BOOK VI

1

Since we have said previously that we must choose the intermediate condition, not the excess or the deficiency, and that the intermediate condition is as the [20] correct reason says, let us now determine what it says. For in all the states of character we have mentioned, as well as in the others, there is a target that the person who has reason focuses on and so tightens or relaxes; and there is a definition of the means, which we say are between excess and deficiency because they accord with the correct reason. [25]

To say this is admittedly true, but it is not at all clear. For in other pursuits directed by a science, it is equally true that we must labor and be idle neither too much nor too little, but the intermediate amount prescribed by correct reason. But knowing only this, we would be [30] none the wiser about, for instance, the medicines to be applied to the body, if we were told we must apply the ones that medical science prescribes and in the way that the medical scientist applies them.

That is why our account of the states of the soul, in the same way, must not only be true as far as it has gone, but we must also determine what the correct reason is, that is to say, what its definition is.

After we divided the virtues of the soul, we said [35] that some are virtues of character and some of thought. And so, having finished our discussion of [1139a] the virtues of character, let us now discuss the others as follows, after speaking first about the soul.

Previously, then, we said there are two parts of the [5] soul, one that has reason, and one nonrational. Now we should divide in the same way the part that has reason. Let us assume there are two parts that have reason: with one we study beings whose principles do not admit of being otherwise than they are, and with the other we study beings whose principles admit of being otherwise. For when the beings are of different kinds, the parts of the soul naturally suited to [10] each of them are also of different kinds, since the parts possess knowledge by being somehow similar and appropriate [to their objects].

Let us call one of these the scientific part, and the other the rationally calculating part; for deliberating is the same as rationally calculating, and no one deliberates about what cannot be otherwise. Hence the [15] rationally calculating part is one part of the part of the soul that has reason.

Hence we should find the best state of the scientific part and the best state of the rationally calculating part; for this state is the virtue of each of them. Now a thing’s virtue is relative to its own proper function, [and so we must consider the function of each part].

2

There are three [capacities] in the soul—sense perception, understanding, desire—that control action and truth. Of these three, sense perception is clearly not the principle of any action, since beasts have [20] perception, but no share in action.

As assertion and denial are to thought, so pursuit and avoidance are to desire. Now virtue of character is a state that decides; and decision is a deliberative desire. If, then, the decision is excellent, the reason must be true and the desire correct, so that what reason asserts is what desire pursues. This, then, is [25] thought and truth concerned with action. The thought concerned with study, not with action or production, has its good or bad state in being true or false; for truth is the function of whatever thinks. But the function of what thinks about action is truth [30] agreeing with correct desire.

The principle of an action—the source of motion, not the goal—is decision; the principle of decision is desire and goal-directed reason. That is why decision requires understanding and thought, and also a state [35] of character; for acting well or badly requires both thought and character.

Thought by itself moves nothing; what moves us is goal-directed thought concerned with action. For this thought is also the principle of productive [1139b] thought; for every producer in his production aims at some [further] goal, and the unqualified goal is not the product, which is only the [qualified] goal of some [production], and aims at some [further] goal. [An unqualified goal is] what we achieve in action, since acting well is the goal, and desire is for the goal. That is why decision is either understanding combined with desire or desire combined with [5] thought; and this is the sort of principle that a human being is.

We do not decide to do what is already past; no one decides, for instance, to have sacked Troy. For neither do we deliberate about what is past, but only about what will be and admits of being or not being; and what is past does not admit of not having happened. That is why Agathon¹¹ is correct to say ‘Of this alone even a god is deprived—to make what is [10] all done to have never happened.’

The function of each of the understanding parts, then, is truth. And so the virtues of each part will be the states that best direct it toward the truth.

3

Then let us begin again, and discuss these states of [15] the soul. Let us say, then, that there are five states in which the soul grasps the truth in its affirmation or denials. These are craft, scientific knowledge, prudence, wisdom, and understanding; for belief and supposition admit of being false.

What science is, is evident from the following, if we must speak exactly and not be guided by [mere] similarities. For we all suppose that what we know [20] scientifically does not even admit of being otherwise; and whenever what admits of being otherwise escapes observation, we do not notice whether it is or is not, [and hence we do not know about it]. Hence what is known scientifically is by necessity. Hence it is everlasting; for the things that are by unqualified necessity are all everlasting, and everlasting things are ingenerable and indestructible.

Further, every science seems to be teachable, and [25] what is scientifically knowable is learnable. But all teaching is from what is already known, as we also say in the Analytics; for some teaching is through induction, some by deduction, [which both require previous knowledge]. Induction [leads to] the principle, i.e., the universal, whereas deduction proceeds from the universal. Hence deduction has principles [30] from which it proceeds and which are not themselves [reached] by deduction. Hence they are [reached] by induction.

Scientific knowledge, then, is a demonstrative state, and has all the other features that in the Analytics we add to the definition. For one has scientific knowledge whenever one has the appropriate sort of confidence, and knows the principles; for if one does not [35] know them better than the conclusion, one will have scientific knowledge [only] coincidentally.

So much for a definition of scientific knowledge.

4

What admits of being otherwise includes what is produced [1140a] and what is achieved in action. Production and action are different; about them we rely also on [our] popular discussions. And so the state involving reason and concerned with action is different from the state involving reason and concerned with production. Nor is one included in the other; for action is [5] not production, and production is not action.

Now building, for instance, is a craft, and is essentially a certain state involving reason concerned with production; there is no craft that is not a state involving reason concerned with production, and no such state that is not a craft. Hence a craft is the same as a state [10] involving true reason concerned with production.

Every craft is concerned with coming to be, and the exercise of the craft is the study of how something that admits of being and not being comes to be, something whose principle is in the producer and not in the product. For a craft is not concerned with things that are or come to be by necessity; nor with things that are by [15] nature, since these have their principle in themselves.

Since production and action are different, craft must be concerned with production, not with action.

In a way craft and fortune are concerned with the same things, as Agathon says: ‘Craft was fond of fortune, and fortune of craft.’ [20]

A craft, then, as we have said, is a state involving true reason concerned with production. Lack of craft is the contrary state involving false reason and concerned with production. Both are concerned with what admits of being otherwise.

5

To grasp what prudence is, we should first study the [25] sort of people we call prudent. It seems proper to a prudent person to be able to deliberate finely about things that are good and beneficial for himself, not about some restricted area—about what sorts of things promote health or strength, for instance—but about what sorts of things promote living well in general.

A sign of this is the fact that we call people prudent about some [restricted area] whenever they calculate well to promote some excellent end, in an area where [30] there is no craft. Hence where [living well] as a whole is concerned, the deliberative person will also be prudent.

Now no one deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise or about things that cannot be achieved in his action. Hence, if science involves demonstration, but there is no demonstration of anything whose principles admit of being otherwise (since every such [35] thing itself admits of being otherwise); and if we cannot deliberate about things that are by necessity; [1140b] it follows that prudence is not science nor yet craft knowledge. It is not science, because what is achievable in action admits of being otherwise; and it is not craft knowledge, because action and production belong to different kinds.

The remaining possibility, then, is that prudence is [5] a state grasping the truth, involving reason, concerned with action about things that are good or bad for a human being. For production has its end in something other than itself, but action does not, since its end is acting well itself.

That is why Pericles and such people are the ones whom we regard as prudent, because they are able [10] to study what is good for themselves and for human beings; we think that household managers and politicians are such people.

This is also how we come to give temperance (sōphrosunē) its name, because we think that it preserves prudence, (sōzousan tēn phronēsin). It preserves the [right] sort of supposition. For the sort of supposition that is corrupted and perverted by the pleasant or painful is not every sort—not, for instance, the supposition that the triangle does or does not have two right [15] angles—but suppositions about what is achievable in action. For the principles of things achievable in action are their goal, but if someone is corrupted because of pleasure or pain, no [appropriate] principle can appear to him, and it cannot appear that this is the right goal and cause of all his choice and action; [20] for vice corrupts the principle. And so prudence must be a state grasping the truth, involving reason, and concerned with action about human goods.

Moreover, there is virtue [or vice in the use] of craft, but not [in the use] of prudence. Further, in a craft, someone who makes errors voluntarily is more choiceworthy; but with prudence, as with the virtues, the reverse is true. Clearly, then, prudence is a virtue, not craft knowledge. [25]

There are two parts of the soul that have reason. Prudence is a virtue of one of them, of the part that has belief; for belief is concerned, as prudence is, with what admits of being otherwise.

Moreover, it is not only a state involving reason. A sign of this is the fact that such a state can be forgotten, but prudence cannot.

6

Scientific knowledge is supposition about universals, [30] things that are by necessity. Further, everything demonstrable and every science have principles, since scientific knowledge involves reason. Hence there can be neither scientific knowledge nor craft knowledge nor prudence about the principles of what is scientifically known. For what is scientifically known [35] is demonstrable, [but the principles are not]; and craft and prudence are about what admits of being [1141a] otherwise. Nor is wisdom [exclusively] about principles; for it is proper to the wise person to have a demonstration of some things.

[The states of the soul] by which we always grasp the truth and never make mistakes, about what can or cannot be otherwise, are scientific knowledge, prudence, [5] wisdom, and understanding. But none of the first three—prudence, scientific knowledge, wisdom—is possible about principles. The remaining possibility, then, is that we have understanding about principles.

7

We ascribe wisdom in crafts to the people who have [10] the most exact expertise in the crafts. For instance, we call Pheidias a wise stoneworker and Polycleitus a wise bronze worker; and by wisdom we signify precisely virtue in a craft. But we also think some people are wise in general, not wise in some [restricted] area, or in some other [specific] way (as Homer says in the [15] Margites: ‘The gods did not make him a digger or a ploughman or wise in anything else’). Clearly, then, wisdom is the most exact [form] of scientific knowledge.

Hence the wise person must not only know what is derived from the principles of a science, but also grasp the truth about the principles. Therefore wisdom is understanding plus scientific knowledge; it is scientific knowledge of the most honorable things that has received [understanding as] its coping stone.

For it would be absurd for someone to think that [20] political science or prudence is the most excellent science; for the best thing in the universe is not a human being [and the most excellent science must be of the best things].

Moreover, if what is good and healthy for human beings and for fish is not the same, whereas what is white or straight is always the same, everyone would also say that the content of wisdom is the same in [25] every case, but the content of prudence is not. For the agent they would call prudent is the one who studies well each question about his own [good], and he is the one to whom they would entrust such questions. That is why prudence is also ascribed to some of the beasts, the ones that are evidently capable of forethought about their own life.

It is also evident that wisdom is not the same as political [30] science. For if people are to say that science about what is beneficial to themselves [as human beings] counts as wisdom, there will be many types of wisdom [corresponding to the different species of animals]. For if there is no one medical science about all beings, there is no one science about the good of all animals, but a different science about each specific good. [Hence there will be many types of wisdom, contrary to our assumption that it has always the same content]. It does not matter if human beings are the best among the animals; for there are other beings of a far more [1141b] divine nature than human beings—most evidently, for instance, the beings composing the universe.

What we have said makes it clear that wisdom is both scientific knowledge and understanding about the things that are by nature most honorable. That is why people say that Anaxagoras or Thales or that [5] sort of person is wise, but not prudent, whenever they see that he is ignorant of what benefits himself. And so they say that what he knows is extraordinary, amazing, difficult, and divine, but useless, because it is not human goods that he looks for.

Prudence, by contrast, is about human concerns, [10] about things open to deliberation. For we say that deliberating well is the function of the prudent person more than anyone else; but no one deliberates about things that cannot be otherwise, or about things lacking any goal that is a good achievable in action. The unqualifiedly good deliberator is the one whose aim accords with rational calculation in pursuit of the best good for a human being that is achievable in action.

Nor is prudence about universals only. It must also [15] acquire knowledge of particulars, since it is concerned with action and action is about particulars. That is why in other areas also some people who lack knowledge but have experience are better in action than others who have knowledge. For someone who knows that light meats are digestible and [hence] healthy, but not which sorts of meats are light, will not produce [20] health; the one who knows that bird meats are light and healthy will be better at producing health. And since prudence is concerned with action, it must possess both [the universal and the particular knowledge] or the [particular] more [than the universal]. Here too, however, [as in medicine] there is a ruling [science].

8

Political science and prudence are the same state, but their being is not the same.

One type of prudence about the city is the ruling [25] part; this is legislative science. The type concerned with particulars [often] monopolizes the name ‘political science’ that [properly] applies to both types in common. This type is concerned with action and deliberation, since [it is concerned with decrees and] the decree is to be acted on as the last thing [reached in deliberation]. Hence these people are the only ones who are said to be politically active; for these are the only ones who put [political science] into practice, as hand-craftsmen put [a craft] into practice.

Similarly, prudence concerned with the individual [30] himself seems most of all to be counted as prudence; and this [type of prudence often] monopolizes the name ‘prudence’ that [properly] applies [to all types] in common. Of the other types, one is household science, another legislative, another political, one type of which is deliberative and another judicial.

In fact knowledge of what is [good] for oneself is one species [of prudence]. But there is much difference [in opinions] about it. The one who knows about [1142a] himself, and spends his time on his own concerns, seems to be prudent, while politicians seem to be too active. Hence Euripides says, ‘Surely I cannot be prudent, since I could have been inactive, numbered among all the many in the army, and have had an [5] equal share … For those who go too far and are too active….’ For people seek what is good for themselves, and suppose that this [inactivity] is the right action [to achieve their good]. Hence this belief has led to the view that these are the prudent people. Presumably, however, one’s own welfare requires household management and a political system. Further, [10] [another reason for the difference of opinion is that] it is unclear, and should be examined, how one must manage one’s own affairs.

A sign of what has been said [about the unclarity of what prudence requires] is the fact that whereas young people become accomplished in geometry and mathematics, and wise within these limits, prudent young people do not seem to be found. The reason is that prudence is concerned with particulars as well as universals, and particulars become known from experience, but a young person lacks experience, [15] since some length of time is needed to produce it.

Indeed [to understand the difficulty and importance of experience] we might consider why a child can become accomplished in mathematics, but not in wisdom or natural science. Surely it is because mathematical objects are reached through abstraction, whereas in these other cases the principles are reached from experience. Young people, then, [lacking experience], have no real conviction in these [20] other sciences, but only say the words, whereas the nature of mathematical objects is clear to them.

Further, [prudence is difficult because it is deliberative and] deliberation may be in error about either the universal or the particular. For [we may wrongly suppose] either that all sorts of heavy water are bad or that this water is heavy.

It is apparent that prudence is not scientific knowledge; [25] for, as we said, it concerns the last thing [i.e., the particular], since this is what is achievable in action. Hence it is opposite to understanding. For understanding is about the [first] terms, [those] that have no account of them; but prudence is about the last thing, an object of perception, not of scientific knowledge. This is not the perception of special objects, but the sort by which we perceive that the last among mathematical objects is a triangle; for it will stop there too. This is another species [of perception [30] than perception of special objects]; but it is still perception more than prudence is.

9

Inquiry and deliberation are different, since deliberation is a type of inquiry. We must also grasp what good deliberation is, and see whether it is some sort of scientific knowledge, or belief, or good guessing, or some other kind of thing. [1142b] First of all, then, it is not scientific knowledge. For we do not inquire for what we already know; but good deliberation is a type of deliberation, and a deliberator inquires and rationally calculates.

Moreover, it is not good guessing either. For good guessing involves no reasoning, and is done quickly; but we deliberate a long time, and it is said that we [5] must act quickly on the result of our deliberation, but deliberate slowly. Further, quick thinking is different from good deliberation, and quick thinking is a kind of good guessing.

Nor is good deliberation just any sort of belief. Rather, since the bad deliberator is in error, and the good deliberator deliberates correctly, good deliberation is clearly some sort of correctness.

But it is not correctness in scientific knowledge or [10] in belief. For there is no correctness in scientific knowledge, since there is no error in it either; and correctness in belief consists in truth, [but correctness in deliberation does not]. Further, everything about which one has belief is already determined, [but what is deliberated about is not yet determined].

However, good deliberation requires reason; hence the remaining possibility is that it belongs to thought. For thought is not yet assertion; [and this is why it is not belief]. For belief is not inquiry, but already an assertion; but in deliberating, either well or badly, [15] we inquire for something and rationally calculate about it.

But good deliberation is a certain sort of correctness in deliberation. That is why we must first inquire what [this correctness] is and what it is [correctness] about. Since there are several types of correctness, clearly good deliberation will not be every type. For the incontinent or base person will use rational calculation to reach what he proposes to see, and so will have deliberated correctly [if that is all it takes], but [20] will have got himself a great evil. Having deliberated well seems, on the contrary, to be some sort of good; for the sort of correctness in deliberation that makes it good deliberation is the sort that reaches a good.

However, we can reach a good by a false inference, as well [as by correct deliberation], so that we reach the right thing to do, but by the wrong steps, when the middle term is false. Hence this type of deliberation, [25] leading us by the wrong steps to the right thing to do, is not enough for good deliberation either.

Further, one person may deliberate a long time before reaching the right thing to do, while another reaches it quickly. Nor, then, is the first condition enough for good deliberation; good deliberation is correctness that accords with what is beneficial, about the right thing, in the right way, and at the right time.

Further, our deliberation may be either good without qualification or good only to the extent that it promotes some [limited] end. Hence unqualifiedly [30] good deliberation is the sort that correctly promotes the unqualified end [i.e., the highest good], while the [limited] sort is the sort that correctly promotes some [limited] end. If, then, having deliberated well is proper to a prudent person, good deliberation will be the type of correctness that accords with what is expedient for promoting the end about which prudence is true supposition.

10

Comprehension, i.e. good comprehension, makes [1143a] people, as we say, comprehend and comprehend well. It is not the same as scientific knowledge in general. Nor is it the same as belief, since, if it were, everyone would have comprehension. Nor is it any one of the specific sciences [with its own specific area], in the way that medicine is about what is healthy or geometry is about magnitudes. For comprehension is neither about what always is and is unchanging nor about [5] just anything that comes to be. It is about what we might be puzzled about and might deliberate about. That is why it is about the same things as prudence, but not the same as prudence.

For prudence is prescriptive, since its end is what action we must or must not do, whereas comprehension only judges. (For comprehension [10] and good comprehension are the same; and so are people with comprehension and with good comprehension.) Comprehension is neither having prudence nor acquiring it.

Rather, it is similar to the way learning is called comprehending when someone applies scientific knowledge. In the same way comprehension consists in the application of belief to judge someone else’s remarks on a question that concerns prudence, and [15] moreover it must judge them finely since judging well is the same as judging finely. That is how the name ‘comprehension’ was attached to the comprehension that makes people have good comprehension. It is derived from the comprehension found in learning; for we often call learning comprehending.

11

The [state] called consideration makes people, as we [20] say, considerate and makes them have consideration; it is the correct judgment of the decent person. A sign of this is our saying that the decent person more than others is considerate, and that it is decent to be considerate about some things. Considerateness is the correct consideration that judges what is decent; and correct consideration judges what is true.

It is reasonable that all these states tend in the same [25] direction. For we ascribe consideration, comprehension, prudence, and understanding to the same people, and say that these have consideration, and thereby understanding, and that they are prudent and comprehending. For all these capacities are about the last things, i.e., particulars. Moreover, someone has comprehension and good consideration, or has considerateness, in being able to judge about the matters that [30] concern the prudent person; for the decent is the common concern of all good people in relations with other people.

[These states are all concerned with particulars because] all the things achievable in action are particular and last things. For the prudent person also must recognize [things achievable in action], while comprehension and consideration are concerned with [35] things achievable in action, and these are last things.

Understanding is also concerned with the last things, and in both directions. For there is understanding, not a rational account, both about the first terms and about the last. In demonstrations understanding [1143b] is about the unchanging terms that are first. In [premises] about action understanding is about the last term, the one that admits of being otherwise, and [hence] about the minor premise. For these last terms are beginnings of the [end] to be aimed at, since [5] universals are reached from particulars.

We must, therefore, have perception of these particulars, and this perception is understanding. That is [9, 10] why understanding is both beginning and end; for demonstrations [begin] from these things and are about them.

That is why these states actually seem to grow [6] naturally, so that, whereas no one seems to have natural wisdom, people seem to have natural consideration, comprehension, and judgment. A sign [of their apparent natural character] is our thinking that they also correspond to someone’s age, and the fact that understanding and consideration belong to a certain age, as though nature were the cause. And so we must attend to the undemonstrated remarks and beliefs of experienced and older people or of prudent people, no less than to demonstrations. For these people see correctly because experience has given them their eye.

We have said, then, what prudence and wisdom [15] are; what each is about; and that each is the virtue of a different part of the soul.

12

One might, however, go through some puzzles about what use they are. For wisdom is not concerned with any sort of coming into being, and hence will not study [20] any source of human happiness. Admittedly, prudence will study this; but what do we need it for? For [25, 26] knowledge of what is healthy or fit (i.e., of what results from the state of health, not of what produces it) makes us no readier to act appropriately if we are already [27] healthy; for having the science of medicine or gymnastics makes us no readier to act appropriately. Similarly, [21] prudence is the science of what is just and what is fine, and what is good for a human being; but this is how the good man acts; and if we are already good, knowledge [25] of them makes us no readier to act appropriately, since virtues are states [activated in actions].

If we concede that prudence is not useful for this, [28] should we say it is useful for becoming good? In that case it will be no use to those who are already excellent. [30] Nor, however, will it be any use to those who are not. For it will not matter to them whether they have it themselves or take the advice of others who have it. The advice of others will be quite adequate for us, just as it is with health: we wish to be healthy, but still do not learn medical science.

Besides, it would seem absurd for prudence, inferior [35] as it is to wisdom, to control it [as a superior. But this will be the result], since the science that produces also rules and prescribes about its product.

We must discuss these questions; for so far we have only raised the puzzles about them.

First of all, let us state that both prudence and [1144a] wisdom must be choiceworthy in themselves, even if neither produces anything at all; for each is the virtue of one of the two [rational] parts [of the soul].

Secondly, they do produce something. Wisdom produces happiness, not in the way that medical science [5] produces health, but in the way that health produces [health]. For since wisdom is a part of virtue as a whole, it makes us happy because it is a state that we possess and activate.

