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

Similarly with continence and incontinence. If 6 a man give way to violent and excessive pleasures or pains, we do not marvel, but are ready to pardon him if he struggled, like Philoctetes when bitten by the viper in the play of Theodectes, or Cercyon in the Alope of Carcinus ; or like people who, in trying to restrain their laughter, burst out into a violent explosion, as happened to Xenophantus. But we do marvel when a man siiccumbs to and cannot resist what the generality of men are able to hold out against, unless the cause be hereditary disposition or disease, as softness is hereditary in the Scythian kings, and as the female is naturally different from the male in this respect.

The man that is given up to amusement is gene- 7 rally thought to be profligate, but in fact he is soft ; for amusement is relaxation, since it is a rest from labour ; and among those who take too much relaxation are those who are given up to amusement.

There are two kinds of incontinence, the hasty and 8 the weak. Some men deliberate, but, under the influence of passion, do not abide by the result of their deliberations ; others are swayed by passion because they do not deliberate ; for as there are people who cannot be tickled if they are prepared for it, so there are people who when they see what is coming, and are forewarned and rouse themselves and their reason, are able to resist the impulse, whether it be pleasant or painful. People of quick sensibility or of a melan-

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cholic temperament are most liable to incontinence of the hasty sort ; such people do not wait to hear the voice of reason, because, in the former case through the rapidity, in the latter case through the intensity of their impressions, they are apt to follow their imagination.

8. Again, a profligate man, as we said, is not given ineontinence to remorse, for he abides by his deliberate purpose : wt* mee but an incontinent man is always apt to leel remorse. So the case is not as it was put in one of the difficulties we enumerated,* but the former is incurable, the latter is curable. For full-formed vice [profligacy] seems to be like such diseases as dropsy or consumption, incontinence like epilepsy; for the former is chronic, the latter intermittent badness.

Indeed, we may roundly say that incontinence is generically different from vice; for the vicious man knows not, but the incontinent man knows, the nature of his acts.f

But of these incontinent characters, those who momentarily lose their reason are not so bad as those who retain their reason but disobey it; J for the latter give way to a slighter impulse, and cannot, like the former, be said to act without deliberation. For an incontinent man is like one who gets drunk quickly and with little wine, i.e. with less than most men.

* Cf. supra, 2, 10, 11.

t The incontinent man, when the fit is over and the better part of him reasserts itself {cf. § 5), recognizes the badness of his act; but the ricious man, though he is aware that his acts are called bad, dissents from the judgments of society (cf. 9, 7), and so may be said not to know : cf. III. 1, 12.

+ The weak {aa0fyus) are worse than the hasty (xpoirfreTs) : cf. supra, 7, 8.

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f

"We have seen that incontinence is not vice, but 3 perhaps we may say that it is in a manner vice. The difference is that the incontinent man acts against purpose, the vicious man according to purpose. But in spite of this difference their acts are similar ; as Demodocus said against the Milesians, " The Milesians are not fools, but they act like fools." So an incontinent man is not unjust, but he acts unjustly.