are double, because the origination in such case lies in a man's own self: for he might have helped getting drunk, and this is the cause of his ignorance.
Again, those also who are ignorant of legal regulations which they are bound to know, and which are not hard to 1114a know, they chastise; and similarly in all other cases where neglect is thought to be the cause of the ignorance, under the notion that it was in their power to prevent their ignorance, because they might have paid attention.
But perhaps a man is of such a character that he cannot attend to such things: still men are themselves the causes of having become such characters by living carelessly, and also of being unjust or destitute of self-control, the former by doing evil actions, the latter by spending their time in drinking and such-like; because the particular acts of working form corresponding characters, as is shown by those who are practising for any contest or particular course of action, for such men persevere in the acts of working.
As for the plea, that a man did not know that habits are produced from separate acts of working, we reply, such ignorance is a mark of excessive stupidity.
Furthermore, it is wholly irrelevant to say that the man who acts unjustly or dissolutely does not wish to attain the habits of these vices: for if a man wittingly does those things whereby he must become unjust he is to all intents and purposes unjust voluntarily; but he cannot with a wish cease to be unjust and become just. For, to take the analogous case, the sick man cannot with a wish be well again, yet in a supposable case he is voluntarily ill because he has produced his sickness by living intemperately and disregarding his physicians. There was a time then when he might have helped being ill, but now he has let himself go he cannot any longer; just as he who has let a stone out of his hand cannot recall it,[1] and yet it rested with him to aim and throw it, because the origination was in his power. Just so the unjust man, and he who has lost all self-control,
- ↑ A stone once set in motion cannot be recalled, because it is then placed under the operation of natural laws which cannot be controlled or altered: so too in Moral declension, there is a point at which gravitation operates irretrievably, “there is a certain bound to imprudence and misbehaviour, which being transgressed, there remains no place for repentance in the natural course of things.” Bishop Butler’s Analogy. First Part, chap. ii.
