Of Moral Virtue (3-4)

However, all these do commonly agree in this one thing, in supposing virtue to be a certain disposition and faculty of the governing and directive part of the soul, of which reason is the cause; or rather to be reason itself, when it consents to what it ought, and is firm and immutable. And they do likewise think, that that part of the soul which is the seat of the passions, and is called brutal or irrational, is not at all distinct by any physical difference from that which is rational; but that this part of the soul (which they call rational and directive), being wholly turned about and changed by its affections and by those several alterations which are wrought in it with respect either to habit or disposition, becometh either vice or virtue, without having any thing in itself that is really brutal or irrational, but is then called brutal or irrational, when by the over-ruling and prevailing violence of our appetites it is hurried on to something absurd and vicious, against the judgment of reason. For passion, according to them, is nothing else but depraved and intemperate reason, that through a perverse and vicious judgment is grown over-vehement and headstrong.

Now, it seems to me, all these philosophers were perfect strangers to the clearness and truth of this point, that we every one of us are in reality twofold and compound. For, discerning only that composition in us which of the two is most evident, namely that of the soul and body, of the other they knew nothing at all. And yet that in the soul itself also there is a certain composition of two dissimilar and distinct natures, the brutal part whereof, as another body, is necessarily and physically compounded with and conjoined to reason, was, it should seem, no secret to Pythagoras himself,—as some have guessed from his

These principles at first Aristotle seems most to have relied upon, as plainly enough appears from what he has written. Though afterwards he confounded the irascible and concupiscible together, by joining the one to the other, as if anger were nothing but a thirst and desire of revenge. However, to the last he constantly maintained that the sensual and irrational was wholly distinct from the intellectual and rational part of the soul. Not that it is so absolutely devoid of reason as those faculties of the soul which are sensitive, nutritive, and vegetative, and are common to us with brute beasts and plants; for these are always deaf to the voice of reason and incapable of it, and may in some sort be said to derive themselves from flesh and blood, and to be inseparably attached to the body and devoted to the service thereof; but the other sensual part, subject to the sudden efforts of the passions and destitute of any reason of its own, is yet nevertheless naturally adapted to hear and obey the intellect and judgment, to have regard to it, and to submit itself to be regulated and ordered according the rules and precepts thereof, unless it happen to be utterly corrupted and vitiated by pleasure, which is deaf to all instruction, and by a luxurious way of living.