EUDEMIAN ETHICS





               From the translation by J. Solomon









                             BOOK 1









     1 ú He who stated his opinion in the god's precinct in Delos

made an inscription on the propylaeum to the temple of Leto, in

which he separated from one another the good, the beautiful, and

the pleasant as not all properties of the same thing; he wrote,

'Most beautiful is what is most just, but best is health, and

pleasantest the obtaining of what one desires'. But let us disagree

with him; for happiness is at once the most beautiful and best of

all things and also the pleasantest.



     Now about each thing and kind there are many views that are

disputed and need investigation; of these some concern knowledge

only, some the acquisition of things and the performance of acts as

well. About those which involve speculative philosophy only we must

at a suitable opportunity say what is relevant to that study. But

first we must consider in what the good life consists and how it is

to be acquired, whether all who receive the epithet 'happy' become

so by nature (as we become tall, short, or of different

complexions), or by teaching (happiness being a sort of science),

or by some sort of discipline--for men acquire many qualities

neither by nature nor by teaching but by habituation, bad qualities

if they are habituated to the bad, good if to the good. Or do men

become happy in none of these ways, but either--like those

possessed by nymphs or deities--through a sort of divine influence,

being as it were inspired, or through chance? For many declare

happiness to be identical with good luck.



     That men, then, possess happiness through all or some or one

of these causes is evident; for practically all events come under

these principles--for all acts arising from intelligence may be

included among acts that arise from knowledge. Now to be happy, to

live blissfully and beautifully, must consist mainly in three

things, which seem most desirable; for some say prudence is the

greatest good, some excellence, and some pleasure. Some also

dispute about the magnitude of the contribution made by each of

these elements to happiness, some declaring the contribution of one

to be greater, some that of another--these regarding wisdom as a

greater good than excellence, those the opposite, while others

regard pleasure as a greater good than either; and some consider

the happy life to be compounded of all or of two of these, while

others hold it to consist in one of them alone.



     2 ú First then about these things we must enjoin every one

that has the power to live according to his own choice to set up

for himself some object for the good life to aim at (whether honour

or reputation or wealth or culture), with reference to which he

will then do all his acts, since not to have one's life organized

in view of some end is a mark of much folly. Then above all we must

first define to ourselves without hurry or carelessness in which of

our belongings the happy life is lodged, and what are the

indispensable conditions of its attainment--for health is not the

same as the indispensable conditions of health; and so it is with

many other things, so that the good life and its indispensable

conditions are not identical. Of such things some are not peculiar

to health or even to life, but common--to speak broadly--to all

dispositions and actions, e.g. without breathing or being awake or

having the power of movement we could enjoy neither good nor evil;

but some are peculiar to each kind of thing, and these it is

specially important to observe; e.g. the eating of meat and walking

after meals are more peculiarly the indispensable conditions of a

good physical state than the more general conditions mentioned

above. For herein is the cause of the disputes about happy living,

its nature and causes; for some take to be elements in happiness

what are merely its indispensable conditions.



     3 ú To examine then all the views held about happiness is

superfluous, for children, sick people, and the insane all have

views, but no sane person would dispute over them; for such persons

need not argument but years in which they may change, or else

medical or political correction--for medicine, no less than

whipping, is a correction. Similarly we have not to consider the

views of the multitude (for they talk without consideration about

almost everything, and most about happiness); for it is absurd to

apply argument to those who need not argument but experience. But

since every study has its special problems, evidently there are

such relating to the best life and best existence; it is well to

examine these opinions, for a disputant's refutation of what is

opposed to his arguments is a demonstration of the argument itself.



     Further, it is proper not to neglect these considerations,

especially with a view to that at which all inquiry should be

directed, viz. the causes that enable us to share in the good and

noble life--if any one finds it invidious to call it the blessed

life--and with a view to the hope we may have of attaining each

good. For if the good life consists in what is due to fortune or

nature, it would be something that many cannot hope for, since its

acquisition is not in their power, nor attainable by their care or

activity; but if it depends on the individual and his personal acts

being of a certain character, then the supreme good would be both

more general and more divine, more general because more would be

able to possess it, more divine because happiness would then be the

prize offered to those who make themselves and their acts of a

certain character.



               4 ú Most of the doubts and difficulties raised will become

clear, if we define well what we ought to think happiness to be,

whether it consists merely in having a soul of a certain

character--as some of the sages and older writers thought--or

whether the man must indeed be of a certain character, but it is

even more necessary that his acts should be of a certain character.



     Now if we make a division of the kinds of life, some do not

even pretend to this sort of well-being, being only pursued for the

sake of what is necessary, e.g. those concerned with vulgar arts,

or with commercial or servile occupations--by vulgar I mean arts

pursued only with a view to reputation, by servile those which are

sedentary and wage-earning, by commercial those connected with

selling in markets and selling in shops. But there are also three

goods directed to a happy employment of life, those which we have

above called the three greatest of human goods, excellence, wisdom,

and pleasure. We thus see that there are three lives which all

those choose who have power, viz. the lives of the political man,

the philosopher, the voluptuary; for of these the philosopher

intends to occupy himself with wisdom and contemplation of truth,

the political man with noble acts (i.e. those springing from

excellence), the voluptuary with bodily pleasures. Therefore each

calls a different person happy, as was indeed said before.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae being asked, 'Who was the happiest of

men'? answered, 'None of those you suppose, but one who would

appear a strange being to you', because he saw that the questioner

thought it impossible for one not great and beautiful or rich to

deserve the epithet 'happy', while he himself perhaps thought that

the man who lived painlessly and pure of injustice or else engaged

in some divine contemplation was really, as far as a man may be,

blessed.



     5 ú About many other things it is difficult to judge well, but

most difficult about that on which judgement seems to all easiest

and the knowledge of it in the power of any man--viz. what of all

that is found in living is desirable, and what, if attained, would

satisfy our desire. For there are many consequences of life that

make men fling away life, such as disease, excessive pain, storms,

so that it is clear that, if one were given the power of choice,

not to be born at all would, as far at least as these reasons go,

have been desirable. Further, the life we lead as children is not

desirable, for no one in his senses would consent to return again

to this. Further, many incidents involving neither pleasure nor

pain or involving pleasure but not of a noble kind are such that,

as far as they are concerned, non-existence is preferable to life.

And generally, if one were to bring together all that all men do

and experience but not willingly because not for its own sake, and

were to add to this an existence of infinite duration, one would

none the more on account of these experiences choose existence

rather than non-existence. But further, neither for the pleasure of

eating or that of sex, if all the other pleasures were removed that

knowing or seeing or any other sense provides men with, would any

man value existence, unless he were utterly servile, for it is

clear that to the man making this choice there would be no

difference between being born a brute and a man; at any rate the ox

in Egypt, which they reverence as Apis, in most of such matters has

more power than many monarchs. We may say the same of the pleasure

of sleeping. For what is the difference between sleeping an

unbroken sleep from one's first day to one's last, say for a

thousand or any number of years, and living the life of a plant?

Plants at any rate seem to possess this sort of existence, and

similarly children; for children, too, continue having their nature

from their first coming into being in their mother's womb, but

sleep the entire time. It is clear then from these considerations

that men, though they look, fail to see what is well-being, what is

the good in life.



     And so they tell us that Anaxagoras answered a man who was

raising problems of this sort and asking why one should choose

rather to be born than not by saying 'for the sake of viewing the

heavens and the whole order of the universe'. He, then, thought the

choice of life for the sake of some sort of knowledge to be

precious; but those who felicitate Sardanapallus or Smindyrides the

Sybarite or any other of those who live the voluptuary's life,

these seem all to place happiness in the feeling of pleasure. But

others would rather choose excellent deeds than wisdom or sensual

pleasures; at any rate some choose these not only for the sake of

reputation, but even when they are not going to win credit by them;

but most 'political' men are not truly so called; they are not in

truth 'political', for the 'political' man is one who chooses noble

acts for their own sake, while most take up the 'political' life

for the sake of money and greed.



     From what has been said, then, it is clear that all connect

happiness with one or other of three lives, the 'political', the

philosophic, and the voluptuary's. Now among these the nature and

quality and sources of the pleasure of the body and sensual

enjoyment are clear, so that we have not to inquire what such

pleasures are, but whether they tend to happiness or not and how

they tend, and whether--supposing it right to attach to the noble

life certain pleasures--it is right to attach these, or whether

some other sort of participation in these is a necessity, but the

pleasures through which men rightly think the happy man to live

pleasantly and not merely painlessly are different.



     But about these let us inquire later. First let us consider

excellence and wisdom, the nature of each, and whether they are

parts of the good life either in themselves or through the actions

that arise from them, since all--or at least all important

thinkers--connect happiness with these.



     Socrates, then, the elder, thought the knowledge of excellence

to be the end, and used to inquire what is justice, what bravery

and each of the parts of virtue; and his conduct was reasonable,

for he thought all the excellences to be kinds of knowledge, so

that to know justice and to be just came simultaneously; for the

moment that we have learned geometry or building we are builders

and geometers. Therefore he inquired what excellence is, not how or

from what it arises. This is correct with regard to theoretical

knowledge, for there is no other part of astronomy or physics or

geometry except knowing and contemplating the nature of the things

which are the subjects of those sciences; though nothing prevents

them from being in an incidental way useful to us for much that we

cannot do without. But the end of the productive sciences is

different from science and knowledge, e.g. health from medical

science, law and order (or something of the sort) from political

science. Now to know anything that is noble is itself noble; but

regarding excellence, at least, not to know what it is, but to know

out of what it arises is most precious. For we do not wish to know

what bravery is but to be brave, nor what justice is but to be

just, just as we wish to be in health rather than to know what

being in health is, and to have our body in good condition rather

than to know what good condition is.



     6 ú About all these matters we must try to get conviction by

arguments, using the phenomena as evidence and illustration. It

would be best that all men should clearly concur with what we are

going to say, but if that is unattainable, then that all should in

some way at least concur. And this if converted they will do, for

every man has some contribution to make to the truth, and with this

as a starting-point we must give some sort of proof about these

matters. For by advancing from true but obscure judgements he will

arrive at clear ones, always exchanging the usual confused

statement for more real knowledge. Now in every inquiry there is a

difference between philosophic and unphilosophic argument;

therefore we should not think even in political philosophy that the

sort of consideration which not only makes the nature of the thing

evident but also its cause is superfluous; for such consideration

is in every inquiry the truly philosophic method. But this needs

much caution. For there are some who, through thinking it to be the

mark of a philosopher to make no arbitrary statement but always to

give a reason, often unawares give reasons foreign to the subject

and idle--this they do sometimes from ignorance, sometimes because

they are charlatans--by which reasons even men experienced and able

to act are trapped by those who neither have nor are capable of

having practical and constructive intelligence. And this happens to

them from want of culture; for inability in regard to each matter

to distinguish reasonings appropriate to the subject from those

foreign to it is want of culture. And it is well to criticize

separately the explanation and the conclusion both because of what

has just been said, viz. that one should attend not merely to what

is inferred by argument, but often attend more to the

phenomena--whereas now when men are unable to see a flaw in the

argument they are compelled to believe what has been said--and

because often that which seems to have been shown by argument is

true indeed but not for the cause which the argument assigns; for

one may prove truth by means of falsehood, as is clear from the

Analytics.



     7 ú After these further preliminary remarks let us start on

our discourse from what we have called the first confused

judgements, and then seek to discover a clear judgement about the

nature of happiness. Now this is admitted to be the greatest and

best of human goods--we say human, for there might perhaps be a

happiness peculiar to some superior being, e.g. a god; for of the

other animals, which are inferior in their nature to men, none have

a right to the epithet 'happy'; for no horse, bird, or fish is

happy, nor anything the name of which does not imply some share of

a divine element in its nature; but in virtue of some other sort of

participation in good things some have a better existence, some a

worse.



     But we must see later that this is so. At present we say that

of goods some are within the range of human action, some not; and

this we say because some things--and therefore also some good

things--are incapable of change, yet these are perhaps as to their

nature the best. Some things, again, are within the range of

action, but only to beings superior to us. But since 'within the

range of action' is an ambiguous phrase--for both that for the sake

of which we act and the things we do for its sake have to do with

practice and thus we put among things within the range of action

both health and wealth and the acts done for the sake of these

ends, i.e. health-giving conduct and money-bringing conduct--it is

clear that we must regard happiness as the best of what is within

the range of action for man.



     8 ú We must then examine what is the best, and in how many

senses we use the word. The answer is principally contained in

three views. For men say that the good per se is the best of all

things, the good per se being that whose property is to be the

original good and the cause by its presence in other things of

their being good; both of which attributes belong to the Idea of

good (I mean by 'both' that of being the original good and also the

cause of other things being good by its presence in them); for good

is predicated of this Idea most truly (other things being good by

participation in and likeness to this); and this is the original

good, for the destruction of that which is participated in involves

also the destruction of that which participates in the Idea, and is

named from its participation in it. But this is the relation of the

first to the later, so that the Idea of good is the good per se;

for this is also (they say) separable from what participates in it,

like all other Ideas.



     The discussion, however, of this view belongs necessarily to

another inquiry and a more abstract one, for arguments that are at

once destructive and general belong to no other science. But if we

must speak briefly about these matters, we say first that it is to

speak abstractly and idly to assert that there is an Idea whether

of good or of anything whatever--this has been considered in many

ways both in our popular and in our philosophic discussions. Next,

however much there are Ideas and in particular an Idea of good,

they are perhaps useless with a view to a good life and to action.

For the good has many senses, as numerous as those of being. For

being, as we have divided it in other works, signifies now what a

thing is, now quality, now quantity, now time, and again some of it

consists in being changed and in changing; and the good is found in

each of these modes, in substance as mind and God, in quality as

justice, in quantity as moderation, in time as opportunity, while

as examples of it in change, we have that which teaches and that

which is being taught. As then being is not one in all that we have

just mentioned, so neither is good; nor is there one science either

of being or of the good; not even things named good in the same

category are the objects of a single science, e.g. opportunity or

moderation; but one science studies one kind of opportunity or

moderation, and another another: e.g. opportunity and moderation in

regard to food are studied by medicine and gymnastics, in military

matters by the art of strategy, and similarly with other sorts of

action, so that it can hardly be the province of one science to

study the good per se.



     Further, in things having an earlier and a later, there is no

common element beyond, and, further, separable from, them, for then

there would be something prior to the first; for the common and

separable element would be prior, because with its destruction the

first would be destroyed as well; e.g. if the double is the first

of the multiples, then the universal multiple cannot be separable,

for it would be prior to the double . . . if the common element

turns out to be the Idea, as it would be if one made the common

element separable: for if justice is good, and so also is bravery,

there is then, they say, a good per se, for which they add 'per se'

to the general definition; but what could this mean except that it

is eternal and separable? But what is white for many days is no

whiter than that which is white for a single day; so the good will

not be more good by being eternal. Hence the common good is not

identical with the Idea, for the common good belongs to all.



     But we should show the nature of the good per se in the

opposite way to that now used. For now from what is not agreed to

possess the good they demonstrate the things admitted to be good,

e.g. from numbers they demonstrate that justice and health are

goods, for they are arrangements and numbers, and it is assumed

that goodness is a property of numbers and units because unity is

the good itself. But they ought, from what are admitted to be

goods, e.g. health, strength, and temperance, to demonstrate that

beauty is present even more in the changeless; for all these things

are order and rest; but if so, then the changeless is still more

beautiful, for it has these attributes still more. And it is a bold

way to demonstrate that unity is the good per se to say that

numbers have desire; for no one says distinctly how they desire,

but the saying is altogether too unqualified. And how can one

suppose that there is desire where there is no life? One should

consider seriously about this and not assume without reasons what

it is not easy to believe even with reasons. And to say that all

existing things desire some one good is not true; for each seeks

its own special good, the eye vision, the body health, and so on.



     There are then these difficulties in the way of there being a

good per se; further, it would be useless to political philosophy,

which, like all others, has its particular good, e.g. as gymnastic

has good bodily condition.

               [Further, there is the argument written in the discourse--that

the Idea itself of good is useful to no art or to all arts in the

same way. Further, it is not practicable.] And similarly neither is

good as a universal either the good per se (for it might belong

even to a small good) or practicable; for medicine does not

consider how to procure an attribute that may be an attribute of

anything, but how to procure health; and so each of the other arts.

But 'good' is ambiguous, and there is in it a noble part, and part

is practicable but the rest not so. The sort of good that is

practicable is an object aimed at, but not the good in things

unchanging.



     It is clear, then, that neither the Idea of good nor the good

as universal is the good per se that we are actually seeking; for

the one is unchanging and not practical, and the other though

changing is still not practical. But the object aimed at as end is

best, and the cause of all that comes under it, and first of all

goods. This then would be the good per se, the end of all human

action. And this would be what comes under the master-art of all,

which is politics, economics, and wisdom; for these mental habits

differ from all others by their being of this nature; whether they

differ from one another must be stated later. And that the end is

the cause of all that comes under it, the method of teaching shows;

for the teacher first defines the end and thence shows of each of

the other things that it is good; for the end aimed at is the

cause. E.g. since to be in health is so and so, so and so must

needs be what conduces to it; the health-giving is the efficient

cause of health and yet only of its actual existence; it is not the

cause of health being good. Further, no one demonstrates that

health is good (unless he is a sophist and no doctor, but one who

produces deceptive arguments from inappropriate considerations),

any more than any other principle.



     We must now consider, making a fresh start, in how many senses

the good as the end of man, the best in the field of action, is the

best of all, since this is best.











                            BOOK 2





     1 ú After this let us start from a new beginning and speak

about what follows from it. All goods are either outside or in the

soul, and of these those in the soul are more desirable; this

distinction we make even in our popular discussions. For wisdom,

excellence, and pleasure are in the soul, and some or all of these

seem to all to be the end. But of the contents of the soul some are

states or faculties, others activities and movements.



     Let this then be assumed, and also that excellence is the best

state or condition or faculty of all things that have a use and

work. This is clear by induction; for in all cases we lay this

down: e.g. a garment has an excellence, for it has a work and use,

and the best state of the garment is its excellence. Similarly a

vessel, house, or anything else has an excellence; therefore so

also has the soul, for it has a work. And let us assume that the

better state has the better work; and as the states are to one

another, so let us assume the corresponding works to be to one

another. And the work of anything is its end; it is clear,

therefore, from this that the work is better than the state; for

the end is best, as being end: for we assumed the best, the final

stage, to be the end for the sake of which all else exists. That

the work, then, is better than the state or condition is plain.



     But 'work' has two senses; for some things have a work beyond

mere employment, as building has a house and not the act of

building, medicine health and not the act of curing and restoring

to health; while the work of other things is just their employment,

e.g. of vision seeing and of mathematical science contemplation.

Hence, necessarily, in those whose work is their employment the

employment is more valuable than the state.



     Having made these distinctions, we say that the work of a

thing is also the work of its excellence, only not in the same

sense, e.g. a shoe is the work both of the art of cobbling and of

the action of cobbling. If, then, the art of cobbling and the good

cobbler have an excellence, their work is a good shoe: and

similarly with everything else.



     Further, let the work of the soul be to produce living, this

consisting in employment and being awake--for slumber is a sort of

inactivity and rest. Therefore, since the work must be one and the

same both for the soul and for its excellence, the work of the

excellence of the soul would be a good life. This, then, is the

complete good, which (as we saw) was happiness. And it is clear

from our assumptions (for these were that happiness was the best of

things, and ends and the best goods were in the soul; it is itself

either a state or an activity . . .), and since the activity is

better than the state, and the best activity than the best state,

and excellence is the best state, that the activity of the

excellence of the soul is the best thing. But happiness, we saw,

was the best of things; therefore happiness is the activity of a

good soul. But since happiness was something complete, and living

is either complete or incomplete and so also excellence--one

excellence being a whole, the other a part--and the activity of

what is incomplete is itself incomplete, therefore happiness would

be the activity of a complete life in accordance with complete

excellence.



     And that we have rightly stated its genus and definition

common opinions prove. For to do well and to live well is held to

be identical with being happy, but each of these--living and

doing--is an employment, an activity; for the practical life is one

of using or employing, e.g. the smith produces a bridle, the good

horseman uses it.



     We find confirmation also in the common opinion that we cannot

ascribe happiness to an existence of a single day, or to a child,

or to each of the ages of life; and therefore Solon's advice holds

good, never to call a man happy when living, but only when his life

is ended. For nothing incomplete is happy, not being whole.



     Further, praise is given to excellence because of its actions,

but to actions something higher than praise, the encomium. And we

crown the actual winners, not those who have the power to win but

do not actually win. Further, our judging the character of a man by

his acts is a confirmation. Further, why is happiness not praised?

Surely because other things are praised owing to this, either by

their having reference to it or by their being parts of it.

Therefore felicitation, praise, and encomium differ; for encomium

is discourse relative to the particular act, praise declares the

general nature of the man, but felicitation is for the end. This

clears up the difficulty sometimes raised--why for half their lives

the good are no better than the bad, for all are alike when asleep;

the cause is that sleep is an inactivity, not an activity of the

soul. Therefore, even if there is some other part of the soul, e.g.

the vegetative, its excellence is not a part of entire excellence,

any more than the excellence of the body is; for in sleep the

vegetative part is more active, while the perceptive and the

appetitive are incomplete in sleep. But as far as they do to some

extent partake of movement, even the visions of the good are better

than those of the bad, except so far as they are caused by disease

or bodily defect.



     After this we must consider the soul. For excellence belongs

to the soul and essentially so. But since we are looking for human

excellence, let it be assumed that the parts of the soul partaking

of reason are two, but that they partake not in the same way, but

the one by its natural tendency to command, the other by its

natural tendency to obey and listen; if there is a part without

reason in some other sense, let it be disregarded. It makes no

difference whether the soul is divisible or indivisible, so long as

it has different faculties, namely those mentioned above, just as

the curved includes the concave and the convex, or, again, the

straight and the white, yet the straight is not white except

incidentally and is not the same in substance.



     We also neglect any other part of the soul that there may be,

e.g. the vegetative, for the above-mentioned parts are peculiar to

the human soul; therefore the excellences of the nutritive part and

that concerned with growth are not those of man. For, if we speak

of him qua man, he must have the power of reasoning, a governing

principle, action; but reason governs not reason, but desire and

the passions; he must then have these parts. And just as general

good condition of the body is compounded of the partial

excellences, so also is the excellence of the soul, qua end.



     But of excellence there are two species, the moral and the

intellectual. For we praise not only the just but also the

intelligent and the wise. For we assumed that what is praiseworthy

is either the excellence or its work, and these are not activities,

but have activities. But since the intellectual excellences involve

reason, they belong to that rational part of the soul which governs

the soul by its possession of reason, while the moral belong to the

part which is irrational but by its nature obedient to the part

possessing reason; for we do not describe the character of a man by

saying that he is wise or clever, but by saying that he is gentle

or bold.



     After this we must first consider moral excellence, its

nature, its parts--for our inquiry has been forced back on

this--and how it is produced. We must make our search as all do in

other things--they search having something to start with; so here,

by means of true but indistinct judgements, we should always try to

attain to what is true and distinct. For we are now in the

condition of one who describes health as the best condition of the

body, or Coriscus as the darkest man in the market-place; for what

either of these is we do not know, but yet for the attainment of

knowledge of either it is worth while to be in this condition.

First, then, let it be laid down that the best state is produced by

the best means, and that with regard to everything the best is done

from the excellence of that thing (e.g. the exercises and food are

best which produce a good condition of body, and from such a

condition men best perform exercises). Further, that every

condition is produced and destroyed by some sort of application of

the same things, e.g. health from food, exercises, and weather.

This is clear from induction. Excellence too, then, is that sort of

condition which is produced by the best movements in the soul, and

from which are produced the soul's best works and feelings; and by

the same things, if they happen in one way, it is produced, but if

they happen in another, it is destroyed. The employment of

excellence is relative to the same things by which it is increased

and destroyed, and it puts us in the best attitude towards them. A

proof that both excellence and badness are concerned with the

pleasant and the painful is that punishment being cure and

operating through opposites, as the cure does in everything else,

acts through these.



     2 ú That moral excellence, then, is concerned with the

pleasant and the painful is clear. But since the character, being

as its name indicates something that grows by habit--and that which

is under guidance other than innate is trained to a habit by

frequent movement of a particular kind--is the active principle

present after this process, but in things inanimate we do not see

this (for even if you throw a stone upwards ten thousand times, it

will never go upward except by compulsion),--consider, then,

character to be this, viz. a quality in accordance with governing

reason belonging to the irrational part of the soul which is yet

able to obey the reason. Now we have to state in respect of what

part of the soul we have character of this or that kind.  It will

be in respect of the faculties of passion, in virtue of which men

are spoken of as subject to passion, and in respect of the habits,

in virtue of which men are described, in reference to those

passions, either as feeling them in some way or as not feeling

them. After this comes the division made in . . . into the

passions, faculties, and habits. By passions I mean such as anger,

fear, shame, sensual desire--in general, all that is usually

followed of itself by sensuous pleasure or pain. Quality does not

depend on these--they are merely experienced--but on the faculties.

By faculty I mean that in virtue of which men who act from their

passions are called after them, e.g. are called irascible,

insensible, amorous, bashful, shameless. And habits are the causes

through which these faculties belong to us either in a reasonable

way or the opposite, e.g. bravery, temperance, cowardice,

intemperance.



     3 ú After these distinctions we must notice that in everything

continuous and divisible there is excess, deficiency and the mean,

and these in relation to one another or in relation to us, e.g. in

the gymnastic or medical arts, in those of building and navigation,

and in any sort of action, alike scientific and non-scientific,

skilled and unskilled. For motion is continuous, and action is

motion. In all cases the mean in relation to us is the best; for

this is as knowledge and reason direct us. And this everywhere also

makes the best habit. This is clear both by induction and by

reasoning. For opposites destroy one another, and extremes are

opposite both to one another and to the mean; for the mean is to

either extreme the other extreme, e.g. the equal is greater to the

less, but less to the greater. Therefore moral excellence must have

to do with the mean and be a sort of mean. We must then notice what

sort of mean excellence is and about what sort of means; let each

be taken from the list by way of illustration, and studied:



irascibility          lack of feeling          gentleness

foolhardiness        cowardice                            bravery

shamelessness        shyness                                   modesty

intemperance          insensibility              temperance

envy                               (unnamed) righteous indignation

gain                               loss       the just

lavishness              meanness                        liberality

boastfulness                              self-depreciationsincerity

habit of flattery   habit of dislike            friendliness

servility                stubbornness          dignity

[luxuriousness      submission to evils      endurance]

vanity                         meanness of spirit greatness of spirit

extravagance          pettiness                         magnificence

[cunning                   simplicity          wisdom]





     These and similar are the passions that occur in the soul;

they receive their names, some from being excesses, some from being

defects. For the irascible is one who is angry more than he ought

to be, and more quickly, and with more people than he ought; the

unfeeling is deficient in regard to persons, occasions, and manner.

The man who fears neither what, nor when, nor as he ought is

foolhardy; the man who fears what he ought not, and on the wrong

occasions, and in the wrong manner is cowardly. . . . similarly,

intemperate . . . one prone to sensual desire and exceeding in all

possible ways, while he who is deficient and does not feel desire

even so far as is good for him and in accordance with nature, but

is as much without feeling as a stone, is insensible. The man who

makes profit from any source is greedy of gain; the man who makes

it from none, or perhaps few, is a waster. The braggart is one who

pretends to more than he possesses, the self-depreciator is one who

pretends to less. The man who is more ready than is proper to join

in praise is a flatterer; the man who is less ready is grudging. To

act in everything so as to give another pleasure is servility, but

to give pleasure seldom and reluctantly is stubbornness. [Further,

one who can endure no pain, even if it is good for him, is soft;

one who can endure all pain alike has no name literally applicable

to him, but by metaphor is called hard, patient, or ready of

submission.] The vain man is he who thinks himself worthy of more

than he is, while the poor-spirited thinks himself worthy of less.

Further, the lavish is he who exceeds, the mean is he who is

deficient, in every sort of expenditure. Similar are the stingy and

the purse-proud; the latter exceeds what is fitting, the former

falls short of it. [The rogue aims at gain in any way and from any

source; the simple not even from the right source.] A man is

envious when he feels pain at the sight of prosperity more often

than he ought, for even those who deserve prosperity cause when

prosperous pain to the envious; the opposite character has not so

definite a name: he is one who shows excess in not grieving even at

the prosperity of the undeserving, but accepts all, as gluttons

accept all food, while his opposite is impatient through envy.



     It is superfluous to add to the definition that the particular

relations to each thing should not be accidental; for no art,

theoretical or productive, uses such additions to its definitions

in speech or action; the addition is merely directed against

logical quibbles against the arts. Take the above then, as simple

definitions, which will be made more accurate when we speak of the

opposite habits.



     But of these states themselves there are species with names

differing according as the excess is in time, in degree, or in the

object provoking the state: e.g. one is quick-tempered through

feeling anger quicker than one ought, irascible and passionate

through feeling it more, bitter through one's tendency to retain

one's anger, violent and abusive through the punishments one

inflicts from anger . . . Epicures, gluttons, drunkards are so

named from having a tendency contrary to reason to indulgence in

one or the other kind of nutriment.



     Nor must we forget that some of the faults mentioned cannot be

taken to depend on the manner of action, if manner means excess of

passion: e.g. the adulterer is not so called from his excessive

intercourse with married women; 'excess' is inapplicable here, but

the act is simply in itself wicked; the passion and its character

are expressed in the same word. Similarly with assault. Hence men

dispute the liability of their actions to be called by these names;

they say that they had intercourse but did not commit adultery (for

they acted ignorantly or by compulsion), or that they gave a blow

but committed no assault; and so they defend themselves against all

other similar charges.



     4 ú Having got so far, we must next say that, since there are

two parts of the soul, the excellences are divided correspondingly,

those of the rational part being the intellectual, whose function

is truth, whether about a thing's nature or genesis, while the

others belong to the part irrational but appetitive--for not any

and every part of the soul, supposing it to be divisible, is

appetitive. Necessarily, then, the character must be bad or good by

its pursuit or avoidance of certain pleasures and pains. This is

clear from our classification of the passions, powers, and states;

for the powers and states are powers and states of the passions,

and the passions are distinguished by pain and pleasure. So that

for these reasons and also because of our previous propositions it

follows that all moral excellence has to do with pleasures and

pains. For by whatever things a soul tends to become better or

worse, it is with regard to and in relation to these things that it

finds pleasure. But we say men are bad through pleasures and pains,

either by the pursuit and avoidance of improper pleasures or pains

or by their pursuit in an improper way. Therefore all readily

define the excellences as insensibility or immobility as regards

pleasures and pains, and vices as constituted by the opposites of

these.



     5 ú But since we have assumed that excellence is that sort of

habit from which men have a tendency to do the best actions, and

through which they are in the best disposition towards what is

best; and best is what is in accordance with right reason, and this

is the mean between excess and defect relative to us; it would

follow that moral excellence is a mean relative to each individual

himself, and is concerned with certain means in pleasures and

pains, in the pleasant and the painful. The mean will sometimes be

in pleasures (for there too is excess and defect), sometimes in

pains, sometimes in both. For he who is excessive in his feeling of

delight exceeds in the pleasant, but he who exceeds in his feeling

of pain, in the painful--and this either absolutely or with

reference to some standard, e.g. when he differs from the majority

of men; but the good man feels as he ought. But since there is a

habit in consequence of which its possessor will in some cases

admit the excess, in others the defect of the same thing, it

follows that as these acts are opposed to one another and to the

mean, so the habits will also be opposed to one another and to

excellence.



