The Online Library of Liberty

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• Preface to the Fifth Edition.
• Book I.: The End.
• 1.: In All He Does Man Seeks Same Good As End Or Means.
• 2.: The End Is the Good; Our Subject Is This and Its Science Politics.
• 3.: Exactness Not Permitted By Subject Nor to Be Expected By Student, Who Needs Experience and Training.
• 4.: Men Agree That the Good Is Happiness, But Differ As to What This Is.
• 5.: The Good Cannot Be Pleasure, Nor Honour, Nor Virtue.
• 6.: Various Arguments to Show Against the Platonists That There Cannot Be One Universal Good.
• 7.: The Good Is the Final End, and Happiness Is This.
• 8.: This View Harmonizes Various Current Views.
• 9.: It Happiness Acquired, Or the Gift of Gods Or of Chance?
• 10.: Can No Man Be Called Happy During Life?
• 11.: Cannot the Fortunes of Survivors Affect the Dead?
• 12.: Happiness As Absolute End Is Above Praise.
• 13.: Division of the Faculties and Resulting Division of the Virtues.
• Book II.: Moral Virtue.
• 1.: Moral Virtue Is Acquired By the Repetition of the Corresponding Acts.
• 2.: These Acts Must Be Such As Reason Prescribes; They Can’t Be Defined Exactly, But Must Be Neither Too Much Nor Too Little.
• 3.: Virtue Is In Various Ways Concerned With Pleasure and Pain.
• 4.: The Conditions of Virtuous Action As Distinct From Artistic Production.
• 5.: Virtue Not an Emotion, Nor a Faculty, But a Trained Faculty Or Habit.
• 6.: Viz., the Habit of Choosing the Mean.
• 7.: This Must Be Applied to the Several Virtues.
• 8.: The Two Vicious Extremes Are Opposed to One Another and to the Intermediate Virtue.
• 9.: The Mean Hard to Hit, and Is a Matter of Perception, Not of Reasoning.
• Book III.
• Chapters 1–5.: the Will.
• 1.: An Act Is Involuntary When Done (a) Under Compulsion, Or (b) Through Ignorance: (a) Means Not Originated By Doer, (b) Means Through Ignorance of the Circumstances: Voluntary Then Means Originated With Knowledge of Circumstances.
• 2.: Purpose, a Mode of Will, Means Choice After Deliberation.
• 3.: We Deliberate On What We Can Do—not On Ends, But Means.
• 4.: We Wish For
• 5.: Virtue and Vice Are Alike Voluntary, Our Acts Are Our Own; For We Are Punished For Them; If This Be Our Character, We Have Made It By Repeated Acts; Even Bodily Vices Are Blamable When Thus Formed. We Cannot Plead That Our Notion of Good Depends On Ou
• Chapters 6—12: the Several Moral Virtues and Vices.
• 6.: Of Courage and the Opposite Vices.
• 7. Of Courage (continued)
• 8. Of Courage Improperly So Called.
• 9.: How Courage Involves Both Pain and Pleasure.
• 10.: Of Temperance.
• 11. Of Temperance (continued)
• 12.: How Profligacy Is More Voluntary Than Cowardice.
• Book IV.: The Several Moral Virtues and Vices— Continued.
• 1.: Of Liberality.
• 2.: Of Magnificence.
• 3.: Of High-mindedness
• 4.: Of a Similar Virtue In Smaller Matters.
• 5.: Of Gentleness.
• 6.: Of Agreeableness.
• 7.: Of Truthfulness.
• 8.: Of Wittiness.
• 9.: Of the Feeling of Shame
• Book V.: The Several Moral Virtues and Vices— Concluded. Justice.
• 1.: Preliminary Two Senses of Justice Distinguished Justice (l) = Obedience to Law = Complete Virtue.
• 2.: Of Justice (2) = Fairness, How Related to Justice (1). What Is Just In Distribution Distinguished From What Is Just In Correction.
• 3.: Of What Is Just In Ditribution and Its Rule of Geometrical Proportion.
• 4.: Of That Which Is Just In Correction, and Its Rule of Arithmetical Proportion.
• 5.: Simple Requital Is Not Identical With What Is Just, But Proportionate Requital Is What Is Just In Exchange; and This Is Effected By Means of Money. We Can Now Give a General Definition of Justice (2).
• 6.: ( One Can Act Unjustly Without Being Unjust. ) That Which Is Just In the Strict Sense Is Between Citizens Only, For It Implies Law.
• 7.: It Is In Part Natural, In Part Conventional.
• 8.: The Internal Conditions of a Just Or Unjust Action, and of a Just Or Unjust Agent.
• 9.: Sundry Questions About Doing and Suffering Injustice
• 10.: Of Equity
• 11.: Can a Man Wrong Himself?
• Book VI.: The Intellectual Virtues.
• 1.: Must Be Studied Because (a) Reason Prescribes the Mean, (b) They Are a Part of Human Excellence. the Intellect Is (1) Scientific, (2) Calculative: We Want the Virtue of Each.
• 2.: The Function of the Intellect, Both In Practice and Speculation, Is to Attain Truth.
