Book ii

. chap. 7, were all three written by Aristotle.

Why then doubt at all? It is because the _Nicomachean Ethics_ contains a second discourse on pleasure (x. 1-5), in which the author, while agreeing with the previous treatment of the subject that pleasure is not a bodily generation, even when accompanied by it, but something psychical, nevertheless defines it (x. 4, 1174 b 31-33) not as an

## activity, but as a supervening end ([Greek: epigignomenon ti telos])

perfecting an activity ([Greek: teleioi taen energeian]). He allows indeed that activity and pleasure are very closely related; that a pleasure of sense or thought perfects an act of sensation or of thinking, depends on it, and is so inseparably conjoined with it as to raise a doubt whether pleasure is end of life or life end of pleasure, and even whether the activity is the same as the pleasure. But he disposes of this doubt in a very emphatic and significant manner. "Pleasure," says he, "does not seem to be thinking or perceiving; for it is absurd: but on account of not being separated from them, it appears to some persons to be the same." Now it is not likely that Aristotle either, after having so often identified pleasure with

## activity, would say that the identification is absurd though it

appears true to some persons, of whom he would in that case be one, or, having once disengaged the pleasure of perceiving and thinking from the acts of perceiving and thinking, would go backwards and confuse them. It is more likely that Aristotle identified pleasure with activity in the _De Anima_, the _Metaphysics_ and the three moral treatises, as we have seen; but that afterwards some subsequent Peripatetic, considering that the pleasure of perceiving or thinking is not the same as perceiving or thinking, declared the previous identification of pleasure with activity absurd. At any rate, if we are to choose, it is the identification that is Aristotle's, and the distinction not Aristotle's. Moreover, the distinction between

## activity and pleasure in the tenth book is really fatal to the

consistency of the whole _Nicomachean Ethics_, which started in the first book with the identification of happiness and virtuous activity. For if the pleasure of virtuous activity is a supervening end beyond the activity, it becomes a supervening end beyond the happiness of virtuous activity, which thus ceases to be the final end. Nevertheless, the distinction between activity and pleasure is true. Some unknown Peripatetic detected a flaw in the _Nicomachean Ethics_ when he said that pleasure is a supervening end beyond activity, and, if he had gone on to add that happiness is also a supervening end beyond the virtuous activities which are necessary to produce it, he would have destroyed the foundation of his own founder's Ethics.

It is further remarkable that the _Nicomachean Ethics_ proceeds to a different conclusion. After the intrusion of this second discourse on pleasure, it goes on (E.N. x. 6-fin.) to the famous theory that the highest happiness is the speculative life of intellect or wisdom as divine, but that happiness as human also includes the practical life of combining prudence and moral virtue; and that, while both lives need external goods as necessaries, the practical life also requires them as instruments of moral action. The treatise concludes with the means of making men virtuous; contending that virtue requires habituation, habituation law, law legislative art, and legislative art politics: Ethics thus passes into Politics. The _Eudemian Ethics_ proceeds to its conclusion (E.E. [Eta] 13-15) differently, with the consideration of (1) good fortune ([Greek: eutuchia]), and (2) gentlemanliness ([Greek: kalokagathia]). Good fortune it divides into two kinds, both irrational; one divine, according to impulse, and more continuous; the other contrary to impulse and not continuous. Gentlemanliness it regards as perfect virtue, containing all

## particular virtues, and all goods for the sake of the honourable.

Finally, it concludes with the limit ([Greek: horos]) of goods. First it finds the limit of goods of fortune in that desire and possession of them which will conduce to the contemplation of God, whereas that which prevents the service and contemplation of God is bad. Then it adds that the best limit of the soul is as little as possible to perceive the other part of the soul (i.e. desire). Finally, the treatise concludes with saying that the limit of gentlemanliness has thus been stated, meaning that its limit is the service and contemplation of God and the control of desire by reason. The _Magna Moralia_ (M.M. ii. 8-10) on these points is unlike the _Nicomachean_, and like the _Eudemian Ethics_ in discussing good fortune and gentlemanliness, but it discusses them in a more worldly way. On good fortune (ii. 8), after recognizing the necessity of external goods to happiness, it denies that fortune is due to divine grace, and simply defines it as irrational nature ([Greek: alogos thusis]). Gentlemanliness (ii. 9) it regards as perfect virtue, and defines the gentleman as the man to whom really good things are good and really honourable things honourable. It then adds (ii. 10) that acting according to right reason is when the irrational part of the soul does not hinder the rational part of intellect from doing its work. Thereupon it proceeds to a discourse on friendship, which in the _Nicomachean_ and _Eudemian Ethics_ is discussed in an earlier position, but breaks off unfinished.

