those below the average in resisting _pains_ are soft or effeminate
Persons below the average in resisting _pleasures_ are incontinent;
those below the average in resisting _pains_ are soft or effeminate.
The mass of men incline to both weaknesses. He that deliberately
pursues excessive pleasures, or other pleasures in an excessive way, is
said to be abandoned. The intemperate are worse than the incontinent.
Sport, in its excess, is effeminacy, as being relaxation from toil.
There are two kinds of incontinence: the one proceeding from
precipitancy, where a man acts without deliberating at all; the other
from feebleness,--where he deliberates, but where the result of
deliberation is too weak to countervail his appetite (VII.).
Intemperance or profligacy is more vicious, and less curable than
Incontinence. The profligate man is one who has in him no principle
(archae) of good or of right reason, and who does wrong without
afterwards repenting of it; the incontinent man has the good principle
in him, but it is overcome when he does wrong, and he afterwards
repents (VIII.). Here, again, Aristotle denies that sticking to one"s
opinions is, _per se_, continence. The opinion may be wrong; in that
case, if a man sticks to it, prompted by mere self-assertion and love
of victory, it is a species of incontinence. One of the virtues of the
continent man is to be open to persuasion, and to desert one"s
resolutions for a noble end (IX.). Incontinence is like sleep or
drunkenness as opposed to wakeful knowledge. The incontinent man is
like a state having good laws, but not acting on them. The incontinence
of passion is more curable than that of weakness; what proceeds from
habit more than what is natural (X.).
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