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nydus/The Nicomachean Ethics of AristotlePublic

This work constitutes one half of a comprehensive treatise on political and social science, focusing on the study of human conduct and character. It functions as an independent inquiry that complements Aristotle’s Politics by exploring the practical activities of human life.

Page 241 of 423
Table of Contents

BOOK VII

Lust does not and is therefore more disgraceful: because he that cannot control his anger yields in a manner to Reason, but the other to his Lust and not to Reason at all.

Again, a man is more excusable for following such desires as are natural, just as he is for following such Lusts as are common to all and to that degree in which they are common. Now Anger and irritability are more natural than Lusts when in excess and for objects not necessary. (This was the ground of the defence the man made who beat his father, “My father,” he said, “used to beat his, and his father his again, and this little fellow here,” pointing to his child, “will beat me when he is grown a man: it runs in the family.” And the father, as he was being dragged along, bid his son leave off beating him at the door, because he had himself been used to drag his father so far and

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