Or is it incidentally any and every choice but per se the
true rule and the right choice by which the one abides and the other
does not? If any one chooses or pursues this for the sake of that, per
se he pursues and chooses the latter, but incidentally the former. But
when we speak without qualification we mean what is per se.
Therefore in a sense the one abides by, and the other abandons, any
and every opinion; but without qualification, the true opinion.
There are some who are apt to abide by their opinion, who are called
strong-headed, viz. those who are hard to persuade in the first
instance and are not easily persuaded to change; these have in them
something like the continent man, as the prodigal is in a way like the
liberal man and the rash man like the confident man; but they are
different in many respects. For it is to passion and appetite that the
one will not yield, since on occasion the continent man will be easy
to persuade; but it is to argument that the others refuse to yield,
for they do form appetites and many of them are led by their
pleasures. Now the people who are strong-headed are the opinionated,
the ignorant, and the boorish-the opinionated being influenced by
pleasure and pain; for they delight in the victory they gain if they
are not persuaded to change, and are pained if their decisions
become null and void as decrees sometimes do; so that they are liker
the incontinent than the continent man.
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