For virtue and vice respectively preserve and destroy the first
principle, and in actions the final cause is the first principle, as
the hypotheses are in mathematics; neither in that case is it argument
that teaches the first principles, nor is it so here-virtue either
natural or produced by habituation is what teaches right opinion about
the first principle. Such a man as this, then, is temperate; his
contrary is the self-indulgent.
But there is a sort of man who is carried away as a result of
passion and contrary to the right rule-a man whom passion masters so
that he does not act according to the right rule, but does not
master to the extent of making him ready to believe that he ought to
pursue such pleasures without reserve; this is the incontinent man,
who is better than the self-indulgent man, and not bad without
qualification; for the best thing in him, the first principle, is
preserved. And contrary to him is another kind of man, he who abides
by his convictions and is not carried away, at least as a result of
passion. It is evident from these considerations that the latter is
a good state and the former a bad one.
9
Is the man continent who abides by any and every rule and any and
every choice, or the man who abides by the right choice, and is he
incontinent who abandons any and every choice and any and every
rule, or he who abandons the rule that is not false and the choice
that is right; this is how we put it before in our statement of the
problem.
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