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ARISTOTLE'S 
 
 DEFINITION OF THE 
 
 HUMAN GOOD 
 
 BY 
 
 J. L.^OCKS 
 
 Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College 
 
 OXFORD 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET 
 
 MCMXIX 
 
* • • 
 
NOTE 
 
 This short account of the central thesis of Aristotle's 
 Ethics is intended as a provisional statement, to serve 
 as a basis for discussion in lectures on that book. 
 
 J.L.S. 
 April, 1919. 
 
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1 
 
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 or 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S MEJ^^I^IlfMN^. OF 
 THE HUMAN GOOD/' 
 
 Lecture L . >^o ' r / ) 
 
 § I.. THE END. A^ \' ^ ^ 
 
 Every branch of conduct and every form of skilkd 
 activity seems to have sl good oWlts own which it tries to 
 secure or achieve. By applying his notion of this good to 
 the particular problem set him, any individual occupied in 
 such conduct or activity is enabled to form a reasonable 
 purpose, and to act not at random Mit with an end in view. 
 The g'eneral in the field is aiming at victory, the gunsmith 
 is trying to complete a gun, the cobbler to complete a boot, 
 the horseman is learning to master a horse, the rifleman to 
 use a rifle. Each has an aim, by his success in achieving 
 which he is judg'ed by others and by himself to be good or 
 bad at the particular activity to which that aim properly 
 belongs. And in so aiming each may be said to judge 
 something good. In the various instances above given, 
 victory, the completed gun, the completed boot, mastery 
 of a horse, mastery of a rifle, are judged to be good; and 
 unless they were in some sense judged good, a reasonable 
 person would not pursue them. The pursuit of something 
 judg'ed to be good may then be said to be a universal i 
 feature of all rational, and therefore of all distinctively 
 human," occupation. 
 
 These various ' goods ' are not out of relation to one ) 
 another. There is subordination among them. Thus the ^ 
 WQrk of the gunsmith is controlled by that of the general, 
 and the work of the general by that of the statesman. 
 Horses are ridden in various ways and for various pur- 
 [Vjses. The military use is controlled again by the art of 
 Vvar, as present in the general. The activities of the 
 cobbler are controlled by the use of boots and shoes for 
 u mcing, walking, running in all its varieties. Each activity 
 is thus under external control, and the control is exercised , 
 by another activity. Each good on examination refers j 
 us to a good beyond itself on which it is dependent. None ' 
 that has yet been m.entioned is final. 
 
, But surely the process cannot continue to infinity : there 
 must be somq ultirnAite : <a>:tivity directed to a final good. 
 There must be a good which is self-sufficing, from which 
 *all subordinate 0r departmental goods draw their goodness. 
 In all matters of war the order proceeds in the end from 
 the general, and it is the general whom the execution of 
 the order must satisfy : victory or defeat of the enemy is 
 the prime consideration to which all other considerations 
 are subordinate. We want now to find for the whole 
 range of human life a central authority like that of the 
 general, and a supreme governing consideration like the 
 defeat of the enemy. As the lesser considerations are 
 called goods, so the final consideration may be called the 
 good (or more accurately the human good; for there are 
 things more precious than man in the universe). To dis- 
 cover the nature of this good is the object of this enquiry. 
 
 § 2. IIoXltlkij: sociology. 
 
 To the enquiry which has for object the discovery of 
 this end or good with a view to its realization, A. gives 
 the name HoXctiki), the Social Art or Science, because man 
 is essentially social by nature and can only realize himself 
 {i.e., satisfy his instincts and desires) in a society fully 
 organized as a poHtical unit. (He also gives another reason. 
 What is good, he says, realized for an individual, must 
 be better realized for a community. But this rea:son is not 
 easily reconciled with the foregoing). The introduction 
 of this term at the beginning of the Ethics shows that the 
 two works of A. which bear respectively the name Politics 
 and Ethics were both regarded by him as possessing a 
 common aim, that of describing the end to which all human ■ 
 activities are directed, that of analysing the human good " 
 and of discussing the means of its realization. The Ethics 
 sets out the form of the good life as it may be realized by 
 ihe best men in a good state, while the Politics exhibits the ■ 
 constitutive principles of the good state itself. It would 
 seem on the whole as though A. regarded the good of the 
 individual as the ultimate consideration, and the state " 
 organization as a means to the realization of that good : 
 but probably the question never put itself to him in that 
 form, and besides it may be a bad question — The name 
 UoXtTLKT] also suggests that the sovereign authority in tV.is 
 sphere will be that of the UoXltlko^; or Statesman. (Tliat 
 inference however may be false). 
 
Lecture ILv ; . . . 
 
 §3. ^vhaLfxovia: PROSPERITY, WELL-BEING, 
 HAPPINESS. 
 
 What is this end — the human good ? Everyone will be 
 able to give it a name, and will agree what name to give, 
 though there is no, real agreement as to its nature. That 
 the sovereign consideration is happiness or prosperity is 
 universally agreed; but, judging from men's actions, we 
 may classify men's notions of happiness according as they 
 seek to find it (i) in physical enjoyment, (2) in honour or 
 public distinction (which really means the search after a 
 reputation for ability or virtue), (3) in the life of the mind, 
 in knowledge of philosophy. The happiness of some seems 
 to be in acquiring wealth, A. adds, but this cannot be con- 
 sidered as a normal or natural tendency : it is either a 
 seeking for enjoyment or comfort through money, or it 
 is a disease (as in the miser). In criticising these notions 
 of happiness A. uses certain notions which bring his own 
 answer to the question rather nearer : the good must be 
 distinctively human ; it must be complete or whole or final ; 
 so far as possible, it must be self-sufficient, i.e., unaffected 
 by accidents outside the individual's control. Physical 
 pleasure is rejected as infra-human, an animal ideal; while 
 public honour is too unsubstantial. Political ambition is 
 particularly subject to undeserved disappointment : no one 
 can control the wind of popular favour. Lastly, the 
 mere possession ot virtue does not constitute happiness, 
 since it is compatible with sleep or inactivity and with 
 misfortune. 
 
 (^ 
 
 § 4. THE NATURE OF MAN. 
 
 What is the use of Man ? What is his business in the 
 world ? In the answer to that question, if it can be found, 
 will be the best chance of an answer to the question, 
 what is the good for Man ? For the good of anything is 
 the satisfactory performance of its proper business. The 
 life of Man has three main layers or. strata : man has (i) 
 a vegetable activity, which is responsible merely for his 
 keeping- alive, and is itself entirely outside the control of 
 
8 
 
 will or intelligence. To it belong growth, digestion, the 
 repair of waste tissue, and other self-governing physical 
 processes. Man has (2) an animal activity, which gives 
 him appetites to satisfy, senses to help to their satisfaction, 
 and physical pleasures attendant upon their satisfaction. 
 In their origin these appetites are independent of his will, 
 but they can be deliberately exploited, and in that form 
 they are one of the most powerful influences in life. They 
 may be called half-rational. Man has (3) a third activity, 
 peculiarly and distinctively human. Man alone of living 
 things can think and will and give an intelligible account 
 of his proceedings. The distinctively human activity is re- 
 garded by A. as belonging to a single principle, to Xoyov 
 exov, usually translated ' reason.' From it proceed all the 
 things that man can do and other creatures cannot do. 
 Art, action, knowledg'e, the planning of cities, the making 
 of laws — all are manifestations of human ' reason.' 
 
