Morgan, Classics of Moral and Political Theory, fifth edition

BOOK I

Every craft and every line of inquiry, and likewise [1094a] every action and decision, seems to seek some good; that is why some people were right to describe the good as what everything seeks. But the ends [that are sought] appear to differ; some are activities, and others [5] are products apart from the activities. Wherever there are ends apart from the actions, the products are by nature better than the activities.

Since there are many actions, crafts, and sciences, the ends turn out to be many as well; for health is the end of medicine, a boat of boat building, victory of generalship, and wealth of household management. But some of these pursuits are subordinate to [10] some one capacity; for instance, bridle making and every other science producing equipment for horses are subordinate to horsemanship, while this and every action in warfare are, in turn, subordinate to generalship, and in the same way other pursuits are subordinate to further ones. In all such cases, then, the ends of the ruling sciences are more choiceworthy than [15] all the ends subordinate to them, since the lower ends are also pursued for the sake of the higher. Here it does not matter whether the ends of the actions are the activities themselves, or something apart from them, as in the sciences we have mentioned.

Suppose, then, that the things achievable by action have some end that we wish for because of itself, and because of which we wish for the other things, and that we do not choose everything because of something [20] else—for if we do, it will go on without limit, so that desire will prove to be empty and futile. Clearly, this end will be the good, that is to say, the best good.

Then surely knowledge of this good also carries great weight for [determining the best] way of life; if we know it, we are more likely, like archers who have a target to aim at, to hit the right mark. If so, we [25] should try to grasp, in outline at any rate, what the good is, and which is its proper science or capacity.

It seems proper to the most controlling science—the highest ruling science. And this appears characteristic of political science. For it is the one that prescribes which of the sciences ought to be studied in cities, and which ones each class in the city should [1094b] learn, and how far; indeed we see that even the most honored capacities—generalship, household management, and rhetoric, for instance—are subordinate to it. And since it uses the other sciences concerned [5] with action, and moreover legislates what must be done and what avoided, its end will include the ends of the other sciences, and so this will be the human good. For even if the good is the same for a city as for an individual, still the good of the city is apparently a greater and more complete good to acquire and preserve. For while it is satisfactory to acquire and preserve the good even for an individual, it is finer [10] and more divine to acquire and preserve it for a people and for cities. And so, since our line of inquiry seeks these [goods, for an individual and for a community], it is a sort of political science.

Our discussion will be adequate if we make things perspicuous enough to accord with the subject matter; for we would not seek the same degree of exactness in all sorts of arguments alike, any more than in the products of different crafts. Now, fine and just things, [15] which political science examines, differ and vary so much as to seem to rest on convention only, not on nature. But [this is not a good reason, since] goods also vary in the same way, because they result in harm to many people—for some have been destroyed because of their wealth, others because of their bravery. And so, since this is our subject and these are [20] our premises, we shall be satisfied to indicate the truth roughly and in outline; since our subject and our premises are things that hold good usually [but not universally], we shall be satisfied to draw conclusions of the same sort.

Each of our claims, then, ought to be accepted in the same way [as claiming to hold good usually]. For the educated person seeks exactness in each area to the extent that the nature of the subject allows; for [25] apparently it is just as mistaken to demand demonstrations from a rhetorician as to accept [merely] persuasive arguments from a mathematician. Further, each person judges rightly what he knows, and is a good [1095a] judge about that; hence the good judge in a given area is the person educated in that area, and the unqualifiedly good judge is the person educated in every area.

This is why a youth is not a suitable student of political science; for he lacks experience of the actions in life, which are the subject and premises of our arguments. Moreover, since he tends to follow his feelings, his study will be futile and useless; for the [5] end [of political science] is action, not knowledge. It does not matter whether he is young in years or immature in character, since the deficiency does not depend on age, but results from following his feelings in his life and in a given pursuit; for an immature person, like an incontinent person, gets no benefit from his knowledge. But for those who accord with reason in forming their desires and in their actions, [10] knowledge of political science will be of great benefit.

These are the preliminary points about the student, about the way our claims are to be accepted, and about what we propose to do.

Let us, then, begin again. Since every sort of knowledge and decision pursues some good, what is the good that we say political science seeks? What, [in [15] other words,] is the highest of all the goods achievable in action?

As far as its name goes, most people virtually agree; for both the many and the cultivated call it happiness, and they suppose that living well and doing well are the same as being happy. But they disagree about [20] what happiness is, and the many do not give the same answer as the wise.

For the many think it is something obvious and evident—for instance, pleasure, wealth, or honor. Some take it to be one thing, others another. Indeed, the same person often changes his mind; for when he has fallen ill, he thinks happiness is health, and when he has fallen into poverty, he thinks it is wealth. And when they are conscious of their own ignorance, they admire anyone who speaks of something grand [25] and above their heads. [Among the wise,] however, some used to think that besides these many goods there is some other good that exists in its own right and that causes all these goods to be goods.

Presumably, then, it is rather futile to examine all these beliefs, and it is enough to examine those that are most current or seem to have some argument [30] for them.

We must notice, however, the difference between arguments from principles and arguments toward principles. For indeed Plato was right to be puzzled about this, when he used to ask if [the argument] set out from the principles or led toward them—just as [1095b] on a race course the path may go from the starting line to the far end, or back again. For we should certainly begin from things known, but things are known in two ways; for some are known to us, some known without qualification. Presumably, then, we ought to begin from things known to us.

That is why we need to have been brought up in [5] fine habits if we are to be adequate students of fine and just things, and of political questions generally. For we begin from the [belief] that [something is true]; if this is apparent enough to us, we can begin without also [knowing] why [it is true]. Someone who is well brought up has the beginnings, or can easily acquire them. Someone who neither has them nor can acquire them should listen to Hesiod:¹ ‘He who [10] grasps everything himself is best of all; he is noble also who listens to one who has spoken well; but he who neither grasps it himself nor takes to heart what he hears from another is a useless man.’

But let us begin again from the point from which we digressed. For, it would seem, people quite reasonably reach their conception of the good, i.e., of happiness, [15] from the lives [they lead]; for there are roughly three most favored lives: the lives of gratification, of political activity, and, third, of study.

The many, the most vulgar, would seem to conceive the good and happiness as pleasure, and hence they also like the life of gratification. In this they appear completely slavish, since the life they decide [20] on is a life for grazing animals. Still, they have some argument in their defense, since many in positions of power feel as Sardanapallus² felt, [and also choose this life].

The cultivated people, those active [in politics], conceive the good as honor, since this is more or less the end [normally pursued] in the political life. This, however, appears to be too superficial to be what we are seeking; for it seems to depend more on those [25] who honor than on the one honored, whereas we intuitively believe that the good is something of our own and hard to take from us. Further, it would seem, they pursue honor to convince themselves that they are good; at any rate, they seek to be honored by prudent people, among people who know them, and for virtue. It is clear, then, that—in their view at any [30] rate—virtue is superior [to honor].

Perhaps, indeed, one might conceive virtue more than honor to be the end of the political life. However, this also is apparently too incomplete [to be the good]. For it seems possible for someone to possess virtue but be asleep or inactive throughout his life, and, [1096a] moreover, to suffer the worst evils and misfortunes. If this is the sort of life he leads, no one would count him happy, except to defend a philosopher’s paradox. Enough about this, since it has been adequately discussed in the popular works as well.

The third life is the life of study, which we shall [5] examine in what follows.

The moneymaker’s life is in a way forced on him [not chosen for itself]; and clearly wealth is not the good we are seeking, since it is [merely] useful, [choiceworthy only] for some other end. Hence one would be more inclined to suppose that [any of] the goods mentioned earlier is the end, since they are liked for themselves. But apparently they are not [the end] either; and many arguments have been presented [10] against them. Let us, then, dismiss them.

Presumably, though, we had better examine the universal good, and puzzle out what is meant in speaking of it. This sort of inquiry is, to be sure, unwelcome to us, because those who introduced the Forms were friends of ours; still, it presumably seems better, indeed [15] only right, to destroy even what is close to us if that is the way to preserve truth. We must especially do this as philosophers, [lovers of wisdom]; for though we love both the truth and our friends, reverence is due to the truth first.

Those who introduced this view did not mean to produce an Idea for any [series] in which they spoke of prior and posterior [members]; that was why they did not mean to establish an Idea [of number] for [the series of] numbers. But the good is spoken of [20] both in what-it-is [that is, substance], and in quality and relative; and what exists in its own right, that is, substance, is by nature prior to the relative, since a relative would seem to be an appendage and coincident of being. And so there is no common Idea over these.

Further, good is spoken of in as many ways as being [is spoken of]: in what-it-is, as god and mind; in quality, as the virtues; in quantity, as the measured [25] amount; in relative, as the useful; in time, as the opportune moment; in place, as the [right] situation; and so on. Hence it is clear that the good cannot be some common and single universal; for if it were, it would be spoken of in only one [of the types of] predication, not in them all.

Further, if a number of things have a single Idea, [30] there is also a single science of them; hence [if there were an Idea of good] there would also be some single science of all goods. But, in fact, there are many sciences even of the goods under one [type of] predication; for the science of the opportune moment, for instance, in war is generalship, in disease medicine. And similarly the science of the measured amount in food is medicine, in exertion gymnastics. [Hence there is no single science of the good, and so no Idea.]

One might be puzzled about what [the believers [35] in Ideas] really mean in speaking of the So-and-So Itself, since Man Itself and man have one and the [1096b] same account of man; for insofar as each is man, they will not differ at all. If that is so, then [Good Itself and good have the same account of good]; hence they also will not differ at all insofar as each is good, [hence there is no point in appealing to Good Itself]. Moreover, Good Itself will be no more of a good by being eternal; for a white thing is no whiter if it lasts a long time than if it lasts a day. [5]

The Pythagoreans would seem to have a more plausible view about the good, since they place the One in the column of goods. Indeed, Speusippus³ seems to have followed them. But let us leave this for another discussion.

A dispute emerges, however, about what we have said, because the arguments [in favor of the Idea] are [10] not concerned with every sort of good. Goods pursued and liked in their own right are spoken of as one species of goods, whereas those that in some way tend to produce or preserve these goods, or to prevent their contraries, are spoken of as goods because of these and in a different way. Clearly, then, goods are spoken of in two ways, and some are goods in their own right, and others goods because of these. Let us, then, [15] separate the goods in their own right from the [merely] useful goods, and consider whether goods in their own right correspond to a single Idea.

But what sorts of goods may we take to be goods in their own right? Are they the goods that are pursued even on their own—for instance, prudence, seeing, some types of pleasures, and honors? For even if we also pursue these because of something else, we may nonetheless take them to be goods in their own right. [20] Alternatively, is nothing except the Idea good in its own right, so that the Form will be futile? But if these other things are also goods in their own right, then, [if there is an Idea of good,] the same account of good will have to turn up in all of them, just as the same account of whiteness turns up in snow and in chalk. In fact, however, honor, prudence, and pleasure have different and dissimilar accounts, precisely [25] insofar as they are goods. Hence the good is not something common corresponding to a single Idea.

But how, then, is good spoken of? For it is not like homonyms resulting from chance. Is it spoken of from the fact that goods derive from one thing or all contribute to one thing? Or is it spoken of more by analogy? For as sight is to body, so understanding is to soul, and so on for other cases.

Presumably, though, we should leave these questions [30] for now, since their exact treatment is more appropriate for another [branch of] philosophy. And the same is true about the Idea. For even if there is some one good predicated in common, or some separable good, itself in its own right, clearly that is not the sort of good a human being can achieve in action or possess; but that is the sort we are looking [35] for now.

Perhaps, however, someone might think it is better to get to know the Idea with a view to the goods that we can possess and achieve in action; for [one might [1097a] suppose that] if we have this as a sort of pattern, we shall also know better about the goods that are goods for us, and if we know about them, we shall hit on them. This argument certainly has some plausibility, but it would seem to clash with the sciences. For [5] each of these, though it aims at some good and seeks to supply what is lacking, leaves out knowledge of the Idea; but if the Idea were such an important aid, surely it would not be reasonable for all craftsmen to know nothing about it and not even to look for it.

Moreover, it is a puzzle to know what the weaver or carpenter will gain for his own craft from knowing this Good Itself, or how anyone will be better at [10] medicine or generalship from having gazed on the Idea Itself. For what the doctor appears to consider is not even health [universally, let alone good universally], but human health, and presumably the health of this human being even more, since he treats one particular patient at a time.

So much, then, for these questions.

But let us return once again to the good we are looking [15] for, and consider just what it could be. For it is apparently one thing in one action or craft, and another thing in another; for it is one thing in medicine, another in generalship, and so on for the rest. What, then, is the good of each action or craft? Surely it is that for the sake of which the other things are done; in medicine this is health, in generalship victory, [20] in house-building a house, in another case something else, but in every action and decision it is the end, since it is for the sake of the end that everyone does the other actions. And so, if there is some end of everything achievable in action, the good achievable in action will be this end; if there are more ends than one, [the good achievable in action] will be these ends.

Our argument, then, has followed a different route to reach the same conclusion. But we must try to make this still more perspicuous. Since there are [25] apparently many ends, and we choose some of them (for instance, wealth, flutes, and, in general, instruments) because of something else, it is clear that not all ends are complete. But the best good is apparently something complete. And so, if only one end is complete, the good we are looking for will be this end; if more ends than one are complete, it will be the most complete end of these. [30]

We say that an end pursued in its own right is more complete than an end pursued because of something else, and that an end that is never choiceworthy because of something else is more complete than ends that are choiceworthy both in their own right and because of this end. Hence an end that is always choiceworthy in its own right, never because of something else, is complete without qualification.

Now happiness, more than anything else, seems complete without qualification. For we always choose [1097b] it because of itself, never because of something else. Honor, pleasure, understanding, and every virtue we certainly choose because of themselves, since we would choose each of them even if it had no further result; but we also choose them for the sake of happiness, supposing that through them we shall be happy. [5] Happiness, by contrast, no one ever chooses for their sake, or for the sake of anything else at all.

The same conclusion [that happiness is complete] also appears to follow from self-sufficiency. For the complete good seems to be self-sufficient. What we count as self-sufficient is not what suffices for a solitary person by himself, living an isolated life, but what [10] suffices also for parents, children, wife, and, in general, for friends and fellow citizens, since a human being is a naturally political [animal]. Here, however, we must impose some limit; for if we extend the good to parents’ parents and children’s children and to friends of friends, we shall go on without limit; but we must examine this another time. Anyhow, we regard something as self-sufficient when all by itself [15] it makes a life choiceworthy and lacking nothing; and that is what we think happiness does.

Moreover, we think happiness is most choiceworthy of all goods, [since] it is not counted as one good among many. [If it were] counted as one among many, then, clearly, we think it would be more choiceworthy if the smallest of goods were added; for the good that is added becomes an extra quantity of goods, and the larger of two goods is always more choiceworthy. Happiness, then, is apparently something [20] complete and self-sufficient, since it is the end of the things achievable in action.

But presumably the remark that the best good is happiness is apparently something [generally] agreed, and we still need a clearer statement of what the best good is. Perhaps, then, we shall find this if we first grasp the function of a human being. For just as the [25] good, i.e., [doing] well, for a flautist, a sculptor, and every craftsman, and, in general, for whatever has a function and [characteristic] action, seems to depend on its function, the same seems to be true for a human being, if a human being has some function.

Then do the carpenter and the leather worker have [30] their functions and actions, but has a human being no function? Is he by nature idle, without any function? Or, just as eye, hand, foot, and, in general, every [bodily] part apparently has its function, may we likewise ascribe to a human being some function apart from all of these?

What, then, could this be? For living is apparently shared with plants, but what we are looking for is the [1098a] special function of a human being; hence we should set aside the life of nutrition and growth. The life next in order is some sort of life of sense perception; but this too is apparently shared with horse, ox, and every animal.

The remaining possibility, then, is some sort of life of action of the [part of the soul] that has reason. One [part] of it has reason as obeying reason; the other has it as itself having reason and thinking. Moreover, [5] life is also spoken of in two ways [as capacity and as activity], and we must take [a human being’s special function to be] life as activity, since this seems to be called life more fully. We have found, then, that the human function is activity of the soul in accord with reason or requiring reason.

Now we say that the function of a [kind of thing]—of a harpist, for instance—is the same in kind as the function of an excellent individual of the kind—of an excellent harpist, for instance. And the same is true [10] without qualification in every case, if we add to the function the superior achievement in accord with the virtue; for the function of a harpist is to play the harp, and the function of a good harpist is to play it well. Moreover, we take the human function to be a certain kind of life, and take this life to be activity and actions of the soul that involve reason; hence the function of the excellent man is to do this well and finely. [15]

Now each function is completed well by being completed in accord with the virtue proper [to that kind of thing]. And so the human good proves to be activity of the soul in accord with virtue, and indeed with the best and most complete virtue, if there are more virtues than one. Moreover, it must be in a complete life. For one swallow does not make a spring, nor does one day; nor, similarly, does one day [20] or a short time make us blessed and happy.

This, then, is a sketch of the good; for, presumably, we must draw the outline first, and fill it in later. If the sketch is good, anyone, it seems, can advance and articulate it, and in such cases time discovers more, or is a good partner in discovery. That is also how the crafts have improved, since anyone can add what [25] is lacking [in the outline].

We must also remember our previous remarks, so that we do not look for the same degree of exactness in all areas, but the degree that accords with a given subject matter and is proper to a given line of inquiry. For the carpenter’s and the geometer’s inquiries about [30] the right angle are different also; the carpenter restricts himself to what helps his work, but the geometer inquires into what, or what sort of thing, the right angle is, since he studies the truth. We must do the same, then, in other areas too, [seeking the proper degree of exactness], so that digressions do not overwhelm our main task.

Nor should we make the same demand for an [1098b] explanation in all cases. On the contrary, in some cases it is enough to prove rightly that [something is true, without also explaining why it is true]. This is so, for instance, with principles, where the fact that [something is true] is the first thing, that is to say, the principle.

Some principles are studied by means of induction, some by means of perception, some by means of some sort of habituation, and others by other means. In each case we should try to find them out by means [5] suited to their nature, and work hard to define them rightly. For they carry great weight for what follows; for the principle seems to be more than half the whole, and makes evident the answer to many of our questions.

We should examine the principle, however, not only from the conclusion and premises [of a deduction], but also from what is said about it; for all the facts [10] harmonize with a true account, whereas the truth soon clashes with a false one.

Goods are divided, then, into three types, some called external, some goods of the soul, others goods of the body. We say that the goods of the soul are [15] goods most fully, and more than the others, and we take actions and activities of the soul to be [goods] of the soul. And so our account [of the good] is right, to judge by this belief anyhow—and it is an ancient belief, and accepted by philosophers.

Our account is also correct in saying that some sort of actions and activities are the end; for in that way the end turns out to be a good of the soul, not an external good. [20]

The belief that the happy person lives well and does well also agrees with our account, since we have virtually said that the end is a sort of living well and doing well.

Further, all the features that people look for in happiness appear to be true of the end described in our account. For to some people happiness seems to be virtue; to others prudence; to others some sort of [25] wisdom; to others again it seems to be these, or one of these, involving pleasure or requiring it to be added; others add in external prosperity as well. Some of these views are traditional, held by many, while others are held by a few men who are widely esteemed. It is reasonable for each group not to be completely wrong, but to be correct on one point at least, or even on most points.

First, our account agrees with those who say happiness [30] is virtue [in general] or some [particular] virtue; for activity in accord with virtue is proper to virtue. Presumably, though, it matters quite a bit whether we suppose that the best good consists in possessing or in using—that is to say, in a state or in an activity [that actualizes the state]. For someone may be in a state that achieves no good—if, for instance, he is [1099a] asleep or inactive in some other way—but this cannot be true of the activity; for it will necessarily act and act well. And just as Olympic prizes are not for the finest and strongest, but for the contestants—since it [5] is only these who win—the same is true in life; among the fine and good people, only those who act correctly win the prize.

Moreover, the life of these active people is also pleasant in itself. For being pleased is a condition of the soul, [and hence is included in the activity of the soul]. Further, each type of person finds pleasure in whatever he is called a lover of; a horse, for instance, pleases the horse-lover, a spectacle the lover of spectacles. Similarly, what is just pleases the lover of justice, [10] and in general what accords with virtue pleases the lover of virtue.

Now the things that please most people conflict, because they are not pleasant by nature, whereas the things that please lovers of the fine are things pleasant by nature. Actions in accord with virtue are pleasant by nature, so that they both please lovers of the fine [15] and are pleasant in their own right.

Hence these people’s life does not need pleasure to be added [to virtuous activity] as some sort of extra decoration; rather, it has its pleasure within itself. For besides the reasons already given, someone who does not enjoy fine actions is not good; for no one would call a person just, for instance, if he did not enjoy doing just actions, or generous if he did not enjoy generous actions, and similarly [20] for the other virtues.

If this is so, actions in accord with the virtues are pleasant in their own right. Moreover, these actions are good and fine as well as pleasant; indeed, they are good, fine, and pleasant more than anything else is, since on this question the excellent person judges rightly, and his judgment agrees with what we have said.

Happiness, then, is best, finest, and most pleasant, [25] and the Delian inscription is wrong to distinguish these things: ‘What is most just is finest; being healthy is most beneficial; but it is most pleasant to win our heart’s desire.’ For all three features are found in the best activities, and we say happiness is these activities, or [rather] one of them, the best one.

Nonetheless, happiness evidently also needs external goods to be added, as we said, since we cannot, or cannot easily, do fine actions if we lack the resources. For, first of all, in many actions we use [1099b] friends, wealth, and political power just as we use instruments. Further, deprivation of certain [externals]—for instance, good birth, good children, beauty—mars our blessedness. For we do not altogether have the character of happiness if we look utterly repulsive or are ill-born, solitary, or childless; and we have it even less, presumably, if our children or friends are totally bad, or were good but have died. [5]

And so, as we have said, happiness would seem to need this sort of prosperity added also. That is why some people identify happiness with good fortune, and others identify it with virtue.

This also leads to a puzzle: Is happiness acquired by learning, or habituation, or by some other form of cultivation? Or is it the result of some divine fate, or [10] even of fortune?

