The oldest treatise on etching is that of Abraham Bosse (1645). See also P.G. Hamerton,Etching and Etchers(1868), andEtchers’ Handbook(1881); F. Wedmore,Etching in England(1895); Singer and Strang,Etching, Engraving, &c.(1897).
The oldest treatise on etching is that of Abraham Bosse (1645). See also P.G. Hamerton,Etching and Etchers(1868), andEtchers’ Handbook(1881); F. Wedmore,Etching in England(1895); Singer and Strang,Etching, Engraving, &c.(1897).
ETEOCLES,in Greek legend, king of Thebes, son of Oedipus and Jocasta (Iocaste). After their father had been driven out of the country, he and his brother Polyneices agreed to reign alternately for a year. Eteocles, however, refused to keep the agreement, and Polyneices fled to Adrastus, king of Argos, whom he persuaded to undertake the famous expedition against Thebes on his behalf. The two brothers met in single combat, and both were slain. The Theban rulers decreed that only Eteocles should receive the honour of burial, but the decree was set at naught by Antigone (q.v.), the sister of Polyneices. The fate of Eteocles and Polyneices forms the subject of theSeven against Thebesof Aeschylus and thePhoenissaeof Euripides.
ETESIAN WIND(Lat.etesius, annual; Gr.ἔτος, year), a Mediterranean wind blowing from the north and west in summer for about six weeks annually.
ÉTEX, ANTOINE(1808-1888), French sculptor, painter and architect, was born in Paris on the 20th of March 1808. He first exhibited in the salon of 1833, his work including a reproduction in marble of his “Death of Hyacinthus,” and the plaster cast of his “Cain and his race cursed by God.” Thiers, who was at this time minister of public works, now commissioned him to execute the two groups of “Peace” and “War,” placed at each side of the Arc de Triomphe. This last, which established his reputation, he reproduced in marble in the salon of 1839. The French capital contains numerous examples of the sculptural works of Étex, which included mythological and religious subjects besides a great number of portraits. His paintings include the subjects of Eurydice and the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, and among the best known of his architectural productions are the tomb of Napoleon I. in the Invalides and a monument of the revolution of 1848. Étex wrote a number of essays on subjects connected with the arts. The last year of his life was spent at Nice, and he died at Chaville (Seine-et-Oise) on the 14th of July 1888.
See P.E. Mangeant,Antoine Étex, peintre, sculpteur et architecte, 1808-1888(Paris, 1894).
See P.E. Mangeant,Antoine Étex, peintre, sculpteur et architecte, 1808-1888(Paris, 1894).
ETHER,(C2H5)2O, theAetherof pharmacy, a colourless, volatile, highly inflammable liquid, of specific gravity 0.736 at 0°, boiling-point 35° C., and freezing-point −117°.4 C. (K. Olszewski). It has a strong and characteristic odour, and a hot sweetish taste, is soluble in ten parts of water, and in all proportions in alcohol, and dissolves bromine, iodine, and, in small quantities, sulphur and phosphorus, also the volatile oils, most fatty and resinous substances, guncotton, caoutchouc and certain of the vegetable alkaloids. The vapour mixed with oxygen or air is violently explosive. The making of ether by the action of sulphuric acid on alcohol was known in about the 13th century; and later Basil Valentine and Valerius Cordus described its preparation and properties. The name ether appears to have been applied to the drug only since the times of Frobenius, who in 1730 termed itspiritus aethereus or vini vitriolatus. It was considered to be a sulphur compound, hence its name sulphur ether; this idea was proved to be erroneous by Valentine Rose in about 1800. Ether is manufactured by the distillation of 5 parts of 90% alcohol with 9 parts of concentrated sulphuric acid at a temperature of 140°-145° C., a constant stream of alcohol being caused to flow into the mixture during the operation. The distillate is purified by treatment with lime and calcium chloride, and subsequent distillation. The mechanism of this reaction was explained by A. Williamson in 1850. For other methods of preparation seeEthers.1
The presence of so small a quantity as 1% of alcohol may be detected in ether by the colour imparted to it by aniline violet; if water or acetic acid be present, the ether must be shaken with anhydrous potassium carbonate before the application of the test. When heated with zinc dust, it yields ethylene and water. Chromic acid oxidizes it to acetic acid and ozone oxidizes it to ethyl peroxide. In contact with hydriodic acid gas at 0° C., it forms ethyl iodide (R.D. Silva,Ber., 1875, 8, p. 903), and with water and a little sulphuric acid at 180° C., it yields alcohol (E. Erlenmeyer,Zeit. f. chemie, 1868, p. 343). It forms crystalline compounds with bromine and with many metallic salts.
