which the dead are supposed to be liable: add then the difference of sensibility which it is fair to presume, and there is a very small residuum of joy or sorrow.
P. 21, l. 18. This is meant for an exhaustive division of goods, which are either so in esse or in posse.
If in esse, they are either above praise, or subjects of praise. Those in posse, here called faculties, are good only when rightly used. Thus Rhetoric is a faculty which may be used to promote justice or abused to support villainy. Money in like way.
P. 22, l. 4. Eudoxus, a philosopher holding the doctrine afterwards adopted by Epicurus respecting pleasure, but (as Aristotle testifies in the Tenth Book) of irreproachable character.
P. 22, l. 13. See the Rhetoric, Book I. chap. ix.
P. 24, l. 23. The unseen is at least as real as the seen.
P. 24, l. 29. The terms are borrowed from the Seventh Book, and are here used in their strict philosophical meaning. The ἐγκρατὴς is he who has bad or unruly appetites, but whose reason is strong enough to keep them under. The ἀκρατὴς is he whose appetites constantly prevail over his reason and previous good resolutions.
By the law of habits the former is constantly approximating to a state in which the appetites are wholly quelled. This state is called σωφροσύνη, and the man in it σώφρων. By the same law, the remonstrances of reason in the latter grow fainter and fainter till they are silenced for ever. This state is called ἀκολασία, and the man in it ἀκόλαστος.
P. 25, l. 2. This is untranslateable. As the Greek phrase, ἔχειν λογόν τινος, really denotes substituting that person’s λόγος for one’s own, so the Irrational nature in a man of self-control or perfected self-mastery substitutes the orders of Reason for its own impulses. The other phrase means the actual possession of mathematical truths as part of the mental furniture, i.e. knowing them.
P. 25, l. 16. ἔξιν may be taken as opposed to ἐνέργειαν, and the meaning will be, to show a difference between Moral and Intellectual Excellences, that men are commended for merely having the latter, but only for exerting and using the former.
P. 26, l. 2. Which we call simply virtue.
P. 26 l. 4. For nature must of course supply the capacity.
P. 26, l. 18 Or “as a simple result of nature.”
P. 28, l. 12. This is done in the Sixth Book.
P. 28, l. 21. It is, in truth, in the application of rules to particular details of practice that our moral Responsibility chiefly lies: no rule can be so framed, that evasion shall be impossible. See Bishop Butler’s Sermon on the character of Balaam, and that on Self-Deceit.
