The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)
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The translator’s English as printed (F. H. Peters). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
tiling already known, as we have explained in the Analytics ; for it proceeds either by induction or by syllogism. Now, it is induction that leads the learner up to universal principles, while syllogism starts from these. There are principles, then, from which syllogism starts, which are not arrived at by syllogism, and w^hich, therefore, must be arrived at by induction.* 4 Science, then, may be defined as a habit or formed faculty of demonstration, with all the further qualifications which are enumerated in the Analytics. It is necessary to add this, because it is only when the principles of our knowledge are accepted and kno\vn to us in a particular way, that we can properly be said to have scientific knowledge ; for unless these principles are better known to us than the conclusions based upon them, our knowledge will be merely accidental, f
This, then, may be taken as our account of science.
1 4. That which is variable includes that which of knowledge of man makes and that which man does ; but makinor things
' o rarxabU, or production is different from doing or action (here "'• (2) of
2 we adopt the popular distinctions). The habit or ««='»«*« •• formed faculty of acting with reason or calculation, then, is diflerent from the formed faculty of producing with reason or calculation. And so the one cannot include the other ; for action is not production, nor is production action.
3 Now, the builder's faculty is one of the arts, and t We may know truths of science, but unless we know these in their necessary connection, we hare not scientific knowledge.
* Though, as we see later, mdaction can elicit them from experience only because thev are already latent in that experience.
p. 186
may be described as a certain formed faculty of producing with calculation; and there is no art which is not a faculty of this kind, nor is there any faculty of this kind which is not an art : an art, then, is the same thing as a "formed faculty of producing with correct calculation."
And every art is concerned with bringing some- 4 thing into being, i.e. with contriving or calculating how to bring into being some one of those things that can either be or not be, and the cause of whose production lies in the producer, not in the thing itself which is produced. For art has not to do with that which is or comes into being of necessity, nor with the products of nature ; for these have the cause of their production in themselves.
Production and action being different, art of course 5 has to do with jDroduction, and not with action. And, in a certain sense, its domain is the same as that of chance or fortune, as Agathon says —
" Art waits on fortune, fortune waits on art."
Art, then, as we said, is a certain formed faculty 6 or habit of production with correct reasoning or calculation, and the contrary of this {aTey^via) is a habit of production with incorrect calculation, the field of both being that which is variable. and (3) of 5. In order to ascertain what prudence is, we will i prudence in n , 1 l, x1 I, n 1 -i.
what ye do, hrst ask who they are whom we call prudent.
the caicuia- It sccms to be characteristic of a prudent man that tive intellect.
he is able to deliberate well about what is good or expedient for himself, not with a view to some particular end, such as health or strength, but with a view to well-being or living well.
4, 4-5, 5.] THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES. 187
This is confirmed by the fact that we apply the name sometimes to those who deliberate weU in some particular field, when they calculate well the means to some particular good end, in matters that do not fall within the sphere of art. So we may say, generally, that a man who can deliberate well is prudent.
But no one deliberates about that which cannot be altered, nor about that which it is not in his power to do.