BOOK VII

1

Let us now make a fresh beginning and point out that of moral states
to be avoided there are three kinds-vice, incontinence, brutishness.
The contraries of two of these are evident,-one we call virtue, the
other continence; to brutishness it would be most fitting to oppose
superhuman virtue, a heroic and divine kind of virtue, as Homer has
represented Priam saying of Hector that he was very good,

For he seemed not, he,
The child of a mortal man, but as one that of God’s seed came.

Therefore if, as they say, men become gods by excess of virtue, of
this kind must evidently be the state opposed to the brutish state;
for as a brute has no vice or virtue, so neither has a god; his state
is higher than virtue, and that of a brute is a different kind of
state from vice.

Now, since it is rarely that a godlike man is found-to use the epithet
of the Spartans, who when they admire any one highly call him a ‘godlike
man’-so too the brutish type is rarely found among men; it is found
chiefly among barbarians, but some brutish qualities are also produced
by disease or deformity; and we also call by this evil name those
men who go beyond all ordinary standards by reason of vice. Of this
kind of disposition, however, we must later make some mention, while
we have discussed vice before we must now discuss incontinence and
softness (or effeminacy), and continence and endurance; for we must
treat each of the two neither as identical with virtue or wickedness,
nor as a different genus. We must, as in all other cases, set the
observed facts before us and, after first discussing the difficulties,
go on to prove, if possible, the truth of all the common opinions
about these affections of the mind, or, failing this, of the greater
number and the most authoritative; for if we both refute the objections
and leave the common opinions undisturbed, we shall have proved the
case sufficiently.

Now (1) both continence and endurance are thought to be included among
things good and praiseworthy, and both incontinence and soft, ness
among things bad and blameworthy; and the same man is thought to be
continent and ready to abide by the result of his calculations, or
incontinent and ready to abandon them. And (2) the incontinent man,
knowing that what he does is bad, does it as a result of passion,
while the continent man, knowing that his appetites are bad, refuses
on account of his rational principle to follow them (3) The temperate
man all men call continent and disposed to endurance, while the continent
man some maintain to be always temperate but others do not; and some
call the self-indulgent man incontinent and the incontinent man selfindulgent
indiscriminately, while others distinguish them. (4) The man of practical
wisdom, they sometimes say, cannot be incontinent, while sometimes
they say that some who are practically wise and clever are incontinent.
Again (5) men are said to be incontinent even with respect to anger,
honour, and gain.-These, then, are the things that are said.

2

Now we may ask (1) how a man who judges rightly can behave incontinently.
That he should behave so when he has knowledge, some say is impossible;
for it would be strange-so Socrates thought-if when knowledge was
in a man something else could master it and drag it about like a slave.
For Socrates was entirely opposed to the view in question, holding
that there is no such thing as incontinence; no one, he said, when
he judges acts against what he judges best-people act so only by reason
of ignorance. Now this view plainly contradicts the observed facts,
and we must inquire about what happens to such a man; if he acts by
reason of ignorance, what is the manner of his ignorance? For that
the man who behaves incontinently does not, before he gets into this
state, think he ought to act so, is evident. But there are some who
concede certain of Socrates’ contentions but not others; that nothing
is stronger than knowledge they admit, but not that on one acts contrary
to what has seemed to him the better course, and therefore they say
that the incontinent man has not knowledge when he is mastered by
his pleasures, but opinion. But if it is opinion and not knowledge,
if it is not a strong conviction that resists but a weak one, as in
men who hesitate, we sympathize with their failure to stand by such
convictions against strong appetites; but we do not sympathize with
wickedness, nor with any of the other blameworthy states. Is it then
practical wisdom whose resistance is mastered? That is the strongest
of all states. But this is absurd; the same man will be at once practically
wise and incontinent, but no one would say that it is the part of
a practically wise man to do willingly the basest acts. Besides, it
has been shown before that the man of practical wisdom is one who
will act (for he is a man concerned with the individual facts) and
who has the other virtues.

(2) Further, if continence involves having strong and bad appetites,
the temperate man will not be continent nor the continent man temperate;
for a temperate man will have neither excessive nor bad appetites.
But the continent man must; for if the appetites are good, the state
of character that restrains us from following them is bad, so that
not all continence will be good; while if they are weak and not bad,
there is nothing admirable in resisting them, and if they are weak
and bad, there is nothing great in resisting these either.

(3) Further, if continence makes a man ready to stand by any and every
opinion, it is bad, i.e. if it makes him stand even by a false opinion;
and if incontinence makes a man apt to abandon any and every opinion,
there will be a good incontinence, of which Sophocles’ Neoptolemus
in the Philoctetes will be an instance; for he is to be praised for
not standing by what Odysseus persuaded him to do, because he is pained
at telling a lie.

(4) Further, the sophistic argument presents a difficulty; the syllogism
arising from men’s wish to expose paradoxical results arising from
an opponent’s view, in order that they may be admired when they succeed,
is one that puts us in a difficulty (for thought is bound fast when
it will not rest because the conclusion does not satisfy it, and cannot
advance because it cannot refute the argument). There is an argument
from which it follows that folly coupled with incontinence is virtue;
for a man does the opposite of what he judges, owing to incontinence,
but judges what is good to be evil and something that he should not
do, and consequence he will do what is good and not what is evil.

