in not highly valuing even the highest thing of all, honour itself, he may seem to others supercilious.  Wealth and fortune contribute to high-mindedness; but most of all, superior goodness; for the character cannot exist without perfect virtue.  The high-minded man neither shuns nor courts danger; nor is he indisposed to risk even his life.  He gives favours, but does not accept them; he is proud to the great, but affable to the lowly.  He attempts only great and important matters; is open in friendship and in hatred; truthful in conduct, with an ironical reserve.  He talks little, either of himself or of others; neither desiring his own praise, nor caring to utter blame.  He wonders at nothing, bears no malice, is no gossip.  His movements are slow, his voice deep, his diction stately (III.).

There is a nameless virtue, a mean between the two extremes of too much and too little ambition, or desire of honour; the reference being to smaller matters and to ordinary men.  The fact that both extremes are made terms of reproach, shows that there is a just mean; while each extreme alternately claims to be the virtue, as against the other, since there is no term to express the mean (IV.).

MILDNESS [Greek:  praotaes] is a mean state with reference to Anger, although inclining to the defective side.  The exact mean, which has no current name, is that state wherein the agent is free from perturbation [Greek:  atarachos], is not impelled by passion, but guided by reason; is angry when he ought, as he ought, with whom, and as long as, he ought:  taking right measure of all the circumstances.  Not to be angry on the proper provocation, is folly, insensibility, slavish submission.  Of those given to excess in anger, some are quick, impetuous, and soon appeased; others are sulky, repressing and perpetuating their resentment.  It is not easy to define the exact mean; each case must be left to individual perception (V.).

The next virtue is Good-breeding in society, a balance between surliness on the one hand, and weak assent or interested flattery on the other.  It is a nameless virtue, resembling friendship without the special affection.  Aristotle shows what he considers the bearing of the finished gentleman, studying to give pleasure, and yet expressing disapprobation when it would be wrong to do otherwise (VI.).

Closely allied to the foregoing is the observance of a due mean, in the matter of Boastfulness.  The boastful lay claim to what they do not possess; false modesty [Greek:  eironeia] is denying or underrating one’s own merits.  The balance of the two is the straightforward and truthful character; asserting just what belongs to him, neither more nor less.  This is a kind of truthfulness,—­distinguished from ‘truth’ in its more serious aspect, as discriminating between justice and injustice—­and has a worth of its own; for he that is truthful in little things will be so in more important affairs (VII.).