Aristotle sorts what is in the soul into emotions, capacities and settled states, and rules virtue out of the second class because "nature gives us our powers or faculties, she does not" make us good or bad. Peters names the third class with a fixed doublet, habit or trained faculty, and asks "what species of trained faculty" virtue is. The genus reuses the word for the class just excluded, so the distinction the argument turns on, that a virtue is not a capacity but a settled condition of one, rests on the adjective trained. Peters knew the cost: in Book X he notes that no one English word covers the Greek hexis. The doublet buys consistency; friendship and shame are later tested against the same phrase.
The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)
Open to all
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
page 20
The translator’s English as printed (F. H. Peters). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
But most men, instead of doing thus, fly to 6 theories, and fancy that they are philosophizing and that this will make them good, like a sick man who listens attentively to what the doctor says and then disobeys all his orders. This sort of philosophizing will no more produce a healthy habit of mind than this sort of treatment will produce a healthy habit of body.
5. We have next to inquire what excellence or l virtue is.
Everything psychical is either (1) a passion or emotion, or (2) a power or faculty, or (3) a habit or trained faculty ; and so virtue must be one of these three. By (1) a passion or emotion we mean appetite, 2 anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, love, hate, longing, emulation, pity, or generally that which is accompanied by pleasure or pain ; (2) a power or faculty is that in respect of which we are said to be capable of being affected in any of these ways, as, for instance, that in respect of which we are able to be angered or pained or to pity; and (3) a habit or trained faculty is that in respect of which we are well or ill regulated or disposed in the matter of our affections ; as, for instance, in the matter of being angered, we are illp. 43 regulated if we are too violent or too slack, but if we are moderate in our anger we are well regulated. And so with the rest.
3 Now, the vii-tues are not emotions, nor are the vices — (1) because we are not called good or bad in respect of ovir eihotions, but are called so in respect of our virtues or vices ; (2) because we are neither praised nor blamed in respect of our emotions (a man is not praised for being afraid or angry, nor blamed for being angry simply, but for being angry in a particular way), but we are praised or blamed in re-
^ spect of our virtues or vices ; (3) because we may be " angered or frightened without deliberate choice, but the virtues are a kind of deliberate choice, or at least are impossible without it ; and (4) because in respect of our emotions we are said to be moved, but in respect of our virtues and vices we are not said to be moved, but to be regulated or disposed in this way or in that.
5 For these same reasons also they are not powers or faculties ; for we are not called either good or bad for being merely capable of emotion, nor are we either praised or blamed for this. And further, while nature gives us our powers or faculties, she does not make us either good or bad. (This point, however, we have already treated.)
6 If, then, the virtues be neither emotions nor faculties, it only remains for them to be habits or trained faculties.
1 6. We have thus found the genus to which virtue „,>., j^ belongs ; but we want to know, not only that it is a '^h^lifg the trained faculty, but also what species of trained faculty '"*""' it is.
p. 44
We may safely assert that the virtue or excellence of a thing causes that thing both to be itself in good condition and to perform its function well. The excellence of the eye, for instance, makes both the eye and its work good ; for it is by the excellence of the eye that we see well. So the proper excellence of the horse makes a horse what he should be, and makes him good at running, and carrying his rid^er, and standing a charge.
If, then, this holds good in all cases, the proper excellence or virtue of man will be a habit or trained faculty that makes a man good and makes him perform his function well.
How this is to be done we have already said, but 4 we may exhibit the same conclusion in another way, by inquiring what the nature of this virtue is.
Now, if we have any quantity, whether continuous or discrete,* it is possible to take either a larger (or too large), or a smaller (or too small), or an equal (or fair) amount, and that either absolutely or relatively to our own needs.
By an equal or fair amount I understand a mean amount, or one that lies between excess and deficiency.
By the absolute mean, or mean relatively to the 5 thing itself, I understand that which is equidistant from both extremes, and this is one and the same for all.
By the mean relatively to us I understand that
* A line (or a generous emotion) is a " continuous quantity ; " yon can part it where you please : a rouleau of sovereigns is a "discrete quantity," made up of definite parts, and primarily separable into them.