The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

the
former asserts. Now this kind of intellect and of truth is
practical; of the intellect which is contemplative, not practical
nor productive, the good and the bad state are truth and falsity
respectively (for this is the work of everything intellectual);
while of the part which is practical and intellectual the good
state is truth in agreement with right desire.
    The origin of action-its efficient, not its final cause-is
choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to
an end. This is why choice cannot exist either without reason and
intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its
opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and
character. Intellect itself, however, moves nothing, but only the
intellect which aims at an end and is practical; for this rules the
productive intellect, as well, since every one who makes makes for
an end, and that which is made is not an end in the unqualified
sense (but only an end in a particular relation, and the end of a
particular operation)-only that which is done is that; for good
action is an end, and desire aims at this. Hence choice is either
desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire, and such an origin of
action is a man. (It is to be noted that nothing that is past is an
object of choice, e.g. no one chooses to have sacked Troy; for no
one deliberates about the past, but about what is future and
capable of being otherwise, while what is past is not capable of
not having taken place; hence Agathon is right in saying
For this alone is lacking even to God,
To make undone things thathave once been done.)
    The work of both the intellectual parts, then, is truth.
Therefore the states that are most strictly those in respect of
which each of these parts will reach truth are the virtues of the
two parts.
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3
    Let us begin, then, from the beginning, and discuss these states
once more. Let it be assumed that the states by virtue of which the
soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial are five in
number, i.e. art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom,
philosophic wisdom, intuitive reason; we do not include judgement
and opinion because in these we may be mistaken.
    Now what scientific knowledge is, if we are to speak exactly and
not follow mere similarities, is plain from what follows. We all
suppose that what we know is not even capable of being otherwise;
of things capable of being otherwise we do not know, when they have
passed outside our observation, whether they exist or not.
Therefore the object of scientific knowledge is of necessity.
Therefore it is eternal; for things that are of necessity in the
unqualified sense are all eternal; and things that are eternal are
ungenerated and imperishable. Again, every science is thought to be
capable of being taught, and its object of being learned. And all
teaching starts from what is already known, as we maintain in the
Analytics also; for it proceeds sometimes through induction and
sometimes by syllogism. Now induction is the starting-point which
knowledge even of the universal presupposes, while syllogism
proceeds from universals. There are therefore starting-points from
which syllogism proceeds, which are not reached by syllogism; it is
therefore by induction that they are acquired. Scientific knowledge
is, then, a state of capacity to demonstrate, and has the other
limiting characteristics which we specify in the Analytics, for it
is when a man believes in a certain way and the starting-points are
known to him that he has scientific knowledge, since if they are
not better known to him than the conclusion, he will have his
knowledge only incidentally.
    Let this, then, be taken as our account of scientific
knowledge.
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4
    In the variable are included both things made and things done;
making and acting are different (for their nature we treat even the
discussions outside our school as reliable); so that the reasoned
state of capacity to act is different from the reasoned state of
capacity to make. Hence too they are not included one in the other;
for neither is acting making nor is making acting. Now since
architecture is an art and is essentially a reasoned state of
capacity to make, and there is neither any art that is not such a
state nor any such state that is not an art, art is identical with
a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning.
All art is concerned with coming into being, i.e. with