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CHAPTERS

FROM

ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS.

INTRODUCTION.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY is sometimes thought of as an abstract study which treats of human life out of relation to definite circumstances of time or place. This is to ignore the fact that philosophy, like science, art, and religion, stands in organic relation to the age and nation whose philosophy it is. Springing from the need to express in an orderly system man's deepest thoughts about life and mind, it would be strange if it did not reflect the essential features of the age of which the thinker is a part. This was in a special degree true of the great philosophies in Greece. It is true, indeed, that the speculations of the pre-Socratic philosophers were little coloured by the particular circumstances of the time. This was due partly to the physical character of the speculations themselves and partly to the cosmopolitan character of the thinkers. But it was the glory of Socrates, in directing attention to human life as the proper

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subject of investigation, to have brought philosophy down from heaven, and, in doing so, to have given it a home in Greece, and more particularly in Athens. Henceforth it is only possible to understand the leading features of Greek philosophy, whether in Plato, in Aristotle, or in the Stoics and Epicureans, in the light of the circumstances of the time that produced them.

Though not himself born in Athens, nor in Greece proper at all, Aristotle * spent the best part of his life after the age of seventeen in that city, and in all his speculations on the nature of social happiness he has the life of the ordinary Athenian citizen in view. For the outlines of that life the English reader of the Ethics must be referred to some good History of Greece, such as Mr. Evelyn Abbott's. We can here only very briefly summarize some of its leading features.

1. It was lived in a city of about one-half the population of Birmingham.† The city was surrounded *The best accredited dates of his birth and death are 384 B.C. and 322 B.C. He resided at Athens from seventeen to thirty-seven, and from forty-nine to sixty-one, about thirty-two years in all.

†The following estimate, made by Professor Sonnenschein, on the basis of recent researches as to the population of Athens in the 5th century B.C., may be taken as approximately correct.

1. Males who were full citizens, probably ..

...

30,000

2. Women and children belonging to free population 70,000
3. Resident aliens at least

...

...

...

...

... 10,000
100,000

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4. Slaves uncertain, but at the very least

As the above estimate for women and children is distinctly a low one, and no estimate has been made of freedmen, the number of whom is quite uncertain, we are, perhaps, justified in placing the total home population at something like 250,000, the figure suggested in the text.

by a small agricultural area about the size of Warwickshire, which furnished such portion of its food supply as was not purchased from abroad. Beyond the borders of Attica, both north and south, were other cities of a similar kind-Thebes, Corinth, Argos, Sparta. All these owned a common nationality as the city-homes of Hellenes. Otherwise they formed independent communities, each with its own form of government, its own separate interests, and its own foreign policy.

While the bounds of these city-states were thus narrower than anything with which we are acquainted, within these bounds the life of the citizens was much simpler and more homogeneous than in any modern community even of the same size. In the aforementioned population there were probably not more than thirty thousand who possessed the rights and owed to one another the obligations of free and equal citizens. Below these and the class of free-born women and children belonging to them, stood the larger portion of the inhabitants, consisting of traders, artisans, and agricultural labourers, who, for the most part, were either slaves or aliens. Within the narrow class of fully privileged citizens, moreover, there were few, if any, of the divisions which separate one portion of a modern community from another, and tend to obscure the common duty which the members owe to the state or municipality. There were as yet no deep religious differences, no Catholics and Protestants, no Church and Dissent, no strongly marked division between labour and capital, rich and poor, town and country. It is

true that most cities were divided into two great political parties-the oligarchical and the democratic

-one or other of which was always ready to call in foreign aid. But, as has been well observed, the very intensity of this political rivalry bore witness to the vividness with which the members of all parties realized their interest in the prize of victory.

2. It was a public life, or, at any rate, a life in public. It follows from what has just been said that the chief influences which moulded the character of the citizens were different from those which operate on the members of a modern community. Professor Marshall has suggested that the factor which in modern life is of most importance in the formation of character is the business by which a man earns his livelihood. But in the ancient world of the Greek republics the typical citizen had no business in the modern sense of the word. He was not engaged to any extent in earning his livelihood by trade or profession. It is true that he spent part of his time in the management of his own private affairs. But this consisted to a large extent in the administration of property which he had for the most part inherited, and was always subordinated to his public and especially to his military duties. These latter came nearer than anything else to what we might call his "profession." Every citizen was also a soldier. At no period-we might say on no day-of his life was he free from the liability to be called upon to take the field in defence of his country and hearth, * With the exception of his religion.

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