GOODNESS, HOW IS IT PRODUCED?

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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