First, then, if the gods give any gift at all to human beings, it is reasonable for them to give us happiness more than any other human good, insofar as it is the best of human goods. Presumably, however, this question is more suitable for a different inquiry.

But even if it is not sent by the gods, but instead [15] results from virtue and some sort of learning or cultivation, happiness appears to be one of the most divine things, since the prize and goal of virtue appears to be the best good, something divine and blessed. Moreover [if happiness comes in this way] it will be widely shared; for anyone who is not deformed [in his capacity] for virtue will be able to achieve happiness through some sort of learning and attention. [20]

And since it is better to be happy in this way than because of fortune, it is reasonable for this to be the way [we become] happy. For whatever is natural is naturally in the finest state possible. The same is true of the products of crafts and of every other cause, especially the best cause; and it would be seriously inappropriate to entrust what is greatest and finest to fortune.

The answer to our question is also evident from [25] our account. For we have said that happiness is a certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with virtue, [and hence not a result of fortune]. Of the other goods, some are necessary conditions of happiness, while others are naturally useful and cooperative as instruments [but are not parts of it].

Further, this conclusion agrees with our opening remarks. For we took the goal of political science to [30] be the best good; and most of its attention is devoted to the character of the citizens, to make them good people who do fine actions.

It is not surprising, then, that we regard neither ox, nor horse, nor any other kind of animal as happy; for [1100a] none of them can share in this sort of activity. For the same reason a child is not happy either, since his age prevents him from doing these sorts of actions. If he is called happy, he is being congratulated [simply] because of anticipated blessedness; for, as we have said, happiness requires both complete virtue and a [5] complete life.

It needs a complete life because life includes many reversals of fortune, good and bad, and the most prosperous person may fall into a terrible disaster in old age, as the Trojan stories tell us about Priam. If someone has suffered these sorts of misfortunes and comes to a miserable end, no one counts him happy.

Then should we count no human being happy during [10] his lifetime, but follow Solon’s⁴ advice to wait to see the end? But if we agree with Solon, can someone really be happy during the time after he has died? Surely that is completely absurd, especially when we say happiness is an activity.

We do not say, then, that someone is happy during [15] the time he is dead, and Solon’s point is not this [absurd one], but rather that when a human being has died, we can safely pronounce [that he was] blessed [before he died], on the assumption that he is now finally beyond evils and misfortunes. But this claim is also disputable. For if a living person has good or evil of which he is not aware, a dead person also, it seems, has good or evil, if, for instance, he receives [20] honors or dishonors, and his children, and descendants in general, do well or suffer misfortune.

However, this conclusion also raises a puzzle. For even if someone has lived in blessedness until old age, and has died appropriately, many fluctuations of his descendants’ fortunes may still happen to him; for some may be good people and get the life they [25] deserve, while the contrary may be true of others, and clearly they may be as distantly related to their ancestor as you please. Surely, then, it would be an absurd result if the dead person’s condition changed along with the fortunes of his descendants, so that at one time he would turn out to have been happy [in his lifetime] and at another time he would turn out to have been miserable. But it would also be absurd [30] if the condition of descendants did not affect their ancestors at all or for any length of time.

But we must return to the previous puzzle, since that will perhaps also show us the answer to our present question. Let us grant that we must wait to see the end, and must then count someone blessed, not as now being blessed [during the time he is dead] but because he previously was blessed. Would it not be absurd, then, if, at the very time when he is happy, we refused to ascribe truly to him the happiness he [35] has? Such refusal results from reluctance to call him [1100b] happy during his lifetime, because of its ups and downs; for we suppose happiness is enduring and definitely not prone to fluctuate, but the same person’s fortunes often turn to and fro. For clearly, if we take [5] our cue from his fortunes, we shall often call him happy and then miserable again, thereby representing the happy person as a kind of chameleon, insecurely based.

But surely it is quite wrong to take our cue from someone’s fortunes. For his doing well or badly does not rest on them. A human life, as we said, needs these added, but activities in accord with virtue control [10] happiness, and the contrary activities control its contrary. Indeed, the present puzzle is further evidence for our account [of happiness]. For no human achievement has the stability of activities in accord with virtue, since these seem to be more enduring even than our knowledge of the sciences. Indeed, the most honorable among the virtues themselves are [15] more enduring than the other virtues, because blessed people devote their lives to them more fully and more continually than to anything else—for this continual activity would seem to be the reason we do not forget them.

It follows, then, that the happy person has the [stability] we are looking for and keeps the character he has throughout his life. For always, or more than anything else, he will do and study the actions in [20] accord with virtue, and will bear fortunes most finely, in every way and in all conditions appropriately, since he is truly ‘good, foursquare, and blameless.’

Many events, however, are subject to fortune; some are minor, some major. Hence, minor strokes of good or ill fortune clearly will not carry any weight for his life. But many major strokes of good fortune will [25] make it more blessed; for in themselves they naturally add adornment to it, and his use of them proves to be fine and excellent. Conversely, if he suffers many major misfortunes, they oppress and spoil his blessedness, since they involve pain and impede many activities. [30] And yet, even here what is fine shines through, whenever someone bears many severe misfortunes with good temper, not because he feels no distress, but because he is noble and magnanimous.

And since it is activities that control life, as we said, no blessed person could ever become miserable, since [35] he will never do hateful and base actions. For a truly good and prudent person, we suppose, will bear [1101a] strokes of fortune suitably, and from his resources at any time will do the finest actions, just as a good general will make the best use of his forces in war, and a good shoemaker will make the finest shoe from [5] the hides given to him, and similarly for all other craftsmen.

If this is so, the happy person could never become miserable, but neither will he be blessed if he falls into misfortunes as bad as Priam’s. Nor, however, will he be inconstant and prone to fluctuate, since he will neither be easily shaken from his happiness nor [10] shaken by just any misfortunes. He will be shaken from it, though, by many serious misfortunes, and from these a return to happiness will take no short time. At best, it will take a long and complete length of time that includes great and fine successes.

Then why not say that the happy person is the one [15] whose activities accord with complete virtue, with an adequate supply of external goods, not for just any time but for a complete life? Or should we add that he will also go on living this way and will come to an appropriate end, since the future is not apparent to us, and we take happiness to be the end, and altogether complete in every way? Given these facts [about the future and about happiness], we shall say [20] that a living person who has, and will keep, the goods we mentioned is blessed, but blessed as a human being is. So much for a determination of this question.

Still, it is apparently rather unfriendly and contrary to the [common] beliefs to claim that the fortunes of our descendants and all our friends contribute nothing. But since they can find themselves in many and various circumstances, some of which affect us [25] more, some less, it is apparently a long—indeed endless—task to differentiate all the particular cases. Perhaps a general outline will be enough of an answer. Misfortunes, then, even to the person himself, differ, and some have a certain gravity and weight for his life, whereas others would seem to be lighter. The [30] same is true for the misfortunes of his friends; and it matters whether they happen to living or to dead people—much more than it matters whether lawless and terrible crimes are committed before a tragic drama begins or in the course of it.

In our reasoning, then, we should also take account of this difference, but even more account, presumably, of the puzzle about whether the dead share in [35] any good or evil. For if we consider this, anything [1101b] good or evil penetrating to the dead would seem to be weak and unimportant, either without qualification or for them. Even if the good or evil is not so weak and unimportant, still its importance and character are not enough to make people happy who are not already [5] happy, or to take away the blessedness of those who are happy. And so, when friends do well, and likewise when they do badly, it appears to contribute something to the dead, but of a character and size that neither makes happy people not happy nor anything of this sort.

Now that we have determined these points, let us [10] consider whether happiness is something praiseworthy, or instead something honorable; for clearly it is not a capacity [which is neither praiseworthy nor honorable].

Whatever is praiseworthy appears to be praised for its character and its state in relation to something. We praise the just and the brave person, for instance, and in general the good person and virtue, because [15] of their actions and achievements; and we praise the strong person, the good runner, and each of the others because he naturally has a certain character and is in a certain state in relation to something good and excellent. This is clear also from praises of the gods; for these praises appear ridiculous because they are referred to us, but they are referred to us because, as [20] we said, praise depends on such a reference.

If praise is for these sorts of things, then clearly for the best things there is no praise, but something greater and better. And indeed this is how it appears. For the gods and the most godlike of men are [not praised, but] congratulated for their blessedness and [25] happiness. The same is true of goods; for we never praise happiness, as we praise justice, but we count it blessed, as something better and more godlike [than anything that is praised].

Indeed, Eudoxus⁵ seems to have used the right sort of argument in defending the supremacy of pleasure. By not praising pleasure, though it is a good, we indicate—so he thought—that it is superior to everything [30] praiseworthy; [only] the god and the good have this superiority since the other goods are [praised] by reference to them.

[Here he seems to have argued correctly.] For praise is given to virtue, since it makes us do fine actions; but celebrations are for achievements, either of body or of soul. But an exact treatment of this is presumably more proper for specialists in celebrations. For us, anyhow, [35] it is clear from what has been said that happiness is [1102a] something honorable and complete.

A further reason why this would seem to be correct is that happiness is a principle; for [the principle] is what we all aim at in all our other actions; and we take the principle and cause of goods to be something honorable and divine.

Since happiness is a certain sort of activity of the soul [5] in accord with complete virtue, we must examine virtue; for that will perhaps also be a way to study happiness better. Moreover, the true politician seems to have put more effort into virtue than into anything else, since he wants to make the citizens good and [10] law-abiding. We find an example of this in the Spartan and Cretan legislators and in any others who share their concerns. Since, then, the examination of virtue is proper for political science, the inquiry clearly suits our decision at the beginning.

It is clear that the virtue we must examine is human virtue, since we are also seeking the human good and [15] human happiness. By human virtue we mean virtue of the soul, not of the body, since we also say that happiness is an activity of the soul. If this is so, it is clear that the politician must in some way know about [20] the soul, just as someone setting out to heal the eyes must know about the whole body as well. This is all the more true to the extent that political science is better and more honorable than medicine; even among doctors, the cultivated ones devote a lot of effort to finding out about the body. Hence the politician as well [as the student of nature] must study the soul. But he must study it for his specific purpose, far enough for his inquiry [into virtue]; for a more [25] exact treatment would presumably take more effort than his purpose requires.

[We] have discussed the soul sufficiently [for our purposes] in [our] popular works as well [as our less popular], and we should use this discussion. We have said, for instance, that one [part] of the soul is nonrational, while one has reason. Are these distinguished [30] as parts of a body and everything divisible into parts are? Or are they two [only] in definition, and inseparable by nature, as the convex and the concave are in a surface? It does not matter for present purposes.

Consider the nonrational [part]. One [part] of it, i.e., the cause of nutrition and growth, would seem to be plantlike and shared [with all living things]; for [1102b] we can ascribe this capacity of the soul to everything that is nourished, including embryos, and the same capacity to full-grown living things, since this is more reasonable than to ascribe another capacity to them. Hence the virtue of this capacity is apparently shared, not [specifically] human. For this part and this capacity more than others seem to be active in [5] sleep, and here the good and the bad person are least distinct; hence happy people are said to be no better off than miserable people for half their lives. This lack of distinction is not surprising, since sleep is inactivity of the soul insofar as it is called excellent or base, unless to some small extent some movements penetrate [to our awareness], and in this way the [10] decent person comes to have better images [in dreams] than just any random person has. Enough about this, however, and let us leave aside the nutritive part, since by nature it has no share in human virtue. Another nature in the soul would also seem to be nonrational, though in a way it shares in reason. For [15] in the continent and the incontinent person we praise their reason, that is to say, the [part] of the soul that has reason, because it exhorts them correctly and toward what is best; but they evidently also have in them some other [part] that is by nature something apart from reason, clashing and struggling with reason. For just as paralyzed parts of a body, when we decide to move them to the right, do the contrary [20] and move off to the left, the same is true of the soul; for incontinent people have impulses in contrary directions. In bodies, admittedly, we see the part go astray, whereas we do not see it in the soul; nonetheless, presumably, we should suppose that the soul also has something apart from reason, countering and opposing reason. The [precise] way it is different does [25] not matter.

However, this [part] as well [as the rational part] appears, as we said, to share in reason. At any rate, in the continent person it obeys reason; and in the temperate and the brave person it presumably listens still better to reason, since there it agrees with reason in everything.

The nonrational [part], then, as well [as the whole soul] apparently has two parts. For while the plantlike [part] shares in reason not at all, the [part] with appetites [30] and in general desires shares in reason in a way, insofar as it both listens to reason and obeys it. This is the way in which we are said to ‘listen to reason’ from father or friends, as opposed to the way in which [we ‘give the reason’] in mathematics. The nonrational part also [obeys and] is persuaded in some way by reason, as is shown by correction, and by every [1103a] sort of reproof and exhortation.

If, then, we ought to say that this [part] also has reason, then the [part] that has reason, as well [as the nonrational part], will have two parts. One will have reason fully, by having it within itself; the other will have reason by listening to reason as to a father.

The division between virtues accords with this difference. [5] For some virtues are called virtues of thought, others virtues of character; wisdom, comprehension, and prudence are called virtues of thought, generosity and temperance virtues of character. For when we speak of someone’s character we do not say that he is wise or has good comprehension, but that he is gentle or temperate. And yet, we also praise the wise person for his state, and the states that are praiseworthy [10] are the ones we call virtues.

BOOK II

Virtue, then, is of two sorts, virtue of thought and [15] virtue of character. Virtue of thought arises and grows mostly from teaching; that is why it needs experience and time. Virtue of character [i.e., of ēthos] results from habit [ethos]; hence its name ‘ethical,’ slightly varied from ‘ethos.’

Hence it is also clear that none of the virtues of character arises in us naturally. For if something is by nature in one condition, habituation cannot bring [20] it into another condition. A stone, for instance, by nature moves downwards, and habituation could not make it move upwards, not even if you threw it up ten thousand times to habituate it; nor could habituation make fire move downwards, or bring anything that is by nature in one condition into another condition. And so the virtues arise in us neither by nature nor against nature. Rather, we are by nature able to acquire [25] them, and we are completed through habit.

Further, if something arises in us by nature, we first have the capacity for it, and later perform the activity. This is clear in the case of the senses; for we did not acquire them by frequent seeing or hearing, [30] but we already had them when we exercised them, and did not get them by exercising them. Virtues, by contrast, we acquire, just as we acquire crafts, by having first activated them. For we learn a craft by producing the same product that we must produce when we have learned it; we become builders, for instance, by building, and we become harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, then, we become just [1103b] by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.

What goes on in cities is also evidence for this. For the legislator makes the citizens good by habituating [5] them, and this is the wish of every legislator; if he fails to do it well he misses his goal. Correct habituation distinguishes a good political system from a bad one.

Further, the sources and means that develop each virtue also ruin it, just as they do in a craft. For playing the harp makes both good and bad harpists, and it is analogous in the case of builders and all the rest; for [10] building well makes good builders, and building badly makes bad ones. Otherwise no teacher would be needed, but everyone would be born a good or a bad craftsman.

It is the same, then, with the virtues. For what we do in our dealings with other people makes some of us just, some unjust; what we do in terrifying situations, [15] and the habits of fear or confidence that we acquire, make some of us brave and others cowardly. The same is true of situations involving appetites and anger; for one or another sort of conduct in these situations makes some temperate and mild, others [20] intemperate and irascible. To sum it up in a single account: a state [of character] results from [the repetition of] similar activities.

That is why we must perform the right activities, since differences in these imply corresponding differences in the states. It is not unimportant, then, to acquire one sort of habit or another, right from our youth. On the contrary, it is very important, indeed [25] all-important.

Our present discussion does not aim, as our others do, at study; for the purpose of our examination is not to know what virtue is, but to become good, since otherwise the inquiry would be of no benefit to us. [30] And so we must examine the right ways of acting; for, as we have said, the actions also control the sorts of states we acquire.

First, then, actions should accord with the correct reason. That is a common [belief], and let us assume it. We shall discuss it later, and say what the correct reason is and how it is related to the other virtues.

But let us take it as agreed in advance that every [1104a] account of the actions we must do has to be stated in outline, not exactly. As we also said at the beginning, the type of accounts we demand should accord with the subject matter; and questions about actions and expediency, like questions about health, have no fixed answers.

While this is the character of our general account, [5] the account of particular cases is still more inexact. For these fall under no craft or profession; the agents themselves must consider in each case what the opportune action is, as doctors and navigators [10] do. The account we offer, then, in our present inquiry is of this inexact sort; still, we must try to offer help.

First, then, we should observe that these sorts of states naturally tend to be ruined by excess and deficiency. We see this happen with strength and health—for we must use evident cases [such as these] as witnesses to things that are not evident. For both [15] excessive and deficient exercise ruin bodily strength, and, similarly, too much or too little eating or drinking ruins health, whereas the proportionate amount produces, increases, and preserves it.

The same is true, then, of temperance, bravery, [20] and the other virtues. For if, for instance, someone avoids and is afraid of everything, standing firm against nothing, he becomes cowardly; if he is afraid of nothing at all and goes to face everything, he becomes rash. Similarly, if he gratifies himself with every pleasure and abstains from none, he becomes intemperate; if he avoids them all, as boors do, he [25] becomes some sort of insensible person. Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.

But these actions are not only the sources and causes both of the emergence and growth of virtues and of their ruin; the activities of the virtues [once we have acquired them] also consist in these same [30] actions. For this is also true of more evident cases; strength, for instance, arises from eating a lot and from withstanding much hard labor, and it is the strong person who is most capable of these very actions. It is the same with the virtues. For abstaining from pleasures makes us become temperate, and once [35] we have become temperate we are most capable of abstaining from pleasures. It is similar with bravery; [1104b] habituation in disdain for frightening situations and in standing firm against them makes us become brave, and once we have become brave we shall be most capable of standing firm.

But we must take someone’s pleasure or pain following [5] on his actions to be a sign of his state. For if someone who abstains from bodily pleasures enjoys the abstinence itself, he is temperate; if he is grieved by it, he is intemperate. Again, if he stands firm against terrifying situations and enjoys it, or at least does not find it painful, he is brave; if he finds it painful, he is cowardly. For virtue of character is about pleasures and pains.

For pleasure causes us to do base actions, and pain [10] causes us to abstain from fine ones. That is why we need to have had the appropriate upbringing—right from early youth, as Plato says—to make us find enjoyment or pain in the right things; for this is the correct education.

Further, virtues are concerned with actions and feelings; but every feeling and every action implies pleasure or pain; hence, for this reason too, virtue is [15] about pleasures and pains. Corrective treatments also indicate this, since they use pleasures and pains; for correction is a form of medical treatment, and medical treatment naturally operates through contraries.

Further, as we said earlier, every state of soul is naturally related to and about whatever naturally makes it better or worse; and pleasures and pains [20] make people base, from pursuing and avoiding the wrong ones, at the wrong time, in the wrong ways, or whatever other distinctions of that sort are needed in an account. These [bad effects of pleasure and pain] are the reason why people actually define the virtues as ways of being unaffected and undisturbed [by pleasures and pains]. They are wrong, however, [25] because they speak of being unaffected without qualification, not of being unaffected in the right or wrong way, at the right or wrong time, and the added qualifications.

We assume, then, that virtue is the sort of state that does the best actions concerning pleasures and pains, and that vice is the contrary state.

The following will also make it evident that virtue [30] and vice are about the same things. For there are three objects of choice—fine, expedient, and pleasant—and three objects of avoidance—their contraries, shameful, harmful, and painful. About all these, then, the good person is correct and the bad person is in error, and especially about pleasure. For pleasure [35] is shared with animals, and implied by every object [1105a] of choice, since what is fine and what is expedient appear pleasant as well.

Further, pleasure grows up with all of us from infancy on. That is why it is hard to rub out this feeling that is dyed into our lives. We also estimate actions [as well as feelings]—some of us more, some [5] less—by pleasure and pain. For this reason, our whole discussion must be about these; for good or bad enjoyment or pain is very important for our actions.

Further, it is more difficult to fight pleasure than to fight spirit—and Heracleitus tells us [how difficult it is to fight spirit]. Now both craft and virtue are in every case about what is more difficult, since a good [10] result is even better when it is more difficult. Hence, for this reason also, the whole discussion, for virtue and political science alike, must consider pleasures and pains; for if we use these well, we shall be good, and if badly, bad.

To sum up: Virtue is about pleasures and pains; [15] the actions that are its sources also increase it or, if they are done badly, ruin it; and its activity is about the same actions as those that are its sources.

Someone might be puzzled, however, about what we mean by saying that we become just by doing just actions and become temperate by doing temperate actions. For [one might suppose that] if we do grammatical or musical actions, we are grammarians or [20] musicians, and, similarly, if we do just or temperate actions, we are thereby just or temperate.

But surely actions are not enough, even in the case of crafts; for it is possible to produce a grammatical result by chance, or by following someone else’s instructions. To be grammarians, then, we must both produce a grammatical result and produce it grammatically—that [25] is to say, produce it in accord with the grammatical knowledge in us.

Moreover, in any case, what is true of crafts is not true of virtues. For the products of a craft determine by their own qualities whether they have been produced well; and so it suffices that they have the right qualities when they have been produced. But for actions in accord with the virtues to be done temperately or [30] justly it does not suffice that they themselves have the right qualities. Rather, the agent must also be in the right state when he does them. First, he must know [that he is doing virtuous actions]; second, he must decide on them, and decide on them for themselves; and, third, he must also do them from a firm and unchanging state.

As conditions for having a craft, these three do not [1105b] count, except for the bare knowing. As a condition for having avirtue, however, the knowing counts for nothing, or [rather] for only a little, whereas the other two conditions are very important, indeed all-important. And we achieve these other two conditions by the frequent [5] doing of just and temperate actions.

Hence actions are called just or temperate when they are the sort that a just or temperate person would do. But the just and temperate person is not the one who [merely] does these actions, but the one who also does them in the way in which just or temperate people do them.

It is right, then, to say that a person comes to be [10] just from doing just actions and temperate from doing temperate actions; for no one has the least prospect of becoming good from failing to do them.

