Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/552

 VI. DISCUSSIONS. AEISTOTLE'S EXPLANATION OF AKPA2IA. THE interpretation which Mr. W. H. Fairbrother, in his interesting article on " Aristotle's Theory of Incontinence " in the July number of MIND (see especially pp. 364-7), has put wponEth. Nic., vii., c. 3, is very ingenious ; but it seems to me unnecessarily to strain the meaning of the passage by separating 5-8 (1146 b 31-1147 a 24) from the remainder of the chapter ( 9-14, 1147 a 24- b 19). Mr. Fairbrother supposes 5-8 to deal with "three ways of ' sinning against knowledge ' in a sense (TTOJS) which do not amount to Incontinence, though they look like it at first sight and are readily confused with it ". Now I cannot find anything in the Greek to warrant this interpretation. Aristotle says nothing here about a " pseudo-incontinence ". The word TTWS only occurs in 5-8 as a qualification of exv liruj-rfiprfv ( 7, 1147 a 13) : in 10 (1147 b 1), which moreover Mr. Fairbrother takes to be part of Aristotle's account of his own theory of real d/cpao-ia, the word TTU? qualifies VTTO yov KOI 86r)<s and not aKparevecrOai. The obvious interpretation of the whole passage ( 5-11, 1146 b 31-1147 b 5) is to consider it (as Mr. Stewart, for instance, does in his com- mentary) as consisting of four explanations of the possibility of oxpao-ia the last three are all introduced by the word In all of them put forward by the writer himself as his own explanations of the same phenomenon and not supposed by him to be incompatible with one another. It is quite true that Aristotle often puts forward dialectically a series of proofs or refutations to which he does not commit himself, or not in equal degrees. But in the present case all the various explanations seem necessary to a complete theory of d/cpao-io. : and it is noticeable that, in the summary or repetition of the argument in 13, more obvious use is made of 5-8 than of 9-11, which alone Mr. Fairbrother holds to contain Aristotle's own theory. Further I think it can be shown that the interpretation which finds Aristotle's theory in a combination of the four explanations ( 5-11) is (in spite of the objections of Mr. Cook Wilson and the doubts of Mr. Stewart) quite consistent with everything that is said elsewhere in the Ethics about responsibility and about the relation between knowledge and conduct. Aristotle, or a pupil