the body, and so on? However, perhaps we ought to leave these questions now, for an accurate investigation of them is more properly the business of a different philosophy. And likewise respecting the ἰδέα: for even if there is some one good predicated in common of all things that are good, or separable and capable of existing independently, manifestly it cannot be the object of human action or attainable by Man; but we are in search now of something that is so.
It may readily occur to any one, that it would be better[1] to attain a knowledge of it with a view to such concrete goods as are attainable and practical,1097a because, with this as a kind of model in our hands, we shall the better know what things are good for us individually, and when we know them, we shall attain them.
Some plausibility, it is true, this argument possesses, but it is contradicted by the facts of the Arts and Sciences; for all these, though aiming at some good, and seeking that which is deficient, yet pretermit the knowledge of it: now it is not exactly probable that all artisans without exception should be ignorant of so great a help as this would be, and not even look after it; neither is it easy to see wherein a weaver or a carpenter will be profited in respect of his craft by knowing the very-good, or how a man will be the more apt to effect cures or to command an army for having seen the ἰδέα itself. For manifestly it is not health after this general and abstract fashion which is the subject of the physician's investigation, but the health of Man, or rather perhaps of this or that man; for he has to heal individuals.—Thus much on these points.
VII
And now let us revert to the Good of which we are in search: what can it be? for manifestly it is different in different actions and arts: for it is different in the healing art and in the art military, and similarly in the rest. What then is the Chief Good in each? Is it not “that for the sake of which the other things are done?” and this in the healing art is health, and in the art military victory, and in that of house-building a house, and in any other thing something else; in
- ↑ 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 not necessarily lead to action, but had a tendency to discourage it by enabling unreal men to talk finely. If true, the theory is merely a way of stating facts, and leads to no action.