The many, however, do not do these actions. They take refuge in arguments, thinking that they are doing philosophy, and that this is the way to become excellent people. They are like a sick person who listens [15] attentively to the doctor, but acts on none of his instructions. Such a course of treatment will not improve the state of the sick person’s body; nor will the many improve the state of their souls by this attitude to philosophy.

Next we must examine what virtue is. Since there [20] are three conditions arising in the soul—feelings, capacities, and states—virtue must be one of these.

By feelings I mean appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, love, hate, longing, jealousy, pity, and in general whatever implies pleasure or pain. By capacities I mean what we have when we are said to [25] be capable of these feelings—capable of being angry, for instance, or of being afraid or of feeling pity. By states I mean what we have when we are well or badly off in relation to feelings. If, for instance, our feeling is too intense or slack, we are badly off in relation to anger, but if it is intermediate, we are well off; the same is true in the other cases.

First, then, neither virtues nor vices are feelings. [30] For we are called excellent or base insofar as we have virtues or vices, not insofar as we have feelings. Further, we are neither praised nor blamed insofar as we have feelings; for we do not praise the angry or the frightened person, and do not blame the person who is simply angry, but only the person who is angry [1106a] in a particular way. We are praised or blamed, however, insofar as we have virtues or vices. Further, we are angry and afraid without decision; but the virtues are decisions of some kind, or [rather] require decision. Besides, insofar as we have feelings, we are said [5] to be moved; but insofar as we have virtues or vices, we are said to be in some condition rather than moved.

For these reasons the virtues are not capacities either; for we are neither called good nor called bad, nor are we praised or blamed, insofar as we are simply [10] capable of feelings. Further, while we have capacities by nature, we do not become good or bad by nature; we have discussed this before.

If, then, the virtues are neither feelings nor capacities, the remaining possibility is that they are states. And so we have said what the genus of virtue is.

But we must say not only, as we already have, that it [15] is a state, but also what sort of state it is.

It should be said, then, that every virtue causes its possessors to be in a good state and to perform their functions well. The virtue of eyes, for instance, makes the eyes and their functioning excellent, because it makes us see well; and similarly, the virtue of a horse [20] makes the horse excellent, and thereby good at galloping, at carrying its rider, and at standing steady in the face of the enemy. If this is true in every case, the virtue of a human being will likewise be the state that makes a human being good and makes him perform his function well.

We have already said how this will be true, and it [25] will also be evident from our next remarks, if we consider the sort of nature that virtue has.

In everything continuous and divisible we can take more, less, and equal, and each of them either in the object itself or relative to us; and the equal is some intermediate between excess and deficiency. By the [30] intermediate in the object I mean what is equidistant from each extremity; this is one and the same for all. But relative to us the intermediate is what is neither superfluous nor deficient; this is not one, and is not the same for all.

If, for instance, ten are many and two are few, we take six as intermediate in the object, since it exceeds [35] [two] and is exceeded [by ten] by an equal amount, [four]. This is what is intermediate by numerical proportion. But that is not how we must take the intermediate [1106b] that is relative to us. For if ten pounds [of food], for instance, are a lot for someone to eat, and two pounds a little, it does not follow that the trainer will prescribe six, since this might also be either a little or a lot for the person who is to take it—for Milo [the athlete] a little, but for the beginner in gymnastics a lot; and the same is true for running and wrestling. [5] In this way every scientific expert avoids excess and deficiency and seeks and chooses what is intermediate—but intermediate relative to us, not in the object.

This, then, is how each science produces its product well, by focusing on what is intermediate and making the product conform to that. This, indeed, [10] is why people regularly comment on well-made products that nothing could be added or subtracted; they assume that excess or deficiency ruins a good [result], whereas the mean preserves it. Good craftsmen also, we say, focus on what is intermediate when they produce their product. And since virtue, like nature, is better and more exact than any craft, it will also [15] aim at what is intermediate.

By virtue I mean virtue of character; for this is about feelings and actions, and these admit of excess, deficiency, and an intermediate condition. We can be afraid, for instance, or be confident, or have appetites, or get angry, or feel pity, and in general have [20] pleasure or pain, both too much and too little, and in both ways not well. But having these feelings at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, is the intermediate and best condition, and this is proper to virtue. Similarly, actions also admit of excess, deficiency, and an intermediate condition.

Now virtue is about feelings and actions, in which [25] excess and deficiency are in error and incur blame, whereas the intermediate condition is correct and wins praise, which are both proper to virtue. Virtue, then, is a mean, insofar as it aims at what is intermediate.

Moreover, there are many ways to be in error—[30] for badness is proper to the indeterminate, as the Pythagoreans pictured it, and good to the determinate. But there is only one way to be correct. That is why error is easy and correctness is difficult, since it is easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it. And so for this reason also excess and deficiency are proper to vice, the mean to virtue; ‘for we are noble in only one way, but bad in all sorts of ways.’ [35]

Virtue, then, is a state that decides, consisting in [1107a] a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency.

It is a mean for this reason also: Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, [5] whereas virtue finds and chooses what is intermediate.

That is why virtue, as far as its essence and the account stating what it is are concerned, is a mean, but, as far as the best [condition] and the good [result] are concerned, it is an extremity.

Now not every action or feeling admits of the mean. [10] For the names of some automatically include baseness—for instance, spite, shamelessness, envy [among feelings], and adultery, theft, murder, among actions. For all of these and similar things are called by these names because they themselves, not their excesses or deficiencies, are base. Hence in doing these things [15] we can never be correct, but must invariably be in error. We cannot do them well or not well—by committing adultery, for instance, with the right woman at the right time in the right way. On the contrary, it is true without qualification that to do any of them is to be in error.

[To think these admit of a mean], therefore, is like thinking that unjust or cowardly or intemperate action [20] also admits of a mean, an excess and a deficiency. If it did, there would be a mean of excess, a mean of deficiency, an excess of excess and a deficiency of deficiency. On the contrary, just as there is no excess or deficiency of temperance or of bravery (since the intermediate is a sort of extreme), so also there is no mean of these vicious actions either, but whatever way anyone does them, he is in error. For in general there is no mean of excess or of deficiency, and no [25] excess or deficiency of a mean.

However, we must not only state this general account but also apply it to the particular cases. For among accounts concerning actions, though the general ones [30] are common to more cases, the specific ones are truer, since actions are about particular cases, and our account must accord with these. Let us, then, find these from the chart.

First, then, in feelings of fear and confidence the [1107b] mean is bravery. The excessively fearless person is nameless (indeed many cases are nameless), and the one who is excessively confident is rash. The one who is excessive in fear and deficient in confidence is cowardly.

In pleasures and pains—though not in all types, [5] and in pains less than in pleasures—the mean is temperance and the excess intemperance. People deficient in pleasure are not often found, which is why they also lack even a name; let us call them insensible.

In giving and taking money the mean is generosity, [10] the excess wastefulness and the deficiency ungenerosity. Here the vicious people have contrary excesses and defects; for the wasteful person is excessive in spending and deficient in taking, whereas the ungenerous person is excessive in taking and deficient in spending. At the moment we are speaking in outline and summary, and that is enough; later we shall define [15] these things more exactly.

In questions of money there are also other conditions. Another mean is magnificence; for the magnificent person differs from the generous by being concerned with large matters, while the generous person is concerned with small. The excess is ostentation [20] and vulgarity, and the deficiency is stinginess. These differ from the vices related to generosity in ways we shall describe later.

In honor and dishonor the mean is magnanimity, the excess something called a sort of vanity, and the [25] deficiency pusillanimity. And just as we said that generosity differs from magnificence in its concern with small matters, similarly there is a virtue concerned with small honors, differing in the same way from magnanimity, which is concerned with great honors. For honor can be desired either in the right way or more or less than is right. If someone desires it to excess, he is called an honor-lover, and if his desire is deficient he is called indifferent to honor, [30] but if he is intermediate he has no name. The corresponding conditions have no name either, except the condition of the honor-lover, which is called honor-loving.

This is why people at the extremes lay claim to the intermediate area. Moreover, we also sometimes call the intermediate person an honor-lover, and sometimes call him indifferent to honor; and sometimes we praise the honor-lover, sometimes the person [1108a] indifferent to honor. We will mention later the reason we do this; for the moment, let us speak of the other cases in the way we have laid down.

Anger also admits of an excess, deficiency, and [5] mean. These are all practically nameless; but since we call the intermediate person mild, let us call the mean mildness. Among the extreme people, let the excessive person be irascible, and his vice irascibility, and let the deficient person be a sort of inirascible person, and his deficiency inirascibility.

There are also three other means, somewhat similar [10] to one another, but different. For they are all concerned with common dealings in conversations and actions, but differ insofar as one is concerned with truth telling in these areas, the other two with sources of pleasure, some of which are found in amusement, and the others in daily life in general. Hence we should also discuss these states, so that we can better [15] observe that in every case the mean is praiseworthy, whereas the extremes are neither praiseworthy nor correct, but blameworthy. Most of these cases are also nameless, and we must try, as in the other cases also, to supply names ourselves, to make things clear and easy to follow.

In truth-telling, then, let us call the intermediate [20] person truthful, and the mean truthfulness; pretense that overstates will be boastfulness, and the person who has it boastful; pretense that understates will be self-deprecation, and the person who has it self-deprecating.

In sources of pleasure in amusements let us call the intermediate person witty, and the condition wit; the excess buffoonery and the person who has it a [25] buffoon; and the deficient person a sort of boor and the state boorishness.

In the other sources of pleasure, those in daily life, let us call the person who is pleasant in the right way friendly, and the mean state friendliness. If someone goes to excess with no [ulterior] aim, he will be ingratiating; if he does it for his own advantage, a flatterer. [30] The deficient person, unpleasant in everything, will be a sort of quarrelsome and ill-tempered person.

There are also means in feelings and about feelings. Shame, for instance, is not a virtue, but the person prone to shame as well as [the virtuous people we have described] receives praise. For here also one person is called intermediate, and another—the person excessively prone to shame, who is ashamed about everything—is called excessive; the person who is [35] deficient in shame or never feels shame at all is said to have no sense of disgrace; and the intermediate [1108b] one is called prone to shame.

Proper indignation is the mean between envy and spite; these conditions are concerned with pleasure and pain at what happens to our neighbors. For the properly indignant person feels pain when someone does well undeservedly; the envious person exceeds [5] him by feeling pain when anyone does well, while the spiteful person is so deficient in feeling pain that he actually enjoys [other people’s misfortunes].

There will also be an opportunity elsewhere to speak of these. We must consider justice after these. Since it is spoken of in more than one way, we shall distinguish its two types and say how each of them is a mean. Similarly, we must also consider the virtues [10] that belong to reason.

Among these three conditions, then, two are vices—one of excess, one of deficiency—and one, the mean, is virtue. In a way, each of them is opposed to each of the others, since each extreme is contrary both to the intermediate condition and to the other extreme, while the intermediate is contrary to the extremes. [15]

For, just as the equal is greater in comparison to the smaller, and smaller in comparison to the greater, so also the intermediate states are excessive in comparison to the deficiencies and deficient in comparison to the excesses—both in feelings and in actions. For [20] the brave person, for instance, appears rash in comparison to the coward, and cowardly in comparison to the rash person; the temperate person appears intemperate in comparison to the insensible person, and insensible in comparison with the intemperate person; and the generous person appears wasteful in comparison to the ungenerous, and ungenerous in comparison to the wasteful person. That is why each of the extreme people tries to push the intermediate person to the other extreme, so that the coward, for [25] instance, calls the brave person rash, and the rash person calls him a coward, and similarly in the other cases.

Since these conditions of soul are opposed to each other in these ways, the extremes are more contrary to each other than to the intermediate. For they are further from each other than from the intermediate, just as the large is further from the small, and the [30] small from the large, than either is from the equal. Further, sometimes one extreme—rashness or wastefulness, for instance—appears somewhat like the intermediate state, bravery or generosity. But the extremes are most unlike one another; and the things that are furthest apart from each other are defined as [35] contraries. And so the things that are further apart are more contrary.

In some cases the deficiency, in others the excess, [1109a] is more opposed to the intermediate condition. For instance, cowardice, the deficiency, not rashness, the excess, is more opposed to bravery, whereas intemperance, the excess, not insensibility, the deficiency, is [5] more opposed to temperance.

This happens for two reasons: One reason is derived from the object itself. Since sometimes one extreme is closer and more similar to the intermediate condition, we oppose the contrary extreme, more than this closer one, to the intermediate condition. Since rashness, for instance, seems to be closer and more similar [10] to bravery, and cowardice less similar, we oppose cowardice, more than rashness, to bravery; for what is further from the intermediate condition seems to be more contrary to it. This, then, is one reason, derived from the object itself.

The other reason is derived from ourselves. For when we ourselves have some natural tendency to one extreme more than to the other, this extreme appears more opposed to the intermediate condition. Since, for instance, we have more of a natural tendency to pleasure, we drift more easily toward intemperance [15] than toward orderliness. Hence we say that an extreme is more contrary if we naturally develop more in that direction; and this is why intemperance is more contrary to temperance, since it is the excess [of pleasure].

We have said enough, then, to show that virtue of [20] character is a mean and what sort of mean it is; that it is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency; and that it is a mean because it aims at the intermediate condition in feelings and actions.

That is why it is also hard work to be excellent. [25] For in each case it is hard work to find the intermediate; for instance, not everyone, but only one who knows, finds the midpoint in a circle. So also getting angry, or giving and spending money, is easy and everyone can do it; but doing it to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right end, and in the right way is no longer easy, nor can everyone do it. Hence doing these things well is rare, praiseworthy, and fine. [30]

That is why anyone who aims at the intermediate condition must first of all steer clear of the more contrary extreme, following the advice that Calypso also gives: ‘Hold the ship outside the spray and surge.’ For one extreme is more in error, the other less. Since, therefore, it is hard to hit the intermediate extremely accurately, the second-best tack, as they say, is to take the lesser of the evils. We shall succeed [35] best in this by the method we describe. [1109b]

We must also examine what we ourselves drift into easily. For different people have different natural tendencies toward different goals, and we shall come to know our own tendencies from the pleasure or [5] pain that arises in us. We must drag ourselves off in the contrary direction; for if we pull far away from error, as they do in straightening bent wood, we shall reach the intermediate condition.

And in everything we must beware above all of pleasure and its sources; for we are already biased in its favor when we come to judge it. Hence we must react to it as the elders reacted to Helen, and on each [10] occasion repeat what they said; for if we do this, and send it off, we shall be less in error.

In summary, then, if we do these things we shall best be able to reach the intermediate condition. But presumably this is difficult, especially in particular cases, since it is not easy to define the way we should [15] be angry, with whom, about what, for how long. For sometimes, indeed, we ourselves praise deficient people and call them mild, and sometimes praise quarrelsome people and call them manly.

Still, we are not blamed if we deviate a little in excess or deficiency from doing well, but only if we deviate a long way, since then we are easily noticed. [20] But how great and how serious a deviation receives blame is not easy to define in an account; for nothing else perceptible is easily defined either. Such things are among particulars, and the judgment depends on perception.

This is enough, then, to make it clear that in every [25] case the intermediate state is praised, but we must sometimes incline toward the excess, sometimes toward the deficiency; for that is the easiest way to hit the intermediate and good condition.

BOOK III

Virtue, then, is about feelings and actions. These [30] receive praise or blame if they are voluntary, but pardon, sometimes even pity, if they are involuntary. Hence, presumably, in examining virtue we must define the voluntary and the involuntary. This is also useful to legislators, both for honors and for corrective treatments. [35]

Now it seems that things coming about by force [1110a] or because of ignorance are involuntary.

What is forced has an external principle, the sort of principle in which the agent, or [rather] the victim, contributes nothing—if, for instance, a wind or people who have him in their control were to carry him off.

But what about actions done because of fear of [5] greater evils, or because of something fine? Suppose, for instance, a tyrant tells you to do something shameful, when he has control over your parents and children, and if you do it, they will live, but if not, they will die. These cases raise dispute about whether they are voluntary or involuntary.

However, the same sort [of unwelcome choice] is found in throwing cargo overboard in storms. For no [10] one willingly throws cargo overboard, without qualification, but anyone with any sense throws it overboard to save himself and the others.

These sorts of actions, then, are mixed, but they are more like voluntary actions. For at the time they are done they are choiceworthy, and the goal of an action accords with the specific occasion; hence we should also call the action voluntary or involuntary on the occasion when he does it. Now in fact he does it willingly. For in such actions he has within him [15] the principle of moving the limbs that are the instruments [of the action]; but if the principle of the actions is in him, it is also up to him to do them or not to do them. Hence actions of this sort are voluntary, though presumably the actions without [the appropriate] qualification are involuntary, since no one would choose any such action in its own right.

For such [mixed] actions people are sometimes [20] actually praised, whenever they endure something shameful or painful as the price of great and fine results. If they do the reverse, they are blamed; for it is a base person who endures what is most shameful for nothing fine or for only some moderately fine result. In some cases there is no praise, but there is pardon, whenever someone does a wrong action [25] because of conditions of a sort that overstrain human nature, and that no one would endure.

But presumably there are some things we cannot be compelled to do. Rather than do them we should suffer the most terrible consequences and accept death; for the things that [allegedly] compelled Euripides’ Alcmaeon to kill his mother appear ridiculous.

It is sometimes difficult, however, to judge what [30] [goods] should be chosen at the price of what [evils], and what [evils] should be endured as the price of what [goods]. It is even more difficult to abide by our judgment, since the results we expect [when we endure] are usually painful, and the actions we are compelled [to endure, when we choose] are usually shameful. That is why those who have been compelled or not compelled receive praise or blame. [1110b]

What sorts of things, then, should we say are forced? Perhaps we should say that something is forced without qualification whenever its cause is external and the agent contributes nothing. Other things are involuntary in their own right, but choiceworthy on this occasion and as the price of these [goods], and their [5] principle is in the agent. These are involuntary in their own right, but, on this occasion and as the price of these [goods], voluntary. But they are more like voluntary actions, since the actions are particulars, and [in the case of mixed actions] these particulars are voluntary. But what sort of thing should be chosen as the price of what [good] is not easy to answer, since there are many differences in particular [conditions]. [10]

But what if someone says that pleasant things and fine things force us, on the ground that they are outside us and compel us? For him, then, everything must be forced, since everyone in every action aims at something fine or pleasant. Moreover, if we are forced and unwilling to act, we find it painful; but if something pleasant or fine is its cause, we do it with pleasure. It is ridiculous, then, for him to ascribe responsibility to external causes, not to himself as being easily snared by such things; and ridiculous [15] to hold himself responsible for his fine actions, but pleasant things responsible for his shameful actions.

What is forced, then, would seem to be what has its principle outside the person forced, who contributes nothing.

Everything caused by ignorance is nonvoluntary, but what is involuntary also involves pain and regret. [20] For if someone’s action was caused by ignorance, but he now has no objection to the action, he has done it neither willingly, since he did not know what it was, nor unwillingly, since he now feels no pain. Hence, among those who act because of ignorance, the agent who now regrets his action seems to be unwilling, but the agent with no regrets may be called nonwilling, since he is another case—for, since he is different, it is better if he has his own special name.

Further, action caused by ignorance would seem [25] to be different from action done in ignorance. For if the agent is drunk or angry, his action seems to be caused by drunkenness or anger, not by ignorance, though it is done in ignorance, not in knowledge. Certainly every vicious person is ignorant of the actions he must do or avoid, and this sort of error makes people unjust, and in general bad. [30]

[This] ignorance of what is beneficial is not taken to make action involuntary. For the cause of involuntary action is not [this] ignorance in the decision, which causes vice; it is not [in other words] ignorance of the universal, since that is a cause for blame. Rather, [1111a] the cause is ignorance of the particulars which the action consists in and is concerned with, since these allow both pity and pardon. For an agent acts involuntarily if he is ignorant of one of these particulars.

Presumably, then, it is not a bad idea to define these particulars, and say what they are, and how many. They are: who is doing it; what he is doing; about what or to what he is doing it; sometimes also [5] what he is doing it with—with what instrument, for example; for what result, for example, safety; in what way, for example, gently or hard.

Now certainly someone could not be ignorant of all of these unless he were mad. Nor, clearly, could he be ignorant of who is doing it, since he could hardly be ignorant of himself. But he might be ignorant of what he is doing, as when someone says that [the secret] slipped out while he was speaking, or, as Aeschylus said about the mysteries, that he did not know it was forbidden to reveal it; or, like the person [10] with the catapult, that he let it go when he [only] wanted to demonstrate it. Again, he might think that his son is an enemy, as Merope did; or that the barbed spear has a button on it, or that the stone is pumice stone. By giving someone a drink to save his life we might kill him; and wanting to touch someone, as [15] they do in sparring, we might wound him.

Since an agent may be ignorant of any of these particular constituents of his action, someone who was ignorant of one of these seems to have acted unwillingly, especially if he was ignorant of the most important; these seem to be what he is doing, and the result for which he does it.

Hence the agent who acts involuntarily is the one who acts in accord with this specific sort of ignorance, [20] who must also feel pain and regret for his action.

Since involuntary action is either forced or caused by ignorance, voluntary action seems to be what has its principle in the agent himself, knowing the particulars that constitute the action.

For, presumably, it is not right to say that action [25] caused by spirit or appetite is involuntary. For, first of all, on this view none of the other animals will ever act voluntarily; nor will children. Next, among all the actions caused by appetite or spirit do we do none of them voluntarily? Or do we do the fine actions voluntarily and the shameful involuntarily? Surely [the second answer] is ridiculous, given that one and the same thing [i.e., appetite or spirit] causes [both fine and shameful actions]. And presumably it is also [30] absurd to say [as the first answer implies] that things we ought to desire are involuntary. Indeed, we ought both to be angry at some things and to have appetite for some things—for health and learning, for instance. Again, what is involuntary seems to be painful, whereas what accords with appetite seems to be pleasant.

Moreover, how are errors in accord with spirit any less voluntary than those in accord with rational calculation? For both sorts of errors are to be avoided. [1111b] Besides, nonrational feelings seem to be no less human than rational calculation; and so actions resulting from spirit or appetite are also proper to a human being. It is absurd, then, to regard them as involuntary.

