Book X

Some say that pleasure is the good; others, on the contrary, that it is altogether bad. Some of the latter are perhaps convinced that this is really so; others think it better for our lives to present pleasure as a bad thing even if it isn’t, since most people incline toward it and are slaves to their pleasures, so one must pull them in the opposite direction, and in that way they will arrive at the mean. But perhaps this isn’t well said. Arguments about feelings and actions are less credible than facts; so when they clash with what is perceived, they are scorned and discredit the truth along with themselves. 1172b If someone who condemns pleasure is once seen going after it, he seems to be leaning toward it because all pleasure is of that sort — for making distinctions is not something most people do.

True arguments, then, seem to be most useful not only for knowledge but also for life. Since they harmonize with the facts, they are believed, and so they encourage those who understand them to live by them. But enough of such matters; let’s go through what has been said about pleasure.

He thought it was no less evident from the opposite. Pain in itself is to be avoided by all, and so, similarly, its opposite is choiceworthy. And what is most choiceworthy is what we choose not because of something else or for the sake of something else; and pleasure is admittedly of this kind, since nobody asks anyone why he is enjoying himself, on the assumption that pleasure is choiceworthy in itself. Added to any good whatever — to acting justly or moderately, for instance — it makes it more choiceworthy, and good is increased by good. This argument, at any rate, seems to show that pleasure is one of the goods, and no more so than any other, since every good is more choiceworthy together with another good than on its own.

It is by just such an argument that Plato, too, refutes the claim that pleasure is the good: the pleasant life is more choiceworthy with practical wisdom than without it, and if the mixture is better, pleasure is not the good, since the good does not become more choiceworthy by having anything added to it. And clearly nothing else would be the good either if it becomes more choiceworthy when combined with any of the things good in themselves. What is there, then, of this kind, that we too can share in? For that is what we are looking for. Those who object that what all things aim at is not good may be talking nonsense. 1173a What everyone believes, we say is so; and someone who does away with this conviction will hardly say anything more convincing. If it were only mindless creatures that desired pleasures, there would be something in what they say; but if intelligent ones do too, how could it make sense?note

Perhaps even in base creatures there is some natural good, stronger than they are in themselves, which aims at their proper good. Nor does the argument about the opposite seem to be correct. They say that if pain is bad, it doesn’t follow that pleasure is good, since bad is opposed to bad as well, and both to what is neither. In saying this they aren’t wrong, but it isn’t true of the things in question. If both were bad, both would have to be avoided, and if both were neither, neither would have to be avoided, or both alike; but in fact people plainly avoid the one as bad and choose the other as good. It is in this way, then, that they are opposed.

And what prevents pleasure from being like health, which is determinate and yet admits of more and less? The same proportion is not present in everyone, nor is there always one and the same proportion in the same person; it can be loosened and still persist up to a point, and it differs by more and less. Pleasure too, then, can be of this kind. Again, they posit that the good is complete, while motions and comings-to-be are incomplete, and they try to show that pleasure is a motion and a coming-to-be. But they don’t seem to be right; it doesn’t even seem to be a motion. Speed and slowness seem proper to every motion — if not in itself, as with the motion of the cosmos, then relative to something else; but neither of these belongs to pleasure. One can become pleased quickly, as one can become angry quickly, 1173b but one can’t be pleased quickly, not even relative to someone else, whereas one can walk, grow and do all such things quickly.

One can change into pleasure quickly or slowly, then, but one can’t be active in accordance with it — I mean, be pleased — quickly. And how could it be a coming-to-be? Not just anything, it seems, comes to be from just anything; rather, a thing dissolves into what it comes to be from; and pain would be the destruction of that of which pleasure is the coming-to-be. They also say that pain is a lack of the natural state, and pleasure a replenishment. But these are bodily feelings. If pleasure is a replenishment of the natural state, then what the replenishment occurs in would also be what feels the pleasure — the body, then; but that doesn’t seem so. So replenishment is not pleasure, though someone might feel pleasure while a replenishment is taking place, and pain while being cut.