Further, we fulfill our function insofar as we have prudence and virtue of character; for virtue makes the goal correct, and prudence makes the things promoting the goal [correct]. The fourth part of the soul, [10] the nutritive part, has no such virtue [related to our function], since no action is up to it to do or not to do.

To answer the claim that prudence will make us no better at achieving fine and just actions, we must begin from a little further back [in our discussion]. We begin here: we say that some people who do just [15] actions are not yet thereby just, if, for instance, they do the actions prescribed by the laws either unwillingly or because of ignorance or because of some other end, not because of the actions themselves, even though they do the right actions, those that the excellent person ought to do. Equally, however, it would seem to be possible for someone to do each type of action in the state that makes him a good person, that is to say, because of decision and for the [20] sake of the actions themselves.

Now virtue makes the decision correct; but the actions that are naturally to be done to fulfill the decision are the concern not of virtue, but of another capacity. We must grasp them more perspicuously before continuing our discussion.

There is a capacity, called cleverness, which is such [25] as to be able to do the actions that tend to promote whatever goal is assumed and to attain them. If, then, the goal is fine, cleverness is praiseworthy, and if the goal is base, cleverness is unscrupulousness. That is why both prudent and unscrupulous people are called clever.

Prudence is not cleverness, though it requires this capacity. [Prudence,] this eye of the soul, requires virtue in order to reach its fully developed state, as [30] we have said and as is clear. For inferences about actions have a principle, ‘Since the end and the best good is this sort of thing’ (whatever it actually is—let it be any old thing for the sake of argument). And this [best good] is apparent only to the good person; [35] for vice perverts us and produces false views about the principles of actions. Evidently, then, we cannot be prudent without being good. [1144b]

13

We must, then, also examine virtue over again. For virtue is similar [in this way] to prudence; as prudence is related to cleverness, not the same but similar, so natural virtue is related to full virtue. For each of us seems to possess his type of character to some extent [5] by nature; for in fact we are just, brave, prone to temperance, or have another feature, immediately from birth. But still we look for some further condition to be full goodness, and we expect to possess these features in another way. For these natural states belong to children and to beasts as well [as to adults], but without understanding they are evidently harmful. At [10] any rate, this much would seem to be clear: Just as a heavy body moving around unable to see suffers a heavy fall because it has no sight, so it is with virtue. [A naturally well-endowed person without understanding will harm himself.]

But if someone acquires understanding, he improves in his actions; and the state he now has, though still similar [to the natural one], will be fully virtue. And so, just as there are two sorts of conditions, cleverness and prudence, in the part of the soul that has [15] belief, so also there are two in the part that has character, natural virtue and full virtue. And of these full virtue cannot be acquired without prudence.

That is why some say that all the virtues are [instances of] prudence, and why the inquiries Socrates used to undertake were in one way correct, and in another way in error. For insofar as he thought all [20] the virtues are [instances of] prudence, he was in error; but insofar as he thought they all require prudence, what he used to say was right.

Here is a sign of this: Whenever people now define virtue, they all say what state it is and what it is related to, and then add that it is the state in accord with the correct reason. Now the correct reason is the reason in accord with prudence; it would seem, then, [25] that they all in a way intuitively believe that the state in accord with prudence is virtue.

But we must make a slight change. For it is not merely the state in accord with the correct reason, but the state involving the correct reason, that is virtue. And it is prudence that is the correct reason in this area. Socrates, then, used to think the virtues are [instances of] reason because he thought they are all [instances of] knowledge, whereas we think they [30] involve reason.

What we have said, then, makes it clear that we cannot be fully good without prudence, or prudent without virtue of character. And in this way we can also solve the dialectical argument that someone might use to show that the virtues are separated from one another. For, [it is argued], since the same person is not naturally best suited for all the virtues, someone [35] will already have one virtue before he gets another. This is indeed possible in the case of the natural virtues. It is not possible, however, in the case of the [full] virtues that someone must have to be called [1145a] good without qualification; for one has all the virtues if and only if one has prudence, which is a single state.

And it is clear that, even if prudence were useless in action, we would need it because it is the virtue of this part of the soul, and because the decision will not be correct without prudence or without virtue—[5] for [virtue] makes us achieve the end, whereas [prudence] makes us achieve the things that promote the end.

Moreover, prudence does not control wisdom or the better part of the soul, just as medical science does not control health. For medical science does not use health, but only aims to bring health into being; hence it prescribes for the sake of health, but does not prescribe to health. Besides, [saying that [10] prudence controls wisdom] would be like saying that political science rules the gods because it prescribes about everything in the city.

BOOK VII

1

Let us now make a new start, and say that there are [15] three conditions of character to be avoided—vice, incontinence, and bestiality. The contraries of two of these are clear; we call one virtue and the other continence.

The contrary to bestiality is most suitably called [20] virtue superior to us, a heroic, indeed divine, sort of virtue. Thus Homer made Priam say that Hector was remarkably good; ‘nor did he look as though he were the child of a mortal man, but of a god.’ And so, if, as they say, human beings become gods because of exceedingly great virtue, this is clearly the sort of state that would be opposite to the bestial state. For indeed, [25] just as a beast has neither virtue nor vice, so neither does a god, but the god’s state is more honorable than virtue, and the beast’s belongs to some kind different from vice.

Now it is rare that a divine man exists. (This is what the Spartans habitually call him; whenever they very much admire someone, they say he is a divine man.) Similarly, the bestial person is also rare among [30] human beings. He is most often found in foreigners; but some bestial features also result from diseases and deformities. We also use ‘bestial’ as a term of reproach for people whose vice exceeds the human level.

We must make some remarks about this condition [35] later. We have discussed vice earlier. We must now discuss incontinence, softness, and self-indulgence, and also continence and resistance; for we must not [1145b] suppose that continence and incontinence are concerned with the same states as virtue and vice, or that they belong to a different kind.

As in the other cases, we must set out the appearances, and first of all go through the puzzles. In this way we must prove the common beliefs about these [5] ways of being affected—ideally, all the common beliefs, but if not all, most of them, and the most important. For if the objections are solved, and the common beliefs are left, it will be an adequate proof.

Continence and resistance seem to be good and praiseworthy conditions, whereas incontinence and [10] softness seem to be base and blameworthy conditions. The continent person seems to be the same as one who abides by his rational calculation; and the incontinent person seems to be the same as one who abandons it. The incontinent person knows that his actions are base, but does them because of his feelings, whereas the continent person knows that his appetites are base, but because of reason does not follow them.

People think the temperate person is continent [15] and resistant. Some think that every continent and resistant person is temperate, while others do not. Some people say the incontinent person is intemperate and the intemperate incontinent, with no distinction; others say they are different.

Sometimes it is said that a prudent person cannot be incontinent; but sometimes it is said that some people are prudent and clever, but still incontinent.

Further, people are called incontinent about spirit, [20] honor, and gain. These, then, are the things that are said.

2

We might be puzzled about what sort of correct supposition someone has when he acts incontinently.

First of all, some say he cannot have knowledge [at the time he acts]. For it would be terrible, Socrates used to think, for knowledge to be in someone, but mastered by something else, and dragged around like [25] a slave. For Socrates used to oppose the account [of incontinence] in general, in the belief that there is no incontinence; for no one, in Socrates’ view, supposes while he acts that his action conflicts with what is best; our action conflicts with what is best only because we are ignorant [of the conflict].

This argument, then, contradicts things that appear manifestly. If ignorance causes the incontinent person to be affected as he is, we must look for the type of ignorance that it turns out to be; for it is evident, at [30] any rate, that before he is affected the person who acts incontinently does not think [he should do the action he eventually does].

Some people concede some of [Socrates’ points], but reject some of them. For they agree that nothing is superior to knowledge, but they deny the claim that no one’s action conflicts with what has seemed better to him. That is why they say that when the incontinent person is overcome by pleasure he has only belief, not knowledge. [35]

If, however, he has belief, not knowledge, and the [1146a] supposition that resists is not strong, but only a weak one, such as people have when they are in doubt, we will pardon failure to abide by these beliefs against strong appetites. In fact, however, we do not pardon vice, or any other blameworthy condition [and incontinence is one of these].

Then is it prudence that resists, since it is the [5] strongest? This is absurd. For on this view the same person will be both prudent and incontinent; but no one would say that the prudent person is the sort to do the worst actions willingly. Besides, we have shown earlier that the prudent person acts [on his knowledge], since he is concerned with the last things, [i.e., particulars] and that he has the other virtues.

Further, if the continent person must have strong [10] and base appetites, the temperate person will not be continent nor the continent person temperate. For the temperate person is not the sort to have either excessive or base appetites; but [the continent person] must have both. For if his appetites are good, the state that prevents him from following them must be base, so that not all continence is excellent. If, however, [15] the appetites are weak and not base, continence is nothing impressive; and if they are base and weak, it is nothing great.

Further, if continence makes someone prone to abide by every belief, it is bad, if, for instance, it makes him abide by a false as well [as true] belief. And if incontinence makes someone prone to abandon every belief, there will be an excellent type of incontinence. Take, for instance, Neoptolemus in [20] Sophocles’ Philoctetes. For he is praiseworthy for his failure to abide by [his promise to tell the lies] that Odysseus had persuaded him [to tell]; [he breaks his promise] because he feels pain at lying.

Further, the sophistical argument is a puzzle. For [the sophists] wish to refute an [opponent, by showing] that his views have paradoxical results, so that they will be clever in encounters. Hence the inference that results is a puzzle; for thought is tied up, whenever [25] it does not want to stand still, because the conclusion is displeasing, but it cannot advance, because it cannot solve the argument. A certain argument, then, concludes that foolishness combined with incontinence is virtue. For incontinence makes someone act contrary to what he supposes [is right]; but since he supposes that good things are bad and that it is wrong [30] to do them, he will do the good actions, not the bad. Further, someone who acts to pursue what is pleasant because this is what he is persuaded and decides to do seems to be better than someone who acts not because of rational calculation, but because of incontinence. For the first person is the easier to cure, because he might be persuaded to act otherwise; but the incontinent person illustrates the proverb ‘If water [35] chokes us, what must we drink to wash it down?’ For [1146b] if he had been persuaded to do the action he does, he would have stopped when he was persuaded to act otherwise; but in fact, though already persuaded to act otherwise, he still acts [wrongly].

Further, is there incontinence and continence about everything? If so, who is simply incontinent? For no one has all the types of incontinence, but we say that some people are simply incontinent. [5]

These, then, are the sorts of puzzles that arise. We must undermine some of these claims, and leave others intact; for the solution of the puzzle is the discovery [of what we are seeking].

3

First, then, we must examine whether the incontinent has knowledge or not, and in what way he has it. Second, what should we take to be the range of incontinence [10] and continence—every pleasure and pain, or some definite subclass? Are the continent and the resistant person the same or different? Similarly we must deal with the other questions that are relevant to this study.

We begin by examining whether continence and [15] incontinence differ from other things by their range or by their attitudes. In other words, is the incontinent person incontinent because of a specific range of actions, or because of a specific attitude, or because of both? Next, is there incontinence and continence about everything, or not?

For the simply incontinent person is not incontinent about everything, but he has the same range as the intemperate person. Nor is he incontinent simply [20] by being inclined toward these things—that would make incontinence the same as intemperance. Rather, he is incontinent by being inclined toward them in this way. For the intemperate person acts on decision when he is led on, since he thinks it is right in every case to pursue the pleasant thing at hand; the incontinent person, however, thinks it is wrong to pursue this pleasant thing, yet still pursues it.

It is claimed that the incontinent person’s action [25] conflicts with the true belief, not with knowledge. But whether it is knowledge or belief that he has does not matter for this argument. For some people with belief are in no doubt, but think they have exact knowledge.

If, then, it is the weakness of their conviction that makes people with belief, not people with knowledge, act in conflict with their supposition, it follows that knowledge will [for these purposes] be no different from belief; for, as Heracleitus makes clear, some people’s [30] convictions about what they believe are no weaker than other people’s convictions about what they know.

But we speak of knowing in two ways; we ascribe it both to someone who has it without using it and to someone who is using it. Hence it will matter whether someone has the knowledge that his action is wrong, without attending to his knowledge, or he both has it [35] and attends to it. For this second case seems extraordinary, but wrong action when he does not attend to his knowledge does not seem extraordinary.

Further, since there are two types of premises, [1147a] someone’s action may well conflict with his knowledge if he has both types of premises, but uses only the universal premise and not the particular premise. For it is particulars that are achievable in action. There are also different types of universal, one type referring to the agent himself, and the other referring [5] to the object. Perhaps, for instance, someone knows that dry things benefit every human being, and that he himself is a human being, or that this sort of thing is dry; but he either does not have or does not activate the knowledge that this particular thing is of this sort. These ways [of knowing and not knowing], then, make such a remarkable difference that it seems quite intelligible [for someone acting against his knowledge] to have the one sort of knowledge, but astounding if he has the other sort.

Further, human beings may have knowledge in a [10] way different from those we have described. For we see that having without using includes different types of having; hence some people, such as those asleep or mad or drunk, both have knowledge in a way and do not have it. Moreover, this is the condition of those affected by strong feelings. For spirited reactions, [15] sexual appetites, and some conditions of this sort clearly [both disturb knowledge and] disturb the body as well, and even produce fits of madness in some people. Clearly, then [since in continents are also affected by strong feelings], we should say that they have knowledge in a way similar to these people.

Saying the words that come from knowledge is no sign [of fully having it]. For people affected in these ways even recite demonstrations and verses of Empedocles. [20] And those who have just learned something do not yet know it, though they string the words together; for it must grow into them, and this takes time. And so we must suppose that those who are acting incontinently also say the words in the way that actors do.

Further, we may also look at the cause in the [25] following way, referring to [human] nature. For one belief is universal; the other is about particulars, and because they are particulars, perception controls them. And in the cases where these two beliefs result in one belief, it is necessary, in one case, for the soul to affirm what has been concluded, but, in the case of beliefs about production, to act at once on what has been concluded. If, for instance, everything sweet [30] must be tasted, and this, some one particular thing, is sweet, it is necessary for someone who is able and unhindered also to act on this at the same time.

Suppose, then, that someone has the universal belief hindering him from tasting; he has the second belief, that everything sweet is pleasant and this is sweet, and this belief is active; but it turns out that appetite is present in him. The belief, then, [that is [35] formed from the previous two beliefs] tells him to avoid this, but appetite leads him on, since it is capable of moving each of the [bodily] parts.

The result, then, is that in a way reason and belief [1147b] make him act incontinently. The [second] belief is contrary to the correct reason, but only coincidentally, not in its own right. For the appetite, not the belief, is contrary [in its own right to the correct reason]. That is also why beasts are not incontinent, because they have no universal supposition, but [only] appearance [5] and memory of particulars.

How is the ignorance resolved, so that the incontinent person recovers his knowledge? The same account that applies to someone drunk or asleep applies here too, and is not special to this way of being affected. We must hear it from the natural scientists.

Since the last premise is a belief about something [10] perceptible, and controls action, this is what the incontinent person does not have when he is being affected. Or [rather] the way he has it is not knowledge of it, but, as we saw, [merely] saying the words, as the drunk says the words of Empedocles.

And since the last term does not seem to be universal, or expressive of knowledge in the same way as [15] the universal term, even the result Socrates was looking for would seem to come about. For the knowledge that is present when someone is affected by incontinence, and that is dragged about because he is affected, is not the sort that seems to be fully knowledge, but it is only perceptual knowledge.

So much, then, for knowing and not knowing, and for how it is possible to know and still to act incontinently.

4

Next we must say whether anyone is simply incontinent, [20] or all incontinents are incontinent in some particular way; and if someone is simply incontinent, we must say what sorts of things he is incontinent about.

First of all, both continence and resistance and incontinence and softness are evidently about pleasures and pains. [25] Some sources of pleasure are necessary; others are choiceworthy in their own right, but can be taken to excess. The necessary ones are the bodily conditions, i.e., those that concern food, sexual intercourse, and the sorts of bodily conditions that we took temperance and intemperance to be about. Other sources of pleasure are not necessary, but are choiceworthy in themselves, such as victory, honor, wealth, and similar [30] good and pleasant things.

When people go to excess, against the correct reason in them, in the pursuit of these sources of pleasure, we do not call them simply incontinent, but add the qualification that they are incontinent about wealth, gain, honor, or spirit, and not simply incontinent. For we assume that they are different, and called incontinent [only] because of a similarity, just as the [35] Olympic victor named Human¹² was different, since [1148a] for him the common account [of human being] was only a little different from his special one, but it was different nonetheless.

A sign in favor of what we say is the fact that incontinence is blamed not only as an error but as a vice, either unqualified or partial, while none of these conditions is blamed as a vice.

Now consider the people concerned with the [5] bodily gratifications, those that we take temperance and intemperance to be about. Some of these people go to excess in pursuing these pleasant things and avoiding painful things—hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and all the objects of touch and taste—not, however, because they have decided on it, but against their decision and thought. These are the people called simply incontinent, not with the added condition that [10] they are incontinent about, for instance, anger.

A sign of this is the fact that people are also called soft about these [bodily] pleasures, but not about any of the non-necessary ones.

This is also why we include the incontinent and the intemperate person, and the continent and the temperate person, in the same class, but do not include any of those who are incontinent in some particular [15] way. It is because incontinence and intemperance are, in a way, about the same pleasures and pains. In fact they are about the same things, but not in the same way; the intemperate person decides on them, but the incontinent person does not. That is why, if someone has no appetites, or slight ones, for excesses, but still pursues them and avoids moderate pains, we will take him to be more intemperate than the person who does it because he has intense appetites. [20] For think of the lengths he would go to if he also acquired vigorous appetites and felt severe pains at the lack of necessities.

Some pleasant things are naturally choiceworthy, some naturally the contrary, some in between, as we divided them earlier. Hence some appetites and pleasures are for fine and excellent kinds of things, [25] such as wealth, profit, victory, and honor. About all these and about the things in between people are blamed not for feeling an appetite and love for them, but for doing so in a particular way, namely to excess.

Some people are overcome by, or pursue, some of [30] these naturally fine and good things to a degree that goes against reason; they take honor, or children, or parents (for instance) more seriously than is right. For though these are certainly good and people are praised for taking them seriously, still excess about them is also possible. It is excessive if one fights, as Niobe¹³ did [for her children], even with the gods, [1148b] or if one regards his father as Satyrus,¹⁴ nicknamed the Father lover, did—for he seemed to be excessively silly about it. There is no vice here, for the reason we have given, since each of these things is naturally choiceworthy for itself, though excess about them is bad and to be avoided.

Similarly, there is no incontinence here either, [5] since incontinence is not merely to be avoided, but also blameworthy [and these conditions are not]. But because this way of being affected is similar to incontinence, people call it incontinence, adding the qualification that it is incontinence about this or that. Just so they call someone a bad doctor or a bad actor, though they would never call him simply bad, since [10] each of these conditions is not vice, but only similar to it by analogy. It is clear, likewise, that the only condition we should take to be continence or incontinence is the one concerned with what concerns temperance and intemperance. We speak of incontinence about spirit because of the similarity [to simple incontinence], and hence add the qualification that someone is incontinent about spirit, as we do in the case of honor or gain.

5

Some things are naturally pleasant, and some of these [15] are pleasant without qualification, whereas others correspond to differences between kinds of animals and of human beings. Other things are not naturally pleasant, but deformities or habits or base natures make them pleasant; and we can see states that are about each of these that are similar to [states that are about naturally pleasant things].

By bestial states I mean, for instance, the female [20] human being who is said to tear pregnant women apart and devour the children; or the pleasures of some of the savage people around the Black Sea who are reputed to enjoy raw meat and human flesh, while some trade their children to each other to feast on; or what is said about Phalaris.

These states are bestial. Other states result from [25] attacks of disease, and in some cases from fits of madness—for instance, the person who sacrificed his mother and ate her, and the one who ate the liver of his fellow slave. Others result from diseased conditions or from [30] habit—for instance, plucking hairs, chewing nails, even coal and earth, and besides these sexual intercourse between males. For in some people these result from [a diseased] nature, in others from habit, as, for instance, in those who have suffered wanton [sexual] assault since their childhood.

If nature is the cause, no one would call these people incontinent, any more than women would be called incontinent for being mounted rather than mounting. The same applies to those who are in a diseased state because of habit. [1149a] Each of these states, then, is outside the limits of vice, just as bestiality is. If someone who has them overcomes them or is overcome by them, that is not simple [continence or] incontinence, but the type so called from similarity, just as someone who is overcome by spirit should be called incontinent in relation to his feeling, but not [simply] incontinent. For [5] among all the excesses of foolishness, cowardice, intemperance, and irritability some are bestial, some diseased.

If, for instance, someone’s natural character makes him afraid of everything, even the noise of a mouse, he is a coward with a bestial sort of cowardice. Another person was afraid of a weasel because of an attack of disease. Among foolish people also, those who naturally [10] lack reason and live only by sense perception, as some races of distant foreigners do, are bestial. Those who are foolish because of attacks of disease, such as epilepsy, or because of fits of madness, are diseased.

Sometimes it is possible to have some of these conditions without being overcome—if, for instance, Phalaris had an appetite to eat a child or for some [15] bizarre sexual pleasure, but restrained it. It is also possible to be overcome by these conditions and not merely to have them.

One sort of vice is human, and this is called simple vice; another sort is called vice with an added condition, and is said to be bestial or diseased vice, but not simple vice. Similarly, then, it is also clear that one sort of incontinence is bestial, another diseased, but only the incontinence corresponding to human intemperance is simple incontinence. [20]

It is clear, then, that incontinence and continence apply only within the range of intemperance and temperance, and that for other things there is another form of incontinence, so called by transference of the name, and not simply.

6

Moreover, let us observe that incontinence about [25] spirit is less shameful than incontinence about appetites. For spirit would seem to hear reason a bit, but to mishear it. It is like overhasty servants who run out before they have heard all their instructions, and then carry them out wrongly, or dogs who bark at any noise at all, before looking to see if it is a friend. In the same way, since spirit is naturally hot and hasty, it [30] hears, but does not hear the instruction, and rushes off to exact a penalty. For reason or appearance has shown that we are being slighted or wantonly insulted; and spirit, as though it had inferred that it is right to fight this sort of thing, is irritated at once. Appetite, [35] however, only needs reason or perception to say that this is pleasant, and it rushes off for gratification.

