One cannot but remark how entirely this is at variance with the notion of a moral sense or instinct, or an intuitive knowledge of what is right and wrong. Aristotle most truly observes that the details of our daily behaviour are subject to such an infinite variety of modifications, that no pre-established rules can be delivered to guide them: we must act with reference to the occasion and the circumstances. Some few rules may indeed be laid down, admitting of very few exceptions: but the vast majority of our proceedings cannot be subjected to any rule whatever, except to the grand and all-comprehensive rule, if we are indeed so to call it, of conforming to the ultimate standard of morality.
Supposing the conditions above indicated to be realized — supposing a certain degree of experience in human affairs, of rational self-government, and of habitual obedience to good rules of action, to be already established in the pupil’s mind, the theory of ethics may then be unfolded to him with great advantage (i. 3). It is not meant to be implied that a man must have previously acquired the perfection of practical reason and virtue before he acquaints himself with ethical theory; but he must have proceeded a certain way towards the acquisition.
Ethics, as Aristotle conceives them, are a science closely analogous to if not a subordinate branch of Politics. (I do not however think that he employs the word Ἠθικὴ in the same distinct and substantive meaning as πολιτικὴ (ἐπιστήμη), although he several times mentions τὰ ἠθικὰ and ἠθικοὶ λόγοι.) Ethical science is for the individual what political science is for the community (i. 2).
In every variety of human action, in each separate art and science, the agents, individual or collective, propose to themselves the attainment of some good as the end and object of their proceedings. Ends are multifarious, and good things are multifarious: but good, under one shape or another, is always the thing desired by every one, and the determining cause of human action (οὗ πάντα ἐφίεται) — i. 1.
Sometimes the action itself, or the exercise of the powers implied in the action, is the end sought, without anything beyond. Sometimes there is an ulterior end, or substantive business, to be accomplished by means of the action and lying beyond it. In this latter class of cases, the ulterior end is the real good: better than the course of action used to accomplish it — “the external results are naturally (πέφυκε) better than the course of actionâ€� (i. 1). Taking this as a general position, it is subject to many exceptions: but the word πέφυκε seems to signify only that such is naturally and ordinarily the case, not that the reverse never occurs.
Again some ends are comprehensive and supreme; others, partial and subordinate. The subordinate ends are considered with reference to the supreme, and pursued as means to their accomplishment. Thus the end of the bridle-maker is subservient to that of the horseman, and the various operations of war to the general scheme of the commander. The supreme, or architectonic, ends, are superior in eligibility to the subordinate, or ministerial, which, indeed, are pursued only for the sake of the former.
One end (or one good), as subordinate, is thus included in another end (or another good) as supreme. The same end may be supreme with regard to one end different from itself, and subordinate with regard to another. The end of the general is supreme with reference to that of the soldier or the maker of arms, subordinate with reference to that of the statesman. In this scale of comprehensiveness of ends there is no definite limit; we may suppose ends more and more comprehensive as we please, and we come from thence to form the idea of one most comprehensive and sovereign end, which includes under it every other without exception — with reference to which all other ends stand in the relation either of parts or of means — and which is itself never in any case pursued for the sake of any other or independent end. The end thus conceived is the Sovereign Good of man, or The Good — The Summum Bonum — Τἀγαθὸν — Τὸ ἄριστον — Τἀνθρώπινον ἀγαθόν (i. 2).
To comprehend, to define, and to prescribe means for realizing the Sovereign Good, is the object of Political Science, the paramount and most architectonic Science of all, with regard to which all other Sciences are simply ministerial. It is the business of the political ruler to regulate the application of all other Sciences with reference to the production of this his End — to determine how far each shall be learnt and in what manner each shall be brought into practice — to enforce or forbid any system of human action according as it tends to promote the accomplishment of his supreme purpose — the Sovereign Good of the Community. Strategical, rhetorical, economical, science, are all to be applied so far as they conduce to this purpose and no farther: they are all simply ministerial; political science is supreme and self-determining (i. 2).
What Political Science is for the community, Ethical Science is for the individual citizen. By this it is not meant that the individual is to be abstracted from society or considered as living apart from society: but simply that human action and human feeling is to be looked at from the point of view of the individual, mainly and primarily — and from the point of view of the society, only in a secondary manner: while in political science, the reverse is the case — our point of view is, first as regards the society; — next, and subordinate to that, as regards the individual citizen (See Eth. Nic. vii. 8).
The object of the Ethical Science is, the Supreme Good of the individual citizen — the End of all Ends, with reference to his desires, his actions, and his feelings — the end which he seeks for itself and without any ulterior aim — the end which comprehends all his other ends as merely partial or instrumental and determines their comparative value in his estimation (i. 2, i. 4).