The habits of Perfect Self-Mastery and entire absence
of self-control have then for their object-matter
such pleasures as brutes also share in, for which
reason they are plainly servile and brutish: they
are Touch and Taste.
But even Taste men seem to make little or no use of;
for to the sense of Taste belongs the distinguishing
of flavours; what men do, in fact, who are testing
the quality of wines or seasoning “made dishes.”
But men scarcely take pleasure at all in these things,
at least those whom we call destitute of self-control
do not, but only in the actual enjoyment which arises
entirely from the sense of Touch, whether in eating
or in drinking, or in grosser lusts. This accounts
for the wish said to have been expressed once by a
great glutton, “that his throat had been formed
longer than a crane’s neck,” implying that
his pleasure was derived from the Touch.
[Sidenote: 1118b] The sense then with which is
connected the habit of absence of self-control is
the most common of all the senses, and this habit
would seem to be justly a matter of reproach, since
it attaches to us not in so far as we are men but
in so far as we are animals. Indeed it is brutish
to take pleasure in such things and to like them best
of all; for the most respectable of the pleasures
arising from the touch have been set aside; those,
for instance, which occur in the course of gymnastic
training from the rubbing and the warm bath: because
the touch of the man destitute of self-control is
not indifferently of any part of the body but
only of particular parts.
Now of lusts or desires some are thought to be universal,
others peculiar and acquired; thus desire for food
is natural since every one who really needs desires
also food, whether solid or liquid, or both (and,
as Homer says, the man in the prime of youth needs
and desires intercourse with the other sex); but when
we come to this or that particular kind, then neither
is the desire universal nor in all men is it directed
to the same objects. And therefore the conceiving
of such desires plainly attaches to us as individuals.
It must be admitted, however, that there is something
natural in it: because different things are pleasant
to different men and a preference of some particular
objects to chance ones is universal. Well then,
in the case of the desires which are strictly and
properly natural few men go wrong and all in one direction,
that is, on the side of too much: I mean, to eat
and drink of such food as happens to be on the table
till one is overfilled is exceeding in quantity the
natural limit, since the natural desire is simply
a supply of a real deficiency. For this reason
these men are called belly-mad, as filling it beyond
what they ought, and it is the slavish who become
of this character.
