called ἐγκράτεια or σωφροσύνη—i.e., self-control or moderation.
If, in the Christian teaching, self-control was included in the conception of self-renunciation, still the order of succession remained the same, and the acquirement of no Christian virtue is possible without self-control—and this not because such a rule has been invented by any one, but because such is the essential nature of the case.
But even self-control, the first step in every righteous life, is not attainable all at once, but only by degrees.
Self-control is the liberation of man from desires—their subordination to moderation, σωφροσύνη. But a man's desires are many and various, and in order successfully to contend with them he must begin with the fundamental ones—those upon which the more complex ones have grown up—and not with those complex lusts which have grown up upon the fundamental ones. There are complex lusts, like that of the adornment of the body, sports, amusements, idle talk, inquisitiveness, and many others; and there are also fundamental lusts—gluttony, idleness, sexual love. And one must begin to contend with these lusts from the beginning: not with the complex, but with the fundamental ones, and that also in a definite order. And this order is determined both by the nature of things and by the tradition of human wisdom.
A man who eats too much cannot strive against laziness, while a gluttonous and idle man will never be able to contend with sexual lust. Therefore, according to all moral teachings, the effort towards self-control commences with a struggle against the lust of gluttony—commences with fasting. In our time, however, every serious relation to the attainment of a good life has been so long and so completely lost, that not only is the very first virtue—self-control—without which the others are unattainable, regarded as superfluous, but the order of succession necessary for the attainment of this first virtue is also disregarded, and fasting is quite forgotten,
