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since it was pleasant1 for
him to speak the truth, and he had only told a lie at the instigation of Odysseus. In
fact, not everyone whose conduct is guided by pleasure is either profligate and base, or
unrestrained, but only those who yield to disgraceful pleasures.
[5]
There is also a character2 that
takes less than the proper amount of pleasure in the things of the body, and that fails to
stand by principle in that sense. The self-restrained man therefore is really intermediate
between the unrestrained man and the type described. The unrestrained man departs from
principle because he enjoys bodily pleasures too much, the person described does so
because he enjoys them too little; while the self-restrained man stands by principle and
does not change from either cause. And inasmuch as Self-restraint is good, it follows that
both the dispositions opposed to it are bad, as indeed they appear to be; but because one
of the two is found only in a few people, and is rarely displayed, Unrestraint is thought
to be the sole opposite of Self-restraint, just as Profligacy is thought to be the sole
opposite of Temperance.
[6]
Many terms are used in an analogical sense, and so we have come to speak by analogy of
the ‘self-restraint’ of the temperate man, because the temperate man,
as well as the self-restrained, is so constituted as never to be led by the pleasures of
the body to act against principle.