The Discipline of Foresight

Know that unchecked desire calls towards immediate pleasure without considering the consequences.

It urges the immediate attainment of desires.

Even if it causes pain and harm immediately and deprives pleasure in the future.

As for the rational person, he restrains himself from pleasure that is followed by pain.

And from desire that leads to regret.

This alone is sufficient to praise reason and criticize desire.

Do you not see that a child prefers what he desires, even if it leads to his ruin?

Thus, a rational person is superior by restraining himself from it.

And there may be equality between them in inclination towards desire.

This is why humans are preferred over animals.

I mean the faculty of will.

Because animals remain with their nature, without regard to consequences and without thinking of their fate.

They consume what their nature calls them to when food is present.

And they perform what they need like defecation and urination at any time.

And the human refrains from that by subduing his nature with reason.

If the rational person knows that desire becomes dominant,

He must refer every occurrence to the judge of reason.

For it will guide him to consider long-term benefits.

And it will instruct him, when in doubt, to use the safer option to curb desire.

until he is certain of safety from harm in the end.

The rational person should train himself to resist even desire whose consequences are safe.

So that he continues to refrain from what has harmful outcomes.

Let the rational person know that those addicted to desires end up in a state where they no longer enjoy them.

Yet they are unable to give them up.

Because they have become for them like a basic need of life.

This is why you see that the addict to wine and intimacy does not enjoy it even a tenth as much as one who is not addicted.

However, habit necessitates that.

So he throws himself into danger to obtain what his habit demands.