     It happens, however, that sometimes all these oppositions will

be clearer, sometimes those on the side of excess, sometimes those

on the side of defect. And the reason for the difference is that

the unlikeness or likeness to the mean is not always of the same

kind, but in one case one might change quicker from the excess to

the middle habit, sometimes from the defect, and the person further

distant seems more opposed; e.g. in regard to the body excess in

exercise is healthier than defect, and nearer to the mean, but in

food defect is healthier than excess. And so of those states of

choice which tend to training now some, now others, will show a

greater tendency to health in case of the two acts of choice--now

those good at work, now those good at abstemiousness; and he who is

opposed to the moderate and the reasonable will be the man who

avoids exercise, not both; and in the case of food the

self-indulgent man, not the man who starves himself. And the reason

is that from the start our nature does not diverge in the same way

from the mean as regards all things; we are less inclined to

exercise, and more inclined to indulgence. So it is too with regard

to the soul. We regard, then, as the habit opposed to the mean,

that towards which both ourselves and men in general are more

inclined--the other extreme, as though not existent, escapes our

notice, being unperceived because of its rarity. Thus we oppose

anger to gentleness, and the irascible to the gentle. Yet there is

also excess in the direction of gentleness and readiness to be

reconciled, and the repression of anger when one is struck. But the

men prone to this are few, and all incline more to the opposite

extreme; there is none of the spirit of reconciliation in anger.



     And since we have reached a list of the habits in regard to

the several passions, with their excesses and defects, and the

opposite habits in virtue of which men are as right reason directs

them to be--(what right reason is, and with an eye to what standard

we are to fix the mean, must be considered later)--it is clear that

all the moral excellences and vices have to do with excesses and

defects of pleasures and pains, and that pleasures and pains arise

from the above-mentioned habits and passions. But the best habit is

that which is the mean in respect of each class of things. It is

clear then that all, or at least some, of the excellences will be

connected with means.



     6 ú Let us, then, take another starting-point for the

succeeding inquiry. Every substance is by nature a sort of

principle; therefore each can produce many similar to itself, as

man man, animals in general animals, and plants plants. But in

addition to this man alone of animals is also the source of certain

actions; for no other animal would be said to act. Such principles,

which are primary sources of movements, are called principles in

the strict sense, and most properly such as have necessary results;

God is doubtless a principle of this kind. The strict sense of

'principle' is not to be found among principles without movement,

e.g. those of mathematics, though by analogy we use the name there

also. For there, too, if the principle should change, practically

all that is proved from it would alter; but its consequences do not

change themselves, one being destroyed by another, except by

destroying the assumption and, by its refutation, proving the

truth. But man is the source of a kind of movement, for action is

movement. But since, as elsewhere, the source or principle is the

cause of all that exists or arises through it, we must take the

same view as in demonstrations. For if, supposing the triangle to

have its angles equal to two right angles, the quadrilateral must

have them equal to four right angles, it is clear that the property

of the triangle is the cause of this last. And if the triangle

should change, then so must the quadrilateral, having six right

angles if the triangle has three, and eight if it has four: but if

the former does not change but remains as it was before, so must

the quadrilateral.



     The necessity of what we are endeavouring to show is clear

from the Analytics; at present we can neither affirm nor deny

anything with precision except just this.



     Supposing there were no further cause for the triangle's

having the above property, then the triangle would be a sort of

principle or cause of all that comes later. So that if anything

existent may have the opposite to its actual qualities, so of

necessity may its principles. For what results from the necessary

is necessary; but the results of the contingent might be the

opposite of what they are; what depends on men themselves forms a

great portion of contingent matters, and men themselves are the

sources of such contingent results. So that it is clear that all

the acts of which man is the principle and controller may either

happen or not happen, and that their happening or not

happening--those at least of whose existence or non-existence he

has the control--depends on him. But of what it depends on him to

do or not to do, he is himself the cause; and what he is the cause

of depends on him. And since excellence and badness and the acts

that spring from them are respectively praised or blamed--for we do

not give praise or blame for what is due to necessity, or chance,

or nature, but only for what we ourselves are causes of; for what

another is the cause of, for that he bears the blame or praise--it

is clear that excellence and badness have to do with matters where

the man himself is the cause and source of his acts. We must then

ascertain of what actions he is himself the source and cause. Now,

we all admit that of acts that are voluntary and done from the

choice of each man he is the cause, but of involuntary acts he is

not himself the cause; and all that he does from choice he clearly

does voluntarily. It is clear then that excellence and badness have

to with with voluntary acts.



               7 ú We must then ascertain what is the voluntary and the

involuntary, and what is choice, since by these excellence and

badness are defined. First we must consider the voluntary and

involuntary. Of three things it would seem to be one, agreement

with either desire, or choice, or thought--that is, the voluntary

would agree, the involuntary would be contrary to one of these. But

again, desire is divided into three sorts, wish, anger, and sensual

appetite. We have, then, to distinguish these, and first to

consider the case of agreement with sensual appetite.



     Now all that is in agreement with sensual appetite would seem

to be voluntary; for all the involuntary seems to be forced, and

what is forced is painful, and so is all that men do and suffer

from compulsion--as Evenus says, 'all to which we are compelled is

unpleasant'. So that if an act is painful it is forced on us, and

if forced it is painful. But all that is contrary to sensual

appetite is painful--for such appetite is for the pleasant--and

therefore forced and involuntary; what then agrees with sensual

appetite is voluntary; for these two are opposites. Further, all

wickedness makes one more unjust, and incontinence seems to be

wickedness, the incontinent being the sort of man that acts in

accordance with his appetite and contrary to his reason, and shows

his incontinence when he acts in accordance with his appetite; but

to act unjustly is voluntary, so that the incontinent will act

unjustly by acting according to his appetite; he will then act

voluntarily, and what is done according to appetite is voluntary.

Indeed, it would be absurd that those who become incontinent should

be more just.



     From these considerations, then, the act done from appetite

would seem voluntary, but from the following the opposite: what a

man does voluntarily he wishes, and what he wishes to do he does

voluntarily. But no one wishes what he thinks to be bad; but surely

the man who acts incontinently does not do what he wishes, for to

act incontinently is to act through appetite contrary to what the

man thinks best; whence it results that the same man acts at the

same time both voluntarily and involuntarily; but this is

impossible. Further, the continent will do a just act, and more so

than incontinence; for continence is an excellence, and excellence

makes men more just. Now one acts continently whenever he acts

against his appetite in accordance with his reason. So that if to

act justly is voluntary as to act unjustly is--for both these seem

to be voluntary, and if the one is, so must the other be--but

action contrary to appetite is involuntary, then the same man will

at the same time do the same thing voluntarily and involuntarily.



     The same argument may be applied to anger; for there is

thought to be a continence and incontinence of anger just as there

is of appetite; and what is contrary to our anger is painful, and

the repression is forced, so that if the forced is involuntary, all

acts done out of anger would be voluntary. Heraclitus, too, seems

to be regarding the strength of anger when he says that the

restraint of it is painful--'It is hard', he says, 'to fight with

anger; for it gives its life for what it desires'. But if it is

impossible for a man voluntarily and involuntarily to do the same

thing at the same time in regard to the same part of the act, then

what is done from wish is more voluntary than that which is done

from appetite or anger; and a proof of this is that we do many

things voluntarily without anger or desire.



     It remains then to consider whether to act from wish and to

act voluntarily are identical. But this too seems impossible. For

we assumed and all admit that wickedness makes men more unjust, and

incontinence seems a kind of wickedness. But the opposite will

result from the hypothesis above; for no one wishes what he thinks

bad, but does it when he becomes incontinent. If, then, to commit

injustice is voluntary, and the voluntary is what agrees with wish,

then when a man becomes incontinent he will be no longer committing

injustice, but will be more just than before he became incontinent.

But this is impossible. That the voluntary then is not action in

accordance with desire, nor the involuntary action in opposition to

it, is clear.



     8 ú But again, that action in accordance with, or in

opposition to, choice is not the true description of the voluntary

and involuntary is clear from the following considerations: it has

been shown that the act in agreement with wish was not involuntary,

but rather that all that one wishes is voluntary, though it has

only been shown that one may do voluntarily what one does not wish.

But we do many things from wish suddenly, but no one chooses an act

suddenly.



     But if, as we saw, the voluntary must be one of these

three--action according either to desire, choice, or thought, and

it is not two of these, the remaining alternative is that the

voluntary consists in action with some kind of thought. Advancing

a little further, let us close our delimitation of the voluntary

and the involuntary. To act on compulsion or not on compulsion

seems connected with these terms; for we say that the enforced is

involuntary, and all the involuntary is enforced: so that first we

must consider the action done on compulsion, its nature and its

relation to the voluntary and the involuntary. Now the enforced and

the necessary, force and necessity, seem opposed to the voluntary

and to persuasion in the case of acts done. Generally, we speak of

enforced action and necessity even in the case of inanimate things;

for we say that a stone moves upwards and fire downwards on

compulsion and by force; but when they move according to their

natural internal tendency, we do not call the act one due to force;

nor do we call it voluntary either; there is no name for this

antithesis; but when they move contrary to this tendency, then we

say they move by force. So, too, among things living and among

animals we often see things suffering and acting from force, when

something from without moves them contrary to their own internal

tendency. Now in the inanimate the moving principle is simple, but

in the animated there is more than one principle; for desire and

reason do not always agree. And so with the other animals the

action on compulsion is simple (just as in the inanimate), for they

have not desire and reason opposing one another, but live by

desire; but man has both, that is at a certain age, to which we

attribute also the power of action; for we do not use this term of

the child, nor of the brute, but only of the man who has come to

act from reason.



     So the compulsory act seems always painful, and no one acts

from force and yet with pleasure. Hence there arises much dispute

about the continent and incontinent, for each of them acts with two

tendencies mutually opposed, so that (as the expression goes) the

continent forcibly drags himself from the pleasant appetites (for

he feels pain in dragging himself away against the resistance of

desire), while the incontinent forcibly drags himself contrary to

his reason. But still the latter seems less to be in pain; for

appetite is for the pleasant, and this he follows with delight; so

that the incontinent rather acts voluntarily and not from force,

because he acts without pain. But persuasion is opposed to force

and necessity, and the continent goes towards what he is persuaded

of, and so proceeds not from force but voluntarily. But appetite

leads without persuading, being devoid of reason. We have, then,

shown that these alone seem to act from force and involuntarily,

and why they seem to, viz. from a certain likeness to the enforced

action, in virtue of which we attribute enforced action also to the

inanimate. Yet if we add the addition made in our definition, there

also the statement becomes untrue. For it is only when something

external moves a thing, or brings it to rest against its own

internal tendency, that we say this happens by force; otherwise we

do not say that it happens by force. But in the continent and the

incontinent it is the present internal tendency that leads them,

for they have both tendencies. So that neither acts on compulsion

nor by force, but, as far at least as the above goes, voluntarily.

For the external moving principle, that hinders or moves in

opposition to the internal tendency, is what we call necessity,

e.g. when we strike someone with the hand of one whose wish and

appetite alike resist; but when the principle is from within, there

is no force. Further, there is both pleasure and pain in both; for

the continent feels pain now in acting against his appetite, but

has the pleasure of hope, i.e. that he will be presently benefited,

or even the pleasure of being actually at present benefited because

he is in health; while the incontinent is pleased at getting

through his incontinency what he desires, but has a pain of

expectation, thinking that he is doing ill. So that to say that

both act from compulsion is not without reason, the one sometimes

acting involuntarily owing to his desire, the other owing to his

reason; these two, being separated, are thrust out by one another.

Whence men apply the language to the soul as a whole, because we

see something like the above in the elements of the soul. Now of

the parts of the soul this may be said; but the soul as a whole,

whether in the continent or the incontinent, acts voluntarily, and

neither acts on compulsion, but one of the elements in them does,

since by nature we have both. For reason is in them by nature,

because if growth is permitted and not maimed, it will be there;

and appetite, because it accompanies and is present in us from

birth. But these are practically the two marks by which we define

the natural--it is either that which is found with us as soon as we

are born, or that which comes to us if growth is allowed to proceed

regularly, e.g. grey hair, old age, and so on. So that either acts

contrary to nature, and yet, broadly speaking, according to nature,

but not the same nature. The puzzles then about the continent and

incontinent are these--do both, or one of them, act on compulsion,

so that they act involuntarily or else at the same time both on

compulsion and voluntarily; that is, if the compulsory is

involuntary, both voluntarily and involuntarily? And it is

tolerably clear from the above how these puzzles are to be met.



     In another way, too, men are said to act by force and

compulsion without any disagreement between reason and desire in

them, viz. when they do what they consider both painful and bad,

but they are threatened with whipping, imprisonment, or death, if

they do not do it. Such acts they say they did on compulsion. Or

shall we deny this, and say that all do the act itself voluntarily?

For they had the power to abstain from doing it, and to submit to

the suffering. Again perhaps one might say that some such acts were

voluntary and some not. For of the acts that a man does without

wishing them some he has the power to do or abstain from doing;

these he always does voluntarily and not by force; but those in

which he has not this power, he does by force in a sense (but not

absolutely), because he does not choose the very thing he does, but

the purpose for which it is done, since there is a difference, too,

in this. For if a man were to murder another so as not to be caught

at blind man's buff he would be laughed at if he were to say that

he acted by force, and on compulsion; there ought to be some

greater and more painful evil that he would suffer if he did not

commit the murder. For then he will act on compulsion and by force,

or at least not by nature, when he does something evil for the sake

of good, or release from a greater evil; then he will at least act

involuntarily, for such acts are not subject to his control. Hence,

many regard love, anger in some cases, and natural conditions as

involuntary, as being too strong for nature; we pardon them as

things capable of overpowering nature. A man would more seem to act

from force and involuntarily if he acted to escape violent than if

to escape gentle pain, and generally if to escape pain than if to

get pleasure. For that which depends on him--and all turns on

this--is what his nature is able to bear; what it is not, what is

not under the control of his natural desire or reason, that does

not depend on him. Therefore those who are inspired and prophesy,

though their act is one of thought, we still say have it not in

their own power either to say what they said, or to do what they

did. And so of acts done through appetite. So that some thoughts

and passions do not depend on us, nor the acts following such

thoughts and reasonings, but, as Philolaus said, some arguments are

too strong for us.



     So that if the voluntary and involuntary had to be considered

in reference to the presence of force as well as from other points

of view, let this be our final distinction. Nothing obscures the

idea of the voluntary so much . . . as though they act from force

and yet voluntarily.



               9 ú Since we have finished this subject, and we have found the

voluntary not to be defined either by desire or by choice, it

remains to define it as that which depends on thought. The

voluntary, then, seems opposed to the involuntary, and to act with

knowledge of the person acted on, instrument and aim--for sometimes

one knows the object, e.g. as father, but not that the aim of the

act is to kill, not to save, as in the case of Pelias's daughters;

or knows the object to be a drink but takes it to be a philtre or

wine when it was really hemlock--seems opposed to action in

ignorance of the person, instrument, or thing, if, that is, the

action is essentially the effect of ignorance. All that is done

owing to ignorance, whether of person, instrument, or thing, is

involuntary; the opposite therefore is voluntary. All, then, that

a man does--it being in his power to abstain from doing it--not in

ignorance and owing to himself must needs be voluntary; this is

what voluntariness is. But all that he does in ignorance and owing

to his ignorance, he does involuntarily. But since science or

knowledge is of two sorts, one the possession, the other the use of

knowledge, the man who has but does not use knowledge may in a

sense be justly called ignorant, but in another sense not justly,

e.g. if he had not used his knowledge owing to carelessness.

Similarly, one might be blamed for not having the knowledge, if it

were something easy or necessary and he does not have it because of

carelessness or pleasure or pain. This, then, we must add to our

definition.



     Such, then, is the completion of our distinction of the

voluntary and the involuntary.



     10 ú Let us next speak about choice, first raising various

difficulties about it. For one might doubt to what genus it belongs

and in which to place it, and whether the voluntary and the chosen

are or are not the same. Now some insist that choice is either

opinion or desire, and the inquirer might well think that it is one

or the other, for both are found accompanying it. Now that it is

not desire is plain; for then it would be either wish, appetite, or

anger, for none desires without having experienced one of these

feelings. But anger and appetite belong also to the brutes while

choice does not; further, even those who are capable of both the

former often choose without either anger or appetite; and when they

are under the influence of those passions they do not choose but

remain unmoved by them. Further, anger and appetite always involve

pain, but we often choose without pain. But neither are wish and

choice the same; for we often wish for what we know is impossible,

e.g. to rule all mankind or to be immortal, but no one chooses such

things unless ignorant of the impossibility, nor does he even

choose what is possible, generally, if he does not think it in his

power to do or to abstain from doing it. So that this is clear,

that the object of choice must be one of the things in our own

power. Similarly, choice is not an opinion nor, generally, what one

thinks; for the object of choice was something in one's power and

many things may be thought that are not in our power, e.g. that the

diagonal is commensurable. Further, choice is not either true or

false. Nor yet is choice identical with our opinion about matters

of practice which are in our own power, as when we think that we

ought to do or not to do something. This argument applies to wish

as well as to opinion; for no one chooses an end, but things that

contribute to an end, e.g. no one chooses to be in health, but to

walk or to sit for the purpose of keeping well; no one chooses to

be happy but to make money or run risks for the purpose of being

happy. And in general, in choosing we show both what we choose and

for what we choose it, the latter being that for which we choose

something else, the former that which we choose for something else.

But it is the end that we specially wish for, and we think we ought

to be healthy and happy. So that it is clear through this that

choice is different both from opinion and from wish; for wish and

opinion pertain especially to the end, but choice does not.



     It is clear, then, that choice is not wish, or opinion, or

judgement simply. But in what does it differ from these? How is it

related to the voluntary? The answer to these questions will also

make it clear what choice is. Of possible things, then, there are

some such that we can deliberate about them, while about others we

cannot. For some things are possible, but the production of them is

not in our power, some being due to nature, others to other causes;

and about these none would attempt to deliberate except in

ignorance. But about others, not only existence and nonexistence is

possible, but also human deliberation; these are things the doing

or not doing of which is in our own power. Therefore, we do not

deliberate about the affairs of the Indians nor how the circle may

be squared; for the first are not in our power, the second is

wholly beyond the power of action; but we do not even deliberate

about all things that may be done and that are in our power (by

which it is clear that choice is not opinion simply), though the

matters of choice and action belong to the class of things in our

own power. One might then raise the problem--why do doctors

deliberate about matters within their science, but not grammarians?

The reason is that error may occur in two ways (either in reasoning

or in perception when we are engaged in the very act), and in

medicine one may go wrong in both ways, but in grammar one can do

so only in respect of the perception and action, and if they

inquired about this there would be no end to their inquiries. Since

then choice is neither opinion nor wish singly nor yet both (for no

one chooses suddenly, though he thinks he ought to act, and wishes,

suddenly), it must be compounded of both, for both are found in a

man choosing. But we must ask--how compounded out of these? The

very name is some indication. For choice is not simply picking but

picking one thing before another; and this is impossible without

consideration and deliberation; therefore choice arises out of

deliberate opinion.



     Now about the end no one deliberates (this being fixed for

all), but about that which tends to it--whether this or that tends

to it, and--supposing this or that resolved on--how it is to be

brought about. All consider this till they have brought the

beginning of the process to a point in their own power. If then, no

one chooses without some preparation, without some deliberation

whether it is better or worse to do so and so, and if, of the

things which contribute to an end, and which may or may not come

about, we deliberate about those which are in our power, then it is

clear that choice is a deliberate desire for something in one's own

power; for we all deliberate about what we choose, but we do not

choose all that we deliberate about. I call it deliberate when

deliberation is the source and cause of the desire, and the man

desires because of the deliberation. Therefore in the other animals

choice does not exist, nor in man at every age or in every

condition; for there is not deliberation or judgement on the ground

of an act; but it is quite possible that many animals have an

opinion whether a thing is to be done or not; only thinking with

deliberation is impossible to them. For the deliberating part of

the soul is that which observes a cause of some sort; and the

object of an action is one of the causes; for we call cause that

owing to which a thing comes about; but the purpose of a thing's

existence or production is what we specially call its cause, e.g.

of walking, the fetching of things, if this is the purpose for

which one walks. Therefore, those who have no aim fixed have no

inclination to deliberate. So that since, if a man of himself and

not through ignorance does or abstains from that which is in his

power to do or abstain from, he acts or abstains voluntarily, but

we do many such things without deliberation or premeditation, it

follows that all that has been chosen is voluntary, but not all the

voluntary is chosen, and that all that is according to choice is

voluntary, but not all that is voluntary is according to choice.

And at the same time it is clear from this that those legislators

define well who enact that some states of feeling are to be

considered voluntary, some involuntary, and some premeditated; for

if they are not thoroughly accurate, at least they approximate to

the truth. But about this we will speak in our investigation of

justice; meanwhile, it is clear that choice is not simply wish or

simply opinion, but opinion and desire together when following as

a conclusion from deliberation.



     But since in deliberating one always deliberates for the sake

of some end, and he who deliberates has always an aim by reference

to which he judges what is expedient, no one deliberates about the

end; this is the starting-point and assumption, like the

assumptions in theoretical science (we have spoken about this

briefly in the beginning of this work and minutely in the

Analytics). Everyone's inquiry, whether made with or without art,

is about what tends to the end, e.g. whether they shall go to war

or not, when this is what they are deliberating about. But the

cause or object will come first, e.g. wealth, pleasure, or anything

else of the sort that happens to be our object. For the man

deliberating deliberates if he has considered, from the point of

view of the end, what conduces to bringing the end within his own

action, or what he at present can do towards the object. But the

object or end is always something good by nature, and men

deliberate about its partial constituents, e.g. the doctor whether

he is to give a drug, or the general where he is to pitch his camp.

To them the absolutely best end is good. But contrary to nature and

by perversion not the good but the apparent good is the end. And

the reason is that some things cannot be used for anything but what

their nature determines, e.g. sight; for one can see nothing but

what is visible, nor hear anything but what is audible. But science

enables us to do what does not belong to that science; for the same

science is not similarly related to health and disease, but

naturally to the former, contrary to nature to the latter. And

similarly wish is of the good naturally, but of the bad contrary to

nature, and by nature one wishes the good, but contrary to nature

and through perversion the bad as well.



     But further, the corruption and perversion of a thing does not

tend to anything at random but to the contrary or the intermediate

between it and the contrary. For out of this province one cannot

go, since error leads not to anything at random but to the contrary

of truth where there is a contrary, and to that contrary which is

according to the appropriate science contrary. Therefore, the error

and the resulting choice must deviate from the mean towards the

opposite--and the opposite of the mean is excess or defect. And the

cause is pleasantness or painfulness; for we are so constituted

that the pleasant appears good to the soul and the more pleasant

better, while the painful appears bad and the more painful worse.

So that from this also it is clear that excellence and badness have

to do with pleasures and pains; for they have to do with objects of

choice, and choice has to do with the good and bad or what seems

such, and pleasure and pain naturally seem such.



     It follows then, since moral excellence is itself a mean and

wholly concerned with pleasures and pains, and badness lies in

excess or defect and is concerned with the same matters as

excellence, that moral excellence is a habit tending to choose the

mean in relation to us in things pleasant and painful, in regard to

which, according as one is pleased or pained, men are said to have

a definite sort of character; for one is not said to have a special

sort of character merely for liking what is sweet or what is

bitter.



     11 ú These distinctions having been made, let us say whether

excellence makes the choice correct and the end right so that a man

chooses for the right end, or whether (as some say) it makes the

reason so. But what does this is continence, for this preserves the

reason. But excellence and continence differ. We must speak later

about them, since those who think that excellence makes the reason

right, do so for this cause--namely, that continence is of this

nature and continence is one of the things we praise. Now that we

have discussed preliminary questions let us state our view.  It is

possible for the aim to be right, but for a man to go wrong in what

contributes to that aim; and again the aim may be mistaken, while

the things leading to it are right; or both may be mistaken. Does

then excellence make the aim, or the things that contribute to that

aim? We say the aim, because this is not attained by inference or

reasoning. Let us assume this as starting-point. For the doctor

does not ask whether one ought to be in health or not, but whether

one ought to walk or not; nor does the trainer ask whether one

ought to be in good condition or not, but whether one should

wrestle or not. And similarly no art asks questions about the end;

for as in theoretical sciences the assumptions are our

starting-points, so in the productive the end is starting-point and

assumed. E.g. we reason that since this body is to be made healthy,

therefore so and so must be found in it if health is to be

had--just as in geometry we argue, if the angles of the triangle

are equal to two right angles, then so and so must be the case. The

end aimed at is, then, the starting-point of our thought, the end

of our thought the starting-point of action. If, then, of all

correctness either reason or excellence is the cause, if reason is

not the cause, then the end (but not the things contributing to it)

must owe its rightness to excellence. But the end is the object of

the action; for all choice is of something and for the sake of some

object. The object, then, is the mean, and excellence is the cause

of this by choosing the object. Still choice is not of this but of

the things done for the sake of this. To hit on these things--I

mean what ought to be done for the sake of the object--belongs to

another faculty; but of the rightness of the end of the choice the

cause is excellence. And therefore it is from a man's choice that

we judge his character--that is from the object for the sake of

which he acts, not from the act itself. Similarly, badness brings

it about that we choose the opposite object. If, then, a man,

having it in his power to do the honourable and abstain from the

base, does the opposite, it is clear that this man is not good.

Hence, it follows that both excellence and badness are voluntary;

for there is no necessity to do what is wicked. Therefore badness

is blamable and excellence praiseworthy. For the involuntary if

base or bad is not blamable, if good is not praiseworthy, but only

the voluntary. Further, we praise and blame all men with regard to

their choice rather than their acts (though activity is more

desirable than excellence), because men may do bad acts under

compulsion, but no one chooses them under compulsion. Further, it

is only because it is not easy to see the nature of a man's choice

that we are forced to judge of his character by his acts. The

activity then is more desirable, but the choice is more

praiseworthy. And this both follows from our assumptions and is in

agreement with the phenomena.













                            BOOK 3







     1 ú That there are mean states, then, in the excellences, and

that these are states of choice, and that the opposite states are

vices and what these are, has been stated in its universal form.

But let us take them individually and speak of them in order; and

first let us speak of bravery. All are practically agreed that the

brave man is concerned with fears and that bravery is one of the

excellences. We distinguished also in the table foolhardiness and

fear as contraries; in a sense they are, indeed, opposed to one

another. Clearly, then, those named after these habits will be

similarly opposed to one another, i.e. the coward, for he is so

called from fearing more than he ought and being less confident

than he ought, and the foolhardy man, who is so called for fearing

less than he ought and being more confident that he ought. (Hence

they have names cognate to those of the qualities, e.g. 'foolhardy'

is cognate to 'foolhardiness'.) So that since bravery is the best

habit in regard to fear and confidence, and one should be neither

like the foolhardy (who are defective in one way, excessive in

another) nor like the cowards (of whom the same may be said, only

not about the same objects, but inversely, for they are defective

in confidence and excessive in fear), it is clear that the middle

habit between foolhardiness and cowardice is bravery, for this is

the best.



     The brave man seems to be in general fearless, the coward

prone to fear; the latter fears many things and few, great things

and small, and intensely and quickly, while his opposite fears

either not at all or slightly and reluctantly and seldom, and great

things only. The brave man endures even what is very frightening,

the coward not even what is slightly frightening. What, then, does

the brave man endure? First, is it the things that appear

frightening to himself or to another? If the latter, his bravery

would be no considerable matter. But if it is the things that he

himself fears, then he must find many things

frightening--frightening things being things that cause fear to

those who find them frightening, great fear if very frightening,

slight fear if slightly frightening. Then it follows that the brave

man feels much and serious fear; but on the contrary bravery seemed

to make a man fearless, fearlessness consisting in fearing few

things if any, and in fearing slightly and with reluctance. But

perhaps we use 'frightening'--like 'pleasant' and 'good'--in two

senses. Some things are pleasant or good absolutely, others to a

particular person pleasant or good--but absolutely bad and not

pleasant, e.g. what is useful to the wicked or pleasant to children

as such; and similarly the frightening is either absolutely such or

such to a particular person. What, then, a coward as such fears is

not frightening to anyone or but slightly so; but what is

frightening to the majority of men or to human nature, that we call

absolutely frightening. But the brave man shows himself fearless

towards these and endures such things, they being to him

frightening in one sense but in another not--frightening to him qua

man, but not frightening to him except slightly so, or not at all,

qua brave. These things, however, are frightening, for they are so

to the majority of men. This is the reason, by the way, why the

habit of the brave man is praised; his condition is analogous to

that of the strong or healthy. For these are what they are, not

because, in the case of the one, no toil, or in the case of the

other, no extreme, crushes them, but because they are either

unaffected absolutely or affected only to a slight extent by the

things that affect the many or the majority. The sick, then, and

the weak and the cowardly are affected by the common affections, as

well as by others, only more quickly and to a greater extent than

the many, . . . and further, by the things that affect the many

they are wholly unaffected or but slightly affected.



     But it is still questioned whether anything is frightening to

the brave man, whether he would not be incapable of fear. May we

not allow him to be capable of it in the way above mentioned? For

bravery consists in following reason, and reason bids one choose

the noble. Therefore the man who endures the frightening from any

other cause than this is either out of his wits or foolhardy; but

the man who does so for the sake of the noble is alone fearless and

brave. The coward, then, fears even what he ought not, the

foolhardy is confident even when he ought not to be; the brave man

both fears and is confident when he ought to be and is in this

sense a mean, for he is confident or fears as reason bids him. But

reason does not bid a man to endure what is very painful or

destructive unless it is noble; now the foolhardy man is confident

about such things even if reason does not bid him be so, while the

coward is not confident even if it does; the brave man alone is

confident about them only if reason bids him.



     There are five kinds of courage, so named for a certain

analogy between them; for they all endure the same things but not

for the same reasons. One is a civic courage, due to the sense of

shame; another is military, due to experience and knowledge, not

(as Socrates said) of what is fearful, but of the resources they

have to meet what is fearful. The third kind is due to inexperience

and ignorance; it is that which makes children and madmen face

objects moving towards them and take hold of snakes. Another kind

is due to hope, which makes those who have often been fortunate, or

those who are drunk, face dangers--for wine makes them sanguine.

Another kind is due to irrational feeling, e.g. love or anger; for

a man in love is rather foolhardy than timid, and faces many

dangers, like him who slew the tyrant in Metapontum or the man of

whom stories are told in Crete. Similar is the action of anger or

passion, for passion is beside itself. Hence wild boars are thought

to be brave though they are not really so, for they behave as such

when beside themselves, but at other times are unpredictable like

foolhardy men. But still the bravery of passion is above all

natural (passion is invincible, and therefore children are

excellent fighters); civic courage is the effect of law. But in

truth none of these forms is courage, though all are useful for

encouragement in danger.



     So far we have spoken of the frightening generally; now it is

best to distinguish further. In general, then, whatever is

productive of fear is called frightening, and this is all that

causes destructive pain. For those who expect some other pain may

perhaps have another pain and other emotions but not fear, e.g. if

a man foresees that he will suffer the pain of envy or of jealousy

or of shame. But fear only occurs in connexion with the expectation

of pains whose nature is to be destructive to life. Therefore men

who are very effeminate as to some things are brave, and some who

are hard and enduring are cowards. Indeed, it is thought

practically the special mark of bravery to take up a certain

attitude towards death and the pain of it. For if a man were so

constituted as to be patient as reason requires towards heat and

cold and similar not dangerous pains, but weak and timid about

death, not for any other feeling, but just because it means

destruction, while another was soft in regard to these but

unaffected in regard to death, the former would seem cowardly, the

latter brave; for we speak of danger also only in regard to such

objects of fear as bring near to us that which will cause such

destruction; when this seems close, then we speak of danger.