(5) Further, he who on conviction does and pursues and chooses what
is pleasant would be thought to be better than one who does so as
a result not of calculation but of incontinence; for he is easier
to cure since he may be persuaded to change his mind. But to the incontinent
man may be applied the proverb ‘when water chokes, what is one to
wash it down with?’ If he had been persuaded of the rightness of what
he does, he would have desisted when he was persuaded to change his
mind; but now he acts in spite of his being persuaded of something
quite different.

(6) Further, if incontinence and continence are concerned with any
and every kind of object, who is it that is incontinent in the unqualified
sense? No one has all the forms of incontinence, but we say some people
are incontinent without qualification.

3

Of some such kind are the difficulties that arise; some of these points
must be refuted and the others left in possession of the field; for
the solution of the difficulty is the discovery of the truth. (1)
We must consider first, then, whether incontinent people act knowingly
or not, and in what sense knowingly; then (2) with what sorts of object
the incontinent and the continent man may be said to be concerned
(i.e. whether with any and every pleasure and pain or with certain
determinate kinds), and whether the continent man and the man of endurance
are the same or different; and similarly with regard to the other
matters germane to this inquiry. The starting-point of our investigation
is (a) the question whether the continent man and the incontinent
are differentiated by their objects or by their attitude, i.e. whether
the incontinent man is incontinent simply by being concerned with
such and such objects, or, instead, by his attitude, or, instead of
that, by both these things; (b) the second question is whether incontinence
and continence are concerned with any and every object or not. The
man who is incontinent in the unqualified sense is neither concerned
with any and every object, but with precisely those with which the
self-indulgent man is concerned, nor is he characterized by being
simply related to these (for then his state would be the same as self-indulgence),
but by being related to them in a certain way. For the one is led
on in accordance with his own choice, thinking that he ought always
to pursue the present pleasure; while the other does not think so,
but yet pursues it.

(1) As for the suggestion that it is true opinion and not knowledge
against which we act incontinently, that makes no difference to the
argument; for some people when in a state of opinion do not hesitate,
but think they know exactly. If, then, the notion is that owing to
their weak conviction those who have opinion are more likely to act
against their judgement than those who know, we answer that there
need be no difference between knowledge and opinion in this respect;
for some men are no less convinced of what they think than others
of what they know; as is shown by the of Heraclitus. But (a), since
we use the word ‘know’ in two senses (for both the man who has knowledge
but is not using it and he who is using it are said to know), it will
make a difference whether, when a man does what he should not, he
has the knowledge but is not exercising it, or is exercising it; for
the latter seems strange, but not the former.

(b) Further, since there are two kinds of premisses, there is nothing
to prevent a man’s having both premisses and acting against his knowledge,
provided that he is using only the universal premiss and not the particular;
for it is particular acts that have to be done. And there are also
two kinds of universal term; one is predicable of the agent, the other
of the object; e.g. ‘dry food is good for every man’, and ‘I am a
man’, or ‘such and such food is dry’; but whether ‘this food is such
and such’, of this the incontinent man either has not or is not exercising
the knowledge. There will, then, be, firstly, an enormous difference
between these manners of knowing, so that to know in one way when
we act incontinently would not seem anything strange, while to know
in the other way would be extraordinary.

And further (c) the possession of knowledge in another sense than
those just named is something that happens to men; for within the
case of having knowledge but not using it we see a difference of state,
admitting of the possibility of having knowledge in a sense and yet
not having it, as in the instance of a man asleep, mad, or drunk.
But now this is just the condition of men under the influence of passions;
for outbursts of anger and sexual appetites and some other such passions,
it is evident, actually alter our bodily condition, and in some men
even produce fits of madness. It is plain, then, that incontinent
people must be said to be in a similar condition to men asleep, mad,
or drunk. The fact that men use the language that flows from knowledge
proves nothing; for even men under the influence of these passions
utter scientific proofs and verses of Empedocles, and those who have
just begun to learn a science can string together its phrases, but
do not yet know it; for it has to become part of themselves, and that
takes time; so that we must suppose that the use of language by men
in an incontinent state means no more than its utterance by actors
on the stage. (d) Again, we may also view the cause as follows with
reference to the facts of human nature. The one opinion is universal,
the other is concerned with the particular facts, and here we come
to something within the sphere of perception; when a single opinion
results from the two, the soul must in one type of case affirm the
conclusion, while in the case of opinions concerned with production
it must immediately act (e.g. if ‘everything sweet ought to be tasted’,
and ‘this is sweet’, in the sense of being one of the particular sweet
things, the man who can act and is not prevented must at the same
time actually act accordingly). When, then, the universal opinion
is present in us forbidding us to taste, and there is also the opinion
that ‘everything sweet is pleasant’, and that ‘this is sweet’ (now
this is the opinion that is active), and when appetite happens to
be present in us, the one opinion bids us avoid the object, but appetite
leads us towards it (for it can move each of our bodily parts); so
that it turns out that a man behaves incontinently under the influence
(in a sense) of a rule and an opinion, and of one not contrary in
itself, but only incidentally-for the appetite is contrary, not the
opinion-to the right rule. It also follows that this is the reason
why the lower animals are not incontinent, viz. because they have
no universal judgement but only imagination and memory of particulars.

