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As for the plea, that a man did not know that habits are produced

from separate acts of working, we reply, such ignorance is a mark

of excessive stupidity.

Furthermore, it is wholly irrelevant to say that the man who acts

unjustly or dissolutely does not wish to attain the habits of

these vices: for if a man wittingly does those things whereby he

must become unjust he is to all intents and purposes unjust

voluntarily; but he cannot with a wish cease to be unjust and

become just. For, to take the analogous case, the sick man cannot

with a wish be well again, yet in a supposable case he is

voluntarily ill because he has produced his sickness by living

intemperately and disregarding his physicians. There was a time

then when he might have helped being ill, but now he has let

himself go he cannot any longer; just as he who has let a stone

out of his hand cannot recall it,[14] and yet it rested with him

to aim and throw it, because the origination was in his power.