tent to indicate the truth roughly, and
in outline.[1]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, pp. 3-4.]

He points out repeatedly that situations are specific, that
laws or generalization can only be tentatively made.

Questions of practice and expediency no more admit of invariable
rules than questions of health. But if this is true of general reasoning
upon Ethics, still more true is it that scientific exactitude is impossible
in reasoning upon particular ethical cases. They do not fall
under any art or any law, but the agents themselves are always
bound to pay regard to the circumstances of the moment, as much
as in medicine or navigation.[1]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, p. 37.]

Instead of framing absolute general rules, Aristotle points
out those specific conditions which must be taken into account
in any act that can, without quibbling, be called good
or virtuous.

It is possible to go too far, or not to go far enough, in respect of
fear, courage, desire, anger, pity, and pleasure and pain generally,
and the excess and the deficiency are alike wrong; but to experience
these emotions at the right time, and on the right occasions and
towards the right persons, and for the right causes and in the right
manner is the mean or the supreme good, which is characteristic of
virtue.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_. p. 46.]

Reflection thus unduly simplifies the moral problem by
setting up general standards which are not adequate to the
multiple variety of specific situations which constitute human
experience. But in reasoning upon the conduct of life, there
has been displayed, furthermore, by ethical writers an inveterate
tendency to identify the processes of life with the process
of reason. One may cite as a classic instance of this point
of view the ethical theory of Jeremy Bentham and the Utilitarians.
According to the Utilitarians human beings judged
acts in terms of their utility, as measured in the amount of
pleasure and pain produced by an action. The individual
figured out the pleasures and pains that would be the consequences
of his action. We shall in the next section examine
this point of view in more detail; we are referring to it here
simply as an illustration of intellectualizing of morals. Few
individuals go through anything remotely resembling the
"hedonic calculus" laid down by Bentham.[3] The individual
is not a static being, mathematically considering the amount
of pleasure and pain associat