CONTINENCE AND INCONTINENCE
[Book Z] LET US NOW MAKE A FRESH START AND POINT OUT THAT there are three kinds of character to be avoided—vice, incontinence, brutishness. The contraries of two of these are plain—one we call virtue, the other continence. To brutishness it would be most fitting to oppose superhuman virtue, [20] something heroic and divine, 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 rather of a god.1
Therefore if, as they say, men become gods by excelling in virtue, of this kind must plainly be the state opposed to the [25] brutish state; for as a brute has no vice or virtue, so neither has a god: his state is more honourable than virtue, and that of a brute is a different kind of state from vice. Since it is rarely that a godlike man is found—to use the epithet of the Spartans, who when they admire anyone highly call him a [30] godlike man—so too the brutish type is rarely found among men. It is found chiefly among foreigners, and it is some-times produced by disease or deformity. We also call by this evil name those who surpass men in vice.
Of this kind of disposition we must later make some mention, while we have discussed vice before: we must now discuss incontinence and softness and effeminacy, and also [1145b] continence and endurance; for we must not assume either that the one is identical with virtue and the other with depravity, or that they are a different genus. We must, as in all other cases, set out people’s perceptions and, after first discussing the problems, go on to prove, if possible, the truth of all the reputable opinions about these phenomena [5] or, failing this, of the greatest number and the most authoritative; for if we both resolve the vexatious points and leave the reputable opinions undisturbed, we shall have proved the case sufficiently.
Both continence and endurance are thought to be included among things virtuous and praiseworthy, and both [10] incontinence and softness among things base and blameworthy; and the same man is thought to be continent and ready to abide by his calculations, or incontinent and ready to abandon them. The incontinent man, knowing that what he does is base, does it as a result of his emotions, while the continent man, knowing that his appetites are base, does not follow them because of his reason. The temperate man, [15] they say, is continent and disposed to endurance, while the continent man some maintain to be always temperate and others not; and some call the self-indulgent man incontinent and the incontinent man self-indulgent indiscriminately, while others distinguish them. The wise man, they sometimes say, cannot be incontinent, while sometimes they say that some who are wise and clever are incontinent. Again, men are said to be incontinent with respect to rage, [20] honour, and profit.
These, then, are the things that are said.
SOMEONE MIGHT RAISE THE PROBLEM OF WHAT KIND OF correct assumption is present in the man who behaves 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 [25] 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, acts against what is best, if he assumes it to be so, but by reason of ignorance. Now this view contradicts people’s clearest perceptions, and we must inquire about the phenomenon: if he acts by reason of ignorance, what is the manner [30] of his ignorance? For that the man who behaves incontinently does not, before he is under the influence of the emotion, think he ought to act so, is evident. There are some who concede some parts but not others: that nothing is stronger than knowledge they admit, but they do not admit that no one acts against what he believes to be the better course, and therefore they say that the incontinent man has not knowledge when he is mastered by his pleasures, but rather belief. But if it is belief and not knowledge, and if it is not a strong [1146a] assumption that resists but a weak one, as in men who are in two minds, we are sympathetic towards failure to stand by such assumptions in the face of strong appetites; but we are not sympathetic towards depravity, nor towards any of the other blameworthy states. Is it then wisdom whose resistance [5] is mastered? That is the strongest of all states. But this is absurd: the same man will be at once wise and incontinent, but no one would say that it is the part of a wise man to do voluntarily the basest of things. Besides, it has been shown before that the wise man is a man of action (someone concerned with ultimates) and that he possesses the other virtues.
[10] Further, if to be continent a man must have strong and base appetites, the temperate man will not be continent nor the continent man temperate; for a temperate man will have neither excessive nor base appetites. But they must be; for if the appetites are good, the state that restrains us from following them is base, so that not all continence will be virtuous; [15] while if they are weak and not base, there is nothing dignified about resisting them, and if they are weak and base, there is nothing great.
Further, if continence makes a man ready to stand by just any belief, it is base—for instance, if it makes him stand even by a false belief; and if incontinence makes a man apt to abandon just any belief, there will be a virtuous sort of [20] incontinence, of which Sophocles’ Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes will be an instance; for he is praiseworthy for not standing by what Odysseus persuaded him to do, because he is pained at telling a lie.