The explanation of how the ignorance is dissolved and the incontinent
man regains his knowledge, is the same as in the case of the man drunk
or asleep and is not peculiar to this condition; we must go to the
students of natural science for it. Now, the last premiss both being
an opinion about a perceptible object, and being what determines our
actions this a man either has not when he is in the state of passion,
or has it in the sense in which having knowledge did not mean knowing
but only talking, as a drunken man may utter the verses of Empedocles.
And because the last term is not universal nor equally an object of
scientific knowledge with the universal term, the position that Socrates
sought to establish actually seems to result; for it is not in the
presence of what is thought to be knowledge proper that the affection
of incontinence arises (nor is it this that is ‘dragged about’ as
a result of the state of passion), but in that of perceptual knowledge.

This must suffice as our answer to the question of action with and
without knowledge, and how it is possible to behave incontinently
with knowledge.

4

(2) We must next discuss whether there is any one who is incontinent
without qualification, or all men who are incontinent are so in a
particular sense, and if there is, with what sort of objects he is
concerned. That both continent persons and persons of endurance, and
incontinent and soft persons, are concerned with pleasures and pains,
is evident.

Now of the things that produce pleasure some are necessary, while
others are worthy of choice in themselves but admit of excess, the
bodily causes of pleasure being necessary (by such I mean both those
concerned with food and those concerned with sexual intercourse, i.e.
the bodily matters with which we defined self-indulgence and temperance
as being concerned), while the others are not necessary but worthy
of choice in themselves (e.g. victory, honour, wealth, and good and
pleasant things of this sort). This being so, (a) those who go to
excess with reference to the latter, contrary to the right rule which
is in themselves, are not called incontinent simply, but incontinent
with the qualification ‘in respect of money, gain, honour, or anger’,-not
simply incontinent, on the ground that they are different from incontinent
people and are called incontinent by reason of a resemblance. (Compare
the case of Anthropos (Man), who won a contest at the Olympic games;
in his case the general definition of man differed little from the
definition peculiar to him, but yet it was different.) This is shown
by the fact that incontinence either without qualification or in respect
of some particular bodily pleasure is blamed not only as a fault but
as a kind of vice, while none of the people who are incontinent in
these other respects is so blamed.

But (b) of the people who are incontinent with respect to bodily enjoyments,
with which we say the temperate and the self-indulgent man are concerned,
he who pursues the excesses of things pleasant-and shuns those of
things painful, of hunger and thirst and heat and cold and all the
objects of touch and taste-not by choice but contrary to his choice
and his judgement, is called incontinent, not with the qualification
‘in respect of this or that’, e.g. of anger, but just simply. This
is confirmed by the fact that men are called ‘soft’ with regard to
these pleasures, but not with regard to any of the others. And for
this reason we group together the incontinent and the self-indulgent,
the continent and the temperate man-but not any of these other types-because
they are concerned somehow with the same pleasures and pains; but
though these are concerned with the same objects, they are not similarly
related to them, but some of them make a deliberate choice while the
others do not.

This is why we should describe as self-indulgent rather the man who
without appetite or with but a slight appetite pursues the excesses
of pleasure and avoids moderate pains, than the man who does so because
of his strong appetites; for what would the former do, if he had in
addition a vigorous appetite, and a violent pain at the lack of the
‘necessary’ objects?

Now of appetites and pleasures some belong to the class of things
generically noble and good-for some pleasant things are by nature
worthy of choice, while others are contrary to these, and others are
intermediate, to adopt our previous distinction-e.g. wealth, gain,
victory, honour. And with reference to all objects whether of this
or of the intermediate kind men are not blamed for being affected
by them, for desiring and loving them, but for doing so in a certain
way, i.e. for going to excess. (This is why all those who contrary
to the rule either are mastered by or pursue one of the objects which
are naturally noble and good, e.g. those who busy themselves more
than they ought about honour or about children and parents, (are not
wicked); for these too are good, and those who busy themselves about
them are praised; but yet there is an excess even in them-if like
Niobe one were to fight even against the gods, or were to be as much
devoted to one’s father as Satyrus nicknamed ‘the filial’, who was
thought to be very silly on this point.) There is no wickedness, then,
with regard to these objects, for the reason named, viz. because each
of them is by nature a thing worthy of choice for its own sake; yet
excesses in respect of them are bad and to be avoided. Similarly there
is no incontinence with regard to them; for incontinence is not only
to be avoided but is also a thing worthy of blame; but owing to a
similarity in the state of feeling people apply the name incontinence,
adding in each case what it is in respect of, as we may describe as
a bad doctor or a bad actor one whom we should not call bad, simply.
As, then, in this case we do not apply the term without qualification
because each of these conditions is no shadness but only analogous
to it, so it is clear that in the other case also that alone must
be taken to be incontinence and continence which is concerned with
the same objects as temperance and self-indulgence, but we apply the
term to anger by virtue of a resemblance; and this is why we say with
a qualification ‘incontinent in respect of anger’ as we say ‘incontinent
in respect of honour, or of gain’.

5

(1) Some things are pleasant by nature, and of these (a) some are
so without qualification, and (b) others are so with reference to
particular classes either of animals or of men; while (2) others are
not pleasant by nature, but (a) some of them become so by reason of
injuries to the system, and (b) others by reason of acquired habits,
and (c) others by reason of originally bad natures. This being so,
it is possible with regard to each of the latter kinds to discover
similar states of character to those recognized with regard to the
former; I mean (A) the brutish states, as in the case of the female
who, they say, rips open pregnant women and devours the infants, or
of the things in which some of the tribes about the Black Sea that
have gone savage are said to delight-in raw meat or in human flesh,
or in lending their children to one another to feast upon-or of the
story told of Phalaris.

