GREEK AND CHINESE THOUGHT. 169 



want of tempering, or it may lose its strength by 

 being tempered over-much. So in regard to plea- 

 sures, the true life implies the /ucT/orjrtK?) rtxyii, the 

 art of measurement, the power of striking the 

 balance, as it were, so as to secure the normal 

 development of nature ; or, as we have it in terms 

 more closely approximating to those of Aristotle, 

 it is a jutr/otorrjc, a mean state secured by imposing 

 the law of reason on the lawlessness of the pas- 

 sions, the indeterminate element in human nature. 

 The vicious go beyond or fall short of this state 

 of equipoise, and so their nature is destroyed in 

 various degrees and different ways. 



The Aristotelian doctrine of the Mean is the 

 final statement of this view. The attempts which 

 have been made to connect it with MHAEN AFAN 

 and the praise of moderation and /mirpta epya in 

 Hesiod are often thoroughly misleading ; for the 

 value of the Aristotelian doctrine is not its negative 

 teaching as to the avoiding of extremes, which 

 would give us no standard, and leave us with a 

 glorification of the commonplace ; its real value 

 is its positive teaching, that virtue is the realizing 

 of a law, the law of one's being, which, though 

 it varies in one as compared with others, is abso- 

 lute for the individual. It is the preservation of 

 that harmony which vice destroys, the state of 

 perfect balance which may be lost in either of two 

 opposite ways. Reason (Xoyoc), which never quite 



