The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

shall have
proved the case sufficiently.
    Now (1) both continence and endurance are thought to be included
among things good and praiseworthy, and both incontinence and soft,
ness among things bad and blameworthy; and the same man is thought
to be continent and ready to abide by the result of his
calculations, or incontinent and ready to abandon them. And (2) the
incontinent man, knowing that what he does is bad, does it as a
result of passion, while the continent man, knowing that his
appetites are bad, refuses on account of his rational principle to
follow them (3) The temperate man all men call continent and
disposed to endurance, while the continent man some maintain to be
always temperate but others do not; and some call the
self-indulgent man incontinent and the incontinent man
selfindulgent indiscriminately, while others distinguish them. (4)
The man of practical wisdom, they sometimes say, cannot be
incontinent, while sometimes they say that some who are practically
wise and clever are incontinent. Again (5) men are said to be
incontinent even with respect to anger, honour, and gain.-These,
then, are the things that are said.
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    Now we may ask (1) how a man who judges rightly can behave
incontinently. That he should behave so when he has knowledge, some
say is impossible; for it would be strange-so Socrates thought-if
when knowledge was in a man something else could master it and drag
it about like a slave. For Socrates was entirely opposed to the
view in question, holding that there is no such thing as
incontinence; no one, he said, when he judges acts against what he
judges best-people act so only by reason of ignorance. Now this
view plainly contradicts the observed facts, and we must inquire
about what happens to such a man; if he acts by reason of
ignorance, what is the manner of his ignorance? For that the man
who behaves incontinently does not, before he gets into this state,
think he ought to act so, is evident. But there are some who
concede certain of Socrates’ contentions but not others; that
nothing is stronger than knowledge they admit, but not that on one
acts contrary to what has seemed to him the better course, and
therefore they say that the incontinent man has not knowledge when
he is mastered by his pleasures, but opinion. But if it is opinion
and not knowledge, if it is not a strong conviction that resists
but a weak one, as in men who hesitate, we sympathize with their
failure to stand by such convictions against strong appetites; but
we do not sympathize with wickedness, nor with any of the other
blameworthy states. Is it then practical wisdom whose resistance is
mastered? That is the strongest of all states. But this is absurd;
the same man will be at once practically wise and incontinent, but
no one would say that it is the part of a practically wise man to
do willingly the basest acts. Besides, it has been shown before
that the man of practical wisdom is one who will act (for he is a
man concerned with the individual facts) and who has the other
virtues.
    (2) Further, if continence involves having strong and bad
appetites, the temperate man will not be continent nor the
continent man temperate; for a temperate man will have neither
excessive nor bad appetites. But the continent man must; for if the
appetites are good, the state of character that restrains us from
following them is bad, so that not all continence will be good;
while if they are weak and not bad, there is nothing admirable in
resisting them, and if they are weak and bad, there is nothing
great in resisting these either.
    (3) Further, if continence makes a man ready to stand by any and
every opinion, it is bad, i.e. if it makes him stand even by a
false opinion; and if incontinence makes a man apt to abandon any
and every opinion, there will be a good incontinence, of which
Sophocles’ Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes will be an instance; for
he is to be praised for not standing by what Odysseus persuaded him
to do, because he is pained at telling a lie.
    (4) Further, the sophistic argument presents a difficulty; the
syllogism arising from men’s wish to expose paradoxical results
arising from an opponent’s view, in order that they may be admired
when they succeed, is one that puts us in a difficulty (for thought
is bound fast when it will not rest because the conclusion does not
satisfy it, and cannot advance because it cannot refute the
argument). There is an argument from which it