“These violent delights have violent ends,And in their triumph die: like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honeyIs loathsome in his own deliciousness,And in the taste confounds the appetite:Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”What Aristotle enunciated therefore was merely the most commonplace wisdom; and so much the better. Commonplace wisdom is the best kind of wisdom for common needs and every-day occasions. It is too late in the day now, and was too late in Aristotle’s time certainly, to be discovering altogether new rules for keeping the consciences and the stomachs of the human millions in good order. Things absolutely necessary to healthy existence were necessarily known from the earliest ages, unless indeed we imagine that the primeval man was created in a state of physical and moral disease, that he might grope and blunder his way into health, as some theorists assert that he groped and blundered his way from a tiger into a moral being, and from a monkey into a man. So far unquestionably, Henry Thomas Buckle was right: there are no discoveries to be made in morals. We do not discover the sun; we only recognise it when the clouds are blown and the rain has exhausted itself. So it is in morals—in the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. We do not discover moral principles by a fingering induction, or in any other way; we merely remove obstructions; we can apply thebellows also and blow the small spark into a mighty flame. Our endeavours therefore as preachers, and as philosophers, like Aristotle, are not in vain. We have much to do, if not in the way of discovering absolutely new principles, certainly in a thousand and one ways of applying those principles. A burning-glass when first invented did not discover the sun; it utilized the sun. And in the same way the institution of every new church or the establishment of every new school is an invention in morals, though not a discovery of a new moral principle. Sabbath-schools were a discovery in morals; Voluntary Churches were a discovery in morals; Reform Bills were a discovery in morals. And in the world of books, we must say also that the principle of the mean asserted and systematically set forth in the Nicomachean Ethics was a great discovery in moral philosophy. The discovery consisted in the sagacity which seized, among a thousand others, a floating proverb, as alone fit, or mainly fit, for being made the corner-stone of a comprehensive canon of human conduct. To pick up a rough stone from the road, and polish it, and set it in a ring, and carve upon it the signature of the king’s imperial will, is no small achievement; and this simile precisely appraises the merit of the Stagirite, in reference to that old maxim μηδὲν ἄγαν, which we have just quoted. He has stamped it with the authority of his own regal intellect, in a manner appealing not less effectively to the analytic habits of the scientific man, than to the broad views so dear to the so-called practical man. And that he was grandly right in seizing upon this rule of conduct, no person who has ever seriously applied, himself to the wisdom of life, as to the onething needful, will hare any difficulty in admitting. For there is hardly a man of any self-knowledge who will not be willing to confess that the greatest blunders he has made in the difficult game of life have arisen from the neglect of this rule, as his most signal successes have sprung from the observance of it. The attainment of this golden mean, indeed, in one shape or another, is the constant problem of existence; and it will be difficult to point out any defects of moral character which do not arise either from a certain feebleness and deficiency of some necessary practical energy, or from the exaggeration and misapplication of virtues—a misapplication, be it observed, which almost always proceeds from an excess; for as a mother is apt to have her pet child, and an old maid her green parrot, her Skye terrier, or her tortoise-shell cat, on which she spends the overflow of her non-utilized sympathies, so every man is apt to have his pet virtue, his idol excellence, on which he prides himself, and of which he is fond of making a parade on all proper and improper occasions. It is the excessive sway of the favourite affection that makes a man blind to discern and weak to prevent its improper application. This is a great truth—and somewhat of a comfortable truth, too; for to sin by excess of good is always better than to offend from pure viciousness; and man is upon the whole (notwithstanding the floating lies of the hour, and the Devil’s Paradise in New York) a blundering rather than a diabolical creature. The importance of Aristotle’s rule arises from the fact that it is a regulative principle of universal application; and in this way it may well be taken in the left hand, along with the golden rule in the righthand, “Do unto others as ye would that they would do unto you;” for this sacred sentence is founded on a just, delicate, and broad sympathy, and belongs rather to the emotional element—the moral steam, so to speak—of our nature, which, to avoid great perils, must always be associated with the regulative principle of the mean, or something to that effect. These two famous maxims indeed may, for practical purposes, be regarded as complementary of each other. For persons in whom the sympathetic emotions predominate are often deficient in the regulative faculty; while those whose power of regulation is great have sometimes little to regulate, and like a great commander with few soldiers, make a very poor appearance in the battle-field. In the struggle of life, the man whose sympathetic unselfish impulses are strong will perhaps find more benefit from the constant reference to Aristotle’s mean than even to the Scriptural golden rule; while the well-tempered Aristotelian will, on the other hand, find it for his advantage to inquire whether the even pace at which he goes is not as much owing to the dullness of the charger’s blood as to the skill with which the rider wields the rein. For there is no single maxim in morals that will conduct a man through all practical difficulties without the consideration of some other maxim qualifying it, and perhaps, for the nonce, giving it a flat contradiction; as I have known a gentleman who confessed to me that by nothing had he been led into so many serious blunders as by the indiscriminate application of this very text, “Do unto others,” etc.; for, being a man of a peculiar idiosyncrasy, and not having learned that the golden rule applies only to that which wehold in common with our fellow-men, and not to those points on which we differ, he was constantly led into a course of behaviour towards certain persons, meant by him as a great kindness, but taken as a serious offence. While he wished not to be troublesome, he was considered to be neglectful; while he abstained from mentioning certain subjects for fear of rousing painful feelings he was accused of coldness and indifference; while he meant to be frank and confiding, he was met with a rebuff that he was rude and impertinent. All this shows how little mere preaching and parading of general maxims has to do with the difficult task of the formation of character; and no writer deserves greater praise for having gravely enunciated this truth than the author of the Nicomachean Ethics. In order fully to realize the value of the Aristotelian mean in the conduct of life, we may follow the method of the great moralist himself, and cull a few examples at random for its verification. We shall take three virtues—courage, truthfulness, self-esteem—and see how distinctly they stand out each as the middle-point of two vicious extremes. That courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness does not require to be told: but what a wide field of operation does this triad open to us, while we proceed to realize it in education, and in the conduct of public affairs, and in the events of life! What a nice judgment is required to know at what exact point the too much and the too little commences, where the right way swerves into an error of which the consequences may be incalculable! For the mean point is variable; and the hesitation which would be prudence in one person, or on one occasion, is cowardice in another. A sailor sailing without achart among blind reefs and strong currents—such as occur everywhere in the Shetland seas—can scarcely be too cautions; with a soldier, a bold dash into a difficulty with a fearlessness which can, scarcely be distinguished from rashness is sometimes the nearest road to a brilliant success. And as good amusements are a mimicry of life, there is a moment at bowls, or croquet, or backgammon, or even deliberate whist, when the fortune of a whole game may depend on a move which at other times would be either the most stupid ignorance or the most reckless folly. The wisdom of life, considered as a battle, depends at every moment on the skill to know when to advance and when to retreat, when to dash on with the spear, and when to crouch behind the shield; to know this moment is to know the just mean between rashness and cowardice, which the Greeks by a very significant name called manhood (ἀνδρειότης) or courage. Take another virtue. Of all commodities in the world, the most difficult to deal with is truth. If, indeed, all men went about the streets, like Socrates, in search of nothing but truth, and thanking everybody most fervidly for any contribution to his stock of it, even in the most disagreeable shape, truthfulness would be an easy virtue; as easy for a human being, one might imagine, as for a quick fountain to spout water, and for an eager fire to spit flame. But we all know it is not so—rather quite otherwise, for truth is an article to which, except in so far as particular truths may happen to prop up their prejudices, to flatter their vanity, and to inflate their conceit, many persons have serious objections. To fling it in their face is to insult them; to put it down their throats,even with a silver spoon and sugar-candy, a difficult operation. Hence, in the conduct of life, the great importance of not speaking too much truth, lest we frighten people, and not speaking too little, lest we learn altogether to live upon lies. In mixed society, on account of the extreme sensitiveness of all sorts of vain and self-important persons, the rule is generally adopted of speaking as little truth as possible—that is, as little serious truth about important matters; for truth about trifles will discompose no one. But this conventional reticence is by no means the μεσότης which a reasonable compliance with the Aristotelian rule in this case would require; for though a surplus of truth is sure to make society uncomfortable, and a deluge of it makes it impossible, a great deficiency will certainly make it tame and stupid; and this is the extreme to which, in this country, we have lately been drifting with a gentle, but not the less a dangerous, current. Even in our pulpits we find a sort of cowardice sometimes formally enthroned, and a tame coldness set up as the standard in a place where, above all others, an indiscreet fervour might occasionally be allowed to pass for full cousin to the greatest excellence. Take again, self-esteem, which is partly an instinct, partly with wise men the result of that self-knowledge which long and varied experience ought always to produce. This is a moral mean perhaps even more difficult to strike than truthfulness; for in speaking, or rather not speaking, the truth, the principal difficulty a wise man has to deal with is the weakness of a brother; whereas, in estimating himself, the wisest man is constantly liable to be bribed by that love of self which, indeed, is the necessary root ofour vitality, but never can be the blooming crown of our glory. In reference to this quality, the general tendency of the world is towards overestimate; most persons are apt to measure too highly the value of their own particular strong point, and to under-estimate, or altogether misprize, that of their neighbours; as a gentleman in the month of August scouring the moors in triumph with a gun will be apt to think himself a much more sublime character than a poet lying lazily on a heather brae, and spinning out pretty fancies to the tune of a brown burn that eddies lazily round an old granite boulder; while the rhymer, on the other hand, thinks it a daintier occupation to sympathize quietly with feathered life than to take it away with powder and shot. So it is with us all, women as well as men—“If a fair girl has but a pretty face,She has the wit to know it.”And there is no reason why she should not know it. If a woman does not know