On Moral Virtue (6)

But since a mean [*] is capable of various interpretations (for that which is a compound is a mean between the simple uncompounded substances, as grey is of white and black; and that which contains and is contained is a mean between the contained and the container, as eight of twelve and four; and that which partakes of neither of the extremes is a mean, as the indifferent is a mean between good and bad), in none of these ways can virtue be called a mean, for it is not a mixture of the vices, nor, encompassing what falls short of due measure, is it encompassed by that which is in excess of it; nor is it entirely exempt from the impulses of the passions, wherein are found excess and deficiency. But it is a mean, and is said to be so, in a sense very like that which obtains in musical sounds and harmonies. For there the mean or mese, a properly-pitched note[*] like the neti and

the hypatê,[*] escapes the sharp highness of the one and the heavy deepness of the other; so virtue, being an activity and faculty concerned with the irrational, does away with the remissions and overstrainings of the impulse and its excesses and defects altogether, and reduces each passion to moderation and faultlessness. So, for instance, they declare courage[*] to be a mean between cowardice and rashness, of which the former is a defect, the latter an excess, of the spirited part of the soul; so, likewise, liberality is a mean between parsimony and prodigality, and gentleness between insensibility and cruelty; and temperance itself and justice are means, the latter distributing to itself in contracts neither more nor less than what is due, the former ever regulating the desires to a mean between lack of feeling and intemperance.

In this last instance, indeed, the irrational seems, with particular clearness, to allow us to observe the difference between itself and the rational, and to show that passion is essentially quite a different thing from reason. For self-control[*] would not differ from temperance, nor incontinence from intemperance, as regards the pleasures and desires, if it were the same part of the soul that we naturally use for desiring as for forming judgements. But the fact is that temperance belongs to the sphere where reason guides and manages the passionate element, like a gentle animal obedient to the reins, making it yielding in its desires and willingly receptive of moderation and propriety;

but the self-controlled man, while he does indeed direct his desire by the strength and mastery of reason, yet does so not without pain, nor by persuasion, but as it plunges sideways and resists, as though with blow and curb, he forcibly subdues it and holds it in, being the while himself full of internal struggle and turmoil. Such a conflict Plato[*] portrays in his simile of the horses of the soul, where the worse horse struggles against his better yoke-fellow and at the same time disconcerts the charioteer, who is ever forced to hold out against him and with might and main to rein him in,

Lest he let fall from his hands the crimson thongs,

as Simonides[*] has it. That is the reason why they do not account self-control even a virtue[*] in the absolute sense, but less than virtue. For it is not a mean which has been produced by the harmony of the worse with the better, nor has the excess of passion in it been eliminated, nor has the desiderative part of the soul become obedient and compliant to the intelligent part, but is vexed and causes vexation and is confined by compulsion and, though living with reason, lives as in a state of rebellion against it, hostile and inimical:

The city reeks with burning incense, rings

Alike with prayers for health and cries of woe[*]

even so is the soul of the self-controlled man because of its lack of consistency and its conflict. And on the same grounds they hold that incontinence also is something less than a vice, but that intemperance is a full-fledged vice. For intemperance possesses both an evil passion and an evil reason; under the influence of the former, it is incited by desire to shameful conduct; under the influence of the latter, which, since its judgement is evil, is enlisted with the desires, intemperance loses even the perception of its errors. But incontinence,[*] with the aid of reason, preserves its power of judgement intact, yet by its passions, which are stronger than its reason, it is swept along against its judgement. That is why incontinence differs from intemperance, for in it reason is worsted by passion, whereas with intemperance reason does not even fight; in the case of incontinence reason argues against the desires as it follows them, whereas with intemperance reason guides them and is their advocate; it is characteristic of intemperance that its reason shares joyfully in the sins committed, whereas with incontinence the reason shares in them, but with reluctance; with intemperance, reason is willingly swept along into shameful conduct, whereas with incontinence, it betrays honour unwillingly.

So also the difference between them is not less manifest in their words than in their actions. These are, for instance, the sayings of intemperate persons:

What pleasure can there be, what joy, without

The golden Aphrodite? May I die

When things like these no longer comfort me.[*]

And another says,

To eat, to drink, to have one’s way in love[*]:

All other things I call accessory,

as though with all his soul he were acquiescing in pleasures and were being subverted thereby. Not less than these does he[*] who says

Leave me to die, for that is best for me,

have his judgement suffering with the same ailment as his passions.

But the sayings of incontinence are otherwise and different:

A mind I have, but Nature forces me[*];

and

Alas I from God this evil comes to men

When, knowing what is good, they do it not[*];

and

The spirit yields and can resist no more,

Like anchor-hook in sand amid the surge.[*]

Here not inaptly the poet terms an anchor-hook in sand that which is not under the control of reason, nor firmly fixed, but surrenders its judgement to the loose and soft part of the soul. Very close to this imagery are also those famous lines[*]:

I, like some ship, am tied by ropes to shore,

And when winds blow, our cables do not hold.

For here the poet calls cables the judgements which resist shameful conduct and then are broken by passion, as by a great gust of wind. Truly the intemperate man is swept along to his pleasures by his desires with sails full-spread and delivers himself over to them and steers his course directly thither; whereas the course of the incontinent man zigzags here and there, as he strives to emerge from his passion and to stave it off and is yet swept down and shipwrecked on the reef of shameful conduct. Just as Timon[*] used to lampoon Anaxarchus:

The Cynic might of Anaxarchus seemed

Steadfast and bold, wherever he wished, to spring;

Well did he know the truth, they said, and yet

Was bad: for Nature smote him with desire

And led him back from truth - ’twas Nature’s dart,

Before whom trembles many a Sophist heart.

For neither is the wise man continent, though he is temperate, nor is the fool incontinent, though he is intemperate. For the wise man takes pleasure in what is honourable, but the fool is not vexed by shamefulness. Incontinence, therefore, is the mark of a sophistic soul, which has, indeed, reason, but reason which cannot stand firm by its own just decisions.