Book 7
7
People too fond of amusement are thought to be profligate, but really they are soft; for amusement is rest, and therefore a slackening of effort, and addiction to amusement is a form of excessive slackness.i.e., it is not an excessive proneness to pursue pleasure, and therefore is not profligacy.
8
But there are two forms of Unrestraint, Impetuousness and Weakness. The weak deliberate, but then are prevented by passion from keeping to their resolution; the impetuous are led by passion because they do not stop to deliberate: since some people withstand the attacks of passion, whether pleasant or painful, by feeling or seeing them coming, and rousing themselves, that is, their reasoning faculty, in advance, just as one is proof against tickling if one has just been tickled already.The variant can avoid being tickled by tickling the other person first seems less likely, but either reading may be doubted: see critical note. Aristotle elsewhere (Aristot. Prob. 965a 11) remarks that one is less sensitive to tickling if one is not taken unawares, and that is why one cannot tickle oneself. It is the quick and the excitable who are most liable to the impetuous form of Unrestraint, because the former are too hasty and the latter too vehement to wait for reason, being prone to follow their imagination.
