"If we regard this sublime philosophy as a preparation for Christianity instead of seeking in it a substitute for the Gospel, we shall not need to overstate its grandeur in order to estimate its real value."--Pressensé.
"Plato made me to know the true God. Jesus Christ showed me the way to Him."--St. Augustine.
The preparatory office of Grecian philosophy is also seen in the department of morals.
I. In the awakening and enthronement of Conscience as a law of duty, and the elevation and purification of the Moral Idea.
The same law of evolution, which we have seen governing the history of speculative thought, may also be traced as determining the progress of ethical inquiry. In this department there are successive stages marked, both in the individual and the national mind. There is, first, the simplicity and trust of childhood, submitting with unquestioning faith to prescribed and arbitrary laws; then the unsettled and ill-directed force of youth, questioning the authority of laws, and asking reasons why this or that is obligatory; then the philosophic wisdom of riper years, recognizing an inherent law of duty, which has an absolute rightness and an imperative obligation. There is first a dim and shadowy apprehension of some lines of moral distinction, and some consciousness of obligation, but these rest mainly upon an outward law--the observed practice of others, or the command of the parent as, in some sense, the command of God. Then, to attain to personal convictions, man passes through a stage of doubt; he asks for a ground of obligation, for an authority that shall approve itself to his own judgment and reason. At last he arrives at some ultimate principles of right, some immutable standard of duty; he recognizes an inward law of conscience, and it becomes to him as the voice of God. He extends his analysis to history, and he finds that the universal conscience of the race has, in all ages, uttered the same behest. Should he live in Christian times, he discovers a wondrous harmony between the voice of God within the heart, and the voice of God within the pages of inspiration. And now the convention of public opinion, and the laws of the state, are revered and upheld by him, just so far as they bear the imprimatur of reason and of conscience--that is, of God.
This history of the normal development of the individual mind has its counterpart in the history of humanity. There is (1.) The age of popular and unconscious morality; (2.) The transitional, skeptical, or sophistical age; and (3.) The philosophic or conscious age of morality. [899] In the "Republic" of Plato, we have these three eras represented by different persons, through the course of the dialogue. The question is started--what is Justice? and an answer is given from the stand-point of popular morality, by Polemarchus, who quotes the words of the poet Simonides,
"To give to each his due is just;" [900]
that is, justice is paying your debts. This doctrine being proved inadequate, an answer is given from the Sophistical point of view by Thrasymachus, who defines justice as "the advantage of the strongest"--that is, might is right, and right is might. [901] This answer being sharply refuted, the way is opened for a more philosophic account, which is gradually evolved in book iv., Glaucon and Adimantus personifying the practical understanding, which is gradually brought into harmony with philosophy, and Socrates the higher reason, as the purely philosophic conception. Justice is found to be the right proportion and harmonious development of all the elements of the soul, and the equal balance of all the interests of society, so as to secure a well-regulated and harmonious whole.
[Footnote 899: ][ (return) ] Grant's "Aristotle's Ethics," vol. i. p. 46.
[Footnote 900: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. i. § 6.