Chapter XX: Section II: is a historical sketch in four parts tracing the main (1)

lines of development in ethical speculation from its birth to the
present day. Here again it has been possible to notice only the
salient points or landmarks, leaving all detail to special articles as
above. All important writers whose names occur in this sketch are
treated in special biographical articles, and references are given as
often as possible to supplementary articles which illustrate and
explain points which cannot be fully treated here. This is especially
the case in connexion with technical terms (whose history and meaning
are inevitably taken for granted) and biographical information about
minor ethical writers.

I. DEFINITION AND SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS

In its widest sense, the term "ethics" would imply an examination into the general character or habits of mankind, and would even involve a description or history of the habits of men in particular societies living at different periods of time. Such a field of study would obviously be too wide for any particular science or philosophy to investigate, and moreover portions of the field are already occupied by history, by anthropology and by the particular sciences (e.g. physiology, anatomy, biology), in so far as the habits and character of men depend upon the material processes which these sciences examine. Even philosophies such as logic and aesthetic would be necessary for such an investigation, if thought and artistic production are normal human habits and elements in character. Ethics then is usually confined to the particular field of human character and conduct so far as they depend upon or exhibit certain general principles commonly known as moral principles. Men in general characterize their own conduct and character and that of other men by such general adjectives as good, bad, right and wrong, and it is the meaning and scope of these adjectives, primarily in relation to human conduct, and ultimately in their final and absolute sense, that ethics investigates.

A not uncommon definition of ethics as the "science of conduct" is inexact for various reasons. (1) The sciences are descriptive or experimental. But a description of what acts or what ends of action men in the present or the past call, or have called, "good" or "bad" is clearly beyond human powers. And experiments in morality (apart from the inconvenient practical consequences likely to ensue) are useless for purposes of ethics, because the moral consciousness would itself at one and the same time be required to make the experiment and to provide the subject upon which the experiment is performed. (2) Ethics is a philosophy and not a science. Philosophy is a process of reflection upon the presuppositions involved in unreflective thought. In logic and metaphysics it investigates either the process of apprehension itself, or conceptions such as cause, substance, space, time, which the ordinary scientific consciousness never criticizes. In moral philosophy the place of the body of sciences, which philosophy as the theory of knowledge investigates, is taken by the developed moral consciousness, which already pronounces moral judgment without hesitation, and claims authority to subject to continual criticism the institutions and forms of social life which it has itself helped to create.

When ethical speculation first begins, conceptions such as those of duty, responsibility, the will as the ultimate subject of moral approbation and disapprobation, are already in existence and already operative. Moral philosophy in a certain sense adds nothing to these conceptions, though it sets them in a clearer light. The problems of the moral consciousness at the time at which it first becomes reflective are not strictly speaking philosophical problems at all. It is occupied with just such questions as each individual man who wishes to act rightly is constantly called upon to answer, e.g. questions such as "What particular action will meet the claims of justice under such and such circumstances?" or "What degree of ignorance will excuse this particular person in this particular case from his responsibility?" It tries to attain a knowledge as complete as possible of the circumstances under which the act contemplated must be performed, the personalities of the persons whom it may affect, and the consequences (so far as they can be foreseen) which it will produce, and then by virtue of its own power of moral discrimination pronounces judgment. And the ever-recurring problem of the moral consciousness, "What ought to be done?" is one which receives a clearer and more definite answer as men become more able in the course of moral experience to apply those principles of the moral consciousness which are yet employed in that experience from the outset. Nevertheless there is a sense in which moral philosophy may be said to originate out of difficulties inherent in the nature of morality itself, although it remains true that the questions which ethics attempts to answer are never questions with which the moral consciousness as such is confronted. The fact that men give different answers to moral problems which seem similar in character, or even the mere fact that men disregard, when they act immorally, the dictates and implicit principles of the moral consciousness is certain sooner or later to produce the desire either, on the one hand, to justify immoral action by casting doubt upon the authority of the moral consciousness and the validity of its principles, or, on the other hand, to justify particular moral judgments either by (the only valid method) an analysis of the moral principle involved in the judgment and a demonstration of its universal acceptation, or by some attempted proof that the particular moral judgment is arrived at by a process of inference from some universal conception of the Supreme Good or the Final End from which all particular duties or virtues may be deduced. It may be that criticism of morality first originates with a criticism of existing moral institutions or codes of ethics; such a criticism may be due to the spontaneous activity of the moral consciousness itself. But when such criticism passes into the attempt to find a universal criterion of morality--such an attempt being in effect an effort to make morality scientific--and especially when the attempt is seen, as it must in the end be seen, to fail (the moral consciousness being superior to all standards of morality and realizing itself wholly in particular judgments), then ethics as a _process of reflection_ upon the nature of the moral consciousness may be said to begin. If this be true it follows that one of the chief function of ethics must be criticism of mistaken attempts to find a criterion of morality superior to the pronouncements of the moral consciousness itself. The ultimate superiority of the moral consciousness over all other standards is recognized, even by those who impugn its authority, whenever they claim that all men ought to recognize the superior value of the standards which they themselves wish to substitute. Similarly, their opponents refute their arguments by showing that they are based ultimately upon a recognition of certain distinctions which are moral distinctions (i.e. imply a moral consciousness capable of discriminating between right and wrong in particular cases), and that these moral distinctions conflict with the conclusions which they reach.

This may briefly be illustrated by reference to some of the great fundamental controversies of ethics. None of these originates out of conflicting statements of the moral consciousness, i.e. there is no fundamental contradiction in morality itself. No one (if unsophisticated) ever confused the conception of pleasure with the conception of the Good, or thought that the claims of selfish interest were identical with those of duty. But the controversy between hedonists and anti-hedonists originates as soon as men reflect that a good which is not in some sense "my" good is not good at all, or that no act can be said to be moral which does not satisfy "me." Or, again, the reflection that the mark or sign of the perfect performance of a particular virtuous act or function is the presence of a characteristic pleasure which always accompanies it, is opposed to the reflection that it is a mark of the highest morality never to rest satisfied, and out of these seemingly contradictory statements of the reflective consciousness might arise a multitude of controversies either concerning pleasure and duty, or the even more difficult and complex conceptions of merit, progress, and the nature of the Supreme Good or Final End.

The Sciences.

Theology.

When and how fresh controversies in ethics will begin it would be impossible for any one to foretell. Sometimes the dominance of a particular science or branch of study is the occasion of an attempt to apply to ethics ideas borrowed from or analogous to the conceptions of that science. False analogies drawn between ethics and mathematics or between morality and the perception of beauty have wrought much mischief in modern and to some degree even in ancient ethics. The influence of ideas borrowed from biology is everywhere manifest in the ethical speculations of modern times. Sometimes, again, whole theories of ethics have been formulated which can be seen in the end to be efforts to subordinate moral conceptions to conceptions belonging properly to institutions or departments of human thought and activity which the moral consciousness has itself originated. Law, for instance, depends, or at least ought to depend, upon men's need for and consciousness of justice. And such institutions as the family and the state are created by the social consciousness, which is the moral consciousness from another aspect. Yet morality has been subordinated to legal and social sanctions, and moral advance has been held to be conditioned by political and social necessities which are not moral needs. Similarly no one since civilization emerged from barbarism has ever really been willing to yield allegiance to a deity who is not moral in the fullest and highest sense of the word. God is not superior to moral law. Yet there have been whole systems of theological ethics which have attempted to base human morality upon the arbitrary will of God or upon the supreme authority of a divinely inspired book or code of laws. One of the greatest of all ethical controversies, that concerning the freedom of the will, arose directly out of what was in reality a theological problem--the necessity, namely, of reconciling God's foreknowledge with human freedom. The unreflective moral consciousness never finds it difficult to distinguish between a man's power of willing and all the forces of circumstance, heredity and the like, which combine to form the temptations to which he may yield or bid defiance; and such facts as "remorse" and "penitence" are a continual testimony to man's sense of freedom. But so soon as men perceive upon reflection an apparent discrepancy between the utterances of their moral consciousness and certain conclusions to which theological speculation (or at a later period metaphysical and scientific inquiries) seems inevitably to lead them, they will not rest satisfied until the belief in the will's freedom (hitherto unquestioned) is upon further reflection justified or condemned. It is clear then that the complexity of the subject-matter of ethics is such that no sharply defined boundary lines can be drawn between it and other branches of inquiry. Just in so far as it presupposes the apprehension of moral facts, it must presuppose a knowledge of the system of social relationships upon which some at least of those facts depend. No one, for instance, could inquire into the nature of justice without being further compelled to undertake an examination of the nature of the state.

Psychology.

It would be difficult to decide how much of the dispute between the advocates of pleasure theories and their opponents turns upon vexed questions of psychology, and how much is strictly relevant to ethics. If, as has already been said, one of the chief tasks of ethics is to prevent the intrusion into its own sphere of inquiry of ideas borrowed from other and alien sources, then obviously these sources must be investigated. One example of this necessity may be given. It is sometimes maintained that the proper method of ethics is the psychological method; ethics, we are told, should examine as its subject-matter moral sentiments wherever found, without raising ultimate questions as to the nature of obligation or moral authority in general. Now if in opposition to such arguments the ultimate character of moral obligation be defended, it will be necessary to point out that no one feels moral sentiments except in connexion with particular objects of moral approbation or disapprobation (e.g. gratitude is inexplicable apart from a particular relationship existing between two or more persons), and that these objects are objects of the moral consciousness alone. But such a line of argument is certain to make necessary an inquiry into the nature of the objects of psychological study which may produce quite unforeseen results for psychology.

Nothing therefore is to be gained by confining ethics within limits which must from the nature of the case be arbitrary. The defender at all events of the supremacy of moral intuitions must be prepared to follow whither the argument leads, into whatever strange quarters it may direct him. But this much may be said by way of delimitation of the scope of ethics: however complicated and involved its arguments and processes of inference may become, the facts from which they start and the conclusions to which they point are such as the moral consciousness alone can understand or warrant. (H. H. W.)

