Page:The ethics of Aristotle.djvu/297

. The words and  are not used here in their strict significations to denote confirmed states of vice: the  necessarily feels pain, because he must always be thwarting passions which are a real part of his nature; though this pain will grow less and less as he nears the point of  or perfected Self-Mastery, which being attained the pain will then, and then only, cease entirely. So a certain degree of fear is necessary to the formation of true courage. All that is meant here is, that no habit of courage or self-mastery can be said to be matured, until pain altogether vanishes.  . Virtue consists in the due regulation of all the parts of our nature: our passions are a real part of that nature, and as such have their proper office, it is an error then to aim at their extirpation. It is true that in a perfect moral state emotion will be rare, but then this will have been gained by regular process, being the legitimate result of the law that "passive impressions weaken as active habits are strengthened, by repetition." If musical instruments are making discord, I may silence or I may bring them into harmony: in either case I get rid of discord, but in the latter I have the positive enjoyment of music. The Stoics would have the passions rooted out, Aristotle would have them cultivated: to use an apt figure (whose I know not), They would pluck the blossom off at once, he would leave it to fall in due course when the fruit was formed. Of them we might truly say, Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. See on this point Bishop Butler's fifth Sermon, and sect. ii. of the chapter on Moral Discipline in the first part of his Analogy.  . I have adopted this word from our old writers, because our word act is so commonly interchanged with action. (action) properly denotes the whole process from the conception to the performance. (fact) only the result. The latter may be right when the former is wrong: if, for example, a murderer was killed by his accomplices. Again, the may be good though the  be wrong, as if a man under erroneous impressions does what would have been right if his impressions had been true (subject of course to the question how far he is guiltless of his original error), but in this case we could not call the  right. No repetition of goes to form a habit. See Bishop Butler on the Theory of Habits in the chapter on Moral Discipline, quoted above, sect. ii. "And in like manner as habits belonging to the body," etc.  . Being about to give a strict logical definition of Virtue, Aristotle ascertains first what is its genus.  . That is, not for merely having them, because we did not make ourselves. See Bishop Butler's account of our nature as containing "particular propensions," in sect. iv. of the chapter on Moral discipline, and in the Preface to the Sermons.

