What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance
are in desire; so that since moral virtue is a state of character
concerned with choice, and choice is deliberate desire, therefore both
the reasoning must be true and the desire right, if the choice is to
be good, and the latter must pursue just what 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.
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