Let us now consider the point that Unrestraint in anger Footnote 1Lack of control of the spirit
: see 4.2, third note is less disgraceful than Unrestraint in the desires.
Now it appears that anger does to some extent hear reason, but hears it wrong, just as hasty servants hurry out of the room before they have heard the whole of what you are saying, and so mistake your order, and as watch-dogs bark at a mere knock at the door, without waiting to see if it is a friend. Similarly anger, owing to the heat and swiftness of its nature, hears, but does not hear the order given, and rushes off to take vengeance. When reason or imagination suggests that an insult or slight has been received, anger flares up at once, but after reasoning as it were that you ought to make war on anybody who insults you. Desire on the other hand, at a mere hint from [the reason or Footnote 2These words are surely an interpolation. ] the senses that a thing is pleasant, rushes off to enjoy it. Hence anger follows reason in a manner, but desire does not. Therefore yielding to desire is more disgraceful than yielding to anger, for he that fails to restrain his anger is in a way controlled by reason, but the other Footnote 3Viz., the man who is unrestrained
in the strict sense, i.e., cannot restrain his desires. is controlled not by reason but by desire.
Again, when impulses are natural, it is more excusable to follow them, since even with the desires it is more excusable to follow those that are common to all men, and in so far as they are common. But anger and bad temper are more natural than desire for excessive and unnecessary pleasures; witness the man who was had up for beating his father and who said in his defence, “Well, my father used to beat his father, and he used to beat his, and (pointing to his little boy) so will my son here beat me when he grows up; it runs in our family”; and the man who, when his son was throwing him out of the house, used to beg him to stop when he got to the door, because he only used to drag his father as far as that.
Footnote 4This story is developed in Robert Browning’s poem Halbert and Hob
; it is said also to occur in a German Volkslied.
Again, the craftier men are, the more Unjust they are.
Now the hot-tempered man is not crafty, nor is anger, but open; whereas desire is crafty, as they say of Aphrodite:
and Homer writes of herWeaver of wiles in Cyprus born Footnote 5The line seems to have ended Κυπρογένεος πρόπολον (Bergk, cf. Hesych., K. π. προαγ〈ω〉γόν) ,for the servant of the wile-weaving Cyprus-born,viz., Peitho, Persuasion. It is ascribed by Wilamowitz to Sappho, and the same epithet is applied to Aphrodite in Sappho, 1.2.
broidered girdle
Cajolery Footnote 6One of the emblematic figures embroidered on the girdle of Aphrodite, Hom. Il. 14.217. that cheats the wisest wits.
As therefore unrestraint in desire is more unjust as well as more disgraceful than unrestraint as regards anger, unrestraint in desire is Unrestraint in the strict sense, and is even in a certain sense Vice.
Again, a wanton outrage Footnote 7ὕβρις means any injury that is insulting to the victim, but here the writer is thinking specially of outrage prompted by lust. The argument is based on the feelings of both agent and victim. Anger, being a painful feeling, does not show wantonness or insolence, for wanton acts are pleasant to the doer. An injury done in anger therefore arouses less anger in return, less resentment in the victim, than does wanton outrage due to unrestrained desire. Therefore it is less unjust,
less of an injury. Cf. Aristot. Rh. 1380a 34(anger is not so much resented, because it does not show contempt for its victim). gives pleasure to the doer, never pain, whereas an act done in anger always causes him a feeling of pain. If then things are unjust in proportion to the justice of the anger they arouse in the victim, unrestraint arising from desire is more unjust than that arising from anger; for anger contains no element of wanton insolence.
It is clear therefore that unrestraint in one’s desires is more disgraceful than unrestraint in anger, and that it is in relation to bodily desires and pleasures that Self-restraint and Unrestraint are really manifested.
But we must distinguish among the bodily desires and pleasures themselves. As was said at the beginning, Footnote 8See 5.1, and also 1.3. some of these are human and natural both in kind and degree, some bestial, and some due to arrested development or disease. Now it is only with the first class that Temperance and Profligacy are concerned; hence we do not use the terms temperate or profligate of the lower animals, except metaphorically, of certain entire species distinguished from the rest by their exceptionally lascivious, mischievous, or omnivorous habits; for animals have neither the faculty of choice nor of calculation: they are aberrations from nature, Footnote 9The writer here seems to regard all animals as unnatural, in the sense of imperfectly developed, because irrational. The order precludes our taking this clause of the exceptional species (asses, wild boars, and pigs according to Greek zoology) just alluded to; moreover, as the excessive appetites of these are analogous to Profligacy in men, they are not aberrations from animal nature any more than profligates are from human nature. like men who are insane.
Bestiality Footnote 10No two commentators read the same sense into this section, which is little more than a series of jottings
( Burnet). The version given largely follows Peters. The insertions in brackets indicate what may possibly have been in the writer’s mind. is less 〈evil〉 than vice, though more horrible: for 〈in a bestial man as in an animal〉 the highest part 〈i.e. the intellect〉 is not corrupted, as it is in a man 〈who is wicked in a human way〉, but entirely lacking. So that it is like comparing an inanimate with an animate thing, and asking which is the more evil; for the badness of a thing which has no originating principle—and intelligence is such a principle—is always less capable of mischief. Footnote 11The relevance of this parenthesis is obscure; its meaning, in the light of other passages in Aristotle, may be that injustice is worse in the sense that it is evil per se (whereas the unjust man is evil per accidens) , but the unjust man is worse in the sense that he is productive of evil. (It is therefore like comparing Injustice with an unjust man: one is worse in one way and the other in another). For a bad man can do ten thousand times more harm than an animal 〈or a bestial man〉.