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[4]

Again,1 the unrestrained man is so constituted as to pursue bodily pleasures that are excessive and contrary to right principle without any belief that he ought to do so, whereas the profligate, because he is so constituted as to pursue them, is convinced that he ought to pursue them. Therefore the former can easily be persuaded to change,2 but the latter cannot. For virtue preserves the fundamental principle,3 vice destroys it, and the first principle or starting-point in matters of conduct is the end proposed, which corresponds to the hypotheses4 of mathematics; hence no more in ethics than in mathematics are the first principles imparted by process of reasoning, but by virtue, whether natural or acquired by training in right opinion as to the first principle. The man of principle therefore is temperate, the man who has lost all principle, profligate.

1 The argument is here resumed from 8.1.

2 i.e., to change his conduct. The unrestrained man's belief is right already and he needs only to be induced to act up to it; whereas the profligate must be persuaded to change his belief before he will alter his conduct.

3 Cf. 6.5.6.

4 The context might indicate that the definitions are meant, which, themselves apprehended intuitively, are the starting-points of mathematical deductions. But these are ordinarily distinguished by Arisotle from hypotheses, which are assertions of the existence of things, not of their nature. It is therefore suggested that the term here means the propositions of mathematics, which are assumed as the starting-point of the analytical process by which a proof of a theorem or solution of a problem may be discovered: cf. 3.3.12.

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