The same holds good in regard to temperance, courage, and the other excellences (II.).
His next remark is another of his characteristic doctrines, that the _test of a formed habit of virtue, is to feel no pain_; he that feels pain in brave acts is a coward.

Whence he proceeds to illustrate the position, that moral virtue [Greek: aethikae aretae] has to do with pleasures and pains.

A virtuous education consists in making us feel pleasure and pain at proper objects, and on proper occasions.
Punishment is a discipline of pain.

Some philosophers (the Cynics) have been led by this consideration to make virtue consist in apathy, or insensibility; but Aristotle would regulate, and not extirpate our sensibilities (III.).
But does it not seem a paradox to say (according to the doctrine of habit in I.), that a man becomes just, by performing just actions; since, if he performs just actions, he is already just?
The answer is given by a distinction drawn in a comparison with the training in the common arts of life.

That a man is a good writer or musician, we see by his writing or his music; we take no account of the state of his mind in other respects: if he knows how to do this, it is enough.