The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (176 page)

4
      (2) We must next discuss whether there is any one who is incontinent without qualification,
(20)
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,
(25)
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
¹⁵
self-indulgence and temperance as being concerned), while the others are not necessary but worthy of choice in themselves (e. g. victory, honour, wealth,
(30)
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
,
(35)
but yet it
was
different.)
¹⁶
[1148a]
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,
(5)
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 judgment, is called incontinent,
(10)
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,
(15)
they are not similarly related to them, but some of them make a deliberate choice while the others do not.
¹⁷

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,
(20)
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
¹⁸
—e. g. wealth, gain,
(25)
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,
(30)
e. g. those who busy themselves more than they ought about honour or about children and parents, [are not wicked]; for these too are goods, 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.
¹⁹
)
[1148b]
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.
(5)
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 not badness but only analogous to it,
(10)
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,
(15)
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,
²⁰
(20)
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.
²¹

These states are brutish, but (B) others arise as a result of disease
²²
(or, in some cases, of madness, as with the man who sacrificed and ate his mother,
(25)
or with the slave who ate the liver of his fellow), and others are morbid states (C) resulting from custom,
²³
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,
(30)
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.
[1149a]

For every excessive state whether of folly, of cowardice, of self-indulgence,
(5)
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,
(10)
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.
(15)
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,
(20)
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 self-indulgence 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.
(25)
(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,
(30)
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,
(35)
if argument or perception merely says that an object is pleasant, springs to the enjoyment of it.
[1149b]
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,
(5)
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,
(10)
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.

(3) Further, those who are more given to plotting against others are more criminal. Now a passionate man is not given to plotting,
(15)
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’:

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,
(20)
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,
(25)
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,
²⁵
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,
(30)
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,
²⁶
as,
(35)
among men, madmen are.
[1150a]
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.
(5)
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,
²⁷
(10)
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; 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.
(15)

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,
(20)
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.
(25)
(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 if with no appetite or with weak appetite he were 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.
(30)
) Of the states named, then,
²⁸
the latter is rather a kind of softness;
²⁹
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,
(35)
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.
[1150b]
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.
(5)
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,
(10)
or Carcinus’ Cercyon in the
Alope
, and as people who try to restrain 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 the softness that is hereditary with the
kings of the Scythians, or that which distinguishes the female sex from the male.
(15)

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,
(20)
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,
(25)
because they are apt to follow their imagination.