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and I can show you one who is likely to hold a distorted view of life."

In maintaining that right action is the only avenue to the apprehension of the principle of reason in life, Aristotle here forestalls one of the most important doctrines of the Ethics. It follows directly from his view that moral action is already the implicit recognition of moral truth. It is thus the antithesis of a theory with which we have recently been made familiar in some popular works, viz. that moral beliefs are the result of habits and traditions that have grown up independently of the operation of human reason, and therefore lie beyond the scope of all logical tests.* According to this view conformity to social traditions is a mode of adaptation to environment, but brings a man no nearer to the logos or rational meaning of life. Aristotle admits that habit and tradition are moulding influences in belief, but holds that they themselves represent the action of the social reason seeking the means of that complete self-development which is the end of man. Seeing, then, that the ideal of human development is reflected, however imperfectly, in every action which contributes to true social well-being, in acting morally the individual is preparing himself for the conscious recognition of that ideal. We shall have an opportunity of returning to this, which is indeed the central truth of the Ethics, at a later stage.

* See, for example, Mr. A. J. Balfour's Foundations of Belief. The same view is applied to sociology by Mr. Benjamin Kidd in his Social Evolution.

D

§ 4. Opinions as to the Nature of the Good.

[I. c. v. §§ 2 foll.]

The division of life into three main types seems to have been a commonplace of semi-philosophical thought. It is traceable to the celebrated metaphor attributed to Pythagoras, who, according to his biographer, compared the world to the Olympic games, to which some came to buy and sell and make gain; others for the sake of glory and to exhibit the prowess of their body; others-by far the noblest sort to see the country and noble works of art, and contemplate every excellence of word and deed. Aristotle, in what follows, refines upon this classifiIcation by distinguishing between the money-making and the pleasure-seeking life as varieties of the lowest form, rejecting them on different grounds; while, at the other end of the scale, he draws a suggestive distinction between the life of a good man according as his powers are called into active exercise or remain dormant.

1. In dealing with the opinion that pleasure is the end (§ 3), Aristotle is not thinking of the deeper form which it had already assumed in the school of the Cyrenaics, and which was still further deepened and dignified by the Epicureans in the succeeding age. He is thinking merely of the popular form of the opinion, which identified the end of life with sensual enjoyment. This he dismisses contemptuously as a mere reflection of the degraded habits of those who profess it. The theory in its more refined and philosophical form, he reserves for later criticism.*

* See chapter xiii. below.

2. The opinion that honour is the good (§§ 4 and 5) is treated more respectfully. One of the tests of the true end of life is that it should be something inherent in man, that it should in fact be nothing less than man's true nature or self. But honour is essentially something adventitious, belonging to a man not as a property of the soul, but as an accidental gift of his fellow-men. It is, therefore, too superficial, being, as Professor Stewart says, "not the nature and life of the person honoured, but a merely superficial and transitory reflection on him of the opinion of other people." This does not mean that honour, or the respect of others, has no important function to perform in relation to the true end. As we shall see hereafter, the highest happiness involves what is here called. assurance of one's own worth," and one of the chief factors in the development of this higher form of self-consciousness is the mutual respect and, recognition of friends.*

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3. The definition of honour as the sign of the possession of high qualities of character suggests the view that virtue itself is the end (§§ 6 and 7). Aristotle's criticism of this view, paradoxical as it at first. seems, carries us a step deeper, and brings out two closely allied elements in his conception of happiness. (a) Whatever else happiness is, it is a form of consciousness. As we shall see hereafter, it is the most vivid form of consciousness in which man can partake. It can never, therefore, consist in the mere possession of virtue, however complete. Just as a man may

* See chapter xii.

possess all knowledge, and yet if he does not use it cannot be called truly wise, so the man whose virtue remains cloistered in his soul cannot be truly happy. (b) Since happiness consists in the active discharge of the soul's functions, mere potentiality, apart from actual realization, is not enough. Happiness, therefore, implies favourable circumstances. The opposite doctrine, viz. that the consciousness of possessing virtue is sufficient for happiness, was already taught in Aristotle's time. It became a commonplace with the Stoics in the next generation, and has found votaries in every succeeding age. So far from being a paradox, it is a mark of the sanity of Aristotle's philosophy that it avoids this exaggeration. Life with him is no abstraction from the circumstances of life. The good man who is overwhelmed by great misfortunes can indeed never be miserable. The essential nobility of his character can never be wholly obscured. Even at the crisis of his misfortunes it will "shine out."* Yet it would be a paradox to call him happy. To do so is, as Grant says, to take "the greatness of a man in misfortunes as though it were identical with his happiness," or, as Jowett still more subtly puts it, to confuse our own idea of happiness with the consciousness of it in another.

4. The force of Aristotle's criticism of the moneymaking life as "contrary to nature" may not at first strike the modern reader. It is common to oppose the "natural" to that which is distinctly human, as that which comes earlier and is more closely allied * I. c. x. § 12.

to our lower or animal nature. To Aristotle, however, the nature of man is not that out of which he has developed, but that into which he is developing; not what he is at the lowest, but what he is at the highest; not what he is born as (to borrow a happy distinction), but what he is born for.* Now we already know what, according to Aristotle, man is born for. He is born for life in a city-state. And this implies two things which distinguish such a life from every other form. In the first place, it is social. The activities of which it consists are directed to common as distinguished from merely personal ends. In the second place, it has a definite form. It consists of activities directed to objects the limit of whose desirableness is fixed by their relation to the common purpose of the whole. In both these respects the money-making life is unnatural. (a) So far from

falling in with man's true end, it distorts and degrades life, turning social activities, eg. the arts of national defence, and the healing of the sick,† which should minister to fulness of social life, into mere means of private gain. (b) There is no limit to such a life. The money-maker goes on accumulating without limit; there is, as we say, no end to it. "Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. What will you

*

Bosanquet's Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 130.

† Politics, Bk. I. c. 9 (see Note C), which ought to be read in connexion with the present passage.

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