Pagina 415 van 734

Again, since of the pleasures indicated some are necessary and

some are not, others are so to a certain degree but not the

excess or defect of them, and similarly also of Lusts and pains,

the man who pursues the excess of pleasant things, or such as are

in themselves excess, or from moral choice, for their own sake,

and not for anything else which is to result from them, is a man

utterly void of Self-Control: for he must be incapable of

remorse, and so incurable, because he that has not remorse is

incurable. (He that has too little love of pleasure is the

opposite character, and the man of Perfected Self-Mastery the

mean character.) He is of a similar character who avoids the

bodily pains, not because he cannot, but because he chooses not

to, withstand them.