Now that we have defined the voluntary and the [5] involuntary, the next task is to discuss decision; for decision seems to be most proper to virtue, and to distinguish characters from one another better than actions do.

Decision, then, is apparently voluntary, but not the same as the voluntary, which extends more widely. For children and the other animals share in voluntary action, but not in decision; and the actions we do on the spur of the moment are said to be voluntary, but [10] not to accord with decision.

Those who say decision is appetite or spirit or wish or some sort of belief would seem to be wrong. For decision is not shared with nonrational animals, but appetite and spirit are shared with them. Again, the incontinent person acts on appetite, not on decision, [15] but the continent person does the reverse, by acting on decision, not on appetite. Again, appetite is contrary to decision, but not to appetite. Besides, the object of appetite is what is pleasant or painful, whereas neither of these is the object of decision. And still less is spirit decision; for actions caused by spirit seem least of all to accord with decision.

But further, it is not wish either, though it is apparently [20] close to it. For we do not decide on impossible things—anyone claiming to decide on them would seem a fool; but we do wish for impossible things—for immortality, for instance—as well as possible things. Further, we wish [not only for results we can achieve], but also for results that are [possible, but] not achievable through our own agency—victory for some actor or athlete, for instance. But what we decide on is [25] never anything of that sort, but what we think would come about through our own agency. Again, we wish for the end more [than for the things that promote it], but we decide on things that promote the end. We wish, for instance, to be healthy, but we decide to do things that will make us healthy; and we wish to be happy, and say so, but we could not appropriately say we decide to be happy, since in general the things [30] we decide on would seem to be things that are up to us.

Nor is it belief. For belief seems to be about everything, no less about things that are eternal and things that are impossible [for us] than about things that are up to us. Moreover, beliefs are divided into true and false, not into good and bad, but decisions are divided into good and bad more than into true and false.

Now presumably no one even claims that decision [1112a] is the same as belief in general. But it is not the same as any kind of belief either. For our decisions to do good or bad actions, not our beliefs, form the characters we have. Again, we decide to take or avoid something good or bad. We believe what it is, whom it benefits or how; but we do not exactly believe to [5] take or avoid. Further, decision is praised more for deciding on what is right, whereas belief is praised for believing rightly. Moreover, we decide on something [even] when we know most completely that it is good; but [what] we believe [is] what we do not quite know. Again, those who make the best decisions do not seem to be the same as those with the best beliefs; on the [10] contrary, some seem to have better beliefs, but to make the wrong decisions because of vice. We may grant that decision follows or implies belief. But that is irrelevant, since it is not the question we are asking; our question is whether decision is the same as some sort of belief.

Then what, or what sort of thing, is decision, since it is none of the things mentioned? Well, apparently it is voluntary, but not everything voluntary is decided. [15] Then perhaps what is decided is what has been previously deliberated. For decision involves reason and thought, and even the name itself would seem to indicate that [what is decided, prohaireton] is chosen [haireton] before [pro] other things.

Do we deliberate about everything, and is everything open to deliberation? Or is there no deliberation [20] about some things? By ‘open to deliberation,’ presumably, we should mean that someone with some sense, not some fool or madman, might deliberate about it.

Now no one deliberates about eternal things—about the universe, for instance, or about the incommensurability of the sides and the diagonal; nor about things that are in movement but always come about the same way, either from necessity or by nature or [25] by some other cause—the solstices, for instance, or the rising of the stars; nor about what happens in different ways at different times—droughts and rains, for instance; nor about what results from fortune—the finding of a treasure, for instance. For none of these results could be achieved through our agency. [30]

We deliberate about what is up to us, that is to say, about the actions we can do; and this is what is left [besides the previous cases]. For causes seem to include nature, necessity, and fortune, but besides [33] them mind and everything [operating] through human [28] agency. But we do not deliberate about all human affairs; no Spartan, for instance, deliberates [29] about how the Scythians might have the best political system. Rather, each group of human beings deliberates [33] about the actions that they themselves can do.

There is no deliberation about the sciences that [1112b] are exact and self-sufficient, as, for instance, about letters, since we are in no doubt about how to write them [in spelling a word]. Rather, we deliberate about what results through our agency, but in different ways on different occasions—about, for instance, medicine and money making. We deliberate about navigation [5] more than about gymnastics, to the extent that it is less exactly worked out, and similarly with other [crafts]. And we deliberate about beliefs more than about sciences, since we are more in doubt about them.

Deliberation concerns what is usually [one way rather than another], where the outcome is unclear [10] and the right way to act is undefined. And we enlist partners in deliberation on large issues when we distrust our own ability to discern [the right answer].

We deliberate not about ends, but about what promotes ends. A doctor, for instance, does not deliberate about whether he will cure, or an orator about whether he will persuade, or a politician about whether he will produce good order, or any other [expert] about the end [that his science aims at]. [15] Rather, we lay down the end, and then examine the ways and means to achieve it.

If it appears that any of several [possible] means will reach it, we examine which of them will reach it most easily and most finely; and if only one [possible] means reaches it, we examine how that means will reach it, and how the means itself is reached, until we come to the first cause, the last thing to be discovered. [20] For a deliberator would seem to inquire and analyze in the way described, as though analyzing a diagram. [The comparison is apt, since], apparently, all deliberation is inquiry, though not all inquiry—in mathematics, for instance—is deliberation. And the last thing [found] in the analysis would seem to be the first that comes into being.

If we encounter an impossible step—for instance, [25] we need money but cannot raise it—we desist; but if the action appears possible, we undertake it. What is possible is what we could achieve through our agency [including what our friends could achieve for us]; for what our friends achieve is, in a way, achieved through our agency, since the principle is in us. [In crafts] we sometimes look for instruments, sometimes [for the way] to use them; so also in other cases we [30] sometimes look for the means to the end, sometimes for the proper use of the means, or for the means to that proper use.

As we have said, then, a human being would seem to be a principle of action. Deliberation is about the actions he can do, and actions are for the sake of other things; hence we deliberate about things that promote an end, not about the end. Nor do we deliberate [1113a] about particulars, about whether this is a loaf, for instance, or is cooked the right amount; for these are questions for perception, and if we keep on deliberating at each stage we shall go on without end.

What we deliberate about is the same as what we decide to do, except that by the time we decide to do it, it is definite; for what we decide to do is what we have judged [to be right] as a result of deliberation. [5] For each of us stops inquiring how to act as soon as he traces the principle to himself, and within himself to the guiding part; for this is the part that decides. This is also clear from the ancient political systems described by Homer; there the kings would first decide and then announce their decision to the people.

We have found, then, that what we decide to do is [10] whatever action, among those up to us, we deliberate about and [consequently] desire to do. Hence also decision will be deliberative desire to do an action that is up to us; for when we have judged [that it is right] as a result of deliberation, we desire to do it in accord with our wish.

We have said in outline, then, what sorts of things decision is about, and [specifically] that we decide on things that promote the end.

Wish, we have said, is for the end. But some think [15] that wish is for the good, others that it is for the apparent good.

For those who say the good is wished, it follows that what someone wishes if he chooses incorrectly is not wished at all. For if it is wished, then [on this view] it is good; but what he wishes is in fact bad, if it turns out that way. [Hence what he wishes is not [20] wished, which is self-contradictory.]

But for those who say the apparent good is wished, it follows that nothing is wished by nature. Rather, for each person what is wished is what seems [good to him]; but different things, and indeed contrary things, if it turns out that way, appear good to different people. [Hence contrary things will be wished and nothing will be wished by nature.]

If, then, these views do not satisfy us, should we say that, without qualification and in reality, what is wished is the good, but for each person what is wished is the apparent good? For the excellent person, then, [25] what is wished will be what is [wished] in reality, while for the base person what is wished is whatever it turns out to be [that appears good to him]. Similarly in the case of bodies, really healthy things are healthy to people in good condition, while other things are healthy to sickly people; and the same is true of what is bitter, sweet, hot, heavy, and so on. For the excellent [30] person judges each sort of thing correctly, and in each case what is true appears to him.

For each state [of character] has its own distinctive [view of] what is fine and pleasant. Presumably, then, the excellent person is far superior because he sees what is true in each case, being himself a sort of standard and measure. In the many, however, pleasure would seem to cause deception, since it appears good when it is not. Certainly, they choose what is [1113b] pleasant because they assume it is good, and avoid pain because they assume it is evil.

We have found, then, that we wish for the end, and deliberate and decide about things that promote it; hence the actions concerned with things that promote [5] the end are in accord with decision and are voluntary. The activities of the virtues are concerned with these things [that promote the end].

Hence virtue is also up to us, and so also, in the same way, is vice. For when acting is up to us, so is not acting, and when no is up to us, so is yes. And so if acting, when it is fine, is up to us, not acting, when it is shameful, is also up to us; and if not acting, [10] when it is fine, is up to us, then acting, when it is shameful, is also up to us. But if doing, and likewise not doing, fine or shameful actions is up to us, and if, as we saw, [doing or not doing them] is [what it is] to be a good or bad person, being decent or base is up to us.

The claim that ‘no one is willingly bad or unwillingly [15] blessed’ would seem to be partly true but partly false. For while certainly no one is unwillingly blessed, vice is voluntary.

If this is not so, we must dispute what has been said, and we must deny that a human being is a principle, begetting actions as he begets children. But if what we have said appears true, and we cannot [20] refer back to other principles apart from those that are up to us, those things that have their principle in us are themselves up to us and voluntary.

There would seem to be evidence in favor of our view not only in what each of us does as a private citizen, but also in what legislators themselves do. For they impose corrective treatments and penalties on anyone who does vicious actions, unless his action [25] is forced or is caused by ignorance that he is not responsible for; and they honor anyone who does fine actions. In all this they assume that they will encourage the second sort of person, and restrain the first. But no one encourages us to do anything that is not up to us and voluntary; people assume it is pointless to persuade us not to get hot or distressed or hungry or anything else of that sort, since persuasion will not stop it happening to us.

Indeed, legislators also impose corrective treatments [30] for the ignorance itself, if the agent seems to be responsible for the ignorance. A drunk, for instance, pays a double penalty; for the principle is in him, since he controls whether he gets drunk, and his getting drunk causes his ignorance. They also impose corrective treatment on someone who [does a vicious action] in ignorance of some provision of law that he is required to know and that is not hard [to know]. And they impose it in other cases likewise [1114a] for any other ignorance that seems to be caused by the agent’s inattention; they assume it is up to him not to be ignorant, since he controls whether he pays attention.

But presumably he is the sort of person who is inattentive. Still, he is himself responsible for becoming this sort of person, because he has lived carelessly. Similarly, an individual is responsible for being unjust, [5] because he has cheated, and for being intemperate, because he has passed his time in drinking and the like; for each type of activity produces the corresponding sort of person. This is clear from those who train for any contest or action, since they continually practice the appropriate activities. [Only] a totally [10] insensible person would not know that a given type of activity is the source of the corresponding state; [Hence] if someone does what he knows will make [12] him unjust, he is willingly unjust. [13]

Further, it is unreasonable for someone doing injustice [11, 12] not to wish to be unjust, or for someone doing intemperate action not to wish to be intemperate. [13] This does not mean, however, that if he is unjust and wishes to stop, he will thereby stop and be just. For [15] neither does a sick person recover his health [simply by wishing]; nonetheless, he is sick willingly, by living incontinently and disobeying the doctors, if that was how it happened. At that time, then, he was free not to be sick, though no longer free once he has let himself go, just as it was up to someone to throw a stone, since the principle was up to him, though he can no longer take it back once he has thrown it. [20] Similarly, then, the person who is [now] unjust or intemperate was originally free not to acquire this character, so that he has it willingly, though once he has acquired the character, he is no longer free not to have it [now].

It is not only vices of the soul that are voluntary; vices of the body are also voluntary for some people, and we actually censure them. For we never censure someone if nature causes his ugliness; but if his lack of training or attention causes it, we do censure him. [25] The same is true for weakness or maiming; for everyone would pity someone, not reproach him, if he were blind by nature or because of a disease or a wound, but would censure him if his heavy drinking or some other form of intemperance made him blind. Hence bodily vices that are up to us are censured, while those not up to us are not censured. If so, then [30] in the other cases also the vices that are censured will be up to us.

But someone may say that everyone aims at the [1114b] apparent good, and does not control how it appears, but, on the contrary, his character controls how the end appears to him. [We reply that] if each person is in some way responsible for his own state [of character], he is also himself in some way responsible for how [the end] appears.

Suppose, on the other hand, that no one is responsible for acting badly, but one does so because one is ignorant of the end, and thinks this is the way to gain [5] what is best for oneself. In that case, one’s aiming at the end is not one’s own choice; one needs a sort of natural, inborn sense of sight, to judge finely and to choose what is really good. Whoever by nature has this sense in a fine condition has a good nature; for [, according to this view,] this sense is the greatest and finest thing, given that one cannot acquire it or learn it from another, but its natural character [10] determines [his] later condition, and when it is naturally good and fine, that is true and complete good nature. If all this is true, then, surely virtue will be no more voluntary than vice.

For how the end appears is laid down, by nature [15] or in whatever way, for the good and the bad person alike; they trace all the other things back to the end in doing whatever actions they do. Let us suppose, then, that nature does not make the end appear however it appears to each person, but something also depends on him. Alternatively, let us suppose that [how] the end [appears] is natural, but virtue is voluntary because the virtuous person does the other things voluntarily. In either case, vice will be no less voluntary than virtue; for the bad person, no less than the [20] good, is responsible for his own actions, even if not for [how] the end [appears].

Now the virtues, as we say, are voluntary. For in fact we are ourselves in a way jointly responsible for our states of character, and the sort of character we have determines the sort of end we lay down. Hence the vices [25] will also be voluntary, since the same is true of them.

We have now discussed the virtues in common. We have described their genus in outline; they are means, and they are states. Certain actions produce them, and they cause us to do these same actions in accord with the virtues themselves, in the way that correct reason prescribes. They are up to us and voluntary.

Actions and states, however, are not voluntary in [30] the same way. For we are in control of actions from the beginning to the end, when we know the particulars. With states, however, we are in control of the [1115a] beginning, but do not know, any more than with sicknesses, what the cumulative effect of particular actions will be. Nonetheless, since it was up to us to exercise a capacity either this way or another way, states are voluntary.

Let us now take up the virtues again, and discuss them one by one. Let us say what they are, what sorts [5] of thing they are concerned with, and how they are concerned with them. It will also be clear at the same time how many of them there are.

First let us discuss bravery. We have already made it apparent that there is a mean about feelings of fear and confidence. What we fear, clearly, is what is frightening, and such things are, speaking without qualification, bad things; hence people define fear as expectation of something bad.

Certainly we fear all bad things—for instance, bad [10] reputation, poverty, sickness, friendlessness, death—but they do not all seem to concern the brave person. For fear of some bad things, such as bad reputation, is actually right and fine, and lack of fear is shameful; for if someone fears bad reputation, he is decent and properly prone to shame, and if he has no fear of it, he has no feeling of disgrace. Some, however, call this fearless person brave, by a transference of the [15] name; for he has some similarity to the brave person, since the brave person is also a type of fearless person.

Presumably it is wrong to fear poverty or sickness or, in general, [bad things] that are not the results of vice or caused by ourselves; still, someone who is fearless about these is not thereby brave. He is also called brave by similarity; for some people who are cowardly in the [20] dangers of war are nonetheless generous, and face with confidence the [danger of] losing money.

Again, if someone is afraid of committing wanton aggression on children or women, or of being envious or anything of that sort, that does not make him cowardly. And if someone is confident when he is going to be whipped for his crimes, that does not make him brave.

Then what sorts of frightening conditions concern [25] the brave person? Surely the most frightening; for no one stands firmer against terrifying conditions. Now death is most frightening of all, since it is a boundary, and when someone is dead nothing beyond it seems either good or bad for him any more. Still, not even death in all conditions—on the sea, for instance, or in sickness—seems to be the brave person’s concern.

In what conditions, then, is death his concern? [30] Surely in the finest conditions. Now such deaths are those in war, since they occur in the greatest and finest danger. This judgment is endorsed by the honors given in cities and by monarchs. Hence someone is called fully brave if he is intrepid in facing a fine death and the immediate dangers that bring death. [35] And this is above all true of the dangers of war.

Certainly the brave person is also intrepid on the [1115b] sea and in sickness, but not in the same way as seafarers are. For he has given up hope of safety, and objects to this sort of death [with nothing fine in it], but seafarers’ experience makes them hopeful. Moreover, we act like brave men on occasions when we can use our strength, or when it is fine to be killed; and neither [5] of these is true when we perish on the sea.

Now what is frightening is not the same for everyone. We say, however, that some things are too frightening for a human being to resist; these, then, are frightening for everyone, at least for everyone with any sense. What is frightening, but not irresistible for a human [10] being, varies in its seriousness and degree; and the same is true of what inspires confidence.

The brave person is unperturbed, as far as a human being can be. Hence, though he will fear even the sorts of things that are not irresistible, he will stand firm against them, in the right way, as reason prescribes, for the sake of the fine, since this is the end aimed at by virtue.

It is possible to be more or less afraid of these frightening things, and also possible to be afraid of what is not frightening as though it were frightening. [15] The cause of error may be fear of the wrong thing, or in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, or something of that sort; and the same is true for things that inspire confidence.

Hence whoever stands firm against the right things and fears the right things, for the right end, in the right way, at the right time, and is correspondingly confident, is the brave person; for the brave person’s actions and feelings accord with what something is worth, and follow what reason prescribes.

Every activity aims at actions in accord with the state [20] of character. Now to the brave person bravery is fine; hence the end it aims at is also fine, since each thing is defined by its end. The brave person, then, aims at the fine when he stands firm and acts in accord with bravery.

Among those who go to excess the excessively fearless [25] person has no name—we said earlier that many cases have no names. He would be some sort of madman, or incapable of feeling distress, if he feared nothing, neither earthquake nor waves, as they say about the Celts.

The person who is excessively confident about frightening things is rash. The rash person also seems [30] to be a boaster, and a pretender to bravery. At any rate, the attitude to frightening things that the brave person really has is the attitude that the rash person wants to appear to have; hence he imitates the brave person where he can. That is why most of them are rash cowards; for, rash though they are on these [occasions for imitation], they do not stand firm against anything frightening. Moreover, rash people are impetuous, wishing for dangers before they arrive, [1116a7] but they shrink from them when they come. Brave [8, 9] people, on the contrary, are eager when in action, but keep quiet until then.

The person who is excessively afraid is the coward, [1115b34] since he fears the wrong things, and in the wrong way, and so on. Certainly, he is also deficient in [35] confidence, but his excessive pain distinguishes him [1116a] more clearly. Hence, since he is afraid of everything, he is a despairing sort. The brave person, on the contrary, is hopeful, since [he is confident and] confidence is proper to a hopeful person.

Hence the coward, the rash person, and the brave [5] person are all concerned with the same things, but have different states related to them; the others are excessive or defective, but the brave person has the [7] intermediate and right state.

As we have said, then, bravery is a mean about what [10] inspires confidence and about what is frightening in the conditions we have described; it chooses and stands firm because that is fine or because anything else is shameful. Dying to avoid poverty or erotic passion or something painful is proper to a coward, not to a brave person. For shirking burdens is softness, and such a person stands firm [in the face of death] [15] to avoid an evil, not because standing firm is fine.

Bravery, then, is something of this sort. But five other sorts of things are also called bravery.

The bravery of citizens comes first, since it looks most like bravery. For citizens seem to stand firm against dangers with the aim of avoiding reproaches and legal penalties and of winning honors; that is [20] why the bravest seem to be those who hold cowards in dishonor and do honor to brave people. That is how Homer also describes them when he speaks of Diomede and Hector: ‘Polydamas will be the first to heap disgrace on me,’ and ‘For some time Hector [25] speaking among the Trojans will say, “The son of Tydeus fled from me.”’ This is most like the [genuine] bravery described above, because it results from a virtue; for it is caused by shame and by desire for something fine, namely honor, and by aversion from reproach, which is shameful.

In this class we might also place those who are [30] compelled by their superiors. However, they are worse to the extent that they act because of fear, not because of shame, and to avoid pain, not disgrace. For their commanders compel them, as Hector does; ‘If I notice [35] anyone shrinking back from the battle, nothing will save him from being eaten by the dogs.’ Commanders who strike any troops who give ground, or who post [1116b] them in front of ditches and suchlike, do the same thing, since they all compel them. The brave person, however, must be moved by the fine, not by compulsion.

Experience about a given situation also seems to [5] be bravery; that is why Socrates actually thought that bravery is scientific knowledge. Different people have this sort [of apparent courage] in different conditions. In wartime professional soldiers have it; for there seem to be many groundless alarms in war, and the professionals are the most familiar with these. Hence they appear brave, since others do not know that the alarms are groundless. Moreover, their experience makes them most capable in attack and defense, since they are skilled in the use of their weapons, and have the [10] best weapons for attack and defense. The result is that in fighting nonprofessionals they are like armed troops against unarmed, or trained athletes against ordinary people; for in these contests also the best fighters are the strongest and physically fittest, not the bravest. [15]

Professional soldiers, however, turn out to be cowards whenever the danger overstrains them and they are inferior in numbers and equipment. For they are the first to run, whereas the citizen troops stand firm and get killed; this was what happened at the temple of Hermes.⁶ For the citizens find it shameful to run, [20] and find death more choiceworthy than safety at this cost. But the professionals from the start were facing the danger on the assumption of their superiority; once they learn their mistake, they run, since they are more afraid of being killed than of doing something shameful. That is not the brave person’s character.

Spirit is also counted as bravery; for those who act [25] on spirit also seem to be brave—as beasts seem to be when they attack those who have wounded them—because brave people are also full of spirit. For spirit is most eager to run and face dangers; hence Homer’s words, ‘put strength in his spirit,’ ‘aroused strength and spirit,’ and ‘his blood boiled’. All these would [30] seem to signify the arousal and the impulse of spirit.

