Book 7
2
Also, Prudence does not consist only in knowing what is right, but also in doing it; but the unrestrained man does not do the right.This parenthesis would come better before the preceding sentence. (Cleverness on the other hand is not incompatible with Unrestraint—which is why it is sometimes thought that some people are prudent and yet unrestrained—because Cleverness differs from Prudence in the manner explained in our first discourseCf. 6.12.9.: as being intellectual facultiesOr perhaps, with the Aldine scholiast, in definition. they are closely akin, but they differ in that Prudence involves deliberate choice.)
3
Nor indeed does the unrestrained man even know the right in the sense of one who consciously exercises his knowledge, but only as a man asleep or drunk can be said to know something. Also, although he errs willingly (for he knows in a sense both what he is doing and what end he is aiming at) , yet he is not wicked, for his moral choice is sound, so that he is only half-wicked. And he is not unjust, for he does not deliberately design to do harm,Cf. 6.3. since the one type of unrestrained person does not keep to the resolve he has formed after deliberation, and the other, the excitable type, does not deliberate at all. In fact the unrestrained man resembles a state which passes all the proper enactments, and has good laws, but which never keeps its laws: the condition of things satirized by Anaxandrides— The state, that recks not of the laws, would fain . .
4
whereas the bad man is like a state which keeps its laws but whose laws are bad.
4
Both Self-restraint and Unrestraint are a matter of extremes as compared with the character of the mass of mankind; the restrained man shows more and the unrestrained man less steadfastness than most men are capable of.