 A. does not deny the necessity to man of the first 
 and second of these activities; but he claims that it is 
 plain that the peculiar and distinctive business of man 
 in the world cannot He in the prosecution of either; 
 obviously it must lie rather in the use and development of 
 the principle which is peculiar to man, i.e., of the reason. 
 And if this is man's business, his good and his happiness 
 — will lie in the proper performance of it. 
 
 To man constituted as he'Ts, however, set down with a 
 variety of appetites and instincts amid the excitements of 
 a changing- world, a reasonable activity which has no refer- 
 ence to his animal nature is either altogether impossible or 
 not to be attained except after a long struggle. The life 
 of pure reason is the Divine life, as far above that of man 
 as the purely vegetative life is below him. In some degree, 
 as A. tries to show later, man can attain to it and should 
 strive to attain as far as be is able. But before he can 
 come near the possibility of such a consummation he must 
 first set in order his own human nature and face the 
 j problems of human conduct. The first application of 
 ! reason for man is to the task of enforcing its rule over the 
 appetites and instincts which belong to his animal nature, 
 so that out of random instincts and appetites may be created 
 a will inform'ed by knowledge and systematically pursuing 
 that which is good. There is thus a middle region, inter- 
 mediate between the Divine and the vegetable, in which 
 the problems of human conduct fall, and which is therefore 
 the field of human goodness. Man emerges out of the 
 
animal; and the distinctively human excellence will be 
 shown in establishing a proper relation between the animal 
 and the super-animal nature. Such a relation is goodness 
 or virtue and the activities of a nature in which this rela- 
 tion has been established will be happiness or prosperity. 
 
 Lecture IIL 
 
 Thus in answering the question, ' what is human g*ood- 
 ness ? ' A. cannot confine himself to the highest of the three 
 strata which compose man's soul and to its perfection. 
 That highest activity is possessed by man alone of all 
 created thing's, and it may be that in it in the end man will 
 find his gerfecti_on : but the problem of life for man is 
 set by the supervention of this Divine principle upon the 
 animal nature. If man were passion without reason, or 
 if he were reason without passion, in either case equally 
 he would be incapable of 'action (conduct, vrpafi?) and 
 the problem would not arise : but, being both, his first 
 and most pressing business, a pre-condition of any per- 
 fection, is to bring the two principles into harmony with 
 one another. 
 
 It is thus suggested that there are two human excel- 
 lences for our investigation: (i) tliie concord of reason 
 and passion exhibited in good action; (2) the perfection 
 of the principle of reason itself. A. begins with the 
 problem of conduct, subdividing the excellence involved 
 into (a) the proper state of the passions (rjOiKri aperrj, 
 excellence of character), (h) the proper state of the in- 
 telligence (Biavorjri/CT} aperrj, excellence of intelligence or 
 judgment). A. begins with the virtue of character, and 
 devotes a single book (B. vi.) to the discussion of Judg- 
 ment, the virtue of intelligence. The two, however, are 
 not really separate, as we shall see; they are complemen- 
 tary, separable only in thought, and here separated for 
 convenience of exposition. 
 
 Let us now sum up A.'s view of the human good to 
 fthe point reached. Whatever it is it may be called happi- 
 ness : it must be something complete, final, and rendering 
 \ht individual as far as maybe superior to all vicissitudes 
 f fortune. It must be something in the mian him>self, not 
 to be taken from himi by human power. It must therefore 
 
 
10 
 
 be a "gift or activity of the individual. But a gifted man 
 possesses his gift when asleep or idling: he is at his best, 
 is really ' living well ' only when using the gift; happiness 
 then will be in the activity rather than in merely being 
 gifted. What activity, then? Activity of whatever prin- 
 ciple is best in man, of that which makes man higher than 
 the animal. This principle is reason. If man can acquire 
 a gift or capacity for such activity, his activity will be not a 
 mere transient moment of perfection, but the putting- forth 
 of a power with all the confidence of possession, a power 
 which increases instead of being exhausted with use, and 
 which speaking generally is independent of external in- 
 fluences. To have such a power is to be good at the 
 activity in question : such a power is goodness or excel- 
 lence. Man's good, then, and his happiness will lie in an 
 activity which proceeds from the excellence or perfection 
 of that which is highest in man. And that means excel- 
 lence of human reason considered as the natural mistress 
 of animal passion. 
 
 5. EXCELLENCE OF CHARACTER (^(9t/c^ aperij) 
 AN ACQUIRED APTITUDE (^f^?). 
 
 A. distinguishes, as already explained, excellence of 
 ■ character from excellence of judgment and treats them 
 separately, though insisting on the fact that they are com- 
 plementary to one another, making up between them the 
 complete equipment for good action. We consider first, 
 excellence of character. 
 
 ~^he g-ifts and graces with which men are or may be 
 adorned fall into two classes. Some every man, who is 
 not deformed or abnormal, possesses: they are his from 
 birth and he has but to use them. Sight and hearing and 
 the other senses are of this kind. There may be some sort 
 of development of these capacities during infancy : but 
 roughly speaking they may be said not to develop at all. 
 When a human being first sees, he sees (optically speaking) 
 as well as he will ever see, and probably a great deal better 
 than he will see at the end of his life. Anyway no effort on 
 his part is required. He has the gift of sense and cannot 
 help using it ; and if the use brings with it in early years 
 development and in later years decay, both equally take 
 place automatically and without his conscious interference. 
 \ But there are other gifts and capacities to which man's 
 
II 
 
 position is quite different. Skill of all kinds is won only 
 by effort and practice. Natural endowment does of course 
 play a part here also. Some men are better fitted, it 
 S'Cems, at birth for the acquirement of one kind of skill, 
 some for another, and some seem naturally unfitted to 
 acquire any high degree of skill at all. But whatever 
 degree of natural capacity a man may possess for art or 
 science or business or athletics, he has to begin by being* 
 a learner; he has to g'o.-.throug'h a period of apprenticeship 
 » before he can make full use of his talents. Ont of the 
 natural gift for music by learning- and practising the 
 musician is developed. The development perhaps finishes 
 only with death. But at a certain point we can say that 
 maturity (relatively speaking) is attained and apprentice- 
 ship over. We can say of a man that he is a musician, or 
 a good musician, meaning that, while all men possess in 
 some degree an aptitude for music, this man has acquired 
 by his efforts and possesses a power which othier men lack. 
 Such a power developed on the basis of a natural gift A. 
 calls a efi9, which we may translate ' acquired aptitude.' 
 iThe excellence we are trying to analyse, must clearly, 
 Jlsince it is not a common property of all men like sight, be 
 'fe. capacity of this second kind. Goodness of character, 
 tljen, is an acquired aptitude. 
 