This view seems to have arisen from the pains and pleasures connected with food: having been in want and felt pain beforehand, people are pleased by the replenishment. But this doesn’t happen with all pleasures. The pleasures of mathematics involve no prior pain, nor, among the pleasures of the senses, do those of smell, nor many sounds and sights, nor memories and hopes. What, then, will these be comings-to-be of? There has been no lack of anything for there to be a replenishment of.

To those who cite the disgraceful pleasures, one might reply that these are not pleasant. If they are pleasant to people in a bad condition, we shouldn’t think they are also pleasant, except to these people — just as we don’t think that what is healthy or sweet or bitter to the sick is so, or that what appears white to people with eye disease is white. Or one might put it this way: pleasures are choiceworthy, but not from these sources — just as being rich is choiceworthy, but not for someone who gets it by betrayal, and being healthy, but not for someone who gets it by eating just anything. Or else pleasures differ in kind. Those from fine things are different from those from shameful ones, and one can’t feel the pleasure of the just person without being just, or that of the musical person without being musical, and so on in other cases.

The fact that a friend is different from a flatterer also seems to make it plain that pleasure is not a good, or that pleasures differ in kind. The one seems to associate with us with a view to the good, the other with a view to pleasure; and the one is reproached, while people praise the other as associating with a view to other things. 1174a Again, no one would choose to live with a child’s mind all his life, taking the greatest possible pleasure in the things children enjoy, or to enjoy doing something utterly shameful, even if he were never going to suffer pain for it. And there are many things we would care about even if they brought no pleasure, such as seeing, remembering, knowing, and having the excellences. If pleasures necessarily follow on these, it makes no difference, since we would choose them even if no pleasure came from them.

That pleasure is not the good, then, and that not every pleasure is choiceworthy, seems to be clear; and also that some pleasures are choiceworthy in themselves, differing from the others in kind or in their sources. So much for what is said about pleasure and pain.

The fitting together of stones is different from the fluting of a column, and both from the making of the temple. The making of the temple is complete (it lacks nothing for what was proposed), whereas that of the foundation and of the triglyph is incomplete, since each is the making of a part. They differ in kind, then, and you can’t find a motion complete in form at any given time, but, if at all, only in the whole time. It’s the same with walking and the rest. For if locomotion is motion from somewhere to somewhere, it too has different kinds — flying, walking, jumping and the like.note

And not only in that way, but within walking itself. The from-where and to-where is not the same for the whole racecourse and for a part of it, or for one part and another; nor is traversing this line the same as traversing that one. 1174b For one traverses not only a line but a line in a place, and this one is in a different place from that one. Motion has been discussed precisely elsewhere; but it seems that it is not complete at every time, but that most motions are incomplete and differ in kind, if the from-where and to-where determines the kind. The form of pleasure, though, is complete at any time. Clearly, then, pleasure and motion would be different from each other, and pleasure is one of the things that are whole and complete.

This would also seem to follow from the fact that one can’t move except in a stretch of time, whereas one can be pleased without one; for what occurs in the now is a kind of whole. From this it is also clear that people are wrong to say that pleasure is a motion or a coming-to-be. These terms are not said of everything, but only of things that are divisible and not wholes. There is no coming-to-be of seeing, or of a point, or of a unit, and none of these is a motion or a coming-to-be; nor, then, is pleasure, since it is a kind of whole. Every sense is active in relation to its object, and a sense in good condition is completely active in relation to the finest of the objects that fall under it (for this more than anything seems to be what complete activity is — whether we say the sense itself is active, or that in which it resides, let it make no difference). In each case, then, the best activity is that of the subject in the best condition in relation to the most excellent of its objects.

Pleasure completes the activity not in the way the state present within it does, but as a sort of end that supervenes, like the bloom of youth on those in their prime. So long, then, as the object of thought or perception is as it should be, and so is what judges or contemplates it, 1175a there will be pleasure in the activity; for when what is acted on and what acts are alike and related to each other in the same way, the same result naturally comes about. How is it, then, that no one is pleased continuously? Is it that we grow tired? Nothing human is capable of continuous activity, so pleasure doesn’t occur continuously either, since it follows on activity.

