The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

Just so the unjust or the profligate man at the beginning was free not to acquire this character, and therefore he is voluntarily unjust or profligate; but now that he has acquired it, he is no longer free to put it off.

But it is not only our mental or moral vices that are voluntary ; bodily vices also are sometimes voluntary, and then are censured. We do not censure natural ugliness, but we do censure that which is due to nesliorence and want of exercise. And so with weakness and infirmity : we should never reproach a man who was bom blind, or had lost his sight in an illness or by a blow — we should rather pity him ; but we should all censure a man who had blinded himself by excessive drinking or any other kind of profligacy.

We see, then, that of the vices of the body it is those that depend on ourselves that are censured, while those that do not depend on ourselves are not censured. And if this be so, then in other fields also those vices that are blamed must depend upon ourselves.

Some people may perhaps object to this.

" All men," they may say, " desire that which appears good to them, but cannot control this appearance ; a man's character, whatever it be, decides what shall appear to him to be the end."

• My act is mine, and does not cease to be mine becaase I would mdo it if I could ; and so, further, since we made the habits whose bonds we cannot now unloose, we are responsible, not merely for the acts which made them, but also for the acts which they now produce " in spite of us : " what constrains us is ourselves.

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If, I answer, each man be in some way responsible for his habits or character, then in some way he must be responsible for this appearance also.

But if this be not the case, then a man is not responsible for, or is not the cause of, his own evil doing, but it is through ignorance of the end that he does evil, fancying that thereby he will secure the greatest good : and the striving towards the true end does not depend on our own choice, but a man must be born with a gift of sight, so to speak, if he is to discriminate rightly and to choose what is really good : and he is truly well-born who is by nature richly endowed with this gift ; for, as it is the greatest and the fairest gift, which we cannot acquire or learn from another, but must keep all our lives just as nature gave it to us, to be well and nobly born in this respect is to be well-born in the truest and completest sense.

Now, even supposing this to be true, how will 18 virtue be any more voluntary than vice ?

For whether it be nature or anything else that determines what shall appear to be the end, it is determined in the same way for both alike, for the good man as for the bad, and both alike refer all their acts of whatever kind to it.

And so whether we hold that it is not merely 19 nature that decides what appears to each to be the end (whatever that be), but that the man himself contributes something ; or whether we hold that the end is fixed by nature, but that virtue is voluntary, inasmuch as the good man voluntarily takes the steps to that end — in either case vice will be just as volun5, 16-22.] THE WILL. 79tary as virtue ; for self i> a^^^i^*^ in t1ir> }vui TnftTv-jyw^ as much as in the_good mag, in^cbeesing the particular acts aOeast^ if not in deteriniiiiDg.ihp. end.

If then, as is generally allowed, the virtues are voluntary (for we do, in fact, in some way help to make our character, and, by being of a certain character, give a certain complexion to our idea of the end), the vices also must be voluntary ; for aU this applies equally to them.

We have thus described in outHne the nature of the virtues in general, viz. that they are forms of moderation or modes of observing the mean, and that they are habits or trained faculties; and we have shown what produces them, and how they themselves issue in the performance of the same acts which produce them, and that they depend on ourselves and are voluntary, and that they follow the guidance of right reason.