But men scarcely take pleasure at all in these things, at least those
whom we call destitute of self-control do not, but only in the actual
enjoyment which arises entirely from the sense of Touch, whether in
eating or in drinking, or in grosser lusts. This accounts for the wish
said to have been expressed once by a great glutton, “that his throat
had been formed longer than a crane’s neck,” implying that his pleasure
was derived from the Touch.
The sense then with which is connected the habit of absence of
self-control is the most common of all the senses, and this habit would
seem to be justly a matter of reproach, since it attaches to us not in
so far as we are men but in so far as we are animals. Indeed it is
brutish to take pleasure in such things and to like them best of all;
for the most respectable of the pleasures arising from the touch have
been set aside; those, for instance, which occur in the course of
gymnastic training from the rubbing and the warm bath: because the
touch of the man destitute of self-control is not indifferently of
_any_ part of the body but only of particular parts.
Now of lusts or desires some are thought to be universal, others
peculiar and acquired; thus desire for food is natural since every one
who really needs desires also food, whether solid or liquid, or both
(and, as Homer says, the man in the prime of youth needs and desires
intercourse with the other sex); but when we come to this or that
particular kind, then neither is the desire universal nor in all men is
it directed to the same objects. And therefore the conceiving of such
desires plainly attaches to us as individuals. It must be admitted,
however, that there is something natural in it: because different
things are pleasant to different men and a preference of some
particular objects to chance ones is universal. Well then, in the case
of the desires which are strictly and properly natural few men go wrong
and all in one direction, that is, on the side of too much: I mean, to
eat and drink of such food as happens to be on the table till one is
overfilled is exceeding in quantity the natural limit, since the
natural desire is simply a supply of a real deficiency.
For this reason these men are called belly-mad, as filling it beyond
what they ought, and it is the slavish who become of this character.
But in respect of the peculiar pleasures many men go wrong and in many
different ways; for whereas the term “fond of so and so” implies either
taking pleasure in wrong objects, or taking pleasure excessively, or as
the mass of men do, or in a wrong way, they who are destitute of all
self-control exceed in all these ways; that is to say, they take
pleasure in some things in which they ought not to do so (because they
are properly objects of detestation), and in such as it is right to
take pleasure in they do so more than they ought and as the mass of men
do.