There is a broader point about pathos: in Aristotle the term is ethically neutral, referring to emotive or non-rational experience quite generally; thus, in the Nicomachean Ethics, virtues may be understood as involving a mean, between an excessive and an inadequate emotive response. Both the Aristotelian picture and the term metriopatheia entail an understanding of pathos as not in itself negative; Galen’s understanding of pathos, in the ethical context, seems rather in accord with the Stoic conception: it is in its nature undesirable, to be reduced or eliminated as far as possible—even if he does not follow the Stoics in asserting the necessity, or indeed practicability, of its complete eradication.