These states are brutish, but (B) others arise as a result of disease
(or, in some cases, of madness, as with the man who sacrificed and
ate his mother, or with the slave who ate the liver of his fellow),
and others are morbid states (C) resulting from custom, e.g. the habit
of plucking out the hair or of gnawing the nails, or even coals or
earth, and in addition to these paederasty; for these arise in some
by nature and in others, as in those who have been the victims of
lust from childhood, from habit.

Now those in whom nature is the cause of such a state no one would
call incontinent, any more than one would apply the epithet to women
because of the passive part they play in copulation; nor would one
apply it to those who are in a morbid condition as a result of habit.
To have these various types of habit is beyond the limits of vice,
as brutishness is too; for a man who has them to master or be mastered
by them is not simple (continence or) incontinence but that which
is so by analogy, as the man who is in this condition in respect of
fits of anger is to be called incontinent in respect of that feeling
but not incontinent simply. For every excessive state whether of folly,
of cowardice, of self-indulgence, or of bad temper, is either brutish
or morbid; the man who is by nature apt to fear everything, even the
squeak of a mouse, is cowardly with a brutish cowardice, while the
man who feared a weasel did so in consequence of disease; and of foolish
people those who by nature are thoughtless and live by their senses
alone are brutish, like some races of the distant barbarians, while
those who are so as a result of disease (e.g. of epilepsy) or of madness
are morbid. Of these characteristics it is possible to have some only
at times, and not to be mastered by them. e.g. Phalaris may have restrained
a desire to eat the flesh of a child or an appetite for unnatural
sexual pleasure; but it is also possible to be mastered, not merely
to have the feelings. Thus, as the wickedness which is on the human
level is called wickedness simply, while that which is not is called
wickedness not simply but with the qualification ‘brutish’ or ‘morbid’,
in the same way it is plain that some incontinence is brutish and
some morbid, while only that which corresponds to human self-indulgence
is incontinence simply.

That incontinence and continence, then, are concerned only with the
same objects as selfindulgence and temperance and that what is concerned
with other objects is a type distinct from incontinence, and called
incontinence by a metaphor and not simply, is plain.

6

That incontinence in respect of anger is less disgraceful than that
in respect of the appetites is what we will now proceed to see. (1)
Anger seems to listen to argument to some extent, but to mishear it,
as do hasty servants who run out before they have heard the whole
of what one says, and then muddle the order, or as dogs bark if there
is but a knock at the door, before looking to see if it is a friend;
so anger by reason of the warmth and hastiness of its nature, though
it hears, does not hear an order, and springs to take revenge. For
argument or imagination informs us that we have been insulted or slighted,
and anger, reasoning as it were that anything like this must be fought
against, boils up straightway; while appetite, if argument or perception
merely says that an object is pleasant, springs to the enjoyment of
it. Therefore anger obeys the argument in a sense, but appetite does
not. It is therefore more disgraceful; for the man who is incontinent
in respect of anger is in a sense conquered by argument, while the
other is conquered by appetite and not by argument.

(2) Further, we pardon people more easily for following natural desires,
since we pardon them more easily for following such appetites as are
common to all men, and in so far as they are common; now anger and
bad temper are more natural than the appetites for excess, i.e. for
unnecessary objects. Take for instance the man who defended himself
on the charge of striking his father by saying ‘yes, but he struck
his father, and he struck his, and’ (pointing to his child) ‘this
boy will strike me when he is a man; it runs in the family’; or the
man who when he was being dragged along by his son bade him stop at
the doorway, since he himself had dragged his father only as far as
that.

(2) Further, those who are more given to plotting against others are
more criminal. Now a passionate man is not given to plotting, nor
is anger itself-it is open; but the nature of appetite is illustrated
by what the poets call Aphrodite, ‘guile-weaving daughter of Cyprus’,
and by Homer’s words about her ’embroidered girdle’:

And the whisper of wooing is there,
Whose subtlety stealeth the wits of the wise, how prudent soe’er.
Therefore if this form of incontinence is more criminal and disgraceful
than that in respect of anger, it is both incontinence without qualification
and in a sense vice.

(4) Further, no one commits wanton outrage with a feeling of pain,
but every one who acts in anger acts with pain, while the man who
commits outrage acts with pleasure. If, then, those acts at which
it is most just to be angry are more criminal than others, the incontinence
which is due to appetite is the more criminal; for there is no wanton
outrage involved in anger.

Plainly, then, the incontinence concerned with appetite is more disgraceful
than that concerned with anger, and continence and incontinence are
concerned with bodily appetites and pleasures; but we must grasp the
differences among the latter themselves. For, as has been said at
the beginning, some are human and natural both in kind and in magnitude,
others are brutish, and others are due to organic injuries and diseases.
Only with the first of these are temperance and self-indulgence concerned;
this is why we call the lower animals neither temperate nor self-indulgent
except by a metaphor, and only if some one race of animals exceeds
another as a whole in wantonness, destructiveness, and omnivorous
greed; these have no power of choice or calculation, but they are
departures from the natural norm, as, among men, madmen are. Now brutishness
is a less evil than vice, though more alarming; for it is not that
the better part has been perverted, as in man,-they have no better
part. Thus it is like comparing a lifeless thing with a living in
respect of badness; for the badness of that which has no originative
source of movement is always less hurtful, and reason is an originative
source. Thus it is like comparing injustice in the abstract with an
unjust man. Each is in some sense worse; for a bad man will do ten
thousand times as much evil as a brute.

