NICOMACHEANETHICS(BOOKVI) 191
Small-mindedness is more opposed to high-mindedness than vanity is, for it
occurs more frequently and is worse. Thus, as we have said, high-mindedness is con-
cerned with high honors.
BOOKVI
- Moral and Intellectual Excellence; the Psychological Foundations of
Intellectual Excellence:We stated earlier that we must choose the median, and not
excess or deficiency, and that the median is what right reason dictates. Let us now
analyze this second point.
In all the characteristics we have discussed, as in all others, there is some target on
which a rational man keeps his eye as he bends and relaxes his efforts to attain it. There
is also a standard that determines the several means which, as we claim, lie between
excess and deficiency, and which are fixed by right reason. But this statement, true
though it is, lacks clarity. In all other fields of endeavor in which scientific knowledge is
possible, it is indeed true to say that we must exert ourselves or relax neither too much
nor too little, but to an intermediate extent and as right reason demands. But if this is the
only thing a person knows, he will be none the wiser: he will, for example, not know
what kind of medicines to apply to his body, if he is merely told to apply whatever med-
ical science prescribes and in a manner in which a medical expert applies them.
Accordingly, in discussing the characteristics of the soul, too, it is not enough that the
statement we have made be true. We must also have a definition of what right reason is
and what standard determines it.
In analyzing the virtues of the soul we said that some are virtues of character
and others excellence of thought or understanding. We have now discussed the moral
virtues, [i.e., the virtues of character]. In what follows, we will deal with the others,
[i.e., the intellectual virtues,] beginning with some prefatory remarks about the soul.
We said in our earlier discussion that the soul consists of two parts, one rational and
one irrational. We must now make a similar distinction in regard to the rational part.
Let it be assumed that there are two rational elements: with one of these we appre-
hend the realities whose fundamental principles do not admit of being other than
they are, and with the other we apprehend things which do admit of being other. For
if we grant that knowledge presupposes a certain likeness and kinship of subject and
object, there will be a generically different part of the soul naturally corresponding
to each of two different kinds of object. Let us call one the scientific and the other
the calculative element. Deliberating and calculating are the same thing, and no one
deliberates about objects that cannot be other than they are. This means that the
calculative constitutes one element of the rational part of the soul. Accordingly, we
must now take up the question which is the best characteristic of each element,
since that constitutes the excellence or virtue of each. But the virtue of a thing is
relative to its proper function. - The Two Kinds of Intellectual Excellence and Their Objects:Now, there
are three elements in the soul which control action and truth: sense perception,
intelligence, and desire. Of these sense perception does not initiate any action. We
can see this from the fact that animals have sense perception but have no share in
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