Book 8
13
If, therefore, some men have good natures—just as musical people though they have not learnt to singOr, with Jackson’s additions, just as untaught musical geniuses, without professional knowledge of singing. have a natural aptitude for it—and without the aid of reason have an impulse in the direction of the natural order of things and desire the right thing in the right way at the right time, these men will succeed even although they are in fact foolish and irrational, just as the others will sing well although unable to teach singing. And men of this sort obviously are fortunate—men who without the aid of reason are usually successful. Hence it will follow that the fortunate are so by nature.
14
Or has the term good fortune more than one meaning? For some things are done from impulse and as a result of the agents’ purposive choice, other things not so but on the contrary; and if in the former cases when the agents succeed they seem to have reasoned badly, we say that in fact they have had good fortune; and again in the latter cases, if they wished for a different good or less good than they have got.
15
The former persons then may possibly owe their good fortune to nature, for their impulse and appetition, being for the right object, succeeded, but their reasoning was foolish; and in their case, when it happens that their reasoning seems to be incorrect but that impulse is the cause of it, this impulse being right has saved them; although sometimes on the contrary owing to appetite they have reasoned in this way and come to misfortune.
16
But in the case of the others,Cf. Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1247b 30τὰ δ’ οὔ( Solomon). then, how will good fortune be due to natural goodness of appetition and desire? The fact is that the good fortune here and that in the other case are the same. Or is good fortune of more than one kind, and is fortune twofold?
