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and is practical; for this rules the productive intellect, as well,
since every one who makes makes for an end, and that which is made
is not an end in the unqualified sense (but only an end in a
particular relation, and the end of a particular operation)-only
that which is done is that; for good action is an end, and desire aims
at this. Hence choice is either desiderative reason or ratiocinative
desire, and such an origin of action is a man. (It is to be noted that
nothing that is past is an object of choice, e.g. no one chooses to
have sacked Troy; for no one deliberates about the past, but about
what is future and capable of being otherwise, while what is past is
not capable of not having taken place; hence Agathon is right in
saying
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For this alone is lacking even to God,
To make undone things thathave once been done.)
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The work of both the intellectual parts, then, is truth. Therefore
the states that are most strictly those in respect of which each of
these parts will reach truth are the virtues of the two parts.
BOOK_6|CH_3
3
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Let us begin, then, from the beginning, and discuss these states
once more. Let it be assumed that the states by virtue of which the
soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial are five in
number, i.e. art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom,
philosophic wisdom, intuitive reason; we do not include judgement
and opinion because in these we may be mistaken.
Now what scientific knowledge is, if we are to speak exactly and not
follow mere similarities, is plain from what follows. We all suppose
that what we know is not even capable of being otherwise; of things
capable of being otherwise we do not know, when they have passed
outside our observation, whether they exist or not. Therefore the
object of scientific knowledge is of necessity. Therefore it is
eternal; for things that are of necessity in the unqualified sense are
all eternal; and things that are eternal are ungenerated and
imperishable. Again, every science is thought to be capable of being
taught, and its object of being learned. And all teaching starts
from what is already known, as we maintain in the Analytics also;
for it proceeds sometimes through induction and sometimes by
syllogism. Now induction is the starting-point which knowledge even of
the universal presupposes, while syllogism proceeds from universals.
There are therefore starting-points from which syllogism proceeds,
which are not reached by syllogism; it is therefore by induction
that they are acquired. Scientific knowledge is, then, a state of
capacity to demonstrate, and has the other limiting characteristics
which we specify in the Analytics, for it is when a man believes in
a certain way and the starting-points are known to him that he has
scientific knowledge, since if they are not better known to him than
the conclusion, he will have his knowledge only incidentally.
Let this, then, be taken as our account of scientific knowledge.
BOOK_6|CH_4
4
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In the variable are included both things made and things done;
making and acting are different (for their nature we treat even the
discussions outside our school as reliable); so that the reasoned
state of capacity to act is different from the reasoned state of
capacity to make. Hence too they are not included one in the other;
for neither is acting making nor is making acting. Now since
architecture is an art and is essentially a reasoned state of capacity
to make, and there is neither any art that is not such a state nor any
such state that is not an art, art is identical with a state of
capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. All art is
concerned with coming into being, i.e. with contriving and considering
how something may come into being which is capable of either being
or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing
made; for art is concerned neither with things that are, or come
into being, by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance
with nature (since these have their origin in themselves). Making
and acting being different, art must be a matter of making, not of
acting. And in a sense chance and art are concerned with the same
objects; as Agathon says, 'art loves chance and chance loves art'.
Art, then, as has been is a state concerned with making, involving a
true course of reasoning, and lack of art on the contrary is a state
concerned with making, involving a false course of reasoning; both are
concerned with the variable.
BOOK_6|CH_5
5
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Regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by
considering who are the persons we credit with it. Now it is thought
to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate
well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in some
particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to health
or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life
in general. This is shown by the fact that we credit men with
practical wisdom in some particular respect when they have
calculated well with a view to some good end which is one of those
that are not the object of any art. It follows that in the general
sense also the man who is capable of deliberating has practical
wisdom. Now no one deliberates about things that are invariable, nor
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