Medicine.—For the anaesthetic properties of ether seeAnaesthesia. Applied externally, ether evaporates very rapidly, producing such intense cold as to cause marked local anaesthesia. For this purpose it is best applied as a fine spray, but ethyl chloride is generally found more efficient and produces less subsequent discomfort. It aids the absorption of fats and may be used with cod liver oil when the latter is administered by the skin. If it be rubbed in or evaporation be prevented, it acts, like alcohol and chloroform, as an irritant. Ten to twenty minims of ether, subcutaneously injected, constitute perhaps the most rapid and powerful cardiac stimulant known, and are often employed for this purpose in cases of syncope under anaesthesia. Taken internally, ether acts in many respects similarly to alcohol and chloroform, but its stimulant action on the heart is much more marked, being exerted both reflexly from the stomach and directly after its rapid absorption. Ether is thus the type of a rapidly diffusible stimulant. It is also useful in relieving the paroxysms of asthma. The dose for repeated administration is from 10 to 30 minims and for a single administration up to a drachm.
Chronic Poisoning.—A dose of a little more than a drachm (a teaspoonful) will produce a condition of inebriation lasting for one-half to one hour, but the dose must soon be greatly increased. The after-effects are, if anything, rather pleasant, and the habit of ether drinking is certainly not so injurious as alcoholism. The principal symptomssymptonsof chronic ether-drinking are a weakening of the activity of the special senses, and notably sight and hearing, a lowering of the intelligence and a degree of general paresis (partial paralysis) of motion.
1See also J. v. Liebig,Ann. Chem. Pharm., 1837, 23, p. 39; 1839, 30, p. 129; E. Mitscherlich,Pogg. Ann., 1836, 31, p. 273; 1841, 53, p. 95; A.W. Williamson,Phil. Mag., 1850 (3), 37, p. 350.
1See also J. v. Liebig,Ann. Chem. Pharm., 1837, 23, p. 39; 1839, 30, p. 129; E. Mitscherlich,Pogg. Ann., 1836, 31, p. 273; 1841, 53, p. 95; A.W. Williamson,Phil. Mag., 1850 (3), 37, p. 350.
ETHEREDGE[orEtherege],SIR GEORGE(c.1635-1691), English dramatist, was born about the year 1635, and belonged to an Oxfordshire family. He is said to have been educated at Cambridge, but Dennis assures us that “to his certain knowledge he understood neither Greek nor Latin.” He travelled abroad early, and seems to have resided in France. It is possible that he witnessed in Paris the performances of some of Molière’s earliest comedies; and he seems, from an allusion in one of his plays, to have been personally acquainted with Bussy Rabutin. On his return to London he studied the law at one of the Inns of Court. His tastes were those of a fine gentleman, and he indulged freely in pleasure.
Sometime soon after the Restoration he composed his comedy ofThe Comical RevengeorLove in a Tub, which introduced him to Lord Buckhurst, afterwards the earl of Dorset. This was brought out at the Duke’s theatre in 1664, and a few copies were printed in the same year. It is partly inrhymedheroic verse, like the stilted tragedies of the Howards and Killigrews, but it contains comic scenes that are exceedingly bright and fresh. The sparring between Sir Frederick and the Widow introduced a style of wit hitherto unknown upon the English stage. The success of this play was very great, but Etheredge waited four years before he repeated his experiment. Meanwhile he gained the highest reputation as a poetical beau, and moved in the circle of Sir Charles Sedley, Lord Rochester and the other noble wits of the day. In 1668 he brought outShe would if she could, a comedy in many respects admirable, full of action, wit and spirit, although to the last degree frivolous and immoral. But in this play Etheredge first shows himself a new power in literature; he has nothing of the rudeness of his predecessors or the grossness of his contemporaries. We move in an airy and fantastic world, where flirtation is the only serious business of life. At this time Etheredge was living a life no less frivolous and unprincipled than those of his Courtals and Freemans. He formed an alliance with the famous actress Mrs Elizabeth Barry; she bore him a daughter, on whom he settled £6000, but who, unhappily, died in her youth. His wealth and wit, the distinction and charm of his manners, won Etheredge the general worship of society, and his temperament is best known by the names his contemporaries gave him, of “gentle George” and “easy Etheredge.” Rochester upbraided him for inattention to literature; and at last, after a silence of eight years, he came forward with one more play, unfortunately his last.The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter, indisputably the best comedy of intrigue written in England before the days of Congreve, was acted and printed in 1676, and enjoyed an unbounded success. Besides the merit of its plot and wit, it had the personal charm of being supposed to satirize, or at least to paint, persons well known in London. Sir Fopling Flutter was a portrait of Beau Hewit, the reigning exquisite of the hour; in Dorimant the poet drew the earl of Rochester, and in Medley a portrait of himself; while even the drunken shoemaker was a real character, who made his fortune from being thus brought into public notice. After this brilliant success Etheredge retired from literature; his gallantries and his gambling in a few years deprived him of his fortune, and he looked about for a rich match. He was knighted before 1680, and gained the hand and the money of a rich widow. He was sent by Charles II. on a mission to the Hague, and in March 1685 was appointed resident minister in the imperial German court at Regensburg. He was very uncomfortable in Germany, and after three and a half years’ residence left for Paris. He had collected a library at Regensburg, some volumes of which are in the theological college there. His MS. despatches are preserved in the British Museum, where they were discovered and described by Mr Gosse in 1881; they add very largely to our knowledge of Etheredge’s career. He died in Paris, probably in 1691, for Narcissus Luttrell notes in February 1692 that “Sir George Etherege, the late King James’ ambassador to Vienna, died lately in Paris.”
