The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

. * This comparison is rendered snperflnous by the preceding one (which probably was meant to be snbstitnted for it), and is not very apt as it stands. We shonld rather expect vpos rh iSiKov : the sense would then be, " injustice is morally worse than an unjust act whichp. 230 would do ten thousand times as much harm as a brute.

jiiconiinence 7. With regard to the pleasures and pains of touch pTeafuX and taste, and the corresponding desires and averpaiZ^^Two sions, which we before marked out as the field of incontinence, profligacy and temperance, it is possible to be so andthe^ disposed as to succumb to allurements which most people resist, or so as to resist allurements to which most people succumb. When they are exhibited in the matter of pleasures, the former of these characters is called incontinent and the latter continent ; when they are exhibited in the matter of pains, the former is called soft and the latter hardy. The character of the general run of men falls between these two, inclining perhaps rather to the worse.

But since some pleasures are necessary, while others are not, and since the necessary pleasures are necessary in certain quantities only, but not in too great nor yet in too small quantities, and since the same is true of appetites and of pains, he who pursues pleasures that fall beyond the pale of legitimate pleasures, or pursues any pleasures to excess,* is called profligate, if he pursues them of deliberate purpose for their own sake and not for any result does not proceed from an unjust character, but the latter may be a worse evil ; " e.g. humanity has suffered more by well-meaning persecutors than by the greatest villains. Gf. V. 11, 8.

* This distinction might be illustrated by the distinction which opinion in England draws between opium-smoking and tobacco-smoking. Opium-smoking is commonly regarded by us as a inrep$o\-f], as a pleasure that in any degree is beyond the pale of legitimate pleasures; a man who is too much given to tobacco-smoking is regarded as pursuing kuO' virep^oXas (in excess) a pleasure which in moderation is legitimate.

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which follows from them ; * for such a man must be incapable of remorse — must be incurable therefore ; for he who feels no remorse is incurable. In the opposite extreme is he who falls short of the mean, while he who observes the mean is temperate. So with the man who avoids bodily pains, not because he is momentarily overcome, but of deliberate purpose.

But those who act thus without deliberate purpose may do so either to gain pleasure or to escape the pain of desire, and we must accordingly distinguish these from one another.

But all would allow that a man who does something disgraceful without desire, or with only a moderate desire, is worse than if he had a violent desire ; and that if a man strike another in cool blood he is worse than if he does it in anger; for what Avould he do if he were in a passion ? The profligate man, therefore, is worse than the incontinent.

Of the characters mentioned, then, we must distinguish softness from profligacy.

The continent character is opposed to the incontinent, and the hardy to the soft; for hardiness implies that you endure, while continence implies that you overcome, and enduring is diflerent from overcoming, just as escaping a defeat is diflerent from winning a victory ; so continence is better than hardiness.

But he that gives way to what the generality of men can and do resist is soft and luxurious (for luxurj^, too, is a kind of softness), — the sort of man that sufiers his cloak to trail along the ground rather

* Eeading tl instead of ^»

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than be at the pains to pull it up ; that plays the invalid, and yet does not consider himself wretched, though it is a wretched man that he imitates.