Note 348 — FIRST SECTION. (continued 2)

Aristotle, Nicomach. Ethics bk. VII. ch. 5., ἀλλὰ μὴν οὕτω διατίθενται οἱ ἐν τοῖς πάθεσιν ὄντες· θυμοὶ γὰρ καὶ ἐπιθυμίαι ἀφροδισίων καὶ ἔνια τῶν τοιούτων ἐπιδήλως καὶ τὸ σῶμα μεθιστᾶσιν, ἐνίοις δὲ καὶ μανίας ποιοῦσιν· δῆλον οὖν ὅτι ὁμοίως ἔχειν λεκτέον τοὺς ἀκρατεῖς τούτοις. cap. 6. αἱ δὲ νοσηματώδεις ἢ ἐξ ἔθους, οἱον τριχῶν τίλσεις καὶ ὀνύχων τρώξεις, ἔτι δ’ ἀνθράκων καὶ γῆς, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ἡ τῶν ἀφροδισίων τοῖς ἄρρεσιν· τοῖς μὲν γὰρ φύσει τοῖς δ’ ἐξ ἔθους συμβαίνουσιν, οἱον τοῖς ὑβριζομένοις ἐκ παίδων· ὅσοις μὲν οὖν φύσις αἰτία, τούτους μὲν οὐδεὶς ἂν εἴπειεν ἀκρατεῖς, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τὰς γυναῖκας, ὅτι οὐκ ὀπυίουσιν ἀλλ’ ὀπυίονται.—πᾶσα γὰρ ὑπερβάλλουσα καὶ ἀφροσύνη καὶ δειλία καὶ ἀκολασία καὶ χαλεπότης αἱ μὲν θηριώδεις αἱ δὲ νοσηματώδεις εἰσίν. ch. 8. ἀνάγκη γὰρ τοῦτον μὴ εἰναι μεταμελητικόν, ὥστ’ ἀνίατος· ὁ γὰρ ἀμεταμέλητος ἀνίατος·—ὁ δ’ ἐλλείπων πρὸς ἃ οἱ πολλοὶ καὶ ἀντιτείνουσι καὶ δύνανται, οὗτος μαλακὸς καὶ τρυφῶν· καὶ γὰρ ἡ τρυφὴ μαλακία τίς ἐστιν· ὅς ἕλκει τὸ ἱμάτιον, ἵνα μὴ πονήσῃ τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ αἴρειν λύπην κ. τ. λ. ... ἀλλ’ εἴ τις πρὸς ἃ οἱ πολλοὶ δύνανται ἀντέχειν, τούτων ἡττᾶται καὶ μὴ δύναται ἀντιτείνειν, μὴ διὰ φύσιν τοῦ γένους ἢ διὰ νόσον, οἷον ἐν τοῖς Σκυθῶν βασιλεῦσιν ἡ μαλακία διὰ τὸ γένος, καὶ ὡς τὸ θῆλυ πρὸς τὸ ἄρρεν διέστηκεν· δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ ὁ παιδιώδης ἀκόλαστος εἶναι, ἔστι δὲ μαλακός.—ἀκρασίας δὲ τὸ μὲν προπέτεια τὸ δ’ ἀσθένεια· οἱ μὲν γὰρ βουλευσάμενοι οὐκ ἐμμένουσιν οἷς ἐβουλεύσαντο διὰ τὸ πάθος, οἱ δὲ διὰ τὸ μὴ βουλεύσασθαι ἄγονται ὑπὸ τοῦ πάθους. (ch. 5., But this is the very condition of people who are under the influence of passion; for fits of anger and the desires of sensual pleasures and some such things do unmistakably produce a change in the condition of the body, and in some cases actually cause madness. It is clear then that we must regard incontinent people as being in much the same condition as people so affected, i.e. people asleep or mad or intoxicated.—ch. 6., Other such states again are the results of a morbid disposition or of habit, as e.g. the practice of plucking out one’s hair, or biting one’s nails, or eating cinders and earth, or of committing unnatural vice; for these habits are sometimes natural,—when a person’s nature is vicious,—and sometimes acquired, as e.g. by those who are the victims of outrage from childhood. Now whenever nature is the cause of these habits, nobody would call people who give way to them incontinent, any more than we should call women incontinent for being not males, but females.—For all excess whether of folly, cowardice, incontinence, or savagery is either brutal or morbid.—ch. 8., for he is necessarily incapable of repentance and is therefore incurable, as to be incapable of repentance is to be incurable:—If a person gives in where people generally resist and are capable of resisting, he deserves to be called effeminate and luxurious; for luxury is a form of effeminacy. Such a person will let his cloak trail in the mud to avoid the trouble of lifting it up, etc.—if a person is mastered by things against which most people succeed in holding out, and is impotent to struggle against them, unless his impotence is due to hereditary constitution or to disease, as effeminacy is hereditary in the kings of Scythia, or as a woman is naturally weaker than a man. But the man addicted to boys would seem to be incontinent, and is effeminate.—Incontinence assumes sometimes the form of impetuosity, and at other times that of weakness. Some men deliberate, but their emotion prevents them from abiding by the result of their deliberation; others again do not deliberate, and are therefore carried away by their emotion).