Now brave people act because of the fine, and their spirit cooperates with them. But beasts act because of pain; for they attack only because they have been wounded or frightened, (since they keep away from us in a forest). They are not brave, then, since distress and spirit drives them in an impulsive rush to meet [35] danger, foreseeing none of the terrifying prospects. For if they were brave, hungry asses would also be [1117a] brave, since they keep on feeding even if they are beaten; and adulterers also do many daring actions because of lust.

Human beings as well as beasts find it painful to [5] be angered, and pleasant to exact a penalty. But those who fight for these reasons are not brave, though they are good fighters; for they fight because of their feelings, not because of the fine nor as reason prescribes. Still, they have something similar [to bravery]. [4] The [bravery] caused by spirit would seem to be the most natural sort, and to be [genuine] bravery once [5] it has also acquired decision and the goal.

Hopeful people are not brave either; for their many [9, 10] victories over many opponents make them confident in dangers. They are somewhat similar to brave people, since both are confident. But whereas brave people are confident for the reason given earlier, the hopeful are confident because they think they are stronger and nothing could happen to them; drunks do the same sort of thing, since they become hopeful. [15] When things turn out differently from how they expected, they run away. The brave person, on the contrary, stands firm against what is and appears frightening to a human being; he does this because it is fine to stand firm and shameful to fail.

Indeed, that is why someone who is unafraid and unperturbed in emergencies seems braver than [someone who is unafraid only] when he is warned in advance; for his action proceeds more from his [20] state of character, because it proceeds less from preparation. For if we are warned in advance, we might decide what to do [not only because of our state of character, but] also by reason and rational calculation; but in emergencies [we must decide] in accord with our state of character.

Those who act in ignorance also appear brave, and indeed they are close to hopeful people, though inferior to them insofar as they lack the self-esteem of hopeful people. That is why the hopeful stand firm [25] for some time, whereas if ignorant people have been deceived and then realize or suspect that things are different, they run. That was what happened to the Argives when they stumbled on the Spartans and took them for Sicyonians.⁷

We have described, then, the character of brave people and of those who seem to be brave.

Bravery is about feelings of confidence and fear—not, [30] however, about both in the same way, but more about frightening things. For someone is brave if he is undisturbed and in the right state about these, more than if he is in this state about things inspiring confidence.

As we said, then, standing firm against what is painful makes us call people brave; that is why bravery is both painful and justly praised, since it is harder to stand firm against something painful than to refrain [35] from something pleasant. Nonetheless, the end [1117b] that bravery aims at seems to be pleasant, though obscured by its surroundings. This is what happens in athletic contests. For boxers find that the end they aim at, the crown and the honors, is pleasant, but, being [5] made of flesh and blood, they find it distressing and painful to take the punches and to bear all the hard work; and because there are so many of these painful things, the end, being small, appears to have nothing pleasant in it.

And so, if the same is true for bravery, the brave person will find death and wounds painful, and suffer them unwillingly, but he will endure them because that is fine or because failure is shameful. Indeed, [10] the truer it is that he has every virtue and the happier he is, the more pain he will feel at the prospect of death. For this sort of person, more than anyone, finds it worthwhile to be alive, and knows he is being deprived of the greatest goods, and this is painful. But he is no less brave for all that; presumably, indeed, he is all the braver, because he chooses what is fine in [15] war at the cost of all these goods. It is not true, then, in the case of every virtue that its active exercise is pleasant; it is pleasant only insofar as we attain the end.

But presumably it is quite possible for brave people, given the character we have described, not to be the best soldiers. Perhaps the best will be those who are less brave, but possess no other good; for they are ready to face dangers, and they sell their lives for small gains. [20]

So much for bravery. It is easy to grasp what it is, in outline at least, from what we have said.

Let us discuss temperance next; for bravery and temperance seem to be the virtues of the nonrational parts. Temperance, then, is a mean concerned with [25] pleasures, as we have already said; for it is concerned less, and in a different way, with pains. Intemperance appears in this same area too. Let us, then, now distinguish the specific pleasures that concern them.

First, let us distinguish pleasures of the soul from those of the body. Love of honor and of learning, for instance, are among the pleasures of the soul; for though a lover of one of these enjoys it, only his [30] thought, not his body, is at all affected. Those concerned with such pleasures are called neither temperate nor intemperate. The same applies to those concerned with any of the other nonbodily pleasures; for lovers of tales, storytellers, those who waste their [35] days on trivialities, are called babblers, but not intemperate. Nor do we call people intemperate if they feel [1118a] pain over money or friends.

Temperance, then, will be about bodily pleasures, but not even about all of these. For those who find enjoyment in objects of sight, such as colors, shapes, a painting, are called neither temperate nor intemperate [5], even though it would also seem possible to enjoy these either rightly or excessively and deficiently. The same is true for hearing; no one is ever called intemperate for excessive enjoyment of songs or playacting, or temperate for the right enjoyment of them.

Nor is this said about someone enjoying smells, [10] except coincidentally. For someone is called intemperate not for enjoying the smell of apples or roses or incense, but rather for enjoying the smell of perfumes or cooked delicacies. For these are the smells an intemperate person enjoys because they remind him of the objects of his appetite. And we can see that others also enjoy the smells of food if they are [15] hungry. It is the enjoyment of the things [that he is reminded of by these smells] that is proper to an intemperate person, since these are the objects of his appetite.

Nor do other animals find pleasures from these senses, except coincidentally. What a hound enjoys, for instance, is not the smell of a hare, but eating it; [20] but the hare’s smell made the hound perceive it. And what a lion enjoys is not the sound of the ox, but eating it; but since the ox’s sound made the lion perceive that it was near, the lion appears to enjoy the sound. Similarly, what pleases him is not the sight of ‘a deer or a wild goat,’ but the prospect of food.

The pleasures that concern temperance and intemperance [25] are those that are shared with the other animals, and so appear slavish and bestial. These pleasures are touch and taste.

However, they seem to deal even with taste very little or not at all. For taste discriminates flavors—the sort of thing that wine tasters and cooks savoring food do; but people, or intemperate people at any [30] rate, do not much enjoy this. Rather, they enjoy the gratification that comes entirely through touch, in eating and drinking and in what are called the pleasures of sex. That is why a glutton actually prayed for his throat to become longer than a crane’s, showing [1118b] that he took pleasure in the touching. And so the sense that concerns intemperance is the most widely shared, and seems justifiably open to reproach, since we have it insofar as we are animals, not insofar as we are human beings.

To enjoy these things, then, and to like them most of all, is bestial. For indeed the most civilized of the pleasures coming through touch, such as those [5] produced by rubbing and warming in gymnasia, are excluded from intemperance, since the touching that is proper to the intemperate person concerns only some parts of the body, not all of it.

Some appetites seem to be shared [by everyone], while others seem to be additions that are distinctive [of different people]. The appetite for nourishment, [10] for instance, is natural, since everyone who lacks nourishment, dry or liquid, has an appetite for it, sometimes for both; and, as Homer says, the young in their prime [all] have an appetite for sex. Not everyone, however, has an appetite for a specific sort of food or drink or sex, or for the same things. That is why an appetite of this type seems to be distinctive of [each of] us. Still, this also includes a natural element, since different sorts of people find different sorts of things more pleasant, and there are some things that are more pleasant for everyone than things chosen at random would be.

In natural appetites few people are in error, and [15] only in one direction, toward excess. Eating indiscriminately or drinking until we are too full is exceeding the quantity that accords with nature; for [the object of] natural appetite is the filling of a lack. That is why these people are called ‘gluttons,’ showing that they glut their bellies past what is right; that is how [20] especially slavish people turn out.

With the pleasures that are distinctive of different people, many make errors and in many ways; for people are called lovers of something if they enjoy the wrong things, or if they enjoy something in the wrong way. And in all these ways intemperate people [25] go to excess. For some of the things they enjoy are hateful, and hence wrong; distinctive pleasures that it is right to enjoy they enjoy more than is right, and more than most people enjoy them.

Clearly, then, with pleasures excess is intemperance, and is blameworthy. With pains, however, we are not called temperate, as we are called brave, for standing firm against them, or intemperate for not [30] standing firm. Rather, someone is intemperate because he feels more pain than is right at failing to get pleasant things; and even this pain is produced by the pleasure [he takes in them]. And someone is temperate because he does not feel pain at the absence of what is pleasant, or at refraining from it.

The intemperate person, then, has an appetite for [1119a] all pleasant things, or rather for the most pleasant of them, and his appetite leads him to choose these at the cost of the other things. That is why he also feels pain both when he fails to get something and when he has an appetite for it, since appetite involves pain. It would seem absurd, however, to suffer pain because [5] of pleasure.

People who are deficient in pleasures and enjoy them less than is right are not found very much. For that sort of insensibility is not human; indeed, even the other animals discriminate among foods, enjoying some but not others. If someone finds nothing pleasant, or preferable to anything else, he is far from [10] being human. The reason he has no name is that he is not found much.

The temperate person has an intermediate state in relation to these [bodily pleasures]. For he finds no pleasure in what most pleases the intemperate person, but finds it disagreeable; he finds no pleasure at all in the wrong things. He finds no intense pleasure in any [bodily pleasures], suffers no pain at their absence, and has no appetite for them, or only a moderate appetite, [15] not to the wrong degree or at the wrong time or anything else at all of that sort. If something is pleasant and conducive to health or fitness, he will desire this moderately and in the right way; and he will desire in the same way anything else that is pleasant, if it is no obstacle to health and fitness, does not deviate from the fine, and does not exceed his means. For the opposite sort of person likes these pleasures more than they are worth; that is not the temperate person's character, but [20] he likes them as correct reason prescribes.

Intemperance is more like a voluntary condition than cowardice; for it is caused by pleasure, which is choiceworthy, whereas cowardice is caused by pain, which is to be avoided. Moreover, pain disturbs and ruins the nature of the sufferer, while pleasure does nothing of the sort; intemperance, then, is more voluntary. That is why it is also more open to reproach. [25] For it is also easier to acquire the habit of facing pleasant things, since our life includes many of them and we can acquire the habit with no danger; but with frightening things the reverse is true.

However, cowardice seems to be more voluntary than particular cowardly actions. For cowardice itself involves no pain, but the particular actions disturb us because of the pain [that causes them], so that [30] people actually throw away their weapons and do all the other disgraceful actions. That is why these actions even seem to be forced [and hence involuntary],

For the intemperate person the reverse is true. The particular actions are the result of his appetite and desire, and so they are voluntary; but the whole condition is less voluntary [than the actions], since no one has an appetite to be intemperate.

We also apply the name of intemperance to the [1119b] errors of children, since they have some similarity. Which gets its name from which does not matter for our present purposes, but clearly the posterior is called after the prior.

The name would seem to be quite appropriately transferred. For the things that need to be tempered are those that desire shameful things and tend to grow [5] large. Appetites and children are most like this; for children also live by appetite, and desire for the pleasant is found more in them than in anyone else.

If, then, [the child or the appetitive part] is not obedient and subordinate to its rulers, it will go far astray. For when someone lacks understanding, his desire for the pleasant is insatiable and seeks indiscriminate satisfaction. The [repeated] active exercise of appetite increases the appetite he already had from birth, and if the appetites are large and intense, they [10] actually expel rational calculation. That is why appetites must be moderate and few, and never contrary to reason. This is the condition we call obedient and temperate. And just as the child's life must follow the instructions of his guide, so too the appetitive part [15] must follow reason.

Hence the temperate person's appetitive part must agree with reason; for both [his appetitive part and his reason] aim at the fine, and the temperate person's appetites are for the right things, in the right ways, at the right times, which is just what reason also prescribes.

So much, then, for temperance.

BOOK IV

Next let us discuss generosity. It seems, then, to be the mean about wealth; for the generous person is praised not in conditions of war, nor in those in which the temperate person is praised, nor in judicial [25] verdicts, but in the giving and taking of wealth, and more especially in the giving. By wealth we mean anything whose worth is measured by money.

Both wastefulness and ungenerosity are excesses and deficiencies about wealth. Ungenerosity is always ascribed to those who take wealth more seriously [30] than is right. But when wastefulness is attributed to someone, several vices are sometimes combined. For incontinent people and those who spend money on intemperance are called wasteful. Since these have many vices at the same time, they make wasteful people seem the basest.

These people, however, are not properly called wasteful. For the wasteful person is meant to have the single vicious feature of ruining his property; for [1120a] someone who causes his own destruction [‘lays waste’ to himself, and so] is wasteful, and ruining one’s own property seems to be a sort of self-destruction, on the assumption that our living depends on our property. This, then, is how we understand wastefulness.

Whatever has a use can be used either well or [5] badly; riches are something useful; and the best user of something is the person who has the virtue concerned with it. Hence the best user of riches will be the person who has the virtue concerned with wealth; and this is the generous person.

Using wealth seems to consist in spending and giving, whereas taking and keeping seem to be possessing [10] rather than using. That is why it is more proper to the generous person to give to the right people than to take from the right sources and not from the wrong sources.

For it is more proper to virtue to do good than to receive good, and more proper to do fine actions than not to do shameful ones; and clearly [the right sort of] giving implies doing good and doing fine actions, while [the right sort of] taking implies receiving well or not [15] doing something shameful. Moreover, thanks go to the one who gives, not to the one who fails to take, and praise goes more [to the giver]. Besides, not taking is easier than giving, since people part with what is their own less readily than they avoid taking what is another’s. [20] Further, those who are called generous are those who give [rightly]. Those who avoid taking [wrongly] are not praised for generosity, though they are praised nonetheless for justice, while those who take [rightly] are not much praised at all. Besides, generous people are loved more than practically any others who are loved because of their virtue; that is because they are beneficial; and they are beneficial in their giving.

Actions in accord with virtue are fine, and aim at the fine. Hence the generous person will also aim at the fine in his giving, and will give correctly; for he [25] will give to the right people, the right amounts, at the right time, and all the other things that are implied by correct giving. Moreover, he will do this with pleasure, or at any rate without pain; for action in accord with virtue is pleasant or at any rate painless, and least of all is it painful.

If someone gives to the wrong people, or does not aim at the fine, but gives for some other reason, he will not be called generous, but some other sort of person. Nor will he be called generous if he finds it [30] painful to give; for such a person would choose wealth over fine action, and that is not how the generous person chooses.

Nor will the virtuous person take wealth from the wrong sources; since he does not honor wealth, this way of taking it is not for him. Nor will he be ready to ask for favors; since he is the one who benefits others, receiving benefits readily is not for him.

He will, however, acquire wealth from the right [1120b] sources—from his own possessions, for instance—regarding taking not as fine, but as necessary to provide something to give. Nor will he neglect his own possessions, since he wants to use them to assist people. And he will avoid giving to just anyone, so that he will have something to give to the right people, at the right time, and where it is fine.

It is also very definitely proper to the generous [5] person to exceed so much in giving that he leaves less for himself, since it is proper to a generous person not to look out for himself. However, [‘exceed’ must be explained;] in speaking of generosity we refer to what accords with one’s means. For what is generous does not depend on the quantity of what is given, but on the state [of character] of the giver, and the generous state gives in accord with one’s means. Hence one who gives less than another may still be more generous, if he has less to give. [10]

Those who have not acquired their means by their own efforts, but have inherited it, seem to be more generous; for they have had no experience of shortage, and, besides, everyone likes his own work more than [other people’s], as parents and poets do.

It is not easy for a generous person to grow rich, [15] since he is ready to spend, not to take or keep, and honors wealth for the sake of giving, not for itself. Indeed, that is why fortune is denounced, because those who most deserve to grow rich actually do so least. This is only to be expected, however, since someone cannot possess wealth, any more than other things, if he pays no attention to possessing it.

Still, he does not give to the wrong people, at the [20] wrong time, and so on. For if he did, he would no longer be acting in accord with generosity, and if he spent his resources on the wrong sort of giving, he would have nothing left to spend for the right purposes. For, as we have said, the generous person is the one who spends in accord with his means, and for the right purposes, whereas the one who exceeds his means is wasteful. That is why tyrants are not called wasteful, since it seems they will have difficulty exceeding their possessions in giving and spending. [25]

Since generosity, then, is a mean concerned with the giving and the taking of wealth, the generous person will both give and spend the right amounts for the right purposes, in small and large matters alike, [30] and do this with pleasure. He will also take the right amounts from the right sources. For since the virtue is a mean about both giving and taking, he will do both in the right way; for decent giving implies decent taking, and the other sort of taking is contrary to the decent sort. Hence the states that imply each other are present at the same time in the same subject, whereas the contrary states clearly are not. [1121a]

If the generous person finds that his spending deviates from what is fine and right, he will feel pain, but moderately and in the right way; for it is proper to virtue to feel both pleasure and pain in the right things and in the right way.

The generous person is also an easy partner to have [5] common dealings with matters of money; for he can easily be treated unjustly, since he does not honor money, and is more grieved if he has failed to spend what it was right to spend than if he has spent what it was wrong to spend—here he does not please Simonides.

The wasteful person is in error here too, since he feels neither pleasure nor pain at the right things or in the right way; this will be more evident as we go on.

We have said, then, that wastefulness and ungenerosity [10] are excesses and deficiencies in two things, in giving and taking—for we also count spending as giving. Now wastefulness is excessive in giving and not taking, but deficient in taking. Ungenerosity is [15] deficient in giving and excessive in taking, but in small matters.

Now the different aspects of wastefulness are not very often combined; for it is not easy to take from nowhere and give to everyone, since private citizens soon outrun their resources in giving, and private citizens are the ones who seem to be wasteful. However, such a person seems to be quite a lot better than the ungenerous person, since he is easily cured, [20] both by growing older and by poverty, and is capable of reaching the intermediate condition. For he has the features proper to the generous person, since he gives and does not take, though he does neither rightly or well. If, then, he is changed, by habituation or some other means, so that he does them rightly and well, he will be generous; for then he will give to the right people and will not take from the wrong sources. [25] This is why the wasteful person seems not to be base in his character; for excess in giving without taking is proper to a foolish person, not to a vicious or ignoble one. Someone who is wasteful in this way seems to be much better than the ungenerous person, both for the reasons just given and because he benefits many, whereas the ungenerous person benefits no one, not even himself.

Most wasteful people, however, as we have said, [30] [not only give wrongly, but] also take from the wrong sources, and to this extent are ungenerous. They become acquisitive because they wish to spend, but cannot do this readily, since they soon exhaust all they have; hence they are compelled to provide from elsewhere. At the same time they care nothing for [1121b] the fine, and so take from any source without scruple; for they have an urge to give, and the way or source does not matter to them.

This is why their ways of giving are not generous either, since they are not fine, do not aim at the fine, [5] and are not done in the right way. Rather, these people sometimes enrich people who ought to be poor, and would give nothing to people with sound characters, but would give much to flatterers or to those providing some other pleasure. That is why most of these people are also intemperate. For since they part with money readily, they also spend it lavishly on intemperance; and because their lives do not [10] aim at the fine, they decline toward pleasures.

If, then, the wasteful person has been left without a guide, he changes into this; but if he receives attention, he might reach the intermediate and the right state.

Ungenerosity, however, is incurable, since old age and every incapacity seem to make people ungenerous. And it comes more naturally to human beings than wastefulness; for the many are money-lovers [15] rather than givers. Moreover, it extends widely and has many species, since there seem to be many ways of being ungenerous. For it consists in two conditions, deficiency in giving and excess in taking; but it is not found as a whole in all cases. Sometimes the two conditions are separated, and some people go to excess [20] in taking, whereas others are deficient in giving.

For the people called misers, tightfisted, skinflints and so on, are all deficient in giving, but they do not go after other people’s goods and do not wish to take them. With some people the reason for this is some sort of decency in them, and a concern to avoid what is shameful. For some people seem—at least, this is what they say—to hold on to their money so that they [25] will never be compelled to do anything shameful. These include the cheeseparer, and everyone like that; he is so called from his excessive refusal to give anything. Others keep their hands off other people’s property because they are afraid, supposing that it is [30] not easy for them to take other people’s property without other people taking theirs too; hence, they say, they are content if they neither take from others nor give to them.

Other people, by contrast, go to excess in taking, by taking anything from any source—those, for instance, who work at degrading occupations, pimps and all such people, and usurers who lend small amounts at [1122a] high interest; for all of these take the wrong amounts from the wrong sources.

Shameful love of gain is apparently their common feature, since they all put up with reproaches for some gain—more precisely, for a small gain. For those who take the wrong things from the wrong sources on a [5] large scale—such as tyrants who sack cities and plunder temples—are called wicked, impious, and unjust, but not ungenerous. The ungenerous, however, include the gambler and the robber, since these are shameful lovers of gain. For in pursuit of gain both go to great efforts and put up with reproaches; the robber faces the greatest dangers to get his haul, while [10] the gambler takes his gains from his friends, the very people he ought to be giving to. Both of them, then, are shameful lovers of gain, because they wish to acquire gains from the wrong sources; and all these methods of acquisition are ungenerous.

It is plausibly said that ungenerosity is contrary to [15] generosity. For it is a greater evil than wastefulness; and error in this direction is more common than the error of wastefulness, as we have described it. So much, then, for generosity and the vices opposed to it.

Next, it seems appropriate to discuss magnificence also. For it seems to be, like generosity, a virtue concerned with wealth, but it does not extend, as generosity [20] does, to all the actions involving wealth, but only to those involving heavy expenses, and in them it exceeds generosity in its large scale. For, just as the name [megaloprepeia] itself suggests, magnificence is expenditure that is fitting [prepousa] in its large scale [megethos]. But large scale is large relative to something; for the expenses of the captain of a warship and of the leader of a delegation are not the same. [25] Hence what is fitting is also relative to oneself, the circumstances, and the purpose.

Someone is called magnificent only if he spends the worthy amount on a large purpose, not on a trivial or an ordinary purpose like the one who ‘gave to many a wanderer’; for the magnificent person is generous, but generosity does not imply magnificence.

The deficiency falling short of this state is called [30] stinginess. The excess is called vulgarity, poor taste, and such things. These are excesses not because they spend an excessively great amount on the right things, but because they show off in the wrong circumstances and in the wrong way. We shall discuss these vices later.

