IV. ARISTOTLE'S THEORY OF INCONTINENCE A CONTRIBUTION TO PRACTICAL ETHICS. 1 BY W. H. FAIRBEOTHEB. IN his Introduction to the seventh book of the Nicomachcean Ethics Grant remarks : " The chief thing we have to com- plain of in this book is the too vague way in which Incon- tinence is treated. For the sake of forming a more definite notion of the standard of Greek morality, we could have wished a graphic portrait of the continent man, in the style of Aristotle's fourth book. As it is, we must be content to know that the continent man yields to temptation less, and the incontinent man more, than people in general." This criticism, slight as it is, and of very questionable value, yet brings out indirectly an important truth, which cannot be too much before our minds whenever we are trying to estimate any portion of Aristotle's ethical teaching, viz., that our test must be practical as well as theoretical we might almost say practical and not theoretical. Like the carpenter to whom he compares himself in the first book of the Ethics, he values truth only so far as it is ' useful in practice,' and he holds that we study Ethical Science not (like other sciences) that " we may know what virtue is, but in order that we may become good ". 2 If this is Aristotle's attitude towards Ethical study as a whole, it is peculiarly so in dealing with the all-important practical question of " doing what we know to be wrong". That a man may sin against a law, of the existence of which he is ignorant, is comprehensible, and needs no explanation. It is sufficient to note the fact and pass on. That, again, a man, of exceptionally strong will, might persuade himself that what other people (or people generally) think wrong is really right, or believe that ordinary moral distinctions are 1 Bead before the Aristoteli&n Society. 2 N. E., ii., 2, 1. Cf. i, 3, 6 ; x., 9, 1.
