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meaning that they fill that organ beyond the right measure; it is
persons of especially slavish nature that are liable to this form of excess.
[4]
But in regard to the pleasures peculiar to particular people, many men err, and err in
many ways. For when people are said to be ‘very fond of’ so-and-so, it
is either because they like things that it is not right to like, or like them more than
most people do, or like them in a wrong manner; and the profligate exceed in all these
ways. For they like some things that are wrong, and indeed abominable, and any such things
that it is right to like they like more than is right, and more than most
people.
[5]
It is clear then that excess in relation to pleasures is Profligacy, and that it is
blameworthy. As regards pains on the other hand, it is not with Temperance as it is with
Courage: a man is not termed temperate for enduring pain and profligate for not enduring
it, but profligate for feeling more pain than is right when he fails to get pleasures
(in his case pleasure actually causing pain), and temperate for not
feeling pain at the absence of pleasure [or at abstaining from it].