Further, the sophistic argument presents a problem; for, because they want to expose paradoxical results to show how clever they are when they succeed, the resulting deduction presents a problem (for thinking is tied up when it does [25] not want to stay with a conclusion it does not approve of, but cannot move forward because it cannot refute the argument). There is an argument from which it follows that folly coupled with incontinence is virtue; for by incontinence he does the contrary of what he assumes, and he assumes what [30] is good to be bad and something that he should not do, so that he will do what is good and not what is bad.
Further, he who by 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 convinced to change his mind. But to the incontinent man may be applied the proverb ‘When water chokes, what is one to wash it down [1146b] with?’ If he had been convinced to do what he did, he would have desisted when he was convinced to change his mind; but as it is, he acts in spite of his being convinced of something quite different.
Further, if incontinence and continence are concerned with just any kind of object, who is it that is incontinent tout court? No one has all the forms of incontinence, but we say some people are incontinent tout court.
[5] Of some such kind are the problems that arise. Some of the points must be refuted and the others left; for the resolution of a problem is a discovery.
WE MUST CONSIDER FIRST, THEN, WHETHER INCONTINENT people act knowingly or not, and in what way knowingly; then with what sorts of objects the incontinent and the [10] continent man may be said to be concerned (I mean whether with just any 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 related to these considerations.
The origin of the investigation is the question whether [15] the continent man and the incontinent are differentiated by their objects or by their attitude—I mean, 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. Next, whether incontinence and continence are concerned with just any object or not. The man who is incontinent tout court is not concerned [20] with just any object but with those with which the self-indulgent man is concerned, nor is he characterized simply by being 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 pursues it.
As for the suggestion that it is true belief and not knowledge [25] against which we act incontinently, that makes no difference to the argument; for some people when in a state of belief are not in two minds but think they know precisely. If, then, it is owing to their weak conviction those who have belief are more likely to act against their assumptions than those who know, there will be no difference between knowledge and belief; for some men are no less convinced of what [30] they believe than others of what they know; as the case of Heraclitus makes plain. But since we speak in two ways of knowing something (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 and is not considering it, or he is considering it; for the latter seems strange, but not if he is not considering it.
[1147a] Further, since there are two kinds of proposition, there is nothing to prevent a man’s having both and acting against his knowledge, provided that he is using the universal and not the particular; for it is particulars that are matters of action. And there are two kinds of universal: one with regard [5] to the agent, the other to the object—for instance, that dry food is good for every man, and that I am a man, or that 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 an enormous difference between these manners of knowing, so that to know in one way would not seem at all absurd, while to know in the other way would be remarkable.
[10] Further, men can have knowledge in another way than those just mentioned; for within the case of having knowledge but not using it we see a difference of state, so that someone has knowledge in a manner and yet does not have it—for instance, a man asleep or mad or drunk. But this is just the condition of men under the influence of their emotions; [15] for outbursts of rage and sexual appetites and some other such things quite plainly alter our bodies, 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 these. The fact that men use language expressive of the knowledge is no indication; for men under the influence of [20] these emotions utter demonstrations and verses of Empedocles, and those who have just learned something can string together words but do not yet know—for it has to become part of themselves, and that takes time. So we must assume that men in an incontinent state speak as actors do.
Again, we may also view the cause as follows with reference [25] to the facts of nature. The one belief is universal, the other is concerned with particulars where sense-perception is authoritative. When a single belief is produced from them, necessarily the soul thereupon affirms the conclusion, and if it is a practical matter immediately acts—for instance, if everything sweet ought to be tasted, and this (a particular [30] sweetmeat) is sweet, a man who can act and is not restrained necessarily at the same time acts accordingly. When, then, a universal belief is present in us restraining us from tasting, and there is also the belief that everything sweet is pleasant and that this is sweet (and this is exercised), and appetite happens to be present in us, then the one tells us to avoid the object, but appetite leads us towards it (for each part of the soul can set us in motion). So it turns out that a man behaves [1147b] incontinently under the influence (in a manner) of reason and belief—a belief contrary not in itself but coincidentally to correct reasoning (for the appetite is contrary, not the belief). Hence brutes are not incontinent because they make [5] no universal assumptions but have 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.
Since the last proposition is a belief about a perceptible [10] object and also controls our actions, this a man either has not when he is in an emotional state, or has it in the way in which having knowledge does not mean knowing but only talking, as a drunken man may utter the verses of Empedocles. And because the last term does not seem to be universal nor equally an object of knowledge with the universal term, the position that Socrates looked to establish actually seems [15] to result; for it is not in the presence of what is thought to be knowledge strictly speaking that the phenomenon occurs nor is it this that is dragged about as a result of the emotion—rather, perceptual knowledge is.