7

With regard to the pleasures and pains and appetites and aversions
arising through touch and taste, to which both self-indulgence and
temperance were formerly narrowed down, it possible to be in such
a state as to be defeated even by those of them which most people
master, or to master even those by which most people are defeated;
among these possibilities, those relating to pleasures are incontinence
and continence, those relating to pains softness and endurance. The
state of most people is intermediate, even if they lean more towards
the worse states.

Now, since some pleasures are necessary while others are not, and
are necessary up to a point while the excesses of them are not, nor
the deficiencies, and this is equally true of appetites and pains,
the man who pursues the excesses of things pleasant, or pursues to
excess necessary objects, and does so by choice, for their own sake
and not at all for the sake of any result distinct from them, is self-indulgent;
for such a man is of necessity unlikely to repent, and therefore incurable,
since a man who cannot repent cannot be cured. The man who is deficient
in his pursuit of them is the opposite of self-indulgent; the man
who is intermediate is temperate. Similarly, there is the man who
avoids bodily pains not because he is defeated by them but by choice.
(Of those who do not choose such acts, one kind of man is led to them
as a result of the pleasure involved, another because he avoids the
pain arising from the appetite, so that these types differ from one
another. Now any one would think worse of a man with no appetite or
with weak appetite were he to do something disgraceful, than if he
did it under the influence of powerful appetite, and worse of him
if he struck a blow not in anger than if he did it in anger; for what
would he have done if he had been strongly affected? This is why the
self-indulgent man is worse than the incontinent.) of the states named,
then, the latter is rather a kind of softness; the former is self-indulgence.
While to the incontinent man is opposed the continent, to the soft
is opposed the man of endurance; for endurance consists in resisting,
while continence consists in conquering, and resisting and conquering
are different, as not being beaten is different from winning; this
is why continence is also more worthy of choice than endurance. Now
the man who is defective in respect of resistance to the things which
most men both resist and resist successfully is soft and effeminate;
for effeminacy too is a kind of softness; such a man trails his cloak
to avoid the pain of lifting it, and plays the invalid without thinking
himself wretched, though the man he imitates is a wretched man.

The case is similar with regard to continence and incontinence. For
if a man is defeated by violent and excessive pleasures or pains,
there is nothing wonderful in that; indeed we are ready to pardon
him if he has resisted, as Theodectes’ Philoctetes does when bitten
by the snake, or Carcinus’ Cercyon in the Alope, and as people who
try to restrain their laughter burst out into a guffaw, as happened
to Xenophantus. But it is surprising if a man is defeated by and cannot
resist pleasures or pains which most men can hold out against, when
this is not due to heredity or disease, like the softness that is
hereditary with the kings of the Scythians, or that which distinguishes
the female sex from the male.

The lover of amusement, too, is thought to be self-indulgent, but
is really soft. For amusement is a relaxation, since it is a rest
from work; and the lover of amusement is one of the people who go
to excess in this.

Of incontinence one kind is impetuosity, another weakness. For some
men after deliberating fail, owing to their emotion, to stand by the
conclusions of their deliberation, others because they have not deliberated
are led by their emotion; since some men (just as people who first
tickle others are not tickled themselves), if they have first perceived
and seen what is coming and have first roused themselves and their
calculative faculty, are not defeated by their emotion, whether it
be pleasant or painful. It is keen and excitable people that suffer
especially from the impetuous form of incontinence; for the former
by reason of their quickness and the latter by reason of the violence
of their passions do not await the argument, because they are apt
to follow their imagination.

8

The self-indulgent man, as was said, is not apt to repent; for he
stands by his choice; but incontinent man is likely to repent. This
is why the position is not as it was expressed in the formulation
of the problem, but the selfindulgent man is incurable and the incontinent
man curable; for wickedness is like a disease such as dropsy or consumption,
while incontinence is like epilepsy; the former is a permanent, the
latter an intermittent badness. And generally incontinence and vice
are different in kind; vice is unconscious of itself, incontinence
is not (of incontinent men themselves, those who become temporarily
beside themselves are better than those who have the rational principle
but do not abide by it, since the latter are defeated by a weaker
passion, and do not act without previous deliberation like the others);
for the incontinent man is like the people who get drunk quickly and
on little wine, i.e. on less than most people.

Evidently, then, incontinence is not vice (though perhaps it is so
in a qualified sense); for incontinence is contrary to choice while
vice is in accordance with choice; not but what they are similar in
respect of the actions they lead to; as in the saying of Demodocus
about the Milesians, ‘the Milesians are not without sense, but they
do the things that senseless people do’, so too incontinent people
are not criminal, but they will do criminal acts.

Now, since the incontinent man is apt to pursue, not on conviction,
bodily pleasures that are excessive and contrary to the right rule,
while the self-indulgent man is convinced because he is the sort of
man to pursue them, it is on the contrary the former that is easily
persuaded to change his mind, while the latter is not. For virtue
and vice respectively preserve and destroy the first principle, and
in actions the final cause is the first principle, as the hypotheses
are in mathematics; neither in that case is it argument that teaches
the first principles, nor is it so here-virtue either natural or produced
by habituation is what teaches right opinion about the first principle.
Such a man as this, then, is temperate; his contrary is the self-indulgent.

