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

in disease is medicine, and the science of the due amount in the matter of food is medicine, but in the matter of labour is the science of gymnastic.

Fourthly, one might ask what they mean by the " absolute : " in " absolute man " and " man " the word '■' man " has one and the same sense ; for in respect of manhood there will be no difference between them :

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and if so, neither will there be any difference in respect of goodness between "absolute good" and "good."

Fifthly, they do not make the good any more good 6 by making it eternal ; a white thing that lasts a long while is no whiter than what lasts but a day.

There seems to be more plausibility in the doctrine 7 of the Pythagoreans, who [in their table of opposites] place the one on the same side with the good things [instead of reducing iall goods to unity]; and even Speusippus * seems to follow them in this.

However, these points may be reserved for another 8 occasion; but objection may be taken to what I have said on the ground that the Platonists do not speak in this way of all goods indiscriminately, but hold that those that are pursued and welcomed on their own account are called good by reference to one common form or type, while those things that tend to produce or preserve these goods, or to prevent their opposites, are called good only as means to these, and in a different sense.

It is evident that there will thus be two classes of 9 goods : one good in themselves, the other good as means to the former. Let us separate then from the things that are merely useful those that are good in themselves, and inquire if they are called good by reference to one common idea or type.

Now what kind of things would one call " good 1( in themselves " ?

Surely those things that we pursue even apart from their consequences, such as wisdom and sight * Plato's nephew and successor.

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and certain pleasures and certain honours ; for although we sometimes pureue these things as means, no one could refuse to rank them among the thinors that are good in themselves.

If these be excluded, nothing is good in itself except the idea ; and then the type or form -vrill be meaningless.*

If however, these are ranked among the things that are good in themselves, then it must be shown that the goodness of all of them can be defined in the same terms, as white has the same meaning when applied to snow and to white lead.

But, in fact, we have to give a separate and different account of the goodness of honour and wisdom and pleasure.

Good, then, is not a term that is applied to all these things alike in the same sense or with reference to one common idea or form.

But how then do these things come to be called good ? for they do not appear to have received the same name by chance merely. Perhaps it is because they all proceed from one source, or aU conduce to one end; or perhaps it is rather in virtue of some analogy, just as we call the reason the eye of the soul because it bears the same relation to it that the eye does to the body, and so on.

But we may dismiss these questions at present; for to discuss them in detail belongs more properly to another branch of philosophy. .

And for the same reasoii we may dismiss the ^'^ inhere

• For there is no meaning in a form which is a form of nothiiig, in a universal which has no particulars under it.

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v^eye,it further consideration of the idea; for even granting heipusiiere. that this term good, which is applied to all these different things, has one and the same meaning throughout, or that there is an absolute good apart from these particulars, it is evident that this good will not be anything that man can realize or attain : but it is a good of this kind that we are now seeking.

It might, perhaps, be thought that it would nevertheless be well to make ourselves acquainted with this universal good, with a view to the goods that are attainable and realizable. With this for a pattern, it may be said, we shall more readily discern our own good, and discerning achieve it.