[Footnote 956: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. ii. ch. xviii.
[Footnote 957: ][ (return) ] "Iliad," xxiv., l. 660.
Nor can we let our young people know that, in the words of Æschylus--
"'When to destruction God will plague a house
He plants among the members guilt and sin.'" [958]
Whatever in the writings of Homer and the tragic poets give countenance to the notion that God is, in the remotest sense the author of sin, must be expunged. Here is clearly a great advance in ethical conceptions.
The great defect in the ethical system of Plato was the identification of evil with the inferior or corporeal nature of man--"the irascible and concupiscible elements," fashioned by the junior divinities. The rational and immortal part of man's nature, which is derived immediately from God--the Supreme Good, naturally chooses the good as its supreme end and destination. Hence he adopted the Socratic maxim "that no man is willingly evil," that is, no man deliberately chooses evil as evil, but only as a seeming good--he does not choose evil as an end, though he may choose it voluntarily as a means. Plato manifests great solicitude to guard this maxim from misconception and abuse. Man has, in his judgment, the power to act in harmony with his higher reason, or contrary to reason; to obey the voice of conscience or the clamors of passion, and consequently he is the object of praise or blame, reward or punishment. "When a man does not consider himself, but others, as the cause of his own sins,.... and even seeks to excuse himself from blame, he dishonors and injures his own soul; so, also, when contrary to reason.... he indulges in pleasure, he dishonors it by filling it with vice and remorse." [959] The work and effort of life, the end of this probationary economy, is to make reason triumphant over passion, and discipline ourselves to a purer and nobler life.
[Footnote 958: ][ (return) ] "Republic," bk. ii. ch, xviii., xix.
[Footnote 959: ][ (return) ] "Laws," bk. v. ch. i.