inquiry belongs to political science, clearly the pursuit of it will
be in accordance with our original plan. But clearly the virtue we
must study is human virtue; for the good we were seeking was human
good and the happiness human happiness. By human virtue we mean not
that of the body but that of the soul; and happiness also we call an
activity of soul. But if this is so, clearly the student of politics
must know somehow the facts about soul, as the man who is to heal
the eyes or the body as a whole must know about the eyes or the
body; and all the more since politics is more prized and better than
medicine; but even among doctors the best educated spend much labour
on acquiring knowledge of the body. The student of politics, then,
must study the soul, and must study it with these objects in view, and
do so just to the extent which is sufficient for the questions we
are discussing; for further precision is perhaps something more
laborious than our purposes require.

  Some things are said about it, adequately enough, even in the
discussions outside our school, and we must use these; e.g. that one
element in the soul is irrational and one has a rational principle.
Whether these are separated as the parts of the body or of anything
divisible are, or are distinct by definition but by nature
inseparable, like convex and concave in the circumference of a circle,
does not affect the present question.

  Of the irrational element one division seems to be widely
distributed, and vegetative in its nature, I mean that which causes
nutrition and growth; for it is this kind of power of the soul that
one must assign to all nurslings and to embryos, and this same power
to fullgrown creatures; this is more reasonable than to assign some
different power to them. Now the excellence of this seems to be common
to all species and not specifically human; for this part or faculty
seems to function most in sleep, while goodness and badness are
least manifest in sleep (whence comes the saying that the happy are
not better off than the wretched for half their lives; and this
happens naturally enough, since sleep is an inactivity of the soul
in that respect in which it is called good or bad), unless perhaps
to a small extent some of the movements actually penetrate to the
soul, and in this respect the dreams of good men are better than those
of ordinary people. Enough of this subject, however; let us leave
the nutritive faculty alone, since it has by its nature no share in
human excellence.

  There seems to be also another irrational element in the soul-one
which in a sense, however, shares in a rational principle. For we
praise the rational principle of the continent man and of the
incontinent, and the part of their soul that has such a principle,
since it urges them aright and towards the best objects; but there
is found in them also another element naturally opposed to the
rational principle, which fights against and resists that principle.
For exactly as paralysed limbs when we intend to move them to the
right turn on the contrary to the left, so is it with the soul; the
impulses of incontinent people move in contrary directions. But
while in the body we see that which moves astray, in the soul we do
not. No doubt, however, we must none the less suppose that in the soul
too there is something contrary to the rational principle, resisting
and opposing it. In what sense it is distinct from the other
elements does not concern us. Now even this seems to have a share in a
rational principle, as we said; at any rate in the continent man it
obeys the rational principle and presumably in the temperate and brave
man it is still more obedient; for in him it speaks, on all matters,
with the same voice as the rational principle.

  Therefore the irrational element also appears to be two-fold. For
the vegetative element in no way shares in a rational principle, but
the appetitive and in general the desiring element in a sense shares
in it, in so far as it listens to and obeys it; this is the sense in
which we speak of 'taking account' of one's father or one's friends,
not that in which we speak of 'accounting for a mathematical property.
That the irrational element is in some sense persuaded by a rational
principle is indicated also by the giving of advice and by all reproof
and exhortation. And if this element also must be said to have a
rational principle, that which has a rational principle (as well as
that which has not) will be twofold, one subdivision having it in
the strict sense and in itself, and the other having a tendency to
obey as one does one's father.

  Virtue too is distinguished into kinds in accordance with this
difference; for we say that some of the virtues are intellectual and
others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical
wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in
speaking about a man's character we do not say that he is wise or
has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we
praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of
states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues.

                              BOOK II

                                 1

  VIRTUE, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral,
intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth
to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time),
while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its
name (ethike) is one that is formed by a slight variation from the
word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the
moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by
nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone
which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move
upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten
thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor