The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

as twelve, while
other peoples count more stars in both. Nay they even say that X,
Ps and Z are concords and that because there are three concords,
the double consonants also are three. They quite neglect the fact
that there might be a thousand such letters; for one symbol might
be assigned to GP. But if they say that each of these three is
equal to two of the other letters, and no other is so, and if the
cause is that there are three parts of the mouth and one letter is
in each applied to sigma, it is for this reason that there are only
three, not because the concords are three; since as a matter of
fact the concords are more than three, but of double consonants
there cannot be more.
    These people are like the old-fashioned Homeric scholars, who
see small resemblances but neglect great ones. Some say that there
are many such cases, e.g. that the middle strings are represented
by nine and eight, and that the epic verse has seventeen syllables,
which is equal in number to the two strings, and that the scansion
is, in the right half of the line nine syllables, and in the left
eight. And they say that the distance in the letters from alpha to
omega is equal to that from the lowest note of the flute to the
highest, and that the number of this note is equal to that of the
whole choir of heaven. It may be suspected that no one could find
difficulty either in stating such analogies or in finding them in
eternal things, since they can be found even in perishable
things.
    But the lauded characteristics of numbers, and the contraries of
these, and generally the mathematical relations, as some describe
them, making them causes of nature, seem, when we inspect them in
this way, to vanish; for none of them is a cause in any of the
senses that have been distinguished in reference to the first
principles. In a sense, however, they make it plain that goodness
belongs to numbers, and that the odd, the straight, the square, the
potencies of certain numbers, are in the column of the beautiful.
For the seasons and a particular kind of number go together; and
the other agreements that they collect from the theorems of
mathematics all have this meaning. Hence they are like
coincidences. For they are accidents, but the things that agree are
all appropriate to one another, and one by analogy. For in each
category of being an analogous term is found-as the straight is in
length, so is the level in surface, perhaps the odd in number, and
the white in colour.
    Again, it is not the ideal numbers that are the causes of
musical phenomena and the like (for equal ideal numbers differ from
one another in form; for even the units do); so that we need not
assume Ideas for this reason at least.
    These, then, are the results of the theory, and yet more might
be brought together. The fact that our opponnts have much trouble
with the generation of numbers and can in no way make a system of
them, seems to indicate that the objects of mathematics are not
separable from sensible things, as some say, and that they are not
the first principles.

Part 6
Ethics and Politics

Nicomachean Ethics, Book I
    Translated by W. D. Ross
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1
    Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and
pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the
good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
But a certain difference is found among ends; some are activities,
others are products apart from the activities that produce them.
Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of
the products to be better than the activities. Now, as there are
many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end
of the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that
of strategy victory, that of economics wealth. But where such arts
fall under a single capacity—as bridle-making and the other arts
concerned with the equipment of horses fall under the art of
riding, and this and every military action under strategy, in the
same way other arts fall under yet others—in all of these the ends
of the master arts are to be preferred to all the subordinate ends;
for it is for the sake of the former that the latter are pursued.
It makes no difference whether the activities themselves are the
ends of the actions, or something else apart from the activities,
as in the case of the sciences just mentioned.
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2
    If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we