The Book of Aristotle 1 · Handed down at the Lyceum, taken from his own writings
He is not a witness. He never saw the Teacher; he was the student of a student. This book does not record his life, only what he wrote in his own books — the Order wants words that can be checked, not a name that can be quoted.
1.1Virtue does not arise in us by nature.
1.2Nor does nature forbid it. What nature gives is only the room in which a habit can be formed.
1.3A stone falls downward. Throw it upward ten thousand times and it will never learn to rise.
1.4A man is not a stone. A man can be formed.
1.5Builders come to be by building, and lyre-players by playing the lyre.
1.6In the same way the just man comes to be by doing just acts, the temperate by doing temperate acts, the brave by doing brave acts.
1.7Virtue does not come first and the act after. The act comes first, and the virtue after.
1.8So it makes no small difference what habits a man forms from his youth. It makes all the difference.
1.9Someone asks: I am not yet just — how then am I to do just acts?
1.10I answer: begin by doing what a just man would do. Do it long enough and you will no longer be imitating.
1.11My teacher’s teacher said: the unexamined life is a living death. (cf. The Covenant 1.1)
1.12I add this: whoever examines and then alters not one day of his life has still not examined. (cf. The Rule 1.2)
1.13What you believe is shown by what you do, not by what you say.