CHAPTER VII.

COURAGE.

"And he is to be deemed courageous who, having the element of passion working in him, preserves in the midst of pain and pleasure the notion of danger which reason prescribes."

PLATO.

§ 1. The Platonic and Aristotelian Conceptions of

Courage.

IN a well-known passage in the Republic, Socrates is made by Plato to describe courage as a species of holding fast, and when he is asked what species, to reply holding fast to the true opinion as to the proper objects of fear and all other things. The citizen-soldier into whose soul this opinion has been dyed by law and education as a good colour is dyed into a properly prepared fleece of wool, holds to it, and keeps his head amid the temptations of pleasure, "mightier solvent far than soap or soda," and pain and fear and desire, "more potent washes than any lye." In this passage Plato makes no distinction between courage and temperance, and although afterwards he proceeds to assign one to the soldiers, the other to the

industrial classes, as the virtues that enable them severally to perform their function, he never loses sight of their essential unity.

In marked contrast herein to Plato, Aristotle starts from the point of view of the difference of these two virtues, explaining that while the field of courage is pain and fear, that of temperance is pleasure. This of course is true enough, but we cannot help feeling that with the advance of analysis we have lost an element of insight, and that Plato is nearer the truth when he represents both of them as having a common root in the self-command that is begotten of right principles worked into a ground of good natural disposition by good laws and good schooling.

While they are thus contrasted, there are many points which the Platonic and Aristotelian accounts of courage have in common; and that which strikes the modern reader most forcibly is the narrowness of the scope assigned to the virtue. In both of them the type of true courage is taken to be the soldier in the battle-field, and thus the emphasis is laid upon what to us is a comparatively insignificant part of it. This limitation of the virtue to the soldier type seems to create a gulf between ancient and modern ideas on this subject, and to obscure the application to modern conditions of what is here said. Closer examination, however, will, I think, show us that the difficulty is created by the illustration rather than by the analysis. For this reason it will be better, with a view to understanding the real scope of Aristotle's conception, to neglect meantime the illustration and confine ourselves

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 Σ-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.