And so spirit follows reason in a way, but appetite [1149b] does not. Therefore [incontinence about appetite] is more shameful. For if someone is incontinent about spirit, he is overcome by reason in a way; but if he is incontinent about appetite, he is overcome by appetite, not by reason.

Further, it is more pardonable to follow natural [5] desires, since it is also more pardonable to follow those natural appetites that are common to everyone and to the extent that they are common. Now spirit and irritability are more natural than the excessive and unnecessary appetites. It is just as the son said in his defense for beating his father: ‘Yes, and he beat his father, and his father beat his father before that’; and [10] pointing to his young son, he said, ‘And he will beat me when he becomes a man; it runs in our family.’ Similarly, the father being dragged by his son kept urging him to stop at the front door, since that was as far as he had dragged his own father.

Further, those who plot more are more unjust. Now the spirited person does not plot, and neither does spirit; it is open. Appetite, however, is like what [15] they say about Aphrodite, ‘trick weaving Cypris,’ and what Homer says about her embroidered girdle: ‘Blandishment, which steals the wits even of the very prudent.’ If, then, incontinence about appetite is more unjust and more shameful than incontinence about spirit, it is simple incontinence, and vice in a way. [20]

Further, no one feels pain when he commits wanton aggression; but whatever someone does from anger, he feels pain when he does it, whereas the wanton aggressor does what he does with pleasure. Now if whatever more justly provokes anger is more unjust, incontinence caused by appetite is more unjust, since spirit involves no wanton aggression.

It is clear, then, how incontinence about appetites [25] is more shameful than incontinence about spirit, and that continence and incontinence are about bodily appetites and pleasures.

Now we must grasp the varieties of these appetites and pleasures. As we said at the beginning, some appetites are human and natural in kind and degree, some bestial, some caused by deformities and diseases. [30] Temperance and intemperance are concerned only with the first of these. This is also why we do not call beasts either temperate or intemperate, except by transference of the name, if one kind of animal exceeds another altogether in wanton aggression, destructiveness, and ravenousness. For beasts have neither decision nor rational calculation, but are outside [35] [rational] nature, as the madmen among human beings [1150a] are.

Bestiality is less grave than vice, but more frightening; for the best part is not corrupted, as it is in a human being, but absent altogether. Hence a comparison between the two is like a comparison between an inanimate and an animate being to see which is [5] worse. For in each case the badness of something that lacks an internal principle of its badness is less destructive than the badness of something that has such an internal principle; and understanding is such an internal principle. It is similar, then, to a comparison between the injustice [of a beast] and an unjust human being; for in a way each [of these] is worse, since a bad human being can do innumerably more bad things than a beast.

7

Let us now consider the pleasures and pains arising [10] through touch and taste, the appetites for these pleasures, and the aversions from these pains. Earlier we defined temperance and intemperance as being about these. Now it is possible for someone to be in the state in which he is overcome, even by [pleasure and pains] which most people overcome; and it is possible to overcome even those that overcome most people. The person who is prone to be overcome by pleasures is incontinent; the one who overcomes is continent; the one overcome by pains is soft; and the one who overcomes them is resistant. The state of most people [15] is in between, though indeed they may lean more toward the worse states.

Now some pleasures are necessary and some are not. [The necessary ones are necessary] to a certain extent, but their excesses and deficiencies are not. The same is true for appetites and pains. One person pursues excesses of pleasant things because they are [20] excesses and because he decides on it, for themselves and not for some further result. He is intemperate; for he is bound to have no regrets, and so is incurable, since someone without regrets is incurable. The one who is deficient is his opposite, while the intermediate one is temperate. The same is true of the one who avoids bodily pains not because he is overcome, but because he decides on it.

One of those who do not [act on] decision is led [25] on because of pleasure; the other is led on because he is avoiding the pain that comes from appetite; hence these two differ from each other.

Now it would seem to everyone that someone who does a shameful action from no appetite or a weak one is worse than if he does it from an intense appetite; and, similarly, that if he strikes another not from anger, he is worse than if he strikes from anger. For [30] [if he can do such evil when he is unaffected by feeling], what would he have done if he had been strongly affected? That is why the intemperate person is worse than the incontinent.

One of the states mentioned [i.e., the decision to avoid pain] is more a species of softness, whereas the other person is intemperate.

The continent person is opposite to the incontinent, and the resistant to the soft. For resistance consists in holding out, and continence in overcoming, [35] but holding out is different from overcoming, just as not being defeated differs from winning; hence continence is more choiceworthy than resistance.

Someone who is deficient in withstanding what [1150b] most people withstand, and are capable of withstanding, is soft and self-indulgent; for self-indulgence is a kind of softness. This person trails his cloak to avoid the labor and pain of lifting it, and imitates an invalid, [5] though he does not think he is miserable—he is [merely] similar to a miserable person.

It is similar with continence and incontinence also. For it is not surprising if someone is overcome by strong and excessive pleasures or pains; indeed, this is pardonable, provided he struggles against them—like Theodectes’ Philoctetes bitten by the snake, or [10] Carcinus’ Cercyon in the Alope, and like those who are trying to restrain their laughter and burst out laughing all at once, as happened to Xenophantus. But it is surprising if someone is overcome by what most people can resist, and is incapable of withstanding it, not because of his hereditary nature or because of disease (as, for instance, the Scythian kings’ softness [15] is hereditary, and as the female is distinguished [by softness] from the male).

The lover of amusements also seems to be intemperate, but in fact he is soft. For amusement is a relaxation, since it is a release, and the lover of amusement is one of those who go to excess here.

One type of incontinence is impetuosity, while [20] another is weakness. For the weak person deliberates, but then his feeling makes him abandon the result of his deliberation; but the impetuous person is led on by his feelings because he has not deliberated. For some people are like those who do not get tickled themselves if they tickle someone else first; if they see and notice something in advance, and rouse themselves and their rational calculation, they are not overcome by feelings, no matter whether something is [25] pleasant or painful. Quick-tempered and volatile people are most prone to be impetuous in continents. For in quick-tempered people the appetite is so fast, and in volatile people so intense, that they do not wait for reason, because they tend to follow appearance.

8

The intemperate person, as we said, is not prone to [30] regret, since he abides by his decision [when he acts]. But every incontinent is prone to regret. That is why the truth is not what we said in raising the puzzles, but in fact the intemperate person is incurable, and the incontinent curable. For vice resembles diseases such as dropsy or consumption, while incontinence is more like epilepsy; vice is a continuous bad condition, but incontinence is not. For the incontinent is similar to those who get drunk quickly from a little [1151a3] wine, and from less than it takes for most people. [4, 5] And in general incontinence and vice are of different [1150b35] kinds. For the vicious person does not recognize that he is vicious, whereas the incontinent person recognizes that he is incontinent.

Among the incontinent people themselves, those [1151a] who abandon themselves [to desire, i.e., the impetuous] are better than those [i.e., the weak] who have reason but do not abide by it. For the second type are overcome by a less strong feeling, and do not act without having deliberated, as the first type do.

Evidently, then, incontinence is not a vice, though [5] presumably it is one in a way. For incontinence is against one’s decision, but vice accords with decision. All the same, incontinence is similar to vice in its actions. Thus Demodocus attacks the Milesians: ‘The Milesians are not stupid, but they do what stupid people would do’; in the same way incontinents are [10] not unjust, but will do injustice.

Moreover, the incontinent person is the sort to pursue excessive bodily pleasures against correct reason, but not because he is persuaded [it is best]. The intemperate person, however, is persuaded, because he is the sort of person to pursue them. Hence the incontinent person is easily persuaded out of it, while the intemperate person is not.

For virtue preserves the principle, whereas vice [15] corrupts it; and in actions the end we act for is the principle, as the assumptions are the principles in mathematics. Reason does not teach the principles either in mathematics or in actions; [with actions] it is virtue, either natural or habituated, that teaches correct belief about the principle. The sort of person [with this virtue] is temperate, and the contrary sort intemperate. [20]

But there is also someone who because of his feelings abandons himself against correct reason. They overcome him far enough so that his actions do not accord with correct reason, but not so far as to make him the sort of person to be persuaded that it is right to pursue such pleasures without restraint. This, then, is the incontinent person. He is better than the intemperate person, and is not bad without qualification, [25] since the best thing, the principle, is preserved in him. Another sort of person is contrary to him. [This is the continent person,] who abides [by reason] and does not abandon himself, not because of his feelings at least. It is evident from this that the continent person’s state is excellent, and the incontinent person’s state is base.

9

Then is someone continent if he abides by just any [30] sort of reason and any sort of decision, or must he abide by the correct decision? And is someone incontinent if he fails to abide by just any decision and any reason, or must it be reason that is not false, and the correct decision? This was the puzzle raised earlier.

Perhaps in fact the continent person abides, and the incontinent fails to abide, by just any decision coincidentally, but abides by the true reason and the correct decision in itself. For if someone chooses or [35] pursues one thing because of a second, he pursues [1151b] and chooses the second in itself and the first coincidentally. Now when we speak of something without qualification, we speak of it in itself. Hence in one way [i.e., coincidentally] the continent person abides by just any belief, and the incontinent abandons it; but, [speaking] without qualification, the continent person abides by the true belief and the incontinent person abandons it.

Now there are some other people who tend to [5] abide by their belief. These are the people called stubborn, who are hard to persuade into something and not easy to persuade out of it. These have some similarity to continent people, just as the wasteful person has to the generous, and the rash to the confident. But they are different on many points. For the continent person is not swayed because of feeling and appetite; [but he is not inflexible about everything] [10] since he will be easily persuaded whenever it is appropriate. But stubborn people are not swayed by reason; for they acquire appetites, and many of them are led on by pleasures.

The stubborn include the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish. The opinionated are as they are because of pleasure and pain. For they find enjoyment in winning [the argument] if they are not persuaded [15] to change their views, and they feel pain if their opinions are voided, like decrees [in the Assembly]. Hence they are more like incontinent than like continent people.

There are also some people who do not abide by their resolutions, but not because they are incontinent—Neoptolemus, for instance, in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. Though certainly it was pleasure that made him abandon his resolution, it was a fine pleasure; [20] for telling the truth was pleasant to him, but Odysseus had persuaded him to lie. [He is not incontinent;] for not everyone who does something because of pleasure is either intemperate or base or incontinent, but only someone who does it because of a shameful pleasure.

There is also the sort of person who enjoys bodily things less than is right, and does not abide by reason; hence the continent person is intermediate between [25] this person and the incontinent. For the incontinent fails to abide by reason because of too much [enjoyment]; the other person fails because of too little; but the continent person abides and is not swayed because of too much or too little. If continence is excellent, then both of these contrary states must be base, as indeed [30] they appear. However, the other state is evident in only a few people on a few occasions; and hence continence seems to be contrary only to incontinence, just as temperance seems to be contrary only to intemperance.

Now many things are called by some name because of similarity [to genuine cases]; this has happened also to the continence of the temperate person, because of similarity. For the continent and the temperate person [35] are both the sort to do nothing against reason because of bodily pleasures, but the continent person has base appetites, whereas the temperate person lacks them. [1152a] The temperate person is the sort to find nothing pleasant against reason, but the continent is the sort to find such things pleasant but not to be led by them.

The incontinent and the intemperate person are [5] similar too; though they are different, they both pursue bodily sources of pleasure. But the intemperate person [pursues them because he] also thinks it is right, while the incontinent person does not think so.

10

Nor can the same person be at once both prudent and incontinent. For we have shown that a prudent person must also at the same time be excellent in [8] character, [and the incontinent person is not]. However, [10] a clever person may well be incontinent. Indeed, the reason people sometimes seem to be prudent but incontinent is that [really they are only clever and] [11] cleverness differs from prudence in the way we [12, 13] described in our first discussion; though they are closely related in definition, they differ in [so far as prudence [14] requires the correct] decision.

Moreover, someone is not prudent simply by knowing; [8, 9] he must also act on his knowledge. But the incontinent person does not. He is not in the condition of [14] someone who knows and is attending [to his knowledge, as he would have to be if he were prudent], [15] but in the condition of one asleep or drunk.

He acts willingly; for in a way he acts in knowledge both of what he is doing and of the end he is doing it for. But he is not base, since his decision is decent; hence he is half base. Nor is he unjust, since he is not a plotter. For one type of incontinent person [i.e., the weak] does not abide by the result of his deliberation, while the volatile [i.e., impetuous] person is not even prone to deliberate at all.

In fact the incontinent person is like a city that [20] votes for all the right decrees and has excellent laws, but does not apply them, as in Anaxandrides’ taunt, ‘The city willed it, that cares nothing for laws.’ The base person, by contrast, is like a city that applies its laws, but applies bad ones.

Incontinence and continence are about what exceeds [25] the state of most people; the continent person abides [by reason] more than most people are capable of doing, the incontinent person less.

The [impetuous] type of incontinence found in volatile people is more easily cured than the [weak] type of incontinence found in those who deliberate but do not abide by it. And incontinents through habituation are more easily cured than the natural incontinents; for habit is easier than nature to change. [30] Indeed the reason why habit is also difficult to change is that it is like nature; as Eunenus says, ‘Habit, I say, is longtime training, my friend, and in the end training is nature for human beings.’

We have said, then, what continence and incontinence, [35] resistance and softness are, and how these states are related to each other.

11

Pleasure and pain are proper subjects of study for the [1152b] political philosopher, since he is the ruling craftsman of the end that we refer to in calling something bad or good without qualification. Further, we must also examine them because we have laid it down that [5] virtue and vice of character are about pains and pleasures, and because most people think happiness involves pleasure—that is why they also call the blessed person by that name (makarios) from enjoyment (chairein).

Now it seems to some people that no pleasure is a good, either in its own right or coincidentally, on the ground that the good is not the same as pleasure. To others it seems that some pleasures are good, but [10] most are bad. A third view is that even if every pleasure is a good, the best good still cannot be pleasure.

The reasons for thinking it is not a good at all are these: Every pleasure is a perceived becoming toward [the fulfillment of something’s] nature; but no becoming is of the same kind as its end—for instance, no [process of] building is of the same kind as a house. [15] Further, the temperate person avoids pleasures. Further, the prudent person pursues what is painless, not what is pleasant. Further, pleasures impede prudent thinking, and impede it more the more we enjoy them; no one, for instance, can think about anything during sexual intercourse. Further, every good is the product of a craft, but there is no craft of pleasure. [20] Further, children and animals pursue pleasure.

To show that not all pleasures are excellent things, people say that some are shameful and reproached, and that some are harmful, since some pleasant things cause disease.

To show that the best good is not pleasure, people say that pleasure is not an end, but a becoming.

These, then, are roughly the things said about it.

12

These arguments, however, do not show that pleasure [25] is not a good, or even that it is not the best good. This will be clear as follows.

First of all, since what is good may be good in either of two ways, as good without qualification or as good for some particular thing or person, this will also be true of natures and states, and hence also of processes and becomings. And so, among the [processes and becomings] that seem bad, some are bad without qualification but for some person not bad, and for this person actually choiceworthy. Some are [30] not choiceworthy for him either, except sometimes and for a short time, not on each occasion. Some are not even pleasures, but appear to be; these are the [processes], for instance, in sick people that involve pain and are means to medical treatment.

Further, since one sort of good is an activity and another sort is a state, the processes that restore us to our natural state are pleasant coincidentally. Here the [35] activity in the appetites belongs to the rest of our state and nature. For there are also pleasures without pain [1153a] and appetite, such as the pleasures of studying, those in which our nature lacks nothing.

A sign [that supports our distinction between pleasures] is the fact that we do not enjoy the same thing when our nature is being refilled as we enjoy when it is eventually fully restored. When it is fully restored, we enjoy things that are pleasant without qualification, but when it is being refilled, we enjoy even the contrary things. For we even enjoy sharp or bitter [5] things, though none of these is pleasant by nature or pleasant without qualification. Hence [these pleasures] are not pleasures [without qualification] either; for as pleasant things differ from one another, so the pleasures arising from them differ too.

Further, it is not necessary for something else to be better than pleasure, as the end, some say, is better than the becoming. For pleasures are not becomings, nor do they all even involve a becoming. They are [10] activities, and an end [in themselves], and arise when we exercise [a capacity], not when we are coming to be [in some state]. And not all pleasures have something else as their end, but only those in people who are being led toward the completion of their nature.

That is why it is also a mistake to call pleasure a perceived becoming. It should instead be called an activity of the natural state, and should be called not perceived, but unimpeded. The reason it seems to some people to be a becoming is that it is fully good [and hence an activity]; for they think activities are [15] becomings, though in fact these are different things.

To say that pleasures are bad because some pleasant things cause disease is the same as saying that some healthy things are bad for money-making. To this extent both are bad; but that is not enough to make [20] them bad, since even study is sometimes harmful to health.

Neither prudence nor any state is impeded by the pleasures arising from it, but only by alien pleasures. For the pleasures arising from study and learning will make us study and learn all the more.

The fact that pleasure is not the product of a craft [25] is quite reasonable; for a craft does not belong to any other activity either, but to a capacity. And yet, the crafts of perfumery and cooking do seem to be crafts of pleasure.

The claim that the temperate person avoids pleasure, that the prudent person pursues the painless life, and that children and beasts pursue pleasure—all these are solved by the same reply. For we have explained in what ways pleasures are good, and in what ways not all are good without qualification; and [30] it is these pleasures [that are not good without qualification] that beasts and children pursue, whereas the prudent person pursues painlessness in relation to these. These are the pleasures that involve appetite and pain and the bodily pleasures (since these involve appetite and pain) and their excesses, whose pursuit makes the intemperate person intemperate. That is why the temperate person avoids these pleasures [but not all pleasures], since there are pleasures of the [35] temperate person too.

13

Moreover, it is also agreed that pain is an evil, and [1153b] is to be avoided; for one kind of pain is bad without qualification, and another is bad in a particular way, by impeding [activities]. But the contrary to what is to be avoided, insofar as it is bad and to be avoided, is a good; hence pleasure must be a good. For Speusippus’ solution—[that pleasure is opposite both to pain [5] and to the good] as the greater is contrary both to the lesser and to the equal—does not succeed. For he would not say [as his solution requires] that pleasure is essentially an evil.

Besides, just as one science might well be the best good, even though some sciences are bad, some pleasure might well be the best good, even though most pleasures are bad. Indeed, presumably, if each state has its unimpeded activities, and happiness is the [10] activity—if the activity is unimpeded—of all states or of some one of them, it follows that some unimpeded activity is most choiceworthy. But pleasure is this, [namely, an unimpeded activity]; and so some type of pleasure might be the best good even if most pleasures turn out to be bad without qualification.

That is why all think the happy life is pleasant and [15] weave pleasure into happiness, quite reasonably. For no activity is complete if it is impeded, and happiness is something complete. That is why the happy person needs to have goods of the body and external goods added [to good activities], and needs fortune also, so that he will not be impeded in these ways.

Some maintain, on the contrary, that we are happy when we are broken on the wheel, or fall into terrible misfortunes, provided that we are good. Whether they [20] mean to or not, these people are talking nonsense.

And because happiness needs fortune added, some believe good fortune is the same as happiness. But it is not. For when it is excessive, it actually impedes happiness; and then, presumably, it is no longer rightly called good fortune, since the limit [up to which it is good] is defined in relation to happiness.

The fact that all, both beasts and human beings, [25] pursue pleasure is some sign of its being in some way the best good: ‘No rumor is altogether lost which many peoples [spread]….’ But since the best nature and state neither is nor seems to be the same for all, [30] they also do not all pursue the same pleasure, though they all pursue pleasure. Presumably in fact they do pursue the same pleasure, and not the one they think or would say they pursue; for all things by nature have something divine [in them].

However, the bodily pleasures have taken over the [35] name because people most often aim at them, and all share in them; and so, since these are the only pleasures they know, people suppose that they are [1154a] the only pleasures.

It is also apparent that if pleasure is not a good and an activity, it will not be true that the happy person lives pleasantly. For what will he need pleasure for if it is not a good? Indeed, it will even be possible for him to live painfully; for pain is neither an evil [5] nor a good if pleasure is not, and why then would he avoid it? Nor indeed will the life of the excellent person be more pleasant if his activities are not also more pleasant.

14

Those who maintain that some pleasures, such as the [10] fine ones, are highly choiceworthy, but the bodily pleasures that concern the intemperate person are not, should examine bodily pleasures.

If what they say is true, why are the pains contrary to these pleasures deplorable? For it is a good that is contrary to an evil. Then are the necessary [bodily pleasures] good only in the way that what is not bad is good? Or are they good up to a point? [Surely they are good up to a point.] For though some states and processes allow no excess of the better, and hence no excess of pleasure [in them] [15] either, others do allow excess of the better, and hence also allow excess of the pleasure in them. Now the bodily goods allow excess. The base person is base because he pursues the excess, but not because he pursues the necessary pleasures; for all enjoy delicacies and wines and sexual relations in some way, though not all in the right way.

The contrary is true of pain. For the base person [20] avoids pain in general, not [only] an excess of it. For not [all] pain is contrary to excess [of pleasure], except to someone who pursues the excess [of pleasure].

We must, however, not only state the true view, but also explain the false view; for an explanation of that promotes confidence. For when we have an apparently reasonable explanation of why a false view [25] appears true, that makes us more confident of the true view. Hence we should say why bodily pleasures appear more choiceworthy.

First, then, it is because bodily pleasure pushes out pain. Excesses of pain make people seek a cure in the pursuit of excessive pleasure and of bodily pleasure in general. And these cures become intense—that is [30] why they are pursued—because they appear next to their contraries.

Indeed these are the two reasons why pleasure seems to be no excellent thing, as we have said. First, some pleasures are the actions of a base nature—either base from birth, as in a beast, or base because of habit, such as the actions of base human beings. Secondly, others are cures of something deficient, and it is better to be [1154b] in a good state than to be coming into it. In fact these pleasures coincide with our restoration to complete health, and so are excellent coincidentally.

Further, bodily pleasures are pursued because they are intense, by people who are incapable of enjoying other pleasures. Certainly, these people induce some kinds of thirst in themselves. What they do is not a matter for reproach, whenever [the pleasures] [5] are harmless, but it is base whenever they are harmful. These people do this because they enjoy nothing else, and many people’s natural constitution makes the neutral condition painful to them.

