The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

continue even
after death; those which are always attended by honour; those which
are exceptional; and those which are possessed by one person
alone-these last are more readily remembered than others. So again
are possessions that bring no profit, since they are more fitting
than others for a gentleman. So are the distinctive qualities of a
particular people, and the symbols of what it specially admires,
like long hair in Sparta, where this is a mark of a free man, as it
is not easy to perform any menial task when one’s hair is long.
Again, it is noble not to practise any sordid craft, since it is
the mark of a free man not to live at another’s beck and call. We
are also to assume when we wish either to praise a man or blame him
that qualities closely allied to those which he actually has are
identical with them; for instance, that the cautious man is
cold-blooded and treacherous, and that the stupid man is an honest
fellow or the thick-skinned man a good-tempered one. We can always
idealize any given man by drawing on the virtues akin to his actual
qualities; thus we may say that the passionate and excitable man is
‘outspoken’; or that the arrogant man is ‘superb’ or ‘impressive’.
Those who run to extremes will be said to possess the corresponding
good qualities; rashness will be called courage, and extravagance
generosity. That will be what most people think; and at the same
time this method enables an advocate to draw a misleading inference
from the motive, arguing that if a man runs into danger needlessly,
much more will he do so in a noble cause; and if a man is
open-handed to any one and every one, he will be so to his friends
also, since it is the extreme form of goodness to be good to
everybody.
    We must also take into account the nature of our particular
audience when making a speech of praise; for, as Socrates used to
say, ‘it is not difficult to praise the Athenians to an Athenian
audience.’ If the audience esteems a given quality, we must say
that our hero has that quality, no matter whether we are addressing
Scythians or Spartans or philosophers. Everything, in fact, that is
esteemed we are to represent as noble. After all, people regard the
two things as much the same.
    All actions are noble that are appropriate to the man who does
them: if, for instance, they are worthy of his ancestors or of his
own past career. For it makes for happiness, and is a noble thing,
that he should add to the honour he already has. Even inappropriate
actions are noble if they are better and nobler than the
appropriate ones would be; for instance, if one who was just an
average person when all went well becomes a hero in adversity, or
if he becomes better and easier to get on with the higher he rises.
Compare the saying of lphicrates, ‘Think what I was and what I am’;
and the epigram on the victor at the Olympic games,
In time past, bearing a yoke on my shoulders,
of wood unshaven,
    and the encomium of Simonides,
A woman whose father, whose husband, whose
brethren were princes all.
    Since we praise a man for what he has actually done, and fine
actions are distinguished from others by being intentionally good,
we must try to prove that our hero’s noble acts are intentional.
This is all the easier if we can make out that he has often acted
so before, and therefore we must assert coincidences and accidents
to have been intended. Produce a number of good actions, all of the
same kind, and people will think that they must have been intended,
and that they prove the good qualities of the man who did them.
    Praise is the expression in words of the eminence of a man’s
good qualities, and therefore we must display his actions as the
product of such qualities. Encomium refers to what he has actually
done; the mention of accessories, such as good birth and education,
merely helps to make our story credible-good fathers are likely to
have good sons, and good training is likely to produce good
character. Hence it is only when a man has already done something
that we bestow encomiums upon him. Yet the actual deeds are
evidence of the doer’s character: even if a man has not actually
done a given good thing, we shall bestow praise on him, if we are
sure that he is the sort of man who would do it. To call any one
blest is, it may be added, the same thing as to call him happy; but
these are not the same thing as to bestow praise and encomium upon
him; the two latter are a part of ‘calling happy’, just as