Ethics | Page 7

to goodness of
character, and so to conduct generally. As all thinking is either theoretical or practical,
goodness of intellect has two supreme forms--Theoretical and Practical Wisdom. The first,
which apprehends the eternal laws of the universe, has no direct relation to human
conduct: the second is identical with that master science of human life of which the
whole treatise, consisting of the Ethics and the Politics, is an exposition. It is this science
which supplies the right rules of conduct Taking them as they emerge in and from
practical experience, it formulates them more precisely and organises them into a system
where they are all seen to converge upon happiness. The mode in which such knowledge
manifests itself is in the power to show that such and such rules of action follow from the
very nature of the end or good for man. It presupposes and starts from a clear conception
of the end and the wish for it as conceived, and it proceeds by a deduction which is
dehberation writ large. In the man of practical wisdom this process has reached its perfect
result, and the code of right rules is apprehended as a system with a single principle and
so as something wholly rational or reasonable He has not on each occasion to seek and
find the right rule applicable to the situation, he produces it at once from within himself,
and can at need justify it by exhibiting its rationale, _i.e._ , its connection with the end.
This is the consummate form of reason applied to conduct, but there are minor forms of it,
less independent or original, but nevertheless of great value, such as the power to think
out the proper cause of policy in novel circumstances or the power to see the proper line
of treatment to follow in a court of law.
The form of the thinking which enters into conduct is that which terminates in the
production of a rule which declares some means to the end of life. The process
presupposes _(a)_ a clear and just apprehension of the nature of that end--such as the
Ethics itself endeavours to supply; _(b)_ a correct perception of the conditions of action,
_(a)_ at least is impossible except to a man whose character has been duly formed by
discipline; it arises only in a man who has acquired moral virtue. For such action and
feeling as forms bad character, blinds the eye of the soul and corrupts the moral principle,
and the place of practical wisdom is taken by that parody of itself which Aristotle calls
"cleverness"--the "wisdom" of the unscrupulous man of the world. Thus true practical
wisdom and true goodness of character are interdependent; neither is genuinely possible
or "completely" present without the other. This is Aristotle's contribution to the

discussion of the question, so central in Greek Moral Philosophy, of the relation of the
intellectual and the passionate factors in conduct.
Aristotle is not an intuitionist, but he recognises the implication in conduct of a direct and
immediate apprehension both of the end and of the character of his circumstances under
which it is from moment to moment realised. The directness of such apprehension makes
it analogous to sensation or sense-perception; but it is on his view in the end due to the
existence or activity in man of that power in him which is the highest thing in his nature,
and akin to or identical with the divine nature--mind, or intelligence. It is this which
reveals to us what is best for us--the ideal of a happiness which is the object of our real
wish and the goal of all our efforts. But beyond and above the practical ideal of what is
best for man begins to show itself another and still higher ideal--that of a life not
distinctively human or in a narrow sense practical, yet capable of being participated in by
man even under the actual circumstances of this world. For a time, however, this further
and higher ideal is ignored.
The next book (Book VII.), is concerned partly with moral conditions, in which the agent
seems to rise above the level of moral virtue or fall below that of moral vice, but partly
and more largely with conditions in which the agent occupies a middle position between
the two. Aristotle's attention is here directed chiefly towards the phenomena of
"Incontinence," weakness of will or imperfect self-control. This condition was to the
Greeks a matter of only too frequent experience, but it appeared to them peculiarly
difficult to understand. How can a man know what is good or best for him, and yet
chronically fail to act upon his knowledge? Socrates was driven to the paradox of
denying the possibility, but the facts are too strong for him. Knowledge