For an animal is always suffering, as the natural scientists also testify, since they maintain that seeing and hearing are painful. However, we are used [to seeing and hearing] by now, so they say, [and so feel no intense pain]. Indeed, the [process of] growth [10] makes young people’s condition similar to an intoxicated person’s and [hence] youth is pleasant. Naturally volatile people, by contrast, are always requiring a cure, since their constitution causes their body continual turmoil, and they are always having intense desires. A pain is driven out by its contrary pleasure, indeed by any pleasure at all that is strong enough; [15] and this is why such people become intemperate and base.

Pleasures without pains, however, have no excess. These are pleasant by nature and not coincidentally. By coincidentally pleasant things I mean pleasant things that are curative; for the [process of] being cured coincides with some action of the part of us that remains healthy, and hence undergoing a cure seems to be pleasant. Things are pleasant by nature, [20] however, when they produce action of a healthy nature.

The reason why no one thing is always pleasant is that our nature is not simple, but has more than one constituent, insofar as we are perishable; hence the action of one part is against nature for the other nature in us, and when they are equally balanced, the action seems neither pleasant nor painful. For if something has a simple nature the same action will always be [25] the most pleasant.

That is why the god always enjoys one simple pleasure [without change]. For activity belongs not only to change but also to unchangingness, and indeed there is pleasure in rest more than in change. ‘Variation in everything is sweet’ (as the poet says) because [30] of some inferiority; for just as it is the inferior human being who is prone to variation, so also the nature that needs variation is inferior, since it is not simple or decent.

So much, then, for continence and incontinence and for pleasure and pain, what each of them is, and in what ways some [aspects] of them are good and others bad. It remains for us to discuss friendship as well.

BOOK VIII

1

After that, the next topic is friendship; for it is a virtue, or involves virtue. [1155a]

Further, it is most necessary for our life. For no [5] one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other goods. Indeed rich people and holders of powerful positions, even more than other people, seem to need friends. For how would one benefit from such prosperity if one had no opportunity for beneficence, which is most often displayed, and most highly praised, in relation to friends? And how would [10] one guard and protect prosperity without friends, when it is all the more precarious the greater it is?

But in poverty also, and in the other misfortunes, people think friends are the only refuge. Moreover, the young need friends to keep them from error. The old need friends to care for them and support the actions that fail because of weakness. And those in their prime need friends to do fine actions; for ‘when two go together …,’ they are more capable of understanding [15] and acting.

Further, a parent would seem to have a natural friendship for a child, and a child for a parent, not only among human beings but also among birds and most kinds of animals. Members of the same species, [20] and human beings most of all, have a natural friendship for each other; that is why we praise friends of humanity. And in our travels we can see how every human being is akin and beloved to a human being.

Moreover, friendship would seem to hold cities together, and legislators would seem to be more concerned about it than about justice. For concord would [25] seem to be similar to friendship, and they aim at concord among all, while they try above all to expel civil conflict, which is enmity. Further, if people are friends, they have no need of justice, but if they are just they need friendship in addition; and the justice that is most just seems to belong to friendship.

But friendship is not only necessary, but also fine. [30] For we praise lovers of friends, and having many friends seems to be a fine thing. Moreover, people think that the same people are good and also friends.

Still, there are quite a few disputed points about friendship.

For some hold it is a sort of similarity and that similar people are friends. Hence the sayings, ‘similar to similar,’ and ‘birds of a feather,’ and so on. On the [35] other side, it is said that similar people are all like the proverbial potters, quarreling with each other.

On these questions some people inquire at a higher [1155b] level, more proper to natural science. Euripides says that when earth gets dry it longs passionately for rain, and the holy heaven when filled with rain longs passionately to fall into the earth; and Heracleitus says [5] that the opponent cooperates, the finest harmony arises from discordant elements, and all things come to be in struggle. Others, such as Empedocles, oppose this view, and say that similar aims for similar.

Let us, then, leave aside the puzzles proper to natural science, since they are not proper to the present examination, and let us examine the puzzles that concern human [nature], and bear on characters and [10] feelings. For instance, does friendship arise among all sorts of people, or can people not be friends if they are vicious? And is there one species of friendship, or are there more? Some people think there is only one species because friendship allows more and less. But here their confidence rests on an inadequate sign; for things of different species also allow more and [15] less. We have spoken about these earlier.

2

Perhaps these questions will become clear once we find out what it is that is lovable. For, it seems, not everything is loved, but [only] the lovable, and this is either good or pleasant or useful. However, it seems that the useful is the source of some good or some pleasure; hence the good and the pleasant are lovable [20] as ends.

Now do people love the good, or the good for themselves? For sometimes these conflict; and the same is true of the pleasant. Each one, it seems, loves the good for himself; and while the good is lovable without qualification, the lovable for each one is the [25] good for himself. In fact, each one loves not what is good for him, but what appears good for him; but this will not matter, since [what appears good for him] will be what appears lovable.

There are these three causes, then, of love. Now love for an inanimate thing is not called friendship, since there is no mutual loving, and no wishing of good to it. For it would presumably be ridiculous to [30] wish good things to wine; the most you wish is its preservation so that you can have it. To a friend, however, it is said, you must wish goods for his own sake. If you wish good things in this way, but the same wish is not returned by the other, you would be said to have [only] goodwill for the other. For friendship is said to be reciprocated goodwill.

But perhaps we should add that friends are aware [35] of the reciprocated goodwill. For many a one has goodwill to people whom he has not seen but supposes [1156a] to be decent or useful, and one of these might have the same goodwill toward him. These people, then, apparently have goodwill to each other, but how could we call them friends, given that they are unaware of their attitude to each other? [If they are to be friends], then, they must have goodwill to each other, wish goods and be aware of it, from one of the [5] causes mentioned above.

3

Since these causes differ in species, so do the types of loving and types of friendship. Hence friendship has three species, corresponding to the three objects of love. For each object of love has a corresponding type of mutual loving, combined with awareness of it.

But those who love each other wish goods to each other [only] insofar as they love each other. Those who love each other for utility love the other not in [10] his own right, but insofar as they gain some good for themselves from him. The same is true of those who love for pleasure; for they like a witty person not because of his character, but because he is pleasant to them.

Those who love for utility or pleasure, then, are [15] fond of a friend because of what is good or pleasant for themselves, not insofar as the beloved is who he is, but insofar as he is useful or pleasant. Hence these friendships as well [as the friends] are coincidental, since the beloved is loved not insofar as he is who he is, but insofar as he provides some good or pleasure.

And so these sorts of friendships are easily dissolved, [20] when the friends do not remain similar [to what they were]; for if someone is no longer pleasant or useful, the other stops loving him.

What is useful does not remain the same, but is different at different times. Hence, when the cause of their being friends is removed, the friendship is dissolved too, on the assumption that the friendship aims at these [useful results]. This sort of friendship seems to arise especially among older people, since [25] at that age they pursue the advantageous, not the pleasant, and also among those in their prime or youth who pursue the expedient.

Nor do such people live together very much. For sometimes they do not even find each other pleasant. Hence they have no further need to meet in this way if they are not advantageous [to each other]; for each finds the other pleasant [only] to the extent that he [30] expects some good from him. The friendship of hosts and guests is taken to be of this type too.

The cause of friendship between young people seems to be pleasure. For their lives are guided by their feelings, and they pursue above all what is pleasant for themselves and what is at hand. But as they grow up [what they find] pleasant changes too. Hence they are [35] quick to become friends, and quick to stop; for their friendship shifts with [what they find] pleasant, and the change in such pleasure is quick. Young people are [1156b] prone to erotic passion, since this mostly accords with feelings, and is caused by pleasure; that is why they love and quickly stop, often changing in a single day.

These people wish to spend their days together and [5] to live together; for this is how they gain [the good things] corresponding to their friendship.

But complete friendship is the friendship of good people similar in virtue; for they wish goods in the same way to each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in their own right. [Hence they wish goods to each other for each other’s own sake.] Now [10] those who wish goods to their friend for the friend’s own sake are friends most of all; for they have this attitude because of the friend himself, not coincidentally. Hence these people’s friendship lasts as long as they are good; and virtue is enduring.

Each of them is both good without qualification and good for his friend, since good people are both good without qualification and advantageous for each other. They are pleasant in the same ways too, since [15] good people are pleasant both without qualification and for each other. [They are pleasant for each other] because each person finds his own actions and actions of that kind pleasant, and the actions of good people are the same or similar.

It is reasonable that this sort of friendship is enduring, since it embraces in itself all the features that friends must have. For the cause of every friendship [20] is good or pleasure, either unqualified or for the lover; and every friendship accords with some similarity. And all the features we have mentioned are found in this friendship because of [the nature of] the friends themselves. For they are similar in this way [i.e., in being good]. Moreover, their friendship also has the other things—what is good without qualification and what is pleasant without qualification; and these are lovable most of all. Hence loving and friendship are found most of all and at their best in these friends.

These kinds of friendships are likely to be rare, since [25] such people are few. Further, they need time as well, to grow accustomed to each other; for, as the proverb says, they cannot know each other before they have shared their salt as often as it says, and they cannot accept each other or be friends until each appears lovable to the other and gains the other’s confidence. Those who are quick to treat each other in friendly ways wish [30] to be friends, but are not friends, unless they are also lovable, and know this. For though the wish for friendship comes quickly, friendship does not.

4

This sort of friendship, then, is complete both in time and in the other ways. In every way each friend gets the same things and similar things from each, and [35] this is what must be true of friends. Friendship for [1157a] pleasure bears some resemblance to this complete sort, since good people are also pleasant to each other. And friendship for utility also resembles it, since good people are also useful to each other.

With these [incomplete friends] also, the friendships are most enduring whenever they get the same thing—pleasure, for instance—from each other, and, [5] moreover, get it from the same source, as witty people do, in contrast to the erotic lover and the boy he loves.

For the erotic lover and his beloved do not take pleasure in the same things; the lover takes pleasure in seeing his beloved, but the beloved takes pleasure in being courted by his lover. When the beloved’s bloom is fading, sometimes the friendship fades too; for the lover no longer finds pleasure in seeing his beloved, and the beloved is no longer courted by the [10] lover. Many, however, remain friends if they have similar characters and come to be fond of each other’s characters from being accustomed to them. Those who exchange utility rather than pleasure in their erotic relations are friends to a lesser extent and less enduring friends.

Those who are friends for utility dissolve the friendship [15] as soon as the advantage is removed; for they were never friends of each other, but of what was expedient for them.

Now it is possible for bad people as well [as good] to be friends to each other for pleasure or utility, for decent people to be friends to base people, and for someone with neither character to be a friend to someone with any character. Clearly, however, only good people can be friends to each other because of the other person himself; for bad people find no [20] enjoyment in one another if they get no benefit.

Moreover, the friendship of good people is the only one that is immune to slander. For it is not easy to trust anyone speaking against someone whom we ourselves have found reliable for a long time; and among good people there is trust, the belief that he would never do injustice, and all the other things expected in a true friendship. But in the other types of friendship [distrust] may easily arise. [25]

[These must be counted as types of friendship.] For people include among friends [not only the best type, but] also those who are friends for utility, as cities are—since alliances between cities seem to aim at expediency—and those who are fond of each other, as children are, for pleasure. Hence we must presumably also say that such people are friends, but say that [30] there are more species of friendship than one.

On this view, the friendship of good people insofar as they are good is friendship primarily and fully, but the other friendships are friendships by similarity. For insofar as there is something good, and [hence] something similar to [what one finds in the best kind], people [in the incomplete friendships] are friends; for what is pleasant is good to lovers of pleasure. But these [incomplete] types of friendship are not very regularly combined, and the same people do not become friends for both utility and pleasure. For things that [merely] coincide with each other are not [35] very regularly combined.

Friendship has been assigned, then, to these species. [1157b] Base people will be friends for pleasure or utility, since they are similar in that way. But good people will be friends because of themselves, since they are friends insofar as they are good. These, then, are friends without qualification; the others are friends coincidentally and by being similar to these. [5]

5

Just as, in the case of the virtues, some people are called good in their state of character, others good in their activity, the same is true of friendship. For some people find enjoyment in each other by living together, and provide each other with good things. Others, however, are asleep or separated by distance, and so are not active in these ways, but are in the state that would result in the friendly activities; for distance [10] does not dissolve the friendship without qualification, but only its activity. But if the absence is long, it also seems to cause the friendship to be forgotten; hence the saying, ‘Lack of conversation has dissolved many a friendship.’

Older people and sour people do not appear to be [15] prone to friendship. For there is little pleasure to be found in them, and no one can spend his days with what is painful or not pleasant, since nature appears to avoid above all what is painful and to aim at what is pleasant.

Those who welcome each other but do not live together would seem to have goodwill rather than friendship. For nothing is as proper to friends as living together; [20] for while those who are in want desire benefit, blessedly happy people [who want for nothing], no less than the others, desire to spend their days together, since a solitary life fits them least of all. But people cannot spend their time with each other if they are not pleasant and do not enjoy the same things, as they seem to in the friendship of companions.

Now the friendship of good people is friendship [25] most of all, as we have often said. For what is lovable and choiceworthy seems to be what is good or pleasant without qualification, and what is lovable and choiceworthy to each person seems to be what is good or pleasant to himself; and both of these make one good person lovable and choiceworthy to another good person.

Loving would seem to be a feeling, but friendship [30] a state. For loving is directed no less toward inanimate things, but reciprocal loving requires decision, and decision comes from a state; and [good people] wish good to the beloved for his own sake in accord with their state, not their feeling.

Moreover, in loving their friend they love what is good for themselves; for when a good person becomes a friend he becomes a good for his friend. Each of [35] them loves what is good for himself, and repays in equal measure the wish and the pleasantness of his friend; for friendship is said to be equality. And this is true above all in the friendship of good people. [1158a]

6

Among sour people and older people, friendship is found less often, since they are worse-tempered and find less enjoyment in meeting people, so that they lack the features that seem most typical and most [5] productive of friendship. That is why young people become friends quickly, but older people do not, since they do not become friends with people in whom they find no enjoyment—nor do sour people. These people have goodwill to each other, since they wish goods and give help in time of need; but they scarcely count as friends, since they do not spend their days together or find enjoyment in each other, and these things seem to be above all typical of [10] friendship.

No one can have complete friendship for many people, just as no one can have an erotic passion for many at the same time; for [complete friendship, like erotic passion,] is like an excess, and an excess is naturally directed at a single individual. And just as it is difficult for many people to please the same person intensely at the same time, it is also difficult, presumably, for many to be good. [To find out whether someone is really good], one must both have experience of him and be on familiar terms with [15] him, which is extremely difficult. If, however, the friendship is for utility or pleasure, it is possible for many people to please; for there are many people of the right sort, and the services take little time.

Of these other two types of friendship, the friendship for pleasure is more like [real] friendship; for they get the same thing from each other, and they find enjoyment in each other, or [rather] in the same [20] things. This is what friendships are like among young people; for a generous [attitude] is found here more [than among older people], whereas it is mercenary people who form friendships for utility.

Moreover, blessedly happy people have no need of anything useful, but do need sources of pleasure. For they want to spend their lives with companions, and though what is painful is borne for a short time, no one could continuously endure even the Good [25] Itself if it were painful to him. That is why they seek friends who are pleasant. But, presumably, they must also seek friends who are good as well [as pleasant], and good for them too; for then they will have everything that friends must have.

Someone in a position of power appears to have separate groups of friends; for some are useful to him, others pleasant, but the same ones are not often both. [30] For he does not seek friends who are both pleasant and virtuous, or useful for fine actions, but seeks one group to be witty, when he pursues pleasure, and the other group to be clever in carrying out instructions; and the same person rarely has both features.

Though admittedly, as we have said, an excellent person is both pleasant and useful, he does not become a friend to a superior [in power and position] [35] unless the superior is also superior in virtue; otherwise he does not reach [proportionate] equality by having a proportionate superior. And this superiority both in power and in virtue is not often found.

The friendships we have mentioned involve equality, [1158b] since both friends get the same and wish the same to each other, or exchange one thing for another—for instance, pleasure for benefit. But, as we have said, they are friendships to a lesser extent, and less enduring. [5]

They seem both to be and not to be friendships, because of their similarity and dissimilarity to the same thing. For, on the one hand, insofar as they are similar to the friendship of virtue, they are apparently friendships; for that type of friendship includes both utility and pleasure, and one of these types includes utility, the other pleasure. On the other hand, the friendship of virtue is enduring and immune to slander, [10] whereas these change quickly, and differ from it in many other ways as well; to that extent they are apparently not friendships, because of their dissimilarity to that best type.

7

A different species of friendship is the one that rests on superiority—of a father toward his son, for instance, and in general of an older person toward a younger, of a man toward a woman, and of any sort of ruler toward the one he rules. These friendships also differ from each other. For friendship of parents to children is not the same as that of rulers to ruled; [15] nor is friendship of father to son the same as that of son to father, or of man to woman as that of woman to man. For each of these friends has a different virtue and a different function, and there are different causes of love. Hence the ways of loving are different, and so are the friendships.

Now each does not get the same thing from the [20] other, and must not seek it; but whenever children accord to their parents what they must accord to those who gave them birth, and parents accord what they must do to their children, their friendship is enduring and decent.

In all the friendships that rest on superiority, the [25] loving must also be proportional; for instance, the better person, and the more beneficial, and each of the others likewise, must be loved more than he loves; for when the loving accords with the comparative worth of the friends, equality is achieved in a way, and this seems to be proper to friendship.

Equality, however, does not appear to be the same [30] in friendship as in justice. For in justice equality is equality primarily in worth and secondarily in quantity; but in friendship it is equality primarily in quantity and secondarily in worth.

This is clear if friends come to be separated by some wide gap in virtue, vice, wealth, or something else; for then they are friends no more, and do not [35] even expect to be. This is most evident with gods, since they have the greatest superiority in all goods. But it is also clear with kings, since far inferior people [1159a] do not expect to be their friends; nor do worthless people expect to be friends to the best or wisest.

Now in these cases there is no exact definition of how long people are friends. For even if one of them loses a lot, the friendship still endures; but if one is [5] widely separated [from the other], as a god is [from a human being], it no longer endures.

This raises a puzzle: Do friends really wish their friend to have the greatest good, to be a god, for instance? For [if he becomes a god], he will no longer have friends, and hence no longer have goods, since friends are goods. If, then, we have been right to say [10] that one friend wishes good things to the other for the sake of the other himself, the other must remain whatever sort of being he is. Hence it is to the other as a human being that a friend will wish the greatest goods—though presumably not all of them, since each person wishes goods most of all to himself.

8

Because the many love honor they seem to prefer [15] being loved to loving. That is why they love flatterers. For the flatterer is a friend in an inferior position, or [rather] pretends to be one, and pretends to love more than he is loved; and being loved seems close to being honored, which the many certainly pursue.

It would seem, however, that they choose honor coincidentally, not in its own right. For the many enjoy being honored by powerful people because they [20] expect to get whatever they need from them, and so enjoy the honor as a sign of this good treatment. Those who want honor from decent people with knowledge are seeking to confirm their own view of themselves, and so they are pleased because the judgment of those who say they are good makes them confident that they are good. Being loved, on the [25] contrary, they enjoy in its own right. That is why it seems to be better than being honored, and friendship seems choiceworthy in its own right.

But friendship seems to consist more in loving than in being loved. A sign of this is the enjoyment a mother finds in loving. For sometimes she gives her child away to be brought up, and loves him as long as she knows [30] about him; but she does not seek the child’s love, if she cannot both [love and be loved]. She would seem to be satisfied if she sees the child doing well, and she loves the child even if ignorance prevents him from returning to her what is due to a mother.

Friendship, then, consists more in loving; and people [35] who love their friends are praised; hence, it would seem, loving is the virtue of friends. And so friends whose love accords with the worth of their friends [1159b] are enduring friends and have an enduring friendship. This above all is how unequals as well as equals can be friends, since this is how they can be equalized.

Equality and similarity, and above all the similarity of those who are similar in being virtuous, is friendship. For virtuous people are enduringly [virtuous] in their own right, and enduring [friends] to each [5] other. They neither request nor provide assistance that requires base actions, but, you might even say, prevent this. For it is proper to good people to avoid error themselves and not to permit it in their friends.

Vicious people, by contrast, have no firmness, since they do not even remain similar to what they were. They become friends for a short time, enjoying each [10] other’s vice. Useful or pleasant friends, however, last longer, for as long as they supply each other with pleasures or benefits.

The friendship that seems to arise most from contraries is friendship for utility, of poor to rich, for instance, or ignorant to knowledgeable; for we aim at whatever we find we lack, and give something else [15] in return. Here we might also include the erotic lover and his beloved, and the beautiful and the ugly. That is why an erotic lover also sometimes appears ridiculous, when he expects to be loved in the same way as he loves; that would presumably be a proper expectation if he were lovable in the same way, but it is ridiculous when he is not.

Presumably, however, contrary seeks contrary coincidentally, [20] not in its own right, and desire is for the intermediate. For what is good for the dry, for instance, is to reach the intermediate, not to become wet, and the same is true for the hot, and so on. Let us, then, dismiss these questions, since they are rather extraneous to our concern.

9

As we said at the beginning, friendship and justice [25] would seem to be about the same things and to be found in the same people. For in every community there seems to be some sort of justice, and some type of friendship also. At any rate, fellow voyagers and fellow soldiers are called friends, and so are members of other communities. And the extent of their community is the extent of their friendship, since it is also [30] the extent of the justice found there. The proverb ‘What friends have is common’ is correct, since friendship involves community.

But, whereas brothers and companions have everything in common, what people have in common in other types of community is limited, more in some communities and less in others, since some friendships are also closer than others, some less close. [35]

What is just is also different, since it is not the [1160a] same for parents toward children as for one brother toward another, and not the same for companions as for fellow citizens, and similarly with the other types of friendship. Similarly, what is unjust toward each of these is also different, and becomes more unjust as it is practiced on closer friends. It is more shocking, for instance, to rob a companion of money than [5] to rob a fellow citizen, to fail to help a brother than a stranger, and to strike one’s father than anyone else. Justice also naturally increases with friendship, since it involves the same people and extends over an equal area.

All the communities [mentioned], however, would seem to be parts of the political community. For people keep company for some advantage and to [10] supply something contributing to their life. And the political community as well [as the others] seems both to have been originally formed and to endure for advantage; for legislators also aim at advantage, and the common advantage is said to be just.

