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THE ETHICS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. 
 
 A LECTURE GIVEN BEFORE THE BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATIOM, 
 SEASON OF 1896-1897, 
 
 Prof. JAMES H. HYSLOP, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND ETHICS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ELEMENTS OF LOGIC," "ELEMENTS OF ETHICS," " HUME'S 
 TREATISE ON MORALS," " DEMOCRACY," AND "LESSONS IN LOGIC." 
 
 Edited by Chas. M. Higgins, with portraits of the Philosophers, 
 
 together with extrdcts from their works, and Editorial Notes 
 
 to show their close relation to modern though t. Concluding 
 
 with a brief Life of Socrates. 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE 
 
 BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION, 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES M. HIGGINS & CO. 
 
 NEW YORK— CHICAGO— LONDON, 
 
 1903. 
 
Copyright, 1903, 
 
 BY 
 
 Charles M. Higgins. 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 
 
Z. SIDNEY SAMPSON. 
 
memoRiAL. 
 
 To Z. SIDNEY SAMPSON, 
 
 BORN NOV . 26th, 1842 ; DIED JULY 29th, 1897. 
 THE SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE 
 
 BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 SERVING TWO TERMS, 1883-1884. 
 * RE-ELECTED FOR THIRD TERM, 1897. 
 
 ESTEEMED AS A MAN : BELOVED AS A FRIEND : 
 HONORED AS AN ABLE OFFICER AND MEMBER. 
 
PRESIDENTS OF THE BROOKLYN 
 ETHICAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 PROF. FRANKLIN W. HOOPER, 
 
 1881-1882. 
 
 MR. Z. SIDNEY SAMPSON, 
 
 1883-1884. 
 
 DR. LEWIS G. JANES, 
 
 1885 to 1896. 
 
 MR. Z. SIDNEY SAMPSON, 
 
 1897. 
 
 MR. HENRY HOYT MOORE, 
 1898-1900. 
 
V 
 
 CONTENTS. _ 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction, i-xi 
 
 Prelude. — " Foretastes and Keynotes from the Great Pa- 
 gan Prophets," being choice texts from Socrates, 
 Plato and Aristotle, illustrating some of their best 
 
 thoughts on Religion, Ethics and Politics Xnxm 
 
 Preface xxT 
 
 Greek Philosophy. — Its study a constant charm. Its 
 spontaneity, naturalness and penetration. Philoso- 
 phers preceding the age of Socrates. Pythagoras, 
 Thales, Democritus, Anaxagoras and others, and 
 their influence on Socrates. Their cosmic specula- 
 tions, moral and religious doctrines. Conceptions of 
 morality, harmony with natural law, similar to views 
 of Herbert Spencer and the Evolutionists, . . . . ' 1-13 
 Socrates, 430B.c.-^His environment, personality, method, 
 doctrines, and influence. Opposition to Skeptics and 
 Sophists. His sagacious assertion of Ignorance and 
 his ingenious and misunderstood doctrine of Knowl- 
 edge as the basis of Virtue. A marvelous conversa- 
 tionalist and profound reasoner. A great moral phi- 
 losopher, opposed to-all eosmiespeculatton or abstract 
 science, putting the stress on practical ethics or the 
 laws of true human conduct for happiness in this natu- 
 ral life and beatitude in the future supernatural life of 
 the soul. One of the greatest moral anfl religious 
 teachers of the world, pre-eminent in the teaching of 
 unworldliness and immortalityjin the Christian sense, 
 400 B. c. A unique personality — mystic, theistic, ra- 
 tionalistic and utilitarian, the father of modern utilita- 
 rian theories and of many ancient philosophic sects. 13-39 
 (a) 
 
b CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Plato, 400 b, c. — The all-around genius in Philosophy and 
 abstract thought. The idealistic, transcendental and 
 universal scope and character of his philosophy^ The 
 great pupil of Socrates, the mouthpiece and modifier 
 of his thought. His ideal State a communistic and so- 
 cialistic " Republic," and an ancient high exponent of 
 modem " Civil Service Refotm»i^«Elato's Morality, or 
 right, an eternal absolute law, innerMt^ in the nature 
 of things, not dependent on caprice~6r authority, hit- 
 man or divine. Author of the Golden Rule, 400 b. c^ 
 His impersonal pantheistic or monistic conceptions 
 of God and the Universe. Conception of immortality 
 and the soul, personal and impersonal — like the Ori- 
 entals or Buddhists — involving pre-existence, reincar- 
 nation and absorption^ His ascetic and high moral 
 ideals — hater of the sensual and lover of the ideal ; 
 exalter of " Good " above " Pleasure. " His deep in- 
 fluence on Jewish and Christian sects, and on all sub- 
 sequent thought, J 39-54 
 
 Aristotle, 350 b. c.-^The rational world student, a natu- 
 ral, moral and political philosopher in a pre-eminent 
 modern sense. Pupil of Plato and blender of the 
 Socratic and Platonic thought with his own original 
 and scientific rationalism. The great rationalist or sci- 
 entist of the Greek schools and father of the modern 
 scientific and evolutionary methods. A great political 
 student, humanitarian, and democratic statesman of 
 the broadest type, harmonious with the best modern 
 standards "... 54-67 
 
 Pythagoras and his School, 500 b. c. — Sketch of his 
 life and work and outline of his doctrines, which had 
 deep influence on Socrates and Plato. The Pluralistic 
 and Unit conceptions of God. Incarnations, Pagan 
 and Christian. Lyman Abbott's idea, . . . 68-74 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Extracts from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, with 
 Notes and Comments illustrating the correspondence 
 of ancient and modern thought. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM PLATO. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. The Supreme God or Creator, and His Creation of 
 
 the Universe. 75 
 
 2. Great Antiquity of Egypt, and her early influence on 
 
 ancient Greece. Tale of " The Lost Atlantis." 82 
 
 3. The Principle of Universal Beneficent Love. From 
 
 Plato's Symposium. 88 
 
 4. Agathon and Socrates on Love 91 
 
 5. Plat* and St. Paul i»arallele«[ in Hymn to Love. Paul 
 
 in I C»r. 13 (A. D. 57). Compared with Agathon 
 
 in the Symposium, B. C. 416. . , 102 
 
 6. The Golden Rule. From Plato's Laws, 400 B. C. ; io6 
 
 7. Return not evil for evil. Socrates' answer to Crito. 109 
 t. Good, not Pleasure, the supreme aim of Conduct. . /iT>s 
 9. Suicide Condemned. Socrates in the Phaedo. . . . ." ^rtjs 
 
 i«. A virtuous life, fearless death, and glorious hereafter 
 
 commended to all men. . ■ ..... V>f i42> 
 
 ''ji. The soul's improvement, n«t w«rMly success, the true 
 
 aim •{ man's life • . , CJ^^ 
 
 ~-<i2. The true life, the life of the soul, not of the world 
 
 or the body. Swcrates in the Phaed* ffi^ 
 
 13. Death is a good and not an evil. Socrates in the 
 
 the Apology . 120 
 
 \t4. The Immortality of the Soul and its future rewards 
 
 and punishments. Socrates in the Phaedo. 122 
 
 15. Best texts from the Old Testament on Immortality 
 
 as compared to Plato's Phaedo 130 
 
 16. The Doctrine of Purgatory — Pagan and Christian. . 135 
 
 17. Reincarnation. 138 
 
d CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i8. Mind inheres in and rules the universe. . . . 141 
 
 •^9. The Greek Conception of Soul and Deity. A Prime 
 
 Mover or Force, which is Self-Moved. . . i44 
 
 \2o. The Universal Soul. ... ... 145 
 
 21. The Platonic Doctrine of Ideas. . . . . 147 
 
 22. The Socratic Utilitarian Theory of Ethics. . . . i57 
 
 23. Socrates the Father of Modern Utilitarian Ethics. . 168 
 
 24. Influence of Socrates on Aristotle and Epicurus and 
 
 the substantial identity of their ethical doflrines. 169 
 
 25. The Hedonistic School of Aristippus— the false Epi- 
 
 curean and perverter of Socratic Doctrine. . 172 
 
 26. Harmony of Herbert Spencer with the Socratic School 
 
 a of Ethics. . . . • . . . 176 
 
 Socratic and Theistic Ethics — a comparison of the 
 Utilitarian and the Theistic Theories of Ethics. 179 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM ARISTOTLE. 
 
 \28. Aristotle on the Idea of God. . . . 182 
 
 29. Aristotle on the Theory of Evolution. . . . 186 
 
 ^a) Abstract of Aristotle's Theory of Ethics. . . 193 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS. 
 
 31. The fundamental nature of a political state or govern- 
 
 ment. Status of property. Socialistic and Indi- 
 vidualistic considered 205 
 
 32. Citizens and States of various kinds considered. 
 
 The best form of government and the best citizen 
 discussed. • . 210 
 
 33. The best constitution for a state. Preponderance 
 
 of the middle class recommended. . 231 
 
 34. Cause of Revolutions Considered. .... 235 
 
 35. Democracy analyzed and commended. . . . 243 
 
 36. The Best Life for Individuals and States . . . 251 
 
 37. Public Schools and Liberal Education, Gymnastics, 
 
 Music and Morals. 272 
 
 LIFE OF SOCRATES. 
 The nativity, parentage and training of Socrates, . . 286 
 His original profession of sculptor abandoned to adopt the 
 role of moral philosopher, public reformer and teacher 
 of virtue, without fees, 287 
 
CONTENTS. e 
 
 PAGE 
 
 His asceticism and voluntary poverty and his claim to divine 
 inspiration and a divine mission to mankind. His pro- 
 phetic spirit and his spiritual attendant or " daemon. " 288 
 The personal appearance, character and virtues of Socrates. 289 
 His wives and children, .... . . 295 
 
 The Masters and Teachers of Socrates, . 297 
 
 His school and pupils, 298 
 
 Philosophic sects influenced by and formed from his teach- 
 ings. Cynics, Stoics, Hedonists, Platonists, Aristotel- 
 ians, etc. 307 
 
 Writings of Socrates — Poetry and Tragedy, . . . 311 
 
 Socrates as a soldier — his military services and actions, . 312 
 His quarrel with the Sophists and Rhetoricians and cause 
 
 of his death, . , .... 314 
 
 The trial of Socrates, ... . . 318 
 
 His imprisonment, 325 
 
 After his death. Decline of Greece. Honors paid and re- 
 morse and sorrow shown by Greeks and others, . 331 
 
.LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAQB 
 
 1. Portrait of Z. Sidney Sampson, President Brooklyn 
 
 Ethical Association during this lefture course. 
 From photograph loaned by Mrs. Sampson. Frontispiece 
 
 2. Portrait of Prof James H. Hyslop xxv 
 
 3. Pouch Mansion, Brooklyn, N. Y. Lecture Hall of 
 
 Brooklyn Ethical Association, . . . . 11 1 
 
 4. Studio House of Mrs. Ole Bull, Cambridge, Mass. . viii 
 
 5. Library Columbia University, ix 
 
 6. Head of Pythagoras, from an Ancient Cameo. Kind- 
 
 ness of Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago, . . 4 
 
 7. Figure of Pythagoras. From Stanley's History of 
 
 Philosophy, London, 1701, 68 
 
 8. Head of Socrates. From Bust in Villa Albani. Kind- 
 
 ness of Walter Thorp Co., of New York. From 
 World's Great Classics, xni 
 
 9. Figure oi Socrates. From Stanley's History of Phi- 
 
 losophy. London, 1701, 34 
 
 ID. Head of Plato. From Bust in the Vatican. Kindness 
 of Walter Thorp Co., New York, publishers of 
 World's Great Classics, xix 
 
 11. Figure of Plato. From Stanley's History of Philosophy. 49 
 
 12. Head of Aristotle. From a Sculpture in the Gal. Du 
 
 Capitole. Kindness of the Open Court Pub. Co., 
 Chicago, . • 231 
 
 13. Head of Aristotle. From Sculpture in Spada Palace, 
 
 Rome. Kindness of Walter Thorp Co., New York. 
 Illustration from World's Great Classics, . . xxii 
 
 14. Figure of Aristotle. From statue in Spada Palace, 
 
 Rome. Kindness of Geo. Putnam's Sons ; plate 
 Irom " Alexander the Great," by Wheeler, . . 55 
 
 15. Figure of Aristotle. From Stanley's History of Phi- 
 
 losophy, . . 197 
 
 (g) 
 
h ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 FAes 
 i6. Head of Epicurus. From Bust in Museo Capitolino, 
 
 Rome 169 
 
 17. Figure of Epicurus. From Stanley's History of Phi- 
 
 losophy, 176 
 
 18. Aristippus the "Hedonist." From Stanley's History 
 
 of Philosophy, 172 
 
 19. Empedocles — a pioneer of Evolution. From Stanley's 
 
 History of Philosophy, 191 
 
 20. Herbert Spencer. — The Modern Aristotle. From pho- 
 
 tograph presented in 1894 to Dr. Lewis G. Janes, 
 President of The Brooklyn Ethical Association. 
 Kindness of Mrs. Janes, 178 
 
 21. Gateway of Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, 
 
 Mass., with its misconceived Scriptural text for 
 Immortality, 133 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE present lecture on The Ethics of the Greek Phi- 
 losophers is one of a course on The Evolution of 
 Ethics delivered before the Brooklyn Ethical Associa- 
 tion in the years i8g6 and 1897. Some of these lectures 
 were also given at the Cambridge Conferences at " The 
 Studio House " of Mrs. Ole Bull in Cambridge, Mass., 
 of which conferences the late Dr. Lewis G. Janes was 
 then director, having been previously President of The 
 Brooklyn Ethical Association for several terms. The 
 full list of these lectures is as follows : — 
 
 Origin of Ethical Ideas, 
 Dr. Lewis G. Janes, M. A. 
 
 Ethical Ideas of the Hindus, 
 Swami Saradananda of India. 
 
 Ethics of Zoroaster and the Parsis, 
 
 Mr. Jehanghile Dossabhoy Cola, of Bombay, India. 
 
 Ethics of Buddhism, 
 
 Anagarika H. Dharmapala, of Colombo, Ceylon. 
 
 Ethics of The Chinese Sages, 
 
 Prof. F. Huberty James, Imperial University, Peking 
 (i) 
 
ii Introduction. 
 
 Ethics of The Greek Philosophers, 
 
 Prof. Jas. H. Hyslop, Columbia University, New York 
 
 Ethics of The Stoics and Epicureans, 
 
 Rev. Merle St. Croix Wright of New York. 
 
 Ethics of The Hebrews, 
 
 Rabbi Joseph Silverman of New York. 
 
 Ethics of The Mohammedans, 
 
 Mr. Z. Sidney Sampson of New York. 
 
 Ethics of The New Testament, 
 
 Prof. Crawford Howell Toy, D.D., of Harvard Uni- 
 versit3\ 
 
 Ethics of the German Schools, 
 
 Miss Anna Boynton Thompson of Boston. 
 
 Utilitarian Ethics, 
 
 Dr. Robert G. Eccles of Brooklyn and 
 
 Prof. Benjamin Underwood of Quincy, 111. 
 
 Ethics of Evolution, 
 
 Rev. John C. Kimball of Sharon, Mass., and 
 M. Mangassarin of New York. 
 
 This series of lectures was proposed and arranged 
 chiefly by our former esteemed President, Mr. Z. Sidney 
 Sampson, whose death in 1897, followed by some changes 
 in the Association, has been one of the causes which 
 have helped to delay the publication, but it has now 
 devolved on the undersigned, a member of our Commit- 
 tee on Comparative Religion, to edit and publish this 
 interesting series, which it is believed will be found to 
 be an important addition to the previous volumes of 
 lectures issued by the Association, as it contains perhaps 
 some of the best work of the Association and one which 
 is particularly harmonious with our title and scope, giv- 
 ing as it does a complete outline or general comprehen- 
 
POUCH MANSION, BROOKLYN, N. T, 
 
 LBCTUKE HALL, BROOKLYN KTHICAL ASS'N. 
 
Introduction. iii 
 
 sion of the history and philosophy of Ethics as shown 
 in the various schools or sects of the world. 
 
 Most of the lectures of the series as above listed are 
 now in plates ready for printing, and all of these lec- 
 tures will be ultimately included in one large volume 
 which will be issued in due course, while some one or 
 more lectures will be issued in smaller special volumes 
 according as their special importance or popularity may 
 warrant. 
 
 The present lecture of Prof. Hyslop on The Ethics of 
 Socrates, Plato and Aristotle has been thought of .suffi- 
 cient individual importance and interest to form a little 
 volume by itself which is now issued as one of the first 
 of the series. And we think that a glance through this 
 little book will justify our estimate and show that Prof. 
 Hyslop is a great student and able expositor of the 
 teachings of that great trinity of Grecian intellect who 
 have probably left more effect on the thought and belief 
 of our European races and civilizations than any other 
 men in History. Prof. Hyslop has thus given us in this 
 little treatise a very comprehensive view of the general 
 character and special influence of each g^eat thinker and 
 with a keen and clear analysis and easy presentation 
 has so distinguished and epitomized their distinctive 
 teachings that at one sitting we can get a fairly good 
 and general view of the three most influential philoso- 
 phers of the past, putting in a popular, easily assimi- 
 lable form what is generally regarded as a rather abstruse 
 subject. 
 
 To better illustrate the points in the lecture and more 
 clearly show the exact character of the ancient thought, 
 we have, with the assistance of Prof. Hyslop, selected 
 and arranged a series of quotations from the best trans- 
 lations of the works of the philosophers, which we have 
 
iv Introduction. 
 
 included in the appendix, and which will demonstrate 
 the beauty, clearness and force of the actual thought of 
 these giants of the ancient intellectual world and prove 
 to us how much we are really their heirs and debtors 
 along so many lines of thought and influence. On the 
 subjects of The Nature and Constitution of the Uni- 
 verse, on Matter and Spirit, Soul, Deity, Ethics and 
 Immortalit}'^, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have proba- 
 bly left on us a greater impression than all other men, 
 and will be found to have furnished most of the philo- 
 sophical arguments which have been echoed and re- 
 echoed, more or less consciously or unconsciously, by 
 others ever since that distant age when these great origi- 
 nal thinkers or expounders first expressed or recorded 
 them, and with little real advance over these old think- 
 ers. We therefore regard it of the greatest interest and 
 importance that men of the modern age should pay 
 more attention to the study of ancient thought and 
 appreciate far more than they do the great work done 
 by the old thinkers, as only in this way can we get a 
 correct view of our own age and understand what prog- 
 ress we have really made ourselves, and in many cases 
 it will be a good check to our conceit, and a great help 
 to modest and truthful views to find that we have not 
 made as many or as great or as original contributions 
 to our " progress" as we may have imagined. 
 
 In this age of advancing womanhood, it is interesting 
 to lookback to that brilliant age of Greece, when woman- 
 philosophers, poets, and rhetoricians, contended for 
 prizes with men and often won them on their merits, and 
 when we might see the greatest masculine intellects of 
 the day sitting at the feet of brilliantly educated women 
 and learning from them, Socrates for instance at the feet 
 of Diotima, the great Pythagorean woman-philosopher 
 
Introduction. v 
 
 who taught him the true philosophy of the universal 
 principle of Beneficent and Creative Love, as is shown 
 in the extracts from the Sj'mposium. 
 
 The names of Sappho, B. C. 600, and Myrtis and 
 Corinna, B. C. 500, are famous in the annals of poetry 
 and the history of Greece. Corinna was a great edu- 
 cator as well as a great poetess, and the teacher of Pindar, 
 the chief lyric poet of Greece, over whom she won the 
 prize for poetry five times in public contests. Aspasia 
 to whom — whether rightly or wrongly — a questionable 
 name has been popularly attached, was, without ques- 
 tion, a most brilliant and accomplished woman, a teacher 
 of philosophy and rhetoric in Athens and the composer 
 of the orations of Pericles, one of the greatest statesmen 
 of Greece, in the most brilliant period of her history. 
 It would be hard to find women in our own day of such 
 relative eminence in letters and public life, and this 
 striking fact should help to make the study of ancient 
 thought and ancient thinkers and writers attractive and 
 interesting to us at this daJ^ 
 
 Special attention is also called to the extracts from the 
 Phaedo and other works on Virtue and the Immortality 
 of the Soul, giving the remarkable thoughts and argu- 
 ments of Socrates and showing the exaltation of ideas, 
 and the clearness and beauty of the old Greek thought. 
 And these thoughts, it must be remembered, were re- 
 corded nearly five hundred years before any part of the 
 New Testament was composed and will be found to give 
 a clearer statement of the main doctrines of the prevail- 
 ing popular religions than can be found in the Old or 
 New Testaments themselves, such doctrines for example 
 as absorption in ideal virtue, abstraction from a worldly 
 life and living for a future state of perfection after 
 
vi Introduction. 
 
 death ; Immortality of the Soul, Heaven, Purgatory, and 
 Hell, etc. 
 
 The ancient Egyptians, above all other peoples, seem 
 to have had the most elaborate and intense belief in 
 immortality of the soul, resurrection of the body and 
 future states of rewards and punishments, and from them 
 these doctrines seem to have spread to the races on both 
 shores of the Mediterranean. Indeed, modern investiga- 
 tions have clearly shown the undoubted influence that 
 ancient Egypt had on ancient Greece in art, religion and 
 philosophy, and have also shown that Europe was 
 probably first peopled, or at least most influenced in its 
 civilization, from the adjacent Africa and not from the 
 distant India as had been the most popular theory for 
 many years.* The clear teaching of the Greek phi- 
 losophers on immortality, etc., as now shown in the ex- 
 tracts herein given, is therefore a good illustration of 
 this Egyptian influence long before the Christian era, as 
 the Greek teaching is almost identical with that which 
 was prevalent in ancient Egypt,t and the Greeks gen- 
 erally acknowledged their debt to Egypt and Chaldea 
 for many of their ideas (seethe extracts from the Timseus 
 in the appendix). 
 
 It is also interesting to here note that in Aristotle we 
 will find the great prototype of the modern Scientific, 
 Rational, and Evolutionary Schools, as he had clearly 
 anticipated the modern ideas of Natural Development or 
 " Evolution," also " Utilitarianism " in Ethics and a 
 broad " Democracy " in Politics. Indeed, in reading 
 over the strong sentences of Aristotle, we will be often 
 
 " See works of Maspero, Petrie and others on Egypt. Also lectures of Amelia 
 B. Edwards (Harper & Bros.) and Prof. Sergi on The Mediterranean Race 
 (Scribner & Sons). 
 
 t See new translation of the Egyptian ' ' Book of the Dead " by E. A. Wallls 
 Budge of the British Museum — Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago. 
 
Introduction. vii 
 
 struck with what we might call the Tema.rls.a.hle modernity 
 of his thought, and in his Politics this is particularly 
 apparent, so that if we did not know the author we might 
 now and then suppose that we were looking over a 
 recent high-class political speech, an editorial in the 
 day's paper, or a magazine article from the latest 
 issue. 
 
 We therefore think it will be interesting and agreeably 
 surprising if the man of to-day will read over our ex- 
 tracts from the Politics giving Aristotle's clear ideas on 
 Public Schools and the careful education of the young 
 on physical, mental and moral lines ; his remarkable 
 emphasis on the use of music in education and its ethical 
 values and dangers, etc. ; his denunciation of excessive 
 athletics in education and his exposure of the fallacy 
 that the professional athlete is necessarily a good physical 
 tj'pe, which some of our best modern authorities are only 
 now beginning to rediscover. It will be equally inter- 
 esting and refreshing to note what is said on " business " 
 and "leisure" and on war and peace in his views on the 
 Best or Ideal Life, and the superiority of culture and 
 character or " goods of the soul " over mere wealth or 
 worldly success ; his condemnation of all government 
 except that based on the consent and for " the good of 
 the governed " and his denunciations of all wars of con- 
 quest and the domination of one race by another through 
 mere force. All of this will be found to have an ex- 
 tremely " advanced " or " modern " tone, yet it was 
 written nearly twenty-four centuries ago by a thinker 
 who was one of the highest products of an old civiliza- 
 tion, which with all our modern conceit we must admit 
 was probably, in its best examples, characterized by as 
 high a standard in the physical, the ethical and the 
 artistic as the human creature has ever attained on earth. 
 
viii Introdicction. 
 
 We have therefore raade the most extensive extracts 
 from the " Politics " because of this great general inter- 
 est and because they contain so many points illustrating 
 the true principles of general or applied ethics as well 
 as of broad politics. 
 
 The little states of ancient Greece with their active 
 versatile peoples, their able statesmen and philosophers, 
 seem indeed to have experienced almost every phase and 
 kind of politics and form of government, and had thus 
 worked out for us the examples and problems of almost 
 every kind that we have since had or now have to deal 
 with in modern ethics and politics, and it will certainly 
 be both interesting and instructive for us to now look 
 over the treatment of these questions and problems by 
 one of the greatest political philosophers who lived 
 twenty-four centuries before us, and to note his criticisms 
 and commendations of the false and true in Ethics, in 
 Democracy and in Free Institutions from that distance 
 of time. In our natural "Anglo-Saxon" and "Teu- 
 tonic " bias, we have been perhaps too much inclined to 
 accept the too popular idea that the main inspiration for 
 all our modern free institutions originated in "the for- 
 ests of Germany" or on "the shores of the Baltic," 
 forgetting that most of our modern institutions were first 
 thought out and most of our modern problems tested at 
 a much earlier age in a more complete way on the classic 
 shores of the Mediterranean from whence we have un- 
 doubtedly also got so much of our speech, our thought 
 and our civilization.* 
 
 •In an old English History by Nath. Bacon, published In London in 1647, an 
 interesting theory of the origin of the Saxons is given, viz., that they sprang 
 from some of the Macedonian legions of Alexander's army which penetrated to 
 the far north of Europe. If this should be true, we cou^d thus, after all, trace 
 the free institutions and liberal ideas of the Saxon directly back to the old 
 sfireek period and to the broad influence of Aristotle, who was the tutor of 
 AJexander and the great political and ethical philosopher of the Macedonian 
 Court. 
 
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Introduction. ix 
 
 The central figure among the Greek Philosophers was, 
 however, the great old Master, Socrates, who for his high 
 moral sense and wonderful reasoning powers was called 
 by his distinguished young pupil Alcibiades, the en- 
 chanter and conqueror of all men in conversation or dis- 
 putation, as expressed in the "Symposium." And it 
 must not be forgotten that Socrates was more eminent 
 in Moral Philosophy than in anything else, his work be- 
 ing devoted chiefly to Ethics and but little to Physics, for 
 which latter he seems to have had more or less contempt. 
 Even the most superficial student cannot fail to notice a 
 remarkable parallel between Socrates and Christ in many 
 features connected with their life and death, and in their 
 character and teachings, so much so that Socrates might 
 properly be called the "Pagan Christian" if not the 
 " Pagan Christ," and the several extracts given in the 
 Appendix and in the inserts from the teachings of Soc- 
 rates will, we think, show this resemblance or relation 
 at a glance. In his pure theistic conception of God and 
 the government of the Universe (which was not of 
 course uncommon in the Pagan world), in his vivid be- 
 lief in the personal immortality of the soul and its future 
 states of probation, reward and punishment, his serious 
 belief in Divine Inspiration, his doctrine of Love, and 
 his earnest contention for a life of ideal virtue and un- 
 worldliness, he approached most closely to the belief of 
 the primitive Christian sect itself. And not only is it 
 strictly true to say, as before indicated, that the 
 Christian's own scripture nowhere contains such a clear, 
 distinct, and detailed account of their own doctrine of 
 the soul and its future, as can be found expressed in the 
 words of Socrates, but it is perhaps not too much to say 
 that no extant writing anywhere contains so good an 
 expression of these doctrines and of the philosophic 
 
X IntrodMction. 
 
 arguments in support of them as could be found in the 
 words of Socrates in Plato's Phasdo over four hundred 
 years before the appearance of the Christian sect. 
 
 Not only, therefore, is this old Greek Master found to 
 stand pre-eminent in the teaching and exposition of 
 some great religious doctrines, but a further notable and 
 most interesting fact, which should be more appreciated 
 by ethical students of our own day, is that Socrates also 
 seems to have been really the father of Modern Utilitari- 
 an Ethics. This modernly revised ethical theory was 
 clearly outlined and developed by Socrates and after- 
 wards was taught by Aristotle, the pupil of Socrates' 
 chief pupil — Plato — and later on was given a very full 
 expression by Epicurus, an immediate successor of Aris- 
 totle, who, after Socrates, was probably the clearest ex- 
 ponent of the Utilitarian school of ethics in ancient 
 times : And we have shown in the Appendix how iden- 
 tical is the teaching of Socrates with the teaching of 
 that great master of the modern utilitarian school, 
 Herbert Spencer, in his Data of Ethics, a point which 
 should be more known and appreciated than it now 
 seems to be — and should add interest to the study of 
 those great pioneers of thought, the Greek Philosophers, 
 in which we hope this little work may be of some help. 
 
 To add a pictorial interest we have obtained and in- 
 serted a number of portraits of the Greek philosophers, 
 some of which are seldom seen, to better acquaint our 
 readers, not only with the ancient thought, but with the 
 personal appearance of the great thinkers themselves, 
 who have so deeply influenced the morals and the 
 thought of the human race. 
 
 "We have also added a brief sketch of Pythagoras and 
 his school, the great predecessor of Socrates and Plato, 
 who had probably the greatest influence on their thought. 
 
LIBRARY COLUMBm UxNIVERSITY. 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 and we have concluded the work with a life of Socrates 
 in condensed form to give a better idea of the great per- 
 sonality who so dominated and influenced all later 
 schools of Greek thinking. 
 
 We have to thank the Open Court Publishing Co. of 
 Chicago, and also the Walter Thorp Co. and G. P- 
 Putnam's Sons of New York, for the use of some of 
 these portraits. 
 
 CHAS. M. HIGGINS, 
 
 Of Committee on Comparative Religjion, 
 
 Brooklyn Ethical Association. 
 
 271 Ninth Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., 
 May I St, 1903. 
 
FORETASTES AND KEYNOTES 
 
 THE GREAT PAGAN PROPHETS 
 
 SOCRATES, 
 
 PLATO, 
 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 " Outside the sacred literature of the world, Socrates 
 Plato, and Aristotle were the main factors of civiliza- 
 tion. They fulfilled a truly sublime mission in their 
 day and nation, for in the fourth century B. C. these 
 philosophers and their disciples made an end to the 
 more ancient materialism and built up those systems 
 of philosophy, including the natural sciences, which 
 have exercised so vast an influence upon the progress 
 of man, and still do in very m.any instances. They 
 were the great prophets of the hum.an conscience in the 
 pagan world.'''' 
 
 Davis — " Greek & Roman Stoicism.'''' 
 
 (xii) 
 
SOCRATES ON IMMORTALITY. 
 B. C. 399. 
 
 " And are we to suppose thai the soul, which is invisible, in pass- 
 ing to the true Hades, which like her is invisible, and pure, and 
 noble, and on her way to the good and wise God, whither, if God 
 will, my soul is soon to go — that the soul, I repeat, if this be her 
 nature and origin, is blown away and perishes immediately on 
 quitting the body, as the many say? That can never be, tny dear 
 Simmias and Cebes. 
 
 '■ Then, Cebes, beyond question the soul is immortal and imper- 
 ishable, and our souls will truly exist in another world! 
 
 "But then, O tny friends, if the soul is really imntortal, what 
 care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of 
 time which is called life, but of eternity ! And the danger of neg- 
 lecting her from, this point of view does indeed appear to be 
 awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would 
 have a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily 
 quit, not only of their body but of their own evil, together with 
 their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, 
 there is no release or salvation frofn evil except the attainment of 
 the highest virtue and wisdom. 
 
 " Wherefore, Simmias, seeing all these things, what ought not we 
 to do, in order to obtain virtue and wisdotn in this life f Fair is 
 the prize and the hope great. 
 
 " Wherefore I say, let a man be of good cheer about his soul, 
 who has cast away the pleasures and ornaments of the body as alien 
 to him, and rather hurtful in their effects, and has followed after 
 the pleasures of knowledge in this life ; who has adorned the soul 
 in her own proper jewels, which are temperance, and justice, and 
 courage, and nobility, and truth — in these arrayed she is ready to 
 go on her journey below when her time comes." 
 
 Plato's Phcedo. 
 
 THE SOCRATIC-UTILITARIAN THEORY OF 
 ETHICS. 
 
 ' ' Then I should say to them in my name and yours : JDo you 
 think them evil for any other reason except that they end in pain 
 and rob us of other pleasures ? ' ' 
 
 " And do you call them good because they occasion the greatest 
 immediate suffering and pain ; or because afterwards they bring 
 health aud improvement of the bodily condition and the salvation 
 of states, and empires, and wealth." 
 
 " Are these things good for any other reason except that they 
 end in pleasure and get rid of and avert pain ? Are you looking 
 to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them 
 good?" 
 
 Plato's "-Protagoras." 
 
SOCRATES, 
 
 B. C. 168 to 399. 
 
 TlIK GREAT ANCIENT EXPONENT OF THE RELICIOUS DOCTRINE 
 
 OK THE IMMORTAL SOUL, ANIJ THE ETHICAL 
 
 UUCTRINE OF UTILITARIANISM. 
 
 tFrom bust in Villa Albani. ) 
 
xni 
 
 WISDOM ANd) KNOWLEDGE. 
 Folly and Ignorance. 
 
 To be ignorant of ourselves^ to seem to know those 
 things whereof we are ignorant^ is next to madness. 
 
 The chief wisdom of man consists in not thinking 
 he understands those things which he doth not under- 
 stand. 
 
 There is but one good., knowledge., one ill., ignorance. 
 
 Socrates jgg, B. C. 
 
XIV 
 
 CHARACTER AND SINCERITY. 
 
 There is no better way to glory than to endeavor 
 to be good as well as to seem such. 
 
 Good men must let the world see that their manners 
 are m.ore firm, than an oath. 
 
 In the life of man., as in an image, every part ought 
 to be beautiful. 
 
 An honest death is better than a dishonest life. 
 
 Socrates. 
 
XV 
 
 POLITICAL MORALITY. 
 
 They are not kings who are in possession of a 
 throne or come unjustly by it, but they who know how 
 to govern. 
 
 A king is ruler of willing subjects according to the 
 laws^ a tyrant is ruler of subjects against their will, 
 not according to the laws, but arbitrarily. 
 
 That city is strongest which hath virtuous men ; 
 that city is best wherein are proposed most rewards 
 of virtue. That city lives best which liveth according 
 to law and punisheth the unjust. 
 
 Faith should be kept more strictly with a city than 
 with private persons. 
 
 Whatever inconvenience may ensue, nothing is to be 
 preferred before justice. 
 
 Socrates. 
 
XVI 
 
 VIRTUE AND FILIAL DUTY. 
 
 Virtue is the beauty^ vice the deformity of the soul. 
 
 The greatest of vices is ingratitude. 
 
 The greatest obligation is that to parents. 
 
 Socrates. 
 
XVII 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 The Gods are to be worshipped according to the law 
 of the city where a man lives. 
 
 The best way of worshipping God is to do what He 
 commands. 
 
 Our prayers should be for blessings in general^ for 
 God knows best what is good for us, our of^erings pro- 
 portioned to our abilities, for He considers integrity^ 
 
 not munificence. 
 
 Socrates. 
 
XVIII 
 
 PRUDENCE. 
 
 Be not forward in speech^ for many times the tongue 
 has cut off the head. 
 
 When a man opens his mouthy his virtues are as 
 manifest as images in a temple. 
 
 In war^ steel is better than gold: In life^ wisdom 
 excelleth wealth. 
 
 When a woman saith she loveth thee, take heed of 
 these words more than when she revileth thee. 
 
 A young man's virtue is to do nothing too much. 
 
 Socrates. 
 
PLATO^ the great idealistic philosopher of the 
 Grecian schools^ having the deepest influence on both 
 the religious and philosophic thought of fewish and 
 Christian sects. It has been said of the great fewish 
 Philosopher Philo — contemporary with Christ and the 
 Apostles — that he was so great a follower of Plato, 
 that it was a common saying among the ancients that 
 ''''either Plato Philonises or Philo Platonises.^^ {See 
 Preface in the works of Philo fudaeus, translated by 
 C. D. Yonge.) St. Augustine, one of the most learned 
 and influential of the Christian ''''Fathers^'' in his 
 " City of God" naively acknowledges that " 7tone come 
 nearer to us than the Platonists." 
 
 It is interesting also to note that a mystic or divine 
 quality was imputed to Plato by his followers, similar 
 to that claimed for Christ, viz., that he was a divine 
 incarnation or super-human being. In the life of 
 Plato given in Stanleys History of Philosophy, he 
 states that: — '''' Plutarch, Suidas and others affirm- it 
 to have been commonly reported at Athens that he 
 {Plato) was the son of Apollo, who appearing in a 
 vision to his mother, a woman of extraordinary 
 beauty — she thereupon conceived." 
 
 ' ' He did not issue from a mortal bed. 
 
 "A God his sire, a Godlike life he led." 
 
 '■''Some therefore affirmed he was born of a Virgin, 
 and it was a common speech among the Athenians that 
 Phoebus begat Esculapius and Plato, one to cure 
 bodies, the other souls." 
 
 The name ''''Plato" seems to mean broad, and was 
 given by his father Ariston, on account of the literal 
 or figurative " broadness" in the physical and mental 
 qualities of his gifted son. It will be seen in the 
 portraits that the brow on the handsome face of Plato 
 has the broadness and smoothness of a '^'^ plateau," 
 which doubtless means the same as '''' Plato." And as 
 to the m.ental sense of the word, it is certain that few 
 thinkers were more elevated and extended in their 
 writings or so broad and profound in their thinking 
 as this immortal pupil of Socrates, hence the fitness 
 and beauty of his name " Plato." 
 
PLATO, 
 
 B. C. 4IX). 
 From orig-iua! iimrbl'-- busC in tlie Vaticaa. 
 
XIX 
 
 HONESTY AND RECIPROCITY. 
 
 " In the next place, dealings between man and man 
 require to be suitably regulated. The principle of 
 them, is very simple: Thou shall not touch that which 
 is mine, if thou canst help, or remove the least thing 
 which belongs to m.e without my consent; and m.ay /, 
 being of sound m,ind, do to others as I would that they 
 should do to m.e.'''' 
 
 Plato's '■'■Laws" 4.00 B. C. 
 
XX 
 
 THE ETERNAL. 
 
 " Now the beginning is unbegotten^ for thai which 
 is begotten has a beginnings but the beginning has no 
 beginning s for if a begi7ining were begotten of some- 
 thing, that would have no beginning. But that which 
 is unbegotten must also be indestructible ; for if be- 
 ginning were destroyed, there could be no beginning 
 out of anything, or anything out of a beginning ; and 
 all things must have a beginning. And therefore the 
 self-moving is the beginning of motion; and this can 
 neither be destroyed nor begotten. But if the self- 
 moving is immortal, he who affirms that self-m-otion is 
 the very idea and essence of the soul will not be put to 
 confusion. But if the soul be trtcly affirmed to be the 
 self-moving, then must she also be without beginning 
 and immortaV 
 
 Plato'' s Phcsdru^. 
 
XXI 
 
 CIVIC VIRTUE AND TRUE STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 " Facts easily prove that mankind do not acquire or 
 preserve virtue by the help of external goods^ but ex- 
 ternal goods by the help of virtue^ and that happiness^ 
 whether consisting in pleasure or virtue^ or bothy is 
 more often found with those who are most highly culti- 
 vated in their mind and in their character and have 
 only a moderate share of external goods, than among 
 those who possess external goods to a useless extent 
 but are deficient in higher qualities. " 
 
 " Let us acknowledge then that each one has just so 
 m.uch of happiness as he has of virtue and wisdom and 
 of virtuous and wise action. God is witness to us of 
 this truthy for He is happy and blessed, not by reason 
 of any external goods, but in Himself and by reason 
 of His own nature?'' 
 
 " Let us assume then that the best life, both for in- 
 dividuals and states, is the life of virtue, having ex- 
 ternal goods enough for the performance of good ac- 
 tions. Now it is evident that the form, of government 
 is best in which every m.an, whoever he is, can act for 
 the best and live happily.'''' 
 
 Aristotle, j^o B. C. 
 
XXII 
 
 LIFE AND PEACE. 
 