 The above account of eft? is based partly on the Meta- 
 physics {02 and 5). In the Ethics, after several timies re- 
 ferring to the excellences of man as efet?, A. at length 
 (II. v.) formally justifies the doctrine in the case of excel- 
 lence of character as follows. He has said that the springs 
 of action are of three kinds : (i) noble and base bright and 
 wrong), (2) profitable and unprofitable, (3) pleasant and 
 painful — the former in each case being a positive, the latter 
 a negative stimulus. Of all three, he says, the good man 
 iwill be master, and the bad man of none; but the third is 
 I all-important. With it our enquiry therefore is chiefly con- 
 cerned. Ultimately, he seems to sugg'est, the whole prob- 
 lem can be stated in terms of pleasure and pain, the prac- 
 tical problem of life being to learn to find pleasure in, the 
 i right, or really pleasant, things. With that point he deals 
 I more fully when he comes to treat of pleasure itself. The 
 ' immediate point is that it is in relation to pleasure and 
 pain that excellence of character will show itself. That 
 being so, there are three, and only three possible alterna- 
 tives. Goodness might be shown (i) in a certain kind of 
 emotion of pleasure, (2) in a certain kind of susceptibility 
 
12 
 
 to pleasure, (3) in an acquired aptitude for a certain attitude 
 to actual or possible experiences of pleasure. The first two 
 are summarily dismissed. A man is not called g'ood or bad 
 either because he has a given emotion or because be is sus- 
 ceptible to a given emotion. The emotion and the sus- 
 ceptibility are not in themselves morally either g*ood or 
 bad. Badness and g'oodness of character are shown in 
 the reaction of the whole man to his emotions and suscepti- 
 bilities, these last being, relatively speaking, outside his 
 control, facts of which his moral consciousness miist take 
 account. Excellience of character, then, will lie in an 
 aptitude for a certain kind of attitude to the pleasures and 
 emotions of life. 
 
 Lecture IV» 
 
 § 6. AN APTITUDE FOR DELIBERATE ACTION. 
 
 To achieve excellence is to achieve a capacity for a cer- 
 tain attitude to pleasure and pain. The next point is that 
 this attitude expresses itself in deliberate action. A. does 
 not arg-ue this step, he simply takes it. It is g-enerally 
 agreed he says (106 a 3) that virtue or excellence either is, 
 or necessarily involves, deliberate action. He would in- 
 clude under the term all action, however swift or hurried, 
 in which a man seeks what he desires after considering 
 how best his desire may be realized, conforming his pro- 
 cedure to the results of that consideration. It is action 
 which em.bodies the results of reflection, and is therefore 
 able to justify itself. The justification will always take the 
 form, of showing (i) what the end of the view was, (2) why 
 these means to it were adopted rather than any other. 
 This distinction of end and means is a universal feature 
 of all deliberate, i.e., of all truly voluntary or free action. 
 Man is, of course, dependent on circumstance for oppor- 
 tunity, and often what he does dehberately is quite other 
 than what in the abstract he would have liked to do. 
 Sometimes even, he is reduced to a choice between two 
 things w^hich neither he nor anyone else could desire. 
 But even in such cases the act is voluntai7, and exhibits 
 the distinction of desired end and chosen means. 
 Deliberate action then is action which embodies a con- 
 
13 
 
 sidered plan, and which, therefore, contains within it the 
 distinction of end and means. 
 
 It muist be remembered in this connexion that we who 
 come to Aristotle for instruction are like archers in search 
 of a mark, and that he has promised to give us one. 
 He says, it is true, several times that a (study of Ethics 
 will no more make a man good than a study of medicine 
 will miake a man health}^: but we are entitled to reverse 
 the comparison and demand that the study of Ethics shall 
 be shown to be as good for human conduct as the study 
 of medicine has been for human health. Unless it were 
 true (i) that in everyone of our everyday considered acts 
 we had an end, and (2) that we had some difficulty in 
 relating- to one another and systematizing the various ends 
 (health, money, comfort, pleasure, &c.) which we at 
 different times pursue — unless this was true, the practical 
 necessity for ethical enquiry would Tiotv exist. But these 
 things being so we need the piiilosopAer to put us on 
 the straight road, so that our cbn^ittered actions may be 
 not only individually coherent, but also consistent and 
 consecutive with one another. 
 
 It should be noted that deHberate action requires the' 
 co-operation of thought and desire. It is thus the single 
 expression of both parts of human excellence, of excel- 
 lence of intellig'ence as well as of excellence of character. 
 It can, therefore, not be fully understood until the in- 
 tellectual excellences have been investigated. 
 
 § 7. SHOWING ITSELF AS PROPORTION OR A 
 
 CAPACITY FOR MIDDLE (OR MEAN) 
 
 QUANTITIES. 
 
 Virtue, it has been shown, is one of those acquired 
 states or capacities which are acquired by repeated 
 activity of the right kind. These states and capacities, 
 A. notes, have this feature in common — that the enem^ 
 always is the too-much and the too-Httle, the excess and 
 the defect; that what is wanted is always the rig^hfor 
 adequate amount, y Thus health and strength are main- 
 tained by taking the right amount of food and exercise : 
 more or less of either will tend to destroy themi. It is so 
 with the excellences of character. By constantly feeling 
 fear and running away a naturally timorous man turns 
 himself into a coward; by constantly shutting his eyes 
 
14 
 
 to danger and ruishing into it a man of sanguine tem- 
 perament becomes foolhardy. Profligacy comes from 
 never denying oneself a prospective pleasure, while utter 
 refusal of all indulgences ends in the complete insensi- 
 bility to enjoyment which characterizes the puritan. A 
 continual too-much or too-little in the act thus produces 
 always a defect m the character : and the maintenance of 
 a proper standard enables character to develop naturally 
 and harmoniously.) If this standard is carefully and con- 
 tinuously maintained, its maintenance will in time become 
 a delight. The agent will in time cease to feel that to 
 refrain from the too-much or too-little is an act of self- 
 sacrifice in the interest of an ideal, but will rather enjoy 
 his own skill in measuring the quantities and putting 
 them together in due proportion. As soon as he begins 
 to feel this enjoyment in his skill, he may take that as an 
 indication that apprenticeship is over and the capacity 
 fully developed — i.e. that he is not merely on the road 
 to goodness, but actually good. 
 
 In saying that virtue of character exhibits itself as 
 proportion or moderation A. is quite well aware that he 
 is committing himself to the statemient that its manifesta- 
 tions can be estimated in term<s of quantity. Any 
 manifestation of this virtue will exhibit a right, or as A. 
 says a middle quantity. But first he tries to remove a 
 misapprehension which the use of the word middle might 
 cause. The middle point or the two equal halves are 
 found by first fixing the extreme points or limits, and to 
 halve a line or other magnitude whose limits are not fixed 
 is as impossible as to find the centre of a circle which 
 has not yet been drawn. His answer in effect is that in 
 this case the middle or rig-ht amount is fixed first and the 
 extremes fixed later by reference to it. 
 
 Lecture V. 
 
 The right amount is unique, the wrong amounts are 
 infinite in number since any amount greater by however 
 little belongs to the one extreme region, any amount less 
 by however little to the other extreme region. Thus, 
 while in strict mathematics the middle may be thought of 
 as a region but the extreme or limit must be a point or 
 line, in moral mathematics the middle is a point or line 
 and thle extremes are (regions of indeterminate extent. 
 
15 
 
 There Is no reason to suppose that there is any maximum, 
 or minimum except so far as individual capacity sets one. 
 A. iUustrates the distinction between the actual middle 
 or mean quantity and the personal middle by the instance 
 of the amount of meat required by an athlete as compared 
 with that required by an ordinary man, the point being 
 that the rig'ht amount can only be settled in a particular 
 case by consideration of the precise nature and needs of / 
 that case. This shows that the personal mean is not con- 
 fined to matters of conduct; and it is possible that the 
 notion was borrowed by A. from the physicians. 
 