II. HISTORICAL SKETCH

A. _Greek and Graeco-Roman Ethics._--The ethical speculation of Greece, and therefore of Europe, had no abrupt and absolute beginning. The naive and fragmentary precepts of conduct, which are everywhere the earliest manifestation of nascent moral reflection, are a noteworthy element in the gnomic poetry of the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. Their importance is shown by the traditional enumeration of the Seven Sages of the 6th century, and their influence on ethical thought is attested by the references of Plato and Aristotle. But from these unscientific utterances to a philosophy of morals was a long process. In the practical wisdom of Thales (q.v.), one of the seven, we cannot discern any systematic theory of morality. In the case of Pythagoras, conspicuous among pre-Socratic philosophers as the founder not merely of a school, but of a sect or order bound by a common rule of life, there is a closer connexion between moral and metaphysical speculation. The doctrine of the Pythagoreans that the essence of justice (conceived as equal retribution) was a square number, indicates a serious attempt to extend to the region of conduct their mathematical view of the universe; and the same may be said of their classification of good with unity, straightness and the like, and of evil with the opposite qualities. Still, the enunciation of the moral precepts of Pythagoras appears to have been dogmatic, or even prophetic, rather than philosophic, and to have been accepted by his disciples with an unphilosophic reverence as the _ipse dixit_[1] of the master. Hence, whatever influence the Pythagorean blending of ethical and mathematical notions may have had on Plato, and, through him, on later thought, we cannot regard the school as having really forestalled the Socratic inquiry after a completely reasoned theory of conduct. The ethical element in the "dark" philosophizing of Heraclitus (c. 530-470 B.C.), though it anticipates Stoicism in its conceptions of a law of the universe, to which the wise man will carefully conform, and a divine harmony, in the recognition of which he will find his truest satisfaction, is more profound, but even less systematic. It is only when we come to Democritus, a contemporary of Socrates, the last of the original thinkers whom we distinguish as pre-Socratic, that we find anything which we can call an ethical system. The fragments that remain of the moral treatises of Democritus are sufficient, perhaps, to convince us that the turn of Greek philosophy in the direction of conduct, which was actually due to Socrates, would have taken place without him, though in a less decided manner; but when we compare the Democritean ethics with the post-Socratic system to which it has most affinity, Epicureanism, we find that it exhibits a very rudimentary apprehension of the formal conditions which moral teaching must fulfil before it can lay claim to be treated as scientific.

The truth is that no system of ethics could be constructed until attention had been directed to the vagueness and inconsistency of the common moral opinions of mankind. For this purpose was needed the concentration of a philosophic intellect of the first order on the problems of practice. In Socrates first we find the required combination of a paramount interest in conduct and an ardent desire for knowledge. The pre-Socratic thinkers were all primarily devoted to ontological research; but by the middle of the 5th century B.C. the conflict of their dogmatic systems had led some of the keenest minds to doubt the possibility of penetrating the secret of the physical universe. This doubt found expression in the reasoned scepticism of Gorgias, and produced the famous proposition of Protagoras, that human apprehension is the only standard of existence. The same feeling led Socrates to abandon the old physico-metaphysical inquiries. In his ease, moreover, it was strengthened by a naive piety that forbade him to search into things of which the gods seemed to have reserved the knowledge to themselves. The regulation of human action, on the other hand (except on occasions of special difficulty, for which omens and oracles might be vouchsafed), they had left to human reason. On this accordingly Socrates concentrated his efforts.

The Sophists.

Socrates.