 " The whole of life is further divided into two parts ^ 
 business and leisure, war and peace, and all actions 
 into those which are necessary and useful and those 
 which are honorable : there must be war for the sake 
 of peace, business for the sake of leisure, things useful 
 and necessary for the sake of things honorable. For 
 ■men must engage in business and go to war, but 
 leisure and peace are better ; they m.ust do what is 
 useful and necessary, but what is honorable is better^ 
 In such principles children and persons of every age 
 should be trained, whereas even the Hellenes of the 
 present day, who are reputed to be the best governed, 
 and the legislators who gave them, their constitutions, 
 do not appear to have framed their governments with 
 regard to the best end, or to have given them laws and 
 education with a view to all the virtues, but in a 
 vulgar spirit have fallen back on those which promised 
 to be more useful and profitabley 
 
 '''' Facts as well as arguments prove that the legis- 
 lator should direct all his m.ilitary and other measures 
 to the provision of leisure and the establishment of 
 peace. For most of those military states are safe only 
 while they are at war, but fall when they have ac- 
 quired their empire: like unused iron they rust in 
 time of peace. And for this the legislator is to blame 
 he never having taught them how to lead the life oj 
 peace?'' 
 
 Aristotle. B. C. jjo. 
 
XXIII 
 
 CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED. 
 Right vs. Might. 
 
 " Yet to a reflecting mind it must appear very 
 strange that the statesman should be always consider- 
 ing how he can dominate and tyrannize over others^ 
 whether they will or not. How can that which is not 
 even lawful be the business of the statesman or legis- 
 lator f Unlawful it certainly is to rule without re- 
 gard to justice^ for there may be might where there is 
 no rights 
 
 " Yet many appear to think that a despotic govern- 
 ment is a true political form., and what men affirm to 
 be unjust and inexpedient in their own case they are 
 not ashamed of practicing towards others ; they de- 
 mand justice for themselves^ but where other men are 
 concerned they care nothing about it. Such behavior 
 is irrational." 
 
 ' ' Neither is a city to be deemed happy or a legis- 
 lator to be praised because he trains his citizens to 
 conquer and obtain domination over their neighbors., 
 for there is great evil in this. No such principle and 
 no law having this object is either statesm.a7tlike, or 
 useful, or right. For the same things are best for in- 
 dividuals and for states and these are the things which 
 the legislator should im.plant in the m-inds of his 
 citizens." 
 
 " Neither should men study war with a view to the 
 enslavement of those who do not deserve to be enslaved, 
 but first of all they should provide against their en- 
 slavement and in the second place obtain empire for 
 the good of the governed and not for the sake of ex- 
 ercising a general despotisTn." 
 
 Aristotle, B. C. j^o. 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE DIVINE MISSION OF SOCRATES. 
 
 ^^ For this is the command of God, as I would have 
 you know ; and I believe that to this day no greater 
 good has ever happened in the state than my service 
 to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading 
 you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for 
 your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly 
 to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I 
 tell you that virtue is not given by m-oney, but that 
 from, virtue come money and every other good of m,an, 
 public as well as private." * * * 
 
 '■'■J am that gadfly which God has given the state, and 
 all day long and in all places am always fastening 
 upon you, arousing and perstiading and reproaching 
 you. * * * And that I am, given to you by God 
 is proved by this : that if I had been like other m.en, I 
 should not have neglected all my own concerns, or 
 patiently seen the neglect of them, during all these 
 years, and have been doing yours, coming to you in- 
 dividually, like a father or elder brother, exhorting 
 you to regard virtue ; this, I say, would not be like 
 human nature. And had I gained anything, or if 
 my exhortations had been paid, there would have been 
 some sense in that ; but now, as you will perceive, not 
 even the impudence xf my accusers dares to say that I 
 have ever exacted or sought pay of any one ; they have 
 no witness of that. And I have a witness of the truth 
 of what I say ; my poverty is a suficient witness.'''' 
 * * * * 
 
 ' ' For if, O men of Athens, by force of persuasion 
 and entreaty, I could overpower your oaths, then I 
 should be teaching you to believe that there are no 
 Gods, and convict myself, in my own defense, of not 
 believing in them. But that is not the case ; for I 
 do believe that there are Gods, and in a far higher 
 sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in 
 them.'''' From the Apology. 
 
Prof. JAMES H HYSLOP. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 r 
 
 The lecture which is here published in book form was 
 an attempt to reduce the conceptions of Greek ethics to 
 the same terms as those in which modern problems in 
 this field express themselves. Too many philosophers 
 merely transliterate the language of antiquity instead of 
 translating it. " The consequence is that we as often fail 
 to discover that in the past we are dealing with the same 
 intellectual and moral problems as in the present. I 
 have endeavored, therefore, to see the Greek thought on 
 ethics with the eyes of a modern student. How far I 
 have been successful must be left to others to decide. 
 But there seems to me a perennial lesson for serious 
 men and women in the efforts of Socrates, Plato and 
 Aristotle to reanimate while they modified the sturdy 
 morality which they thought produced the civilization 
 they saw on the decline. The Republic and the Laws of 
 Plato, and the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle are equally 
 good as missionary appeals to revivify the conscience of 
 the race as the}' are scientific treatises to enlighten its 
 intellect. They should be read with constant reference 
 to the problems that interest in social and political mo- 
 rality. The selections from Plato and Aristotle which 
 have been made by the Editor and myself are designed 
 both to illustrate the conceptions of Greek philosophy 
 and to show their aflSnity with present day questions. 
 
 JAMES H. HYSLOP. 
 New York, March 26, 1903. 
 
XXVI 
 
 PUBLISHER'S NOTE. 
 
 The series of lectures on The Evolution of Ethics 
 will probably be issued in three volumes as follows : 
 
 Vol. I, The Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Vol. 2, Origin of Ethical Ideas, Ethics of Evolution, 
 and Utilitarian Ethics. 
 
 Vol. 3 will probably contain all the remaining lectures 
 of the course. 
 
 We now issue the volume on the Greek Philosophers 
 as the first of the series, not because the Greek systems 
 are necessarily first in order of importance or chronol- 
 ogy, but because they properly deserve first place in our 
 regards, as we believe it cannot be denied that to the 
 Greek and Latin thinkers we are most indebted for the 
 greatest and most direct influence on our own political, 
 moral, religious and scientific thought. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 BY PROF. JAS. H. HYSLOP. 
 
 The interest in Greek philosophy is perennial. It 
 resembles the immortality of Homer. The Iliad and the 
 Odyssey have not done more to stimulate and nourish 
 the imagination than the philosophers have done for the 
 understanding and the conscience. Whenever we wish 
 to discuss fundamental principles in philosophy and 
 literature, or the great outlines of theory in both depart- 
 ments of thought, we return to Greece, and there we find 
 the object of our suit in all its simplicity and fascination. 
 Homer, like his own Cimmerian shades, is found only in 
 the twilight of fable, and philosophy, like epic poetry in 
 its antiquity, traces its origin to the confines of myth- 
 ology. But in both branches of its intellectual activity 
 Greece reflects the naivete of childhood, until its problems 
 become well defined in the speculations of the later 
 schools. It is this very simplicity, however, that con- 
 stitutes both the fascination and the value of Greek phil- 
 osophic thought. It deals with first principles in a 
 way that seems always and everywhere to characterize 
 the rise of philosophic reflection. The spontaneity and 
 naturalness of this development make it especially 
 
2 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 attractive to all who enjoy an emancipation from the 
 artificial methods and burdensome shackles of scholastic 
 dogmatism. It goes direct to nature and fact for its data, 
 and keeps near enough to common experience to avoid 
 mere romancing, while it remains profound enough to 
 originate the spirit and methods of science and philoso- 
 phy. This naturalness of Greek reflection was and is the 
 true genius of speculative inquiry, and naive as were 
 many of its thoughts, they exhibit a sagacity and pene- 
 tration that astonishes us when we consider the character 
 of the period as compared with the advantages of our 
 own. The concrete form of these speculations often 
 seem odd and childish enough, but the general princi- 
 ples at their basis were as profound and far reaching as 
 anything that can to-day boast of an origin in riper 
 reflection. Hence whenever we wish to divest ourselves of 
 the impediments adhering to existing formulas and illus- 
 trations with their illusory associations we have only to 
 return to those sources of philosophy which, though they 
 border on the simplicity of childhood, have power to 
 stimulate inquiry in a way that is not rivaled by any 
 other race of thinkers. This is the one reason that Greece 
 is the great academic source of philosophic education and 
 culture. 
 
 The chief interest, however, with which we are here 
 occupied is that period of reflection which begins with 
 Socrates and ends with Aristotle. Not even all of the 
 aspects of this period will require our attention, but only 
 those which deal with its ethics. 
 
 It was an age of unexampled intellectual, as it was of 
 political, activity, both having been brought about by 
 the same causes : namely, the emancipation of the Greek 
 consciousness from the thralls of tradition, and the vic- 
 tory over Persia at Marathon and Salamis. The former 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 3 
 
 secured intellectual, and the latter political, freedom, and 
 both a civilization without a rival at that time, and which 
 remained as long as the old morality retained its leaven- 
 ing power. Greece became conscious of herself and of 
 her power in this emancipation of her people, and so 
 secured that spontaneity of action, intellectual and politi- 
 cal, which is the only guarantee and protector of a great 
 civilization. Her strength against outside enemies gave 
 her self-reliance, and the taste of freedom fortified her 
 against hostile forces withia Besides all these there 
 was, of course, a variety of influences, social, literary, 
 and philosophical, which stimulated intellectual activity 
 of all kinds, and so supplemented the purely political 
 agencies in awakening Greek life to a consciousness 
 of its powers and vocation. There was a large class of 
 people, aristocratic in possessions, tastes, and habits, and 
 with leisure, or free from toil and pain as the Greeks 
 expressed it, to lead a contemplative or reflective life. 
 This class set to thinking about things cosmic, personal, 
 and social, and the very first impulse opened up a fairy- 
 land of wonders in nature that fascinated the imagination 
 Tike the discoveries of Columbus and the theories of 
 Darwin in later times. In thus opening up the secrets of 
 nature, the Greeks were stimulated in an inquiry as intoxi- 
 cating as the gold fever of Peru and California. Trees, 
 plants, ocean, seasons, stars, numbers, elements, and all 
 animate or inanimate things were objects of mingled wor- 
 ship and curiosity. A discovery iu any of these fields was 
 the signal for the most impetuous and childish theories. 
 It was only natural, and though their systems were very 
 naive at first, they soon gave rise to problems which 
 have a perennial interest and an importance for every 
 individual who seeks a knowledge of nature as well as 
 culture, "Consider," says Mr. Alfred Benn, "the lively 
 
4 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 emotions excited among an intelligent people at a time 
 when multiplication and division, squaring and cubing, 
 the rule of three, the construction and equivalence of 
 figures, with all their manifold applications to indus- 
 try, commerce, fine art, and (military) tactics, were just 
 as strange and wonderful as electrical phenomena to 
 us; consider also the magical influence still commonly 
 attributed to particular numbers, and the intense eager- 
 ness to obtain exact numerical statements, even when 
 they are of no practical value, exhibited by all who 
 are thrown back upon primitive ways of living, as, for 
 example, in Alpine traveling, or on board an Atlantic 
 steamer, and we shall cease to wonder that a mere form 
 of thought, a lifeless abstraction, should once have been 
 regarded as the solution of every problem, the cause of 
 all existence." What is said in this passage referring to 
 Pythagoras can also be said of Thales, Anaximander, 
 Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras. The physical 
 speculations of the Ionian school, the pantheistic con- 
 ceptions of Anaximander and the two Eleatics, Xeno- 
 phanes and Parmenides, the dialectic of Zeno, the per- 
 petual flux or evolution of Heraclitus, the naive atomic 
 theories of Empedocles and Democritus, and the theolog- 
 ical system of Anaxagoras — all of these indicated an 
 intellectual fermentation of vast significance both in 
 their destructive influence upon traditional ideas and in 
 their constructive power for molding a new civilization. 
 But upon these influences I cannot dwell further, and 
 allude to them at all only to remark their importance in 
 a complete estimate of the period which I am to discuss 
 more carefully. I can only examine in the briefest com- 
 pass possible the most general philosophic and moral 
 attitude of mind characterizing the whole period preced- 
 ing Socrates. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 5 
 
 Preceding the Socratic period, which I am to consider, 
 there were two phases of intellectual development whose 
 characteristics require to be noticed in order to compre- 
 hend rightly the new tendencies inaugurated by Socrates. 
 They may be called the philosophic and religious move- 
 ments. Both of them terminate with the skepticism of 
 the sophists, who will come in for some consideration. 
 But the philosophic attitude of mind was characterized 
 by cosmic speculation. They were first attempts to 
 explain the universe and afterward endeavors to formu- 
 late maxims for the regulation of conduct. The phe- 
 nomena of nature were reduced to some kind of unity, 
 whether of being or of motion, elements or substance, 
 and their action according to some definite law. When 
 ethical maxims were reached they took the form of in- 
 junctions to conform conduct to this unity, to the law of 
 nature, to the harmony of the universe. It is important 
 to remark the conception of morality involved in such a 
 view of things. It is identical in general conception and 
 terms with that of Mr. Spencer and evolutionists usually, 
 in that it represents morality to be an adjustment to the 
 laws of nature, or in evolutionistic parlance, environ- 
 ment. This conception and point of view make morality 
 external. It represents morality merely as action ad- 
 justed to external forces and requires nothing but the 
 intelligence and prudence instigated by fear to achieve 
 it. Such a thing as the Kantian good-will is either 
 unnecessary or unintelligible in this condition of mind. 
 Obedience to the fixed laws of the cosmos is the one 
 course that leads to the highest good, which to the Greek 
 was always pleasure, unless we except Plato and the 
 Stoics. It is hardly proper to say that this obedience 
 was a duty, or felt as a duty, because the very con- 
 ception of moral obligation, born from the sense of a 
 
6 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 conflict between one's own inclinations and the constraint 
 of conscience, which looked at an ideal above nature and 
 more especially characterized Christianity, was unknown 
 to the period of which I am treating. The sense of con- 
 flict was often enough felt, but it was the sense of a con- 
 flict between a weaker and a stronger power, and not 
 between human desires and a divine will preconceived 
 as just and benevolent The Greek consciousness or 
 belief was that man was a part of nature^ not dualisti- 
 cally opposed to it, as either equal or inferior to it, and 
 this conception held the mind to the assumption of a 
 complete harmony between the ultimate order of the 
 world and man's interest. The highest good, therefore, 
 was conceived as man's interest in obedience to superior 
 power, and not respect for its laws as the expression of a 
 personal will. Consequently, prudence became the 
 highest virtue, which was wise obedience to power, not 
 respect for moral personality. This prudence, therefore, 
 did not involve merit for good-will as distinct from 
 knowledge or intelligence, but threw the whole responsi- 
 bility for virtue or excellence upon wisdom or knowl- 
 edge of the laws of nature. The good man was the wise 
 man; the man who knew the laws of the cosmos and 
 obeyed them whether he had any respect for them or 
 not The prudent {vorsichtiger) man was as good as the 
 religious saint, or even better, and had his rewards for 
 mere prudent self-interest quite equal those of the seekoar 
 after eternal life. It was assumed that his will inevita- 
 bly lay in the direction of the good, which was con- 
 ceived as personal interest and pleasure, and all that any 
 one could be said to lack when he failed to achieve it, or 
 " virtue," was wisdom or rational knowledge of the uni- 
 verse. Man's whole duty was to get a knowledge of 
 nature and to prudently adjust his conduct to its laws, 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosopher.'^. 7 
 
 not to seek an ideal above nature in some transcendental 
 state of existence. The ignorant man, if he ever attained 
 the good at all, merely stumbled upon it, but the rational 
 man who was conscious of what he aimed at was 
 "virtuous" for that reason. Consciousness or self-con- 
 sciousness was the Greek's conception of virtue. Con- 
 scientiousness is the increment which later thought adds 
 to that as the conception of morality, and so supple- 
 ments knowledge by good-will as a condition of virtue. 
 
 In order to see the close relation between early phil- 
 osophy and ethics we must keep in mind that both in 
 his speculative and practical reflections the pre-Socratic 
 thinker directed his attention to the external world. 
 Both his philosophy and his ethics were cosmic. To 
 state it more technically his point of view was cosmolog- 
 ical, that is, cosmocentric, as distinct from anthropologi- 
 cal, that is, anthropocentric. This position favored 
 humility and obedience, as the anthropocentric view, 
 whatever its merits in other respects, often tends to an 
 exaggerated self-estimation. Nevertheless the Greek had 
 no humility and the later Christian had less pride. There 
 were other reasons for this fact. But the reference to 
 cosmic and external conditions, under the philosophic 
 impulse, was not accompanied or inspired by any sense of 
 fear, at least among the philosophers. The common mind 
 may have lived in terror of the forces of nature, because 
 it thought them the manifestation of lawless gods and 
 demons. But in the reflective stage of development this 
 fear was banished. This was probably because the 
 movement was controlled by the- more philosophic minds 
 of Greece, who were in their times the ideals of calm and 
 dispassionate temperament, and hence the ethical con- 
 sciousness represented by them was of the rational type, 
 duly exempt from fear and superstition on the one hand. 
 
8 Ethics of the Oreeh Philosophers. 
 
 and from an exalted and exaggerated estimate of human 
 life on the other. Not being able to awaken the in- 
 flaence of love for an impersonal law, as Christianity- 
 awakened it for the law of an idealized personal God, the 
 ethics of the period under notice could have no other 
 motive than a calculating prudence, exempt from the 
 disturbing influence of fear, hope, and love. Its whole 
 principle was adjustment to an external order, and 
 morality was rational submission to it. There was no 
 high estimation placed upon man in any sense that his 
 good lay in conquering the world, but only in conform- 
 ing to it. The point of view, as I have said, was cosmo- 
 centric, not anthropocentric, and this meant that man 
 must subordinate his life to the cosmos instead of sub- 
 ordinating nature to himself. This same conception was 
 reflected in politics, in which the ethical norm was " pas- 
 sive obedience" to authority, minus the "divine right of 
 kings,'' though there are traces of even this idea, with 
 none of its idealization, however, as later civilization 
 tried to construe it. Bat morality in this conception 
 expressed a sense of limitation, and though the whole 
 movement was characterized by a calm and rational 
 view of this limitation, its tendency was to make the 
 Greek conscious of thwarted effort and restricted liberty 
 in the satisfaction of desire, and this he resented with all 
 the bitterness characteristic of a liberty-loving race. 
 Hence the universal lamentation at the hardness of fate, 
 though this weakness generally escaped the philosophers 
 whose habits of thought and action insured a mental 
 equilibrium that has fixed the popular conception of 
 their character for all time. They taught and practised 
 that balance of feeling and will which enables men to 
 battle with the storms of nature and destiny, and to seek 
 their highest good rather in obedience to cosmic laws 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 9 
 
 than ia rebellion against them. The average Greek was 
 a born rebel, because he could respect neither nature nor 
 the gods, and it was a hard lesson to learn that the 
 cosmos had the first claim upon his allegiance. But this 
 necessity — for- it was a necessity rather than a duty to 
 the Greek, because, on the one hand, he found neither per- 
 sonality in nature nor morality in the gods, and on the 
 other, his own conception of the good did not transcend 
 personal interest — this necessity of submission to nature 
 was the whole ethical teaching of the philosophic move- 
 ment previous to Socrates, and it was identical with the 
 religious attitude of mind in the same period, except 
 that the forces that exacted obedience were impersonal 
 and could not utilize all those associations which are 
 connected with the idea of personality. Though they 
 could not evoke love, as the human attitude of mind 
 toward them, they did not awaken in the philosophers 
 the sentiment of fear. The age and its necessities 
 taught the fatuity of cowardice aod the benefits of 
 rational adjustment to nature. 
 
 The second intellectual movement which both pre- 
 ceded and accompanied the philosophical was the relig- 
 ious system of ideas. This founded all morality upon 
 the will of the gods. It was not reflective in its type, 
 but manifested those naive ideas regarding the basis of 
 morals which characterize all religious beliefs. It fos- 
 tered the morality of fear. It was like the philosophical 
 movement in producing the sense of subjection to an 
 external law, or authority, but it was unlike that move- 
 ment in its conception of the law to be obeyed. The 
 religious consciousness of that time obeyed divinities 
 that were the embodied ge^iii of caprice and libertinism, 
 and hence it could live only under the domination of fear, 
 which such beings would inspire, 'especially that they 
 
10 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 held men's life and fortune in their hands. At first men 
 animated even nature with capricious laws and lived in 
 terror under it. Long after they had found the cosmos 
 a seat of fixed laws they still attributed to the gods the 
 caprice and wontonness that nature had shared at an 
 earlier time. No genuine morality is possible under 
 such a system. The calculations of prudence and virtue 
 are not possible where nature and the gods are not 
 regular, and to caprice the gods added personality with- 
 out morality. Hence they could inspire nothing but 
 fear. On the other hand, the philosopher's cosmos was 
 the seat of irrevocable order, and he could learn to cal- 
 culate its action, to sacrifice his desires to it for remoter 
 rewards, and to contemplate its course with equanimity, 
 while the religious mind had to quake and tremble before 
 the prospect of an arbitrary and unjust interference with 
 its plans, hopes, and aspirations. Nothing but super- 
 stitious fear could exist under such a system of concep- 
 tions, and man still remained the servant of external 
 agents, and his morality or conduct nothing more 
 than prudential obedience under restraint. The philo- 
 sophic mind could cultivate an intellectual calm, the 
 calm of Fate, or the consciousness that the course of 
 things was inexorable, and that it could be propitiated 
 by neither fear, nor hope, nor love, but the religious 
 mind, having no fixed order with which to reckon, but 
 only a lot of capricious personal beings to propitiate, 
 could only lead a life of fear and terror. In the absence, 
 therefore, of the philosopher's calm and insight, the two 
 alternatives for man's regeneration were either to deny 
 the existence of the gods, or to moralize them. Skepti- 
 cism did the former ; Christianity did the latter. 
 
 This skeptical tendency was represented by the 
 sophistic movement in which there were three factors 
 
Ethics oftlie Greek Philosophers. 11 
 
 baving much interest in the development of philosophy. 
 They were : (1) Its doctrine of the so-called relativity 
 of knowledge, both intellectual and moral. (2) Its 
 agnosticism, or even denial, regarding the existence of 
 the gods. (3) Its theory of conventionalism regarding 
 the origin of morality. There was also in the school an 
 incipient recognition of the place occupied by pleasure 
 in the determination of conduct in so far as the indi- 
 vidual is concerned. This might very well be called 
 the fourth factor in sophistic thought. All of them 
 exercised a profound influence upon current conceptions 
 of morality. The first led to a change from the cosmo- 
 logical to the anthropological point of view. The second 
 led to a denial of the religious consciousness and the 
 authority of the gods. The third and fourth in connection 
 with religious skepticism created a tendency toward 
 libertinism. 
 
 The meaning of the sophistic theory of tlie relativity 
 of knowledge was that all ideas and truths were relative 
 to the individual who perceived them. At this period 
 of reflection many of the Greeks, and more particularly 
 the sophists, became conscious of the contradictions 
 in human experience and beliefs. For instance, what 
 appeared hot to one man was cold to another ; what one 
 called large another called small ; what one called right 
 another called wrong. Differences of opinion seemed 
 irreconcilable. Every man appeared to have nothing 
 but his own sensations to consider in his reflections and 
 was without assurance that they were in any respect 
 like those of his neighbor. All this was expressed by 
 saying that all knowledge and ideas were relative and 
 none of them absolute, which was only to maintain that 
 there was no common measure of experience and truth, 
 that every idea was true, every act right for the man who 
 
12 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 thought so. I cannot go fully into this doctrine at present, 
 but I hope I have made it clear that it was a most 
 radical skepticism in regard to UU the beliefs of common 
 sense. The consequences of it are, or ought to be, 
 apparent to every one. It leaves every one free to follow 
 his own convictions and impulses without hindrance 
 except from superior power. There can be no appeal to 
 common ideas and principles, and reason can only mean 
 what each man thinks and believes for himself and with- 
 out regard to others. The doctrine of conventionalism 
 carried the principles of skepticism still farther. After 
 denying the existence of the gods and their relation to 
 morality, and the existence of absolute truth, this doc- 
 trine of conventionalism was an attempt to explain how 
 the actual code of moral practice came to be accepted 
 and to be a common one. There was no doubt about the 
 fact that a common code existed, but so far from being 
 the spontaneous adoption of the individuals in society 
 the sophists held that it was due to the passive conven- 
 tion of citizens in obedience to the superior power of the 
 state, which in most cases was an arbitrary prince. With 
 the growing demand for individual and political liberty, 
 and the hatred against tyrannical rulers, this idea only 
 reinforced the individualism of sophistic psychology, and 
 tended to destroy the authority of the state in the esti- 
 mation of the citizen who could claim upon the basis of 
 this philosophy the sole right to determine his own con- 
 duct. When pleasure was set up as the positive motive 
 for every man's action, and each individual was regarded 
 as his own rightful judge of what was right or wrong, or 
 what pleasure he could pursue without the legitimacy of 
 hindrance or interference on the part of others, we can 
 well imagine what moral chaos must follow upon the 
 application of such a theory to social and political action. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 13 
 
 Now Socrates originates the reaction against sophistic 
 doctrine in philosophy, ethics, and politics. In order to 
 understand what he accomplished and what he represents 
 in the history of thought, at least by way of suggestion, 
 we must examine three characteristics of the man : 
 (1) His method. (2) His doctrine. (8) His personality. 
 
 The method of Socrates begins with his attack upon 
 the sophists, which covered his own pretense of ignorance 
 behind the keenest of innuendo and satire against the 
 sophisms of these skeptical wiseacres. He did not ques- 
 tion their theology, or rather anti-theological beliefs, as 
 the main point of attack. He might have defended the 
 existence of the gods as the first position to be sustained 
 in the reconstruction of ethics. But he did not choose 
 this resource. Whatever belief in the gods he main- 
 tained he held either as a pious opinion of his own or as 
 the terminus ad quem of his philosophical theories. But 
 avoiding the prior reconstruction of theology, he pushed 
 sophistic skepticism to its logical consequences and 
 directed his attack upon the sophists' boastful claim to 
 a knowledge of virtue and of the best means to attain it. 
 He ridiculed their personal arrogance and resented their 
 conceited and ignorant claims to superior knowledge in 
 all matters of virtue. But in his argument with them 
 he showed great shrewdness and sagacity. He made no 
 pretensions to knowledge himself. He confessed that he 
 was only a seeker after truth, and instead of asserting 
 anything that would require proof on his part, he carried 
 on his discussionp. with the sophists by a series of ques- 
 tions which shifted the obligation of assertion upon them 
 and which were couched in a way to expose their igno- 
 rance by exhibiting their contradictions while pretending 
 to be instructors of youth in matters of knowledge and 
 virtue. He asked for definition and meaning where the 
 
14 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 ordinary man wanted facts. Consequently he had to deal 
 with conceptions, ideas, rather than with objects, external 
 things and laws. His process of induction, definition, 
 and dialectic argument turned on the clarification of 
 one's ideas, and the establishment of a real or certain, as 
 distinct from an illusory or uncertain, knowledge. His 
 object in this was, of course, to show the sophist that he 
 had not thought out his ideas to their consequences, and 
 that his contradictory conceptions, with his psychological 
 individualism, unfitted him to be the intellectual and 
 moral guide to the Athenian youth. But in the process 
 Socrates assumed and used a point of view of whose 
 significance he was not himself conscious. He began his 
 inquiries with ideas and not with things, and the conse- 
 quence was that he completely reversed the point of view 
 from which the study of philosophy began. Instead of 
 looking primarily at the external world, or the objective 
 facts which skepticism denied or questioned, he forced 
 the sophist to discover in his individual ideas the 
 contradictions which this class had found in general 
 knowledge, and consequently he compelled his opponent 
 either to admit his own confusion or to reconstruct his 
 view of knowledge. But in the intensity of his occupa- 
 tion with mere ideas Socrates ceased to take an interest 
 in speculations about the cosmos. The sophists, of 
 course, prepared the way for this by their skepticism 
 in regard to the validity of sensory knowledge. But 
 they did not openly avow any contempt for physical 
 speculation. Socrates, however, ridiculed all attempts at 
 determining the nature of the stars, for instance, or 
 explaining the physical universe. He said he could learn 
 nothing from the study of nature. He did not care for 
 a walk along the river bank for the contemplation of the 
 trees, or for any study of physical phenomena. He was. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 15 
 
 on the contrary, a complete agnostic in regard to the 
 possibility of physical science, as it was then called. Man / 
 and his conceptions were his supreme interest, while a| 
 knowledge of the physical world was ridiculed either as 
 impossible or as a hot-bed of fancies and illusions. 
 This position, of course, was only the logical conse- 
 quence of sophistic psychology, though with Socrates 
 this attitude of mind was rather a matter of moral tem- 
 perament than of jogicalreflection upon the philosophical 
 problems of the time. It was due to the intensity of his 
 interest in ideas which monopolized attention and tended 
 to turn men from the contemplation of the external 
 universe to reflection upon themselves. It was a quiet 
 substitution of the anthropocentric for the cosmocentric 
 point of view in the consideration of truth. 
 
 But this agnosticism in physical science requires some 
 attention in the light of the criticism which is sometimes 
 directed against it. The contempt for physical -sciencei 
 which Socrates expressed sounds very strange in oui; 
 ears, especially after all the triumphs of modern inquiry 
 under that name. Had it been called metaphysics, 
 which it really was, there would be no protest against 
 his judgment by those who are inclined to ridicule him 
 for his opinion. But, as it is, Socrates' impeachment of 
 physical science is taken as a defense of the process of 
 burrowing in one's own reflections for a solution of the 
 world's mystery, like the Hindu sage who is said toTolve 
 the riddle of the sphinx by sitting under his palm tree 
 and looking into his navel. Socrates here seems to 
 favor the.scholastic method which science so vehemently 
 despigfis,in philosapjiy, and which Tt illustrates so vfgor- 
 ously in the weaknesses of Hegelian language, namely, 
 the attempt to construe the whole universe from the 
 standpoint of self-consciousness. 
 
] 6 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 But accusations of this kind betray complete igno- 
 rance of both the acuteness of Socrates and of the actual 
 conception of physical science which he attacked. Mere 
 propositions are not safe guides in regard to the mean- 
 ing of past ideas. The form of expression which literally 
 translates the past may conceal its real content. The 
 physical science of Socrates' time, as denominated in the 
 doctrines of Thales, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Democritus, 
 and Anaxagoras, along with others, was nothing but 
 a priori metaphysical speculation about . the physical 
 universe, and deludes the average scientist of the 
 present day because he allows himself to be deceived 
 by the name and contents of ancient inquiry without 
 regarding the viciousness of ancient method. Moreover 
 the admirer of Mr. Spencer should not be counted among 
 the critics of Socrates. But physical science in Greece 
 was not an attempt to catalogue the facts of nature after 
 the method of modern scientific and inductive procedure, 
 and to suspend explanation until the laws and uniformi- 
 ties of nature were adequately known, but it was a 
 resort to the widest and wildest speculation upon the 
 most meager data conceivable, and under conditions that 
 made it impossible to penetrate the mysteries of the 
 cosmos. The limitations of such knowledge, as suspected 
 by Socrates, were entirely justifiable suppositions, and 
 nothing would meet the modern condemnation of science 
 more readily than this a priori speculation about the uni- 
 verse which Socrates eschewed, though with even better 
 reasons than he knew. It was rather a spontaneous 
 interest in man and his conduct that animated Socrates 
 and diverted him from watching the stars than any 
 philosophic conception of the limitations of human 
 knowledge. His agnosticism was thus not against 
 physical science as we understand the term, namely, as 
 
Ethics of the Oreeh Philosophers. 17 
 
 a process for empirically determining tlie laws of nature, 
 but against metaphysical efforts to construe the origin of 
 phenomena and of organic existence in terms of some 
 simple substance and by a purely speculative method. ^ 
 This is precisely the contention of modern science, 
 which ought to claim Socrates as the father of empirical 
 inquiry in the field of physical phenomena, or at least as 
 no opponent of it, though he formulated no principles 
 by which the limitations of knowledge to phenomena 
 could be determined, instead of reproaching him with 
 the introspective method of studying nature. What 
 Socrates actually aimed at was identical with the prac- 
 tical interests of present science, except that itJsasjnoral, 
 not physical. His object was to turn men to attainable 
 "results,~e\^en if they were only the clarification of ideas 
 and the moralization of the will. 
 
 But the mere fact that he turned away Iroxn current 
 physical speculations and demanded an examination of 
 our logical conceptions, while he applied ajJialficticjuse 
 o f the m against the sophistries of Protagoras, Prodicus, 
 Gorgias, and their class generally, created a new tend- 
 ency, and a new point of view, the anthropocentric as 
 opposed to the cosmocentric, as they have already been 
 denominated- Besides its influence upon philosophic 
 method, which was to make it psychological and idealistic, 
 as distinct from the physical and realistic type of 
 thought, it established an entirely new direction for ethical 
 reflection. This too became subjective as against the 
 objective point of view in the older philosophy. Man 
 was turned in upon himself for a knowledge of the moral 
 law. Eeflection upon himself and not upon external 
 nature became the method of determining one's duties. 
 The habit of self-analysis thus initiated and involved in 
 the criticism of one's conceptions transmitted its influence 
 
18 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 to the desires, and they became objects of introspective 
 examination and regulation. The ethical conscious- 
 ness thus turned away from the cosmological order of 
 nature to find the law of action and its promised reward 
 in the subject itself. The effect of this with its emphasis 
 upon the virtue of self-control, which is the index of 
 man's own responsibility for the good and not nature, 
 was to create in man a wholly new idea of himself, 
 namely, that sense of his dignity and worth which was 
 wholly impossible under the idea that he was merely an 
 instrument in the hands of Fate, of nature, or of the 
 ruler to accomplish some other end than his own. The 
 old cosmological ethics had taught submission, if not 
 humility, though it could not wholly prevent fear and 
 slavish obedience. The new psychological and anthropo- 
 logical pointof view awakened courage and self-confidence, 
 and with them reinforced the pride which an aristocratic 
 society had fostered, even when the order of nature 
 elicited no respect for itself. This pride could take 
 the direction of vanity, or of man's dignity, importance, 
 and moral mission in the universe, according to the 
 character of the individual who maintained it The last 
 was its form in Socrates and Plato, and it marked the 
 rise of that conception of man which no subsequent 
 morality has forgotten, and which no future ethics can 
 ignore, even when it is necessary to correct its aberra- 
 tions, and though it is incumbent upon it not to ignore 
 the limitations which an eternal order places upon self- 
 estimation. "Know thyself," rvcoBt GeavTOv, is 
 an important maxim for a man who wishes to secure 
 self-control and for one who would possess the psycho- 
 logical equipment for instructing and leading his fellows 
 in the path of truth and virtue ; but if it conduces only 
 to pride and vanity, an exaggerated sense of human 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 19 
 
 importance in the economy of nature, or to a demand for 
 liberty and. impunity in conduct, it requires to be cor- 
 rected by empbasizing that subordination to external 
 nature, or adjustment to the laws of the universe, which 
 the old cosmological point of view so effectively instilled, 
 and whicb checks transcendental aspirations, based upon 
 wishes instead of facts, by substituting obedience for 
 libertinism on the one hand, and impracticable idealism 
 with other-worldliness on the other. But self-examina- 
 tion is necessary to avoid both extremes, and the method 
 of reflection which Socrates initiated supplied this want 
 So much for the method of Socrates. But the most 
 interesting feature about his position is the content of his 
 doctrine. In spite of his departure from the cosmologi- 
 cal method he adopted one of the fundamental ideasof the 
 cosmological school. "We have seen that the cosmocentric 
 point of view emphasizes the necessity of knowledge as a 
 condition of securing the fruits of prudence and of success- 
 ful adjustment to nature. Obedience to the laws of 
 nature was the form of expression that this pre-Socratic 
 ethics assumed, but it demanded for its realization 
 rational knowledge. Socrates, presupposing the natural 
 prudence of men, took up this assumption of the cosmo- 
 logical school and advanced it to the position of the 
 
 highest good. Thjfi wnfl-^hTlt. k-nnwiAflg/i. in l.lij^riT^Q gj-eat- 
 
 " virtue" (in Greek parlance, excellence) or condition of 
 moral life. The idea in its main features was thus not 
 entirely new, but in fact the distinctive doctrine of 
 Greek thought, though Socrates had raised it to the 
 supreme place, whereas before it had been one of many 
 ideals. The Greek admiiid knowledge on its own ac- 
 count as well as for its utility, and- hence Socrates only 
 kept within the limits of racial ideals when he chose one 
 of them for the pinnacle of an ethical system. But he 
 
20 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 simply retained the main principle of the cosraological 
 period without its method or its object. Previous 
 thought assumed that men resented obedience to nature 
 and required adjustment of will to attain virtue. But 
 Socrates, assuming that the will was already set in the 
 direction of its desires, thought that the want of knowl- 
 edge was the only reason for man's failure to attain the 
 object of desire. Hence he did not make "virtue" a 
 product of virill alone but an object of the intellect, 
 wholly forgetting the attributes of will, that constituted 
 morality for the majority of men, though realizing them 
 in his personal character, and remaining unconscious of 
 the maxim so often quoted from Ovid, as indicating the 
 frequent discord between knowledge and virtue : 
 
 video meliora proboque, deterlora sequor. 
 
 But assuming that men would pursue the good or virtue 
 if they knew what it was, he made knowledge the highest 
 good and excused vice by tracing it merely to ignorance. 
 The two formulas which expressed his doctrine, and 
 which were paradoxical even to the Greeks, though less 
 so to them than to us, were, first, that "knowledge is 
 virtue," and second, that "no man is voluntarily bad." 
 Both of them should be examined carefully. '-"-^.. 
 
 It seems exceedingly strange that any man should 
 advocate the proposition that knowledge is virtue. 
 Nothing appears more absurd than this real or apparent 
 identification of knowledge and morality. The dis- 
 tinction between them is radical with us. But the fact 
 is that the whole paradoxical character of his formula 
 lies in the errors of translators. Stated in this literal, or 
 transliteral, manner it wholly conceals the real intention 
 of Socrates. Translators should know more of psychol- 
 ogy and philosophy before they attempt to interpret the 
 
Ethics of Ihe Oreek Philosophers. 21 
 
 Greeks for us, and I know of no better illustration of 
 their intellectual poverty as a rule than the usual 
 formula ■which they adopt to express the idea of Socrates, 
 confusing the conceptions and associations of the term 
 for us with the very different ideas of the Greeks. 
 " Virtue " with them was a general term for excellence of 
 any kind, whether physical, intellectual, or moral, 
 though there was at least a vague feeling that a decided 
 difference existed between physical and moral excellence. 
 Socrates, indeed, thought of this " virtue " or excellence, 
 namely, knowledge, as a good to be attained as a condi- 
 tion of successfully pursuing personal and other interests,'; 
 but not as a quality of will, nor of the act attaining and 
 aiming at this end, and hence in order to obtain the true 
 conception of Socrates' doctrine we have to interpret his 
 " virtue, " not as a quality of will or conduct, but as the 
 skill or intelligence required to obtain the good which 
 the individual was supposed to be seeking. Conse- 
 quently, when he says that knowledge is " virtue, " he 
 means that it is the most important excellence or quality 
 of being which man can aim to attain. It stood for 
 Socrates as the summum bonum, in so far as it was the 
 necessary condition to the satisfaction of desire, though 
 he admitted or assumed that it was the means to the 
 good which all persons seek without the necessity of 
 being urged to do so, or without failure, namely, interest 
 or pleasure. With Socrates men's intentions were right, 
 and their failure to attain the object of volition was not 
 due to any moral depravity of will as we conceive the 
 matter, but was traceable to ignorance, and hence the 
 imperative duty to gain knowledge, if desire was to be 
 satisfied without miscarriage ; that is, if the good was to 
 be attained. This conception of his doctrine is not so 
 paradoxical as it seems in the usual form of statement. 
 
22 Ethics of ike Oreeh Philosophers. 
 
 because of two facts : (1) Because " virtue " is found to 
 mean excellence in general, and (2) Because Socrates 
 conceived knowledge as a means to an end already 
 sought, and not as the real ultimate good, though it 
 seemed to stand for this in his system. 
 
