The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

First of all, then, we must observe that, in matters of this sort, to fall short and to exceed ai'e alike fataL This is plain (to illustrate what we cannot see by what we can see) in the case of strength and health. Too much and too little exercise alike destroy strength, and to take too much meat and drink, or to take too little, is equally ruinous to health, but the fitting amount produces and increases and preserves them. Just so, then, is it with temperance also, and courage, and the other virtues. The man who shuns and fears everything and never makes a stand, becomes a coward; while the man who fears nothing at all, but will face anything, becomes foolhardy. So, too, the man who takes his fill of any kind of pleasure, and abstains from none, is a profligate, but the man who shuns all (like him whom we call a " boor ") is devoid of sensibility.* For temperance and coinagep. 38 are destroyed botli by excess and defect, but preserved by nioderation.

* These two, the " boor " (aypolKos) and he who lacks sensibility {avaiaOriTos), are afterwards distinguished : cf. U. 7, 3 and 13.

But habits or types of character are not only pro- 8 duced and preserved and destroyed by the same occasions and the same means, but they also manifest themselves in the same circumstances. This is the case with palpable things like strength. Strength is produced by taking plenty of nourishment and doing plenty of hard work, and the strong man, in turn, has the greatest capacity for these. And the case is the 9 same with the virtues : by abstaining from pleasure we become temperate, and when we have become temperate we are best able to abstain. And so with courage : by habituating ourselves to despise danger, and to face it, we become courageous ; and when we have become courageous, we are best able to face danger. Virtue is in 3. The pleasure or pain that accompanies the acts l ^wncermd^^ must bc taken as a test of the formed habit or character. lure and Hc who abstains from the pleasures of the body and rejoices in the abstinence is temperate, while he who is vexed at having to abstain is profligate ; and again, he who faces danger with pleasure, or, at any rate, without pain, is courageous, but he to whom this is painful is a coward.

For moral virtue or excellence is closely concerned with pleasure and pain. It is pleasure that moves us to do what is base, and pain that moves us to refrain from what is noble. And therefore, as 2 Plato says, man needs to be so trained from his youth up as to find pleasure and pain in the right objects. This is what sound education means.

2, 8-3, 7.] MORAL VIRTUE. 39

Another reason why virtue has to do with pleasure and pain, is that it has to do with actions and passions or affections ; but every affection and every act is accompanied by pleasure or pain.

The fact is further attested by the employment of pleasure and pain in con-ection ; they have a kind of curative property, and a cure is effected by administering the opposite of the disease.

"^igain, as we said before, every type of character [or habit or formed faculty] is essentially relative to, and concerned with, those things that form it for good or for ill ; but it is through pleasure and pain that bad characters are f<^»rmed — that is to say, through pursuing and avoiding the wrong pleasures and pains, or pursuing and avoiding them at the wrong time, or in the wrong manner, or in any other of the various ways of going wrong that may be distinguished.

And hence some people go so far as to define the virtues as a kind of impassive or neutral state of mind. But they err in stating this absolutely, instead of qualifying it by the addition of the right and wrong manner, time, etc.

We may lay down, therefore, that this kind of excellence [i.e. moral excellence] makes us do what is best in matters of pleasure and pain, while vice or badness has the contrary effect.

The following considerations wUl throw additional light on the point.