Goodness of character does not
come by nature, but is produced by habituation.
Goodness, then, being of two
kinds, goodness of intellect and goodness of character, intellectual goodness
is both produced and increased mainly by teaching, and therefore experience and
time are required for it. Goodness of character, on the other hand, is the
outcome of habit, and accordingly the word "ethos," character, is
derived from "Ithos," habit, by a slight modification in the quantity
of the vowel.
From this it is evident that no
form of goodness of character is produced in us by nature; nothing which is by
nature can be habituated to be other than it it For example, a stone, which
naturally tends to fall downwards, cannot be habituated to rise upwards, not
even if we try to train it by throwing it up an indefinite number of times, nor
can anything else that acts in one way by nature be habituated to act in
another way. Goodness, then, is not produced in us either by nature or in
opposition to nature; we are naturally capable of receiving it, and we attain
our full development by habituation.
Secondly, in the case of
everything that comes to us by nature, we first acquire the capacities and then
produce the activities. This is clear if we test it by the senses. It is not by
seeing often or hearing often that we got the senses of sight and hearing. On
the contrary, we had the senses first and then used them; we did not get them
by using them. There various forms of goodness. The things which we are to do
when we have learnt them, we learn by doing them; we become, for instance, good
builders by building and good lyre players by playing the lyre. In the same way
it is by doing just acts that we become just, by doing temperate acts that we
become temperate, and by doing brave deeds that we become brave. What actually
happens in states is evidence of this. It is by habituation that lawgivers make
citizens good and this is the aim of every lawgiver. Those who do not it well,
fail in their aim, and this is just the difference between a good constitution
and a bad one.
Again, the material from which
and the means by which any form of goodness is produced and those by which it
is destroyed are the same. This is so too with any form of art; for it is by
playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced, and it is
the same with builders and the rest. It is by building well that they will
become good builders and by building badly that they will become bad builders.
If it were otherwise, we should have no need of anyone to teach us; all would
become good or bad as the case might be. So too in the case of goodness. It is
by acting in business transactions between man and man that we become just or
unjust as the case may be, and it is by acting in the moment of danger and
habituating ourselves to fear and not to fear that we become cowards or brave
men. So too it is with our desires and feelings of anger. Some people become
moral and good-tempered, while others become immoral and bad-tempered,
according as they behave themselves in one may or another in these matters. In
one word, conditions of soul arise from activities of like character to the
conditions. What we have to do, then, is to qualify out activities, since the
differences between the conditions of soul correspond to the differences of the
activities which give rise to them. It is of no little importance, then, that
we should be habituated this way or that from the earliest youth; it is of
great importance, or rather all important.
Now our present study is not,
like others, a theoretic one. The object
of our inquiry is not to know what goodness is, but to become good ourselves.
Otherwise it would be of no use whatever. We must therefore consider actions,
and how they ought to be performed; for, as we have said, it depends entirely
upon our actions what the character of our conditions of soul will be. That we
should act according to the right rule is common ground and we may assume it.
But we must come to an understanding at the outset that every description of
how we should act must be a mere sketch; it cannot be exact. At the very start
we laid down that the kind of discussion required in any case must be such as
the subject-matter admits of, and that our statements about action and what is
good for us can have no fixity, any more than statements about health. And, if
this is true of the subject generally, it will be still more true that the
discussion of particular points admits of no exactitude. They do not fall under
any art or professional tradition, but the agents themselves must in every case
consider what the occasion demands, just as in the case of navigation and
medicine. Still, though this is the nature of the present subject, we must do
what we can to come to the rescue.
“Analogy shows that the sort of
activities which will produce goodness are activities in a mean. The mean is in
feelings and actions, mainly in pleasure and pain, which are the true materials
of goodness.”
The first point to be observed,
then, is that in things of this character excess and defect are both
destructive. We must use as evidence of what is obscure such things as are
clear, and we see that this is to in the case of health and strength. Both
excess and defect of gymnastic exercises destroy strength, and in the same way
excess and defect of food and drink destroy health, while the right proportion
produces, increases, and preserves it. It is the same with temperance, courage,
and the other forms of goodness. The man that shuns and fears everything and
faces nothing becomes a coward; the man that fears nothing and goes to meet
every danger becomes rash. In the same way, the man who indulges in every
pleasure and never refrains from any becomes intemperate, and the man who shuns
all pleasures, like the boors, becomes insensible. So temperance and courage
are destroyed both by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.
Not only, however, do we find
that the material and the means of the production, development and destruction
of these conditions are the same, but also that the activities which arise from
the conditions when formed have the same objects. This is in the less obscure
cases, for instance in the case of strength. Strength is produced by taking a
great deal of nourishment and undergoing a great deal of exertion, and it is
just the strong man that can do these things best. So it is in the case of
goodness. It is by abstaining from pleasures that we become temperate, and it
is when we have become temperate that we are best able to abstain from them. So
again with courage; it is by habituating ourselves to despise objects of fear
and by facing them that we become courageous, and it is when we have become
courageous that we shall best be able to face them.
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