 This interpretation of the formula of Socrates is born 
 out by a similar examination of the second paradox in 
 his theory, namely, the proposition that " no man is 
 voluntarily bad." Here again translators are at fault 
 They have assumed too readily that both "bad " and 
 " voluntary " connote the same in English as in Greek, an 
 assumption which is totally false. In modern parlance, 
 itself due to conceptions and a history which we cannot 
 recount here, " bad " denotes either depravity of will, or 
 evil consequences, such as pain, or both ; and " voluntary " 
 expresses three facts, namely, consciousness, autonomy, 
 and purpose. But in Greek thought " bad '^denoted only 
 disagreeable results, and "voluntary" {ixcov) mere in- 
 tention without reference or implication in regard to 
 autonomy. Consequently, to say in our phraseology 
 that " no man is voluntarily bad " is both to deny the 
 freedom of the will and to deny the idea of moral de- 
 pravity of will. But if translators had said tbat Socrates 
 taught that no man intentionally or consciously sought 
 what he thought injurious to himself they would have 
 expressed exactly what Socrates meant, and the proposi- 
 tion would not have appeared so paradoxical. The prop- 
 osition seems absurd to us because, as I have said, it ap- 
 pears to deny the freedom of the will on the one hand, 
 and the fact that man does consciously, if not purposely, 
 choose the worse act on the other. But if Socrates had 
 been told that his doctrine contradicted the freedom of 
 the will he would either have laughed at us or told us 
 that he could not understand such an accusation. The 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 23 
 
 fact is that " involuntary " is not the proper translation of 
 the Greek term for which it stands in the proposition. 
 The reason, or one reason at least, for this is that the 
 Greek language did not distinguish between will and 
 desire. The same term did service for both conceptions, 
 while modern philosophy makes the distinction between 
 choice and desire (organic or instinctiye craviag) so clear 
 that there is no illusion as to the meaning of the volun- 
 tary and involuntary. The term desire, of course, is 
 equivocal. But no man to-day calls his desires voluntary 
 in so far as the term describes merely natural or consti- 
 tutional appetites, but only when he conceives them as 
 conscious acts of decision or preference. When he con- 
 trasts desire with will he means distinctly to imply that 
 desire is either an organic state of consciousness which 
 we find in experience to be an index of a want, or crav- 
 ing minus the final act of excluding its alternative object 
 from possible election. The former has no element of 
 will in it, and the latter, though it may represent one 
 stage of consciousness involving will, can only be the 
 will in deliberation. But .distinguishing as we do 
 between will and desire we can very well suppose that 
 a man can_ will what he does not desira Socrates, 
 however, could not do this because psychology had not 
 yet sufficiently analyzed the phenomena of conation. 
 Neither he nor his contemporaries clearly saw the need 
 of this distinction, though they instinctively felt that there 
 was something paradoxical and illusory about his propo- 
 sition, while they left the riddle where they found it 
 If, therefore, we attempt to bring out his meaning we 
 should read his formula so that it should express the 
 fact that no man purposely desires evil. This would 
 sound much less paradoxical, because we concede easily 
 enough in common parlance that men can act against 
 
24 Ethics of the Grreek Philosophers. 
 
 their desires and do wrong though they do not desire the 
 wrong on its own account Still there is something 
 equivocal in this statement, b ecause \re know or believe 
 that some men do desire what is wrong oF^evir. But 
 here again our word " evil " does duty' for two different 
 conceptions which we at least try to distinguish clearly, 
 namely, phj^sical evil and moral evil. Physical or non- 
 moral evil is conceived as some form of pain, or conse- 
 quence that is opposed to desire, and moral evil as a per- 
 version of will or quality of action in volition that 
 excites the resistance of conscience. Now Socrates could 
 conceive but one "evil," and this did not distinguish 
 between the physical and the moral ; that is, physical 
 and moral evil were the same thing, and the defect called 
 vice was a defect of knowledge. This evil or pain he 
 always conceived egoistically and for this reason did not 
 see the necessity or occasion for recognizing a prohibition 
 on anything that was not so related. We can say that a 
 man can desire the wrong, but not the evil, but Socrates, 
 not distinguishing between wrong and evil, conld not 
 use both propositions, but had to choose between say- 
 ing that man consciously desired evil and that man did 
 not consciously desire evil. Socrates was, of course, 
 asserting a truism in his doctrine when we understand 
 what he meant to maintain. With him there was no 
 evil, that is,Vmoral evil, out of relation to consciousness 
 or intention, which is perfectly true.^ But his formula 
 for expressing this truth was equivocal. He did not 
 always distinguish between consciously doing what is 
 evil and consciously doing what we know to' be evil. 
 Assuming then that we never desire evil, that desire and 
 will are the same, and that there is no evil out of relation 
 to desire, we can see what the proposition of Socrates 
 meant to express. It was that no man consciously 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 25 
 
 desires what he knows to be evil or opposed to his per- 
 sonal interests. The pain or evil which he considered as 
 opposed to desire always had a reference to the subject 
 of the act or volition. The wrong was always to himself, 
 and this was never purposive. 
 
 But then why did Socrates enunciate such a truism ? 
 *me answer to this question is that he was aiming to assert, 
 ilWthe interest of the importance which he attached 
 to knowledge, that all men sought the same object, 
 namely, their own personal interest, but were ignorant 
 of the means of attaining it. He thus assumed, as every 
 Greek would assume in agreement with our Manchester 
 economists perhaps, that the highest good, in so far 
 as it is an object of desire, is known, this being his own 
 interest, but that, in so far as it was an object of knowl- 
 edge, it is not always known. Socrates did not enter 
 into any inquiry to determine or prove what the highest 
 good, as the ultimate end of volition, should be, because 
 he assumed that this was both known and unquestion-. 
 able. This was a problem of later ethics. He wanted i 
 to emphasize the fact that the failure to attain it was a 
 defect of knowledge in regard to the means, and not of 
 will. Socrates was in no respect a believer in total de- 
 pravity, in so far as this characterized a bad will, but 
 the great sin of man, if sin it could be called, was igno- 
 rance, the want of the intelligence and skill to attain the 
 good which he naturally sought. Hence Socrates said, 
 on the one hand, that no man consciously sought his 
 own injury, and on the other, as an explanation of the 
 evil which men actually suffered, that knowledge was 
 the one need which man required to supply in order to 
 satisfy the real object of his volition. 
 
 This analysis of the position of Socrates brings us to 
 two conclusions which it has been our object to show. 
 
26 Ethics ofilie Greek Philosophers. 
 
 and which could not have been indicated clearly without 
 removing the paradoxes of his doctrine. They are : (1) 
 The purely practical nature of the Socratio ethics, and 
 (2) Their extremely individualistic character, at least in 
 respect of the reference of the good to be realized. Both 
 of these require farther comments in order to understand 
 the fundamental trend of the Greek moral consciousness. 
 \ Socrates after all did not transcend sophistic doctrine 
 in his theory. He was himself a sophist in the best 
 sense of that term, which literally denoted a wise man, 
 but in the person of the later members of the school had 
 degenerated into a synonym for conceit and charlatan 
 wisdom. In regard to method, however, Socrates was a 
 sophist, and in both his psychological and ethical as- 
 sumptions remained, at least for the sake of argument, 
 upon the level of the men whose doctrines he so critically 
 examined. He argued and debated precisely as they did, 
 and took the attitude of an instructor of youth, though 
 careful to exhibit more modesty, humility, and consistent 
 agnosticism than these purveyors of wisdom. In it all, 
 however, he was terribly in earnest, and less governed 
 by personal gain than the sophists whom Plato lam- 
 pooned. It was only in a latent sympathy with the reli- 
 gious conception of the world that he departed from the 
 skepticism of the sophists. But in spite of the religious 
 tinge of thought in his mind he did not start with this 
 doctrine as the basis of his ethics. He was too dexterous 
 a logician to be entrapped in this way. He made no 
 effort to combat sophistic skepticism by proving the 
 existence of the gods, nor did he try to show that moral- 
 ity was founded in the will of such gods as he admitted 
 to exist. He kept silence upon this point, whether from 
 discretion or not it is not necessary to say, though it may 
 be a libel to suspect that Socrates had any discretion at 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 27 
 
 all. But he showed no tendency to revert t6 the old 
 religious view of morality. Nor did he question the 
 sophistic doctrines that every one must be the measure 
 of truth, and that pleasure or personal interest was the 
 real sum:num honum for every man. With this settled 
 or assumed he had only to show, as already indicated, 
 what means were necessary to attain this good. Even 
 when he sought a definition of virtue itself he was not 
 trying to determine any other end in conduct than per- 
 sonal happiness or satisfaction, but only to show the 
 form in which that happiness could be gained without 
 any admixture of evil. The Socratic morality, therefore, 
 "was practical, not theoretical. He was bent on showing 
 men that the chief problem was a knowledge of the 
 "good" as the means to the desired end. Hence hei 
 could maintain that " virtue " could be taught, because ity 
 was merely the problem of imparting knowledge of the! 
 causal relation between certain acts and their conse- 
 quences. It is only when we reach Plato and Aristotle] 
 that we find a definite conscious effort to reconstruct 
 ethical theory from the point of view of the end of con- 
 duct as well as the means. But Socrates was still a 
 sophist in the conception of both his ethics and his call- 
 ing, namely, in considering himself an instructor respect- 
 ing the means to a good already assumed rather than 
 respecting the correction of men's idea of this good, 
 though his method of criticizing conceptions led to this 
 very result. Nevertheless, his whole conception of the 
 ethical problem was that of a man who felt only the need 
 of educating the intellect in regard to the conditions 
 necessary for attaining a presupposed end. These he 
 conceived as knowledge, as the education of the logical 
 faculties, as the sharpening of the cognitive insight, as 
 nothing but clear ideas. Such a thing as a perverted 
 
28 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 will he could not understand, but only a perverted intel- 
 lect. He assumed that a man will always do the right if 
 only he knows what it is. This is true enough when the 
 man is conscientious, a condition of mind which includes 
 respect for the interests of others as well as self. But 
 when he regards nothing but his own interest, or per- 
 sonal satisfaction in a form incompatible with the welfare 
 of others, though knowing what this good for others is, 
 there is much more than the education of the intellect 
 necessary. Socrates is here banking on the flexibility of " 
 the will, which is ready to modify its ideal at the demand 
 of better insight, while the fact is that the form of our 
 ideal concretely conceived often requires as much modi- 
 fication of the will to arrive at the true good as it does 
 education of the intellect or reason to see the way to it. 
 Hence Socrates gets no further in his conception of 
 ethics than the problem of educating the intellect. The 
 problem of "educating" the will he did not see, and 
 perhaps would not have seen or understood had it been 
 pointed out to him. He remained upon the general 
 level of the Greek consciousness of his time, which was 
 extravagantly absorbed in the pursuit of knowledge. 
 The Greek exaggerated the importance of reason, and 
 especially of speculative reason, so that a life of mere 
 knowledge seemed the only satisfaction necessary for the 
 attainment of perfection, the socio-economic system with 
 slavery on the one side and aristocratic habits and tastes 
 on the other favoring leisure and scientific pursuits as 
 the occupation of gentlemen. In such a civilization willy 
 or action would not be idealized. Knowledge would! 
 naturally be the highest good, or the excellence which 
 free men would estimate most highly, while the moral 
 virtues of will which we consider would be limited to 
 the dependent classes. Socrates, though nothing of an 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosojihers. 29 
 
 aristocrat iu his taste, person, or manners, remained by 
 this conception, which led to the contemplative rather 
 than the active life. 
 
 The second characteristic of the Socratic ethics is no 
 less interesting than the first. It is the individualistic 
 point of view assumed by him, if not in the means of 
 attaining self-satisfaction, certainly in the end which action 
 had to subserve. "We have already remarked that Soc- 
 rates did not transcend the sophistic view in his tacit 
 assumption that every_jnan_js_g0jceKBedr-in^-liis_j3Qndjict 
 by his own personal interest. This was a truism with 
 Socrates. The high tone of language employed about 
 virtue, which we understand from a changed point of 
 view, charging it with conceptions and implications of 
 later history, availed to conceal from the modern mind 
 either the naked individualism of his doctrine or the 
 complete absence of an altruistic object, though it recog- 
 nized altruistic means to an egoistic end. Socrates never 
 thought of making the interest of others an end, but only 
 a means to one's own higher interest. In this way his 
 individualism was made objectively consistent with 
 social welfare. Modern ideas make others than the sub- 
 ject ends in themselves, and not merely means to the 
 subject's interest That is, we treat justice as an end 
 and not merely as a means to personal welfare. But 
 Socrates, though he went beyond his Contemporaries in 
 the recognition of the means to virtue, did not transcend 
 them in the motive which he advanced. Consequently, 
 in spite of the social content of his ethical position, it 
 was individualistic in its motive efficient. It may be 
 objected, of course, that this view is not pure individual- 
 ism, and I do not care to insist too vehemently for the 
 position. But when we consider that, besides the indi- 
 vidualistic motive in his doctrine, there was not a clear 
 
30 Ethics of the Greele Philosophers. 
 
 consciousness in Socrates of the conflict between individ- 
 ual and social interest, not ideally, but in fact, we can 
 understand both the paradox and the egoism of his theory. 
 He was understood by the average Greek to mean, 
 when he taught that justice would result in good to the 
 agent of it, that this good would be the satisfaction of the 
 personal interest which the individual sought without 
 regard to the welfare of others. This is well illustrated 
 by the question raised in Plato's "Eepublic," asking 
 - whether justice always results in satisfying personal 
 interest. Socrates no doubi had an ideal that was calcu- 
 lated to change the conception of his race, but his instinct 
 for practical ethics, and the desire to put his doctrine in 
 terms of common experience, made him appeal to con- 
 ceptions that were lower than his ideal. Hence he was 
 not understood to maintain or admit a real conflict be- 
 tween personal and social interest. The whole practical 
 effect of his position was to keep alive, not by his life, 
 but by his theory, the egoistic assumptions of the Greek 
 consciousness. The Greek ideal was: "Everyman for 
 himself and the devil take the hindmost" — the true naked 
 conception involved in the struggle for existence as con- 
 ceived when we try to eliminate its moral character. 
 Socrates never thought to question such a view as inhu- 
 man, nor to teach definitely that a sacrifice of one pleas- 
 ure or ideal had t© be made to secure another. The idea 
 of sacrifice for attaining the true good was not a Greek 
 conception, and Socrates did not inculcate it, so that his 
 individualism, though it was in its means identical with 
 the social ethics of later times, had for its motive and its 
 material results the same effect as that individualism 
 which passes for egoism and selfishness. His own 
 strength of will and respect for justice prevented him 
 from both appearing and being egoistic in his personal 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 31 
 
 and objective conduct, but his subjective psychology and 
 egoistic motive in ethical theory kept hina within the 
 limits of his race, and, consciously or unconsciously, 
 favored personal interest as the only ultimate end of con- 
 duct, as against all men being ends in themselves and 
 while invoking altruistic motives, represent the point of 
 view that still justifies the characterization of individual- 
 ism in Socratic ethics. 
 
 But if this view of Socrates be correct, why is it that 
 he has created so much interest in subsequent ages ? If 
 his theory of virtue was so individualistic, and if he did 
 not transcend the moral consciousness of his age, which 
 was so individualistic in its motives and objects, why 
 has he been so universally admired, and why has his 
 doctrine been so extravagantly extolled? Why is he 
 regarded as so superior to his contemporaries? 
 
 The answer to this question lies in his personality, not 
 in his philosophy. Socrates, as a man, was either better 
 than his theory, or he gave it that meaning in his life and 
 conduct which it logically concealed. That is to say, 
 his theoretical doctrine did not give logical expression to 
 the ideas which his conduct embodied. It was his per- 
 sonality that struck his comtemporaries, and that stands 
 out in the estimation of succeeding ages, giving the real 
 meaning to his formulas when his own conceptions did 
 not transcend the main trend of his time. Men see 
 character and interpret theories according to the conducjt 
 with which theories are associated. Ideas are rightly 
 supposed either to express facts or to indicate the path 
 of virtue, and assuming that men really intend to pursue 
 the latter when pointed out, a theory pretending to di- 
 rect the will into a presumably desired course will be 
 adjudged by its influence upon the man who proposes it 
 as a moral guide. Socrates had one of those interesting 
 
32 Ethics of the Cheek Philosophers. 
 
 personalities of the highest moral type, mixed also with 
 something of the grotesque, which was bound to attract 
 the attention of mankind, and it is to this that we must 
 trace both the extraordinary interest in the man and the 
 concealment of the real import of his doctrine. It was 
 his character rather than his logic that revolutionized 
 the subsequent conception of morality, and it may be 
 safe to say that it is always personality, and not abstract 
 philosophy, that creates mankind's conception of moral 
 conduct and the value of moral theory. Abstract philo- 
 sophical dogmas have no meaning or influence upon the 
 majority until embodied in a personal life. Now Socra- 
 tes was not individualistic in his conduct, whatever his 
 motives. His will always waited on his intellect, and 
 hence he was ever ready to do what he conceived to be 
 right and just, which he conceived to be his interest. 
 He refused to recognize any personal interest but that 
 which was consistent with justice or the welfare of 
 others. Hence he never appeared to be an egoist or the 
 subject of selfishness. With his fellows, personal interest 
 was often in conflict with that of others, and when the 
 good was proposed to any one it was conceivable only in 
 individualistic terras which assumed this conflict But 
 Socrates felt no interest but that of justice, and in so 
 doing generalized the conception so that it was consist- 
 ent with his will, while his fellows heard the conceptions 
 of an egoist and saw the volitions of an idealist. Thus 
 his personal life evoked veneration and gave meaning to 
 his appeal to interest, though his contemporaries could 
 not feel the identification of justice and interest which he 
 taught, because their interest was on the lower plane of 
 that individualism'which could not transcend the conflict 
 between personal interest and that of others, or would not 
 extend the range of its objects, so that an individualistic 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 33 
 
 motive could encompass a social end. But with a 
 motive efficient upon the level of individualism, Socrates 
 interpreted it in terms of social welfare, though^ only as 
 a means to his own interest, and yet accomplished all 
 that the social motive is expected to realize objectively. 
 Consequently, his personality obtained all the benefits 
 of a moralist whose theory had transcended individual- 
 ism. 
 
 The personality of Socrates, however, had two wholly 
 distinct features, both of which attracted equal interest, 
 but which unequally affected speculative thought They 
 are represented in what is known as the real Socrates and 
 the ideal Socrates. I assume, of course, for the moment, 
 and for the purposes of distinction, that the real and 
 ideal are different from each other. In the man himself 
 they were not, but history has so thoroughly idealized 
 him that it does not always make clear the features that 
 the tastes of the present age would regard as very un- 
 ideal, or, at least, difficult to harmonize with its precon- 
 ception of what so ideal a man would be. So much is 
 said to exalt the character of Socrates that we constantly 
 forget how he looked to his contemporaries, and we 
 shall miss the full meaning of his work if we neglect the 
 realistic side of his life, which forced upon the sensuous 
 and esthetic Greeks the perception of moral beauty 
 without the expected accompaniment of personal grace 
 and artistic enjoyment, and the effect was to reconcile 
 morality with democratic conceptions. 
 
 Now to get at the real Socrates, as the literary 
 and esthetic sense of humor must see him, we should 
 remember that physically he was not a very prepossess- 
 ing person. On the contrary, his characteristics made 
 him the butt of considerable ridicule. He was a somewhat 
 corpulent, well-fed looking body with shaggy hair, pug 
 
84 Ethics of the Oreeh Philosophers. 
 
 nose, bare-footed, ill-dressed and generally of ungainly 
 appearance. He passed for a Silenus among his com- 
 panions, and we all know how unattractive this character 
 seemed and seems to an artistic world. The picture of 
 him is that of a man who is so common in his rough and 
 untidy appearance that even an unesthetic age would 
 have to feel some natural repugnance to him, not to say 
 anything of the impression he would naturally leave 
 upon a people so nice and esthetic as the Greeks. 
 "His general appearance," says Professor Blackie in 
 language almost identical with that which I have em- 
 ployed, " was that of a Silenus or satyr, with a flat, some 
 what turned-up nose, full prominent eyes, big lips, and 
 in Inter life, as appears in monuments, a bald head." 
 But these merely physical characteristics were only a 
 part of his peculiarities. With these to handicap him 
 among the beauty-loving Greeks, he added to them an 
 interminable disposition to argue with everybody. In 
 fact, Socrates was a veritable tramp in Athens, only he 
 did not go about begging bread. Perhaps he got this, 
 the cynic would say, without asking and in return for 
 his shrewd conversation. If so, he escaped the laws of 
 Draco, which put tramps to death without a chance for 
 philosophic immortality as Socrates won it, whether he 
 got his bread into the bargain or not. This, however, 
 is the humor of ignorance. Bat Socrates was certainly 
 an interesting spectacle going about Athens in his bare 
 feet, or poorly shod and with that cynical indifference 
 to the esthetic taste of the Greeks which aroused their 
 interest all the more for its connection with intellectual 
 genius, tormenting every man he could meet with ques- 
 tions or discussions about conceptions, or knowledge, or 
 virtue. To-day he would be treated as a bore or a crank, 
 unless we were sufficiently like him to admire or become 
 
MODERATION AND CONTENTMENT. 
 
 We should refrain most from sordid unjust pleas- 
 ures. 
 
 Happiness consists not in luxury and pride. To 
 want nothing is divine.^ to want the least, next to 
 divine. 
 
 He is richest who is content with least, for content 
 ■ment is the riches of nature. 
 
 It is the property of God to need nothing, to need 
 least the nighest to God. 
 
 Socrates. 
 
Ethics of the Oreek Philosophers. 35 
 
 lost in his logical acumen without caring for his appear- 
 ance. In fact he was like the man who always wants to 
 talk politics with people who do not care a picayune 
 about them, or to ventilate some hobby like the schemes 
 which are to cure all the ills of humanity. He reminds 
 us of some too wise farmer who neglects his stock and 
 crops to sit on the fence all day, debating prohibition, 
 free silver, or tlie money power. Everywhere we meet 
 this type of man, and we inevitably set him down at 
 once as a crank and a bore, if we are very esthetic and 
 not very serious about life. And this habit brought 
 Socrates, as it does his modern after-type, into trouble 
 with his wife. Xantippe complained that Socrates 
 roamed the streets talking about philosophy when he 
 should have been at work supporting her and his chil- 
 dren. We do not know that Xantippe supported 
 Socrates in his pedestrian philosophy and idleness on the 
 streets by washing, as is often the case with our modern 
 " dead beats," but the situation, described has a marvel- 
 ous resemblance to this very thing. Socrates, however, 
 grunted out a not very chivalrous excuse for himself, 
 reflecting on the temper of his other half, himself and the 
 age being impervious to the finer sentiments and duties 
 of a husband, and modern civilization sides with Xan- 
 tippe. But neither Xantippe's rightful claims nor the 
 alleged acidity of her temper and observations deterred 
 Socrates from keeping up his life of dialectic mischief 
 with every one he could buttonhole on the street corners. 
 But he could not have succeeded in producing the 
 effect he did, had he not been as thick-skinned as he was 
 shrewd and talented, and inspired 'with lofty ideals 
 which shone out behind the covering of oddities, physi- 
 cal and intellectual, in a way to defeat all concealment. 
 He laughed at his own defects, perfectly conscious of 
 
86 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 the way he was regarded by his countrymen, cynically 
 indifferent to it, a good-humored stolid Greek, who could 
 not be offended by any ridicule, nor silenced by any 
 criticism except that which led to his own conclusions. 
 He was an adept at the art of controversy, even when he 
 had no positive doctrine to defend, and if the Greeks 
 ever loved anything it was logical discussion. They 
 were forever at it, whether on the streets or the hustings, 
 and they liked a man, especially in this period of transi- 
 tion from the age of belief to philosophic ideas, wiio 
 could either produce or solve logical puzzles without 
 discriminating too nicely about his manners and appear- 
 ance. In this art Socrates showed unusual shrewdness, 
 because he insisted upon his ignorance, thus escaping 
 responsibility for any assertion whatever, though this pro- 
 fession was ironical, and shifting the duty of proof upon 
 his antagonists. This made him a perfect master of the 
 true art of a skeptic, who shelters himself behind ques- 
 tions while his informant must do all the asserting and 
 gets into deeper and deeper water with every question 
 that he tries to answer. Moreover the average Greeks of 
 common sense had felt the destructive influence of 
 sophistic and skeptical thought and did not like the 
 intellectual and moral confusion that it produced, They 
 were also no less impressed than Socrates with sophistic 
 conceit and pretension, and hence they looked on with 
 delight at the shafts of logic which this Silenus of a man 
 thrust into skeptical armor, and though he often pro- 
 duced as much embarrassment in his hearers as he cured, 
 he created much satisfaction in the interest of truth and 
 morality by puzzling skepticism upon its own premises, 
 and this satisfaction was enough for a people who did 
 not want the paradoxes or logical tricks of the sophists 
 for their every-day philosophy. The Greeks had not 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 37 
 
 forgotten the logical legerdemain of Zeno, and though 
 they were not disposed to follow him in denying the 
 possibility of motion, they admired logic and were great 
 sticiilers for the importance of its method and the con- 
 sistency which it demanded. Hence, when they found 
 Socrates using it in his masterful way to make the con- 
 fusion of the sophists worse confounded, they gave him 
 an enthusiastic hearing in spite of homely illustrations, 
 grotesque personal appearance, odd manners, and indif- 
 ference to family obligations. He had a genius for em- 
 barrassing charlatans in philosophy, and his own delight 
 was not less than his auditors' when he saw some over- 
 confident antagonist writhing at the bottom of a syllo- 
 gism for some indiscretion in starting an argument before 
 he had matured and mastered the conceptions which he 
 so glibly used. 
 
 But it was the moral character of Socrates, his strength 
 of will, that created the profoundest influence even upon 
 the pleasure-loving Greeks. They were not all of them 
 given to libertinism. A few choice spirits, even when 
 they saw no way out of sophistic logic on matters of 
 morality, felt their better instincts groping after an ideal 
 that involved neither slavish obedience to arbitrary 
 power nor unrestrained indulgence of passion. They 
 awaited only the voice of some one crying in the wilder- 
 ness to enlist and encourage their moral natures, and 
 though they may have enjoyed most the keen, Damascus- 
 like tiirusts of Socrates' logic against sophistic illusions 
 in morality, they were not wholly insensible to the 
 monitions of conscience, when any noble aspirations were 
 suggested in keeping with the best features of the civili- 
 zation which they had already reached, and hence 
 Socrates, both in his personality and his method, awak- 
 ened ideals that were in danger of suffocation under 
 
38 Ethics of the Oreek Philosophers. 
 
 skepticism and libertinism. Behind all his indifference 
 to ridicule, tolerance of others' opinions, and uncouth 
 manners, Socrates was a man of great moral earnestness, 
 and this fact did not escape the notice of the better men 
 who formed a part of his audienca The chief feature 
 of his character which struck the Athenians was 
 his strength of .will, his splendid self-control, and his 
 unselfish devotion to justice. At least they found in his 
 resolute purpose to do the right when he knew it his 
 political firmness against the majority in the Prytaneum 
 who wished to violate the law, his determined attach- 
 ment to some ideal in the midst of every temptation that 
 might be used as an excuse for libertinism, his submis- 
 sion to the law in the matter of his own sentence and 
 execution when offered an -opportunity to escape, and 
 the perpetual moderation of his appetites — in all these 
 they found the traits of moral character which they had 
 learned to admire so much in such heroes as Solon, 
 Aristides, and others, who in firmness and constancy of 
 principle, and devotion to justice, which was the Greek 
 righteousness, were prototypes of Socrates in his com- 
 mon life. The Greeks recognized a noble man when 
 they saw him quite as readily as we can, as is clearly 
 shown in many of their heroes, even if their general 
 standard of life was lower than ours. It was this moral 
 strength of will that struck the imagination and com- 
 manded respect when his theory of virtue was either mis- 
 understood or felt to be paradoxical and unsatisfactory. 
 Perfect self-control was his peculiar virtue. He did not 
 get tipsy at a banquet while his companions were often 
 said to be found under the table. Perhaps the cynic 
 and skeptic will say that his associates admired him 
 because he could drink more thaa they could without get- 
 ting drunk, and if the Greek who wished that his throat 
 
Ethics of the Oreek Phihsopliers. 39 
 
 was a mile long when he drank good wine was a typical 
 man of his race, this cynical view might be plausible. 
 But with all deference to the pessimist's view of human 
 nature, many of the admirers of Socrates were possessed 
 of adequate self-control and of insight into the real 
 character of their master, which was as much morally as 
 it was physically constitutional, while those who were 
 themselves the victims of imprudence when they knew 
 the better course saw well enough in the midst of Soc- 
 rates' geniality of temperament that the master spirit of 
 his life was a strong will thoroughly in subjection to 
 moral law. This was the ideal side of his character, and 
 it had the effect when contrasting Socrates with others 
 of eliciting a new analysis of the ethical problem, and a 
 new conception of morality, a conception that interpreted 
 it in terms of a righteous will instead of mere knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 Plato more clearly than any one else saw the ideal 
 Socrates and painted him in colors which will never be 
 effaced from the memory of history. While he began 
 with admiration for his method and the place which he 
 / assigned to knowledge as the highest " virtue," he went 
 fer beyond ^ocrates in the conception and analysis of 
 mor ality, ^though he still left enough undone for the 
 critical and analytical power of Aristotle to secure an 
 equal immortality by a still profounder development of 
 ethical problems. 
 
 In estimating ^^tonic ethics we must ascertain his 
 point of departure from Socrates. Plato still remSned 
 by the pyschological method of his master, but not by 
 the Socratic contempt for metaphysics. We have 
 already seen how Socrates -treated the physical specula- 
 tions of his predecessors, refusing to learn anything from 
 nature or to look at the external order of the world for 
 
40 Mhics of the Greelc Philosophers. 
 
 the moral ideal by wliicli to govern his conduct. Not 
 so witli Plato. He sliowed"ar^fo founder InsigEtTiito all 
 the facts with which the human mind is called to deal. 
 He was an all-round genius, the heau ideal of his race. 
 It is hard to say whether his sympathies with art, which 
 was little less than the divinity of Greece, were any less 
 than his enthusiasm and power for the speculations of 
 abstract philosophy, a very rare combination of talents 
 and tastes in any age, and especially conspicuous and 
 striking in the disciple of Socrates, and which took the 
 form best calculated to throw all their splendid illumina- 
 tion upon the conception and purpose of ethics. The 
 interest in metaphysics showed itself in his antagonism 
 to Heraclitus, whose doctrine of change and phenomenal 
 evanescence of everything resulted in the sophists' sub- 
 jective psychology and conventional ethics, the denial of 
 any universal truth.s, and of any law for the individual 
 will except its own caprices, and in his attachment to the 
 ideas of Parmenides, who had emphasized the import- 
 ance of the permanent, the universal, and the eternal in 
 the nature of things including human thought and 
 action. Plato took up the thought of the permanent 
 and worked it out as his own in the field of ethics as 
 Parmenides had done in the physical world, and we 
 have as a consequence two characteristics of his position : 
 (1) That morality expresses a law in the nature of 
 things, eternal and absolute, and in no way subject to 
 the caprice of power, divine or human, (2) The subor- 
 dination of the individual to the whole, or the law of the 
 good which he found in nature as well as in man, and 
 the consequent importance of objective (physical) as well 
 as subjective (psychological) knowledge for the attain- 
 ment of this end. The first of these positions was 
 Plato's answer to the sophists whose morality was the 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 41 
 
 f 
 whim of the inomeat; that is, no morality at all; and 
 the second was the doctrine in which we find Plato 
 transcending the pure individualism of his race, though 
 it coincides exactly with the universal civic ideal of 
 Greece, the sacrifice of the citizen to the state, and 
 explains the socialism of the Platonic Eepublic. This 
 tendency of his system requires for its understanding a 
 most careful examination of his general position. 
 
 Socrates, as we have seen,_tajightt.hatJ?nowledge^was 
 necessary to virtue, but he ass umed that the will wa s 
 alreaf^y set in the direction of the goo d an d that it 
 \^o\!rf.<\i^v intp.llip-ence to pjnide it,. That is to say, the 
 
 ■practical ethics of Socrates neglected the theoretical 
 problem, of determining the end of morality, and was 
 employed aboiit tlie means to an end which was assumed 
 to be known. But Plato early discovered that men were 
 very concrete in their choice of objects to realize, and 
 that the abstract idea of interest or pleasure drew no dis- 
 tinction between vice and virtue. Consequently, he saw, 
 or believed he saw, that men were as ignorant of the 
 true end of life as Socrates thought them in regard to the 
 right means to a presupposed interest, and so he set 
 about correcting the Socratic assumption that pleasure 
 or personal interest was the highest good, at least when 
 conceived as sacrificing the universal good. Both his 
 metaphysics and his psychology led him away from the 
 subordination of everything to the individual. His 
 metaphysics, which seized upon the permanent elements 
 in nature and mind as opposed to the transient, and the 
 ordinary Greek consciousness of the limitations placed 
 upon the arbitrary human will by the cosmos, taught 
 him to find in nature an order to which it was the chief 
 duty and end of man to subject himself. This end he 
 called the Good,( which he identified with God, regarding 
 
42 Mhics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 God, however, as impersonal and as merely the 
 moral order of the world, a position that was reiterated 
 by Fichte in later times. Man's duty was to find out 
 this end and then to ascertain how he could attain it 
 Thus a double knowledge was required : first, a knowl- 
 edge, reasoned and speculative in its nature, of this 
 eternal law, of the end, goal, destiny, state, or condition 
 which nature intended man to realize, and second— a 
 knpwled^e of the correct means to reach it. In the first 
 of these conceptions the human will is wholly subor- 
 dinated to an end, which, if it is not outside itself in the 
 results attained, is outside of it in the way that duty is 
 presented to it, and so leads to that sacrifice of the 
 individual to the whole which is so prominent in the 
 Republic, and which prepares us for the Stoic pantheism 
 and the Neoplatonic absorption. An end that was not 
 pleasure, that was not consciousness of any kind, and 
 that involved a result out of relation to one's personal 
 identity, but that was an objective universe of law and 
 order, necessitated the complete sacrifice of the individual 
 to realize it 
 
 Plato's psychological analysis led him no less certainly 
 in the same direction. He saw that pleasure was a 
 'aiterion that had no other meaning for the average 
 Greek than individual personal interest, and more 
 v^pecially the interest of the moment His predilection 
 for the idea of law, of an eternal order, set him about 
 reconstructing the internal principle of morality in , 
 harmony with the cosmic order. All sensations and 
 feelings of sense being transient phenomena, while the 
 objects of reason were permanent realities, or facts of 
 highest worth on that account, he described the pursuit 
 of pleasure as the anarchic reign of passion and impulse. 
 To restrain these inclinations he proposed the imperial 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 43 
 
 authority of reason. His famous myth of the chariot drawn ^ 
 by two unruly steeds but controlled by tbe charioteer 
 called reason brilliantly illustrates his conception of the 
 source of supreme power in the determination of virt.npi 
 Eeason was required, in this illustration, to restrain 
 passion and impulse, or better to guide them, the 
 idea that it restrains being in fact a conception of 
 later thought. And this view represents Plato's- doctrine 
 of conscienco^^/But with him conscience was not a 
 motive power or a sense of duty, an injunction imposed 
 upon the will, but it was a cognitive power to point 
 out the right way for impulse to attain the desirable 
 en^.yTa spite of this view, however, Plato's very 
 ilTustration introduced the idea of a regulative function 
 for reason having the nature of will, as such control of 
 motive forbes implied simijar agency, and hence it was 
 only a short step to the idea of conscience combining the 
 functions of intellect and will, moving as well as direct- 
 ing volition. - With us conscience is insight plus motive, 
 the motive of duty and reverence for an ideal above and 
 beyond passion. With Plat o reason was only inai f rht 
 into the course wh ich was a harmonv betwee n p^gjainn and- 
 
 Umpulse . and it guide d the man, not as an impelling 
 force, but as a chaperon that could furnish wisdom but 
 no power. This conception of it at once took it out of 
 the region of pleasure. Tlie function of reason was to 
 furnish the abstract true, beautiful, and good, not to 
 move the will. In this Plato still remained by the con- 
 ception of his master. He exalted the importance of 
 knowledge. But at this point he widened the range of 
 its power and objects. Reason or knowledge occupied 
 itself with the whole cosmos of facts, physical and 
 mental, and as^lato refused to recognize anything tran- 
 
 ;^ent, like feeling or pleasure, as the highest good, he 
 
44 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 had to look beyond the individual for it, and he found it 
 in the eternal reality, law, or order behind phenomena, a 
 transcendental ideal condition of things independent of 
 sense and consciousness which only a mystical philoso^ 
 pher like Plato could see or find. But it was the end 
 which he thought nature had in view, independent of 
 the capricious pleasures of passion and impluse. These 
 anarchic tendencies could never discover it, but only 
 attain it after reason had ^n the vision of its beauty. 
 
 But Plato, as Greek thi«kers generally, was monistic 
 and pantheistic in his conception of nature and man, and 
 consequently when hcsaw reason in nature he assigned 
 it the same function there as in the regulation of the 
 passion, namely, the determination of order. Eeason 
 in both the macrocosmos and the raicrocosmos was the 
 producer of order, and this object was not a mere feeling 
 in the former, so that man's chief end could not be a 
 pleasure. As the psychological good was the harmony 
 between the appetites and the metaphysical good the 
 harmony in nature, and as reason was the function for 
 determining it in both fields, fethics looked beyond 
 pleasure for the ideal, this being merely a transient and 
 subjective feeling, and had in this way to sacrifice the 
 individual psychologically as well as metaphysically. 
 The order of nature being an objective end for realiza- 
 tion and demanding the subjection of the will, the whole 
 system subordinated man to an end other than himself, and 
 virtually demanded a self-sacrifice that no other system 
 of Greek ethics proposed. But he recognized that this 
 subordination brought man his true good, and nothing 
 was lost in the sacrifice. The only thing, however, that 
 mars this beautiful picture of Plato's ethics is the fact that 
 his system saw nothing of worth in the individual but 
 his conformity to law. Personality and consciousness 
 
Mhics of the Greel^^iloso2-)hers. 45 
 
 were sacrificed to an impersonal end. Plato recon- 
 ciled the interests of man to the order of nature, but he 
 partly lost sight of the anthropological point of view 
 in getting his position. Consequently there was a tend- 
 ency in his system to asceticism and mysticism which led 
 to the doctrine of absorption. 
 
