Section 1: All human activities aim at some good, and some goods subordinate to others

Every skill and every inquiry, and likewise _[1094a1] every action and pursuit, seems to aim at some good. That’s why the good has rightly been called “that at which all things aim.”

But it seems there are two different kinds of goals people have. Some of our goals are activities, while others are products separate from the activities that produce them. _[5] Where the goals we have are products separate from the actions that bring them about, the product is by nature more important than the activities that produce them.

Now, since there are many actions, skills, and disciplines, these have many goals; for example, the goal of medicine is health, the goal of shipbuilding is a ship, the goal of strategizing is victory, the goal of household management is wealth.

But where skills fall under one ability–for example, as _[15] bridle-making and the other skills concerned with the equipment of military horses fall under the skill of horse riding, and this and every military action under the art of military strategy, in the same way other skills fall under yet others–in all of these the goals of the master skills are to be preferred to all the subordinate goals; _[15] for it is for the sake of the former that the latter are pursued. It makes no difference whether the activities themselves are the goals of the actions, or something else apart from the activities, as in the case of the disciplines just mentioned.