The Stoic asks him whether he has kept all the commandments. If he has, then he may be promoted to serve the great Commander in other departments of the cosmic order. If he has broken the least of them, no matter on what pretext, or under what temptation, he is irrevocably doomed. Plato asks him how well he has managed to keep under his appetites and passions. If the man has risen above them, Plato will promote him to seats nearer the perfect goodness of the gods. If he has slipped or failed, then he must return for longer probation in the prison-house of sense.
Aristotle's judgment seat is a very different place. A man comes to him who has had a very sorry time: who has broken many commandments; who has yielded time and again to sensuous desires; yet who is a good husband, a kind father, an honest workman, a loyal citizen, a disinterested scientist or artist, a lover of his fellows, a worshipper of God's beauty and beneficence; and in spite of the sad time he has had, in spite of the laws he has broken, in spite of the appetites which have proved too strong for him, Aristotle gives him his hand, and bids him go up higher. For that man stands in genuine relations to some aspects of the great social end to which he devotes himself. And because some portion of the real world has been made better by the conception of it he has cherished, and the fidelity with which he has translated his conception into fact, therefore a share in the great glory of the splendid whole belongs of right to him. Good honest work, after an ideal plan, to the full measure of his powers, with wise selection of appropriate means, gives each individual his place and rank in the vast workshop wherein the eternal thoughts of God, revealed to men as their several ideals, are wrought out into the actuality of the social, economic, political, æsthetic and spiritual order of the world.
On the other hand, the man of scattered and unfruitful pleasures, the man of merely clear conscience, pure life, unstained reputation, with his boast of rites observed, and ceremonies performed, and laws unbroken, "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null," is the man above all others whom Aristotle cannot endure.
Do you wish, then, to know precisely where you stand in the scale of personality? Here is the test. How large a section of this world do you care for, in such a vital, responsible way, that you are thinking about its welfare, forming schemes for its improvement, bending your energies toward its advancement? Do you care for your profession in that way? Do you care for your family like that? Do you love your country with such jealous solicitude for its honour and prosperity? Can you honestly say that your neighbour gets represented in your mind in this imaginative, sympathetic, helpful way? Do you think of God's great universe as something in the goodness of which you rejoice, and for the welfare of which you are earnestly enlisted? Begin down at the bottom, with your stomach, your pocket-book, your calling list, and go up the scale until you come to these wider interests, and mark the point where you cease to think how these things might be better than they are and to work to make them so, and that point where your imagination and your service stops, and your indifference and irresponsibility begins, will show you precisely how you stand on the rank-book of God. The magnitude of the ends you see and serve is the measure of your personality. Personality is not an entity we carry around in our spiritual pockets. It is an energy, which is no whit larger or smaller than the ends it aims at and the work it does. If you are not doing anything or caring for anybody, or devoted to any end, you will not be called up at some future time and formally punished for your negligence. Plato might flatter your self-importance with that notion, but not Aristotle. Aristotle tells you, not that your soul will be punished hereafter, but that it is lost already.
Goodness does not consist in doing or refraining from doing this or that particular thing. It depends on the whole aim and purpose of the man who does it, or refrains from doing it. Anything which a good man does as part of the best plan of life is made thereby a good act. And anything that a bad man does, as part of a bad plan of life, becomes thereby an evil act. Precisely the same external act is good for one man and bad for another. An example or two will make this clear.
Two men seek political office. For one man it is the gate of heaven; to the other it is the door to hell. One man has established himself in a business or profession in which he can earn an honest living and support his family. He has acquired sufficient standing in his business so that he can turn it over temporarily to his partners or subordinates. He has solved his own problem; and he has strength, time, energy, capacity, money, which he can give to solving the problems of the public. Were he to shirk public office, or evade it, or fail to take all legitimate means to secure it, he would be a coward, a traitor, a parasite on the body politic. For there is good work to be done, which he is able to do, and can afford to do, without unreasonable sacrifice of himself or his family. Hence public office is for this man the gateway of heaven.
The other man has not mastered any business or profession; he has not made himself indispensable to any employer or firm; he has no permanent means of supporting himself and his family. He sees a political office in which he can get a little more salary for doing a good deal less work than is possible in his present position. He seeks the office, as a means of getting his living out of the public. From that day forth he joins the horde of mere office-seekers, aiming to get out of the public a living he is too lazy, or too incompetent, or too proud to earn in private employment. Thus the very same external act, which was the other man's strait, narrow gateway to heaven, is for this man the broad, easy descent into hell.
Two women join the same woman's club, and take part in the same programme. One of them has her heart in her home; has fulfilled all the sweet charities of daughter, sister, wife, or mother; and in order to bring back to these loved ones at home wider interests, larger friendships, and a richer and more varied interest in life, has gone out into the work and life of the club. No angel in heaven is better employed than she in the preparation and delivery of her papers and her attendance on committee meetings and afternoon teas.
The other woman finds home life dull and monotonous. She likes to get away from her children. She craves excitement, flattery, fame, social importance. She is restless, irritable, out of sorts, censorious, complaining at home; animated, gracious, affable, complaisant abroad. For drudgery and duty she has no strength, taste, or talent; and the thought of these things are enough to give her dyspepsia, insomnia, and nervous prostration. But for all sorts of public functions, for the preparation of reports, and the organisation of new charitable and philanthropic and social schemes, she has all the energy of a steam-engine, the power of a dynamo. When this woman joins a new club, or writes a new paper, or gets a new office, though she does not a single thing more than her angel sister who sits by her side, she is playing the part of a devil.
It is not what one does; it is the whole purpose of life consciously or unconsciously expressed in the doing that measures the worth of the man or woman who does it. At the family table, at the bench in the shop, at the desk in the office, in the seats at the theatre, in the ranks of the army, in the pews of the church, saint and sinner sit side by side; and often the keenest outward observer cannot detect the slightest difference in the particular things that they do. The good man is he who, in each act he does or refrains from doing, is seeking the good of all the persons who are affected by his action. The bad man is the man who, whatever he does or refrains from doing, leaves out of account the interests of some of the people whom his action is sure to affect. Is there any sphere of human welfare to which you are indifferent? Are there any people in the world whose interests you deliberately disregard? Then, no matter how many acts of charity and philanthropy, and industry and public spirit you perform—acts which would be good if a good man did them—in spite of them all, you are to that extent an evil man.