Page:The ethics of Aristotle.djvu/293

 instances (from which we gather the principles and laws), the particulars are said to be.

Adopting this signification gives greater unity to the whole passage, which will then stand thus. The question being whether we are to assume principles, or obtain them by an analysis of facts, Aristotle says, “We must begin of course with what is known: but then this term denotes either particulars or universals:  perhaps we then must begin with particulars:  and hence the necessity of a previous good training in habits, etc. (which of course is beginning with particular facts), for a fact is a starting—point, and if this be sufficiently clear, there will be no want of the reason for the fact in addition.”

The objection to this method of translation is, that occurs immediately afterwards in the sense of “principles.”

Utere tuo judicio nihil enim impedio.  . Or “prove themselves good,” as in the Prior Analytics, ii. 25, : but the other rendering is supported by a passage in Book VIII. chap. ix.  .  meant originally some paradoxical statement by any philosopher of name enough to venture on one, but had come to mean any dialectical question. Topics, I. chap. ix.  . A lost work, supposed to have been so called, because containing miscellaneous questions.  . It is only quite at the close of the treatise that Aristotle refers to this, and allows that constitutes the highest happiness because it is the exercise of the highest faculty in man:  the reason of thus deferring the statement being that till the lower, that is the moral, nature has been reduced to perfect order,  cannot have place; though, had it been held out from the first, men would have been for making the experiment at once, without the trouble of self-discipline.  . Or, as some think, “many theories have been founded on them.”  . The list ran thus:— τὸ πέρας   τὸ ἄπειρον   τὸ εὐθὺ       τὸ καμπύλον τὸ περισσὸν τὸ ἄρτιον   τὸ φῶς        τὸ σκότος τὸ ἒν      τὸ πλῆθος    τὸ τετράγωνον τὸ ἑτερόμηκες τὸ δεξιὸν  τὸ ἀριστερὸν τὸ ἠρεμοῦν    τὸ κινούμενον τὸ ἄρρεν   τὸ θῆλυ      τὸ ἀγαθόν     τὸ κακόν  . Plato’s sister’s son. <section end="P. 8, l. 2" /> . <section begin="P. 9, l. 9" />This is the capital defect in Aristotle’s eyes, who being, eminently practical, could not like a theory which not only did <section end="P. 9, l. 9" />