• 3.: Of the Five Modes of Attaining Truth: (1) of Demonstrative Science of Things Invariable.
• 4.: Of Knowledge of Things Variable, Viz. (2) of Art In What We Make;
• 5.: And (3) of Prudence In What We Do, the Virtue of the Calculative Intellect.
• 6.: (4) of Intuitive Reason As the Basis of Demonstrative Science.
• 7.: (5) of Wisdom As the Union of Science and Intuitive Reason. Comparison of the Two Intellectual Virtues, Wisdom and Prudence.
• 8.: Prudence Compared With Statesmanship and Other Forms of Knowledge.
• 9.: Of Deliberation.
• 10.: Of Intelligence
• 11.: Of Judgment of Reason Or Intuitive Perception As the Basis of the Practical Intellect.
• 12.: Of the Uses of Wisdom and Prudence. How Prudence Is Related to Cleverness.
• 13.: How Prudence Is Related to Moral Virtue
• Book VII.
• Chapters 1–10.: Characters Other Than Virtue and Vice.
• 1.: Of Continence and Incontinence, Heroic Virtue and Brutality. of Method. Statement of Opinions About Continence.
• 2.: Statement of Difficulties As to How One Can Know Right and Do Wrong.
• 3.: Solution: to Know Has Many Senses; In What Sense Such a Man Knows.
• 4.: Of Incontinence In the Strict and In the Metaphorical Sense.
• 5.: Of Incontinence In Respect of Brutal Or Morbid Appetites.
• 6.: Incontinence In Anger Less Blamed Than In Appetite.
• 7.: Incontinence Yields to Pleasure, Softness to Pain. Two Kinds of Incontinence, the Hasty and the Weak.
• 8.: Incontinence Compared With Vice and Virtue.
• 9.: Continence and Incontinence Not Identical With Keeping and Breaking a Resolution.
• 10.: Prudence Is Not, But Cleverness Is, Compatible With Incontinence.
• Chapters 11—14.: of Pleasure.
• 11.: We Must Now Discuss Pleasure. Opinions About It.
• 12.: Answers to Arguments Against Goodness of Pleasure. Ambiguity of Good and Pleasant. Pleasure Not a Transition, But Unimpeded Activity.
• 13.: Pleasure Is Good, and the Pleasure That Consists In the Highest Activity Is the Good. All Admit That Happiness Is Pleasant. Bodily Pleasures Not the Only Pleasures.
• 14.: Of the Bodily Pleasures, and the Distinction Between Naturally and Accidentally Pleasant.
• Book VIII.: Friendship Or Love.
• 1.: Uses of Friendship. Differences of Opinion About It.
• 2.: Three Motives of Friendship. Friendship Defined.
• 3.: Three Kinds of Friendship, Corresponding to the Three Motives Perfect Friendship Is That Whose Motive Is the Good.
• 4.: The Others Are Imperfect Copies of This.
• 5.: Intercourse Necessary to the Maintenance of Friendship.
• 6.: Impossible to Have Many True Friends.
• 7.: Of Friendship Between Unequal Persons and Its Rule of Proportion. Limits Within Which This Is Possible.
• 8.: Of Loving and Being Loved.
• 9.: Every Society Has Its Own Form of Friendship As of Justice. All Societies Are Summed Up In Civil Society.
• 10.: Of the Three Forms of Constitution.
• 11.: Of the Corresponding Forms of Friendship.
• 12.: Of the Friendship of Kinsmen and Comrades.
• 13.: Of the Terms of Interchange and Quarrels Hence Arising In Equal Friendships.
• 14.: Of the Same In Unequal Friendships.
• Book IX.: Friendship Or Love— Continued.
• 1.: Of the Rule of Proportion In Dissimilar Friendships.
• 2.: Of the Conflict of Duties.
• 3.: Of the Dissolution of Friendships.
• 4.: A Man’s Relation to His Friend Like His Relation to Himself.
• 5.: Friendship and Goodwill.
• 6.: Friendship and Unanimity
• 7.: Why Benefactors Love More Than They Are Loved.
• 8.: In What Sense It Is Right to Love One’s Self.
• 9.: Why a Happy Man Needs Friends.
• 10.: Of the Proper Number of Friends.
• 11.: Friends Needed Both In Prosperity and Adversity.
• 12.: Friendship Is Realized In Living Together.
• Book X.
• Chapters 1–5.: Pleasure.
• 1.: Reasons For Discussing Pleasure.
• 2.: Arguments of Eudoxus That Pleasure Is the Good.
• 3.: Argument That It Is Not a Quality; That It Is Not Determined; That It Is a Motion Or Coming Into Being. Pleasures Differ In Kind.
• 4.: Pleasure Defined: Its Relation to Activity.
• 5.: Pleasures Differ According to the Activities the Standard Is the Good Man.
• Chapters 6–9.: Conclusion.
• 6.: Happiness Not Amusement, But Life.
• 7.: Of the Speculative Life As Happiness In the Highest Sense.
• 8.: Of the Practical Life As Happiness In a Lower Sense, and of the Relation Between the Two. Prosperity, How Far Needed.
• 9.: How Is the End to Be Realized?

