Aristotle settles the point by distinguishing, in this case as in others, between what bears a given character simply and absolutely, and what bears the same character relatively to this or that individual.  The object of Wish, simply, truly, and absolutely, is the Good; while the object of Wish, to any given individual, is what appears Good to him.  But by the Absolute here, Aristotle explains that he means what appears good to the virtuous and intelligent man; who is is declared, here as elsewhere, to be the infallible standard; while most men, misled by pleasure, choose what is not truly good.  In like manner, Aristotle affirms, that those substances are truly and absolutely wholesome, which are wholesome to the healthy and well-constituted man; other substances may be wholesome to the sick or degenerate.  Aristotle’s Absolute is thus a Relative with its correlate chosen or imagined by himself.

He then proceeds to maintain that virtue and vice are voluntary, and in our own power.  The arguments are these. (1) If it be in our power to act right, the contrary is equally in our own power; hence vice is as much voluntary as virtue. (2) Man must be admitted to be the origin of his own actions. (3) Legislators and others punish men for wickedness, and confer honour on good actions; even culpable ignorance and negligence are punished. (4) Our character itself, or our fixed acquirements, are in our power, being produced by our successive acts; men become intemperate, by acts of drunkenness. (5) Not only the defects of the mind, but the infirmities of the body also, are blamed, when arising through our own neglect and want of training. (6) Even if it should be said that all men aim at the apparent good, but cannot control their mode of conceiving [Greek:  phantasia] the end; still each person, being by his acts the cause of his own fixed acquirements, must be to a certain extent the cause of his own conceptions.  On this head, too, Aristotle repeats the clenching argument, that the supposed imbecility of conceiving would apply alike to virtue and to vice; so that if virtuous action be regarded as voluntary, vicious action must be so regarded likewise.  It must be remembered that a man’s fixed acquirements or habits are not in his own power, in the same sense and degree in which his separate acts are in his own power.  Each act, from first to last, is alike in his power; but in regard to the habit, it is only the initiation thereof that is thoroughly in his power; the habit, like a distemper, is taken on by imperceptible steps in advance (V.).

In the foregoing account of the Ethical questions connected with the Will, Aristotle is happily unembroiled with the modern controversy.  The mal-apropos of ‘Freedom’ had not been applied to voluntary action.  Accordingly, he treats the whole question from the inductive side, distinguishing the cases where people are praised or blamed for their conduct, from those where praise and blame are inapplicable as being powerless.  It would have been well if the method had never been departed from; a sound Psychology would have improved the induction, but would never have introduced any question except as to the relative strength of the different feelings operating as motives to voluntary conduct.