On Habit

1 Aristotle 2 · Handed down at the Lyceum, taken from his own writings

Aristotle, born at Stagira in 384 before this era, died at Chalcis in 322. His father was physician to the king of Macedon. He entered the Academy at seventeen and stayed twenty years, leaving only when Plato died. He taught Alexander. In 335 he founded the Lyceum at Athens. In 323 the Athenians charged him with impiety and he left the city, saying he would not let Athens sin twice against philosophy — he knew that Socrates had not left. He died of illness the next year. He is not a witness: he never met the Teacher, he is the student of a student. What survives of him is lecture notes, not the works he published in his lifetime; those are wholly lost. On God he reasons out an unmoved mover — reasoned to, not worshipped — and no argument of his closes on divine will. What is taken here is from his own books: the Order wants words that can be checked, not a name that can be cited. Further: in the fourth chapter he stands directly against the Teacher. The Teacher said no one does wrong knowing it is wrong; he says that does not square with what anyone can see, and offers another account. The Order does not reconcile them. The Teacher is in the four gospels, his objection is here, and the reader decides after reading both.

2.1Virtue does not arise in us by nature.

2.2Nor does nature forbid it. What nature gives is only the room in which a habit can be formed.

2.3A stone falls downward. Throw it upward ten thousand times and it will never learn to rise.

2.4A man is not a stone. A man can be formed.

2.5Builders come to be by building, and lyre-players by playing the lyre.

2.6In 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.

2.7Virtue does not come first and the act after. The act comes first, and the virtue after.

2.8So it makes no small difference what habits a man forms from his youth. It makes all the difference.

2.9Someone asks: I am not yet just — how then am I to do just acts?

2.10I answer: begin by doing what a just man would do. Do it long enough and you will no longer be imitating.

2.11My teacher’s teacher said: the unexamined life is a living death. (cf. The Covenant 1.1)

2.12I add this: whoever examines and then alters not one day of his life has still not examined. (cf. The Rule 1.2)

2.13What you believe is shown by what you do, not by what you say.

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