Now the other types of community aim at partial [15] advantage. Sea travellers, for instance, seek the advantage proper to a journey, in making money or something like that, while fellow soldiers seek the advantage proper to war, desiring either money or victory or a city; and the same is true of fellow members of a tribe or deme. Some communities—religious societies and dining clubs—seem to arise for [20] pleasure, since these are, respectively, for religious sacrifices and for companionship.

But all these communities would seem to be subordinate to the political community, since it aims not at some advantage close at hand, but at advantage for the whole of life…. [We can see this in the arrangements that cities make for religious festivals. For] in performing sacrifices and arranging gatherings for these, people both accord honors to the gods and [25] provide themselves with pleasant relaxations. For the long-established sacrifices and gatherings appear to take place after the harvesting of the crops, as a sort of first-fruits, since this was the time when people used to be most at leisure [and the time when relaxation would be most advantageous for the whole of life].

All the types of community, then, appear to be [30] parts of the political community, and these sorts of communities imply the appropriate sorts of friendships.

10

There are three species of political system (politeia), and an equal number of deviations, which are a sort of corruption of them. The first political system is kingship; the second aristocracy; and since the third rests on property (timēma), it appears proper to call it a timocratic system, though most people usually call it a polity. The best of these is kingship and the [35] worst timocracy.

The deviation from kingship is tyranny. For, [1160b] though both are monarchies, they show the widest difference, since the tyrant considers his own advantage, but the king considers the advantage of his subjects. For someone is a king only if he is self-sufficient [5] and superior in all goods; and since such a person needs nothing more, he will consider the subjects’ benefit, not his own. For a king who is not like this would be only some sort of titular king. Tyranny is contrary to this; for the tyrant pursues his own good. It is more evident that [tyranny] is the worst [deviation than that timocracy is the worst political system]; but the worst is contrary to the best; [hence kingship is the best].

The transition from kingship is to tyranny. For [10] tyranny is the degenerate condition of monarchy, and the vicious king becomes a tyrant.

The transition from aristocracy [rule of the best people] is to oligarchy [rule of the few], resulting from the badness of the rulers. They distribute the city’s goods contrary to people’s worth, so that they distribute all or most of the goods to themselves, and always assign ruling offices to the same people, [15] counting wealth for most. Hence the rulers are few, and they are vicious people instead of the most decent.

The transition from timocracy is to democracy [rule by the people], since these border on each other. For timocracy is also meant to be rule by the majority, and all those with the property-qualification are equal; [and majority rule and equality are the marks of democracy]. Democracy is the least vicious [of the deviations]; for it deviates only slightly from the form of a [20] [genuine] political system.

These, then, are the most frequent transitions from one political system to another, since they are the smallest and easiest.

Resemblances to these—indeed, a sort of pattern of them—can also be found in households. For the community of a father and his sons has the structure [25] of kingship, since the father is concerned for his children. Indeed that is why Homer also calls Zeus father, since kingship is meant to be paternal rule.

Among the Persians, however, the father’s rule is tyrannical, since he treats his sons as slaves. The rule of a master over his slaves is also tyrannical, since it [30] is the master’s advantage that is achieved in it. This, then, appears a correct form of rule, whereas the Persian form appears erroneous, since the different types of rule suit different subjects.

The community of man and woman appears aristocratic. For the man’s rule in the area where it is right accords with the worth [of each], and he commits to the woman what is fitting for her. If, however, the [35] man controls everything, he changes it into an oligarchy; for then his action does not accord with the worth [of each], [1161a] or with the respect in which [each] is better. Sometimes, indeed, women rule because they are heiresses; these cases of rule do not accord with virtue, but result from wealth and power, as is true in oligarchies.

The community of brothers is like a timocratic [5] [system], since they are equal except insofar as they differ in age. That is why, if they differ very much in age, the friendship is no longer brotherly.

Democracy is found most of all in dwellings without a master, since everyone there is on equal terms; and also in those where the ruler is weak and everyone is free [to do what he likes].

11

Friendship appears in each of the political systems, [10] to the extent that justice appears also. A king’s friendship to his subjects involves superior beneficence. For he benefits his subjects, since he is good and attends to them to ensure that they do well, as a shepherd attends to his sheep; hence Homer also called Agamemnon shepherd of the peoples. [15]

A father’s friendship resembles this, but differs in conferring a greater benefit, since the father is the cause of his children’s being, which seems to be the greatest benefit, and of their nurture and education. These benefits are also ascribed to ancestors; and by nature a father is ruler over sons, ancestors over descendants, and a king over subjects.

All these are friendships of superiority. That is why [20] parents are also honored. And what is just is not the same in each of these friendships, but it accords with worth; for so does the friendship.

The friendship of man to woman is the same as in an aristocracy. For it accords with virtue, in assigning [25] more good to the better, and assigning what is fitting to each. The same is true of what is just here.

The friendship of brothers is similar to that of companions, since they are equal and of an age, and such people usually have the same feelings and characters. Friendship in a timocracy is similar to this. For there the citizens are meant to be equal and decent, and so rule in turn and on equal terms. The same is true, then, of their friendship. [30]

In the deviations, however, justice is found only to a slight degree; and hence the same is true of friendship. There is least of it in the worst deviation; for in a tyranny there is little or no friendship.

For where ruler and ruled have nothing in common, they have no friendship, since they have no [35] justice either. This is true for a craftsman in relation to his tool, and for the soul in relation to the body. [1161b] For in all these cases the user benefits what he uses, but there is neither friendship nor justice toward inanimate things. Nor is there any toward a horse or cow, or toward a slave, insofar as he is a slave. For master and slave have nothing in common, since a slave is [5] a tool with a soul, while a tool is a slave without a soul.

Insofar as he is a slave, then, there is no friendship with him. But there is friendship with him insofar as he is a human being. For every human being seems to have some relation of justice with everyone who is capable of community in law and agreement; hence [every human being seems] also [to have] friendship [with every human being], to the extent that [every human being] is a human being.

Hence there are friendships and justice to only a slight degree in tyrannies also, but to a much larger [10] degree in democracies; for there people are equal, and so have much in common.

12

As we have said, then, every friendship is found in a community. But we should set apart the friendship of families and that of companions. The friendship of citizens, tribesmen, voyagers, and suchlike are more like friendships in a community, since they [15] appear to reflect some sort of agreement; and among these we may include the friendship of host and guest.

Friendship in families also seems to have many species, but they all seem to depend on paternal friendship. For a parent is fond of his children because he regards them as something of himself; and children are fond of a parent because they regard themselves as coming from him.

A parent knows better what has come from him [20] than the children know that they are from the parent; and the parent regards his children as his own more than the product regards the maker as its own. For a person regards what comes from him as his own, as the owner regards his tooth or hair or anything; but what has come from him regards its owner as its own not at all, or to a lesser degree. The length of [25] time also matters. For a parent becomes fond of his children as soon as they are born, but children become fond of the parent when time has passed and they have acquired some comprehension or [at least] perception. And this also makes it clear why mothers love their children more [than fathers do].

A parent, then, loves his children as [he loves] himself. For what has come from him is a sort of other himself; [it is other because] it is separate. Children love a parent because they regard themselves as having come from him. Brothers love each other [30] because they have come from the same [parents]. For the same relation to the parents makes the same thing for both of them; hence we speak of the same blood, the same stock, and so on. Hence they are the same thing in a way, in different [subjects].

Being brought up together and being of an age contributes largely to friendship; for ‘two of an age’ [get on well], and those with the same character are [35] companions. That is why the friendship of brothers [1162a] and that of companions are similar. Cousins and other relatives are akin by being related to brothers, since that makes them descendants of the same parents [i.e., the parents of these brothers]. Some are more akin, others less, by the ancestor’s being near to or far from them.

The friendship of children to a parent, like the [5] friendship of human beings to a god, is friendship toward what is good and superior. For the parent conferred the greatest benefits on his children, since he is the cause of their being and nurture and of their education once they have been born. This sort of friendship also includes pleasure and utility, more than the friendship of unrelated people does, to the extent that [parents and children] have more of a life in common.

Friendship between brothers has the features of [10] friendship between companions, especially when [the companions] are decent, or in general similar. For brothers are that much more akin to each other [than ordinary companions], and are fond of each other from birth; they are that much more similar in character when they are from the same parents, nurtured together and educated similarly; and the proof of their reliability over time is fullest and firmest. Among other relatives too the features of friendship are proportional [15] [to the relation].

The friendship of man and woman also seems to be natural. For human beings form couples more naturally than they form cities, to the extent that the household is prior to the city, and more necessary, and childbearing is shared more widely among the [20] animals. For the other animals, the community goes only as far as childbearing. Human beings, however, share a household not only for childbearing, but also for the benefits in their life. For the difference between them implies that their functions are divided, with different ones for the man and the woman; hence each supplies the other’s needs by contributing a special function to the common good. For this reason their friendship seems to include both utility and pleasure.

And it may also be friendship for virtue, if they are [25] decent. For each has a proper virtue, and this will be a source of enjoyment for them. Children seem to be another bond, and that is why childless unions are more quickly dissolved; for children are a common good for both, and what is common holds them together.

How should a man conduct his life toward his wife, [30] or, in general, toward a friend? That appears to be the same as asking how they are to conduct their lives justly. For what is just is not the same for a friend toward a friend as toward a stranger, or the same toward a companion as toward a classmate.

13

There are three types of friendship, as we said at the [35] beginning, and within each type some friendships rest on equality, while others are in accord with superiority. For equally good people can be friends, but [1162b] also a better and a worse person; and the same is true of friends for pleasure or utility, since they may be either equal or unequal in their benefits. Hence equals must equalize in loving and in the other things, because of their equality; and unequals must make the return that is proportionate to the types of superiority.

Accusations and reproaches arise only or most often [5] in friendship for utility. And this is reasonable. For friends for virtue are eager to benefit each other, since this is proper to virtue and to friendship; and if this is what they strain to achieve, there are no accusations or fights. For no one objects if the other loves and benefits him; if he is gracious, he retaliates by benefiting [10] the other. And if the superior gets what he aims at, he will not accuse his friend of anything, since each of them desires what is good.

Nor are there many accusations among friends for pleasure. For both of them get what they want at the [15] same time if they enjoy spending their time together; and someone who accused his friend of not pleasing him would appear ridiculous, since he is free to spend his days without the friend’s company.

Friendship for utility, however, is liable to accusations. For these friends deal with each other in the expectation of gaining benefits. Hence they always require more, thinking they have got less than is fitting; and they reproach the other because they get less than they require and deserve. And those who confer benefits cannot supply as much as the recipients [20] require.

There are two ways of being just, one unwritten, and one governed by rules of law. And similarly one type of friendship of utility would seem to depend on character, and the other on rules. Accusations arise most readily if it is not the same sort of friendship [25] when they dissolve it as it was when they formed it.

Friendship dependent on rules is the type that is on explicit conditions. One type of this is entirely mercenary and requires immediate payment. The other is more generous and postpones the time [of repayment], but in accordance with an agreement [requiring] one thing in return for another. In this sort of friendship it is clear and unambiguous what is owed, but the postponement is a friendly aspect of it. That is why some cities do not allow legal actions in these cases, but think that people who have formed [30] an arrangement on the basis of trust must put up with the outcome.

Friendship [for utility] that depends on character is not on explicit conditions. Someone makes a present or whatever it is, as to a friend, but expects to get back as much or more, since he assumes that it is not a free gift, but a loan.

If one party does not dissolve the friendship on the terms on which he formed it, he will accuse the other. This happens because all or most people wish for [35] what is fine, but decide to do what is beneficial; and while it is fine to do someone a good turn without [1163a] aiming to receive one in return, it is beneficial to receive a good turn.

We should, if we can, make a return worthy of what we have received, [if the other has undertaken the friendship] willingly. For we should never make a friend of someone who is unwilling, but must suppose that we were in error at the beginning, and received a benefit from the wrong person; for since it was not from a friend, and this was not why he was doing it, [5] we must dissolve the arrangement as though we had received a good turn on explicit conditions. And we will agree to repay if we can. If we cannot repay, the giver would not even expect it. Hence we should repay if we can. We should consider at the beginning who is doing us a good turn, and on what conditions, so that we can put up with it on these conditions, or else decline it.

It is disputable whether we must measure [the return] [10] by the benefit accruing to the recipient, and make the return proportional to that, or instead by the good turn done by the benefactor. For a recipient says that what he got was a small matter for the benefactor, and that he could have gotten it from someone else instead, and so he belittles it. But the benefactor says it was the biggest thing he had, that it could not [15] be gotten from anyone else, and that he gave it when he was in danger or similar need.

Since the friendship is for utility, surely the benefit to the recipient must be the measure [of the return]. For he was the one who required it, and the benefactor supplies him on the assumption that he will get an equal return. Hence the aid has been as great as [20] the benefit received, and the recipient should return as much as he gained, or still more, since that is finer.

But in friendships in accord with virtue, there are no accusations. Rather, the decision of the benefactor would seem to be the measure, since the controlling element in virtue and character lies in decision.

14

There are also disputes in friendships in accord with [25] superiority, since each friend expects to have more than the other, but whenever this happens the friendship is dissolved.

For the better person thinks it is fitting for him to have more, on the ground that more is fittingly allotted to the good person. And the more beneficial person thinks the same. For it is wrong, they say, for someone to have an equal share if he is useless; the result is a public service, not a friendship, if the benefits from the friendship do not accord with the worth [30] of the actions. [The superior party says this] because he notices that in a financial community the larger contributors gain more, and he thinks the same thing is right in a friendship.

But the needy person, the inferior party in the friendship, takes the opposite view, saying it is proper to a virtuous friend to supply his needy [friends]. For what use is it, as they say, to be an excellent or [35] powerful person’s friend if you are not going to gain anything by it?

Well, each of them would seem to be correct in [1163b] what he expects, and it is right for each of them to get more from the friendship—but not more of the same thing. Rather, the superior person should get more honor, and the needy person more profit, since honor is the reward of virtue and beneficence, while profit is what supplies need.

This also appears to be true in political systems. For [5] someone who provides nothing for the community receives no honor, since what is common is given to someone who benefits the community, and honor is something common. For it is impossible both to make money off the community and to receive honor from it at the same time; for no one endures the smaller [10] share of everything. Hence someone who suffers a monetary loss [by holding office] receives honor in return, while someone who accepts gifts [in office] receives money [but not honor]; for distribution that accords with worth equalizes and preserves the friendship, as we have said.

This, then, is how we should treat unequals. If we benefit from them in money or virtue, we should return honor, and thereby make what return we can. [15] For friendship seeks what is possible, not what accords with worth, since that is impossible in some cases, as it is with honor to gods and parents. For no one could ever make a return in accord with their worth, but someone who attends to them as far as he is able seems to be a decent person.

That is why it might seem that a son is not free to [20] disown his father, but a father is free to disown his son. For a debtor should return what he owes, and since, no matter what a son has done, he has not made a worthy return for what his father has done for him, he is always the debtor. But the creditor is free to remit the debt, and hence the father is free to remit.

At the same time, however, it presumably seems that no one would ever withdraw from a son, except from one who was far gone in vice. For, quite apart from their natural friendship, it is human not to repel [25] aid. The son, however, if he is vicious, will want to avoid helping his father, or will not be keen on it. For the many wish to receive benefits, but they avoid doing them because they suppose it is unprofitable. So much, then, for these things.

BOOK IX

1

In all friendships of friends with dissimilar aims, proportion equalizes and preserves the friendship, as we said; in political friendship, for instance, the cobbler [35] receives a worthy exchange for his shoes, and so do the weaver and the others. Here money is supplied [1164a] as a common measure; everything is related to this and measured by it.

In erotic friendships, however, sometimes the lover charges that he loves the beloved deeply and is not loved in return; and in fact perhaps he has nothing [5] lovable in him. The beloved, however, often charges that previously the lover was promising him everything, and now fulfills none of his promises.

These sorts of charges arise whenever the lover loves his beloved for pleasure while the beloved loves his lover for utility, and they do not both provide these. For if the friendship has these causes, it is dissolved whenever they do not get what they were [10] friends for; for each was not fond of the other himself, but only of what the other had, which was unstable. That is why the friendships are also unstable. Friendship of character, however, is friendship in itself, and endures, as we have said.

Friends quarrel when they get results different from those they want; for when someone does not get what he aims at, it is like getting nothing. It is like the [15] person who promised the lyre player a reward, and a greater reward the better he played; in the morning, when the player asked him to deliver on his promise, the other said he had paid pleasure in return for pleasure. Now if this was what each of them had wished, it would be quite enough. But if one wished for delight and the other for profit, and one has got his delight and the other has not made his profit, [20] things are not right in their common dealings. For each person sets his mind on what he finds he requires, and this will be his aim when he gives what he gives.

Who should fix the worth [of a benefit], the giver or the one who has already received it? [Surely the latter.] For the giver would seem to entrust [the judgment] to the one who has received. This is what Protagoras is said to have done; for whenever he taught anything at all, he used to tell the pupil to [25] estimate how much the knowledge was worth, and that was the amount he used to collect. In such cases, however, some prefer the rule ‘Payment to a man….’

But those who take the money first, and then do nothing that they said they would do, because their promises were excessive, are reasonably accused, [30] since they do not carry out what they agreed to. And presumably the sophists are compelled to make excessive promises. For no one would pay them money for the knowledge they really have; hence they take the payment, and then do not do what they were paid to do, and reasonably are accused.

But where no agreement about services is made, [35] friends who give services because of the friend himself are not open to accusation, as we have said, since this is the character of the friendship that accords [1164b] with virtue. And the return should accord with the decision [of the original giver], since decision is proper to a friend and to virtue.

And it would seem that the same sort of return should also be made to those who have shared philosophy in common with us. For its worth is not measured by money, and no equivalent honor can be paid; but [5] it is enough, presumably, to do what we can, as we do toward gods and parents.

If the giving is not of this sort, but on some specified condition, presumably the repayment must be, ideally, what each of them thinks accords with the worth of the gift. But if they do not agree on this, then it would seem not merely necessary, but also just, for the party who benefits first to fix the repayment. For if the other receives in return as much benefit as the [10] first received, or as much as he would have paid for the pleasure, he will have got the worthy return from him.

Indeed this is also how it appears in buying and selling. And in some cities there are actually laws prohibiting legal actions in voluntary bargains, on the assumption that if we have trusted someone we must dissolve the community with him on the same terms [15] on which we formed it. The law does this because it supposes that it is more just for the recipient to fix repayment than for the giver to fix it. For usually those who have something and those who want it do not put the same price on it, since, to the giver, what he owns and what he is giving appears to be worth a lot. But nonetheless the return is made in the amount fixed by the initial recipient. Presumably, however, [20] the price must be not what it appears to be worth when he has got it, but the price he put on it before he got it.

2

Here are some other questions that raise a puzzle. Must you accord [authority in] everything to your father, and obey him in everything? Or must you trust the doctor when he is sick, and should you vote for a military expert to be general? Similarly, should you [25] do a service for your friend rather than for an excellent person, and return a favor to a benefactor rather than do a favor for a companion, if you cannot do both?

Surely it is not easy to define all these matters exactly. For they include many differences of all sorts—in importance and unimportance, and in the fine and the necessary. Still, it is clear that not everything [30] should be rendered to the same person, and usually we should return favors rather than do favors for our companions, just as we should return a loan to a creditor rather than lend to a companion.

But presumably this is not always true. If, for instance, someone has ransomed you from pirates, should you ransom him in return, no matter who he [35] is? Or if he does not need to be ransomed, but asks [1165a] for his money back, should you return it, or should you ransom your father instead? Here it seems that you should ransom your father, rather than even yourself.

As we have said, then, we should, generally speaking, return what we owe. But if making a gift [to B] outweighs [returning the money to A] by being finer or more necessary, we should incline to [making the gift to B] instead. For sometimes even a return of a [5] previous favor is not fair [but an excessive demand], whenever [the original giver] knows he is benefiting an excellent person, but [the recipient] would be returning the benefit to someone he thinks is vicious. For sometimes you should not even lend in return to someone who has lent to you. For he expected repayment when he lent to a decent person, whereas you have no hope of it from a bad person. If that is really so, then, the demand [for reciprocity] is not [10] fair; and even if it is not so, but you think it is so, your refusal of the demand seems not at all absurd.

As we have often said, then, arguments about acting and being affected are no more definite than their subject matter. Clearly, then, we should not render the same things to everyone, and we should not render [15] everything to our fathers, just as we should not make all our sacrifices to Zeus.

And since different things should be rendered to parents, brothers, companions, and benefactors, we should accord to each what is proper and suitable. This is what actually appears to be done; for instance, kinsfolk are the people invited to a wedding, since [20] they share the same family, and hence share in actions that concern it; and for the same reason it is thought that kinsfolk more than anyone must come to funerals.

It seems that we must supply means of support to parents more than anyone. For we suppose that we owe them this, and that it is finer to supply those who are the causes of our being than to supply ourselves in this way. And we should accord honor to our parents, just as we should to the gods, but not every sort of honor; for we should not accord the same honor to [25] a father as to a mother, nor accord to them the honor due to a wise person or a general. We should accord a father’s honor to a father, and likewise a mother’s to a mother.

We should accord to every older person the honor befitting his age, by standing up, giving up seats, and so on. With companions and brothers we should speak freely, and have everything in common. To kinsfolk, [30] fellow tribesmen, fellow citizens, and all the rest we should always try to accord what is proper, and should compare what belongs to each, as befits closeness of relation, virtue, or usefulness.

Admittedly, this comparison is easier with people of the same kind, and more difficult with people of different kinds. But such difficulty is no reason for giving up the comparison; rather, we should define [35] as far as we can.

3

There is also a puzzle about dissolving or not dissolving [1165b] friendships with friends who do not remain the same. With friends for utility or pleasure perhaps there is nothing absurd in dissolving the friendship whenever they are no longer pleasant or useful. For they were friends of pleasure or utility; and if these give out, it is reasonable not to love. We might, however, [5] accuse a friend if he really liked us for utility or pleasure, and pretended to like us for our character. For, as we said at the beginning, friends are most at odds when they are not friends in the way they think they are.

