refraining from injuring others, removes occasions of strife and
disturbance.

3. Lastly, S. Gregory says[332]: "The contemplative life is something
beautiful in the soul," and it is for this reason that it is said to be
typified by Rachel, for _She was well-favoured and of a beautiful
countenance_.[333] But the beauty of the soul, as S. Ambrose remarks,
depends upon the moral virtues and especially on that of
temperance.[334]

But beauty consists in a certain splendour combined with a
becoming harmony. Both of these points are radically to be
referred to the reason, for to it belongs both the light which
manifests beauty, and the establishment of due proportion in
others. Consequently in the contemplative life--which consists
in the act of the reason--beauty is necessarily and essentially
to be found; thus of the contemplation of Wisdom it is said:
_And I became a lover of her beauty_.[335] But in the moral
virtues beauty is only found by a certain participation--in
proportion, namely, as they share in the harmony of reason; and
this is especially the case with the virtue of temperance whose
function it is to repress those desires which particularly
obscure the light of reason. Hence it is, too, that the virtue
of chastity especially renders a man fit for contemplation, for
venereal pleasures are precisely those which, as S. Augustine
points out, most drag down the mind to the things of sense.[336]

* * * * *

_S. Augustine:_ While it is true that any one of these three kinds of
life--the leisurely, the busy, and the life commingled of them both--may
be embraced by anybody without prejudice to his faith, and may be the
means of leading him to his eternal reward, it is yet important that a
man should take note of what it is that he holds to through love of the
truth, and should reflect on the nature of the work to which he devotes
himself at the demand of charity. For no man should be so addicted to
leisure as for its sake to neglect his neighbour's profit; neither
should any man be so devoted to the active life as to forget the thought
of God. For in our leisured life we are not to find delight in mere idle
repose, but the seeking and finding of the truth must be our aim; each
must strive to advance in that, to hold fast what he finds, and yet not
to grudge it to his neighbour. Similarly, in the life of action: