A difficulty arises at this point, in that we have said that men become virtuous by performing virtuous actions. A critic of this view might say that men are already virtuous if they perform virtuous actions, just as a man is already literate if he reads and writes correctly and is already musical if able to play an instrument. However, this is a false analogy and not a valid objection, first, because there is a significant difference between acts that create virtue and acts that are caused by virtue, and, second, because excellence in the arts is determined only by the end product and not by the process by which that product is created, so that in judging a musician one is only concerned with the music he produces and not with his method of playing the instrument. Or, another case in point, it is quite possible to find someone who speaks according to the rules of grammar without having any knowledge of those rules, but it is not possible to consider this man literate or well-versed in grammar.
This is not the case in ethics. A virtuous act is not virtuous only because it is an act of a certain quality or kind. The agent or doer of a virtuous act must also be in a certain frame of mind and have certain characteristics when he acts. There are three conditions required; (a) that the agent must be fully conscious of what he is doing, (b) that he must deliberately choose or will his action, and must choose it for its own sake, (c) that the act must proceed from a fixed moral disposition.