1.

Of the rule of proportion in dissimilar friendships.

In all dissimilar friendships* it is proportionate exchange that maintains equality and preserves the friendship (as we have already said), just as in the association of citizens, where the shoemaker, in exchange for his shoes, receives some return proportionate to his desert, and so on with the weaver and the rest.

Now, in these latter cases, a common measure is supplied by money; money is the standard to which everything is referred, and by which it is measured.

In sentimental friendships, on the other hand, the lover sometimes complains that while he loves excessively he gets no love in return, although, maybe, there is nothing lovable about him; often the beloved complains that whereas the other used to promise everything, he now performs nothing.

Complaints of this sort are wont to arise when, pleasure being the motive of the friendship with one person and profit with the other, they do not both get what they want. For the friendship, being based on these motives, is dissolved whenever they fail to obtain that for the sake of which they made friends; for it was not the other’s self that each loved, but only something which he had, and which is not apt to endure; for which reason these friendships also are not apt to endure. But friendship based on character, being pure, is likely to last, as we said.

Sometimes, again, friends quarrel when they find they are getting something different from what they want, for failing to get what you want is like getting nothing. This may be illustrated by the story of the harper: a man promised him that the better he played, the more he should receive; but when, as dawn drew near, the harper claimed the fulfilment of his promise, the other replied that he had already paid him pleasure* for pleasure. Now, if this was what both wished, there would be nothing more to say: but if the one wanted pleasure and the other profit, and the one has what he wants, while the other has not, the bargain will not be fairly carried out; for it is what a man happens to want that he sets his heart on, and consents for the sake of it to render this particular service.

But whose business is it to fix the value of the service? his who first gives, or rather his who first receives?—for he who first gives seems to leave it to the other. This, they say, was the custom of Protagoras: when he had been giving lessons in any subject, he used to tell his pupil to estimate the value of the knowledge he had acquired, and so much he would take.

Some, however, think the rule should be, “Let a friend be content with his stated wage.”*

But if a man, after being paid in advance, fulfils none of his engagements, because he had promised more than he could perform, he is rightly held chargeable; for he does not fulfil his contract. But the sophists, perhaps, are compelled to adopt this plan [of payment in advance]; for otherwise no one would give anything for what they know.

He, then, who fails to do that for which he has already been paid, is rightly chargeable. But when there is no express agreement about the service rendered, (a) when one voluntarily helps another for that other’s sake, no accusation can arise, as we said: for this is the nature of friendship based on virtue. The return must here be regulated by the purpose of him who renders the first service; for it is purpose that makes both friend and virtue. The same rule would seem to apply also to the relations of a philosopher and his disciples; for desert cannot here be measured in money, and no honour that could be paid him would be an adequate return; but, nevertheless, as in our relations to gods and parents, the possible is accepted as sufficient. (b) If, however, the first gift has been made, not in this spirit, but on the understanding that there shall be some return, the return should, if possible, be such as both deem proportionate to desert: but if this cannot be, it would seem to be not only necessary, but just, that the recipient of the first benefit should assess it; for whatever be the amount of the advantage he has received, or whatever he would have been willing to give for the pleasure, the other, in receiving the same amount, will receive as much as is due from him. For even in sales this is plainly what takes place; and in some states there is no recovery by law in voluntary contracts, as it is held that when you have given a man credit, you must conclude your bargain with him in the same spirit in which you began it. It is held to be fairer that the service should be valued by him who is trusted than by him who trusts. For most things are differently valued by those who have them and by those who wish to get them: what belongs to us, and what we give away, always seems very precious to us. Nevertheless, the return to be made must be measured by the value which is set upon the service by the receiver. But perhaps he ought to put it, not at what it seems to be worth when he has got it, but at the value he set upon it before he had it.

[* ]Where the two friends have different motives.

[* ]Viz. the pleasure of anticipation.

[* ]μισθὸς δ’ ἀνδρὶ ϕίλῳ εἰρημένος ἄρκιος ἔστω.—Hesiod.