14.—Then my lord Gaspar replied:
“There are, however, many who know well that they are doing evil, and yet do it; and this because they have more thought for the present pleasure which they feel, than for the chastisement which they fear must come upon them: like thieves, homicides, and other such men.”
My lord Ottaviano said:
“True pleasure is always good, and true suffering always evil; therefore these men deceive themselves in taking false pleasure for true, and true suffering for false; hence by false pleasures they often run into true sufferings. Therefore that art which teaches how to discern the true from the false, may well be learned; and the faculty whereby we choose that which is truly good and not that which falsely seems so, may be called true wisdom and more profitable to human life than any other, because it dispels the ignorance from which, as I have said, all evils spring.”
15.—Then messer Pietro Bembo said:
“I do not know, my lord Ottaviano, whether my lord Gaspar ought to grant you that all evils spring from ignorance; and that there are not many who well know that they are sinning when they sin, and do not in the least deceive themselves as to true pleasure, nor yet as to true suffering. For it is certain that those who are incontinent judge reasonably and rightly, and know that to be evil to which they are prompted by their lusts in spite of duty, and therefore resist and set reason against appetite, whence arises a conflict of pleasure and pain against judgment. Conquered at last by too potent appetite, reason yields, like a ship which resists awhile the buffetings of the sea, but finally beaten by the too furious violence of the gale, with anchor and rigging broken, suffers herself to be driven at fortune’s will, without use of helm or any guidance of compass to save her.
“Therefore the incontinent commit their errours with a certain doubtful remorse, and as it were in their own despite; which they would not do if they did not know that what they are doing is evil, but would follow appetite without restraint of reason and wholly uncontrolled, and would then be not incontinent but intemperate, which is much worse. Thus incontinence is said to be a diminished vice, because it has a grain of reason in it; and likewise continence is said to be an imperfect virtue, because it has a grain of passion in it. Therefore in this, methinks, we cannot say that the errours of the incontinent proceed from ignorance, or that they deceive themselves and that they do not sin, when they well know that they are sinning.”
16.—My lord Ottaviano replied:
“In truth, messer Pietro, your argument is fine; yet to my thinking it is specious rather than sound, for although the incontinent sin hesitatingly, and reason struggles with appetite in their mind, and although that which is evil seems evil to them,—yet they have no perfect perception of it, nor do they know it so thoroughly as they need. Hence they have a vague idea rather than any certain knowledge of it, and thus allow their reason to be overcome by passion; but if they had true knowledge of it, doubtless they would not err: since the thing by which appetite conquers reason is always ignorance, and true knowledge can never be overcome by passion, which is derived from the body and not from the mind, and becomes virtue if rightly ruled and governed by reason; if not, it becomes vice.
“But reason has such power that it always reduces the senses to submission and enters in by wonderful means and ways, provided ignorance does not seize that which it ought to possess. So that although the spirits and nerves and bones have no reason in them, yet when a movement of the mind starts in us, as if thought were spurring and shaking the bridle on our spirits, all our members make ready,—the feet to run, the hands to take or to do that which the mind thinks; and moreover this is clearly seen in many who at times unwittingly eat some loathsome and disgusting food, which to their taste seems very delicious, and then learning what thing it was, not only suffer pain and distress of mind, but the body so follows the mental sense, that they must perforce cast up that food.”