The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

contriving
and considering how something may come into being which is capable
of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and
not in the thing made; for art is concerned neither with things
that are, or come into being, by necessity, nor with things that do
so in accordance with nature (since these have their origin in
themselves). Making and acting being different, art must be a
matter of making, not of acting. And in a sense chance and art are
concerned with the same objects; as Agathon says, ‘art loves chance
and chance loves art’. Art, then, as has been is a state concerned
with making, involving a true course of reasoning, and lack of art
on the contrary is a state concerned with making, involving a false
course of reasoning; both are concerned with the variable.
<
    div class="section" title="5">
5
    Regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by
considering who are the persons we credit with it. Now it is
thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to
deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not
in some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce
to health or to strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to
the good life in general. This is shown by the fact that we credit
men with practical wisdom in some particular respect when they have
calculated well with a view to some good end which is one of those
that are not the object of any art. It follows that in the general
sense also the man who is capable of deliberating has practical
wisdom. Now no one deliberates about things that are invariable,
nor about things that it is impossible for him to do. Therefore,
since scientific knowledge involves demonstration, but there is no
demonstration of things whose first principles are variable (for
all such things might actually be otherwise), and since it is
impossible to deliberate about things that are of necessity,
practical wisdom cannot be scientific knowledge nor art; not
science because that which can be done is capable of being
otherwise, not art because action and making are different kinds of
thing. The remaining alternative, then, is that it is a true and
reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that
are good or bad for man. For while making has an end other than
itself, action cannot; for good action itself is its end. It is for
this reason that we think Pericles and men like him have practical
wisdom, viz. because they can see what is good for themselves and
what is good for men in general; we consider that those can do this
who are good at managing households or states. (This is why we call
temperance (sophrosune) by this name; we imply that it preserves
one’s practical wisdom (sozousa tan phronsin). Now what it
preserves is a judgement of the kind we have described. For it is
not any and every judgement that pleasant and painful objects
destroy and pervert, e.g. the judgement that the triangle has or
has not its angles equal to two right angles, but only judgements
about what is to be done. For the originating causes of the things
that are done consist in the end at which they are aimed; but the
man who has been ruined by pleasure or pain forthwith fails to see
any such originating cause-to see that for the sake of this or
because of this he ought to choose and do whatever he chooses and
does; for vice is destructive of the originating cause of action.)
Practical wisdom, then, must be a reasoned and true state of
capacity to act with regard to human goods. But further, while
there is such a thing as excellence in art, there is no such thing
as excellence in practical wisdom; and in art he who errs willingly
is preferable, but in practical wisdom, as in the virtues, he is
the reverse. Plainly, then, practical wisdom is a virtue and not an
art. There being two parts of the soul that can follow a course of
reasoning, it must be the virtue of one of the two, i.e. of that
part which forms opinions; for opinion is about the variable and so
is practical wisdom. But yet it is not only a reasoned state; this
is shown by the fact that a state of that sort may forgotten but
practical wisdom cannot.
<
    div class="section" title="6">
6
    Scientific knowledge is judgement about things that are
universal and necessary, and the conclusions of demonstration, and
all scientific knowledge, follow from first principles (for
scientific knowledge involves apprehension of a rational ground).
This being so, the first