Kitap 2
8
ButWe here resume from the end of chap. 1. The preceding paragraphs, repeating from Bk. 1. the caution as to method, and introducing the doctrine of the Mean, which is to be developed below, are parenthetical. not only are the virtues both generated and fostered on the one hand, and destroyed on the other, from and by the same actions, but they will also find their full exercise in the same actions. This is clearly the case with the other more visible qualities, such as bodily strength: for strength is produced by taking much food and undergoing much exertion, while also it is the strong man who will be able to eat most food and endure most exertion.
9
The same holds good with the virtues. We become temperate by abstaining from pleasures, and at the same time we are best able to abstain from pleasures when we have become temperate. And so with Courage: we become brave by training ourselves to despise and endure terrors, and we shall be best able to endure terrors when we have become brave.
1
An index of our dispositions is afforded by the pleasure or pain that accompanies our actions. A man is temperate if he abstains from bodily pleasures and finds this abstinence itself enjoyable, profligate if he feels it irksome; he is brave if he faces danger with pleasure or at all events without pain, cowardly if he does so with pain.
1
In fact pleasures and pains are the things with which moral virtue is concerned.
1
For (1) pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain cause us to abstain from doing noble actions.
2
Hence the importance, as Plato points out, of having been definitely trained from childhood to like and dislike the proper things; this is what good education means.
3
(2)Again, if the virtues have to do with actions and feelings, and every action is attended with pleasure or pain, this too shows that virtue has to do with pleasure and pain.
