The Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle

much concerns us to know this good; for then, like archers shooting at a definite mark, we shall be more likely to attain what we want.

       If this be so, we must try to indicate roughly what it is, and first of all to which of the arts or sciences it belongs.

       It would seem to belong to the supreme art or science, that one which most of all deserves the name of master-art or master-science.

       Now Politics Endnote 004 seems to answer to this description. For it prescribes which of the sciences a state needs, and which each man shall study, and up to what point; and to it we see subordinated even the highest arts, such as economy, rhetoric, and the art of war.

       Since then it makes use of the other practical sciences, and since it further ordains what men are to do and from what to refrain, its end must include the ends of the others, and must be the proper good of man.

       For though this good is the same for the individual and the state, yet the good of the state seems a grander and more perfect thing both to attain and to secure; and glad as one would be to do this service for a single individual, to do it for a people and for a number of states is nobler and more divine.

       This then is the aim of the present inquiry, which is a sort of political inquiry. Endnote 005

       3.: Exactness not permitted by subject nor to be expected by student, who needs experience and training.

       We must be content if we can attain to so much precision in our statement as the subject before us admits of; for the same degree of accuracy is no more to be expected in all kinds of reasoning than in all kinds of handicraft.

       Now the things that are noble and just (with which Politics deals) are so various and so uncertain, that some think these are merely conventional and not natural distinctions.

       There is a similar uncertainty also about what is good, because good things often do people harm: men have before now been ruined by wealth, and have lost their lives through courage.

       Our subject, then, and our data being of this nature, we must be content if we can indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and if, in dealing with matters that are not amenable to immutable laws, and reasoning from premises that are but probable, we can arrive at probable conclusions. Endnote 006

      The reader, on his part, should take each of my statements in the same spirit; for it is the mark of an educated man to require, in each kind of inquiry, just so much exactness as the subject admits of: it is equally absurd to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician, and to demand scientific proof from an orator.

       But each man can form a judgment about what he knows, and is called “a good judge” of that—of any special matter when he has received a special education therein, “a good judge” (without any qualifying epithet) when he has received a universal education. And hence a young man is not qualified to be a student of Politics; for he lacks experience of the affairs of life, which form the data and the subject-matter of Politics.

       Further, since he is apt to be swayed by his feelings, he will derive no benefit from a study whose aim is not speculative but practical.

       But in this respect young in character counts the same as young in years; for the young man’s disqualification is not a matter of time, but is due to the fact that feeling rules his life and directs all his desires. Men of this character turn the knowledge they get to no account in practice, as we see with those we call incontinent; but those who direct their desires and actions by reason will gain much profit from the knowledge of these matters.

       So much then by way of preface as to the student, and the spirit in which he must accept what we say, and the object which we propose to ourselves.

       4.: Men agree that the good is happiness, but differ as to what this is.

       . Since—to resume—all knowledge and all purpose aims at some good, what is this which we say is the aim of Politics; or, in other words, what is the highest of all realizable goods?

       As to its name, I suppose nearly all men are agreed; for the masses and the men of culture alike declare that it is happiness, and hold that to “live well” or to “do well” is the same as to be “happy.”

      But they differ as to what this happiness is, and the masses do not give the same account of it as the philosophers.

       The former take it to be something palpable and plain, as pleasure or wealth or fame; one man holds it to be this, and another that, and often the same man is of different minds at different times,—after sickness it is health, and in poverty it is wealth; while when they are impressed with the consciousness of their ignorance, they admire most those who say grand things that are above their comprehension.

      Some philosophers, on the other hand, have thought that, beside these several good things, there is an “absolute” good which is the cause of their goodness.

       As it would hardly be worth while to review all the opinions that have been held, we will confine ourselves to those which are most popular, or which seem to have some foundation in reason.

      We must reason from facts accepted without question by the man of trained character.

       But we must not omit to notice the distinction that is drawn between the method of proceeding from your starting-points or principles, and the method of working up to them. Plato used with fitness to raise this question, and to ask whether the right way is from or to your starting-points, as in the race-course you may run from the judges to the boundary, or vice versâ.

      Well, we must start from what is known.

      But “what is known” may mean two things: “what is known to us,” which is one thing, or “what is known” simply, which is another.

      I think it is safe to say that we must start from what is known to us.

       And on this account nothing but a good moral training can qualify a man to study what is noble and just—in a word, to study questions of Politics. For the undemonstrated fact is here the starting-point, and if this undemonstrated fact be sufficiently evident to a man, he will not require a “reason why.” Now the man who has had a good moral training either has already arrived at starting-points or principles of action, or will easily accept them when pointed out. But he who neither has them nor will accept them may hear what Hesiod says Endnote 007—

      “The best is he who of himself doth know;

      Good too is he who listens to the wise;

      But he who neither knows himself nor heeds

      The words of others, is a useless man.”

       5.: The good cannot be pleasure, nor honour, nor virtue.

       Let us now take up the discussion at the point from which we digressed.

      It seems that men not unreasonably take their notions of the good or happiness from the lives actually led, and that the masses who are the least refined suppose it to be pleasure, which is the reason why they aim at nothing higher than the life of enjoyment.

      For the most conspicuous kinds of life are three: this life of enjoyment, the life of the statesman, and, thirdly, the contemplative life.

       The mass of men show themselves utterly slavish in their preference for the life of brute beasts, but their views receive consideration because many of those in high places have the tastes of Sardanapalus.

       Men of refinement with a practical turn prefer honour; for I suppose we may say that honour is the aim of the statesman’s life.

      But this seems too superficial to be the good we are seeking: for it appears to depend upon those who give rather than upon those who receive it; while we have a presentiment that the good is something that is peculiarly a man’s own and can scarce be taken away from him.

       Moreover, these men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of