Though, however, Socrates was the first to arrive at a proper conception of the problems of conduct, the general idea did not originate with him. The natural reaction against the metaphysical and ethical dogmatism of the early thinkers had reached its climax in the Sophists (q.v.). Gorgias and Protagoras are only representatives of what was really a universal tendency to abandon dogmatic theory and take refuge in practical matters, and especially, as was natural in the Greek city-state, in the civic relations of the citizen. The education given by the Sophists aimed at no general theory of life, but professed to expound the art of getting on in the world and of managing public affairs. In their eulogy of the virtues of the citizen, they pointed out the prudential character of justice and the like as a means of obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain. The Greek conception of society was such that the life of the free-born citizen consisted mainly of his public function, and, therefore, the pseudo-ethical disquisitions of the Sophists satisfied the requirements of the age. None thought of [Greek: arete] (virtue or excellence) as a unique quality possessed of an intrinsic value, but as the virtue of the citizen, just as good flute-playing was the virtue of the flute-player. We see here, as in other activities of the age, a determination to acquire technical knowledge, and to apply it directly to the practical issue; just as music was being enriched by new technical knowledge, architecture by modern theories of plans and T-squares (sc. Hippodamus), the handling of soldiers by the new technique of "tactics" and "hoplitics," so citizenship must be analysed afresh, systematized and adapted in relation to modern requirements. The Sophists had studied these matters superficially indeed but with thoroughness as far as they went, and it is not remarkable that they should have taken the methods which were successful in rhetoric, and applied them to the "science and art" of civic virtues. Plato's _Protagoras_ claims, not unjustly, that in teaching virtue they simply did systematically what every one else was doing at haphazard. But in the true sense of the word, they had no ethical system at all, nor did they contribute save by contrast to ethical speculation. They merely analysed conventional formulae, much in the manner of certain modern so-called "scientific" moralists. Into this arena of hazy popular common sense Socrates brought a new critical spirit, showing that these popular lecturers, in spite of their fertile eloquence, could not defend their fundamental assumptions, nor even give rational definitions of what they professed to explain. Not only were they thus "ignorant," but they were also perpetually inconsistent with themselves in dealing with particular instances. Thus, by the aid of his famous "dialectic," Socrates arrived first at the negative result that the professed teachers of the people were as ignorant as he himself claimed to be, and in a measure justified the eulogy of Aristotle that he rendered to philosophy the service of "introducing induction and definitions." This description of his work is, however, both too technical and too positive, if we may judge from those earlier dialogues of Plato in which the real Socrates is found least modified. The pre-eminent wisdom which the Delphic oracle attributed to him was held by himself to consist in a unique consciousness of ignorance. Yet it is equally clear from Plato that there was a most important positive element in the teaching of Socrates in virtue of which it is just to say with Alexander Bain, "the first important name in ancient ethical philosophy is Socrates." The union of the negative and the positive elements in his work has caused historians no little perplexity, and we cannot quite save the philosopher's consistency unless we regard some of the doctrines attributed to him by Xenophon as merely tentative and provisional. Still the positions of Socrates that are most important in the history of ethical thought not only are easy to harmonize with his conviction of ignorance, but even render it easier to understand his unwearied cross-examination of common opinion. While he showed clearly the difficulty of acquiring knowledge, he was convinced that knowledge alone could be the source of a coherent system of virtue, as error of evil. Socrates, therefore, first in the history of thought, propounds a positive scientific law of conduct. Virtue is knowledge. This principle involved the paradox that no man, knowing good, would do evil. But it was a paradox derived from his unanswerable truisms, "Every one wishes for his own good, and would get it if he could," and "No one would deny that justice and virtue generally are goods, and of all goods the best." All virtues are, therefore, summed up in knowledge of the good. But this good is not, for Socrates, duty as distinct from interest. The force of the paradox depends upon a blending of duty and interest in the single notion of good, a blending which was dominant in the common thought of the age. This it is which forms the kernel of the positive thought of Socrates according to Xenophon. He could give no satisfactory account of Good in the abstract, and evaded all questions on this point by saying that he knew "no good that was not good _for something in particular_," but that good is consistent with itself. For himself he prized above all things the wisdom that is virtue, and in the task of producing it he endured the hardest penury, maintaining that such life was richer in enjoyment than a life of luxury. This many-sidedness of view is illustrated by the curious blending of noble and merely utilitarian sentiment in his account of friendship: a friend who can be of no service is valueless; yet the highest service that a friend can render is moral improvement.

The historically important characteristics of his moral philosophy, if we take (as we must) his teaching and character together, may be summarized as follows:--(1) an ardent inquiry for knowledge nowhere to be found, but which, if found, would perfect human conduct; (2) a demand meanwhile that men should act as far as possible on some consistent theory; (3) a provisional adhesion to the commonly received view of good, in all its incoherent complexity, and a perpetual readiness to maintain the harmony of its different elements, and demonstrate the superiority of virtue by an appeal to the standard of self-interest; (4) personal firmness, as apparently easy as it was actually invincible, in carrying out consistently such practical convictions as he had attained. It is only when we keep all these points in view that we can understand how from the spring of Socratic conversation flowed the divergent streams of Greek ethical thought.

The Socratic Schools.

Four distinct philosophical schools trace their immediate origin to the circle that gathered round Socrates--the Megarian, the Platonic, the Cynic and the Cyrenaic. The impress of the master is manifest on all, in spite of the wide differences that divide them; they all agree in holding the most important possession of man to be wisdom or knowledge, and the most important knowledge to be knowledge of Good. Here, however, the agreement ends. The more philosophic part of the circle, forming a group in which Euclid of Megara (see MEGARIAN SCHOOL) seems at first to have taken the lead, regarded this Good as the object of a still unfulfilled quest, and were led to identify it with the hidden secret of the universe, and thus to pass from ethics to metaphysics. Others again, whose demand for knowledge was more easily satisfied, and who were more impressed with the positive and practical side of the master's teaching, made the quest a much simpler affair. They took the Good as already known, and held philosophy to consist in the steady application of this knowledge to conduct. Among these were Antisthenes the Cynic and Aristippus of Cyrene. It is by their recognition of the duty of living consistently by theory instead of mere impulse or custom, their sense of the new value given to life through this rationalization, and their effort to maintain the easy, calm, unwavering firmness of the Socratic temper, that we recognize both Antisthenes and Aristippus as "Socratic men," in spite of the completeness with which they divided their master's positive doctrine into systems diametrically opposed. Of their contrasted principles we may perhaps say that, while Aristippus took the most obvious logical step for reducing the teaching of Socrates to clear dogmatic unity, Antisthenes certainly drew the most natural inference from the Socratic life.

Aristippus.

