he most so who was in ignorance as regards the most important, which are thought to be those in which the action consists, and the result.
Further, not only must the ignorance be of this kind, to constitute an action involuntary, but it must be also understood that the action is followed by pain and regret.
Now since all involuntary action is either upon compulsion or by reason of ignorance, Voluntary Action would seem to be “that whose origination is in the agent, he being aware of the particular details in which the action consists.”
For, it may be, men are not justified by calling those actions involuntary, which are done by reason of Anger or Lust.
Because, in the first place, if this be so no other animal but man, and not even children, can be said to act voluntarily. Next, is it meant that we never act voluntarily when we act from Lust or Anger, or that we act voluntarily in doing what is right and involuntarily in doing what is discreditable?[1] The latter supposition is absurd, since the cause is one and the same. Then as to the former, it is a strange thing to maintain actions to be involuntary which we are bound to grasp at: now there are occasions on which anger is a duty,[2] and there are things which we are bound to lust[3] after, health, for instance, and learning.
Again, whereas actions strictly involuntary are thought to be attended with pain, those which are done to gratify lust are thought to be pleasant.
Again: how does the involuntariness make any difference between wrong actions done from deliberate calculation, and those done by reason of anger?[4] for both ought to be avoided, 1111b and the irrational feelings are thought to be just as natural to man as reason, and so of course must be such actions of the individual as are done from Anger and Lust. It is absurd then to class these actions among the involuntary.
II
Having thus drawn out the distinction between voluntary and involuntary action our next step is to examine into the
- ↑ ἔνεκα primarily denotes the relation of cause and effect all circumstances which in any way contribute to a cert result are ἔνεκα that result. From the power which we have or acquire of deducing future results from present causes we are enabled to act towards, with a view to produce, these results: thus ἔνεκα comes to mean not causation merely, but designed causation: and so οὖ ἔνεκα is used for Motive, or final cause. It is the primary meaning which is here intended, it would be a contradiction in terms to speak of a man's being ignorant of his own Motive of action. When the man “drew a bow at a venture and smote the King of Israel between the joints of the harness” (1 Kings xxii. 34) he did it ἔνεκα του ἀπόκτειναι the King of Israel, in the primary sense of ἔνεκα; that is to say, the King's death was in fact the result, but could not have been the motive, of the shot, because the King was disguised and the shot was at a venture.
- ↑ Bishop Butler would agree to this: he says of settled deliberate anger, “It seems in us plainly connected with a sense of virtue and vice, of moral good and evil.” See the whole Sermon on Resentment.
- ↑ Aristotle has, I venture to think, rather quibbled here, by using ἐπιθυμία and its verb, equivocally: as there is no following his argument without condescending to the same device, I have used our word lust in its ancient signification. Ps. xxiv. 12, “What man is he that lusteth to live?”
- ↑ The meaning is, that the onus probandi is thrown upon the person who maintains the distinction; Aristotle has a primâ facie case. The whole passage is one of difficulty. Cardwell's text gives the passage from δοκεἲ δὲ as a separate argument. Bekker's seems to intend αἱ δὲ πράξεις as a separate argument: but if so, the argument would be a mere petitio principii. I have adopted Cardwell's reading in part, but retain the comma at ἅμφω, and have translated the last four words as applying to the whole discussion, whereas Cardwell's reading seems to restrict them to the last argument.
