The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

self-indulgent; the man who is intermediate
is temperate. Similarly, there is the man who avoids bodily pains
not because he is defeated by them but by choice. (Of those who do
not choose such acts, one kind of man is led to them as a result of
the pleasure involved, another because he avoids the pain arising
from the appetite, so that these types differ from one another. Now
any one would think worse of a man with no appetite or with weak
appetite were he to do something disgraceful, than if he did it
under the influence of powerful appetite, and worse of him if he
struck a blow not in anger than if he did it in anger; for what
would he have done if he had been strongly affected? This is why
the self-indulgent man is worse than the incontinent.) of the
states named, then, the latter is rather a kind of softness; the
former is self-indulgence. While to the incontinent man is opposed
the continent, to the soft is opposed the man of endurance; for
endurance consists in resisting, while continence consists in
conquering, and resisting and conquering are different, as not
being beaten is different from winning; this is why continence is
also more worthy of choice than endurance. Now the man who is
defective in respect of resistance to the things which most men
both resist and resist successfully is soft and effeminate; for
effeminacy too is a kind of softness; such a man trails his cloak
to avoid the pain of lifting it, and plays the invalid without
thinking himself wretched, though the man he imitates is a wretched
man.
    The case is similar with regard to continence and incontinence.
For if a man is defeated by violent and excessive pleasures or
pains, there is nothing wonderful in that; indeed we are ready to
pardon him if he has resisted, as Theodectes’ Philoctetes does when
bitten by the snake, or Carcinus’ Cercyon in the Alope, and as
people who try to restrain their laughter burst out into a guffaw,
as happened to Xenophantus. But it is surprising if a man is
defeated by and cannot resist pleasures or pains which most men can
hold out against, when this is not due to heredity or disease, like
the softness that is hereditary with the kings of the Scythians, or
that which distinguishes the female sex from the male.
    The lover of amusement, too, is thought to be self-indulgent,
but is really soft. For amusement is a relaxation, since it is a
rest from work; and the lover of amusement is one of the people who
go to excess in this.
    Of incontinence one kind is impetuosity, another weakness. For
some men after deliberating fail, owing to their emotion, to stand
by the conclusions of their deliberation, others because they have
not deliberated are led by their emotion; since some men (just as
people who first tickle others are not tickled themselves), if they
have first perceived and seen what is coming and have first roused
themselves and their calculative faculty, are not defeated by their
emotion, whether it be pleasant or painful. It is keen and
excitable people that suffer especially from the impetuous form of
incontinence; for the former by reason of their quickness and the
latter by reason of the violence of their passions do not await the
argument, because they are apt to follow their imagination.
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8
    The self-indulgent man, as was said, is not apt to repent; for
he stands by his choice; but incontinent man is likely to repent.
This is why the position is not as it was expressed in the
formulation of the problem, but the selfindulgent man is incurable
and the incontinent man curable; for wickedness is like a disease
such as dropsy or consumption, while incontinence is like epilepsy;
the former is a permanent, the latter an intermittent badness. And
generally incontinence and vice are different in kind; vice is
unconscious of itself, incontinence is not (of incontinent men
themselves, those who become temporarily beside themselves are
better than those who have the rational principle but do not abide
by it, since the latter are defeated by a weaker passion, and do
not act without previous deliberation like the others); for the
incontinent man is like the people who get drunk quickly and on
little wine, i.e. on less than most people.
    Evidently, then, incontinence is not vice (though perhaps it is
so in a qualified sense); for incontinence is contrary to choice
while vice is in accordance with choice; not but what they are
similar in respect of the actions they lead to; as in the