waywardness and eccentricity which detracted from their moral value, and in view of the caricature of the attitude of mind they represented, as exhibited in the vagaries of the Cynic dissenters, even a philosopher might be excused if he hesitated to rank independence of thought and action, and the temper that makes a man ready to face the personal loss it might involve, as an element in ideal excellence.

The last of the above-mentioned points of difference between ancient and modern conceptions of courage is doubtless traceable to our own keener sense of the sadness of things. Here also the greater simplicity and harmony of the social conditions in the Greek state is one of the chief factors to be taken into account, tending, as it did, to obscure the deeper problems of life. And if to this we add the comparative lightness with which the wider problem of the balance of good and evil in the world weighed on the Greek mind, we shall have little difficulty in understanding why the need of a courage, the essence of which consists in upholding faith in a moral order in obvious contrast to existing conditions of life, was little felt. Under modern conditions, on the other hand, it is more difficult to believe that

and the man who holds unfalteringly to this faith exhibits a type of courage which, if a new element in moral excellence, is, we feel, a permanent addition to our conception of what is implied in it. In an age

I

of shaken creeds and widespread intellectual hesitancy the power of maintaining a belief in moral potentialities underlying apparent weakness and failure, moral order underlying apparent confusion, may even be of supreme value, and rightly take its place as perhaps the cardinal virtue of our own time. Its importance is emphasized by the prominence of the opposite phase of thought in much modern literature, and the need there is of an equally powerful note of courage and serenity. From this point of view a new light may be thrown upon the function of the poet in our own time. We might almost say that a new type of poet has been developed in the writers-and they are the greatest-who sound this note: the "Hero as Poet" whom Carlyle speaks of. Remaining himself undismayed, he rallies his fellows around him, and becomes a leader in courageous living. To take an instance from recent biography, it is usual to think of William Morris as combining an almost Hellenic simplicity of character with a Hellenic cheerfulness and serene enjoyment in the exercise of his marvellous creative faculty. Yet his biographer calls attention to another side of his character, in the profound sense he has of the need of maintaining a belief in human progress as the basis of human effort.*

*Speaking half for the old Northmen and more than half for himself, Morris says: "It may be that the world shall be weary of itself and sicken, and none but faint hearts be left—who knows? So, at any rate, comes the end at last, so comes the great strife; and, like the kings and heroes that they have loved, here also must the gods die-the gods who made that strifeful, imperfect earth-not blindly indeed, but fore-doomed. One by one they extinguish for ever some dread or

Morris, however, had so many of the conditions essential to happiness in the Aristotelian sense that a comparatively slight adjustment of the Greek view of life is required to recognize him as the type of the happy man." A more characteristic modern instance, appealing to us with perhaps greater force, is to be found in Robert Louis Stevenson, a creative artist, rejoicing in the life on which he physically had so slender a hold, resolutely triumphing by force of character over unfavourable circumstances. He also, like Morris, had a misgiving that "Odin was dead." But he also, like him, met it with the belief that all was not lost nor losable. "I would believe in the ultimate decency of things, even though I woke in Hell," is one among other brave sayings in which we realize, together with "the substantial identity" which Green notes between ancient and modern conceptions of courage, the immense advance in depth and spirituality which the latter has made.*

misery that all this time has brooded over life, and one by one, their work accomplished, they die; till at last the great destruction breaks out over all things, and the old heaven and earth are gone, and then a new heaven and earth. What goes on there? Who shall say of us who know only of rest and peace by toil and strife? And what shall be our share in it? Well, sometimes we must needs think that we shall live again; yet, if that were not, would it not be enough that we helped to make this unnameable glory, and lived not altogether deedless? Think of the joy we have in praising great men, and how we turn their stories over and over, and fashion their lives for our joy. And this also we ourselves may give to the world. This seems to me pretty much the religion of the Northmen. I think one would be a happy man if one could hold it, in spite of the wild dreams and dreadful imaginings that hung about it here and there."-Life of William Morris, by J. W. Mackail, vol. i. p. 333 (condensed).

* See, for example, the passage quoted, Note E.

CHAPTER VIII.

TEMPERANCE.

"Next consider Temperance; this, as far as I can see at present, has more of the nature of symphony and harmony than the preceding."

PLATO.

§ 1. Features in Aristotle's Conception of Temperance.

[III. cc. x. foll.]

IN the account here given of the virtue of Temperance there is much with which the modern student finds himself in sympathy. He will be struck, for instance, with the sobriety of the statement and the absence of any false note of asceticism. Of the particular pleasures, indeed, in respect to which temperance is said to be the mean, Aristotle seems, as we shall see, to be curiously suspicious, but with pleasure in general he has no quarrel. He tells us that it is part of his ideal of the temperate man not only to take the ordinary pleasures of life as they come, but to desire to have them (c. xi. § 8). The reader will further be struck with the disinterestedness of this virtue as conceived by Aristotle. There is no false attempt to "rationalize" it, as a modern utilitarian might do by emphasizing the consequences to

individual health and happiness of its neglect. As Plato had declared that the man who is temperate for such a reason overcomes only because he is overcome by pleasure, and is "temperate through intemperance," so Aristotle would have refused to recognize any such merely prudential temperance as a form of "excellence." He is quite aware of the effect of intemperance upon "health and good condition," but it is clearly the injury done through this loss to his efficiency as a citizen, and not to individual happiness, that is in his mind. So far is he from conceiving of temperance as a form of prudence that he lays no emphasis on its "consequences" at all, but treats it throughout simply as an element in the "ideal excellence" which it is the "aim" of the good man to realize as completely as possible. In these respects there is no difference between the Aristotelian and the modern philosophical conception of temperance. To Aristotle, as to us, the principle which underlies the exercise of self-restraint in the presence of the allurements of pleasure is the acceptance of a higher ideal of life than that of merely individual satisfaction.

§ 2. Limitations of Ancient Conceptions of Temperance.

It is when we come to the limits which Aristotle here sets to the field of the virtue that dissatisfaction begins. If the treatment of courage is felt to be inadequate, that of temperance falls still further short of modern requirements. Not only is the field of its