Aristippus (see CYRENAICS) argued that, if all that is beautiful or admirable in conduct has this quality as being useful, i.e. productive of some further good; if virtuous action is essentially action done with insight, or rational apprehension of the act as a means to this good, this good must be pleasure. Bodily pleasures and pains Aristippus held to be the keenest, though he does not seem to have maintained this on any materialistic theory, as he admitted the existence of purely mental pleasures, such as joy in the prosperity of one's native land. He fully recognized that his good was capable of being realized only in successive parts, and gave even exaggerated emphasis to the rule of seeking the pleasure of the moment, and not troubling oneself about a dubious future. It was in the calm, resolute, skilful culling of such pleasures as circumstances afforded from moment to moment, undisturbed by passion, prejudices or superstition, that he conceived the quality of wisdom to be exhibited; and tradition represents him as realizing this ideal to an impressive degree. Among the prejudices from which the wise man was free he included all regard to customary morality beyond what was due to the actual penalties attached to its violation; though he held, with Socrates, that these penalties actually render conformity reasonable. Thus early in the history of ethical theory appeared the most thorough-going exposition of hedonism.

The Cynics.

Far otherwise was the Socratic spirit understood by Antisthenes and the Cynics (q.v.). They equally held that no speculative research was needed for the discovery of good and virtue, and maintained that the Socratic wisdom was exhibited, not in the skilful pursuit, but in the rational disregard of pleasure,--in the clear apprehension of the intrinsic worthlessness of this and most other objects of men's ordinary desires and aims. Pleasure, indeed, Antisthenes declared roundly to be an evil; "Better madness than a surrender to pleasure." He did not overlook the need of supplementing merely intellectual insight by "Socratic force of soul"; but it seemed to him that, by insight and self-mastery combined, an absolute spiritual independence might be attained which left nothing wanting for perfect well-being (see also DIOGENES). For as for poverty, painful toil, disrepute, and such evils as men dread most, these, he argued, were positively useful as means of progress in spiritual freedom and virtue. There is, however, in the Cynic notion of wisdom, no positive criterion beyond the mere negation of irrational desires and prejudices. We saw that Socrates, while not claiming to have found the abstract theory of good or wise conduct, practically understood by it the faithful performance of customary duties, maintaining always that his own happiness was therewith bound up. The Cynics more boldly discarded both pleasure and mere custom as alike irrational; but in so doing they left the freed reason with no definite aim but its own freedom. It is absurd, as Plato urged, to say that knowledge is the good, and then when asked "knowledge of what?" to have no positive reply but "of the good"; but the Cynics do not seem to have made any serious effort to escape from this absurdity.

The ultimate views of these two Socratic schools we shall have to notice presently when we come to the post-Aristotelian schools. We must now proceed to trace the fuller development of the Socratic theory in the hands of Plato and Aristotle.

Plato.

The ethics of Plato cannot properly be treated as a finished result, but rather as a continual movement from the position of Socrates towards the more complete, articulate system of Aristotle; except that there are ascetic and mystical suggestions in some parts of Plato's teaching which find no counterpart in Aristotle, and in fact disappear from Greek philosophy soon after Plato's death until they are revived and fantastically developed in Neopythagoreanism and Neoplatonism. The first stage at which we can distinguish Plato's ethical view from that of Socrates is presented in the _Protagoras_, where he makes a serious, though clearly tentative effort to define the object of that knowledge which he with his master regards as the essence of all virtue. Such knowledge, he here maintains, is really mensuration of pleasures and pains, whereby the wise man avoids those mistaken under-estimates of future feelings in comparison with present which we commonly call "yielding to fear or desire." This hedonism has perplexed Plato's readers needlessly (as we have said in speaking of the Cyrenaics), inasmuch as hedonism is the most obvious corollary of the Socratic doctrine that the different common notions of good--the beautiful, the pleasant and the useful--were to be somehow interpreted by each other. By Plato, however, this conclusion could have been held only before he had accomplished the movement of thought by which he carried the Socratic method beyond the range of human conduct and developed it into a metaphysical system.

This movement may be expressed thus. "If we know," said Socrates, "what justice is, we can give an account or definition of it"; true knowledge must be knowledge of the general fact, common to all the individual cases to which we apply our general notion. But this must be no less true of other objects of thought and discourse; the same relation of general notions to particular examples extends through the whole physical universe; we can think and talk of it only by means of such notions. True or scientific knowledge then must be general knowledge, relating, not to individuals primarily, but to the general facts or qualities which individuals exemplify; in fact, our notion of an individual, when examined, is found to be an aggregate of such general qualities. But, again, the object of true knowledge must be what really exists; hence the reality of the universe must lie in general facts or relations, and not in the individuals that exemplify them.

So far the steps are plain enough; but we do not yet see how this logical Realism (as it was afterwards called) comes to have the essentially ethical character that especially interests us in Platonism. Plato's philosophy is now concerned with the whole universe of being; yet the ultimate object of his philosophic contemplation is still "the good," now conceived as the ultimate ground of all being and knowledge. That is, the essence of the universe is identified with its end,--the "formal" with the "final" cause of things, to use the later Aristotelian phraseology. How comes this about?

