the limit which is essentially good, the check which the passion receives that is essentially conducive to wellbeing, this doctrine is, I think, merely another form of Aristotle's doctrine of the μεσότης, or the mean. Virtue, according to Aristotle, is a mean between two extremes, both of which are vices, or at least irregularities; in other words, impose a limit on a vice, and you produce a virtue; set bounds to rashness, or set bounds to cowardice, and in either case you produce courage. In the same way, all our passions and pleasures are in themselves irregular and boundless; they are in themselves without form and without law; they stretch into the chaotic, the infinite, the evil. Impose upon them a law and a limit, and out of the two, out of the passion and the limit you create a virtue. Virtue is thus generated, not out of the passion itself, but out of the law or limit which holds it in check. Happiness, too, our proper happiness as rational beings, is also generated, not out of the pleasure which accompanies the indulgence of our passions, but out of the limit which prevents that pleasure from being carried too far. The essence, then, of virtue and of happiness is to be placed, not in passion or in pleasure itself, but in the limiting act by which passion is subjugated, and by which pleasure is moderated and restrained.
31. I have said, in the conclusion of my last lecture, that our happiness might be regarded as made up of two elements, the operation of our passions and
