ion--Ambition is the desire, whereby all the emotions
(cf. III. xxvii. and xxxi.) are fostered and strengthened;
therefore this emotion can with difficulty be overcome. For, so
long as a man is bound by any desire, he is at the same time
necessarily bound by this. "The best men," says Cicero, "are
especially led by honour. Even philosophers, when they write a
book contemning honour, sign their names thereto," and so on.

XLV. Luxury is excessive desire, or even love of living
sumptuously.

XLVI. Intemperance is the excessive desire and love of drinking.

XLVII. Avarice is the excessive desire and love of riches.

XLVIII. Lust is desire and love in the matter of sexual
intercourse.

Explanation--Whether this desire be excessive or not, it is
still called lust. These last five emotions (as I have shown in
III. lvi.) have on contraries. For deference is a species of
ambition. Cf. III. xxix. note.

Again, I have already pointed out, that temperance, sobriety,
and chastity indicate rather a power than a passivity of the
mind. It may, nevertheless, happen, that an avaricious, an
ambitious, or a timid man may abstain from excess in eating,
drinking, or sexual indulgence, yet avarice, ambition, and fear
are not contraries to luxury, drunkenness, and debauchery. For
an avaricious man often is glad to gorge himself with food and
drink at another man's expense. An ambitious man will restrain
himself in nothing, so long as he thinks his indulgences are
secret; and if he lives among drunkards and debauchees, he will,
from the mere fact of being ambitious, be more prone to those
vices. Lastly, a timid man does that which he would not. For
though an avaricious man should, for the sake of avoiding death,
cast his riches into the sea, he will none the less remain
avaricious; so, also, if a lustful man is downcast, because he
cannot follow his bent, he does not, on the ground of abstention,
cease to be lustful. In fact, these emotions are not so much
concerned with the actual feasting, drinking, &c., as with the
appetite and love of such. Nothing, therefore, can be opposed to
these emotions, but high--mindedness and valour, whereof I will
speak presently.

The definitions of jealousy and other waverings of the mind I
pass over in silence, first, because they arise from the
compounding of the emotions already described; secondly, because
many of them have no distinctive names, which shows that it is
sufficient