The magnificent person, in contrast to these, is like a scientific expert, since he is able to observe what will be the fitting amount, and to spend large [35] amounts in an appropriate way. For, as we said at the [1122b] start, a state is defined by its activities and its objects; now the magnificent person’s expenditures are large and fitting; so also, then, must the results be, since that is what makes the expense large and fitting to the result. Hence the result must be worthy of the [5] expense, and the expense worthy of, or even in excess of, the result.

In this sort of spending the magnificent person will aim at the fine; for that is a common feature of the virtues. Moreover, he will spend gladly and readily, since it is stingy to count every penny. He will think more about the finest and most fitting way to spend than about the cost or about the cheapest way to do it. [10]

Hence the magnificent person must also be generous; for the generous person will also spend what is right in the right way. But it is in this spending that the large scale of the magnificent person, his greatness, is found, since his magnificence is a sort of large scale of generosity in these things; and from an expense that is equal [to a nonmagnificent person’s] he will make the result more magnificent. For a possession [15] and a result have different sorts of excellence; the most honored [and hence most excellent] possession is the one worth most—for example, gold—but the most honored result is the one that is great and fine, since that is what is admirable to behold. Now what is magnificent is admirable, and the excellence of the result consists in its large scale.

This sort of excellence is found in the sorts of [20] expenses called honorable, such as expenses for the gods—dedications, temples, sacrifices, and so on, for everything divine—and in expenses that provoke a good competition for honor, for the common good, if, for instance, some city thinks a splendid chorus or warship or a feast for the city must be provided.

But in all cases, as we have said, we fix the right [25] amount by reference to the agent [as well as the task]—by who he is and what resources he has; for the amounts must be worthy of these, fitting the producer as well as the result.

That is why a poor person could not be magnificent; he lacks the means for large and fitting expenditures. If he tries to be magnificent, he is foolish; for he spends more than what is worthy and right for him, whereas correct spending accords with virtue. Large spending befits those who have the means, [30] acquired through their own efforts or their ancestors or connections, or are well born or reputable, and so on; for each of these conditions includes greatness and reputation for worth.

This, then, above all is the character of the magnificent person, and magnificence is found in these sorts of expenses, as we have said, since these are the [35] largest and most honored.

It is found also in those private expenses that arise [1123a] only once, such as a wedding and the like, and in those that concern the whole city, or the people in it with a reputation for worth—the receiving of foreign guests and sending them off, gifts and exchanges of gifts. For the magnificent person spends money on the common good, not on himself, and the gifts have [5] some similarity to dedications.

It is also proper to the magnificent person to build a house befitting his riches, since this is also a suitable adornment. He spends more readily on long-lasting results, since these are the finest. In each case he spends on what is fitting. For what suits gods does [10] not suit human beings, and what suits a temple does not suit a tomb.

And since each great expense is great in relation to a particular kind of object, the most magnificent will be a great expense on a great object, and the [magnificent] in a particular area will be what is great in relation to the particular kind of object. Moreover, greatness in the results is not the same as greatness in an expense, since the finest ball or oil bottle has the magnificence [15] proper to a gift for a child, but its value is small and paltry. That is why it is proper to the magnificent person, whatever kind of thing he produces, to produce it magnificently, since this is not easily exceeded, and to produce something worthy of the expense.

This, then, is the character of the magnificent person.

The vulgar person who exceeds [the mean] exceeds [20] by spending more than is right, as has been said. For in small expenses he spends a lot, and puts on an inappropriate display. He gives his club a dinner party in the style of a wedding banquet, and when he supplies a chorus for a comedy, he brings them onstage dressed in purple, as they do at Megara. In all this he aims not [25] at the fine, but at the display of his wealth and at the admiration he thinks he wins in this way. Where a large expense is right, he spends a little, and he spends a lot where a small expense is right.

The stingy person will be deficient in everything. After spending the largest amounts, he will refuse a small amount, and so destroy a fine result. Whatever he does, while he is doing it he will hesitate and [30] consider how he can spend the smallest possible amount; he will even moan about spending this, and will always think he is doing something on a larger scale than is right.

These states, vulgarity and stinginess, are vices. But they do not bring reproaches, since they do no harm to one’s neighbors and are not too disgraceful.

Magnanimity seems, even if we go simply by the [35] name, to be concerned with great things. Let us see first the sorts of things it is concerned with. It does [1123b] not matter whether we consider the state itself or the person who acts in accord with it.

The magnanimous person, then, seems to be the one who thinks himself worthy of great things and is really worthy of them. For if someone is not worthy of them but thinks he is, he is foolish, and no virtuous person is foolish or senseless; hence the magnanimous person is the one we have mentioned. For if someone [5] is worthy of little and thinks so, he is temperate, but not magnanimous; for magnanimity is found in greatness, just as beauty is found in a large body, and small people can be attractive and well proportioned, but not beautiful.

Someone who thinks he is worthy of great things, but is not worthy of them, is vain; but not everyone who thinks he is worthy of greater things than he is worthy of is vain.

Someone who thinks he is worthy of less than he [10] is worthy of is pusillanimous, whether he is worthy of great or of moderate things, or of little and thinks himself worthy of still less. The one who seems most pusillanimous is the one who is worthy of great things; for consider how little he would think of himself if he were worthy of less.

The magnanimous person, then, is at the extreme insofar as he makes great claims. But insofar as he makes them rightly, he is intermediate; for what he thinks he is worthy of accords with his real worth, [15] whereas the others are excessive or deficient. The pusillanimous person is deficient both in relation to himself [i.e., his worth] and in relation to the [20] magnanimous person’s estimate of his own worth. The vain person makes claims that are excessive for himself, but not for the magnanimous person.

If, then, he thinks he is worthy of great things, and is worthy of them, especially of the greatest things, he has one concern above all. Worth is said to [make one worthy of] external goods; and we would suppose that the greatest of these is the one we award to the gods, the one above all that is the aim of people with a reputation for worth, the prize for the finest [achievements]. All this is true of honor, since it is the [25] greatest of external goods. Hence the magnanimous person has the right concern with honors and dishonors. And even without argument it appears that magnanimous people are concerned with honor; for the great think themselves worthy of honor most of all, but in accord with their worth.

Since the magnanimous person is worthy of the greatest things, he is the best person. For in every case the better person is worthy of something greater, and the best person is worthy of the greatest things; and hence the truly magnanimous person must be good.

Greatness in each virtue also seems proper to the [30] magnanimous person. Surely it would not at all fit a magnanimous person to run away [from danger when a coward would], swinging his arms [to get away faster], or to do injustice. For what goal will make him do shameful actions, given that none [of their goals] is great to him? And if we examine particular cases, we can see that the magnanimous person appears altogether ridiculous if he is not good. Nor would he be worthy of honor if he were base; for honor [35] is the prize of virtue, and is awarded to good people.

Magnanimity, then, would seem to be a sort of [1124a] adornment of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it does not arise without them. That is why it is difficult to be truly magnanimous, since it is not possible without being fine and good.

The magnanimous person, then, is concerned especially [5] with honors and dishonors. When he receives great honors from excellent people, he will be moderately pleased, thinking he is getting what is proper to him, or even less. For there can be no honor worthy of complete virtue; but still he will accept honors [from excellent people], since they have nothing greater to award him. But if he is honored by just [10] anyone, or for something small, he will altogether disdain it; for that is not what he is worthy of. And similarly he will disdain dishonor; for it will not be justly attached to him.

As we have said, then, the magnanimous person is concerned especially with honors. Still, he will also have a moderate attitude to riches and power and every sort of good and bad fortune, however it turns [15] out. He will be neither excessively pleased by good fortune nor excessively distressed by ill fortune, since he does not even regard honor as the greatest good. For positions of power and riches are choiceworthy for their honor; at any rate their possessors wish to be honored on account of them. Hence the magnanimous person, given that he counts honor for little, will also count these other goods for little; that is why [20] he seems arrogant.

The results of good fortune, however, also seem to contribute to magnanimity. For the wellborn and the powerful or rich are thought worthy of honor, since they are in a superior position, and everything superior in some good is more honored. That is why these things also make people more magnanimous, since some people honor their possessors for these goods. In reality, however, it is only the good person [25] who is honorable. Still, anyone who has both virtue and these goods is more readily thought worthy of honor.

Those who lack virtue but have these other goods are not justified in thinking themselves worthy of great things, and are not correctly called magnanimous; that is impossible without complete virtue. They become arrogant and wantonly aggressive when [30] they have these other goods. For without virtue it is hard to bear the results of good fortune suitably, and when these people cannot do it, but suppose they are [1124b] superior to other people, they think less of everyone else, and do whatever they please. They do this because they are imitating the magnanimous person though they are not really like him. They imitate him where they can; hence they do not act in accord with virtue, but they think less of other people. For the [5] magnanimous person is justified when he thinks less of others, since his beliefs are true; but the many think less of others with no good reason.

He does not face dangers in a small cause; he does not face them frequently, since he honors few things; and he is no lover of danger. But he faces dangers in a great cause, and whenever he faces them he is unsparing of his life, since he does not think life at all costs is worth living.

He is the sort of person who does good but is [10] ashamed when he receives it; for doing good is proper to the superior person, but receiving it is proper to the inferior. He returns more good than he has received; for in this way the original giver will be repaid, and will also have incurred a new debt to him, and will be the beneficiary.

Magnanimous people seem to remember the good they do, but not what they receive, since the recipient is inferior to the giver, and the magnanimous person wishes to be superior. And they seem to find pleasure [15] in hearing of the good they do, and none in hearing of what they receive—that also seems to be why Thetis⁸ does not tell Zeus of the good she has done him, and the Spartans do not tell of the good they have done the Athenians, but only of the good received from them.

Again, it is proper to the magnanimous person to ask for nothing, or hardly anything, but to help eagerly.

When he meets people with good fortune or a [20] reputation for worth, he displays his greatness, since superiority over them is difficult and impressive, and there is nothing ignoble in trying to be impressive with them. But when he meets ordinary people he is moderate, since superiority over them is easy, and an attempt to be impressive among inferiors is as vulgar as a display of strength against the weak.

He stays away from what is commonly honored, and from areas where others lead; he is inactive and a delayer, except for some great honor or achievement. [25] His actions are few, but great and renowned.

Moreover, he must be open in his hatreds and his friendships, since concealment is proper to a frightened person. He is concerned for the truth more than for people’s opinion. He is open in his speech and actions, since his thinking less of other people makes him [30] speak freely. And he speaks the truth, except [when he speaks less than the truth] to the many, [because he is moderate], not because he is self-deprecating.

He cannot let anyone else, except a friend, determine [1125a] his life. For that would be slavish; and this is why all flatterers are servile and inferior people are flatterers.

He is not prone to marvel, since he finds nothing great, or to remember evils, since it is proper to a magnanimous person not to nurse memories, especially not of evils, but to overlook them. [5]

He is no gossip. For he will not talk about himself or about another, since he is not concerned to have himself praised or other people blamed. Nor is he given to praising people. Hence he does not speak evil even of his enemies, except [when he responds to their] wanton aggression.

He especially avoids laments or entreaties about [10] necessities or small matters, since these attitudes are proper to someone who takes these things seriously.

He is the sort of person whose possessions are fine and unproductive rather than productive and advantageous, since that is more proper to a self-sufficient person.

The magnanimous person seems to have slow movements, a deep voice, and calm speech. For since he takes few things seriously, he is in no hurry, and since he counts nothing great, he is not strident; and [15] these [attitudes he avoids] are the causes of a shrill voice and hasty movements.

This, then, is the character of the magnanimous person. The deficient person is pusillanimous, and the person who goes to excess is vain. [Like the vulgar and the stingy person] these also seem not to be evil people, since they are not evildoers, but to be in error.

For the pusillanimous person is worthy of goods, [20] but deprives himself of the goods he is worthy of, and would seem to have something bad in him because he does not think he is worthy of the goods. Indeed he would seem not to know himself; for if he did, he would aim at the things he is worthy of, since they are goods. For all that, such people seem hesitant rather than foolish. But this belief of theirs actually seems to make them worse. For each sort of person seeks what [he thinks] he is worth; and these people [25] hold back from fine actions and practices, and equally from external goods, because they think they are unworthy of them.

Vain people, by contrast, are foolish and do not know themselves, and they make this obvious. For they undertake commonly honored exploits, but are not worthy of them, and then they are found out. [30] They adorn themselves with clothes and ostentatious style and that sort of thing; and since they want everyone to know how fortunate they are, they talk about it, thinking it will bring them honor.

Pusillanimity is more opposed than vanity to magnanimity; for it arises more often, and is worse.

Magnanimity, then, as has been said, is the virtue [35] concerned with honor, and [specifically] with great honor.

But, as we said in the first discussion, [just as there [1125b] is a virtue for small-scale giving], there would also seem to be a virtue concerned with honor that seems to be related to magnanimity in the way that generosity is related to magnificence. For it abstains, just as generosity does, from anything great, but forms the right attitude in us on medium and small matters. [5]

Just as the taking and giving of money admits of a mean, an excess and a deficiency, so also we can desire honor more or less than is right, and we can desire it from the right sources and in the right way. [10] For we blame the honor-lover for aiming at honor more than is right, and from the wrong sources; and we blame someone indifferent to honor for deciding not to be honored even for fine things. Sometimes, however, we praise the honor-lover for being manly and a lover of the fine; and again we praise the indifferent person for being moderate and temperate, as we said in the first discussion.

Clearly, since we speak in several ways of loving something, what we refer to as love of honor is not [15] the same attitude in every case. When we praise it, we refer to loving honor more than the many do. When we blame it, we refer to loving honor more than is right. Since the mean has no name, the extremes look like the only contestants, as though they had the field to themselves. Still, if there is excess and deficiency, there is also an intermediate condition.

Since people desire honor both more and less than [20] is right, it is also possible to desire it in the right way. This state, therefore, a nameless mean concerned with honor, is praised. In relation to love of honor, it appears as indifference to honor; in relation to indifference, it appears as love of honor; in relation to both, it appears in a way as both. The same would seem to be true of the other virtues too; but in this [25] particular case the extreme people appear to be opposed [only to each other] because the intermediate person has no name.

Mildness is the mean concerned with anger. Since the mean is nameless, and the extremes are practically nameless too, we call the intermediate condition mildness, inclining toward the deficiency, which is also nameless. The excess might be called a kind of [30] irascibility; for the relevant feeling is anger, though its sources are many and varied.

The person who is angry at the right things and toward the right people, and also in the right way, at the right time, and for the right length of time, is praised. This, then, will be the mild person, if mildness is praised. For [if mildness is something to be praised,] being a mild person means being undisturbed, not led by feeling, but irritated wherever reason [35] prescribes, and for the length of time it prescribes. [1126a] And he seems to err more in the direction of deficiency, since the mild person is ready to pardon, not eager to exact a penalty.

The deficiency—a sort of inirascibility or whatever [5] it is—is blamed. For people who are not angered by the right things, or in the right way, or at the right times, or toward the right people, all seem to be foolish. For such a person seems to be insensible and to feel no pain, and since he is not angered, he does not seem to be the sort to defend himself. Such willingness to accept insults to oneself and to overlook insults to one’s family and friends is slavish.

The excess arises in all these ways—in anger toward [10] the wrong people, at the wrong times, more than is right, more hastily than is right, and for a longer time—but they are not all found in the same person. For they could not all exist together; for evil destroys itself as well as other things, and if it is present as a whole it becomes unbearable.

Irascible people get angry quickly, toward the wrong people, at the wrong times, and more than is right; but they stop soon, and this is their best feature. [15] They do all this because they do not contain their anger, but their quick temper makes them pay back the offense without concealment, and then they stop.

Choleric people are quick-tempered to extreme, and irascible about everything and at everything; that is how they get their name.

Bitter people are hard to reconcile, and stay angry [20] for a long time, since they contain their [angry] spirit. It stops when they pay back the offense; for the exaction of the penalty produces pleasure in place of pain, and so puts a stop to the anger. But if this does not happen, they hold their grudge. For no one else persuades them to get over it, since it is not obvious; [25] and digesting anger in oneself takes time. This sort of person is most troublesome to himself and to his closest friends.

The people we call irritable are those who are irritated by the wrong things, more severely and for longer than is right, and are not reconciled until [the offender has suffered] a penalty and corrective treatment.

We regard the excess as more opposed than the [30] deficiency to mildness. For it is more widespread, since it comes more naturally to human beings to exact a penalty from the offender [than to overlook an offense]; and, moreover, irritable people are harder to live with.

These remarks also make clear a previous point of ours. For it is hard to define how, against whom, about what, and how long we should be angry, and up to what point someone is acting correctly or in [35] error. For someone who deviates a little toward either excess or deficiency is not blamed; for sometimes we praise deficient people and say they are mild, but [1126b] sometimes we say that people who get irritated are manly because we think they are capable of ruling others. How far, then, and in what way must someone deviate to be open to blame? It is not easy to answer in a [general] account; for the judgment depends on particular cases, and [we make it] by perception.

However, this much at least is clear: The intermediate [5] state is praiseworthy, and in accord with it we are angry toward the right people, about the right things, in the right way, and so on. The excesses and deficiencies are blameworthy, lightly if they go a little way, more if they go further, and strongly if they go far. Clearly, then, we must keep to the intermediate state. So much, then, for the states concerned with anger. [10]

In meeting people, living together, and common dealings in conversations and actions, some people seem to be ingratiating; these are the ones who praise everything to please us and never cross us, but think they must cause no pain to those they meet. In contrast [15] to these, people who oppose us on every point and do not care in the least about causing pain are called cantankerous and quarrelsome.

Clearly, the states we have mentioned are blameworthy, and the state intermediate between them is praiseworthy; in accord with it one accepts or objects to things when it is right and in the right way. This [20] state has no name, but it would seem to be most like friendship; for the character of the person in the intermediate state is just what we mean in speaking of a decent friend, except that the friend is also fond of us.

It differs from friendship in not requiring any special feeling or any fondness for the people we meet. For this person takes each thing in the right way because that is his character, not because he is a friend or an enemy. For he will behave this way to [25] new and old acquaintances, to familiar companions and strangers without distinction, except that he will also do what is suitable for each; for the proper ways to spare or to hurt the feelings of familiar companions are not the proper ways to treat strangers.

We have said, then, that in general he will treat people in the right way when he meets them. [More exactly], he will aim to avoid causing pain or to share pleasure, but will always refer to the fine and the beneficial. For he would seem to be concerned with [30] the pleasures and pains that arise in meeting people; and if it is not fine, or it is harmful, for him to share one of these pleasures, he will object and will decide to cause pain instead. Further, if the other person will suffer no slight disgrace or harm from doing an action, and only slight pain if he is crossed, the virtuous person will object to the action and not accept it.

When he meets people with a reputation for worth, [35] his attitude will be different from his attitude to just anyone; he will take different attitudes to those he [1127a] knows better and those he knows less well; and similarly with the other differences, according what is suitable to each sort of person. What he will choose in itself is to share pleasure and avoid causing pain. But he will be guided by consequences, if they are [5] greater—that is to say, by the fine and the expedient; and to secure great pleasure in the future he will cause slight pain.

This, then, is the character of the intermediate person, though he has no name.

Among those who share pleasure the person who aims to be pleasant with no ulterior purpose is ingratiating; the one who does it for some advantage in money and what money can buy is the flatterer. The [10] one who objects to everything is, as we have said, the cantankerous and quarrelsome person. However, the extremes appear to be opposite [only] to each other, because the intermediate condition has no name.

The mean that corresponds to boastfulness is also concerned with practically these same [conditions of social life]; and it too is nameless. It is a good idea [15] to examine the nameless virtues as well as the others. For if we discuss particular aspects of character one at a time, we will acquire a better knowledge of them; and if we survey the virtues and see that in each case the virtue is a mean, we will have more confidence in our belief that the virtues are means. As concerns social life, then, having discussed those who aim at giving pleasure or pain when they meet people, let us now discuss those who are truthful and false, both [20] in words and in actions—that is to say, in their claims [about themselves].

The boaster seems to claim qualities that win reputation, though he either lacks them altogether or has less than he claims. The self-deprecator, by contrast, seems to disavow or to belittle his actual qualities. The intermediate person is straightforward, and therefore truthful in what he says and does, acknowledging the qualities he has without exaggerating [25] or belittling.

Each of these things may be done with or without an ulterior purpose; and someone’s character determines what he says and does and the way he lives, if he is not acting for an ulterior purpose. Now in itself [when no ulterior purpose is involved], falsehood is base and blameworthy, and truth is fine and praiseworthy; in this way the truthful person, like other intermediate people, is praiseworthy, and both the [30] tellers of falsehoods are blameworthy, the boaster to a higher degree. Let us discuss each type of blameworthy person; but first let us discuss the truthful person.

For we do not mean someone who is truthful in agreements in matters of justice and injustice, since [1127b] these concern a different virtue, but someone who is truthful both in what he says and in how he lives, when nothing about justice is at stake, simply because that is his state of character. Someone with this character seems to be a decent person. For a lover of the truth who is truthful even when nothing is at stake [5] will be still keener to tell the truth when something is at stake, since he will avoid falsehood as shameful [when something is at stake], having already avoided it in itself [when nothing was at stake]. This sort of person is praiseworthy. He inclines to tell less, rather than more, than the truth; for this appears more suitable, since excesses are oppressive.

If someone claims to have more than he has, with [10] no ulterior purpose, he certainly looks as though he is a base person, since otherwise he would not enjoy telling falsehoods; but apparently he is pointlessly foolish rather than bad. Among those who do it with an ulterior purpose, the one who does it for the reputation or honor is not to be blamed too much as a boaster. But the one who does it for money or for means to making money is more disgraceful.

It is not a person’s capacity, but his decision, that [15] makes him a boaster; for his state of character makes a person a boaster, just as it makes a person a liar. And [boasters differ in their states of character]; one is a boaster because he enjoys telling falsehoods in itself, another because he pursues reputation or gain. Boasters who aim at reputation, then, claim the qualities that win praise or win congratulation for happiness. Boasters who aim at profit claim the qualities [20] that gratify other people and that allow someone to avoid detection when he claims to be what he is not—a wise diviner or doctor, for instance. That is why most [boasters] claim these sorts of things and boast about them; for they have the features just mentioned.

