The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

other than man any pleasure connected
with these senses, except incidentally. For dogs do not delight in
the scent of hares, but in the eating of them, but the scent told
them the hares were there; nor does the lion delight in the lowing
of the ox, but in eating it; but he perceived by the lowing that it
was near, and therefore appears to delight in the lowing; and
similarly he does not delight because he sees ‘a stag or a wild
goat’, but because he is going to make a meal of it. Temperance and
self-indulgence, however, are concerned with the kind of pleasures
that the other animals share in, which therefore appear slavish and
brutish; these are touch and taste. But even of taste they appear
to make little or no use; for the business of taste is the
discriminating of flavours, which is done by winetasters and people
who season dishes; but they hardly take pleasure in making these
discriminations, or at least self-indulgent people do not, but in
the actual enjoyment, which in all cases comes through touch, both
in the case of food and in that of drink and in that of sexual
intercourse. This is why a certain gourmand prayed that his throat
might become longer than a crane’s, implying that it was the
contact that he took pleasure in. Thus the sense with which
self-indulgence is connected is the most widely shared of the
senses; and self-indulgence would seem to be justly a matter of
reproach, because it attaches to us not as men but as animals. To
delight in such things, then, and to love them above all others, is
brutish. For even of the pleasures of touch the most liberal have
been eliminated, e.g. those produced in the gymnasium by rubbing
and by the consequent heat; for the contact characteristic of the
self-indulgent man does not affect the whole body but only certain
parts.
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11
    Of the appetites some seem to be common, others to be peculiar
to individuals and acquired; e.g. the appetite for food is natural,
since every one who is without it craves for food or drink, and
sometimes for both, and for love also (as Homer says) if he is
young and lusty; but not every one craves for this or that kind of
nourishment or love, nor for the same things. Hence such craving
appears to be our very own. Yet it has of course something natural
about it; for different things are pleasant to different kinds of
people, and some things are more pleasant to every one than chance
objects. Now in the natural appetites few go wrong, and only in one
direction, that of excess; for to eat or drink whatever offers
itself till one is surfeited is to exceed the natural amount, since
natural appetite is the replenishment of one’s deficiency. Hence
these people are called belly-gods, this implying that they fill
their belly beyond what is right. It is people of entirely slavish
character that become like this. But with regard to the pleasures
peculiar to individuals many people go wrong and in many ways. For
while the people who are ‘fond of so and so’ are so called because
they delight either in the wrong things, or more than most people
do, or in the wrong way, the self-indulgent exceed in all three
ways; they both delight in some things that they ought not to
delight in (since they are hateful), and if one ought to delight in
some of the things they delight in, they do so more than one ought
and than most men do.
    Plainly, then, excess with regard to pleasures is
self-indulgence and is culpable; with regard to pains one is not,
as in the case of courage, called temperate for facing them or
self-indulgent for not doing so, but the selfindulgent man is so
called because he is pained more than he ought at not getting
pleasant things (even his pain being caused by pleasure), and the
temperate man is so called because he is not pained at the absence
of what is pleasant and at his abstinence from it.
    The self-indulgent man, then, craves for all pleasant things or
those that are most pleasant, and is led by his appetite to choose
these at the cost of everything else; hence he is pained both when
he fails to get them and when he is merely craving for them (for
appetite involves pain); but it seems absurd to be pained for the
sake of pleasure. People who fall short with regard to pleasures
and delight in them less than they should are hardly found; for
such insensibility is not human. Even the other animals distinguish
different kinds of food and enjoy some and not others; and if there
is any one who finds