ing, in this case as in
others, between what bears a given character simply and absolutely,
and what bears the same character relatively to this or that
individual. The object of Wish, simply, truly, and absolutely, is the
Good; while the object of Wish, to any given individual, is what
appears Good to him. But by the Absolute here, Aristotle explains that
he means what appears good to the _virtuous_ and _intelligent_ man;
who is is declared, here as elsewhere, to be the infallible standard;
while most men, misled by pleasure, choose what is not truly good. In
like manner, Aristotle affirms, that those substances are truly and
absolutely wholesome, which are wholesome to the healthy and
well-constituted man; other substances may be wholesome to the sick or
degenerate. Aristotle's Absolute is thus a Relative with its correlate
chosen or imagined by himself.

He then proceeds to maintain that virtue and vice are voluntary, and
in our own power. The arguments are these. (1) If it be in our power
to act right, the contrary is equally in our own power; hence vice is
as much voluntary as virtue. (2) Man must be admitted to be the origin
of his own actions. (3) Legislators and others punish men for
wickedness, and confer honour on good actions; even culpable ignorance
and negligence are punished. (4) Our character itself, or our fixed
acquirements, are in our power, being produced by our successive acts;
men become intemperate, by acts of drunkenness. (5) Not only the
defects of the mind, but the infirmities of the body also, are blamed,
when arising through our own neglect and want of training. (6) Even if
it should be said that all men aim at the apparent good, but cannot
control their mode of conceiving [Greek: phantasia] the end; still
each person, being by his acts the cause of his own fixed
acquirements, must be to a certain extent the cause of his own
conceptions. On this head, too, Aristotle repeats the clenching
argument, that the supposed imbecility of conceiving would apply alike
to virtue and to vice; so that if virtuous action be regarded as
voluntary, vicious action must be so regarded likewise. It must be
remembered that a man's fixed acquirements or habits are not in his
own power, in the same sense and degree in which his separate acts are
in his own power. Each act, from first to last, is alike in his power;
but in regard to the habit, it is only the initiation thereof that is
thoroughly in his power; the ha