Self-deprecators underestimate themselves in what they say, and so appear to have more cultivated characters. For they seem to be avoiding bombast, not looking for profit, in what they say. The qualities [25] that win reputation are the ones that these people especially disavow, as Socrates also used to do.

Those who disavow small qualities that they obviously have are called humbugs, and people more readily think less of them. Sometimes, indeed, this even appears a form of boastfulness, as the Spartans’ [austere] dress does; for the extreme deficiency, as [30] well as the excess, is boastful. But those who are moderate in their self-deprecation and confine themselves to qualities that are not too commonplace or obvious appear sophisticated.

It is the boaster [rather than the self-deprecator] who appears to be opposite to the truthful person, since he is the worse [of the two extremes].

Since life also includes relaxation, and in this we pass [1128a] our time with some form of amusement, here also it seems possible to behave appropriately in meeting people, and to say and listen to the right things and in the right way. The company we are in when we speak or listen also makes a difference. And, clearly, in this case also it is possible to exceed the intermediate condition or to be deficient.

Those who go to excess in raising laughs seem to [5] be vulgar buffoons. They stop at nothing to raise a laugh, and care more about that than about saying what is seemly and avoiding pain to the victims of the joke. Those who would never say anything themselves to raise a laugh, and even object when other people do it, seem to be boorish and stiff. Those who joke in appropriate ways are called witty, or, in other [10] words, agile-witted. For these sorts of jokes seem to be movements of someone’s character, and characters are judged, as bodies are, by their movements.

Since there are always opportunities at hand for raising a laugh, and most people enjoy amusements and jokes more than they should, buffoons are also called witty because they are thought cultivated; [15] nonetheless, they differ, and differ considerably, from witty people, as our account has made clear.

Dexterity is also proper to the intermediate state. It is proper to the dexterous person to say and listen to what suits the decent and civilized person. For some things are suitable for this sort of person to say [20] and listen to by way of amusement; and the civilized person’s amusement differs from the slavish person’s. This can also be seen from old and new comedies; for what people used to find funny was shameful abuse, but what they now find funny instead is innuendo, [25] which is considerably more seemly.

Then should the person who jokes well be defined by his making remarks not unsuitable for a civilized person, or by his avoiding pain and even giving pleasure to the hearer? Perhaps, though, this [avoiding pain and giving pleasure] is indefinable, since different people find different things hateful or pleasant. The remarks he is willing to hear made are of the same sort, since those he is prepared to hear made seem to be those he is prepared to make himself.

Hence he will not be indiscriminate in his remarks. [30] For since a joke is a type of abuse, and legislators prohibit some types of abuse, they would presumably be right to prohibit some types of jokes too. Hence the cultivated and civilized person, as a sort of law to himself, will take this [discriminating] attitude. This, then, is the character of the intermediate person, whether he is called dexterous or witty.

The buffoon cannot resist raising a laugh, and [35] spares neither himself nor anyone else if he can cause laughter, even by making remarks that the sophisticated person would never make, and some that the [1128b] sophisticated person would not even be willing to hear made.

The boor is useless when he meets people in these circumstances. For he contributes nothing himself, and objects to everything; but relaxation and amusement seem to be necessary in life.

[5] We have spoken, then, of three means in life, all concerned with common dealings in certain conversations and actions. They differ insofar as one is concerned with truth, the others with what is pleasant. One of those concerned with pleasure is found in amusements, and the other in our behavior in the other aspects of life when we meet people.

It is not appropriate to treat shame as a virtue; for it [10] would seem to be more like a feeling than like a state [of character]. It is defined, at any rate, as a sort of fear of disrepute. Its expression is similar to that of fear of something terrifying; for a feeling of disgrace makes people blush, and fear of death makes them [15] turn pale. Hence both [types of fear] appear to be in some way bodily [reactions], which seem to be more characteristic of feelings than of states.

Further, the feeling of shame is suitable for youth, not for every time of life. For we think it right for young people to be prone to shame, since they live by their feelings, and hence often go astray, but are restrained by shame; and hence we praise young people [20] who are prone to shame. No one, by contrast, would praise an older person for readiness to feel disgrace, since we think it wrong for him to do any action that causes a feeling of disgrace.

For a feeling of disgrace is not proper to the decent person either, if it is caused by base actions; for these should not be done. If some actions are really disgraceful and others are base [only] in [his] belief, that does not matter, since neither should be done, and so he [25] should not feel disgrace. On the contrary; being the sort of person who does any disgraceful action is proper to a vicious person.

If someone’s state [of character] would make him feel disgrace if he were to do a disgraceful action, and because of this he thinks he is decent, that is absurd. For shame is concerned with what is voluntary, and the decent person will never willingly do base actions.

Shame might, however, be decent on an assumption; [30] if one were to do [disgraceful actions], one would feel disgrace; but this does not apply to the virtues. If we grant that it is base to feel no disgrace or shame at disgraceful actions, it still does not follow that to do such actions and then to feel disgrace at them is decent.

Continence is not a virtue either. It is a sort of [35] mixed state. We will explain about it in what we say later. Now let us discuss justice.

BOOK V

The questions we must examine about justice and injustice [1129a] are these: What sorts of actions are they concerned with? What sort of mean is justice? What are [5] the extremes between which justice is intermediate? Let us investigate them by the same line of inquiry as we used in the topics discussed before.

We see that the state everyone means in speaking of justice is the state that makes us just agents—[that is to say], the state that makes us do justice and wish what is just. In the same way they mean by injustice [10] the state that makes us do injustice and wish what is unjust. That is why we also should first assume these things as an outline.

For what is true of sciences and capacities is not true of states. For while one and the same capacity or science seems to have contrary activities, a state that is a contrary has no contrary activities. Health, [15] for instance, only makes us do healthy actions, not their contraries; for we say we are walking in a healthy way if [and only if] we are walking in the way a healthy person would.

Often one of a pair of contrary states is recognized from the other contrary; and often the states are recognized from their subjects. For if, for instance, the good state is evident, [20] the bad state becomes evident too; and moreover the good state becomes evident from the things that have it, and the things from the state. For if, for instance, the good state is thickness of flesh, the bad state must be thinness of flesh, and the thing that produces the good state must be what produces thickness of flesh.

If one of a pair of contraries is spoken of in more [25] ways than one, it follows, usually, that the other is too. If, for instance, the just is spoken of in more ways than one, so is the unjust.

Now it would seem that justice and injustice are both spoken of in more ways than one, but since their homonymy is close, the difference is unnoticed, and is less clear than it is with distant homonyms where [30] the distance in appearance is wide (for instance, the bone below an animal’s neck and what we lock doors with are called keys homonymously).

Let us, then, find the number of ways an unjust person is spoken of. Both the lawless person and the overreaching and unfair person seem to be unjust; and so, clearly, both the lawful and the fair person will be just. Hence the just will be both the lawful [1129b] and what is fair, and the unjust will be both the lawless and the unfair.

Since the unjust person is an overreacher, he will be concerned with goods—not with all goods, but only with those involved in good and bad fortune, goods which are, [considered] without qualification, always good, but for this or that person not always good. Though human beings pray for these and pursue them, they are wrong; the right thing is to pray [5] that what is good without qualification will also be good for us, but to choose [only] what is good for us. Now the unjust person [who chooses these goods] does not choose more in every case; in the case of what is bad without qualification he actually chooses less. But since what is less bad also seems to be good [10] in a way, and overreaching aims at more of what is good, he seems to be an overreacher. In fact he is unfair; for unfairness includes [all these actions], and is a common feature [of his choice of the greater good and of the lesser evil].

Since, as we saw, the lawless person is unjust and the lawful person is just, it clearly follows that whatever is lawful is in some way just; for the provisions of legislative science are lawful, and we say that each of them is just. In every matter that they deal with, the laws aim [15] either at the common benefit of all, or at the benefit of those in control, whose control rests on virtue or on some other such basis. And so in one way what we call just is whatever produces and maintains happiness and its parts for a political community.

Now the law instructs us to do the actions of a brave [20] person—for instance, not to leave the battle-line, or to flee, or to throw away our weapons; of a temperate person—not to commit adultery or wanton aggression; of a mild person—not to strike or revile another; and similarly requires actions in accord with the other virtues, and prohibits actions in accord with the vices. The [25] correctly established law does this correctly, and the less carefully framed one does this worse.

This type of justice, then, is complete virtue, not complete virtue without qualification, but complete virtue in relation to another. And that is why justice often seems to be supreme among the virtues, and ‘neither the evening star nor the morning star is so marvellous,’ and the proverb says, ‘And in justice all virtue is summed up.’ [30]

Moreover, justice is complete virtue to the highest degree because it is the complete exercise of complete virtue. And it is the complete exercise because the person who has justice is able to exercise virtue in relation to another, not only in what concerns himself; for many are able to exercise virtue in their own concerns, but unable in what relates to another.

That is why Bias seems to have been correct in [1130a] saying that ruling will reveal the man; for a ruler is automatically related to another, and in a community. That is also why justice is the only virtue that seems to be another person’s good, because it is related to another; for it does what benefits another, either the ruler or the fellow member of the community.

The worst person, therefore, is the one who exercises his vice toward himself and his friends as well [as toward others]. And the best person is not the one who exercises virtue [only] toward himself, but the one who [also] exercises it in relation to another, since this is a difficult task.

This type of justice, then, is the whole, not a part, [10] of virtue, and the injustice contrary to it is the whole, not a part, of vice.

Our discussion makes clear the difference between virtue and this type of justice. For virtue is the same as justice, but what it is to be virtue is not the same as what it is to be justice. Rather, insofar as virtue is related to another, it is justice, and insofar as it is a certain sort of state without qualification, it is virtue.

But we are looking for the type of justice, since we say [15] there is one, that consists in a part of virtue, and correspondingly for the type of injustice that is a part of vice.

A sign that there is this type of justice and injustice is this: If someone’s activities accord with the other vices—if, for instance, cowardice made him throw away his shield, or irritability made him revile someone, or ungenerosity made him fail to help someone with money—what he does is unjust, but not overreaching. But when someone acts from overreaching, [20] in many cases his action accords with none of these vices—certainly not all of them; but it still accords with some type of wickedness, since we blame him, and [in particular] it accords with injustice. Hence there is another type of injustice that is a part of the whole, and a way of being unjust that is a part of the whole that is contrary to law.

Further, if A commits adultery for profit and makes [25] a profit, but B commits adultery because of his appetite, and spends money on it to his own loss, B seems intemperate rather than overreaching, but A seems unjust, not intemperate. Clearly, then, this is because A acts to make a profit.

Further, we can refer every other unjust action to [30] some vice—to intemperance if someone committed adultery, to cowardice if he deserted his comrade in the battle-line, to anger if he struck someone. But if he made an [unjust] profit, we can refer it to no other vice except injustice.

It is evident, then, that there is another type of injustice, special injustice, apart from injustice as a whole, and that it is synonymous with injustice as a whole, since the definition is in the same genus. For [1130b] both have their area of competence in relation to another, but special injustice is concerned with honor or wealth or safety (or whatever single name will include all these), and aims at the pleasure that results from making a profit, whereas the concern of injustice as a whole is whatever concerns the excellent person. [5]

Clearly, then, there is more than one type of justice, and there is another type besides [the type that is] the whole of virtue; but we must still grasp what it is, and what sort of thing it is.

The unjust is divided into the lawless and the unfair, and the just into the lawful and the fair. The injustice previously described, then, is concerned [10] with the lawless. But the unfair is not the same as the lawless; it is related to it as part to whole, since whatever is unfair is lawless, but not everything lawless is unfair. Hence also the unfair type of injustice and the unfair way of being unjust are not the same as the lawless type, but differ as parts from wholes. For [15] unfair injustice is a part of the whole of injustice, and, similarly, fair justice is a part of the whole of justice. Hence we must describe special as well as general justice and injustice, and equally this way of being just or unjust.

Let us, then, set aside the type of justice and injustice [20] that accords with the whole of virtue, justice being the exercise of the whole of virtue, and injustice of the whole of vice, in relation to another. And it is evident how we must distinguish the way of being just or unjust that accords with this type of justice and injustice. For most lawful actions, we might say, are those produced by virtue as a whole; for the law prescribes living in accord with each virtue, and forbids living in accord with each vice. Moreover, the actions producing the whole of virtue are the [25] lawful actions that the laws prescribe for education promoting the common good. We must wait till later, however, to determine whether the education that makes an individual an unqualifiedly good man is a task for political science or for another science; for, presumably, being a good man is not the same as being every sort of good citizen.

Special justice, however, and the corresponding [30] way of being just have one species that is found in the distribution of honors or wealth or anything else that can be divided among members of a community who share in a political system; for here it is possible for one member to have a share equal or unequal to another’s. A second species concerns rectification [1131a] in transactions.

This second species has two parts, since one sort of transaction is voluntary, and one involuntary. Voluntary transactions (for instance, selling, buying, lending, pledging, renting, depositing, hiring out) are [5] so called because their principle is voluntary. Among involuntary transactions some are secret (for instance, theft, adultery, poisoning, pimping, slave-deception, murder by treachery, false witness), whereas others involve force (for instance, imprisonment, murder, plunder, mutilation, slander, insult).

Since the unjust person is unfair, and what is unjust [10] is unfair, there is clearly an intermediate between the unfair [extremes]. This is the fair; for in any action where too much and too little are possible, the fair [amount] is also possible. And so, if the unjust is unfair, the just is fair (ison), as seems true to everyone even without argument. And since the equal (ison) [and fair] is intermediate, the just is some sort of intermediate.

Since the equal involves at least two things [equal [15] to each other], it follows that the just must be intermediate and equal, and related to something, and for some people. Insofar as it is intermediate, it must be between too much and too little; insofar as it is equal, it involves two things; and insofar as it is just, it is just for some people. Hence the just requires four things at least; the people for whom it is just are two, and the [equal] things involved are two. [20]

Equality for the people involved will be the same as for the things involved, since [in a just arrangement] the relation between the people will be the same as the relation between the things involved. For if the people involved are not equal, they will not [justly] receive equal shares; indeed, whenever equals receive unequal shares, or unequals equal shares, in a distribution, that is the source of quarrels and accusations.

This is also clear from considering what accords [25] with worth. For all agree that the just in distributions must accord with some sort of worth, but what they call worth is not the same; supporters of democracy say it is free citizenship, some supporters of oligarchy say it is wealth, others good birth, while supporters of aristocracy say it is virtue.

Hence the just [since it requires equal shares for [30] equal people] is in some way proportionate. For proportion is special to number as a whole, not only to numbers consisting of [abstract] units, since it is equality of ratios and requires at least four terms. Now divided proportion clearly requires four terms. But so does continuous proportion, since here we use one term as two, and mention it twice. If, for instance, [1131b] line A is to line B as B is to C, B is mentioned twice; and so if B is introduced twice, the terms in the proportion will be four.

The just also requires at least four terms, with the [5] same ratio [between the pairs], since the people [A and B] and the items [C and D] involved are divided in the same way. Term C, then, is to term D as A is to B, and, taking them alternately, B is to D as A is to C. Hence there will also be the same relation of whole [A and C] to whole [B and D]; this is the relation in which the distribution pairs them, and it pairs them justly if this is how they are combined.

Hence the combination of term A with C and of [10] B with D is the just in distribution, and this way of being just is intermediate, whereas the unjust is contrary to the proportionate. For the proportionate is intermediate, and the just is proportionate.

This is the sort of proportion that mathematicians call geometrical, since in geometrical proportion the relation of whole to whole is the same as the relation of each [part] to each [part]. But this proportion [involved [15] in justice] is not continuous, since there is no single term for both the person and the item. The just, then, is the proportionate, and the unjust is the counterproportionate. Hence [in an unjust action] one term becomes more and the other less; and this is indeed how it turns out in practice, since the one doing injustice has more of the good, and the victim has less. [20]

With an evil the ratio is reversed, since the lesser evil, compared to the greater, counts as a good; for the lesser evil is more choiceworthy than the greater, what is choiceworthy is good, and what is more choiceworthy is a greater good.

This, then, is the first species of the just.

The other species is rectificatory, found in transactions [25] both voluntary and involuntary. This way of being just belongs to a different species from the first.

For the just in distribution of common assets will always accord with the proportion mentioned above; for [just] distribution from common funds will also [30] accord with the ratio to one another of different people’s deposits. Similarly, the way of being unjust that is opposed to this way of being just is what is counterproportionate.

The just in transactions, by contrast, though it is [1132a] a sort of equality (and the unjust a sort of inequality), accords with numerical proportion, not with the [geometrical] proportion of the other species. For here it does not matter if a decent person has taken from a base person, or a base person from a decent person, or if a decent or a base person has committed adultery. Rather, the law looks only at differences in the harm [inflicted], and treats the people involved as equals, if one does injustice while the other suffers it, and [5] one has done the harm while the other has suffered it.

And so the judge tries to restore this unjust situation to equality, since it is unequal. For [not only when one steals from another but] also when one is wounded and the other wounds him, or one kills and the other is killed, the action and the suffering are unequally divided [with profit for the offender and loss for the victim]; and the judge tries to restore the [10] [profit and] loss to a position of equality, by subtraction from [the offender’s] profit.

For in such cases, stating it without qualification, we speak of profit for the attacker who wounded his victim, for instance, even if that is not the proper word for some cases; and we speak of loss for the victim who suffers the wound. At any rate, when what was suffered has been measured, one part is called the [victim’s] loss, and the other the [offender’s] profit. Hence the equal is intermediate between more and [15] less. Profit and loss are more and less in contrary ways, since more good and less evil is profit, and the contrary is loss. The intermediate area between [profit and loss], we have found, is the equal, which we say is just. Hence the just in rectification is the intermediate between loss and profit.

That is why parties to a dispute resort to a judge, [20] and an appeal to a judge is an appeal to the just; for the judge is intended to be a sort of living embodiment of the just. Moreover, they seek the judge as an intermediary, and in some cities they actually call a judge a ‘mediator,’ assuming that if they are awarded an intermediate amount, the award will be just. If, then, the judge is an intermediary, the just is in some way intermediate.

The judge restores equality, as though a line [AB] [25] had been cut into unequal parts [AC and CB], and he removed from the larger part [AC] the amount [DC] by which it exceeds the half [AD] of the line [AB], and added this amount [DC] to the smaller part [CB]. And when the whole [AB] has been halved [into AD and DB], then they say that each person has what is properly his own, when he has got an equal share.

The equal [in this case] is intermediate, by numerical [30] proportion, between the larger [AC] and the smaller line [CB]. This is also why it is called just (dikaion), because it is a bisection (dicha), as though we said bisected (dichaion), and the judge (dikastes) is a bisector (dichastes). For when [the same amount] is subtracted from one of two equal things and added to the other, then the one part exceeds the other by the two parts; for if a part had been subtracted from the one, but not added to the other, the larger part [1132b] would have exceeded the smaller by just one part. Hence the larger part exceeds the intermediate by one part, and the intermediate from which [a part] was subtracted [exceeds the smaller] by one part.

In this way, then, we will recognize what we must subtract from the one who has more and add to the one who has less [to restore equality]; for to the one who has less we must add the amount by which the intermediate exceeds what he has, and from the [5] greatest amount [held by the one who has more] we must subtract the amount by which it exceeds the intermediate. Let lines AA,′ BB′, and CC′ be equal; let AE be subtracted from AA′ and CD be added to CC′, so that the whole line DCC′ will exceed the line EA′ by the parts CD and CF [where CF equals AE]; it follows that DCC′ exceeds BB′ by CD.

These names ‘loss’ and ‘profit’ are derived from [11] voluntary exchange. For having more than one’s own share is called making a profit, and having less than what one had at the beginning is called suffering a loss, in buying and selling, for instance, and in other [15] transactions permitted by law. And when people get neither more nor less, but precisely what belongs to them, they say they have their own share and make neither a loss nor a profit. Hence the just is intermediate between a certain kind of loss and profit, since it is having the equal amount both before and after [the transaction]. [20]

Some people, however, think reciprocity is also just without qualification. This was the Pythagoreans’ view, since their definition stated without qualification that what is just is reciprocity with another.

The truth is that reciprocity suits neither distributive [25] nor rectificatory justice, though people take even Rhadamanthys’ [primitive] conception of justice to describe rectificatory justice: ‘If he suffered what he did, upright justice would be done.’⁹ For in many cases reciprocity conflicts [with rectificatory justice]. If, for instance, a ruling official [exercising his office] wounded someone else, he must not be wounded in retaliation, but if someone wounded a ruling official, [30] he must not only be wounded but also receive corrective treatment. Moreover, the voluntary or involuntary character of the action makes a great difference.

In communities for exchange, however, this way of being just, reciprocity that is proportionate rather than equal, holds people together; for a city is maintained by proportionate reciprocity. For people seek to return either evil for evil, since otherwise [1133a] [their condition] seems to be slavery, or good for good, since otherwise there is no exchange; and they are maintained [in a community] by exchange. Indeed, that is why they make a temple of the Graces prominent, so that there will be a return of benefits received. For this is what is special to grace; when someone has been gracious to us, we must do a service for him [5] in return, and also ourselves take the lead in being gracious again.

It is diagonal combination that produces proportionate exchange. Let A be a builder, B a shoemaker, C a house, D a shoe. The builder must receive the shoemaker’s product from him, and give him the [10] builder’s own product in return. If, then, first of all, proportionate equality is found, and, next, reciprocity is also achieved, the proportionate return will be reached. Otherwise it is not equal, and the exchange will not be maintained, since the product of one may well be superior to the product of the other. These products, then, must be equalized.

This is true of the other crafts also; for they would [15] have been destroyed unless the producer produced the same thing, of the same quantity and quality as the thing affected underwent. For no community [for exchange] is formed from two doctors. It is formed from a doctor and a farmer, and, in general, from people who are different and unequal and who must be equalized.

This is why all items for exchange must be comparable [20] in some way. Currency came along to do exactly this, and in a way it becomes an intermediate, since it measures everything, and so measures excess and deficiency—[for instance,] how many shoes are equal to a house. Hence, as builder is to shoemaker, so must the number of shoes be to a house; for if this does not happen, there will be no exchange and no [25] community. But proportionate equality will not be reached unless they are equal in some way. Everything, then, must be measured by some one measure, as we said before.

