Kitap 2
12
And similarly there can be excess, deficiency, and the due mean in actions. Now feelings and actions are the objects with which virtue is concerned; and in feelings and actions excess and deficiency are errors, while the mean amount is praised, and constitutes success; and to be praised and to be successful are both marks of virtue.
13
Virtue, therefore is a mean state in the sense that it is able to hit the mean.
14
Again, error is multiform (for evil is a form of the unlimited, as in the old Pythagorean imagery,Cf. 1.6.7. and good of the limited), whereas success is possible in one way only (which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed—easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it); so this is another reason why excess and deficiency are a mark of vice, and observance of the mean a mark of virtue:
14
Goodness is simple, badness manifold.The verse from an unknown source would come in better just before or just after the last parenthesis.
15
Virtue then is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choiceΠροαίρεσις, choice or purpose, is discussed in Bk. 3.2, where see note. of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is,A variant reading gives determined by principle, or whatever we like to call that by which the prudent man would determine it (vide Taylor, Aristotle, p. 77). as the prudent man would determine it.
16
And it is a mean state between two vices, one of excess and one of defect. Furthermore, it is a mean state in that whereas the vices either fall short of or exceed what is right in feelings and in actions, virtue ascertains and adopts the mean.
17
Hence while in respect of its substance and the definition that states what it really is in essence virtue is the observance of the mean, in point of excellence and rightness it is an extreme.Cf. 4.3.8. 3.4.8.
