Book 2
3
Now it is evident that it is not appetition; for in that case it would be either wish or desire or passion, since nobody wants to get a thing without having experienced one of those feelings. Now even animals possess passion and desire, but they do not have purposive choice. And again, beings that possess both of these often make choices even without passion and desire; and while they are experiencing these feelings do not make a choice but hold out. Again, desire and passion are always accompanied by pain, but we often make a choice even without pain.
4
But moreover purposive choice is not the same as wish either; for men wish for some things that they know to be impossible, for instance to be king of all mankind and to be immortal, but nobody purposively chooses a thing knowing it to be impossible, nor in general a thing that, though possible, he does not think in his own power to do or not to do. So that this much is clear—a thing purposively chosen must necessarily be something that rests with oneself.
5
And similarly it is manifest that purposive choice is not opinion either, nor something that one simply thinks; for we saw Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1223a 16-19. that a thing chosen is something in one’s own power, but we have opinions as to many things that do not depend on us, for instance that the diagonal of a square is incommensurableThe Mss. give commensurable, but there is no point in specifying an untrue opinion. Cf. Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1112a 22περὶ δὴ τῶν ἀϊδίων οὐδεὶς βουλεύεται, οἷον περὶ τοῦ κόσμου, ἢ τῆς διαμέτρου καὶ τῆς πλευρᾶς ὅτι ἀσύμμετροι (where Kb has σύμμετροι). with the side;
6
and again, choice is not true or false. Nor yet is purposive choice an opinion about practicable things within one’s own power that makes us think that we ought to do or not to do something; but this characteristic is common to opinion and to wish.