But there is a sort of man who is carried away as a result of passion
and contrary to the right rule-a man whom passion masters so that
he does not act according to the right rule, but does not master to
the extent of making him ready to believe that he ought to pursue
such pleasures without reserve; this is the incontinent man, who is
better than the self-indulgent man, and not bad without qualification;
for the best thing in him, the first principle, is preserved. And
contrary to him is another kind of man, he who abides by his convictions
and is not carried away, at least as a result of passion. It is evident
from these considerations that the latter is a good state and the
former a bad one.

9

Is the man continent who abides by any and every rule and any and
every choice, or the man who abides by the right choice, and is he
incontinent who abandons any and every choice and any and every rule,
or he who abandons the rule that is not false and the choice that
is right; this is how we put it before in our statement of the problem.
Or is it incidentally any and every choice but per se the true rule
and the right choice by which the one abides and the other does not?
If any one chooses or pursues this for the sake of that, per se he
pursues and chooses the latter, but incidentally the former. But when
we speak without qualification we mean what is per se. Therefore in
a sense the one abides by, and the other abandons, any and every opinion;
but without qualification, the true opinion.

There are some who are apt to abide by their opinion, who are called
strong-headed, viz. those who are hard to persuade in the first instance
and are not easily persuaded to change; these have in them something
like the continent man, as the prodigal is in a way like the liberal
man and the rash man like the confident man; but they are different
in many respects. For it is to passion and appetite that the one will
not yield, since on occasion the continent man will be easy to persuade;
but it is to argument that the others refuse to yield, for they do
form appetites and many of them are led by their pleasures. Now the
people who are strong-headed are the opinionated, the ignorant, and
the boorish-the opinionated being influenced by pleasure and pain;
for they delight in the victory they gain if they are not persuaded
to change, and are pained if their decisions become null and void
as decrees sometimes do; so that they are liker the incontinent than
the continent man.

But there are some who fail to abide by their resolutions, not as
a result of incontinence, e.g. Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ Philoctetes;
yet it was for the sake of pleasure that he did not stand fast-but
a noble pleasure; for telling the truth was noble to him, but he had
been persuaded by Odysseus to tell the lie. For not every one who
does anything for the sake of pleasure is either self-indulgent or
bad or incontinent, but he who does it for a disgraceful pleasure.

Since there is also a sort of man who takes less delight than he should
in bodily things, and does not abide by the rule, he who is intermediate
between him and the incontinent man is the continent man; for the
incontinent man fails to abide by the rule because he delights too
much in them, and this man because he delights in them too little;
while the continent man abides by the rule and does not change on
either account. Now if continence is good, both the contrary states
must be bad, as they actually appear to be; but because the other
extreme is seen in few people and seldom, as temperance is thought
to be contrary only to self-indulgence, so is continence to incontinence.

Since many names are applied analogically, it is by analogy that we
have come to speak of the ‘continence’ the temperate man; for both
the continent man and the temperate man are such as to do nothing
contrary to the rule for the sake of the bodily pleasures, but the
former has and the latter has not bad appetites, and the latter is
such as not to feel pleasure contrary to the rule, while the former
is such as to feel pleasure but not to be led by it. And the incontinent
and the self-indulgent man are also like another; they are different,
but both pursue bodily pleasures- the latter, however, also thinking
that he ought to do so, while the former does not think this.

10

Nor can the same man have practical wisdom and be incontinent; for
it has been shown’ that a man is at the same time practically wise,
and good in respect of character. Further, a man has practical wisdom
not by knowing only but by being able to act; but the incontinent
man is unable to act-there is, however, nothing to prevent a clever
man from being incontinent; this is why it is sometimes actually thought
that some people have practical wisdom but are incontinent, viz. because
cleverness and practical wisdom differ in the way we have described
in our first discussions, and are near together in respect of their
reasoning, but differ in respect of their purpose-nor yet is the incontinent
man like the man who knows and is contemplating a truth, but like
the man who is asleep or drunk. And he acts willingly (for he acts
in a sense with knowledge both of what he does and of the end to which
he does it), but is not wicked, since his purpose is good; so that
he is half-wicked. And he is not a criminal; for he does not act of
malice aforethought; of the two types of incontinent man the one does
not abide by the conclusions of his deliberation, while the excitable
man does not deliberate at all. And thus the incontinent man like
a city which passes all the right decrees and has good laws, but makes
no use of them, as in Anaxandrides’ jesting remark,

The city willed it, that cares nought for laws; but the wicked man
is like a city that uses its laws, but has wicked laws to use.

Now incontinence and continence are concerned with that which is in
excess of the state characteristic of most men; for the continent
man abides by his resolutions more and the incontinent man less than
most men can.

Of the forms of incontinence, that of excitable people is more curable
than that of those who deliberate but do not abide by their decisions,
and those who are incontinent through habituation are more curable
than those in whom incontinence is innate; for it is easier to change
a habit than to change one’s nature; even habit is hard to change
just because it is like nature, as Evenus says:

I say that habit’s but a long practice, friend,
And this becomes men’s nature in the end.

We have now stated what continence, incontinence, endurance, and softness
are, and how these states are related to each other.

11

The study of pleasure and pain belongs to the province of the political
philosopher; for he is the architect of the end, with a view to which
we call one thing bad and another good without qualification. Further,
it is one of our necessary tasks to consider them; for not only did
we lay it down that moral virtue and vice are concerned with pains
and pleasures, but most people say that happiness involves pleasure;
this is why the blessed man is called by a name derived from a word
meaning enjoyment.

