The Catholic treatment of life and its recommendation of discipline and mortification has precisely the same basis as the physical advice—­an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.  We are exposed to temptation constantly, and we need to recognise the fact and prepare ourselves to meet it; and the best preparation is the preparation of self-discipline for the purpose of keeping rebellious nature under control.  Good farming does not consist in pulling up weeds; it consists in the choice and preparation of the ground in which the seed is to be sown; it looks primarily to the growth of the seed and not to the elimination of the weeds.  Our nature is a field in which the Word of God is sown; its preparation and care is what we need to focus attention on, not the weeds.

Self-discipline is the preparation of nature, the discipline of the powers of the spiritual life with a view to what they have to do.  And one of the important phases of our preparation is to teach our passions obedience, to subject them to the control of the enlightened will.  If they are accustomed to obey they are not very likely to get out of hand in some time of crisis.  If they are broken in to the dominion of spiritual motive, they will instinctively seek that motive whenever they are incited to act.  Hence the immense spiritual value of the habitual denial to ourselves of indulgence in various innocent kinds of activity.  I do not at all mean that we are never to have innocent indulgences:  I do mean that the declining of them occasionally for the purpose of self-discipline is a most wholesome practice.  How frequently it is desirable must be determined by the individual circumstances.  It is utterly disastrous to permit a child to have everything it wants because there is sufficient money to spend, to permit it to run to soda fountains or go to the picture houses as it desires.  Any sane person recognises that; but does the same person recognise the sane principle as applying in his own life?  Does he feel the value of going without something for a day or two, or staying from places of amusement for a time, or of abandoning for a while this or that luxury?

The principle is of course the ascetic principle of self-mastery.  It is best brought before us by the familiar practice of fasting, which is very mildly recommended to us in its lowest terms in the table in the Book of Common Prayer.  Naturally, its value is not the value of going without this or that, but the value of self-mastery.  The very fact that our appetites rebel at the notion shows their undisciplined character.  The child at the table begins to ask, not for a sensible meal founded on sound reasons of hygiene, but for various things that are an immediate temptation to the appetite.  The adult is not markedly different save that he preserves a certain order in indulgence.  The principle of fasting is that he should from time to cut across the inclination of appetite, and either go without a meal altogether, or select such food as will maintain health without delighting appetite.  So man gains the mastery over the animal side of his nature and shows himself the child of God.