The same is true of running and wrestling. Thus a master of any art
avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses
this- the intermediate not in the object but relatively to us.
If it is thus, then, that every art does its work well- by looking
to the intermediate and judgling its works by this standard (so that
we often say of good works of art that it is not possible either to
take away or to add anything, implying that excess and defect
destroy the goodness of works of art, while the mean preserves it; and
good artists, as we say, look to this in their work), and if, further,
virtue is more exact and better than any art, as nature also is,
then virtue must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate. I
mean moral virtue; for it is this that is concerned with passions
and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the
intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite
and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both
too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel
them at the right times, with reference to the right objects,
towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way,
is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of
virtue.
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