Page - 1866 - in The Complete Aristotle

laws, but makes no use of them, as in Anaxandrides’ jesting remark, The city willed it, that cares nought for laws; but the wicked man is like a city that uses its laws, but has wicked laws to use. Now incontinence and continence are concerned with that which is in excess of the state characteristic of most men; for the continent man abides by his resolutions more and the incontinent man less than most men can. Of the forms of incontinence, that of excitable people is more curable than that of those who deliberate but do not abide by their decisions, and those who are incontinent through habituation are more curable than those in whom incontinence is innate; for it is easier to change a habit than to change one’s nature; even habit is hard to change just because it is like nature, as Evenus says: I say that habit’s but a long practice, friend, And this becomes men’s nature in the end. We have now stated what continence, incontinence, endurance, and softness are, and how these states are related to each other. < div class=“section” title=“11”> 11 The study of pleasure and pain belongs to the province of the political philosopher; for he is the architect of the end, with a view to which we call one thing bad and another good without qualification. Further, it is one of our necessary tasks to consider them; for not only did we lay it down that moral virtue and vice are concerned with pains and pleasures, but most people say that happiness involves pleasure; this is why the blessed man is called by a name derived from a word meaning enjoyment. Now (1) some people think that no pleasure is a good, either in itself or incidentally, since the good and pleasure are not the same; (2) others think that some pleasures are good but that most are bad. (3) Again there is a third view, that even if all pleasures are good, yet the best thing in the world cannot be pleasure. (1) The reasons given for the view that pleasure is not a good at all are (a) that every pleasure is a perceptible process to a natural state, and that no process is of the same kind as its end, e.g. no process of building of 1866