As far as the moral circumstances were concerned, rather than waste time debating final ends, Mill focused on accepted middle principles. The stable production of those mental sequences which fulfil the ends of education, he argued, depends upon cultivating four virtues: intelligence, temperance, justice and generosity. The first two promote individual well-being. Intelligence referred to "bringing within our ken what is capable, and what is not capable of being used as means," but also "seizing and combining, at the proper moment, whatever is the fittest as means to each particular end." More generally, rational practice requires a collection of observations of past acts, with a justified expectation (i.e. that similar causes produce similar effects) for specific results. Temperance entailed the ability of controlling one’s appetites and desires, preventing them from leading to a "hurtful direction," allowing the constant pursuit of what one "deliberately approves." The latter two cardinal virtues, justice and generosity, promote social wellbeing, by avoiding doing harm and by doing positive good to others (i.e. acting supererogatorily) respectively. Of course, Mill insisted, that "[i]n reality, as the happiness of the individual is bound up with that of his species, that which affects the happiness of the one, must also, in general, affect that of the other (Mill 1992, 154–156, 179; Loizides 2019c).