Now (1) some people think that no pleasure is a good, either in itself
or incidentally, since the good and pleasure are not the same; (2)
others think that some pleasures are good but that most are bad. (3)
Again there is a third view, that even if all pleasures are good,
yet the best thing in the world cannot be pleasure. (1) The reasons
given for the view that pleasure is not a good at all are (a) that
every pleasure is a perceptible process to a natural state, and that
no process is of the same kind as its end, e.g. no process of building
of the same kind as a house. (b) A temperate man avoids pleasures.
(c) A man of practical wisdom pursues what is free from pain, not
what is pleasant. (d) The pleasures are a hindrance to thought, and
the more so the more one delights in them, e.g. in sexual pleasure;
for no one could think of anything while absorbed in this. (e) There
is no art of pleasure; but every good is the product of some art.
(f) Children and the brutes pursue pleasures. (2) The reasons for
the view that not all pleasures are good are that (a) there are pleasures
that are actually base and objects of reproach, and (b) there are
harmful pleasures; for some pleasant things are unhealthy. (3) The
reason for the view that the best thing in the world is not pleasure
is that pleasure is not an end but a process.

12

These are pretty much the things that are said. That it does not follow
from these grounds that pleasure is not a good, or even the chief
good, is plain from the following considerations. (A, a) First, since
that which is good may be so in either of two senses (one thing good
simply and another good for a particular person), natural constitutions
and states of being, and therefore also the corresponding movements
and processes, will be correspondingly divisible. Of those which are
thought to be bad some will be bad if taken without qualification
but not bad for a particular person, but worthy of his choice, and
some will not be worthy of choice even for a particular person, but
only at a particular time and for a short period, though not without
qualification; while others are not even pleasures, but seem to be
so, viz. all those which involve pain and whose end is curative, e.g.
the processes that go on in sick persons.

(b) Further, one kind of good being activity and another being state,
the processes that restore us to our natural state are only incidentally
pleasant; for that matter the activity at work in the appetites for
them is the activity of so much of our state and nature as has remained
unimpaired; for there are actually pleasures that involve no pain
or appetite (e.g. those of contemplation), the nature in such a case
not being defective at all. That the others are incidental is indicated
by the fact that men do not enjoy the same pleasant objects when their
nature is in its settled state as they do when it is being replenished,
but in the former case they enjoy the things that are pleasant without
qualification, in the latter the contraries of these as well; for
then they enjoy even sharp and bitter things, none of which is pleasant
either by nature or without qualification. The states they produce,
therefore, are not pleasures naturally or without qualification; for
as pleasant things differ, so do the pleasures arising from them.

(c) Again, it is not necessary that there should be something else
better than pleasure, as some say the end is better than the process;
for leasures are not processes nor do they all involve process-they
are activities and ends; nor do they arise when we are becoming something,
but when we are exercising some faculty; and not all pleasures have
an end different from themselves, but only the pleasures of persons
who are being led to the perfecting of their nature. This is why it
is not right to say that pleasure is perceptible process, but it should
rather be called activity of the natural state, and instead of ‘perceptible’
‘unimpeded’. It is thought by some people to be process just because
they think it is in the strict sense good; for they think that activity
is process, which it is not.

(B) The view that pleasures are bad because some pleasant things are
unhealthy is like saying that healthy things are bad because some
healthy things are bad for money-making; both are bad in the respect
mentioned, but they are not bad for that reason-indeed, thinking itself
is sometimes injurious to health.

Neither practical wisdom nor any state of being is impeded by the
pleasure arising from it; it is foreign pleasures that impede, for
the pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think
and learn all the more.

(C) The fact that no pleasure is the product of any art arises naturally
enough; there is no art of any other activity either, but only of
the corresponding faculty; though for that matter the arts of the
perfumer and the cook are thought to be arts of pleasure.

(D) The arguments based on the grounds that the temperate man avoids
pleasure and that the man of practical wisdom pursues the painless
life, and that children and the brutes pursue pleasure, are all refuted
by the same consideration. We have pointed out in what sense pleasures
are good without qualification and in what sense some are not good;
now both the brutes and children pursue pleasures of the latter kind
(and the man of practical wisdom pursues tranquil freedom from that
kind), viz. those which imply appetite and pain, i.e. the bodily pleasures
(for it is these that are of this nature) and the excesses of them,
in respect of which the self-indulgent man is self-indulent. This
is why the temperate man avoids these pleasures; for even he has pleasures
of his own.

13

But further (E) it is agreed that pain is bad and to be avoided; for
some pain is without qualification bad, and other pain is bad because
it is in some respect an impediment to us. Now the contrary of that
which is to be avoided, qua something to be avoided and bad, is good.
Pleasure, then, is necessarily a good. For the answer of Speusippus,
that pleasure is contrary both to pain and to good, as the greater
is contrary both to the less and to the equal, is not successful;
since he would not say that pleasure is essentially just a species
of evil.

