4 Maccabees 1

1 I am about to set out a most philosophical argument — whether devout reason is absolute master of the passions — and I would rightly advise you to give philosophy your eager attention. [a] 2 This argument is one everyone needs for learning, and besides that it takes in the praise of the greatest virtue — I mean discernment. 3 If, then, reason plainly gets the upper hand over the passions that stand in the way of self-control — gluttony and desire — [b] 4 then it is plainly in command of the passions that hinder righteousness as well, such as malice, and of the passions that hinder courage: anger and fear and pain.

5 Perhaps some will say: “How is it, then, that if reason rules the passions, it is not master of forgetfulness and ignorance?” What they are trying to say is ridiculous. 6 For reason does not rule its own passions, but the ones set against righteousness and courage and self-control — and it rules those not so as to break them up, but so as not to give way to them. [c]

7 Now I could show you from many sides and many angles that reason is sovereign over the passions, [d] 8 but I can prove it far better from the bravery of those who died for virtue: Eleazar, and the seven brothers, and their mother. 9 For by looking down on pains that went as far as death, all of them showed that reason overpowers the passions. 10 So then: for their virtues it falls to me to praise the men who died for goodness at that time along with their mother, and for their honors I would call them blessed. 11 They were admired for their courage and endurance, not only by everyone else but even by the men who abused them, and they became the cause of the breaking of the ruler’s power over the nation. They defeated the ruler by their endurance, and through them the homeland was cleansed. 12 But I may speak of that here and now, beginning with the proposition, as I always do; and so I will turn to the account of them, giving glory to the all-wise God.

13 So this is the question: is reason sovereign over the passions? 14 Let us settle what reason is, and what a passion is, and how many forms of passion there are, and whether reason gets the upper hand over all of them. 15 Reason, then, is the mind that with sound reasoning puts the life of wisdom first. [e] 16 And wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and things human, and of their causes. 17 And this is the training the law gives, by which we learn the things of God with reverence and the things of men to our profit. 18 The forms of wisdom are these: discernment, righteousness, courage, and self-control. [f] 19 Discernment has the highest authority of them all, and it is from discernment that reason gets the upper hand over the passions.

20 Of the passions, the two that reach widest by nature are pleasure and pain, and each of them belongs by nature to the body and to the soul alike. [g] 21 And many passions come trooping after pleasure and pain. 22 Before pleasure comes desire; after pleasure, joy. 23 Before pain comes fear; after pain, grief. 24 Anger is a passion shared by pleasure and pain, as anyone will see who takes note of what happens when it falls on him.

25 And in pleasure there is also the malicious disposition, the most many-sided of all the passions. 26 In the soul it is boastfulness, and love of money, and love of reputation, and love of a quarrel, and envy; [h] 27 in the body it is eating anything and everything, and greed at the table, and eating alone. 28 So, since pleasure and pain are two plants growing out of the body and the soul, there are many offshoots of these plants; 29 and reason, the gardener over them all, weeds around each one, and nips it back, and ties it up, and waters it, and shifts it every way, and so brings the tangle of habits and passions under cultivation. 30 For reason is the leader of the virtues and sovereign over the passions. Watch, then — first of all, through the very things that stand in the way of self-control — that reason is absolute master of the passions.

31 Now self-control means getting the upper hand over the desires. 32 Some desires belong to the soul and others to the body, and reason plainly gets the upper hand over both. 33 Otherwise, how is it that when we are drawn toward forbidden foods we turn away from the pleasures in them? Is it not because reason can get the upper hand over the appetites? I think it is. 34 And so, when we want water creatures and birds and four-footed animals and every kind of food the law forbids us, we hold back, because reason has the upper hand. 35 For the passions of our appetites are checked and pushed back by the self-controlled mind, and every movement of the body is muzzled by reason.