this faculty is when we conceive ourselves to have been wronged. The man of good sense is here the man who can put himself in the place of the wrong-doer, and "makes every allowance" for him. This "allowance" is what the Greeks called ovyyvwun, usually translated "forgiveness," but really "sympathy" or "common sense."

It seems hardly necessary to call attention to the educational bearings of these sections. If the good life is the purposeful life, and the relation of means to purpose follows the lines of the practical syllogism —if, further, the good life is the consistent life, and implies the faculty of applying a general principle in detail, the ordinary distinction between intellectual and moral training is seen to be illusory.

Similarly, if the good life is the "equitable" life, we have in the remarks upon "sense" some suggestions that may be useful for the proper understanding of the current educational theory of the relation of imagination and sympathy to practice. It has become a commonplace to emphasize the training of imagination and sympathy as factors in conduct. The Aristotelian doctrine, however, goes beyond this, and indicates the precise kind of sympathy that is here required. Thus it is important to note that it is not merely the power of feeling with others in the sense of responding to their feelings, but the power of feeling for them, that is here meant. The infection of feeling -the vague "sensibility sensibility" which was the fashion in the earlier part of the century-is one thing; the power of putting one's self in the place of another and

L

sharing his ends is quite another. But, secondly, it is the power of sympathizing with the moral element in another's ends. It is possible to sympathize with bad ends as well as with good ones, and be all the worse for such a power of sympathy. Our feelings for "others" have therefore to be checked and regulated by a feeling for the common good-our "sensibility" by common sense.

§4. Prudence and Moral Virtue.

[VI. cc. xii. and xiii.]

The relation between Prudence and Moral Virtue is arrived at in the course of the reply which Aristotle gives to the question what is the use of insight. The first part of the discussion refers to both forms of intellectual virtue; the second part is confined to Prudence. The reply in the former consists in showing that utility is here a false standard. What is useful is desired for the sake of something else— that which it is useful for. Prudence and Wisdom cannot be useful in this sense, for they are elements in that from which everything else derives utility, viz. happiness or perfection. There is indeed a sense in which we may say that they are useful. We may distinguish between the possession and the exercise of these qualities, and looking to the former may hold it to be useful. But we must be careful in this case to remember that by useful we here mean not something which is used for something else, being itself different from it, as e.g. medicine is useful for health, but something which already is

potentially that which it is useful for, as good condition is useful for the enjoyment of good health.

Aristotle, however, seems to feel that in this reply he does not really come to close grips with the problem of the true relation between Prudence and Moral Virtue, and, making a new start, proposes "to carry the question a step further back" by inquiring what precisely is implied in the latter. Our previous discussion has shown that there are two sides or elements in every good act. In the first place, it is what ought to be done, what "may be expected of a good man;" and, secondly, it is the conscious adaptation of means to a good end. But the power of adapting means to end is what we call natural ability, which stands to Prudence as natural virtue in general stands to virtue proper. This gives us the required clue. For just as the natural virtues require to be moulded and regulated by social habits in order that they may become sources of usefulness to society,* so "this eye of the soul" requires the transforming influence of good training in order that it may become a useful social quality.† After illustrating the view of the nature of true moral virtue, to which he is thus led, by a criticism of the Socratic doctrine on the one hand and common opinion on the other (which he treats as exaggerations of opposite sides of the truth), Aristotle sums up his reply to the main problem in the words: "It is impossible to be good in the proper sense without prudence, or prudent without goodness" (xiii. § 6).

In the answer to our question as thus stated, it would seem at first sight as though, instead of a solution, Aristotle had given us a paradox-as though, in fact, the discussion ends where it ought to have begun, in a clear statement of the problem. The source, it appears, of true insight or prudence is virtue; but if we ask whence virtue itself comes, the answer is, from insight or prudence. Without virtue, then, no prudence-without prudence, no virtue. But the solution of this circle-so far as solution in the ordinary sense is possible—has already been given : it has been, in fact, the aim of the whole of the Ethics up to this point to give it. We have only to gather the elements of it together and re-state them in the particular form required. As the true understanding of this paradox is perhaps the best test of a sound ethical philosophy, it may be useful to conclude this section by attempting such a re-statement.

I. Virtue is the habit of doing what is right-as Aristotle puts it, of doing "all that may be expected of a good man." This is true; indeed, to readers of the Ethics, a truism. But it is very easy to miss the precise limits within which it is true. Thus, it is easy so to emphasize the influence of habit, training, tradition, upon the view a man takes of what is morally good and desirable as to throw the function of individual reason and judgment into the shade. It is one of the evidences of the sanity of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle that it does not fall into this exaggeration. The chief danger to the Greek community came from the side of able unscrupulous

leaders, imperfectly imbued with the moral tradition which the State embodied. In Themistocles, Alcibiades, Callias, and Pausanias, Athens and Sparta had had fatal experience of this type of character. The Greek philosophers were greatly impressed with its dangers, the Republic of Plato being in reality the sketch of a system of education and polity specially designed to meet them. Yet even in Plato the whole course of education proceeds on the assumption that morality which is merely conventional is "a shadow and slavish quality," and that the supreme aim of the legislator is the development of the highest powers of reason and intelligence in the future citizens. Modern writers* have not always succeeded in avoiding the pitfall here indicated, and in their eagerness to establish the influence of authority and tradition have sometimes lent encouragement to the view that the foundations of moral belief are external to a man, and that reason and insight make no substantive addition to life and happiness.

2. Virtue is adaptation of means to end. It therefore involves the exercise of individual reason-is, in fact, a matter of private judgment. Here also it is easy to go wrong, and to lay so much stress on this side of the truth as to make it appear that emancipation, enlightenment, "illumination," is the only, or at least the chief, requisite for life and happiness. This is what the Rousseau-Godwin school in modern times has succeeded in doing. Among the contemporaries of Aristotle we know that there was a school of thinkers * Of whom Burke is a favourable example.