passion principle is brought gradually to decay.

_Readings_.--Ar., _Eth._, III., x.; St. Thos., 2a 2a, q. 141, art. 2;
_ib._, q. 141, art. 3, in corp.; _ib._, q. 142, art. 1; _ib._, q. 143,
art. 1, in corp., ad 2, 3; _ib._, q. 161, art. 1, ad 5; _ib._, q. 161,
art. 2, in corp.; _ib._, q. 161, art. 6, in corp., ad 1; _ib._, q.
157, art. 1, in corp., ad 3; _ib_, q. 156, art. 3; Ar., _Eth._, VII.,
viii.


SECTION VIII.--_Of Fortitude_.


1. As Temperance is a curb, restraining animal nature in the pursuit
of the good to which it goes out most eagerly, namely, life and the
means of its continuance, so Fortitude also is a curb, withholding
that nature from irrational flight from the evil which it most dreads.
Aristotle tells us what that evil is: "Most dreadful of all things is
death, for it is the limit, and for the dead man there appears to be
no further good nor evil left." (_Eth._, III, vi., b.) Death is truly
the limit to human existence: for, though the soul be immortal, the
being of flesh and blood, that we call man, is dissolved in death,
and, apart from supernatural hope of the resurrection, extinct for
ever. Death therefore is the direst of all evils in the animal
economy; and as such, is supremely abhorred by the sensitive appetite,
which is the animal part of man. Fortitude moderates this abhorrence
and fear by the dictate of reason. Reason shows that there are better
things than life, and things worse than death, for man in his
spiritual capacity as an intellectual and immortal being.