And so, if we mistakenly suppose we are loved for our character, when our friend is doing nothing to suggest this, we must hold ourselves responsible. But [10] if we are deceived by his pretense, we are justified in accusing him—even more justified than in accusing debasers of the currency, to the extent that his evil-doing debases something more precious.

But if we accept a friend as a good person, and then he becomes vicious, and seems so, should we still love him? Surely we cannot, if not everything, but only the good, is lovable. The bad is not lovable, [15] and must not be loved; for we ought neither to love the bad nor to become similar to a base person, and we have said that similar is friend to similar.

Then should the friendship be dissolved at once [as soon as the friend becomes bad]? Surely not with every sort of person, but only with an incurably vicious person. If someone can be set right, we should try harder to rescue his character than his property, insofar [20] as character is both better and more proper to friendship. Still, the friend who dissolves the friendship seems to be doing nothing absurd. For he was not the friend of a person of this sort; hence, if the friend has altered, and he cannot save him, he leaves him.

But if one friend stayed the same and the other became more decent and far excelled his friend in virtue, should the better person still treat the other as a friend? Surely he cannot. This becomes clear in [25] a wide separation, such as we find in friendships beginning in childhood. For if one friend still thinks as a child, while the other becomes a man of the best sort, how could they still be friends, if they neither approve of the same things nor find the same things enjoyable or painful? For they do not even find it so in their life together, and without that they cannot [30] be friends, since they cannot live together—we have discussed this.

Then should the better person regard the other as though he had never become his friend? Surely he must keep some memory of the familiarity they had. Just as we think we must do kindnesses for friends more than for strangers, so also we should accord something to past friends because of the former friendship, [35] whenever it is not excessive vice that causes the dissolution.

4

The defining features of friendship that are found [1166a] in friendships to one’s neighbors would seem to be derived from features of friendship toward oneself. For a friend is taken to be someone who wishes and does goods or apparent goods to his friend for the friend’s own sake; or one who wishes the friend to be and to live for the friend’s own sake—this is how [5] mothers feel toward their children, and how friends who have been in conflict feel [toward each other]. Others take a friend to be one who spends his time with his friend, and makes the same choices; or one who shares his friend’s distress and enjoyment—and this also is especially true of mothers. And people define friendship by one of these features.

Each of these features is found in the decent person’s [10] relation to himself, and it is found in other people, insofar as they suppose they are decent. As we have said, virtue and the excellent person would seem to be the standard in each case.

For the excellent person is of one mind with himself, and desires the same things in his whole soul. Hence he wishes goods and apparent goods to himself, [15] and achieves them in his actions, since it is proper to the good person to reach the good by his efforts. He wishes and does them for his own sake, since he does them for the sake of his thinking part, and that is what each person seems to be. Moreover, he wishes himself to live and to be preserved. And he wishes this for his rational part more than for any other part.

For being is a good for the good person, and each [20] person wishes for goods for himself. And no one chooses to become another person even if that other will have every good when he has come into being; for, as it is, the god has the good [but no one chooses to be replaced by a god]. Rather [each of us chooses goods] on condition that he remains whatever he is; and each person would seem to be the understanding part, or that most of all. [Hence the good person wishes for goods for the understanding part.]

Further, such a person finds it pleasant to spend time with himself, and so wishes to do it. For his memories of what he has done are agreeable, and his expectations [25] for the future are good, and hence both are pleasant. And besides, his thought is well supplied with topics for study. Moreover, he shares his own distresses and pleasures, more than other people share theirs. For it is always the same thing that is painful or pleasant, not different things at different times. This is because he practically never regrets [what he has done].

The decent person, then, has each of these features [30] in relation to himself, and is related to his friend as he is to himself, since the friend is another himself. Hence friendship seems to be one of these features, and people with these features seem to be friends.

But is there friendship toward oneself, or not? Let us dismiss that question for the present. However, there seems to be friendship insofar as someone is [35] two or more parts. This seems to be true from what we have said, and because an extreme degree of friendship resembles one’s friendship to oneself. [1166b]

The many, base though they are, also appear to have these features. But perhaps they share in them only insofar as they approve of themselves and suppose they are decent. For no one who is utterly base [5] and unscrupulous either has these features or appears to have them.

Indeed, even base people hardly have them. For they are at odds with themselves, and have an appetite for one thing and a wish for another, as incontinent people do. For they do not choose things that seem to be good for them, but instead choose pleasant things that are actually harmful; and cowardice or laziness causes others to shrink from doing what they [10] think best for themselves. And those who have done many terrible actions hate and shun life because of their vice, and destroy themselves.

Besides, vicious people seek others to pass their [15] days with, and shun themselves. For when they are by themselves they remember many disagreeable actions, and anticipate others in the future; but they manage to forget these in other people’s company. These people have nothing lovable about them, and so have no friendly feelings for themselves.

Hence such a person does not share his own enjoyments [20] and distresses. For his soul is in conflict, and because he is vicious one part is distressed at being restrained, and another is pleased [by the intended action]; and so each part pulls in a different direction, as though they were tearing him apart. Even if he cannot be distressed and pleased at the same time, still he is soon distressed because he was pleased, and wishes these things had not become pleasant to him; [25] for base people are full of regret.

Hence the base person appears not to have a friendly attitude even toward himself, because he has nothing lovable about him.

If this state is utterly miserable, everyone should earnestly shun vice and try to be decent; for that is how someone will have a friendly relation to himself and will become a friend to another.

5

Goodwill would seem to be a feature of friendship, [30] but still it is not friendship. For it arises even toward people we do not know, and without their noticing it, whereas friendship does not. We have also said this before.

Nor is it loving, since it lacks intensity and desire, which are implied by loving. Moreover, loving requires familiarity, but goodwill can also arise in a [35] moment, as it arises, for instance, [in a spectator] for [1167a] contestants. For [the spectator] acquires goodwill for them, and wants what they want, but would not cooperate with them in any action; for, as we said, his goodwill arises in a moment and his fondness is superficial.

Goodwill, then, would seem to be a beginning of friendship, just as pleasure coming through sight is a beginning of erotic passion. For no one has erotic [5] passion for another without previous pleasure in his appearance. But still enjoyment of his appearance does not imply erotic passion for him; passion consists also in longing for him in his absence and in an appetite for his presence. Similarly, though people cannot be friends without previous goodwill, goodwill does not imply friendship; for when they have goodwill, people only wish goods to the other, and will not cooperate with him in any action, or go to any [10] trouble for him. Hence we might transfer [the name ‘friendship’], and say that goodwill is inactive friendship, and that when it lasts some time and they grow accustomed to each other, it becomes friendship.

It does not, however, become friendship for utility or pleasure; for these aims do not produce goodwill either. For a recipient of a benefit does what is just [15] when he returns goodwill for what he has received. But those who wish for another’s welfare because they hope to enrich themselves through him would seem to have goodwill to themselves, rather than to him. Likewise, they would seem to be friends to themselves rather than to him, if they attend to him because he is of some use to them.

But in general goodwill results from some sort of virtue and decency, whenever one person finds another to be apparently fine or brave or something [20] similar. As we said, this also arises in the case of contestants.

6

Concord also appears to be a feature of friendship. That is why it is not merely sharing a belief, since this might happen among people who do not know each other. Nor are people said to be in concord [25] when they agree on just anything, on astronomical questions, for instance, since concord on these questions is not a feature of friendship. Rather, a city is said to be in concord when [its citizens] agree on what is advantageous, make the same decision, and act on their common resolution.

Hence concord concerns questions for action, and, [30] more exactly, large questions where both or all can get what they want. A city, for instance, is in concord whenever all the citizens resolve to make offices elective, or to make an alliance with the Spartans, or to make Pittacus¹⁵ ruler, when he himself is also willing. But whenever each person wants the same thing all to himself, as the people in the Phoenissae¹⁶ do, they are in conflict. For it is not concord when each merely has the same thing in mind, whatever it is. [35] Rather, each must also have the same thing in mind for the same person; this is true, for instance, whenever both the common people and the decent party [1167b] want the best people to rule, since when that is so both sides get what they seek.

Concord, then, is apparently political friendship, as indeed it is said to be; for it is concerned with advantage and with what affects life [as a whole].

This sort of concord is found in decent people. [5] For they are in concord with themselves and with each other, since they are practically of the same mind; for their wishes are stable, not flowing back and forth like a tidal strait. They wish for what is just and advantageous, and also seek it in common.

Base people, however, cannot be in concord, except [10] to a slight degree, just as they can be friends only to a slight degree; for they seek to overreach in benefits [to themselves], and shirk labors and public services. And since each wishes this for himself, he interrogates and obstructs his neighbor; for when people do not look out for the common good, it is ruined. The result is that they are in conflict, trying to compel [15] one another to do what is just, but not wishing to do it themselves.

7

Benefactors seem to love their beneficiaries more than the beneficiaries love them [in return], and this is discussed as though it were an unreasonable thing to happen. In most people’s view, this is because the [20] beneficiaries are debtors and the benefactors creditors: The debtor in a loan wishes the creditor did not exist, while the creditor even attends to the safety of the debtor. So also, then, a benefactor wants the beneficiary to exist because he expects gratitude in return, whereas the beneficiary is not attentive about [25] making the return.

Now Epicharmus might say that most people say this because they ‘take a bad person’s point of view.’ Still, it would seem to be a human point of view, since the many are indeed forgetful, and seek to receive benefits more than to give them.

However, it seems that the cause is more proper to [human] nature, and the case of creditors is not even similar. For they do not love their debtors, but [30] in wishing for their safety simply seek repayment. Benefactors, however, love and like their beneficiaries even if they are of no present or future use to them. The same is true of craftsmen; for each likes his own [35] product more than it would like him if it acquired a soul. Presumably this is true of poets most of all, since they dearly like their own poems, and are fond of [1168a] them as though they were their children.

This, then, is what the case of the benefactor resembles; [5] here the beneficiary is his product, and hence he likes him more than the product likes its producer. The reason for this is that being is choiceworthy and lovable for all, and we are insofar as we are actualized, since we are insofar as we live and act. Now the product is, in a way, the producer in his actualization; hence the producer is fond of the product, because he loves his own being. This is natural, since what he is potentially is what the product indicates in actualization.

At the same time, the benefactor’s action is fine [10] for him, so that he finds enjoyment in the person he acts on; but the person acted on finds nothing fine in the agent, but only, at most, some advantage, which is less pleasant and lovable.

What is pleasant is actualization in the present, expectation for the future, and memory of the past; but what is most pleasant is the [action we do] insofar [15] as we are actualized, and this is also most lovable. For the benefactor, then, his product endures, since the fine is long-lasting; but for the person acted on, the useful passes away.

Besides, memory of fine things is pleasant, while memory of [receiving] useful things is not altogether pleasant, or is less pleasant—though the reverse would seem to be true for expectation.

Moreover, loving is like production, while being [20] loved is like being acted on; and [the benefactor’s] love and friendliness are the result of his greater activity.

Further, everyone is fond of whatever has taken effort to produce; for instance, people who have made money themselves are fonder of it than people who have inherited it. And while receiving a benefit seems to take no effort, giving one is hard work. This is also [25] why mothers love their children more [than fathers do], since giving birth is more effort for them, and they know better that the children are theirs. And this also would seem to be proper to benefactors.

8

There is also a puzzle about whether one ought to love oneself or someone else most of all; for those who like themselves most are criticized and denounced as [30] self-lovers, as though this were something shameful. Indeed, the base person seems to go to every length for his own sake, and all the more the more vicious he is; hence he is accused, for instance, of doing nothing [for any end apart] from himself. The decent person, on the contrary, acts for what is fine, all the more the better he is, and for his friend’s sake, disregarding his own [interest]. [35]

The facts, however, conflict with these claims, and [1168b] that is not unreasonable. For it is said that we must love most the friend who is most a friend; and one person is a friend to another most of all if he wishes goods to the other for the other’s sake, even if no one will know about it. But these are features most of all of one’s relation to oneself; and so too are all the other defining features of a friend, since we have said [5] that all the features of friendship extend from oneself to others.

All the proverbs agree with this too, speaking, for instance, of ‘one soul,’ ‘what friends have is common,’ ‘equality is friendship,’ and ‘the knee is closer than the shin.’ For all these are true most of all in someone’s relations with himself, since one is a friend to himself most of all. Hence he should also love himself most [10] of all.

It is not surprising, then, that there is a puzzle about which view we ought to follow, since both inspire some confidence. Presumably, then, we must divide these sorts of arguments, and distinguish how far and in what ways those on each side are true. [15] Perhaps, then, it will become clear, if we grasp how those on each side understand self-love.

Those who make self-love a matter for reproach ascribe it to those who award the biggest share in money, honors, and bodily pleasures to themselves. For these are the goods desired and eagerly pursued by the many on the assumption that they are best. That is why they are also contested. Those who overreach for these goods gratify their appetites and in [20] general their feelings and the nonrational part of the soul; and this is the character of the many. That is why the application of the term [‘self-love’] is derived from the most frequent [kind of self-love], which is base. This type of self-lover, then, is justifiably reproached.

And plainly it is the person who awards himself these goods whom the many habitually call a self-lover. For if someone is always eager above all to do [25] just or temperate actions or any other actions in accord with the virtues, and in general always gains for himself what is fine, no one will call him a self-lover or blame him for it.

This sort of person, however, more than the other sort, seems to be a self-lover. At any rate he awards himself what is finest and best of all, and gratifies [30] the most controlling part of himself, obeying it in everything. And just as a city and every other composite system seems to be above all its most controlling part, the same is true of a human being; hence someone loves himself most if he likes and gratifies this part.

Similarly, someone is called continent or incontinent [35] because his understanding is or is not the master, on the assumption that this is what each person is. [1169a] Moreover, his own voluntary actions seem above all to be those involving reason. Clearly, then, this, or this above all, is what each person is, and the decent person likes this most of all.

That is why he most of all is a self-lover, but a different kind from the self-lover who is reproached. He differs from him as much as the life guided by [5] reason differs from the life guided by feelings, and as much as the desire for what is fine differs from the desire for what seems advantageous.

Those who are unusually eager to do fine actions are welcomed and praised by everyone. And when everyone strains to achieve what is fine and concentrates on the finest actions, everything that is right [10] will be done for the common good, and each person individually will receive the greatest of goods, since that is the character of virtue. And so the good person must be a self-lover, since he will both help himself and benefit others by doing fine actions. But the vicious person must not love himself, since he will harm both himself and his neighbors by following his base feelings.

For the vicious person, then, the right actions conflict [15] with those he does. The decent person, however, does the right actions, since every understanding chooses what is best for itself and the decent person obeys his understanding.

It is quite true that, as they say, the excellent person labors for his friends and for his native country, and will die for them if he must; he will sacrifice money, [20] honors, and contested goods in general, in achieving the fine for himself. For he will choose intense pleasure for a short time over slight pleasure for a long time; a year of living finely over many years of undistinguished life; and a single fine and great action over [25] many small actions. This is presumably true of one who dies for others; he does indeed choose something great and fine for himself. He is also ready to sacrifice money as long as his friends profit; for the friends gain money, while he gains the fine, and so he awards himself the greater good.

He treats honors and offices in the same way; for [30] he will sacrifice them all for his friends, since this is fine and praiseworthy for himself. It is not surprising, then, that he seems to be excellent, since he chooses the fine at the cost of everything. It is also possible, however, to sacrifice actions to his friend, since it may be finer to be responsible for his friend’s doing the action than to do it himself.

In everything praiseworthy, then, the excellent person [35] awards himself the fine. In this way, then, we must be self-lovers, as we have said. But in the way [1169b] the many are, we ought not to be.

9

There is also a dispute about whether the happy person will need friends or not. For it is said that blessedly happy and self-sufficient people have no need of friends. For they already have [all] the goods, and [5] hence, being self-sufficient, need nothing added. But your friend, since he is another yourself, supplies what your own efforts cannot supply. Hence it is said, ‘When the god gives well, what need is there of friends?’

It would seem absurd, however, to award the happy person all the goods, without giving him friends; for [10] having friends seems to be the greatest external good. And if it is more proper to a friend to confer benefits than to receive them, and it is proper to the good person and to virtue to do good, and it is finer to benefit friends than to benefit strangers, the excellent person will need people for him to benefit. Indeed, that is why there is a question about whether friends are needed more in good fortune than in ill fortune; for it is assumed that in ill fortune we need people [15] to benefit us, and in good fortune we need others for us to benefit.

Presumably it is also absurd to make the blessed person solitary. For no one would choose to have all [other] goods and yet be alone, since a human being is a political [animal], tending by nature to live together with others. This will also be true, then, of the happy [20] person; for he has the natural goods, and clearly it is better to spend his days with decent friends than with strangers of just any character. Hence the happy person needs friends.

Then what are those on the other side saying, and on what point are they correct? Perhaps they say what they say because the many think that it is the useful people who are friends. Certainly the blessedly happy [25] person will have no need of these, since he has [all] goods. Similarly, he will have no need, or very little, of friends for pleasure; for since his life is pleasant, it has no need of imported pleasures. Since he does not need these sorts of friends, he does not seem to need friends at all.

This conclusion, however, is presumably not true. For we said at the beginning that happiness is a kind [30] of activity; and clearly activity comes into being, and does not belong [to someone all the time], as a possession does. Now if being happy consists in living and being active; the activity of the good person is excellent, and [hence] pleasant in itself, as we said at the beginning; what is our own is pleasant; and we are able to observe our neighbors more than ourselves, [35] and to observe their actions more than our own; it follows that a good person finds pleasure in the actions of excellent people who are his friends, since these [1170a] actions have both the naturally pleasant [features—they are good, and they are his own]. The blessed person, therefore, will need virtuous friends, given that he decides to observe virtuous actions that are his own, and the actions of a virtuous friend are of this sort.

Further, it is thought that the happy person must [5] live pleasantly. But the solitary person’s life is hard, since it is not easy for him to be continuously active all by himself; but in relation to others and in their company it is easier. Hence his activity will be more continuous. It is also pleasant in itself, as it must be in the blessedly happy person’s case. For the excellent person, insofar as he is excellent, enjoys actions in accord with virtue, and objects to actions caused by [10] vice, just as the musician enjoys fine melodies and is pained by bad ones.

Further, good people’s life together allows the cultivation of virtue, as Theognis says.

If we examine the question more from the point of view of [human] nature, an excellent friend would seem to be choiceworthy by nature for an excellent person. For, as we have said, what is good by nature [15] is good and pleasant in itself for an excellent person.

For animals, life is defined by the capacity for perception, but for human beings, it is defined by the capacity for perception or understanding; moreover, every capacity refers to an activity, and a thing is present fully in its activity; hence living fully would seem to be perceiving or understanding.

Now life is good and pleasant in itself; for it has [20] definite order, which is proper to the nature of what is good. What is good by nature is also good for the decent person; that is why life would seem to be pleasant for everyone. But we must not consider a life that is vicious and corrupted, or filled with pains; for such a life lacks definite order, just as its proper [25] features do. (The truth about pain will be more evident in what follows.)

Life itself, then, is good and pleasant, as it would seem, at any rate, from the fact that everyone desires it, and decent and blessed people desire it more than others do—for their life is most choiceworthy for them, and their living is most blessed.

Now someone who sees perceives that he sees; one [30] who hears perceives that he hears; one who walks perceives that he walks; and similarly in the other cases also there is some [element] that perceives that we are active; so that if we are perceiving, we perceive that we are perceiving, and if we are understanding, we perceive that we are understanding. Now perceiving that we are perceiving or understanding is the same as perceiving that we are, since we agreed that being is perceiving or understanding.

Perceiving that we are alive is pleasant in itself. [1170b] For life is by nature a good, and it is pleasant to perceive that something good is present in us. Living is also choiceworthy, for a good person most of all, since being is good and pleasant for him; for he is pleased to perceive something good in itself together [5] [with his own being].

The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another himself. Therefore, just as his own being is choiceworthy for him, his friend’s being is choiceworthy for him in the same or a similar way. We agreed that someone’s own being is choiceworthy because he perceives that he is good, and this sort of perception is pleasant in itself. He must, then, perceive [10] his friend’s being together [with his own], and he will do this when they live together and share conversation and thought. For in the case of human beings what seems to count as living together is this sharing of conversation and thought, not sharing the same pasture, as in the case of grazing animals.

If, then, for the blessedly happy person, being is [15] choiceworthy, since it is naturally good and pleasant, and if the being of his friend is closely similar to his own, his friend will also be choiceworthy. What is choiceworthy for him he must possess, since otherwise he will in this respect lack something. Anyone who is to be happy, then, must have excellent friends.

10

Then should we have as many friends as possible? [20] Or is it the same as with the friendship of host and guest, where it seems to be good advice to ‘have neither many nor none’? Is this also good advice in friendship, to have neither no friends nor excessively many?

With friends for utility the advice seems very apt, [25] since it is hard work to return many people’s services, and life is too short for it. Indeed, more [such] friends than are adequate for one’s own life are superfluous, and a hindrance to living finely; hence we have no need of them. A few friends for pleasure are enough also, just as a little seasoning on food is enough.

Of excellent people, however, should we have as [30] many as possible as friends, or is there some proper measure of their number, as of the number in a city? For a city could not be formed from ten people, but it would be a city no longer if it had a hundred thousand. Presumably, though, the right quantity is not just one number, but anything between certain defined limits. Hence there is also some limit defining [1171a] the number of friends. Presumably, this is the largest number with whom you could live together, since we found that living together seems to be most characteristic of friendship.

Clearly you cannot live with many people and distribute yourself among them. Further these many people must also be friends to one another, if they are all to spend their days together; and this is hard [5] work for many people to manage. It also becomes difficult for many to share one another’s enjoyments and distresses as their own, since you are quite likely to find yourself sharing one friend’s pleasure and another friend’s grief at the same time.

Presumably, then, it is good not to seek as many friends as possible, and good to have no more than enough for living together; indeed it even seems impossible [10] to be an extremely close friend to many people. That is why it also seems impossible to be passionately in love with many people, since passionate erotic love tends to be an excess of friendship, and one has this for one person; hence also one has extremely close friendship for a few people.

This would seem to be borne out in what people actually do. For the friendship of companions is not found in groups of many people, and the friendships [15] celebrated in song are always between two people. By contrast, those who have many friends and treat everyone as close to them seem to be friends to no one, except in the way fellow citizens are friends; these people are regarded as ingratiating. Certainly it is possible to have a fellow citizen’s friendship for many people, and still to be a truly decent person, not ingratiating; but it is impossible to be many people’s friend for their virtue and for themselves. We have reason to be satisfied if we can find even a few [20] such friends.

