This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
- bekker page : bekker line
- book : chapter : section
[14]
nevertheless this by
no means implies that he can stop being unjust and become just merely by wishing to do so;
any more than a sick man can get well by wishing, although it may be the case that his
illness is voluntary, in the sense of being due to intemperate living and neglect of the
doctors' advice. At the outset then, it is true, he might have avoided the illness, but
once he has let himself go he can do so no longer. When you have thrown a stone, you
cannot afterwards bring it back again, but nevertheless you are responsible for having
taken up the stone and flung it, for the origin of the act was within you. Similarly the
unjust and profligate might at the outset have
avoided becoming so, and therefore they are so voluntarily, although having become unjust
and profligate it is no longer open to them not to be so.
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
