E.g. since rashness is
thought liker and nearer to courage, and cowardice more unlike, we
oppose rather the latter to courage; for things that are further
from the intermediate are thought more contrary to it. This, then,
is one cause, drawn from the thing itself; another is drawn from
ourselves; for the things to which we ourselves more naturally tend
seem more contrary to the intermediate. For instance, we ourselves
tend more naturally to pleasures, and hence are more easily carried
away towards self-indulgence than towards propriety. We describe as
contrary to the mean, then, rather the directions in which we more
often go to great lengths; and therefore self-indulgence, which is
an excess, is the more contrary to temperance.
9
That moral virtue is a mean, then, and in what sense it is so, and
that it is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the
other deficiency, and that it is such because its character is to
aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions, has been
sufficiently stated. Hence also it is no easy task to be good. For
in everything it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find
the middle of a circle is not for every one but for him who knows; so,
too, any one can get angry- that is easy- or give or spend money; but
to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right
time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for
every one, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and
laudable and noble.
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