     The objects of fear, then, in regard to which we call a man

brave are, as we have said, those which appear capable of causing

destructive pain, but only when they appear near and not far off,

and are of such magnitude, real or apparent, as is not out of

proportion to man, for some things must appear frightening and must

perturb any man. For just as things hot and cold and certain other

powers are too strong for us and the conditions of the human body,

so it may be with regard to the emotions of the soul.



     The cowardly, then, and the foolhardy are misled by their

habits; for to the coward what is not frightening seems

frightening, and what is slightly frightening greatly so, while in

the opposite way, to the foolhardy man the frightening seems safe

and the very frightening but slightly so; but the brave man thinks

things what they truly are. Therefore, if a man faces the

frightening through ignorance (e.g. if a man faces in the transport

of madness the attack of a thunderbolt), he is not brave nor yet

if, knowing the magnitude of the danger, he faces it through

passion--as the Celts take up their arms to go to meet the waves;

in general, all the bravery of foreigners involves passion. But

some face danger also for other pleasures--for passion is not

without a certain pleasure, involving as it does the hope of

vengeance. But still, whether a man faces death for this or some

other pleasure or to flee from greater evils, he would not justly

be called brave. For if dying were pleasant, the profligate would

have often died because of his incontinence, just as now--since

what causes death is pleasant though not death itself--many

knowingly incur death through their incontinence, but none of them

would be thought brave even if they do it with perfect readiness to

die. Nor is a man brave if he seeks death to avoid trouble, as many

do; to use Agathon's words: 'Bad men too weak for toil are in love

with death,' And so the poets narrate that Chiron, because of the

pain of his wound, prayed for death and release from his

immortality. Similarly, all who face dangers owing to experience

are not really brave; this is what, perhaps, most soldiers do. For

the truth is the exact opposite of what Socrates thought; he held

that bravery was knowledge. But those who know how to ascend masts

are confident not because they know what is frightening but because

they know how to help themselves in dangers. Nor is all that makes

men fight more boldly courage; for then, as Theognis puts it,

strength and wealth would be bravery--'every man' (he says) 'is

daunted by poverty'. Obviously some, though cowards, face dangers

because of their experience, because they do not think them

dangers, as they know how to help themselves; and a proof of this

is that, when they think they can get no help and the danger is

close at hand, they no longer face it. But of all brave men of this

sort, it is those who face danger because of shame who would most

seem to be brave, as Homer says Hector faced the danger from

Achilles--'and shame seized Hector'; and, again, 'Polydamas will be

the first to taunt me'. Such bravery is civic. But the true bravery

is neither this nor any of the others, but like them, as is also

the bravery of brutes which from passion run to meet the blow. For

a man ought to hold his ground though frightened, not because he

will incur disrepute, nor through anger, nor because he does not

expect to be killed or has powers by which to protect himself; for

in that case he will not even think that there is anything to be

feared. But since all excellence implies choice--we have said

before what this means and that it makes a man choose everything

for the sake of some end, and that the end is the noble-it is clear

that bravery, because it is an excellence, will make a man face

what is frightening for some end, so that he does it neither

through ignorance--for his excellence rather makes him judge

correctly--nor for pleasure, but because the act is noble; since,

if it is not noble but frantic, he does not face the danger, for

that would be disgraceful. In regard, then, to what things bravery

is a mean state, between what, and why, and the meaning of the

frightening, we have now spoken tolerably adequately for our

present purpose.



     2 ú After this we must try to draw certain distinctions

regarding profligacy and temperance. 'Profligate' has many senses.

A man is profligate when he has not been corrected or cured (just

as what has not been cut is uncut), and of such men, some are

capable, others incapable of correction; just as the uncut includes

both what cannot be cut and what can be but has not been cut; and

so with 'profligate'. For it is both that which by its nature

refuses correction, and that which is of a nature to accept but has

not yet received correction for the faults in regard to which the

temperate man acts rightly--e.g. children. For we give them the

same name as the profligate, but because of this latter kind of

profligacy. And, further, it is in different senses that we give

the name to those hard to cure and to those whom it is quite

impossible to cure through correction. Profligacy, then, having

many senses, it is clear that it has to do with certain pleasures

and pains, and that the forms differ from one another and from

other states by the kind of attitude towards these; we have already

stated how, in the use of the word 'profligacy', we apply it to

various states by analogy. As to those who from insensibility are

unmoved by these same pleasures, some call them insensible, while

others describe them as such by other names; but this state is not

very familiar or common because all rather err in the opposite

direction, and it is congenital to all to be overcome by and to be

sensible to such pleasures. It is the state chiefly of such as the

rustics introduced on the stage by comic writers, who keep aloof

from even moderate and necessary pleasures.



     But since temperance has to do with pleasures, it must also

have to do with certain appetites; we must, then, ascertain which.

For the temperate man does not exhibit his temperance in regard to

all appetites and all pleasures, but about the objects, as it

seems, of two senses, taste and touch, or rather really about those

of touch alone. For his temperance is shown not in regard to visual

pleasure in the beautiful (so long as it is unaccompanied by sexual

appetite) or visual pain at the ugly; nor, again, in regard to the

pleasure or pain of the ear at harmony or discord; nor, again, in

regard to olfactory pleasure or pain at pleasant or disagreeable

odours. Nor is a man called profligate for feeling or want of

feeling in regard to such matters. For instance, if one sees a

beautiful statue, or horse, or human being, or hears singing,

without any accompanying wish for eating, drinking, or sexual

indulgence, but only with the wish to see the beautiful and to hear

the singers, he would not be thought profligate any more than those

who were charmed by the Sirens. Temperance and profligacy have to

do with those two senses whose objects are alone felt by and give

pleasure and pain to brutes as well; and these are the senses of

taste and touch, the brutes seeming insensible to the pleasures of

practically all the other senses alike, e.g. harmony or beauty; for

they obviously have no feeling worth mentioning at the mere sight

of the beautiful or the hearing of the harmonious, except, perhaps,

in some marvellous instances. And with regard to pleasant and

disagreeable odours it is the same, though all their senses are

sharper than ours. They do, indeed, feel pleasure at certain

odours; but these gladden them accidentally and not of their own

nature. By those enjoyed not of their own nature I mean those that

give us pleasure owing to expectation and memory, e.g. the pleasure

from the scent of foods and drinks; for these we enjoy because of

a different pleasure, that of eating or drinking; the odours

enjoyed for their own nature are such as those of flowers

(therefore Stratonicus neatly remarked that these smell

beautifully, food, etc., pleasantly). Indeed, the brutes are not

excited over every pleasure connected with taste, e.g. not over

those which are felt in the tip of the tongue, but only over those

that are felt in the gullet, the sensation being one of touch

rather than of taste. Therefore gluttons pray not for a long tongue

but for the gullet of a crane, as did Philoxenus, the son of

Eryxis. Therefore, broadly, we should regard profligacy as

concerned with objects of touch. Similarly it is with such

pleasures that the profligate man is concerned. For drunkenness,

gluttony, lecherousness, gormandizing, and all such things are

concerned with the above-mentioned senses; and these are the parts

into which we divide profligacy. But in regard to the pleasures of

sight, hearing, and smell, no one is called profligate if he is in

excess, but we blame without considering disgraceful such faults,

and all in regard to which we do not speak of men as continent; the

incontinent are neither profligate nor temperate.



     The man, then, so constituted as to be deficient in the

pleasures in which all must in general partake and rejoice is

insensible (or whatever else we ought to call him); the man in

excess is profligate. For all naturally take delight in these

objects and conceive appetites for them, and neither are nor are

called profligate; for they neither exceed by rejoicing more than

is right when they get them, nor by feeling greater pain than they

ought when they miss them; nor are they insensible, for they are

not deficient in the feeling of joy or pain, but rather in excess.



     But since there is excess and defect in regard to these

things, there is clearly also a mean, and this state is the best

and opposed to both of the others; so that if the best state about

the objects with which the profligate is concerned is temperance,

temperance would be the mean state in regard to the above-mentioned

sensible pleasures, the mean between profligacy and insensibility,

the excess being profligacy and the defect either nameless or

expressed by the names we have suggested. More accurate

distinctions about the class of pleasures will be drawn in what is

said later about continence and incontinence.



     3 ú In the same way we must ascertain what is gentleness and

irascibility. For we see that the gentle is concerned with the pain

that arises from anger, being characterized by a certain attitude

towards this. We have given in our list as opposed to the

passionate, irascible, and savage--all such being names for the

same state--the slavish and the stupid. For these are pretty much

the names we apply to those who are not moved to anger even when

they ought, but take insults easily and are tolerant of

contempt--for slowness to anger is opposed to quickness, violence

to quietness, long persistence in that feeling of pain which we

call anger to short. And since there is here, as we have said there

is elsewhere, excess and defect--for the irascible is one that

feels anger more quickly, to a greater degree, and for a longer

time, and when he ought not, and at what he ought not, and

frequently, while the slavish is the opposite--it is clear that

there is a mean to this inequality. Since, then, both the

above-mentioned habits are wrong, it is clear that the mean state

between them is good; for he is neither too soon nor too late, and

does not feel anger when he ought not, nor feel no anger when he

ought. So that since in regard to these emotions the best condition

is gentleness, gentleness would be a mean state, and the gentle a

mean between the irascible and the slavish.



     4 ú Also magnanimity, magnificence, and liberality are mean

states--liberality being shown in the acquisition or expenditure of

wealth. For the man who is more pleased than he ought to be with

every acquisition and more pained than he ought to be at every

expenditure is illiberal; he who feels less of both than he ought

is lavish; he who feels both as he ought is liberal. (By 'as he

ought', both in this and in the other cases, I mean 'as right

reason directs'.) But since the two former show their nature

respectively by excess and defect--and where there are extremes,

there is also a mean and that is best, a single best for each kind

of action--liberality must be the mean between lavishness and

meanness in regard to the acquisition and expenditure of wealth. I

take wealth and the art of wealth in two senses; the art in one

sense being the proper use of one's property (say of a shoe or a

coat), in the other an accidental mode of using it--not the use of

a shoe for a weight, but, say, the selling of it or letting it out

for money; for here too the shoe is used. Now the lover of money is

a man eager for actual money, which is a sign of possession taking

the place of the accidental use of other possessions. But the

illiberal man may even be lavish in the accidental pursuit of

wealth, for it is in the natural pursuit of it that he aims at

increase. The lavish runs short of necessaries; but the liberal man

gives his superfluities. There are also species of these genera

which exceed or fall short as regards parts of the subject-matter

of liberality, e.g. the sparing, the skinflint, the grasper at

disgraceful gain, are all illiberal; the sparing is characterized

by his refusal to spend, the grasper at disgraceful gain by his

readiness to accept anything, the skinflint by his strong feeling

over small amounts, while the man who has the sort of injustice

that involves meanness is a false reckoner and cheat. And similarly

one class of spendthrift is a waster by his disorderly expenditure,

the other a fool who cannot bear the pain of calculation.



     5 ú As to magnanimity we must define its specific nature from

the qualities that we ascribe to the magnanimous. For just as with

other things, in virtue of their nearness and likeness up to a

certain point, their divergence beyond that point escapes notice,

so it is with magnanimity. Therefore, sometimes men really opposite

lay claim to the same character, e.g. the lavish to that of the

liberal, the self-willed to that of the dignified, the foolhardy to

that of the brave. For they are concerned with the same things, and

are up to a certain point contiguous; thus the brave man and the

foolhardy man are alike ready to face danger--but the former in one

way, the latter in another; and these ways differ greatly. Now, we

assert that the magnanimous man, as is indicated by the name we

apply to him, is characterized by a certain greatness of soul and

faculty; and so he seems like the dignified and the magnificent

man, since magnanimity seems to accompany all the excellences. For

to distinguish correctly great goods from small is laudable. Now,

those goods are thought great which are pursued by the man of the

best habit in regard to what seem to be pleasures; and magnanimity

is the best habit. But every special excellence correctly

distinguishes the greater from the less among its objects, as the

wise man and excellence would direct, so that all the excellences

seem to go with this one of magnanimity, or this with all the

excellences.



     Further, it seems characteristic of the magnanimous man to be

disdainful; each excellence makes one disdainful of what is

esteemed great contrary to reason (e.g. bravery disdains dangers of

this kind--for it considers it disgraceful to hold them great; and

numbers are not always fearful: so the temperate disdains many

great pleasures, and the liberal wealth). But this characteristic

seems to belong to the magnanimous man because he cares about few

things only, and those great, and not because someone else thinks

them so. The magnanimous man would consider rather what one good

man thinks than many ordinary men, as Antiphon after his

condemnation said to Agathon when he praised his defence of

himself. Contempt seems particularly the special characteristic of

the magnanimous man; and, again, as regards honour, life, and

wealth--about which mankind seems to care--he values none of them

except honour. He would be pained if denied honour, and if ruled by

one undeserving. He delights most of all when he obtains honour.



     In this way he would seem to contradict himself; for to be

concerned above all with honour, and yet to disdain the multitude

and reputation, are inconsistent. So we must first distinguish. For

honour, great or small, is of two kinds; for it may be given by a

crowd of ordinary men or by those worthy of consideration; and,

again, there is a difference according to the ground on which

honour is given. For it is made great not merely by the number of

those who give the honour or by their quality, but also by its

being precious; but in reality, power and all other goods are

precious and worthy of pursuit only if they are truly great, so

that there is no excellence without greatness; therefore every

excellence, as we have said, makes a man magnanimous in regard to

the object with which that excellence is concerned. But still there

is a single excellence, magnanimity, alongside of the other

excellences, and he who has this must be called in a special sense

magnanimous. But since some goods are precious and some as we

distinguished earlier, and of such goods some are in truth great

and some small, and of these some men are worthy and think

themselves so, among these we must look for the magnanimous man.

There must be four different kinds of men. For a man may be worthy

of great goods and think himself worthy of them, and again there

may be small goods and a man worthy of them and thinking himself

worthy; and we may have the opposites in regard to either kind of

goods; for there may be a man worthy of small who thinks himself

worthy of great and esteemed goods; and, again, one worthy of great

but thinking himself worthy only of small. He then who is worthy of

the small but thinks himself worthy of the great is blameable; for

it is stupid and not noble that he should obtain out of proportion

to his worth: the man also is blameable who being worthy of great

goods, because he possesses the gifts that make a man worthy, does

not think himself worthy to share in them. There remains then the

opposite of these two--the man who is worthy of great goods and

thinks himself worthy of them, such being his disposition; he is

the mean between the other two and is praiseworthy. Since, then, in

respect of the choice and use of honour and the other esteemed

goods, the best condition is magnanimity, and we define the

magnanimous man as being this, and not as being concerned with

things useful; and since this mean is the most praiseworthy state,

it is clear that magnanimity is a mean. But of the opposites, as

shown in our list, the quality consisting in thinking oneself

worthy of great goods when not worthy is vanity--for we give the

name of vain to those who think themselves worthy of great things

though they are not; but the quality of not thinking oneself worthy

of great things though one is, we call mean-spiritedness--for it is

held to be the mark of the mean-spirited not to think himself

worthy of anything great though he possesses that for which he

would justly be deemed worthy of it; hence, it follows that

magnanimity is a mean between vanity and mean-spiritedness. The

fourth of the sorts of men we have distinguished is neither wholly

blameable nor yet magnanimous, not having to do with anything that

possesses greatness, for he neither is worthy nor thinks himself

worthy of great goods; therefore, he is not opposite to the

magnanimous man; yet to be worthy and think oneself worthy of small

goods might seem opposite to being worthy and thinking oneself

worthy of great ones. But such a man is not opposite to the

magnanimous man, for he is not to be blamed (his habit being what

reason directs); he is, in fact, similar in nature to the

magnanimous man; for both think themselves worthy of what they

really are worthy of. He might become magnanimous, for of whatever

he is worthy of he will think himself worthy. But the mean-spirited

man who, possessed of great and honourable qualities, does not

think himself worthy of great goods--what would he do if he

deserved only small? Either he would think himself worthy of great

goods and thus be vain, or else of still smaller than he has.

Therefore, no one would call a man mean-spirited because, being an

alien in a city, he does not claim to govern but submits, but only

one who does not, being well born and thinking power a great thing.



     6 ú The magnificent man is not concerned with any and every

action or choice, but with expenditure--unless we use the name

metaphorically; without expense there cannot be magnificence. It is

the fitting in ornament, but ornament is not to be got out of

ordinary expenditure, but consists in surpassing the merely

necessary. The man, then, who tends to choose in great expenditure

the fitting magnitude, and desires this sort of mean, and with a

view to this sort of pleasure, is magnificent; the man whose

inclination is to something larger than necessary but out of

harmony, has no name, though he is near to those called by some

tasteless and showy: e.g. if a rich man, spending money on the

marriage of a favourite, thinks it sufficient to make such

arrangements as one makes to entertain those who drink to the Good

Genius, he is shabby; while one who receives guests of this sort in

the way suited to a marriage feast resembles the showy man, if he

does it neither for the sake of reputation nor to gain power; but

he who entertains suitably and as reason directs, is magnificent;

for what looks well is the suitable; nothing unsuitable is fitting.

And what one does should be fitting. For in what is fitting is

involved suitability both to the object (e.g. one thing is fitting

for a servant's, another for a favourite's wedding) and to the

entertainer both in extent and kind, e.g. people thought that the

mission conducted by Themistocles to the Olympian games was not

fitting to him because of his previous low station, but would have

been to Cimon. But the man who is indifferent to questions of

suitability is in none of the above classes.



     Similarly with liberality; for a man may be neither liberal

nor illiberal.



     7 ú In general of the other blameable or praiseworthy

qualities of character some are excesses, others defects, others

means, but of feelings, e.g. the envious man and the man who

rejoices over another's misfortunes. For, to consider the habits to

which they owe their names, envy is pain felt at deserved good

fortune, while the feeling of the man who rejoices at misfortunes

has itself no name, but such a man shows his nature by rejoicing

over undeserved ill fortune. Between them is the man inclined to

righteous indignation, the name given by the ancients to pain felt

at either good or bad fortune if undeserved, or to joy felt at them

if deserved. Hence they make righteous indignation ({nemesis}) a

god. Shame is a mean between shamelessness and shyness; for the man

who thinks of no one's opinion is shameless, he who thinks of

everyone's alike is shy, he who thinks only of that of apparently

good men is modest. Friendliness is a mean between animosity and

flattery; for the man who readily accommodates himself in all

respects to another's desires is a flatterer; the man who opposes

every desire is prone to enmity; the man who neither accommodates

himself to nor resists everyone's pleasure, but only accommodates

himself to what seems to be best, is friendly. Dignity is a mean

between self-will and too great obligingness; for the contemptuous

man who lives with no consideration for another is self-willed; the

man who adapts his whole life to another and is submissive to

everybody is too obliging; but he who acts thus in certain cases

but not in others, and only to those worthy, is dignified. The

sincere and simple, or, as he is called, straightforward man, is a

mean between the dissembler and the boaster. For the man who

knowingly and falsely depreciates himself is a dissembler; the man

who exalts himself is a boaster; the man who represents himself as

he is, is sincere, and in the Homeric phrase honest; in general the

one loves truth, the other a lie. Wittiness also is a mean, the

witty man being a mean between the rustic and the buffoon. For just

as the squeamish differs from the omnivorous in that the one takes

little or nothing and that with reluctance, while the other accepts

everything readily, so is the rustic related to the vulgar buffoon;

the one accepts nothing comic without difficulty, the other takes

all easily and with pleasure. Neither attitude is right; one ought

to accept some things and not others, as reason directs--and the

man who does this is witty. The proof is the usual one; wittiness

of this kind, supposing we do not use the word in some transferred

sense, is the best habit, and the mean is praiseworthy, and the

extremes blameable. But wit being of two kinds--one being delight

in the comic, even when directed against one's self, if it be

really comic, like a jest, the other being the faculty of producing

such things--the two sorts differ from one another but both are

means. For the man who can produce what a good judge will be

pleased at, even if the joke is against himself, will be midway

between the vulgar and the frigid man; this definition is better

than that which merely requires the thing said to be not painful to

the person mocked, no matter what sort of man he is; one ought

rather to please the man who is in the mean, for he is a good

judge.



     All these mean states are praiseworthy without being

excellences, nor are their opposites vices--for they do not involve

choice. All of them occur in the classifications of affections, for

each is an affection. But since they are natural, they tend to the

natural excellences; for, as will be said later, each excellence is

found both naturally and also otherwise, viz. as including thought.

Envy then tends to injustice (for the acts arising from it affect

another), righteous indignation to justice, shame to

temperance--whence some even put temperance into this genus. The

sincere and the false are respectively sensible and foolish.



     But the mean is more opposed to the extremes than these to one

another, because the mean is found with neither, but the extremes

often with one another, and sometimes the same people are at once

cowardly and foolhardy, or lavish in some ways, illiberal in

others, and in general are lacking in uniformity in a bad

sense--for if they lack uniformity in a good sense, men of the mean

type are produced; since, in a way, both extremes are present in

the mean.



     The opposition between the mean and the extremes does not seem

to be alike in both cases; sometimes the opposition is that of the

excessive extreme, sometimes that of the defective, and the causes

are the two first given--rarity, e.g. of those insensible to

pleasures, and the fact that the error to which we are most prone

seems the more opposed to the mean. There is a third reason,

namely, that the more like seems less opposite, e.g. foolhardiness

to bravery, lavishness to liberality.



     We have, then, spoken sufficiently about the other

praiseworthy excellences; we must now speak of justice.















                             BOOK 4







     1 ú With regard to justice and injustice we must consider what

kind of actions they are concerned with, what sort of mean justice

is, and between what extremes the just act is intermediate. Our

investigation shall follow the same course as the preceding

discussions.



     We see that all men mean by justice that kind of state which

makes people disposed to do what is just and makes them act justly

and wish for what is just; and similarly by injustice that state

which makes them act unjustly and wish for what is unjust. Let us

too, then, first lay this down as a rough sketch. For the same is

not true of the sciences and the faculties as of states. For it

seems that the same faculty or science deals with contraries; but

a state of character which is one of two contraries does not

produce the contrary results; e.g. as a result of health we do not

do what is the opposite of healthy, but only what is healthy; for

we say a man walks healthily, when he walks as a healthy man would.



     Now often one contrary state is recognized from its contrary,

and often states are recognized from the subjects that exhibit

them; for if good condition is known, bad condition also becomes

known, and good condition is known from the things that are in good

condition, and they from it. If good condition is firmness of

flesh, it is necessary both that bad condition should be flabbiness

of flesh and that the wholesome should be that which causes

firmness in flesh. And it follows for the most part that if one

contrary is ambiguous the other also will be ambiguous; e.g. if

'just' is so, that 'unjust' will be so too.



     Now 'justice' and 'injustice' seem to be ambiguous, but

because the homonymy is close, it escapes notice and is not obvious

as it is, comparatively, when the meanings are far apart, e.g. (for

here the difference in outward form is great) as the homonymy in

the use of kleis for the collar-bone of an animal and for that with

which we lock a door. Let us then ascertain the different ways in

which a man may be said to be unjust. Both the lawless man and the

grasping and unequal man are thought to be unjust, so that

evidently both the law-abiding and the equal man will be just. The

just, then, is the lawful and the equal, the unjust the unlawful

and the unequal.



     Since the unjust man is grasping, he must be concerned with

goods--not all goods, but those with which prosperity and adversity

have to do, which taken absolutely are always good, but for a

particular person are not always good. (Men pray for and pursue the

same things; but they should not, but should pray that the things

that are good absolutely may also be good for them, and should

choose the things that are good for them.) The unjust man does not

always choose the greater, but also the less--in the case of things

bad absolutely; but because the lesser evil is itself thought to be

in a sense good, and graspingness is directed at the good,

therefore he is thought to be grasping. And he is unequal; for this

contains and is common to both.



     Since the lawless man was seen to be unjust and the

law-abiding man just, evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just

acts; for the acts laid down by the legislative art are lawful, and

each of these, we say, is just. Now the laws in their enactments on

all subjects aim at the common advantage either of all or of the

best or of those who hold power, or something of the sort; so that

in one sense we call those acts just that tend to produce and

preserve happiness and its components for the political society.

And the law bids us do both the acts of a brave man (e.g. not to

desert our post or take to flight or throw away our arms), and

those of a temperate man (e.g. not to commit adultery or outrage),

and those of a good-tempered man (e.g. not to strike another or

speak evil), and similarly with regard to the other excellences and

forms of wickedness, commanding some acts and forbidding others;

and the rightly-framed law does this rightly, and the hastily

conceived one less well.



     This form of justice, then is complete excellence--not

absolutely, but in relation to others. And therefore justice is

often thought to be the greatest of excellences and 'neither

evening nor morning star' is so wonderful; and proverbially 'in

justice is every excellence comprehended'. And it is complete

excellence in its fullest sense, because it is the actual exercise

of complete excellence. It is complete because he who possesses it

can exercise his excellence towards others too and not merely by

himself; for many men can exercise excellence in their own affairs,

but not in their relations to excellence. This is why the saying of

Bias is thought to be true, that 'rule will show the man'; for a

ruler is necessarily in relation to other men and a member of a

society. For this same reason justice, alone of the excellences, is

thought to be another's good, because it is related to others; for

it does what is advantageous to another, either a ruler or a

partner. Now the worst man is he who exercises his wickedness both

towards himself and towards his friends, and the best man is not he

who exercises his excellence towards himself but he who exercises

it towards another; for this is a difficult task. Justice in this

sense, then, is not part of excellence but excellence entire, nor

is the contrary injustice a part of vice but vice entire. What the

difference is between excellence and justice in this sense is plain

from what we have said; they are the same but being them is not the

same; what, as a relation to others, is justice is, as a certain

kind of state without qualification, excellence.



     2 ú But at all events what we are investigating is the justice

which is a part of excellence; for there is a justice of this kind,

as we maintain. Similarly it is with injustice in the particular

sense that we are concerned.



     That there is such a thing is indicated by the fact that while

the man who exhibits in action for the other forms of wickedness

acts unjustly but not graspingly (e.g. the man who throws away his

shield through cowardice or speaks harshly through bad temper or

fails to help a friend with money through meanness), when a man

acts graspingly he often exhibits none of these vices,--no, nor all

together, but certainly wickedness of some kind (for we blame him)

and injustice. There is, then, another kind of injustice which is

a part of injustice in the wide sense, and something unjust which

answers to a part of what is unjust in the wide sense of contrary

to the law. Again, if one man commits adultery for the sake of gain

and makes money by it, while another does so at the bidding of

appetite though he loses money and is penalized for it, the latter

would be held to be self-indulgent rather than grasping while the

former is unjust, but not self-indulgent; evidently, therefore, he

is unjust by reason of his making gain by his act. Again, all other

unjust acts are ascribed invariably to some particular kind of

wickedness, e.g. adultery to self-indulgence, the desertion of a

comrade in battle to cowardice, physical violence to anger; but if

a man makes gain, his action is ascribed to no form of wickedness

but injustice. Evidently, therefore, there is apart from injustice

in the wide sense another, particular, injustice which shares the

name and nature of the first, because its definition falls within

the same genus; for the force of both lies in a relation to others

but the one is concerned with honour or money or safety--or that

which includes all these, if we had a single name for it--and its

motive is the pleasure that arises from gain; while the other is

concerned with all the objects with which the good man is

concerned.



     It is clear, then, that there is more than one kind of

justice, and that there is one which is distinct from excellence

entire; we must try to grasp what and what sort of thing it is.



     The unjust has been divided into the unlawful and the unequal,

and the just into the lawful and the equal. To the unlawful answers

the afore-mentioned sort of injustice. But since the unequal and

the unlawful are not the same, but are different as a part is from

its whole (for all that is unequal is unlawful, but not all that is

unlawful is unequal), the unjust and injustice are not the same as

but different from the former kind, as part from whole; for

injustice in this sense is a part of injustice in the wide sense,

and similarly justice in the one sense of justice in the other.

Therefore we must speak also about particular justice and

particular injustice, and similarly about the just and the unjust.

The justice, then, which answers to the whole of excellence and the

corresponding injustice, one being the exercise of excellence as a

whole, and the other that of vice as a whole towards others, we may

leave on one side. And how the just and the unjust which answer to

these are to be distinguished is evident; for practically the

majority of the acts commanded by the law are those which are

prescribed from the point of view of excellence taken as a whole;

for the law bids us practise every excellence and forbids us to

practise any vice. And the things that tend to produce excellence

taken as a whole are those of the acts prescribed by the law which

have been prescribed with a view to education for the common good.

But with regard to the education of the individual as such, which

makes him without qualification a good man, we must determine later

whether this is the function of the political art or of another;

for perhaps it is not the same in every case to be a good man and

a good citizen.



     Of particular justice and that which is just in the

corresponding sense, one kind is that which is manifested in

distributions of honour or money or the other things that fall to

be divided among those who have a share in the constitution (for in

these it is possible for one man to have a share either unequal or

equal to that of another), and another kind is that which plays a

rectifying part in transactions. Of this there are two divisions;

of transactions some are voluntary and others

involuntary--voluntary such transactions as sale, purchase, usury,

pledging, lending, depositing, letting (they are called voluntary

because the origin of these transactions is voluntary), while of

the involuntary some are clandestine, such as theft, adultery,

poisoning, procuring, enticement of slaves, assassination, false

witness, and others are violent, such as assault, imprisonment,

murder, robbery with violence, mutilation, abuse, insult.



     3 ú Since the unjust man is unequal and the unjust act

unequal, it is clear that there is also an intermediate for the

unequal. And this is the equal; for in any kind of action in which

there is a more and a less there is also what is equal. If, then,

the unjust be unequal, the just is equal, as all men suppose it to

be, even apart from argument. And since the equal is intermediate,

the just will be an intermediate. Now equality implies at least two

things. The just, then, must be both intermediate and equal and

relative (i.e. for certain persons). And qua intermediate it must

be between certain things (which are respectively greater and

less); qua equal, it involves two things; qua just, it is for

certain people. The just, therefore, involves at least four terms;

for the persons for whom it is in fact just are two, and the things

in which it is manifested, the objects, are two. And the same

equality will exist between the persons and between the things

concerned; for as the latter--the things concerned--are related, so

are the former; if they are not equal, they will not have what is

equal, but this is the origin of quarrels and complaints--when

either equals have and are awarded unequal shares, or unequals

equal shares. Further, this is plain from the fact that awards

should be according to merit; for all men agree that what is just

in distribution must be according to merit in some sense, though

they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats

identify it with the status of freeman, supporters of oligarchy

with wealth (or with noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy

with excellence.

               The just, then, is a species of the proportionate (proportion

being not a property only of the kind of number which consists of

abstract units, but of number in general). For proportion is

equality of ratios, and involves four terms at least (that discrete

proportion involves four terms is plain, but so does continuous

proportion, for it uses one term as two and mentions it twice; e.g.

as the line A is to the line B, so is the line B to the line C; the

line B, then, has been mentioned twice, so that if the line B be

assumed twice, the proportional terms will be four); and the just,

too, involves at least four terms, and the ratio is the same--for

there is a similar distinction between the persons and between the

things. As the term A, then, is to B, so will C be to D, and

therefore, alternando, as A is to C, B will be to D. Therefore also

the whole is in the same ratio to the whole; and this coupling the

distribution effects, and, if the terms are so combined, effects

justly. The conjunction, then, of the term A with C and of B with

D is what is just in distribution, and this species of the just is

intermediate, and the unjust is what violates the proportion; for

the proportional is intermediate, and the just is proportional.

(Mathematicians call this kind of proportion geometrical; for it is

in geometrical proportion that it follows that the whole is to the

whole as either part is to the corresponding part.) This proportion

is not continuous; for we cannot get a single term standing for a

person and a thing.



