Page:The ethics of Aristotle.djvu/189

 not simply; because we consider them as different characters and only having that title in right of a kind of resemblance (as when we add to a man's name “conqueror in the Olympic games” the account of him as Man differs but little from the account of him as the Man who conquered in the Olympic games, but still it is different). And a proof of the real difference between these so designated with an addition and those simply so called is this, that Imperfect Self-Control is blamed, not as an error merely but also as being a vice, either wholly or partially; but none of these other cases is so blamed.

But of those who have for their object-matter the bodily enjoyments, which we say are also the object-matter of the man of Perfected Self-Mastery and the man who has lost all Self-Control, he that pursues excessive pleasures and too much avoids things which are painful (as hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and everything connected with touch and taste), not from moral choice but in spite of his moral choice and intellectual conviction, is termed “a man of Imperfect Self-Control,” not with the addition of any particular object-matter as we do in respect of want of control of anger but simply.

And a proof that the term is thus applied is that the kindred term “Soft” is used in respect of these enjoyments but not in respect of any of those others. And for this reason we put into the same rank the man of Imperfect Self-Control, the man who has lost it entirely, the man who has it, and the man of Perfected Self-Mastery; but not any of those other characters, because the former have for their object-matter the same pleasures and pains: but though they have the same object-matter, they are not related to it in the same way, but two of them act upon moral choice, two without it. And so we should say that man is more entirely given up to his passions who pursues excessive pleasures, and avoids moderate pains, being either not at all, or at least but little, urged by desire, than the man who does so because