Book 3
19
Whether then a man’s view of his end, whatever it may be, is not given by nature but is partly due to himself, or whether, although his end is determined by nature, yet virtue is voluntary because the good man’s actions to gain his end are voluntary, in either case vice will be just as much voluntary as virtue; for the bad man equally with the good possesses spontaneity in his actions, even if not in his choice of an end.
20
If then, as is said, our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.
21
We have then now discussed in outline the virtues in general, having indicated their genus [namely, that it is a mean, and a dispositionThis clause looks like an interpolation: ἕξις is the genus of virtue, Bk. 2.5 fin., 6 init., μεσότης its differentia, 2.6.5,17.] and having shown that they render us apt to do the same actions as those by which they are produced,See 2.2.8. and to do them in the way in which right reason may enjoinSee 2.2.2. This clause in the mss. follows the next one.; and that they depend on ourselves and are voluntary.See 5.2 and 20.This section some editors place before 5.21, but it is rather a footnote to 5.14; and the opening words of 5.23 imply that a digression has been made.
22
But our dispositions are not voluntary in the same way as are our actions. Our actions we can control from beginning to end, and we are conscious, of them at each stage.τὰ καθ’ ἕκαστα seems to bear a somewhat different sense here from 1.15, ἡ καθ’ ἕκαστα ( ἄγνοια). With our dispositions on the other hand, though we can control their beginnings, each separate addition to them is imperceptible, as is the case with the growth of a disease; though they are voluntary in that we were free to employ our capacities in the one way or the other.
