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[1248b] [1] just as the blind remember better, being released from having their faculty of memory engaged with objects of sight.1

It is clear, then, that there are two kinds of good fortune—one divine, owing to which the fortunate man's success is thought to be due to the aid of God, and this is the man who is successful in accordance with his impulse, while the other is he who succeeds against his impulse. Both persons are irrational. The former kind is more continuous good fortune, the latter is not continuous.

We have, then, previously spoken about each virtue in particular; and as we have distinguished their meaning separately, we must also describe in detail the virtue constituted from them, to which we now give the name2 of nobility.3 Now it is manifest that one who is to obtain this appellation truly must possess the particular virtues; for it is impossible for it to be otherwise in the case of any other matter either—for instance, no one is healthy in his whole body but not in any part of it, but all the parts, or most of them and the most important, must necessarily be in the same condition as the whole. Now being good and being noble are really different not only in their names but also in themselves. For all goods have Ends that are desirable in and for themselves. [20] Of these, all those are fine which are laudable as existing for their own sakes, for these are the Ends which are both the motives of laudable actions and laudable themselves—justice itself and its actions, and temperate actions, for temperance also is laudable; but health is not laudable, for its effect is not, nor is vigorous action laudable, for strength is not—these things are good but they are not laudable. And similarly induction makes this clear in the other cases also. Therefore a man is good for whom the things good by nature are good. For the things men fight about and think the greatest, honor and wealth and bodily excellences and pieces of good fortune and powers, are good by nature but may possibly be harmful to some men owing to their characters. If a man is foolish or unjust or profligate he would gain no profit by employing them, any more than an invalid would benefit from using the diet of a man in good health, or a weakling and cripple from the equipment of a healthy man and of a sound one. A man is noble because he possesses those good things that are fine for their own sake and because he is a doer of fine deeds even for their own sake; and the fine things are the virtues and the actions that arise from virtue.

But there is also a state of character that is the 'civic' character, such as the Spartans have or others like them may have; and this character is of the following sort. There are those who think that one ought, it is true, to possess goodness, but for the sake of the things that are naturally good;

1 Jackson (with some hints from the Latin version) emends to give 'just as blind men, who are released from attention to visibles, remember better than others, because the faculty of memory is thus more earnestly addressed to what has been said.'

2 The Ms. reading gives, 'we were already giving the name,' but if that is correct, the passage referred to has been lost.

3 Καλοκἀγαθία, like 'nobility', connotes both social status and moral excellence; so καλοκἀγαθός may be rendered 'gentleman.'

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