Perhaps we may best explain this by recurring to the original application of the Socratic method to human affairs. Since all rational activity is for some end, the different arts or functions of human industry are naturally defined by a statement of their ends or uses; and similarly, in giving an account of the different artists and functionaries, we necessarily state their end, "what they are good for." In a society well ordered on Socratic principles, every human being would be put to some use; the essence of his life would consist in doing what he was good for (his proper [Greek: ergon]). But again, it is easy to extend this view throughout the whole region of organized life; an eye that does not attain its end by seeing is without the essence of an eye. In short, we may say of all organs and instruments that they are what we think them in proportion as they fulfil their function and attain their end. If, then, we conceive the whole universe organically, as a complex arrangement of means to ends, we shall understand how Plato might hold that all things really _were_, or (as we say) "realized their idea," in proportion as they accomplished the special end or good for which they were adapted. Even Socrates, in spite of his aversion to physics, was led by pious reflection to expound a teleological view of the physical world, as ordered in all its parts by divine wisdom for the realization of some divine end; and, in the metaphysical turn which Plato gave to this view, he was probably anticipated by Euclid of Megara, who held that the one real being is "that which we call by many names, Good, Wisdom, Reason or God," to which Plato, raising to a loftier significance the Socratic identification of the beautiful with the useful, added the further name of Absolute Beauty, explaining how man's love of the beautiful finally reveals itself as the yearning for the end and essence of being.

Plato, therefore, took this vast stride of thought, and identified the ultimate notions of ethics and ontology. We have now to see what attitude he will adopt towards the practical inquiries from which he started. What will now be his view of wisdom, virtue, pleasure and their relation to human well-being?

The answer to this question is inevitably somewhat complicated. In the first place we have to observe that philosophy has now passed definitely from the market-place into the lecture-room. The quest of Socrates was for the true art of conduct for a man living a practical life among his fellows. But if the objects of abstract thought constitute the real world, of which this world of individual things is but a shadow, it is plain that the highest, most real life must lie in the former region and not in the latter. It is in contemplating the abstract reality which concrete things obscurely exhibit, the type or ideal which they imperfectly imitate, that the true life of the mind in man must consist; and as man is most truly man in proportion as he is mind, the desire of one's own good, which Plato, following Socrates, held to be permanent and essential in every living thing, becomes in its highest form the philosophic yearning for knowledge. This yearning, he held, springs--like more sensual impulses--from a sense of want of something formerly possessed, of which there remains a latent memory in the soul, strong in proportion to its philosophic capacity; hence it is that in learning any abstract truth by scientific demonstration we merely make explicit what we already implicitly know; we bring into clear consciousness hidden memories of a state in which the soul looked upon Reality and Good face to face, before the lapse that imprisoned her in an alien body and mingled her true nature with fleshly feelings and impulses. We thus reach the paradox that the true art of living is really an "art of dying" as far as possible to mere sense, in order more fully to exist in intimate union with absolute goodness and beauty. On the other hand, since the philosopher must still live and act in the concrete sensible world, the Socratic identification of wisdom and virtue is fully maintained by Plato. Only he who apprehends good in the abstract can imitate it in such transient and imperfect good as may be realized in human life, and it is impossible that, having this knowledge, he should not act on it, whether in private or public affairs. Thus, in the true philosopher, we shall necessarily find the practically good man, who being "likest of men to the gods is best loved by them"; and also the perfect statesman, if only the conditions of his society allow him a sphere for exercising his statesmanship.

Virtue a harmony.

The characteristics of this practical goodness in Plato's matured thought correspond to the fundamental conceptions in his view of the universe. The soul of man, in its good or normal condition, must be ordered and harmonized under the guidance of reason. The question then arises, "Wherein does this order or harmony precisely consist?" In explaining how Plato was led to answer this question, it will be well to notice that, while faithfully maintaining the Socratic doctrine that the highest virtue was inseparable from knowledge of the good, he had come to recognize an inferior kind of virtue, possessed by men who were not philosophers. It is plain that if the good that is to be known is the ultimate ground of the whole of things, it is attainable only by a select and carefully trained few. Yet we can hardly restrict all virtue to these alone. What account, then, was to be given of ordinary "civic" bravery, temperance and justice? It seemed clear that men who did their duty, resisting the seductions of fear and desire, must have right opinions, if not knowledge, as to the good and evil in human life; but whence comes this right "opinion"? Partly, Plato said, it comes by nature and "divine allotment," but for its adequate development "custom and practice" are required. Hence the paramount importance of education and discipline for civic virtue; and even for future philosophers such moral culture, in which physical and aesthetic training must co-operate, is indispensable; no merely intellectual preparation will suffice. His point is that perfect knowledge cannot be implanted in a soul that has not gone through a course of preparation including much more than physical training. What, then, is this preparation? A distinct step in psychological analysis was taken when Plato recognized that its effect was to produce the "harmony" above mentioned among different parts of the soul, by subordinating the impulsive elements to reason. These non-rational elements he further distinguished as appetitive ([Greek: to epithumetikon]) and spirited ([Greek: to thumoeides] or [Greek: thumos])--the practical separateness of which from each other and from reason he held to be established by our inner experience.

