Art Fortune loves

Chapter 3

Commencing then from the point stated above we will now speak of these Excellences again. Let those

The Soul attains truth in Affirmation or Negation through 5 faculties:[10]

1. Art
2. Knowledge
3. Practical Wisdom
4. Science
5. Intuition

(Supposition and Opinion I do not include, because by these one may go wrong.)

What Knowledge is, is plain from the following of considerations, if one is to speak accurately, instead of being led away by resemblances.

For we all conceive that what we strictly speaking know, cannot be otherwise than it is, because as to those things which can be otherwise than they are, we are uncertain whether they are or are not, the moment they cease to be within the sphere of our actual observation.

So then, whatever comes within the range of Knowledge is by necessity, and therefore eternal, (because all things are so which exist necessarily,) and all eternal things are without beginning, and indestructible.

All Knowledge is thought to be capable of being taught, and what comes within its range capable of being learned.

All teaching is based upon previous knowledge; (a statement you will find in the Analytics also,)[11] for there are two ways of teaching, by Syllogism and by Induction.

In fact. Induction is the source of universal propositions, and Syllogism reasons from these universals.[12]

Syllogism then may reason from principles which cannot be themselves proved Syllogistically: and therefore must by Induction.

So Knowledge is “a state or mental faculty apt to demonstrate syllogistically,” &c. as in the Analytics[13].

This is because a man, strictly and properly speaking, knows, when he establishes his conclusion in a certain way, and the principles are known to him: for if they are not better known to him than the conclusion, such knowledge as he has will be merely accidental.

Chapter 4

Contingent Matter may exist otherwise than it actually does. This is of 2 kinds:

1. The object of Making
2. The object of Doing

Making and Doing are two different things (as we show in the exoteric treatise)/

And so that state of mind, conjoined with Reason, which is apt to Do, is distinct from that also conjoined with Reason, which is apt to Make.

This is why they are not included one by the other.

Doing is not Making, nor Making Doing.[14] [15]

Architecture is an Art, and is the same as “a certain state of mind, conjoined with Reason, which is apt to Make,” and as there is no Art which is not such a state, nor any such state which is not an Art, Art, in its strict and proper sense, must be “a state of mind, conjoined with true Reason, apt to Make.”

All Art has to do with production, and contrivance, and seeing how any of those things may be produced which may either be or not be, and the origination of which rests with the maker and not with the thing made.

And, so neither things which exist or come into being necessarily, nor things in the way of nature, come under the province of Art, because these are self-originating. And since Making and Doing are distinct, Art must be concerned with the former and not the latter. And in a certain sense Art and Fortune are concerned with the same things, as, Agathon says by the way,

“Art Fortune loves, and is of her beloved.”

So Art, as has been stated, is “a certain state of mind, apt to Make, conjoined with true Reason;” its absence, on the contrary, is the same state conjoined with false Reason, and both are employed upon Contingent matter.

Chapter 5

As for Practical Wisdom, we shall ascertain its nature by examining to what kind of persons we in common language ascribe it.[16]

It is thought then to be the property of the Practically Wise man to be able to deliberate well respecting what is good and expedient for himself, not in any definite line,[17] as what is conducive to health or strength, but what to living well.

A proof of this is that we call men Wise in this or that, when they calculate well with a view to some good end in a case where there is no definite rule. And so, in a general way of speaking, the man who is good at deliberation will be Practically Wise.

Now no man deliberates respecting things which cannot be otherwise than they are, nor such as lie not within the range of his own action: and so, since Knowledge requires strict demonstrative reasoning, of which Contingent matter does not admit (I say Contingent matter, because all matters of deliberation must be Contingent and deliberation cannot take place with respect to things which are Necessarily), Practical Wisdom cannot be Knowledge nor Art; nor the former, because what falls under the province of Doing must be Contingent; not the latter, because Doing and Making are different in kind.

It remains then that it must be “a state of mind true, conjoined with Reason, and apt to Do, having for its object those things which are good or bad for Man:” because of Making something beyond itself is always the object, but cannot be of Doing because the very well-doing is in itself an End.

For this reason we think Pericles and men of that stamp to be Practically Wise, because they can see what is good for themselves and for men in general, and we also think those to be such who are skilled in domestic management or civil government. In fact, this is the reason why we call the habit of perfected self-mastery by the name which in Greek it bears, etymologically signifying “that which preserves the Practical Wisdom:” for what it does preserve is the Notion I have mentioned, i.e. of one’s own true interest.[18]

For it is not every kind of Notion which the pleasant and the painful corrupt and pervert, as, for instance, that “the three angles of every rectilineal triangle are equal to two right angles,” but only those bearing on moral action.

For the Principles of the matters of moral action are the final cause of them:[19] now to the man who has been corrupted by reason of pleasure or pain the Principle immediately becomes obscured, nor does he see that it is his duty to choose and act in each instance with a view to this final cause and by reason of it: for viciousness has a tendency to destroy the moral Principle: and so Practical Wisdom must be “a state conjoined with reason, true, having human good for its object, and apt to do.”

Then again Art admits of degrees of excellence, but Practical Wisdom does not:[20] and in Art he who goes wrong purposely is preferable to him who does so unwittingly,[21] but not so in respect of Practical Wisdom or the other Virtues. It plainly is then an Excellence of a certain kind, and not an Art.

Two parts of the Soul have Reason.

It must be the Excellence of the Opinionative [which we called before calculative or deliberative], because both Opinion and Practical Wisdom are exercised upon Contingent matter.

It is not simply a state conjoined with Reason, as is proved by the fact that such a state may be forgotten and so lost while Practical Wisdom cannot.

Chapter 6

Knowledge is a conception concerning universals and Necessary matter.

There are First Principles in all trains of demonstrative reasoning.

Demonstrative reasoning leads to all kinds of Knowledge because Knowledge is connected with reasoning.

The faculty which takes in the first principles, of that which comes within Knowledge, is intuition.

The first principles cannot be discovered by:

• Knowledge
  • This is because the object of Knowledge must be derived from demonstrative reasoning.
• Art or Practical Wisdom
  • This is because these are exercised upon Contingent matter only.
• Science which takes in these
  • This is because the Scientific Man must in some cases depend on demonstrative Reasoning.

The faculties that help us attain truth

The faculties of Knowledge, Practical Wisdom, Science, and Intuition are never deceived when dealing with matter Necessary or even Contingent.