her points, according to a high authority, she cannot even dress well; only, experience has proved that the less men and women think about their strong points, except, of course, when they are dressing, the better; for there is no more certain way of committing suicide on the higher moral nature than by falling in love with ourselves. In reference to this matter, therefore, it may be thought that the other and less common extreme is the more safe—it is better to think too lowly of ourselves than too highly. And it is a fact, capable of being proved from a hundred biographies, that the greatest men have been the least given to self-glorification; that modesty, as is commonly said,is the invariable accompaniment of genuine power, while forward conceit, and empty inflation, and boastful exhibition of all kinds, are the natural characteristics of the young, the superficial, and the small. The under-estimate of self often found in connexion with the highest genius, especially in the early period of its experiments, arises naturally from the high ideal of perfection, by the contemplation of which excellence grows. No young man who puts a few well-adjusted and well-toned figures together on a piece of canvas can know, and certainly ought never to imagine, that he carries Raphael and Michael Angelo, and something better than both perhaps, in his bosom. But though this be true, I do not know whether I have not seen more sad mistakes made in life by persons who were rather depressed by too little than elevated by too much self-esteem. I have sometimes thought that the conceit so natural to young men is given to them by a gracious provision as a superfluity that is sure to be pruned off. The world is constantly employed in pulling down outrageous conceit; but when a poor fellow starts in the hot race of life, afflicted with that disease which the Greeks call δυσωπία, ordifficult-facedness—that is, so modest as not to be able to look a fellow-being in the face—I must confess, though I have a kindly feeling towards a person so deficient which I never can have to the smart and pert self-conscious mannikin, I feel that the defect of the one is a much greater misfortune, and a malady much more difficult to cure, than the excess of the other. With some persons, and indeed whole families, the tendency to underrate their own capacity acts like a positive taint in the blood; it cuts the wing from hope, dulls the nerveof aspiration, and palsies the arm of action. It makes an honest man useless where God has put him, and opens the door for a dishonest man with a little natural confidence to do badly what the honest man for sheer lack of confidence has not been able to do at all. The man of defective self-esteem thus commits two great wrongs—he wrongs himself, because he allows himself to be shunted out of his natural sphere, and becomes a hindrance where he might have been a help; and he wrongs the public, which lacks both the insight and the leisure to drag modest merit from its den and to look with an unwinking eye on the juggling glamoury of the bold pretender.But it is not only in the phases of individual character and the experiences of personal life that the validity of the Aristotelian standard of well-being is strongly asserted. In every sphere of existence through the various drama of the cosmos, we find the same principle in operation. And we may, without qualification, broadly pronounce that the world is a κόσμος, an ordered and garnished whole, only in so far as it is held together by the harmonizing law of the mean; otherwise it jerks asunder, and through violent excess bolts into chaos. Take what we call Health, for instance; what is it but the rhythmical medium, of normal pulse between the excess of fever and the defect of feebleness? which two extremes, as the common saying is, necessarily meet; for they are both equally removed from healthy life, and sisters-uterine to death and dissolution. Then, again, what is Beauty? A power which all feel, but few can define; neither shall I attempt to define it now. But one thing at least in reference to it is quite plain, that it is always a mediumbetwixt two extremes, or, what comes to the same thing, a marriage of extremes. For by such a marriage, as we see in the commonest processes of chemical action, a mean product is produced of a comparatively mild and innocuous character. The corrosive acid or alkali is annihilated and a neutral salt comes to view. Exactly so in works of nature or art on which the imagination can pleasantly dwell. No extreme is beautiful. The extreme of force overwhelms; the extreme of gentleness enfeebles and enervates. Therefore, to make a handsome man, we must borrow a few tricks of grace from the female; and to make a woman who shall be more than an animated rose or primrose, we must find her infected with a certain dose of firmness and energy from the male. A mere masculine creature, composed altogether of the extreme of strength and force, is disagreeable, and often unbearable; a mere feminine creature in the extreme of delicacy, however finely tinted with the “dolce mistura di rosa e di ligustro,” which Ariosto lauds, if she is capable only of a gentle smile and a soft caress, very soon becomes tiresome. She is the extreme of the mere woman, and, like a cooing turtle-dove, soon satiates; and at the apparition of such an unfeathered pigeon we yawn, as from the fully-developed unmitigated male bear we shrink. But it is in the great movements of the social world—in the rise and fall of stock and commercial speculations—no less than in the slow changes and violent revolutions of Churches and States, that the operation of the Aristotelian mean is most strikingly exemplified. Moderation, indeed, both in Church and State, and on ’Change, is the one great condition of safety—no propositionin Euclid is more certain than this: but though this be the wisdom of government and of trade, it is a wisdom which political, commercial, and ecclesiastical adventurers in all ages have been slow to learn; and in public life we constantly meet with persons who act and speak as if they believed that the triumph of an extreme view is ever the triumph of right, and that the well-being of communities consists in the unlimited sway of one party and the complete annihilation of all others. And it may be said also, that, notwithstanding all the warnings of centuries of bloody experience, the man or the party that takes the strong one-sided violent view has, on critical occasions, the best chance to succeed. Wisdom in the days of Solomon lifted up her voice in the streets, and was not heard. It is even so now. The streets are not the place for wisdom. Wisdom requires calm reflection; but the streets are full of hurry and bustle. Aristotle had a serene contempt for the multitude, and the multitude have an instinctive aversion to Aristotle. When you bring a multitude of men together to be harangued, violent and extreme opinions pronounced in the strongest language are apt to be the most popular. A one-sided view taxes thought less; a one-sided speech flatters an ignorant audience, who are capable only of one idea—at least only of one at a time—and who delight to hug themselves in the fancy that there is no other idea in the universe. And the natural leader of a multitude so affected is not, of course, your man of many thoughts, your Aristotle, your Shakespeare, your Goethe, but your well-packed, self-contained, little man, full of bottled fire impatient to burst forth, who marches from his cradle to his grave capable onlyof one aspect of things, and who, if the notion by which he is governed happens to jump with the humour of the time, shall become the demagogue of the hour, or, if circumstances favour, the dictator of the age. When, indeed, we consider the undeniable fact that great social changes are generally effected through the agency of excited multitudes and highly stimulated parties, we shall not be surprised at the result so often exhibited in history. That result shows bloody civil wars instead of peaceful arrangement; faction instead of patriotism; and an oscillation between feverish extremes, instead of a well-calculated balance of social forces. The revolutions and reforms which fill the most interesting pages of history teem with examples of this kind. These revolutions and reforms are of two kinds—remedial and constructive, or disintegrating and destructive; and the history of both equally illustrates the hopelessness—perhaps it were more correct to say the impossibility—of expecting wisdom and moderation to perform a prominent part in the management of the congregated millions of diverse and hostile-minded men under the passionate influences that accompany organic change. For these things are generally done in the manner of a battle: parties get heated; the blood is up; first ink is shed in oceans, then gall, then blood; and who expects moderation from men with partisan pens or poignards in their hands, and carrying on a systematic trade in all sorts of misrepresentation, slander, and lies? We read sometimes, indeed, of a whole people having by a happy accident found out their wisest man—as in the notable example ofSolon—and oligarchs and democrats voluntarily submitting themselves tohim as a just and legal arbiter. The result in this case, as we read, was what might have been expected. The wise man produced a wise constitution. The contending claims of the adverse parties were adjusted with moderation; and a mingled polity, presenting a just medium between oligarchy, the cold selfishness of the few, and democracy, the overbearing insolence of the many, was the result. But nothing human is permanent; and the next changes did not proceed so comfortably. The democracy, inflated with their military successes at Marathon and Salamis, would tolerate no check; their Areopagus, or House of Lords, was shorn of all influence; the extravagant ambition of their popular assemblies was fooled to the top of its bent by the unprincipled brilliancy of adventurers like Alcibiades; the constant necessity of maintaining political influence by flinging sops to a greedy multitude produced, as we see in America at the present hour, a corruption of public morals, and a deterioration of the character of public men, against which all patriotic remonstrances were weak: faction assumed the helm; venality became law; and at the moment of danger, when the young Macedonian snake might yet have been crushed, there was found only one honest man among the noisy haranguers of the Pnyx. And to him they listened only when it was too late. Thus, by the excess of democratic polity fostered by Pericles, the insolence of democratic ambition spurred by Alcibiades, the languor that followed the over-exertion of the Peloponnesian War, and the corruption that belongs to every extreme form of government, Athens forfeited her short lease of brilliant liberty, and became a slave for more than two thousand years. A similar scenewas exhibited in the Roman Forum, which, however, I must refrain from painting out in detail here. Suffice it to say that, so long as a moderate balance between patricians and plebeians was maintained, the Aristocratic Republic of Rome prospered at home and conquered abroad; but no sooner had the democracy, by the Hortensian law of B.C. 286, asserted the right of acting alone in legislative measures, without the co-operation of the Roman House of Lords (that is, the Senate), than the seed of destruction was sown. The two parties were now planted face to face on independent ground; two masters in the same house claimed equal power; the peaceful balance became a battle-field; assassinations in the Forum were the harbingers of butcheries in protracted dramas of civil slaughter; violence was followed by exhaustion; and on the bloody steps of a democratic Tribunate the armed nursling of the democracy mounted the throne of universal despotism. So the public life of Ancient Rome ended with faction and a native military monarchy, as that, of Greece in faction and subjection to a foreign power. There are some people of a happy innocence of mind who believe that we in modern times, by the help of Christianity and schoolmasters, may haply escape all these evils and flourish in a green immortality on the earth, if not under present circumstances exactly, at least by and by with the help of manhood suffrage, ballot-boxes, unbearded politicians, and a few other democratic imaginations. I am sorry to say that I do not in the least share in these anticipations: only under one condition is it possible that modern States should escape the disintegrating process which annihilated the constitutions of Ancient Greece andRome—they must study moderation; they must be converted to