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CHAPTER V.

THE GENERAL NATURE OF VIRTUE.

"I say, then, that pleasure and pain are the first perceptions of children, and that these are the forms in which virtue and vice first appear in the soul. . . . By education, I mean the training that is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children, when pleasure and affection, pain and hatred, are rightly implanted in souls not yet able to understand their meaning, and who, when they attain to Reason, find that they are in harmony with her."

§ 1. The Roots of Virtue.

[II. c. i. § 3.]

PLATO.

THE account given in the last chapter of the relation of the lower to the higher elements in man—“nature" to "spirit"-has prepared us to hear that virtue has its roots in natural human instincts. It is true that good action does not come by nature, in the sense of being an inheritable consequence of primitive tendencies. Yet it is not contrary to nature. We have even a natural capacity for acquiring it. In a later passage we are told of a natural justice, a natural courage, a natural modesty and self-control.* *See Ethics, VI. c. xiii. § 1 (p. 274 below); with which we may compare Magna Moralia, I. § 5: "We are all endowed with certain natural virtues, of which the unreasoning impulse to obey the dictates of courage and justice is an example." See also Note A, fin.

As the feelings are the potentiality of thought,* so the instincts may be said to be the potentiality or capacity of virtue. And just as the training of the feelings may be said to be the process of developing a blind emotion into a rational sentiment, so moral education may be said to be the transformation of the blind gropings of natural instinct into the conscious choice of what is right and good.

It need hardly be pointed out that all this is in essential harmony with the more scientific view of human instincts of our own time and the theory of education founded upon it. Darwin's treatment of the natural basis of morality in the Descent of Man† might be taken as a comment upon the passage before us. "As a man is a social animal, it is also probable that he would inherit a tendency to be faithful to his comrades, for this quality is common to most social animals. He would in like manner possess some capacity for self-command and perhaps of obedience to the leader of the community. He would from an inherited tendency still be willing to defend in concert with others his fellow-men, and would be ready to aid them in any way which does not too greatly interfere with his own welfare or his strong desires."

The modern educational theories derived from this view contrast strongly with those which have their source in the older doctrine of "original sin," or its modern equivalent in the writings of those who, like Mr. Benjamin Kidd, regard man as

* Aristotle calls them "materialized thoughts."
† Pt. I. c. iii.

essentially unsocial. So far from regarding instincts and passions as a noxious undergrowth which has to be removed before anything better can be implanted, scientific theory sees in them the germ and promise of moral capacity. It is a proof of the wholesome influence which Aristotle's teaching exercised on subsequent educational theory, that his followers of the Peripatetic school clearly saw that the mistaken attempt of the Ascetics to uproot the natural instincts must issue in leaving the rational part of the soul with nothing to carry it forward to the ends of reason, nor even to give it even steerage way, "like a pilot when the wind has dropped."

There are, however, two features of the actions. we class as instinctive which mark them off from those that are good or virtuous. (a) They are fitful and capricious. Thus the unreasoning impulse to face danger may at the critical moment be replaced by an equally unreasoning impulse towards selfpreservation. They therefore require to be rendered stable by being attached to some permanent object of human interest. A man's natural courage may in this way become the basis of loyalty to his comrade in arms, his regiment or his country; his natural modesty the basis of self-respect. What was before an instinct may thus be developed into a moral sentiment.

*Plutarch, de Virtute Morali, 12 (quoted by Stewart).

† An interesting example is afforded by Stephen Crane's psychological tale, The Red Badge of Courage. On the first day of the battle the hero, who is a raw recruit, to his own astonishment fights like the best. On the second day, equally to his astonishment, he incontinently runs away. He has only natural courage.

(b) They are done in unconsciousness of the end or purpose they are fitted to effect. There is thus no principle acknowledged in them which can set a limit to them, and "just as," to use Aristotle's metaphor, "strong bodies when they move blindly fall heavily through not having the use of their eyes, so natural virtue is apt to come to grief." The remedy here is to furnish the instinct with an eye; in other words, to train it to act in strict subordination to a conception of social welfare more or less consciously grasped, and thus to take its place in the organized life of the good citizen.

If we ask how, as a matter of fact, this transformation of the natural virtues takes place, the following sections give the answer.

§ 2. Training in Virtue.

[II. c. i. §§ 6-8; c. ii. §§ 6-9.]

The transforming power is here the force of habit. It is by doing the action which is just, courageous, etc., that stability is given to fitful, natural instinct. It is by omitting to do it, or doing what is actually wrong, that the instinct is distorted and moral growth checked. It is by training in good habit also that at a later stage moral insight is developed. The former process is that with which we are in the mean time concerned.

We need hardly dwell on this side of moral training. Aristotle is led to emphasize the truth that virtue is habit by the comparative neglect of it in some

of the ethical theories of his time. It is true, as we shall see hereafter, that the attempt to define morality in terms of habit has difficulties of its own which call for further explanation. Here, however, it is sufficient to note that all that modern psychology teaches as to the nature of habit has only brought home to us more convincingly the vital connexion that exists between what we do to-day and what we shall be to-morrow. To quote only a single passage from Professor James, who in his classical chapter on Habit gives us the modern version of the Aristotelian doctrine: "We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle in Jefferson's play excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among the nerve-cells and fibres, the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up, to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is in strict literalness wiped out.” *

On the side of the failure to develop desirable instincts and habits, modern psychology is no less insistent. Thus, Professor James, dwelling on the part that instinct plays as the basis of man's moral and intellectual life, and lamenting its neglect in education, emphasizes the necessity of seizing the psychological moment for the development of it * Principles of Psychology, i. p. 127.

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