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[4]
Moreover, the faculties given us by nature are bestowed on us first in a potential form;
we exhibit their actual exercise afterwards. This is clearly so with our senses: we did
not acquire the faculty of sight or hearing by repeatedly seeing or repeatedly listening,
but the other way about—because we had the senses we began to use them, we did
not get them by using them. The virtues on the other hand we acquire by first having
actually practised them, just as we do the arts. We learn an art or craft by doing the
things that we shall have to do when we have learnt it1:
for instance, men become builders by building houses, harpers by playing on the harp.
Similarly
we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave
acts.
1 Or possibly ‘For things that we have to learn to do [in contrast with things that we do by nature], we learn by doing them.’
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.
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