This must suffice as our answer to the question of whether or not men can act incontinently when they have knowledge, and in what way they have knowledge.
[20] WE MUST NEXT DISCUSS WHETHER THERE IS ANYONE WHO is incontinent tout court, or all men who are incontinent are so in a particular respect; and if there is incontinence tout court, what its objects are.
That both continent persons and persons of endurance, and incontinent and soft persons, are concerned with pleasures and pains, is evident. Of the things that produce pleasure some are necessary while others are desirable in them-selves [25] but admit of excess, the bodily causes of pleasure being necessary (by such I mean those concerned with food and the need for sex, and the bodily matters with which we determined self-indulgence and temperance to be concerned)—while others are not necessary but desirable in [30] themselves (for instance victory, honour, riches, and good and pleasant things of this sort). Those who go to excess with reference to the latter, against their own correct reasoning, we do not call incontinent tout court—we add the qualification ‘in respect of wealth’ or ‘profit’ or ‘honour’ or ‘rage’—not incontinent tout court, on the ground that they are different from incontinent people and are called incontinent by reason of a resemblance. (Compare the case of Man, who [1148a] won a contest at the Olympic games: in his case the general formula of man differed little from the one proper, but yet it was different.) An indication of this is the fact that incontinence, whether tout court or in a particular respect, is blamed not only as an error but also as a kind of vice, while none of the others is so blamed.
[5] 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 against his choice and his [10] thinking, is called incontinent, not with the qualification ‘in respect of this or that’ (for example, ‘of anger’) but incontinent tout court. An indication of this is the fact that men are called soft with regard to these pleasures but not with regard to any of the others. And we group together the incontinent and the self-indulgent, the continent and the temperate man [15] (but not any of these other types) because they are concerned somehow with the same pleasures and pains; but although they are concerned with the same objects, they are not similarly related to them, but some of them choose them while the others do not choose them.
This is why we should describe as self-indulgent rather the man who without appetite or with but a slight appetite pursues the excesses and avoids moderate pains, than the [20] 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 strong pain at the lack of the necessary objects?
Of appetites and pleasures some belong to the class of things noble and virtuous—for some pleasant things are by nature desirable—while others are contrary to these, and [25] others are intermediate, to adopt our previous distinction (for instance, wealth, profit, victory, honour). With reference to all objects whether of this or of the intermediate kind men are not blamed for being affected by them, for craving them, or for loving them, but for doing so in a certain way and for going to excess. (This is why all those who against reason either are mastered by or pursue one of the objects [30] which are naturally noble and good, for instance those who busy themselves more than they ought about honour or about children and parents—for these are good things, and those who busy themselves about them are praised; but yet there is an excess even in them, if one were to fight against the gods like Niobe, or to be like Satyrus nicknamed ‘the filial’, [1148b] who was thought to be extremely silly.) There is no depravity with regard to these objects, for the reason given—because each of them is by nature a thing desirable for its own sake. But excesses in respect of them are base and to be avoided. Similarly there is no incontinence with regard to them; for incontinence is not only to be avoided but is also blameworthy.
[5] Owing to a similarity in the phenomenon people talk of 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 tout court. Just as in that case we do not apply the term without qualification because none of these [10] conditions is a vice but only analogous to one, so it is plain that here too that alone must be assumed to be incontinence and continence which is concerned with the same objects as temperance and self-indulgence. We apply the term to rage by virtue of a resemblance; and this is why we say with a qualification ‘incontinent in respect of rage’ just as we say ‘of honour’, or ‘of profit’.
[15] SOME THINGS ARE PLEASANT BY NATURE, AND OF THESE some are so in the abstract, and others are so for particular classes either of animals or of men; while others are not pleasant by nature, but some of them become pleasant by reason of deformities, and others by reason of habits, and others by reason of a depraved nature. It is possible with regard to each of the latter kinds to discern corresponding states—I mean the brutish states, as in the case of the [20] woman who, they say, rips open pregnant women and devours the infants, or of the things in which some of the savages about the Black Sea are said to delight (some in raw meat, some in in human flesh, some lending their children to one another to feast upon), or of the story of Phalaris. [25] These states are brutish. 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 diseased states resulting from custom,2 for instance the habit of pulling out your hair or of biting your the nails, or again coals or earth, and in addition to these sex with males; for these arise in some by nature and in others from habit—as in those who have practised physical [30] training3 from childhood.
