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do not fall within the limits
of Vice, nor yet does Bestiality; and to conquer or yield to them does not constitute
Unrestraint1
in the strict sense, but only the state so called by analogy; just as a man who cannot
control his anger must be described as ‘unrestrained in’ that passion,
not ‘unrestrained.’
(Indeed folly, cowardice, profligacy, and ill-temper, whenever they run to
excess, are either bestial or morbid conditions.
[6]
One so
constituted by nature as to be frightened by everything, even the sound of a mouse, shows
the cowardice of a lower animal; the man who was afraid of a weasel was a case of disease.
So with folly: people irrational by nature and living solely by sensation, like certain
remote tribes of barbarians, belong to the bestial class; those who lose their reason
owing to some disease, such as epilepsy, or through insanity, to the morbid.)
[7]
With these unnatural propensities it is possible in some cases merely to have the
disposition and not to yield to it: I mean, for instance, Phalaris2 might have had the desire to eat a child,
or to practise unnatural vice, and refrained; or it is possible not merely to possess but
to yield to the propensity.
[8]
As therefore with Vice, that
natural to man is called simply vice, whereas the other kind3 is termed not simply vice, but vice with the
qualifying epithet bestial or morbid, similarly with Unrestraint, it is clear that the
bestial and morbid kinds are distinct from unrestraint proper, and that the name without
qualification belongs only to that kind of
unrestraint which is co-extensive with Profligacy of the human sort.
[9]
It is clear then that Self-restraint and Unrestraint relate only to the objects to which
Temperance and Profligacy are related, and that unrestraint in relation to anything else
is of another kind, which is only so called metaphorically and with a
qualification.
Let us now consider the point that Unrestraint in anger4 is less disgraceful than Unrestraint in the desires.
Now it appears that anger does to some extent hear reason, but hears it wrong, just as
hasty servants hurry out of the room before they have heard the whole of what you are
saying, and so mistake your order, and as watch-dogs bark at a mere knock at the door,
without waiting to see if it is a friend. Similarly anger, owing to the heat and swiftness
of its nature, hears, but does not hear the order given, and rushes off to take vengeance.
When reason or imagination suggests that an insult or slight has been received, anger
flares up at once, but after reasoning as it were that you ought to make war on anybody
who insults you. Desire on the other hand, at a mere hint from [the reason
or5] the senses that a thing is pleasant, rushes off to enjoy
it.
1 We must understand ‘does not constitute restraint or unrestraint’ unless we amend ‘and to fail to conquer, or to be conquered by, them does not constitute unrestraint.’
2 No such stories about Phalaris are alluded to elsewhere; so Burnet here brackets the name, supposing the subject of κατεῖχεν to be unexpressed, and taking 5.2 to refer to Phalaris's well-known practice of burning human victims in a bronze bull. But that was hardly an instance of Bestiality.
3 i.e., inhuman vice.
4 ‘Lack of control of the spirit’ : see 4.2, third note
5 These words are surely an interpolation.