Kitap 1
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,
2
and accordingly are content with the Life of Enjoyment—for there are three specially prominent Lives,The doctrine of the three Lives goes back to Pythagoras, who compared the three kinds of men to the three classes of strangers who went to the Games, traders, competitors, and spectators (Iamblichus, Vit. Pythag. 58). This apologue brings out the metaphor underlying the phrase θεωρητικὸς βίος, lit. the life of the spectator (Burnet). the one just mentioned, the Life of Politics, and thirdly, the Life of Contemplation.