Those in whom nature is the cause no one would call incontinent, any more than one would apply the epithet to women because they do not mount but are mounted; nor would one apply it to those who are in a diseased condition as a result of habit. To have these various types of habit is beyond [1149a] the limits of vice, just as brutishness is; for a man who has them, to master or be mastered by them is not incontinence tout court but that which is so by a similarity, just as the man who is in this condition in respect of fits of rage is to be called incontinent in respect of that feeling but not incontinent.
[5] For every excessive state, whether of folly, of cowardice, of self-indulgence, or of bad temper, is either brutish or diseased: 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 do not [10] calculate and live by their senses alone are brutish, like some races of the distant foreigners, while those who are so as a result of disease (for instance of epilepsy) or of madness are diseased. Of these characteristics it is possible to have some only at times and not to be mastered by them—for instance, if Phalaris repressed his craving to eat a child, or deviant sexual [15] pleasure; but it is also possible to be mastered, not merely to have the feelings. Thus just as depravity which is on the human level is called depravity tout court whereas other kinds are so called with the qualification ‘brutish’ or ‘diseased’ but not tout court, in the same way it is plain that some incontinence [20] is brutish and some diseased, while only that which corresponds to human self-indulgence is incontinence tout court.
That incontinence and continence are concerned only with the same objects as self-indulgence and temperance, and that what is concerned with other objects is another species of incontinence and called incontinence not tout court but by extension, is plain.
LET US CONSIDER WHETHER INCONTINENCE IN RESPECT [25] of rage is less ignoble than that in respect of the appetites. Rage seems to listen to reason 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 mistake the command, or as dogs bark if there is but a knock at the door, before [30] looking to see if it is a friend: so rage by reason of the warmth and hastiness of its nature, though it hears, does not hear an order, and springs to take revenge. For reason or imagination makes it plain that we have been insulted or treated with disdain, and rage, deducing as it were that anything like this must be fought against, is angry at once; whereas appetite, if reason or perception merely says that something is pleasant, [1149b] springs to the enjoyment of it. Therefore rage obeys reason in a manner, but appetite does not. It is therefore more ignoble; for the man who is incontinent in respect of rage is in a sense defeated by reason, while the other is defeated by appetite and not by reason.
Further, we sympathize with people more easily for following natural appetites, since we sympathize with them [5] more easily for following such appetites as are common to all men, and in so far as they are common. Now rage and bad temper are more natural than the appetites for excess and for unnecessary objects. Take for instance the man who defended himself on the charge of striking his father by saying [10] ‘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.
Further, those who are more given to plotting are more unjust. Now a man who rages is not given to plotting, nor is [15] rage itself—it is open. But appetite is—as they call Aphrodite ‘guile-weaving daughter of Cyprus’, and as Homer says of her embroidered girdle:
Enchantment, that stole the wits even of the most sane.4
So if this form of incontinence is more unjust and ignoble than that in respect of rage, it is both incontinence tout court and in a manner vice.
[20] Further, no one commits outrage with a feeling of pain: everyone 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 unjust, the incontinence which is due to appetite is the more unjust; for there is no outrage involved in rage.
Plainly, then, the incontinence concerned with appetite is [25] more ignoble than that concerned with rage, 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 deformities and diseases. [30] Only with the first of these are temperance and self-indulgence concerned: this is why we call the brutes neither temperate nor self-indulgent except by extension, and only if some one kind5 of animals exceeds another as a whole in outrage, destructiveness, and omnivorous greed; for they have no choice or calculation—rather, they are departures [1150a] from what is natural as, among men, madmen are. Brutishness is less than vice, though more frightening; for it is not that the better part has been destroyed, as in man—they have no better part. Thus it is like comparing an inanimate [5] thing with an animate in respect of badness; for the baseness of that which has no originating principle is always less destructive, and intelligence is a principle. Thus it is like comparing injustice with an unjust man. Each is in a way worse; for a bad man will do ten thousand times as many bad things as a brute.
WITH REGARD TO THE PLEASURES AND PAINS AND APPETITES [10] and aversions arising through touch and taste, with which (as we have earlier determined) both self-indulgence and temperance are concerned, it is 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; and among these possibilities, those relating to pleasures are incontinence and continence, those relating to [15] pains softness and endurance. The state of most people is intermediate, even if they lean more towards the worse states.
