it has to do with the ultimate issue,[1] as has been said, because every object of action is of this nature.
To Intuition it is opposed, for this takes in those principles which cannot be proved by reasoning, while Practical Wisdom is concerned with the ultimate particular fact which cannot be realised by Knowledge but by Sense; I do not mean one of the five senses, but the same by which we take in the mathematical fact, that no rectilineal figure can be contained by less than three lines, i.e. that a triangle is the ultimate figure, because here also is a stopping point.
This however is Sense rather than Practical Wisdom, which is of another kind.[2]
IX
Now the acts of inquiring and deliberating differ, though deliberating is a kind of inquiring. We ought to ascertain about Good Counsel likewise what it is, whether a kind of Knowledge, or Opinion, or Happy Conjecture, or some other kind of faculty. Knowledge it obviously is not, because men do not inquire about what they know, 1142b and Good Counsel is a kind of deliberation, and the man who is deliberating is inquiring and calculating.
Neither is it Happy Conjecture; because this is independent of reasoning, and a rapid operation; but men deliberate a long time, and it is a common saying that one should execute speedily what has been resolved upon in deliberation, but deliberate slowly.[3]
Quick perception of causes again is a different faculty from good counsel, for it is a species of Happy Conjecture. Nor is Good Counsel Opinion of any kind.
Well then, since he who deliberates ill goes wrong, and he who deliberates well does so rightly, it is clear that Good Counsel is rightness of some kind, but not of Knowledge nor of Opinion: for Knowledge cannot be called right because it cannot be wrong, and Rightness of Opinion is Truth: and again,[4] all which is the object of opinion is definitely marked out.
Still, however, Good Counsel is not independent of Reason,