Pagina 414 di 734

Now with respect to the pleasures and pains which come to a man

through Touch and Taste, and the desiring or avoiding such (which

we determined before to constitute the object-matter of the

states of utter absence of Self-Control and Perfected

Self-Mastery), one may be so disposed as to yield to temptations

to which most men would be superior, or to be superior to those

to which most men would yield: in respect of pleasures, these

characters will be respectively the man of Imperfect

Self-Control, and the man of Self-Control; and, in respect of

pains, the man of Softness and the man of Endurance: but the

moral state of most men is something between the two, even though

they lean somewhat to the worse characters.