Section 10: Prudence is not compatible with the lack of self-control, but cleverness is

Nor can the same person be prudent and lack self-control. For it has been shown that a person who is prudent is at the same time good in respect of his character. Further, a person has prudence not only by knowing what to do but by being able to do it. Yet the person who lacks self-control is unable to act as he thinks is right.

There is, however, nothing to prevent a clever person from lacking self-control. This is why sometimes it is thought _[10] that certain people have prudence but lack self-control–namely, because cleverness and prudence differ in the way we have described in our initial discussions, and are close together with respect to their reasoning, but differ with respect to their purpose.

Nor is the person who lacks self-control like the person who knows and is actively contemplating a truth, but instead he is like someone who is asleep or drunk. And he acts voluntarily, _[15] since he acts in a sense with knowledge both of what he does and of the goal for which he does it. Yet is not a wicked person, because his deliberate choices are good, [even if he isn’t able to stand by them,] so that he is half-wicked.

And the person who lacks self-control is not unjust, since he does not plot evil. One type of person who lacks self-control does not stand by the conclusions of his deliberation, while the other, the excitable type, does not deliberate at all.

Thus, the person who lacks self-control like a city that passes all the right decrees _[20] and has good laws, but makes no use of them (as in Anaxandrides’ jesting remark: “The city willed it, that cares nothing for laws”). But the wicked person is like a city that uses its laws, but has wicked laws to use.

Now self-control and the lack of self-control are concerned with that which is in excess _[25] of the state of character of most people. For the self-controlled person stands by his resolutions more than most people can, while the person who lacks self-control stands by his resolutions less than most people can.

Of the forms of lacking self-control, that of excitable people is more curable than that of people who deliberate but do not abide by their decisions. Likewise, those who lack self-control through habituation are more curable than those who naturally lack of self-control. For it is easier to change a habit than to change one’s nature. In fact, habit is _[30] hard to change because it is like nature, as Evenus says:

I say that habit’s but a long practice, friend,
And this becomes men’s nature in the end.

We have now stated what self-control, the lack of self-control, endurance, and softness are, and how these states are related _[35] to each other.