“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.” 17.—My lord Ottaviano was continuing his discourse further, but the Magnifico Giuliano interrupted him and said: “If I heard aright, my lord Ottaviano, you said that continence is an imperfect virtue because it has a grain of passion in it; and when there is a struggle waging in our minds between reason and appetite, I think that the virtue which battles and gives reason the victory, ought to be esteemed more perfect than that which conquers without opposition of lust or passion; for there the mind seems not to abstain from evil by force of virtue, but to refrain from doing evil because it has no inclination thereto.”