 The next question is — of what does the virtue of 
 character secure a right amount? A.'s answer is quite 
 expHcit. Of two things : (i) of emotion or feehng. At 
 any given moment a man may show too much or too 
 little of any given emjotion. The emotions mentioned 
 are fear, appetite, anger, pity, and all other forms of 
 pleasure and pain; on every occasion the good man will 
 feel these emotions to a proper extent, in the right ' 
 quantity. (2) Of action. This is not further explained 
 by A., but illustrations are easily supplied. You may run 
 too fast or too slow, you may be too soon or too late,^ 
 you may hit too hard or too soft, in an interview you may" 
 be too direct or too circumlocutory, a speech may be too 
 short or too long. Thus everywhere success stands on a 
 razor's edge between the too much or too little, and may 
 therefore be reg'arded as moderation, even though as 
 success, as an achievement of what is §"ood, it stands on 
 a pinnacle by itself. Scientifically analysed its essence is 
 seen to consist in securing the middle or moderate amount, 
 while in the categ'ory of good it holds the extreme or 
 superlative position. 
 
 Lecture VL 
 
 § 8. CONTROLLED BY A PLAN WHICH 
 JUDGMENT PROVIDES. 
 
 A. has already said that it is axiomatic that good action 
 must ' follow the right plan.'^ The word is X0709, which 
 is also used in the definition of virtue of character, and 
 often appears^ as the name for the opponent of appetite 
 
 ^ 103632. 2 £g^ 102 6 15, 14762, I5ia29fr. 
 
i6 
 
 in the moral struggle {' Reason against Desire '). Fur- 
 ther a X6709 irepl rcov irpaKrSyVy an Ethical Theory which 
 is to be also (it must be remembered), according to A.'s 
 promise, a Plan of Life, is what it is the object of this 
 enquiry to formulate. There are wrong plans as well as 
 right ones, and it makes all the difference to the character 
 and to the action what the determining plan is. So the 
 formula ' a gift of moderating the passions in the interest 
 of a plan ' would be insufficient as a definition of the 
 capacity whose exercise is the human g'ood. It is neces- 
 sary to add some words to differentiate the right plan 
 from the wrong. But rightness of plan is another name 
 for the virtue of Judgment, and Judgment belong-s to the 
 intellectual side of g'oodness. Therefore in defining virtue 
 of character A. does not attempt to give the differentia: 
 he contents himself with adding words which refer us 
 forward for the differentia to the discussion of Judgment. 
 If you ask ' what plan,' he ) says, the answer, is ' that plan 
 by which the man of Judgment would control action.' 
 Observe that he does not say ' that which he would 
 approve,' but ' that which he would use.'' He must 
 therefore mean one of two things. Either (i) that all 
 g'ood action follows one and the same plan, which may 
 be equally realized by different men in different emer- 
 gencies and by one man equally in each successive action 
 of a long career. If the plan is of this kind it is clear that 
 it can only be stated in very abstract and general terms, 
 and that to particularize would be to falsify. Or (2) we 
 miay point to the conditional form and ask what is the 
 suppressed protasis to this^ apodosis. * Would use ' — if 
 what ? Various answers to this c^onundnim might be sug- 
 gested, but they seem roughly reducible to two : {a) * if 
 he could impose his will upon you ' ; {h) ' if he were in 
 your place.' The former answer has the defect that it 
 suggests that it is possible for one man to estimate 
 another's difficulties and opportunities; and that a man 
 who is able to act wisely himself is competent to control 
 the actions of others, a highly dubious proposition. It 
 thus lends support to the heresy that the man of Judg- 
 ment is meant to be treated as a consultant physician 
 of conduct, a heresy which A. himself shows plainly that 
 he rejects. We must therefore prefer the second sug- 
 gestion. The plan is that which the man of Judgment 
 would use if he were in your place. That this is the 
 meaning seems to be the view of Prof. Stewart when he 
 
17 
 
 says (Vol. I., p. 204) ' Evidently, then, A. will have us 
 look for ourselves at the awovBalof; (good man) in the con- 
 crete and watch liow he actually tempers his nature ' — a 
 standard, he says, of great practical value, though liable 
 to misinterpretation. 
 
 There seem, then, to be two possible interpretations of 
 the Plan which is constitutive of g'oodness of character 
 and proceeds from goodness of intelligence. The first 
 interpretation makes it a plan for all, for every man in 
 every act, the common property of all men of g'ood will, 
 so that it must be general and capable only of formulation 
 in g'eneral terms. Th^ .second interpretation suggests' 
 something thoroughly detailed and particularized, differ- 
 ing according to the powers of the individual and the 
 possibilities of the situation, apprehended and executed by 
 the man of Judgmtent in the moment of action, but very 
 likely never formulated in word, possibly even not capable 
 of verbal formulation at all. It is a matter of considerable 
 importance to determine which of these interpretations 
 corresponds most nearly to Aristotle's meaning; but the 
 decision of the question requires a thorough examination 
 of A.'s account of thle virtue of Judgment and also of his 
 account of the part played by intellig'ence*in determining 
 conduct. 
 
 § 9. WILL AND INTELLIGENCE. KNOWLEDGE 
 
 OE MEANS. 
 
 A deliberate action can always be analysed, as we have 
 seen, into an end which is desired and means chosen after 
 reflection to secure it. A.^ (following Plato) distinguishes 
 three kinds of desire — appetite, anger, wish — and of these 
 three the last is the only one which requires thought as 
 to means. Appetite requires for its operations only sien- 
 sation, though we often see careful thought employed in 
 its service. Anger is not psychologically analysed in any 
 extant work of A. Perhaps we should do justice to it 
 by saying that sense together with the father obscure 
 intermediate activity called imagination is sufficient to its 
 needs. Wish, however, or intelligent desire joined with 
 a judgment that the object aimed at is good (cf. § i), 
 
 ' For this account of the opeKriK^ ^vx^ cf. De Anima r 433 a 31—434 a 21, 
 the clearest account in A. works. It rests on the distinction between the 
 alir9i}TiK^ and XoyiarriKi} (pavraffia {=$ov\€vriK^ <f>. 434 a 7). 
 
 (J) 
 
^. 
 
 .18 
 
 actually requires reflection before it can be operative. 
 This distinction is not difficult to follow, and corresponds 
 roughly to the distinction made by some English philo- 
 sophers'^ between particular and general desires. While 
 the appetite of hunger is directed from the beginning upon 
 a particular object within the field of perception, confines 
 itself to that object, and is satisfied when that object is 
 secured, the wish for honour marks out a certain object 
 as in general good, and therefore in the nature of the case | 
 is never done with. Hunger is not a desire for food in^^ 
 general, but a desire at a particular time for a particular 
 food; but ambition is a desire for honour in general and 
 will exhibit itself wherever and whenever a man sees a 
 chance of public distinction.^ 
 
 Lecture VIL 
 
 This characteristic of general desire carries with it the 
 consequence that reflection as to ways and means is an 
 indispensible preliminary to its control of conduct. By 
 reflection a man must see in the given situation a chance 
 of distinct ion, and by reflection he must find a way to 
 '/^taking the opportunity. 
 
 Wish, therefore, is peculiar in two ways among desires, 
 (i) in that it involves a judgment that an object of a certain 
 kind is in general good ; (2) in that it necessarily gives 
 occasrofrT^'~an activity of thought in the calculation of 
 means to the securing of that object in the given 
 situation. 
 
 In his analysis of deliberate action A. seems to confine 
 
 thoug'ht to the function of calculating- means to a given 
 
 end. He says more than once that end, not means, is the 
 
 object of wish, and that it is means, not end, which are 
 
 \ sought for in the process of deHberation. The end is 
 
 lalready settled when deliberation begins, and is the start- 
 
 * Particularly Butler, Pref. §§ 30, 31 and Serm. XI. But perhaps self- 
 love is the only 'passion' recognised as 'general' in B.'s .cense. Hume 
 makes a parallel distinction between calm and violent passions. Treatise, 
 Bk. II, Part III, Sect. Ill & IV (S.B. 413 flf.). 
 
