end, we shall see how little support the ordinary dualism between morality and intelligence, practice and theory, receives from the Aristotelian division.

(a) On the broad distinction between the morally good life, manifesting itself in such "virtues" as selfmastery and liberality, and the life of intellectual insight as typified in the wise administration of one's own and other people's affairs, Aristotle, as we shall see, shows no tendency to suppose that a man can be good in the full sense without being intelligent and thoughtful. The life of prudence he consistently conceives of (as we should expect from his general view of the relation of higher forms of reality to lower) as the end to which the life of conformity to moral and social traditions points, and in which it finds its reality. According to this view, to be good is to be on the road to wisdom; to be wise is to know where goodness points and what it means.

(b) It is true that in his conception of the relation between the lower and the higher form of the "intellectual" life (prudence or practical wisdom, and thought or philosophy) Aristotle leaves us in some uncertainty, and that there are passages where he seems to have in view as the highest development of human capacity a life only negatively related to the active duties of citizenship. Whatever difficulties this uncertainty may cause in dealing with the text, from the side of Aristotle's philosophical principles there is no justification for any such dualism between the life of the practical man and of the thinker. According to these principles, the purpose of thought and reflection

is not to remove us from practice, but to raise practice to a higher plane. To separate thought from action is as fatal to a true understanding, not only of the spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy, but of life, as to separate soul from body, form from content. Separated from the life of action, the life of reflection becomes unreal; separated from reflection, the life of action becomes unmeaning. As Professor Mackenzie puts it in his pointed treatment of this subject: "A life of pure reflection would never acquire any positive content. It would have principles, but no facts to apply them to; yet it is by contact with such facts that the principles themselves grow. It is experience that tests them and sends us back again to improve them." On the other hand, the life of action without reflection, bringing our actual achievements face to face with the ideal of excellence which is their end, is necessarily stereotyped and unprogressive. It is not, therefore, merely a case of action and reaction it is not merely that "in retirement we criticize the acts of life; in life we criticize the ideas of retirement," or that "action is the gymnastics, reflection the music, of moral culture." The life of action is the body and blood of the life of thought; the life of thought is the soul and reason of the life of action.

* Manual of Ethics, 3rd edit. p. 364.
+ Ibid. p. 366.

CHAPTER V.

THE GENERAL NATURE OF VIRTUE.

"I say, then, that pleasure and pain are the first perceptions of children, and that these are the forms in which virtue and vice first appear in the soul. . . . By education, I mean the training that is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children, when pleasure and affection, pain and hatred, are rightly implanted in souls not yet able to understand their meaning, and who, when they attain to Reason, find that they are in harmony with her."

§ 1. The Roots of Virtue.

[II. c. i. § 3.]

PLATO.

THE account given in the last chapter of the relation of the lower to the higher elements in man-“ nature” to "spirit"-has prepared us to hear that virtue has its roots in natural human instincts. It is true that good action does not come by nature, in the sense of being an inheritable consequence of primitive tendencies. Yet it is not contrary to nature. We have even a natural capacity for acquiring it. In a later passage we are told of a natural justice, a natural courage, a natural modesty and self-control.*

See Ethics, VI. c. xiii. § 1 (p. 274 below); with which we may compare Magna Moralia, I. § 5: “ We are all endowed with certain natural virtues, of which the unreasoning impulse to obey the dictates of courage and justice is an example." See also Note A, fin.

As the feelings are the potentiality of thought,* so the instincts may be said to be the potentiality or capacity of virtue. And just as the training of the feelings may be said to be the process of developing a blind emotion into a rational sentiment, so moral education may be said to be the transformation of the blind gropings of natural instinct into the conscious choice of what is right and good.

It need hardly be pointed out that all this is in essential harmony with the more scientific view of human instincts of our own time and the theory of education founded upon it. Darwin's treatment of the natural basis of morality in the Descent of Man† might be taken as a comment upon the passage before us. "As a man is a social animal, it is also probable that he would inherit a tendency to be faithful to his comrades, for this quality is common to most social animals. He would in like manner possess some capacity for self-command and perhaps of obedience to the leader of the community. He would from an inherited tendency still be willing to defend in concert with others his fellow-men, and would be ready to aid them in any way which does not too greatly interfere with his own welfare or his strong desires."

The modern educational theories derived from this view contrast strongly with those which have their source in the older doctrine of "original sin," or its modern equivalent in the writings of those who, like Mr. Benjamin Kidd, regard man as

* Aristotle calls them "materialized thoughts."

† Pt. I. c. iii,

essentially unsocial. So far from regarding instincts and passions as a noxious undergrowth which has to be removed before anything better can be implanted, scientific theory sees in them the germ and promise of moral capacity. It is a proof of the wholesome influence which Aristotle's teaching exercised on subsequent educational theory, that his followers of the Peripatetic school clearly saw that the mistaken attempt of the Ascetics to uproot the natural instincts must issue in leaving the rational part of the soul with nothing to carry it forward to the ends of reason, nor even to give it even steerage way, “like a pilot when the wind has dropped.”

There are, however, two features of the actions we class as instinctive which mark them off from those that are good or virtuous. (a) They are fitful and capricious. Thus the unreasoning impulse to face danger may at the critical moment be replaced by an equally unreasoning impulse towards selfpreservation. They therefore require to be rendered stable by being attached to some permanent object of human interest. A man's natural courage may in this way become the basis of loyalty to his comrade in arms, his regiment or his country; his natural modesty the basis of self-respect. What was before an instinct may thus be developed into a moral sentiment.

*Plutarch, de Virtute Morali, 12 (quoted by Stewart).

An interesting example is afforded by Stephen Crane's psychological tale, The Red Badge of Courage. On the first day of the battle the hero, who is a raw recruit, to his own astonishment fights like the best. On the second day, equally to his astonishment, he incontinently runs away. He has only natural courage.