Etheredge deserves to hold a more distinguished place in English literature than has generally been allotted to him. In a dull and heavy age, he inaugurated a period of genuine wit and sprightliness. He invented the comedy of intrigue, and led the way for the masterpieces of Congreve and Sheridan. Before his time the manner of Ben Jonson had prevailed in comedy, and traditional “humours” and typical eccentricities, instead of real characters, had crowded the comic stage. Etheredge paints with a light, faint hand, but it is from nature, and his portraits of fops and beaux are simply unexcelled. No one knows better than he how to present a gay young gentleman, a Dorimant, “an unconfinable rover after amorous adventures.” His genius is as light as thistle-down; he is frivolous, without force of conviction, without principle; but his wit is very sparkling, and his style pure and singularly picturesque. No one approaches Etheredge in delicate touches of dress, furniture and scene; he makes the fine airs of London gentlemen and ladies live before our eyes even more vividly than Congreve does; but he has less insight and less energy than Congreve. Had he been poor or ambitious, he might have been to England almost what Molière was to France, but he was a rich man living at his ease, and he disdained to excel in literature. Etheredge was “a fair, slender, genteel man, but spoiled his countenance with drinking.” His contemporaries all agree in acknowledging that he was the soul of affability and sprightly good-nature.
The life of Etheredge was first given in detail by Edmund Gosse inSeventeenth Century Studies(1883). His works were edited by A.W. Verity, in 1888.
The life of Etheredge was first given in detail by Edmund Gosse inSeventeenth Century Studies(1883). His works were edited by A.W. Verity, in 1888.
(E. G.)
ETHERIDGE, JOHN WESLEY(1804-1866), English nonconformist divine, was born near Newport, Isle of Wight, on the 24th of February 1804. He received most of his early education from his father. Though he never attended any university he acquired ultimately a thorough knowledge of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, French and German. In 1824 he was placed on the Wesleyan Methodist plan as a local preacher. In 1826 his offer to enter the ministry was accepted, and after the usualprobationary trial he was received into full connexion at the conference of 1831. For two years after this he remained at Brighton, and in 1833 he removed to Cornwall, being stationed successively at the Truro and Falmouth circuits. From Falmouth he removed to Darlaston, where in 1838 his health gave way. For a good many years he was a supernumerary, and lived for a while at Caen and Paris, where in the public libraries he found great facilities for prosecuting his favourite Oriental studies. His health having considerably improved, he became, in 1843, pastor of the Methodist church at Boulogne. He returned to England in 1847, and was appointed successively to the circuits of Islington, Bristol, Leeds, Penzance, Penryn, Truro and St Austell in east Cornwall. Shortly after his return to England he received the degree of Ph.D. from the university of Heidelberg. He was a patient, modest, hard-working and accurate scholar. He died at Camborne on the 24th of May 1866.
His principal works areHorae Aramaicae(1843);History, Liturgies and Literature of the Syrian Churches(1847);The Apostolic Acts and Epistles, from the Peshito or Ancient Syriac(1849);Jerusalem and Tiberias, a Survey of the Religious and Scholastic Learning of the Jews(1856);The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel(1st vol. in 1862, 2nd in 1865). SeeMemoir, by Rev. Thornley Smith (1871).
