rily a just or
temperate man, unless he does them with right intention and on their
own account. This state of the internal mind, which is requisite to
constitute the just and temperate man, follows upon the habitual
practice of just and temperate acts, and follows upon nothing else.
But most men are content to talk without any such practice. They fancy
erroneously that _knowing_, without doing, will make a good man. [We
have here the reaction against the Sokratic doctrine of virtue, and
also the statement of the necessity of a _prosper motive_, in order to
virtue.]

Aristotle now sets himself to find a definition of virtue, _per genus
et differentiam_. There are three qualities in the Soul--_Passions_
[Greek: pathae], as Desire, Anger, Fear, &c., followed by pleasure or
pain; _Capacities_ or _Faculties_ [Greek: dynameis], as our capability
of being angry, afraid, affected by pity, &c.; _Fixed tendencies,
acquirements_, or _states_ [Greek: hexeis]. To which of the three does
virtue or excellence belong? It cannot be a Passion; for passions are
not in themselves good or evil, and are not accompanied with
deliberate choice [Greek: prouiresis], will, or intention. Nor is it a
Faculty: for we are not praised or blamed because we _can_ have such
or such emotions; and moreover our faculties are innate, which virtue
is not. Accordingly, virtue, or excellence, must be an acquirement
[Greek: hexis]--a State (V.). This is the _genus_.

Now, as to the _differentia_, which brings us to a more specific
statement of the doctrine of the _Mean_. The specific excellence of
virtue is to be got at from quantity in the abstract, from which we
derive the conceptions of more, less, and equal; or excess, defect,
and mean; the equal being the mean between excess and defect. But in
the case of moral actions, the arithmetical mean may not hold (for
example, six between two and ten); it must be a mean relative to the
individual; Milo must have more food than a novice in the training
school. In the arts, we call a work perfect, when anything either
added or taken away would spoil it. Now, virtue, which, like Nature,
is better and more exact than any art, has for its subject-matter,
passions and actions; all which are wrong either in defect or in
excess. Virtue aims at the mean between them, or the maximum of Good:
which implies a correct estimation of all the circumstances of the
act,--when we ought to do it--under what conditions--towards whom-