The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle Author:Aristotle, Robert Williams Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: For it prescribes which of the sciences a state needs, and which each man shall study, and up to what 6 point; and to it we see subordinated even the highe... more »st arts, such as economy, rhetoric, and the art of war. 7 Since then it makes use of the other practical sciences, and since it further ordains what men are to do and from what to refrain, its end must include the ends of the others, and must be the proper good of' man. 8 For though this good is the same for the individual and the state, yet the good of the state seems a grander and more perfect thing both to attain and to secure; and glad as one would be to do this service for a single individual, to do it for a people and for a number of states is nobler and more divine. 9 This then is the aim of the present inquiry, which is a sort of political inquiry. 1 3. We must be content if we can attain to so much Exactness precision in our statement as the subject before us muted by -i-pp1 1 . subject nor to admits of; for the same degree of accuracy is no more z expected to be expected in all kinds of reasoning than in all needs' experience kinds of manufacture. and training. 2 Now what is noble and just (with which Politics deals) is so various and so uncertain, that some think these are merely conventional and not natural distinctions. 3 There is a similar uncertainty also about what is good, because good things often do people harm: men have before now been ruined by wealth, and have lost their lives through courage. 4 Our subject, then, and our data being of this i.e. corers a part of the ground only: see preceding note. nature, we must be content if we can indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and if, in dealing with matters that are not amenable to immutable laws, and reasonin...« less