His principal works areHorae Aramaicae(1843);History, Liturgies and Literature of the Syrian Churches(1847);The Apostolic Acts and Epistles, from the Peshito or Ancient Syriac(1849);Jerusalem and Tiberias, a Survey of the Religious and Scholastic Learning of the Jews(1856);The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel(1st vol. in 1862, 2nd in 1865). SeeMemoir, by Rev. Thornley Smith (1871).
ETHERIDGE, ROBERT(1819-1903), English geologist and palaeontologist, was born at Ross, in Herefordshire, on the 3rd of December 1819. After an ordinary school education in his native town, he obtained employment in a business house in Bristol. There he devoted his spare time to natural history pursuits, and in 1850 was appointed curator of the museum attached to the Bristol Philosophical Institution. He also became lecturer on botany in the Bristol medical school. In 1857, through the influence of Sir Roderick I. Murchison, he was appointed to a post in the Museum of Practical Geology in London, and eventually became palaeontologist to the Geological Survey. In 1865 he assisted Prof. Huxley in the preparation of aCatalogue of Fossils in the Museum of Practical Geology. His chief work for many years was in naming the fossils collected during the progress of the Geological Survey, and in supplying the lists that were appended to numerous official memoirs. In this way he acquired an exceptional knowledge of British fossils, and he ultimately prepared an elaborate work entitledFossils of the British Islands, Stratigraphically and Zoologically arranged. Only the first volume dealing with the Palaeozoic species was published (1888). Etheridge also was author of several papers on the Rhaetic Beds, and of an important essay on the Physical Structure of North Devon, and on the Palaeontological Value of the Devonian Fossils (1867). He edited, and in the main rewrote, the second part of a new edition of John Phillips’ Manual of Geology—entitledStratigraphical Geology and Palaeontology(1885). He was elected F.R.S. in 1871, and was president of the Geological Society in 1881-1882. In 1881 Etheridge was transferred from the Geological Survey to the geological department of the British Museum, where he served as assistant keeper until 1891. He died at Chelsea, London, on the 18th of December 1903.
Memoir by Dr Henry Woodward (with list of works and portrait) inGeological Magazine, January 1904; also Memoir by H.B. Woodward (with portrait) inProc. Bristol Nat. Soc.x. 175.
Memoir by Dr Henry Woodward (with list of works and portrait) inGeological Magazine, January 1904; also Memoir by H.B. Woodward (with portrait) inProc. Bristol Nat. Soc.x. 175.
ETHERS,in organic chemistry, compounds of the general formula R·O·R′, where R, R′ = alkyl or aryl groups. They may be regarded as the anhydrides of the alcohols, being formed by elimination of one molecule of water from two molecules of the alcohols; those in which the two hydrocarbon radicals are similar are known assimpleethers, and those in which they are dissimilar asmixedethers. They may be prepared by the action of concentrated sulphuric acid on the alcohols, alkyl sulphuric acids being first formed, which yield ethers on heating with alcohols. The process may be made a continuous one by running a thin stream of alcohol continually into the heated reaction mixture of alcohol and sulphuric acid. Benzene sulphonic acid has been used in place of sulphuric acid (F. Krafft,Ber., 1893, 26, p. 2829). A.W. Williamson (Ann., 1851, 77, p. 38; 1852, 81, p. 77) prepared ether by the action of sodium ethylate on ethyl iodide, and showed that all ethers must possess the structural formula given above (see alsoBrit. Assoc. Reports, 1850, p. 65). They may also be prepared by heating the alkyl halides with silver oxide.
The ethers are neutral volatile liquids (the first member, methyl ether, is a gas at ordinary temperature). Phosphorus pentachloride converts them into alkyl chlorides, a similar decomposition taking place when they are heated with the haloid acids. Nitric acid and chromic acid oxidize them in such a mariner that they yield the same products as the alcohols from which they are derived. With chlorine they yield substitution products.