 Perhaps we should be told that his doctrine of immor- 
 tality recognized the worth of the individual and supple- 
 mented the tendencies of the system to sacrifice man to 
 the whole. But the reply is that there is no better proof 
 of the subordination of the individual to an end not him- 
 self than Plato's conception of immortality. This theory 
 may be very fine to those who imagine that it has any 
 resemblance to the Christian idea of it. Words are too 
 often a source of illusion and deception to those who do 
 not take the trouble to go deeper, and if they can only 
 /Enlist the support of philosophic language they are con- 
 tent to live under a delusion. But Plato never dreamed i 
 of a personal survival after death. Such a thing as the 
 retention of personal identity after the dissolution of the 
 body, tne continuity of consciousness in all time, was as 
 absurd, or at least as discredited a possibility with him 
 as with the materialists whom he criticized. There was 
 no resemblance between the Christian and the Platonic 
 immortality. So far as the consciousness of the past is 
 concerned Plato's conception was in sympathy with the 
 materialists. But the svbstance of the soul, the subject 
 of consciousness survived, the present personal stream of 
 mental events not being a part of its essence or essential 
 activity, as it was conceived after the teaching of Chris- 
 tianity on the one hand and Cartesian philosophy on the 
 other. This soul or substance of mind could pass into 
 any other embodiment and continue another life, upward 
 or downward according to its nature, just as the atom 
 
46 Ethics of the Oreeh Philosophers. 
 
 can pass from one form of combination to another in 
 modern and ancient physics without destruction. But 
 no consciousness of its past is at all necessary to this 
 continuance. Such a conception involves the most tre- 
 mendous self-sacrifice on thepart of any man who should 
 regulate his conduct-in reference to his soul's future in 
 which present consciousness cT)uld not participate by 
 way of memory and personal identity. To restrain pas- 
 sion and impulse in order thatmy^oatmay nofpass JTrto 
 a brute form where I should ncYfir-fenoW^he'-degi^ida-! 
 tion, is not a conception of immortality that would suc^ 
 ceed in promptings many to yi£tH«p=*H0re'=^peGially ' a 
 Chdstian.'^fEheEfris.-scarcely anyjparalleLta-thfijlemand^ 
 on unselfishness which is _irnglied in the_Platomc-id.ea«f 
 immortality, -anSTience again we find in this very feature 
 of his philosophy the most radical and far-reaching con- 
 ception of the subordination of the individual to the 
 order of the cosmos which any one can imagine. Plato, 
 of course, was hardly conscious of this way of stating his 
 position, because the distinction between the selfish 
 and unselfish, the egoistic and altruistic, conception of 
 life was not yet drawn, and could hardly have been 
 drawn at his time. Greek philosophy was too monistic 
 to conceive any antagonism between man and nature, 
 between the individual and society. The interests of the 
 individual and of the whole were conceived by Socrates 
 and Plato as the same. This, of course, is true ideally 
 but not really, and the average Greek was the last to act 
 up to such a doctrine even when the philosophic trend of 
 his time forced the conviction of such a unity upon him. 
 It required the dualism of Christianity and Cartesianism 
 to develop the opposition between man and nature into 
 formal recognition, placing the greatest value upon the 
 individual, and with it the duty to respect one's neighbor 
 
Ethics of the Qreek Philosophers. 47 
 
 as one's self, the very condition of preserving any 
 morality at all, because dualism or pluralism tends to 
 establish the same opposition between individuals as 
 tetween man and nature, and in order to save ethics 
 must place the stress of morality upon making man, or 
 others, ends in themselves in lieu of insisting upon the 
 identity of their interests, yBut the method of reconciling 
 the individual and the whole by self-sacrifice, consciously 
 affirmed and formulated as above duty to self, does 
 not appear in Plato, and least of all in his conception 
 of immortality, in which the associations of the term 
 affected by later history connect it with the notion of 
 personal survival, while the idea of regulating conduct 
 with reference to the destiny of a being in whose life 
 no connection with the conscious past of the soul surviv- 
 ing is to be found makes a demand upon unselfishness 
 which few men would venture to make on the race, 
 especially upon an average Greek who was a good 
 embodiment of the idea taught by the Manchester school 
 of political economists. But Plato makes it, and in his 
 conception returns in a different phraseology to that sac- 
 rifice of the individual which had characterized the 
 cosmological type of thought. The peculiarity and 
 sublimity of the demand lies in the fact that the sacrifice 
 has to be made without a personal and individual interest 
 in its object. In Christianity the demand for sacrifice in 
 behalf of others was attended with an individual interest 
 in the consequences of it. That is to say, Christianity 
 combined individualism and altruism in a way to secure 
 a general hearing. Plato demanded the sacrifice with- 
 out satisfying individual interest, and hence his idea 
 of immortality cannot be considered as favoring the posi- 
 tion that man is an end to himself. 
 
 But Plato shows none of the nightmare of terror which 
 
48 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 troubled the average Greek when he reflected upon such 
 a fate, or such a sacrifice as this doctrine involved. Plato 
 was above all a philosopher and had learned to reconcile 
 himself to fact, to accept the judgment of his intellect in 
 regard to the law of nature as reflecting what is best for 
 the will. Hence his reconciliation was not that of a man 
 bent on obstinately displaying his courage against adverse 
 fortune, standing like an Athanasius contra mundum, or 
 a Stoic dying joyfully on a funeral pyre, but it was 
 that of a man who denied the opposition of nature to his 
 real welfare and loved it for its beauty and harmony. 
 He did not quarrel with Fate, because he saw in the 
 world's order a type of action to be imitated, and a 
 beauty and goodness to be worshiped. Hence rebellion 
 had no temptations for him as it had for the individ- 
 ualist who, emancipated from the tyranny of the gods 
 and princes, set up his own will as the only thing to be 
 satisfied in the world. Plato loved what his intellect 
 told him was the good, and had no temptations which 
 had kept his race between the terror of the gods and the 
 anarchy of libertinism. Consequently he was the first 
 of the philosophers who both in his person and his 
 philosophy substituted respect for fear of the law as the 
 condition of virtue and of attaining the good which is 
 the same in man as in nature. 
 
 But Plato had his philosophic difficulties nevertheless. 
 He found it a struggle for the average man to realize the 
 ideal, whether there was a harmony between man and 
 nature or not. His problem was not completely solved 
 when he had pointed out the good in the cosmos apd 
 suggested that immortality was a fact to be reckoned 
 with in the realization of it and a condition of attaining 
 the harmony of nature with the true interest of man. 
 He had the practical difficulty of getting the common 
 
EMERSON ON PLATO. 
 
 " In Plato you explore modern Europe in its causes 
 and seed — all that in thought which the history of 
 Europe embodies or has yet to embody. The well in- 
 formed man finds himself anticipated — Plato is up 
 with him. too. Nothing has escaped him. Every new 
 crop in the fertile harvest of reform^ every fresh sug- 
 gestion of modern humanity is there. Why should 
 not young men be educated on this book ? It would 
 suffice for the tuition of the race — lowest the under- 
 standing and to express the reason.! Who can over- 
 estimate the images with which Plato has enriched the 
 minds ofmen^ and which pass like bullion in the cur- 
 rency of all nations ? /Read the Phcsdo, the Protago- 
 ras^ the Phcsdrus, the Timceus, the Republic and the 
 Apology of Socrates. 
 
 Emerson's Essay on Books 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 49 
 
 mind to seek this good and to make the sacrifices neces- 
 sary to realize it , The theoretical problem was easy, but 
 ^the practical one was very different. The former had 
 only to convince the intellect ; the latter had also to 
 move the will and secure its permanent adhesion 
 to the good. Finding in man a hierarchy of conflicting 
 impulses all leading to evil, he had to discover a way to 
 control them, to reduce them to submission, or to direct 
 the will toward the ideal. The agency for accom- 
 plishing this end was reason, whose function it was to 
 establish the same order in man that objective reason 
 had established in nature. The passions were blind 
 initiatives of action without regard to farsightedness, and 
 were calculated to turn life into a carnival of debauch, 
 and the only hope of curbing their caprices l^y in the 
 regulative power of reason which, though it c ould furnish 
 1 10 motive pow er, could furnish insight and directive 
 ideas, impulse having to sacrifice its natural and immedi- 
 ate object for the good which reason discovered. In 
 his conception, therefore, the natural passions did not 
 have the good for their end, and though they remained 
 the motive efficient of the action suggested by reason, 
 their natural object had to be wholly sacrificed in the 
 attainment of the rational ideal. Here we see the ascetic 
 type of philosopher in Plato, and it is the ground of the 
 sympathy of Christianity with his system. In his view 
 virtue or the good could only be attained by heroic 
 methods, by the sublime though repressive restraints 
 exhibited by hermit, sage, anchorite, or martyr. No 
 quarter was to be given to impulse or natural desire in 
 the ideal world. A merciless and rigid asceticism was 
 the only sure way to the paradise of the ideal. We find 
 in the Neoplatonist the logical outcome of this doctrine, 
 a hatred of the things of sense that turns into a morbid 
 
50 Ethics of the Oreeh Philosophers. 
 
 and maudlin antipathy against the world that hardly 
 comports with the philosophic calm and admiration of 
 nature. It is true that the Neoplatonist only carried into 
 his ethics Plato's doctrine of matter as representing his 
 metaphysics of the cosmos and its depreciation of the 
 things of sense, showing the reductio absurdum of both 
 metaphysics and ethics which neither completed its 
 evolution nor found its recoil in Plato, because his 
 esthetic instincts on the one hand and his political 
 enthusiasm on the other were adequate restraints upon 
 pessimism and philosophic insanity. 
 
 It was the fact that Plato was a healthy human being,' 
 coupled with the present prospect that Greece would 
 remain upon the high level of her accomplished civiliza- 
 tion, that prevented his own action from being an absurd 
 concession to the popular idea of logic in the inter- 
 pretation of his doctrine, or a rush of despair into the 
 transcendental as the only escape of a noble mind from 
 the vices of a dying world. His nature and insight were 
 proof against abstract logic, and however rigid might be 
 his theory in its conception of the opposition between 
 the life of sense and the life of reason, as alternatives, no 
 one knew better than he the limitations under which it 
 was applicable. This is strikingly reflected in his composi- 
 tion of the " Laws " after he had written the " Eepublic." 
 He knew the conditi ons un der which human nature had 
 to exist and work, and his nwn conduct»_because of a 
 healthy and balanced nature, reflected the necessary con- 
 cessions to sense in the world as we find it, though he 
 did not find it i'5eal._Plato enjoyed a banquet as well 
 as any one, but he enjoyedTThS" philosophic ecstasy still 
 more, and he f-nnHfii^ ucted his ideal_ world of opposition to 
 sensuous pleasures as the only clearway ot getting virtue 
 appreciated at all, especially by a race that was little 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 51 
 
 disposed to transcend the world of sense for its ideals, as 
 is shown by its art. He probably saw that it was strength 
 of will in Socrates rather than knowledge or insight that 
 secured him the virtue he loved, and " sizing up " the aver- 
 age Greek of his day as a possible or probable debauchee,he 
 told his fellow men who had weaker wills than Socrates 
 that they could not see or realize the glory of the true, 
 the beautiful, and the good until they had gained com- 
 plete control of a sensuous life. Every reformer has to 
 tell the victim of vice that he has no hope of salvation 
 except in total abstinence. Not because it is necessarily 
 wrong to gratify sense at all, but because ihe individual 
 once addicted to intemperance must exhibit a weaker 
 will when the slightest concession is made to temptation 
 than when he absolutely rejects its solicitations. This 
 antithesis between pleasure and the good thus becomes a 
 nec"essar5rpra5rfteaf-deviee-for securing moral strength of 
 will, whatever be its theoretical defects in a world other 
 than the present one : and hence what was to Plato a practi- 
 cal means for securing both a vision and a realization of 
 virtue in a people too much committed to the worship 
 of sense easily assunred- ~th^ coloring of asceticism, 
 especially in an. age whes^the„p£ilj±ieal— idea:tgTjf'ittteh3 
 w:ere sacrificed to the conservatism of Sparta- and the 
 ambition of Macedonia. 
 
 It wouIdTalSetStrnrcrch time to examine the " Republic " 
 and ail-that' it means for-a-trae estimate of Plato's genius. 
 Among our every-day n^en of the world it is called an 
 ideal and impractical scheme, a brilliant dream of a noble 
 but impossible mind, repeated from age to age, as the 
 OivitasDei of Augustine, More's " Utopia," Bacon's "New 
 Atlantis," or even Mr. Bellamy's "Looking Backward." 
 But this whole characterization of it with the insinuation 
 that it is a visionary idealism and representative of just 
 
52 Ethics of the Oreek Philosophers. 
 
 about what the public may expect of a philosopher, spinning 
 , fancies out of his contemplative moods, is not wholly fair to 
 Plato. Most sensible readers of it will find little idealism 
 in it, and nothing Utopian, as those terms are under- 
 stood, though it may be only a difference of ideals that 
 makes us hesitate to apply these terms to it But whether 
 ideal or not, the scheme was communistic and socialistic, 
 and in respect of both the farnilyaHdrtheTCdivIdual run^ 
 directly counter to all that evolution has produced in the 
 course of later history. But in spite of such provis ions 
 and of its assumption of llobbe's state ~oFp^5etuarwar~ 
 (not a very ideal condition for Utopia in our idea of it), 
 the " Eepublic " is not to be condemned by men who have 
 never studied it with care and who have not caught the 
 fundamental principle ^that lay at the basis of it. Plato 
 was undoubtedly hampered, as all men are, by the con- 
 crete conceptions of his time in the attempt to give-iorai 
 ani^body to his ideas, but his ideal of good government 
 was not much, if any, different from our own. The fit 
 man in the /jLji/no^-wfl s tJie ^^ maxim unon which hgJ^igtt eT' 
 -He thoroughly believed m the doctrine of Carlyle, that 
 " the tools should belong to him who can handle them," 
 and we to-day after more than one hundred years of repub- 
 lican institutions are just learning the value of applying 
 this principle to the civil service. /The " 'R,ep],^^],i"fi " jj^ ^r|1 v 
 a treatise on 0,1,711 Rp.rvicp. j-efnrm.j The conduct of men 
 like Alcibiades was a justification of Plato's intentions. 
 We may not be satisfied with the means by which he 
 vrould secure an ideal government, namely, the selection 
 of aristocratic philosophers for our rulers, and we may 
 perceive more readUy^th an he the limitation s of environ- 
 ment under which all reconstructions of society must be 
 made, but if we lay too much emphasis upon this defect 
 we shall forget the crucial principle upon which all good 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 53 
 
 gove rnment must resfivpamely, the inteUigence and didnter- 
 ested/riess of its rulers. <^Mj.'. Pater' cans attention t o this 
 feliLul'y Ul' PlaLo's doctrine, and it d' ^jpHins '"why Plato 
 chdse pMloso pners tor his ideal kin^ 
 
 They are supposed, at least by the general public and 
 so-called practicaT'men" toTe^' cTass*of ' "iTleaiists ' ' 'w"li"3' ' Sre 
 f orCTer'pIa^^Vffll^irely aT)¥fractl3onceijEions, and this 
 
 is oTten the case. But in Plato's time and before him they 
 
 were aii-rouna °m'en oriibowIedgE" They 'were "iiStenec^ 
 
 tuailj__andjnorailyth^ h e community. We 
 
 have seen that it was the philosopher that had overcome 
 the terrors of Fate and counseled a life of calm respectful 
 obedience to the inflexible laws of nature. Everywhere 
 about them the common people were steeped in ignorance 
 and showed no disinterestedness even toward nature, much 
 less toward their fellow men, while their lives were a con- 
 stant moral panic in the presence of both nature and the 
 gods. The philosophers, however, had not only attained 
 a superior knowledge of nature, but had also acquired 
 that disinterested temper of mind and will which can sup- 
 press individualistic passions and interests identified with 
 the moment, and maintain a far-reaching insight and calm 
 faith in the ultimate beneficence of nature and justice. 
 Hence with their habits of will, on the one hand, involv- 
 ing the sacrifice of libertine desires, and their superior 
 knowledge, on the other, involving a comprehensive view 
 of nature and man, it was only natural that Plato should 
 look to them for ideal prophets, priests, and kings ; if 
 only we refer to the arrogance and self-conceit of our 
 modem politicians who so unanimously laugh at the far- 
 sightedness of the more intelligent classes, we shall obtain 
 abundant confirmation of Plato's insight into the social 
 need of every age for the intelligent and disinterested man 
 
54 Ethics ofilie Qreeh Philosophers. 
 
 to guide its destiny, though we have not yet found, any- 
 more than Plato, the proper way to secure his services. 
 Moreover both the existence of the "Laws" and an 
 occasional sense of humor and idealistic weakness con- 
 sciously recognized even in the " Republic " itself show that 
 Plato was building for a world that he did not expect to 
 realize, and so was trying, as he did for the individual in 
 the sacrifice of the passions to the reason, to present for 
 the ruler an ideal which might stir the conscience of his 
 country, and to demand of its aristocracy duties as well 
 
 as privileges. ._„„.— -- — ^ 
 
 - ■^ AttsEbtle showsa wholly different type of intellect from 
 that of his master. He is more rigidly scientific. He is ; 
 almost, if not absolutely, without an esthetic sense, and 
 never indulges in humor. Plato was a typical Greek in 
 his esthetic appreciation, while he had as keen a sense of 
 humor, though it was lofty and refined, as any laughter- 
 loving man could demand. lAristotle had neither time 
 nor taste for the pleasantries' of life, but was serious in 
 temperament, though not puritanical, and eliminating the 
 sentimental and emotional from his reflections he made him- 
 self severely scientific in his study of ph ilosophi cal probl ems, 
 so that when we come to read him we miss the literary charm, 
 the delicate touch of humor, and the brilliant play of imagi- 
 nation and figure that conferimmortality upon Plato, even 
 when much of his philosophy seems unintelligible or absurd. 
 But if we lose these characteristics when we come to the 
 disciple, we gain in thoroughness and clearness of psycho- 
 logical analysis and limitation to facts for knowledge and 
 the regulation of conduct. This fact must be appreciated 
 by an age which especially admires scientific method and 
 the severe eliminationof literary embellishment and padding 
 from the discussion of profound philosophic problems, 
 and emotional interests from the determination of truth. 
 
Ethics of Hie Greek Philosophers. 56 
 
 / Plato never separated metaphysics from ethics, but 
 Aristotle makes this separation the first step in his 
 procedure. He does not say that this is a necessary condi- 
 tion of his system, nor does he discuss such a problem as 
 their relation. He simply writes on ethical science with- 
 out alluding to metaphysics at all One might imagine 
 That he had no interest in this recondite subject, or that 
 he knew nothing about it, if we had to judge him by his 
 treatise on ethics alone. But the fact is that no one in 
 antiquity wrote a more elaborate and profound system of 
 metaphysics than Aristotle, and we can wonder how he 
 could indulge his sense of the unity of "science when he 
 came to deal with the theory of morality. 
 
 The explanation of the peculiarity just mentioned is 
 the fact that Aristotle was a true Socratic in ethics with- 
 out sharing the contempt wHcIl Socrates had for specu- 
 lative philosophy. He realized that, whatever man had 
 K) consider in adjusting his conduct to cosmic law, he 
 must find in himself the spring to this adjustment and 
 the benefit that was to accrue from it, and not condition 
 the practical rules of life upon some prior system of 
 reflective philosophy which should be the result and not 
 the determinant of a moral life. Not that Aristotle 
 would deny a reflex influence from speculative doctrine 
 iipon ethics, or a value for practical conduct in meta- 
 physical theories, but only that both ethical science and 
 mucb of pracHcal action are not dependent upon a prior 
 philosophic system of the external universe. Perhaps 
 /his sense of the unity between man and nature was 
 stronger than that of the Greeks generally, so that in tacitly 
 abandoning the dualism of Plato he had no occasion to 
 determine morality by the transcendental goal which the 
 cosmos reserves for man's pursuit Hence, though he 
 recognized the necessity of metaphysics as the comjDletion 
 
.56 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 of man's Knowledge, the xmity between man and nature 
 made it unnecessary to condition ethics, at least of a prac- 
 tical kind, and this was largely all that he sought, upon 
 
 i a previously constructed system of metaphysics. In this 
 1 method he in reality followed the spirit of Socrates, 
 though he had emancipated himself from the contempt 
 which Socrates entertained for cosmic knowledge. 
 
 The first step, therefore, which Aristotle takes in the 
 discussion of the ethical problem is to show that all moral 
 action is determined wholly by reference to the end, or 
 the object at which the will aims, the reXo? of volition. 
 He would admit that the object of nature and that of the 
 human will ought to be the same, but he -v^ould, like Soc- 
 rates, turn the mind to self-reflection for its determination 
 of this object rather than first deciding the purpose of 
 nature, as in Plato. Hence he says absolutely nothing/ 
 about cosmological, theological, or conventional theories, 
 but rises at once into heights superior to all of them, while 
 at the same time asserting a criterion of ethical conduct 
 which can, in its first power at least, be determined within 
 the limits of the individual consciousness. Socrates and 
 Plato, by emphasizing human ignorance as the great sin, 
 practically left the impression that it Was what men did 
 not know that determined the good or virtue, but 
 Aristotle, by putting the stress upon the end of volitions, 
 limited morality to what man could be conscious of. In 
 all of them it was an object to be known thnt determined 
 
 ^jQrtuejJliut in the former the knowledge of the object was 
 all that was necessary, while in the latter the intention was 
 the main desideratum. In this last conception ignorance 
 oJ the means played a minor part in virtue, so that virtue 
 became a qu ality of will rather than, or aa well as, knnwl - 
 
 ■fidgft~ Consequently the initial basis of ethics with 
 Aristotle took on a scientific form. If cosmological and 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophem. 57 
 
 theological or conventional theories are to obtain any 
 standing after such an enunciation of principles, it will bo 
 on the condition that their norm be capable of interpretation 
 as an end related to human welfare and volition, and not 
 either a blind limitation of man's liberty, the passive sub- 
 mission to external law, or the non-purposive action that 
 may happen to realize objective good. The criterion of 
 Aristotle is first subjective, that is, determinable by human 
 consciousness, aao^ b eiT if objective forces have their 
 resultants expressible as possible ends of volition, they have 
 a recognizable place in ethics. But they cannot otherwise 
 obtain it, and we are left with the broad universal princi- 
 ple that the final determinant of moral action, whether the 
 expression of divine or human agencies, must be an end, 
 or object aimed at, the quality of conduct being thus 
 determined by the will rather than by the intellect alona 
 The law of nature, the will of the gods, or the decrees of 
 political authority and convention have no meaning or 
 relevancy in this conception unless they recognize ends 
 applicable to the volitions of the subject upon which 
 they are binding. Aristotle's predecessors would have 
 admitted as much had this analysis been presented to them. 
 ^But they were so bent upon emphasizing the importance 
 of speculative knowledge that they consciously or 
 unconsciously concealed the place which the will and 
 intentions had in morality, -v 
 
 But Aristotle is not on this account individualistic in his 
 conception of ethics. He recognizes, implicitly or explicitly, 
 that the ethical postulate must be within the reach of 
 scientific method, and thus be an object of purposive 
 intelligent consciousness which he finds in the individual 
 man. But he does not thereby exclude from this 
 object the idea that it shall be an extra-personal fact. His 
 most general principle, affirmed or implied, is that, whatever 
 
58 Ethics of the Oreek Philosophers. 
 
 it is, it must be conceived as an end to the being who is to 
 realize it, and who is to be .responsible for it only as 
 intending it The individual supplies the knowledge and 
 the initiative, and receives the praise or btaine, or, in other 
 words, has moral responsibility apportioned according to 
 the intention and not according to consequences beyond the 
 ken of consciousness. Thia,_of. course, is not the language 
 of Aristotle, but it is the meaning of his conception of 
 morality, in which he terminates before he completes 
 his analysis. The individualistic element, therefore, in 
 his system, though not egoistic in its intention, is found 
 in the part which the subject must play in the recognition 
 and initiation of the end, which last is not limited to a 
 subjective result, though always consistent with it, as con- 
 ceived by Socrates. This extra-personal element he 
 recognizes in the end of action when he comes to define it, 
 and he thus' transcends the individualism of the sophists 
 who never admitted an extra-personal element at all. 
 AristotledoesriotJ£fine-.the. end- as, pleasure {hdovij), nor 
 as comformity to nature;- to convention, or to the will of 
 the gods, but as welfare ( ivdat jj. ovioiSi which is sometimes 
 translated as happiness, but which ought to be translated 
 a well-ordered condition of being, or a well-organized and 
 disposed state of functions. Perhaps the conception 
 can be best expressed, at least approximately, by the 
 modern term perfection, which would mean for Aristotle 
 the proper condition of being for a healthy and harmonious 
 exercise of functions. This idea not only takes him. 
 beyond the individualistic hedonism of the sophistic school, 
 because pleasure is not the only end for action, but 
 repeats in a psychological form that which had been given 
 a metaphysical and cosmological meaning in Plato. Plato 
 recognized an extra-personal end to which the individual 
 was sacrificed, as we have seen, but it was not so clearly 
 
Mhics of the Greek Philosophers. 59 
 
 reconciled with personal good as was the conception of 
 his disciple. Aristotle, however, in choosing welfare, or 
 perfection, interpreted as the ideal condition of organic 
 beings, prepared the way for the recognition of others as 
 ends in themselves, instead of their being mere means to 
 a personal end, as in Socrates, or means to an impersonal 
 end, as in Plato. This perfection could be either 
 or both personal and extra-personal. Moreover, inas- 
 much as the end recognized by Aristotle was not a 
 transient feeling like pleasure, it reinstates Plato's con- 
 ception of reality or permanence as the moral object of 
 volition, though it is made personal in the disciple, while 
 it was impersonal in the master. I mean by personal, of 
 course, a condition in man himself. Hence Aristotle 
 simply gives personal meaning to the Platonic reality. \ 
 This conception of welfare took Aristotle directly away 
 from the asceticism of Plato. Welfare demanded some 
 concessions to sensuous objects ; the life of pure reason 
 did not,.^-AVith Plato reason furnished the object of 
 (gction, and passion the motive power. With Aristotle 
 passion might furnish an object as well as motive, while 
 reaSonrcould furnish also an object of its own, but never 
 any motive, though it was always the only guide to the 
 rational,_whether in the domain of sense or other func- 
 tiong/ Hence, instead of sacrificing the desires to obtain 
 morality, Aristotle granted them a legitimate field of 
 activity and merely subordinated their gratification to the 
 supremacy of reason. Plato also insisted upon the suprem- 
 acy of reason^ but it was a supremacy based upon the 
 denial of all moral rights to desire. With Aristotle its 
 supremacy was consistent with a legitimate function for 
 desire. Hstead, therefore, of subordinating the indi- 
 vidual to the whole by requiring some transcendental 
 condition like the moral order of the universe as we found 
 
60 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers: 
 
 it in Plato, we see in Aristotle that concessions are made' 
 to the ends of sense, and the ideals of the concrete man. 
 Though Aristotle made a contemplative life the highest 
 ideal, this being for the Greeks of that time a speculative 
 or philosophic, as we should now call it a scientific, voca- 
 tion, he admitted moral possibilities below this height 
 He allowed the natural functions of man to determine an 
 object for volition, and simply required that their proper 
 action be regulated by reason, whereas we should say 
 conscience, giving it both cognitive and motive power. 
 In this concession to the desires we see that Aristotle did 
 not require the immortality of the soul, a transcendental 
 survival from the toils of our prison house, in order to 
 realize morality, though this view did not antagonize or 
 deny the^ value of an ideal worldbeyondthe^grascer^^ The 
 /Virtue of Aristotle lay in volition, not in the object 
 [attained by it, though the good might lie beyond the 
 \action in which virtue was realized. With Plato, as we 
 found, virtue was realized in the conscious attainment of 
 the good which lay beyond mere action and the will. But 
 with virtue consisting in the intention and the good in 
 some realizable perfection of the subject within the limits 
 of actual existence, Aristotle reinstates the value of the 
 individual which his master had sacrificed, and in doing, 
 so he lays the foundation for opposition to both the 
 socialism and the pantheism of Plato, and finds an escape 
 from the temptation to build ideal republics, supported 
 upon the immolation of their citizens. But after the saner 
 attfemptpf PJato in the " Laws," he constructs his theory of 
 governmental institutions with greater reference to indi- 
 vidual development as well as to the conditions of human 
 nature, and^is 'vvorkrin this direction has remained-monu- 
 mental. 
 
 The simple principle that determined the whole result 
 
' Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 61 
 
 of his thouglit, in politics as well as ethics, was the doc- 
 trine of the mean (^jueaorr^?^, as it was called. Armed 
 with PlatcJ's conception of reason regulating passion, and 
 with the universal Greek notion of moderation, the 
 jj.r]6iv ayav, " nothing overmuch,'^ Aristotle con- 
 ■'ce3e9~9esif e not only a legitimate But an ethical func- 
 tion, provided its satisfaction observed a mean between 
 .excess and deficiency, and tl^us placed-ten-aelf- upon-tes- 
 restrial groun d in his do ^t.ripf^ nf marality, though not 
 "Sisplacing the ideal that might require a transcendental 
 world for its realization. He thus became the sanest aiid 
 healthiest type of the Greek philosophers, at least in his 
 scientific conception of the ethical problem, whatever we 
 may think of the practical difficulties involved in the 
 concession to the appetites, which, as Plato,saw,^couhli)e 
 more easily controlledby abstinence than by-moderation. 
 But with all such practical obstacles to its application 
 without insight and common sense, Aristotle's position' 
 has the merit of theoretical accuracy, and of boldness in 
 recognizing that man must construct his ethical ideals 
 within the limits of realizable human ends, and that he 
 should not run after will-o'-the-wisps in impossible 
 wgrldSi^fee saw that the conditions of man's present life 
 ^ad to be satisfied, whatever the hereafter might be, and 
 rightly regulated ; that conscience has for its object and 
 duty the restraint of passion and the direction of higher 
 desires instead of moaning over the limitations of sense 
 and longing for release from the body in order to gain 
 the reward of virtua/Thus the doctrine of the mean 
 'kept Aristotle in t^ world of real life while it allowed 
 for any ideal condition that might come within the ken 
 of knowledge. 
 
 Other doctrines can only receive mention, as carrying the 
 analysis of ethical problems farther than his predecessors. 
 
■62 Ethics of the Oreek Philosophers. 
 
 By the distinction between intellectual or natural and 
 moral or acquired virtues (excellences) Aristotle escaped 
 the paradoxes of Socrates and Plato about the identity 
 of virtue and knowledge, and the question whether 
 virtue could be taught Aristotle, at least in effect, 
 \maintained that the natural virtues or excellences 
 'were constitutional perfections in the individual, while 
 the moral virtues were the direct product of the will. 
 Consequently he was enabled to maintain against his 
 masters the voluntary nature of vice, and ever since his 
 time the term " virtue " has denoted only a quality of 
 will, except in those survivals which speak of the " vir- 
 tues " of medicine, etc. ilia— outline of f reedom^-and- 
 responsibility, the distinction between the two ideas not 
 being explicitly drawn, can hardly be surpassed by any 
 modern writer. His conception of moral virtue, the term 
 moral being tautological to us owing to Aristotle's own 
 influence, was that of a confirmed habit of will, not any 
 fortuitously capricious motive. This view was a natural 
 consequence of the general conception of virtue as an 
 excellence of any kind in which it was most easily con- 
 ceived as constitutional and static. Hence an individual 
 act which did not represent a habit, no matter what the 
 motive, could not be called a "virtue,." though the 
 Aristotelian distinction between natural and acquired 
 excellence finally led to the recognition of even individual 
 acts as morally good, and character came to stand for the 
 fixed nature of the will which makes it " virtuous." But 
 Aristotle's idea conceived moral merit as a quality of the 
 subject indicating some inner fixity of character, and 
 thus to some extent anticipated the position of Kant, who 
 insisted that morality essentially consists in the idea', of 
 law, both as an imperative and as uniformity of action. 
 Aristotle, of course, did not recognize the notion of an 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 63 
 
 imperative, but he did remark the idea of uniformity 
 which puts the " virtue " in the will, whatever merit we 
 may come to assign to the volition itself. 
 
 Aristotle's treatment of the particular virtues is coldly 
 analytical, somewhat iminteresting to the modern mind, 
 and is carried out along the line of his principle ; namely, 
 the mean between excess and deficiency in the gratifica- 
 tion of impulse. No special importance for us attaches 
 to this part of his work, except the length of the discus- 
 sion on friendship, which, with the fact that quite as 
 much attention was given to it by Plato, raises the ques- 
 tion whether it does not indicate the conscious necessity 
 for emphasis by the moralists of the time upon some of 
 the social virtues as a counter-influence to the naturally 
 egoistic tendencies of Greek life. 
 
 When it comes finally to a summary of the influence 
 which Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle exercised upon 
 modern ethical doctrines there is an interesting and com- 
 plicated problem to solve. Each of these philosophers 
 appeals to a different type of mind. It was the person- 
 ality of Socrates that gave him an influence upon after 
 ages more than his method ; for this latter had to be 
 developed by other hands before its usefulness could be 
 appreciated. His strength of will and martyrdom for his 
 convictions made him, as in the case of all men like him, 
 the center of interest for that class of hero- worshipers who^ 
 like moral courage better than mere intellectual insight, 
 and example better than precept, ^piatn^ on the other 
 hand, is attractive to all speculative minds of a mystical 
 sort and who delight in transcendental conceptions, the 
 airy visionary universe of pureth^^ht, demanding those 
 empyrean flights of fancy which justuy the description of 
 metaphysics as the poetry of reason. Over these Plato 
 exercises an influence bordering on enchantment, and 
 
64 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 scarcely any man with philosopliic, literary, and humane 
 instincts of any kind can escape the magical charm which 
 he inspires. Aristotle, however, is the antithesis of thidiT 
 He was to some extent the moral contrast of Socrates ana 
 the intellectual contrast of Plato. He was the embodiV 
 ment of the strictly scientific mind, too prudent to die for 
 the sake of obstinacy, as his flight from Athens to avoid 
 a second disgrace to philosophy very well shows, and too 
 critical to indulge in poetical metaphysics. His moral 
 ideals involved no sacrifices like those of Socrates, and 
 his philosophy no passion like that of Plato. He was 
 coldly critical and scientific in method and temperament, 
 poised equally between the two extremes of moral enthu- 
 siasm and speculative idealism. He is the philosopher of 
 facts, an example and the hero of those who ask no favors 
 of the universe but to know the truth, and no transcen- 
 dental world to stimulate the inspiration and hopes of 
 theiLmaralityr- The general influence of all of them, 
 liowever, lies in the spirit of reflective thinking which 
 j hey cultivated. I^his has not thrown much light on 
 modern practical issues, but only upon the theoretical 
 basis of morality. Whatever has been reqtiired for solv- 
 ing the perplexities of theoretical ethics has received its 
 impulse from this school of thinkers. They furnish the 
 dry light of reason in the determination of what morality 
 is and means, but none of the warmth of feeling and 
 motive power which practical life demands, and though 
 this fact is no discredit to the work of scientific analysis, 
 which is always important, it indicates the limitations of 
 Greek speculation. Insight and truth are of primary 
 importance, though ineffective without power. Greek 
 consciousness was almost wholly scientific curiosity, 
 even when it touched upon the moral issues of life, 
 and the shadows of its exaggerated worship of reason 
 
Etliics of the Greek Philosophers. 65 
 
 still extend over all countries that have been molded by 
 its culture. 
 
 To measure its value, however, by its inefficiency upon 
 moral life in individual cases is to mistake both its 
 nature and its mission, though such an accusation of its 
 defects would be a pertinent criticism against those who 
 identified knowledge and virtue. But to him who had 
 distinguished, as Aristotle had done, between the specula- 
 tive efforts of the intellect and the moral impulses and 
 products of the will, it was only a recognition of individ- 
 ual responsibility for practical results to maintain that 
 philosophy only furnished enlightenment and not moral 
 character^ Reason could point out the path of rectitude, 
 Dut It could not impel a man to take it, except at the 
 expense of that freedom which is as dear to the moralist 
 land philosophe r as knowledge c an be. The intellect could 
 I supply LheTruth, but the will had to supply the moral 
 impulse. Nevertheless, the distance between light and 
 power is a short one, and the whole intellectual momen- 
 tum of Greek thought, though circumscribed by the 
 horizon of mere knowledge or wisdom, expended its illu- 
 minating power upon the speculative ideals of truth, 
 beauty, and courage, and halted only at the limits of that 
 moral enthusiasm which characterized the impulse of 
 Christianity. Plato and Aristotle were the highest 
 development of this tendency, though they represent the 
 obverse and reverse sides of human genius, both in 
 regard to the accomplishments and the spiritual influence 
 of speculative thought Plato was the idealist, a nd 
 -. ^istotle w as the reali s t ~T he one lived in the transcen- 
 dental world of ^abstraction^ and gained possession of 
 human aspirations by directing them into the fairy-land of 
 ideals ; the other remained in the empirical world of con- 
 cret^Sc^, actual reality which chastened the speculative 
 
66 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 j/impulses of reason by counseling tlie lessons of humility. 
 If pMlosopliy ever betrays ber genius in her incarna- 
 tions, the characteristics thus described are even reflected 
 in the creations which sculpture has brought down to us of 
 these two men. Plato appears with his broad and elevated 
 brow, cheerful countenance, and speculative eye looking 
 dreamily into the great infinite of invisible existence, and 
 with ecstatic vision keeping watch over the gates of 
 immortality and God, as if he could utter the language of 
 Tennyson's " Ulysses " : 
 
 Yet all experience Is an arch where through 
 Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades 
 Forever and forever as we move. 
 
 But Aristotle with frigid, resolute, and drawn features, 
 as if repressing the temptations of fancy, looks straight 
 into nature, and having no purpose. 
 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the bathi 
 Of all the western stars, 
 
 sternly represents man's messenger of fact within the 
 limits of reality. For him the abstractions of time and 
 eternity have no fascination, and he will follow no will- 
 o'-the-wisps into the bogs of transcendentalism. But 
 making the real not so bad, and the ideal not so fine as 
 Plato, he circumscribes the objects of duty by the world 
 of scientific facts, and hence the main virtue which his 
 philosophy was calculated to inspire was that of every 
 truly scientific mind ; namely, the courage to disenchant 
 the will of its demoniac passion for aspirations which 
 neglect the most important duties of actual life, and hence 
 to reconcile desire to the limitations of the world. He 
 knew, to appropriate the language of Carlyle in reference 
 to Mt. Yesuvius, that " the earth, green as she looks, rests 
 everywhere on dread foundations were we further down, 
 and Pan, to whose music the nymphs dance, has a cry in 
 
" Pythagoras was eminently a practical person, the 
 founder of a school of ascetics and socialists, a planter 
 of colonies, and nowise a man of abstract studies 
 alone.'''' 
 
 Emerson's Essay on '''' Books. '" 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 67 
 
 him that oan drive all men distracted " : and hence, as in 
 such conditions every man must choose between bravery 
 and death, the I'esources of virtue must lie in the cultiva- 
 tion of knowledge and a resolute obedience to the laws 
 of nature. But Aristotle also knew that nature had her 
 compensations for the man whose moral consciousness, like 
 that of the Stoic, gathers its impulses from courage and 
 reverence for the actual world, and fearless of fate, 
 serenely assaults the illusions which one finds in the real 
 and the other in the ideal He found both in nature, and 
 his calm scientific spirit, with something of the vindictive 
 austerity of Stoicism and the brave humility of Spinoza, 
 demands of human life 
 
 One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
 
 Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
 
 To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. 
 
 The passing of the gods under th§ aegis of skepticism 
 may be marked by a shadow, and hope may be frustrated 
 for a moment by the loss of its previous ideals, but the 
 recovery of self-possession and the consciousness that life 
 offers its best rewards to him who respects facts bring 
 with them the " everlasting yea " of Carlyle, the light of 
 truth and the power of virtue to shed their luster over 
 the speculations both of history and of hope. 
 
 JAMES H. HYSLOP. 
 Columbia University. 
 
PYTHAGORAS AND HIS SCHOOL. 
 
 Pythagoras was one of the greatest, if not the 
 greatest philosopher preceding the age of Socrates and 
 Plato, and had a deep influence on their thought. He 
 traveled over most of the known world to study the 
 wisdom of its sages and is presumed to have learned 
 much from the Brahmans of India, the Priests o^ 
 Chaldea and Egypt, and the Magi of Persia, and he lived 
 for many years in Babylon and Egypt before returning 
 to Greece and Italy. 
 
 He established most extensive religious or monastic 
 orders throughout Greece, Italy, and other Mediterranean 
 countries which in discipline and doctrine closely re- 
 sembled the early Hindoo and later Christian orders. 
 For example, they practiced abstinence from animal 
 foods, and also, strange as it may seem, from beans. They 
 also observed celibacy, avoided bloody sacrifices, used a 
 special dress and believed in the reincarnation of souls, 
 like the Hindoo and Buddhist orders, and counselled a 
 life of great purity and moderation. 
 
 Pythagoras seems not only to have been a world- 
 student of Religion, Ethics and Philosophy, but also a 
 great Moral Reformer and Cosmic Philosopher, as well 
 as an able Politician. His religious confraternities of 
 men and women became so numerous and powerful in 
 Greece and Italy, and of such intellectual and political 
 influence, that they were considered a menace to the 
 
 (68) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 69 
 
 State, and were finally suppressed as dangerous to it, 
 just as in a similar way Christian religious orders have 
 been suppressed in some European States in modern 
 times. 
 
 Pythagoras was also believed by his followers to be 
 more than human, or actually divine, a son of Apollo, 
 through a miraculous or divine conception by his 
 mother, and thus an incarnation of God in human forui_ 
 And it is also related of him that he rose from the dead 
 after a long burial. 
 
 These ideas of human deification or divine incarnation 
 were, however, not unusual in the beliefs, mythologies 
 or legends of the Mediterranean and Oriental races be- 
 fore the time of Christ. And the same idea of divine 
 incarnation was indeed also applied to Plato, and of 
 course many of the Greek and Roman rulers were actu- 
 ally declared to be incarnations of God and reverenced 
 as divine, for example, Alexander the Great, Nero, and 
 others. 
 