 ' III. iv. $ov\r)(ris is said to aim either at rh ayaddv or at rh (paivv. a'ya66v. 
 It is obvious that before analysis of a given situation the notion of the good 
 must remain general. The ambitious man always wants honour, but seeks 
 different honours from time to time. 
 
19 
 
 ing point of thte_encLuiry ; and when the enquii-y is finished 
 by. tte^^Titscbvery of the best means to the end, all 
 obstacles to action are removed, and action follows as 
 soon as the chosen moment comes. Accepting for argu- 
 ment's sake the analysis of all pm-pose into end and 
 means, we must accept also this account : but a reserva- 
 tion is necessary. The end cannot be supposed to be 
 either utterly fixed, or utterly independent of reflection. 
 Within the limits of a single act of deliberation it is of 
 course fixed : or where would questioning begin and end ? 
 But desires of this kind, ' general ' desires, are of course 
 continually chang'ing; they are also largely constituted 
 and constantly modified by reflection. Though, there- 
 fore, A. need not be criticized for treating the end as 
 outside the scope of intelligence when analysing deliberate 
 action, he ought somewhere to explain what part the in- 
 telligence played in its genesis and development. The 
 question is of the highest importance : for it is one of L-- 
 A.'s favourite doctrines that a thing is characterized by ' 
 Its end : by his end therefore it is natural to suppose 
 that we shall know a g'ood man from a bad, and our 
 examination of A.'s account of virtue of character has 
 led us to expect that the ground for such distinctions is 
 to be looked for in the region of Judgment. Let us now 
 look there for knowledge of the end. 
 
 § 10. JUDGMENT: KNOWLEDGE OF THE END? 
 
 In the Sixth Book the two requirements of g'ood action ! 
 are summed up as (i) a true plan, (21) a right desire (139 
 a 24). It is natural to suppose that we have dealt under 
 the head of character with right desire and have now to 
 hear of rightness or truth of plan. At the very start A. 
 makes it clear that Judgment is primarily concerned with 
 the process preliminary to action which is called delibera- 
 tion, and consists in the selection of proper means to a 
 desired end. Its sphere (141 h 8) is human goods so far 
 as these admit of deliberation. Ability in the selection of 
 means is of course characteristic of all skilled activities. 
 The doctor is an expert in the selection of means to the 
 recovery of health, the stockbroker in the selection- of 
 means to the increase of wealth by investment or specu- 
 lation. Each of these experts has the gift of judgment 
 within a special restricted area : but judgment prope^r 
 knows no such restrictions. It is not a departmental 
 
20 
 
 proficiency, but a competence to deal with g-ood life in 
 general and as a whole. The dialectic of Socrates could 
 probably make hay of this definition as it did of a similar 
 definition of moral wisdom in the mouth of Polemarchus. 
 But its truth, says A., is witnessed by the fact that we do 
 attribute Judgment to a mian when he shows this selective 
 ability in matters not covered by any art or profession 
 like those of the doctor or stockbroker. A. presumably 
 means neither to g-ive Judgment a right to interfere every- 
 where nor to restrict it to a special field, but to give it a 
 general controlling (architectonic) authority over the 
 experts whom it employs. 
 
 > Now to confine Judgment to deliberation is to confine 
 it to the selection of means : and there seems to be nothing 
 distinctively moral in the ability to select means to an end 
 
 I already settled in some other way. The nerve or essence 
 not merely of morality but of good activity in general 
 would seem to be rather in the end adopted than in the 
 means chosen. But if this is so, we seem to be referred 
 back again for the distinctive note of human goodness 
 1 to the excellence of character, which according to Book 
 ! VI. is responsible for deciding the end. Yet the definition 
 
 ~" of that excellence seemed to refer us forward to Judg- 
 ment for the answer to our question. Very Hkely the root 
 of the difficulty will be found in the end to lie in the in- 
 adequacy of the notion of end and means. But we must 
 
 I not jump too hastily to the conclusion that A. is confused. 
 We must first examine his account of two capacities, each 
 concerned with the determination of means, which he 
 distinguishes from Judgment, and see whether we find in 
 them any promise of a solution of the difficulty. 
 
 Lecture VIIL 
 
 I . The first of these is called ' deliberative ability ' 
 (ev^ovXia). To it only one short chapter is devoted 
 (VI. ix.). The analysis given is not very satisfactory, and 
 the crucial point how to distinguish such ability from 
 Judgment is not made clear. It is shown that this virtue 
 must belong to reflection and manifest itself as rightness 
 of deliberation; and it is asserted that rightness of de- 
 liberation, properly so-called, must involve rightness of 
 
21 
 
 end as well as Tightness of means. The only reference 
 to Judg'ment is contained in the last sentence, the trans- 
 lation of which is unfortunately disputed. A. appears to 
 say that the man of Judgment may be characterized as 
 hairing deliberated rightly, and that consequently delibera- 
 tive ability may be defined as ' rightness in respect of that 
 which conduces to the end of which judgment is a true 
 conception " 
 
 In this sentence there are two points in particular wliich 
 attract attention. We wonder how much emphasis is 
 m,,eant to be laid on the tense when A. says that to have 
 deliberated rightly is characteristic of the man of Judg-^ 
 ment; and we are surprised that without warning or 
 preparation we should be told that Judgment is the true 
 conception of an end. The apparent inconsistency of such 
 statements with many others in Book VI., in which right- 
 ness in regard to means is represented as the main 
 characteristic of Judgment, is sufficient ground for sus- 
 pecting mistranslation. Nothing can be done with the 
 perfect infinitive, but an alternative is offered for the end 
 of the sentence. Professor Burnet says that A. does not 
 mean that Judgment is a true conception of the end, but 
 that Judgment is a true conception of ziJ^hat conduces to 
 that end, i.e. of the means {i.e. the antecedent of ov is not 
 TO TeXo';^ but rov (TVfx<^epovTo^ irpo^ ro reXofi). You may 
 well ask — In that case, how is Judgment distinguished from'' 
 deliberative ability ? Burnet's answer seems to be that to 
 possess Judgment is to possess general rules as to what is 
 fitting, that such general rules alone make possible right- 
 ness of deliberation, so that deliberative capacity cannot be 
 possessed without Judgment nor Judgment without it, but 
 yet they are to be distinguished. This view, which is 
 peculiar to Professor Burnet, can hardly be regarded as 
 offering a feasible version of the Greek text. Professor 
 Stewart (Vol. II., p. 83,) says there is no difficulty. Judg- 
 ment, he says, ' is dp'yLTeKrovLKrj as well as Trepl to KaO 
 €Kaara. We may say that <f)p6v7]aL<^ indeed apprehends the 
 end, but could not do so in the way required by morality, 
 i.e. with a single eye, unless rjOiKr) apeTrj invested that end 
 with a moral interest.' Here we may leave deliberative 
 abilitv for a moment and turn to Cleverness or Ingenuity. 
 
