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about and choose, actions concerning means must be according to choice
and voluntary. Now the exercise of the virtues is concerned with means.
Therefore virtue also is in our own power, and so too vice. For where
it is in our power to act it is also in our power not to act, and
vice versa; so that, if to act, where this is noble, is in our power,
not to act, which will be base, will also be in our power, and if
not to act, where this is noble, is in our power, to act, which will
be base, will also be in our power. Now if it is in our power to do
noble or base acts, and likewise in our power not to do them, and
this was what being good or bad meant, then it is in our power to
be virtuous or vicious.
The saying that 'no one is voluntarily wicked nor involuntarily happy'
seems to be partly false and partly true; for no one is involuntarily
happy, but wickedness is voluntary. Or else we shall have to dispute
what has just been said, at any rate, and deny that man is a moving
principle or begetter of his actions as of children. But if these
facts are evident and we cannot refer actions to moving principles
other than those in ourselves, the acts whose moving principles are
in us must themselves also be in our power and voluntary.
Witness seems to be borne to this both by individuals in their private
capacity and by legislators themselves; for these punish and take
vengeance on those who do wicked acts (unless they have acted under
compulsion or as a result of ignorance for which they are not themselves
responsible), while they honour those who do noble acts, as though
they meant to encourage the latter and deter the former. But no one
is encouraged to do the things that are neither in our power nor
voluntary;
it is assumed that there is no gain in being persuaded not to be hot
or in pain or hungry or the like, since we shall experience these
feelings none the less. Indeed, we punish a man for his very ignorance,
if he is thought responsible for the ignorance, as when penalties
are doubled in the case of drunkenness; for the moving principle is
in the man himself, since he had the power of not getting drunk and
his getting drunk was the cause of his ignorance. And we punish those
who are ignorant of anything in the laws that they ought to know and
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NICOMACHEAN ETHICS 33
that is not difficult, and so too in the case of anything else that
they are thought to be ignorant of through carelessness; we assume
that it is in their power not to be ignorant, since they have the
power of taking care.
But perhaps a man is the kind of man not to take care. Still they
are themselves by their slack lives responsible for becoming men of
that kind, and men make themselves responsible for being unjust or
self-indulgent, in the one case by cheating and in the other by spending
their time in drinking bouts and the like; for it is activities
exercised
on particular objects that make the corresponding character. This
is plain from the case of people training for any contest or action;
they practise the activity the whole time. Now not to know that it
is from the exercise of activities on particular objects that states
of character are produced is the mark of a thoroughly senseless person.
Again, it is irrational to suppose that a man who acts unjustly does
not wish to be unjust or a man who acts self-indulgently to be self-
indulgent.
But if without being ignorant a man does the things which will make
him unjust, he will be unjust voluntarily. Yet it does not follow
that if he wishes he will cease to be unjust and will be just. For
neither does the man who is ill become well on those terms. We may
suppose a case in which he is ill voluntarily, through living
incontinently
and disobeying his doctors. In that case it was then open to him not
to be ill, but not now, when he has thrown away his chance, just as
when you have let a stone go it is too late to recover it; but yet
it was in your power to throw it, since the moving principle was in
you. So, too, to the unjust and to the self-indulgent man it was open
at the beginning not to become men of this kind, and so they are unjust
and selfindulgent voluntarily; but now that they have become so it
is not possible for them not to be so.
But not only are the vices of the soul voluntary, but those of the
body also for some men, whom we accordingly blame; while no one blames
those who are ugly by nature, we blame those who are so owing to want
of exercise and care. So it is, too, with respect to weakness and
infirmity; no one would reproach a man blind from birth or by disease
or from a blow, but rather pity him, while every one would blame a
man who was blind from drunkenness or some other form of self-
indulgence.
Of vices of the body, then, those in our own power are blamed, those
not in our power are not. And if this be so, in the other cases also
the vices that are blamed must be in our own power.
Now some one may say that all men desire the apparent good, but have
no control over the appearance, but the end appears to each man in
a form answering to his character. We reply that if each man is somehow
responsible for his state of mind, he will also be himself somehow
responsible for the appearance; but if not, no one is responsible
for his own evildoing, but every one does evil acts through ignorance
of the end, thinking that by these he will get what is best, and the
aiming at the end is not self-chosen but one must be born with an
eye, as it were, by which to judge rightly and choose what is truly
good, and he is well endowed by nature who is well endowed with this.
For it is what is greatest and most noble, and what we cannot get
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NICOMACHEAN ETHICS 34
or learn from another, but must have just such as it was when given
us at birth, and to be well and nobly endowed with this will be perfect
and true excellence of natural endowment. If this is true, then, how
will virtue be more voluntary than vice? To both men alike, the good
and the bad, the end appears and is fixed by nature or however it
may be, and it is by referring everything else to this that men do
whatever they do.
Whether, then, it is not by nature that the end appears to each man
such as it does appear, but something also depends on him, or the
end is natural but because the good man adopts the means voluntarily
virtue is voluntary, vice also will be none the less voluntary; for
in the case of the bad man there is equally present that which depends
on himself in his actions even if not in his end. If, then, as is
asserted, the virtues are voluntary (for we are ourselves somehow
partly responsible for our states of character, and it is by being
persons of a certain kind that we assume the end to be so and so),
the vices also will be voluntary; for the same is true of them.
With regard to the virtues in general we have stated their genus in
outline, viz. that they are means and that they are states of character, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]