     This, then, is what the just is--the proportional; the unjust

is what violates the proportion. Hence one term becomes too great,

the other too small, as indeed happens in practice; for the man who

acts unjustly has too much, and the man who is unjustly treated too

little, of what is good. In the case of evil the reverse is true;

for the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the

greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the

greater, and what is worthy of choice is good, and what is worthier

of choice a greater good.



     This, then, is one species of the just.



     4 ú The remaining one is the rectificatory, which arises in

connexion with transactions both voluntary and involuntary. This

form of the just has a different specific character from the

former. For the justice which distributes common possessions is

always in accordance with the kind of proportion mentioned above

(for in the case also in which the distribution is made from common

funds it will be according to the same ratio which the funds put

into the business bear to one another); and the injustice opposed

to this kind of justice is that which violates the proportion. But

the justice in transactions is a sort of equality indeed, and the

injustice a sort of inequality; not according to that kind of

proportion, however, but according to arithmetical proportion. For

it makes no difference whether a good man has defrauded a bad man

or a bad man a good one, nor whether it is a good or a bad man that

has committed adultery; the law looks only to the distinctive

character of the injury, and treats the parties as equal, if one is

in the wrong and the other is being wronged, and if one inflicted

injury and the other has received it. Therefore, this kind of

injustice being an inequality, the judge tries to equalize it; for

in the case also in which one has received and the other has

inflicted a wound, or one has slain and the other been slain, the

suffering and the action have been unequally distributed; but the

judge tries to equalize things by means of the penalty, taking away

from the gain of the assailant. For the term 'gain' is applied

generally to such cases, even if it be not a term appropriate to

certain cases, e.g. to the person who inflicts a wound--and 'loss'

to the sufferer; at all events when the suffering has been

estimated, the one is called loss and the other gain. Therefore the

equal is intermediate between the greater and the less, but the

gain and the loss are respectively greater and less in contrary

ways; more of the good and less of the evil are gain, and the

contrary is loss; intermediate between them is, as we saw, the

equal, which we say is just; therefore corrective justice will be

the intermediate between loss and gain. This is why, when people

dispute, they take refuge in the judge; and to go to the judge is

to go to justice; for the nature of the judge is to be a sort of

animate justice; and they seek the judge as an intermediate, and in

some states they call judges mediators, on the assumption that if

they get what is intermediate they will get what is just. The just,

then, is an intermediate, since the judge is so. Now the judge

restores equality; it is as though there were a line divided into

unequal parts, and he took away that by which the greater segment

exceeds the half, and added it to the smaller segment. And when the

whole has been equally divided, then they say they have their

own--i.e. when they have got what is equal. It is for this reason

also that it is called just ({dikaion}), because it is a division

into two parts ({dicha}), just as if one were to call it

{dichaion}; and the judge ({dikastes}) is one who bisects

({dichastes}). The equal is intermediate between the greater and

the lesser according to arithmetical proportion. For when something

is subtracted from one of two equals and added to the other, the

other is in excess by these two; since if what was taken from the

one had not been added to the other, the latter would have been in

excess by one only. It therefore exceeds the intermediate by one,

and the intermediate exceeds by one that from which something was

taken. By this, then, we shall recognize both what we must

substract from that which has more, and what we must add to that

which has less; we must add to the latter that by which the

intermediate exceeds it, and subtract from the greatest that by

which it exceeds the intermediate. Let the lines AA, BB, CC be

equal to one another; from the line AA let the segment AE have been

subtracted, and to the line CC let the segment CD have been added,

so that the whole line DCC exceeds the line EA by the segment CD

and the segment CF; therefore it exceeds the line BB [And this is

true of the other arts also; for they would have been destroyed if

what the patient suffered had not been just what the agent did, and

of the same amount and kind.] by the segment CD. These names, both

loss and gain, have come from voluntary exchange; for to have more

than one's own is called gaining, and to have less than one's

original share is called losing, e.g. in buying and selling and in

all other matters in which the law has left people free to make

their own terms; but when they get neither more nor less but just

what belongs to themselves, they say that they have their own and

that they neither lose nor gain.



     Therefore the just is intermediate between a sort of gain and

a sort of loss, viz. those which are involuntary; it consists in

having an equal amount before and after the transaction.



     5 ú Some think that reciprocity is without qualification just,

as the Pythagoreans said; for they defined justice without

qualification as reciprocity. Now reciprocity fits neither

distributive nor rectificatory justice--yet people want even the

justice of Rhadamanthus to mean this:



     Should a man suffer what he did, right justice would be done



--for in many cases they are not in accord; e.g. if an official has

inflicted a wound, he should not be wounded in return, and if

someone has wounded an official, he ought not to be wounded only

but punished in addition. Further, there is a great difference

between a voluntary and an involuntary act. But in associations for

exchange this sort of justice does hold men together--reciprocity

in accordance with a proportion and not on the basis of equality.

For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together.

Men seek to return either evil for evil--and if they cannot do so,

think their position mere slavery--or good for good--and if they

cannot do so there is no exchange, but it is by exchange that they

hold together. This is why they give a prominent place to the

temple of the Graces--to promote the requital of services; for this

is characteristic of grace--we should serve in return one who has

shown grace to us, and should another time take the initiative in

showing it.



     Now proportionate return is secured by cross-conjunction. Let

A be a builder, B a shoemaker, C a house, D a shoe. The builder,

then, must get from the shoemaker the latter's work, and must

himself give him in return his own. If, then, first there is

proportionate equality of goods, and then reciprocal action takes

place, the result we mention will be effected. If not, the bargain

is not equal, and does not hold; for there is nothing to prevent

the work of the one being better than that of the other; they must

therefore be equated. (And this is true of the other arts also; for

they would have been destroyed if what the patient suffered had not

been just what the agent did, and of the same amount and kind.) For

it is not two doctors that associate for exchange, but a doctor and

a farmer, or in general people who are different and unequal; but

these must be equated. This is why all things that are exchanged

must be somehow commensurable. It is for this end that money has

been introduced, and it becomes in a sense an intermediate; for it

measures all things, and therefore the excess and the defect--how

many shoes are equal to a house or to a given amount of food. The

number of shoes exchanged for a house [or for a given amount of

food] must therefore correspond to the ratio of builder to

shoemaker. For if this be not so, there will be no exchange and no

intercourse. And this proportion will not be effected unless the

goods are somehow equal. All goods must therefore be measured by

some one thing, as we said before. Now this unit is in truth

demand, which holds all things together (for if men did not need

one another's goods at all, or did not need them equally, there

would be either no exchange or not the same exchange); but money

has become by convention a sort of representative of demand; and

this is why it has the name 'money' ({nomisma})--because it exists

not by nature but by law ({nomos}) and it is in our power to change

it and make it useless. There will, then, be reciprocity when the

terms have been equated so that as farmer is to shoemaker, the

amount of the shoemaker's work is to that of the farmer's work. But

we must not bring them into a figure of proportion when they have

already exchanged (otherwise one extreme will have both excesses),

but when they still have their own goods. Thus they are equals and

associates just because this equality can be effected in their

case. Let A be a farmer, C food, B a shoemaker, D his product

equated to C. If it had not been possible for reciprocity to be

thus effected, there would have been no association of the parties.

That demand holds things together as a single unit is shown by the

fact that when men do not need one another, i.e. when neither needs

the other or one does not need the other, they do not exchange, as

we do when some one wants what one has oneself, e.g. when people

permit the exportation of corn in exchange for wine. This equation

therefore must be established. And for the future exchange--that if

we do not need a thing now we shall have it if ever we do need

it--money is as it were our surety; for it must be possible for us

to get what we want by bringing the money. Now the same thing

happens to money itself as to goods--it is not always worth the

same; yet it tends to be steadier. This is why all goods must have

a price set on them; for then there will always be exchange, and if

so, association. Money, then, acting as a measure, makes goods

commensurate and equates them; for neither would there have been

association if there were not exchange, nor exchange if there were

not equality, nor equality if there were not commensurability. Now

in truth it is impossible that things differing so much should

become commensurate, but with reference to demand they may become

so sufficiently. There must, then, be a unit, and that fixed by

agreement (for which reason it is called money); for it is this

that makes all things commensurate, since all things are measured

by money. Let A be a house, B ten minae, C a bed. A is half of B,

if the house is worth five minae or equal to them; the bed, C, is

a tenth of B; it is plain, then, how many beds are equal to a

house, viz. five. That exchange took place thus because there was

money is plain; for it makes no difference whether it is five beds

that exchange for a house, or the money value of five beds.



     We have now defined the unjust and the just. These having been

marked off from each other, it is plain that just action is

intermediate between acting unjustly and being justly treated; for

the one is to have too much and the other to have too little.

Justice is a kind of mean, but not in the same way as the other

excellences, but because it relates to an intermediate amount,

while injustice relates to the extremes. And justice is that in

virtue of which the just man is said to be a doer, by choice, of

that which is just, and one who will distribute either between

himself and another or between two others not so as to give more of

what is desirable to himself and less to his neighbour (and

conversely with what is harmful), but so as to give what is equal

in accordance with proportion; and similarly in distributing

between two other persons. Injustice on the other hand is similarly

related to the unjust, which is excess and defect, contrary to

proportion, of the useful or hurtful. For which reason injustice is

excess and defect, viz. because it is productive of excess and

defect--in one's own case excess of what is in its own nature

useful and defect of what is hurtful, while in the case of others

it is as a whole like what it is in one's own case, but proportion

may be violated in either direction. In the unjust act to have too

little is to be unjustly treated; to have too much is to act

unjustly.



     Let this be taken as our account of the nature of justice and

injustice, and similarly of the just and the unjust in general.



     6 ú Since acting unjustly does not necessarily imply being

unjust, we must ask what sort of unjust acts imply that the doer is

unjust with respect to each type of injustice, e.g. a thief, an

adulterer, or a brigand. Surely the answer does not turn on the

difference between these types. For a man might even lie with a

woman knowing who she was, but the origin of this act might be not

choice but passion. He acts unjustly, then, but is not unjust; e.g.

a man is not a thief, yet he stole, nor an adulterer, yet he

committed adultery; and similarly in all other cases.



     Now we have previously stated how the reciprocal is related to

the just; but we must not forget that what we are looking for is

not only what is just without qualification but also political

justice. This is found among men who share their life with a view

to self-sufficiency, men who are free and either proportionately or

arithmetically equal, so that between those who do not fulfil this

condition there is no political justice but justice in a special

sense and by analogy. For justice exists only between men whose

mutual relations are governed by law; and law exists for men

between whom there is injustice; for legal justice is the

discrimination of the just and the unjust. And between men between

whom there is injustice there is also unjust action (though there

is not injustice between all between whom there is unjust action),

and this is assigning too much to oneself of things good in

themselves and too little of things evil in themselves. This is why

we do not allow a man to rule, but law, because a man behaves thus

in his own interests and becomes a tyrant. The magistrate on the

other hand is the guardian of justice, and, if of justice, then of

equality also. And since he is assumed to have no more than his

share, if he is just (for he does not assign to himself more or

what is good in itself, unless such a share is proportional to his

merits--so that it is for others that he labours, and it is for

this reason that men, as we stated previously, say that justice is

another's good), therefore a reward must be given him, and this is

honour, and privilege; but those for whom such things are not

enough become tyrants.



     The justice of a master and that of a father are not the same

as this, though they are like it; for there can be no injustice in

the unqualified sense towards things that are one's own, but a

man's chattel, and his child until it reaches a certain age and

sets up for itself, are as it were part of himself, and no one

chooses to hurt himself (for which reason there can be no injustice

towards oneself). Therefore the justice or injustice of citizens is

not manifested in these relations; for it was as we saw according

to law, and between people naturally subject to law, and these as

we saw are people who have an equal share in ruling and being

ruled. Hence justice can more truly be manifested towards a wife

than towards children and chattels, for the former is household

justice; but even this is different from political justice.



     7 ú Of political justice part is natural, part

legal,--natural, that which everywhere has the same force and does

not exist by people's thinking this or that; legal, that which is

originally indifferent, but when it has been laid down is not

indifferent, e.g. that a prisoner's ransom shall be a mina, or that

a goat and not two sheep shall be sacrificed, and again all the

laws that are passed for particular cases, e.g. that sacrifice

shall be made in honour of Brasidas, and the provisions of decrees.

Now some think that all justice is of this sort, because that which

is by nature is unchangeable and has everywhere the same force (as

fire burns both here and in Persia), while they see change in the

things recognized as just. This, however, is not true in this

unqualified way, but is true in a sense; or rather, with the gods

it is perhaps not true at all, while with us there is something

that is just even by nature, yet all of it is changeable; but still

some is by nature, some not by nature. It is evident which sort of

thing, among things capable of being otherwise, is by nature, and

which is not but is legal and conventional, assuming that both are

equally changeable. And in all other things the same distinction

will apply; by nature the right hand is stronger, yet it is

possible that all men should come to be ambidextrous. The things

which are just by virtue of convention and expediency are like

measures; for wine and corn measures are not everywhere equal, but

larger in wholesale and smaller in retail markets. Similarly, the

things which are just not by nature but by human enactment are not

everywhere the same, since constitutions also are not the same,

though there is but one which is everywhere by nature the best.



     Of things just and lawful each is related as the universal to

its particulars; for the things that are done are many, but of them

each is one, since it is universal.



     There is a difference between the act of injustice and what is

unjust, and between the act of justice and what is just; for a

thing is unjust by nature or by enactment; and this very thing,

when it has been done, is an act of injustice, but before it is

done is not yet this but is unjust. So, too, with an act of justice

(though the general term is rather 'just action', and 'act of

justice' is applied to the correction of the act of injustice).



     Each of these must later be examined separately with regard to

the nature and number of its species and the nature of the things

with which it is concerned.



     8 ú Acts just and unjust being as we have described them, a

man acts unjustly or justly whenever he does such acts voluntarily;

when involuntarily, he acts neither unjustly nor justly except in

an incidental way; for he does things which happen to be just or

unjust. Whether an act is or is not one of injustice (or of

justice) is determined by its voluntariness or involuntariness; for

when it is voluntary it is blamed, and at the same time is then an

act of injustice; so that there will be things that are unjust but

not yet acts of injustice, if voluntariness be not present as well.

By the voluntary I mean, as has been said before, any of the things

in a man's own power which he does with knowledge, i.e. not in

ignorance either of the person acted on or of the instrument used

or of the end that will be attained (e.g. whom he is striking, with

what, and to what end), each such act being done not incidentally

nor under compulsion (e.g. if you take my hand and strike someone

else with it, I do not act voluntarily; for the act was not in my

power). The person struck may be the striker's father, and the

striker may know that it is a man or one of the persons present,

but not know that it is his father; a similar distinction may be

made in the case of the end, and with regard to the whole action.

Therefore that which is done in ignorance, or though not done in

ignorance is not in the agent's power, or is done under compulsion,

is involuntary (for many natural processes, even, we knowingly both

perform and experience, none of which is either voluntary or

involuntary; e.g. growing old or dying). But in the case of unjust

and just acts alike the injustice or justice may be only

incidental; for a man might return a deposit unwillingly and from

fear, and then he must not be said either to do what is just or to

act justly, except in an incidental way. Similarly the man who

under compulsion and unwillingly fails to return the deposit must

be said to act unjustly, and to do what is unjust, only

incidentally. Of voluntary acts we do some by choice, others not by

choice; by choice those which we do after deliberation, not by

choice those which we do without previous deliberation. Thus there

are three kinds of injury in transactions; those done in ignorance

are mistakes when the person acted on, the act, the instrument, or

the end is other than the agent supposed; the agent thought either

that he was not hitting any one or that he was not hitting with

this missile or not hitting this person or to this end, but a

result followed other than that which he thought likely (e.g. he

threw not with intent to wound but only to prick), or the person

hit or the missile was other than he supposed. Now when the injury

takes place contrary to reasonable expectation, it is a

misadventure. When it is not contrary to reasonable expectation but

does not imply vice, it is a mistake (for a man makes a mistake

when the ignorance originates in him, but is the victim of accident

when its origin lies outside him). When he acts with knowledge but

not after deliberation, it is an act of injustice--e.g. the acts

due to anger or to other passions necessary or natural to man; for

when men do such harmful and mistaken acts they act unjustly, and

the acts are acts of injustice, but this does not imply that the

doers are unjust or wicked; for the injury is not due to vice. But

when a man acts from choice, he is an unjust man and a vicious man.



     Hence acts proceeding from anger are rightly judged not to be

done of malice aforethought; for it is not the man who acts in

anger but he who enraged him that starts the mischief. Again, the

matter in dispute is not whether the thing happened or not, but its

justice; for it is apparent injustice that occasions anger. For

they do not dispute about the occurrence of the act--as in

commercial transactions where one of the two parties must be

vicious--unless they do so owing to forgetfulness; but, agreeing

about the fact, they dispute on which side justice lies (whereas a

man who has deliberately injured another cannot help knowing that

he has done so), so that the one thinks he is being treated

unjustly and the other disagrees.



     But if a man harms another by choice, he acts unjustly; and

these are the acts of injustice which imply that the doer is an

unjust man, provided that the act violates proportion or equality.

Similarly, a man is just when he acts justly by choice; but he acts

justly if he merely acts voluntarily.



     Of involuntary acts some are forgivable, others not. For the

mistakes which men make not only in ignorance but also from

ignorance are forgivable, while those which men do not from

ignorance but (though they do them in ignorance) owing to a passion

which is neither natural nor such as man is liable to, are not

forgivable.



     9 ú Assuming that we have sufficiently defined the suffering

and doing of injustice, it may be asked whether there is any truth

in Euripides' paradoxical words:



     'I slew my mother, that's my tale in brief.'

     'Were you both willing, or unwilling both?'



Is it truly possible to be voluntarily treated unjustly, or is all

suffering of injustice involuntary, as all unjust action is

voluntary? And is all suffering of injustice of the latter kind or

else all of the former, or is it sometimes voluntary, sometimes

involuntary? So, too, with the case of being justly treated; all

just action is voluntary, so that it is reasonable that there

should be a similar opposition in either case--that both being

unjustly and being justly treated should be either alike voluntary

or alike involuntary. But it would be thought paradoxical even in

the case of being justly treated, if it were always voluntary; for

some are non-voluntarily treated justly. One might raise this

question also, whether every one who has suffered what is unjust is

being unjustly treated, or on the other hand it is with suffering

as with acting. In both it is possible to partake of justice

incidentally, and similarly (it is plain) of injustice; for to do

what is unjust is not the same as to act unjustly, nor to suffer

what is unjust as to be treated unjustly, and similarly in the case

of acting justly and being justly treated; for it is impossible to

be unjustly treated if the other does not act unjustly, or justly

treated unless he acts justly. Now if to act unjustly is simply to

harm some one voluntarily, and 'voluntarily' means 'knowing the

person acted on, the instrument, and the manner of one's acting',

and the incontinent man voluntarily harms himself, not only will he

voluntarily be unjustly treated but it will be possible to treat

oneself unjustly. (This also is one of the questions in doubt,

whether a man can treat himself unjustly.) Again, a man may

voluntarily, owing to incontinence, be harmed by another who acts

voluntarily, so that it would be possible to be voluntarily treated

unjustly. Or is our definition incorrect; must we to 'harming

another, with knowledge both of the person acted on, of the

instrument, and of the manner' add 'contrary to the wish of the

person acted on'? Then a man may be voluntarily harmed and

voluntarily suffer what is unjust, but no one is voluntarily

treated unjustly; for no one wishes to be unjustly treated, not

even the incontinent man. He acts contrary to his wish; for no one

wishes for what he does not think to be good, but the incontinent

man does do things that he does not think he ought to do. Again,

one who gives what is his own, as Homer says Glaucus gave Diomede



     Armour of gold for brazen, the price of a hundred beeves for

nine,



is not unjustly treated; for though to give is in his power, to be

unjustly treated is not, but there must be some one to treat him

unjustly. It is plain, then, that being unjustly treated is not

voluntary.



     Of the questions we intended to discuss two still remain for

discussion: whether it is the man who has assigned to another more

than his deserts that acts unjustly, or he who has the excessive

share, and whether it is possible to treat oneself unjustly. The

questions are connected; for if the former alternative is possible

and the distributor acts unjustly and not the man who has the

excessive share, then if a man assigns more to another than to

himself, knowingly and voluntarily, he treats himself unjustly;

which is what modest people seem to do, since the virtuous man

tends to take less than his share. Or does this statement too need

qualification? For he perhaps gets more than his share of some

other good, e.g. of honour or of intrinsic nobility. Again, the

question is solved by applying the distinction we applied to unjust

action; for he suffers nothing contrary to his own wish, so that he

is not unjustly treated as far as this goes, but at most only

suffers harm.



     It is plain too that the distributor acts unjustly, but not

always the man who has the excessive share; for it is not he to

whom what is unjust appertains that acts unjustly, but he to whom

it appertains to do the unjust act voluntarily, i.e. the person in

whom lies the origin of the action, and this lies in the

distributor not in the receiver. Again, since things are said to do

things in different senses, and there is a sense in which lifeless

things, or a hand, or a servant who obeys an order, may be said to

slay, he who gets an excessive share does not act unjustly; though

he does what is unjust.



     Again, if the distributor gave his judgment in ignorance, he

does not act unjustly in respect of legal justice, and his judgment

is not unjust in this sense, but in a sense it is unjust (for legal

justice and primary justice are different); but if with knowledge

he judged unjustly, he is himself aiming at an excessive share

either of gratitude or of revenge. As much, then, as if he were to

share in the unjust act, the man who has judged unjustly for these

reasons has got too much; for, assigning the land on that

condition, he received not land but money.



     Men think that acting unjustly is in their power, and

therefore that being just is easy. But it is not; to lie with one's

neighbour's wife, to wound another, to deliver a bribe, is easy and

in our power, but to do these things as a result of a certain state

of character is neither easy nor in our power. Similarly to know

what is just and what is unjust requires, men think, no great

wisdom, because it is not hard to understand the matters dealt with

by the laws (though these are not the things that are just, except

incidentally); but how actions must be done and distributions

effected in order to be just, to know this is a greater achievement

than knowing what is good for the health; though even there, while

it is easy to know that honey, wine, hellebore, cautery, and the

use of the knife are so, to know how, to whom, and when there

should be applied with a view to producing health, is no less an

achievement than that of being a physician. Again, for this very

reason men think that acting unjustly is characteristic of the just

man no less than of the unjust, because he would be not less but

even more capable of doing each of these acts; for he could lie

with a woman or wound a neighbour; and the brave man could throw

away his shield and turn to flight in this direction or in that.

But to play the coward or to act unjustly consists not in doing

these things, except incidentally, but in doing them as the result

of a certain state of character, just as to practise medicine and

to heal consists not in applying or not applying the knife, in

using or not using medicines, but in doing so in a certain way.



     Just acts occur between people who participate in things good

in themselves and can have too much or too little of them; for some

beings (e.g. presumably the gods) cannot have too much of them, and

to others, those who are incurably bad, not even the smallest share

in them is beneficial but all such goods are harmful, while to

others they are beneficial up to a point; therefore justice is

essentially something human.



     10 ú Our next subject is equity and the equitable, and their

respective relations to justice and the just. For on examination

they appear to be neither absolutely the same nor generically

different; and while we sometimes praise what is equitable and the

equitable man (so that we apply the name by way of praise even to

instances of the other virtues, instead of 'good', meaning by 'more

equitable' that a thing is better), at other times, when we reason

it out, it seems strange if the equitable, being something

different from the just, is yet praiseworthy; for either the just

or the equitable is not good, if they are different; or, if both

are good, they are the same.



     These, then, are pretty much the considerations that give rise

to the problem about the equitable; they are all in a sense correct

and not opposed to one another; for the equitable, though it is

better than one kind of justice, yet is just, and it is not as

being a different class of thing that it is better than the just.

The same thing, then, is just and equitable, and while both are

good the equitable is superior. What creates the problem is that

the equitable is just, but not the legally just but a correction of

legal justice. The reason is that all law is universal but about

some things it is not possible to make a universal statement which

will be correct. In those cases, then, in which it is necessary to

speak universally, but not possible to do so correctly, the law

takes the usual case, though it is not ignorant of the possibility

of error. And it is none the less correct; for the error is not in

the law nor in the legislator but in the nature of the thing, since

the matter of practical affairs is of this kind from the start.

When the law speaks universally, then, and a case arises on it

which is not covered by the universal statement, then it is right,

when the legislator fails us and has erred by over-simplicity, to

correct the omission--to say what the legislator himself would have

said had he been present, and would have put into his law if he had

known. Hence the equitable is just, and better than one kind of

justice--not better than absolute justice but better than the error

that arises from the absoluteness of the statement. And this is the

nature of the equitable, a correction of law where it is defective

owing to its universality. In fact this is the reason why all

things are not determined by law, viz. that about some things it is

impossible to lay down a law, so that a decree is needed. For when

the thing is indefinite the rule also is indefinite, like the lead

rule used in making the Lesbian moulding; the rule adapts itself to

the shape of the stone and is not rigid, and so too the decree is

adapted to the facts.



     It is plain, then, what the equitable is, and that it is just

and is better than one kind of justice. It is evident also from

this who the equitable man is; the man who chooses and does such

acts, and is no stickler for justice in a bad sense but tends to

take less than his share though he has the law on his side, is

equitable, and this state is equity, which is a sort of justice,

and not a different state.



     11 ú Whether a man can treat himself unjustly or not, is

evident from what has been said. For one class of just acts are

those acts in accordance with any excellence which are prescribed

by the law; e.g. the law does not command a man to kill himself,

and what it does not command it forbids. Again, when a man in

violation of the law harms another (otherwise than in retaliation)

voluntarily, he acts unjustly, and a voluntary agent is one who

knows both the person he is affecting and the instrument; and he

who through anger voluntarily stabs himself does this contrary to

right reason, and this the law does not allow; therefore he is

acting unjustly. But towards whom? Surely towards the state, not

towards himself. For he suffers voluntarily, but no one is

voluntarily treated unjustly. This is also the reason why the state

punishes; a certain loss of civil rights attaches to the man who

destroys himself, on the ground that he is treating the state

unjustly.



     Further, in the sense in which the man who acts unjustly is

unjust only and not bad all round, it is not possible to treat

oneself unjustly (this is different from the former sense; the

unjust man in one sense of the term is wicked in a particularized

way just as the coward is, not in the sense of being wicked all

round, so that his unjust act does not manifest wickedness in

general). For that would imply the possibility of the same thing's

having been subtracted from and added to the same thing at the same

time; but this is impossible--the just and the unjust always

involve more than one person. Further, unjust action is voluntary

and done by choice, and is prior (for the man who because he has

suffered does the same in return is not thought to act unjustly);

but if a man harms himself he suffers and does the same things at

the same time. Further, a man could be voluntarily treated

unjustly. Besides, no one acts unjustly without committing

particular acts of injustice; but no one can commit adultery with

his own wife or housebreaking on his own house or theft on his own

property.



     In general, the question 'can a man treat himself unjustly?'

is solved also by the distinction we applied to the question 'can

a man be voluntarily treated unjustly?'



     (It is evident too that both are bad, being unjustly treated

and acting unjustly; for the one means having less and the other

having more than the intermediate amount, which plays the part here

that the healthy does in the medical art, and that good condition

does in the art of bodily training. But still acting unjustly is

the worse, for it involves vice and is blameworthy--involves vice

which is either of the complete and unqualified kind or almost so

(for not all voluntary unjust action implies injustice), while

being unjustly treated does not involve vice and injustice. In

itself, then, being unjustly treated is less bad, but there is

nothing to prevent its being incidentally a greater evil. But

theory cares nothing for this; it calls pleurisy a more serious

mischief than a stumble; yet the latter may become incidentally the

more serious, if the fall due to it leads to your being taken

prisoner or put to death by the enemy.)



     Metaphorically and in virtue of a certain resemblance there is

a justice, not indeed between a man and himself, but between

certain parts of him; yet not every kind of justice but that of

master and servant or that of husband and wife. For these are the

ratios in which the part of the soul that has reason stands to the

irrational part; and it is with a view to these parts that people

also think a man can be unjust to himself, viz. because these parts

are liable to suffer something contrary to their desires; there is

therefore thought to be a mutual justice between them as between

ruler and ruled.



     Let this be taken as our account of justice and the other,

i.e. the moral, excellences.











                            BOOK 5







     1 ú Since we have previously said that one ought to choose

that which is intermediate, not the excess nor the defect, and that

the intermediate is determined by the dictates of reason, let us

discuss this. In all the states we have mentioned, as in all other

matters, there is a mark to which the man who possesses reason

looks, and heightens or relaxes his activity accordingly, and there

is a standard which determines the mean states which we say are

intermediate between excess and defect, being in accordance with

right reason. But such a statement, though true, is by no means

illuminating; for in all other pursuits which are objects of

knowledge it is indeed true to say that we must not exert ourselves

nor relax our efforts too much nor too little, but to an

intermediate extent and as right reason dictates; but if a man had

only this knowledge he would be none the wiser--e.g. we should not

know what sort of medicines to apply to our body if some one were

to say 'all those which the medical art prescribes, and which agree

with the practice of one who possesses the art'. Hence it is

necessary with regard to the states of the soul also not only that

this true statement should be made, but also that it should be

determined what right reason is and what is the standard that fixes

it.



     We divided the excellences of the soul and said that some are

excellences of character and others of intellect. Now we have

discussed the moral excellences; with regard to the others let us

express our view as follows, beginning with some remarks about the

soul. We said before that there are two parts of the soul--that

which possesses reason and that which is irrational; let us now

draw a similar distinction within the part which possesses reason.

And let it be assumed that there are two parts which possess

reason--one by which we contemplate the kind of things whose

principles cannot be otherwise, and one by which we contemplate

variable things; for where objects differ in kind the part of the

soul answering to each of the two is different in kind, since it is

in virtue of a certain likeness and kinship with their objects that

they have the knowledge they have. Let one of these parts be called

the scientific and the other the calculative; for to deliberate and

to calculate are the same thing, but no one deliberates about what

cannot be otherwise. Therefore the calculative is one part of the

faculty which possesses reason. We must, then, learn what is the

best state of each of these two parts; for this is the excellence

of each.



     2 ú The excellence of a thing is relative to its proper

function. Now there are three things in the soul which control

action and truth--sensation, thought, desire.

               Of these sensation originates no action; this is plain from

the fact that beasts have sensation but no share in action.



     What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and

avoidance are in desire; so that since moral excellence is a state

concerned with choice, and choice is deliberate desire, therefore

both the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice

is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former

asserts. Now this kind of intellect and of truth is practical; of

the intellect which is contemplative, not practical nor productive,

the good and the bad state are truth and falsity (for this is the

function of everything intellectual); while of the part which is

practical and intellectual the good state is truth in agreement

with right desire.



     The origin of action--its efficient, not its final cause--is

choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to

an end. This is why choice cannot exist either without thought and

intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its

opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and

character. Intellect itself, however, moves nothing, but only the

intellect which aims at an end and is practical; for this rules the

productive intellect as well, since every one who makes makes for

an end, and that which is made is not an end in the unqualified

sense (but only relative to something, i.e. of something)--only

that which is done is that; for good action is an end, and desire

aims at this. Hence choice is either desiderative thought or

intellectual desire, and such an origin of action is a man.

(Nothing that is past is an object of choice, e.g. no one chooses

to have sacked Troy; for no one deliberates about the past, but

about what is future and contingent, while what is past is not

capable of not having taken place; hence Agathon is right in saying



     For this alone is lacking even to God,

     To make undone things that have once been done.)





     The function of both the intellectual parts, then, is truth.

Therefore the states that are most strictly those in respect of

which each of these parts will reach truth are the excellences of

the two parts.



