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but to those
things in regard to which a man can be profligate; and also it does not mean merely that
he is concerned with these things (for in that case Unrestraint would be the same
thing as Profligacy), but that he is concerned with them in a particular manner.
The profligate yields to his appetites from choice, considering it right always to pursue
the pleasure that offers, whereas the man of defective self-restraint does not think so,
but pursues it all the same.3.
[3]
(i) Now the suggestion that it is not Knowledge, but True Opinion,
against which unrestrained men act, is of no importance for our argument. Some men hold
their opinions with absolute certainty, and take them for positive knowledge; 3.
[4]
so that if weakness of conviction
be the criterion for deciding that men who act against their conception of what is right
must be said to opine rather than to know the right, there will really be no difference in
this respect between Opinion and Knowledge; since some men are just as firmly convinced of
what they opine as others are of what they know: witness Heracleitus.1
3.
[5]
(1) But the word know is used in two senses. A man who has
knowledge but is not exercising it is said to know, and so is a man who is actually
exercising his knowledge. It will make a difference whether a man does wrong having the
knowledge that it is wrong but not consciously thinking of his knowledge, or with the
knowledge consciously present to his mind. The latter would be felt to be surprising; but
it is not surprising that a man should do what he knows to be wrong if he is not conscious
of the knowledge at the time.
1 This seems to refer to the dogmatic tone of Heracleitus's teaching in general.