Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. W.D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908. Print.
I.1
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and
pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good
has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. But a
certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others
are products apart from the activities that produce them. Where
there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products
to be better than the activities. Now, as there are many actions, arts,
and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of the medical art is
health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of
economics wealth. But where such arts fall under a single capacityas bridle-making and the other arts concerned with the equipment of
horses fall under the art of riding, and this and every military action
under strategy, in the same way other arts fall under yet others—in
all of these the ends of the master arts are to be preferred to all the
subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the former that the latter
are pursued. It makes no difference whether the activities
themselves are the ends of the actions, or something else apart from
the activities, as in the case of the sciences just mentioned.
