Friends. 16. 17. Good In what number and excellence of friends consists is not doubtful, it having been distinctly stated, respecting a friend, that he is a friend who exerts himself to do for another whatever he esteems good for him, solely for the other's sake. He to whom many are so affected, has numerous friends; he to whom worthy men, has excellent friends. Good fortune is the accession, and actual posfortune. session, either of all, of most, or the greatest of those goods of which chance is the cause. Now chance is the cause of some things about which there are arts conversant9; of many things, too, unrecognised by art; for instance, of whatever things nature is a cause; for it is possible that they should happen contrarily to nature for art is a cause of health; nature, of comeliness and stature. In a word, those goods proceed from chance, about which envy is felt 10. Chance is also a cause of those goods which baffle all calculation; when, for instance, one is handsome, the rest of whose brothers are ugly; or when every one else overlooked a treasure, and he found it; or if a weapon hit one's neighbour and not one's self; or if he alone, who used always to frequent a place, did not come there, while they who came then only were destroyed; for all such things appear to be pieces of good luck. 18. Vir. tue. As to moral excellence, since that topic is most intimately connected with praise 11, we must lay down distinctions respecting it when we treat of the subject of praise. It is then plain at what objects we ought to aim in exhorting, as likely to take place, or On the affinity of art and chance, see Eth. Nich. vi. 4.— The affinity appears to consist in this, that arts very often owe their origin to chance; as the capital of the Corinthian pillar, for instance, from a basket of acanthus flowers; and painting from tracing a shadow on the wall. Compare also the Poetics, ch. vi. where he deduces poetry from the αὐτοσχεδιάσματα or extemporaneous effusions of its rude votaries. already in existence; and what in dissuading, for they are the contraries of these. CHAP. VI. Of the Good and Expedient treated generally. orator ad therefore SINCE the expedient is the object proposed to the de- 1. The deliberative orator, and as all form their conclusions, liberative not about the end itself, but about the means con- vises on ducive to that end; as moreover these are all things "the which are expedient in reference to human conduct means," (now every thing expedient is a good), we shall have he must to ascertain certain elementary propositions, on the know the συμφέsubjects of the good and the expedient in general. ρου. Let good, then, be defined to be, 1. Whatever is 2. an object of choice independently, for its own sake; 2. and for the sake of which we choose something else. 3. What every thing aims at1, or every thing which has perception, or which has intelligence; or every thing would aim at, were it possessed of intelligence. 4. Whatever intelligence would award to each. 5. Whatever the intelligence conversant with every instance awards to each, that to each individual is his good. 6. That which being present, one is well disposed and independent. 7. Independency. 8. Whatever produces or preserves such advantages 2; 9. and that on which they are consequent. 10. Whatever, too, has a tendency to prevent or destroy their opposites. Now, things are consequent in two ways; 3. Consefor either they may be consequent simultaneously or quences subsequently. Knowledge, for instance, is a conse- fold. quent on learning subsequently; life is so on health simultaneously. Again, things are productive in Things This principle, which he insists on even in his moral treatises, is peculiarly adapted for a test in rhetoric: where, if the subject be only reconciled to this standard of previous opinion, the end, persuasion, is forthwith answered. ? Hooker, v. § 65, p. 306. are two are productive in three ways. 4. Indisputable goods. 5. three ways3; first, in the way that the being healthy is productive of health, or as food is so of health, or as exercise is, because usually it does produce health. These things being laid down, it must be of course that acquisitions of good, and the exemptions from evil, are good; for on the one is consequent the non-possession of evil simultaneously; on the other, the possession of good subsequently. And the acquisition of a greater instead of a less good; of a less evil instead of a greater; for this becomes an acquisition of the one and an exemption from the other, in the ratio of the excess of the 6. greater above the less. The virtues also must of course be a good, for in reference to them are their possessors well-disposed; they are also productive of goods, and bear on moral conduct: respecting each, however, severally what, and of what kind it is, 7. must be distinctly treated. It must be also that pleasure is a good, for all living things naturally desire it. Thus, too, things pleasant and honourable must needs be good; for the first are productive of pleasure; while, of things honourable, some are pleasant, and the rest are by themselves objects of 8. choice on their own account. So that to speak of them severally, it must