a USELESS KNOWLEDGE 25 



Oh, I know, he continued, what you are wishing to 

 object. How can aofyia exist without the help of 

 &amp;lt;f&amp;gt;p6wr]&amp;lt;n&amp;lt;; in beings that have to act practically in a social 

 life, seeing that it does not as such concern itself with the 

 means of human happiness ? l I confess to an over 

 statement. It is not quite true that aotyia and (frpovijais 

 have nothing to do with each other. There is a connexion, 

 because practical wisdom has to provide speculative with 

 the material conditions of its exercise. In other words, 

 men are too imperfect to live the divine life of contempla 

 tion wholly and always. They must to some extent busy 

 themselves with the needs of the perishable part of their 

 nature, and the contingencies and changes of the sublunary 

 sphere. And the regulation and satisfaction of such needs, 

 the whole v\rj of things that are capable of being otherwise 

 (ev8%o/j,ev(i)v aA,\o&amp;gt;9 e ^etz/), appertains to practical wisdom. 



Without it, therefore, speculative wisdom could not 

 exist among men, or at least could not be self-supporting. 

 But it does not follow that it thereby becomes dependent 

 on practical wisdom, and still less, derivative from it. 

 Practical wisdom serves speculative like a faithful servant. 

 It is the trusty steward who has so to order the household 

 that its master may have leisure for his holy avocations. 

 It would be truer, therefore, to say that practical wisdom 

 depends on speculative, without which life would lose its 

 savour. But best of all is it to say that the two are 

 essentially distinct and connected only by the bond of an 

 external necessity. 



Having shown thus that practical and theoretical 

 activity (evepyeia) are different in kind, let me explain 

 next why the latter is the better, and the relation between 

 them which I have described is a just one. 



They differ in their psychological character, in their 

 object and in their value. Practical wisdom is the 

 function of a lower and altogether inferior &quot; part of the 

 soul,&quot; of that &quot; passive reason &quot; (vovs TradrjrtKo^ which we 

 put forth only while we deal with a &quot; matter &quot; whose 

 resistance we cannot wholly master. Speculative activity, on 



1 Cp. Eth. Nich. vi. 12, i. 



