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consequence and motive, are inseparable. Unless the action is inspired by a noble motive, and permeated throughout its whole structure by the quality of a noble character, it has no claim to the name of courage. It is this that is the basis of the series of fine distinctions Aristotle draws in chaps. vii. § 13 and viii. §§ 1-5, marking off true courage from that which is merely mercenary (c. viii. § 6 foll.), from that which is merely prudential (c. viii. § 4), from the courage of despair, which is only a form of cowardice (c. vii. § 13), and even from that form which bears the closest resemblance to true courage, the courage of shame or of ambition (c. viii. §§ 1-3).

How, we may ask, is this noble object to be conceived? The passage before us does not seem to throw any direct light on this question. Indeed, the section (c. vi. § 6) in which it is most directly alluded to seems rather to add a new element of difficulty by suggesting that the courageous act must be done simply because it is courageous, and that courage is valuable for the sake of courage. If, however, we keep steadily before us what has already been said of the unity of the virtues on the one hand, and the unity of the noble character and noble city life on the other, we shall have no difficulty in avoiding this mistake. We shall then notice, in the first place, that the emphasis is here laid, not upon the isolated act of courage, but upon the type of character which the courageous act expresses (it is this and not the act that is the "fine thing"); and in the second place, that neither is this character an isolated phenomenon, but only

the inner side of the city life to which it ministers and in which it finds its end.

$3. The Greek and Modern Ideals of Courage.

If with this analysis before us we now return to the limitations which, as already said, strike the modern reader in these sections, we shall have less difficulty in understanding their source, and in seeing that the difference between Aristotle's idea and our own consists rather in a widening of the field in which the virtue is exercised than in any fundamental divergence of principle. Starting with the said limitations, we may state them as follows. In the first place, physical pains, such as those of sickness, fatigue, deprivation, even death, encountered in other fields. than war, in the meeting of which with a cheerful heart so much of modern heroism consists, are either ignored or expressly excluded.* As Green very well says, "If a Christian worker' who devotes himself, unnoticed and unrewarded, at the risk of life and the sacrifice of every pleasure but that of his work, to the service of the sick, the ignorant, and the debased, were told that his ideal of virtue was in principle the same as that of the avoptios, 'the brave man,' described by Aristotle, and if he were induced to read the description, he would probably seem to himself to find nothing of . his ideal in it." In the second place, the wide field agreed to call "moral" heroism is

of what we are

*See chap. vi. §§ 7, 11, and 12.

† Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 277.

left wholly untouched. Aristotle's conception of courage, as of happiness, seems to presuppose the existence of a favourable milieu. There is no mention, for instance, of the courage which is based upon the invigorating belief in the power of character over circumstances, and which consists in pursuing some noble purpose in the face of adverse influences, including even hostile social opinion. Still less of that form of courage which has risen into prominence in modern, one might almost say recent times, and which consists in actively cherishing the belief in the ultimate rationality of the world, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding—a belief which, as Professor James insists, is among ourselves the source of all strenuous living. To understand how these limitations spring severally from the widening of our social and intellectual outlook we must recall some of the respects in which this widening is most marked.*

(1) To the Greek philosopher the city-state was the symbol of all that was excellent in life. Amongst a homogeneous society of equals the sphere of duty was clearly defined. The end or function of justice or virtue in general was the maintenance of the political equilibrium. As the point at which this equilibrium was most exposed to attack, and where danger was most to be encountered in its service, was on the side of its military independence, it was natural that the particular virtue of courage should be conceived of as chiefly exhibited in physical warfare. With us, on the other hand, the conception of the city-state Cp. what is said in the Introduction.

as the embodiment of all that is most excellent in life and the all-embracing end, has broadened into that of the moral possibilities that are open to all. Corresponding to this we have the extension of the field of moral virtue in general, from the limited liability of the Greek citizen for the maintenance of a narrow political equilibrium, to the duty that rests on each as a man to further by all the means that lie in his power the cause of moral progress in the world; of courage in particular, to all the nameless personal sacrifices that the individual is called upon to make in forwarding the wider object. This does not, of course, mean that courage in ceasing to be merely civic has ceased to be social, but that we have substituted for the conception of a homogeneous society of equals, which found a visible symbol in the templecrowned cities of Hellas, that of a society, the homogeneousness of which is to be looked for in a will inspired by a common ideal of righteous living.

We

This last feature of the modern virtue suggests a further contrast. To the change in the scope of the virtue we must add also a change in the motive, amounting in reality to a purification of it. conceive of Aristotle's courageous man as acting in full view of his fellow-citizens for an object whose value and nobility were recognized by all whose opinion was worth having. Given these encouraging conditions, courage becomes comparatively easy. On the other hand, as Green says, "The secondary motives which assist self-devotion in war, or in the performance of functions of recognized utility before

the eyes of fellow-citizens, are absent when neither from the recipients of the service done nor from any spectators of it, can any such praise be forthcoming as might confirm the agent in the consciousness of doing nobly." In yet another point the modern virtue by reason of this change is more "disinterested," in that while the personal share of the Greek citizen in the life for which he fought could not fail to be present to his mind in the moment of danger, this modern type of heroism rests on faith in a moral order which is believed in as only a distant possibility for the race.

(2) In the light of this wider conception of the "object" we can further understand the place which the form of courage we call moral holds in our view. The courage shown, say in the support of an unpopular cause, has comparatively little place in the Greek conception. The recognized elements in human life had attained. in the Greek type of civilization the maximum of development as compared with other societies-with the consequence that the established and the conventional stood in the eyes of even the best citizens for the type of the natural and normal, in a way that among us, with our more complex ideal of what society might be, is no longer possible. It is true that the Greek also had his ideal of courageous independence of popular opinion in such men as Phocion and Aristides, and his faith in the identity of the ideal and the actual had in later years been rudely shaken by the condemnation of Socrates. Yet in many of these cases there was a suggestion of personal

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