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

The opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish are 3 all obstinate — the opinionated from motives of pleasure and pain; for they delight in the sense of victory when they hold out against argument, and are pained if their opinion comes to naught like a decree that is set aside. They resemble the incontinent man, therefore, rather than the continent.

Sometimes also people abandon their resolutions 4 from something else than incontinence, as, for instance, Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes of Sophocles. It may be said, indeed, that pleasure was his motive in abandoning his resolution : but it was a noble pleasure ; for truth was fair in his eyes, but Ulysses had persuaded him to lie. For he who acts with pleasure for motive is not always either profligate, or worthless, or incontinent, but only when his motive is a base pleasure.

Again, there are people whose character it is to 5 take too little delight in the pleasures of the body, and who by reason of this character swerve from reason ;

9, 3-10, 1.] DfCONTIXENCE. 237 and between these and the incontinent come the continent. For while the incontinent swerve from reason because of an excess, and these because of a deficiency, the continent man holds fast and is not turned aside by the one or the other.

But if continence be a good thing, the characters that are opposed to it must be bad, as in fact they evidently are ; only, since the other extreme is found but rarely and in few cases, incontinence comes to be regarded as the only opposite of continence, just as profligacy comes to be regai-ded as the only opposite of temperance.

We often apply names metaphorically ; and so we come to speak metaphorically of the continence of the temperate man. For it is the nature both of the continent and of the temperate man never to do anything contrary to reason for the sake of bodily pleasures ; but whereas the former has, the latter has not bad desires, and whereas the latter is of such a nature as to take no delight in what is contrary to reason, the former is of such a nature as to take delight in, but not to be swayed by them.

The incontinent and the profligate also resemble each other, though they are different: both pursue bodOy pleasui-es, but the latter pursues them on principle,* while the former does not

10. It is impossible for the same man to be at once Prudence u prudent and incontinent ; for we have shown that a cievtmets is,

. amipeUibU man cannot be prudent without bemg at the same '^''* **«»"- time morally good.

* Literallj-, thinking that he ought {olSfievos Se7y) ; i.e. adopting

them as his end.

238 NIOOMACHEAN ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE. [Bk. VII.

Moreover, a man is not made prudent by merely knowing, but also by being apt to act, and the incontinent man is not apt to act [as he resolves]. But there is nothing to prevent a man who is clever at calculating means from being incontinent; and so people sometimes think a man prudent and yet incontinent, because this cleverness is related to prudence in the manner before * explained, and as far as reason goes they are closely allied, though they differ in purpose.

The incontinent man, however, has knowledge, not as one who knows in the sense of using his knowledge, but as one may know who is asleep or drunk.

He acts voluntarily (for in a manner he knows what he is doing and with what object), and yet is not bad : for his purpose is good ; so he is only half bad. Moreover, incontinent men are not unjust,t for they are not deliberately malicious — some of them being apt to swerve from their deliberate resolutions, others of melancholic temper and apt to act without deliberating at all. An incontinent man, then^ may be compared to a state which always makes excellent decrees and has good laws, but never carries them out; as Anaxandrides jestingly says —

" So willed the state that takes no heed of laws."

The bad man, on the contrary, may be compared to a 4 state that carries out its laws, but has bad laws.

* Cf. supra, VI. IS, 9.