the doctrine of Aristotle; otherwise they must perish. That in free constitutions public affairs should be managed by the oscillations of opposing parties is necessary and natural: the annihilation of parties is possible only with the prostration of liberty; but the eternal truth still remains, that if parties will not acknowledge certain wise limitations, but push their hostility to extremes, the preservation of national liberty is impossible. If, when organic reforms are necessary, the wise and moderate men of all parties will unite together to make such changes as will satisfy the just demands of new claimants, without destroying the equally just rights of the old, then, so far as political forces of corruption are concerned, the durability of a constitution may be looked upon as secured; but if the parties, instead of working for a patriotic purpose, are more concerned for the momentary success of a parliamentary manœuvre than for the ultimate triumph of a great principle—if, instead of wisely and courageously confronting a violent and unreasonable clamour and quashing outrageous folly with statesmanlike firmness, they waver, and flinch, and yield, and even condescend to the base game (practised in ancient Rome and mediæval Florence) of outbidding one another in cowardly concessions to an untempered multitude—in this case, neither Christianity nor schoolmasters can save any modern State from perdition, either on this or on the other side of the Atlantic. For there is not one law of morality for the individual and another for public men, but they are both the same; and it is not so much the form of government as the tone of political morality,and the character of politicians, that saves or ruins a State. If in any country the management of public affairs falls into the hands of men who make a trade of politics, and employ an organized machinery of violence, and lies, and intrigue, for the purpose of getting into power; and if they consider power valuable, not for the purpose of moderating popular passions and exposing popular delusions, but for keeping their party in place by spreading full sails to the popular breeze, then that country is already in the hands of the destroying Siva, and no constitution can save it. Political wisdom is not to be expected from men who enter the game of public life with the recklessness of professional gamblers; and that army will scarcely be looked to for noble achievements in the field which, with Selfishness for its god, has chosen Cunning for its captain, and planted Cowardice for a guard.In these last remarks we have wandered beyond the strict bounds of the present essay into the domain of Politics, and the Art of Government, but not without design; for thePoliticsand theEthicsare with the Stagirite only two parts of the same work; as indeed with the Greeks generally, personal ethics were always conceived of in connexion with the State, in the same way that with thorough and consistent Christians the fruits of social virtue cannot be divorced from the root of theological faith of which they are the consummation. And whoever studies the great treatise on the Art of Government with that care, which more than any other work of antiquity its weighty conclusions demand, will not fail to observe that the key-note to the whole political system lies in that μεσότης, or just mean,which is the prominent principle of theEthics. But this by the way. What remains for us now, in order that the modern thinker may have a full view of the attitude of Aristotle as a moral philosopher, is that we exhibit him discoursing in his own person on some one of those types of social character, which in his third and fourth books he has so skilfully analysed. For this purpose we shall choose the section on μεγαλοψυχία orgreat-mindedness, a chapter eminently characteristic both of the writer and of the people to whom he belonged, and presenting also, one of the most striking of those contrasts between the attitude of Hellenic and that of Christian ethics, which it is one object of the present volume to set forth. The Chapter is the third of Book IV.“That great-mindedness has reference to something great is plain from the name; let us inquire therefore, in the first place, to what great things it refers; and here it is of no consequence whether we talk formally of the moral habitude itself, or of the person who possesses that habitude. Now, a great-minded person is one who esteems himself worthy of great things, being in fact so worthy; for the man who claims for himself what he does not deserve is a fool; but in virtue there can be nothing foolish or unintelligent. This therefore is the great-minded man. For though a person’s estimate of himself should be just, for example, if, being worthy of little consideration, he esteems himself accordingly, such an one we call sober-minded, but not great-minded; for without a certain magnitude there is no greatness of soul, just as beauty demands a certain stature, and little people may indeed be pretty and well-proportioned, but theyare never called beautiful.[173.1]On the other hand, the man who esteems himself worthy of great things, being not so worthy, we call pretentious and conceited; though not every one who over-estimates in some degree his real worth is justly charged with conceit. And in the opposite extreme to this, the man who claims less than he deserves is small or mean-minded, whether his real desert be something great or something moderate; and he remains small-minded also, if, while he is worthy of little, he rates himself at less. But the greatest offender in this case is he who, being worthy of great things, nevertheless considers himself worthy of little or of nothing; for how deep might such a man’s self-esteem have fallen if he had been really as devoid of moral desert as even with so much real merit he rates himself? Now the great-minded man, in respect of comparative magnitude, seems to stand at an extreme, but in respect of self-estimate he is the just mean; for his estimate of himself falls neither within nor beyond the mark of truth, while the others fail on the one side by excess, and on the other by defect. Further, the man who deems himself worthy of great things, being so worthy, of course deems himself worthy of the greatest things, and of one thing, whatever that be, pre-eminently great. What then do we mean when we say that a man is worthy, that he may justly claim great things or small things? We usethis language always in reference to something external. And the greatest of external things is that which we pay to the gods, and that which men in the highest situations chiefly desire, and for which among men there arises the most noble struggle of the most noble. This, of course, is honour; for honour is the greatest of external goods. It is in reference therefore to demonstrations of honour and dishonour that the great-minded man comports himself as a wise man ought. And indeed this is a point which requires only to be stated, not argued; for it is manifest that great-minded men everywhere are spoken of as being great-minded in reference to honour; for it is honour above all things of which truly great men think themselves worthy, and that in the measure of their desert. But the small-minded man is deficient both in relation to himself and in relation to the dignity that belongs to the great-minded, while the conceited man no doubt sins by excess in reference to his own merit, but not in reference to the high estimate of himself justly entertained by the great-minded man.“Again, it is obvious that the great-minded man, if he is worthy of the greatest consideration, must be not only a good man, but one of the very best; for always the better a man is the greater is his desert, and the best man alone may claim the most. The really great-minded man, therefore, must be good; or rather, let us say that to be entitled to the praise of great-mindedness a man must be great in all virtue. Least of all, certainly, is it consistent with the character of a great-minded man to droop his crest at the face of danger and run away, or to do any act of injustice; for why should a man do anything dishonourable,to whom even the greatest things in the world are small measured by the estimate that he entertains of his own worth? And, indeed, it is quite ridiculous to imagine a man of genuine great-mindedness who is not at the same time a virtuous man. For, if he is bad he is certainly not worthy of honour, honour which is the reward of virtue, and is given only to the good. Let us say therefore that great-mindedness is a sort of crown and blossom of the virtues, for it elevates all the virtues, and without them it cannot exist. For which reason it is a hard thing to be truly great-minded; for this elevation of the soul is not possible without general goodness. We see therefore that it is with demonstrations of honour and dishonour that the great-minded man is principally concerned; and it is characteristic of him, that when great honour is done him by good persons, he is pleased, but always moderately, because on every occasion he only gets what he deserves, or perhaps less; because, in fact, virtue never can receive a proper equivalent for itself in the shape of anything external: he will not, however, reject any such offering, however inferior to his merits, because he will consider that people have given the best they had to give. But the honour that he receives for small services, and from persons of no excellence, he will hold very cheap; for it is not of such respect that he considers himself worthy. Exactly similar is his relation to dishonour; for disrespect in no kind can under any circumstances have reference to him. But honour, though the principal, is not the only external thing that belongs to the great-minded man; money, and power, and prosperity, and their opposites, affect him also in their proper place and degree, in such afashion always as that he shall neither be much elevated by their presence, nor much depressed by their absence. For not even the absence of that honour, which he justly claims, will he allow to affect his peace very deeply, much less the withholding of that wealth and that influence, which are desired by the good only for the sake of the honour which they bring with them. He therefore who can look calmly on the absence of that which is most desired, will not break his heart because he finds himself destitute of those things which are valued only as they contribute to the attainment of that desire. For this reason it is that men of a high self-esteem are apt to appear proud and contemptuous. It would appear also that the accidents of birth and fortune contribute in some degree towards great-mindedness; for persons of noble birth are considered worthy of honour, and persons of great influence, and wealthy persons; and there is a superiority belonging to all such persons, which brings a certain amount of honour along with it that is grateful to a good man. And it cannot be denied that such things have a tendency to engender a certain loftiness of soul, for they are never without honour from some quarter. Nevertheless the only thing really deserving of honour is virtue, though where virtue is conjoined with these external advantages it will always command a latter share of public respect. But those who possess such external advantages without virtue have neither any reason for thinking themselves deserving of great consideration, nor are they properly called great-minded; for it is only of those who possess virtue that such things can be predicated. On the contrary, those who possess such external goods are apt tobecome insolent and haughty. For without virtue it is by no means easy to bear prosperity well; and, not bearing it well, such persons are apt to conceit themselves better than their neighbours, and to despise them, while themselves spend their lives at random, and do what chance throws in their way. For they imitate the manner of the great-minded man, not being like him in soul; and, while they do nothing on which a lofty estimate of themselves might justly be founded, they find it easy to usurp an apparent superiority by looking down upon their fellow-men. This superiority belongs of right to the great-minded man, for his opinion of himself is founded on reality; but these, as chance may have thrown some exceptional tag of distinction in their way, despise their neighbours. Again, the great-minded man is not fond of running petty risks, nor indeed is it by rash and hasty ventures in any shape that he would catch a small breath of honour; but when a great risk presents itself then he willingly confronts danger, and spares not his life, as deeming life secondary when higher interests