Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/380

 364 W. H. FAIRBROTHER : incomplete apprehension of the facts, etc., etc., can be finally satisfactory. From these convictions it follows that the problem narrows itself to a single question, viz., TL Kwel ra fiopia what is the actual efficient cause of that physical movement in which every action outwardly consists ? The man, the moment before the act, is, to outward observation, at rest. " What then is it," asks analytic practical Aristotle, "which produces that sudden stretching out of the hand, that hasty raising to the mouth, that passionate suction of the lips, which together make up the immoral act called ' tasting the forbidden thing ' ? " Answer this ques- tion truthfully and the problem is solved. At one stroke we shall free ourselves from those endless dialectical subtleties, based upon true but irrelevant distinctions between ' knowledge,' ' opinion ' and the like, which have hitherto occupied men's minds. The problem is : ' What moves the limbs?' These distinctions, important though they are, all fall within the region of Reason alone, and Reason alone cannot ' move '. The question, as thus stated, Aristotle attempts to answer in the third chapter of the Nic. Eth., bk. vii., and, more particularly, in 9-11 of that chapter, where he examines it, in his own phrase, ua-t/c&>? according to its true essential nature. We may summarise this chapter as follows : "It is disputed whether the incontinent man sins know- ingly or not, and in what sense of the word knowing. In regard to this problem we say : " (1) In the first place the distinction which some in- genious reasoners draw between ' true opinion ' and ' know- ledge ' will not help us here. They argue that the incontinent man is fully conscious, both of what he is doing and that it is wrong to do it, but that this consciousness is not that knowledge which amounts to demonstrated truth not knowledge proper but merely ' opinion '. In this way they save the claim of ' knowledge ' to be all-convincing and all- powerful, without adopting the absurd alternative that the incontinent man does not know what he is doing. This distinction is important in itself, and in its application to science, but irrelevant to the moral problem before us. In many cases the incontinent man is unaware that the opinion he holds is merely opinion ; he imagines it to be absolute, demonstrated truth (a/rpt/Sw? elSevai), and in any case the question is not whether his opinion be true or not, but how he comes to act contrary to it. In other words, how is it possible for him to do what he believes to be wrong ? Such