That In The Soul Which Is Called

When A Draco Has Eaten Much Fruit, It Seeks The Juice Of The Bitter Lettuce; It Has Been Seen To Do This.

Those Who Assert That The Mathematical Sciences Say Nothing Of The Beautiful Or The Good Are In Error. For These Sciences Say And Prove A Great Deal About Them; If They Do Not Expressly Mention Them, But Prove Attributes Which Are Their Results Or Definitions, It Is Not True That They Tell Us Nothing About Them. The Chief Forms Of Beauty Are Order And Symmetry And Definiteness, Which The Mathematical Sciences Demonstrate In A Special Degree.

So Virtue Is A Purposive Disposition, Lying In A Mean That Is Relative To Us And Determined By A Rational Principle, And By That Which A Prudent Man Would Use To Determine It. It Is A Mean Between Two Kinds Of Vice, One Of Excess And The Other Of Deficiency.

All Are Agreed That The Various Moral Qualities Are In A Sense Bestowed By Nature: We Are Just, And Capable Of Temperance, And Brave, And Possessed Of The Other Virtues From The Moment Of Our Birth. But Nevertheless We Expect To Find That True Goodness Is Something Different, And That The Virtues In The True Sense Come To Belong To Us In Another Way. For Even Children And Wild Animals Possess The Natural Dispositions, Yet Without Intelligence These May Manifestly Be Harmful.

The Activity Of God, Which Is Transcendent In Blessedness, Is The Activity Of Contemplation; And Therefore Among Human Activities That Which Is Most Akin To The Divine Activity Of Contemplation Will Be The Greatest Source Of Happiness.