CHAPTER NINE 30 Is, then, a self-restrained person someone who abides by any argument whatever and any choice whatever, or does he abide by only the correct choice? And is a person lacking self-restraint someone who fails to abide by any choice whatever and any argument whatever, or does he fail to abide by the argument that is not false and by the choice that is correct, as in the perplexing question encountered before ?44 Or is it only inci-dentally that the argument and choice involved are of this or that sort, but it is the true argument and the correct choice in themselves that 42 The verb translated as "to hold the correct opinion" ( orthodoxein) contains the ele-ments of the English word orthodoxy. 43 Ekstatikos: see n. 40 above. 44 Consider n46ar6-2r. BOOK 7, CHAPTER 9 [ 153 the self-restrained abides by and the other does not abide by? For if some- 35 one chooses or pursues this given thing on account of that given thing, he 1151b pursues and chooses this latter in itself, the former only incidentally. And by "in itself" we mean "unqualifiedly." As a result, in one sense the self-restrained person abides by any opinion whatever, while the person lack-ing self-restraint departs from it; but in an unqualified sense, it is the true opinion that the one abides by and the other departs from. There are also some who are inclined to abide by their opinion, whom people call obstinate; such people are hard to persuade and, once per-suaded, not easily changed. They have a certain similarity to the self-restrained person, just as the prodigal has to the liberal and the reckless to the confident, but they are different in many respects. For the one, the self-restrained person, does not change on account of passion and desire, but it may sometimes happen that he will be readily persuadable [by rea- 10 son]; whereas the obstinate are not persuadable, when they take hold of given desires, and in fact many of them are led by pleasures. Obstinate types are the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish, the opinionated being such on account of the pleasure and pain at stake: they delight in the victory they gain, if their persuasion undergoes no change, and they 15 are pained if their own opinions become null and void, like decrees. As a result, they resemble more the person lacking self-restraint than they do the self-restrained. There are also some who do not abide by their opinions, but not on account of a lack of self-restraint-for example, Neoptolemus in Sopho-cles's Philoctetes. It was, however, on account of pleasure that he did not abide by his opinion-albeit a noble pleasure: telling the truth was noble 20 in his eyes, but he was persuaded by Odysseus to lie. For not everyone who does something on account of pleasure is licentious or base or lack-ing self-restraint; rather, he who does something on account of a shame-ful pleasure is such. But since there is also a sort of person who enjoys the bodily pleasures less than one ought and who does not abide by reason, the self-restrained person is in the middle between this person and the one lacking self- 25 restraint: the person lacking self-restraint does not abide by reason be-cause he enjoys something more than he ought, this person because he en-joys something less than he ought, while the self-restrained person abides by reason and does not change on either account. If in fact self-restraint is something serious, both of these contrary characteristics ought to be base, just as they in fact appear to be. But because the characteristic that 30 1541 BOOK 7, CHAPTER 10 leads one to enjoy pleasure less than one ought appears in few people and on few occasions, then just as moderation is held to be the sole contrary oflicentiousness, so too self-restraint is held to be the sole contrary of the lack of self-restraint. Since many things are spoken ofby way of a certain similarity they may share, it has followed that we speak of the self-restraint of the moderate 3 5 person by way of a certain similarity they share: the self-restrained person is such as to do nothing, on account of the bodily pleasures, that is con-1152a trary to reason, and so too is the moderate person. But the one person has, and the other does not have, base desires; and the one is such as not to feel pleasure contrary to reason, the other such as to feel the pleasure but not to be led by it. Those lacking self-restraint and the licentious are similar as well, though they are in fact different: both pursue the bodily pleasures, but the one does so while supposing he ought to, the other while suppos-ing he ought not to. CHAPTER TEN The same person does not admit of being at the same time both prudent and lacking self-restraint; for it was shown that, as regards his character, a prudent person is at the same time serious as well.45 Further, a person is prudent not only by dint of what he knows, but also because he is skilled in action. But the person lacking self-restraint is not skilled in action. (Yet 10 nothing prevents the clever person from lacking self-restraint. Hence there are times when some people are even held to be prudent and lack-ing self-restraint, because cleverness differs from prudence in the manner stated in the first arguments; and although they are close to each other, in reference to their respective definitions, they do differ when it comes to the choice each makes.) And so the person lacking self-restraint does not resemble someone who knows and contemplates something, but re-15 sembles rather someone who is asleep or drunk. Although he acts vol-untarily-for in a certain manner he knows both what he is doing and for the sake of what he does it-he is not wicked: his choice is decent, such that he is only half-wicked. He is also not unjust, for he is not a plot-ter: one sort of person lacking self-restraint is not apt to abide by the re-sults of his deliberation, whereas another, melancholic sort is not even apt BOOK 7, CHAPTER 11 [ 155 to deliberate at all. So the person lacking self-restraint is like a city that votes for all that it ought to vote for and has serious laws, yet it makes use 20 of none of them, just as Anaxandrides joked: The city wished to, the one that cares for none of its laws. 46 But the wicked person [is like a city that] makes use of the laws, though the laws it uses are wicked. Lack of self-restraint and self-restraint are concerned with what goes 25 beyond47 the characteristic typical of the many; for the self-restrained person abides by his deliberations more, the person lacking self-restraint less, than is within the capacity of most people. And among those who lack self-restraint, that of the melancholic type is more readily curable than is the lack of self-restraint of those who deliberate but do not abide by their deliberations; and those lacking self-restraint as a result of habit-uation are more curable than those who are such by nature. For a habit is 30 easier to change than nature: it is for this reason that habit too is difficult [to change]-because it seems like nature-just as Evenus48 says as well: I assert that it is a practice oflong duration, friend, and so In the end this is nature for human beings. What is self-restraint, then, and what lack of self-restraint, what stead-fastness and what softness, and how these characteristics relate to one an- 3 5 other has been stated.