Some things delight us when they are new, but later not as much, for the same reason. At first our thought is stimulated and intensely active about them, as with people’s sight when they look hard at something; but afterward the activity is not like that but slackens, and so the pleasure fades too. One might think that everyone desires pleasure because everyone also aims at living. Life is a kind of activity, and each person is active about the things, and with the faculties, that he loves most — the musical person, for instance, with his hearing about melodies, the lover of learning with his thought about objects of study, and likewise each of the rest. And pleasure completes the activities, and so it completes living, which they desire. It is reasonable, then, that they aim at pleasure too, since it completes life for each of them, and life is choiceworthy.

Whether we choose life for the sake of pleasure or pleasure for the sake of life, let’s leave aside for now. The two appear to be yoked together and not to admit of separation, since without activity there is no pleasure, and pleasure completes every activity.

People who are active with pleasure judge each thing better and are more precise. Those who enjoy doing geometry, for instance, become geometers and grasp each point better; similarly, lovers of music, lovers of building and all the rest make progress in their own proper work by enjoying it. So the pleasures increase the activities, and what increases a thing is proper to it; 1175b and for things different in kind, what is proper to them is also different in kind. This would appear still more clearly from the fact that pleasures from other sources get in the way of activities. Lovers of pipe music can’t pay attention to arguments if they overhear someone playing the pipes, since they enjoy piping more than their present activity; so the pleasure of piping destroys the activity of argument.

The same thing happens in other cases when someone is active about two things at once. The more pleasant activity crowds out the other — all the more if it differs greatly in pleasantness — so that one stops engaging in the other altogether. That’s why, when we are enjoying anything intensely, we hardly do anything else, and we do other things when we are only mildly pleased with something; people who munch snacks in the theater, for instance, do it most when the performers are bad. Since an activity’s proper pleasure makes it more precise, more lasting and better, while alien pleasures spoil it, clearly the two are far apart. Alien pleasures do pretty much what an activity’s proper pains do. For proper pains destroy activities — if, for instance, someone finds writing or calculating unpleasant and painful: the one doesn’t write, the other doesn’t calculate, because the activity is painful.

So opposite effects on an activity come from its proper pleasures and pains; and the proper ones are those that arise from the activity in itself. Alien pleasures, as has been said, do something similar to pain: they destroy the activity, though not in the same way. Since activities differ in goodness and badness, and some are choiceworthy, some to be avoided and some neither, the same holds for pleasures, since each activity has its own proper pleasure. The pleasure proper to an excellent activity is decent, and that proper to a base one is bad; for appetites, too, are praiseworthy when they are for fine things and blameworthy when they are for shameful ones.

But the pleasures in activities are more proper to them than the desires are. The desires are distinct from the activities both in time and in nature, while the pleasures are close to the activities and so hard to distinguish from them that there is dispute whether the activity is the same thing as the pleasure. Still, pleasure doesn’t seem to be thought or perception (that would be absurd); but because it isn’t separated from them, it appears to some to be the same. As activities are different, then, so are the pleasures. 1176a Sight differs from touch in purity, and hearing and smell from taste; so the pleasures differ similarly, and the pleasures of thought differ from these, and each group among themselves. Each animal also seems to have its own proper pleasure, as it has its own function — namely, the pleasure that corresponds to its activity.

This would appear, too, if one looks at them one by one: the pleasure of a horse is different from that of a dog or a human being — as Heraclitus says, donkeys would choose rubbish rather than gold, since food is more pleasant to donkeys than gold. So the pleasures of creatures different in kind differ in kind, and it is reasonable that those of the same kind do not differ. Yet among human beings, at least, they vary quite a lot: the same things delight some and pain others, and are painful and hateful to some, pleasant and lovable to others. This happens with sweet things too. The same things don’t seem sweet to someone with a fever and to someone healthy, nor does the same thing seem warm to a sick person and to one in good condition. The same happens in other cases. But in all such cases, what is really so seems to be what appears so to the excellent person.

