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Who Is Self-Restraint
Who Is Self-Restraint
lack of self-restraint.
Since many things are spoken ofby way of a certain similarity they may
share, it has followed that we speak of the self-restraint of the moderate
3 5 person by way of a certain similarity they share: the self-restrained perso
n
is such as to do nothing, on account of the bodily pleasures, that is con1152a trary to reason, and so too is the moderate person. But the one person ha
s,
and the other does not have, base desires; and the one is such as not to feel
pleasure contrary to reason, the other such as to feel the pleasure but not
to be led by it. Those lacking self-restraint and the licentious are similar
as well, though they are in fact different: both pursue the bodily pleasures,
but the one does so while supposing he ought to, the other while supposing he ought not to.
CHAPTER TEN
The same person does not admit of being at the same time both prudent
and lacking self-restraint; for it was shown that, as regards his character,
a prudent person is at the same time serious as well.
45
Further, a person is
prudent not only by dint of what he knows, but also because he is skilled
in action. But the person lacking self-restraint is not skilled in action. (Yet
10 nothing prevents the clever person from lacking self-restraint. Hence
there are times when some people are even held to be prudent and lacking self-restraint, because cleverness differs from prudence in the manner
stated in the first arguments; and although they are close to each other,
in reference to their respective definitions, they do differ when it comes
to the choice each makes.) And so the person lacking self-restraint does
not resemble someone who knows and contemplates something, but re15 sembles rather someone who is asleep or drunk. Although he acts voluntarily-for in a certain manner he knows both what he is doing and
for the sake of what he does it-he is not wicked: his choice is decent,
such that he is only half-wicked. He is also not unjust, for he is not a plotter: one sort of person lacking self-restraint is not apt to abide by the results of his deliberation, whereas another, melancholic sort is not even apt BOO
K 7, CHAPTER 11 [ 155
to deliberate at all. So the person lacking self-restraint is like a city that
votes for all that it ought to vote for and has serious laws, yet it makes use
20
of none of them, just as Anaxandrides joked:
The city wished to, the one that cares for none of its laws. 46
But the wicked person [is like a city that] makes use of the laws, though
the laws it uses are wicked.
Lack of self-restraint and self-restraint are concerned with what goes 25
beyond
47
the characteristic typical of the many; for the self-restrained
person abides by his deliberations more, the person lacking self-restraint
less, than is within the capacity of most people. And among those who
lack self-restraint, that of the melancholic type is more readily curable
than is the lack of self-restraint of those who deliberate but do not abide
by their deliberations; and those lacking self-restraint as a result of habituation are more curable than those who are such by nature. For a habit is 30
easier to change than nature: it is for this reason that habit too is difficult
[to change]-because it seems like nature-just as Evenus
48
says as well:
I assert that it is a practice oflong duration, friend, and so
In the end this is nature for human beings.
What is self-restraint, then, and what lack of self-restraint, what stead-
fastness and what softness, and how these characteristics relate to one an- 3 5
other has been stated.