11

Have we more need of friends in good fortune or in ill fortune? For in fact we seek them in both; for in ill fortune we need assistance, and in good fortune we need friends to live with and to benefit, since then we wish to do good. Certainly it is more necessary to have friends in ill fortune; that is why useful friends are needed here. But it is finer to have them in good [25] fortune. That is why we also seek decent friends; for it is more choiceworthy to do good to them and spend our time with them.

The very presence of friends is also pleasant, in ill fortune as well as good fortune; for we have our pain lightened when our friends share our distress. Indeed, [30] that is why one might be puzzled about whether they take a part of it from us, as though helping us to lift a weight, or, alternatively, their presence is pleasant and our awareness that they share our distress makes the pain smaller. Well, we need not discuss whether it is this or something else that lightens our pain; at any rate, what we have mentioned does appear to occur.

However, the presence of friends would seem to [35] be a mixture [of pleasure and pain]. For certainly the sight of our friends in itself is pleasant, especially [1171b] when we are in ill fortune, and it gives us some assistance in removing our pain. For a friend consoles us by the sight of him and by conversation, if he is dexterous, since he knows our character and what gives us pleasure and pain.

Nonetheless, awareness of his pain at our ill fortune [5] is painful to us; for everyone tries to avoid causing pain to his friends. That is why someone with a manly nature tries to prevent his friend from sharing his pain. Unless he is unusually immune to pain, he cannot endure pain coming to his friends; and he does not allow others to share his mourning at all, since he is not prone to mourn himself either. Females, [10] however, and effeminate men enjoy having people to wail with them; they love them as friends who share their distress. But in everything we clearly must imitate the better person.

In good fortune, by contrast, the presence of friends makes it pleasant to pass our time and to notice that they take pleasure in our own goods. That is why it seems that we must eagerly call our [15] friends to share our good fortune, since it is fine to do good. But we must hesitate to call them to share our ill fortune, since we must share bad things with them as little as possible; hence the saying ‘My misfortune is enough.’ We should invite them most of all whenever they will benefit us [20] greatly, with little trouble to themselves.

Conversely, it is presumably appropriate to go eagerly, without having to be called, to friends in misfortune. For it is proper to a friend to benefit, especially to benefit a friend in need who has not demanded it, since this is finer and pleasanter for both friends. In good fortune he should come eagerly to help him, since friends are needed for this also; but he should be slow to come to receive benefits, since eagerness [25] to be benefited is not fine. Presumably, though, one should avoid getting a reputation for being a killjoy, as sometimes happens, by refusing benefits.

Hence the presence of friends is apparently choiceworthy in all conditions.

12

What the erotic lover likes most is the sight of his [30] beloved, and this is the sort of perception he chooses over the others, supposing that this above all is what makes him fall in love and remain in love. In the same way, surely, what friends find most choiceworthy is living together. For friendship is community, and we are related to our friend as we are related to ourselves. Hence, since the perception of our own being is choiceworthy, so is the perception of our friend’s being. Perception is active when we live with [35] him; hence, not surprisingly, this is what we seek. [1172a]

Whatever someone [regards as] his being, or the end for which he chooses to be alive, that is the activity he wishes to pursue in his friend’s company. Hence some friends drink together, others play dice, while others do gymnastics and go hunting, or do [5] philosophy. They spend their days together on whichever pursuit in life they like most; for since they want to live with their friends, they share the actions in which they find their common life.

Hence the friendship of base people turns out to be vicious. For they are unstable, and share base pursuits; and by becoming similar to each other, they [10] grow vicious. But the friendship of decent people is decent, and increases the more often they meet. And they seem to become still better from their activities and their mutual correction. For each molds the other in what they approve of, so that ‘[you will learn] what is noble from noble people.’

So much, then, for friendship. The next task will [15] be to discuss pleasure.

BOOK X

1

The next task, presumably, is to discuss pleasure. For [20] it seems to be especially proper to our [animal] kind; that is why, when we educate children, we steer them by pleasure and pain. Besides, enjoying and hating the right things seems to be most important for virtue of character. For pleasure and pain extend through the whole of our lives, and are of great importance for virtue and the happy life, since people decide on [25] pleasant things, and avoid painful things.

Least of all, then, it seems, should these topics be neglected, especially since they arouse much dispute. For some say pleasure is the good, while others, on the contrary, say it is altogether base. Presumably, some [who say it is base] say so because they are persuaded that it is so. Others, however, say it because they think it is better for the conduct of our lives to [30] present pleasure as base even if it is not. For, they say, the many lean toward pleasure and are slaves to pleasures, and that is why we must lead them in the contrary direction, because that is the way to reach the intermediate condition.

Surely, however, this is wrong. For arguments [35] about actions and feelings are less credible than the facts; hence any conflict between arguments and perceptible [facts] arouses contempt for the arguments, [1172b] and moreover undermines the truth as well [as the arguments]. For if someone blames pleasure, but then has been seen to seek it on some occasions, the reason for his lapse seems to be that he regards every type of pleasure as something to seek; for the many are not the sort to make distinctions.

True arguments, then, would seem to be the most [5] useful, not only for knowledge but also for the conduct of life. For since they harmonize with the facts, they are credible, and so encourage those who comprehend them to live by them.

Enough of this, then; let us now consider what has been said about pleasure.

2

Eudoxus thought that pleasure is the good, because [10] he saw that all [animals], both rational and nonrational, seek it, and in everything, he says, what is choiceworthy is good, and what is most choiceworthy is supreme. The fact that all are drawn to the same thing [i.e., pleasure], indicates, in his view, that it is best for all, since each [kind of animal] finds its own [15] good, just as it finds its own nourishment; and what is good for all, what all aim at, is the good. These arguments of his were found credible because of his virtuous character, rather than on their own [merits]. For since he seemed to be outstandingly temperate, he did not seem to be saying this because he was a friend of pleasure; rather, it seemed that what he said was how it really was.

He thought it was no less evident from consideration of the contrary. For pain in itself, he said, is something to be avoided for all, so that, similarly, its [20] contrary is choiceworthy for all. Now what is most choiceworthy is what we choose not because of, or for the sake of, anything else; and it is agreed that this is the character of pleasure, since we never ask anyone what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choiceworthy in itself.

Moreover, [he argued], when pleasure is added to any other good, to just or temperate action, for instance, it makes that good more choiceworthy; and [25] good is increased by the addition of itself.

This [last] argument, at least, would seem to present pleasure as one good among others, no more a good than any other. For the addition of any other good makes a good more choiceworthy than it is all by itself. Indeed Plato uses this sort of argument to undermine the claim of pleasure to be the good. For, he argues, the pleasant life is more choiceworthy when [30] combined with prudence than it is without it; and if the mixed [good] is better, pleasure is not the good, since nothing can be added to the good to make it more choiceworthy. Nor, clearly, could anything else be the good if it is made more choiceworthy by the addition of anything that is good in itself. Then what is the good that meets this condition, and that we [35] share in also? That is what we are looking for.

But when some object that what everything aims [1173a] at is not good, surely there is nothing in what they say. For if things seem [good] to all, we say they are [good]; and if someone undermines confidence in these, what he says will hardly inspire more confidence in other things. For if [only animals] without understanding desired these things, there would be something in the objection; but if prudent [animals] also desire them, how can there be anything in it? And presumably even in inferior [animals] there is [5] something superior to themselves that seeks their own proper good.

The argument [against Eudoxus] about the contrary would also seem to be incorrect. For they argue that if pain is an evil, it does not follow that pleasure is a good, since evil is also opposed to evil, and both are opposed to the neutral condition [without pleasure or pain]. The objectors’ general point here is right, but [10] what they say in the case mentioned is false. For if both pleasure and pain were evils, we would also have to avoid both, and if both were neutral, we would have to avoid neither, or else avoid both equally. Evidently, however, we avoid pain as an evil and choose pleasure as a good; hence this must also be the opposition between them.

3

Again, if [as the objectors argue] pleasure is not a quality, it does not follow [as they suppose] that it is not a good. For virtuous activities and happiness are [15] not qualities either.

They say that the good is definite, whereas pleasure is indefinite because it admits of more and less. If their judgment rests on the actual condition of being pleased, it must also hold for justice and the other virtues, where evidently we are said to have a certain [20] character more and less, and to act more and less in accord with the virtues; for we may be more [and less] just or brave, and may do just or temperate actions more and less. If, on the other hand, their judgment rests on the [variety of] pleasures, then surely they fail to state the reason [why pleasures admit of more and less], namely that some are unmixed [with pain] and others are mixed.

Moreover, just as health admits of more and less, [25] though it is definite, why should pleasure not be the same? For not every [healthy person] has the same proportion [of bodily elements], nor does the same person always have the same, but it may be relaxed and still remain up to a certain limit, and may differ in more and less. The same is quite possible, then, for pleasure also.

They hold that what is good is complete, whereas [30] processes and becomings are incomplete, and they try to show that pleasure is a process and a becoming. It would seem, however, that they are wrong, and pleasure is not even a process. For quickness or slowness seems to be proper to every process—if not in itself (as, for instance, with the universe), then in relation to something else. But neither of these is true of pleasure. For though certainly it is possible to become pleased quickly, as it is possible to become [1173b] angry quickly, it is not possible to be pleased quickly, even in relation to something else, whereas this is possible for walking and growing and all such things [i.e., for processes]. It is possible, then, to pass quickly or slowly into pleasure, but not possible to be [quickly or slowly] in the corresponding activity, i.e., to be pleased quickly [or slowly].

And how could pleasure be a becoming? For one [5] random thing, it seems, does not come to be from any other; what something comes to be from is what it is dissolved into. Hence whatever pleasure is the becoming of, pain should be the perishing of it.

They do indeed say that pain is the emptying of the natural [condition, and hence the perishing], and that pleasure is its refilling [and hence the becoming]. Emptying and filling happen to the body; if, then, pleasure is the refilling of something natural, what [10] has the refilling will also have the pleasure. Hence it will be the body that has pleasure. This does not seem to be true, however. The refilling, then, is not pleasure, though someone might be pleased while a refilling is going on, and pained when he is becoming empty.

This belief [that pleasure is refilling] seems to have arisen from pains and pleasures in connection with food; for first we are empty and suffer pain, and then [15] take pleasure in the refilling. The same is not true, however, of all pleasures; for pleasures in mathematics, and among pleasures in perception those through the sense of smell, and many sounds, sights, memories, and expectations as well, all arise without [previous] pain. In that case what will they be comings-to-be [20] of? For since no emptiness of anything has come to be, there is nothing whose refilling might come to be.

To those who cite the disgraceful pleasures [to show that pleasure is not a good], we might reply that these [sources of disgraceful pleasures] are not pleasant. For if things are healthy or sweet or bitter to sick people, we should not suppose that they are also healthy, or sweet, or bitter, except to them, or that things appearing white to people with eye disease are white, except to them. Similarly, if things are pleasant to people in bad condition, we should not suppose that they are also pleasant, except to these people.

Or else we might say that pleasures are choiceworthy, [25] but not if they come from these sources, just as wealth is desirable, but not if you have to betray someone to get it, and health is desirable, but not if it requires you to eat anything and everything.

Or perhaps pleasures differ in species. For those from fine sources are different from those from shameful sources; and we cannot have the just person’s [30] pleasure without being just, any more than we can have the musician’s without being musicians, and similarly in the other cases.

The difference between a friend and a flatterer seems to indicate that pleasure is not good, or else that pleasures differ in species. For in dealings with us the friend seems to aim at what is good, but the flatterer at pleasure; and the flatterer is reproached, [1174a] whereas the friend is praised, on the assumption that in their dealings they have different aims.

And no one would choose to live with a child’s [level of] thought for his whole life, taking as much pleasure as possible in what pleases children, or to enjoy himself while doing some utterly shameful action, even if he would never suffer pain for it. [5] Moreover, there are many things that we would be eager for even if they brought no pleasure—for instance, seeing, remembering, knowing, having the virtues. Even if pleasures necessarily follow on them, that does not matter; for we would choose them even if no pleasure resulted from them.

It would seem to be clear, then, that pleasure is not the good, that not every pleasure is choiceworthy, and that some are choiceworthy in themselves, differing in species or in their sources [from those that are not]. [10]

Let this suffice, then, for discussion of the things said about pleasure and pain.

4

What, then, or what kind of thing, is pleasure? This will become clearer if we take it up again from the beginning. For seeing seems to be complete at any time, since it has no need for anything else to complete [15] its form by coming to be at a later time. And pleasure is also like this, since it is some sort of whole, and no pleasure is to be found at any time that will have its form completed by coming to be for a longer time.

That is why pleasure is not a process either. For every process, such as constructing a building, takes [20] time, and aims at some end, and is complete when it produces the product it seeks, or, [in other words, is complete] in this whole time [that it takes]. Moreover, each process is incomplete during the processes that are its parts, i.e., during the time it goes on; and it consists of processes that are different in form from the whole process and from one another.

For laying stones together and fluting a column are different processes; and both are different from the [whole] production of the temple. For the production [25] of the temple is a complete production, since it needs nothing further [when it is finished] to achieve the proposed goal; but the production of the foundation or the triglyph is an incomplete production, since [when it is finished] it is [the production] of a part. Hence [processes that are parts of larger processes] differ in form; and we cannot find a process complete in form at any time [while it is going on], but [only], if at all, in the whole time [that it takes].

The same is true of walking and the other [processes]. [30] For if locomotion is a process from one place to another, it includes locomotions differing in form—flying, walking, jumping, and so on. And besides these differences, there are differences in walking itself. For the place from which and the place to which are not the same in the whole racecourse as they are in a part of it, or the same in one part as in another; nor is travelling along one line the same as travelling along another, since what we cover is not [1174b] just a line, but a line in a [particular] place, and this line and that line are in different places.

Now we have discussed process exactly elsewhere. But, at any rate, a process, it would seem, is not complete at every time; and the many [constituent] processes are incomplete, and differ in form, since [5] the place from which and the place to which make the form of a process [and different processes begin and end in different places].

The form of pleasure, by contrast, is complete at any time. Clearly, then, it is different from a process, and is something whole and complete. This also seems true because a process must take time, but being pleased need not; for what is present in an instant is a whole. This also makes it clear that it is [10] wrong to say that pleasure is a process or a becoming. For this is not said of everything, but only of what is divisible and not a whole; for seeing, or a point, or a unit, has no coming to be, and none of these is either a process or a becoming. But pleasure is a whole; hence it too has no coming to be.

Every perceptual capacity is active in relation to [15] its perceptible object, and completely active when it is in good condition in relation to the finest of its perceptible objects. For this above all seems to be the character of complete activity, whether it is ascribed to the capacity or to the subject that has it. Hence for each capacity the best activity is the activity of the subject in the best condition in relation to the best object of the capacity.

This activity will also be the most complete and [20] the most pleasant. For every perceptual capacity and every sort of thought and study has its pleasure; the most pleasant activity is the most complete; and the most complete is the activity of the subject in good condition in relation to the most excellent object of the capacity. Pleasure completes the activity.

But the way in which pleasure completes the activity [25] is not the way in which the perceptible object and the perceptual capacity complete it when they are both excellent—just as health and the doctor are not the cause of being healthy in the same way.

Clearly a pleasure arises that corresponds to each perceptual capacity, since we say that sights and sounds are pleasant; and clearly it arises most of all whenever the perceptual capacity is best, and is active in relation to the best sort of object. When this is the condition of the perceptible object and of the [30] perceiving subject, there will always be pleasure, when the producer and the subject to be affected are both present.

Pleasure completes the activity—not, however, as the state does, by being present [in the activity], but as a sort of consequent end, like the bloom on youths. Hence as long as the objects of understanding or perception and the subject that judges or attends are [1175a] in the right condition, there will be pleasure in the activity. For as long as the subject affected and the productive [cause] remain similar and in the same relation to each other, the same thing naturally arises.

Then how is it that no one is continuously pleased? [5] Is it not because we get tired? For nothing human is capable of continuous activity, and hence no continuous pleasure arises either, since pleasure is a consequence of the activity. Some things delight us when they are new to us, but later delight us less, for the same reason. For at first our thought is stimulated and intensely active toward them, as our sense of sight is when we look closely at something; but later the [10] activity becomes lax and careless, so that the pleasure fades also.

Why does everyone desire pleasure? We might think it is because everyone also aims at being alive. Living is a type of activity, and each of us is active toward the objects he likes most and in the ways he likes most. The musician, for instance, activates his hearing in hearing melodies; the lover of learning activates his thought in thinking about objects of [15] study; and so on for each of the others. Pleasure completes their activities, and hence completes life, which they desire. It is reasonable, then, that they also aim at pleasure, since it completes each person’s life for him, and life is choiceworthy.

But do we choose life because of pleasure, or pleasure because of life? Let us set aside this question for now, since the two appear to be combined and to [20] allow no separation; for pleasure never arises without activity, and, equally, it completes every activity.

5

Hence pleasures also seem to differ in species. For we suppose that things of different species are completed by different things. That is how it appears, both with natural things and with artifacts—for instance, with animals, trees, a [25] painting, a statue, a house, or an implement. Similarly, activities that differ in species are also completed by things that differ in species. Now activities of thought differ in species from activities of the capacities for perception, and so do these from each other; so also, then, do the pleasures that complete them.

This is also apparent from the way each pleasure [30] is proper to the activity that it completes. For the proper pleasure increases the activity; for we judge each thing better and more exactly when our activity involves pleasure. If, for instance, we enjoy doing geometry, we become better geometers, and understand each question better; and similarly lovers of music, building, and so on improve at their proper [35] function when they enjoy it. Each pleasure increases the activity; what increases it is proper to it; and since [1175b] the activities are different in species, what is proper to them is also different in species.

This is even more apparent from the way some activities are impeded by pleasures from others. For lovers of flutes, for instance, cannot pay attention to a conversation if they catch the sound of someone playing the flute, because they enjoy flute playing more [5] than their present activity; and so the pleasure proper to flute playing destroys the activity of conversation.

The same is true in other cases also, whenever we are engaged in two activities at once. For the more pleasant activity pushes out the other one, all the more if it is much more pleasant, so that we no longer [10] even engage in the other activity. Hence if we are enjoying one thing intensely, we do not do another very much. It is when we are only mildly pleased that we do something else; for instance, people who eat nuts in theatres do this most when the actors are bad.

Since, then, the proper pleasure makes an activity [15] more exact, longer, and better, whereas an alien pleasure damages it, clearly the two pleasures differ widely. For an alien pleasure does virtually what a proper pain does. The proper pain destroys activity, so that if, for instance, writing or rational calculation has no pleasure and is in fact painful for us, we do not write or calculate, since the activity is painful. [20] Hence the proper pleasures and pains have contrary effects on an activity; and the proper ones are those that arise from the activity in itself. And as we have said, the effect of alien pleasures is similar to the effect of pain, since they ruin the activity, though not in the same way as pain.

Since activities differ in degrees of decency and [25] badness, and some are choiceworthy, some to be avoided, some neither, the same is true of pleasures; for each activity has its own proper pleasure. Hence the pleasure proper to an excellent activity is decent, and the one proper to a base activity is vicious; for, similarly, appetites for fine things are praiseworthy, and appetites for shameful things are blameworthy. [30] And in fact the pleasure in an activity is more proper to it than the desire for it. For the desire is distinguished from it in time and in nature; but the pleasure is close to the activity, and so little distinguished from it that disputes arise about whether the activity is the same as the pleasure.

Still, pleasure would seem to be neither thought nor perception, since that would be absurd. Rather, it is because [pleasure and activity] are not separated [35] that to some people they appear the same. Hence, [1176a] just as activities differ, so do the pleasures. Sight differs from touch in purity, as hearing and smell do from taste; hence the pleasures also differ in the same way. So also do the pleasures of thought differ from these [pleasures of sense]; and both sorts have different kinds within them.

Each kind of animal seems to have its own proper pleasure, just as it has its own proper function; for the proper pleasure will be the one that corresponds to its activity. This is apparent if we also study each [5] kind; for a horse, a dog, and a human being have different pleasures, and, as Heracleitus says, an ass would choose chaff over gold, since asses find food more pleasant than gold. Hence animals that differ in species also have pleasures that differ in species; and it would be reasonable for animals of the same species to have the same pleasures also.

In fact, however, the pleasures differ quite a lot, [10] in human beings at any rate. For the same things delight some people, and cause pain to others; and while some find them painful and hateful, others find them pleasant and lovable. The same is true of sweet things. For the same things do not seem sweet to a feverish and to a healthy person, or hot to an enfeebled and to a vigorous person; and the same is true of [15] other things.

But in all such cases it seems that what is really so is what appears so to the excellent person. If this is right, as it seems to be, and virtue, i.e., the good person insofar as he is good, is the measure of each thing, then what appear pleasures to him will also really be pleasures, and what is pleasant will be what he enjoys.

And if what he finds objectionable appears pleasant [20] to someone, that is not at all surprising; for human beings suffer many sorts of corruption and damage. It is not pleasant, however, except to these people in these conditions. Clearly, then, we should say that the pleasures agreed to be shameful are not pleasures at all, except to corrupted people.

But what about those pleasures that seem to be [25] decent? Of these, which kind, or which particular pleasure, should we take to be the pleasure of a human being? Surely it will be clear from the activities, since the pleasures are consequences of these. Hence the pleasures that complete the activities of the complete and blessedly happy man, whether he has one activity or more than one, will be called the fully human pleasures to the fullest extent. The other pleasures will be human in secondary, or even more remote ways, corresponding to the character of the activities.

6

We have now finished our discussion of the types of [30] virtue; of friendship; and of pleasure. It remains for us to discuss happiness in outline, since we take this to be the end of human [aims]. Our discussion will be shorter if we first take up again what we said before.

We said, then, that happiness is not a state. For if it were, someone might have it and yet be asleep for his whole life, living the life of a plant, or suffer the [35] greatest misfortunes. If we [1176b] do not approve of this, we count happiness as an activity rather than a state, as we said before.

Some activities are necessary, i.e., choiceworthy for some other end, while others are choiceworthy in their own right. Clearly, then, we should count happiness as one of those activities that are choiceworthy [5] in their own right, not as one of those choiceworthy for some other end. For happiness lacks nothing, but is self-sufficient.

