[Footnote 901: ][ (return) ] Ibid., bk. i. § 12.
The era of popular and unconscious morality is represented by the times of Homer, Hesiod, the Gnomic poets, and "the Seven Wise Men of Greece."
This was an age of instinctive action, rather than reflection--of poetry and feeling, rather than analytic thought. The rules of life were presented in maxims and proverbs, which do not rise above prudential counsels or empirical deductions. Morality was immediately associated with the religion of the state, and the will of the gods was the highest law for men. "Homer and Hesiod, and the Gnomic poets, constituted the educational course," to which may be added the saws and aphorisms of the Seven Wise Men, and we have before us the main sources of Greek views of duty. When the question was asked--"What is right?" the answer was given by a quotation from Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, and the like. The morality of Homer "is concrete, not abstract; it expresses the conception of a heroic life, rather than a philosophic theory. It is mixed up with a religion which really consists in a celebration of the beauty of nature, and in a deification of the strong and brilliant qualities of human nature. It is a morality uninfluenced by a regard for a future life. It clings with intense enjoyment and love to the present world, and the state after death looms up in the distance as a cold and repugnant shadow. And yet it would often hold death preferable to disgrace. The distinction between a noble and ignoble life is strongly marked in Homer, and yet a sense of right and wrong about particular actions seems fluctuating" and confused. [902] A sensuous conception of happiness is the chief good, and mere temporal advantage the principal reward of virtue. We hear nothing of the approving smile of conscience, of inward self-satisfaction, and peace, and harmony, resulting from the practice of virtue. Justice, energy, temperance, chastity, are enjoined, because they secure temporal good. And yet, with all this imperfection, the poets present "a remarkable picture of primitive simplicity, chastity, justice, and practical piety, under the three-fold influence of right moral feeling, mutual and fear of the divine displeasure." [903]
[Footnote 902: ][ (return) ] Grant's "Aristotle's Ethics," vol. i. p. 51.
[Footnote 903: ][ (return) ] Tyler, "Theology of the Greek Poets," p. 167.
The transitional, skeptical, or sophistical era begins with Protagoras. Poetry and proverbs had ceased to satisfy the reason of man. The awakening intellect had begun to call in question the old maxims and "wise saws," to dispute the arbitrary authority of the poets, and even to arraign the institutions of society. It had already begun to seek for some reasonable foundation of authority for the opinions, customs, laws, and institutions which had descended to them from the past, and to ask why men were obliged to do this or that? The question whether there is at bottom any real difference between truth and error, right and wrong, was now fairly before the human mind. The ultimate standard of all truth and all right, was now the grand object of pursuit. These inquiries were not, however, conducted by the Sophists with the best motives. They were not always prompted by an earnest desire to know the truth, and an earnest purpose to embrace and do the right. They talked and argued for mere effect--to display their dialectic subtilty, or their rhetorical power. They taught virtue for mere emolument and pay. They delighted, as Cicero tells us, to plead the opposite sides of a cause with equal effect. And they found exquisite pleasure in raising difficulties, maintaining paradoxes, and passing off mere tricks of oratory for solid proofs. This is the uniform representation of the sophistical spirit which is given by all the best writers who lived nearest to their times, and who are, therefore, to be presumed to have known them best. Grote [904] has made an elaborate defense of the Sophists; he charges Plato with gross misrepresentation. His portraits of them are denounced as mere caricatures, prompted by a spirit of antagonism; all antiquity is presumed to have been misled by him. No one, however, can read Grant's "Essay on the History of Moral Philosophy in Greece" [905] without feeling that his vindication of Plato is complete and unanswerable: "Plato never represents the Sophists as teaching a lax morality to their disciples. He does not make sophistry to consist in holding wicked opinions; he represents them as only too orthodox in general, [906] but capable of giving utterance to immoral paradoxes for the sake of vanity. Sophistry rather tampers and trifles with the moral convictions than directly attacks them." The Sophists were wanting in deep conviction, in moral earnestness, in sincere love of truth, in reverence for goodness and purity, and therefore their trifling, insincere, and paradoxical teaching was unfavorable to goodness of life. The tendency of their method is forcibly depicted in the words of Plato: "There are certain dogmas relating to what is just and good in which we have been brought up from childhood--obeying and reverencing them. Other opinions recommending pleasure and license we resist, out of respect for the old hereditary maxims. Well, then, a question comes up concerning what is right? He gives some answer such as he has been taught, and straightway is refuted. He tries again, and is again refuted. And, when this has happened pretty often, he is reduced to the opinion that nothing is either right or wrong; and in the same way it happens about the just and the good, and all that before we have held in reverence. On this, he naturally abandons his allegiance to the old principles and takes up with those he before resisted, and so, from being a good citizen, he becomes lawless." [907] And, in point of fact, this was the theoretical landing-place of the Sophists. We do not say they became practically "lawless" and antinomian, but they did arrive at the settled opinion that right and wrong, truth and error, are solely matter of private opinion and conventional usage. Man's own fluctuating opinion is the measure and standard of all things. [908] They who "make the laws, make them for their own advantage." [909] There is no such thing as Eternal Right. "That which appears just and honorable to each city is so for that city, as long as the opinion prevails." [910]
[Footnote 904: ][ (return) ] "History of Greece."
[Footnote 905: ][ (return) ] Aristotle's "Ethics," vol. i. ch. ii
[Footnote 906: ][ (return) ] "His teachings will be good counsels about a man's own affairs, how best to govern his family; and also about the affairs of the state, how most ably to administer and speak of state affairs."--"Protag.," § 26.