 The common belief held by the Mediterranean and 
 Oriental races in the pre-existence and eternal nature of 
 the soul and its repeated rebirths or reincarnations, to- 
 gether with the general belief in the multiple personality 
 of God, as shown by their Polytheistic and Henotheistic 
 conceptions, as well as the popular belief in the close 
 personal relations existing between Gods and men — and 
 women too — led to the easy adoption of this doctrine 
 of miraculous conception and divine incarnations, as 
 one of the most simple and natural mental results 
 under the circumstances. And it is therefore not to 
 be wondered at that teachers of such unusual mental 
 and moral power as Pythagoras and Plato, and of such 
 deep and wide influence among men, should come to be 
 regarded as superhuman in nature and divinely engen- 
 
70 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 dered in origin where such mystic religious ideas were 
 commonly held.* 
 
 With regard to the conception of God held commonly 
 in the Pagan world, it is interesting to note that Prof. 
 James, the great religious philosopher of Harvard Uni- 
 versity and a deep student of ancient philosophic con- 
 ceptions, in his recent notable work, " Varieties of Re- 
 ligious Experience," seems to make the remarkable ad- 
 mission that he considers it rational to conceive God either 
 as " pluralistic " or as " one and only." This is practically 
 the conception of God held by the great philosophic 
 Pagans among -the Hindoos, Chaldeans, Egyptians, 
 Greeks and Romans, who considered God as existing in 
 many manifestations or personifications, such as Jupiter, 
 Minerva, Neptune, Vesta, &c., or their equivalents, but 
 that these pluralistic personifications or manifestations 
 were really to be considered as all one in unison. Now 
 many things in unity is obviously a better conception of 
 God than mere "oneness" in itself: And we think it 
 must also be admitted that "Allness" is a better concep- 
 tion of Infinity and Omnipotence than mere oneness, 
 and " Allness " certainly involves the conception of multi- 
 tude primarily and unity or oneness secondarily. The 
 " All in All " or The Completeness of Everything are cer- 
 tainly good conceptions of God, at least in the Pan- 
 theistic sense; and all Theism necessarily involves more 
 or less Pantheism, so that we therefore think it is logic- 
 ally indisputable to say with Prof. James and the old 
 Pagans, that it is rationally admissible to conceive God 
 either as "pluralistic" or as "one." At all events, the 
 Christian conception of multi-personifications in unity 
 
 * The Rev. Lyman Abbott in a serious address to the students of Yale College 
 some time ago, made a most remarkable statement in referring to the Christian 
 doctrine of Incarnation. He stated that he sometimes wondered if the Church 
 really believed that doctrine, and if he really believed it himself, but he was 
 certain on one point, that it weis easier to believe that God could produce such 
 a mystery, than that men could have invented it. And this peculiar state- 
 ment would seem to imply that men had never believed or ' ' Invented ' ' this 
 doctrine before the christian Era I 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. "ji 
 
 is much nearer to the conceptions common to the philo- 
 sophic Pagans than it is to the simple uncompromising 
 monotheism of the Jewish and Mohammedan worlds 
 who have so persistently rejected the Christian creed, 
 whereas the Greek, Latin, Coptic, Celtic, and Teutonic 
 races who were used to a multi or pluralistic conception, 
 are practically the only races who have ever adopted 
 that creed. 
 
 The Pythagorean conception of God and the soul is 
 briefly described in the following paragraphs, which we 
 take from Stanley's History of Philosophy, 1701. — Ed. 
 Pythagorean Conception of God. 
 
 Pythagoras defined what God is, thus, A mind which 
 commeateth and is diffused through every part of the 
 world and through all nature, and from whom all ani- 
 mals that are produced receive life. 
 
 God is one. He is not (as some conceive) out of the 
 world, but entire within Himself, in a complete circle 
 surveying all generations. He is the temperament of 
 all ages, the agent of His own powers and works, the 
 principle of all things, one, in heavenly luminary, and 
 Father of all things ; mind and animation of the whole, 
 the motion of all circles. 
 
 God (as Pythagoras learned of the Magi, who term 
 Him Oromasdes) in His body resembles light, in His 
 soul, truth. 
 
 He said that God only is wise. 
 
 He conceiveth that the first (being) God, is neither 
 sensible nor passible, but invisible and intelligible. 
 
 Next to the Supreme God, there are three kinds of in- 
 telligibles, gods, daemons, heroes. That Pythagoras thus 
 distinguished them, is manifest from his precept, that 
 we must in worship prefer gods before daemons, heroes 
 before men : But in Jamblichus, he seems either to ob- 
 serve a different method, or to confound the terms: 
 
72 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 teaching first of gods, then of heroes, last of daemons ; 
 
 which order perhaps is the same with that of the Golden 
 
 Verses, 
 
 First, as decreed, th' immortal gods adore 
 Thy oath keep ; next great heroes, then implore 
 Terrestrial daemons with due sacrifice. 
 
 By terrestrial daemons seems to be understood (not 
 princes, as Hierocles, but) the daemons themselves, con- 
 fined to several offices upon earth ; for 
 
 All the air is full of souls, which are esteemed daemons 
 and heroes; from these are sent to men dreams and 
 presages of sickness and of health ; and not only to men, 
 but to sheep also, and to other cattle: to these certain 
 expiations and averrunciations, and all divinations, 
 cledons, and the like. 
 
 All the parts of the world above the moon are gov- 
 erned according to Providence and firm order, and the 
 decree of God, which they follow, but those beneath the 
 moon by four causes : by God, by fate, by our election, 
 by fortune. For instance, to go aboard into a ship or 
 not, is in our-power : storms and tempests to arise out of 
 calm is by fortune : for the ship being under water to be 
 preserved, is by the providence of God. Of fate, there 
 are many manners and differences, it differs from fortune, 
 as having a determination, order and consequence but 
 fortune is spontaneous and casual, as to proceed from a 
 boy to a youth, and orderly to pass through the other 
 degrees of age happens by one manner of fate. 
 
 Man is of affinity with the gods, by reason that he 
 participates of heat, wherefore God hath a providential 
 care of us. There is also a fate of all things in general 
 and in particular, the cause of their administration. 
 
 In Pythagoras his definition of the soul is a self-mov- 
 ing number, Plutarch saith, he takes number for mind. 
 The mind is induced into the soul, ab extrinseco, from 
 without, by divine participation, delibated of the Uni- 
 versal Divine Mind. For there is a soul intent and 
 commeant through the whole nature of things, from 
 which our souls are plucked. She is immortal, because 
 that from which she is taken is immortal ; yet not a God, 
 but the work of the eternal God. Thus Pj'thagoras ex- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 73 
 
 ceedingly confirmed the opinion of his master Pherecides, 
 who first taught, that the souls of men are sempiternal. 
 
 The soul hath a twofold life, separate and in the body ; 
 her faculties are otherwise in anima, otherwise in animali. 
 
 The soul is incorruptible ; for when it goes out of the 
 body, it goes to the soul of the world, which is of the 
 same kind.* 
 
 When she goeth out upon the earth, she walketh in 
 the air like a body. Mercury is the keeper of souls, he 
 brings souls out of bodies in the earth and the sea ; of 
 which, those that are pure, he leadeth into an high place ; 
 the impure come not to them, nor to one another, but 
 are bound by the Furies in indissoluble chains. 
 
 A summary of the Pythagoric Doctrine is extant in 
 verse, entitled, the Golden Verses of Pythagoras ; or as 
 others say, of the Pythagoreans. For that, saith Hiero- 
 cles, as gold is the best and purest of metals, so these 
 are the best and most divine of verses. 
 
 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. 
 
 First, in their ranks, the Immortal Gods adore. 
 Thy oath keep ; next, great Heroes ; then implore 
 Terrestrial Daemons with due sacrifice. 
 Thy parents reverence, and near allies ; 
 Him that is first in virtue make thy friend. 
 And with observance his kind speech attend ; 
 Nor (to thy power) for light faults cast him by, 
 Thy pow'r is neighbor to necessity. 
 
 These know, and with intentive care pursue ; 
 But anger, sloth, and luxury subdue. 
 
 In sight of others or thy self forbear 
 What's ill ; but of thyself stand most in fear. 
 Let Justice all thy words and actions sway : 
 Nor from the even course of Reason stray : 
 For know, that all men are to die ordain'd, 
 And riches are as quickly lost as gain'd. 
 Crosses that happen by divine decree, 
 (If such thy lot) bearnot impatiently. 
 Yet seek to remedy with all thy care, 
 And think the just have not the greatest share. 
 'Mongst men, discourses good and bad are spread, 
 Despise not those, nor be by these misled. 
 If any some notorious falsehood say, 
 Thou the report with equal judgment weigh. 
 
 •This idea seems to be identical with the Platonic and Buddhistic concep- 
 tions of soul. — Ed. 
 
74 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Let not men's smoother promises invite, 
 
 Nor rougtier threats from just resolves thee fright. 
 
 If ought thou shouldst attempt, first ponder it ; 
 
 Fools only inconsiderate acts commit ; 
 
 Nor do what afterwards thou' mayest repent ; 
 
 First learn to know the thing on which th' art bent. 
 
 Thus thou a life shalt lea:d with joy replete. 
 
 Nor must thou care of outward health forget. 
 
 Such temp'rance use in exercise and diet, 
 
 As may preserve thee in a settled quiet. 
 
 Meats unprohibited, not curious, choose ; 
 
 Decline what any other may accuse. 
 
 The rash expense of vanitj; detest, 
 
 And sordidness : A mean in all is best. 
 
 Hurt not thyself; Before thou act, advise ; 
 
 Nor suffer sleep at night to close thine eyes, 
 
 Till thrice thy acts that day thou hast o'errun, 
 
 How slipt, what deeds, what duty left undone ? 
 
 Thus thy account summ'd up from first to last, 
 
 Grieve for the ill, joy for what good hath past. 
 
 These study, practice these, and these affect ; 
 To sacred virtue these thy steps direct. 
 
 Eternal Nature's fountain I attest. 
 
 Who the Tetractis on our souls imprest. 
 
 Before thy mind thou to this study bend, 
 Invoke the Gods to grant it a good end. 
 These if thy labour vanquish, thou shalt then 
 Know the connexure both of Gods and men ; 
 How everything proceeds, or by what staid. 
 And know (as far as fit to be survey'd) 
 Nature alike throughout ; that thou mayest learn 
 Not to hope hopeless things, but all discern ; 
 And know those wretches whose perverser wills 
 Draw down upon their head spontaneous ills ; 
 Unto the good that's nigh them, deaf and blind : 
 Some few the cure of these misfortunes find. 
 This only is the Fate that harms, and rolls. 
 Through miseries successive, human souls. 
 Within is a continual hidden fight 
 Which we to shun must study, not excite. 
 Great Jove ! how little trouble should we know, 
 If thou to all men wouldst their genius show ! 
 But fear not thou ; men come of heav'nly race. 
 Taught by diviner Nature what t' embrace : 
 Which if pursu'd, thou all I nam'd shall gain, 
 And keep thy soul clear from thy body's stain. 
 In time of Pray' r and cleansing, meat's deni'd 
 Abstain from : thy mind's reins let reason guide : 
 Then, strip'd of flesh, up to free .^ther soar, 
 A deathless God, Divine, mortal no more. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Extracts from works 
 
 — OF- 
 
 Plato and Aristotle. 
 
 Illustrating the Ethics of the Greek Philoso- 
 phers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 EXPLANATORY NOTE. 
 
 These extracts are taken from the following English 
 works : — • 
 
 JowetVs Translation of Mato's Works, published by 
 Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1889. 
 
 JoweWs Politics of Aristotle, Oxford Edition, Claren- 
 don Press, 1885. 
 
 Aristotle's Niomachean Ethics, Peter's Translation. 
 
 Aristotle's History of Animals, Cresswell's Translation, 
 Bohn Edition. 
 
 Aristotle's Metaphysics. 
 
 The paragraphs quoted in these extracts are all given 
 exactly as they appear in the translations, but not al. 
 ways in complete continuity, that is, for purpose of con- 
 densation many intervening clauses between several of 
 the paragraphs in the original have been omitted in our 
 extracts as being irrelevant or redundant or obscure. 
 The places where such omissions have been made have 
 not been indicated in our text, for the sake of smoother 
 appearance and easier reading, and the quotations have 
 thus been printed by us as if they were continuous or 
 uninterupted from the original, but we have been always 
 careful in our selection and arrangement of the quota- 
 tions that the omitted phrases do not affect the sense 
 and context which has been everywhere carefully pre- 
 served by a juxtaposition and succession substantially 
 
 as it is in the original. 
 
 (74b) 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Extracts from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, with 
 Notes and Comments illustrating the correspondence 
 of ancient and modern thought. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM PLATO. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. The Supreme God or Creator and His Creation of 
 
 the Universe. 75 
 
 2. Great Antiquity of Egypt, and her early influence on 
 
 ancient Greece. Tale of " The Lost Atlantis." 82 
 
 3. The Principle of Universal Beneficent Love. From 
 
 Plato's Symposium. . . ... 88 
 
 4. Agathon and Socrates on Love 91 
 
 5. Plato and St. Paul paralleled in Hymn to Love. Paul 
 
 in r Cor. 13 (A. D. 57). Compared with Agathon 
 
 in the Symposium, B. C. 416. . . . .102 
 
 6. The Golden Rule. From Plato's Laws, 400 B. C. 106 
 
 7. Return not evil for evil. Socrates' answer to Crito. 109 
 
 8. Good, not Pleasure, the supreme aim of Conduct. . 11 1 
 
 9. Suicide Condemned. Socrates in the Phaedo. . . 112 
 
 10. A virtuous life, fearless death, and glorious hereafter 
 
 commended to all men. . • . . .114 
 
 11. The soul's improvement, not worldly success, the true 
 
 aim of man's life. ....... 116 
 
 12. The true life, the life of the soul, not of the world 
 
 or the body. Socrates in the Phaedo. . . .118 
 
 13. Death is a good and not an evil. Socrates in the 
 
 the Apology 120 
 
 14. The Immortality of the Soul and its future rewards 
 
 and punishments. Socrates in the Phaedo. 122 
 
 15. Best texts from the Old Testament on Immortality 
 
 as compared to Plato's Phasdo 130 
 
 16. The Doctrine of Purgatory — Pagan and Christian. . 135 
 
 17. Reincarnation. i-tS 
 
 (74C) 
 
74ci CONTENTS. — CONTINUED. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i8. Mind inheres in and rules the universe. . . .141 
 
 19. The Greek Conception of Soul and Deity. A Prime 
 
 Mover or Force, which is Self-Moved. . 144 
 
 20. The Universal Soul. .... . . 145 
 
 21. The Platonic Doctrine of Ideas. ... . 147 
 
 22. The Socratic Utilitarian Theory of Ethics. . . . 157 
 
 23. Socrates the Father of Modern Utilitarian Ethics. . 168 
 
 24. Influence of Socrates on Aristotle and Epicurus and 
 
 the substantial identity of their ethical dodlrines. 169 
 
 25. The Hedonistic School of Aristippus— the false Epi- 
 
 curean and perverter of Socratic Doctrine. . 172 
 
 26. Harmony of Herbert Spencer with the Socratic School 
 
 of Ethics. . . . • . . . 176 
 
 27. Socratic and Theistic Ethics — a comparison of the 
 
 Utilitarian and the Theistic Theories of Ethics. 179 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM ARISTOTLE. 
 
 28. Aristotle on the Idea of God. 182 
 
 29. Aristotle on the Theory of Evolution 186 
 
 30. Abstract of Aristotle's Theory of Ethics. . . . 193 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS. 
 
 31 . The fundamental nature of a political state or govern- 
 
 ment. Status of property. Socialistic and Indi- 
 vidualistic considered 205 
 
 32. Citizens and States of various kinds considered. 
 
 The best form of government and the best citizen 
 discussed. • . 210 
 
 33. The best constitution for a state. Preponderance 
 
 of the middle class recommended. . . . 231 
 
 34. Cause of Revolutions Considered. .... 235 
 
 35. Democracy analyzed and commended. . . . 243 
 
 36. The Best Life for Individuals and States . . .251 
 
 37. Public Schools and Liberal Education, Gymnastics, 
 
 Music and Morals. 272 
 
THE SUPREME GOD OR CREATOR AND HIS 
 CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 From Plato's Tim^us. 
 Introductory Note : — 
 
 ACCORDING to the latest Biblical critics, tlie Book 
 of Genesis is a literary mosaic made up of literary 
 fragments of various dates and authorships, and the 
 dates of its various parts vary from about 700 to 400 B. C. 
 Now it is very interesting to here note that the fol- 
 lowing extract from Plato, giving the story of the Crea- 
 tion, is not far from being contemporary with Genesis 
 itself, as it was written about 400 B. C. Note also the 
 reference to a great deluge in the tale of the lost Atlantis. 
 — C. M. H. 
 
 " Let me tell you then, why the Creator of the world 
 generated and created this universe. He was good, and 
 no goodness can ever have any jealousy of anything. 
 And being free from jealousy. He desired that all things 
 should be as like Himself as possible. This is the true 
 beginning of Creation and of the world, which we shall 
 do well in receiving on the testimony of wise men : God 
 desired that all things should be good and nothing bad 
 as far as this could be accomplished. 
 
 (75) 
 
76 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal, 
 and also visible and tangible. And nothing is visible 
 when there is no fire, or tangible which is not solid, and 
 nothing is solid without earth. Wherefore also, God in 
 the beginning of creation made the body of the universe 
 to consist of fire and earth.* 
 
 " Now the Creation took up the whole of each of the 
 four elements ; for the Creator compounded the world 
 out of all the fire and all the water and all the air and 
 all the earth, leaving no part of any of them nor any 
 power of them outside. He intended, in the first place, 
 that the whole animal should be perfect, as far as pos- 
 sible, and that the parts of which he was formed should 
 be perfect ; and that he should be one, leaving no 
 remnants out of which another such world might be 
 created ; and also, that he should be free from old age 
 and unaffected by disease. 
 
 " Such was the whole scheme of the eternal God about 
 the god that was to be, to whom He for all these reasons 
 gave a body, smooth, even, and in every direction 
 equidistant from a centre, entire and perfect, and formed 
 out of perfect bodies. And in the centre He put the soul, 
 which He diilused through the whole, and also spread 
 over all the body round about ; and He made one solitary 
 and only heaven a circle moving in a circle, having .such 
 excellence as to be able to hold converse with itself, and 
 needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having 
 these purposes in view He created the world to be a 
 blessed god. 
 
 " Now God did not make the soul after the body, al- 
 though we have spoken of them in this order ; for when 
 He put them together He would never have allowed that 
 the elder should serve the younger, but this is what we 
 
 * " In the beginning God created tlie heaven nnd the earth." 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 77 
 
 say at random, because we ourselves too are very largely 
 affected by chance. Whereas He made the soul in origin 
 and excellence prior to and older than the body, to be 
 the ruler and mistress, of whom the body was to be the 
 subject. And the soul he made out of the following 
 elements and on this manner : He took of the unchange- 
 able and indivisible essence, and also of the divisible and 
 corporeal which is generated, and He made a third sort 
 of intermediate essence out of them both, partaking of 
 the nature of the same and of the other, and thus He 
 compounded a nature which was in a mean between the 
 indivisible and the divisible and corporeal. These three 
 elements he took and mingled them all in one form, 
 compressing the reluctant and unsociable nature of the 
 other into the same. And when He had mixed them with 
 the essence and out of all the three made one. He again 
 divided this whole into as many portions as was fitting, 
 each of them containing an admixture of the same and 
 of the other and of the essence. 
 
 " Now when the Creator had framed the soul according 
 to His will, He formed within the mind the corporeal uni- 
 verse, and brought them together, and united them from 
 center to center. The soul, interfused everywhere from 
 the center to the circumference of heaven, of which she 
 is the external envelopment, herself turning in herself, 
 began a divine beginning of never-ceasing and rational 
 life enduring throughout all time. The body of heaven 
 is visible, but the soul invisible, and partakes of reason 
 and harmony, and being made by the best of intelligible 
 and everlasting beings, is the best of things created. 
 
 " When the Father and Creator saw the image that He 
 had made of the eternal gods moving and living, he was 
 delighted, and in his joy determined to make His work 
 still more like the pattern ; and as the pattern was an 
 
78 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 eternal creature, He sought to make the universe the 
 same as far as might be. Now the nature of the in- 
 telligible being is eternal, and to bestow eternity on the 
 creature was wholly impossible. But He resolved to 
 make a moving image of eternity, and as He set in order 
 the heaven He made, this eternal image having a motion 
 according to number, while eternity rested in unity ; and 
 this is what we call time. 
 
 " Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation 
 of time. And in order to accomplish this creation, He 
 made the sun and moon and five other stars, which are 
 called the planets, to distinguish and preserve the num- 
 bers of time, and when God made the bodies of these 
 several stars He gave them orbits in the circle of the 
 other. 
 
 "Until the creation of time,. all things had been made 
 in the likeness of that which was their pattern, but in 
 so far as the universe did not as yet include within itself 
 all animals, there was a difference. This defect the 
 Creator supplied by fashioning them after the nature of 
 the pattern. And as the mind perceives ideas or species 
 of a certain nature and number in the ideal animal. He 
 thought that this created world ought to have them of a 
 like nature and number. There are four such ; one of 
 them is the heavenly race of the gods ; another, the race 
 of birds moving in the air; the third the watery species ; 
 and the fourth, the pedestrian and land animals. Of the 
 divine. He made the greater part out of fire, that they 
 might be the brightest and fairest to the sight, and He 
 made them after the likeness of the universe in the form 
 of a circle, and gave them to know and follow the best, 
 distributing them over the whole circumference of the 
 heaven, which was to be a true cosmos or glory spangled 
 with them. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 79 
 
 "To tell of other divinities, and to know their origin 
 is beyond us, and we must accept the traditions of the 
 men of old time who affirm themselves to be the off- 
 spring of the gods, and they must surely have known 
 the truth about their own ancestors. How can we doubt 
 the word of the children of the gods ? Although they 
 give no probable or certain proofs, still, as they declare 
 that they are speaking of family traditions, we must be- 
 lieve them in accordance to the law. In this manner, 
 then, according to them, the genealogy of these gods is 
 to be received and narrated. 
 
 " Now, when all of them, both those who visibly appear 
 in their revolutions as well as those other gods who are 
 of a more retiring nature, had come into being, the 
 Creator of the universe spoke as follows : — 
 
 " Gods and sons of gods who are my works, and of 
 whom I am the Artificer and Father, my creations are 
 indissoluble, if so I will. All that is bound may be dis- 
 solved, but only an evil being would wish to dissolve 
 that which is harmonious and happy. And although 
 being created, ye are not altogether immortal and indis- 
 soluble, ye shall certainly not be dissolved, nor be liable 
 to the fate of death ; having in my will a greater and 
 mightier bond than those which bound you when ye 
 were created. And now, listen to my instructions : 
 Three tribes of mortal beings remain to be created, — 
 without them the universe will be incomplete, for it will 
 not have in it every kind of animal which a perfect 
 world ought to have. On the other hand, if they were 
 created and received life from me, they would be on an 
 equ.ality with the gods. In order then that there may 
 be mortals, and that this universe may be truly univer- 
 sal, do ye, according to your natures, betake yourselves 
 to the formation of animals, imitating the power which 
 
8o Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 I showed in creating you. The divine and immortal 
 part of them, which is the guiding principle of those 
 who are willing to follow justice and the gods — of that 
 divine part I will myself give you the seed and begin- 
 ning. And do you then weave together the mortal and 
 immortal, and make and beget living creatures, and give 
 them food, and make them to grow, and receive them 
 again in death. Thus He spake, and once more and in 
 the same manner poured the remains of the elements 
 into the cup in which he had previously mingled the 
 soul of the universe, no longer, however, pure as before, 
 but diluted to the second and third degree. And when 
 He had framed the universe He distributed souls equal in 
 number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star; 
 and having placed them as in a chariot, He showed them 
 the nature of the universe, and the decrees of destiny 
 appointed for them, and told them that their first birth 
 would be one and the same for all, and that no one 
 should suffer at His hands ; and that they must be sown 
 in the vessels of the times severally adapted to them, 
 and then there would come forth the most religious of 
 animals ; and as human nature was of two kinds, the 
 superior race would hereafter be called man. Now, as 
 they were implanted in bodies by necessity, and objects 
 were always approaching or receding from them, in the 
 first place there was a necessity that they should have 
 one natural mode of perceiving external force ; in the 
 second place, they must have love, which is a mixture 
 of pleasure and pain ; also fear and anger, and the feel- 
 ings which are akin or opposite to them ; if they con- 
 quered these they would live righteously, and if they 
 were unconquered by them, unrighteously. Also, He 
 said, that he who lived well during his appointed time 
 would return to the habitation of his star, and there 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 8r 
 
 have a blessed and suitable existence. But if he failed 
 in attaining this, in the second generation he would pass 
 into a woman, and should he not cease from evil in that 
 condition, he would be changed into some brute who 
 resembled him in his evil ways, and would not cease 
 from his toils and transformations until he followed the 
 original principle of sameness and likeness within him, 
 and overcame, by the help of reason, the later accretions 
 of turbulent and irrational elements composed of fire 
 and air and water and earth, and returned to the form of 
 his first and better nature. When He had given all 
 these laws to His creatures, that He might be guiltless 
 of their future evil, He sowed some of them in the earth, 
 and some in the moon, and some in the other stars which 
 are the measures of time ; and when He had sown them 
 He committed to the younger gods the fashioning of their 
 mortal bodies, and desired them to furnish what was 
 still lacking to the human soul, and make all the suit- 
 able additions, and rule and pilot the mortal animal in 
 the best and wisest manner that they could, and avert 
 all but self-inflicted evils." 
 
GREAT ANTIQUITY OF EGYPT AND HER EARLY 
 
 INFLUENCE ON ANCIENT GREECE. TALE 
 
 OF " THE LOST ATLANTIS." 
 
 From Plato's Tim^us. 
 
 " Then listen, Socrates, to a strange tale which is, how- 
 ever, certainly true, as Solon, who was the wisest of the 
 seven sages, declared. He was a relative and a great 
 friend of my great-grandfather, Dropidas, as he himself 
 says in several of his poems : and Dropidas told Critias, 
 my grandfather, who remembered and told us : That 
 there were of old great and marvelous actions of the 
 Athenians, which have passed into oblivion through 
 time and the destruction of the human race, and one in 
 particular, which was the greatest of them all, the re- 
 cital of which will be a suitable testimony of our gjrati- 
 tude to you, and also a hymn of praise true and worthy 
 of the goddess, which may be sung by us at the festival 
 in her honor. 
 
 " Tell us, said the other, the whole story, and how and 
 from whom Solon heard this veritable tradition. 
 
 " He replied : At the head of the Egyptian Delta, where 
 the river Nile divides, there is a certain district which is 
 called the district of Sais, and the great city of the dis- 
 trict is also called Sais, and is the city from which 
 
 Amasis the king was sprung. And the citizens have a 
 
 (82} 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 83 
 
 deity who is their foundress : she is called in the Egyptian 
 tongue Neith, and is asserted by them to be the same 
 whom the Hellenes called Athene. Now the citizens of 
 this city are great lovers of the Athenians, and say that 
 they are in some way related to them. Thither came 
 Solon, who was received by them with great honor ; and 
 he asked the priests, who were most skillful in such 
 matters, about antiquity, and made the discovery that 
 neither he nor any other Hellene knew anything worth 
 mentioning about the times of old. On one occasion, 
 when he was drawing them on to speak of antiquity, he 
 began to tell about the most ancient things in our part 
 of the world — about Phoroueus, who is called " the first," 
 and about Niobe : and after the Deluge, to tell of the 
 lives of Deucalion and Pyrrha : and he traced the 
 genealogy of their de-scendants, and attempted to reckon 
 how many years old were the events of which he was 
 speaking, and to give the dates. Thereupon, one of the 
 priests, who was of a very great age, said : O Solon, 
 Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there is never 
 an old man who is an Hellene. Solon hearing this, said, 
 What do you mean ? I mean to say, he replied, that in 
 mind you are all young : there is no old opinion handed 
 down among you by ancient tradition : nor any science 
 which is hoary with age. And I will tell you the reason 
 of this. There have been, and will be again, many de- 
 structions of mankind arising out of many causes : the 
 greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire 
 and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other 
 causes. There is a story, which even you have preserved, 
 that once upon a time Phsethon, the son of Helios, hav- 
 ing yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he 
 was not able to drive them in the path of his father, 
 burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself 
 
84 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the form of 
 a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies 
 moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great 
 conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long 
 intervals of time ; when this happens, those who live 
 upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more 
 liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or 
 on the sea-shore. And from this calamity the Nile, who 
 is our never-failing saviour, saves and delivers us. 
 When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with 
 a deluge of water, among you, herdsmen and shepherds 
 on the mountains are the survivors, whereas those of you 
 who live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea. 
 But in this country, neither at that time nor at any other, 
 does the water come from above on the fields, having 
 always a tendency to come up from below, for which 
 reason the things preserved here are said to be the oldest. 
 The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost 
 or of summer sun does not prevent, the human race is 
 always increasing at times, and at other times diminish- 
 ing in numbers. And whatever happened either in your 
 country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are 
 informed — if any action which is noble or great or in any 
 other way remarkable, has taken place, all that has been 
 written down of old, and is preserved in our temples ; 
 whereas you and other nations are just being provided 
 with letters and the other things which States require ; 
 and then, at the usual period, the stream from heaven 
 descends like a pestilence, and leaves only those of you 
 who are destitute of letters and education ; and thus you 
 have to begin all over again as children, and know 
 nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among 
 us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies of 
 yours which you have recounted to us, Solon, they are 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophen 85 
 
 no better than the tales of children ; for in the first place 
 you remember one deluge only, whereas there were many 
 of them ; and in the next place, you do not know that 
 there dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of 
 men which ever lived, of whom you and your whole city 
 are but a seed or remnant. And this was unknown to 
 you, because for many generations the survivors of that 
 destruction died and made no sign. For there was a 
 time, Solon, before the great deluge of all, when the 
 city which now is Athens, was first in war and was pre- 
 eminent for the excellence of her laws, and is said to 
 have performed the noblest deeds and to have had the 
 fairest constitution of any of which tradition tells, under 
 the face of heaven. Solon marveled at this, and earnestly 
 requested the priest to inform him exactly and in order 
 about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear 
 about them, Solon, said the priest, both for your own 
 sake and for that of the city, and above all, for the sake 
 of the goddess who is the common patron and protector 
 and educator of both our cities. She founded your city 
 a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth 
 and Hephaestus the seed of your race, and then she 
 founded ours, the constitution of which is set down in 
 our sacred registers as eight thousand years old. As 
 touching the citizens of nine thousand years ago, I will 
 briefly inform you of their laws and of the noblest of 
 their actions ; and the exact particulars of the whole we 
 will hereafter go through at our leisure in the sacred 
 registers themselves. If you compare these very laws 
 with your own you will find that many of ours are the 
 counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. In 
 the first place, there is the caste of priests, which is 
 separated from all the others ; next there are the artificers, 
 who exercise their several crafts by themselves and with- 
 
86 Ethics of ike Greek Philosophers. 
 
 out admixture of any other ; and also there is the class 
 of shepherds and that of hunters, as well as that of husr 
 bandmen ; and you will observe, too, that the warriors in 
 Egypt are separated from all the other classes, and are 
 commanded by the law only to engage in war ; moreover, 
 the weapons with which they are equipped are shields 
 and spears, and this the goddess taught first among you, 
 and then in Asiatic countries, and we among the Asiatics 
 first adopted. Then as to wisdom, do you observe what 
 care the law took from the very first, searching out and 
 comprehending the whole order of things down to 
 prophecy and medicine (the latter with a view to health) ; 
 and out of these divine elements drawing what was need- 
 ful for human life, and adding every sort of knowledge 
 which was connected with them. All this order and 
 arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when es- 
 tablishing your city ; and she chose the spot of earth in 
 which you were born, because she saw that the happy 
 temperament of the seasons in that land would produce 
 the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess who was a 
 lover both of war and of wisdom, selected, and first of 
 all settled that spot which was the most likely to pro- 
 duce men likest herself; And there you dwelt, having 
 such laws as these and still better ones, and excelled all 
 mankind in all virtue as became the children and 
 disciples of the gods. 
 
 " Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your 
 State in our histories. But one of them exceeds all the 
 rest in greatness and valor. For these histories tell of 
 a mighty power which was aggressing wantonly against 
 the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city 
 put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic 
 Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; 
 and there was an island situated in front of the straits 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 87 
 
 which you call the columns of Heracles ; the island was 
 larger than Lib3'a and Asia put together, and was the 
 way to other islands, and from the islands you might 
 ,pass through the whole of the opposite continent which 
 surrounded the true ocean ; for this sea which is within 
 the Straits of Heracles is only a harbor, having a narrow 
 entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surround- 
 ing land may be most truly called a continent. Now in 
 this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful 
 empire which had rule over the whole island and several 
 others, as well as over parts of the continent, and, be- 
 sides these, they subjected the parts of Libya within the 
 columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as 
 far as Tyrrhenia. The vast power thus gathered into 
 one, endeavored to subdue at one blow our country and 
 yours and the whole of the land which was within the 
 straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in 
 the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all 
 mankind ; for she was the first in courage and military 
 skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when 
 the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone 
 after having undergone the very extremity of danger, 
 she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and pre- 
 served from slavery those who were not yet subjected, 
 and freely liberated all the others who dwelt within the 
 limits of Heracles. But afterwards there occurred vio- 
 lent earthquakes and floods ; and in a single day and 
 night of rain all your warlike men in a body sank into 
 the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner dis- 
 appeared, and was sunk beneath the sea. And this is the 
 reason why the sea in those parts is impassable and im- 
 penetrable, because there is such a quantity of shallow 
 mud in the way ; and this was caused by the subsidence 
 of the island." ' 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF UNIVERSAL BENEFICENT 
 LOVE. 
 
 From Plato's Symposium. 
 
 Introductory Note : — We have here assembled the best 
 parts of Plato's Symposium on the subject of Love to 
 show the beauty and profundity of much of the old 
 thought on this subject, and have thus given most of the 
 speeches of the tragic poet Agathon and of Socrates the 
 sculptor and philosopher. The moral as well as poetic 
 beauty of Agathon's analysis and remarks will be readily 
 noted, and it may recall to us the beautiful and famous 
 hymn to love or "Charity" given by St. Paul in ist 
 Corinthians, 13th Chapter. " Charity " and " love " are 
 of course interchangeable terms, and " love " is the term 
 which is now used by the translators in the late revised 
 version of the New Testament. As to the word " charity " 
 itself, it should also be noted that it is derived from the 
 Greek word " Charites " which is the Greek name of 
 the " three graces " who were believed to have presided 
 over all the kind and social relations and " graces " of 
 life. It will be noted in the parallel which we have 
 drawn farther on between the words of Paul and 
 Agathon, that practically identical thoughts or ideas ap- 
 pear in each, Agathon being earlier by nearly five hun- 
 dred years. 
 
 In the remarks of Socrates will be found the true 
 
 (88) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 89 
 
 doctrine of " Platonic Love " which has popularly and 
 incorrectly been regarded as a pure or sexless love be- 
 tween the sexes, whereas it does not necessarily involve 
 a friendship between the opposite sexes at all, but rather 
 between old men and youths, and relates particularly to 
 the influence of the great or creative souls in producing 
 a moral and intellectual offspring by influencing the 
 minds and characters of others for their good and chiefly 
 between old and young men. Note also the appearance 
 here of that remarkable character of whom little seems 
 to be known, viz., the Greek woman Diotima, who seems 
 to have been a great Pythagorean philosopher and also 
 a priestess of Zeus from the ancient democratic city of 
 Mantinea in the Greek state of Arcadia where women 
 had more freedom and independence than in the more 
 aristocratic state of Athens, and who it seems was the 
 teacher in philosophy of the great Socrates himself who 
 shows manj' traces of the Pythagorean discipline and 
 doctrine in his mode of life and teachings. The discourse 
 between Socrates and Diotima is deeply interesting and 
 profound, and it will be seen that one of the remarkable 
 definitions which she gives of Love is that it is "the de- 
 sire of the everlasting possession of the good." Another of 
 her remarkable statements is that, all desire of good and 
 happiness is due to the great and subtle power of love, 
 that love is only birth in beauty, whether of body or of 
 soul, and that love exists essentially for the purpose of 
 realizing immortality, as only by rebirth, whether of 
 body or soul, is immortality made a practical reality or 
 fact. Thus, physical man simpl}-- passes on his physical 
 life to his mortal children, and intellectual and soulful 
 man transmits his mental and moral attainments to his 
 disciples — his children of the soul — all through " the 
 great and subtle power of Love." 
 
go Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 An illustration of the Socratic ethical doctrine that 
 " Knowledge " essentially constitutes Good or Virtue is 
 seen in Diotima's positive statement to Socrates that 
 " There is nothing which men love but the good." 
 Hence Socrates insisted that virtue can be taught for it 
 is essentially " knowledge," and that if men only knew 
 what " Good " was, they would always love and practice 
 it, and it is thus chiefly through pure "ignorance" that 
 they are not virtuous. Note also how this Socratic 
 ethical theory corresponds with the interesting statement 
 quoted in the extracts from Aristotle where he says, re- 
 ferring to Plato, " And therefore as Plato says man needs 
 to be trained from his youth up to find pleasure and pain 
 in the right objects. This is what a sound education 
 means."— C. M. H. 
 
AGATHON AND SOCRATES ON LOVE. 
 
 From Plato's Symposium. 
 
 The ancient things of which Hesiod and Parmenides 
 speak, if they were done at all, were done of necessity 
 and not of love ; had love been in those days, there 
 would have been no chaining or mutilation of the gods, 
 or other violence but peace and sweetness, as there is 
 now in heaven, since the rule of Love began. Love is 
 young and also tender ; he ought to have a poet like 
 Homer to describe his tenderness, as Homer says of 
 Ate, that she is a goddess and tender : — 
 
 " Her feet are tender, for she sets her steps, 
 Not on the ground but on the heads of men :" 
 
 which is an excellent proof of her tenderness, because 
 she walks not upon the hard but upon the soft. Let us 
 adduce a similar proof of the tenderness of Love : for 
 he walks not upon the earth, nor yet upon the skulls 
 of men, which are hard enough, but in the hearts and 
 souls of men ; in them he walks and dwells and has his 
 home. Not in every soul without exception, for where 
 there is a hardness he departs, where there is softness 
 there he dwells ; and clinging always with his feet and 
 in all manner of ways in the softest of soft places, how 
 can he be other than the softest of all things ? And he 
 
 (91) 
 
92 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 is the youngest as well as the tenderest, and also he is 
 of flexile form ; for without flexure he could not enfold 
 all things, or wind his way into and out of every soul 
 of man without being discovered, if he were hard. And 
 a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of form is his 
 grace, which is universally admitted to be in an especial 
 manner the attribute of Love : ungrace and love are 
 always at war with one another. * * But I must 
 now speak of his virtue ; his greatest glory is that he 
 can neither do nor suffer wrong from any god or any 
 man : for he suffers not by force if he suffers, for force 
 comes not near him, neither does he act by force. For 
 all serve him of their own free-will, and where there is 
 love as well as obedience, there, as the laws which are 
 the lords of the city say, is justice. And not only is he 
 just but exceedingly temperate, for Temperance is the 
 acknowledged ruler of the pleasures and desires, and no 
 pleasure ever masters Love ; he is their master and they 
 are his servants ; and if he conquers them he must be 
 temperate indeed. As to courage, even the God of War 
 is no match for him ; he is the captive and Love is the 
 lord, for love, the love of Aphrodite, masters him, as the 
 tale runs : and the master is stronger than the servant. 
 And if he conquers the bravest of all he must be himself 
 the bravest. Of his courage and justice and temper- 
 ance I have spoken ; but I have yet to speak of his wis- 
 dom, and I must try to do my best, according to the 
 measure of my ability. For in the first place he is a 
 poet, (and here, like Eryximachus, I magnify my art,) 
 and he is also the source of poesy in others, which he 
 could not be if he were not himself a poet. And at the 
 touch of him every one becomes a poet, even though he 
 had no music in him before ; this also is a proof that 
 Love is a good poet and accomplished in all the musical 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 93 
 
 arts ; for no one can give to another that which he has 
 not himself, or teach that of which he has no knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 And as to the artists, do we not know that he only of 
 them whom love inspires has the light of fame? — he 
 whom love touches not walks in darkness. Love set in 
 order the empire of the gods. And formerly, as I was 
 saying, dreadful deeds were done among the gods, be- 
 cause of the rule of necessity ; but now since the birth 
 of Love, and from the love of the beautiful, has sprung 
 every good in heaven and earth. Therefore, Phaedrus, 
 I say of Love that he is the fairest and best in himself, 
 and the cause of what is fairest and best in all other 
 things. And I have a mind to say of him in verse that 
 he is the god who — 
 
 " Gives peace on earth and calms the stormy deep, 
 Who stills the waves and bids the sufferer sleep." 
 
