Abhba.
SHAKSPEARE READINGS, NO. VII.
"What are 'Aristotle's checks?'"
This is the question that Mr. Collier proposed in support of the alteration of checks into ethics, at p. 144. of his Notes and Emendations. He terms checks "an absurd blunder," and in the preface he again introduces it, passing upon it the same unqualified sentence of excommunication, as upon "bosom multiplied," viz. "it can never be repeated." In this opinion he is backed by most of the public scribes of the day, especially by the critic of the Gentleman's Magazine for April, who declares "we should be very sorry to have to discover what the editors have understood by the checks of Aristotle." Furthermore, this critic thinks that "it is extremely singular that the mistake should have remained so long uncorrected;" and he intimates that they who have found any meaning in checks, have done so only because, through ignorance, they could find no meaning in ethics.
Hence it becomes necessary for those who do find a meaning in checks, to defend that meaning; and hence I undertake to answer Mr. Collier's question.
Aristotle's checks are those moral adjustments that form the distinguishing feature of his philosophy.
They are the eyes of reason, whereby he would teach man to avoid divergence from the straight path of happiness.
They are his moderators, his mediocrities, his metriopathics.
They are his philosophical steering-marks, his moral guiding-lines, whereby the passions are to be kept in the via media; as much removed from total abnegation on the one hand, as from immoderate indulgence on the other.