And (F) if certain pleasures are bad, that does not prevent the chief
good from being some pleasure, just as the chief good may be some
form of knowledge though certain kinds of knowledge are bad. Perhaps
it is even necessary, if each disposition has unimpeded activities,
that, whether the activity (if unimpeded) of all our dispositions
or that of some one of them is happiness, this should be the thing
most worthy of our choice; and this activity is pleasure. Thus the
chief good would be some pleasure, though most pleasures might perhaps
be bad without qualification. And for this reason all men think that
the happy life is pleasant and weave pleasure into their ideal of
happiness-and reasonably too; for no activity is perfect when it is
impeded, and happiness is a perfect thing; this is why the happy man
needs the goods of the body and external goods, i.e. those of fortune,
viz. in order that he may not be impeded in these ways. Those who
say that the victim on the rack or the man who falls into great misfortunes
is happy if he is good, are, whether they mean to or not, talking
nonsense. Now because we need fortune as well as other things, some
people think good fortune the same thing as happiness; but it is not
that, for even good fortune itself when in excess is an impediment,
and perhaps should then be no longer called good fortune; for its
limit is fixed by reference to happiness.

And indeed the fact that all things, both brutes and men, pursue pleasure
is an indication of its being somehow the chief good:

No voice is wholly lost that many peoples… But since no one nature
or state either is or is thought the best for all, neither do all
pursue the same pleasure; yet all pursue pleasure. And perhaps they
actually pursue not the pleasure they think they pursue nor that which
they would say they pursue, but the same pleasure; for all things
have by nature something divine in them. But the bodily pleasures
have appropriated the name both because we oftenest steer our course
for them and because all men share in them; thus because they alone
are familiar, men think there are no others.

It is evident also that if pleasure, i.e. the activity of our faculties,
is not a good, it will not be the case that the happy man lives a
pleasant life; for to what end should he need pleasure, if it is not
a good but the happy man may even live a painful life? For pain is
neither an evil nor a good, if pleasure is not; why then should he
avoid it? Therefore, too, the life of the good man will not be pleasanter
than that of any one else, if his activities are not more pleasant.

14

(G) With regard to the bodily pleasures, those who say that some pleasures
are very much to be chosen, viz. the noble pleasures, but not the
bodily pleasures, i.e. those with which the self-indulgent man is
concerned, must consider why, then, the contrary pains are bad. For
the contrary of bad is good. Are the necessary pleasures good in the
sense in which even that which is not bad is good? Or are they good
up to a point? Is it that where you have states and processes of which
there cannot be too much, there cannot be too much of the corresponding
pleasure, and that where there can be too much of the one there can
be too much of the other also? Now there can be too much of bodily
goods, and the bad man is bad by virtue of pursuing the excess, not
by virtue of pursuing the necessary pleasures (for all men enjoy in
some way or other both dainty foods and wines and sexual intercourse,
but not all men do so as they ought). The contrary is the case with
pain; for he does not avoid the excess of it, he avoids it altogether;
and this is peculiar to him, for the alternative to excess of pleasure
is not pain, except to the man who pursues this excess.

Since we should state not only the truth, but also the cause of error-for
this contributes towards producing conviction, since when a reasonable
explanation is given of why the false view appears true, this tends
to produce belief in the true view-therefore we must state why the
bodily pleasures appear the more worthy of choice. (a) Firstly, then,
it is because they expel pain; owing to the excesses of pain that
men experience, they pursue excessive and in general bodily pleasure
as being a cure for the pain. Now curative agencies produce intense
feeling-which is the reason why they are pursued-because they show
up against the contrary pain. (Indeed pleasure is thought not to be
good for these two reasons, as has been said, viz. that (a) some of
them are activities belonging to a bad nature-either congenital, as
in the case of a brute, or due to habit, i.e. those of bad men; while
(b) others are meant to cure a defective nature, and it is better
to be in a healthy state than to be getting into it, but these arise
during the process of being made perfect and are therefore only incidentally
good., b) Further, they are pursued because of their violence by
those who cannot enjoy other pleasures. (At all events they go out
of their way to manufacture thirsts somehow for themselves. When these
are harmless, the practice is irreproachable; when they are hurtful,
it is bad.) For they have nothing else to enjoy, and, besides, a neutral
state is painful to many people because of their nature. For the animal
nature is always in travail, as the students of natural science also
testify, saying that sight and hearing are painful; but we have become
used to this, as they maintain. Similarly, while, in youth, people
are, owing to the growth that is going on, in a situation like that
of drunken men, and youth is pleasant, on the other hand people of
excitable nature always need relief; for even their body is ever in
torment owing to its special composition, and they are always under
the influence of violent desire; but pain is driven out both by the
contrary pleasure, and by any chance pleasure if it be strong; and
for these reasons they become self-indulgent and bad. But the pleasures
that do not involve pains do not admit of excess; and these are among
the things pleasant by nature and not incidentally. By things pleasant
incidentally I mean those that act as cures (for because as a result
people are cured, through some action of the part that remains healthy,
for this reason the process is thought pleasant); by things naturally
pleasant I mean those that stimulate the action of the healthy nature.

There is no one thing that is always pleasant, because our nature
is not simple but there is another element in us as well, inasmuch
as we are perishable creatures, so that if the one element does something,
this is unnatural to the other nature, and when the two elements are
evenly balanced, what is done seems neither painful nor pleasant;
for if the nature of anything were simple, the same action would always
be most pleasant to it. This is why God always enjoys a single and
simple pleasure; for there is not only an activity of movement but
an activity of immobility, and pleasure is found more in rest than
in movement. But ‘change in all things is sweet’, as the poet says,
because of some vice; for as it is the vicious man that is changeable,
so the nature that needs change is vicious; for it is not simple nor
good.

We have now discussed continence and incontinence, and pleasure and
pain, both what each is and in what sense some of them are good and
others bad; it remains to speak of friendship.

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