If this is right, as it seems to be, and excellence — the good person, as such — is the measure of each thing, then pleasures too would be what appear to be pleasures to him, and pleasant things what he enjoys. If what he finds distasteful appears pleasant to someone, that’s no wonder, since human beings suffer many kinds of corruption and damage; but these things are not pleasant, except to these people and to those in this condition. Clearly, then, we should not say that the admittedly shameful pleasures are pleasures, except to the corrupt. But among those that seem decent, what kind of pleasure, or which one, should we say is the pleasure of a human being? Or is it clear from the activities, since pleasures follow on these? Whether, then, there is one activity or several belonging to the complete and blessed man, the pleasures that complete them would be called human pleasures in the strict sense, and the rest in a secondary sense and at many removes, as are the activities.

Actions in accordance with excellence seem to be of this kind, since doing fine and excellent things is among what is choiceworthy for its own sake. So do pleasant amusements, since people don’t choose them for the sake of other things; in fact, they are harmed by them more than benefited, neglecting their bodies and their property. Most of those who are considered happy take refuge in such pastimes, which is why people who are witty in such pastimes are well regarded at the courts of tyrants: they make themselves pleasant in the things the tyrants aim at, and such people are what the tyrants need.

These things are thought to belong to happiness because those in positions of power spend their leisure in them; but perhaps such people are no evidence. For excellence and intellect, from which excellent activities come, don’t consist in holding power; and if these people, having never tasted pure pleasure, worthy of a free person, take refuge in bodily pleasures, we shouldn’t on that account think these more choiceworthy. Children, too, think that what is valued among them is best. It is reasonable, then, that just as different things appear valuable to children and to men, so different things appear valuable to bad and to decent people. As has often been said, then, what is valuable and pleasant is what is so to the excellent person; and to each person the most choiceworthy activity is the one in accordance with his own state, and so to the excellent person it is the activity in accordance with excellence.

Happiness, then, does not lie in amusement. It would be absurd if the end were amusement, and if we toiled and suffered hardship our whole life long for the sake of amusing ourselves. For practically everything we choose, we choose for the sake of something else — except happiness, since that is the end. To be serious and to labor for the sake of amusement seems foolish and altogether childish; but to amuse oneself so as to be serious, as Anacharsis put it, seems right. For amusement is like relaxation, and we need relaxation because we can’t labor continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end, 1177a since it happens for the sake of activity. The happy life seems to be a life in accordance with excellence, and such a life involves seriousness; it does not consist in amusement. We also say that serious things are better than funny things and things done in fun, and that the activity of the better thing — whether the better part of a person or the better person — is always the more serious; and the activity of what is better is superior, and so already happier.note

Besides, anyone at all, even a slave, could enjoy bodily pleasures no less than the best of people; but no one grants a slave a share in happiness — unless he also grants him a life of his own. For happiness does not lie in pastimes of this kind, but in activities in accordance with excellence, as we have said before.

We think, too, that pleasure must be mixed in with happiness; and the activity in accordance with wisdom is, by common agreement, the most pleasant of the activities in accordance with excellence. At any rate, philosophy seems to hold pleasures that are marvelous for their purity and their stability, and it is reasonable that those who know should pass their time more pleasantly than those who are still inquiring. Again, what is called self-sufficiency will belong most of all to contemplative activity. The wise person, the just person and the rest all need the necessities of life; but once they are adequately supplied with these, the just person still needs people toward whom and with whom to act justly, and so do the moderate person, the courageous person and each of the others. The wise person, by contrast, can contemplate even on his own, and the wiser he is, the more he can do so. He does better, perhaps, if he has fellow workers; but all the same he is the most self-sufficient.

And this activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake, since nothing comes from it beyond the contemplating, whereas from practical activities we gain something, more or less, beyond the action itself. Happiness also seems to lie in leisure: we are busy so that we may have leisure, and we make war so that we may live in peace.

Now the activity of the practical excellences lies in politics or in war, and actions concerned with these seem to be unleisured — those of war entirely so. For no one chooses to make war, or stirs up a war, for the sake of making war; a person would seem utterly bloodthirsty if he turned his friends into enemies so that there might be battles and slaughter. But the politician’s activity is unleisured too: beyond political activity itself, it seeks to secure positions of power and honors — or at any rate happiness for the politician himself and his fellow citizens, a happiness distinct from political activity, and which we are plainly seeking as something distinct.