An activity is choiceworthy in its own right if nothing further apart from it is sought from it. This seems to be the character of actions in accord with virtue; for doing fine and excellent actions is choiceworthy for itself. But pleasant amusements also [seem to be [10] choiceworthy in their own right]; for they are not chosen for other ends, since they actually cause more harm than benefit, by causing neglect of our bodies and possessions. Moreover, most of those people congratulated for their happiness resort to these sorts of pastimes. That is why people who are witty participants in them have a good reputation with tyrants, [15] since they offer themselves as pleasant [partners] in the tyrant’s aims, and these are the sort of people the tyrant requires. And so these amusements seem to have the character of happiness because people in supreme power spend their leisure in them.

These sorts of people, however, are presumably no evidence. For virtue and understanding, the sources of excellent activities, do not depend on holding supreme power. Further, these powerful people have [20] had no taste of pure and civilized pleasure, and so they resort to bodily pleasures. But that is no reason to think these pleasures are most choiceworthy, since boys also think that the things they honor are best. Hence, just as different things appear honorable to boys and to men, it is reasonable that in the same way different things appear honorable to base and to decent people.

As we have often said, then, what is honorable and [25] pleasant is what is so to the excellent person. To each type of person the activity that accords with his own proper state is most choiceworthy; hence the activity in accord with virtue is most choiceworthy to the excellent person [and hence is most honorable and pleasant].

Happiness, then, is not found in amusement; for it would be absurd if the end were amusement, and our lifelong efforts and sufferings aimed at amusing [30] ourselves. For we choose practically everything for some other end—except for happiness, since it is [the] end; but serious work and toil aimed [only] at amusement appears stupid and excessively childish. Rather, it seems correct to amuse ourselves so that we can do something serious, as Anacharsis says; for amusement would seem to be relaxation, and it is because we cannot toil continuously that we require [35] relaxation. Relaxation, then, is not [the] end; for we pursue it [to prepare] for activity. But the happy life [1177a] seems to be a life in accord with virtue, which is a life involving serious actions, and not consisting in amusement.

Besides, we say that things to be taken seriously are better than funny things that provide amusement, and that in each case the activity of the better part and [5] the better person is more serious and excellent; and the activity of what is better is superior, and thereby has more the character of happiness.

Besides, anyone at all, even a slave, no less than the best person, might enjoy bodily pleasures; but no one would allow that a slave shares in happiness, if one does not [also allow that the slave shares in the sort of] life [needed for happiness]. Happiness, then, is found not in these pastimes, but in the activities in accord with virtue, as we also said previously. [10]

7

If happiness is activity in accord with virtue, it is reasonable for it to accord with the supreme virtue, which will be the virtue of the best thing. The best is understanding, or whatever else seems to be the [15] natural ruler and leader, and to understand what is fine and divine, by being itself either divine or the most divine element in us. Hence complete happiness will be its activity in accord with its proper virtue; and we have said that this activity is the activity of study.

This seems to agree with what has been said before, and also with the truth. For this activity is supreme, since understanding is the supreme element in us, [20] and the objects of understanding are the supreme objects of knowledge.

Further, it is the most continuous activity, since we are more capable of continuous study than any continuous action.

Besides, we think pleasure must be mixed into happiness; and it is agreed that the activity in accord with wisdom is the most pleasant of the activities in [25] accord with virtue. Certainly, philosophy seems to have remarkably pure and firm pleasures, and it is reasonable for those who have knowledge to spend their lives more pleasantly than those who seek it.

Moreover, the self-sufficiency we spoke of will be found in study more than in anything else. For admittedly the wise person, the just person, and the other virtuous people all need the good things necessary for life. Still, when these are adequately supplied, the [30] just person needs other people as partners and recipients of his just actions; and the same is true of the temperate person, the brave person, and each of the others. But the wise person is able, and more able the wiser he is, to study even by himself; and though he presumably does it better with colleagues, even [1177b] so he is more self-sufficient than any other [virtuous person].

Besides, study seems to be liked because of itself alone, since it has no result beyond having studied. But from the virtues concerned with action we try to a greater or lesser extent to gain something beyond the action itself.

Besides, happiness seems to be found in leisure; [5] for we deny ourselves leisure so that we can be at leisure, and fight wars so that we can be at peace. Now the virtues concerned with action have their activities in politics or war, and actions here seem to require trouble. This seems completely true for actions in war, since no one chooses to fight a war, and no one continues it, for the sake of fighting a war; [10] for someone would have to be a complete murderer if he made his friends his enemies so that there could be battles and killings. But the actions of the politician also deny us leisure; apart from political activities themselves, those actions seek positions of power and honors, or at least they seek happiness for the politician himself and for his fellow citizens, which is [15] something different from political science itself, and clearly is sought on the assumption that it is different.

Hence among actions in accord with the virtues those in politics and war are preeminently fine and great; but they require trouble, aim at some [further] end, and are choiceworthy for something other than themselves. But the activity of understanding, it [20] seems, is superior in excellence because it is the activity of study, aims at no end apart from itself, and has its own proper pleasure, which increases the activity. Further, self-sufficiency, leisure, unwearied activity (as far as is possible for a human being), and any other features ascribed to the blessed person, are evidently features of this activity. Hence a human [25] being’s complete happiness will be this activity, if it receives a complete span of life, since nothing incomplete is proper to happiness.

Such a life would be superior to the human level. For someone will live it not insofar as he is a human being, but insofar as he has some divine element in him. And the activity of this divine element is as much superior to the activity in accord with the rest of virtue as this element is superior to the compound. Hence if understanding is something divine in comparison [30] with a human being, so also will the life in accord with understanding be divine in comparison with human life. We ought not to follow the makers of proverbs and ‘Think human, since you are human,’ or ‘Think mortal, since you are mortal.’ Rather, as far as we can, we ought to be pro-immortal, and go to all lengths to live a life in accord with our supreme element; for however much this element may lack [1178a] in bulk, by much more it surpasses everything in power and value.

Moreover, each person seems to be his understanding, if he is his controlling and better element. It would be absurd, then, if he were to choose not his own life, but something else’s. And what we have said [5] previously will also apply now. For what is proper to each thing’s nature is supremely best and most pleasant for it; and hence for a human being the life in accord with understanding will be supremely best and most pleasant, if understanding, more than anything else, is the human being. This life, then, will also be happiest.

8

The life in accord with the other kind of virtue [i.e., the kind concerned with action] is [happiest] in a secondary way, because the activities in accord with [10] this virtue are human. For we do just and brave actions, and the other actions in accord with the virtues, in relation to other people, by abiding by what fits each person in contracts, services, all types of actions, and also in feelings; and all these appear to be human conditions. Indeed, some feelings actually seem to arise from the body; and in many ways virtue [15] of character seems to be proper to feelings.

Besides, prudence is inseparable from virtue of character, and virtue of character from prudence. For the principles of prudence accord with the virtues of character; and correctness in virtues of character accords with prudence. And since these virtues [20] are also connected to feelings, they are concerned with the compound. Since the virtues of the compound are human virtues, the life and the happiness in accord with these virtues is also human. The virtue of understanding, however, is separated [from the compound]. Let us say no more about it, since an exact account would be too large a task for our present project.

Moreover, it seems to need external supplies very [25] little, or [at any rate] less than virtue of character needs them. For let us grant that they both need necessary goods, and to the same extent; for there will be only a very small difference, even though the politician labors more about the body and suchlike. Still, there will be a large difference in [what is needed] for the [proper] activities [of each type of virtue]. For the generous person will need money for generous actions; and the just person will need it for [30] paying debts, since wishes are not clear, and people who are not just pretend to wish to do justice. Similarly, the brave person will need enough power, and the temperate person will need freedom [to do intemperate actions], if they are to achieve anything that the virtue requires. For how else will they, or any other virtuous people, make their virtue clear?

Moreover, it is disputed whether decision or action [35] is more in control of virtue, on the assumption that [1178b] virtue depends on both. Well, certainly it is clear that the complete [good] depends on both; but for actions many external goods are needed, and the greater and finer the actions the more numerous are the external goods needed.

But someone who is studying needs none of these goods, for that activity at least; indeed, for study at least, we might say they are even hindrances. Insofar as he is a human being, however, and [hence] lives [5] together with a number of other human beings, he chooses to do the actions that accord with virtue. Hence he will need the sorts of external goods [that are needed for the virtues], for living a human life.

In another way also it appears that complete happiness is some activity of study. For we traditionally suppose that the gods more than anyone are blessed [10] and happy; but what sorts of actions ought we to ascribe to them? Just actions? Surely they will appear ridiculous making contracts, returning deposits, and so on. Brave actions? Do they endure what [they find] frightening and endure dangers because it is fine? Generous actions? Whom will they give to? And surely it would be absurd for them to have currency or anything like that. What would their temperate [15] actions be? Surely it is vulgar praise to say that they do not have base appetites. When we go through them all, anything that concerns actions appears trivial and unworthy of the gods. Nonetheless, we all traditionally suppose that they are alive and active, since surely [20] they are not asleep like Endymion. Then if someone is alive, and action is excluded, and production even more, what is left but study? Hence the gods’ activity that is superior in blessedness will be an activity of study. And so the human activity that is most akin to the gods’ activity will, more than any others, have the character of happiness.

A sign of this is the fact that other animals have no [25] share in happiness, being completely deprived of this activity of study. For the whole life of the gods is blessed, and human life is blessed to the extent that it has something resembling this sort of activity; but none of the other animals is happy, because none of them shares in study at all. Hence happiness extends just as far as study extends, and the more someone studies, the happier [30] he is, not coincidentally but insofar as he studies, since study is valuable in itself. And so [on this argument] happiness will be some kind of study.

But happiness will need external prosperity also, since we are human beings; for our nature is not self-sufficient [35] for study, but we need a healthy body, and need to have food and the other services provided. Still, even though no one can be blessedly happy [1179a] without external goods, we must not think that to be happy we will need many large goods. For self-sufficiency and action do not depend on excess.

Moreover, we can do fine actions even if we do not rule earth and sea; for even from moderate resources we can do the actions that accord with virtue. [5] This is evident to see, since many private citizens seem to do decent actions no less than people in power do—even more, in fact. It is enough if moderate resources are provided; for the life of someone whose activity accords with virtue will be happy.

Solon¹⁷ surely described happy people well, when [10] he said they had been moderately supplied with external goods, had done what he regarded as the finest actions, and had lived their lives temperately. For it is possible to have moderate possessions and still to do the right actions. And Anaxagoras would seem to have supposed that the happy person was neither rich nor powerful, since he said he would not be surprised [15] if the happy person appeared an absurd sort of person to the many. For the many judge by externals, since these are all they perceive. Hence the beliefs of the wise would seem to accord with our arguments.

These considerations, then, produce some confidence. But the truth in questions about action is judged from what we do and how we live, since these [20] are what control [the answers to such questions]. Hence we ought to examine what has been said by applying it to what we do and how we live; and if it harmonizes with what we do, we should accept it, but if it conflicts we should count it [mere] words.

The person whose activity accords with understanding and who takes care of understanding would seem to be in the best condition, and most loved by the gods. For if the gods pay some attention to human [25] beings, as they seem to, it would be reasonable for them to take pleasure in what is best and most akin to them, namely understanding; and reasonable for them to benefit in return those who most of all like and honor understanding, on the assumption that these people attend to what is beloved by the gods, and act correctly and finely. Clearly, all this is true [30] of the wise person more than anyone else; hence he is most loved by the gods. And it is likely that this same person will be happiest; hence, by this argument also, the wise person, more than anyone else, will be happy.

9

We have now said enough in outlines about happiness and the virtues, and about friendship and pleasure also. Should we, then, think that our decision [to [35] study these] has achieved its end? On the contrary, [1179b] the aim of studies about action, as we say, is surely not to study and know about a given thing, but rather to act on our knowledge. Hence knowing about virtue is not enough, but we must also try to possess and exercise virtue, or become good in any other way.

Now if arguments were sufficient by themselves [5] to make people decent, the rewards they would command would justifiably have been many and large, as Theognis says, and rightly bestowed. In fact, however, arguments seem to have enough influence to stimulate and encourage the civilized ones among the young people, and perhaps to make virtue take possession of a well-born character that truly loves what is fine; but they seem unable to turn the many toward [10] being fine and good.

For the many naturally obey fear, not shame; they avoid what is base because of the penalties, not because it is disgraceful. For since they live by their feelings, they pursue their proper pleasures and the sources of them, and avoid the opposed pains, and [15] have not even a notion of what is fine and [hence] truly pleasant, since they have had no taste of it.

What argument, then, could reform people like these? For it is impossible, or not easy, to alter by argument what has long been absorbed as a result of one’s habits. But, presumably, we should be satisfied to achieve some share in virtue if we already have what we seem to need to become decent.

Now some think it is nature that makes people [20] good; some think it is habit; some that it is teaching. The [contribution] of nature clearly is not up to us, but results from some divine cause in those who have it, who are the truly fortunate ones. Arguments and teaching surely do not prevail on everyone, but the soul of the student needs to have been prepared by [25] habits for enjoying and hating finely, like ground that is to nourish seed. For someone who lives in accord with his feelings would not even listen to an argument turning him away, or comprehend it [if he did listen]; and in that state how could he be persuaded to change? And in general feelings seem to yield to force, not to argument. Hence we must already in [30] some way have a character suitable for virtue, fond of what is fine and objecting to what is shameful.

It is difficult, however, for someone to be trained correctly for virtue from his youth if he has not been brought up under correct laws; for the many, especially the young, do not find it pleasant to live in a temperate and resistant way. That is why laws must [35] prescribe their upbringing and practices; for they will not find these things painful when they get used to them.

Presumably, however, it is not enough if they get [1180a] the correct upbringing and attention when they are young; rather, they must continue the same practices and be habituated to them when they become men. Hence we need laws concerned with these things also, and in general with all of life. For the many yield to compulsion more than to argument, and to [5] sanctions more than to the fine.

That is why legislators must, in some people’s view, urge people toward virtue and exhort them to aim at the fine—on the assumption that anyone whose good habits have prepared him decently will listen to them—but must impose corrective treatments and penalties on anyone who disobeys or lacks the right [10] nature, and must completely expel an incurable. For the decent person, it is assumed, will attend to reason because his life aims at the fine, whereas the base person, since he desires pleasure, has to receive corrective treatment by pain, like a beast of burden. That is why it is said that the pains imposed must be those most contrary to the pleasures he likes.

As we have said, then, someone who is to be good [15] must be finely brought up and habituated, and then must live in decent practices, doing base actions neither willingly nor unwillingly. And this will be true if his life follows some sort of understanding and correct order that prevails on him.

Now a father’s instructions lack this power to prevail and compel; and so in general do the instructions of an individual man, unless he is a king or someone [20] like that. Law, however, has the power that compels; and law is reason that proceeds from a sort of prudence and understanding. Besides, people become hostile to an individual human being who opposes their impulses, even if he is correct in opposing them, whereas a law’s prescription of what is decent is not burdensome.

And yet, it is only in Sparta, or in a few other cities [25] as well, that the legislator seems to have attended to upbringing and practices. In most other cities they are neglected, and an individual lives as he wishes, ‘laying down the rules for his children and wife,’ like a Cyclops.

It is best, then, if the community attends to upbringing, [30] and attends correctly. But if the community neglects it, it seems fitting for each individual to promote the virtue of his children and his friends—to be able to do it, or at least to decide to do it. From what we have said, however, it seems he will be better able to do it if he acquires legislative science. For, clearly, attention by the community works through laws, and [35] decent attention works through excellent laws; and [1180b] whether the laws are written or unwritten, for the education of one or of many, seems unimportant, as it is in music, gymnastics, and other practices. For just as in a city the provisions of law and the types of character [found in that city] have influence, similarly a father’s words and habits have influence, and [5] all the more because of kinship and because of the benefits he does; for his children are already fond of him and naturally ready to obey.

Further, education adapted to an individual is actually better than a common education for everyone, just as individualized medical treatment is better. For though generally a feverish patient benefits from rest and starvation, presumably some patient does not; [10] nor does the boxing instructor impose the same way of fighting on everyone. Hence it seems that treatment in particular cases is more exactly right when each person gets special attention, since he then more often gets the suitable treatment.

Nonetheless a doctor, a gymnastics trainer, and everyone else will give the best individual attention if they also know universally what is good for all, or [15] for these sorts. For sciences are said to be, and are, of what is common [to many particular cases]. Admittedly someone without scientific knowledge may well attend properly to a single person, if his experience has allowed him to take exact note of what happens in a given case, just as some people seem to be their own best doctors, though unable to help anyone else at all. Nonetheless, presumably, it seems that someone [20] who wants to be an expert in a craft and a branch of study should progress to the universal, and come to know that, as far as possible; for that, as we have said, is what the sciences are about.

Then perhaps also someone who wishes to make people better by his attention, many people or few, should try to acquire legislative science, if laws are a [25] means to make us good. For not just anyone can improve the condition of just anyone, or the person presented to him; but if someone can, it is the person with knowledge, just as in medical science and the others that require attention and prudence.

Next, then, should we examine whence and how [30] someone might acquire legislative science? Just as in other cases [we go to the practitioner], should we go to the politicians, since, as we saw, legislative science seems to be a part of political science? Or does the case of political science appear different from the other sciences and capacities? For evidently, in the other cases, the same people, such as doctors or painters, who transmit the capacity to others actively practice [35] it themselves. By contrast, it is the sophists who advertise that they teach politics but none of them [1181a] practices it. Instead, those who practice it are the political activists, and they seem to act on some sort of capacity and experience rather than thought.

For evidently they neither write nor speak on such questions, though presumably it would be finer to do this than to compose speeches for the law courts or [5] the Assembly; nor have they made politicians out of their own sons or any other friends of theirs. But it would be reasonable for them to do this if they were able; for there is nothing better than the political capacity that they could leave to their cities, and nothing better that they could decide to produce in themselves, or, therefore, in their closest friends.

Nonetheless, experience would seem to contribute [10] quite a lot; otherwise people would not have become better politicians by familiarity with politics. That is why those who aim to know about political science would seem to need experience as well.

By contrast, those of the sophists who advertise [that they teach political science] appear to be a long way from teaching; for they are altogether ignorant about the sort of thing political science is, and the sorts of things it is about. For if they had known what [15] it is, they would not have taken it to be the same as rhetoric, or something inferior to it, or thought it an easy task to assemble the laws with good reputations and then legislate. For they think they can select the best laws, as though the selection itself did not require comprehension, and as though correct judgment were not the most important thing, as it is in music.

[They are wrong;] for those with experience in [20] each area judge the products correctly and comprehend the ways and means of completing them, and what fits with what; for if we lack experience, we must be satisfied with noticing that the product is well or badly made, as with painting. Now laws would seem to be the products of political science; how, [1181b] then, could someone acquire legislative science, or judge which laws are best, from laws alone? For neither do we appear to become experts in medicine by reading textbooks.

And yet doctors not only try to describe the [recognized] treatments, but also distinguish different [bodily] states, and try to say how each type of patient might be cured and must be treated. And what they [5] say seems to be useful to the experienced, though useless to the ignorant. Similarly, then, collections of laws and political systems might also, presumably, be most useful if we are capable of studying them and of judging what is done finely or in the contrary way, and what sorts of [elements] fit with what. Those who lack the [proper] state [of experience] when they [10] go through these collections will not manage to judge finely, unless they can do it all by themselves [without training], though they might come to comprehend them better by going through them.

Since, then, our predecessors have left the area of legislation uncharted, it is presumably better to examine it ourselves instead, and indeed to examine political systems in general, and so to complete the [15] philosophy of human affairs, as far as we are able.

First, then, let us try to review any sound remarks our predecessors have made on particular topics. Then let us study the collected political systems, to see from them what sorts of things preserve and destroy cities, and political systems of different types; [20] and what causes some cities to conduct politics well, and some badly. For when we have studied these questions, we will perhaps grasp better what sort of political system is best; how each political system should be organized so as to be best; and what habits and laws it should follow.

Let us discuss this, then, starting from the beginning.

From Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, second edition, translated by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000). Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

1. [Aristotle frequently quotes ancient sources, from Hesiod and Homer to Sophocles, Euripides, Epicharmus, and Simonides. For a comprehensive list of Aristotle’s literary references see Terence Irwin, Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, first edition (Hackett Publishing Company, 1985), 433–36.—M.L.M.]

2. [An Assyrian king (669–626) who lived in legendary luxury.—T.I.]

3. [Plato’s nephew; succeeded Plato in 347 as head of the Academy.—M.L.M.]

4. [Important Athenian statesman and sage about 600; when he saw the vast wealth of Croesus, king of Lydia, Solon refused to call him the happiest man until he saw how his life ended.—M.L.M.]

5. [Famous mathematician and member of Plato’s academy.—M.L.M.]

6. [When, in 353, mercenary soldiers were engaged to help the citizens in Coronea, they ran away.—M.L.M.]

7. [In 392, during battle in Corinth, Spartan cavalry took up Sicyonian shields and were confused for them.—M.L.M.]

8. [Thetis, Zeus’ daughter, does not remind him that she intervened when the other gods wanted to put him in chains.—M.L.M.]

9. [In mythology a judge in the underworld.—T.I.]

10. [Brasidas was a Spartan general who after his death received sacrifices in Amphipolis as a liberator; his cult is introduced as an example of a strictly local observance initiated by decree.—T.I.]

11. [A fifth-century dramatist; his victory is being celebrated in Plato’s Symposium.—M.L.M.]

12. [The winning boxer in the Olympics of 456 was called Anthropos.—T.I.]

13. [Claimed that her children were more beautiful than those of Leto.—M.L.M.]

14. [Stories are told of Satyrus that he committed suicide in grief when his father died.—M.L.M.]

15. [After serving as dictator of Mitylene for fourteen years in the early sixth century, he gave up his office, although the citizens unanimously wanted him to continue.—M.L.M.]

16. [Euripides’ Phoenissae is about the bitter and unscrupulous struggle between Eteocles and Polyneices for absolute power in Thebes.—T.I.]

17. [According to Solon, Tellus of Athens was the happiest man he knew; he was wealthy, lived to see his grandchildren, and died honorably in battle.—M.L.M.]