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 similarly with appetites and pains, the man who pursues the excesses of things pleasant, [20] or pursues pleasant things to excess, and6 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 without regrets, and therefore incurable, since a man without regrets cannot be cured. The man who is deficient is the opposite. The man who is in the middle is temperate. Similarly, there is the man who avoids bodily pains [25] not because he is defeated by them but by choice. Of those who do not choose, one kind of man is led to them by pleasure, another because he avoids the pain arising from the appetite, so that these types differ from one another. Anyone would think worse of a man if with no appetite or with weak appetite he were to do something ignoble, than if he did it with an intense appetite, and worse of him if he struck a blow not in anger than if he did so in anger—for what would he have done if he had been under the influence of his emotions? [30] This is why the self-indulgent man is worse than the incontinent. Of the states named, then, one is rather a kind of softness, the other 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 mastering, and resisting and mastering are different, just as not being defeated is different from winning. This is why continence [1150b] is more desirable than endurance. Now the man who is deficient in respect of resistance to the things which most men both can and do resist is soft and luxurious (for luxuriousness is a kind of softness): such a man trails his cloak to avoid the trouble of lifting it, and plays the invalid without thinking himself wretched, though that is what he is like.
[5] The case is similar with regard to continence and incontinence. For if a man is defeated by strong and excessive pleasures or pains, there is nothing surprising in that—rather, we are ready to sympathize with him if he has resisted, as Theodectes’ Philoctetes does when bitten by the snake, or [10] Carcinus’ Cercyon in the Alope, and as people who try to repress their laughter burst out in 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 [15] 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 soft. For amusement is a relaxation, since it is a rest; and the lover of amusement is one of the people who go to excess in this.
Of incontinence one kind is impetuosity, another weakness. [20] For some men after deliberating fail, owing to their emotions, to stand by the conclusions of their deliberation, others because they have not deliberated are led by their emotions; for—just as people who have once been tickled7 are not tickled again—some people perceive beforehand and see ahead and rouse themselves and their calculative faculty in advance, and so are not defeated by their emotions, [25] whether they are pleasant or painful. It is quick-tempered and atrabilious people that suffer especially from the impetuous form of incontinence: the former because of their quickness and the latter because of the intensity of their feelings do not wait on reason because they are apt to follow their imagination.
THE SELF-INDULGENT MAN, AS WAS SAID, HAS NO REGRETS; [30] for he stands by his choice. But any incontinent man is subject to regrets. This is why the position is not as it was supposed in the formulation of the problem: rather, the self-indulgent man is incurable and the incontinent man curable. For depravity is like a disease such as dropsy or consumption, while incontinence is like epilepsy: the former is a permanent, the latter an intermittent viciousness. And generally incontinence and vice are different in kind; vice is unconscious of itself, incontinence is not. Of incontinent men [1151a] themselves, those who are carried away are better than those who go through the reasoning but do not stand by it, since they are defeated by a weaker emotion, and do not like the others act without previous deliberation. The incontinent man is like the people who get drunk quickly and on little wine and on less than most people do.
[5] Evidently, then, incontinence is not vice (though perhaps it is so in a way); for incontinence goes against 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’. And incontinent people are not unjust but they will do unjust acts.
Since the incontinent man is apt to pursue, not from conviction, [10] bodily pleasures that are excessive and against correct reasoning, while the self-indulgent man is convinced because he is the sort of man to pursue them, it is the former that is easily convinced to change, while the latter is not. For [15] virtue and vice respectively preserve and destroy the originating principle, and in actions the purpose is the principle, as the hypotheses are in mathematics: neither in that case is it reason that teaches the principles, nor is it so here—virtue either natural or produced by habituation is what teaches correct belief about principles. Such a man as this, then, is temperate, and his contrary is self-indulgent.
[20] There is a sort of man who is carried away by emotion against correct reasoning—a man whom emotion masters so that he does not act according to correct reasoning, but does not master to the extent of convincing him that one ought to pursue such pleasures without reserve. This is the incontinent man, who is better than the self-indulgent man, [25] and not base tout court; for the best thing in him, the originating principle, is preserved. And contrary to him is another kind of man, he who stands fast and is not carried away, at least not by his emotions. It is evident from these considerations that the latter is a virtuous state and the former a base one.
IS THE MAN CONTINENT WHO STANDS BY JUST ANY REASONING [30] and any choice or by correct choice, and is he incontinent who fails to stand by just any choice and reasoning or by reasoning that is not false and choice that is correct? This is a problem we posed earlier. Is it perhaps coincidentally any choice but per se true reasoning and correct choice by which [1151b] the one stands and the other does not? If anyone chooses or pursues one thing for the sake of another, per se he pursues and chooses the latter but coincidentally the former. But when we speak in the abstract we mean what is per se. Therefore in a manner the one stands by and the other abandons any belief at all; but abstractly speaking, true belief.
