The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

if he is thought
responsible for the ignorance, as when penalties are doubled in the
case of drunkenness; for the moving principle is in the man
himself, since he had the power of not getting drunk and his
getting drunk was the cause of his ignorance. And we punish those
who are ignorant of anything in the laws that they ought to know
and that is not difficult, and so too in the case of anything else
that they are thought to be ignorant of through carelessness; we
assume that it is in their power not to be ignorant, since they
have the power of taking care.
    But perhaps a man is the kind of man not to take care. Still
they are themselves by their slack lives responsible for becoming
men of that kind, and men make themselves responsible for being
unjust or self-indulgent, in the one case by cheating and in the
other by spending their time in drinking bouts and the like; for it
is activities exercised on particular objects that make the
corresponding character. This is plain from the case of people
training for any contest or action; they practise the activity the
whole time. Now not to know that it is from the exercise of
activities on particular objects that states of character are
produced is the mark of a thoroughly senseless person. Again, it is
irrational to suppose that a man who acts unjustly does not wish to
be unjust or a man who acts self-indulgently to be self-indulgent.
But if without being ignorant a man does the things which will make
him unjust, he will be unjust voluntarily. Yet it does not follow
that if he wishes he will cease to be unjust and will be just. For
neither does the man who is ill become well on those terms. We may
suppose a case in which he is ill voluntarily, through living
incontinently and disobeying his doctors. In that case it was then
open to him not to be ill, but not now, when he has thrown away his
chance, just as when you have let a stone go it is too late to
recover it; but yet it was in your power to throw it, since the
moving principle was in you. So, too, to the unjust and to the
self-indulgent man it was open at the beginning not to become men
of this kind, and so they are unjust and selfindulgent voluntarily;
but now that they have become so it is not possible for them not to
be so.
    But not only are the vices of the soul voluntary, but those of
the body also for some men, whom we accordingly blame; while no one
blames those who are ugly by nature, we blame those who are so
owing to want of exercise and care. So it is, too, with respect to
weakness and infirmity; no one would reproach a man blind from
birth or by disease or from a blow, but rather pity him, while
every one would blame a man who was blind from drunkenness or some
other form of self-indulgence. Of vices of the body, then, those in
our own power are blamed, those not in our power are not. And if
this be so, in the other cases also the vices that are blamed must
be in our own power.
    Now some one may say that all men desire the apparent good, but
have no control over the appearance, but the end appears to each
man in a form answering to his character. We reply that if each man
is somehow responsible for his state of mind, he will also be
himself somehow responsible for the appearance; but if not, no one
is responsible for his own evildoing, but every one does evil acts
through ignorance of the end, thinking that by these he will get
what is best, and the aiming at the end is not self-chosen but one
must be born with an eye, as it were, by which to judge rightly and
choose what is truly good, and he is well endowed by nature who is
well endowed with this. For it is what is greatest and most noble,
and what we cannot get or learn from another, but must have just
such as it was when given us at birth, and to be well and nobly
endowed with this will be perfect and true excellence of natural
endowment. If this is true, then, how will virtue be more voluntary
than vice? To both men alike, the good and the bad, the end appears
and is fixed by nature or however it may be, and it is by referring
everything else to this that men do whatever they do.
    Whether, then, it is not by nature that the end appears to each
man such as it does appear, but something also depends on him, or
the end is natural but because the good man adopts the means
voluntarily virtue is voluntary, vice also will be none the less
voluntary; for in the case of the bad man there is equally present
that which depends on himself in his actions even if