Section 5: Lack of self-control in the case of inhuman or morbid desires

Some things are pleasant by nature, and of these (a) some _[15] are pleasant without qualification, and (b) others are pleasant with reference to particular kinds of animals and of humans. Other things are not pleasant by nature, but (a) some of them become pleasant because of injuries to the organism, (b) some because of acquired habits, and (c) some because of originally depraved natures. Hence, concerning each of these, we can discover a corresponding state of character.

I mean inhuman states of character; for example, the case of the female who, they say, rips open pregnant women _[20] and devours the infants, or of the things in which some of the tribes about the Black Sea that have gone savage are said to delight–in raw meat or in human flesh, or in lending their children to one another to feast upon–or of the story told of Phalaris. These states are inhuman or beastlike. But others arise as a result of disease, or in some cases because of madness, as in the case of the man _[25] who sacrificed and ate his mother, or with the slave who ate the liver of his fellow. Others are morbid states resulting from custom–for instance, the habit of plucking out the hair or of gnawing the nails, or even coals or earth, and in addition to these pederasty. For these arise in some by nature and in others from habit, as happens in those who have been the victims of lust from _[30] childhood.

Now if nature is the cause of such a state, no one would say the people lack self-control, any more than one would say that women do because of the passive part they play in copulation. Nor would anyone say that those who are in a morbid condition as a result of habit lack self-control.

To have these various types of habit is beyond the limits of vice, and inhumanness is too. _[1149a1] For someone who either controls them or is controlled by them does not have or lack self-control without qualification. Instead, such as person has or lacks self-control by analogy, as, for example, someone who is in this condition in respect of fits of anger is said to lack self-control in respect of that feeling but not to lack self-control simply speaking.

For every excessive state whether of folly, of cowardice, of intemperance, _[5] or of bad temper, is either inhuman or morbid. Someone who is by nature prone to fear everything, even the squeak of a mouse, is cowardly with an inhuman cowardice, while someone who feared a weasel did so in consequence of disease. Of foolish people, those who by nature are thoughtless and live by their senses alone are inhuman, like some races _[10] of the distant barbarians. Those who are foolish as a result of disease (for example, of epilepsy) or of madness are morbid.

Of these characteristics, it is possible to have some only at times, and not to be controlled by them. For instance, Phalaris may have restrained a desire to eat the flesh of a child or an appetite for unnatural sexual pleasure. But it is also possible to be controlled by them, and not merely _[15] to have the feelings.

Thus, just as the wickedness that is on the human level is called wickedness simply speaking, while wickedness beyond the human level is not is called wickedness simply speaking, but with the qualification “inhuman” or “morbid,” in the same way it is clear that some cases of lack of self-control are also “inhuman” and some “morbid,” while only that which corresponds to human intemperance is a lack of self-control simply speaking. _[20]

Hence, it is clear that self-control and the lack of self-control are concerned only with the same pleasures as temperance and intemperance, and that what is concerned with other things is a type distinct from the lack of self-control, and called a lack of self-control by metaphor and not simply.