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[5]
One who is
deficient in resistance to pains that most men withstand with success, is soft or
luxurious （for Luxury is a kind of Softness） : such a man lets his cloak
trail on the ground to escape the fatigue and trouble of lifting it, or feigns sickness,
not seeing that to counterfeit misery is to be miserable.
[6]
The same holds good of Self-restraint and Unrestraint. It is not surprising that a man
should be overcome by violent and excessive pleasures or pains: indeed it is excusable if
he succumbs after a struggle, like Philoctetes in Theodectes when bitten by the viper, or
Kerkyon in the Alope of Karkinos, or as men who try to restrain their
laughter explode in one great guffaw, as happened to Xenophantus.1 But we are surprised when a man is overcome by pleasures and pains
which most men are able to withstand, except when his failure to resist is due to some
innate tendency, or to disease: instances of the former being the hereditary
effeminacy2 of the royal family of Scythia,
and the inferior endurance of the female sex as compared with the male.
[7]
People too fond of amusement are thought to be profligate, but really they are soft; for
amusement is rest, and therefore a slackening of effort, and addiction to amusement is a
form of excessive slackness.3
[8]
But there are two forms of Unrestraint, Impetuousness and Weakness.
1 Seneca, De ira, 2.2, says that Xenophantus's martial music made Alexander put out his hand to grasp his weapons （the story is told by Suidas of a Theban flute-player Timotheus, cf. Dryden, Alexander's Feast） ; apparently Alexander's music had a different effect on Xenophantus!
2 Hdt. 1.105, says that certain Scythians who robbed the temple of Uranian Aphrodite at Askalon were smitten with the ‘feminine disease,’ which affected their descendants ever after; but Hippocrates, Περὶ ἀέρων22, describes effeminate symptoms prevalent among wealthy and high-born Scythians, due to being too much on horseback.
3 i.e., it is not an excessive proneness to pursue pleasure, and therefore is not profligacy.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.
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