This passage has been quite misunderstood by Stark, loco citato p. 27, for he has made it too refer to the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease); in this error indeed Camerarius, (Explic. Ethic. Aristot. Nicomach.—Explanations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics—Frankfort 1578, 4to., p. 344) whom he cites, had preceded him. Stark says: Excusat autor eos, qui propter naturae quandam mollitiem et levitatem vitiorum illecebris resistere nequeant. Haec infirmitas vel ex morbo procreata vel a sexus differente natura profecta esse potest. Quarum rationum exempla et quidem alterius διὰ νόσον, Scytharum morbum, alterius διὰ φύσιν τοῦ γένους mulierum debilitatem affert. (The author is excusing such as on account of a certain softness and lightness of nature cannot resist the allurements of vice. This weakness may have been either induced by disease, or have sprung from the different nature of the sexes. Of which cases he gives two examples—of the one διὰ νόσον (on account of disease), the disease of the Scythians, of the other διὰ φύσιν τοῦ γένους (on account of congenital nature), the relative weakness of women). But Aristotle says expressly in the passage that the μαλακία (softness, effeminacy) of the Scythians, as well as of a woman, was διὰ γένους (congenital),—that Scythians equally with women are weakly by birth; while his examples of the διὰ νόσον (on account of disease) do not come till further on. The Scythians, he says, like women, are μαλακοί (soft), and the same is true of the man who practises vices with boys (παιδιώδης); it is a part of their nature, and so they are not ἀκόλαστοι (“intemperate”), for the ἀκόλαστος is such a man as cannot owing to disease govern himself (ἀκρασία, ἀσθενεία, διὰ τὸ πάθος—incontinence, weakness, owing to passion). Thus the question cannot possibly be here of the νοῦσος θήλεια (feminine disease), but merely of a weakly, effeminate mode of life; and this is properly speaking μαλακία, while the vice of the pathic is called μαλθακία,—but the two words were constantly interchanged, and thus a part of the blame for the mistake may very well lie with the transcribers. A Pathic is habitually μαλακός, but the μαλακὸς is not necessarily also a Pathic. Hence it might very probably be right to read, as Aspasius and other editors have actually done, Περσῶν for Σκυθῶν (kings of the Persians for kings of the Scythians), even though the MSS. show no variants; and indeed to confirm this one might bring forward the trailing of the cloak (ὃς ἕλκει τὸ ἱμάτιον—the man who trails his cloak) which is mentioned as an example, and which was, as is well known, a fashion among the Persians.—ch. 10., οὐ γὰρ πᾶς ὁ δι’ ἡδονήν τι πράττων οὔτ’ ἀκόλαστος οὔτε φαῦλος οὔτ’ ἀκρατής, ἀλλ’ ὁ δι’ αἰσχράν. (For not every man that does a thing for pleasure is “intemperate” or base or incontinent, but he that does it for disgraceful pleasure).