For argument or imagination informs us that we have been
insulted or slighted, and anger, reasoning as it were that anything
like this must be fought against, boils up straightway; while
appetite, if argument or perception merely says that an object is
pleasant, springs to the enjoyment of it. Therefore anger obeys the
argument in a sense, but appetite does not. It is therefore more
disgraceful; for the man who is incontinent in respect of anger is
in a sense conquered by argument, while the other is conquered by
appetite and not by argument.
(2) Further, we pardon people more easily for following natural
desires, since we pardon them more easily for following such appetites
as are common to all men, and in so far as they are common; now
anger and bad temper are more natural than the appetites for excess,
i.e. for unnecessary objects. Take for instance the man who defended
himself on the charge of striking his father by saying 'yes, but he
struck his father, and he struck his, and' (pointing to his child)
'this boy will strike me when he is a man; it runs in the family';
or the man who when he was being dragged along by his son bade him
stop at the doorway, since he himself had dragged his father only as
far as that.
(2) Further, those who are more given to plotting against others are
more criminal.
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