Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, written 350 B.C.E, trans. W. D. Ross,      Book II.

1

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both
its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while
moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (ethike) is one that is formed
by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the
moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary
to its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move
upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be
habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to
behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us;
rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later
exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by often seeing or
often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and
did not come to have them by using them); but the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also
happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we
learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so
too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave
acts.

This is confirmed by what happens in states; for legislators make the citizens good by forming
habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their
mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both produced and
destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad
lyre-players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest;
men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so,
there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their
craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our
transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the
presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly.
The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered,
others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate
circumstances. Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the
activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond
to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one
kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the
difference.


5   Next we must consider what virtue is. Since things that are found in the soul are of three
kinds- passions, faculties, states of character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean
appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling, hatred, longing, emulation, pity,
and in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in
virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, e.g. of becoming angry or being pained
or feeling pity; by states of character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with
reference to the passions, e.g. with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or
too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions.

Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad on the
ground of our passions, but are so called on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and because
we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is not
praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way),
but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or blamed.

Again, we feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues are modes of choice or involve
choice. Further, in respect of the passions we are said to be moved, but in respect of the virtues
and the vices we are said not to be moved but to be disposed in a particular way.

For these reasons also they are not faculties; for we are neither called good nor bad, nor praised
nor blamed, for the simple capacity of feeling the passions; again, we have the faculties by
nature, but we are not made good or bad by nature; we have spoken of this before. If, then, the
virtues are neither passions nor faculties, all that remains is that they should be states of
character.

Thus we have stated what virtue is in respect of its genus.

6

But not every action nor every passion admits of a mean; for some have names that already imply
badness, e.g. spite, shamelessness, envy, and in the case of actions adultery, theft, murder; for
all of these and suchlike things imply by their names that they are themselves bad, and not the
excesses or deficiencies of them. It is not possible, then, ever to be right with regard to them;
one must always be wrong. Nor does goodness or badness with regard to such things depend on
committing adultery with the right woman, at the right time, and in the right way, but simply to do
any of them is to go wrong. It would be equally absurd, then, to expect that in unjust, cowardly,
and voluptuous action there should be a mean, an excess, and a deficiency; for at that rate there
would be a mean of excess and of deficiency, an excess of excess, and a deficiency of deficiency.
But as there is no excess and deficiency of temperance and courage because what is intermediate is
in a sense an extreme, so too of the actions we have mentioned there is no mean nor any excess and
deficiency, but however they are done they are wrong; for in general there is neither a mean of
excess and deficiency, nor excess and deficiency of a mean.