The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle · Aristotle
BOOK I
The beginnings of Resolve, Ἀρχὶ or Motives, when formally stated, are the major premisses of what Aristotle calls the συλλογίσμοι τῶν πρακτῶν, i.e. the reasoning into which actions may be analysed. Thus we say that the desire of human praise was the motive of the Pharisees, or the principle on which they acted. Their practical syllogism then would stand thus: Whatever gains human praise is to be done; Public praying and almsgiving gave human praise: [ergo] Public praying and almsgiving are to be done. The major premisses may be stored up in the mind as rules of action, and this is what is commonly meant by having principles good or bad. [5] The difficulty of this passage consists in determining the signification of the terms [Greek: gnorima aemin] and [Greek: gnorima aplos] I have translated them without reference to their use elsewhere, as denoting respectively what _is_ and what _may_ be known. All truth is [Greek: gnorimon aplos], but that alone [Greek: aemin] which we individually realise, therefore those principles alone are [Greek: gnorima aemin] which _we have received as true_. From this appears immediately the necessity of good training as preparatory to the study of Moral Philosophy for good training in habits will either work principles into our nature, or make us capable of accepting them as soon as they are put before us; which no mere intellectual training can do. The child who has been used to obey his parents may never have heard the fifth Commandment but it is in the very texture of his nature, and the first time he hears it he will recognise it as morally true and right the principle is in his case a fact, the reason for which he is as little inclined to ask as any one would be able to prove its truth if he should ask.
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