28. You will now, I think, understand the sense in which Aristotle alleges that we have no natural capacity for virtue; we have no natural capacity for it in the way in which we have a capacity for seeing, or in which a stone has a capacity for falling to the earth. We have a capacity for virtue only in the sense that this capacity is also a capacity for vice. It may perhaps be convenient to retain the word capacity in this signification, but we must keep in mind that the word thus used signifies something very different from what is indicated by the other employment of the term. According to Aristotle, then, we have no natural capacity for virtue or for vice, but only what may be improperly termed a capacity for either of these indifferently. In certain circumstances a man may become virtuous; in the same circumstances he may also become vicious. This shows that man has no natural capacity for either of these. For out of a natural capacity the only issue that can come in the form of acts must be of one constant and uniform kind.
29. Out of this doctrine that man has no natural capacity for virtue, arises Aristotle's doctrine of freewill, προαίρεσις, deliberate purpose, determination, or choice. If man had a capacity for virtue, that is, a natural tendency, which was irresistible, and which carried him to virtue whether he would or not, he could, of course, have no free-will or power of choice. The law of the δύναμις would determine the act as its
