Hence
anger follows reason in a manner, but desire does not. Therefore yielding to desire is
more disgraceful than yielding to anger, for he that fails to restrain his anger is in a
way controlled by reason, but the other1 is controlled not by reason but by desire.
[2]
Again, when impulses are natural, it is more excusable to follow them, since even with
the desires it is more excusable to follow those that are common to all men, and in so far
as they are common. But anger and bad temper are more natural than desire for excessive
and unnecessary pleasures; witness the man who was had up for beating his father and who
said in his defence, “Well, my father used to beat his father, and he used to
beat his, and （pointing to his little boy） so will my son here beat me
when he grows up; it runs in our family”; and the man who, when his son was
throwing him out of the house, used to beg him to stop when he got to the door,
‘because he only used to drag his father as far as that.’2
Again, the craftier men are, the more Unjust they are.
[3]
Now the hot-tempered man is not crafty, nor is anger, but open; whereas desire is
crafty, as they say of Aphrodite: “
Weaver of wiles in Cyprus born3
” and Homer writes of her ‘broidered girdle’ “
Cajolery4 that cheats the wisest wits.
”
As therefore unrestraint in desire is more unjust as well as more disgraceful than
unrestraint as regards anger, unrestraint in desire is Unrestraint in the strict sense,
and
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1 Viz., the man who is ‘unrestrained’ in the strict sense, i.e., cannot restrain his desires.
2 This story is developed in Robert Browning's poem ‘Halbert and Hob’ ; it is said also to occur in a German Volkslied.
3 The line seems to have ended Κυπρογένεος πρόπολον （Bergk, cf. Hesych., K. π. προαγ<ω>γόν） , ‘for the servant of the wile-weaving Cyprus-born,’ viz., Peitho, Persuasion. It is ascribed by Wilamowitz to Sappho, and the same epithet is applied to Aphrodite in Sappho, 1.2.
4 One of the emblematic figures embroidered on the girdle of Aphrodite, Hom. Il. 14.217.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.
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