(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.