are concerned. Moreover, in reference to benefits, he is more given to confer than to receive them; for he who confers a benefit always stands in a position of superiority, while he on whom it is conferred feels inferior. And when a benefit is conferred on him, he will repay it in larger measure; for thus the benefactor will seem to be put under a new obligation, having received more than he gave. He seems also to have a more wakeful memory for those on whom he has conferred benefits, than for those from whom he has received them; for the person benefited is always inferior to the person conferring the benefit,and the great-minded man always wishes to feel superior. And he does not hear of benefits conferred on him with the same pleasure as benefits which he has conferred on others, for which reason in Homer Thetis does not commemorate her services to Jove; and in the same way the Spartans do not speak to the Athenians of the benefits they have conferred on Athens, but of those which they have received. It is also a mark of the great-minded man that he will either not ask a favour at all, or do it with difficulty; on the other hand, he is ready to do a service to all, but with this difference, that while he bears himself loftily to those high in position and worldly fortune, he is of easy access and condescending to the common man; for not to bow before the mighty is not easy, and is possible only to those who are inspired by a high sense of personal worth, whereas with common men any man may plant himself on an equality; and indeed even a little excess of pride in the presence of the proud is never ignoble, while to be haughty to those beneath us is always the sign of a vulgar mind, and a person of low ambition, as when one makes a vaunt of strength before the weak. Again, the great-minded man will not be the first to seize on honourable distinctions when offered, but he will gladly let others precede, being slow and backward, except, indeed, where a difficult thing is to be done, and a very rare honour achieved; generally he will meddle with few things, but what he does put his hand to must be something great and nameworthy. We may further note that he will be open and above ground, whether in his hatreds or his friendships, for to conceal a man’s feelings is usually a sign of fear. And in every case he willbe found more concerned for truth than for opinion, and he will shrink as little from an act as from a word that the occasion may demand; for his contempt of small men and small things makes him indifferent as to results, and inspires him with a lofty confidence. For which reason also he is much given to speak the truth, except indeed when he wishes to speak ironically; and it is his delight to use a little humorous self-concealment or self-misrepresentation when he speaks in mixed company. Neither is he able easily to adapt himself to another person, unless, indeed, that person be a special friend, for in this ready adaptability there is generally implied something slavish, as we see that flatterers have always something menial in their character, and low persons more readily condescend to flatter. Nor again is the great-minded man much given to wonder; for to him there is nothing great. As little is he apt to store up a grudge; for a great-minded man will not remember trifles, especially petty offences, but will rather overlook them. Nor will he indulge in personal remarks of any kind, speaking little either about himself or others; for neither is he careful to be praised, nor pleased that others should be blamed; as little is he given to laud other people, or, on the other hand, to speak evil of others, even when they are his enemies, except perhaps occasionally, when insolence requires to be chastised. Further, about necessary evils, or vexatious trifles, he is not the man to make many bewailings and beseechings, for to behave in this manner a man must take these things much to heart, which he never can. And oftentimes he will be found preferring what is noble and brings no profit, to what is useful and gainful,for his self-dependence stands out the more thereby. Finally, as to his appearance and manner, it will be noted that the great-minded man is slow in his movements, that his voice is deep, and his discourse weighty, for it is not natural that one who is not anxious about small matters should be in a hurry, or that a person should be very much excited on common occasions, to whom common matters are unimportant. Such then is the great-minded man. The two extremes between which he represents the mean, are, as we have said, the man of low self-estimate and the man of large pretensions and conceit. Now these two are manifestly not bad men, for they are not evil-doers; they only miss the ideal of what is true and noble in character. For the man who thinks meanly of himself, depriving himself of what he might justly claim as his due, though not a vicious man, suffers under a great vice of character, the defect of not knowing himself; for had he known himself, he would certainly have desired to possess the good things to which he has a natural right. At the same time such a person is not to be called foolish; he is only backward. But such a misprision of one’s self, however removed from flagrant viciousness, has unquestionably a tendency to deteriorate the character; for the imagination of their own unworthiness, by which these persons are possessed, not only cheats them of valuable external good which might naturally have fallen to their lot, but it causes them also to retire from many noble and excellent spheres of usefulness, and to shrink from the performance of most excellent actions. A conceited man, on the other hand, is both foolish and self-ignorant, and exhibits himself in a moreridiculous fashion to the general eye; for deeming himself fit for some honourable office, the moment he appears in public his inefficiency is exposed, and he parades himself in showy dress, and puts himself into attitudes, and wishes that the whole world should take notice of his good fortune, and claims honour as rightfully due to him for such display. There is, however, a greater opposition between the man who thinks meanly of himself and the great-minded man, than between this man and the conceited, person; for in truth the mean abnegation of self, the cheapening of a man’s capabilities, and despair of all lofty achievement, is of more common occurrence amongst the masses, and on account of its negative character leads in the practical warfare of life to more sad results.”[181.1]For commenting on some of the remarkable characteristics of this chapter, hovering as they do so delicately on the slippery border that separates a justifiable pride from a salutary humility, more apt occasion may present itself in our next discourse; in the meantime it will serve more the purpose of the present inquiry to ask, whether there may not be grave objections to a system of ethics based on the mere prudential calculation of a mean? and whether, granting this calculation to be wise and salutary, so far as it goes, it may not require to be strengthened by some stronger force than any which the philosophy of the Stagirite supplies? Now, in the first place, here there is one very common classof objections to the doctrine of the μέσον, to which we hope the whole tone of our previous remarks has already supplied the answer. “Is it possible,” some one has often asked, “to possess too much love? Of what good emotion is envy the exaggeration? Can any modification of spite be virtuous? Can any mere deficiency of the quality of truth account for the viciousness of a positive lie?” To some of these objections Aristotle has himself supplied the answer; but the best general answer to all is their impertinence as bearing upon a treatise which does not pretend to set forth a curious definition, proof against every subtle objection, but only to supply a useful practical rule. Whosoever accepts theNicomachean Ethicsin the practical spirit in which it was written, will soon find, perhaps by no very pleasant experience, that there is nothing more common among good people than to have too much even of such a rare virtue as Christian love; for there is too much always when there is too much for the occasion, or too much for the use or the abuse that is likely to be made of it; and unchastened generosity, inconsiderate philanthropy, and indiscriminate kindness are certainly not among the rarest of social faults. Equally certain is it that some of our most odious vices are only the despotic usurpations of certain instincts, natural and healthy in themselves, and when acting under the habitual check of other instincts equally natural, so as to preserve the just balance of a harmonious whole. Thus envy is merely the natural fruit of a salutary rivalry, when a generous sympathy is wanting; it is an odious state of mind arising out of an excess of rivalry on the one hand, and a deficiency of sympathy on the other. Let this styleof objections therefore pass. But a more serious deficiency in the Aristotelian doctrine seems to reveal itself, when it is said, This morality is merely prudential and calculating; it regulates but it does not move: it supplies the pilot at the helm, and gives him a curiously marked compass to steer by, but it leaves the ship in a stagnant ocean without wind and without tides. Now there is something in this objection, but not nearly so much as appears on the surface. Aristotle certainly is not an emotional writer; he does not stir the affections; he will never be a favourite with women, or with poets, or with evangelists, or with any person—and this is by no means the worst sort of person—whose head requires to be reached through his heart. It is not true, however, that he commits the folly of attempting to construct a steam-engine without steam. He finds the steam there, and the engine too ready-made, and his only object is to supply a regulator, because a regulator is the chief thing wanted. Whatever an unprincipled or paradoxical Sophist here and there might assert, neither Aristotle nor any notable philosopher of antiquity ever thought it necessary, to commence his moral theory with a systematic controversion of the Hobbesian doctrine that man is naturally all selfish, a creature that if left without policemen and executioners would necessarily grow up into a mere intellectual tigerhood. Aristotle assumed, and expressly asserts, that man is naturally a social animal; the social instincts which form families and friendships, clanships and nationalities, being among the most marked peculiarities of his complex nature: these instincts, he knew well, constantly exist in sufficient and morethan sufficient strength; they bubble out like streams from the mountain side, which require only a calculated control to make them useful; they are the luxuriant overgrowth of a rich soil, which demands, not the stimulus of a strong manure, but the check of a wise pruning-hook. That this was Aristotle’s view is quite plain; for he not only believes in nature generally, as opposed to the institutions and conventions (νόμος) so much in favour with the Sophists, but he devotes two whole books to what he calls Φιλία, a word commonly translated “friendship,” but which in the Nicomachean Ethics is used in the widest sense to designate all the social sympathies and feelings implanted in man by Nature, with the relations springing therefrom; and this part of his work, as Grant well observes, is treated with a depth and moral earnestness that makes the reader feel the supreme importance attached to it by its illustrious author.[184.1]Aristotle therefore is not to be blamed for ignoring the great motive powers of moral life; he only does not directly address them; it was not his vocation; he was no poet, no apostle; and even without poets and apostles, Nature, he might well imagine, was always strong enough for that part of the business. But even without the fervid wheels of passion there lies in the Aristotelian philosophy, at least for a certain class of noble minds, a driving power of the most approved efficiency. That driving power is simply the love of perfection. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” To live in the most excellent way, accordingto the true excellence of man, is the constant ideal of an Aristotelian philosopher. And so long as the lofty consciousness of this ideal bears him up, he requires neither whip nor spur to incite him to continue in a virtuous career. He acts in the true spirit of the poet when he says—
“These violent delights have violent ends,And in their triumph die: like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honeyIs loathsome in his own deliciousness,And in the taste confounds the appetite:Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
