as in a race-course one may run from the judges to the far end of
the track or the reverse. Now no doubt it is proper to start from the known. But
‘the known’ has two meanings—‘what is known to
us,’ which is one thing, and ‘what is knowable in itself,’
which is another. Perhaps then for us
1 at all events it proper to start from what
is known to us.
[
6]
This is why in order to be a competent
student of the Right and Just, and in short of the topics of Politics in general, the
pupil is bound to have been well-trained in his habits.
[
7]
For the starting-point or first principle is the fact that a thing is so; if this be
satisfactorily ascertained, there will be no need also to know the reason why it is so.
And the man of good moral training knows first principles already, or can easily acquire
them. As for the person who neither knows nor can learn, let him hear the words of
Hesiod
2: “
Best is the man who can himself advise;
He too is good who hearkens to the wise;
But who, himself being witless, will not heed
Another's wisdom, is a fool indeed.
”
5.
But let us continue from the point3 where
we digressed. To judge from men's lives, the more or less reasoned conceptions of the Good
or Happiness that seem to prevail are the following. On the one hand the generality of men
and the most vulgar identify the Good with pleasure,
[2]
and
accordingly are content with the Life of Enjoyment—for there are three specially
prominent Lives,4 the one just mentioned, the
Life of Politics, and thirdly, the Life of Contemplation.
[3]
The generality of mankind then
