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

With regard to pleasantness in the other affairs of life, he who makes himself properly pleasant may I e called friendly, and his moderation friendliness ; he that exceeds may be called obsequious if he have no ulterior motive, but a flatterer if he has an eye to his own advantage ; he that is deficient in this respect, and always makes himself disagreeable, may be called a quarrelsome or peevish fellow.

Moreover, in mere emotions * and in our conduct with regard to them, there are ways of observing the

* i.e. which do not issue in act like those hitherto mentioned.

p. 52

mean; for instance, shame (aiSwc), is not a virtue, but yet the modest (aldijfxwv) man is praised. For in these matters also we speak of this man as observing the mean, of that man as going beyond it (as the shame-faced man whom the least thing makes shy), while he who is deficient in the feeling, or lacks it altogether, is called shameless ; but the term modest (atS^jitwv) is applied to him who observes the mean.

Righteous indignation, again, hits the mean between envy and malevolence. These have to do with feelings of pleasure and pain at what happens to our neighbours. A man is called righteously indignant when he feels pain at the sight of undeserved prosperity, but your envious man goes beyond him and is pained by the sight of any one in prosperity, while the malevolent man is so far from being pained that he actually exults in the sight of prosperous iniquity.

But we shall have another opportunity of discussing these matters.

As for justice, the term is used in more senses than one ; we will, therefore, after disposing of the above questions, distinguish these various senses, and show how each of these kinds of justice is a kind of moderation.

And then we will treat of the intellectual virtues
in the same way.
The two 8. There are, as we said, three classes of disposition,

vicious . 1 ' 1 r- '

extremes are VIZ. two kiuds 01 vicc. One marked by excess, the opposed to .-I -, -. ^ . , one another other by denciencv, and one kind of virtue, the oband to the f ^ intermediate servaucc of the mean.

virtue.

JNow, the extreme dispositions are opposed both

I

7, 15-8, 5.] MORAL VIRTUE. 53

to the mean or moderate disposition and to one another, while the moderate disposition is opposed to both the extremes. Just as a quantity which is equal to a given quantity is also greater when compared with a less, and less when compared with a greater quantity, so the mean or moderate dispositions exceed as compared with the defective dispositions, and fall short as compared with the excessive dispositions, both in feeling and in. action ; e.g. the courageous man seems foolhardy as compared with the coward, and cowardly as compared with the foolhardy; and similarly the temperate man appears profligate in comparison with the insensible, and insensible in comparison with the profligate man ; and the liberal man appears prodigal by the side of the illiberal man, and illiberal by the side of the prodigal man.

And so the extreme characters try to displace the mean or moderate character, and each represents him as falling into the opposite extreme, the coward calling the courageous man foolhardy, the foolhardy calling him coward, and so on in other cases.

But while the mean and the extremes are thus opposed to one another, the extremes are still more contrary to each other than to the mean ; for they are further removed from one another than from the mean, as that which is greater than a given magnitude is further from that which is less, and that which is less is further from that which is greater, than either the greater or the less is from that which is equal to the given magnitude.