Temperance: The Foundation of All Other Virtues

Taken from the The Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin

Lesson 2

Temperance:

The Foundation of All Other Virtues

"Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations."

When Franklin sat down to construct his famous list of thirteen virtues — his systematic program for arriving at moral perfection — he did not arrange them randomly. He arranged them in a specific order, with specific reasoning, and he placed Temperance first. This was not an accident. This was philosophy.

His precept for Temperance was simple: "Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation." But the principle behind it was far larger than table manners. Franklin understood, from practical experience, that the capacity to exercise any other virtue depends entirely on the clarity and steadiness of the mind. A mind clouded by excess — whether of food, drink, stimulation, or indulgence — cannot maintain the vigilance required to practice Silence, Order, Resolution, or any of the other qualities he was working to build. Temperance, therefore, was not merely one virtue among thirteen. It was the precondition for all the rest.

Look at how he described its function: it "tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up." He was not speaking about temperance in the abstract. He was speaking about it as a tool — a prerequisite — for the larger project of self-construction. Without it, the other virtues had no stable foundation on which to stand.

Franklin was not an ascetic. He enjoyed good wine, good conversation, and good food. He was not advocating deprivation. He was advocating proportion, the art of taking what nourishes and stopping before you take what diminishes. He demonstrated this practically during his time as a printer's apprentice, when he adopted a vegetarian diet for a period and found distinct advantages: "My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency," he wrote, but when he ate simply — "a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water" — he found he had "greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking."

He extended the principle of temperance beyond food and drink to all appetites and pleasures. In his original conception, temperance meant "moderating every other pleasure, appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, even to our avarice and ambition." This is a far more demanding definition, and a more useful one. It asks you to examine every area of excess in your life — not just what you eat and drink, but how much you spend, how much you pursue status, how much you give in to anger, fear, or pride — and to bring each of these appetites into proportion.

The modern world is a machine for producing excess. It is designed, at virtually every turn, to encourage you to consume more, stimulate yourself more, and want more. Franklin's counsel is the counter-principle: that sufficiency is not deprivation, that the moderate life is not the diminished life, and that the person who has mastered their appetites has gained a freedom that no amount of indulgence can purchase.

His observation about his fellow workers at the London printing house is instructive. He noted that his coworkers drank heavily throughout the day, believing the beer gave them strength to labor. Franklin, who drank only water, was notably stronger than they were. "They wondered to see," he wrote, that "the Water-American, as they called me, was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer." He had demonstrated, in the most practical terms, that temperance was not weakness. It was power.

Daily Practice

Choose one area of excess in your current life — a food, a substance, a habit, a form of entertainment, or a pattern of consumption — and practice deliberate moderation with it today. Not elimination. Moderation. If you typically eat until you are full, stop when you are satisfied. If you typically spend an hour on a distracting habit, limit yourself to thirty minutes. Notice how this small act of restraint affects your clarity and energy throughout the rest of the day. Write down the result tonight. Practice this same restraint tomorrow, with the same target. Do it for one week before you add a second area. Franklin understood that habits are built one small discipline at a time.