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

p. 88

Being driven to face danger by pain or rage, then, 12 is not courage proper. However, this kind of courage, whose impulse is rage, seems to be the most natural, and, when deliberate purpose and the right motive are added to it, to become real courage.

Again, anger is a painful state, the act of revenge is pleasant ; but those who fight from these motives [i.e. to avoid the pain or gain the pleasure] may fight well, but are not courageous : for they do not act because it is noble to act so, or as reason bids, but are driven by their passions; though they bear some resemblance to the courageous man.

Fourthly, the sanguine man is not properly called 13 courageous : he is confident in danger because he has often won and has defeated many adversaries. The two resemble one another, since both are confident ; but whereas the courageous man is confident for the reasons specified above, the sanguine man is confident because he thinks he is superior and will win without receiving a scratch. (People behave in the same sort 14 of way when they get drunk ; for then they become sanguine.) But when he finds that this is not the case, he runs away ; while it is the character of the courageous man, as we saw, to face that which is terrible to a man even when he sees the danger, because it is noble to do so and base not to do so.

And so (it is thought) it needs greater courage to 15 be fearless and cool in sudden danger than in danger that has been foreseen; for behaviour in the former case is more directly the outcome of formed character, or, in other words, is less dependent on preparation. When we see what is coming we may choose to meetp. 89 it, as the result of calculation and reasoning, but when it comes upon us suddenly, we must choose according to our character.

Fifthly, those who are unaware of their danger sometimes appear to be courageous, and in fact are not very far removed from the sanguine persons we last spoke of, only they are inferior in that they have not necessarily any opinion of themselves, which the sanguine must have. And so whUe the latter hold their ground for some time, the former, whose courage was due to a false belief, run away the moment they perceive or suspect that the case is different ; as the Argives did when they engaged the Spartans under the idea that they were Sicyonians.*

Thus we have described the character of the courageous man, and of those who are taken for courageous.

But there is another point to notice.

9. Courage is concerned, as we said, with feelings sow etmrage both of confidence and of fear, yet it is not equally pain and concerned with both, but more with occasions of fear : it is the man who is cool and behaves as he ought on such occasions that is called courageous, rather than he who behaves thus on occasions that inspire confidence.

And so, as we said, men are called courageous for enduring painful things.

Courage, therefore, brings pain, and is justly praised; for it is harder to endure what is painful than to abstain from what is pleasant.

I do not, of course, mean to say that the end of * The incident is narrated by Xenophon, Hell., iv. 10.

90 NIOOMACHEAN ETHICS OF AEISTOTLE. [Bk. III.

courage is not pleasant, but that it seems to be hidden from view by the attendant circumstances, as is the case in gymnastic contests also. Boxers, for instance, have a pleasant end in view, that for which they strive, the crown and the honours; but the blows they receive are grievous to flesh and blood, and painful, and so are all the labours they undergo ; and as the latter are many, while the end is small, the pleasantness of the end is hardly apparent.

If, then, the case of courage is analogous, death and wounds will be painful to the courageous man and against his will, but he endures them because it is noble to do so or base not to do so.

And the more he is endowed with every virtue, and the happier he is, the more grievous will death be to him ; for life is more worth living to a man of his sort than to any one else, and he deprives himself knowingly of the very best things ; and it is painful to do that. But he is no less courageous because he 5 feels this pain; nay, we may say he is even more courageous, because in spite of it he chooses noble conduct in battle in preference to those good things.