ETERNAL REST GIVE UNTO THEM, O LORD, AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM. AMEN.
The second chief manifestation of the virtue of Temperance is Chastity. The first one regulates the maintenance of life in the individual, this regulates its maintenance in the species. The species is of more importance in the universe than the individual, and the natural impulses which regard specific life are therefore the more important and the more forcible. Like all other impulses, these too may be perverted from their proper use so as to frustrate their natural aim, and transmute themselves into vices hostile to man's natural and spiritual evolution. If this be the case, the injury which they produce must be proportioned to their importance and their energy. Thus the primary forces of life generate the most powerful, prevalent and fatal vices, if they be released from the moderating influences of instinct, reason and grace. The law of nature is in itself wholesome, constructive and progressive. The impulses of sense are only one factor in that law; and if they be taken as the sole one, to the exclusion of those factors which are supplied by the higher faculties, the effect will be disintegrating and fatal to individual life, physical and mental, to family life, social life, national life. The deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the extermination of the Canaanites, the putrefaction of great nations in ancient and modern times, in fine the greatest part of human calamities on earth and in hell are due chiefly to the fact that "all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth" (Gen. vi. 12). Chastity, in restraining these evils, is the source of the greatest earthly blessings. "As for him who is pure, his work is right" (Prov. xxi. 8).