“These violent delights have violent ends,And in their triumph die: like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honeyIs loathsome in his own deliciousness,And in the taste confounds the appetite:Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
What Aristotle enunciated therefore was merely the most commonplace wisdom; and so much the better. Commonplace wisdom is the best kind of wisdom for common needs and every-day occasions. It is too late in the day now, and was too late in Aristotle’s time certainly, to be discovering altogether new rules for keeping the consciences and the stomachs of the human millions in good order. Things absolutely necessary to healthy existence were necessarily known from the earliest ages, unless indeed we imagine that the primeval man was created in a state of physical and moral disease, that he might grope and blunder his way into health, as some theorists assert that he groped and blundered his way from a tiger into a moral being, and from a monkey into a man. So far unquestionably, Henry Thomas Buckle was right: there are no discoveries to be made in morals. We do not discover the sun; we only recognise it when the clouds are blown and the rain has exhausted itself. So it is in morals—in the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. We do not discover moral principles by a fingering induction, or in any other way; we merely remove obstructions; we can apply thebellows also and blow the small spark into a mighty flame. Our endeavours therefore as preachers, and as philosophers, like Aristotle, are not in vain. We have much to do, if not in the way of discovering absolutely new principles, certainly in a thousand and one ways of applying those principles. A burning-glass when first invented did not discover the sun; it utilized the sun. And in the same way the institution of every new church or the establishment of every new school is an invention in morals, though not a discovery of a new moral principle. Sabbath-schools were a discovery in morals; Voluntary Churches were a discovery in morals; Reform Bills were a discovery in morals. And in the world of books, we must say also that the principle of the mean asserted and systematically set forth in the Nicomachean Ethics was a great discovery in moral philosophy. The discovery consisted in the sagacity which seized, among a thousand others, a floating proverb, as alone fit, or mainly fit, for being made the corner-stone of a comprehensive canon of human conduct. To pick up a rough stone from the road, and polish it, and set it in a ring, and carve upon it the signature of the king’s imperial will, is no small achievement; and this simile precisely appraises the merit of the Stagirite, in reference to that old maxim μηδὲν ἄγαν, which we have just quoted. He has stamped it with the authority of his own regal intellect, in a manner appealing not less effectively to the analytic habits of the scientific man, than to the broad views so dear to the so-called practical man. And that he was grandly right in seizing upon this rule of conduct, no person who has ever seriously applied, himself to the wisdom of life, as to the onething needful, will hare any difficulty in admitting. For there is hardly a man of any self-knowledge who will not be willing to confess that the greatest blunders he has made in the difficult game of life have arisen from the neglect of this rule, as his most signal successes have sprung from the observance of it. The attainment of this golden mean, indeed, in one shape or another, is the constant problem of existence; and it will be difficult to point out any defects of moral character which do not arise either from a certain feebleness and deficiency of some necessary practical energy, or from the exaggeration and misapplication of virtues—a misapplication, be it observed, which almost always proceeds from an excess; for as a mother is apt to have her pet child, and an old maid her green parrot, her Skye terrier, or her tortoise-shell cat, on which she spends the overflow of her non-utilized sympathies, so every man is apt to have his pet virtue, his idol excellence, on which he prides himself, and of which he is fond of making a parade on all proper and improper occasions. It is the excessive sway of the favourite affection that makes a man blind to discern and weak to prevent its improper application. This is a great truth—and somewhat of a comfortable truth, too; for to sin by excess of good is always better than to offend from pure viciousness; and man is upon the whole (notwithstanding the floating lies of the hour, and the Devil’s Paradise in New York) a blundering rather than a diabolical creature. The importance of Aristotle’s rule arises from the fact that it is a regulative principle of universal application; and in this way it may well be taken in the left hand, along with the golden rule in the righthand, “Do unto others as ye would that they would do unto you;” for this sacred sentence is founded on a just, delicate, and broad sympathy, and belongs rather to the emotional element—the moral steam, so to speak—of our nature, which, to avoid great perils, must always be associated with the regulative principle of the mean, or something to that effect. These two famous maxims indeed may, for practical purposes, be regarded as complementary of each other. For persons in whom the sympathetic emotions predominate are often deficient in the regulative faculty; while those whose power of regulation is great have sometimes little to regulate, and like a great commander with few soldiers, make a very poor appearance in the battle-field. In the struggle of life, the man whose sympathetic unselfish impulses are strong will perhaps find more benefit from the constant reference to Aristotle’s mean than even to the Scriptural golden rule; while the well-tempered Aristotelian will, on the other hand, find it for his advantage to inquire whether the even pace at which he goes is not as much owing to the dullness of the charger’s blood as to the skill with which the rider wields the rein. For there is no single maxim in morals that will conduct a man through all practical difficulties without the consideration of some other maxim qualifying it, and perhaps, for the nonce, giving it a flat contradiction; as I have known a gentleman who confessed to me that by nothing had he been led into so many serious blunders as by the indiscriminate application of this very text, “Do unto others,” etc.; for, being a man of a peculiar idiosyncrasy, and not having learned that the golden rule applies only to that which wehold in common with our fellow-men, and not to those points on which we differ, he was constantly led into a course of behaviour towards certain persons, meant by him as a great kindness, but taken as a serious offence. While he wished not to be troublesome, he was considered to be neglectful; while he abstained from mentioning certain subjects for fear of rousing painful feelings he was accused of coldness and indifference; while he meant to be frank and confiding, he was met with a rebuff that he was rude and impertinent. All this shows how little mere preaching and parading of general maxims has to do with the difficult task of the formation of character; and no writer deserves greater praise for having gravely enunciated this truth than the author of the Nicomachean Ethics. In order fully to realize the value of the Aristotelian mean in the conduct of life, we may follow the method of the great moralist himself, and cull a few examples at random for its verification. We shall take three virtues—courage, truthfulness, self-esteem—and see how distinctly they stand out each as the middle-point of two vicious extremes. That courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness does not require to be told: but what a wide field of operation does this triad open to us, while we proceed to realize it in education, and in the conduct of public affairs, and in the events of life! What a nice judgment is required to know at what exact point the too much and the too little commences, where the right way swerves into an error of which the consequences may be incalculable! For the mean point is variable; and the hesitation which would be prudence in one person, or on one occasion, is cowardice in another. A sailor sailing without achart among blind reefs and strong currents—such as occur everywhere in the Shetland seas—can scarcely be too cautions; with a soldier, a bold dash into a difficulty with a fearlessness which can, scarcely be distinguished from rashness is sometimes the nearest road to a brilliant success. And as good amusements are a mimicry of life, there is a moment at bowls, or croquet, or backgammon, or even deliberate whist, when the fortune of a whole game may depend on a move which at other times would be either the most stupid ignorance or the most reckless folly. The wisdom of life, considered as a battle, depends at every moment on the skill to know when to advance and when to retreat, when to dash on with the spear, and when to crouch behind the shield; to know this moment is to know the just mean between rashness and cowardice, which the Greeks by a very significant name called manhood (ἀνδρειότης) or courage. Take another virtue. Of all commodities in the world, the most difficult to deal with is truth. If, indeed, all men went about the streets, like Socrates, in search of nothing but truth, and thanking everybody most fervidly for any contribution to his stock of it, even in the most disagreeable shape, truthfulness would be an easy virtue; as easy for a human being, one might imagine, as for a quick fountain to spout water, and for an eager fire to spit flame. But we all know it is not so—rather quite otherwise, for truth is an article to which, except in so far as particular truths may happen to prop up their prejudices, to flatter their vanity, and to inflate their conceit, many persons have serious objections. To fling it in their face is to insult them; to put it down their throats,even with a silver spoon and sugar-candy, a difficult operation. Hence, in the conduct of life, the great importance of not speaking too much truth, lest we frighten people, and not speaking too little, lest we learn altogether to live upon lies. In mixed society, on account of the extreme sensitiveness of all sorts of vain and self-important persons, the rule is generally adopted of speaking as little truth as possible—that is, as little serious truth about important matters; for truth about trifles will discompose no one. But this conventional reticence is by no means the μεσότης which a reasonable compliance with the Aristotelian rule in this case would require; for though a surplus of truth is sure to make society uncomfortable, and a deluge of it makes it impossible, a great deficiency will certainly make it tame and stupid; and this is the extreme to which, in this country, we have lately been drifting with a gentle, but not the less a dangerous, current. Even in our pulpits we find a sort of cowardice sometimes formally enthroned, and a tame coldness set up as the standard in a place where, above all others, an indiscreet fervour might occasionally be allowed to pass for full cousin to the greatest excellence. Take again, self-esteem, which is partly an instinct, partly with wise men the result of that self-knowledge which long and varied experience ought always to produce. This is a moral mean perhaps even more difficult to strike than truthfulness; for in speaking, or rather not speaking, the truth, the principal difficulty a wise man has to deal with is the weakness of a brother; whereas, in estimating himself, the wisest man is constantly liable to be bribed by that love of self which, indeed, is the necessary root ofour vitality, but never can be the blooming crown of our glory. In reference to this quality, the general tendency of the world is towards overestimate; most persons are apt to measure too highly the value of their own particular strong point, and to under-estimate, or altogether misprize, that of their neighbours; as a gentleman in the month of August scouring the moors in triumph with a gun will be apt to think himself a much more sublime character than a poet lying lazily on a heather brae, and spinning out pretty fancies to the tune of a brown burn that eddies lazily round an old granite boulder; while the rhymer, on the other hand, thinks it a daintier occupation to sympathize quietly with feathered life than to take it away with powder and shot. So it is with us all, women as well as men—
“If a fair girl has but a pretty face,She has the wit to know it.”