 2. The second is ' Ingenuity ' (Betvorrj^). After saying 
 once more that virtue of character makes the ' mark ' 
 right, judg'ment the means to it, and then restating this 
 with the substitution of irpoaipeai^ for o-atotto?, A. goes on 
 
2i2 
 
 (144a 23) to say that there is a capacity called ingenuity, 
 which is a gift of finding suitable means to any mark that 
 f may be offered. It thus may be called good or bad 
 ' according as the end is good or bad. Hence ingenuity 
 may be attributed to thei man of judgmient. But it is not 
 j\ j to be confused with judgment. It is merely the necessary 
 \J I basis of that virtue, the natural gift on which it is built 
 K- up. It is the eye of the soul, and virtue of character is 
 c\ the necessary condition of its conversion into judgment. 
 • The starting point of the practical syllogism,, he explains, 
 Wyis a characterization of the end, and truth in this matter 
 ^VJis open only to the g-ood man. Vice destroys the vision, 
 1 and therefore g'ives a wrong starting point to the 
 syllogism. Therefore it is impossible that anyone should 
 \have judgment but a good man. 
 ^J^Having shown that judgment is impossible without 
 \ character, A. goes on to show that character is impossible 
 without judgment. As judgmicnt is based on the natural 
 gift of ingenuity, so character has a natural basis which 
 may be called natural virtue — a congenital tendency to 
 justice, bravery, temperance, and the like. These ten- 
 dencies are present in children and the beasts, and they 
 may be made instruments for harm as well as for good. 
 They are converted into the acquired aptitude of character 
 by the acquisition of reason froOQl Th^-s as virtue of 
 character turns ingenuity into judgment, so ludgmient 
 , turns natural virtue into virtue of character. Hence the 
 plausibility of the view that virtue is judgment (or> 
 i wisdom). Full virtue must, we now see. not only follow 
 ■ the right plan, but also possess it : the determination by 
 I the \0709 must be self-determination : and the acquired 
 gift which makes this possible is Judgment. On the 
 single possession of Judgment all the virtues follow. In 
 the end the virtues are inseparable, parts of a whole finding 
 I their unity in Judgment, but as natural gifts they are 
 I separable : the same man is not enuallv fitted by nature 
 "^' for all the virtues. A. ends Book VI. with the assertion 
 : that the perfection of deliberate action requires both 
 i character and judgment — the end ffor the ^hird time) being 
 supplied by character and the means bv judgment. 
 
 Here the following points may be noted: — 
 I. The ground of distinction between the natural 
 capacity and the virtue is in the end. Ingenuity is indif- 
 ferent in respect of the end and may be employed for good 
 
23 
 
 or bad purposes ; judgrnent is committed to the good and 
 will serve no other master. 
 
 2. If this is so, the end cannot be externally related to 
 the faculty of judgment. Otherwise there would be no 
 ground for a distinction. It would be merely a difference 
 in the employment of one and the same faculty. If judg- 
 ment is of means only, it is not distinct from ing'enuity. 
 
 3. The difference is explained by the fact that practical 
 reasoning requires a conception of an end for its starting 
 point. The conception of the good is distorted by bad 
 action, clarified by good action. A proper attitude to 
 pleasure and pain is a pre-condition of the knowledge of 
 the good. But though in an intelligent being good con- 
 duct produces good judgment, it cannot be supposed that 
 the notion of the good has its seat in the character as 
 distinct from the intelligence. Goodness must be present 
 in the intelligence as well as in the character. 
 
 4. The virtue of judgment therefore must include a true 
 conception of the human good or end. This passage 
 therefore corroborates the more natural translation of the 
 disputed sentence in the account of ev^ovXia. Judgment \,>^ 
 is the true conception of the end with the ability to find 
 means to its realization. 
 
 Lecture IX. 
 
 § II. THE RULE OR PLAN. 
 
 Take, first, two illustrations which/ Aristotle uses. 
 
 I. That of a zv^ork of art. It is a commonplace, says A. 
 in connection with the mean, to say of the well executed 
 work of art that nothing could be removed from or added 
 to it without destroying it. The proportion which the 
 artist strove after and achieved would be annulled by more 
 here or less there. A. does not say here that these 
 quantitative relations are determined by a Plan, but he says 
 so elsewhere. The question for us is — whRt kind of a thing 
 would the Plan be ? What determines the proper size 
 and emphasis of the various parts of a picture? It is diffi- 
 cult to give any other answer than the whole design; and 
 to say the whole determines the part is to say what may 
 be true in a sense but is neither velry lucid nor very 
 illuminating. We must remember, however, that the edu- 
 cated intelligence, whether in artist or spectator, is not 
 
24 
 
 confined to the particular picture. When it finds beauty in 
 a picture it can give a reason, which m.ust mean that it can 
 see and possibly explain how the form of beauty is realized 
 in this material object, how each step in the making" pro- 
 cess and every line and colour in the product was dictated 
 by the interests of this form, so that in the end the general 
 form was embodied by the genius of the artist in these 
 particular arrangements of colour and line. To some 
 extent a quasi-mathematical formula could be given for the 
 arrangement, but such a formula would have to be derived 
 from' the notion of beauty. For that notion is the only 
 standard, the sole source of authority. Not itself quantity 
 nor capable of quantitative estimate it is yet realized 
 through quantity and exhibits itself as proportion or 
 moderation. 
 
 2. The other illustration is that of bodily health. 
 
 It was a favourite doctrine; of Heraditus that opposites 
 are necessary to one another, that a state of being is a 
 continuous war between opposite tendencies, and that effec- 
 tive beinig depends upon the maintenance of a proper 
 balance or proportion between themi. The penalty for the 
 undue encroachment of one opposite on the other (his 
 ' injustice ') is inefficiency, and the final triumph of one 
 over the other means death and destruction. The wor!d 
 formula is the ' adjustment of opposite tensions as in the 
 lyre and in the bow ' {7ra\ivrovo<; apfjiovin Mo-irep ro^ov re 
 Kal \vp7j(;). Those who have read the Phaedo will remem*- 
 ber that a pretty and plausible theory of the nature of soul, 
 the principle of life, was suggested by Simmias upon this 
 basis, and rejected by Socrates as inconsistent with the 
 observed fact that soul has some kind of independence 
 and power of rule over the body. It seems likelv that 
 Simmias was influenced by vague memories of what he had 
 heard physiologists say about health. Anyhow it is pretty 
 certain that already by the end of the 5th century some 
 such doctrine of health was current in the medical school. 
 The body was held to be comiposed of opposite tendencies 
 or substances, e.g. moist-dry, warm^cold, and its health 
 and its life depended on the maintenance of a proper 
 balance between them. The body is disordered when in- 
 flammation occurs in anv part, i.e. when the warm ^ sfoes 
 apart by itself ' ; and equally, when the cold separates itself 
 and there is a chill in anv part, disorder results. The 
 application is obvious, and the doctrine is clear, viz. that 
 health requires for its realization the maintenance of a 
 
25 
 
 proper proportion or ratio between opposites. ' Requires ' 
 this proportion rather than ' is ' : for health should per- 
 haps be defined as the proper performance of the functions 
 by the org^ans, and the mathematical formula is a condi- 
 tion of such performance. Thus in the case of health 
 as in the work of art quality is realized through quantity, 
 and the embodiment of form in matter is conditioned by 
 a mathematical ratio. 
 
 By putting" these two illustrations together we arrive 
 naturally at the Ethical doctrine. The case of the artist is 
 parallel to the case of the agent in that both activities are 
 calculated, deliberate, impositions of form on matter, with 
 ioreknowledg"e of the result; and an analogy frorn health 
 supplies the missing point, that in the human soul there are 
 opposed and warring tendencies which need to be kept in, 
 some kind of harmony or mutual adjustment if spiritual! 
 health is to be maintained. Goodness itself is no more a \ 
 quantity than health or beauty are; it is a form, a quality; 
 but for its realization it requires, as they do, adjustments 
 of certain matter which can be quantitatively estimated and 
 stated in terms of a mathematical formula. 
 
