higher ideal--that of a life not distinctively human or in a narrow
sense practical, yet capable of being participated in by man even under
the actual circumstances of this world. For a time, however, this
further and higher ideal is ignored.

The next book (Book VII.), is concerned partly with moral conditions, in
which the agent seems to rise above the level of moral virtue or fall
below that of moral vice, but partly and more largely with conditions in
which the agent occupies a middle position between the two. Aristotle's
attention is here directed chiefly towards the phenomena of
"Incontinence," weakness of will or imperfect self-control. This
condition was to the Greeks a matter of only too frequent experience,
but it appeared to them peculiarly difficult to understand. How can a
man know what is good or best for him, and yet chronically fail to act
upon his knowledge? Socrates was driven to the paradox of denying the
possibility, but the facts are too strong for him. Knowledge of the
right rule may be present, nay the rightfulness of its authority may be
acknowledged, and yet time after time it may be disobeyed; the will may
be good and yet overmastered by the force of desire, so that the act
done is contrary to the agent's will. Nevertheless the act may be the
agent's, and the will therefore divided against itself. Aristotle is
aware of the seriousness and difficulty of the problem, but in spite of
the vividness with which he pictures, and the acuteness with which he
analyses, the situation in which such action occurs, it cannot be said
that he solves the problem. It is time that he rises above the abstract
view of it as a conflict between reason and passion, recognising that
passion is involved in the knowledge which in conduct prevails or is
overborne, and that the force which leads to the wrong act is not blind
or ignorant passion, but always has some reason in it. But he tends to
lapse back into the abstraction, and his final account is perplexed and