For the Principles of the matters of moral action are the final cause
of them:[19] now to the man who has been corrupted by reason of
pleasure or pain the Principle immediately becomes obscured, nor does
he see that it is his duty to choose and act in each instance with a
view to this final cause and by reason of it: for viciousness has a
tendency to destroy the moral Principle: and so Practical Wisdom must
be “a state conjoined with reason, true, having human good for its
object, and apt to do.”
Then again Art admits of degrees of excellence, but Practical Wisdom
does not:[20] and in Art he who goes wrong purposely is preferable to
him who does so unwittingly,[21] but not so in respect of Practical
Wisdom or the other Virtues. It plainly is then an Excellence of a
certain kind, and not an Art.
Now as there are two parts of the Soul which have Reason, it must be
the Excellence of the Opinionative [which we called before calculative
or deliberative], because both Opinion and Practical Wisdom are
exercised upon Contingent matter. And further, it is not simply a state
conjoined with Reason, as is proved by the fact that such a state may
be forgotten and so lost while Practical Wisdom cannot.
Chapter VI.
Now Knowledge is a conception concerning universals and Necessary
matter, and there are of course certain First Principles in all trains
of demonstrative reasoning (that is of all Knowledge because this is
connected with reasoning): that faculty, then, which takes in the first
principles of that which comes under the range of Knowledge, cannot be
either Knowledge, or Art, or Practical Wisdom: not Knowledge, because
what is the object of Knowledge must be derived from demonstrative
reasoning; not either of the other two, because they are exercised upon
Contingent matter only. Nor can it be Science which takes in these,
because the Scientific Man must in some cases depend on demonstrative
Reasoning.
It comes then to this: since the faculties whereby we always attain
truth and are never deceived when dealing with matter Necessary or even
Contingent are Knowledge, Practical Wisdom, Science, and Intuition, and
the faculty which takes in First Principles cannot be any of the three
first; the last, namely Intuition, must be it which performs this
function.
Chapter VII.
Science is a term we use principally in two meanings: in the first
place, in the Arts we ascribe it to those who carry their arts to the
highest accuracy;[22] Phidias, for instance, we call a Scientific or
cunning sculptor; Polycleitus a Scientific or cunning statuary;
meaning, in this instance, nothing else by Science than an excellence
of art: in the other sense, we think some to be Scientific in a general
way, not in any particular line or in any particular thing, just as
Homer says of a man in his Margites; “Him the Gods made neither a
digger of the ground, nor ploughman, nor in any other way Scientific.”