Suppose, then, that among actions in accordance with the excellences, political and military actions stand out in fineness and greatness, but are unleisured, aim at some further end and are not chosen for their own sake; whereas the activity of intellect, being contemplative, seems to excel in seriousness, to aim at no end beyond itself, and to have its own proper pleasure (which in turn increases the activity); and suppose that self-sufficiency, leisure, freedom from weariness (so far as that is possible for a human being), and all the other things ascribed to the blessed person are evidently features of this activity. Then this will be the complete happiness of a human being — provided it takes up a complete span of life, for nothing that belongs to happiness is incomplete.

It would be odd, then, if a person chose not his own life but someone else’s. And what we said before will apply now too: what properly belongs to each thing by nature is best and most pleasant for it. So for a human being the life in accordance with intellect is best and most pleasant, since intellect, more than anything else, is what a human being is. This life, then, will also be the happiest.

The happiness of intellect, by contrast, is separate. Let that much be said about it, since to work it out precisely is a larger task than the one before us. It would seem, too, to need external resources only a little, or at least less than the happiness of character. Let us grant that both need the necessities, and to an equal degree — even if the politician takes more trouble over the body and things of that sort — for the difference here would be small. But where their activities are concerned there will be a great difference. The generous person will need money to do generous deeds; so will the just person, for paying back what he owes (since wishes can’t be seen, and even people who are not just pretend to wish to act justly); the courageous person will need power, if he is to accomplish any of the deeds that accord with his excellence; and the moderate person will need the opportunity. Otherwise how will he, or any of the others, be recognized for what he is?

People also dispute whether decision or actions matter more for excellence, on the grounds that it involves both. 1178b Clearly its completeness would lie in both; but actions need many things, and the greater and finer they are, the more they need. The person who contemplates, on the other hand, needs none of these things, at least for the activity itself; in fact they are, so to speak, even hindrances, at least to contemplation. But insofar as he is a human being and lives with others, he chooses to do what accords with excellence, and so he will need such things for living a human life. That complete happiness is a kind of contemplative activity will also be clear from the following. We suppose the gods above all to be blessed and happy; but what sort of actions ought we to ascribe to them? Just ones? Won’t they look ridiculous making contracts, returning deposits and so on?

Courageous ones, then — facing terrors and running risks because it is fine? Or generous ones? But to whom will they give? And it would be absurd if they actually had money or anything like it. And what would their moderate actions be? Isn’t that a vulgar thing to praise them for, since they don’t have base appetites? If we went through them all, everything to do with action would appear petty and unworthy of gods. Yet everyone supposes that the gods are alive, and so active; surely they don’t sleep, like Endymion. Now if a living being is deprived of acting, and still more of producing, what is left but contemplation? So the activity of the god, which surpasses all others in blessedness, will be contemplative; and so, among human activities, the one most akin to this will be the happiest. A sign of this is that the other animals have no share in happiness, being completely deprived of such activity.note

For the whole life of the gods is blessed, while human life is blessed insofar as it has some likeness of such activity; but none of the other animals is happy, since they have no share at all in contemplation. Happiness, then, extends just as far as contemplation does, and those who contemplate more are happier — not incidentally, but by virtue of the contemplation, since it is valuable in itself. So happiness would be a kind of contemplation.

Solon, too, was perhaps right in his description of the happy when he said they were people moderately supplied with external goods, who had done what he thought were the finest deeds, and had lived moderately; for it is possible for people with moderate possessions to do what they should. Anaxagoras also seems to have supposed that the happy person was neither rich nor powerful, when he said he wouldn’t be surprised if the happy person struck most people as odd; for they judge by externals, since externals are all they perceive. So the opinions of the wise seem to agree with our arguments. Such things carry some conviction, then; but in practical matters the truth is judged from deeds and from life, since these are what is decisive. We must therefore examine what we have said by bringing it to bear on deeds and life: if it harmonizes with the deeds, we should accept it, and if it clashes, we should suppose it to be mere words.

