Kitap 2
1
Let us then take the particular virtues from the diagram.Here apparently the lecturer displayed a table of virtues (like the one in Aristot. Eud. Eth. 1220b 37), exhibiting each as a mean between two vices of excess and defect in respect of a certain class of action or feeling. This is developed in detail in Bk. 3. 6-end and Bk. 4.
2
The observance of the mean in fear and confidence is Courage. The man that exceeds in fearlessness not designated by any special name (and this the case with many of the virtues and vices); he that exceeds in confidence is Rash; he that exceeds in fear and is deficient in confidence is Cowardly.
3
In respect of pleasures and pains—not all of them, and to a less degree in respect of painsThis parenthesis looks like an interpolation from 3.10.1.—the observance of the mean is Temperance, the excess Profligacy. Men deficient in the enjoyment of pleasures scarcely occur, and hence this character also has not been assigned a name, but we may call it Insensible.
4
In regard to giving and getting money, the observance of the mean is Liberality; the excess and deficiency are Prodigality and Meanness,The Greek word is the negative of that translated Liberality, but illiberality and illiberal we do not usually employ with reference to money. but the prodigal man and the mean man exceed and fall short in opposite ways to one another: the prodigal exceeds in giving and is deficient in getting, whereas the mean man exceeds in getting and is deficient in giving.
5
For the present then we describe these qualities in outline and summarily, which is enough for the purpose in hand; but they will be more accurately defined later.