“If a fair girl has but a pretty face,She has the wit to know it.”
And there is no reason why she should not know it. If a woman does not know her points, according to a high authority, she cannot even dress well; only, experience has proved that the less men and women think about their strong points, except, of course, when they are dressing, the better; for there is no more certain way of committing suicide on the higher moral nature than by falling in love with ourselves. In reference to this matter, therefore, it may be thought that the other and less common extreme is the more safe—it is better to think too lowly of ourselves than too highly. And it is a fact, capable of being proved from a hundred biographies, that the greatest men have been the least given to self-glorification; that modesty, as is commonly said,is the invariable accompaniment of genuine power, while forward conceit, and empty inflation, and boastful exhibition of all kinds, are the natural characteristics of the young, the superficial, and the small. The under-estimate of self often found in connexion with the highest genius, especially in the early period of its experiments, arises naturally from the high ideal of perfection, by the contemplation of which excellence grows. No young man who puts a few well-adjusted and well-toned figures together on a piece of canvas can know, and certainly ought never to imagine, that he carries Raphael and Michael Angelo, and something better than both perhaps, in his bosom. But though this be true, I do not know whether I have not seen more sad mistakes made in life by persons who were rather depressed by too little than elevated by too much self-esteem. I have sometimes thought that the conceit so natural to young men is given to them by a gracious provision as a superfluity that is sure to be pruned off. The world is constantly employed in pulling down outrageous conceit; but when a poor fellow starts in the hot race of life, afflicted with that disease which the Greeks call δυσωπία, ordifficult-facedness—that is, so modest as not to be able to look a fellow-being in the face—I must confess, though I have a kindly feeling towards a person so deficient which I never can have to the smart and pert self-conscious mannikin, I feel that the defect of the one is a much greater misfortune, and a malady much more difficult to cure, than the excess of the other. With some persons, and indeed whole families, the tendency to underrate their own capacity acts like a positive taint in the blood; it cuts the wing from hope, dulls the nerveof aspiration, and palsies the arm of action. It makes an honest man useless where God has put him, and opens the door for a dishonest man with a little natural confidence to do badly what the honest man for sheer lack of confidence has not been able to do at all. The man of defective self-esteem thus commits two great wrongs—he wrongs himself, because he allows himself to be shunted out of his natural sphere, and becomes a hindrance where he might have been a help; and he wrongs the public, which lacks both the insight and the leisure to drag modest merit from its den and to look with an unwinking eye on the juggling glamoury of the bold pretender.
But it is not only in the phases of individual character and the experiences of personal life that the validity of the Aristotelian standard of well-being is strongly asserted. In every sphere of existence through the various drama of the cosmos, we find the same principle in operation. And we may, without qualification, broadly pronounce that the world is a κόσμος, an ordered and garnished whole, only in so far as it is held together by the harmonizing law of the mean; otherwise it jerks asunder, and through violent excess bolts into chaos. Take what we call Health, for instance; what is it but the rhythmical medium, of normal pulse between the excess of fever and the defect of feebleness? which two extremes, as the common saying is, necessarily meet; for they are both equally removed from healthy life, and sisters-uterine to death and dissolution. Then, again, what is Beauty? A power which all feel, but few can define; neither shall I attempt to define it now. But one thing at least in reference to it is quite plain, that it is always a mediumbetwixt two extremes, or, what comes to the same thing, a marriage of extremes. For by such a marriage, as we see in the commonest processes of chemical action, a mean product is produced of a comparatively mild and innocuous character. The corrosive acid or alkali is annihilated and a neutral salt comes to view. Exactly so in works of nature or art on which the imagination can pleasantly dwell. No extreme is beautiful. The extreme of force overwhelms; the extreme of gentleness enfeebles and enervates. Therefore, to make a handsome man, we must borrow a few tricks of grace from the female; and to make a woman who shall be more than an animated rose or primrose, we must find her infected with a certain dose of firmness and energy from the male. A mere masculine creature, composed altogether of the extreme of strength and force, is disagreeable, and often unbearable; a mere feminine creature in the extreme of delicacy, however finely tinted with the “dolce mistura di rosa e di ligustro,” which Ariosto lauds, if she is capable only of a gentle smile and a soft caress, very soon becomes tiresome. She is the extreme of the mere woman, and, like a cooing turtle-dove, soon satiates; and at the apparition of such an unfeathered pigeon we yawn, as from the fully-developed unmitigated male bear we shrink. But it is in the great movements of the social world—in the rise and fall of stock and commercial speculations—no less than in the slow changes and violent revolutions of Churches and States, that the operation of the Aristotelian mean is most strikingly exemplified. Moderation, indeed, both in Church and State, and on ’Change, is the one great condition of safety—no propositionin Euclid is more certain than this: but though this be the wisdom of government and of trade, it is a wisdom which political, commercial, and ecclesiastical adventurers in all ages have been slow to learn; and in public life we constantly meet with persons who act and speak as if they believed that the triumph of an extreme view is ever the triumph of right, and that the well-being of communities consists in the unlimited sway of one party and the complete annihilation of all others. And it may be said also, that, notwithstanding all the warnings of centuries of bloody experience, the man or the party that takes the strong one-sided violent view has, on critical occasions, the best chance to succeed. Wisdom in the days of Solomon lifted up her voice in the streets, and was not heard. It is even so now. The streets are not the place for wisdom. Wisdom requires calm reflection; but the streets are full of hurry and bustle. Aristotle had a serene contempt for the multitude, and the multitude have an instinctive aversion to Aristotle. When you bring a multitude of men together to be harangued, violent and extreme opinions pronounced in the strongest language are apt to be the most popular. A one-sided view taxes thought less; a one-sided speech flatters an ignorant audience, who are capable only of one idea—at least only of one at a time—and who delight to hug themselves in the fancy that there is no other idea in the universe. And the natural leader of a multitude so affected is not, of course, your man of many thoughts, your Aristotle, your Shakespeare, your Goethe, but your well-packed, self-contained, little man, full of bottled fire impatient to burst forth, who marches from his cradle to his grave capable onlyof one aspect of things, and who, if the notion by which he is governed happens to jump with the humour of the time, shall become the demagogue of the hour, or, if circumstances favour, the dictator of the age. When, indeed, we consider the undeniable fact that great social changes are generally effected through the agency of excited multitudes and highly stimulated parties, we shall not be surprised at the result so often exhibited in history. That result shows bloody civil wars instead of peaceful arrangement; faction instead of patriotism; and an oscillation between feverish extremes, instead of a well-calculated balance of social forces. The revolutions and reforms which fill the most interesting pages of history teem with examples of this kind. These revolutions and reforms are of two kinds—remedial and constructive, or disintegrating and destructive; and the history of both equally illustrates the hopelessness—perhaps it were more correct to say the impossibility—of expecting wisdom and moderation to perform a prominent part in the management of the congregated millions of diverse and hostile-minded men under the passionate influences that accompany organic change. For these things are generally done in the manner of a battle: parties get heated; the blood is up; first ink is shed in oceans, then gall, then blood; and who expects moderation from men with partisan pens or poignards in their hands, and carrying on a systematic trade in all sorts of misrepresentation, slander, and lies? We read sometimes, indeed, of a whole people having by a happy accident found out their wisest man—as in the notable example ofSolon—and oligarchs and democrats voluntarily submitting themselves tohim as a just and legal arbiter. The result in this case, as we read, was what might have been expected. The wise man produced a wise constitution. The contending claims of the adverse parties were adjusted with moderation; and a mingled polity, presenting a just medium between oligarchy, the cold selfishness of the few, and democracy, the overbearing insolence of the many, was the result. But nothing human is permanent; and the next changes did not proceed so comfortably. The democracy, inflated with their military successes at Marathon and Salamis, would tolerate no check; their Areopagus, or House of Lords, was shorn of all influence; the extravagant ambition of their popular assemblies was fooled to the top of its bent by the unprincipled brilliancy of adventurers like Alcibiades; the constant necessity of maintaining political influence by flinging sops to a greedy multitude produced, as we see in America at the present hour, a corruption of public morals, and a deterioration of the character of public men, against which all patriotic remonstrances were weak: faction assumed the helm; venality became law; and at the moment of danger, when the young Macedonian snake might yet have been crushed, there was found only one honest man among the noisy haranguers of the Pnyx. And to him they listened only when it was too late. Thus, by the excess of democratic polity fostered by Pericles, the insolence of democratic ambition spurred by Alcibiades, the languor that followed the over-exertion of the Peloponnesian War, and the corruption that belongs to every extreme form of government, Athens forfeited her short lease of brilliant liberty, and became a slave for more than two thousand years. A similar scenewas exhibited in the Roman Forum, which, however, I must refrain from painting out in detail here. Suffice it to say that, so long as a moderate balance between patricians and plebeians was maintained, the Aristocratic Republic of Rome prospered at home and conquered abroad; but no sooner had the democracy, by the Hortensian law of B.C. 286, asserted the right of acting alone in legislative measures, without the co-operation of the Roman House of Lords (that is, the Senate), than the seed of destruction was sown. The two parties were now planted face to face on independent ground; two masters in the same house claimed equal power; the peaceful balance became a battle-field; assassinations in the Forum were the harbingers of butcheries in protracted dramas of civil slaughter; violence was followed by exhaustion; and on the bloody steps of a democratic Tribunate the armed nursling of the democracy mounted the throne of universal despotism. So the public life of Ancient Rome ended with faction and a native military monarchy, as that, of Greece in faction and subjection to a foreign power. There are some people of a happy innocence of mind who believe that we in modern times, by the help of Christianity and schoolmasters, may haply escape all these evils and flourish in a green immortality on the earth, if not under present circumstances exactly, at least by and by with the help of manhood suffrage, ballot-boxes, unbearded politicians, and a few other democratic imaginations. I am sorry to say that I do not in the least share in these anticipations: only under one condition is it possible that modern States should escape the disintegrating process which annihilated the constitutions of Ancient Greece andRome—they must study moderation; they must be converted to the doctrine of Aristotle; otherwise they must perish. That in free constitutions public affairs should be managed by the oscillations of opposing parties is necessary and natural: the annihilation of parties is possible only with the prostration of liberty; but the eternal truth still remains, that if parties will not acknowledge certain wise limitations, but push their hostility to extremes, the preservation of national liberty is impossible. If, when organic reforms are necessary, the wise and moderate men of all parties will unite together to make such changes as will satisfy the just demands of new claimants, without destroying the equally just rights of the old, then, so far as political forces of corruption are concerned, the durability of a constitution may be looked upon as secured; but if the parties, instead of working for a patriotic purpose, are more concerned for the momentary success of a parliamentary manœuvre than for the ultimate triumph of a great principle—if, instead of wisely and courageously confronting a violent and unreasonable clamour and quashing outrageous folly with statesmanlike firmness, they waver, and flinch, and yield, and even condescend to the base game (practised in ancient Rome and mediæval Florence) of outbidding one another in cowardly concessions to an untempered multitude—in this case, neither Christianity nor schoolmasters can save any modern State from perdition, either on this or on the other side of the Atlantic. For there is not one law of morality for the individual and another for public men, but they are both the same; and it is not so much the form of government as the tone of political morality,and the character of politicians, that saves or ruins a State. If in any country the management of public affairs falls into the hands of men who make a trade of politics, and employ an organized machinery of violence, and lies, and intrigue, for the purpose of getting into power; and if they consider power valuable, not for the purpose of moderating popular passions and exposing popular delusions, but for keeping their party in place by spreading full sails to the popular breeze, then that country is already in the hands of the destroying Siva, and no constitution can save it. Political wisdom is not to be expected from men who enter the game of public life with the recklessness of professional gamblers; and that army will scarcely be looked to for noble achievements in the field which, with Selfishness for its god, has chosen Cunning for its captain, and planted Cowardice for a guard.