Methyl ether, (CH3)2O, was first prepared by J. B. Dumas and E. Péligot (Ann. chim. phys., 1835, [2] 58, p. 19) by heating methyl alcohol with sulphuric acid. It is best prepared by heating methyl alcohol and sulphuric acid to 140° C. and leading the evolved gas into sulphuric acid. The sulphuric acid solution is then allowed to drop slowly into an equal volume of water, when the methyl ether is liberated (E. Erlenmeyer and A. Kriechbaumer,Ber., 1874, 7, p. 699). It is a pleasant-smelling gas, which burns when ignited, and may be condensed to a liquid which boils at 23.6º C. It is somewhat soluble in water and readily soluble in alcohol, and concentrated sulphuric acid. It combines with hydrochloric acid gas to form a compound (CH3)2O·HCl (C. Friedel,Comptes rendus, 1875, 81, p. 152).Methyl ethyl ether, CH3·O·C2H5, is prepared from methyl iodide and sodium ethylate, or from ethyl iodide and sodium methylate (A. W. Williamson,Ann., 1852, 81, p. 77). It is a liquid which boils at 10.8º C.
For diethyl ether seeEther, and for methyl phenyl ether (anisole) and ethyl phenyl ether (phenetole) seeCarbolic Acid.
For diethyl ether seeEther, and for methyl phenyl ether (anisole) and ethyl phenyl ether (phenetole) seeCarbolic Acid.
ETHICS,the name generally given to the science of moral philosophy. The word “ethics” is derived from the Gr.ἠθικός, that which pertains toἦθος, character.
For convenience in reference, the arrangement followed in this article may be explained at the outset:—pageI.DEFINITION AND SCOPE809II.HISTORICAL SKETCH810A. Greek and Graeco-Roman Ethics810The Age of the Sophists811Socrates and his Disciples811Plato812Plato and Aristotle814Aristotle815Stoicism816Hedonism (Epicurus)818Later Greek and Roman Ethics818Neoplatonism819B. Christianity and Medieval Ethics820Christian and Jewish “Law of God”820Christian and Pagan Inwardness820(Knowledge, Faith, Love, Purity)Distinctive Particulars of Christian Morality821Development of Opinion in Early Christianity, Augustine, Ambrose823Medieval Morality and Moral Philosophy824Thomas Aquinas824Casuistry and Jesuitry826The Reformation; and birth of Modern Thought826C. Modern Ethics827Grotius827Hobbes827The Cambridge Moralists828(Cudworth, More)Cumberland829Locke829Clarke829Shaftesbury830Mandeville830Butler831Wollaston831Hutcheson831Hume832Adam Smith833The Intuitional School833(Price, Reid, Stewart, Whewell)The Utilitarian School835(Paley, Bentham, Mill)Association and Evolution837Free-will837French Influence on English Ethics838(Helvetius, Comte)German Influence on English Ethics839(Kant, Hegel)D. Ethics since 1879840III.Bibliography845Section I. contains a general survey of the subject; it shows in what sense ethics is to be regarded as a special field of philosophical investigation—its relations to other departments of thought, especially to psychology, religion and modern physical science. The article makes no attempt to give a detailed, casuistical examination of the matter of ethical theory. For this, reference must be made to special articles on philosophic schools, writers and terms.Section II. is a historical sketch in four parts tracing the main 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.
For convenience in reference, the arrangement followed in this article may be explained at the outset:—
Section I. contains a general survey of the subject; it shows in what sense ethics is to be regarded as a special field of philosophical investigation—its relations to other departments of thought, especially to psychology, religion and modern physical science. The article makes no attempt to give a detailed, casuistical examination of the matter of ethical theory. For this, reference must be made to special articles on philosophic schools, writers and terms.
Section II. is a historical sketch in four parts tracing the main 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 aprocess of reflectionupon 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, thereflection 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.
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 fromThe Sciences.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 beenTheology.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.
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 beenPsychology.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 centuriesB.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 theipse dixit1of 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.530-470B.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 centuryB.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.
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 earlyThe Sophists.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 ofἀρετή(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’sProtagorasclaims, 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 commonSocrates.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 goodfor 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.
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 theThe Socratic Schools.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 (seeMegarian 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 secretof 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 (seeCyrenaics) 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 rationalAristippus.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.
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 wasThe Cynics.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 alsoDiogenes). 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.
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 andPlato.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 theProtagoras, 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 properἔργον). 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 shallunderstand how Plato might hold that all things reallywere, 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.
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 harmonizedVirtue a harmony.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 (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν) and spirited (τὸ θυμοειδέςorθυμός)—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 (δικαιοσύνη). 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 termedδικαιοσύνη. 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 (ἀνδρεία) and Temperance (σωφροσύνη) 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 theRepubliche has no objection to trying the question of the intrinsic superiority of philosophic or virtuous2life 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 moreemphatically is it declared in theLawsthat 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 thePhilebusbetween 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 (seeTimaeus, 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 thePhilebus, 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 theLaws, 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.