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by exercise. Similarly, in respect to habit he notes that continuity of training is the great means of giving the right bent to character, or, as he puts it, making "our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy." In this he has the support of Professor Bain, who, in a passage which he quotes, points out that "the peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. It is necessary above all things in such a situation never to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right. The essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition under any circumstances. This is the theoretically best career of moral progress." †

§3. The Test of Virtue.

[II. c. iii. § 1.]

The test that Aristotle proposes of the completely good act, viz. the pleasure that attends it, suggests several difficulties. Is it, say, applicable to courage? Must we withhold approval from the courageous man who faces wounds and death on the battle-field · unless he does so not only without pain but with * Op. cit. ii. pp. 401 and 441.

Ibid. p. 123. Cf. Bain's The Emotions and the Will, p. 440.

But

exhilaration and joy? If not, we have the paradox that the better and happier a man is the more painful the act is likely to be, since he has the more to lose. This difficulty is met partly by pointing out that the virtue of courage is itself defined as a certain attitude of mind in the presence of pain or the prospect of pain, and that by hypothesis it involves more or less of pain; partly by noting that even here the more disciplined the character, the more transient the pain and the greater the room for the exultation and élan which we associate with the heroic act.* perhaps the chief difficulty which occurs to the modern reader is not that of applying the test in special cases, such as courage, but of applying it at all. The doctrine seems to contradict a commonly received idea that the greater the effort required for a good action, the greater the virtue shown in performing it, and that so far is it from being true that the readiness and ease with which an action is performed are the test of its moral quality, that only those actions are truly good which are done contrary to inclination merely because they are right.

The difficulty here, which we may admit is a real one, is met by making a distinction which throws further light on Aristotle's doctrine-the distinction, namely, between the virtue or excellence that is shown in the actions of the fully developed character, and the merit or credit which we attribute to the actions of the man whose character is still, so to speak, in the gristle. It is quite true that the action of the man *See III. ix. 2 foll. (p. 256).

of strong undisciplined desires who succeeds in doing what is right in spite of temptation, affects us in a different way from that of the man who does it with the ease and certainty of habit. We mark this difference by speaking of the former as more meritorious. But it would be a mistake to maintain that it is a better action. On the contrary, if it is the mark of a good act to be the outcome of a good character, we must maintain that the better the character the better the action. A closer view of the act itself will probably convince us that this is so. For, in the first place, the very ease with which it is performed gives it a grace and finish that the other wants. Pleasure, according to Aristotle, is not merely the sign of perfection; it is the cause of it.* But, in the second place, the man who does his duty > "because he likes to," escapes a danger to which the other is exposed. Such a man takes his good actions like the events of nature, as something to be expected. They are "all in the day's work." It does not, therefore, strike him to approve them. They are accordingly the less likely to be marred by any feeling of self-complacency. To have won a victory over one's self may naturally enough be a cause of self-congratulation. But it is also humiliating enough, when we come to think of it, to have had to win a victory over one's self at all.

* See chapter xiii. p. 201.

+ Mr. Leslie Stephen says somewhere that after forty a man has no right to have a conscience. This applies to the approval as well as to the disapproval of conscience.

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§4. Character and Action.

[II. c. iv. §§ 1-3.]

Chapter iv. opens with the statement of an objection to the theory of habit as just explained. Seeing that good action presupposes good habit, how can the latter have its origin in the former ? The sections in which Aristotle states his reply are not without obscurity, owing to a certain confusion in the thought. In § 2 it is pointed out that the objection rests on a failure to distinguish acts which are formally or accidentally right, from those which as the outcome of good character are right in the full sense. The second part (§ 3) is a criticism of the popular analogy between art and morality, and the obscurity comes from the looseness of the relation in which this criticism stands to the rest of the argument. Not only does it throw no further light on the difficulty with which the chapter opens, but it introduces a new difficulty, viz. that of the relation between virtue and knowledge, which is here only partially met.

Apart, however, from the bearing of these sections on the particular objection to which they are intended to furnish the reply, they are interesting as throwing light upon Aristotle's views on two questions which naturally rise in connexion with the present discussion: (a) What is the relation between the goodness of an act and the motive of it? (b) What is the true relation between art and morality?

(a) The objection itself, suggested in c. iv. § I, is

perhaps not one that would naturally have suggested itself to a modern reader. It seems quite natural to us to separate off action on the one hand from character and motive on the other, and we find no difficulty in speaking of actions as good independently of the will that they express. It is even characteristic of the current utilitarian view to justify this distinction on the ground that an action is right and good because it "produces happiness," not because it is the act of a good man.* And indeed it is difficult to see how, if we grant the utilitarian contention that the end or good is something different from virtue or goodness, and that the good action is valuable only in so far as it tends to produce pleasure or happiness, the good character only in so far as it tends to produce good actions, this conclusion can be avoided. There is in this case no organic connexion between good character or virtue and the end for which it exists, and an action may be in the fullest sense good whatever the character of the man who does it.

Now, it is true that the contrast in Aristotle's mind is not the modern one between motive and consequence, but between action which is the result, say, of obedience to a command, and action which is the outcome of a fully developed character. Yet the statement of the objection and the reply to it have a deeper interest for us on account of the complete reversal of the current distinction which they imply. According to Aristotle's view we must deny goodness of action, however good may be its consequences, *See Mill's Utilitarianism, chap. ii. p. 26.

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