In these last remarks we have wandered beyond the strict bounds of the present essay into the domain of Politics, and the Art of Government, but not without design; for thePoliticsand theEthicsare with the Stagirite only two parts of the same work; as indeed with the Greeks generally, personal ethics were always conceived of in connexion with the State, in the same way that with thorough and consistent Christians the fruits of social virtue cannot be divorced from the root of theological faith of which they are the consummation. And whoever studies the great treatise on the Art of Government with that care, which more than any other work of antiquity its weighty conclusions demand, will not fail to observe that the key-note to the whole political system lies in that μεσότης, or just mean,which is the prominent principle of theEthics. But this by the way. What remains for us now, in order that the modern thinker may have a full view of the attitude of Aristotle as a moral philosopher, is that we exhibit him discoursing in his own person on some one of those types of social character, which in his third and fourth books he has so skilfully analysed. For this purpose we shall choose the section on μεγαλοψυχία orgreat-mindedness, a chapter eminently characteristic both of the writer and of the people to whom he belonged, and presenting also, one of the most striking of those contrasts between the attitude of Hellenic and that of Christian ethics, which it is one object of the present volume to set forth. The Chapter is the third of Book IV.
“That great-mindedness has reference to something great is plain from the name; let us inquire therefore, in the first place, to what great things it refers; and here it is of no consequence whether we talk formally of the moral habitude itself, or of the person who possesses that habitude. Now, a great-minded person is one who esteems himself worthy of great things, being in fact so worthy; for the man who claims for himself what he does not deserve is a fool; but in virtue there can be nothing foolish or unintelligent. This therefore is the great-minded man. For though a person’s estimate of himself should be just, for example, if, being worthy of little consideration, he esteems himself accordingly, such an one we call sober-minded, but not great-minded; for without a certain magnitude there is no greatness of soul, just as beauty demands a certain stature, and little people may indeed be pretty and well-proportioned, but theyare never called beautiful.[173.1]On the other hand, the man who esteems himself worthy of great things, being not so worthy, we call pretentious and conceited; though not every one who over-estimates in some degree his real worth is justly charged with conceit. And in the opposite extreme to this, the man who claims less than he deserves is small or mean-minded, whether his real desert be something great or something moderate; and he remains small-minded also, if, while he is worthy of little, he rates himself at less. But the greatest offender in this case is he who, being worthy of great things, nevertheless considers himself worthy of little or of nothing; for how deep might such a man’s self-esteem have fallen if he had been really as devoid of moral desert as even with so much real merit he rates himself? Now the great-minded man, in respect of comparative magnitude, seems to stand at an extreme, but in respect of self-estimate he is the just mean; for his estimate of himself falls neither within nor beyond the mark of truth, while the others fail on the one side by excess, and on the other by defect. Further, the man who deems himself worthy of great things, being so worthy, of course deems himself worthy of the greatest things, and of one thing, whatever that be, pre-eminently great. What then do we mean when we say that a man is worthy, that he may justly claim great things or small things? We usethis language always in reference to something external. And the greatest of external things is that which we pay to the gods, and that which men in the highest situations chiefly desire, and for which among men there arises the most noble struggle of the most noble. This, of course, is honour; for honour is the greatest of external goods. It is in reference therefore to demonstrations of honour and dishonour that the great-minded man comports himself as a wise man ought. And indeed this is a point which requires only to be stated, not argued; for it is manifest that great-minded men everywhere are spoken of as being great-minded in reference to honour; for it is honour above all things of which truly great men think themselves worthy, and that in the measure of their desert. But the small-minded man is deficient both in relation to himself and in relation to the dignity that belongs to the great-minded, while the conceited man no doubt sins by excess in reference to his own merit, but not in reference to the high estimate of himself justly entertained by the great-minded man.
“Again, it is obvious that the great-minded man, if he is worthy of the greatest consideration, must be not only a good man, but one of the very best; for always the better a man is the greater is his desert, and the best man alone may claim the most. The really great-minded man, therefore, must be good; or rather, let us say that to be entitled to the praise of great-mindedness a man must be great in all virtue. Least of all, certainly, is it consistent with the character of a great-minded man to droop his crest at the face of danger and run away, or to do any act of injustice; for why should a man do anything dishonourable,to whom even the greatest things in the world are small measured by the estimate that he entertains of his own worth? And, indeed, it is quite ridiculous to imagine a man of genuine great-mindedness who is not at the same time a virtuous man. For, if he is bad he is certainly not worthy of honour, honour which is the reward of virtue, and is given only to the good. Let us say therefore that great-mindedness is a sort of crown and blossom of the virtues, for it elevates all the virtues, and without them it cannot exist. For which reason it is a hard thing to be truly great-minded; for this elevation of the soul is not possible without general goodness. We see therefore that it is with demonstrations of honour and dishonour that the great-minded man is principally concerned; and it is characteristic of him, that when great honour is done him by good persons, he is pleased, but always moderately, because on every occasion he only gets what he deserves, or perhaps less; because, in fact, virtue never can receive a proper equivalent for itself in the shape of anything external: he will not, however, reject any such offering, however inferior to his merits, because he will consider that people have given the best they had to give. But the honour that he receives for small services, and from persons of no excellence, he will hold very cheap; for it is not of such respect that he considers himself worthy. Exactly similar is his relation to dishonour; for disrespect in no kind can under any circumstances have reference to him. But honour, though the principal, is not the only external thing that belongs to the great-minded man; money, and power, and prosperity, and their opposites, affect him also in their proper place and degree, in such afashion always as that he shall neither be much elevated by their presence, nor much depressed by their absence. For not even the absence of that honour, which he justly claims, will he allow to affect his peace very deeply, much less the withholding of that wealth and that influence, which are desired by the good only for the sake of the honour which they bring with them. He therefore who can look calmly on the absence of that which is most desired, will not break his heart because he finds himself destitute of those things which are valued only as they contribute to the attainment of that desire. For this reason it is that men of a high self-esteem are apt to appear proud and contemptuous. It would appear also that the accidents of birth and fortune contribute in some degree towards great-mindedness; for persons of noble birth are considered worthy of honour, and persons of great influence, and wealthy persons; and there is a superiority belonging to all such persons, which brings a certain amount of honour along with it that is grateful to a good man. And it cannot be denied that such things have a tendency to engender a certain loftiness of soul, for they are never without honour from some quarter. Nevertheless the only thing really deserving of honour is virtue, though where virtue is conjoined with these external advantages it will always command a latter share of public respect. But those who possess such external advantages without virtue have neither any reason for thinking themselves deserving of great consideration, nor are they properly called great-minded; for it is only of those who possess virtue that such things can be predicated. On the contrary, those who possess such external goods are apt tobecome insolent and haughty. For without virtue it is by no means easy to bear prosperity well; and, not bearing it well, such persons are apt to conceit themselves better than their neighbours, and to despise them, while themselves spend their lives at random, and do what chance throws in their way. For they imitate the manner of the great-minded man, not being like him in soul; and, while they do nothing on which a lofty estimate of themselves might justly be founded, they find it easy to usurp an apparent superiority by looking down upon their fellow-men. This superiority belongs of right to the great-minded man, for his opinion of himself is founded on reality; but these, as chance may have thrown some exceptional tag of distinction in their way, despise their neighbours. Again, the great-minded man is not fond of running petty risks, nor indeed is it by rash and hasty ventures in any shape that he would catch a small breath of honour; but when a great risk presents itself then he willingly confronts danger, and spares not his life, as deeming life secondary when higher interests are concerned. Moreover, in reference to benefits, he is more given to confer than to receive them; for he who confers a benefit always stands in a position of superiority, while he on whom it is conferred feels inferior. And when a benefit is conferred on him, he will repay it in larger measure; for thus the benefactor will seem to be put under a new obligation, having received more than he gave. He seems also to have a more wakeful memory for those on whom he has conferred benefits, than for those from whom he has received them; for the person benefited is always inferior to the person conferring the benefit,and the great-minded man always wishes to feel superior. And he does not hear of benefits conferred on him with the same pleasure as benefits which he has conferred on others, for which reason in Homer Thetis does not commemorate her services to Jove; and in the same way the Spartans do not speak to the Athenians of the benefits they have conferred on Athens, but of those which they have received. It is also a mark of the great-minded man that he will either not ask a favour at all, or do it with difficulty; on the other hand, he is ready to do a service to all, but