In reality, this measure is need, which holds everything together; for if people needed nothing, or needed things to different extents, there would be either no exchange or not the same exchange. And [30] currency has become a sort of pledge of need, by convention; in fact it has its name (nomisma) because it is not by nature, but by the current law (nomos), and it is within our power to alter it and to make it useless.

Reciprocity will be secured, then, when things are equalized, so that the shoemaker’s product is to the farmer’s as the farmer is to the shoemaker. However, [1133b] they must be introduced into the figure of proportion not when they have already exchanged and one extreme has both excesses, but when they still have their own; in that way they will be equals and members of a community, because this sort of equality can be produced in them. Let A be a farmer, C food, B a [5] shoemaker, and D his product that has been equalized; if this sort of reciprocity were not possible, there would be no community.

Now clearly need holds [a community] together as a single unit, since people with no need of each other, both of them or either one, do not exchange, as they exchange whenever another requires what one has oneself, such as wine, when they allow the export of corn. This, then, must be equalized. [10]

If an item is not required at the moment, currency serves to guarantee us a future exchange, guaranteeing that the item will be there for us if we need it; for it must be there for us to take if we pay. Now the same thing happens to currency [as other goods], and it does not always count for the same; still, it tends to be more stable. Hence everything must have a [15] price; for in that way there will always be exchange, and then there will be community.

Currency, then, by making things commensurate as a measure does, equalizes them; for there would be no community without exchange, no exchange without equality, no equality without commensuration. And so, though things so different cannot become commensurate in reality, they can become commensurate enough in relation to our needs. [20]

Hence there must be some single unit fixed [as current] by a stipulation. This is why it is called currency; for this makes everything commensurate, since everything is measured by currency. Let A, for instance, be a house, B ten minae, C a bed. A is half of B if a house is worth five minae or equal to them; and C, the bed, is a tenth of B. It is clear, then, how [25] many beds are equal to one house—five. This is clearly how exchange was before there was currency; for it does not matter whether a house is exchanged for five beds or for the currency for which five beds are exchanged.

We have now said what it is that is unjust and just. [30] And now that we have defined them, it is clear that doing justice is intermediate between doing injustice and suffering injustice, since doing injustice is having too much and suffering injustice is having too little.

Justice is a mean, not as the other virtues are, [1134a] but because it is about an intermediate condition, whereas injustice is about the extremes. Justice is the virtue in accord with which the just person is said to do what is just in accord with his decision, distributing good things and bad, both between himself and others and between others. He does not award too much of what is choiceworthy to himself and too little to his [5] neighbor (and the reverse with what is harmful), but awards what is proportionately equal; and he does the same in distributing between others.

Injustice, on the other hand, is related [in the same way] to the unjust. What is unjust is disproportionate excess and deficiency in what is beneficial or harmful; hence injustice is excess and deficiency because it concerns excess and deficiency. The unjust person [10] awards himself an excess of what is beneficial, [considered] without qualification, and a deficiency of what is harmful, and, speaking as a whole, he acts similarly [in distributions between] others, but deviates from proportion in either direction. In an unjust action getting too little good is suffering injustice, and getting too much is doing injustice.

So much, then, for the nature of justice and the [15] nature of injustice, and similarly for just and unjust in general.

Since it is possible to do injustice without thereby being unjust, what sort of injustice must someone do to be unjust by having one of the different types of injustice, by being a thief or adulterer or brigand, for instance?

Perhaps it is not the type of action that makes the difference [between merely doing injustice and being unjust]. For someone might lie with a woman and [20] know who she is, but the principle might be feelings rather than decision. In that case he is not unjust, though he does injustice—not a thief, for instance, though he stole, not an adulterer though he committed adultery, and so on in the other cases.

Now we have previously described the relation of [25] reciprocity to the just. But we must recognize that we are inquiring not only into the just without qualification, but also into the politically just. This belongs to those who share in common a life aiming at self-sufficiency, who are free and either proportionately or numerically equal. Hence those who lack these features have nothing politically just in their relations, though they have something just insofar as it is similar to the politically just.

For the just belongs to those who have law in their [30] relations. Law belongs to those among whom injustice is [possible]; for the judicial process is judgment that distinguishes the just from the unjust. Where there is injustice there is also doing injustice, though where there is doing injustice there need not also be injustice. And doing injustice is awarding to oneself too many of the things that, [considered] without qualification, are good, and too few of the things that, [considered] without qualification, are bad.

That is why we allow only reason, not a human [35] being, to be ruler. For a human being awards himself too many goods and becomes a tyrant; a ruler, however, [1134b] is a guardian of the just, and hence of the equal [and so must not award himself too many goods].

If a ruler is just, he seems to profit nothing by it. For since he does not award himself more of what, [considered] without qualification, is good if it is not proportionate to him, he seems to labor for another’s [5] benefit. That is why justice is said, as we also remarked before, to be another person’s good. Hence some payment [for ruling] should be given; this is honor and privilege. The people who are not satisfied with these rewards are the ones who become tyrants.

The just for a master and a father is similar to this, [10] not the same. For there is no unqualified injustice in relation to what is one’s own; one’s own possession, or one’s child until it is old enough and separated, is as though it were a part of oneself. Now no one decides to harm himself. Hence there is no injustice in relation to them, and so nothing politically unjust or just either. For we found that the politically just must accord with law, and belong to those who are naturally suited for law, and hence to those who have [15] equality in ruling and being ruled. [Approximation to this equality] explains why relations with a wife more than with children or possessions allow something to count as just; for that is the just in households. Still, this too is different from the politically just.

One part of the politically just is natural, and the other part legal. The natural has the same validity everywhere alike, independent of its seeming so or [20] not. The legal originally makes no difference [whether it is done] one way or another, but makes a difference whenever people have laid down the rule—that a mina is the price of a ransom, for instance, or that a goat rather than two sheep should be sacrificed. The legal also includes laws passed for particular cases (for instance, that sacrifices should be offered to Brasidas)¹⁰ and enactments by decree.

Now some people think everything just is merely [25] legal. For the natural is unchangeable and equally valid everywhere—fire, for instance, burns both here and in Persia—whereas they see that the just changes [from city to city].

This is not so, though in a way it is so. With us, though presumably not at all with the gods, there is such a thing as the natural, but still all is changeable; [30] despite the change there is such a thing as what is natural and what is not.

Then what sort of thing, among those that [are changeable and hence] admit of being otherwise, is natural, and what sort is not natural, but legal and conventional, if both natural and legal are changeable? It is clear in other cases also, and the same distinction [between the natural and the unchangeable] will apply; for the right hand, for instance, is naturally superior, even though it is possible for everyone [35] to become ambidextrous.

The sorts of things that are just by convention and [1135a] expediency are like measures. For measures for wine and for corn are not of equal size everywhere, but in wholesale markets they are bigger, and in retail smaller. Similarly, the things that are just by human [enactment] and not by nature differ from place to place, since political systems also differ. Still, only [5] one system is by nature the best everywhere.

Each [type of] just and lawful [action] is related as a universal to the corresponding particulars; for the [particular] actions that are done are many, but each [type] is one, since it is universal.

An act of injustice is different from the unjust, and an act of justice from the just. For the unjust [10] is unjust by nature or enactment; when this has been done, it is an act of injustice, but before it is done it is only unjust. The same applies to an act of justice [in contrast to the just]. Here, however, the general [type of action contrary to an act of injustice] is more usually called a just act, and what is called an act of justice is the [specific type of just act] that rectifies an act of injustice.

Later we must examine each of these actions, to see what sorts of species, and how many, they have, and what they are concerned with. [15]

Given this account of just and unjust actions, one does injustice or does justice whenever one does them willingly. Whenever one does them unwillingly, one neither does justice nor does injustice, except coincidentally, since the actions one does are coincidentally just or unjust.

An act of injustice and a just act are defined by the [20] voluntary and the involuntary. For when the action is voluntary, the agent is blamed, and thereby also it is an act of injustice. And so something will be unjust without thereby being an act of injustice, if it is not also voluntary.

As I said before, I say that an action is voluntary just in case it is up to the agent, who does it in knowledge, and [hence] not in ignorance of the person, [25] instrument, and goal (for instance, whom he is striking, with what, and for what goal), and [does] each of these neither coincidentally nor by force (if, for instance, someone seized your hand and struck another [with it], you would not have done it willingly, since it was not up to you). But [a further distinction must be drawn about knowledge. For] it is possible that the victim is your father, and you know he is a human being or a bystander, but do not know he is [30] your father. The same distinction must be made for the goal and for the action as a whole.

Actions are involuntary, then, if they are done in ignorance; or they are not done in ignorance, but they are not up to the agent; or they are done by force. For we also do or undergo many of our natural [1135b] [actions and processes], such as growing old and dying, in knowledge, but none of them is either voluntary or involuntary.

Both unjust and just actions may also be coincidental in the same way. For if someone returned a deposit unwillingly and because of fear, we ought to say that [5] he neither does anything just nor does justice, except coincidentally. Similarly, if someone is under compulsion and unwilling when he fails to return the deposit, we should say that he coincidentally does injustice and does something unjust.

In some of our voluntary actions we act on a previous decision, [10] and in some we act without previous decision. We act on a previous decision when we act on previous deliberation, and we act without previous decision when we act without previous deliberation.

Among the three ways of inflicting harms in a community, actions done with ignorance are errors if someone does neither the action he supposed, nor to the person, nor with the instrument, nor for the result he supposed. For he thought, for instance, that he was not hitting, or not hitting this person, or not for this result; but coincidentally the result that was [15] achieved was not what he thought (for instance, [he hit him] to graze, not to wound), or the victim or the instrument was not the one he thought.

If, then, the infliction of harm violates reasonable expectation, the action is a misfortune. If it does not violate reasonable expectation, but is done without vice, it is an error. For someone is in error if the principle of the cause is in him, and unfortunate when it is outside.

If he does it in knowledge, but without previous [20] deliberation, it is an act of injustice; this is true, for instance, of actions caused by spirit and other feelings that are natural or necessary for human beings. For when someone inflicts these harms and commits these errors, he does injustice and these are acts of injustice; but he is not thereby unjust or wicked, since it is not vice that causes him to inflict the harm. [25] But whenever his decision is the cause, he is unjust and vicious.

That is why it is right to judge that actions caused by spirit do not result from forethought [and hence do not result from decision], since the principle is not the agent who acted on spirit, but the person who provoked him to anger. Moreover the dispute is not about whether [the action caused by anger] happened or not, but about whether it was just, since anger is a response to apparent injustice. For they do not [30] dispute about whether it happened or not, as they do in commercial transactions, where one party or the other must be vicious, unless forgetfulness is the cause of the dispute. Rather [in cases of anger] they agree about the fact and dispute about which action was just; but [in commercial transactions] the [cheater] who has plotted against his victim knows very well [that what he is doing is unjust]. Hence [in cases of [1136a] anger the agent] thinks he is suffering injustice, while [in transactions the cheater] does not think so.

If [the cheater’s] decision causes him to inflict the harm, he does injustice, and this is the sort of act of injustice that makes an agent unjust, if it violates proportion or equality. In the same way, a person is just if his decision causes him to do justice; one [merely] does justice if one merely does it voluntarily.

Some involuntary actions are to be pardoned, and [5] some are not. For if someone’s error is not only committed in ignorance, but also caused by ignorance, it is to be pardoned. But if, though committed in ignorance, it is caused not by ignorance but by some feeling that is neither natural nor human, it is not to be pardoned.

If we have adequately defined suffering injustice and [10] doing injustice, some puzzles might be raised.

First of all, are those bizarre words of Euripides correct, where he says: ‘“I killed my mother—a short tale to tell.” “Were both of you willing or both [15] unwilling?”’? Is it really possible to suffer injustice willingly, or is it always involuntary, as doing injustice is always voluntary? And is it always one way or the other, or is it sometimes voluntary and sometimes involuntary?

The same question arises about receiving justice. Since doing justice is always voluntary [as doing injustice is], it is reasonable for the same opposition to [20] apply in both cases, so that both receiving justice and suffering injustice will be either alike voluntary or alike involuntary. But it seems absurd in the case of receiving justice as well [as in the case of suffering injustice] for it to be always voluntary, since some people receive justice, but not willingly.

We might also raise the following puzzle: Does everyone who has received something unjust suffer injustice, or is it the same with receiving as it is with [25] doing? For certainly it is possible, in the case both of doing and of receiving, to have a share in just things coincidentally; and clearly the same is true of unjust things, since doing something unjust is not the same as doing injustice, and suffering something unjust is not the same as suffering injustice. The same is true of doing justice and receiving it; for it [30] is impossible to suffer injustice if no one does injustice and impossible to receive justice if no one does justice.

Now if doing injustice is simply harming someone willingly (and doing something willingly is doing it with knowledge of the victim, the instrument, and the way), and the incontinent person harms himself willingly, he suffers injustice willingly. Hence someone can do injustice to himself; and one of our puzzles was just this, whether someone can do injustice to [1136b] himself. Further, someone’s incontinence might cause him to be willingly harmed by another who is willing, so that it would be possible to suffer injustice willingly.

Perhaps, however, our definition [of doing injustice] was incorrect, and we should add to ‘harming with knowledge of the victim, the instrument, and the way,’ the further condition ‘against the wish of [5] the victim.’ If so, someone is harmed and suffers something unjust willingly, but no one suffers injustice willingly. For no one wishes it, not even the incontinent, but he acts against his wish; for no one wishes for what he does not think is excellent, and what the incontinent does is not what he thinks it is right [and hence excellent] to do.

And if someone gives away what is his own, as [10] Homer says Glaucus gave to Diomede ‘gold for bronze, a hundred cows’ worth for nine cows’ worth,’ he does not suffer injustice. For it is up to him to give them, whereas suffering injustice is not up to him, but requires someone to do him injustice.

Clearly, then, suffering injustice is not voluntary.

Two further questions that we decided [15] to discuss still remain: If A distributes to B more than B deserves, is it A, the distributor, or B, who has more, who does injustice? And is it possible to do injustice to oneself?

For if the first alternative is possible, and A rather than B does injustice, it follows that if A knowingly and willingly distributes more to B than to himself, [20] A does injustice to himself. And indeed this is what a moderate person seems to do; for the decent person tends to take less than his share.

Perhaps, however, it is not true without qualification that he takes less. For perhaps he overreaches for some other good, such as reputation or the unqualifiedly fine. Moreover, our definition of doing injustice allows us to solve the puzzle. For since he suffers nothing against his own wish, he does not suffer injustice, at least not from his distribution, but, at most, [25] is merely harmed.

But it is evidently the distributor who does injustice, and the one who has more does not always do it. For the one who does injustice is not the one who has an unjust share, but the one who willingly does what is unjust, that is to say, the one who has the principle [30] of the action; this is the distributor, not the recipient. Besides, doing is spoken of in many ways, and there is a way in which inanimate things, or hands, or servants at someone else’s order, kill; the recipient, then, does not do injustice, but does something that is unjust.

Further, if the distributor judged in ignorance, he does not do injustice in violation of what is legally just, and his judgment is not unjust; in a way, though, it is unjust, since what is legally just is different from what is primarily just. If, however, he judged unjustly, and did it knowingly, he himself as well [as the recipient] is overreaching—for gratitude or to exact a [1137a] penalty.

And so someone who has judged unjustly for these reasons has also got more, exactly as though he got a share of the [profits of] the act of injustice. For he gave judgment about some land, for instance, on this condition [that he would share the profits], and what he got was not land, but money.

People think doing injustice is up to them; that is [5] why they think that being just is also easy. But it is not. For lying with a neighbor’s wife, wounding a neighbor, bribing, are all easy and up to us, but being in a certain state when we do them is not easy, and not up to us.

Similarly, people think it takes no wisdom to know [10] the things that are just and unjust, because it is not difficult to comprehend what the laws speak of. But these are not the things that are just, except coincidentally. Knowing how actions must be done, and how distributions must be made, if they are to be just, takes more work than it takes to know about healthy things. And even in the case of healthy things, knowing [15] about honey, wine, hellebore, burning, and cutting is easy, but knowing how these must be distributed to produce health, and to whom and when, takes all the work that it takes to be a doctor.

For the same reason they think doing injustice is no less proper to the just than to the unjust person, because the just person is no less, and even more, able to do each of the actions. For he is able to lie [20] with a woman, and to wound someone; and the brave person, similarly, is able to throw away his shield, and to turn and run this way or that. But doing acts of cowardice or injustice is not doing these actions, except coincidentally; it is being in a certain state when we do them. Similarly, practicing medicine or healing is not cutting or not cutting, giving drugs or not giving them, but doing all these things in a [25] certain way.

Just things belong to those who have a share in things that, [considered] without qualification, are good, who can have an excess or a deficiency of them. Some (as, presumably, the gods) can have no excess of them; others, the incurably evil, benefit from none of them, but are harmed by them all; others again benefit from these goods up to a point; and this is [30] why the just is something human.

The next task is to discuss how decency is related to justice and how the decent is related to the just. For on examination they appear as neither the same without qualification nor as states of different kinds. Sometimes we praise what is decent and the decent [35] person, so that even when we praise someone for other things we transfer the term ‘decent’ and use it [1137b] instead of ‘good,’ making it clear that what is more decent is better. But sometimes, when we reason about the matter, it appears absurd for what is decent to be something apart from what is just, and still praiseworthy. For [apparently] either what is just is not excellent or what is decent is not excellent, if it is something other than what is just; or else, if they [5] are both excellent, they are the same.

These, then, are roughly the claims that raise the puzzle about the decent; but they are all correct in a way, and none is contrary to any other. For the decent is better than one way of being just, but it is still just, and not better than the just by being a different kind of thing. Hence the same thing is just [10] and decent; while both are excellent, what is decent is superior.

The puzzle arises because the decent is just, but is not the legally just, but a rectification of it. This is because all law is universal, but in some areas no universal rule can be correct; and so where a universal [15] rule has to be made, but cannot be correct, the law chooses the [universal rule] that is usually [correct], well aware of the error being made. And the law is no less correct on this account; for the source of the error is not the law or the legislator, but the nature of the object itself, since that is what the subject matter of actions is bound to be like.

And so, whenever the law makes a universal rule, [20] but in this particular case what happens violates the [intended scope of] the universal rule, on this point the legislator falls short, and has made an error by making an unqualified rule. Then it is correct to rectify the deficiency; this is what the legislator would have said himself if he had been present there, and what he would have prescribed, had he known, in his legislation.

That is why the decent is just, and better than a [25] certain way of being just—not better than the unqualifiedly just, but better than the error that results from the omission of any qualification [in the rule]. And this is the nature of the decent—rectification of law insofar as the universality of law makes it deficient.

This is also the reason why not everything is guided by law. For on some matters legislation is impossible, and so a decree is needed. For the standard applied to the indefinite is itself indefinite, as the lead standard [30] is in Lesbian building, where it is not fixed, but adapts itself to the shape of the stone; similarly, a decree is adapted to fit its objects.

It is clear from this what is decent, and clear that it is just, and better than a certain way of being just. It is also evident from this who the decent person is; [35] for he is the one who decides on and does such [1138a] actions, not an exact stickler for justice in the bad way, but taking less than he might even though he has the law on his side. This is the decent person, and his state is decency; it is a sort of justice, and not some state different from it.

Is it possible to do injustice to oneself or not? The answer is evident from what has been said.

First of all, some just actions are the legal prescriptions [5] in accord with each virtue; we are legally forbidden, for instance, to kill ourselves. Moreover, if someone illegally and willingly inflicts harm on another, not returning harm for harm, he does injustice (a person acting willingly is one who knows the victim and the instrument). Now if someone murders himself [10] because of anger, he does this willingly, in violation of correct reason, when the law forbids it; hence he does injustice. But injustice to whom? Surely to the city, not to himself, since he suffers it willingly, and no one willingly suffers injustice. That is why the city both penalizes him and inflicts further dishonor on him for destroying himself, on the ground that he does injustice to the city.

Now consider the type of injustice that belongs [15] to an agent who is only unjust, not base generally. Clearly the corresponding type of unjust action is different from the first type. For this second type of unjust person is wicked in the same [special] way as the coward is, not by having total wickedness; hence his acts of injustice do not accord with total wickedness either. In this case also one cannot do injustice to oneself. For if one could, the same person could lose and get the same thing at the [20] same time. But this is impossible; on the contrary, what is just or unjust must always involve more than one person.

Moreover, doing injustice is voluntary, and results from a decision, and strikes first; for a victim who retaliates does not seem to do injustice. But if someone does injustice to himself, he does and suffers the same thing at the same time. Further, on this view, it would be possible to suffer injustice willingly.

Besides, no one does injustice without doing one [25] of the particular acts of injustice. But no one commits adultery with his own wife, or burgles his own house, or steals his own possessions.

And in general the puzzle about doing injustice to oneself is also solved by the distinction about voluntarily suffering injustice.

It is also evident that both doing and suffering [30] injustice are bad, since one is having more, one having less, than the intermediate amount, just as in the case of health in medicine and fitness in gymnastics [both more and less than the intermediate amount are bad]. But doing injustice is worse; for it is blameworthy, involving vice that is either complete and unqualified or close to it (since not all voluntary doing of injustice is combined with [the state of] injustice). Suffering injustice, however, involves no vice or injustice. [35]

In its own right, then, suffering injustice is less bad; [1138b] and though it might still be coincidentally a greater evil, that is no concern of a craft. Rather, the craft says that pleurisy is a worse illness than a stumble, even though a stumble might sometimes coincidentally turn out worse—if, for instance, someone stumbled and by coincidence was captured by the enemy [5] or killed because he fell.

It is possible for there to be a sort of justice, by similarity and transference, not of a person to himself, but of certain parts of a person—not every kind of justice, but the kind that belongs to masters or households. For in these discussions the part of the soul that has reason is distinguished from the nonrational part. People look at these and it seems to them that there is injustice to oneself, because in these parts it is possible to suffer something against one’s own desires. Hence it is possible for those parts to be just to each other, as it is for ruler and ruled.

So much, then, for our definitions of justice and [10] the other virtues of character.