 Here however should be noted a peculiarity of the third 
 case, which raises a fundamental problem. In art the 
 matter which is to be moulded or informed is detached 
 from the artist. The form which he has imagined he then 
 executes in stone or marble; and the aesthetic judgment 
 which estimates the degree of his success or failure refers 
 solely to the product of the activity and not at all to the 
 activity itself or to the artist. The good in art, says A., 
 i.e., the end, that of which the achievement is success, lies 
 beyond the activity in its product. But the matter of 
 conduct is the agent's own emotions, his own behaviour. 
 He is house as well as architect. The moral judgment 
 calls him good or. bad, refers to his character, his will, his 
 action, not to any detached product of the activity. The 
 form is to be realized in himiself, and the required ratp 
 is to be imposed by him upon his own soul. . \'\y u UKVlU; *l'^ 
 
 The fact that in the activity of conduct, which is the ■ 
 human good, man is both artist and work of art, both 
 agent and patient, no doubt gives rise to difficulties and 
 makes the foregoing analogies dangerous: but it will be 
 seen that there is no inherent absurdity in the relation 
 supposed if certain things are remembered. Doctoring is 
 one of the ' arts ' to which A. is fond of appealing. Its 
 aim is to maintain a certain form- called hea'th, which it is 
 
26 
 
 the business of medical knowledge to define and analyse, 
 in the human body. But there is no inherent absurdity in 
 supposing- a man to be his "own physician. To some extent 
 we are all that. But we are able to cure ourselves only 
 because that which ctu-es, vis. the intelligent will, is not 
 that which is diseased and needs treatment. In any case 
 in which it can be truly said that the one man is both 
 agent and patient, it must be also true to say that the 
 agent-self and patient-self are different. Activity of the 
 man upon himself necessarily presupposes a distinction of 
 parts within him. 
 
 Lecture X, 
 
 Now the agent-self in all relations and activities is always 
 the same, the inteUigent will; and from this it follows 
 immediately that the patient-self is not the will. It is 
 not difficult to see that this principle (which is insisted on 
 by A. himself in the Metaphysics and elsewhere), though 
 not actually stated in the Ethics, is impHcit in A.'s treat- 
 ment of the matter. We saw that the matter in which the 
 mean was reahzed was the agent's emotions and behaviour, 
 and this involved the necessary consequence that neithei 
 emotion nor behaviour was in itself g;ood or bad. We see 
 the same implication now from- a different point of view. 
 The activity of will which proves a man gfood is the im- 
 position of formi or order upon the ' natural man 'or animal 
 nature.'"' The self which acts and the self which is acted 
 upon are distinct. Hence the doctrine is consistent and 
 involves A. in no absurdity. 
 
 But if the good lies in the activity itself, and the activity 
 in question is the imposition of a certain form upon the 
 lower nature by the will, it seems to follow that the good 
 must reside in the active will and not in the self which is 
 patient to the will's activity. If so, the form which is 
 self-imposed is not the good: for if it were, will would 
 be acting: upon itself and man would be in the same respect 
 both agent and patient, which is absurd. Thus the Aristo- 
 telian conception of virtue of character as a form imposed 
 on the passions by the will leaves room for, or rather 
 
 ^ Burnet, C. R. 1914, p. 7a, * <Pp- is the K. t^s apfrris in exactly the .«?ame 
 sense as larpiK-i] is the \6yos t^s iiyi^ias' It follows that the form appre- 
 hended by the <pp6viiios in virtue of his <pp6vr)(ris is the form only of virtue of 
 character, and that the gfoodness which is <pp6v7]<ns is (a) beyond his appre- 
 hension except as self-conscious, {b) no creation of his will. 
 
/ 
 
 / 
 
 27 
 
 requires for its completion, the doctrine that one thing 
 and one only is ' good without qualification,' the good 
 will. A notion of will would be required which, like that 
 of Kant, makes an absolute separation of will from passion 
 and desire, since, by the principle previously applied, will 
 which acts upon desire cannot be identified with any form 
 of desire. We therefore should not be surprised to find 
 the activity of will attributed to reason or intelligence, as 
 Judgment — the active or informing virtue — is in fact by 
 A. : nor should we be any more surprised to find that the 
 place in the scheme to be filled by this virtue is one that 
 cannot be filled by a mere ability to calculate means to an 
 end otherwise settled. Judgment has to fill in A.'s system 
 the place filled in Kant's by the practical Reason, and in 
 so far as in A.'s account it falls short of that office, his 
 system remains incoherent. That is why we are still 
 floundering about in the attempt to complete the account 
 of the moral good: because A., bhnded by his own com- 
 mon-sense doctrine of ends and means, hesitated at this 
 point and failed to make the discovery made a little later 
 by the Stoics that the only moral good is a good will. 
 
 § 12. PLAN, END, IDEAL, THEORY, RULE, 
 FORM, RATIO, &c. 
 
 We have seen that the activity which is the good is the 
 imposition of a pre-conceived foiTn upon its appropriate 
 matter. As the medical activity is an activity controlled 
 bv knowledge of a certain form which it seeks to realize, ^ 
 sJ?^ffctlon is an activity controlled by a knowledge of a vY 
 form called goodness of character which it seeks to realize. 
 When A. says that the art is the plan of the work of art in 
 separation from the matter (de Part An. 640, a 31)^ and 
 that Judgment is the right plan in its own region (144 b 27), 
 he may be accused of a double inaccuracy: — (i) in identi- 
 fying that which is known or apprehended with the know- 
 ledge or apprehension of it — for the plan is that which is 
 known by the artist or man of Judgmient, not his knowing- 
 it (c/>. our use of 'sensation,' 'conception,' &c.), but 
 Judgment or art must be a knowing or an ability to know : 
 (2) in identifying capacity with act or activity; for Judg- 
 ment or art is properly a capacity to know rather than a 
 
 ''' Cf. also Met. A, 1070 a 30, ^ larpiKTj rix^n o \6yos ttjs vyifias iffriv. 
 
28 
 
 knowing. (Here again ni iinglish we are fond of the same 
 usage : we say a man ' knows ' so and so without implying 
 that he actually has it in his mind). But these inaccuracies 
 are unimportant : they have only the effect of making 
 the assertions a kind of hyperbole. The doctrine is a 
 familiar one, almiost generally accepted until called in 
 question recently by Futurists, Syndicalists, and other 
 anarchic and anti-intellectual philosophers. It has been 
 preached recently from the University pulpit. It was 
 argued that thought is at times creative, and embodies 
 itself in action. ' I suppose,' said the preacher, * this 
 Church existed in some one's mind before it ever existed 
 in stone.' Reason was given man to direct his path, and 
 by its direction are produced man's greatest works. Like 
 Butler's Conscience — ' had it strength, as it has right; had 
 it power, as it has manifest authority; it would absolutely 
 govern the world.' 
 
 Lecture XL 
 
 Such is the general doctrine. What I wish to explain is 
 that the variety of possible translations of the word X0709 
 is due to the nature of the doctrine, not to confusion or 
 inexactness in A.'s thought. I miust first point out that 
 the confusion noticed above between the act of apprehen- 
 sion and the object apprehended will affect any possible 
 version of the word, even Reason itself : for reason was 
 originally the name for a manifestation of the reflective 
 principle and still reverts to its original use. If \0709 
 means end it will also m'can the conception of an end, if 
 means, also the conception of means, and so on. Thus 
 there is a g^eneral duplicity about the use of the word which 
 must be recog'nized if it is not to lead to confusion. 
 