 He makes men to be of one mind at a banquet such as 
 this, fulfilling them with affection and emptying them 
 of disaffection. In sacrifices, banquets, dances, he is our 
 lord, — supplying kindness and banishing uukindness, 
 giving friendship and forgiving enmity, the joy of the 
 good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the 
 gods ; desired by those who have no part in him, and 
 precious to those who have the better part in him ; 
 parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, 
 grace ; careful of the good, uncareful of the evil. In 
 every word, work, wish, fear, — pilot, helper, defender, 
 savior ; glory of gods and men, leader best and brightest : 
 in whose footsteps let every man follow, chanting a 
 hymn and joining in that fair strain with which Love 
 charms the souls of gods and men. Such is the dis- 
 course, Phaedrus, half playful, yet having a certain 
 
94 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 measure of seriousness, which, according to my ability, 
 I dedicate to the God. 
 
 •ip. if, -^ -ifi :|e % iii !)(. :(; 
 
 Socrates then proceeded as follows : — 
 
 In the magnificent discourse which you have uttered, 
 I think that 3'ou were right, my dear Agathon, in saying 
 that you would begin with the nature of Love and then 
 afterwards speak of his works — that is a way of begin- 
 ning which I very much approve. 
 
 And now I will take mj' leave of you, and rehearse 
 the tale of love which I heard once upon a time from 
 Diotima of Mantinea, who was a wise woman in this 
 and many other branches of knowledge. She was the 
 same who deferred the plague of Athens ten years by a 
 sacrifice, and was my instructress in the art of love. In 
 the attempt which I am about to make I shall pursue 
 Agathon's method, and begin with his admissions 
 which are nearly if not quite the same which I made to 
 the wise woman when she questioned me : this will be 
 the easiest way, and I shall take both parts myself as 
 well I can. For, like Agathon, she spoke first of the 
 being and nature of Love, and then of his works. 
 
 "What then is Love?" I asked; "Is he mortal?" 
 "No." "What then?" "As in the former instance, 
 he is neither mortal or immortal, but in a mean between 
 them." " What is he then, Diotima ? " " He is a great 
 spirit, and like all that is spiritual he is intermediate 
 between the divine and the mortal." " And what is the 
 nature of this spiritual power?" I said. "This is the 
 power," she said, "which interprets and conveys to the 
 gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the 
 commands and rewards of the gods: and this power 
 spans the chasm which divides them, and in this all is 
 bound together, and through this the arts of the prophet 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 95 
 
 and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, 
 and all prophecy and incantation, find their way. For 
 God mingles not with man ; and through this power all 
 the intercourse and speech of God with man, whether 
 awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which un- 
 derstands this is spiritual : all other wisdom, such as 
 that of arts or handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now 
 these spirits or intermediate powers are many and 
 divine, and one of them is Love." 
 
 " But all men, Socrates," she rejoined, " are not said 
 to love, but only some of them ; and you say that all 
 men are always loving the same things." " I myself 
 wonder," I said, " why that is." " There is nothing to 
 wonder at," she replied ; " the reason is that one part of 
 love is separated off and receives the name of the whole, 
 but the other parts have other names." " Give an 
 example," I said. She answered me as follows : " There 
 is poetry, which, as you know, is complex and manifold. 
 And all creation or passage of non-being into being is 
 poetry or making, and the processes of all art are crea- 
 tive ; and the masters of arts are all poets." " Very 
 true." " Still," she said, " you know that they are not 
 called poets, but have other names; the generic term 
 ' poetry ' is confined to that specific art which is sepa- 
 rated off from the rest of poetry, and is concerned with 
 music and metre ; and this is what is called poetry, and 
 they who possess this kind of poetrj' are called poets." 
 "Very true," I said. "And the same holds of love. 
 For you may say generally that all desire of good and 
 happiness is due to the great and subtle power of Love ; 
 but those who, having their affections set upon him, are 
 yet diverted into the paths of money-making or gym- 
 nastic philosophy, are not called lovers, — the name of 
 the genus is reserved for those whose devotion takes 
 
96 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 one form only, — they alone are said to love, or to be 
 lovers." " In that," I said, " I am of opinion that you 
 are right." "Yes," she said, " and you hear people say 
 that lovers are seeking for the half of themselves ; but I 
 say that they are seeking neither for the half, nor for 
 the whole, unless the half or the whole be also a good. 
 And they will cut off their own hands and feet and cast 
 them away, if they are evil ; for they love them not be- 
 cause they are their own, but because they are good, 
 and dislike them not because they are another's, but 
 because they are evil. There is nothing which men love 
 but the good. Do you think that there is? " " Indeed," 
 I answered, " I should say not." " Then," she said, 
 " the conclusion of the whole matter is, that men love 
 the good." " Yes," I said. " To which may be added 
 that they love the possession of the good ? " " Yes, that 
 may be added." " And not only the possession, but the 
 everlasting possession of the good ? " " That may be 
 added too." " Then love," she said, " may be described 
 generally as the love of the everlasting possession of 
 the good ? " " That is most true," I said. 
 
 " Then if this be the nature of love, can you tell me 
 further," she said, " what is the manner of the pursuit? 
 what are they doing who show all this eagerness and 
 heat which is called love ? Answer me that." " Nay, 
 Diotima," I said, "if I had known I should not have 
 wondered at your wisdom, or have come to you to learn." 
 " Well," she said, " I will teach you ; love is only birth 
 in beauty, whether of body or soul." 
 
 " For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love 
 of the beautiful only." "What then?" "The love of 
 generation and birth in beauty." "Yes," I said. "Yes, 
 indeed," she replied. "But why of birth?" I said. 
 " Because to the mortal, birth is a sort of eternity and 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 97 
 
 immortality," she replied ; " and as has been already- 
 admitted, all men will necessarily desire immortality 
 together with good, if love is of the everlasting posses- 
 sion of the good." 
 
 All this she taught me at various times when she 
 spoke of love. And on another occasion she said to rae, 
 "What is the reason, Socrates, of this love, and the 
 attendant desire ? See you not how all animals, birds 
 as well as beasts, in their desire of profreation, are in 
 agony when they take the infection of love ; this begins 
 with the desire of union, to which is added the care of 
 offspring, on behalf of whom the weakest are ready to 
 battle against the strongest even to the uttermost, and 
 to die for them, and will let themselves be tormented 
 with hunger or suffer anything in order to maintain 
 their offspring. Man may be supposed to do this from 
 reason ; but why should animals have these passionate 
 feelings? Can you tell me why?" Again I replied, 
 " that I did not know." She said to me : " And do you 
 expect ever to become a master in the art of love, if you 
 do not know this?" "But that," I said, " Diotima, is 
 the reason why I come to you, because, as I have told 
 you already, I am aware that I want a teacher ; and I 
 wish that you would explain to me this and the other 
 mysteries of love." " Marvel not at this," she said, " if 
 you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have al- 
 ready admitted ; for here again, and on the same principle 
 too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to 
 be everlasting and immortal : and this is only to be at- 
 tained by generation, because the new is always left in 
 the place of the old. For even in the same individual 
 there is succession and not absolute unity : a man is 
 called the same : but yet in the short interval which 
 elapses between youth and age, and in which every 
 
gS Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 animal is said to have life and identity, he is undergoing 
 a perpetual process of loss and reparation — hair, flesh 
 bones, blood, and the whole body, are always changing. 
 And this is true, not only of the body, but also of the 
 soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, 
 pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us, but 
 are always coming and going. And what is yet more 
 surprising is, that this is also true of knowledge ; and 
 not only does knowledge in general come and go, so that 
 in this respect we are never the same; but particular 
 knowledge also experiences a like change. For what is 
 implied in the word ' recollection,' but the departure of 
 knowledge, which is ever being forgotten and is renewed , 
 and preserved by recollection, appearing to be the same 
 although in reality new, according to that law of suc^ 
 cession by which all mortal things are preserved, not by 
 absolute sameness of existence, but by substitution, the 
 old worn-out mortality leaving another new and similar 
 one behind — unlike the immortal in this, which is always 
 the same and not another ? And in this way, Socrates, 
 the mortal body, or mortal anything, partakes of im- 
 mortality ; but the immortal in another way. Marvel 
 not then at the love which all men have of their off- 
 spring; for that universal love and interest is for the 
 sake of immortality." 
 
 " Men whose bodies only are creative, betake them- 
 selves to women and beget children — this is the character 
 of their love ; their offspring, as they hope, will preserve 
 their memory and give them the blessedness and immor- 
 tality which they desire in the future. But creative souls 
 — for there are men who are more creative in their souls 
 than in their bodies — conceive that which is proper for 
 the soul to conceive or retain. And what are these con- 
 ceptions ? — wisdom and virtue in general. And such 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 99 
 
 creators are all poets and other artists who may be said 
 to have invention. But the greatest and fairest sort of 
 wisdom by far, is that which is concerned with the order- 
 ing of states and families, and which is called temper- 
 ance and justice. And he who in youth has the seed of 
 these implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he 
 comes to maturity, desires to beget and generate. And 
 he wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget off- 
 spring — for in deformit}' he will beget nothing — and 
 embraces the beautiful rather than the deformed; and 
 when he finds a fair, and noble, and well-nurtured soul, 
 and there is union of the two in one person, he gladly 
 embraces him, and to such a one he is full of fair speech 
 about virtue and the nature and pursuits of a good man : 
 and he tries to educate him ; and at the touch and pres- 
 ence of the beautiful he brings forth the beautiful which 
 he conceived long before, and the beautiful is ever pres- 
 ent with him and in his memory even when absent, and 
 in Company they tend that which he brings forth, and 
 they are bound together by a far nearer tie, and have a 
 closer friendship than those who beget mortal children, 
 for the children who are their common offspring are fairer 
 and more immortal. Who, when he thinks of Homer 
 and Hesiod and other great poets, would not rather have 
 their children than ordinary human ones ? Who would 
 not emulate them in the creation of children such as 
 theirs, which have preserved their memory and given 
 them everlasting glory ? Or who would not have such 
 children as Lycurgus left behind to be the saviors, not 
 only of Lacedaemon, but of Hellas, as one may say ? 
 There is Solon, too, who is the revered father of Athenian 
 laws ; and many others there are in many other places, 
 both among Hellenes and barbarians. All of them have 
 done many noble works, and have been the parents of 
 
loo Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 virtue of every kind, and many temples have been raised 
 in honor of their children, which were never raised in 
 honor of the mortal children of any one." 
 
 " And the true order of going or being led by another 
 to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth as 
 steps along which he mounts upwards for the sake of 
 that other beauty, going from one to two, and from two 
 to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and 
 from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions 
 he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last 
 knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dear 
 Socrates," said the stranger of Mantineia, " is that life 
 above all others which man should live, in the contem- 
 plation of beauty absolute ; a beauty which, if you once 
 beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of 
 gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, which, 
 when you now behold, you are in fond amazement, and 
 you and many a one are content to live seeing only and 
 conversing with them without meat or drink, if that 
 were possible — you only want to be with them and to 
 look at them. But what if man had eyes to see the true 
 beauty — the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and 
 unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, 
 and all the colors and vanities of human life — thither 
 looking, and holding converse with the true beauty, 
 divine and simple, and bringing into being and educating 
 true .creations of virtue and not idols only ? Do you not 
 see that in that communion only, beholding beauty with 
 the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, 
 not images of beauty, but realities ; for he has hold, not 
 of an image, but of a reality, and bringing forth and 
 educating true virtue to become the friend of God and 
 be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an 
 ignoble life?" 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. loi 
 
 Such, Phaedrus — and I speak not only to you, but to 
 all men — were the words of Diotima ; and I am persuaded 
 of their truth. And being persuaded of them, I try to 
 persuade others, that in the attainment of this end human 
 nature will not easily find a better helper than Love. 
 And therefore, also, I say that every man ought to honor 
 him as I myself honor him, and walk in his ways, and 
 exhort others to do the same, even as I praise the power 
 and spirit of love according to the measure of my ability, 
 now and ever. 
 
PAUL AND PLATO PARALLELED. 
 
 — HYMN TO LOVE. — 
 
 Paul in I Corinthians, ij. Agathon in Plato's Sympo- 
 REViSED VERSION, sium, B. C. 4.16. 
 
 About A. D. 57. 
 
 Section First. 
 
 "If I speak with the 
 tongues of men and of an- 
 gels, but have not love, I 
 am become sounding brass 
 or a clanging cymbal. And 
 if I have the gift of proph- 
 ecy and know all mysteries 
 and all knowledge, and if I 
 have all faith so as to re- 
 move mountains, but have 
 not love, I am nothing. 
 
 Section Second. 
 
 "And if I bestow all my 
 goods to feed the poor, and 
 
 Section First. 
 
 "And as to the artists, do 
 we not know that he only 
 of them whom love inspires 
 has the light of fame ? He 
 whom love touches not 
 walks in darkness. Love 
 set in order the empire of 
 the Gods. Therefore Phae- 
 drus I say of Love that he 
 is the fairest and best in 
 himself and the cause of 
 what is fairest and best in 
 all other things." 
 
 Section Second. 
 
 (Note. This thought of 
 Paul is not paralleled in 
 
 (102) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 iP3 
 
 if I give my body to be 
 burned, but have not love, 
 it profiteth me nothing. 
 
 Section Third. 
 
 " Love suffereth long and 
 is kind, love envieth not, 
 love vaunteth not itself, is 
 not puffed up, doth not 
 behave itself unseemly, 
 seeketh not its own, is not 
 provoked, taketh not ac- 
 count of evil, rejoiceth not 
 in unrighteousness, but re- 
 joiceth with the truth, bear- 
 eth all things, believeth all- 
 things, hopeth all things, 
 endureth all things. 
 
 Agathon, being simply a 
 denunciation of ostenta- 
 tious or Pharisaic virtue 
 without real kindness or 
 charity in the heart. — Ed.)' 
 
 Section Third. 
 
 ' And I have a mind to 
 say of him in verse that he 
 is the god who 
 
 Gives peace on earth, and 
 calms the stormy deep, 
 
 Who stills the waves, and 
 bids the sufferer sleep. 
 
 He makes men- to be of one 
 mind at a banquet such as 
 this, filling them with affec- 
 tion and emptying them of 
 disaffection. In sacrifices, 
 banquets, dances, he is our 
 lord, supplying kindness 
 and banishing unkindness, 
 giving friendship and for- 
 giving enmity, the joy of 
 the good, the wonder of the 
 wise, the amazement of the 
 gods ; desired by those who 
 have no part in him and 
 precious to those who have 
 the better part in him, par- 
 ent of delicacy, luxury, 
 desire, fondness, softness, 
 grace, careful of the good, 
 uncareful of the evil. 
 
104 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Section Fourth. Section Fourth. 
 
 " Love never faileth . . 
 . But now abideth faith, 
 hope, love, these three, and 
 the greate.st of these is love. 
 Follow after love. . . " 
 
 Note I. — Paul was an edu- 
 cated Greek- Jew and doubt- 
 less familiar with Greek 
 literature. He was a Ro- 
 man citizen and a resident 
 of the great Greek City of 
 Tarsus in Asia Minor which 
 was a rival of Athens itself. 
 His epistles contain many 
 phrases evidently taken 
 from old Greek works. 
 Several instances of these 
 could be easily given, but 
 it is not here necessary. 
 Suffice it to say that in the 
 very Chapter of Corinthi- 
 ans from which we quote, 
 Paul uses the noted phrase 
 "for now we see through 
 a glass darkly," which will 
 be found used by Socrates 
 in the Phsedo and in other 
 places in exactly the same 
 form and sense as used by 
 Paul.— C. M. H. , 
 
 " In every word, work, 
 wish, fear — pilot, helper, 
 defender, saviour, glory of 
 gods and men, leader best 
 and brightest in whose foot- 
 steps let every man follow." 
 
 Note 2. — Agathon was a 
 tragic poet of Athens, and 
 his beautiful encomium to 
 Love as recorded by Plato 
 is necessarily in a more 
 poetic and festive vein than 
 that of Paul, as it was ut- 
 tered at a banquet given to 
 the great men of Athens on 
 the occasion of his winning 
 the prize in poetry about 
 the year4i6 B.C. Although 
 Paul's encomium is more 
 serious and religious in tone 
 yet it will be noted that his 
 ideas are substantially iden- 
 tical with those of Agathon, 
 and while it is not to be 
 presumed that Paul was a 
 mere copier from Plato, yet 
 it is more than probable 
 that he was familiar with 
 and influenced by the works 
 of Plato, as his metaphysi- 
 cal style indicates this, and 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 105 
 
 it is well known that learn- 
 ed Jews in Alexandria and 
 Palestine and the cities of 
 Greece and Rome were fa- 
 miliar with Plato's teach- 
 ings and greatly influenced 
 by them.— C. M. H. 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 From Plato's Laws, Book XI, 400 B. C. 
 
 " In the next place, dealings between man and man 
 " require to be suitably regulated. The principle of them 
 " is very simple : Thou shalt not touch that which is 
 " mine, if thou canst help, or remove the least thing which 
 " belongs to me without my consent : and may I, being 
 " of sound mind, do to others as I would that they should 
 " do to me." 
 
 Note. This is a remarkably clear and positive state- 
 ment of the famous Golden Rule, uttered about one hun- 
 dred years after its statement by Confucius, and over 
 four hundred years before its statement by Jesus of 
 Nazareth. It is interesting also to here note the careful 
 and judicial or legal manner in which the rule is stated 
 by the philosophic Plato so as to avoid possible miscon- 
 struction or perversion by the perverse mind. Observe 
 carefully the effect of the parenthetical qualifying clause 
 "being of sound mind" which seems like the careful 
 phrasing of a lawyer in the drawing of a statute, so as 
 to exclude misapplications and perversions of interpreta- 
 tion, yet fully cover all proper cases. Now the principle 
 of the Golden Rule obviously is that of a broad reciprocal 
 justice and sympathy and a mutuality of self-interest, 
 
 which makes a man's own judgment of what he would 
 
 (106) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 107 
 
 consider good and desirable/<7r himself to be his standard 
 for his treatment of all other men. 
 
 Now no man " of sound mind" will really desire any- 
 thing bad, injurious or vicious for himself, and hence to 
 make his judgment for self a sound and true one, the 
 man himself must first be of sound or normal mind and 
 desires and not one made abnormal by vice or excess or 
 insanity, otherwise he might, as in the case of the 
 abandoned drunkard, the libertine or madman, obey 
 literally the less carefully stated formula of Jesus — "All 
 things whatsoever ye would that m.en should do to you, do ye 
 even so to them " — and yet make a great moral perversion 
 of the pure and elevated intention of Jesus to justify a 
 vicious end. For example, the alcoholic or opium de- 
 generate would gladly welcome an intoxication or drug- 
 ging at the expense of some other man and return the 
 compliment with reciprocal good nature whenever he 
 could, thus literally obeying the loose and sweeping in- 
 junction "All things whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do to you, do you even so to them." 
 
 But the judicial Plato evidently and clearly excludes 
 this perversion by the qualifying clause " being of sound 
 mind" as no man of " sound" mind could apply the rule • 
 in this perverted way, while the man of vicious or mad 
 mind could readily apply the formula of Jesus literally 
 and justify himself by it, something as the witty Cocotte 
 did by quoting the words of Christ that " much would be 
 forgiven her because she had loved much." 
 
 It is also interesting to note that the negative form 
 in which the Golden Rule was given by Confucius one 
 hundred years before Plato and five"hundred years before 
 Christ, and which Christian theologians and apologists 
 usually try to show is inferior to the positive form of 
 Jesus, is not really inferior on examination, but if any- 
 
io8 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 thing, legall}' and verbally superior, as it, like Plato's 
 form, excludes perversions or is less subject to perversion. 
 For example, Confucius' formula is as follows : " What 
 you do notlikevihGn done to yourself, do not do to others."* 
 Now this, it seems to us, is one of the best and simplest 
 statements of the Golden Rule ever given, and, like Plato's, 
 less open to perversion than Christ's, and a little reflec- 
 tion will, we think, show the superiority and simplicity 
 of this Confucian or negative form over the Christian 
 formula. Thus, what men desire to be done to them- 
 selves, as before indicated, is often very vicious, but what 
 they do not like to be done to themselves is almost al- 
 ways a true evil to be avoided, and hence it is an obvi- 
 ously sound, just and true reciprocal rule that what they 
 thus recognize as an evil to themselves they must avoid 
 doing to other men, and this will be sound and true in 
 almost all cases and not easily perverted, as is the more 
 carelessly expressed formula in the Sermon on the Mount. 
 Hence in basing the rule negatively on what one does 
 not like done to one's-self , rather than positively on what 
 one does like to be done to one's-self, it seems to be a sim- 
 pler, safer and more judicious formula. 
 
 The form in which the rule has been stated by the 
 Confucian philosopher Mencius, who was contemporary 
 with Plato, is also very clear and simple, and is probably 
 nearest to the positive formula of Christ, viz., " If one 
 strives to treat others as he would be treated by them, 
 he will not fail to come near the perfect life." 
 
 This latter form is quoted in Prof. James' lecture on 
 The Ethics of The Chinese Sages, and is perhaps one of 
 the most beautiful forms of the positive statement of the 
 rule ever given. — C. M. H. 
 
 ' See Legge's Chinese Classics, also Prof. James' lecture on Ethics of Chinese 
 
RETURN NOT EVIL FOR EVIL. 
 Socrates' Answer to Crito in Plato's Crito. 
 
 "Then we must do not wrong. Nor when injured, 
 injure in return, for we must injure no one at all." 
 
 "Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil 
 to an}' one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. 
 But I would have you consider, Crito, whether you 
 really meant what you were saj'ing. For this opinion 
 has never been held, and never will be held, by any con- 
 siderable number of persons ; and those who are agreed 
 and those who are not agreed upon this point have no 
 common ground, and can onl}'- despise one another when 
 they see how widely they differ. Tell me, then, whether 
 you agree with and assent to my first principle, that 
 neither injury nor retaliation, nor warding off evil by 
 evil is ever right. And shall that be the premise of our 
 argument ? Or do you decline and dissent from this ? 
 For this has been of old and is still my opinion ; but, if 
 you are of another opinion, let me hear what you hav^e 
 to say. If, however, you remain of the same mind as 
 formerly, I will proceed to the next step. 
 
 " ' Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you 
 up. Think not of life and children first, and of justice 
 afterwards, but of justice first, that you may be justi- 
 fied before the princes of the world below. For neither 
 
 (log) 
 
no Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier 
 or juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as 
 Crito bids. Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and 
 not a doer of evil ; a victim, not of the laws, but of men. 
 But if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury 
 for injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which 
 you have made with us, and wronging those whom you 
 ought least to wrong, that is to say, yourself, your 
 friends, your country, and us, we shall be angry with 
 you while you live, and our brethren, the laws in the 
 world below, will receive you as an enemy ; for they 
 will know that you have done your best to destroy us. 
 Listen, then, to us and not to Crito.' 
 
 " This is the voice wTiich I seem to hear murmuring 
 in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the 
 mystic ; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and 
 prevents me from hearing any other. And I know that 
 anything more which you may say will be vain. Yet 
 speak, if you have anything to say. 
 
 " Cr. I have nothing to say, Socrates. 
 
 "Soc. Then let me follow the intimations of the 
 will of God." 
 
GOOD, NOT PLEASURE, THE SUPREME AIM 
 OF CONDUCT. 
 
 From Plato's Gorgias. 
 
 "Socrates. Because, if you refiiember, Polus and I 
 agreed that all our actions are to be done for the sake of 
 the good ; and will you agree with us in saying, that the 
 good is the end of all our actions, and that all our actions 
 are to be done for the sake of the good, and not the 
 good for the sake of them ? — will you give a third vote 
 for that proposition ? 
 
 " Callias. I will. 
 
 " Socrates. Then pleasure as well as all else is for the 
 sake of good, and not good for the sake of pleasure ? 
 
 " CalUas. To be sure." 
 
 (HI) 
 
SUICIDE CONDEMNED. 
 Socrates in the PHiEDO. 
 
 " Then he, or any man who has the spirit of philoso- 
 phy, will be willing to die, though he will not take his 
 own life, for that is held not to be right. 
 
 " Then tell me, Socrates, why is suicide held not to be 
 right ? as I have certainly heard Philolaus affirm when 
 he was staying with us at Thebes ; and there are others 
 who say the same, although none of them has ever made 
 me understand him. 
 
 " But do your best, replied Socrates, and the day may 
 come when you will understand. I suppose that you 
 wonder why, as most things which are evil may be ac- 
 cidentally good, this is to be the only exception (for 
 may not death, too, be better than life in some cases ?) 
 and why, when a man is better dead, he is not permitted 
 to be his own benefactor, but must wait for the hand of 
 another. 
 
 " I admit the appearance of inconsistency, replied 
 Socrates, but there may not be any real inconsistency 
 after all in this. There is a doctrine uttered in secret 
 that man is a prisoner who has no right to open the 
 door of his prison and run away ; this is a great mystery 
 which I do not quite understand. Yet I too believe that 
 
 (112) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 113 
 
 the gods are our guardians, and that we are a possession 
 of theirs. 
 
 " And if one of your own possessions, an ox or an ass, 
 for example, took the liberty of putting himself out of 
 the way when you had given no intimation of your wish 
 that he should die, would you not be angry with him, 
 and would you not punish him if you could ? 
 
 " Then there may be reason in saying that a man 
 should wait, and not take his own life until God sum- 
 mons him, as he is now summoning me." 
 
A VIRTUOUS LIFE, FEARLESS DEATH, AND 
 
 GLORIOUS HEREAFTER, COMMENDED 
 
 TO ALL MEN. 
 
 Socrates in the Gorgias. 
 
 " For no man but an utter fool and coward is afraid of 
 death itself, but he is afraid of doing wrong. For to go 
 to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel 
 full of injustice, is the last and worst of all evils. 
 
 " Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these 
 things, and I consider how I shall present my soul whole 
 and undefiled before the judge in that day. Renouncing 
 the honors at which the world aims, I desire only to 
 know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and when 
 the time comes, to die. And, to the utmost of my power, 
 I exhort all other men to do the same. And, in return 
 for your exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take 
 part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, 
 and greater than every other earthly conflict. 
 
 "Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will 
 be happy in life and after death, as your own argument 
 shows. And never mind if some one despises you as a 
 fool, and insults you, if he has a mind ; let him strike 
 you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer and do not 
 
 (114) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 115 
 
 mind the insulting blow, for you will never come to any 
 harm in the practice of virtue, if yon are a really good 
 and true man. 
 
 " Let us then, take this discourse as our guide, which 
 signifies to us, that the best way of life is to practice 
 justice and every virtue in life and death. This way let 
 us go ; and in this exhort all men to follow, not in that 
 way in which you trust and in which you exhort me to 
 follow you ; far that way, Callicles, is nothing worth." 
 
THE SOUL'S IMPROVEMENT, NOT WORLDLY 
 SUCCESS, THE TRUE AIM OF MAN'S LIFE. 
 
 Socrates in Plato's Apology. 
 
 " Men of Athens, I honor and love you : but I shall 
 obey God rather than you, and while I have life and 
 strength I shall never cease from the practice and teach- 
 ing of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet after 
 my manner, and convincing him, saying : O my friend, 
 why do you, who are a citizen of the great and mighty 
 and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up 
 the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, 
 and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest 
 improvement of the soul, which you never regard or 
 heed at all ? Are you not ashamed of this ? And if the 
 person with whom I am arguing, says Yes, but I do care ; 
 I do not depart or let him go at once ; I interrogate and 
 examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he 
 has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him 
 with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. 
 And this I should say to every one whom I meet, young 
 and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, 
 inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the com- 
 mand to God, as I would have you know ; and I believe 
 
 that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the 
 
 Ui6) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 117 
 
 state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but 
 go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to 
 take thought for your persons or your properties, but 
 first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement 
 of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, 
 but that from virtue come money and every other good 
 of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, 
 and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my 
 influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this 
 is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Where- 
 fore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids 
 or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not ; but 
 whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, 
 not even if I have to die many times." 
 
THE TRUE LIFE, THE LIFE OF THE SOUL, NOT 
 OF THE WORLD OR OF THE BODY. 
 
 Socrates in the PHiEoo. 
 
 " Whereas, Simmias, the rest of the world are pf opiniqii 
 that a life which has no bodily pleasures and no part in 
 them, is not worth having: but that he who thinks 
 nothing of bodily pleasures is almost as though he were 
 dead. 
 
 " What again shall we say of the actual acquirement 
 of knowledge ? — is the body, if invited to share in the 
 inquiry, a hinderer or a helper ? I mean to say, have 
 sight and hearing any truth in them ? Are they not, as 
 the poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses ? and 
 yet, if even they are inaccurate and indistinct, what is to 
 be said of the other senses ? — for you will allow that they 
 are the best of them ? 
 
 " Then when does the soul attain truth ? — for in at- 
 tempting to consider anything in company with the body 
 she is obviously deceived. 
 
 " Then must not existence be revealed to her in thought, 
 if at all? 
 
 " And thought is best when the mind is gathered into 
 
 herself and none of these things trouble her — neither 
 
 sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure, — when she 
 
 (ii8) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 119 
 
 has as little as possible to do with the body, and has no 
 bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being ? 
 
 " And in this the philosopher dishonors the body ; his 
 soul runs away from the body and desires to be alone 
 and by herself ? 
 
 " In this present life, I reckon that we make the near- 
 est approach to knowledge when we have the least pos- 
 sible concern or interest in the body, and are not saturated 
 with the bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour 
 when God himself is pleased to release us. And then 
 the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we 
 shall be pure and hold converse with other pure souls, 
 and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere : and 
 this is surely the light of truth. For no impure thing is 
 allowed to approach the pure. These are the sort of 
 words, Simmias, which the true lovers of wisdom can- 
 not help saying to one another, and thinking. You will 
 agree with me in that ? 
 
 " But if this is true, O my friend, then there is great 
 hope that, going whither I go, I shall there be satisfied 
 with that which has been the chief concern of you and 
 me in our past lives. And now that the hour of depart- 
 ure is appointed to me, this is the hope with which I 
 depart, and not I only, but every man who believes that 
 he has his mind purified. 
 
 " And what is purification but the separation of the soul 
 from the body, as I was saying before ; the habit of the 
 soul gathering and collecting herself into herself, out of 
 all the courses of the body ; the dwelling in her own 
 place alone, as in another life, so also in this, as far as 
 she can ; the release of the soul from the chains of the 
 body?" 
 
DEATH IS A GOOD AND NOT AN EVIL. 
 
 Socrates in the "Apology." 
 
 " Let us reflect in another waj', and we shall see that 
 there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for 
 one of two things : either death is a state of nothingness 
 and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a 
 change and migration of the soul from this world to 
 another. Now if you suppose that there is no con- 
 sciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is un- 
 disturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an 
 unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the 
 night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, 
 and were to compare with this the other days and nights 
 of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and 
 nights he had passed in the course of his life better, and 
 more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I 
 will not say a private man, but even the great king will 
 not find many such days or nights, when compared with 
 the others. Now, if death is like this, I say that to die 
 is gain ; for eternity is then onlj' a single night. But if 
 death is the journey to another place, and there, as men 
 say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and 
 judges, can be greater than this ? If indeed when the 
 pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from 
 the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true 
 
 judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and 
 
 (120) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 121 
 
 Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other 
 sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that 
 pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a 
 man give if he might converse with Orpheus and 
 Musseus and Hesiod and Homer ? Nay, if this be true, 
 let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonder- 
 ful interest in a place where I can converse with Pala- 
 medes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes 
 of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judg- 
 ment : and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, 
 in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above 
 all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and 
 false knowledge ; as in this world, so also in that ; I 
 shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, 
 and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to 
 be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan ex- 
 pedition : or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, 
 men and women too ! What infinite delight would there 
 be in conversing with them and asking them questions ! 
 For in that world they do not put a man to death for 
 this ; certainly not. For besides being happier in that 
 world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is 
 said is true. 
 
 "Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, 
 and know this of a truth — that no evil can happen to a 
 good man, either in life or after death. He and his are 
 not neglected by the gods ; nor has my own approaching 
 end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that 
 to die and be released was better for me ; and therefore 
 the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am 
 not angry with my accusers or my condemners; they 
 have done me no harm, although neither of them meant 
 to do me any good ; and for this I may gently blame 
 them." 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL AND ITS 
 
 FUTURE REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 From Plato's Ph^do. 
 
 Introdtutory Note. There can be found no text in 
 tlie Old or New Testament in which the doctrines of the 
 immortal soul and its future states, as believed in by the 
 majority of the Christian world, are so fully and clearly 
 set forth as in these extracts from Plato, written nearly 
 five hundred years before any book of the New Testa- 
 ment was composed. All texts in the Old Testament 
 quoted for immortality and future state are very meager 
 and vague except a few texts in the later books such as 
 those from Ecclesiastes, i8o B. C, Daniel, 165 B. C, 
 and Wisdom, 40 A. D., and it will thus be seen that 
 Plato's Phaedo is more than two hundred years older 
 than the earliest of these three Old Testament Books, 
 which contain the best texts on immortality. See supple- 
 mentary notes on p. 130. — C. M. H. 
 
 (122) 
 
SOCRATES ON IMMORTALITY. 
 Conversation of Socrates with his Disciples 
 
 SiMMIAS AND CeBES IN HIS PRISON BEFORE HIS DeATH. 
 
 Date ^gg, B. C. 
 
 " Then reflect Cebes : is not the conclusion of the whole 
 matter this, — that the soul is in the very likeness of the 
 divine, and immortal, and intelligible, and uniform, and 
 indissoluble, and unchangeable ; and the body is in the 
 very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintelligi- 
 ble, and multiform, and dissoluble; and changeable? 
 Can this my dear Cebes, be denied ? 
 
 " And are we to suppose that the soul, which is invis- 
 ible, in passing to the true Hades, which like her is in- 
 visible, and pure, and noble, and on her way to the good 
 and wise God, whither, if God will, my soul is also soon 
 to go, — that the soul, I repeat, if this be her nature and 
 origin, is blown away and perishes immediately, on 
 quitting the body, as the many say? That can never 
 be, my dear Simmias and Cebes. The truth rather is, 
 that the soul which is pure at departing draws after her 
 no bodily taint, having never voluntarily had connection 
 with the body, and which she is ever avoiding, herself 
 gathered into herself (for such abstraction has been the 
 
 (123) 
 
124 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 study of her life). And what does this mean but that 
 she has been a true disciple of philosophy, and has 
 practiced how to die easily ? And is not philosophy the 
 practice of death ? 
 
 "That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the 
 invisible world, — to the divine and imnaortal and ration- 
 al: thither arriving, she lives in bliss and is released 
 from the error and folly of men, their fears and wild 
 passions, and all other human ills, and forever dwells,- 
 as they say of the initiated, in company with the gods ? 
 Is not this true, Cebes ? 
 
 " But the soul which has been polluted and is impure 
 at the time of her departure, and is the companion and 
 servant of the body always, and is in love with and 
 fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures 
 of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only 
 exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see 
 and taste and use for the purposes of his lusts, — the 
 soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the 
 intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark 
 and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy ; 
 do you suppose that such a soul as this will depart pure 
 and unalloyed ? 
 
 " And this, Cebes, is the reason why the true lovers of 
 knowledge are temperate and brave; and not for the 
 reason which the world gives. 
 
 " Certainly not ! For not in that way does the soul 
 of a philosopher reason ; she will not ask philosophy to 
 release her in order that when released she may deliver 
 herself up again to the thraldom of pleasures and pains 
 doing a work only to be undone again, weaving instead 
 of unweaving, her Penelope's web. But she will make 
 herself a calm of passion, and follow Reason, and dwell 
 in her, beholding the true and divine (which is not mat- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 125 
 
 ter of opinion), and thence derive nourishment. Thus 
 she seeks to live while she lives, and after death she 
 hopes to go to her own kindred and to be freed from 
 human ills. Never fear, Simmiasand Cebes, that a soul 
 which has been thus nurtured and has had these pursuits, 
 will at her departure from the body, be scattered and 
 blown away by the winds and be nowhere and nothing. 
 
 "There is nothing new, he said, in what I am about 
 to tell you ; but only what I have been alwaj'S and 
 everywhere repeating in the previous discussion and on 
 other occasions : I want to show you the nature of that 
 cause which has occupied my thoughts, and I shall have 
 to go back to those familiar words which are in the 
 mouth of every one, and first of all assume that there 
 is an absolute beauty and goodness, and greatness, and 
 the like ; grant me this, and I hope to be able to show 
 you the nature of the cause, and to prove the immor- 
 tality of the soul. 
 
 "Yes, replied Socrates, all men will agree that God, 
 and the essential form of life, and the immortal in gen- 
 eral, will never perish. 
 
 " Then when death attacks a man, the mortal portion 
 of him may be supposed to die, but the immortal goes 
 out of the way of death and is preserved safe and sound ? 
 
 " Then, Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal 
 and imperishable, and our souls will truly exist in an- 
 other world ! 
 
 " But then, O my friends, if the soul is really im- 
 mortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in 
 respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of 
 eternity ! And the danger of neglecting her from this 
 point of view does indeed appear to be awful. If death 
 had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had 
 a good bargain in dying, for they would have been 
 
126 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 happily quit, not only of their body, but of their own 
 evil together with their souls. But now, as the soul 
 plainly appears to be immortal, there is no release or 
 salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest 
 virtue and wisdom. For the soul when on her progress 
 to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture 
 and education ; which are indeed said greatly to benefit 
 or greatly to injure the departed, at the very beginning 
 of his pilgrimage in the other world. 
 
 " For after death, as they say, the genius of each in- 
 dividual, to whom he belonged in life, leads him to a 
 certain place in which the dead are gathered together 
 for judgment, whence they go into the world below, fol- 
 lowing the guide, who is appointed to conduct them 
 from this world to the other : and when they have there 
 received their due, and remained their time, another 
 guide brings them back again after many revolutions of 
 ages. Now this journey to the other world is not, as 
 Aeschylus says in the Telephus, a single and straight 
 path, — no guide would be wanted for that, and no one 
 could miss a single path ; but there are many partings 
 of the road, and windings, as I must infer from the rites 
 and sacrifices which are offered to the gods below in 
 places where three ways meet on earth. The wise and 
 orderly soul is conscious of her situation, and follows 
 in the path ; but the soul which desires the body, and 
 which, as I was relating before, has long been fluttering 
 about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after 
 many struggles and many sufferings hardly and with 
 violence carried away by her attendant genius, and when 
 she arrives at the place where the other souls are gather- 
 ed, if she be impure and have done impure deeds, or been 
 concerned in foul murders or other crimes which are 
 the brothers of these, and the works of brothers in 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. ii-j 
 
 crime, — from that soul every one flees and turns away ; 
 no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but 
 alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain 
 times are fulfilled, and when they are fulfilled, she is 
 borne irresistibly to her own fitting habitation ; as every 
 pure and just soul which has passed through life in the 
 company and under the guidance of the gods, has also 
 her own proper home. 
 
 " Such is the nature of the other world ; and when the 
 dead arrive at the place to which the genius of each 
 severally conveys them, first of all, they have sentence 
 passed upon them, as they have lived well and piously 
 or not. And those who appear to have lived neither 
 well nor ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such 
 conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to 
 the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their 
 evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which 
 the}' have done to others, and are absolved, and receive 
 the rewards of their good deeds according to their de- 
 serts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason 
 of the greatness of their crimes — who have committed 
 many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and 
 violent, or the like — such are hurled into Tartarus, 
 which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. 
 Those again who have committed crimes, which, al- 
 though great, are not unpardonable — who in a moment 
 of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or 
 a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their 
 lives, or who have taken the life of another under the 
 like extenuating circumstances — these are plunged into 
 Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to un- 
 dergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave 
 casts them forth — mere homicides by way of Cocytus, 
 parricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon — and they 
 
128 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 are borne to the Acherusian lake, and there they lift up 
 their voices and call upon the victims whom they have 
 slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive 
 them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. 
 And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from 
 their troubles ; but if not, they are carried back again 
 into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasing- 
 ly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have 
 wronged, for that is the sentence inflicted upon them by 
 their judges. Those who are remarkable for having 
 led holy lives are released from this earthly prison, and 
 go to their pure home which is above, and dwell in the 
 purer earth; and those who have duly purified them- 
 selves with philosophy, live henceforth altogether with- 
 out the body, in mansions fairer far than these, which 
 may not be described, and of which the time would fail 
 me to tell. 
 
