[Footnote 2: Optional Morality, the Morality of Reward, is exemplified as follows:—
(A) A liberal performance of duties properly so called. (a) The support of aged parents; this, though to a certain extent a legal duty, is still more a virtue, being stimulated by the approbation of one's fellows. The performance of the family duties generally is the subject of commendation. (b) The payment of debts that cannot be legally recovered, as in the case of bankrupts after receiving their discharge.
These examples typify cases (1) where no definite law is laid down, or where the law is content with a minimum; and (2) where the law is restrained by its rules of evidence or procedure. Society, in such cases, steps in and supplies a motive in the shape of reward.
(B) Pure Virtue, or Beneficence; all actions for the benefit of others without stipulation, and without reward; relief of distress, promotion of the good of individuals or of society at large. The highest honours of society are called into exercise by the highest services.
Bentham's principle of the claims of superior need cannot be fully carried out, (although he conceives it might, in some cases), by either the legal or the popular sanction. Thus, the act of the good Samaritan, the rescue of a ship's crew from drowning, could not be exacted; the law cannot require heroism. It is of importance to remark, that although Duty and Nobleness, Punishment and Reward, are in their extremes unmistakably contrasted, yet there may be a margin of doubt or ambiguity (like the passing of day into night). Thus, expressed approbation, generally speaking, belongs to Reward; yet, if it has become a thing of course, the withholding of it operates as a Punishment or a Penalty.]
[Footnote 3: The conditions that regulate the authoritative enforcement of actions, are exhaustively given in works on Jurisprudence, but they do not all concern Ethical Theory. The expedience of imposing a rule depends on the importance of the object compared with the cost of the machinery. A certain line of conduct may be highly beneficial, but may not be a fit case for coercion. For example, the law can enforce only a minimum of service: now, if the case be such, that a minimum is useless, as in helping a ship in distress, or in supporting aged parents, it is much, better to leave the case to voluntary impulses, seconded by approbation or reward. Again, an offence punished by law must be, in its nature, definable; which, makes a difficulty in such cases as insult, and defamation, and many species of fraud. Farther, the offence must be easy of detection, so that the vast majority of offenders may not escape. This limits the action of the law in unchastity.]
[Footnote 4: See, on the method of Sokrates, Appendix A.]
[Footnote 5: In setting forth, the Ethical End, the language of Sokrates was not always consistent. He sometimes stated it, as if it included an independent reference to the happiness of others; at other times, he speaks as if the end was the agent's own happiness, to which, the happiness of others was the greatest and most essential means. The first view, although not always adhered to, prevails in Xenophon; the second appears most in Plato.]
[Footnote 6: 'What Plato here calls the Knowledge of Good, or Reason,—the just discrimination and comparative appreciation, of Ends and Means—appears in the Politikus and the Euthydêmus, under the title of the Regal or Political Art, as employing or directing the results of all other arts, which are considered as subordinate: in the Protagoras, under the title of art of calculation or mensuration: in the Philêbus, as measure and proportion: in the Phaedrus (in regard to rhetoric) as the art of turning to account, for the main purpose of persuasion, all the special processes, stratagems, decorations, &c., imparted by professional masters. In the Republic, it is personified in the few venerable Elders who constitute the Reason of the society, and whose directions all the rest (Guardians and Producers) arc bound implicitly to follow: the virtue of the subordinates consisting in this implicit obedience. In the Leges, it is defined as the complete subjection in the mind, of pleasures and pains to right Reason, without which, no special aptitudes are worth, having. In the Xenophontic Memorabilia, it stands as a Sokratic authority under the title of Sophrosynê or Temperance: and the Profitable is declared identical with, the Good, as the directing and limiting principle for all human pursuits and proceedings.' (Grote's Plato, I., 362.)]
[Footnote 7: 'Indeed there is nothing more remarkable in the Gorgias, than the manner in which. Sokrates not only condemns the unmeasured, exorbitant, maleficent desires, but also depreciates and degrades all the actualities of life—all the recreative and elegant arts, including music and poetry, tragic as well as dithyrambic—all provision for the most essential wants, all protection against particular sufferings and dangers, even all service rendered to another person in the way of relief or of rescue—all the effective maintenance of public organized force, such as ships, docks, walls, arms, &c. Immediate satisfaction, or relief, and those who confer it, are treated with contempt, and presented as in hostility to the perfection of the mental structure. And it is in this point of view, that various Platonic commentators extol in an especial manner the Gorgias: as recognizing an Idea of Good superhuman and supernatural, radically disparate from pleasures and pains of any human being, and incommensurable with, them; an Universal Idea, which, though it is supposed to cast a distant light upon its particulars, is separated from them by an incalculable space, and is discernible only by the Platonic telescope.' (Grote, Gorgias)]