The following points have been established:
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Moral virtue is a mean.
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It is a mean between two vices, one marked by excess and the other by deficiency.
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It is a mean in the sense that it aims at the middle point in emotions and actions.
Here are some rules for the guidance of those who seek the mean (i.e., who seek after virtue):
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Avoid the extreme most opposed to the mean for which you are seeking. One of the two extremes is always more in error than the other. If you must err from the right path, it is better to choose the lesser of two evils.
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Guard against those errors into which you are most likely to fall because of your natural inclinations by forcing yourself to move in the opposite direction. One can determine his natural inclinations by observing the amount of pleasure and pain he experiences in regard to certain things.
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Remember that you will make few mistakes if you try to avoid pleasure and pleasant things and move away from whatever is most tempting for this will tend to be the path toward the mean.
It is difficult to give any more specific guide-rules, especially where particular cases are involved. At any given time it is possible to praise someone who seems deficient in anger, and at another to praise someone who is excessively angry. There is no simple formula to determine how a man should act in a given situation or how far he can err before he is considered at fault. This difficulty of definition is inherent in all cases of perception. Questions of degree are bound up with the circumstances of particular cases. The solution in every case rests on one's own moral sensibility. But this much is clear: In all areas of human conduct the mean is most desirable and its attainment is the source of all moral virtue.
