The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

than with anger, to
use Heraclitus’ phrase’, but both art and virtue are always
concerned with what is harder; for even the good is better when it
is harder. Therefore for this reason also the whole concern both of
virtue and of political science is with pleasures and pains; for
the man who uses these well will be good, he who uses them badly
bad.
    That virtue, then, is concerned with pleasures and pains, and
that by the acts from which it arises it is both increased and, if
they are done differently, destroyed, and that the acts from which
it arose are those in which it actualizes itself—let this be taken
as said.
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4
    The question might be asked,; what we mean by saying that we
must become just by doing just acts, and temperate by doing
temperate acts; for if men do just and temperate acts, they are
already just and temperate, exactly as, if they do what is in
accordance with the laws of grammar and of music, they are
grammarians and musicians.
    Or is this not true even of the arts? It is possible to do
something that is in accordance with the laws of grammar, either by
chance or at the suggestion of another. A man will be a grammarian,
then, only when he has both done something grammatical and done it
grammatically; and this means doing it in accordance with the
grammatical knowledge in himself.
    Again, the case of the arts and that of the virtues are not
similar; for the products of the arts have their goodness in
themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain
character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the virtues
have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they
are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain
condition when he does them; in the first place he must have
knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for
their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm
and unchangeable character. These are not reckoned in as conditions
of the possession of the arts, except the bare knowledge; but as a
condition of the possession of the virtues knowledge has little or
no weight, while the other conditions count not for a little but
for everything, i.e. the very conditions which result from often
doing just and temperate acts.
    Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such
as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man
who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also
does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then,
that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by
doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one
would have even a prospect of becoming good.
    But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and
think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way,
behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their
doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the
latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment,
the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of
philosophy.
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5
    Next we must consider what virtue is. Since things that are
found in the soul are of three kinds—passions, faculties, states of
character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean
appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling,
hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that
are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in
virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, e.g. of
becoming angry or being pained or feeling pity; by states of
character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with
reference to the passions, e.g. with reference to anger we stand
badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it
moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions.
    Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we
are not called good or bad on the ground of our passions, but are
so called on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and because
we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who
feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels
anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way), but for
our virtues and our vices we are praised or blamed.
    Again, we feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues
are modes of choice or