I
Before the golden age of Greek philosophy there was no Ethics in the strictest sense. Philosophy proper occupied itself primarily with ontological questions—questions as to the origin and constitution of the material world. It was only when mythology and religion had lost their hold upon the cultured, and the traditions of the poets had come to be doubted, that inquiries as to the meaning of life and conduct arose.
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The Sophists may be regarded as the pioneers of ethical science. This body of professional teachers, who appeared about the fifth century in Greece, drew attention to the vagueness of common opinion and began to teach the art of conduct. Of these Protagoras is the most famous, and to him is attributed the saying, 'Man is the measure of all things.' As applied to conduct, this dictum is commonly interpreted as meaning that good is entirely subjective, relative to the individual. Viewed in this light the saying is one-sided and sceptical, subversive of all objective morality. But the dictum may be regarded as expressing an important truth, that the good is personal and must ultimately be the good for man as man, therefore for all men.
1. It was Socrates, however, who, as it was said, first called philosophy from heaven to the sphere of this earth, and diverted men's minds from the consideration of natural things to the affairs of human life. He was indeed the first moral philosopher, inasmuch as that, while the Sophists merely talked at large about justice and virtue, he asked what these terms really meant. Living in an age when the old guides of life—law and custom—were losing their hold upon men, he was compelled to find a substitute for them by reflection upon the meaning and object of existence. For him the source of evil is want of thought, and his aim is to awaken men to the realisation of what they are, and what they must seek if they would make the best of their lives. He is the prophet of clear self-consciousness. 'Know thyself' is his motto, and he maintains that all virtue must be founded on such knowledge. A life without reflection upon the meaning of existence is unworthy of a man.[1] Hence the famous Socratic dictum, 'Virtue is knowledge.' Both negatively and positively Socrates held this principle to be true. For, on the one hand, he who is not conscious of the good and does not know in what it consists, cannot possibly pursue it. And, on the other hand, if a man is once alive to his real good, how can he do otherwise than pursue it? No one therefore does {37} wrong willingly. Let a man know what is right, and he will do it. Knowledge of virtue is not, however, distinct from self-interest. Every one naturally seeks the good simply because he sees that the good is identical with his ultimate happiness. The wise man is the happy man. Hence to know oneself is the secret of well-being. Let each be master of himself, knowing what he seeks, and seeking what he knows—that, for Socrates, is the first principle of Ethics, the condition of all moral life. This view is obviously one-sided and essentially individualistic, excluding all those forms of morality which are pursued unconsciously, and are due more to the influence of intuitive perception and social habit than to clear and definite knowledge. The merit of Socrates, however, lies in his demand for ethical reflection, and his insistence upon man not only acting rightly, but acting from the right motive.
2. While Socrates was the first to direct attention to the nature of virtue, it received from Plato a more systematic treatment. Platonic philosophy may be described as an extension to the universe of the principles which Socrates applied to the life of the individual. Plato attempts to define the end of man by his place in the cosmos; and by bringing Ethics into connection with Metaphysics he asks What is the idea of man as a part of universal reality? Two main influences combined to produce his conception of virtue. First, in opposition to the Heraclitean doctrine of perpetual change, he contended for something real and permanent. Second, in antagonism to the Sophistic theory of the conventional origin of the moral law, he maintained that man's chief end was the good which was fixed in the eternal nature of things, and did not consist in the pursuit of transient pleasures. Hence, in two respects, Plato goes beyond Socrates. He puts opinion, which is his name for ordinary consciousness, between ignorance and knowledge, ascribing to it a certain measure of truth, and making it the starting-point for reflection. And further, he transforms the Socratic idea of morality, rejecting the notion that its principle is to be found in a mere calculation of pleasures, {38} and maintaining that particular goods must be estimated by the good of life as a whole. Plato's philosophy rests upon his doctrine of ideas, which, as the types of permanent reality, represent the eternal nature of things; and the problem of life is to rise from opinion to truth, from appearance to reality, and attain to the ideal principle of unity. The highest good Plato identifies with God, and man's end is ultimately to be found in the knowledge of, and communion with, the eternal.
The human soul he conceived to be a mixture of two elements. In virtue of its higher spiritual nature it participates in the world of ideas, the life of God: and in virtue of its lower or animal impulses, in the corporeal world of decay. These two dissimilar parts are connected by an intermediate element called by Plato thymos or courage, implying the emotions or affections of the heart. Hence a threefold constitution of the soul is conceived—the rational powers, the emotional desires, and the animal passions. If we ask who is the good man? Plato answers, it is the man in whom these three elements are harmonised. On the basis of this psychology Plato classifies and determines the virtues—adopting the four cardinal virtues of Greek tradition as the fundamental types of morality. Wisdom is the quality, or condition of all virtue and the crown of the moral life: courage is the virtue of the emotional part of man; temperance or moderation, the virtue of the lower appetites: while justice is the unity and the principle of the others. Virtue is thus no longer identified with knowledge simply. Another source of vice besides ignorance is assumed, viz., the disorder and conflict of the soul; and the well-being of man lies in the attainment of a well-ordered and harmonious life. As health is the harmony of the body, so virtue is the harmony of the soul—a condition of perfection in which every desire is kept in control and every function performs its part with a view to the good of the whole. Morality, however, does not belong merely to the individual, but has its perfect realisation in the state in which the three elements of the soul have their {39} counterpart in the threefold rank of society. Man is indeed but a type of a larger cosmos, and it is not as an individual but as a citizen that he finds his station and duties, and is capable of realising his true life.