[5] There are some who are apt to stand by their beliefs and who are called strong-minded—those who are hard to convince and are not easily convinced to change. These have in them something like the continent man, just as the prodigal is in a way like the liberal man and the over-confident man like the confident man; but they are different in many respects. For it is emotion and appetite that do not change the [10] continent man (since on occasion he will be easy to persuade), whereas it is reason that fails to change the others (for they hold on to their appetites) and many of them are led by their pleasures. Now the people who are strong-minded are the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish—the opinionated being influenced by pleasure and pain; for they [15] delight in the victory they gain if they are not persuaded to change, and are pained if their decisions lack authority, like decrees. So that they are more like the incontinent than the continent man.
There are some who fail to stand by their beliefs not as a result of incontinence—for instance, Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ Philoctetes: true, it was for the sake of pleasure that he did not stand fast—but a noble pleasure; for telling [20] the truth was noble to him, but he had been persuaded by Odysseus to lie. For not everyone who does something for the sake of pleasure is either self-indulgent or base or incontinent, but he who does it for an ignoble pleasure.
Since there is also a sort of man who takes less delight than he should in bodily things and does not stand by reason, [25] he who is in the middle between him and the incontinent man is the continent man; for the incontinent man fails to stand by reason because he delights too much, and this man because he delights too little; while the continent man stands fast and does not change on either account. If continence [30] is something virtuous, both the contrary states must be base, as they evidently are; but because the one is evident in few people and seldom, then just as temperance is thought to be contrary only to self-indulgence, so is continence to incontinence.
Many things are called what they are called in virtue of a resemblance, and the continence of the temperate man has come about in virtue of a resemblance; for both the continent man and the temperate man are such as to do nothing against reason for the sake of the bodily pleasures. But the [1152a] former has and the latter has not base appetites, and the latter is such as not to feel pleasure against reason, 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 one another: they are different, but both pursue bodily [5] pleasures—the latter, however, thinking that he ought to do so, while the former does not think so.
NOR CAN THE SAME MAN BE WISE AND INCONTINENT AT the same time; for it has been shown that a man is at the same time wise and virtuous in respect of character. Further, a man is wise not by knowing only but by also by being disposed to act; but the incontinent man is not disposed to act. [10] There is, however, nothing to prevent a clever man from being incontinent (and this is why it is sometimes thought that some people are wise but incontinent) because cleverness and wisdom differ in the way we have described in our first discussions: they are near together in respect of their reasoning, but differ in respect of their choice. The incontinent man is not like the man who knows and is considering [15] something, but like the man who is asleep or drunk. And he acts voluntarily (for in a way he acts with knowledge both of what he does and to what end), but he is not vicious since his choice is upright—so that he is half-vicious. And he is not unjust; for he does not plot: one type of incontinent man does not stand by the conclusions of his deliberation, while [20] the atrabilious man does not deliberate at all. And thus the incontinent man is like a city which passes all the decrees it should and has virtuous laws but makes no use of them, as in Anaxandrides’ mocking remark,
The city willed it, that cares nought for laws.
But the vicious man is like a city that uses its laws but has vicious laws to use.
[25] Incontinence and continence are concerned with that which is in excess of the state characteristic of most men; for the continent man stands fast more and the incontinent man less than most men can.
Of the forms of incontinence, that of atrabilious 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 [30] incontinence is natural; for it is easier to change one’s habit than one’s nature. Even habit is hard to change just because it is like nature, as Evenus says:
I say that habit’s but long practice, friend,
And this becomes men’s nature in the end.
We have now stated what continence, incontinence, endurance, [35] and softness are, and how these states are related to each other.
1 Iliad XXIV 258.
2 Omitting ἤ (with the Laurentian manuscript).
3 Reading γυμναζομένοις where Bywater prefers the variant ὑβριζομένοις (‘who have been violated from childhood’).
4 Iliad XIV 214.
5 Reading τι (suggested by Bywater) for τινι.
6 Reading καθ᾽ ὑπερβολὴν καί (with the Marcianus), where Bywater prints: †ἢ καθ᾽ ὑπερβολὰς† ἤ.
7 Reading προγαργαλισθέντες (the better attested text) rather than προγαργαλίσαντες (‘having once tickled’).