On this triple division of the soul he founded a systematic view of the four kinds of goodness recognized by the common moral consciousness of Greece, and in later times known as the Cardinal Virtues (q.v.). Of these the two most fundamental were (as has been already indicated) wisdom--in its highest form philosophy--and that harmonious and regulated activity of all the elements of the soul which Plato regards as the essence of uprightness in social relations ([Greek: dikaiosyne]). The import of this term is essentially social; and we can explain Plato's use of it only by reference to the analogy which he drew between the individual man and the community. In a rightly ordered polity social and individual well-being alike would depend on that harmonious action of diverse elements, each performing its proper function, which in its social application is more naturally termed [Greek: dikaiosyne]. We see, moreover, how in Plato's view the fundamental virtues, Wisdom and Justice in their highest forms, are mutually involved. Wisdom will necessarily maintain orderly activity, and this latter consists in regulation by wisdom, while the two more special virtues of Courage ([Greek: andreia]) and Temperance ([Greek: sophrosyne]) are only different sides or aspects of this wisely regulated action of the complex soul.

Such, then, are the forms in which essential good seemed to manifest itself in human life. It remains to ask whether the statement of these gives a complete account of human well-being, or whether pleasure also is to be included. On this point Plato's view seems to have gone through several oscillations. After apparently maintaining (_Protagoras_) that pleasure is the good, he passes first to the opposite extreme, and denies it (_Phaedo, Gorgias_) to be a good at all. For (1), as concrete and transient, it is obviously not the real essential good that the philosopher seeks; (2) the feelings most prominently recognized as pleasures are bound up with pain, as good can never be with evil; in so far, then, as common sense rightly recognizes some pleasures as good, it can only be from their tendency to produce some further good. This view, however, was too violent a divergence from Socratism for Plato to remain in it. That pleasure is not the real absolute good, was no ground for not including it in the good of concrete human life; and after all only coarse and vulgar pleasures were indissolubly linked to the pains of want. Accordingly, in the _Republic_ he has no objection to trying the question of the intrinsic superiority of philosophic or virtuous[2] life by the standard of pleasure, and argues that the philosophic (or good) man alone enjoys real pleasure, while the sensualist spends his life in oscillating between painful want and the merely neutral state of painlessness, which he mistakes for positive pleasure. Still more emphatically is it declared in the _Laws_ that when we are "discoursing to men, not to gods," we must show that the life which we praise as best and noblest is also that in which there is the greatest excess of pleasure over pain. But though Plato holds this inseparable connexion of best and pleasantest to be true and important, it is only for the sake of the vulgar that he lays this stress on pleasure. For in the most philosophical comparison in the _Philebus_ between the claims of pleasure and wisdom the former is altogether worsted; and though a place is allowed to the pure pleasures of colour, form and sound, and of intellectual exercise, and even to the "necessary" satisfaction of appetite, it is only a subordinate one. At the same time, in his later view, Plato avoids the exaggeration of denying all positive quality of pleasure even to the coarser sensual gratifications; they are undoubtedly cases of that "replenishment" or "restoration" to its "natural state" of a bodily organ, in which he defines pleasure to consist (see _Timaeus_, pp. 64, 65); he merely maintains that the common estimate of them is to a large extent illusory, or a false appearance of pleasure is produced by contrast with the antecedent or concomitant painful condition of the organ. It is not surprising that this somewhat complicated and delicately balanced view of the relations of "good" and "pleasure" was not long maintained within the Platonic school, and that under Speusippus, Plato's successor, the main body of Platonists took up a simply anti-hedonistic position, as we learn from the polemic of Aristotle. In the _Philebus_, however, though a more careful psychological analysis leads him to soften down the exaggerations of this attack on sensual pleasure, the antithesis of knowledge and pleasure is again sharpened, and a desire to depreciate even good pleasures is more strongly shown; still even here pleasure is recognized as a constituent of that philosophic life which is the highest human good, while in the _Laws_, where the subject is more popularly treated, it is admitted that we cannot convince man that the just life is the best unless we can also prove it to be the pleasantest.

Plato and Aristotle.

When a student passes from Plato to Aristotle, he is so forcibly impressed by the contrast between the habits of mind of the two authors, and the literary manners of the two philosophers, that it is easy to understand how their systems have come to be popularly conceived as diametrically opposed to each other; and the uncompromising polemic which Aristotle, both in his ethical and in his metaphysical treatises, directs against Plato and the platonists, has tended strongly to confirm this view. Yet a closer inspection shows us that when a later president of the Academy (Antiochus of Ascalon) repudiated the scepticism which for two hundred years had been accepted as the traditional Platonic doctrine, he had good grounds for claiming Plato and Aristotle as consentient authorities for the ethical position which he took up. For though Aristotle's divergence from Plato is very conspicuous when we consider either his general conception of the subject of ethics, or the details of his system of virtues, still his agreement with his master is almost complete as regards the main outline of his theory of human good; the difference between the two practically vanishes when we view them in relation to the later controversy between Stoics and Epicureans. Even on the cardinal point on which Aristotle entered into direct controversy with Plato, the definite disagreement between the two is less than at first appears; the objections of the disciple hit that part of the master's system that was rather imagined than thought; the main positive result of Platonic speculation only gains in distinctness by the application of Aristotelian analysis.

