that if we could have a complete record of a man's conduct in every department of life and at every stage in life—through childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, as son, brother, husband, and father, as an inferior, superior, and equal, in friendship and enmity, at work and play, in prosperity and adversity, as a citizen of a State and a member of a Church—we should have a complete expression of his character. We assume that all his actions have been produced by his character.
On the other hand, conduct determines character. As we have seen, character is not something absolutely fixed. Character is a growing system; it is in constant process of growth; and its development is influenced by the kind of actions it habitually performs. Every one of a self's actions has some effect, however infinitesimal, on the formation of its character. Aristotle constantly insists that a man acquires a good or bad character by the habitual repetition of good or bad actions. Training and habituation in the performance of actual good actions are necessary for the production of a good character. We start simply with capacities. Now, the capacity for being good is the same thing as the capacity for being bad. Every child is born with an infinite capacity for good or evil, and it depends on training and habituation in which of the two ways the capacities will become realised as character. "It is by doing just acts that we become just, by doing temperate acts that we become temperate, and by doing brave deeds that we become brave."[1] In this sense, conduct determines character.
