_Temperance_, as a virtue, is rather the peace of mind that goes with civilisation--urbanity--than the more physical virtue: its opposites are intemperance, excess, asperity, savagery, barbarity. "It is through intemperance in sensual and in intellectual passions that families, republics, civil societies, the world, are dissolved, disordered, destroyed, swallowed up."[466] Again, Bruno's unorthodox standpoint with regard to the vows of _chastity_ and of celibacy taken by nuns and priests is part of a healthy reaction towards naturalism from the false sentiment which condemned as unholy whatever pertained to the natural man. The place of _Virgo_ is taken by chastity, continence, modesty, shame; the contrasting vices being lust, incontinence, shamelessness. "It is through these," Bruno adds, "that virginity becomes a virtue. In itself it is neither virtue nor vice, implies no goodness, dignity, or merit, and when it resists the command of nature it becomes a wrong, an impotence, a folly, madness express; while if it is in compliance with some urgent reason, it is called _continence_, and has the essence of virtue, because it participates in that courage and contempt for pleasure which is not vain or worthless, but benefits human intercourse and brings honourable satisfaction to others."[467] "The laws of the wise do not forbid love, but irrational love; the sycophancies of the foolish prescribe, without reason, limits to reason, and condemn the law of nature; the most corrupt of them call _it_ corrupt, because by it they are not raised above nature to become heroic spirits, but are depraved, contrary to nature and below all worth, to become brutes."[468] [Sidenote: The Golden Age.]