238 //-102
might think that there are two highest goods. For just as, if it is someone's
purpose to direct a spear or arrow at something, we say that his highest
goal is to do everything he can in order to direct it at [the target], in the
same sense that we say that our highest goal is a good. The archer in
this comparison is to do all that he can to direct [his arrow at the target];
and yet doing all that he can to attain his purpose would be like the
highest goal of the sort which we say is the highest good in life; actually
striking [the target], though, is as it were to be selected and not to
be chosen.
- Since all appropriate actions proceed from the natural principles,
it is necessary that wisdom itself proceed from them as well. But just as
it often happens that he who is introduced to someone puts a higher
value on the man to whom he is introduced than on the man by whom
he was introduced, just so it is in no way surprising that we are first
introduced to wisdom by the starting points [established] by nature, but
that later on wisdom itself becomes dearer to us than the things which
brought us to wisdom. And just as our limbs were given us in such a
way that they seem to have been given for the sake of a certain way of
life, similarly the impulse in our soul, which is called horme in Greek,
seems not to have been given for the sake of any old type of life but for
a certain kind of living; and similarly for reason and perfected reason. - Just as an actor or dancer has not been assigned just any old [type
of] delivery or movement but rather a certain definite [type]; so too life
is to be lived in a certain definite manner, not in any old [manner]. And
we call that manner 'in agreement' and consonant. And we do not think
that wisdom is like navigation or medicine, but rather like the craft of
acting or dancing which I just mentioned; thus its goal, i.e., the [proper]
execution of the craft, depends on it itself and is not sought outside itself.
There is also another point of dissimilarity between wisdom and these
crafts, viz. that in them proper actions do not contain all the components
[lit. parts] which constitute the art; but things called 'right' or 'rightly
done', if I may call them that, though the Greeks call them katorthomata
[morally perfect actions], contain all the features of virtue. Only wisdom
is totally self-contained, and this is not the case with the other crafts. - But it is misguided to compare the highest goal of medicine or
navigation with that of wisdom; for wisdom embraces magnanimity and
justice and an ability to judge that everything which happens to a [mere]
human being is beneath it-and this does not apply to the rest of the
crafts. But no one can possess the very virtues which I just mentioned
unless he has firmly decided that there is nothing except what is honour-
able or shameful which makes a difference or distinguishes one [thing
or situation] from another.