     3 ú Let us begin, then, from the beginning, and discuss these

states once more. Let it be assumed that the states by virtue of

which the soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial are

five in number, i.e. art, knowledge, prudence, philosophic wisdom,

comprehension; for belief and opinion may be mistaken.



     Now what knowledge is, if we are to speak exactly and not

follow mere similarities, is plain from what follows. We all

suppose that what we know is not capable of being otherwise; of

things capable of being otherwise we do not know, when they have

passed outside our observation, whether they exist or not.

Therefore the object of knowledge is of necessity. Therefore it is

eternal; for things that are of necessity in the unqualified sense

are all eternal; and things that are eternal are ungenerated and

imperishable. Again, every science is thought to be capable of

being taught, and its object of being learned. And all teaching

starts from what is already known, as we maintain in the Analytics

also; for it proceeds sometimes through induction and sometimes by

deduction. Now induction is of first principles and of the

universal and deduction proceeds from universals. There are

therefore principles from which deduction proceeds, which are not

reached by deduction; it is therefore by induction that they are

acquired. Knowledge, then, is a state of capacity to demonstrate,

and has the other limiting characteristics which we specify in the

Analytics; for it is when a man believes in a certain way and the

principles are known to him that he has knowledge, since if they

are not better known to him than the conclusion, he will have his

knowledge only incidentally.



     Let this, then, be taken as our account of knowledge.



     4 ú Among things that can be otherwise are included both

things made and things done; making and acting are different (for

their nature we treat even the discussions outside our school as

reliable); so that the reasoned state of capacity to act is

different from the reasoned state of capacity to make. Nor are they

included one in the other; for neither is acting making nor is

making acting. Now since building is an art and is essentially a

reasoned state of capacity to make, and there is neither any art

that is not such a state nor any such state that is not an art, art

is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true

course of reasoning. All art is concerned with coming into being,

i.e. with contriving and considering how something may come into

being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose

origin is in the maker and not in the thing made; for art is

concerned neither with things that are, or come into being, by

necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature

(since these have their origin in themselves). Making and acting

being different, art must be a matter of making, not of acting. And

in a sense chance and art are concerned with the same objects; as

Agathon says, 'art loves chance and chance loves art'. Art, then,

as has been said, is a state concerned with making, involving a

true course of reasoning, and lack of art on the contrary is a

state concerned with making, involving a false course of reasoning;

both are concerned with what can be otherwise.



     5 ú Regarding prudence we shall get at the truth by

considering who are the persons we credit with it. Now it is

thought to be a mark of a man of prudence to be able to deliberate

well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some

particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to

health or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the

good life in general. This is shown by the fact that we credit men

with prudence in some particular respect when they have calculated

well with a view to some good end which is one of those that are

not the object of any art. Thus in general the man who is capable

of deliberating has prudence. Now no one deliberates about things

that cannot be otherwise nor about things that it is impossible for

him to do. Therefore, since knowledge involves demonstration, but

there is no demonstration of things whose first principles can be

otherwise (for all such things might actually be otherwise), and

since it is impossible to deliberate about things that are of

necessity, prudence cannot be knowledge nor art; not knowledge

because that which can be done is capable of being otherwise, not

art because action and making are different kinds of thing. It

remains, then, that it is a true and reasoned state of capacity to

act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man. For

while making has an end other than itself, action cannot; for good

action itself is its end. It is for this reason that we think

Pericles and men like him have prudence, viz. because they can see

what is good for themselves and what is good for men in general; we

consider that those can do this who are good at managing households

or states. (This is why we call temperance by this name; we imply

that it preserves one's prudence. Now what it preserves is a belief

of the kind we have described. For it is not any and every belief

that pleasant and painful objects destroy and pervert, e.g. the

belief that the triangle has or has not its angles equal to two

right angles, but only beliefs about what is to be done. For the

principles of the things that are done consist in that for the sake

of which they are to be done; but the man who has been ruined by

pleasure or pain forthwith fails to see any such principle--to see

that for the sake of this or because of this he ought to choose and

do whatever he chooses and does; for vice is destructive of the

principle.)



     Prudence, then, must be a reasoned and true state of capacity

to act with regard to human goods. But further, while there is such

a thing as excellence in art, there is no such thing as excellence

in prudence; and in art he who errs willingly is preferable, but in

prudence, as in the excellences he is the reverse. Plainly, then,

prudence is an excellence and not an art. There being two parts of

the soul that possess reason, it must be the excellence of one of

the two, i.e. of that part which forms opinions; for opinion is

about what can be otherwise, and so is prudence. But yet it is not

only a reasoned state; this is shown by the fact that a state of

that sort may be forgotten but prudence cannot.



     6 ú Knowledge is belief about things that are universal and

necessary, and there are principles of everything that is

demonstrated and of all knowledge (for knowledge involves

reasoning). This being so, the first principle of what is known

cannot be an object of knowledge, of art, or of prudence; for that

which can be known can be demonstrated, and art and prudence deal

with things that can be otherwise. Nor are these first principles

the objects of wisdom, for it is a mark of the wise man to have

demonstration about some things. If, then, the states by which we

have truth and are never deceived about things that cannot--or

can--be otherwise are knowledge, prudence, philosophic wisdom, and

comprehension, and it cannot be any of the three (i.e. prudence,

scientific knowledge, or philosophic wisdom), the remaining

alternative is that it is comprehension that grasps the first

principles.



     7 ú Wisdom in the arts we ascribe to their most finished

exponents, e.g. to Phidias as a sculptor and to Polyclitus as a

maker of statues, and here we mean nothing by wisdom except

excellence in art; but we think that some people are wise in

general, not in some particular field or in any other limited

respect, as Homer says in the Margites,



     Him did the gods make neither a digger nor yet a ploughman

     Nor wise in anything else.



Therefore wisdom must plainly be the most finished of the forms of

knowledge. It follows that the wise man must not only know what

follows from the first principles, but must also possess truth

about the first principles. Therefore wisdom must be comprehension

combined with knowledge--knowledge of the highest objects which has

received as it were its proper completion.



     For it would be strange to think that the art of politics, or

prudence, is the best knowledge, since man is not the best thing in

the world. Now if what is healthy or good is different for men and

for fishes, but what is white or straight is always the same, any

one would say that what is wise is the same but what is practically

wise is different; for it is to that which observes well the

various matters concerning itself that one ascribes prudence, and

it is to this that one will entrust such matters. This is why we

say that some even of the lower animals have prudence, viz. those

which are found to have a power of foresight with regard to their

own life. It is evident also that wisdom and the political art

cannot be the same; for if the state of mind concerned with a man's

own interests is to be called wisdom, there will be many wisdoms;

there will not be one concerned with the good of all animals (any

more than there is one art of medicine for all existing things),

but a different wisdom about the good of each species.



     But if the argument be that man is the best of the animals,

this makes no difference; for there are other things much more

divine in their nature even than man, e.g., most conspicuously, the

bodies of which the heavens are framed. From what has been said it

is plain, then, that wisdom is knowledge, combined with

comprehension, of the things that are highest by nature. This is

why we say Anaxagoras, Thales, and men like them have wisdom but

not prudence, when we see them ignorant of what is to their own

advantage, and why we say that they know things that are

remarkable, admirable, difficult, and divine, but useless; viz.

because it is not human goods that they seek.



     Prudence on the other hand is concerned with things human and

things about which it is possible to deliberate; for we say this is

above all the work of the man of prudence, to deliberate well, but

no one deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise, nor about

things which have not an end, and that a good that can be brought

about by action. The man who is without qualification good at

deliberating is the man who is capable of aiming in accordance with

calculation at the best for man of things attainable by action. Nor

is prudence concerned with universals only--it must also recognize

the particulars; for it is practical, and practice is concerned

with particulars. This is why some who do not know, and especially

those who have experience, are more practical than others who know;

for if a man knew that light meats are digestible and wholesome,

but did not know which sorts of meat are light, he would not

produce health, but the man who knows that chicken is wholesome is

more likely to produce health.



     Now prudence is concerned with action; therefore one should

have both forms of it, or the latter in preference to the former.

Here, too, there must be a controlling kind.



     8 ú Political wisdom and prudence are the same state of mind,

but to be them is not the same. Of the wisdom concerned with the

city, the prudence which plays a controlling part is legislative

wisdom, while that which is related to this as particulars to their

universal is known by the general name 'political wisdom'; this has

to do with action and deliberation, for a decree is a thing to be

carried out in the form of an individual act. This is why the

exponents of this art are alone said to take part in politics; for

these alone do things as manual labourers do things.



     Prudence also is identified especially with that form of it

which is concerned with a man himself--with the individual; and

this is known by the general name 'prudence'; of the other kinds

one is called household management, another legislation, the third

politics, and of the last one part is called deliberative and the

other judicial. Now knowing what is good for oneself will be one

kind of knowledge, but is very different from the other kinds; and

the man who knows and concerns himself with his own interests is

thought to have prudence, while politicians are thought to be

busybodies; hence the words of Euripides,



     But how could I be wise, who might at ease,

     Numbered among the army's multitude,

     Have had an equal share?. . .

     For those who aim too high and do too much. . . .



Those who think thus seek their own good, and consider that one

ought to do so. From this opinion, then, has come the view that

such men have prudence; yet perhaps one's own good cannot exist

without household management, nor without a form of government.

Further, how one should order one's own affairs is not clear and

needs inquiry.



     What has been said is confirmed by the fact that while young

men become geometricians and mathematicians and wise in matters

like these, it is thought that a young man of prudence cannot be

found. The cause is that such wisdom is concerned not only with

universals but with particulars, which become familiar from

experience, but a young man has no experience, for it is length of

time that gives experience; indeed one might ask this question too,

why a boy may become a mathematician, but not a wise man or a

natural scientist. Is it because the objects of mathematics exist

by abstraction, while the first principles of these other subjects

come from experience, and because young men have no conviction

about the latter but merely use the proper language, while the

essence of mathematical objects is plain enough to them?



     Further, error in deliberation may be either about the

universal or about the particular; we may fail to know either that

all water that weighs heavy is bad, or that this particular water

weighs heavy.



     That prudence is not knowledge is evident; for it is, as has

been said, concerned with the ultimate particular fact, since the

thing to be done is of this nature. It is opposed, then, to

comprehension; for comprehension is of the definitions, for which

no reason can be given, while prudence is concerned with the

ultimate particular, which is the object not of knowledge but of

perception--not the perception of qualities peculiar to one sense

but a perception akin to that by which we perceive that the

particular figure before us is a triangle; for in that direction

too there will be a limit. But this is rather perception than

prudence, though it is another kind of perception.



     9 ú There is a difference between inquiry and deliberation;

for deliberation is a particular kind of inquiry. We must grasp the

nature of excellence in deliberation as well--whether it is a form

of knowledge, or opinion, or skill in conjecture, or some other

kind of thing. It is not knowledge; for men do not inquire about

the things they know about, but good deliberation is a kind of

deliberation, and he who deliberates inquires and calculates. Nor

is it skill in conjecture; for this both involves no reasoning and

is something that is quick in its operation, while men deliberate

a long time, and they say that one should carry out quickly the

conclusions of one's deliberation, but should deliberate slowly.

Again, readiness of mind is different from excellence in

deliberation; it is a sort of skill in conjecture. Nor again is

excellence in deliberation opinion of any sort. But since the man

who deliberates badly makes a mistake, while he who deliberates

well does so correctly, excellence in deliberation is clearly a

kind of correctness, but neither of knowledge nor of opinion; for

there is no such thing as correctness of knowledge (since there is

no such thing as error of knowledge), and correctness of opinion is

truth; and at the same time everything that is an object of opinion

is already determined. But again excellence in deliberation

involves reasoning. The remaining alternative, then, is that it is

correctness of thinking; for this is not yet assertion, since,

while opinion is not inquiry but already assertion, the man who is

deliberating, whether he does so well or ill, is searching for

something and calculating.



     But excellence in deliberation is a certain correctness of

deliberation; hence we must first inquire what deliberation is and

what it is about. And, there being more than one kind of

correctness, plainly excellence in deliberation is not any and

every kind; for the incontinent man and the bad man will reach as

a result of his calculation what he sets himself to do, so that he

will have deliberated correctly, but he will have got for himself

a great evil. Now to have deliberated well is thought to be a good

thing; for it is this kind of correctness of deliberation that is

excellence in deliberation, viz. that which tends to attain what is

good. But it is possible to attain even good by a false deduction

and to attain what one ought to do but not by the right means, the

middle term being false; so that this too is not yet excellence in

deliberation--this state in virtue of which one attains what one

ought but not by the right means. Again it is possible to attain it

by long deliberation while another man attains it quickly.

Therefore in the former case we have not yet got excellence in

deliberation, which is rightness with regard to the

expedient--rightness in respect both of the conclusion, the manner,

and the time. Further it is possible to have deliberated well

either in the unqualified sense or with reference to a particular

end. Excellence in deliberation in the unqualified sense, then, is

that which succeeds with reference to what is the end in the

unqualified sense, and excellence in deliberation in a particular

sense is that which succeeds relatively to a particular end. If,

then, it is characteristic of men of prudence to have deliberated

well, excellence in deliberation will be correctness with regard to

what conduces to the end of which prudence is the true

apprehension.



     10 ú Understanding, also, and goodness of understanding, in

virtue of which men are said to be men of understanding or of good

understanding, are neither entirely the same as opinion or

knowledge (for at that rate all men would have been men of

understanding), nor are they one of the particular sciences, such

as medicine, the science of things connected with health, or

geometry, the science of spatial magnitudes. For understanding is

neither about things that are always and are unchangeable, nor

about any and every one of the things that come into being, but

about things which may become subjects of questioning and

deliberation. Hence it is about the same objects as prudence; but

understanding and prudence are not the same. For prudence issues

commands, since its end is what ought to be done or not to be done;

but understanding only judges. (Understanding is identical with

goodness of understanding, men of understanding with men of good

understanding.) Now understanding is neither the having nor the

acquiring of prudence; but as learning is called understanding when

it means the exercise of the faculty of knowledge, so

'understanding' is applicable to the exercise of the faculty of

opinion for the purpose of judging of what some one else says about

matters with which prudence is concerned--and of judging soundly;

for 'well' and 'soundly' are the same thing. And from this has come

the use of the name 'understanding' in virtue of which men are said

to be of good understanding, viz. from the application of the word

to learning; for we often call learning understanding.

               11 ú What is called judgement, in virtue of which men are said

to be forgiving and to have judgement, is the right discrimination

of the equitable. This is shown by the fact that we say the

equitable man is above all others a man of forgiveness and identify

equity with forgiveness about certain facts. And forgiveness is

judgement which discriminates what is equitable and does so

correctly; and correct judgement is that which judges what is true.



     Now all the states we have considered converge, as might be

expected, on the same point; for when we speak of judgement and

understanding and prudence and comprehension we credit the same

people with possessing judgement and comprehension and with having

prudence and understanding. For all these faculties deal with

ultimates, i.e. with particulars; and being a man of understanding

and of good judgement or of forgiveness consists in being able to

judge about the things with which prudence is concerned; for the

equities are common to all good men in relation to other men. Now

all things which have to be done are included among particulars or

ultimates; for not only must the man of prudence know particular

facts, but understanding and judgement are also concerned with

things to be done, and these are ultimates. And comprehension is

concerned with the ultimates in both directions; for both the

primary definitions and the ultimates are objects of comprehension

and not of argument, and in demonstrations comprehension grasps the

unchangeable and primary definitions, while in practical reasonings

it grasps the last and contingent fact, i.e. the second

proposition. For these are the starting-points of that for the sake

of which, since the universals are reached from the particulars; of

these therefore we must have perception, and this is comprehension.



     This is why these states are thought to be natural

endowments--why, while no one is thought to be wise by nature,

people are thought to have by nature judgement, understanding, and

comprehension. This is shown by the fact that we think our powers

correspond to our time of life, and that a particular age brings

with it comprehension and judgement; this implies that nature is

the cause. [Hence comprehension is both beginning and end; for

demonstrations are from these and about these.]  Therefore we ought

to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of experienced

and older people or of people of prudence not less than to

demonstrations; for because experience has given them an eye they

see aright.



     We have stated, then, what prudence and wisdom are, and with

what each of them is concerned, and we have said that each is the

excellence of a different part of the soul.



     12 ú Difficulties might be raised as to the utility of these

qualities of mind. For wisdom will contemplate none of the things

that will make a man happy (for it is not concerned with any coming

into being), and though prudence has this merit, for what purpose

do we need it? Prudence is the quality of mind concerned with

things just and noble and good for man, but these are the things

which it is the mark of a good man to do, and we are none the more

able to act for knowing them if the excellences are states, just as

we are none the better able to act for knowing the things that are

healthy and sound, in the sense not of producing but of issuing

from the state of health; for we are none the more able to act for

having the art of medicine or of gymnastics. But if we are to say

that it is useful not for the sake of this but for the sake of

becoming good, prudence will be of no use to those who are good;

but again it is of no use to those who are not; for it will make no

difference whether they have prudence themselves or obey others who

have it, and it would be enough for us to do what we do in the case

of health; though we wish to become healthy, yet we do not learn

the art of medicine. Besides this, it would be thought strange if

prudence, being inferior to wisdom, is to be put in authority over

it, as seems to be implied by the fact that the art which produces

anything rules and issues commands about that thing.



     These, then, are the questions we must discuss; so far we have

only stated the difficulties.



     Now first let us say that in themselves these states must be

worthy of choice because they are the excellences of the two parts

of the soul respectively, even if neither of them produces

anything.



     Secondly, they do produce something, not as the art of

medicine produces health, however, but as health produces health;

so does wisdom produce happiness; for, being a part of excellence

entire, by being possessed and by actualizing itself it makes a man

happy.



     Again, the function of man is achieved only in accordance with

prudence as well as with moral excellence; for excellence makes the

aim right, and prudence the things leading to it. (Of the fourth

part of the soul--the nutritive--there is no such excellence; for

there is nothing which it is in its power to do or not to do.)



     With regard to our being none the more able to do because of

our prudence what is noble and just, let us begin a little further

back, starting with the following principle. As we say that some

people who do just acts are not necessarily just, i.e. those who do

the acts ordained by the laws either unwillingly or owing to

ignorance or for some other reason and not for the sake of the acts

themselves (though, to be sure, they do what they should and all

the things that the good man ought), so is it, it seems, that in

order to be good one must be in a certain state when one does the

several acts, i.e. one must do them as a result of choice and for

the sake of the acts themselves. Now excellence makes the choice

right, but the question of the things which should naturally be

done to carry out our choice belongs not to excellence but to

another faculty. We must devote our attention to these matters and

give a clearer statement about them. There is a faculty which is

called cleverness; and this is such as to be able to do the things

that tend towards the mark we have set before ourselves, and to hit

it. Now if the mark be noble, the cleverness is laudable, but if

the mark be bad, the cleverness is mere villainy; hence we call

clever both men of prudence and villains. Prudence is not the

faculty, but it does not exist without this faculty. And this eye

of the soul acquires its formed state not without the aid of

excellence as has been said and is plain; for inferences which deal

with acts to be done are things which involve a starting-point,

viz. 'since the end, i.e. what is best, is of such and such a

nature', whatever it may be (let it for the sake of argument be

what we please); and this is not evident except to the good man;

for wickedness perverts us and causes us to be deceived about the

starting-points of action. Therefore it is evident that it is

impossible to be practically wise without being good.



     13 ú We must therefore consider excellence also once more; for

virtue too is similarly related; as prudence is to cleverness--not

the same, but like it--so is natural excellence to excellence in

the strict sense. For all men think that each type of character

belongs to its possessors in some sense by nature; for from the

very moment of birth we are just or fitted for self-control or

brave or have the other moral qualities; but yet we seek something

else as that which is good in the strict sense--we seek for the

presence of such qualities in another way. For both children and

brutes have the natural dispositions to these qualities, but

without thought these are evidently hurtful. Only we seem to see

this much, that, while one may be led astray by them, as a strong

body which moves without sight may stumble badly because of its

lack of sight, still, if a man once acquires thought that makes a

difference in action; and his state, while still like what it was,

will then be excellence in the strict sense. Therefore, as in the

part of us which forms opinions there are two types, cleverness and

prudence, so too in the moral part there are two types, natural

excellence and excellence in the strict sense, and of these the

latter involves prudence. This is why some say that all the

excellences are forms of prudence, and why Socrates in one respect

was on the right track while in another he went astray; in thinking

that all the excellences were forms of prudence he was wrong, but

in saying they implied prudence he was right. This is confirmed by

the fact that even now all men, when they define excellence, after

naming the state and its objects add 'that (state) which is in

accordance with the right reason'; now the right reason is that

which is in accordance with prudence. All men, then, seem somehow

to divine that this kind of state is excellence, viz. that which is

in accordance with prudence. But we must go a little further. For

it is not merely the state in accordance with right reason, but the

state that implies the presence of right reason, that is

excellence; and prudence is right reason about such matters.

Socrates, then, thought the excellences were forms of reason (for

he thought they were, all of them, forms of knowledge), while we

think they involve reason.



     It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not

possible to be good in the strict sense without prudence, nor

prudent without moral excellence. But in this way we may also

refute the dialectical argument whereby it might be contended that

the excellences exist in separation from each other; the same man,

it might be said, is not best equipped by nature for all the

excellences, so that he will have already acquired one when he has

not yet acquired another. This is possible in respect of the

natural excellences, but not in respect of those in respect of

which a man is called without qualification good; for with the

presence of the one quality, prudence, will be given all the

excellences. And it is plain that, even if it were of no practical

value, we should have needed it because it is the excellence of the

part of us in question; plain too that the choice will not be right

without prudence any more than without excellence; for the one

determines the end and the other makes us do the things that lead

to the end.



     But again it is not supreme over wisdom, i.e. over the

superior part of us, any more than the art of medicine is over

health; for it does not use it but provides for its coming into

being; it issues orders, then, for its sake, but not to it.

Further, to maintain its supremacy would be like saying that the

art of politics rules the gods because it issues orders about all

the affairs of the state.











                            BOOK 6







     1 ú Let us now make a fresh beginning and point out that of

moral states to be avoided there are three kinds--vice,

incontinence, brutishness. The contraries of two of these are

evident--one we call excellence, the other continence; to

brutishness it would be most fitting to oppose superhuman

excellence, something heroic and divine, as Homer has represented

Priam saying of Hector that he was very good,



     For he seemed not, he,

     The child of a mortal man, but as one that of God's seed

     came.



Therefore if, as they say, men become gods by excess of excellence,

of this kind must evidently be the state opposed to the brutish

state; for as a brute has no vice or excellence, so neither has a

god; his state is higher than excellence, and that of a brute is a

different kind of state from vice.



     Now, since it is rarely that a godlike man is found--to use

the epithet of the Spartans, who when they admire any one highly

call him a 'godlike man'--so too the brutish type is rarely found

among men, it is found chiefly among foreigners, but some brutish

qualities are also produced by disease or deformity; and we also

call by this evil name those who surpass ordinary men in vice. Of

this kind of disposition, however, we must later make some mention,

while we have discussed vice before; we must now discuss

incontinence and softness (or effeminacy), and continence and

endurance; for we must treat each of the two neither as identical

with excellence or wickedness, nor as a different genus. We must,

as in all other cases, set the phenomena before us and, after first

discussing the difficulties, go on to prove, if possible, the truth

of all the reputable opinions about these affections or, failing

this, of the greater number and the most authoritative; for if we

both resolve the difficulties and leave the reputable opinions

undisturbed, we shall have proved the case sufficiently.



     Now both continence and endurance are thought to be included

among things good and praiseworthy, and both incontinence and

softness among things bad and blameworthy; and the same man is

thought to be continent and ready to abide by the result of his

calculations, or incontinent and ready to abandon them. And the

incontinent man, knowing that what he does is bad, does it as a

result of passion, while the continent man, knowing that his

appetites are bad, does not follow them because of his reason. The

temperate man all men call continent and disposed to endurance,

while the continent man some maintain to be always temperate but

others do not; and some call the self-indulgent man incontinent and

the incontinent man self-indulgent indiscriminately, while others

distinguish them. The man of prudence, they sometimes say, cannot

be incontinent, while sometimes they say that some who are

practically wise and clever are incontinent. Again men are said to

be incontinent with respect to anger, honour, and gain.--These,

then, are the things that are said.



     2 ú Now we may ask what kind of right belief is possessed by

the man who behaves incontinently. That he should behave so when he

has knowledge, some say is impossible; for it would be strange--so

Socrates thought--if when knowledge was in a man something else

could master it and drag it about like a slave. For Socrates was

entirely opposed to the view in question, holding that there is no

such thing as incontinence; no one, he said, acts against what he

believes best--people act so only by reason of ignorance. Now this

view contradicts the plain phenomena, and we must inquire about

what happens to such a man; if he acts by reason of ignorance, what

is the manner of his ignorance? For that the man who behaves

incontinently does not, before he gets into this state, think he

ought to act so, is evident. But there are some who concede certain

of Socrates' contentions but not others; that nothing is stronger

than knowledge they admit, but not that no one acts contrary to

what has seemed to him the better course, and therefore they say

that the incontinent man has not knowledge when he is mastered by

his pleasures, but opinion. But if it is opinion and not knowledge,

if it is not a strong belief that resists but a weak one, as in men

who hesitate, we forgive their failure to stand by such convictions

against strong appetites; but we do not forgive wickedness, nor any

of the other blameworthy states. It is then prudence whose

resistance is mastered? That is the strongest of all states. But

this is absurd; the same man will be at once practically wise and

incontinent, but no one would say that it is the part of a

practically wise man to do willingly the basest acts. Besides, it

has been shown before that the man of prudence is one who will act

(for he is a man concerned with the individual facts) and who has

the other excellences.



     Further, if continence involves having strong and bad

appetites, the temperate man will not be continent nor the

continent man temperate; for a temperate man will have neither

excessive nor bad appetites. But the continent man must; for if the

appetites are good, the state that restrains us from following them

is bad, so that not all continence will be good; while if they are

weak and not bad, there is nothing admirable in resisting them, and

if they are weak and bad, there is nothing great in resisting these

either.



     Further, if continence makes a man ready to stand by any and

every opinion, it is bad, i.e. if it makes him stand even by a

false opinion; and if incontinence makes a man apt to abandon any

and every opinion, there will be a good incontinence, of which

Sophocles' Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes will be an instance; for

he is to be praised for not standing by what Odysseus persuaded him

to do, because he is pained at telling a lie.



     Further, the sophistic argument presents a difficulty; for,

because they want to produce paradoxical results to show how clever

they are, when they succeed the resulting inference presents a

difficulty (for thought is bound fast when it will not rest because

the conclusion does not satisfy it, and cannot advance because it

cannot refute the argument). There is an argument from which it

follows that folly coupled with incontinence is excellence; for a

man does the opposite of what he believes owing to incontinence,

but believes what is good to be evil and something that he should

not do, and in consequence he will do what is good and not what is

evil.



     Further, he who on conviction does and pursues and chooses

what is pleasant would be thought to be better than one who does so

as a result not of calculation but of incontinence; for he is

easier to cure since he may be persuaded to change his mind. But to

the incontinent man may be applied the proverb 'when water chokes,

what is one to wash it down with?' If he had been persuaded of the

rightness of what he does, he would have desisted when he was

persuaded to change his mind; but now he acts in spite of his being

persuaded of something quite different.



     Further, if incontinence and continence are concerned with any

and every kind of object, who is it that is incontinent in the

unqualified sense? No one has all the forms of incontinence, but we

say some people are incontinent without qualification.



     3 ú Of some such kind are the difficulties that arise; some of

these points must be refuted and the others left in possession of

the field; for the solution of the difficulty is the discovery of

the truth. We must consider first, then, whether incontinent people

act knowingly or not, and in what sense knowingly; then with what

sorts of object the incontinent and the continent man may be said

to be concerned (i.e. whether with any and every pleasure and pain

or with certain determinate kinds), and whether the continent man

and the man of endurance are the same or different; and similarly

with regard to the other matters germane to this inquiry. The

starting-point of our investigation is the question whether the

continent man and the incontinent are differentiated by their

objects or by their attitude, i.e. whether the continent man is

incontinent simply by being concerned with such and such objects,

or, instead, by his attitude, or, instead of that, by both these

things; the second question is whether incontinence and continence

are concerned with any and every object or not. The man who is

incontinent in the unqualified sense is neither concerned with any

and every object, but with precisely those with which the

self-indulgent man is concerned, nor is he characterized by being

simply related to these (for then his state would be the same as

self-indulgence), but by being related to them in a certain way.

For the one is led on in accordance with his own choice, thinking

that he ought always to pursue the present pleasure; while the

other does not think so, but yet pursues it.

               As for the suggestion that it is true opinion and not

knowledge against which we act incontinently, that makes no

difference to the argument; for some people when in a state of

opinion do not hesitate, but think they know exactly. If, then, it

is owing to their weak conviction those who have opinion are more

likely to act against their belief than those who know, there will

be no difference between knowledge and opinion; for some men are no

less convinced of what they think than others of what they know; as

is shown by the case of Heraclitus. But since we use the word

'know' in two senses (for both the man who has knowledge but is not

using it and he who is using it are said to know), it will make a

difference whether, when a man does what he should not, he has the

knowledge but is not exercising it, or is exercising it; for the

latter seems strange, but not the former.



     Further, since there are two kinds of propositions, there is

nothing to prevent a man's having both and acting against his

knowledge, provided that he is using only the universal and not the

particular; for it is particular acts that have to be done. And

there are also two kinds of universal; one is predicable of the

agent, the other of the object; e.g. 'dry food is good for every

man', and 'I am a man', or 'such and such food is dry'; but whether

this food is such and such, of this the incontinent man either has

not or is not exercising the knowledge. There will, then, be,

firstly, an enormous difference between these manners of knowing,

so that to know in one way would not seem anything strange, while

to know in the other way would be extraordinary.



     And further the possession of knowledge in another sense than

those just named is something that happens to men; for within the

case of having knowledge but not using it we see a difference of

state, admitting of the possibility of having knowledge in a sense

and yet not having it, as in the instance of a man asleep, mad, or

drunk. But now this is just the condition of men under the

influence of passions; for outbursts of anger and sexual appetites

and some other such passions, it is evident, actually alter our

bodily condition, and in some men even produce fits of madness. It

is plain, then, that incontinent people must be said to be in a

similar condition to these. The fact that men use the language that

flows from knowledge proves nothing; for even men under the

influence of these passions utter scientific proofs and verses of

Empedocles, and those who have just begun to learn can string

together words, but do not yet know; for it has to become part of

themselves, and that takes time; so that we must suppose that the

use of language by men in an incontinent state means no more than

its utterance by actors on the stage.



     Again, we may also view the cause as follows with reference to

the facts of nature. The one opinion is universal, the other is

concerned with the particular facts, and here we come to something

within the sphere of perception; when a single opinion results from

the two, the soul must in one type of case affirm the conclusion,

while in the case of opinions concerned with production it must

immediately act (e.g. if everything sweet ought to be tasted, and

this is sweet, in the sense of being one of the particular sweet

things, the man who can act and is not restrained must at the same

time actually act accordingly). When, then, the universal opinion

is present in us restraining us from tasting, and there is also the

opinion that everything sweet is pleasant, and that this is sweet

(now this is the opinion that is active), and when appetite happens

to be present in us, the one opinion bids us avoid the object, but

appetite leads us towards it (for it can move each of our bodily

parts); so that it turns out that a man behaves incontinently under

the influence (in a sense) of reason and opinion, and of opinion

not contrary in itself, but only incidentally--for the appetite is

contrary not the opinion--to right reason. It also follows that

this is the reason why the lower animals are not incontinent, viz.

because they have no universal beliefs but only imagination and

memory of particulars.