The person who is active in accordance with intellect, who cultivates it and is in the best condition, also seems to be the one most loved by the gods. For if the gods have some care for human affairs, as they are thought to, it would be reasonable for them to delight in what is best and most akin to them (and that would be intellect), and to reward those who most love and honor it, on the grounds that these people care for what the gods hold dear and act rightly and finely. And it is plain enough that all this belongs most of all to the wise person. He, then, is the most loved by the gods; and the same person is likely to be the happiest too. So in this way as well the wise person will be happiest of all.

Now if arguments were enough by themselves to make people decent, they would rightly have earned many large fees, as Theognis says, and we would have had to get hold of them. As it is, arguments evidently have the power to encourage and spur on the generous-minded among the young, and to make a well-born character, one that truly loves what is fine, open to being possessed by excellence; but they are evidently unable to spur the many on toward being fine and good. For the many are not naturally inclined to obey a sense of shame, but fear, or to keep away from base things because they are shameful, but because of the penalties. Living by feeling, they pursue their own pleasures and whatever will bring them about, and avoid the opposing pains; but they have not even a notion of what is fine and truly pleasant, since they have never tasted it. What argument could reshape people like that?

For it is impossible, or at least not easy, to dislodge by argument what has long been ingrained in people’s characters. We should perhaps be content if, when we have everything by which people seem to become decent, we get some share of excellence. Some think people become good by nature, others by habit, others by teaching. What comes from nature is plainly not up to us, but belongs, through some divine causes, to those who are truly fortunate. Argument and teaching may well not have force with everyone; the listener’s soul must first have been cultivated by habits to enjoy and to hate in the right way, like soil that is to nourish the seed. For someone who lives by feeling would not listen to an argument turning him away, or even understand it; and how can you persuade someone in that state to change?

In general, feeling seems to yield not to argument but to force. So there must already be a character somehow akin to excellence, one that loves what is fine and is repelled by what is shameful. But it is hard to get the right upbringing for excellence from youth if one has not been raised under the right laws; for living moderately and with endurance is not pleasant to most people, especially the young. That is why their upbringing and pursuits must be ordered by laws, since these will not be painful once they have become habitual. 1180a But it is perhaps not enough to get the right upbringing and care when young; since people must keep up these pursuits and be habituated to them when they are grown men as well, we would need laws about this too, and in general about the whole of life. For most people obey necessity rather than argument, and penalties rather than what is fine.

That is why some think that lawgivers should urge people toward excellence and exhort them for the sake of the fine, expecting that those who have been decently prepared by their habits will listen; but should impose punishments and penalties on those who disobey or are of poorer nature, and banish the incurable altogether. For the decent person, who lives with a view to the fine, will obey reason, while the base person, who craves pleasure, must be corrected by pain, like a beast of burden. That is also why they say the pains should be those most opposed to the pleasures such people love.

If, then, as we have said, the person who is to be good must be raised well and habituated well, and then live in decent pursuits and do nothing base either involuntarily or voluntarily, and if this would come about for people who live according to some kind of intellect and right order that has force behind it — well, a father’s command does not have force or compulsion, nor in general does the command of any one man, unless he is a king or something of the sort; but law does have compelling power, being a rule that proceeds from a kind of practical wisdom and intellect. Besides, people hate individuals who oppose their impulses, even if they do so rightly; but law is not resented when it prescribes what is decent.

Yet it is only in the city of the Spartans, or there and in a few others, that the lawgiver seems to have taken care over upbringing and pursuits. In most cities such matters are neglected, and each person lives as he wishes, “laying down the law for children and wife,” like the Cyclopes. The best thing, then, is for there to be public care, and of the right kind, and for the city to be able to carry it out. But when the community neglects it, it would seem to be up to each person to help his own children and friends toward excellence — or at least to decide to do so. And from what we have said, it would seem that he would be better able to do this if he became a lawgiver. For public care evidently comes about through laws, and decent care through excellent laws. 1180b Whether they are written or unwritten would seem to make no difference, nor whether they are laws by which one person or many will be educated — any more than it does in music or athletics and the other pursuits.note

For just as laws and customs have force in cities, so a father’s words and habits have force in households — and even more so, because of kinship and the benefits he confers; for his children start out with affection for him and are naturally ready to obey. Further, individual education differs from public education, just as in medicine: in general rest and fasting are good for someone with a fever, but perhaps not for a particular person; and a boxer perhaps doesn’t teach everyone the same style of fighting. So it would seem that the particular case is worked out more precisely when the care is private, since each person is more likely to get what suits him.