Thus we see how Plato is led to correct the shortcomings of Socrates—his abrupt distinction between ignorance and knowledge, his vagueness as to the meaning of the good, and his tendency to emphasise the subjective side of virtue and withdraw the individual from the community of which he is essentially a part. But in developing his theory of ideas Plato has represented the true life of man as consisting in the knowledge of, and indeed in absorption in, God, a state to which man can only attain by the suppression of his natural impulses and withdrawal from earthly life: and though there is not wanting in Plato's later teaching the higher conception of the transformation of the animal passions, he is not wholly successful in overcoming the dualism between impulse and reason which besets some of the earlier dialogues.
It is a striking proof of the vitality of Plato that his teaching has affected every form of idealism and has helped to shape the history of religious thought in all ages. Not only many of the early Fathers, such as Clement and Origen, but the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, the Cambridge Platonists of the seventeenth century, and also the German theologians, Baur and Schleiermacher, have recognised numerous coincidences between Christianity and Platonism: as Bishop Westcott has said, 'Plato points to St. John.'[2] His influence may be detected in some of the greatest Christian poetry of our own country, especially in that of Wordsworth and Tennyson. For Plato believes, in common with the greatest of every age, in 'that inborn passion for perfection,' that innate though often unconscious yearning after the true, the beautiful, the good,
'Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,'
which are the heritage of human nature.
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3. The Ethics of Aristotle does not essentially differ from that of Plato. He is the first to treat of morals formally as a science, which, however, in his hands becomes a division of politics. Man, says Aristotle, is really a social animal. Even more decisively than Plato, therefore, he treats man as a part of society. While in Plato there is the foreshadowing of the truth that the goal of moral endeavour lies in godlikeness, with Aristotle the goal is confined to this life and is conceived simply as the earthly well-being of the moral subject. 'Death,' he declares, 'is the greatest of all evils, for it is the end.' Aristotle begins his great work on Ethics with the discussion of the chief good, which he declares to be happiness or well-being. But happiness does not consist in sensual pleasure, nor even in the pursuit of honour, but in an 'activity of the soul in accordance with reason.'[3] There are required for this life of right thinking and right doing not only suitable environment but proper instruction. Virtue is not virtuous until it is a habit, and the only way to be virtuous is to practise virtue. To be virtuous a man's conduct must be a law for him, the regular expression of his will. Hence the virtues are habits of deliberate choice, and not natural endowments. Following Plato, Aristotle sees that there is in man a number of impulses struggling for the mastery of the soul, hence he is led to assume that the natural instincts need guidance and control. Moderation is therefore the one chief virtue; and moral excellence consists in an activity which at every point seeks to strike a 'mean' between two opposite excesses. Virtue in general, then, may be defined as the observation of the due mean in action. Aristotle also follows Plato in assigning the ideal good to contemplation, and in exalting the life of reason and speculation above all others. In thus idealising the contemplative life he was but reflecting the spirit of his race. This apotheosis of knowledge infected all Greek thought, and found exaggerated expression in the religious absorption of Neo-Platonism.
