•^ UC-NRLF CO C3 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. 'L^ v^ %./. 1 ,^^fv: 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 : :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. 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 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, * . 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 r;i? 'T 19 75 80 SLR. 1975 8 r A)///^ r '-., LD21A-50m-2,'71 (P200l8l0)476 — A-32 General Library University of California Berkeley I .. L