     The explanation of how the ignorance is dissolved and the

incontinent man regains his knowledge, is the same as in the case

of the man drunk or asleep and is not peculiar to this condition;

we must go to the students of natural science for it. Now, the last

proposition both being an opinion about a perceptible object, and

being what determines our actions, this a man either has not when

he is in the state of passion, or has it in the sense in which

having knowledge did not mean knowing but only talking, as a

drunken man may utter the verses of Empedocles. And because the

last term is not universal nor equally an object of knowledge with

the universal term, the position that Socrates sought to establish

actually seems to result; for it is not what is thought to be

knowledge proper that the passion overcomes (nor is it this that is

dragged about as a result of the passion), but perceptual

knowledge.



     This must suffice as our answer to the question of whether men

can act incontinently when they know or not, and in what sense they

know.



     4 ú We must next discuss whether there is any one who is

incontinent without qualification, or all men who are incontinent

are so in a particular sense, and if so, with what sort of objects.

That both continent persons and persons of endurance, and

incontinent and soft persons, are concerned with pleasures and

pains, is evident.



     Now of the things that produce pleasure some are necessary,

while others are worthy of choice in themselves but admit of

excess, the bodily causes of pleasure being necessary (by such I

mean both those concerned with food and those concerned with sexual

intercourse, i.e. the bodily matters with which we defined

self-indulgence and temperance as being concerned), while the

others are not necessary but worthy of choice in themselves (e.g.

victory, honour, wealth, and good and pleasant things of this

sort). This being so, those who go to excess with reference to the

latter, contrary to the right reason which is in themselves, are

not called incontinent simply, but incontinent with the

qualification 'in respect of money, gain, honour, or anger',--not

simply incontinent, on the ground that they are different from

incontinent people and are called incontinent by reason of a

resemblance. (Compare the case of Man, who won a contest at the

Olympic games; in his case the general formula of man differed

little from the one peculiar to him, but yet it was different.)

This is shown by the fact that incontinence either without

qualification or in some particular respect is blamed not only as

a fault but as a kind of vice, while none of the others is so

blamed.



     But of the people who are incontinent with respect to bodily

enjoyments, with which we say the temperate and the self-indulgent

man are concerned, he who pursues the excesses of things

pleasant--and shuns those of things painful, of hunger and thirst

and heat and cold and all the objects of touch and taste--not by

choice but contrary to his choice and his judgement, is called

incontinent, not with the qualification 'in respect of this or

that', e.g. of anger, but without qualification. This is confirmed

by the fact that men are called soft with regard to these

pleasures, but not with regard to any of the others. And for this

reason we group together the incontinent and the self-indulgent,

the continent and the temperate man--but not any of these other

types--because they are concerned somehow with the same pleasures

and pains; but although these are concerned with the same objects,

they are not similarly related to them, but some of them choose

them while the others do not choose them.



     This is why we should describe as self-indulgent rather the

man who without appetite or with but a slight appetite pursues the

excesses and avoids moderate pains, than the man who does so

because of his strong appetites; for what would the former do, if

he had in addition a vigorous appetite, and a violent pain at the

lack of the necessary objects?



     Now of appetites and pleasures some belong to the class of

things generically noble and good--for some pleasant things are by

nature worthy of choice--while others are contrary to these, and

others are intermediate, to adopt our previous distinction, e.g.

wealth, gain, victory, honour. And with reference to all objects

whether of this or of the intermediate kind men are not blamed for

being affected by them, for desiring and loving them, but for doing

so in a certain way, i.e. for going to excess. (This is why all

those who contrary to reason either are mastered by or pursue one

of the objects which are naturally noble and good, e.g. those who

busy themselves more than they ought about honour or about children

and parents--for these too are goods, and those who busy themselves

about them are praised; but yet there is an excess even in them--if

like Niobe one were to fight even against the gods, or were to be

as much devoted to one's father as Satyrus nicknamed 'the filial',

who was thought to be very silly on this point.) There is no

wickedness, then, with regard to these objects, for the reason

named, viz. because each of them is by nature a thing worthy of

choice for its own sake; yet excesses in respect of them are bad

and to be avoided. Similarly there is no incontinence with regard

to them; for incontinence is not only to be avoided but is also a

thing worthy of blame; but owing to a similarity in the passion

people apply the name incontinence, adding in each case what it is

in respect of, as we may describe as a bad doctor or a bad actor

one whom we should not call bad, simply. As, then, is the case we

do not apply the term without qualification because each of these

conditions is not badness but only analogous to it, so it is clear

that in the other case also that alone must be taken to be

incontinence and continence which is concerned with the same

objects as temperance and self-indulgence, but we apply the term to

anger by virtue of a resemblance; and this is why we say with a

qualification 'incontinent in respect of anger' as we say

'incontinent in respect of honour, or of gain'.



     5 ú Some things are pleasant by nature, and of these some are

so without qualification, and others are so with reference to

particular classes either of animals or of men; while others are

not pleasant by nature, but some of them become so by reason of

deformities, and others by reason of habits, and others by reason

of bad natures. This being so it is possible with regard to each of

the latter kinds to discover similar states; I mean the brutish

states, as in the case of the female who, they say, rips open

pregnant women and devours the infants, or of the things in which

some of the tribes about the Black Sea that have gone savage are

said to delight--in raw meat or in human flesh, or in lending their

children to one another to feast upon--or of the story of Phalaris.



     These states are brutish, but others arise as a result of

disease (or, in some cases, of madness, as with the man who

sacrificed and ate his mother, or with the slave who ate the liver

of his fellow), and others are morbid states resulting from custom,

e.g. the habit of plucking out the hair or of gnawing the nails, or

even coals or earth, and in addition to these paederasty; for these

arise in some by nature and in others, as in those who have been

the victims of lust from childhood, from habit.



     Now those in whom nature is the cause of such a state no one

would call incontinent, any more than one would apply the epithet

to women because of the passive part they play in copulation; nor

would one apply it to those who are in a morbid condition as a

result of habit. To have these various types of habit is beyond the

limits of vice, as brutishness is too; for a man who has them to

master or be mastered by them is not simple incontinence but that

which is so by analogy, as the man who is in this condition in

respect of fits of anger is to be called incontinent in respect of

that feeling, but not incontinent.



     For every excessive state whether of folly, of cowardice, of

self-indulgence, or of bad temper, is either brutish or morbid; the

man who is by nature apt to fear everything, even the squeak of a

mouse, is cowardly with a brutish cowardice, while the man who

feared a weasel did so in consequence of disease; and of foolish

people those who by nature are thoughtless and live by their senses

alone are brutish, like some races of the distant foreigners, while

those who are so as a result of disease (e.g. of epilepsy) or of

madness are morbid. Of these characteristics it is possible to have

some only at times, and not to be mastered by them, e.g. Phalaris

may have restrained a desire to eat the flesh of a child or an

appetite for unnatural sexual pleasure; but it is also possible to

be mastered, not merely to have the feelings. Thus, as the

wickedness which is on the human level is called wickedness simply,

while that which is not is called wickedness not simply but with

the qualification 'brutish' or 'morbid', in the same way it is

plain that some incontinence is brutish and some morbid, while only

that which corresponds to human self-indulgence is incontinence

simply.



     That incontinence and continence, then, are concerned only

with the same objects as self-indulgence and temperance and that

what is concerned with other objects is a type distinct from

incontinence, and called incontinence by a metaphor and not simply,

is plain.



     6 ú That incontinence in respect of anger is less disgraceful

than that in respect of the appetites is what we will now proceed

to see. Anger seems to listen to reason to some extent, but to

mishear it, as do hasty servants who run out before they have heard

the whole of what one says, and then muddle the order, or as dogs

bark if there is but a knock at the door, before looking to see if

it is a friend; so anger by reason of the warmth and hastiness of

its nature, though it hears, does not hear an order, and springs to

take revenge. For reason or imagination informs us that we have

been insulted or slighted, and anger, reasoning as it were that

anything like this must be fought against, boils up straightway;

while appetite, if reason or perception merely says that an object

is pleasant, springs to the enjoyment of it. Therefore anger obeys

reason in a sense, but appetite does not. It is therefore more

disgraceful; for the man who is incontinent in respect of anger is

in a sense conquered by reason, while the other is conquered by

appetite and not by reason.



     Further, we forgive people more easily for following natural

desires, since we forgive them more easily for following such

appetites as are common to all men, and in so far as they are

common; now anger and bad temper are more natural than the

appetites for excess, i.e. for unnecessary objects. Take for

instance the man who defended himself on the charge of striking his

father by saying 'yes, but he struck his father, and he struck his,

and' (pointing to his child) 'this boy will strike me when he is a

man; it runs in the family'; of the man who when he was being

dragged along by his son bade him stop at the doorway, since he

himself had dragged his father only as far as that.



     Further, those who are more given to plotting against others

are more unjust. Now a passionate man is not given to plotting, nor

is anger itself--it is open; but the nature of appetite is

illustrated by what the poets call Aphrodite, 'guile-weaving

daughter of Cyprus', and by Homer's words about her 'embroidered

girdle':



               And the whisper of wooing is there,

     Whose subtlety stealeth the wits of the wise, how prudent

soe'er.



Therefore if this form of incontinence is more unjust and

disgraceful than that in respect of anger, it is both incontinence

without qualification and in a sense vice.



     Further, no one commits wanton outrage with a feeling of pain,

but every one who acts in anger acts with pain, while the man who

commits outrage acts with pleasure. If, then, those acts at which

it is most just to be angry are more unjust, the incontinence which

is due to appetite is the more unjust; for there is no wanton

outrage involved in anger.



     Plainly, then, the incontinence concerned with appetite is

more disgraceful than that concerned with anger, and continence and

incontinence are concerned with bodily appetites and pleasures; but

we must grasp the differences among the latter themselves. For, as

has been said at the beginning, some are human and natural both in

kind and in magnitude, others are brutish, and others are due to

deformities and diseases. Only with the first of these are

temperance and self-indulgence concerned; this is why we call the

lower animals neither temperate nor self-indulgent except by a

metaphor, and only if some one kind of animals exceeds another as

a whole in wantonness, destructiveness, and omnivorous greed; these

have no power of choice or calculation, but they are departures

from what is natural as, among men, madmen are. Now brutishness is

less evil than vice, though more alarming; for it is not that the

better part has been perverted, as in man,--they have no better

part. Thus it is like comparing a lifeless thing with a living in

respect of badness; for the badness of that which has no source of

movement is always less hurtful, and thought is a source. Thus it

is like comparing injustice with an unjust man. Each is in some

sense worse; for a bad man will do ten thousand times as much evil

as a brute.



     7 ú With regard to the pleasures and pains and appetites and

aversions arising through touch and taste, to which both

self-indulgence and temperance were formerly narrowed down, it is

possible to be in such a state as to be defeated even by those of

them which most people master, or to master even those by which

most people are defeated; among these possibilities, those relating

to pleasures are incontinence and continence, those relating to

pains softness and endurance. The state of most people is

intermediate, even if they lean more towards the worse states.



     Now, since some pleasures are necessary while others are not,

and are necessary up to a point while the excesses of them are not,

nor the deficiencies, and this is equally true of appetites and

pains, the man who pursues the excesses of things pleasant, or

pursues to excess necessary objects, and does so by choice, for

their own sake and not at all for the sake of any result distinct

from them, is self-indulgent; for such a man is of necessity

without regrets, and therefore incurable, since a man without

regrets cannot be cured. The man who is deficient is the opposite;

the man who is intermediate is temperate. Similarly, there is the

man who avoids bodily pains not because he is defeated by them but

by choice. (Of those who do not choose such acts, one kind of man

is led to them as a result of the pleasure involved, another

because he avoids the pain arising from the appetite, so that these

types differ from one another. Now any one would think worse of a

man if with no appetite or with weak appetite he were to do

something disgraceful, than if he did it under the influence of

powerful appetite, and worse of him if he struck a blow not in

anger than if he did it in anger; for what would he have done if he

had been strongly affected? This is why the self-indulgent man is

worse than the incontinent.) Of the states named, then, the latter

is rather a kind of softness; the former is self-indulgence. While

to the incontinent man is opposed the continent, to the soft is

opposed the man of endurance; for endurance consists in resisting,

while continence consists in conquering, and resisting and

conquering are different, as not being beaten is different from

winning; this is why continence is also more worthy of choice than

endurance. Now the man who is defective in respect of resistance to

the things which most men both resist and resist successfully is

soft and effeminate; for effeminacy too is a kind of softness; such

a man trails his cloak to avoid the pain of lifting it, and plays

the invalid without thinking himself wretched, though the man he

imitates is a wretched man.



     The case is similar with regard to continence and

incontinence. For if a man is defeated by violent and excessive

pleasures or pains, there is nothing wonderful in that; indeed we

are ready to forgive him if he has resisted, as Theodectes'

Philoctetes does when bitten by the snake, or Carcinus' Cercyon in

the Alope, and as people who try to restrain their laughter burst

out in a guffaw, as happened to Xenophantus. But it is surprising

if a man is defeated by and cannot resist pleasures or pains which

most men can hold out against, when this is not due to heredity or

disease, like the softness that is hereditary with the kings of the

Scythians, or that which distinguishes the female sex from the

male.



     The lover of amusement, too, is thought to be self-indulgent,

but is really soft. For amusement is a relaxation, since it is a

rest; and the lover of amusement is one of the people who go to

excess in this.



     Of incontinence one kind is impetuosity, another weakness. For

some men after deliberating fail, owing to their passion, to stand

by the conclusions of their deliberation, others because they have

not deliberated are led by their passion; since some men (just as

people who first tickle others are not tickled themselves), if they

have first perceived and seen what is coming and have first roused

themselves and their calculative faculty, are not defeated by their

passion, whether it be pleasant or painful. It is keen and

excitable people that suffer especially from the impetuous form of

incontinence; for the former because of their quickness and the

latter because of the violence of their passions do not wait on

reason, because they are apt to follow their imagination.



     8 ú The self-indulgent man, as was said, has no regrets; for

he stands by his choice; but any incontinent man is subject to

regrets. This is why the position is not as it was expressed in the

formulation of the problem, but the self-indulgent man is incurable

and the incontinent man curable; for wickedness is like a disease

such as dropsy or consumption, while incontinence is like epilepsy;

the former is a permanent, the latter an intermittent badness. And

generally incontinence and vice are different in kind; vice is

unconscious of itself, incontinence is not (of incontinent men

themselves, those who become beside themselves are better than

those who possess reason but do not abide by it, since the latter

are defeated by a weaker passion, and do not act without previous

deliberation like the others); for the incontinent man is like the

people who get drunk quickly and on little wine, i.e. on less than

most people.



     Evidently, then, incontinence is not vice (though perhaps it

is so in a qualified sense); for incontinence is contrary to choice

while vice is in accordance with choice; not but what they are

similar in respect of the actions they lead to; as in the saying of

Demodocus about the Milesians, 'the Milesians are not without

sense, but they do the things that senseless people do', so too

incontinent people are not unjust but they will do unjust acts.



     Now, since the incontinent man is apt to pursue, not on

conviction, bodily pleasures that are excessive and contrary to

right reason, while the self-indulgent man is convinced because he

is the sort of man to pursue them, it is on the contrary the former

that is easily persuaded to change his mind, while the latter is

not. For excellence and vice respectively preserve and destroy the

first principle, and in actions that for the sake of which is the

first principle, as the hypotheses are in mathematics; neither in

that case is it reason that teaches the first principles, nor is it

so here--excellence either natural or produced by habituation is

what teaches right opinion about the first principle. Such a man as

this, then, is temperate; his contrary is the self-indulgent.



     But there is a sort of man who is carried away as a result of

passion and contrary to right reason--a man whom passion masters so

that he does not act according to right reason, but does not master

to the extent of making him ready to believe that he ought to

pursue such pleasures without reserve; this is the incontinent man,

who is better than the self-indulgent man, and not bad without

qualification; for the best thing in him, the first principle, is

preserved. And contrary to him is another kind of man, he who

abides by his convictions and is not carried away, at least as a

result of passion. It is evident from these considerations that the

latter is a good state and the former a bad one.



     9 ú Is the man continent who abides by any and every reasoning

and any and every choice, or the man who abides by the right

choice, and is he incontinent who abandons any and every choice and

any and every reasoning, or he who abandons the reasoning that is

not false and the choice that is right? this is how we put it

before our statement of the problem. Or is it incidentally any and

every choice but per se the true reasoning and the right choice by

which the one abides and the other does not? If any one chooses or

pursues this for the sake of that, per se he pursues and chooses

the latter, but incidentally the former. But when we speak without

qualification we mean what is per se. Therefore in a sense the one

abides by, and the other abandons, any and every opinion; but

without qualification, the true opinion.



     There are some who are apt to abide by their opinion, who are

called strong-headed, viz. those who are hard to persuade and are

not easily persuaded to change; these have in them something like

the continent man, as the prodigal is in a way like the liberal man

and the rash man like the confident man; but they are different in

many respects. For it is to passion and appetite that the one will

not yield, since on occasion the continent man will be easy to

persuade; but it is to reason that the others refuse to yield, for

they do form appetites and many of them are led by their pleasures.

Now the people who are strong-headed are the opinionated, the

ignorant, and the boorish--the opinionated being influenced by

pleasure and pain; for they delight in the victory they gain if

they are not persuaded to change, and are pained if their decisions

become null and void as decrees sometimes do; so that they are more

like the incontinent than the continent man.



     But there are some who fail to abide by their resolutions, not

as a result of incontinence, e.g. Neoptolemus in Sophocles'

Philoctetes; yet it was for the sake of pleasure that he did not

stand fast--but a noble pleasure; for telling the truth was noble

to him, but he had been persuaded by Odysseus to tell the lie. For

not every one who does anything for the sake of pleasure is either

self-indulgent or bad or incontinent, but he who does it for a

disgraceful pleasure.



     Since there is also a sort of man who takes less delight than

he should in bodily things, and does not abide by reason, he who is

intermediate between him and the incontinent man is the continent

man; for the incontinent man fails to abide by reason because he

delights too much in them, and this man because he delights in them

too little; while the continent man abides by it and does not

change on either account. Now if continence is good, both the

contrary states must be bad, as they actually appear to be; but

because the other extreme is seen in few people and seldom, as

temperance is thought to be contrary only to self-indulgence, so is

continence to incontinence.



     Since many names are applied analogically, it is by analogy

that we have come to speak of the continence of the temperate man;

for both the continent man and the temperate man are such as to do

nothing contrary to reason for the sake of the bodily pleasures,

but the former has and the latter has not bad appetites, and the

latter is such as not to feel pleasure contrary to reason, while

the former is such as to feel pleasure but not to be led by it. And

the incontinent and the self-indulgent man are also like one

another; they are different, but both pursue bodily pleasures--the

latter, however, also thinking that he ought to do so, while the

former does not think this.



     10 ú Nor can the same man have prudence and be incontinent;

for it has been shown that a man is at the same time practically

wise, and good in respect of character. Further, a man has prudence

not by knowing only but by acting; but the incontinent man is

unable to act--there is, however, nothing to prevent a clever man

from being incontinent; this is why it is sometimes actually

thought that some people have prudence but are incontinent, viz.

because cleverness and prudence differ in the way we have described

in our first discussions, and are near together in respect of their

reasoning, but differ in respect of their choice--nor yet is the

incontinent man like the man who knows and is contemplating a

truth, but like the man who is asleep or drunk. And he acts

voluntarily (for he acts in a sense with knowledge both of what he

does and of that for the sake of which he does it), but is not

wicked since his choice is good; so that he is half-wicked. And he

is not unjust; for he does not act of malice aforethought; of the

two types of incontinent man the one does not abide by the

conclusions of his deliberation, while the excitable man does not

deliberate at all. And thus the incontinent man is like a city

which passes all the right decrees and has good laws, but makes no

use of them, as in Anaxandrides' jesting remark,



     'The city willed it, that cares nought for laws';



but the wicked man is like a city that uses its laws, but has

wicked laws to use.



     Now incontinence and continence are concerned with that which

is in excess of the state characteristic of most men; for the

continent man abides by his resolutions more and the incontinent

man less than most men can.



     Of the forms of incontinence, that of excitable people is more

curable than that of those who deliberate but do not abide by their

decisions, and those who are incontinent through habituation are

more curable than those in whom incontinence is innate; for it is

easier to change a habit than to change one's nature; even habit is

hard to change just because it is like nature, as Evenus says:



     I say that habit's but long practice, friend,

     And this becomes men's nature in the end.





               We have now stated what continence, incontinence, endurance,

and softness are, and how these states are related to each other.



     11 ú The study of pleasure and pain belongs to the province of

the political philosopher; for he is the architect of the end, with

a view to which we call one thing bad and another good without

qualification. Further, it is one of our necessary tasks to

consider them; for not only did we lay it down that moral

excellence and vice are concerned with pains and pleasures, but

most people say that happiness involves pleasure; this is why the

blessed man is called by a name derived from a word meaning

enjoyment.



     Now some people think that no pleasure is a good, either in

itself or incidentally, since the good and pleasure are not the

same; others think that some pleasures are good but that most are

bad. Again there is a third view, that even if all pleasures are

goods, yet the best thing cannot be pleasure. The reasons given for

the view that pleasure is not a good at all are (a) that every

pleasure is a perceptible process to a natural state, and that no

process is of the same kind as its end, e.g. no process of building

of the same kind as a house. (b) A temperate man avoids pleasures.

(c) A man of prudence pursues what is free from pain, not what is

pleasant. (d) The pleasures are a hindrance to thought, and the

more so the more one delights in them, e.g. in sexual pleasure; for

no one could think of anything while absorbed in this. (e) There is

no art of pleasure; but every good is the product of some art. (f)

Children and the brutes pursue pleasures. The reasons for the view

that not all pleasures are good are that (a) there are pleasures

that are actually base and objects of reproach, and (b) there are

harmful pleasures; for some pleasant things are unhealthy. The

reason for the view that the best thing is not pleasure is that

pleasure is not an end but a process.



     12 ú These are pretty much the things that are said. That it

does not follow from these grounds that pleasure is not a good, or

even the chief good, is plain from the following considerations.

First, since that which is good may be so in either of two senses

(one thing good simply and another good for a particular person),

natural constitutions and states, and therefore also movements and

processes, will be correspondingly divisible. Of those which are

thought to be bad some will be bad without qualification but not

bad for a particular person, but worthy of his choice, and some

will not be worthy of choice even for a particular person, but only

at a particular time and for a short period, though not without

qualification; while others are not even pleasures, but seem to be

so, viz. all those which involve pain and whose end is curative,

e.g. the processes that go on in sick persons.



     Further, one kind of good being activity and another being

state, the processes that restore us to our natural state are only

incidentally pleasant; for that matter the activity at work in the

appetites for them is the activity of so much of our state and

nature as has remained unimpaired; for there are actually pleasures

that involve no pain or appetite (e.g. those of contemplation), the

nature in such a case not being defective at all. That the others

are incidental is indicated by the fact that men do not enjoy the

same things when their nature is in its settled state as they do

when it is being replenished, but in the former case they enjoy the

things that are pleasant without qualification, in the latter the

contraries of these as well; for then they enjoy even sharp and

bitter things, none of which is pleasant either by nature or

without qualification. Nor, then, are the pleasures; for as

pleasant things differ, so do the pleasures arising from them.



     Again, it is not necessary that there should be something else

better than pleasure, as some say the end is better than the

process; for pleasures are not processes nor do they all involve

process--they are activities and ends; nor do they arise when we

are becoming something, but when we are exercising some faculty;

and not all pleasures have an end different from themselves, but

only the pleasures of persons who are being led to the completing

of their nature. This is why it is not right to say that pleasure

is a perceptible process, but it should rather be called activity

of the natural state, and instead of 'perceptible' 'unimpeded'. It

is thought to be a process just because they think it is in the

strict sense good; for they think that activity is a process which

it is not.



     The view that pleasures are bad because some pleasant things

are unhealthy is like saying that healthy things are bad because

some healthy things are bad for the pocket; both are bad in the

respect mentioned, but they are not bad for that reason--indeed,

contemplation itself is sometimes injurious to health.



     Neither prudence or any state is impeded by the pleasure

arising from it; it is foreign pleasures that impede, for the

pleasures arising from contemplation and learning will make us

contemplate and learn all the more.



     The fact that no pleasure is the product of any art arises

naturally enough; there is no art of any other activity either, but

only of the capacity; though for that matter the arts of the

perfumer and the cook are thought to be arts of pleasure.



     The arguments that the temperate man avoids pleasure and that

the man of prudence pursues the painless life, and that children

and the brutes pursue pleasure, are all refuted by the same

consideration. We have pointed out in what sense pleasures are good

without qualification and in what sense some are not good; now both

the brutes and children pursue pleasures of the latter kind (and

the man of prudence pursues tranquil freedom from that kind), viz.

those which imply appetite and pain, i.e. the bodily pleasures (for

it is these that are of this nature) and the excesses of them, in

respect of which the self-indulgent man is self-indulgent. This is

why the temperate man avoids these pleasures; for even he has

pleasures of his own.



               13 ú But further it is agreed that pain is bad and to be

avoided; for some pain is without qualification bad, and other pain

is bad because it is in some respect an impediment to us. Now the

contrary of that which is to be avoided, qua something to be

avoided and bad, is good. Pleasure, then, is necessarily a good.

For the answer of Speusippus, that it is just as the greater is

contrary both to the less and to the equal, is not successful;

since he would not say that pleasure is essentially a species of

evil.



     And if certain pleasures are bad, that does not prevent the

best thing from being some pleasure--just as knowledge might be,

though certain kinds of knowledge are bad. Perhaps it is even

necessary, if each state has unimpeded activities, that whether the

activity (if unimpeded) of all our states or that of some one of

them is happiness, this should be the thing most worthy of our

choice; and this activity is a pleasure. Thus the chief good would

be some pleasure, though most pleasures might perhaps be bad

without qualification. And for this reason all men think that the

happy life is pleasant and weave pleasure into happiness--and

reasonably too; for no activity is complete when it is impeded, and

happiness is a complete thing; this is why the happy man needs the

goods of the body and external goods, i.e. those of fortune, viz.

in order that he may not be impeded in these ways. Those who say

that the victim on the rack or the man who falls into great

misfortunes is happy if he is good, are, whether they mean to or

not, talking nonsense. Now because we need fortune as well as other

things, some people think good fortune the same thing as happiness;

but it is not that, for even good fortune itself when in excess is

an impediment, and perhaps should then be no longer called good

fortune; for its limit is fixed by reference to happiness.



     And indeed the fact that all things, both brutes and men,

pursue pleasure in an indication of its being somehow the chief

good:



     No voice is wholly lost that many peoples. . . .



But since no one nature or state either is or is thought the best

for all, neither do all pursue the same pleasure; yet all pursue

pleasure. And perhaps they actually pursue not the pleasure they

think they pursue nor that which they would say they pursue, but

the same pleasure; for all things have by nature something divine

in them. But the bodily pleasures have appropriated the name both

because we oftenest steer our course for them and because all men

share in them; thus because they alone are familiar, men think

there are no others.



     It is evident also that if pleasure and activity is not a

good, it will not be the case that the happy man lives a pleasant

life; for to what end should he need pleasure, if it is not a good

but the happy man may even live a painful life? For pain is neither

an evil nor a good, if pleasure is not; why then should he avoid

it?

               Therefore, too, the life of the good man will not be

pleasanter than that of any one else, if his activities are not

more pleasant.



     14 ú With regard to the bodily pleasures, those who say that

some pleasures are very much to be chosen, viz. the noble

pleasures, but not the bodily pleasures, i.e. those with which the

self-indulgent man is concerned, must consider why, then, the

contrary pains are bad. For the contrary of bad is good. Are the

necessary pleasures good in the sense in which even that which is

not bad is good? Or are they good up to a point? Is it that where

you have states and processes of which there cannot be too much,

there cannot be too much of the corresponding pleasure, and that

where there can be too much of the one there can be too much of the

other also? Now there can be too much of bodily goods, and the bad

man is bad by virtue of pursuing the excess, not by virtue of

pursuing the necessary pleasures (for all men enjoy in some way or

other both dainty foods and wines and sexual intercourse, but not

all men do so as they ought). The contrary is the case with pain;

for he does not avoid the excess of it, he avoids it altogether;

for the alternative to excess of pleasure is not pain, except to

the man who pursues this excess.



     Since we should state not only the truth, but also the cause

of error--for this contributes towards producing conviction, since

when a reasonable explanation is given of why the false view

appears true, this tends to produce belief in the true

view--therefore we must state why the bodily pleasures appear the

more worthy of choice. Firstly, then, it is because they expel

pain; owing to the excesses of pain men pursue excessive and in

general bodily pleasure as being a cure for the pain. Now curative

agencies produce intense feeling--which is the reason why they are

pursued--because they show up against the contrary pain. (Indeed

pleasure is thought not to be good for these two reasons, as has

been said, viz. that some of them are activities belonging to a bad

nature--either congenital, as in the case of a brute, or due to

habit, i.e. those of bad men; while others are meant to cure a

defective nature, and it is better to be in a healthy state than to

be getting into it, but these arise during the process of being

made complete and are therefore only incidentally good.) Further,

they are pursued because of their violence by those who cannot

enjoy other pleasures. At all events some people manufacture

thirsts for themselves. When these are harmless, the practice is

irreproachable; when they are hurtful, it is bad. For they have

nothing else to enjoy, and, besides, a neutral state is painful to

many people because of their nature. For animals are always

toiling, as the students of natural science also testify, saying

that sight and hearing are painful; but we have become used to

this, as they maintain. Similarly, while, in youth, people are,

owing to the growth that is going on, in a situation like that of

drunken men, and youth is pleasant, on the other hand people of

excitable nature always need relief; for even their body is ever in

torment owing to its special composition, and they are always under

the influence of violent desire; but pain is driven out both by the

contrary pleasure, and by any chance pleasure if it be strong; and

for these reasons they become self-indulgent and bad. But the

pleasures that do not involve pains do not admit of excess; and

these are among the things pleasant by nature and not incidentally.

By things pleasant incidentally I mean those that act as cures (for

because as a result people are cured, through some action of the

part that remains healthy, for this reason the process is thought

pleasant); things naturally pleasant are those that stimulate the

action of the healthy nature.



     There is no one thing that is always pleasant, because our

nature is not simple but there is another element in us as well,

inasmuch as we are perishable creatures, so that if the one element

does something, this is unnatural to the other nature, and when the

two elements are evenly balanced, what is done seems neither

painful nor pleasant; for if the nature of anything were simple,

the same action would always be most pleasant to it. This is why

God always enjoys a single and simple pleasure; for there is not

only an activity of movement but an activity of immobility, and

pleasure is found more in rest than in movement. But 'change in all

things is sweet', as the poet says, because of some vice; for as it

is the vicious man that is changeable, so the nature that needs

change is vicious; for it is not simple nor good.



     We have now discussed continence and incontinence, and

pleasure and pain, both what each is and in what sense some of them

are good and others bad; it remains to speak of friendship.











                            BOOK 7



     1 ú Friendship, what it is and of what nature, who is a

friend, and whether friendship has one or many senses (and if many,

how many), and, further, how we should treat a friend, and what is

justice in friendship--all this must be examined not less than any

of the things that are noble and desirable in character. For it is

thought to be the special business of the political art to produce

friendship, and men say that excellence is useful because of this,

for those who are unjustly treated by one another cannot be friends

to one another. Further, all say that justice and injustice are

specially exhibited towards friends; the same man seems both good

and a friend, and friendship seems a sort of moral habit; and if

one wishes to make men not wrong one another, one should make them

friends, for genuine friends do not act unjustly. But neither will

men act unjustly if they are just; therefore justice and friendship

are either the same or not far different.