 " Wherefore, Simmias, seeing all these things, what 
 ought not we to do in order to obtain virtue and wisdom 
 in this life ? Fair is the prize, and the hope great. 
 
 " I do not mean to affirm that the description which I 
 have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly 
 true — a man of sense ought hardly to say that. But I do 
 say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal, 
 he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, 
 that something of the kind is true. The venture is a 
 glorious one, and he ought to comfort himself with 
 words like these, which is the reason why I lengthen 
 out the tale. Wherefore, I say, let a man be of good 
 cheer about his soul, who has cast away the pleasures 
 and ornaipents of the body as alien to him, and rather 
 hurtful in their effects, and has followed after the 
 pleasures of knowledge in this life ; who has adorned 
 the soul in her own proper jewels, which are temperance. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 129 
 
 and justice, and courage, and nobility, and truth — in 
 these arrayed, she is ready to go on her journey to the 
 world below, when her time comes. You, Sinimias and 
 Cebes, and all other men, will depart at some time or 
 other. Me already, as the tragic poet would say, the 
 voice of fate calls. Soon I must drink the poison." 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES ON IMMORTALITY. 
 
 BEbT Texts on Immortality from the Old Testa- 
 ment AS Compared with Plato's Ph^edo. 
 
 The three clearest extracts from the Old Testament 
 on the Immortality of the Soul, referred to in the intro- 
 ductory note, are as follows : 
 
 I St. — Daniel, Chapter XII, verses 2 and 3. 
 
 " And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
 awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlast- 
 ing contempt. 
 
 "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
 firmament : and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars 
 forever and ever." 
 
 2nd. — Ecclesiastes, Chapter XII, verse 7. 
 
 " Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit 
 shall return unto God who gave it." 
 
 We have used the St. James Version in both quota- 
 tions, above given, but the language and ideas are sub- 
 stantially the same in both the Jewish and Douay ver- 
 sions. • 
 
 3rd. — The Book of Wisdom, Douay Version, Chapter 
 
 II, verses 23 and 24 : 
 
 " For God created man incorruptible and to the image of his 
 own likeness he made him-" 
 
 " But by the envy of the devil death came into the world." 
 
 Chapter III, verses i, 2, 3, 4 : 
 
 " But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the tor- 
 ment of death shall not touch them." 
 
 " In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die ; and their de- 
 parture was taken for misery." 
 
 " And their going away from us for utter destruction : but they 
 are in peace." (130) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 131 
 
 " And though in the sight of men they suffered torments, their 
 hope is full of imffl.ortality." 
 
 Chapter V, verses 15, 16 and 17 : 
 
 " For the hope of the wicked is as dust, which is blown away 
 with the wind ; and as a thin froth which is dispersed by the storm ; 
 and as smoke that is scattered abroad by the wind ; and as the 
 remembrance of a guest of one day that passeth by." 
 
 " But the just shall live for evermore : and their reward is with 
 the Lord, and the care of them with the Most High." 
 
 "Therefore shall they receive a kingdom of glory, and a crown 
 of beauty at the hand of the Lord : for with his right hand he will 
 cover them ; and with his holy arm he will defend them." 
 
 Now it is interesting to note that the above texts are 
 perhaps the very best and clearest that can be found 
 anywhere in the Old Testatnent for the doctrine of the 
 immortality of the soul, and yet these best Hebrew texts 
 when compared to the Platonic texts already given are 
 obviously very vague and meagre and also of much later 
 date. Many other texts are quoted and used to prove 
 immortality by Jews and Christians from the Psalms and 
 from Job, Isaiah and Hosea, but they will all be found 
 to be much more vague and meagre than the Hebrew 
 texts now given and of very doubtful significance com- 
 pared to them. 
 
 It will be now further interesting to consider the rela- 
 tive dates of these best Hebrew texts in comparison with 
 that of the Platonic texts previously given. Thus 
 Ecclesiastes, which contains the text which is probably 
 most known and used as a proof for immortality, not- 
 withstanding its very doubtful significance, dates only 
 from about 180 B. C, whereas Plato's Phsedo antedates 
 it by more than two hundred years. Daniel, which con- 
 tains some very good texts for immortality, dates only 
 about 165 B. C, and Wisdom, which has some of the 
 best and clearest texts, dates actually within the 
 Christian Era, or about 40 A. D.* 
 
 'See " The Bible of To-Day," by John W. Chadwick. 
 
132 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 How the Jewish people could have lived so long in 
 a land like Egypt, which was saturated with the doctrine 
 of immortalitj', without imbibing that doctrine, and how 
 they could have left this wonderful old laud pre-eminent 
 in the doctrines of resurrection of the body and immor- 
 tality of the soul, without taking these doctrines with 
 them, is somewhat of a mystery : But the best students 
 of the subject are, we think, now agreed that the old 
 Hebrews had no definite knowledge or belief in these 
 doctrines as the peoples all surrounding them had, such 
 as the Egyptians, Persians and Greeks. At least the 
 oldest Hebrew literature known to us, the old books of 
 the Bible, contain no evidence of this belief in immor- 
 tality, but if anything rather an indication of positive 
 disbelief in it, as shown clearly in Job, Ecclesiastes and 
 elsewhere, whereas the contemporary literature of the 
 surrounding so-called pagan peoples is full of this doc- 
 trine stated in the most clear, detailed and beautiful man- 
 ner possible, as we have already seen in Plato's Phsedo. 
 
 Matthew Arnold, in his "Literature and Dogma" p. 
 68 has this to say of the status of the Old Testament on 
 Immortality : 
 
 " An impartial criticism will hardly find in the Old 
 Testament writers before the times of the Maccabees 
 (and certainly not in the passage usually quoted to prove 
 it) the set doctrine of the immortality of the soul or of 
 the resurrection of the dead. But by the time of the 
 Maccabees, when this passage of the book of Daniel was 
 written, in the second century before Christ, the Jews 
 have undoubtedly become familiar, not indeed with the 
 idea of immortality of the soul as the philosophers like 
 Plato conceived it, but with the notion of a resurrection 
 of the dead to take their trial for acceptance or rejection 
 in the Most High's judgment and Kingdom." 
 
ECCLESIASTES, XII, 7. 
 
 " Stranger than this is the conceit that the purpose 
 of Ecclesiastes is to teach explicitly the doctrine of a 
 future state. The strongest text for this position is 
 that which has been graven as a motto over the 
 entrance to Mount Auburn : — 
 
 THEN SHALL THE DUST RETURN TO THE EARTH, 
 AS IT WAS : AND THE SPIRIT SHALL RETURN 
 UNTO GOD WHO GAVE IT. 
 
 But what this text asserts is just the opposite of Im- 
 mortahty. * * What it asserts is the absorption 
 of the individual in God, the annihilation of all indi- 
 vidual existence^ 
 
 Dr. fohn IV. Chadwick, 
 
 In ''Bible of To-day.'' 
 (Seep. 133.) 
 
GATE np MT, AUBURN CEMETERY, 
 
 CAMBRIDliK, MA8S. 
 AMth its miscoTiceiw"! ti'Xt fof Iinniort;ilit\" 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 133 
 
 In that comprehensive little work, "The Bible of 
 To-day," p. 140, Dr. John White Chadwick makes this 
 scathing criticism on the generally false interpretation 
 and application of that vague but popular text from 
 Ecclesiastes : 
 
 " But your thorough-going apologist is never at a loss 
 for explanations. The object of Ecclesiastes, he informs 
 us, is to compel us to infer the doctrine of another life 
 from the futility of all enjoyment here. Stranger than 
 this is the conceit that the purpose of Ecclesiastes is to 
 teach explicitly the doctrine of a future life. The 
 strongest text for this position is that which has been 
 graven as a motto over the entrance to Mount Auburn.* 
 ' Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and 
 the spirit shall return to God who gave it.' But what 
 this text asserts is just the opposite of immortality, as 
 every critic tnows who is not consciously or unconscious- 
 ly a special pleader. What it asserts is the absorption 
 of the individual in God, the annihilation of all individual 
 existence. Interpreting, as we are bound to do, the 
 more or less obscure statement, we must interpret this 
 by Chapter III, verses 19 and 20 : ' For that which be- 
 falleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; even one thing 
 befalleth them ; as the one dieth so dieth the other. Yea, 
 they have all one breath; so that a man has no pre- 
 eminence above a beast ; for all is vanity.' Read in the 
 light of these clear-shining words, the motto of Mount 
 Auburn is a denial of any personal immortality." 
 
 Now in view of the clear comparison here afforded 
 between the Platonic and the Hebrew texts, it is hardly 
 necessary to state that the Platonic texts will be found 
 to give not only the clearest and fullest possible state- 
 ment of the doctrine of personal immortality of the soul, 
 
 * A beautiful cemetery near Boston. Mass. 
 
134 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 and its different states of future rewards and punish- 
 ments, but that practically no question exists as to the 
 meaning conveyed by these texts at any point as exists 
 even to some extent in the best Hebrew texts. And 
 another remarkable thing about these Platonic texts is 
 the fact that the doctrine there stated is in substance and 
 details substantially if not identically the same as that 
 held by the old Pharisees of Christ's day, and by the 
 Christians of our own times, particularly that oldest and 
 largest section of Christians known as the Roman Church. 
 And what is still more remarkable is that the doctrine of 
 immortal soul, Heaven, Purgatory and Hell as now be- 
 lieved in b}"^ the majority of Christians is more fully and 
 clearly set forth in this work of Plato than can be found 
 in any part even of the New Testament itself, which was 
 not composed until about half a millennium after the 
 work of Plato was written. 
 
 From the clear and beautiful words of Socrates in 
 the Phsedo, it is also evident that these beliefs were not 
 at all new with him or with his age, but were a common 
 belief coming down from remote times, so that if any- 
 thing seems clear from these facts it is the conclusion 
 that these doctrines of the Phaedo have been undoubtedly 
 transmitted as a heritage from the great old pagan* peoples 
 to the Jewish and Christian sects. — C. M. H. 
 
 * We use under protest this really absurd term "Pagan," and only iu 
 deference to the now almost universal Christian custom or usage. This term, 
 originally meaning: ' ' rustic " or " villager, " is supposed to describe the more 
 ignorant, superstitiou.s and idolatrous state of the rustic or peasant, as com- 
 pared to the more rational and enlightened dweller in cities. Its general 
 application, however, to races like tne Bgyptian-i, Chinese, Hindoos, Greeks 
 and Romans, distinguished for their great intellectual and artistic culture 
 and their development of city life, seems to be a most absurd usage of 
 Christian custom, and it should have been displaced long ago by a term which 
 would be more corri'Ct and would more fitly describe those great civilized 
 Gentile races who have given us so much " enlightenment " in art, philosophy 
 and religion. 
 
NOTE ON THE DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY. 
 
 In referring above to the doctrine of Purgatory, that 
 is, a probationary state of souls in the future life, which 
 is so clearly stated in the Phsedo, we cannot let this 
 occasion pass without an explanatory note to show the 
 relation of this great old Egyptian and Greek doc- 
 trine to the doctrine now prevailing in the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 The first Christians must of course be regarded as truly 
 a sect of the Jews, and this sect arose at a time when the 
 Jews had been most surrounded and influenced by the 
 pagan civilizations of Persia, Greece and Rome, and it 
 also must not be forgotton that the great Jewish sect of 
 the Pharisees, which preceded the sect of Christians, 
 notwithstanding their severe denunciation by Christ, 
 were closely related to the early Christians in many 
 ways, and especially in the fact that both held almost 
 exactly the same belief as to immortality of the soul and 
 its future states in Heaven, Purgatory or Hell.* Hence 
 the belief of the old Pharisee as to the soul and its 
 future, was not only almost the same as that of the early 
 Christians, but substantially the same as that of the 
 Roman Church of to-day, and this, as we have already 
 
 • It has been suggested that the true derivation of "Pharisee" is from 
 ' * Parsee, ' ' meaning the doctrine of the Parsees or Persians who believed in 
 immortality, resurrection, gnod and evil spirits, etc., and who influenced the 
 formation of this great Jewish sect to which both Christ and St. Paul belonged. 
 
 (135) 
 
136 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 indicated, was not substantially different from the com- 
 mon belief held in the Greek- Roman world at the time 
 of Christ and substantially identical with the belief of 
 the old Greeks and Egyptians extending back to almost 
 prehistoric times. 
 
 While we are at this point, it might be well to refer 
 to " The Apostles Creed " for a moment, and note the 
 old Greek or Socratic doctrine it contains : — " He de- 
 scended into Hell, the third day He rose again from the 
 dead; He ascended into Heaven." Now the Church 
 takes pains to explain that the " Hell " here referred to 
 is not the Hell of the damned, but the " limbo " or pre- 
 paratory prison in which the redeemed souls are held 
 previous to their release and ascent to Heaven: How 
 this corresponds to the " Hades" or " Under World " of 
 the old Egyptians and Greeks and to the " earthly 
 prison" described by Socrates in the Phsedo, to which 
 the soul after the death of the body first "descends," 
 and to the " pure home which is above," to which the 
 soul afterwards "ascends" and to "mansions fairer," 
 etc., is obvious and needs no further remark. Note also 
 how the " seventh heaven " of which that Greek- 
 Christian-Jew, Paul, had a vision which he could not 
 even describe, corresponds to what Socrates hinted at. 
 Notwithstanding therefore the peculiar and fallacious 
 repugnance which the average Protestant displays to the 
 doctrine of purgatory as being in his mind unscriptural, 
 unhistoric and immoral, a little invastigation and reflec- 
 tion will show that it is neither one nor the other, but is 
 in fact a very old and respectable and morally comforting 
 doctrine and made trebly so by its undoubted prevalence 
 among ancient Jews and Christians, and above all among 
 the ancient, ethical pagans — Egyptians, Greeks and 
 Romans, who undoubtedly transmitted it to the Jews and 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. lyi 
 
 Christians. The modern Protestant is beginning at last 
 to fullj' recognize and appreciate this point, that is, the 
 morality, antiquity and orthodoxy of the doctrine of 
 purgatory or a probationary state of future life, as is 
 shown in such works as "Our Life After Death" by 
 Rev. Arthur Chambers, (Philadelphia, Geo. W. Jacobs 
 & Co.) which is a great Protestant pl^a for the sound- 
 ness of the doctrine of Purgatory from an ethical, 
 historic and Christian standpoint. — C. M. H. 
 
REINCARNATION. 
 
 From Plato's Phaedrus. 
 
 And there is a law of the goddess Retribution, that 
 the soul which attains any vision of truth in company 
 with the god is preserved from harm until the next 
 period, and he who always attains is always unharmed. 
 But when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the 
 vision of truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath 
 the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her 
 feathers fall from her and she drops to earth, then the 
 law ordains that this soul shall in the first generation 
 pass, not into that of any other animal, but only of man; 
 and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to 
 the birth as a philosopher or artist, or musician or lover ; 
 that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be 
 a righteous king or warrior or lord ; the soul which is 
 of the third class shall be a politician or economist or 
 trader ; the fourth shall be a lover of gymnastic toils or 
 a physician ; the fifth a prophet or hierophant ; to the 
 sixth a poet or imitator will be appropriate; to the 
 seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman; to the 
 eighth that of a Sophist or demagogue ; to the ninth 
 
 that of a tyrant; all these are states of probation, in 
 
 (138) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 139 
 
 which he who lives righteous!}' improves, and he who 
 lives unrighteously deteriorates his lot. 
 
 Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul can 
 return to the place from whence she came, for she can- 
 not grow her wings in less ; only the soul of a philoso- 
 pher, guileless and true, or the soul of a lover, who is 
 not without philosophy, may acquire wings in the third 
 recurring period of a thousand years ; and if they choose 
 this life three times in succession, then they have their 
 wings given them, and go away at the end of three 
 thousand years. But the others receive judgment when 
 they have completed their first life, and after the judg- 
 ment they go, some of them to the houses of correction 
 which are under the earth, and are punished ; others to 
 some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by 
 justice, and there they live in a manner worthy of the 
 life which they led here when in the form of men. And 
 at the end of the first thousand years the good souls and 
 also the evil souls both come to cast lots and choose 
 their second life, and they may take any that they like. 
 And then the soul of the man may pass into the life of a 
 beast, or from the beast again into the man. But the 
 soul of him who has never seen the truth will not pass 
 into the human form, for man ought to have intelligence, 
 as they say, "secundum speciem," proceeding from 
 many particulars of sense to one conception of 
 reason; and this is the recollection of those things 
 which our soul once saw when in company with God — 
 when looking down from above on that which we now 
 call being and upwards towards the true being. And 
 therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings ; 
 and this is just; for he is always, according to the 
 measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those 
 things in which God abides, and in beholding which He 
 
140 Ethics of tfie Greek Philosophers. 
 
 is what he is. And he who employs aright these mem- 
 ories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and 
 alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly 
 interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him 
 mad, and rebuke him ; they do not see that he is in- 
 spired. 
 
MIND INHERES IN AND RULES THE UNIVERSE. 
 From Plato's Philebus. 
 
 Socrates. I must obey you, O Protarchus ; nor is the 
 task whicli you impose a difiEcult one ; but have I really, 
 as Philebus says, disconcerted you with my playful so- 
 lemnity, in asking the question to what class mind and 
 knowledge belong? 
 
 Yet the answer is easy, as all philosophers are agreed 
 that mind is the king of heaven and earth ; in this way 
 truly they magnify themselves. And perhaps they are 
 right. But still I should like to consider the class of 
 mind, if you do not object, a little more fully. 
 
 Very good ; let us begin then, Protarchus, by asking 
 whether all this which they call the universe is left to 
 the guidance of an irrational and random chance, or, on 
 the contrary, as our fathers have declared, ordered and 
 governed by a marvelous intelligence and wisdom. 
 
 Shall we, then, agree with them of old time in main- 
 taining this doctrine, — nor merely reasserting the notions 
 of others, without risk to ourselves, — but shall we ven- 
 ture also to share in the risk, and bear the reproaches 
 which will await us, when an ingenious individual de- 
 clares that all is disorder ? 
 
 We see the elements which enter into the nature of 
 the bodies of all animals, fire, water, air, and, as the 
 storm-tossed sailor cries, " Land ahead," in the consti- 
 tution of the world. 
 
 (141) 
 
142 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Consider now that any one of the elements, as they 
 exist in us, is but a small fraction of them, and of a 
 mean sort, and not in any way pure, or having any 
 power worthy of its nature. One instance will prove 
 this of all of them ; there is a fire within us, and in the 
 universe. 
 
 And is not our fire small and weak and mean, but the 
 fire in the universe is wonderful in quantity and beauty, 
 and in every power that fire has ? 
 
 And is that universal element nourished and generated 
 and ruled by our fire, or is the fire in you and me, and 
 in other animals, dependent on the universal fire ? 
 
 Pro. That is a question that does not deserve an 
 answer. 
 
 Soc. Right; and you would say the same, if I am 
 not mistaken, of the earth which is in animals and the 
 earth which is in the universe, and you would give a 
 similar reply about all the other elements? 
 
 Pro. Why, how could any man who gave any other 
 be deemed in his senses ? 
 
 Soc. I do not think that he could,— but now go a 
 step further; when we see those elements of which we 
 have been speaking gathered up in one, do we not call 
 them a body ? 
 
 And the same may be said of the cosmos, which for 
 the same reason may be considered as a body, because 
 made up of the same elements. 
 
 But is our body nourished wholly by this body, or is 
 this body nourished by our body, thence deriving and 
 having the qualities of which we were just now 
 speaking? 
 
 May our body be said to have a soul ? 
 
 And whence comes that soul, my dear Protarchus, 
 unless the body of the universe, which contains elements 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 143 
 
 similar and fairer far, had. also a soul ? Can there be 
 another source ? 
 
 Why yes, Protarchus, for surely we cannot imagine 
 that of the four elements, the finite, the infinite, the 
 composition of the two, and the cause or fourth element, 
 which enters into all things, giving to our bodies souls, 
 and the art of self-management, and of healing disease, 
 and operating in other ways to heal and organize, — that 
 this last, I say, should be called by all the names of 
 wisdom, and not imagine that while the other elements 
 equally exist in a larger form, both in the entire heaven, 
 and in great provinces of the heaven, only fairer and 
 purer, in this higher sphere the cause which is the 
 noblest and fairest of all natures has still no existence ? 
 
 But if that is not true, should we not be wiser in 
 assenting to that other argument, which says, as we have 
 often repeated, that there is in the universe a mighty 
 infinite and an adequate limit, as well as a cause of no 
 mean power, which orders and arranges years and 
 seasons and months, and may be justly called wisdom 
 and mind ? 
 
 And wisdom and mind cannot exist without soul? 
 
 Pro. Certainly not. 
 
 Soc. And in the divine nature of Zeus would you 
 not say that there is the soul and mind of a king, and 
 that the power of the cause engenders this ? And other 
 gods will have other noble attributes, whereby they love 
 severally to be called. 
 
 Pro. Very true. 
 
 Soc. Do not then suppose that these words are rashly 
 spoken by us, O Protarchus, for they are in harmony 
 with the testimony of those who said of old time that 
 mind rules the universe. 
 
THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF SOUL AND DEITY. 
 
 From Plato's "Phaedrus." 
 
 " The soul is immortal, for that is immortal which is 
 ever in motion ; but that which moves and is moved by 
 another, in ceasing to move ceases also to live. There- 
 fore, only that which is self-moving, never failing of 
 self, never ceases to move, and is the fountain and 
 beginning of motion to all that moves besides. Now, the 
 beginning is unbegotten, for that which is begotten has 
 a beginning, but the beginning has no beginning, for if 
 a beginning were begotten of something, that would 
 have no beginning. But that, which is unbegotten must 
 also be indestructible ; for if beginning were destroyed, 
 there could be no beginning out of anything, or any- 
 thing out of a beginning ; and all things must have a 
 beginning. And therefore the self-moving is the begin- 
 ning of motion ; and this can neither be destro3''ed nor 
 begotten, for in that case the whole heavens and all 
 generation would collapse and stand still, and never 
 again have motion or birth. But if the self-moving is 
 immortal, he who affirms that self-motion is the very 
 idea and essence of the soul will not be put to confusion. 
 For the body which is. moved from without is soulless ; 
 but that which is moved from within has a soul, and 
 this is involved in the nature of the soul. But if the 
 soul be truly afifirmed to be the self-moving, then must 
 she also be without beginning, and immortal. Enough 
 of the soul's immortality." 
 
 (144) 
 
THE UNIVERSAL SOUL. 
 From Plato's Laws, Book X. 
 
 Athenian. Nearly all of them, my friends, seem to be 
 ignorant of the nature and power of the soul, especially 
 in what relates to her origin ; they do not know that she 
 is among the first of bodies, and before them all, and is the 
 chief author of their changes and transpositions. And 
 if this is true, and if the soul is older than the body, 
 must not the things which are of the soul's kindred be 
 of necessity before those which appertain to the body ? 
 
 Cleinias. But why is the word "nature" wrong? 
 
 Ath. Because those who use the term mean to say 
 that nature is the first creative power ; but if the soul 
 turn out to be the primeval element and not fire or 
 air, then in the truest sense and beyond other things the 
 soul may be said to have a natural or creative power : 
 and this would be true if 3'ou proved that the soul is 
 older than the body, but not otherwise. 
 
 Let us assume that there is a motion able to move 
 other things, but not to move itself, — that is one kind ; 
 and there is another kind which can move itself as 
 well as other things, working in composition and de- 
 composition, by increase and diminution, and genera- 
 tion and destruction, — that is also one of the many kinds 
 of motion. 
 
 Then we must say that self-motion being the ori- 
 gin and beginning of motion, as well among things at 
 rest as among things in motion, is the eldest and might- 
 
 (145) 
 
146 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 iest principle of change, and that which is changed by 
 another and yet moves other is second. 
 
 And what is the definition of that which is named 
 "soul?" Can we conceive of any other than that 
 which has been already given — the motion which is self- 
 moved ? 
 
 Yes ; and if this is true, do we still maintain that 
 there is anything wanting in the proof that the soul 
 is the first origin and moving power of all that is, or has 
 been, or will be, and their contraries, when she has 
 been clearly shown to be the source of change and mo- 
 tion in all things ? 
 
 Then we are right, and speak the most perfect and 
 absolute truth, when we say that the soul is prior to 
 the body, and that the body is second and comes after- 
 wards, and is born to obey the soul which is the ruler? 
 
 In the next place, must we not of necessity admit that 
 the soul is the cause of good and evil, base and honor- 
 able, just and unjust, and of all other opposites, if we 
 suppose her to be the cause of all things ? 
 
 Cle. Certainly. 
 
 Ath. And as the soul orders and inhabits all things 
 moving every way, must we not say that she orders 
 also the heavens ? 
 
 Cle. Of course. 
 
 Ath. One soul or more ? More than one — I will an- 
 swer for you ; at any rate we must not suppose that 
 there are less than two — one the author of good, and the 
 other of evil.* 
 
 * Note.— By referring to Aristotle' 5 idea of God as given on page 182, it will be 
 seen that he has substantially the fame conception as above given in the 
 two preceding extracts from Plato, viz. a Motion which is self-moved or a 
 Prime Mover which is self-moved. Plato applies this conception to describe the 
 " Soul ' ' 111 general, while Aristotle applies it to describe God in particular, but 
 of course the "Universal Soal" or the *' Soul of the Universe," as meant 
 by Plato, is only another name for " God ' '—and Aristotle doubtless got his 
 conception from this source. — C. M. H. 
 
THE PLATONIC DOCTRINE OF IDEAS. 
 
 From Plato's "Theaetetus" and " The Republic." 
 
 Note: — The English word " idea" does not adequately- 
 express what Plato meant by the Greek term of which it 
 is a translation. Associations and implications connected 
 with the development of the philosophy of Locke and 
 Berkeley, and perhaps German Idealism generally, give 
 the word a meaning that conceals the Platonic import 
 altogether. The Platonic " idea " was the equivalent of 
 \h& permanent or " universal" as opposed to the transient 
 or "individual." It appears throughout his system in 
 various forms and is variously represented in modern 
 conceptions by the terms "reality," "sub.stance," "uni- 
 versal," "essence," "subject," "absolute," "ultimate," 
 " God," etc. It is not easy to select passages from his 
 works clearly representative of its wide meaning, as it did 
 duty for the fields of both metaphysic and the theory of 
 knowledge. It is most clearly developed in the Theaete- 
 tus, at least for its place in the theory of knowledge. In 
 the Phsedrus it is mythically treated. I select a passage 
 from the former dialogue as perhaps the best from which 
 to choose. Plato, as philosophers generally, starts with 
 sensations as the primordial elements of knowledge and 
 
 (147) 
 
148 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 proceeds to the discovery of supersensible mental states 
 which have as their objects the permanent in phe- 
 nomena. — J. H. H. 
 
 "Socrates. The simple sensations which reach the 
 soul through the body are given at birth to men and 
 animals by nature, but their reflections on these and on 
 their relations to being and use, are slowly and hardly 
 gained, if they are ever gained, by education and long 
 experience. 
 
 " Theaetetus. Assuredl}'. 
 
 " Soc. And can a man attain truth who fails of attain- 
 ing being? 
 
 " Theaet. Impossible. 
 
 "Soc. And can he who misses the truth of anything 
 have a knowledge of that thing ? 
 
 " Theaet. He cannot. 
 
 " Soc. Then knowledge does not consist in impres- 
 .sions of sense, but in reasoning about them; in that 
 only, and not in the mere impression, truth and being 
 can be obtained ? 
 
 " Theaet. Clearly. 
 
 " Soc. And would you call the two processes by the 
 same name, when there is so great a difference between 
 them? 
 
 " Theaet. That will not be right. 
 
 "Soc. And what name would you give to seeing, 
 hearing, smelling, being cold and being hot ? 
 
 "Theaet. I should call all that perceiving — what 
 other name could be given them ? 
 
 "Soc. Perception would be the collective name of 
 them? 
 
 " Theaet. Certainly. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 149 
 
 "Soc. Which, as we say, has no part in the attain- 
 ment of truth any more than of being ? 
 
 " Theaet. Certainly not. 
 
 "Soc. And therefore cannot have any part in science 
 and knowledge? 
 
 " Theaet. No. 
 
 " Soc. Then perception, Theaetetus, can never be the 
 same as knowledge or science? 
 
 " Theaet. That is evident, Socrates ; and knowledge 
 is now most clearly proved to be different from per- 
 ception. 
 
 "Soc. But the original aim of our discussion was to 
 find out rather what knowledge is, than what it is not ; 
 at the same time we have made some progress, for we 
 no longer seek for knowledge in perception at all, but 
 in that other process, however called, in which the mind 
 is alone and engaged with being." 
 
 Note: — In further discussing the question whether 
 " knowledge " coincided with " true opinion " Plato 
 advances to the examination of definition as the determin- 
 ant of the former. He now makes Socrates start the 
 inquiry. — J. H. H. 
 
 "Soc. Knowledge is not attained until, combined 
 with true opinion, there is an enumeration of the elements 
 out of which anything is composed. 
 
 " Theaet. Yes. 
 
 " Soc. In the same general way, we might also have 
 true opinion about a wagon; but he who can describe 
 the essence by an enumeration of the hundred planks, 
 adds rational explanation to true opinion, and instead of 
 opinion has art and knowledge of the nature of a wagon, 
 
150 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 in that he attains to a knowledge of the whole through 
 the elements. 
 
 " Theaet. Is not that your view, Socrates? 
 
 " Soc. I want to know what is your view, my friend, 
 and whether you admit the resolutiou of all things into 
 their elements to be a rational explanation of them, and 
 the consideration of them in syllables (elements) or 
 larger combinations of them to be irrational ; I should 
 like to know whether this is your view, that we may 
 examine it ? 
 
 "Theaet. That is quite my view. 
 
 "Soc. Well, and do you conceive that a man has 
 knowledge who thinks that the same attribute belongs 
 at one time to one thing, and at another time to another 
 thing, or that the same thing has different attributes at 
 different times ? 
 
 " Theat. Assuredly not. 
 
 "Soc. Then, my friend, there is such a thing as 
 right opinion united with definition or explanation, 
 which does not as yet attain to the exactness of knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 "Theaet. That seems to be true. 
 
 "Soc. But what have we gained? For this perfect 
 definition of knowledge is a dream only. And yet per- 
 haps we had better not say that at present, for very 
 likely there may be found some one who will prefer the 
 third of the three explanations of the definition of 
 knowledge, one of which, as we said, must be adopted 
 by the definer. 
 
 "Theaet. You are right in reminding me of that; 
 for there is still one remaining : the first was the image 
 or expression of the mind in sound ; and that which has 
 just been mentioned is a way of reaching the whole by 
 an enumeration of the elements. What is the third way ? 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 151 
 
 " Soc. There is further, the popular notion of telling 
 the mark or sign of diSerence which distinguishes the 
 thing in question from all others. 
 
 " Theaet. Can you give me an example of such a 
 definition ? 
 
 "Soc. As, for example, in the case of the sun, I 
 think that you need only know that the sun is the 
 brightest of the heavenly bodies which revolves about 
 the earth. 
 
 " Theaet. Certainly. 
 
 "Soc. Understand why I say this: the reason is, as 
 I was saying, that if you get at the difference and dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic of each thing, then, as many 
 persons say, j'ou will get at the definition or explanation 
 of it; but will you lay hold of the common and not of 
 the characteristic notion, you will only have the defini- 
 tion of those things to which this common quality 
 belongs. 
 
 "Theaet. I understand, and am of the opinion that 
 you are quite right in calling that a definition. 
 
 "Soc. But he, who having a right opinion about any- 
 thing, can find out the difference which distinguishes it 
 from other things, will know that of which before he had 
 only had an opinion. 
 
 "Theaet. That is what we are maintaining. 
 
 "Soc. Nevertheless, Theaetetus, on a nearer view, I 
 find myself quite disappointed in the picture, which at 
 the distance was not so bad. 
 
 "Theaet. What do you mean ? 
 
 "Soc. I will endeavor to explain: I will suppose 
 myself to have a true opinion of you, and if to this I add 
 your definition, then I have knowledge, but if not, opin- 
 ion only. 
 
 " Theaet. Yes. 
 
152 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " Soc. The definition was assumed to be the inter- 
 pretation of your difference. 
 
 " Thbaet. True. 
 
 " Soc. But when I had only opinion, I had no con- 
 ception of your distinguishing characteristics ? 
 
 " Theaet. I suppose not. 
 
 " Soc. Then I must have conceived of some general 
 or common nature which no more belonged to you than 
 to another. 
 
 "Theaet. True. 
 
 " Soc. Tell me, now ; how in that case could I have 
 formed a judgment of you any more than of any one 
 else ? Suppose that I knew Theaetetus to be a man who 
 has nose, eyes, and mouth, and every member complete: 
 how could that enable me to distinguish Theaetetus 
 from Theodorus, or from some other unknown barbarian ? 
 
 " Theaet. Very true. 
 
 " Soc. Or if I had further known you, not only as 
 having nose and eyes, but as having a snub nose and 
 prominent eyes, should I have any more notion of you 
 than of myself and of others who resemble me ? 
 
 "Theaet. Certainly not. 
 
 " Soc. Surely I can have no conception of Theaetetus 
 until the distinction between your snub-nosedness and 
 the snub-nosedness of others, as well as the other pecu- 
 liarities which distinguish you, have stamped their 
 memorial on my mind, so that when I meet you to- 
 morrow the right impression may be recalled ? 
 
 " Theaet. Most true. 
 
 "Soc. Then right opinion implies the perception of 
 difiEerences ? 
 
 "Theaet. That is evident. 
 
 "Soc. What, then, shall we say of adding reason or 
 explanation to right opinion ? If the meaning is that we 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 153 
 
 should form an opinion of the way in which something 
 differs from another thing, the proposal is ridiculous. 
 
 " Theaet. How so ? 
 
 "Soc. We are required to have a right opinion of 
 the differences which distinguish one thing from another 
 when we already have a right opinion of them, and so 
 we go round and round ; the revolution of the scytal, or 
 pestle, or any other rotatory engine, in the same circles, 
 is nothing to us ; and we may be truly described as the 
 blind leading the blind ; for to bid us add those things 
 which we already have, in order that we may learn what 
 we already think, is a rare sort of darkness. 
 
 " Theaet. Tell me, then ; what were you going to 
 say just now, when you asked the question ? 
 
 " Soc. If, my boy, the argument, when speaking of 
 adding the definition, had used the word ' to know,' and 
 not merely 'have an opinion' of the difference, this 
 which is the best of all the definitions of knowledge 
 would have come to a pretty end, for to know is surely 
 to get knowledge. 
 
 " Theaet. True. 
 
 "Soc. Then when the question is asked, What is 
 knowledge? this fair argument will answer ' Right opin- 
 ion with knowledge,' — knowledge, that is, of difference, 
 for this, as the said argument maintains, is the explana- 
 tion or definition to be added. 
 
 " Theaet. That seems to be true. 
 
 "Soc. But how utterly foolish, when we are asking 
 what is knowledge, that the reply should only be, right 
 opinion with knowledge of difference or of anything. 
 And so, Theaetetus, knowledge is neither sensation nor 
 true opinion, nor yet definition and explanation accom- 
 panying true opinion ? 
 
 " Theaet. I suppose not. 
 
154 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " Soc. And are you still in labor and travail, my dear 
 friend, or have you brought all that you have to say 
 about knowledge to the birth ? 
 
 " Theaet. I am sure, Socrates, that you have brought 
 a good deal more out of me than was ever in me. 
 
 "Soc. And does not my art show that you have 
 brought forth wind, and that the offspring of your brain 
 are not worth bringing up ? 
 
 "Theaet. Very true. 
 
 " Soc. But if, Theatetus, you have, or wish to have, 
 any more embryo thoughts, they will be all the better 
 for the present investigation, and if you have none, you 
 will be soberer and humbler and gentler to other men, 
 not fancying that you know what you do not know. 
 These are the limits of my art ; I can no further go, nor 
 do I know aught of the things which great and famous 
 men know, or have known, in this, or former ages. The 
 office of a mid-wife, I, like my mother, have received 
 from God ; she delivered women, and I deliver men ; but 
 they must be young, and noble, and fair." 
 
 (Plato's Dialogues : Theaetetus. Jowett Trans.) 
 
 IVote : — There is a passage on dialectic in the Republic 
 which obtains its interest from its alliance with the 
 doctrine of Ideas, and which I here quote as follows: — 
 J. H. H. 
 
 " Dear Glaucon, I said, you will not be able to follow 
 me here, though I would do my best, and you should 
 behold, not an image only, but the absolute truth, but 
 that something like this is the truth I am confident. 
 
 " Certainly, he replied. 
 
 " And further, I must tell you that the power of 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 155 
 
 dialectic alone can reveal this, and only to one who is a 
 disciple of the previous sciences. 
 
 " Of that too, he said, you may be confident. 
 
 " And no one, I said, will argue that there is any other 
 process or way of comprehending all true existence ; for 
 the arts in general are referable to the wants or opinions 
 of men, or are cultivated for the sake of production and 
 construction, or for the care of such productions and 
 constructions; and as to the mathematical arts which, as 
 we were saying, have some apprehension of true being — 
 geometry and the like — they only dream about being, 
 but never can they behold the waking reality so long as 
 they leave the hypotheses which they use undisturbed, 
 and are unable to give an account of them. For when 
 a man knows not his own first principle, and when the 
 conclusion and intermediate steps are also constructed 
 out of he knows not what, how can he imagine that such 
 an arbitrary agreement will ever become science? 
 
 " Impossible, he said. 
 
 " Then dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes to a principle, 
 and is the only science which does away with hypotheses 
 in order to establish them ; the eye of the soul, which is 
 literally buried in some outlandish slough, is by her 
 taught to look upwards ; and she uses as handmaids, in 
 the work of conversion, the sciences which we have been 
 discussing. Custom terms them sciences, but they ought 
 to have some other name, implying greater clearness than 
 opinion and less clearness than science : and this in our 
 previous sketch, was called understanding. But there is 
 no use in our disputing about names when we have 
 realities of such importance to consider. 
 
 "No, he said, any name will do which expresses the 
 thought clearly. 
 
 "At any rate, we are satisfied, as before, to have four 
 
156 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 divisions, two for intellect and two for opinion ; and to 
 call the first division science, the second understanding, 
 the third belief, and the fourth knowledge of shadows: 
 opinion being concerned with generation, and intellect 
 with true being; and then to make a proportion: — as 
 being is to generation, so is pure intellect to opinion : and, 
 as science is to belief, so is understanding to knowledge 
 of shadows. 
 
 " But let us leave the further distribution and division 
 of the objects of opinion and of intellect, which will be 
 a long inquiry many times longer than this has been. 
 
 " As far as I understand, he said, I agree. 
 
 "And do you also agree, I said, in describing the 
 dialectician as one who has a conception of the essence 
 of each thing ? And may he who is unable to acquire 
 and impart this conception, in whatever degree he fails, 
 in that degree also be said to fail in intelligence ? Will 
 you admit that ? 
 
 " Yes, he said ; how can I deny that ? 
 
 "And you would say the same of the conception of 
 the good? Until a person is able to abstract and define 
 the idea of the good, and unless he can run the gauntlet 
 of all objections, and is ready to disprove them, not by 
 appeals to opinion, but to true existence, never faltering 
 at any step of the argument — unless he can do all this, 
 you would say that he knows neither absolute good nor 
 any other good ; he apprehends only a shadow, which 
 is given by opinion and not by knowledge; dream- 
 ing and slumbering in this life, before he is well, awake, 
 here he arrives at the world below, and finally has his 
 quietus." 
 
 Plato's Republic, Book VII. (Jowett's Trans.) 
 
THE SOCRATIC UTILITARIAN THEORY OF 
 ETHICS. 
 
 Brief : — Pleasure is essentially Good, and Pain essen- 
 tially Evil. Virtue is simply the right choice of pleasures 
 and pains, and for this right choice "knowledge" or 
 " wisdom " is necessary. Hence Virtue, in the last 
 analysis, is essentially knowledge or wisdom, and vice 
 essentially ignorance or foolishness. — See'Supplementary 
 Notes at end of extract. — C. M. H. 
 
 From Dialogue of Socrates with Protagoras, 
 IN Plato's "Protagoras." 
 