 Recognising this first as a possible source of confusion, 
 and putting it aside, we can see that without any confusion 
 it is still possible to give the most various descriptions of 
 the intellectual element. The plan is a project, since it i- 
 somiething which is to be reahzed by human effort ; it ma 
 therefore be called an end or goal or mark. n. ov even a o\ 
 raison d'etre of the pains taken to realizei it. It is also n 
 form : to realize it is to make it the form of certain appro 
 priate matter. The pLan of the church was mark or goa: 
 to the builder, and to us who see the church now is its 
 
29 
 
 form.. Again such a form may be regarded as a specifica- 
 tion in special circumstances of a general form;. The form 
 realized in the activity may therefore mean the general 
 form (architecture), capable of infinite varieties of applica- 
 tion, which every architect in every building seeks to 
 realize. Regarded in this last way it is that which the 
 theory of architecture or of conduct seeks to define. The 
 aim of the theory is simply to secure a general view of the 
 same form which the agent in action apprehends with more 
 exactness and detail; and since full precision and detail is 
 possible only in the practical application, the theory can be 
 only a rough outline and must remain incomplete until it 
 finds its fulfilment in practice. The theory is on the same 
 plane as the practice, and is needed, presumably, because 
 in practice the urgency of the demands which have to be 
 met tends to cut short reflection upon the general prin- 
 ciples of action. 
 
 The general form, again, the knowledge of which is the 
 essential mark of true art and of full virtue, may be re- 
 garded as a standard constantly referred to and dictating 
 procedure. It may be said therefore to order or command 
 — 94^ I avTT} (7ro\LTCK^)\BiaTdacr€t, 138^32 17 larpiKr) fceXevec 
 (yet it is the X0709 of health). The law of the state is a 
 command but is also the plan or form frafi?) of a com- 
 munity. The phrases in which the X0709 or opOb^; X0709 
 commands present no greater difficulty. It is true that 
 state law employs a force that moral law does not, but it 
 is quite natural to represent the control which the form 
 known exercises over dehberation as a command. Hence 
 the translation rule. If this were written with a capital R 
 it would mean the Kdvcov or Standard, but written small it 
 is misleading. Rules as to conduct are of no independent 
 authority; they are only vague statements of tendencies 
 (^•S-y 'avoid the extreme to which you are the more 
 prone '), and what authority they have is derived from the 
 X0709. Even if they could be made less vague they would 
 still stand to the \0709 as a law stands to the system of law 
 of which it is a fragment or the principle which it embodies. 
 
 The form, finally, whether considered as apprehended by 
 the agent or as embodied in his completed work, may be 
 regarded as a ratio. This mathematical use is the same as 
 that in which the X0709 of flesh is said to be the mixture of 
 certain kinds of matter in certain proportions. Similarly 
 we might call H2O the X0709 of water, meaning that water 
 consists in a combination of hydrogen and oxygen in the 
 
30 
 
 proportion 2:1, and we could call a recipe for a pudding a 
 X070? in the same sense. In his edition Burnet advocates 
 this interpretation, and he has stated recently that he has 
 not retracted that opinion. But though it is true that 
 virtue is in a sense a ratio or mathematical formula of 
 mixture, nevertheless as a version ' ratio ' is inadequate. 
 It lays too much stress upon the quantitative side in the 
 manifestations of virtue, excluding quality. The recipe 
 for making a pudding does not explain (though it condi- 
 tions) the nature of the pudding when made. Only on the 
 basis of a qualitative knowledge of the materials (if even 
 then) could we forecast the resultant character of the comr 
 pound. But the form of a thing is shortly stated in the 
 definition which comprehends its essence and should be 
 the explanation of the whole connotation of the term. 
 Therefore though from one side the form may be regarded 
 as a ratio, the translation is open to objection. Many 
 passages it quite fails to suit because it unduly narrows the 
 meaning of the word. 
 
 The most generally applicable notion seems to be that 
 of form or plan, and that not only in A. but throughout 
 Greek philosophy from Heraclitus to the Stoics. In the 
 Stoics the word is usually translated ' Reason,' but a single 
 example will suffice to show that it is not as far from the 
 Aristotelian use as this translation would suggest. 
 Cleanthesr Hymn — (Arnimi f. 537 11. 14-17). 
 
 But Thou knowest how to make odd things even. 
 And to order what is disorderly, and unlovely things 
 
 are lovely to Thee. 
 For in such wise hast Thou fitted all things together in 
 
 one, good with evil, 
 That there results one reasonable design of the whole. 
 
 aWa (TV Kol ra irepLarcra eiriaTaa-aL apria Oeivai 
 KoX koa/jL€LV ra/coa/jLa kol ov (f>L\a aol <biXa iariv 
 wSe yap el<i €v Trdvra (TvvripfjLOKa<^, eaOXa KaKolaiv^ 
 MorO^ eva yiyvea-Bai irdvrwv \6yov alev eovra. 
 
 Form, plan, design is always the primary sense of the 
 word, though as time went on the term tended to be trans- 
 ferred to that in man and in the world which informs, plans, 
 designs. The one X0709 of the Hymn is identical in prin- 
 ciple with the \o7o? which according to A. is embodied in 
 
every product of nature — ^PXV ^' o X6709 6/jloIq)<; ev re 
 ToU Kara Tej(yriv Kal kv roU (pucret (ivveari^KoaLv (Part An. 
 639 b 16) — and to assert the universality of design is the 
 point of Aristotle's oft repeated maxim, ovOev fMarrjv iroiel 
 6 6eo^ Kal rj <pvai<i. All things have their purpose, end, or 
 function. 
 
 These last remarks shov^how closely connected the plan 
 and the end are, and carry us back to a difficulty previously 
 raised. The function of intelligence is to apprehend a X0709 : 
 all things are Kara \6yov but only intelligent creatures 
 apprehend the \0709 which they embody. The X0709 is the 
 end.* Intelligence therefore apprehends the end. The 
 general doctrine of \6yo<; implies so much, and the same 
 implication seems to occur in the definition of virtue of 
 character which is said to get it orientation (so to say) 
 from judgment. Elsewhere, we have seen, A. seems to 
 vacillate or even to contradict this conclusion. But this 
 hesitation becomes intelligible, and is seen to be not very 
 damaging, if it is understood that the relation of end and 
 means is in the end to Aristotle a relation of universal and 
 particular. The end is not a result waited and worked for, 
 but a form progressively realized, and, when attained, 
 continuously sustained in every action. The end, the 
 general form, is one pole, the particular act is the other. 
 In general outline the character of the act is fixed before- 
 hand; it is the detail that is new. The function of delibera- 
 tion is not the positing of an end-to-be-attained and the 
 securing of means to attain it so much as the particulariza- 
 tion of a universal form in face of particular needs. The 
 form is never fully particularized except in a particular act ; 
 but if that act is to preserve the form it will be because 
 reflection on the circumstances has preceded the action. 
 
 The question raised in § 8, whether the plan was general 
 or particular, a plan for all or the special principle or 
 formula of one single act, can now be seen to admit of no 
 simple answer. The relation of plan and act is simply a 
 special case of the relation of form and matter. 
 
 ^ npwTf] — V Aeyo/xej/ eVe/cci riyos' \6yos.yap ovros, Part An. I.e. 
 
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