Book 7
11
(for it is the desire, and not the opinion, that is really opposed). Hence the lower animals cannot be called unrestrained, if only for the reason that they have no power of forming universal concepts, but only mental images and memories of particular things.
12
If we ask how the unrestrained man’s ignorance is dissipated and he returns to a state of knowledge, the explanation is the same as in the case of drunkenness and sleep, and is not peculiar to failure of self-restraint. We must go for it to physiology.
13
But inasmuch as the last premise, which originates action, is an opinion as to some object of sense, and it is this opinion which the unrestrained man when under the influence of passion either does not possess, or only possesses in a way which as we saw does not amount to knowing it but only makes him repeat it as the drunken man repeats the maxims of Empedocles, and since the ultimate term is not a universal, and is not deemed to be an object of Scientific Knowledge in the same way as a universal term is, we do seem to be led to the conclusionCf. 2.1. which Socrates sought to establish.
14
For the knowledge which is present when failure of self-restraintHere τὸ πάθος means ἀκρατεύεσθαι, cf. 2.2, 3.12, 4.6; but in the following line (cf. 2.1) it probably means ἐπιθυμία or θυμός, as 3.7, 5.5, 7.8. occurs is not what is held to be Knowledge in the true sense, nor is it true Knowledge which is dragged about by passion, but knowledge derived from sense-perception.
