ts
by playing the harp. Similarly it is by doing just acts that we
become just, by doing temperate acts that we become temperate,
by doing courageous acts that we become courageous.... Again
the causes and means by which any virtue is produced, and by
which it is destroyed, are the same; and it is equally so with
any art; for it is by playing the harp that both good and bad
harpists are produced, and the case of builders and all other
artisans is similar, as it is by building well that they will
be good builders, and by building badly that they will be bad
builders.... It is by acting in such transactions as take place
between man and man that we become either just or unjust. It is
by acting in the face of danger and habituating ourselves to
fear or courage that we become either cowardly or courageous.
It is much the same with our desires and angry passions. Some
people become temperate and gentle, others become licentious
and passionate, according as they conduct themselves in one way
or another way in particular circumstances." (Aristotle:
_Ethics_, pp. 35-36, Weldon translation.)]

The mere preaching of virtue will thus not produce its
practice. Those standards which reflection discovers, however
useful in the guidance of life, are not sufficient to improve
human conduct. They must, as noted above, be emotionally
sanctioned to become habitual, and, on the other
hand, only if they are early acquired habits, will the emotions
associated with them be pleasant rather than painful.
"Accordingly the difference between one training of habits
and another from early days is not a light matter, but is serious
or rather all-important."[1] Ideals of life, when they remain
mere closet-ideals, are interesting academic specimens,
but are hardly effective in the helpful amendment of the lives
of mankind. "Whoever contemplates the world in the light
of an ideal," writes Bertrand Russell, "whether what he seeks
be intellect or art, or love, or simple happiness, or all together,
must feel a great sorrow in the evils which men allow needlessly
to continue and--if he is a man of force and vital
energy--an urgent desire to lead men to the realization of
the good which inspires his creative vision." Great thinkers
upon morals have not been content to work out interesting
systems which were logically conclusive, abstract methods of
attaining happiness. They have worked out their ethical
systems as genuinely preferred ways of life, they