     Further, men believe a friend to be among the greatest of

goods, and friendlessness and solitude to be most terrible, because

all life and voluntary association is with friends; for we spend

our days with our family, kinsmen, or comrades, children, parents,

or wife. The private justice practised to friends depends on

ourselves alone, while justice towards all others is determined by

the laws, and does not depend on us.



     Many questions are raised about friendship. There is the view

of those who include the external world and give the term an

extended meaning; for some think that like is friend to like,

whence the saying 'how God ever draws like to like'; or the saying

'crow to crow'; or 'thief knows thief, and wolf wolf'. The

physicists even systematize the whole of nature on the principle

that like goes to like--whence Empedocles said that the dog sat on

the tile because it was most like it. Some, then, describe a friend

thus, but others say that opposites are friends; for they say the

loved and desired is in every case a friend, but the dry does not

desire the dry but the moist--whence the sayings, 'Earth loves the

rain', and 'in all things change is pleasant'; but change is change

to an opposite. And like hates like, for 'potter is jealous of

potter', and animals nourished from the same source are enemies.

Such, then, is the discrepancy between these views; for some think

the like a friend, and the opposite an enemy--'the less is ever the

enemy of the more, and begins a day of hate'; and, further, the

places of contraries are separate, but friendship seems to bring

together. But others think opposites are friends, and Heraclitus

blames the poet who wrote 'may strife perish from among gods and

men'; for (says he) there could not be harmony without the low and

the high note, nor living things without male and female, two

opposites. There are, then, these two views about friendship; and

they are too general and far removed. There are other views that

come nearer to and are more suitable to the phenomena. Some think

that bad men cannot be friends but only the good; while others

think it strange that mothers should not love their own children.

(Even among the brutes we find such friendship; at least they

choose to die for their children.) Some, again, think that we only

regard the useful as a friend, their proof being that all pursue

the useful, but the useless, even in themselves, they throw away

(as old Socrates said, citing the case of our spittle, hairs, and

nails), and that we cast off useless parts, and in the end at death

our very body, the corpse being useless; but those who have a use

for it keep it, as in Egypt. Now all these things seem opposed to

one another; for the like is useless to the like, and contrariety

is furthest removed from likeness, and the contrary is not useless

to its contrary, for contraries destroy one another. Further, some

think it easy to acquire a friend, others a very rare thing to

recognize one, and impossible without misfortune; for all wish to

seem friends to the prosperous. But others would have us distrust

even those who remain with us in misfortune, alleging that they are

deceiving us and making pretence, that by giving their company to

us when we are in misfortune they may obtain our friendship when we

are again prosperous.



     2 ú We must, then, find a method that will best explain the

views held on these topics, and also put an end to difficulties and

contradictions. And this will happen if the contrary views are seen

to be held with some show of reason; such a view will be most in

harmony with the phenomena; and both the contradictory statements

will in the end stand, if what is said is true in one sense but

untrue in another.



     Another puzzle is whether the good or the pleasant is the

object of love. For if we love what we desire--and love is of this

kind, for 'none is a lover but one who ever loves'--and if desire

is for the pleasant, in this way the object of love would be the

pleasant; but if it is what we wish for, then it is the good--the

good and the pleasant being different.



     About all these and the other cognate questions we must

attempt to gain clear distinctions, starting from the following

principle. The desired and the wished for is either the good or the

apparent good. Now this is why the pleasant is desired, for it is

an apparent good; for some think it such, and to some it appears

such, though they do not think so. For appearance and opinion do

not reside in the same part of the soul. It is clear, then, that we

love both the good and the pleasant.



     This being settled, we must make another assumption. Of the

good some is absolutely good, some good to a particular man, though

not absolutely; and the same things are at once absolutely good and

absolutely pleasant. For we say that what is advantageous to a body

in health is absolutely good for a body, but not what is good for

a sick body, such as drugs and the knife. Similarly, things

absolutely pleasant to a body are those pleasant to a healthy and

unaffected body, e.g. seeing in light, not in darkness, though the

opposite is the case to one with ophthalmia. And the pleasanter

wine is not that which is pleasant to one whose tongue has been

spoilt by inebriety (for they add vinegar to it), but that which is

pleasant to sensation unspoiled. So with the soul; what is pleasant

not to children or brutes, but to the adult, is really pleasant; at

least, when we remember both we choose the latter. And as the child

or brute is to the adult man, so are the bad and foolish to the

good and sensible. To these, that which suits their habit is

pleasant, and that is the good and noble.



     Since, then, 'good' has many meanings--for one thing we call

good because its nature is such, and another because it is

profitable and useful--and further, the pleasant is in part

absolutely pleasant and absolutely good, and in part pleasant to a

particular individual and apparently good; just as in the case of

inanimate things we may choose and love a thing for either of these

reasons, so in the case of a man loving one man because of his

character or because of excellence, another because he is

profitable and useful, another because he is pleasant, and for

pleasure. So a man becomes a friend when he is loved and returns

that love, and this is recognized by the two men in question.



     There must, then, be three kinds of friendship, not all being

so named for one thing or as species of one genus, nor yet having

the same name quite by mere accident. For all the senses are

related to one which is the primary, just as is the case with the

word 'medical'; for we speak of a medical soul, body, instrument,

or act, but properly the name belongs to that primarily so called.

The primary is that of which the definition is contained in the

definition of all; e.g. a medical instrument is one that a medical

man would use, but the definition of the contained is not implied

in that of 'medical man'. Everywhere, then, we seek for the

primary. But because the universal is primary, they also take the

primary to be universal, and this is an error. And so they are not

able to do justice to all the phenomena of friendship; for since

one definition will not suit all, they think there are no other

friendships; but the others are friendships, only not similarly so.

But they, finding the primary friendship will not suit, assuming it

would be universal if really primary, deny that the other

friendships even are friendships; whereas there are many species of

friendship; this was part of what we have already said, since we

have distinguished the three senses of friendship--one due to

excellence, another to usefulness, a third to pleasantness.



     Of these the friendship based on usefulness is that of the

majority; men love one another because of their usefulness and to

the extent of this; so we have the proverb 'Glaucus, a helper is a

friend so long as he fights', and 'the Athenians no longer know the

Megarians'. But the friendship based on pleasure is that of the

young, for they are sensitive to pleasure; therefore also their

friendship easily changes; for with a change in their characters as

they grow up there is also a change in their pleasures. But the

friendship based on excellence is that of the best men.



               It is clear from this that the primary friendship, that of

good men, is a mutual returning of love and choice. For what is

loved is dear to him who loves it, but a man loving in return is

dear to the man loved. This friendship, then, is peculiar to man,

for he alone perceives another's choice. But the other friendships

are found also among the brutes where utility is in some degree

present, both between tame animals and men, and between animals

themselves, as in the case mentioned by Herodotus of the friendship

between the sandpiper and the crocodile, and the coming together

and parting of birds that soothsayers speak of. The bad may be

friends to one another on the ground both of usefulness and of

pleasure; but some deny them to be friends, because there is not

the primary friendship between them; for a bad man will injure a

bad man, and those who are injured by one another do not love one

another; but in fact they do love, only not with the primary

friendship. Nothing prevents their loving with the other kinds; for

owing to pleasure they put up with each other's injury, so long as

they are incontinent. But those whose love is based on pleasure do

not seem to be friends, when we look carefully, because their

friendship is not of the primary kind, being unstable, while that

is stable; it is, however, as has been said, a friendship, only not

the primary kind but derived from it. To speak, then, of friendship

in the primary sense only is to do violence to the phenomena, and

makes one assert paradoxes; but it is impossible for all

friendships to come under one definition. The only alternative left

is that in a sense there is only one friendship, the primary; but

in a sense all kinds are friendship, not as possessing a common

name accidentally without being specially related to one another,

nor yet as falling under one species, but rather as in relation to

one and the same thing.



     But since the same thing is at the same time absolutely good

and absolutely pleasant (if nothing interferes), and the genuine

friend is absolutely the friend in the primary sense, and such is

the man desirable for himself (and he must be such; for the man to

whom one wishes good to happen for himself, one must also desire to

exist), the genuine friend is also absolutely pleasant; hence any

sort of friend is thought pleasant. Again, one ought rather to

distinguish further, for the subject needs reflection. Do we love

what is good for ourselves or what is good absolutely? and is

actual loving attended with pleasure, so that the loved object is

pleasant, or not? For the two must be harmonized. For what is not

absolutely good, but perhaps bad, is something to avoid, and what

is not good for one's self is nothing to one; but what is sought is

that the absolutely good should be good in the further sense of

being good to the individual. For the absolutely good is absolutely

desirable, but for each individual his own; and these must agree.

Excellence brings about this agreement, and the political art

exists to make them agree for those to whom as yet they do not. .

. . And one who is a human being is ready and on the road for this

(for by nature that which is absolutely good is good to him), and

man rather than woman, and the gifted rather than the ungifted; but

the road is through pleasure; what is noble must be pleasant. But

when these two disagree a man cannot yet be perfectly good, for

incontinence may arise; for it is in the disagreement of the good

with the pleasant in the passions that incontinence occurs.



     So that since the primary friendship is grounded on

excellence, friends of this sort will be themselves absolutely

good, and this not because they are useful, but in another way. For

good to the individual and the absolutely good are two, and as with

the profitable so with habits. For the absolutely profitable

differs from what is profitable to an individual, as taking

exercise does from taking drugs. So that the habit called human

excellence is of two kinds, for we will assume man to be one of the

things excellent by nature; for the excellence of the naturally

excellent is an absolute good, but the excellence of that which is

not thus good only to it. Similarly, then, with the pleasant. For

here one must pause and examine whether friendship can exist

without pleasure, how such a friendship differs from other

friendship, and on which of the two--goodness or pleasure--the

loving depends, whether one loves a man because he is good even if

not pleasant, and in any case not for his pleasantness. Now, loving

having two senses, does actual love seem to involve pleasure

because activity is good? It is clear that just as in science what

we have recently contemplated and learnt is most perceptible

because of its pleasantness, so also is the recognition of the

familiar, and the same account applies to both. Naturally, at

least, the absolutely good is absolutely pleasant, and pleasant to

those to whom it is good. From which it at once follows that like

takes pleasure in like, and that nothing is so pleasant to man as

man; and if this is so even before they are perfect, it is clear it

must be so when they are perfect; and the good man is perfect. But

if active loving is a mutual choice with pleasure in each other's

acquaintance, it is clear that in general the primary friendship is

a reciprocal choice of the absolutely good and pleasant because it

is good and pleasant; and this friendship is the habit from which

such choice springs. For its function is an activity, and this is

not external, but in the one who feels love. But the function of

every faculty is external; for it is in something different or in

one's self qua different. Therefore to love is to feel pleasure,

but not to be loved; for to be loved is the activity of what is

lovable, but to love is the activity of friendship also; and the

one is found only in the animate, the other also in the inanimate,

for even inanimate things are loved. But since active loving is to

treat the loved qua loved, and the friend is loved by the friend

qua friend and not qua musician or doctor, the pleasure coming from

him merely as being himself is the pleasure of friendship; for he

loves the object as himself and not for being someone else. So that

if he does not rejoice in him for being good the primary friendship

does not exist, nor should any of his incidental qualities hinder

more than his goodness gives pleasure. For if a man has an

unpleasant odour he is left. For he must be content with goodwill

without actual association. This then is primary friendship, and

all admit it to be friendship. It is through it that the other

friendships seem friendships to some, but are doubted to be such by

others. For friendship seems something stable, and this alone is

stable. For a formed decision is stable, and where we do not act

quickly or easily, we get the decision right. There is no stable

friendship without confidence, but confidence needs time. One must

then make trial, as Theognis says, 'You cannot know the mind of man

or woman till you have tried them as you might cattle'. Nor is a

friend made except through time; they do indeed wish to be friends,

and such a state easily passes muster as friendship. For when men

are eager to be friends, by performing every friendly service to

one another they think they not merely wish to be, but are friends.

But it happens with friendship as with other things; as man is not

in health merely because he wishes to be so, neither are men at

once friends as soon as they wish to be friends. The proof is that

men in this condition, without having made trial of one another,

are easily made enemies; wherever each has allowed the other to

test him, they are not easily made enemies; but where they have

not, they will be persuaded whenever those who try to break up the

friendship produce evidence. It is clear at the same time that this

friendship does not exist between the bad, for the bad man feels

distrust and is malignant to all, measuring others by himself.

Therefore the good are more easily deceived unless experience has

taught them distrust. But the bad prefer natural goods to a friend

and none of them loves a man so much as things; therefore they are

not friends. The proverbial 'community among friends' is not found

among them; the friend is made a part of things, not things

regarded as part of the friend. The primary friendship then is not

found towards many, for it is hard to test many men, for one would

have to live with each. Nor should one choose a friend like a

garment. Yet in all things it seems the mark of a sensible man to

choose the better of two alternatives; and if one has used the

worse garment for a long time and not the better, the better is to

be chosen, but not in place of an old friend one of whom you do not

know whether he is better. For a friend is not to be had without

trial nor in a single day, but there is need of time and so 'the

bushel of salt' has become proverbial. He must also be not merely

good absolutely but good for you, if the friend is to be a friend

to you. For a man is good absolutely by being good, but a friend by

being good for another, and absolutely good and a friend when these

two attributes are combined so that what is absolutely good is good

for the other, or else not absolutely good for the good man, but

good to another in the sense of useful. But the need of active

loving also prevents one from being at the same time a friend to

many; for one cannot be active towards many at the same time.



     From these facts then it is clear that it is correctly said

that friendship is a stable thing, just as happiness is a thing

sufficient in itself. It has been rightly said, 'for nature is

stable but not wealth', but it is still better to say 'excellence'

than 'nature'; and Time is said to show the friend, and bad fortune

rather than good fortune. For then it is clear that the goods of

friends are common (for friends alone instead of things naturally

good and evil--which are the matters with which good and bad

fortune are concerned--choose a man rather than the existence of

some of those things and the non-existence of others). But

misfortune shows those who are not really friends, but friends only

for some utility. But time reveals both sorts; for even the useful

man does not show his usefulness quickly, as the pleasant man does

his pleasantness; yet the absolutely pleasant is not quick to show

himself either. For men are like wines and meats; the pleasantness

of them shows itself quickly, but if it continues longer it is

unpleasant and not sweet, and so it is with men. For the absolutely

pleasant must be determined as such by the end it realizes and the

time for which it continues pleasant. Even the vulgar would admit

this, judging not merely according to results but in the way in

which, speaking of a drink, they call it sweeter. For this is

unpleasant not for the result but from not being continuous, though

it deceives us at the start.



     The first friendship then--by reason of which the others get

the name--is that based on excellence and due to the pleasure of

excellence, as has been said before; the other kinds occur also in

children, brutes, and bad men; whence the sayings, 'like is pleased

with like' and 'bad adheres to bad from pleasure'. For the bad may

be pleasant to one another, not qua bad or qua neither good nor

bad, but (say) as both being musicians, or the one fond of music

and the other a musician, and inasmuch as all have some good in

them, and in this way they harmonize with one another. Further,

they might be useful and profitable to one another, not absolutely

but in relation to their choice, or in virtue of some neutral

characteristic. Also a good man may be a friend to a bad, the bad

being of use to the good in relation to the good man's existing

choice, the good to the incontinent in relation to his existing

choice, and to the bad in relation to his natural choice. And he

will wish for his friend what is good, the absolutely good

absolutely, and conditionally what is good for the friend, so far

as poverty or illness is of advantage to him--and these for the

sake of absolute goods; taking a medicine is an instance, for that

no one wishes, but wishes only for some particular purpose.

Further, a good man and a bad man may be friends in the way in

which those not good might be friends to one another. A man might

be pleasant, not as bad but as partaking in some common property,

e.g. as being musical, or again, so far as there is something good

in all (for which reason some might be glad to associate even with

the good), or in so far as they suit each individual; for all have

something of the good.



     3 ú These then are three kinds of friendship; and in all of

them the word friendship implies a kind of equality. For even those

who are friends through excellence are mutually friends by a sort

of equality of excellence.



     But another variety is the friendship of superiority to

inferiority, e.g. as the excellence of a god is superior to that of

a man (for this is another kind of friendship)--and in general that

of ruler to subject; just as justice in this case is different, for

here it is a proportional equality, not numerical equality. Into

this class falls the relation of father to son and of benefactor to

beneficiary; and there are varieties of these again, e.g. there is

a difference between the relation of father to son, and of husband

to wife, the latter being that of ruler to subject, the former that

of benefactor to beneficiary. In these varieties there is not at

all, or at least not in equal degree, the return of love for love.

For it would be ridiculous to accuse a god because the love one

receives in return from him is not equal to the love given him, or

for the subject to make the same complaint against his ruler. For

the part of a ruler is to receive not to give love, or at least to

give love in a different way. And the pleasure of the man who needs

nothing over his own possessions or child, and that of him who

lacks over what comes to him, are not the same. Similarly also with

those who are friends through use or pleasure, some are on an equal

footing with each other, in others there is the relation of

superiority and inferiority. Therefore those who think themselves

to be on the former footing find fault if the other is not equally

useful to and a benefactor of them; and similarly with regard to

pleasure. This is obvious in the case of lover and beloved; for

this is frequently a cause of strife between them. The lover does

not perceive that the passion in each has not the same reason;

therefore. . . a lover would not say such things. But they think

that there is the same reason for the passion of each.



     4 ú There being, then, as has been said, three kinds of

friendship--based on excellence, utility, and pleasantness--these

again are subdivided each into two, one kind based on equality, the

other on superiority. Both are friendships, but only those between

whom there is equality are friends; it would be absurd for a man to

be the friend of a child, yet certainly he loves and is loved by

him. Sometimes the superior ought to be loved, but if he loves, he

is reproached for loving one undeserving; for measurement is made

by the worth of the friends and a sort of equality. Some then,

owing to inferiority in age, do not deserve to receive an equal

love, and others because of excellence or birth or some other such

superiority possessed by the other person. The superior ought to

claim either not to return the love or not to return it in the same

measure, whether in the friendship of utility, pleasure, or

excellence. Where the superiority is small, disputes naturally

arise; for the small is in some cases of no account, e.g. in

weighing wood, though not in weighing gold. But men judge wrongly

what is small; for their own good by its nearness seems great, that

of another by its distance small. But when the difference is

excessive, then not even those affected seek to make out that their

love should be returned or equally returned, e.g. as if a man were

to claim this from a god. It is clear then that men are friends

when on an equality with each other, but we may have return of love

without their being friends. And it is clear why men seek the

friendship of superiority rather than that of equality; for in the

former they obtain both love and superiority. Therefore with some

the flatterer is more valued than the friend, for he procures the

appearance of both love and superiority for the object of his

flattery. The ambitious are especially of this kind; for to be an

object of admiration involves superiority. By nature some grow up

loving, and others ambitious; the former is one who delights rather

in loving than in being loved, the other tends to be fond of

honour. He, then, who delights in being loved and admired really

loves superiority; the other, the loving, is fond of the pleasure

of loving. This by his mere activity of loving he must have; for to

be loved is an accident; one may be loved without knowing it, but

not love. Loving, rather than being loved, depends on lovingness;

being loved rather depends on the nature of the object of love. And

here is a proof. The friend would choose, if both were not

possible, rather to know than to be known, as we see women do when

allowing others to adopt their children, e.g. Antiphon's

Andromache. For wishing to be known seems to be felt on one's own

account and in order to get, not to do, some good; but wishing to

know is felt in order that one may do and love. Therefore we praise

those who persist in their love towards the dead; for they know but

are not known. That, then, there are several sorts of friendship,

that they are three in number, and what are the differences between

being loved and having love returned, and between friends on an

equality and friends in a relation of superiority and inferiority,

has now been stated.



     5 ú But since 'friendly' is also used more universally, as was

indeed said at the beginning, by those who take in extraneous

considerations--some saying that the like is friendly, and some the

contrary,--we must speak also of the relation of these friendships

to those previously mentioned. The like is brought both under the

pleasant and under the good, for the good is simple, but the bad

various in form; and the good man is ever like himself and does not

change in character; but the bad and the foolish are quite

different in the evening from what they were in the morning.

Therefore unless the bad come to some agreement, they are not

friends to one another but are parted; but unstable friendship is

not friendship. So thus the like is friendly, because the good is

like; but it may also be friendly because of pleasure; for those

like one another have the same pleasures, and everything too is by

nature pleasant to itself. Therefore the voices, habits, and

company of those of the same species are pleasantest to each side,

even in the animals other than man; and in this way it is possible

for even the bad to love one another: 'pleasure glues the bad to

the bad'.



     But opposites are friendly through usefulness; for the like is

useless to itself; therefore master needs slave, and slave master;

man and woman need one another, and the opposite is pleasant and

desired qua useful, not as included in the end but as contributing

towards it. For when a thing has obtained what it desires, it has

reached its end and no longer desires the opposite, e.g. heat does

not desire cold, nor dryness moisture. Yet in a sense the love of

the contrary is love of the good; for the opposites desire one

another because of the mean; they desire one another like tallies

because thus out of the two arises a single mean. Further, the love

is accidentally of the opposite, but per se of the mean, for

opposites desire not one another but the mean. For if over-chilled

they return to the mean by being warmed, and if over-warmed by

being chilled. And so with everything else. Otherwise they are ever

desiring, never in the mean states; but that which is in the mean

delights without desire in what is naturally pleasant, while the

others delight in all that puts them out of their natural

condition. This kind of relation then is found also among inanimate

things; but love occurs when the relation is found among the

living. Therefore some delight in what is unlike themselves, the

austere in the witty, the energetic in the lazy; for they reduce

each other to the mean state. Accidentally, then, as has been said,

opposites are friendly, because of the good.



     The number then of kinds of friendship, and the different

senses in which we speak of 'friends' and of persons as 'loving'

and 'loved', both where this constitutes friendship and where it

does not, have now been stated.



     6 ú The question whether a man is a friend to himself or not

requires much inquiry. For some think that every man is above all

a friend to himself; and they use this friendship as a canon by

which to test his friendship to all other friends. If we look to

argument and to the properties usually thought characteristic of

friends, then the two kinds of friendship are in some of these

respects opposed to one another, but in others alike. For this

friendship--that to oneself--is, in a way, friendship by analogy,

not absolutely. For loving and being loved require two separate

individuals. Therefore a man is a friend to himself rather in the

sense in which we have described the incontinent and continent as

willing or unwilling, namely in the sense that the parts of his

soul are in a certain relation to each other; and all problems of

this sort have a similar explanation, e.g. whether a man can be a

friend or enemy to himself, and whether a man can wrong himself.

For all these relations require two separate individuals; so far

then as the soul is two, these relations can in a sense belong to

it; so far as these two are not separate, the relations cannot

belong to it.



     By a man's attitude to himself the other modes of friendship,

under which we are accustomed to consider friendship in this

discourse, are determined. For a man seems to us a friend, who

wishes the good or what he thinks to be such to someone, not on his

own account but for the sake of that other; or, in another way, if

he wishes for another man existence--even if he is not bestowing

goods--on that other's account and not on his own, he would seem

most of all to be a friend to him. And in yet another manner he

would be a friend to him whom he wishes to live with merely for the

sake of his company and for no other reason; thus fathers wish the

existence of their sons, but prefer to live with others. Now these

various ways of friendship are discordant with one another. For

some think they are not loved, unless the other wishes them this or

that good, some unless their existence or their society is desired.

Further, to sorrow with the sorrowing, for no other reason than

their sorrow, we shall regard as love (e.g. slaves grieve with

their masters because their masters when in trouble are cruel to

them, not for the sake of the masters themselves)--as mothers feel

towards their children, and birds that share one another's pains.

For the friend wants, if possible, not merely to feel pain along

with his friend, but to feel the same pain, e.g. to feel thirsty

when he is thirsty, if that could be, as closely as possible. The

same words are applicable to joy, which, if felt for no other

reason than that the other feels joy, is a sign of friendship.

Further, we say about friendship such things as that friendship is

equality, and true friends a single soul. All such phrases point

back to the single individual; for a man wishes good to himself in

this fashion; for no one benefits himself for some further reason

. . . for he who shows that he loves seems to want to be loved, not

to love. And wishing the existence above all of the friend, living

with him, sharing his joy and his grief, unity of soul with the

friend, the impossibility of even living without one another, and

the dying together are characteristic of a single individual. (For

such is the condition of the individual and he perhaps takes

pleasure in his own company.) All these characters we find in the

relation of the good man to himself. In the bad man, e.g. the

incontinent, there is variance, and for this reason it seems

possible for a man to be at enmity with himself; but so far as he

is single and indivisible, he is an object of desire to himself.

Such is the good man, the man whose friendship is based on

excellence, for the wicked man is not one but many, in the same day

other than himself and fickle. So that a man's friendship for

himself is at bottom friendship towards the good; for because a man

is in a sense like himself, single, and good for himself, so far he

is a friend and object of desire to himself. And this is natural to

man; but the bad man is unnatural. The good man never finds fault

with himself at the moment of his act, like the incontinent, nor

the later with the earlier man, like the penitent, nor the earlier

with the later, like the liar. Generally, if it is necessary to

distinguish as the sophists do, he is related to himself as

Coriscus to good Coriscus. For it is clear that some identical

portion of them is good; for when they blame themselves, they kill

themselves. But every one seems good to himself. But the man that

is good absolutely, seeks to be a friend to himself, as has been

said, since he has within him two parts which by nature desire to

be friends and which it is impossible to tear apart. Therefore in

the case of man each is thought to be the friend of himself; but

not so with the other animals; e.g. the horse is himself to

himself. . . therefore not a friend. Nor are children, till they

have attained the power of choice; for already then the mind is at

variance with the appetite. One's friendship to oneself resembles

the friendship arising from kinship; for neither bond can be

dissolved by one's own power; but even if they quarrel, the kinsmen

remain kinsmen; and so the man remains one so long as he lives.



     The various senses then of loving, and how all friendships

reduce to the primary kind, is clear from what has been said.



     7 ú It is appropriate to the inquiry to study agreement of

feeling and kindly feeling; for some identify these, and others

think they cannot exist apart. Now kindly feeling is not altogether

different from friendship, nor yet the same; for when we

distinguish friendship according to its three sorts, kindly feeling

is found neither in the friendship of usefulness nor in that of

pleasure. For if one wishes well to the other because that is

useful to oneself, one would be so wishing not for the object's

sake, but for his own; but goodwill seems like. . . to be not

goodwill for him who feels the goodwill, but for him towards whom

it is felt. Now if goodwill existed in the friendship towards the

pleasant, then men would feel goodwill towards things inanimate. So

that it is clear that goodwill is concerned with the friendship

that depends on character; but goodwill shows itself in merely

wishing, friendship in also doing what one wishes. For goodwill is

the beginning of friendship; every friend has goodwill, but not all

who have goodwill are friends. He who has goodwill only is like a

man at the beginning, and therefore it is the beginning of

friendship, not friendship itself . . .



     For friends seem to agree in feeling, and those who agree in

feeling seem to be friends. Friendly agreement is not about all

things, but only about things that may be done by those in

agreement and about what relates to their common life. Nor is it

agreement merely in thought or merely in desire, for it is possible

to know one thing and desire the opposite, as in the incontinent

the motives disagree, nor if a man agrees with another in choice,

does he necessarily agree in desire. Agreement is only found in the

case of good men; at least, bad men when they choose and desire the

same things harm one another. Agreement, like friendship, does not

appear to have a single meaning; but still in its primary and

natural form it is good; and so the bad cannot agree; the agreement

of the bad, when they choose and desire the same things, is

something different. And the two parties must so desire the same

thing that it is possible for both to get what they desire; for if

they desire that which cannot belong to both, they will quarrel;

but those in agreement will not quarrel. There is agreement when

the two parties make the same choice as to who is to rule, who to

be ruled, meaning by 'the same', not that each one should choose

himself, but that both should choose the same person. Agreement is

the friendship of fellow citizens. So much then about agreement and

goodwill.



     8 ú It is disputed why benefactors are more fond of the

benefited than the benefited of their benefactors. The opposite

seems to be just. One might suppose it happens from consideration

of utility and what is profitable to oneself; for the benefactor

has a debt due to him, while the benefited has to repay a debt.

This, however, is not all; the reason is partly the general natural

principle--activity is more desirable. There is the same relation

between the effect and the activity, the benefited being as it were

an effect or creation of the benefactor. Hence in animals their

strong feeling for their children both in begetting them and in

preserving them afterwards. And so fathers love their children--and

still more mothers--more than they are loved by them. And these

again love their own children more than their parents, because

nothing is so good as activity; in fact, mothers love more than

fathers because they think the children to be more their own

creation; for the amount of work is measured by the difficulty, and

the mother suffers more in birth. So much then for friendship

towards oneself and among more than one.



               9 ú But justice seems to be a sort of equality and friendship

also involves equality, if the saying is not wrong that 'love is

equality'. Now regimes are all of them a particular form of

justice; for a regime is a community, and every community rests on

justice, so that whatever be the number of species of friendship,

there are the same of justice and community; these all border on

one another, and the species of one have differences akin to those

of the other. But since there is the same relation between soul and

body, artisan and tool, and master and slave, between each of these

pairs there is no community; for they are not two, but the first

term in each is one, and the second a part of this one. Nor is the

good to be divided between the two, but that of both belongs to the

one for the sake of which the pair exists. For the body is the

soul's natural tool, while the slave is as it were a part and

detachable tool of the master, the tool being a sort of inanimate

slave.



     The other communitys are a part of the political community,

e.g. those of the phratries and priestly colleges or pecuniary

communitys. All regimes are found together in the household, both

the true and the corrupt forms, for the same thing is true in

regimes as of harmonies. The government of the children by the

father is kingly, the relation of husband and wife aristocratic,

the relation of brothers that of a commonwealth; the corruptions of

these three are tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. The forms of

justice then are also so many in number.



     But since equality is either numerical or proportional, there

will be various species of justice, friendship, and community; on

numerical equality rests the democratic community, and the

friendship of comrades--both being measured by the same standard,

on proportional the aristocratic and the kingly. For the same thing

is not just for the superior and the inferior; what is proportional

is just. Such is the friendship between father and child; and the

same sort of thing may be seen in communitys.



     10 ú We speak of friendships of kinsmen, comrades, partners,

the so-called 'political friendship'. That of kinsmen has more than

one species, that of brothers and that of father and sons. There is

the friendship based on proportion, as that of the father to his

children, and that based on mere number, e.g. that of brothers, for

this latter resembles the friendship of comrades; for here too age

gives certain privileges. Political friendship has been established

mainly in accordance with utility; for men seem to have come

together because each is not sufficient for himself, though they

would have come together anyhow for the sake of living in company.

Only the political friendship and its parallel corruption are not

merely friendships, but the community is that of friends; other

friendships rest on the relation of superiority. The justice

belonging to the friendship of those useful to one another is

pre-eminently justice, for it is political or political justice.

The concurrence of the saw and the art that uses it is of another

sort; for it is not for some end common to both--it is like

instrument and soul--but for the sake of the user. It is true that

the tool itself receives attention, and it is just that it should

receive it, for its function, that is; for it exists for the sake

of its function. . . . And the essence of a gimlet is twofold, but

more properly it is its activity, namely boring holes. In this

class come the body and a slave, as has been said before.



     To inquire, then, how to behave to a friend is to look for a

particular kind of justice, for generally all justice is in

relation to a friend. For justice involves a number of individuals

who are partners, and the friend is a partner either in family or

in one's scheme of life. For man is not merely a political but also

a household-maintaining animal, and his unions are not, like those

of the other animals, confined to certain times, and formed with

any chance partner, whether male or female; but . . . man has a

tendency to community with those to whom he is by nature akin.