Plato, we saw, held that there is one supreme science or wisdom, of which the ultimate object is absolute good; in the knowledge of this, the knowledge of all particular goods--that is, of all that we rationally desire to know--is implicitly contained; and also all practical virtue, as no one who truly knows what is good can fail to realize it. But in spite of the intense conviction with which he thus identified metaphysical speculation and practical wisdom, we find in his writings no serious attempt to deduce the particulars of human well-being from his knowledge of absolute good, still less to unfold from it the particular cognitions of the special arts and sciences. Indeed, we may say that the distinction which Aristotle explicitly draws between speculative science or wisdom and practical wisdom (on its political side statesmanship) is really indicated in Plato's actual treatment of the subjects, although the express recognition of it is contrary to his principles. The discussion of good (e.g.) in his _Philebus_ relates entirely to human good, and the respective claims of Thought and Pleasure to constitute this; he only refers in passing to the Divine Thought that is the good of the ordered world, as something clearly beyond the limits of the present discussion. So again, in his last great ethico-political treatise (the _Laws_) there is hardly a trace of his peculiar metaphysics. On the other hand, the relation between human and divine good, as presented by Aristotle, is so close that we can hardly conceive Plato as having definitely thought it closer. The substantial good of the universe, in Aristotle's view, is the pure activity of universal abstract thought, at once subject and object, which, itself changeless and eternal, is the final cause and first source of the whole process of change in the concrete world. And both he and Plato hold that a similar activity of pure speculative intellect is that in which the philosopher will seek to exist, though he must, being a man, concern himself with the affairs of ordinary human life, a region in which his highest good will be attained by realizing perfect moral excellence. No doubt Aristotle's demonstration of the inappropriateness of attributing moral excellence to the Deity seems to contradict Plato's doctrine that the just man as such is "likest the gods," but here again the discrepancy is reduced when we remember that the essence of Plato's justice ([Greek: dikaiosune]) is harmonious activity. No doubt, too, Aristotle's attribution of pleasure to the Divine Existence shows a profound metaphysical divergence from Plato; but it is a divergence which has no practical importance. Nor, again, is Aristotle's divergence from the Socratic principle that all "virtue is knowledge" substantially greater than Plato's, though it is more plainly expressed. Both accept the paradox in the qualified sense that no one can deliberately act contrary to what appears to him good, and that perfect virtue is inseparably bound up with perfect wisdom or moral insight. Both, however, recognize that this actuality of moral insight is not a function of the intellect only, but depends rather on careful training in good habits applied to minds of good natural dispositions, though the doctrine has no doubt a more definite and prominent place in Aristotle's system. The disciple certainly takes a step in advance by stating definitely, as an essential characteristic of virtuous action, that it is chosen for its own sake, for the beauty of virtue alone; but herein he merely formulates the conviction that his master inspires. Nor, finally, does Aristotle's account of the relation of pleasure to human well-being (although he has to combat the extreme anti-hedonism to which the Platonic school under Speusippus had been led) differ materially from the outcome of Plato's thought on this point, as the later dialogues present it to us. Pleasure, in Aristotle's view, is not the primary constituent of well-being, but rather an inseparable accident of it; human well-being is essentially well-doing, excellent activity of some kind, whether its aim and end be abstract truth or noble conduct; knowledge and virtue are objects of rational choice apart from the pleasure attending them; still all activities are attended and in a manner perfected by pleasure, which is better and more desirable in proportion to the excellence of the activity. He no doubt criticizes Plato's account of the nature of pleasure, arguing that we cannot properly conceive pleasure either as a "process" or as "replenishment"--the last term, he truly says, denotes a material rather than a psychical fact. But this does not interfere with the general ethical agreement between the two thinkers; and the doctrine that vicious pleasures are not true or real pleasures is so characteristically Platonic that we are almost surprised to find it in Aristotle.

Aristotle's ethics.

In so far as there is any important difference between the Platonic and the Aristotelian views of human good, we may observe that the latter has substantially a closer correspondence to the positive element in the ethical teaching of Socrates, though it is presented in a far more technical and scholastic form, and involves a more distinct rejection of the fundamental Socratic paradox. The same result appears when we compare the methods of the three philosophers. Although the Socratic induction forms a striking feature of Plato's dialogues, his ideal method of ethics is purely deductive; he admits common sense only as supplying provisional steps and starting-points from which the mind is to ascend to knowledge of absolute good, through which knowledge alone, as he conceives, the lower notions of particular goods are to be truly conceived. Aristotle, discarding the transcendentalism of Plato, naturally retained from Plato's teaching the original Socratic method of induction from and verification by common opinion. Indeed, the windings of his exposition are best understood if we consider his literary manner as a kind of Socratic dialogue formalized and reduced to a monologue. He first leads us by an induction to the fundamental notion of ultimate end or good for man. All men, in acting, aim at some result, either for its own sake or as a means to some further end; but obviously not everything can be sought merely as a means; there must be some ultimate end. In fact men commonly recognize such an end, and agree to call it well-being[3] ([Greek: eudaimonia]). But they take very different views of its nature; how shall we find the true view? We observe that men are classified according to their functions; all kinds of man, and indeed all organs of man, have their special functions, and are judged as functionaries and organs according as they perform their functions well or ill. May we not then infer that man, as man, has his proper function, and that the well-being or "doing well" that all seek really lies in fulfilling well the proper function of man,--that is, in living well that life of the rational soul which we recognize as man's distinctive attribute?