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Without dwelling further upon the ethical philosophy of Aristotle, a defect which at once strikes a modern in regard to his scheme of virtues is that benevolence is not recognised, except obscurely as a form of magnanimity; and that, in general, the gentler virtues, so prominent in Christianity, have little place in the list. The virtues are chiefly aristocratic. Favourable conditions are needed for their cultivation. They are not possible for a slave, and hardly for those engaged in 'mercenary occupations.'[4] Further, it may be remarked that habit of itself does not make a man virtuous. Morality cannot consist in a mere succession of customary acts. 'One good custom would corrupt the world,' and habit is frequently a hindrance rather than a help to the moral life. But the main defect of Aristotle's treatment of virtue is that he tends to regard the passions as irrational, and he does not see that passions if wholly evil could have no 'mean.' Reason pervades all the lower appetites of man: and the instincts and desires, instead of being treated as elements which must be suppressed, ought to be regarded rather as powers to be transformed and employed as vehicles of the moral life. At the same time there are not wanting passages in Aristotle as well as in Plato which, instead of emphasising the avoidance of excess, regard virtue as consisting in complementary elements—the addition of one virtuous characteristic to another—'that balance of contrasted qualities which meets us at every turn in the distinguished personalities of the Hellenic race, and which is too often thought of in a merely negative way, as the avoidance of excess rather than as the highest outcome of an intense and many-sided vitality.'[5]
4. After Aristotle philosophy rapidly declined, and Ethics degenerated into popular moralising which manifested itself chiefly in a growing depreciation of good as the end {42} of life. The conflicting elements of reason and impulse, which neither Plato nor Aristotle succeeded in harmonising, gave rise ultimately to two opposite interpretations of the moral life. The Stoics selected the rational nature as the true guide to an ethical system, but they gave to it a supremacy so rigid as to threaten the extinction of the affections. The Epicureans, on the other hand, fastening upon the emotions as the measure of truth, emphasised the happiness of the individual as the chief good—a doctrine which led some of the followers of Epicurus to justify even sensual enjoyment. It is not necessary to dwell upon the details of Epicureanism, for though its description of the 'wise man,' as that of a person who prudently steered a middle course between passion and asceticism, was one which exercised considerable influence upon the morals of the age, it is the doctrines of Stoicism which more especially have come into contact with Christianity. Without discussing the Stoic conception of the world as interpenetrated and controlled by an inherent spirit, and the consequent view of life as proceeding from God and being in all its parts equally divine, we may note that the Stoics, under the influence of Platonism, regarded self-realisation as the true end of man. This idea they expressed in the formula, 'Life according to nature.' The wise man is he who seeks to live in all the circumstances of life in agreement with his rational nature. The law of nature is to avoid what is hurtful and strive for what is appropriate. Pleasure, though not the immediate object of man, arises as an accompaniment of a well-ordered life. Pleasure and pain are, however, really accidents, to be met by the wise man with indifference. He alone is free who acknowledges the absolute supremacy of reason and makes himself independent of earthly desires. This life of freedom is open to all: since all men are members of one body. The slave may be as free as the consul, and in every station of life each may make the world serve him by living in harmony with it.
There is a certain sublimity in the ethics of Stoicism which has always appealed to noble minds. 'It inspired,' {43} says Mr. Lecky, 'nearly all the great characters of the early Roman Empire, and nerved every attempt to maintain the dignity and freedom of the human soul.'[6] But we cannot close our eyes to its defects. Divine providence, though frequently dwelt upon, signified little more for the Stoic than destiny or fate. Harmony with nature was simply a sense of proud self-sufficiency. Stoicism is the glorification of reason, even to the extent of suppressing all emotion. Sin is unreason, and salvation lies in an external control of the passions—in indifference and apathy begotten of the subordination of desire to reason.
The chief merit of Stoicism is that in an age of moral degeneracy it insisted upon the necessity of integrity in all the conditions of life. In its preference for the joys of the inner life and its scorn of the delights of sense; in its emphasis upon individual responsibility and duty; above all, in its advocacy of a common humanity and its belief in the relation of each human soul to God, Roman Stoicism, as revealed in the writings of a Seneca, an Epictetus, and a Marcus Aurelius, not only showed how high Paganism at its best could reach, but proved in a measure a preparation for Christianity, with whose practical truths it had much in common.
The affinities between Stoicism and Paulinism have been frequently pointed out, and the similarity in language and thought can scarcely be accounted for by coincidence. There are, however, elements in Stoicism which St. Paul would never have dreamt of assimilating. The material conception of the world, the self-conscious pride, the absence of all sense of sin, the temper of apathy, and unnatural suppression of feelings were ideas which could not but rouse the apostle's strongest antagonism. But, on the other hand, there were characteristics of a nobler order in Stoic morality which, we may well believe, Paul found ready to his hand and did not hesitate to incorporate in his teaching. Of these we may mention, the Immanence of God, the idea of Wisdom, the conception of freedom as {44} the prerogative of the individual, and the notion of brotherhood as the goal of humanity.[7]
The Roman Stoics, notwithstanding their theoretic interest in moral questions, lived in an ideal world, and hardly attempted to bring their views into connection with the facts of life. Their philosophy was a refuge from the evil around them rather than an effort to remove it. They seek to overcome the world by being indifferent to it. In Neo-Platonism—the last of the Greek schools of philosophy—this tendency to withdraw from life and its problems becomes still more marked. Absorption in God is the goal of existence and the essence of religion. 'Man is left alone with God without any world to mediate between them, and in the ecstatic vision of the Absolute the light of reason is extinguished.'[8]
Meagre as our sketch of ancient thought has necessarily been, it is perhaps enough to show that the debt of religion to Greek and Roman Ethics is incalculable. It lifted man above vague wonder, and gave him courage to define his relation to existence. It caused him to ask questions of experience, and awakened him to the value of life and the meaning of freedom, duty, and good. Finally, it brought into view those contrasted aims of life and society which find their solution in the Christian ideal.[9]