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

t The other three are sense, reason, desire (olirOijcrij, vods, op€|«) : '. supra, cap. 2. The excellences or best states of the desires have already been described as the moral virtues. Wisdom and prudence are the excellences of the reason or intellect (w5if in wide sense) : sense (o3fff0ij<r«) does not need separate treatment, as it is here regarded as merely subsidiary to reason and desire ; for human life is (1) speculative, (2) practical, and no independent place is allowed to the artistic life j the fourth part therefore alone remains.

p. 204

We allow, on the one hand, that some who do just acts are not yet just ; e.g. those who do what the laws enjoin either unwillingly or unwittingly, or for some external motive and not for the sake of the acts themselves (though they do that which they ought and all that a good man should do). And, on the other hand, it seems that when a man does the several acts with a certain disposition he is good; i.e. when he does them' of deliberate purpose, and for the sake of the acts themselves.

Now, the rightness of the purpose is secured by 8 [moral] virtue, but to decide what is proper to be done in order to carry out the purpose belongs not to [moral] virtue, but to another faculty. But we must dwell a little on this point and try to make it quite clear.

There is a faculty or power which we call clever- 9 ness {^Hv6T^g) — the power of hitting upon and carrying out the means which tend to any proposed end. If then the end be noble, the power merits praise ; but if the end be base, the power is the power of the villain. So we apply the term clever both to the prudent man and the villain.*

Now, this power is not identical with prudence, 1( but is its necessary condition. But this power, the " eye of the soul " as we may call it, does not attain its perfect development f without moral virtue, as we said before, and as may be shown thus : —

All syllogisms or deductive reasonings about what is to be done have for their starting point [principle or major premise] " the end or the supreme good12, 8-13, 2.] THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES. 205 is so and so" (whatever it be; any definition of the good will do for the argument). But it is only to the good man that this presents itself as the good; for vice perverts us and causes us to err about the principles of action. So it is plain, as we said, that it is impossible to be prudent without being morally good. L 13. This suggests a further consideration of moral „^ oo Hone pruvirtue ; for the case is closely analogous to this — I l^tJato mean that just as prudence is related to cleverness, "^"^ ««>'«<• being not identical with it, but closely akin to it, so is fully developed moral virtue related to "natural virtue."

* Reading Tohs iravoipyovs. t As <pp6vriais, prudence.

All admit that in a certain sense the several kinds of character are bestowed by nature. Justice, a tendency to temperance, courage, and the other types if character are exhibited from the moment of birth. Nevertheless, we look for developed goodness as something different from this, and expect to find these same qualities in another form. For even in children and brutes these natural virtues are present, but without the guidance of reason they are plainly hurtful. So much at least, seems to be plain — that just as a strong-bodied creature devoid of sight stumbles heavily when it tries to move, because it cannot see, so is it with this natural virtue; but when it is enlightened by reason it acts surpassingly 2 well ; and the natural virtue (which before was only like virtue) will then be fully developed virtue.

We find, then, that just as there are two forms of the calculative faculty, viz. cleverness and prudence, so there are two forms of the moral qualities, viz. natural

206 NICOMACHEAN ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE. [Bk. VI.

virtue and fully developed virtue, and that the latter is impossible without prudence.

On this account some people say that all the 3 virtues are forms of prudence, and in particular Socrates held this view, being partly right in his inquiry and partly wrong — wrong in thinking that all the virtues are actually forms of prudence, but right in saying that they are impossible without prudence.