There would, then, be community and a kind of justice, even if

there were no state; and the household is a kind of friendship; the

relation, indeed, of master and servant is that of an art and its

tools, a soul and its body; and these are not friendships, nor

forms of justice, but something similar to justice; just as health

is not justice, but something similar. But the friendship of man

and wife is a friendship based on utility, a community; that of

father and son is the same as that of god to man, of the benefactor

to the benefited, and in general of the natural ruler to the

natural subject. That of brothers to one another is eminently that

of comrades, inasmuch as it involves equality--'for I was not

declared a bastard brother to him; but the same Zeus, my king, was

called the father of both of us'. For this is the language of men

that seek equality. Therefore in the household first we have the

sources and springs of friendship, of political organization, and

of justice.



     But since there are three sorts of friendship, based on

excellence, utility, and pleasantness respectively, and two

varieties of each of these--for each of them may imply either

superiority or equality--and the justice involved in these is clear

from the debates that have been held on it, in a friendship between

superior and inferior the claim for proportion takes different

forms, the superior's claim being one for inverse proportion, i.e.

as he is to the inferior, so should what he receives from the

inferior be to what the inferior receives from him, he being in the

position of ruler to subject; if he cannot get that, he demands at

least numerical equality. For so it is in the other associations,

the two members enjoying an equality sometimes of number, sometimes

of ratio. For if they contributed numerically equal sums of money,

they divide an equal amount, and by an equal number; if not equal

sums, then they divide proportionally. But the inferior inverts

this proportion and joins crosswise. But in this way the superior

would seem to come off the worse, and friendship and community to

be a gratuitous burden. Equality must then be restored and

proportion created by some other means; and this means is honour,

which by nature belongs to a ruler or god in relation to a subject.

The profit and the honour must be equated.



               But political friendship is that resting on equality; it is

based on utility; and just as cities are friends to one another, so

in the like way are citizens. 'The Athenians no longer know the

Megarians'; nor do citizens one another, when they are no longer

useful to one another, and the friendship is merely a temporary one

for a particular exchange of goods. There is here, too, the

relation of ruler and subject which is neither the natural

relation, nor that involved in kingship, but each is ruler and

ruled in turn; nor is it either's purpose to act with the free

beneficence of a god, but that he may share equally in the good and

in the burdensome service. Political friendship, then, claims to be

one based on equality. But of the friendship of utility there are

two kinds, the strictly legal and the moral. Political friendship

looks to equality and to the object as sellers and buyers do; hence

the proverb 'a fixed wage for a friend'. When, then, this political

friendship proceeds by contract, it is of the legal kind; but when

each of the two parties leaves the return for his services to be

fixed by the other, we have the moral friendship, that of comrades.

Therefore recrimination is very frequent in this sort of

friendship; and the reason is that it is unnatural; for friendships

based on utility and based on excellence are different; but these

wish to have both together, associating together really for the

sake of utility, but representing their friendship as moral, like

that of good men; pretending to trust one another they make out

their friendship to be not merely legal. For in general there are

more recriminations in the useful friendship than in either of the

other two (for excellence is not given to recrimination, and

pleasant friends having got what they wanted, and given what they

had, are done with it; but useful friends do not dissolve their

association at once, if their relations are not merely legal but

those of comrades); still the legal form of useful friendship is

free from recrimination. The legal association is dissolved by a

money-payment (for it measures equality in money), but the moral is

dissolved by voluntary consent. Therefore in some countries the law

forbids lawsuits for voluntary transactions between those who

associate thus as friends, and rightly; for good men do not have

bonds of justice with one another; and such as these have dealings

with one another as good and trustworthy men. In this kind of

friendship it is uncertain how either will recriminate on the

other, seeing that they trust each other not in a limited legal way

but on the basis of their characters.



     It is a further problem on which of two grounds we are to

determine what is just, whether by looking to the amount of service

rendered, or to what was its character for the recipient; for, to

borrow the language of Theognis, the service may be 'Small to thee,

O goddess, but great to me'. Or the opposite may happen, as in the

saying, 'this is sport to you but death to me'. Hence, as we have

said, come recriminations. For the benefactor claims a return on

the ground of having done a great service, because he has done it

at the request of the other, or with some other plea of the great

value of the benefit to the other's interest, saying nothing about

what it was to himself; while the recipient insists on its value to

the benefactor, not on its value to himself. Sometimes the receiver

inverts the position, insisting how little the benefit has turned

out to him, while the doer insists on its great magnitude to him,

e.g. if at considerable risk one has benefited another to the

extent of a drachma, the one insists on the greatness of the risk,

the other on the smallness of the money, just as in the repayment

of money--for there the dispute is on this point--the one claims

the value of it when it was lent, the other concedes only the value

of it now when it is returned, unless they have made an explicit

provision in the contract. Political friendship, then, looks to the

agreement and the thing, moral friendship to the choice; here then

we have a truer justice, and a friendly justice. The reason for the

quarrel is that moral friendship is more noble, but useful

friendship more necessary; men start, then, by proposing to be

moral friends, i.e. friends through excellence; but as soon as some

private interest arises, they show clearly they were not so. For

the multitude aim at the noble only when they have plenty of

everything else; and at noble friendship similarly. So that it is

clear what distinctions should be drawn in these matters. If the

two are moral friends, we must look to see if the choice of each is

equal; and then nothing more should be claimed by either from the

other. But if their friendship is of the useful or political kind,

we must consider what would have been profitable lines for an

agreement. And if one declares that they are friends on one basis,

but the other on the other, it is not honourable, if one ought to

do something in return, merely to use fine language; and so too, in

the other cases; but since they have not declared their friendship

a moral friendship, someone must be made judge, so that neither

cheats the other by a false pretence; and so each must put up with

his luck. But that moral friendship is based on choice is clear,

since even if after receiving great benefits one does not repay

them through inability, but repays only to the extent of his

ability, he acts honourably; and a god is satisfied at getting

sacrifices as good as our power allows. But a seller of goods will

not be satisfied if the buyer says he cannot pay more; nor will a

lender of money.



     Recriminations are common in dissimilar friendships, where

action and reaction are not in the same straight line; and it is

not easy to see what is just. For it is hard to measure by just

this one unit different directions; we find this in the relation of

lovers, for there the one pursues the other as a pleasant person,

in order to live with him, while the latter seeks the other at

times for his utility. When the love is over, one changes as the

other changes. Then they calculate the quid pro quo; thus Python

and Pammenes quarrelled; and so do teacher and pupil (for knowledge

and money have no common measure), and so Herodicus the doctor

quarrelled with a patient who paid him only a small fee; such too

was the case of the king and the lyre-player; the former regarded

his associate as pleasant, the latter his as useful; and so the

king, when he had to pay, chose to regard himself as an associate

of the pleasant kind, and said that just as the player had given

him pleasure by singing, so he had given the player pleasure by his

promise. But it is clear here too how one should decide; the

measurement must be by one measure, only here not by a term but by

a ratio; we must measure by proportion, just as one measures in the

associations of citizens. For how is a cobbler to have dealings

with a farmer unless one equates the work of the two by proportion?

So to all whose exchanges are not of the same for the same,

proportion is the measure, e.g. if the one complains that he has

given wisdom, and the other that he has given money, we must

measure first the ratio of wisdom to wealth, and then what has been

given for each. For if the one gives half of the lesser, and the

other does not give even a small fraction of the greater object, it

is clear that the latter does injustice. Here, too, there may be a

dispute at the start, if one party pretends they have come together

for use, and the other denies this and alleges that they have met

from some other kind of friendship.



     11 ú As regards the good man who is loved for his excellence,

we must consider whether we ought to render useful services and

help to him, or to one who makes a return and has power. This is

the same problem as whether we ought rather to benefit a friend or

a virtuous man. For if the friend is also good, there is perhaps no

great difficulty, if one does not exaggerate the one quality and

minimize the other, making him very much of a friend, but not much

of a good man. But in other cases many problems arise, e.g. if the

one has been but will no longer remain so, and the other will be

but is not yet what he is going to be, or the one was but is not,

and the other is but has not been and will not be . . . But the

other is a harder question. For perhaps Euripides is right in

saying, 'A word is your just pay for a word, but a deed for him who

has given deeds'. And one must not do everything for one's father,

but there are some things also one should do for one's mother,

though a father is the better of the two. For, indeed, even to Zeus

we do not sacrifice all things, nor does he have all honours but

only some. Perhaps, then, there are things which should be rendered

to the useful friend and others to the good one; e.g. because a man

gives you food and what is necessary, you need not give him your

society; nor, therefore, need you give the man to whom you grant

your society that which not he but the useful friend gives. Those

who doing this give all to the object of their love, when they

ought not, are worthless.



     And the various definitions of friendship that we give in our

discourses all belong to friendship in some sense, but not to the

same friendship. To the useful friend applies the fact that one

wishes what is good for him, and to a benefactor, and in fact to

any kind of friend--for this definition does not distinguish the

class of friendship; to another we should wish existence, of

another we should wish the society, to the friend on the basis of

pleasure sympathy in joy and grief is the proper gift. All these

definitions are appropriate to some friendship, but none to a

single unique thing, friendship. Hence there are many definitions,

and each appears to belong to a single thing, viz. friendship,

though really it does not, e.g. the purpose to maintain the

friend's existence. For the superior friend and benefactor wishes

the existence of that which he has made, and to him who has given

one existence one ought to give it in return, but not necessarily

one's society; that gift is for the pleasant friend.



     Some friends wrong one another; they love rather the things

than the possessor of them; and so they love the persons much as

they choose wine because it is pleasant, or wealth because it is

useful; for wealth is more useful than its owner. Therefore he

should not be indignant, as if he had preferred his wealth to him

as to something inferior. But the other side complain in turn; for

they now look to find in him a good man, when before they looked

for one pleasant or useful.



     12 ú We must also consider about independence and friendship,

and the relations they have to one another. For one might doubt

whether, if a man be in all respects independent, he will have a

friend, if one seeks a friend from want and the good man is

perfectly independent. If the possessor of excellence is happy, why

should he need a friend? For the independent man neither needs

useful people nor people to cheer him, nor society; his own society

is enough for him. This is most plain in the case of a god; for it

is clear that, needing nothing, he will not need a friend, nor have

one, supposing that he does not need one. So that the happiest man

will least need a friend, and only as far as it is impossible for

him to be independent. Therefore the man who lives the best life

must have fewest friends, and they must always be becoming fewer,

and he must show no eagerness for men to become his friends, but

despise not merely the useful but even men desirable for society.

But surely this makes it all the clearer that the friend is not for

use or help, but that the friend through excellence is the only

friend. For when we need nothing, then we all seek others to share

our enjoyment, those whom we may benefit rather than those who will

benefit us. And we judge better when independent than when in want,

and most of all we then seek friends worthy to be lived with. But

as to this problem, we must see if we have not been partially

right, and partially missed the truth owing to our illustration. It

will be clear if we ascertain what is life in its active sense and

as end. Clearly, it is perception and knowledge, and therefore life

in society is perception and knowledge in common. And

self-perception and self-knowledge is most desirable to every one,

and hence the desire of living is congenital in all; for living

must be regarded as a kind of knowledge. If then we were to cut off

and abstract mere knowledge and its opposite--this passes unnoticed

in the argument as we have given it, but in fact need not remain

unnoticed--there would be no difference between this and another's

knowing instead of oneself; and this is like another's living

instead of oneself. Now naturally the perception and knowledge of

oneself is more desirable. For we must take two things into

consideration, that life is desirable and also that the good is,

and thence that it is desirable that such a nature should belong to

oneself as belongs to them. If, then, of such a pair of

corresponding series there is always one series of the desirable,

and the known and the perceived are in general constituted by their

participation in the nature of the determined; so that to wish to

perceive one's self is to wish oneself to be of a certain definite

character,--since, then, we are not in ourselves possessed of each

of such characters, but only by participation in these qualities in

perceiving and knowing--for the perceiver becomes perceived in that

way and in that respect in which he first perceives, and according

to the way in which and the object which he perceives; and the

knower becomes known in the same way--therefore it is for this

reason that one always desires to live, because one always desires

to know; and this is because he himself wishes to be the object

known. The choice to live with others might seem, from a certain

point of view, silly--(first, in the case of things common also to

the other animals, e.g. eating together, drinking together; for

what is the difference between doing these things in the

neighbourhood of others or apart from them, if you take away

speech? But even to share in speech of a casual kind does not make

the case different. Further, for friends who are self-dependent

neither teaching nor learning is possible; for if one learns, he is

not as he should be: and if he teaches, his friend is not; and

likeness is friendship)--but surely it is obviously so, and all of

us find greater pleasure in sharing good things with friends as far

as these come to each--I mean the greatest good one can share; but

to some it falls to share in bodily delights, to others in artistic

contemplation, to others in philosophy. And the friend must be

present too; whence the proverb, 'distant friends are a burden', so

that men must not be at a distance from one another when there is

friendship between them. Hence sensuous love seems like friendship;

for the lover aims at the society of his beloved, but not as

ideally he ought, but in a merely sensuous way.



     The argument, then, says what we have before mentioned,

raising difficulties; but the facts are as we saw later, so that it

is clear that the objector is in a way misleading us. We must see

the truth from what follows: a friend wants to be, in the words of

the proverb, 'another Heracles', 'a second self'; but he is severed

from his friend, and it is hard to find in two people the

characteristics of a single individual. But though a friend is by

nature what is most akin to his friend, one man is like another in

body, and another like him in soul, and one like him in one part of

the body or soul, and another like him in another. But none the

less does a friend wish to be as it were a separate self.

Therefore, to perceive a friend must be in a way to perceive one's

self and to know a friend to know one's self. So that even the

vulgar forms of pleasure and life in the society of a friend are

naturally pleasant (for perception of the friend always takes place

at the same time), but still more the communion in the diviner

pleasures. And the reason is, that it is always pleasanter to see

one's self enjoying the superior good. And this is sometimes a

passion, sometimes an action, sometimes something else. But if it

is pleasant for a man himself to live well and also his friend, and

in their common life to engage in mutually helpful activity, their

community surely would be above all in things included in the end.

Therefore, men should contemplate in common and feast in common,

only not on the pleasures of food or on necessary pleasures; such

society does not seem to be true society, but sensuous enjoyment.

But the end which each can attain is that in which he desires the

society of another; if that is not possible, men desire to benefit

and be benefited by friends in preference to others. Thus it is

clear that friends ought to live together, that all wish this above

all things, and that the happiest and best man tends especially to

do so. But that the contrary appeared as the conclusion of the

argument was also reasonable, since the argument said what was

true. For it is because of the comparison of the two cases that the

solution is not found, the case compared being in itself truly

enough stated. For because a god is not such as to need a friend,

we claim the same of the man who resembles a god. But by this

reasoning the virtuous man will not even think; for the perfection

of a god is not in this, but in being superior to thinking of

anything beside himself. The reason is, that with us welfare

involves a something beyond us, but the deity is his own

well-being.



     As to our seeking and praying for many friends, while we say

that the man who has many friends has no friend, both are correct.

For if it is possible to live with and share the perceptions of

many at the same time, it is most desirable that these should be as

numerous as possible; but since this is most difficult, the

activity of joint perception must exist among fewer. So that it is

not only hard to get many friends--for testing is necessary--but

also to use them when you have got them.



     Sometimes we wish the object of our love to be happy away from

us, sometimes to share the same fortune as ourselves; the wish to

be together is characteristic of friendship. For if the two can

both be together and be happy, all choose this; but if they cannot

be both, then we choose as the mother of Heracles might have

chosen, i.e. that her son should be a god rather than in her

company but a serf to Eurystheus. One might say something like the

jesting remark of the Laconian, when some one bade him in a storm

to summon the Dioscuri.



     It appears to be the mark of one who loves to keep the object

of his love from sharing in hardships, but of the beloved to wish

to share them; the conduct of both is reasonable. For nothing ought

to be so painful to a friend as not to see his friend, but it is

thought that he ought not to choose what is for his own interest.

Therefore men keep their friends from participation in their

calamities; their own suffering is enough, that they may not show

themselves studying their own interest, and choosing joy at the

cost of a friend's pain, . . . again, being relieved by not bearing

their troubles alone. But since both well-being and participation

are desirable, it is clear that participation with a smaller good

is more desirable than to enjoy a greater good in solitude. But

since the weight to be attached to participation is not

ascertained, men differ, and some think that participation in all

things at once is the mark of friendship, e.g. they say that it is

better to dine together than separately, though having the same

food; yet others would not wish it. And since if one takes extreme

cases . . . they agree that they suffer great adversity together or

great good fortune apart . . . We have something similar in the

case of ill-fortune. For sometimes we wish our friends to be absent

and we wish to give them no pain, when they are not going to be of

any use to us; at another time we find it pleasantest for them to

be present. But this contradiction is quite reasonable. For this

happens in consequence of what we have mentioned above, and because

we often simply avoid the sight of a friend in pain or in bad

condition, as we should the sight of ourselves so placed; yet to

see a friend is as pleasant as anything can be (because of the

above-mentioned cause), and to see him not ill if you are ill

yourself. So that whichever of these two is the pleasanter decides

us whether to wish the friend present or not. This also happens,

for the same reason, in the case of the worse sort of men; for they

are most anxious that their friends should not fare well nor even

exist if they themselves have to fare badly. Therefore some kill

the objects of their love with themselves. For they think that if

the objects of their love are to survive they would perceive their

own trouble more acutely, just as one who remembered that once he

had been happy would feel it more than if he thought himself to be

always unhappy . . .



     13 ú Here one might raise a question. One can use each thing

both for its natural purpose and otherwise, and either per se or

again per accidens, as, for instance, one might use the eye for

seeing, and also for falsely seeing by squinting, so that one thing

appears as two. Both these uses are due to the eye being an eye,

but it was possible to use the eye in another way--per accidens,

e.g. if one could sell or eat it.  Knowledge may be used similarly;

it is possible to use it truly or to do what is wrong, e.g. when a

man voluntarily writes incorrectly, thus using knowledge as

ignorance, like a person using his hand as a foot--dancing-girls

sometimes use the foot as a hand and the hand as a foot. If, then,

all the excellences are kinds of knowledge, one might use justice

also as injustice, and so one would be unjust and do unjust actions

from justice, as ignorant things may be done from knowledge. But if

this is impossible, it is clear that the excellences are not

species of knowledge. And even if ignorance cannot proceed from

knowledge, but only error and the doing of the same things as

proceed from ignorance, it must be remembered that from justice one

will not act as from injustice. But since prudence is knowledge and

something true, it may behave like knowledge; one might act

foolishly though possessed of wisdom, and commit the errors of the

foolish. But if the use of each thing as such were single, then in

so acting men would still be acting wisely. Over other kinds of

knowledge, then, there is something superior that diverts them; but

how can there be any knowledge that diverts the highest knowledge

of all? There is no longer any knowledge to do this. But neither

can excellence do it, for wisdom uses that; for the excellence of

the ruling part uses that of the subject. Then what will it be?

Perhaps the position is like that of incontinence, which is said to

be a vice of the irrational part of the soul, and the incontinent

man who has reason but is intemperate. But if so, supposing

appetite to be strong it will twist him and he will draw the

opposite conclusion. Or is it obvious that if there is excellence

in the irrational part, but ignorance in the rational, they are

transformed? Thus it will be possible to use justice unjustly and

badly, and wisdom foolishly--and therefore the opposite uses will

also be possible. For it is absurd that vice occurring sometimes in

the irrational part should twist the excellence in the rational

part and make the man ignorant, but that excellence in the

irrational part, when ignorance is present in the rational, should

not divert the latter and make the man judge wisely and as is

right, and again, wisdom in the rational part should not make the

intemperance in the irrational part act temperately. This seems the

very essence of continence. And therefore we shall also get wise

action arising out of ignorance. But all these consequences are

absurd, especially that of acting wisely out of ignorance, for we

certainly do not see this in any other case, e.g. intemperance does

not pervert one's medical or grammatical knowledge. But at any rate

we may say that not ignorance, if opposite, (for it has no

superiority), but excellence is rather related in this way to vice

in general. For whatever the just man can do, the unjust can do;

and in general powerlessness is covered by power. And so it is

clear that wisdom and excellence go together, and that those are

states of someone else, and the Socratic saying that nothing is

stronger than wisdom is right. But when Socrates said this of

knowledge he was wrong. For wisdom is an excellence and not a

species of knowledge, but another kind of cognition. . . .



     14 ú But since not only wisdom and excellence produce

well-doing, but we say also that the fortunate do well, thus

assuming that good fortune produces well-doing and the same results

as knowledge, we must inquire whether it is or is not by nature

that one man is fortunate, another not, and what is the truth about

these things. For that there are fortunate men we see, who though

foolish are often successful in matters controlled by fortune.

Again, in matters involving art, chance too largely enters, e.g.

strategy and navigation. Does their success, then, arise from some

mental condition, or do they effect fortunate results not because

of their own qualities at all (at present men take the latter view,

regarding them as having some special natural endowment); does

nature, rather, make men with different qualities so that they

differ from birth; as some are blue-eyed and some black-eyed

because they have some particular part of a particular nature, so

are some lucky and others unlucky? For that they do not succeed

through wisdom is clear, for wisdom is not irrational but can give

a reason why it acts as it does; but they could not say why they

succeed; that would be art. Further, it is clear that they succeed

though foolish, and not about other things--that would not be

strange at all, e.g. Hippocrates was a geometer, but in other

respects was thought silly and foolish, and once on a voyage was

robbed of much money by the customs-collectors at Byzantium, owing

to his silliness, as we are told--but foolish in the very business

in which they are lucky. For in navigation not the cleverest are

the most fortunate, but it is as in throwing dice, where one throws

nothing, another throws a high score, according to his natural

luck. Or is it because he is loved, as the phrase is, by a god,

success being something coming from without, as a worse-built

vessel often sails better, not owing to itself but because it has

a good pilot? So, the fortunate man has a good pilot, namely, the

divinity. But it is absurd that a god or divinity should love such

a man and not the best and most wise of men. If, then, success must

be due either to nature or intelligence or some sort of protection,

and the latter two causes are out of the question, then the

fortunate must be so by nature. But, on the other hand, nature is

the cause of what is always or for the most part so, fortune the

opposite. If, then, it is thought that unexpected success is due to

chance, but that, if it is through chance that one is fortunate,

the cause of his fortune is not the sort of cause that produces

always or usually the same result--further, if a person succeeds or

fails because he is a certain sort of man, just as a man sees badly

because he is blue-eyed, then it follows that not fortune but

nature is the cause; the man then is not fortunate but rather

naturally gifted. So we must say that the people we call fortunate

are not so through fortune; therefore they are not fortunate, for

those goods only are in the disposal of fortune of which good

fortune is the cause.



     But if this is so, shall we say that fortune does not exist at

all, or that it exists but is not a cause? No, it must both exist

and be a cause. It will, then, also cause good or evil to certain

people. But whether it is to be wholly removed, and we ought to say

that nothing happens by chance, but do say that chance is a cause

simply because, though there is some other cause, we do not see it

(and therefore, in defining chance, some make it a cause

incalculable to human reasoning, taking it to be a genuine

reality)--this would be matter for another inquiry. But since we

see people who are fortunate once only, why should they not be

fortunate a second time? Because they succeed once, they do so

again. The cause is the same. Then this cannot be a matter of

chance. But when the same event follows from indefinite and

undetermined antecedents, it will be good or evil, but there will

not be the science that comes by experience of it, since otherwise

some would have learned to be lucky, or even--as Socrates said--all

the sciences would have been kinds of good luck. What, then,

prevents such things happening to a man often in succession, not

because they should, but as, say, dice might continually throw a

lucky number? But again, are there not in the soul impulses, some

from reason and others from irrational desire, the latter being the

earlier? For if the desire arising from appetite for the pleasant

is natural, everything would by nature march towards the good. If,

then, some have a natural endowment--as musical people, though they

have not learned to sing, are fortunately endowed in this way--and

move without reason in the direction given them by their nature,

and desire that which they ought at the time and in the manner they

ought, such men are successful, even if they are foolish and

irrational, just as the others will sing well though not able to

teach singing. And such men are fortunate, namely those who

generally succeed without the aid of reason. Men, then, who are

fortunate will be so by nature. Perhaps, however, 'good fortune' is

a phrase with several senses. For some things are done from impulse

and are due to choice, and others not, but the opposite; and if, in

the former cases, they succeed where they seem to have reasoned

badly, we say that they have been lucky; and again, in the latter

cases, if they wished for a different good than they got. Men who

are lucky in the former way, then, may be fortunate by nature, for

the impulse and the desire was for the right object and succeeded,

but the reasoning was silly; and people in this case, when it

happens that their reasoning seems incorrect but desire is the

cause of their reasoning, are saved by the rightness of their

desire; but on another occasion a man reasons again in this way

owing to appetite and turns out unfortunate.



     But in the other cases how can the good luck be due to a

natural goodness in desire and appetite? But surely the good

fortune and chance spoken of here and in the other case are the

same, or else there is more than one sort of good fortune, and

chance is of two kinds. But since we see some men lucky contrary to

all knowledge and right reasonings, it is clear that the cause of

luck must be something different from these. But is it luck or not

by which a man desires what and when he ought, though for him human

reasoning could not lead to this? For that is not altogether

unreasonable, nor is the desire natural, though it is misled by

something. The man, then, is thought to have good luck, because

luck is the cause of things contrary to reason, and this is

contrary to reason (for it is contrary to knowledge and the

universal). But probably it does not spring from chance, but seems

so for the above reason. So that this argument shows not that good

luck is due to nature, but that not all who seem to be lucky are

successful owing to chance, but rather owing to nature; nor does it

show that fortune is not the cause of anything, but only not of all

that it seems to be the cause of. This, however, one might

question: whether fortune is the cause of just this, viz. desiring

what and when one ought. But will it not in this case be the cause

of everything, even of thought and deliberation? For one does not

deliberate after previous deliberation which itself presupposed

deliberation, but there is some starting-point; nor does one think

after thinking previously to thinking, and so ad infinitum.

Thought, then, is not the starting-point of thinking nor

deliberation of deliberation. What, then, can be the starting-point

except chance? Thus everything would come from chance. Perhaps

there is a starting-point with none other outside it, and this can

act in this sort of way by being such as it is. The object of our

search is this--what is the commencement of movement in the soul?

The answer is clear: as in the universe, so in the soul, it is god.

For in a sense the divine element in us moves everything. The

starting-point of reasoning is not reasoning, but something

greater. What, then, could be greater even than knowledge and

intellect but god? For excellence is an instrument of the

intellect. And for this reason, as I said a while ago, those are

called fortunate who, whatever they start on, succeed in it without

being good at reasoning. And deliberation is of no advantage to

them, for they have in them a principle that is better than

intellect and deliberation, while the others have not this but have

intellect; they have inspiration, but they cannot deliberate. For,

though lacking reason, they succeed, and like the prudent and wise,

their divination is speedy; and we must mark off as included in it

all but the judgement that comes from reasoning; in some cases it

is due to experience, in others to habituation in the use of

reflection; and both experience and habituation use god. This

quality sees well the future and the present, and these are the men

in whom the reasoning-power is relaxed. Hence we have the

melancholic men, the dreamers of what is true. For the moving

principle seems to become stronger when the reasoning-power is

relaxed. So the blind remember better, being freed from concern

with the visible, since their memory is stronger. It is clear,

then, that there are two kinds of good luck, the one divine--and so

the lucky seem to succeed owing to god--, the other natural. Men of

this sort seem to succeed in following their impulse, the others to

succeed contrary to their impulse; both are irrational, but the one

is persistent good luck, the other not.



     15 ú About each excellence by itself we have already spoken;

now since we have distinguished their natures separately, we must

describe clearly the excellence that arises out of the combination

of them, what we have already called nobility-and-goodness. That he

who truly deserves this denomination must have the separate

excellences is clear; it cannot be otherwise with other things

either, for no one is healthy in his entire body and yet healthy in

no part of it, but the most numerous and important parts, if not

all, must be in the same condition as the whole. Now goodness and

nobility-and-goodness differ not only in name but also in

themselves. For all goods have ends which are to be chosen for

their own sake. Of these, we call noble those which, existing all

of them for their own sake, are praised. For these are those which

are the source of praised acts and are themselves praised, such as

justice itself and just acts; also temperate acts, for temperance

is praised, but health is not praised, for its effect is not; nor

vigorous action, for vigour is not. These are good but not praised.

Induction makes this clear about the rest, too. A good man, then,

is one for whom the natural goods are good. For the goods men fight

for and think the greatest--honour, wealth, bodily excellences,

good fortune, and power--are naturally good, but may be to some

hurtful because of their dispositions. For neither the foolish nor

the unjust nor the intemperate would get any good from the

employment of them, any more than an invalid from the food of a

healthy man, or one weak and maimed from the equipment of one in

health and sound in all limbs. A man is noble and good because

those goods which are noble are possessed by him for themselves,

and because he practises the noble and for its own sake, the noble

being the excellences and the acts that proceed from excellence.

There is also the political disposition, such as the Laconians

have, and others like them might have; its nature would be

something like this--there are some who think one should have

excellence but only for the sake of the natural goods, and so such

men are good (for the natural goods are good for them), but they

have not nobility and goodness. For it is not true of them that

they acquire the noble for itself, that they choose acts good and

noble at once--more than this, that what is not noble by nature but

good by nature is noble to them; for objects are noble when a man's

motives for acting and choosing them are noble, because to the

noble and good man the naturally good is noble--for what is just is

noble, justice is proportion to merit, and he merits these things;

or what is fitting is noble, and to him these things--wealth, high

birth, and power--are fitting. So that the noble and good man

things profitable are also noble; but to the many the profitable

and the noble do not coincide, for things absolutely good are not

good for them as they are for the good man; to the noble and good

man they are also noble, for he does many noble deeds by reason of

them. But the man who thinks he ought to have the excellences for

the sake of external goods does deeds that are noble only per

accidens. Nobility and goodness, then, is perfect excellence.



     About pleasure, too, we have spoken, what it is and in what

sense good; we have said that the absolutely pleasant is also

noble, and the absolutely good pleasant. But pleasure only arises

in action; therefore the truly happy man will also live most

pleasantly: that this should be so is no idle demand of man.



     But since the doctor has a standard by reference to which he

distinguishes what is healthy for the body from what is not, and

with reference to which each thing up to a certain point ought to

be done and is healthy, while if less or more is done health is the

result no longer, so in regard to actions and choice of what is

naturally good but not praiseworthy, the good man should have a

standard both of disposition and of choice and avoidance with

regard to excess or deficiency of wealth and good fortune, the

standard being--as above said--as reason directs; this corresponds

to saying in regard to diet that the standard should be as medical

science and its reason direct. But this, though true, is not

illuminating. One must, then, here as elsewhere, live with

reference to the ruling principle and with reference to the formed

habit and the activity of the ruling principle, as the slave must

live with reference to that of the master, and each of us by the

rule proper to him. But since man is by nature composed of a ruling

and a subject part, each of us should live according to the

governing element within himself--but this is ambiguous, for

medical science governs in one sense, health in another, the former

existing for the latter. And so it is with the theoretic faculty;

for god is not an imperative ruler, but is the end with a view to

which wisdom issues its commands (the word 'end' is ambiguous, and

has been distinguished elsewhere), for god needs nothing. What

choice, then, or possession of the natural goods--whether bodily

goods, wealth, friends, or other things--will most produce the

contemplation of god, that choice or possession is best; this is

the noblest standard, but any that through deficiency or excess

hinders one from the contemplation and service of god is bad; this

a man possesses in his soul, and this is the best standard for the

soul--to perceive the irrational part of the soul, as such, as

little as possible.



     So much, then, for the standard of nobility and goodness and

the object of the absolute goods.