planted in them emotions and inclinations, ²²but at the same time he enthroned the mind among the senses as a sacred governor over them all. ²³To the mind he gave the law; and one who lives subject to this will rule a kingdom that is temperate, just, good, and courageous.

²⁴How is it then, one might say, that if reason is master of the emotions, it does not control forgetfulness and ignorance?