The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, Tr. with Notes by R.W. Browne

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850 edition. Excerpt: ... 8. (7.) We make, more or less, pleasure and pain the rule of our actions; and on these our habits depend. 9, 10. (8.) Virtue is shown in struggling with difficulty, and nothing is so difficult to resist as pleasure. IV.--1. It may be asked, what is meant by saying that we become just by performing just actions; are we not then already just, as in the case of the arts 1 This question is answered--2. (1.) By observing that this is not the case in the arts, for a man is not a grammarian, unless he speaks grammatically, because he understands the rules of grammar. 3. (2.) Because the cases are not parallel; as in the arts we only consider the excellence of the production, in morals we look to the character and motives of the person. The three requisites, then, for a moral act are (1.) Knowledge, (2.) Deliberate preference on its own account, (3.) Fixedness and stability. 4--6. A man, therefore, is called virtuous if he acts on virtuous principles; and to do this requires practice. 7. The masses, however, think that theory without practice will be sufficient to make them virtuous. V.--1--4. What, then, is the genus of virtue? In that division of the soul in which moral virtue resides, there are only three properties; namely, passions, capacities, and habits. 5, 6. Now virtue and vice are not passions. (1.) Because we are not called good or bad for our passions. 2. ) We are not praised or blamed for them. 3. ) Virtue implies deliberate preference, passion does not. (4.) We are said to be moved by our passions, but dis-posed by virtues or vices. 7. They are not capacities. (1.) For the first and second reasons given above. (2.) Because our capacities are innate. 8. Therefore virtue must be a habit. VI.--1, 2. What is the differentia of virtue?...