Again, the same person cannot be at once unrestrained and prudent, for it has been
shown2 that Prudence is inseparable
from Moral Virtue.
[2]
Also, Prudence does not consist only
in knowing what is right, but also in doing it; but the unrestrained man does not do the
right.3 (Cleverness on the other hand is not incompatible
with Unrestraint—which is why it is sometimes thought that some people are
prudent and yet unrestrained—because Cleverness differs from Prudence in the
manner explained in our first discourse4: as being intellectual faculties5 they are closely akin, but they differ in
that Prudence involves deliberate choice.)
[3]
Nor
indeed does the unrestrained man even know the right in the sense of one who consciously
exercises his knowledge, but only as a man asleep or drunk can be said to know something.
Also, although he errs willingly (for he knows in a sense both what he is doing
and what end he is aiming at) , yet he is not wicked, for his moral choice is
sound, so that he is only half-wicked. And he is not unjust, for he does not deliberately
design to do harm,6 since the one type
of unrestrained person does not keep to the resolve he has formed after deliberation, and
the other, the excitable type, does not deliberate at all. In fact the unrestrained man resembles a state which passes all the
proper enactments, and has good laws, but which never keeps its laws: the condition of
things satirized by Anaxandrides— “
The state, that recks not of the laws, would fain . .
” [4]
whereas the bad man is like a state which keeps its laws but whose laws are bad.
Both Self-restraint and Unrestraint are a matter of extremes as compared with the character of the mass of mankind; the restrained man shows more and the unrestrained man less steadfastness than most men are capable of.
Reformation is more possible with that type of Unrestraint which is displayed by persons
of an excitable temperament than it is with those who deliberate as to what they ought to
do, but do not keep to the resolution they form. And those who have become unrestrained
through habit are more easily cured than those who are unrestrained by nature, since habit
is easier to change than nature; for even habit is hard to change, precisely because it is
a sort of nature, as Evenus says: “
Mark me, my friend, 'tis7
long-continued training,
And training in the end becomes men's nature.
” [5]
We have now discussed the nature of Self-restraint and Unrestraint, and of Endurance and Softness, and have shown how these dispositions are related to one another.