Let us take it then that evcry science performs its function well when it looks to the mean and guides its products towards it. Hence people say of products that are in a good state that one cannot take away or add anything, any excess or deficien being enough to destroy the good state, while the mean preserves it, and good craftsmen, as we have said, look to the mean when they work. If this is so, then since virtue, like nature, is more accurate and efficient than any craft, it too will at the mean. I am speaking here of ethical virtme, or virtue of character; for this is concerned with feelings and actions, and here we find excess, deficiency and the mean. For one may feel fear and confidence and desire and anger and pity, pleasure and pain generally, too much or too little, and neither of these is good. But to have these feelings at the right time, on the right grounds, towards the right people, for the right purpose and in the right way this the intermediate and best condition, and the characteristic of true virtue.