On the whole, the three moral treatises proceed on very similar lines down to the common identification of pleasure with activity, and then diverge. From this point the _Eudemian Ethics_ and the _Magna Moralia_ become more like one another than like the _Nicomachean Ethics_. They also become less like one another than before: for the treatment of good fortune, gentlemanliness, and their limit is more theological in the _Eudemian Ethics_ than in the _Magna Moralia_.

How are the resemblances and differences of the three to be explained? By Aristotle's gradual method of composition. All three are great works, contributing to the origin of the independent science of Ethics. But the _Eudemian Ethics_ and the _Magna Moralia_ are more rudimentary than the _Nicomachean Ethics_, which as it were seems to absorb them except in the conclusion. They are, in short, neither independent works, nor mere commentaries, but Aristotle's first drafts of his Ethics.

In the _Ethics to Eudemus_, as Porphyry properly called the _Eudemian Ethics_, Aristotle in the first four books successively investigates happiness, virtue, the voluntary and the particular moral virtues, in the same order and in the same letter and spirit as in his _Ethics to Nicomachus_. But the investigations are never so good. They are all such rudiments as Aristotle might well polish into the more developed expositions in the first four books of the _Nicomachean Ethics_. On the other hand, nobody would have gone back afterwards on his masterly treatment of happiness, in the first book, or of virtue in the second, or of the voluntary in the third, or of the particular virtues in the third and fourth, to write the sketchy accounts of the _Eudemian Ethics_.

Again, these sketches are rough preparations for the subsequent books common to the two treatises. It is true, as Dr Henry Jackson has pointed out, though with some exaggeration, that the Eudemian agrees in detail rather better than the Nicomachean treatment of the voluntary with the subsequent discussion of injury (E.E. [Delta] = E.N. v. 8); and, as Th. H. Fritzsche remarks, the distinction between politics, and economics, and prudence in the _Eudemian Ethics_ ([Alpha] 8) is a closer anticipation of the subsequent triple distinction of practical science (E.E. [Epsilon] = E.N. vi 8). On the other hand, there are still more fundamental points in which the first three books of the _Eudemian Ethics_ are a very inadequate preparation for the common books. Notably its treatment of prudence ([Greek: phronaesis]) is a chaos. At first, prudence appears as the operation of the philosophical life and connected with the speculative philosophy of Anaxagoras (E.E. [Alpha] 1-5): then it is brought into connexion with the practical philosophy of Socrates (_ib_. 5) and co-ordinated with politics and economics (_ib_. 8); then it is intruded into the diagram of moral virtues as a mean between villainy ([Greek: panourgia]) and simplicity (([Greek: euhaetheia]) (E.E. [Beta] 33, 1221 a 12); finally, a distinction between virtue by nature and virtue with prudence ([Greek: metha phronhaeseos]) is promised (E.E. [Tau] 7, 1234 a 4). In addition to all this confusion of speculative and practical knowledge, prudence is absent when it ought to be present; e.g. from the division of virtues into moral and intellectual (E.E. [Beta] 1, 1220 a 4-13), and from the definition of moral virtue (_ib_. 5, 10); while, in a passage ([Beta] 11) anticipating the subsequent discussion of the relation between prudence and moral virtue (E.E. [Epsilon] = E.N. vi. 12-13), it is stated that in purpose the end is made right by moral virtue, the means by another power, reason, without this right reason being stated to be prudence. After this, it can never be said that the earlier books of the _Eudemian Ethics_ are so good a preparation as those of the _Nicomachean Ethics_ for the distinction between prudence ([Greek: phrhoraesis]) and wisdom ([Greek: sophia]), which is the main point of the common books, and one of Aristotle's main points against Plato's philosophy.

Curiously enough, although little is made of it, this distinction, absent from the earlier books, is present in the final