CHAPTER THREE The pleasure or pain that accompanies someone's deeds ought to be taken 5 as a sign of his characteristics: he who abstains from bodily pleasures and enjoys this very abstention is moderate, but he who is vexed in doing so is licentious; he who endures terrifying things and enjoys doing so, or at any rate is not pained by it, is courageous, but he who is pained thereby is a coward. For moral virtue is concerned with pleasures and pains: it is on ac-count of the pleasure involved that we do base things, and it is on account 10 of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Thus one must be brought up in a certain way straight from childhood, as Plato asserts, so as to en-joy as well as to be pained by what one ought, for this is correct education. Further, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions, and pleasure and pain accompany every passion and every action, then on this 15 account too virtue would be concerned with pleasures and pains. Punish-ments are indicative of this as well, since they arise through these [pains]: they are a sort of curative treatment, and curative treatments naturally take place through contraries. Further, as we said just recently too, every characteristic of soul shows its nature in relation to and in its concern for the sorts of things by which 20 8 The first appearance of this famous term (he mesotes) in Aristotle's account of the moral phenomena. 30] BOOK 2, CHAPTER 3 it naturally becomes worse or better: it is through pleasures and pains that people become base, by pursuing and avoiding these, either the pleasures and pains that one ought not to pursue or avoid, or when one ought not, or as one ought not, or in as many other such conditions as are defined by reason.9 Thus people even define the virtues as certain dispassionate and 25 calm states, though such a definition is not good; for they say simply this much but not "as one ought;' "as one ought not;' "when;' and any other things posited in addition. Virtue, therefore, has been posited as being such as to produce the best [actions] in relation to pleasures and pains, and vice as being the contrary. But that [virtue and vice] are concerned with the same things might be-30 come manifest to us also from these considerations: there being three ob-jects of choice and three of avoidance-the noble, the advantageous, and the pleasant together with their three contraries, the shameful, the harm-ful, and the painful-in all these the good person is apt to be correct, the bad person to err, but especially as regards pleasure. For pleasure is com-35 mon to the animals and attendant upon all things done through choice, uosa since both what is noble and what is advantageous appear pleasant. Further, pleasure has been a part of the upbringing of us all from in-fancy; it is difficult to remove this experience, since our life has been so in-grained with it. We also take pleasure and pain as the rule of our actions, some of us to a greater degree, some to a lesser. It is on account of this, then, that one's entire concern necessarily pertains to pleasure and pain, for taking delight and feeling pain make no small contribution to our ac-tions' being well or badly done. Further, it is more difficult to battle against pleasure than against spir-itedness, as Heraclitus10 asserts, and art and virtue always arise in connec-10 tion with that which is more difficult: the doing of something well is bet-ter when it is more difficult. As a result, and on account of this, the whole 9 Or, "the argument" (ho logos). The phrase may well refer to "[correct] reason"; see also n. 4 above. 10 Heraclitus of Ephesus lived in the late sixth century and is numbered among the most famous of the pre-Socratic philosophers. It is uncertain what remark Aristotle here refers to, and the fragment most frequently cited by commentators ("with thumos it is difficult to do battle I for whatever it craves is purchased at the price of soul") ap-pears to use thumos (translated in the text above by "spiritedness;' its usual meaning in later Attic Greek) as an equivalent of, rather than in contrast to, craving or desire (see Gauthier and Jolif). Aristotle cites this line also in the Politics (13I5a30-31) and Eu-demian Ethics (1223b23). BOOK 2, CHAPTER 4 matter of concern in both virtue and the political art is bound up with pleasures and pains. For he who deals with these well will be good, but he who does so badly will be bad. Let it be said, then, that virtue concerns pleasures and pains; that it both increases as a result of those actions from which it comes into be- 15 ing and is destroyed when these are performed in a different manner; and that it becomes active in just those activities as a result of which it also came into being. CHAPTER FOUR But someone might be perplexed as to what we mean when we say that to become just, people must do just things or, to become moderate, do moderate things. For if they do just and moderate things, they already are 20 just and moderate, just as if they do what concerns letters and music, they are by that fact skilled [or artful] in letters and in music. Or is this not so even in the case of the arts? For it is possible to do something skillful in letters by chance or on the instructions of another. A person will actually be skilled in letters, then, when he both does something skillful and does it in a skillful way, and this is what accords with the art ofletters that re- 25 sides within the person himsel Further, what pertains in the arts is not at all similar to what pertains in the virtues. For the excellence in whatever comes into being through the arts resides in the artifacts themselves. It is enough, then, for these artifacts to be in a certain state. But whatever deeds arise in accord with the virtues are not done justly or moderately if they are merely in a cer- 30 tain state, but only if he who does those deeds is in a certain state as well: first, if he acts knowingly; second, if he acts by choosing and by choos-ing the actions in question for their own sake; and, third, if he acts while being in a steady and unwavering state. But these criteria are irrelevant when it comes to possessing the arts-except for the knowledge itself 110sb involved. But when it comes to the virtues, knowledge has no, or little, force, whereas the other two criteria amount to not a small part of but rather the whole affair-criteria11 that are in fact met as a result of our doing just and moderate things many times. Matters of action are said to 11 The reading of the MSS (haper). Perhaps better is Bywater's slight emendation of the text (eiper), adopted also by Burnet and Gauthier and Jolif, which might be ren-dered as follows: "the whole affair, if in fact [the virtues] are gained as a result of doing just and moderate things many times:' 32] BOOK 2, CHAPTER 5 be just and moderate, then, when they are comparable in kind to what the just or moderate person would do. And yet he who performs these actions is not by that fact alone just and moderate, but only if he also acts as those who are just and moderate act. 10 It is well said, then, that as a result of doing just things, the just person comes into being and as a result of doing moderate things, the moderate person; without performing these actions, nobody would become good. Yet most people [or the many] do not do them; and, seeking refuge in ar-gument, they suppose that they are philosophizing and that they will in 15 this way be serious, thereby doing something similar to the sick who lis-ten attentively to their physicians but do nothing prescribed. Just as these latter, then, will not have a body in good condition by caring for it in this way, so too the former will not have a soul in good condition by philoso-phizing in this way.