Book 1
5
And we must not overlook the distinction between arguments that start from first principles and those that lead to first principles. It was a good practice of Plato to raise this question, and to enquire whether the true procedure is to start from or to lead up to one’s first principles, as in a race-course one may run from the judges to the far end of the track or the reverse. Now no doubt it is proper to start from the known. But the known has two meanings—what is known to us, which is one thing, and what is knowable in itself, which is another. Perhaps then for usIn contrast apparently with the school of Plato. at all events it proper to start from what is known to us.
6
This is why in order to be a competent student of the Right and Just, and in short of the topics of Politics in general, the pupil is bound to have been well-trained in his habits.
7
For the starting-point or first principle is the fact that a thing is so; if this be satisfactorily ascertained, there will be no need also to know the reason why it is so. And the man of good moral training knows first principles already, or can easily acquire them. As for the person who neither knows nor can learn, let him hear the words of Hesiod Hes. WD 293 ff. : Best is the man who can himself advise; He too is good who hearkens to the wise; But who, himself being witless, will not heed Another’s wisdom, is a fool indeed.
1
But let us continue from the pointa 30. where we digressed. To judge from men’s lives, the more or less reasoned conceptions of the Good or Happiness that seem to prevail are the following. On the one hand the generality of men and the most vulgar identify the Good with pleasure,
