for such consideration is in every inquiry the truly philo- sophic method. But this needs much caution. For there are some who, through thinking it to be the mark of philosopher to make no arbitrary statement but always to give a reason, often unawares give reasons foreign to the subject and idle — this they do sometimes from ignorance, sometimes because they are charlatans — by which reasons even men experienced and able to act are trapped by those who neither have nor are capable of having practical and constructive intelligence. And this happens to them from want of culture ; for inability in regard to each matter to distinguish reasonings appropriate to the subject from those foreign to it is want of culture. And it is well to criticize separately the reason that gives the cause and the conclusion both because of what has just been said,[1] viz. that one should attend not merely to what is inferred by argument, but often attend more to perceived facts — whereas now when men are unable to see a flaw in the argument they are compelled to believe what has been said — and because often that which seems to have been shown by argument is true indeed, but not for the cause which the argument assigns ; for one may prove truth by means of falsehood, as is clear from the Analytics.[2]
7
After these further preliminary remarks let us start on 7 our discourse from what we have called[3] the first confused judgements, and then[4] seek to discover a clear judgement about the nature of happiness. Now this is admitted to be the greatest and best of human goods — we say human, for there might perhaps be a happiness peculiar to some superior being, e.g. a god ; for of the other animals, which are inferior in their nature to men, none have a right to the epithet 'happy'; for no horse, bird, or fish is happy, nor anything the name of which does not imply some share of a
21 sq. = E. N. 1095a 16–20. 22–24 = E. N. 1102a 13: cf. M. M. 1182b 2–5. 24–29 = E.N. 1099b 32–1100a I.