be that the following things are good. Happiness; for it is both an object of choice by itself, and independent, and for the sake of it 9. we choose many things. Justice, courage, temperance, 3 First, continuous; second, discrete; third, contingent. We may observe of Aristotle's several enumerations of εion, that he usually refers a few instances of earliest occurrence to the respective definitions or axioms at the outset of the subject, by virtue of which they belong to the class to which he assigns them. Thus, in the enumeration of good here instituted, he refers to his general canons of good which have just been admitted; e. g. virtue may be classed among goods, by virtue of def. 5 and 7. It would be useful to pursue the comparison, if not through all the instances quoted, at least through the greater part of them; since it will at once serve the purpose of impressing on the memory his leading examples, and of helping us to a fuller acquaintance with his theory. magnanimity, magnificence, and other habits of that 10 sort; for they are excellencies of the soul;—and health and comeliness, and things of that sort, for they are excellencies of the body, and productive of many things; health, for instance, both of pleasure and of life; and it seems, on this account, to be the very best possession, because it is the cause of two things, which the generality of men value most, viz. of pleasure and life :-Wealth; because it is an excellence of 11. possession, and productive of many things. A friend 12. and friendship; for a friend is an object of choice independently, and productive of many advantages. Honour, character; for they are pleasant, and pro- 13. ductive of much; and there is usually consequent on them the actual possession of the qualities, on account of which the subject is honoured. Ability, in 14. speaking and acting; for all such powers are productive of good. Again, high genius, memory, readiness 15. in learning, quickness of thought, and all such qualities; for these faculties are productive of good; and in the same way all the arts and sciences. And 16. life; for were no other good consequent on it, of itself it is an object of choice. And that which is just, 17. for it is a kind of general advantage. Such, then, are the things which are good, as it were confessedly. But in the case of questionable goods, your reason- 18. Dis ings will be deduced from these formulæ,—that of putable which the contrary is an evil, is itself a good; as is 19. goods. that of which the contrary is expedient to an enemy: for example, if your being cowards be above all things expedient to your enemies, it is plain, that to the citizens your courage will be above all things beneficial. And, in a word, whatever be the things 20. which the enemy desires and in which they rejoice, the contrary of those things appear beneficial; and hence was it well said; "Priam surely would exult," etc. Il. ά, 1. 255 3. 5 See Otho's speech to the soldiers on Vitellius's usurpation after the murder of Galba :-Si Vitellio et satellitibus ejus eligendi facultas detur, quem nobis animum, quas mentes imprecentur; quid aliud quam seditionem e discordiam opta. bunt? Tacit. Hist. i. 84. And yet this case does not always hold, though it does generally; for there is no reason why the selfsame things should not, at times, be expedient to two hostile parties; from which comes the saying that evils bring men together, when the same thing hap21. pens to be injurious to both. That too is a good, which is not in excess7; but whatever exceeds what 22. it ought, is an evil. And that on account of which much toil or expense has been bestowed, for already will it have appeared to be a good; and we already conceive of every such thing as of an end, and as ar end of many efforts; but the end is a good; and on this principle rests the force of that appeal, "It were in accordance forsooth with Priam's heartiest and of this, "Base indeed is it to remain so long;" Il. ß, l. 298. and that of the proverb of "Breaking the pitcher at the very door." Vide Erasmi Adagia II. i. 75. 23. That too of which many are desirous, and which appears to be disputed for; because that of which all are desirous, was laid down to be a good; the generality, however, have the appearance of being all. 24. And that which is recommended; because no one recommends that which is not good. And that which your enemies and the bad recommend; for all, as it were, already acknowledge it when even they do who are ill affected; for solely on account of its being plainly such will these acknowledge it9: and in ex 6 So Shakspeare quotes the proverb, "Misery makes a man acquainted with strange bedfellows." 7 A good which requires no qualification; e. g. moral truths. To desire evil as evil, and feel pleasure in it as such, is perfectly unnatural. Hence St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, ch. i. ver. 32, sums up the iniquity of the Gentile world in this one word; that not only did they in person commit the enormities, but "had pleasure in them that do them." Virgil therefore could not have praised Æneas more than when he makes Diomede say, Stetimus tela aspera contra, In clypeum assurgat, quo turbine torqueat hastam. En |