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unless it is the spontaneous expression of good character and motive. To take Mill's example, the saving of the life of a fellow-creature, if it is done. from a wrong motive, eg. to win the medal of the Royal Humane Society, could only be called good "accidentally." To be a truly good action it must be done from no selfish motive, but simply because it is the right thing to do: because, being the man he is, the doer of it "cannot do otherwise."

If it be said that it is contrary to common sense to deny goodness of an action which is right (in itself) inasmuch as it produces consequences which are good quite independently of the will that is expressed in it, the reply is that this depends on the answer we give to two questions. (1) What are the consequences at which the act which is good aims? (2) Can these consequences really be attained if the motive is bad? In reply to the first question, Aristotle would have maintained that "good" consequences are not to be measured by the amount of pleasure to one's self and others that the action produces. The production of pleasure taken by itself is neither good nor evil from the point of view of morality. "Good" consequences in the moral sense can only mean those that make for the increase of happiness in the sense of the exercise of virtue or excellence, and this, as we have just seen, is a matter of character. It is perhaps difficult to say what an ancient Greek philosopher would have replied to so essentially modern a question as the second of the above. It is not, however, difficult to see that the answer that has been given to it by

one of his most distinguished modern followers is in essential accordance with Aristotle's principles. Discussing the question whether actions which are the expression of a bad or imperfect character can really have good consequences of the kind just described, Green says: It is only to our limited vision that there can seem to be such a thing as good effects from an action that is bad in respect of the will which it represents, and that in consequence the question becomes possible whether the morality of an action is determined by its motive or by its consequences. There is no real reason to doubt that the good or evil in the motive of an action is exactly measured by the good or evil of its consequences as rightly estimated-estimated, that is, in their bearing on the production of a good will or the perfecting of mankind." [Thus to use Green's own instance: "The good in the effect of a political movement will correspond to the degree of good will which has been exerted in bringing it about; and the effects of any selfishness in its promoters will appear in some limitation to the good it brings society."] "The contrary only appears to be the case on account of the limited view we take both of action and consequences.'

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§ 5. Art and Morality.

[II. c. iv. § 3.]

(b) The organic connexion which in Aristotle's view between action and character is further

exists

* Prolegomena to Ethics, § 295.

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illustrated by what is said in chapter iv. § 3 on the relation between art and morality.

It is a common view that the distinction between art and morality, the beautiful and the good, is overlooked by Greek ethics in general, and by Aristotle in particular. The impression is founded partly on the identity of their artistic and ethical terminology (as Ruskin says, "There is scarcely a word in Greek social philosophy which has not a reference to musical law, and scarcely a word in Greek musical science which has not an understood reference to social law"); partly on the care with which the great ethical writers themselves work out the conception of the good life, as consisting essentially in harmony or proportion between the different elements of human nature. It is strengthened in the case of Aristotle by frequent reference (e.g. I. c. vii. § 9 foll.) to the analogy between the function of man as man and the craft of the artist, by his picture of the happy man (e.g. I. c. viii. § 15) as an actor duly equipped with all the stage properties necessary for the part he has to play in life, but most of all by his definition of virtue as a mean and his conception of the good act as not only one that is harmonious in all its parts, but as one that is done for the sake of its harmony or beauty.

How far this criticism is from the truth in respect to happiness in general, we have already seen. Happiness is no artificial product, but the full development of the true nature of man. As Professor Stewart puts it: "Since the subject of ethics is the life of man at its best (the 'good life'), it is easy to

understand that the relation of 'nature,' rather than that of 'art,' to the Good, will be present in Aristotle's mind throughout the treatise. Human life at its best is no mere device or means adopted by man for the sake of something beyond itself, or better. The 'happy man' lives, and there is nothing better than his life. His nature is a 'proportion' or organism, 'right' balanced in all its parts and containing, like the nature of a tree, its own 'principle' and 'end' within itself-freely initiating functions, in the performance of which it treats itself 'always as an end, and never merely as a means.'

With regard to moral goodness, the present passage indicates two points in which the "analogy of the arts is misleading."

(1) In the case of art, the work itself, the "effect,” is the important matter: "Hermes is dug up at Olympia, and we find him beautiful as soon as we see him (Stewart); the character of the artist, or the state of his mind in the execution of it, is quite secondary and does not enter into our ordinary æsthetic judgments at all. In the case of conduct, on the contrary, goodness or badness depends, as we have seen, on the character or habit of will of which it is the expression. However good an action appears from the point of view of its results, unless the attitude of will in the doer of it be right, nothing is right. On the other hand, however ineffective the action appears to be, if only the will be good, all is well. We say "appears," for we have already seen with respect to consequences apparently * Op. cit. ii. p. 4,

good that a deeper insight into the true nature of the consequences would probably show that imperfection of character is faithfully reflected in the imperfection of the results. Extending the same principle to the failure to produce a desired effect, here also it is probably true that, given the good will (and by good will we mean not only "good intentions," but readiness to spare no trouble to discover and secure the proper means to secure our ends), failure to produce the desired effect is only apparent. From this point of view, we can conceive an Intelligence to which it would be sufficient that actions should have a certain quality of their own, and the distinction in this respect between art and morality would have disappeared. But this does not alter the truth of Aristotle's remark so far as our limited human judgments are concerned. To us it is true that the material with which the artist works responds to his conceptions of beauty with a directness which we look for in vain in the responses of so complicated a material as the circumstances of social life. The consequence is, that while the result comes home to us immediately in the former case as good or bad, our judgments on the latter are given with hesitation and reserve.

(2) Secondly, art differs from conduct in that while "knowledge" is an essential condition of good work in the former, for the latter "knowledge is of comparatively little importance." It may be well to notice, in view of the doctrine which we have already to some extent anticipated, and which is subsequently more fully developed, in what sense Aristotle intends us to take

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