 The right, moderate, temperature, will ensure that reason is not blinded by the senses, and hence will allow reason to retain control over desire; and moderate temperature is, on Marinella’s account, most often found in women. The philosophical foundation for the claim that the temperature of women’s bodies is a sign of their virtue is an interpretation of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. (It is possible that she also had Galen in mind.) Marinella claims that the lower temperature of women’s bodies causes them to have superior moral virtues, and in this she is original; Castiglione had argued that women were more temperate physiologically, but he did not draw the connection to moral temperance so explicitly (see Castiglione 1528, 219). Marinella reports that Aristotle says that women are “Less hot than men and therefore more imperfect and less noble,” (130). She agrees with Aristotle that relative to men women are cooler in temperature, but she disagrees that women are cold in absolute terms. She then develops an argument that demonstrates, in part by pointing out discrepancies in Aristotle’s own account of the effects of heat and cold on certain soul functions, that the relative coolness of the female is a moral, and ultimately an intellectual, advantage.