But a doctor, a trainer or anyone else will give the best care to an individual if he knows the universal — what is good for everyone, or for people of a certain kind (for the sciences are said to be about what is common, and they are). Still, perhaps nothing prevents even someone without scientific knowledge from caring well for a single individual, if through experience he has observed precisely what happens in each case — just as some people seem to be their own best doctors, though they couldn’t help anyone else at all. Nonetheless, someone who wants to master a craft and to understand it theoretically would seem to have to proceed to the universal and come to know it as far as possible; for we have said that this is what the sciences are about. And perhaps someone who wants to make people better through his care, whether many or few, should try to become a lawgiver, if it is through laws that we can become good.

For putting anyone at all — whoever is set before you — into a good condition is not a job for just anybody; if it is for anyone, it is for the person who knows, as in medicine and the other fields that involve care and practical wisdom. Should we next examine, then, where or how one might become a lawgiver? Is it, as in other fields, from the practitioners — the politicians? For lawgiving seemed to be a part of political science. Or does political science appear to be unlike the other sciences and capacities?

For in the others, evidently, the same people both pass on the capacities and exercise them — doctors and painters, for instance. But when it comes to politics, it is the sophists who profess to teach it, 1181a yet none of them practises it; the practitioners are the politicians, who would seem to do this through a kind of capacity and experience rather than through thought. For they evidently neither write nor speak about such matters (though that would perhaps be finer than composing speeches for the law courts and the assembly), nor have they made politicians of their own sons or of any of their friends. Yet it would be reasonable for them to have done so, if they could; for there is nothing better they could leave to their cities, and nothing they would rather choose to have for themselves, or indeed for those dearest to them, than such a capacity.

Still, experience seems to contribute no small amount; otherwise people would not have become politicians through familiarity with politics. That is why those who want to know about political science seem to need experience as well. But those sophists who profess to teach it are evidently very far from doing so. For in general they don’t even know what sort of thing it is or what it is about; otherwise they would not have classed it as the same as rhetoric, or even as inferior to it, nor would they have thought it easy to legislate by collecting the laws that are well thought of. You can select the best ones, they say — as if the selection itself did not call for comprehension, and as if judging correctly were not the most important thing, just as in music.

For people experienced in a given field judge its works correctly and understand by what means or how they are accomplished, and what fits with what; whereas the inexperienced must be content if they can tell whether the work has been done well or badly, as with painting. Laws are like the works of political science; 1181b how, then, could someone become a lawgiver from them, or judge which are best? For people evidently don’t become doctors from medical handbooks either. And yet these try to state not only the treatments but also how particular kinds of patient might be cured and how each should be treated, distinguishing the various bodily states; but while these seem useful to the experienced, they are useless to those without knowledge.

Perhaps, then, collections of laws and constitutions would also be very useful to those who are able to study them and judge what is well done or the opposite, and what sorts of things suit what; but those who go through such material without the trained state would not be able to judge well, except by chance, though they might become more discerning about these matters. Since our predecessors have left the subject of lawgiving unexamined, it is perhaps better that we examine it ourselves, and indeed the whole subject of the constitution, so that our philosophy of human affairs may be completed as far as possible. First, then, let us try to review whatever has been said well on particular points by those before us; then, on the basis of the constitutions we have collected, let us study what sorts of things preserve and destroy cities, and what sorts preserve and destroy each kind of constitution, and for what reasons some cities are well governed and others the opposite.note

For once these have been studied, we will perhaps have a better view of which constitution is best, how each is arranged, and what laws and customs it uses. Let us begin, then, and discuss it.