with this difference, that while he bears himself loftily to those high in position and worldly fortune, he is of easy access and condescending to the common man; for not to bow before the mighty is not easy, and is possible only to those who are inspired by a high sense of personal worth, whereas with common men any man may plant himself on an equality; and indeed even a little excess of pride in the presence of the proud is never ignoble, while to be haughty to those beneath us is always the sign of a vulgar mind, and a person of low ambition, as when one makes a vaunt of strength before the weak. Again, the great-minded man will not be the first to seize on honourable distinctions when offered, but he will gladly let others precede, being slow and backward, except, indeed, where a difficult thing is to be done, and a very rare honour achieved; generally he will meddle with few things, but what he does put his hand to must be something great and nameworthy. We may further note that he will be open and above ground, whether in his hatreds or his friendships, for to conceal a man’s feelings is usually a sign of fear. And in every case he willbe found more concerned for truth than for opinion, and he will shrink as little from an act as from a word that the occasion may demand; for his contempt of small men and small things makes him indifferent as to results, and inspires him with a lofty confidence. For which reason also he is much given to speak the truth, except indeed when he wishes to speak ironically; and it is his delight to use a little humorous self-concealment or self-misrepresentation when he speaks in mixed company. Neither is he able easily to adapt himself to another person, unless, indeed, that person be a special friend, for in this ready adaptability there is generally implied something slavish, as we see that flatterers have always something menial in their character, and low persons more readily condescend to flatter. Nor again is the great-minded man much given to wonder; for to him there is nothing great. As little is he apt to store up a grudge; for a great-minded man will not remember trifles, especially petty offences, but will rather overlook them. Nor will he indulge in personal remarks of any kind, speaking little either about himself or others; for neither is he careful to be praised, nor pleased that others should be blamed; as little is he given to laud other people, or, on the other hand, to speak evil of others, even when they are his enemies, except perhaps occasionally, when insolence requires to be chastised. Further, about necessary evils, or vexatious trifles, he is not the man to make many bewailings and beseechings, for to behave in this manner a man must take these things much to heart, which he never can. And oftentimes he will be found preferring what is noble and brings no profit, to what is useful and gainful,for his self-dependence stands out the more thereby. Finally, as to his appearance and manner, it will be noted that the great-minded man is slow in his movements, that his voice is deep, and his discourse weighty, for it is not natural that one who is not anxious about small matters should be in a hurry, or that a person should be very much excited on common occasions, to whom common matters are unimportant. Such then is the great-minded man. The two extremes between which he represents the mean, are, as we have said, the man of low self-estimate and the man of large pretensions and conceit. Now these two are manifestly not bad men, for they are not evil-doers; they only miss the ideal of what is true and noble in character. For the man who thinks meanly of himself, depriving himself of what he might justly claim as his due, though not a vicious man, suffers under a great vice of character, the defect of not knowing himself; for had he known himself, he would certainly have desired to possess the good things to which he has a natural right. At the same time such a person is not to be called foolish; he is only backward. But such a misprision of one’s self, however removed from flagrant viciousness, has unquestionably a tendency to deteriorate the character; for the imagination of their own unworthiness, by which these persons are possessed, not only cheats them of valuable external good which might naturally have fallen to their lot, but it causes them also to retire from many noble and excellent spheres of usefulness, and to shrink from the performance of most excellent actions. A conceited man, on the other hand, is both foolish and self-ignorant, and exhibits himself in a moreridiculous fashion to the general eye; for deeming himself fit for some honourable office, the moment he appears in public his inefficiency is exposed, and he parades himself in showy dress, and puts himself into attitudes, and wishes that the whole world should take notice of his good fortune, and claims honour as rightfully due to him for such display. There is, however, a greater opposition between the man who thinks meanly of himself and the great-minded man, than between this man and the conceited, person; for in truth the mean abnegation of self, the cheapening of a man’s capabilities, and despair of all lofty achievement, is of more common occurrence amongst the masses, and on account of its negative character leads in the practical warfare of life to more sad results.”[181.1]
For commenting on some of the remarkable characteristics of this chapter, hovering as they do so delicately on the slippery border that separates a justifiable pride from a salutary humility, more apt occasion may present itself in our next discourse; in the meantime it will serve more the purpose of the present inquiry to ask, whether there may not be grave objections to a system of ethics based on the mere prudential calculation of a mean? and whether, granting this calculation to be wise and salutary, so far as it goes, it may not require to be strengthened by some stronger force than any which the philosophy of the Stagirite supplies? Now, in the first place, here there is one very common classof objections to the doctrine of the μέσον, to which we hope the whole tone of our previous remarks has already supplied the answer. “Is it possible,” some one has often asked, “to possess too much love? Of what good emotion is envy the exaggeration? Can any modification of spite be virtuous? Can any mere deficiency of the quality of truth account for the viciousness of a positive lie?” To some of these objections Aristotle has himself supplied the answer; but the best general answer to all is their impertinence as bearing upon a treatise which does not pretend to set forth a curious definition, proof against every subtle objection, but only to supply a useful practical rule. Whosoever accepts theNicomachean Ethicsin the practical spirit in which it was written, will soon find, perhaps by no very pleasant experience, that there is nothing more common among good people than to have too much even of such a rare virtue as Christian love; for there is too much always when there is too much for the occasion, or too much for the use or the abuse that is likely to be made of it; and unchastened generosity, inconsiderate philanthropy, and indiscriminate kindness are certainly not among the rarest of social faults. Equally certain is it that some of our most odious vices are only the despotic usurpations of certain instincts, natural and healthy in themselves, and when acting under the habitual check of other instincts equally natural, so as to preserve the just balance of a harmonious whole. Thus envy is merely the natural fruit of a salutary rivalry, when a generous sympathy is wanting; it is an odious state of mind arising out of an excess of rivalry on the one hand, and a deficiency of sympathy on the other. Let this styleof objections therefore pass. But a more serious deficiency in the Aristotelian doctrine seems to reveal itself, when it is said, This morality is merely prudential and calculating; it regulates but it does not move: it supplies the pilot at the helm, and gives him a curiously marked compass to steer by, but it leaves the ship in a stagnant ocean without wind and without tides. Now there is something in this objection, but not nearly so much as appears on the surface. Aristotle certainly is not an emotional writer; he does not stir the affections; he will never be a favourite with women, or with poets, or with evangelists, or with any person—and this is by no means the worst sort of person—whose head requires to be reached through his heart. It is not true, however, that he commits the folly of attempting to construct a steam-engine without steam. He finds the steam there, and the engine too ready-made, and his only object is to supply a regulator, because a regulator is the chief thing wanted. Whatever an unprincipled or paradoxical Sophist here and there might assert, neither Aristotle nor any notable philosopher of antiquity ever thought it necessary, to commence his moral theory with a systematic controversion of the Hobbesian doctrine that man is naturally all selfish, a creature that if left without policemen and executioners would necessarily grow up into a mere intellectual tigerhood. Aristotle assumed, and expressly asserts, that man is naturally a social animal; the social instincts which form families and friendships, clanships and nationalities, being among the most marked peculiarities of his complex nature: these instincts, he knew well, constantly exist in sufficient and morethan sufficient strength; they bubble out like streams from the mountain side, which require only a calculated control to make them useful; they are the luxuriant overgrowth of a rich soil, which demands, not the stimulus of a strong manure, but the check of a wise pruning-hook. That this was Aristotle’s view is quite plain; for he not only believes in nature generally, as opposed to the institutions and conventions (νόμος) so much in favour with the Sophists, but he devotes two whole books to what he calls Φιλία, a word commonly translated “friendship,” but which in the Nicomachean Ethics is used in the widest sense to designate all the social sympathies and feelings implanted in man by Nature, with the relations springing therefrom; and this part of his work, as Grant well observes, is treated with a depth and moral earnestness that makes the reader feel the supreme importance attached to it by its illustrious author.[184.1]Aristotle therefore is not to be blamed for ignoring the great motive powers of moral life; he only does not directly address them; it was not his vocation; he was no poet, no apostle; and even without poets and apostles, Nature, he might well imagine, was always strong enough for that part of the business. But even without the fervid wheels of passion there lies in the Aristotelian philosophy, at least for a certain class of noble minds, a driving power of the most approved efficiency. That driving power is simply the love of perfection. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” To live in the most excellent way, accordingto the true excellence of man, is the constant ideal of an Aristotelian philosopher. And so long as the lofty consciousness of this ideal bears him up, he requires neither whip nor spur to incite him to continue in a virtuous career. He acts in the true spirit of the poet when he says—