to the main features to which the analysis calls our attention. § 2. Marks of True Courage. [III. c. viii.] Both Plato and Aristotle conceive of courage as having its root in natural instinct. In a humorous passage in the Republic, Plato finds anticipations of it in the noble dog which already begins to shows signs of the philosopher in the curious mixture of gentleness and courage displayed in relation to men. We have already seen how Aristotle recognizes courage as one of the virtues which normally form a part of the natural endowment of a child. In harmony with this, while pointing out that “courageous men are actually men of quick passion," and that the truly courageous man acts with passion for his ally, Aristotle is careful to distinguish true courage in the passage before us from the courage of mere animal energy, "rushing on danger under the stimulus of pain or passion, and without foresight of the grounds of alarm." What, then, must be added in order that the animal instinct may be transformed into an element of true human courage? We shall be led to the answer if we recall what has already been said of the limitations of qualities which are merely instinctive.* (a) One of these was their unreliability. It is in the light of this test of reliability that Aristotle bids us * See chapter v. class as a spurious form of courage that which springs from mere sanguineness or confidence of success. "The courage of the sanguine man is the result of temporary feeling; he is elated by a perhaps groundless hope of victory. But the truly courageous man is actuated by steady principle. His nature is such that the law of duty is always before his eyes. Hence you may take him on a sudden without discomposing him. His courage will be ready on the shortest notice, because it is himself, not a passing mood" (Stewart). (b) Another defect of merely natural courage is that it is apt to be present as an isolated element of promise in a man's nature, and on the principle corruptio optimi pessima may coexist with a general habit of evil-doing which is all the more dangerous to society for the combination. As Aristotle himself hints in the passage quoted, courage of this kind serves only to make mischief more mischievous, just as a heavy body has a worse fall from its being heavy.' * We (c). It is not sufficient that a man should respond mechanically to the call of danger nor, again, that his actions should be socially beneficial. The true significance of Aristotle's view comes out in connexion with what he says of the state of the man's mind. have already seen how in the case of virtue in general it is essential that a man should know what he is about; and, secondly, that he should act from a right motive. These points Aristotle is careful to illustrate from the case of courage. In the first place, true courage is clearly distinguishable from the courage of * See Browning's Halbert and Hob. * ignorance--a point happily illustrated from an incident in the siege of Corinth (392 B.C.), where a party of Lacedæmonian horse under their leader Pasimachus covered the retreat of the Sicyonians by dismounting and themselves taking their shields. In the belief that the familiar E-marked bucklers covered the inferior foe, the Argives boldly advanced to the attack, the spuriousness of their courage, successful though it was in the immediate onset, being proved by their subsequent flight when they became aware of the presence of the Lacedæmonians. But, secondly, mere knowledge, even when combined with perfect training, is not of itself enough. A man may have the requisite knowledge and training, and yet for that very reason fall short of true courage. This point is brought out in the interesting and apparently contradictory passage (c. viii. § 6), in which Aristotle shows that a man may be steady in alarms, retaining the head to grasp the situation and use all his advantages to meet it, and yet after all be a coward, the reason being that there is no true citizen principle behind his act. Passing over the obvious unfairness in identifying the Socratic doctrine with the theory that experience necessarily gives courage, we come, in this distinction between the professional and the citizen-soldier, to the crucial point of the whole analysis, dividing once for all merely instinctive and merely habitual from true human courage. True courage must be for a noble object. Here, as in all true excellence, action and object, * Xenophon, History of Greece, iv. 4. consequence and motive, are inseparable. Unless the action is inspired by a noble motive, and permeated throughout its whole structure by the quality of a noble character, it has no claim to the name of courage. It is this that is the basis of the series of fine distinctions Aristotle draws in chaps. vii. § 13 and viii. §§ 1-5, marking off true courage from that which is merely mercenary (c. viii. § 6 foll.), from that which is merely prudential (c. viii. § 4), from the courage of despair, which is only a form of cowardice (c. vii. § 13), and even from that form which bears the closest resemblance to true courage, the courage of shame or of ambition (c. viii. §§ 1-3). How, we may ask, is this noble object to be conceived? The passage before us does not seem to throw any direct light on this question. Indeed, the section (c. vi. § 6) in which it is most directly alluded to seems rather to add a new element of difficulty by suggesting that the courageous act must be done simply because it is courageous, and that courage is valuable for the sake of courage. If, however, we keep steadily before us what has already been said of the unity of the virtues on the one hand, and the unity of the noble character and noble city life on the other, we shall have no difficulty in avoiding this mistake. We shall then notice, in the first place, that the emphasis is here laid, not upon the isolated act of courage, but upon the type of character which the courageous act expresses (it is this and not the act that is the "fine thing"); and in the second place, that neither is this character an isolated phenomenon, but only the inner side of the city life to which it ministers and in which it finds its end. § 3. The Greek and Modern Ideals of Courage. If with this analysis before us we now return to the limitations which, as already said, strike the modern reader in these sections, we shall have less difficulty in understanding their source, and in seeing that the difference between Aristotle's idea and our own consists rather in a widening of the field in which the virtue is exercised than in any fundamental divergence of principle. Starting with the said limitations, we may state them as follows. In the first place, physical pains, such as those of sickness, fatigue, deprivation, even death, encountered in other fields. than war, in the meeting of which with a cheerful heart so much of modern heroism consists, are either ignored or expressly excluded.* As Green very well says, "If a Christian worker' who devotes himself, unnoticed and unrewarded, at the risk of life and the sacrifice of every pleasure but that of his work, to the service of the sick, the ignorant, and the debased, were told that his ideal of virtue was in principle the same as that of the avoptioç, 'the brave man,' described by Aristotle, and if he were induced to read the description, he would probably seem to himself to find nothing of his ideal in it." In the second place, the wide field of what we are agreed to call "moral" heroism is *See chap. vi. §§ 7, 11, and 12. |