 "You would admit, Protagoras, that some men live 
 well and others ill ? 
 
 " He agreed to this. 
 
 "And do you think that a man lives well who lives in 
 pain and grief? 
 
 " He does not. 
 
 " But if he lives pieasantly to the end of his life, don't 
 you think that in that case he will have lived well? 
 
 " I do. 
 
 " Then to live pleasantly is a good, and to live un- 
 pleasantly an evil ? 
 
 " Yes, he said, if the pleasure be good and honorable. 
 (157) 
 
158 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 "And do you, Protagoras, like the rest of the world, 
 call some pleasant things evil and some painful things 
 good ? — for I am rather disposed to say that things are 
 good in as far as they are pleasant, if they have no con- 
 sequences of another sort, and in as far as they are 
 painful they are bad. 
 
 " I do not know, Socrates, he said, whether I can ven- 
 ture to assert in that unqualified manner that the pleas- 
 ant is the good and the painful the evil. Having regard 
 not only to my present answer, but also to the rest of 
 my life, I shall be safer, if I am not mistaken, in saying 
 that there are some pleasant things which are not good, 
 and that there are some painful things which are good, 
 and some which are not good, and that there are some 
 which are neither good nor evil. 
 
 "And you would call pleasant, I said, the things 
 which participate in pleasure or create pleasure ? 
 
 " Certainly, he said. 
 
 "Then my meaning is, that in as far as they are 
 pleasant they are good ; and my question would imply 
 that pleasure is a good in itself. 
 
 "According to your favorite mode of speech, Socrates, 
 let us inquire about this, he said ; and if the result of 
 the inquiry is to show that pleasure and good are really 
 the same, then we will agree; but if not, then we will 
 argue. 
 
 " Having seen what your opinion is about good and 
 pleasure, I am minded to say to you : Uncover your 
 mind to me Protagoras, and reveal j'our opinion about 
 knowledge, that I may know whether you agree with 
 the rest of the world. Now the rest of the world are of 
 opinion that knowledge is a principle not of strength, or 
 of rule, or of command : their notion is that a man may 
 have knowledge, and yet that the knowledge which is in 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 159 
 
 him may be overmastered by anger, or pleasure, or 
 pain, or love, or perhaps fear, — just as if knowledge 
 were a slave, and might be dragged about anyhow. 
 Now is that your view ? or do you think that knowledge 
 is a noble and commanding thing, which cannot be 
 overcome, and will not allow a man, if he only knows 
 the difference of good and evil, to do anything which is 
 contrary to knowledge, but that wisdotn will have 
 strength to help him ? 
 
 " I agree with you, Socrates, said Protagoras ; and not 
 only that but I, above all other men, am bound to say 
 that wisdom and knowledge are the highest of human 
 things. 
 
 " Good, I said, and true. But are you aware that the 
 majority of the world are of another mind ; and that men 
 are commonly supposed to know the things which are 
 best, and not to do them when they might? And most 
 persons of whom I have asked the reason of this have 
 said, that those who did thus were overcome by pain, or 
 pleasure, or some of those affections which I was now 
 mentioning. 
 
 " Yes, Socrates, he replied ; and that is not the only 
 point about which mankind are in error. 
 
 " Suppose, then, that you and I endeavor to instruct 
 and inform them what is the nature of this affection, 
 which is called by them being overcome by pleasure, 
 and which, as they declare, is the reason why they know 
 the better and choose the worse. When we say to them : 
 Friends, you are mistaken, and are saying what is not 
 true, they would reply ; Socrates and Protagoras, if this 
 affection of the soul is not to be described as being over- 
 come by pleasure, what is it, and how do you call it? 
 Tell us that. 
 
 " When men are overcome by eating and drinking 
 
i6o Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 and other sensual desires which are pleasant, and they, 
 knowing them to be evil, nevertheless indulge in them, 
 is not that what you would call being overcome by 
 pleasure? That they will admit. And suppose that 
 you and I were to go on and ask them again : In what 
 way do you say that they are evil, — in that they are 
 pleasant and give pleasure at the moment, or because 
 the}' cause disease and poverty and other like evils in 
 the future? Would they still be evil, if they had no 
 attendant evil consequences, simply because they give 
 the consciousness of pleasure of whatever nature? 
 Would they not answer that they are not evil on ac- 
 count of the pleasure which is immediately given by 
 them, but on account of the after consequences — diseases 
 and the like? 
 
 "I believe, said Protagoras, that the world in general 
 would give that answer. 
 
 "And in causing diseases do they not cause pain ? and 
 in causing poverty do they not cause pain ; they would 
 agree to that also, if I am not mistaken ? 
 
 " Protagoras assented. 
 
 " Then I should say to them, in my name and yours : 
 Do you think them evil for any other reason, except 
 that they end in pain and rob us of other pleasures ? — 
 that again they would admit. 
 
 "We both of us thought that they would. 
 
 " And that I should take the question from the opposite 
 point of view, and say: Friends, when you speak of 
 goods being painful, do you mean remedial goods, such 
 as gj'mnastic exercises and military services, and the 
 physician's use of burning, cutting, drugging, and starv- 
 ing ? Are these the things which are good but painful ? — 
 they would assent to that ? 
 
 "He agreed. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. i6i 
 
 " And do you call them good because they occasiou the 
 greatest immediate suffering and pain ; or because, after- 
 wards, they bring health and improvement of the bodily 
 condition and the salvation of states, and empires, and 
 wealth? — they would agree to that, if I am not mistaken? 
 
 "He assented. 
 
 " Are these things good for any other reason except 
 that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? 
 Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and 
 pain when you call them good ? — they would acknowl- 
 edge that they were not ? 
 
 " I think that they would, said Protagoras. 
 
 " And do you not pursue after pleasure as a good, and 
 avoid pain as an evil ? 
 
 "He assented. 
 
 " Then you think that pain is an evil and pleasure is 
 a good; and even pleasure you deem an evil, when it 
 robs you of greater pleasures than it gives, or causes 
 greater pain than the pleasures which it has. If, how- 
 ever, you call pleasure an evil in relation to some other 
 end or standard, you will be able to show us that stand- 
 ard. But you have none to show. 
 
 " I do not think that they have, said Protagoras. 
 
 " And have you not a similar way of speaking about 
 pain ? You call pain a good when it takes away greater 
 pains than those which it has, or gives pleasures greater 
 than the pains ; for I say that if you have some standard 
 other than pleasure and pain to which you refer when 
 you call actual pain a good, you can show what that is. 
 But 5'ou cannot. 
 
 " That is true, said Protagoras. 
 
 " Suppose again, I said, that the world says to me : 
 Why do you spend many words and speak in many ways 
 on this subject ? Excuse me, friends, I should reply ; 
 
1 62 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 but in the first place there is a difficulty in explaining the 
 meaning of the expression ' overcome by pleasure ; ' 
 and the whole argument turns upon this. And even 
 now, if you see any possible way in which evil can be 
 explained as other than pain, or good as other than 
 pleasure, you may still retract. But I suppose that you 
 are satisfied at having a life of pleasure which is without 
 pain. And if you are satisfied, and if you are unable to 
 show any good or evil which does not end in pleasure 
 and pain, hear the consequences. — If this is true, then I 
 say that the argument is absurd which affirms that a man 
 often does evil knowinglj^, when he might abstain, be- 
 cause he is seduced and amazed by pleasure ; or again, 
 when you say that a man knowingly refuses to dp what 
 is good because he is overcome at the moment by pleas- 
 ure. Now that this is ridiculous will be evident if only 
 we give up the use of various names, such as pleasant 
 and painful, and good and evil. As there are two things, 
 let us call them by two names, — first, good and evil, and 
 then pleasant and painful. Assuming this, let us go on 
 to say that a man does evil knowing that he does evil. 
 But some one will ask. Why ? Because he is overcome, 
 is the first answer. And by what is he overcome ? the 
 inquirer will proceed to ask. And we shall not be able 
 to reply, ' By pleasure,' for the name of pleasure has 
 been exchanged for that of good. In our answer, then, 
 we shall only say that he is overcome. ' By what ? ' he 
 will reiterate. By the good, we shall have to reply; in- 
 deed we shall. Nay, but our questioner will rejoin with 
 a laugh, if he be one of the swaggering sort, That is too 
 ridiculous, that a man should do what he knows to be 
 evil when he ought not, because he is overcome bj' good. 
 Is that, he will ask, because the good was worthy or not 
 worthy of conquering the evil ? And in answer to that 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 163 
 
 we shall clearly reply, Because it was not worthy : for 
 if it had been worthy, then he who, as we say, was over- 
 come by pleasure, would not have been wrong. But 
 how, he will reply, can the good be unworthy of the evil, 
 or the evil of the good? Is not the real explanation that 
 they are out of proportion to one another, either as 
 greater and smaller, or more and fewer ? This we cannot 
 deny. And when you speak of being overcome, — what 
 do you mean, he will say, but that you choose the greater 
 evil in exchange for the lesser good ? This being the 
 case, let us now substitute the names of pleasure and 
 pain, and say, not as before, that a man does what is evil 
 knowingly, but that he does what is painful knowingly, 
 and because he is overcome by pleasure, which is un- 
 worthy to overcome. And what measure is there of the 
 relations of pleasure to pain other than excess and defect, 
 which means that they become greater and smaller, and 
 more and fewer, and differ in degree ? For if any one 
 says, ' Yes, Socrates, but immediate pleasure differs 
 widely from future pleasure and pain,' — to that I should 
 reply : And do they differ in any other way except by 
 reason of pleasure and pain ? There can be no other 
 measure of them. And do you, like a skillful weigher, 
 put into the balance the pleasures and the pains, near 
 and distant, and weigh them, and then say which out- 
 weighs the other ? If you weigh pleasures against pleas- 
 ures, you, of course, take the more and greater ; or if 
 you weigh pains against pains, you take the fewer and 
 the less ; or if pleasures against pains, then you choose 
 that course of action in which the painful is exceeded by 
 the pleasant, whether the distant by the near, or the near 
 by the distant; and you avoid that course of action in 
 which the pleasant is exceeded by the painful. Would 
 
164 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 you not admit, my friends, that this is true ? I am con- 
 fident that they cannot deny this. 
 
 " He agreed with me. 
 
 " Now supposing that happiness consisted in making 
 and taking large things, what would be the saving 
 principle of human life ? Would the art of measuring 
 be the saving principle, or would the power of appear- 
 ance ? Is not the latter that deceiving art which makes 
 us wander up and down and take the things at one time 
 of which we repent at another, both in our actions and 
 in our choice of things, great and small ? But the art of 
 measurement is that which would do away with the effect 
 of appearances, and, showing the truth, would fain teach 
 the soul at last to find rest in the truth, and would thus 
 save our life. Would not mankind generally acknowl- 
 edge that the art which accomplishes this is the art of 
 measurement ? 
 
 " Yes, he said, the art of measurement. 
 
 "Suppose, again, the salvation of human life to depend 
 on the choice of odd and even, and on the knowledge of 
 when men ought to choose the greater or less, either in 
 reference to themselves or to each other, whether near 
 or at a distance ; what would be the saving principle of 
 our lives? Would not knowledge? — a knowledge of 
 measuring, when the question is one of excess and defect, 
 and a knowledge of number, when the question is of odd 
 and even? The world will acknowledge that, will 
 they not? 
 
 " Protagoras admitted that they would. 
 
 "Well, then, I say to them, my friends; seeing that 
 the salvation of human life has been found to consist in 
 the right choice of pleasures and pains, — in the choice of 
 the more and the fewer and the greater and the less, and 
 the nearer and remoter, must not this measuring be a 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 165 
 
 consideration of excess and defect and equality in rela- 
 tion to each other ? 
 
 " That is undeniably true. 
 
 "And this, as possessing measure, must undeniably 
 also be an art and science ? 
 
 "They will agree to that. 
 
 " The nature of that art or science, will be a matter of 
 future consideration ; the demonstration of the existence 
 of such a science is a sufficient answer to the question 
 which you asked of me and Protagoras. At the time 
 when you asked the question, if you remember, both of 
 us were agreeing that there was nothing mightier than 
 knowledge, and that knowledge, in whatever existing, 
 must have the advantage over pleasure and all other 
 things ; and then you said that pleasure often got the 
 advantage even over a man who has knowledge; and we 
 refused to allow this, and you said : O Protagoras and 
 Socrates, if this state is not to be called being overcome 
 by pleasure, tell us what it is ; what would you call it? 
 If we had immediately and at the time answered " Igno- 
 rance," you would have laughed at us. But now, in 
 laughing at us, you will be laughing at yourselves: for 
 you also admitted that men err in their choice of pleas- 
 ures and pains ; that is, in their choice of good and evil, 
 from defect of knowledge ; and you admitted further that 
 they err, not only from defect of knowledge in general, 
 but of that particular knowledge which is called measur- 
 ing. And you are also aware that the erring act which 
 is done without knowledge is done in ignorance. This, 
 therefore, is the meaning of being overcome by pleas- 
 ure, — ignorance, and that the greatest. 
 
 " Then you agree, I said, that the pleasant is the good, 
 and the painful evil ? 
 
 "Are not all actions, the tendency of which is to make 
 
1 66 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 life painless and pleasant, honorable and useful ? The 
 honorable work is also useful and good ? 
 
 " This was admitted. 
 
 " Then, if the pleasant is the good, nobody does any- 
 thing under the idea or conviction that some other thing 
 would be better and is also attainable, when he might do 
 the better. And this inferiority of a man to himself is 
 merely ignorance, as the superiority of a man to himself 
 is wisdom. 
 
 " They all assented. 
 
 " And is not ignorance the having a false opinion and 
 being deceived about important matters ? 
 
 " To that they also unanimously assented. 
 
 " Then, no man voluntarily pursues evil, or that which 
 he thinks to be evil. To prefer evil to good is not in 
 human nature ; and when a man is compelled to choose 
 one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he 
 might have the less. 
 
 " All of us agreed to every word of this. 
 
 " My only object, I said, in continuing the discussion, 
 has been the desire to ascertain the relations of virtue 
 and the essential nature of virtue ; for if this were clear, 
 I am very sure that the other controversy which has 
 been carried on at great length by both of us — you affirm- 
 ing and I denying, that virtue can be taught — would also 
 have become clear. The result of our discussion appears 
 to me to be singular. For if the argument had a human 
 voice, that voice would be heard laughing at us and say- 
 ing: Protagoras and Socrates, you are strange beings; 
 there are you who were saying that virtue cannot be 
 taught, contradicting yourself now in the attempt to show 
 that all things are knowledge, including justice, and 
 temperance, and courage, — which tends to show that 
 virtue can certainly be taught ; for if virtue were other 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 167 
 
 than knowledge, as Protagoras attempted to show, then 
 clearly virtue cannot be taught ; but if virtue is entirely 
 knowledge, as you, Socrates, are seeking to show, then I 
 cannot but suppose that virtue is capable of being taught. 
 Protagoras, on the other hand, who started by saying 
 that it might be taught, is now eager to show that it is 
 anything rather than knowledge ; and if this is true, it 
 must be quite incapable of being taught " 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 
 
 Socrates the Father of Modern or 
 Utilitarian Ethics. 
 
 The preceding extract from the dialogue of Socrates 
 with Protagoras, should have great interest for students 
 of ethics, as it presents in probably the earliest and most 
 complete form the great modern theory of ethics known 
 as the Utilitarian and Spencerian theory, which is, as 
 may be here seen, simply a revival of one of the old 
 Greek schools of ethics. This theory, that pleasure is 
 essentially good and pain essentially evil, has probably 
 no better and clearer statement anywhere than in this 
 extract from Socrates recorded by Plato about 400 B. C. 
 The same theory was later used with modifications by 
 Aristotle, 350 B. C, who copied many ideas from Plato 
 and Socrates, and will be found freely in Aristotle's 
 Ethics, as shown in the extracts given farther on, 
 where he distinctly teaches that Virtue is that course of 
 conduct which secures or leads to a beneficent final result 
 or "end" which is desirable in itself as snch ^nal end 
 and not merely as a " means " to something else. Hence 
 he distinctly states that " The besi of all things must be 
 something ^nal," and that " Happiness or welfare seems 
 
 more than anything else to answer to this description, 
 
 (168) 
 
EPICURUS, the much maligned and misunder- 
 stood " Philosopher of the Garden^'' was a great advo- 
 cate of the moderate and simple life, and, after Soc- 
 rates, one of the clearest exponents of the true rational 
 theory of Pleasure — the m.odern utilitarian or " Spen- 
 cerian " theory of ethics. He was a Deist in religion, 
 but a disbeliever in immortality, a consistent rational- 
 ist and materialist in general thought, and a great 
 exponent of the '■'■atomic''^ theory of matter in a Uni- 
 verse governed by fixed laws. 
 
 GIST OF EPICUREAN ETHICS. 
 
 " Yet some there are, who, with great flourishes, 
 have so discoursed against pleasure itself, as if it were 
 something ill in its own nature, and consequently not 
 appertaining to wisdom and felicity.''^ 
 
 " When, therefore, we say in general terms, pleas- 
 ure is the end of happy life, we are far from meaning 
 the pleasures of luxurious persons, or of others, as 
 some, either through ignorance, dissent, or ill will, in- 
 terpret. We mean no more but this — Not pained in 
 body nor troubled in mind.'''' 
 
 ''''For it is not perpetual feasting and drinking, not 
 the conversation of beautiful women ; not rarities of 
 fish, nor any dainties of a profuse table, that make a 
 happy life ; but reason, with sobriety and a serene 
 mind.'''' 
 
 " Concerning Temperance, we must first observe 
 that it is desired not for its own sake, but for that it 
 procureth pleasure, that is, brings peace to the minds 
 of men, pleasing and soothing them with a kind of 
 concord?'' 
 
 " Hence it is understood that Temperance is to be 
 desired, not for that it avoids some pleasures, but be- 
 cause he who refrains from them declines troubles, 
 which being avoided he obtains greater pleasures. 
 Which it so doth that the action becomes honest and 
 decent, and we may clearly understand that the same 
 men may be lovers both of pleasure and of decency?'' 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 169 
 
 for we always choose it for itself and never for the sake 
 of something else." After Aristotle, Epicurus (about 
 300 B. C.) fully adopted and clearly taught this doctrine, 
 which, therefore, also came to be called the " Epicurean " 
 theory, and under that name has been probably the most 
 maligned and misunderstood theory that has ever been 
 held in the history of ethics, particularly during the 
 Christian era and among Christian peoples, where it has 
 been persistently misrepresented or misunderstood. 
 Thus the term "Epicure" or "Epicurean" has come to 
 mean in a gross sense a mere glutton or sensualist, and 
 in a more exact sense a person of most elaborate and re- 
 fined tastes in sensuous delights and indulgences : And 
 Epicureanism is regarded as a system of moral philosophy 
 which simply places "virtue" or "good" as consisting 
 essentially in a life of mere pleasure or sensuous in- 
 dulgence. The truth is, however, that Epicurus was a 
 man of the greatest simplicity and moderation — the 
 "philosopher of the Garden" — who boasted of his ability 
 to live on the simple products of his own little field, of 
 the entire sufiiciency of " barley cakes and water" for all 
 the needs of life, and on his capacity to properly live on 
 a mere "obolus" — one cent — a day! Not only this, he 
 denounced in the clearest terms a life of so-called " pleas- 
 ure" or sensuous indulgence and showed that this was 
 the very course best calculated to produce an overplus 
 of pain and prevent the attainment of the truly happy 
 life with the overplus or true balance of pleasure, and 
 the minimum of pain which temperance and right living 
 inevitably bring. 
 
 In order to clearly show what this true Epicureanism 
 is, and how it follows on the lines laid down by Socrates 
 and Aristotle, we will here quote a few paragraphs from 
 the ethics of Epicurus : 
 
ii70 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers, 
 
 " For the end of life, bj' the tacit consent of all men, is 
 felicity. 
 
 " Therefore, before we inquire whether felicity really 
 consists in pleasure, we must show, that pleasure is in 
 its own nature good, as its contrary, pain, is in its own 
 nature ill. 
 
 "There needs not therefore any reasoning to prove, 
 that pleasure is to be desired, pain to be shunned ; for 
 this is manifest to our sense, as that fire is hot, snow 
 white, honey sweet. We need no arguments to prove 
 this, it is enough that we give notice of it. 
 
 "First, therefore, we must consider of felicity no 
 otherwise than as of health ; it being manifest, that the 
 state, in which the mind is free from perturbation, the 
 body from pain, is no other than the perfect health of the 
 whole man. 
 
 "Yet some there are, who, with great flourishes, have 
 so discoursed against pleasure itself, as if it were some- 
 thing ill in its own nature, and consequently not apper- 
 taining to wisdom and felicity. 
 
 "When, therefore, we say in general terms, pleasure 
 is the end of happy life, we are far from meaning the 
 pleasures of luxurious persons, or of others, as some, 
 either through ignorance, dissent, or ill will, interpret. 
 We mean no more but this, (to repeat it once more) Not 
 pained in body, nor troubled in mind. 
 
 " For it is not perpetual feasting and drinking ; not the 
 conversation of beautiful women ; not rarities of fish, nor 
 any other dainties of a profuse table, that make a happy 
 life ; but reason, with sobriety, and a serene mind. 
 
 "Others condemn, and exclaim on us, for afiirming, 
 that the virtues are of such a nature, as that they con- 
 duce to pleasure or felicity, as if we meant that pleasure 
 which is obscene and infamous, but- let them rail as they 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 171 
 
 please. For as they make virtue the chief good, so do 
 we. But if the discourse be of living happily, or felicity, 
 why should not this be a good superior to virtue, to the 
 attainment whereof virtue itself is but subservient? 
 
 " For while nature is our guide, whatsoever we do 
 tends to this, that we neither be pained in body nor 
 troubled in mind ; and as soon as we have attained this, 
 all disturbances of the mind are quieted, and there is 
 nothing beyond it that we can aim at to complete the 
 good, both of our soul and body; for that absolute good 
 of human nature is contained in the peace of the soul 
 and the body. 
 
 "Hence is manifest, when I formerly said, A sober or 
 well ordered reason procures a pleasant and happy life ; 
 we are to understand, that it procures it by means of the 
 virtues which it ingenerates and preserves. 
 
 " By this you find why I conceive, that the virtues are 
 connatural to a happy life, and that it is impossible to 
 separate happy life from them. All other things, as 
 being frail and mortal, are transitory, separable from 
 true and constant pleasure ; only virtue, as being a per- 
 petual and immortal good, is inseparable from it." 
 (From History of Philosophy, by Thos. Stanley, 
 London, 1701). 
 
 Now a little consideration will show that what Aristotle 
 meant by the y?«a/f«^, "happiness" or "welfare" is 
 exactly what Socrates before him and Epicurus after 
 him meant by "' pleasure." And in the last analysis it 
 will be found, we think, to be an irrefutable proposition 
 that " pleasure" is the essence of what we call " happi- 
 ness " or well-being, and " pain " the essence of what we 
 term unhappiness or ill-being, as demonstrated in the 
 cogent reasonings of Socrates with Protagoras twenty- 
 
172 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 four ceiituries ago in the clear and simple argument of 
 that great rationalist, Epicurus, two centuries later, no 
 less than in the almost identical and unanswerable rea- 
 sonings of that great Socratic and Epicurean rationalist 
 of our own daj' — Herbert Spencer, in his Data of Ethics. 
 But opponents of this great ancient and modern school 
 of rational ethics will persist in misunderstanding and 
 misapplying this great decisive term " pleasure " as the 
 true test of the final rightness of conduct, and one of the 
 first men responsible for bringing about this confusion 
 was probably the first great " Hedonist," Aristippus, a 
 pupil of Socrates, who grossly misapplied the Socratic 
 ethical theory that " pleasure " was the only good and 
 pain the only evil, to mean merely the initial or immediate 
 pleasure of an act, without any regard to the tiltimate, 
 final or actual pleasure when all the results and conse- 
 quences of the initial act had been duly allowed for and 
 adjusted. This is the great error of the so-called " He- 
 donistic school " which has too long been mistaken for 
 the true "Epicurean" or utilitarian school. Hence, 
 when the term " pleasure " is used in a philosophical, 
 ethical sense, it will be obvious that it must be under- 
 stood not only in the positive form, but also, and even 
 much more so, in the negative form, that is, in absence 
 from pain or disturbance, "not pained in body nor 
 troubled in mind " as Epicurus says, for it is undeniable 
 that this negative form of pleasure, the mere tranquil 
 quiescent state, free from pain, which a state of normal 
 simple health gives, is absolutely the chief and greatest 
 element of a normal, moral, happy or well adjusted life, 
 and not mere tense, positive pleasures, gratifications or 
 indulgences. And in this logical view of the matter we 
 can therefore readily recognize the real soundness of the 
 great Socratic theory that " knowledge " or " wisdom " is 
 
ARISTIPPUS might probably be called the original 
 " Hedonist^ " the perverter of the Socratic doctrine of 
 " Pleasure " as the greatest good^ and the exponent of 
 the voluptuous theory of ethics^ which afterwards came 
 to be incorrectly called '"'• Epicureanism^'' but which 
 zvas really a false Epicureanism. True Epncurean- 
 ism is the doctrine of rational moderation resulting not 
 in the greatest immediate delight but in the greatest 
 ultimate utility or fnal permanent pleasure. {See p. 
 i6g, &c. 
 
 SKETCH OF ARISTIPPUS. 
 
 From Stanley's History of Philosophy. 
 
 From. Cyrene Aristippus went first to Athens., in- 
 vited by the fame of Socrates^ concerning whom he fell 
 into discourse with Ischomachus^ meeting him casually 
 at the Olympic Games, and inquiring what disputes 
 they were wherewith Socrates prevailed so much upon 
 the young men, he received from him some little seeds 
 and scatterings thereof wherewith he was so passion^- 
 ately affected, that lie grew pale and lean, till, to 
 assuage his fervent thirst, he took a voyage to Athens, 
 and there driittk at the fountain, satisfying himself 
 with the person, his discourse and philosophy, the end 
 whereof was to know our evils and to acquit ourselves 
 of them. Aristotle said, philosophy doth harm to those 
 zvho misinterpret things well said. Aristippus chiefly 
 delighted with the more voluptuous dispnites of Soc- 
 rates, asserted pleasure to be the ultimate end wherein 
 all happiness doth consist. 
 
 His life was agreeable to the opinion, which he em- 
 ployed in luxury, sweet unguents, rich garments, 
 wine and women ; m.aintained by a course as different 
 from the precepts and practice of Socrates as the things 
 themselves were. For, notwithstanding he had a good 
 estate {and three country seats) he first of the Socratic 
 disciples took money for teaching. Which Socrates 
 observing, asked him, how he came to have so much. 
 He replied, '■''How came you to have so little f'' A 
 further dislike of this course Socrates expressed, when 
 Aristippus sending him tieenty mimz, he returned it, 
 saying, his Dcemon would not suffer him to take it. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 173 
 
 the essence of virtue, and that a true resultant in actual 
 final pleasure or happiness is the test of what is virtuous, 
 for it is obvious that a true wisdom or knowledge of 
 causes and effects is necessary to determine how to 
 abstain and how to indulge so as to result in the highest 
 deg^ree of ultimate pleasure or happiness, positive or 
 negative. 
 
 The neglect, therefore, to duly weigh and consider this 
 aspect of negative pleasure and to regard the relation of 
 initial and ultimate pleasure in striking a true resultant or 
 balance, will be found to be one of the great errors which 
 the critics of the utilitarian theory of ethics constantly 
 fall into, and it is time that this error was abandoned by 
 ethical reasoners, for we think that if "pleasure" be 
 considered both in the positive and negative aspects, and 
 in the broad sense, and the adjustment made between 
 initial and ultimate pleasures, and a true balance struck, 
 then the dicta of Socratic-Epicurean or Utilitarian ethics, 
 that conduct is good or bad simply because it tends to 
 produce pleasure or pain, happiness or unhappiness, wel- 
 fare or injury, is simply impregnable, ethically, logically 
 and philosophically, and the opposite theory that regards 
 "virtue" itself as the " end" of ethics, and not "health," 
 "pleasure," "happiness" or "welfare," is clearly irra- 
 tional and a reductio ad absurdum as it is simply prefer- 
 ring the " means" to the " end." 
 
 A most interesting point, however, to be noted, just 
 at this connection, is that not only is the modern 
 utilitarian theory of ethics found stated in the teachings 
 of Socrates in the most clear and positive manner, as 
 above shown, but the distinctions here pointed out of 
 the necessity of making a true adjustment of all the 
 consequences or results of the act, for pain or pleasure, 
 to strike the true resultant or actual balance of pleasure 
 
174 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 which must determine the real character of the act as 
 " good " or " virtuous," is also as clearly set forth by that 
 " Wizard of Conversation," the great old Socrates — the 
 real father of modem rational ethics. Let us therefore, 
 here juxtapose a few telling paragraphs from the dialogue 
 of Socrates, and we will readily see how clearly these 
 points and distinctions are brought out : 
 
 " Then j'ou think that pain is an evil and pleasure is 
 a good ; and even pleasure you deem an evil when it robs 
 you of greater pleasures than it gives, or causes greater 
 pain than the pleasures which it has : If, however, you 
 call pleasure an evil in relation to some other end or 
 standard, you will be able to show us that standard. 
 But you have none to show. 
 
 " Would they still be evil if they had no attendant evil 
 consequences simply because they give the consciousness 
 of pleasure of whatever nature ? Would they not an- 
 swer that they are not evil on account of the pleasure 
 which is immediately given by them, but on account of 
 the after consequences — diseases and the like. 
 
 "And have you not a similar way of speaking about 
 pain ? You call pain a good when it takes away greater 
 pains than those which it has or gives pleasures greater 
 than the pains ; for I say that if you have some standards 
 other than pleasure and pain to which you refer when 
 you call actual pain a good, you can show what that is. 
 But you cannot. 
 
 " If you weigh pleasures against pleasures, 5'ou, of 
 course, take the more and greater ; or if yon weigh pains 
 against pains, you take the fewer and the less ; or if 
 pleasures against pains, then you choose that course of 
 action in which the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, 
 whether the distant by the near or the near by the dis- 
 tant, and you avoid that course of action in which the 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 175 
 
 pleasant is exceeded by the painful. Would you not 
 admit, my friends, that this is true ? I am confident that 
 they cannot deny this. 
 
 " But now in laughing at us you will be laughing at 
 yourselves, for you also admitted that men err in their 
 choice of pleasures and pains ; that is, in their choice of 
 good and evil, from defect of knowledge, and you ad- 
 mitted further that they err not only from defect of 
 knowledge in general, but of that particular knowledge 
 which is called measuring. 
 
 "Then I should say to them in my name and yours: 
 Do you think them evil for any other reason except that 
 they end in pain and rob us of other pleasures ? 
 
 "And do you call them good because they occasion 
 the greatest immediate suffering and pain ; or because 
 afterwards they bring health and improvement of the 
 bodily condition and the salvation of states, and empires, 
 and wealth? 
 
 "Are these things good for any other reason except 
 that they end in pleasure and get rid of and avert pain ? 
 Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and 
 pain when you call them good ? " 
 
 Note again how the clear-thinking Epicurus voices the 
 Socratic theory of the true ethics of pleasure in his dis- 
 course on " Temperance : " — 
 
 " Concerning Temperance we must first observe that 
 it is desired not for its own sake but for that it procureth 
 pleasure, that is, brings peace to the minds of men, 
 pleasing and soothing them with a kind of concord. 
 
 " But most men not able to hold and keep to what they 
 have resolved on, being vanquished and debilitated by 
 the appearance of present pleasure, resign themselves to 
 the fetters of lust, not foreseeing what will follow. But 
 
176 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 thej' who enjoy pleasures so that no pain shall ensue, 
 and who preserve their judgment constant, nor are over- 
 come by pleasure, to the doing of what they know ought 
 not to be done, these men obtain the greatest pleasure by 
 pretermitting pleasure: They also many times suffer 
 some pain to prevent falling into greater. 
 
 "Hence it is understood that Temperance is to be de- 
 sired, not for that it avoids some pleasures, but because 
 he who refrains from them declines troubles, which being 
 avoided he obtains greater pleasures. Which it so doth 
 that the action becomes honest and decent and we may 
 clearly understand that the same men may be lovers 
 both of pleasure and of decency." 
 (History of Philosophy, Thos. Stanley, London, 1701.) 
 
 Now it only remains to be shown how identical is the 
 standpoint of Herbert Spencer in his Data of Ethics with 
 that of Socrates in his dialogue with Protagoras, and 
 how absolutely similar the arguments and challenges are 
 in both cases, to demonstrate the truth of the statement 
 in Prof. Hyslop's lecture that the ethical philosophy of 
 the Socratic period is identical with modern evolutionary 
 philosophy, and this is particularly true of the Socratic 
 school itself, as shown by Socrates, Aristotle and Epi- 
 curus, in the extracts already given. 
 
 Let us, therefore, now compare a few test paragraphs 
 from Spencer's Data of Ethics with the paragraphs just 
 quoted from Socrates and Epicurus, and we will see that 
 the identity of thought is absolute : — 
 
 "Thus there is no escape from the admission that in 
 calling good the conduct which subserves life, and bad 
 the conduct which hinders or destroys it, and in so im- 
 plying that life is a blessing and not a curse, we are in- 
 
THE VOLUPTUOUS (?) "PLEASURES" OF THE 
 REAL EPICURUS. 
 
 " For my part^ when I eat coarse bread and drink 
 water, or sometimes augm.ent my commons with a 
 little Cytheridian Cheese, {xuhen I have a mind to 
 feast extraordinarily), I take great delight in it, and 
 bid defiance to those pleasures which accompany the 
 usual magnificence of feasts ; so that if I have but 
 bread, or barley-cakes and water, I am furnished to 
 content even withfove himself in point of felicity.'''' 
 
 " For my part, truly {that I may with modesty in- 
 stance myself) I ajti content, and highly pleased with 
 the plants and fruits of m.y own little gardens ; and 
 will, that this inscription be set over the Gate, 
 Stranger, here you may stay ; here the Supreme Good 
 is plea,sure ; the Master of this little house is hosprit- 
 able, friendly, ajid will entertain you with polenta, 
 and afford you water plejitifully, and will ask you, 
 how you like your entertainment? These little 
 Gardens invite not hunger, but satisfy it ; nor increase 
 thirst with drinks, but extinguish it with the natural 
 and pleasant rem.edy?'' 
 
 " In this pleasure I have grown old, finding by ac- 
 count, that my diet atnounts not fully to ati obolus a 
 day, and yet some days there are, in which I abate 
 somewhat even of that, to make trial, whether I want 
 any thing of full and perfect pleasure, or how much, 
 and whether it be worth great labour.'''' 
 
 C Polenta "—a thick cereal musli; "obolus"— one cent.) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 177 
 
 evitably asserting that conduct is good or bad according 
 as its total effects are pleasurable or painful. 
 
 "Omitting people of this class (Devil Worshippers), 
 if there are any, as beyond or beneath argument, we find 
 that all others avowedly or tacitly hold that the final 
 justification for maintaining life, can only be the recep- 
 tion from it of a surplus of pleasurable feeling over pain- 
 ful feeling ; and that goodness or badness can be ascribed 
 to acts which subserve life or hinder life, only on this 
 supposition. 
 
 " Using, then, as our tests, these most pronounced 
 forms of good and bad conduct, we find it unquestion- 
 able that our ideas of their goodness and badness really 
 originate from our consciousness of the certainty or 
 probability that they will produce pleasures or pains 
 somewhere. 
 
 " Unless it is asserted that courage and chastity could 
 still be thought of as virtues though thus productive of 
 misery, it must be admitted that the conceptions of 
 virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happi- 
 ness-producing conduct ; and that as this holds of all the 
 virtues, however otherwise unlike, it is from their con- 
 ducivness to happiness that they come to be classed as 
 virtues. 
 
 "So that no school can avoid taking for the ultimate 
 moral aim a desirable state of feeling called by whatever 
 name — gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure 
 somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an 
 inexpugnable element of the conception. It is as much 
 a necessary form of moral intuition as space is a neces- 
 sarj' form of intellectual intuition." 
 
 Now we think it will be readily admitted on com- 
 parison that the point of view and the argument of the 
 old Greek thinkers could not be any nearer to that of our 
 
178 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 modem rationalists, unless the very words themselves 
 were identical. Note, for example, how alike are the 
 concluding keynotes in both Socrates and Spencer. Thus 
 Socrates asks twenty -four centuries ago. "Are these 
 things good for any other reason except that they end 
 in pleasure and get rid of and avert pain ? Are you look- 
 ing to any other standard but pleasure and pain when 
 you call them good?" And Spencer thus agrees with 
 and answers Socrates over a gap of twenty-four centuries 
 as follows : — " We find it unquestionable that our ideas 
 of their goodness and badness really originate from our 
 consciousness of the certainty or probability that they 
 will produce pleasure or pain somewhere. It must be 
 admitted that the conceptions of virtue cannot be sepa- 
 rated from the conception of happiness-producing con- 
 duct. So that no school can avoid taking for the ultimate 
 moral aim a desirable state of feeling called bj' whatever 
 name, gratification, enjo3'ment, happiness. Pleasure 
 somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an 
 inexpugnable element of the conception." 
 
 Thus we find an absolute unity in the basic ethical 
 philosophy of the greatest thinkers among the highest 
 civilizations of the past with the teachings of the greatest 
 scientific moralists of our own day, and this fact should 
 certainly lead us to give more honor and credit to these 
 grand old ethical " pagans " than they generally get in 
 popular estimation, and it should also increase our respect 
 for the modem evolutionary and utilitarian school of 
 ethics as being not only natural and rational, but simple 
 and practical, and combining the dicta of a consensus of 
 some of the greatest moral intellects in past and present 
 times.— C. M. H. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. Bom at Derby, England, 
 April 2j, 1820. The great modern exponent of 
 Evolution and the Utilitarian T/ieory of Ethics. 
 The oldest liinng philosopher and tJie greatest 
 rationalistic thinker of the nineteenth century — the 
 Socrates, Aristotle and EpncuT^is of our day. 
 
 GIST OF SPENCERIAN ETHICS, A. D., 1893. 
 
 Thus there is no escape from the admission that in 
 calling good the conduct zvhich sjibserves life, and bad 
 the conduct which hinders or destroys it, and in so 
 implying that life is a blessing atid not a curse, zee are 
 inezntably asserting that conduct is good or bad ac- 
 cording as its total effects are pleasurable or painful. 
 
 Using, then, as our tests, the^e most pronounced 
 forms of good and bad coTtduct, we find it unquestion- 
 able that our ideas of tJieir goodness and badfiess 
 really originate from our consdousness of the cer- 
 tainty or probability that tJiey zvill produce pleasures 
 or pains someivhere. 
 
 Unless it is asserted that courage and chastity could 
 still be thought of as zrirtues ttiough thus productive 
 of misery, it must be admitted that the conceptions 
 of virtue cannot be separated from the cotueption of 
 happiness-producing conduct ; and that as this holds 
 of all the virtues, however otherwise unlike, it is from 
 their conduciveness to happiness that they come to be 
 classed as zrirtues. 
 
 So that 710 scJwol can avoid taking for the ultimate 
 moral aim a desirable state of feeling called by 
 whatever name — gratification, enjoyment, happiness. 
 Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or 
 beings, is an i7iexpntgnable element of the conception. 
 It is as much a necessary form of moral intuition as 
 space is a necessary form of intellectual intuition. 
 Spencer's Data of Ethics, Edition iSgj. 
 
SOCRATES AND THEISTIC ETHICS. 
 
 The chief opponent of the Socratic-Epicurean or 
 Utilitarian School of Ethics, has always been, as it now 
 is, what may be termed the " Theistic School of Ethics." 
 And by " Theistic " we mean that school — under what- 
 ever religious or denominational name it may assume 
 from time to time in the world's history — which holds 
 that the true standard and motive for human conduct is 
 accordance with the " Will of God " or that course of con- 
 duct in man which may be held to harmonize with the 
 "pleasure" or '"desire" of the Infinite and contribute 
 primarily or essentially to the "honor" and "glory" of 
 God, and not primarily and essentially to the pleasure, 
 welfare or utility of man. 
 
 As, however, the Theistic School of Ethics is essen- 
 tially religious and dogmatic in its character and origin, 
 it cannot be expected to show to logical or philosophic 
 advantage with that humane utilitarian system which, as 
 we have shown, has been developed rationally from a 
 natural and logical basis by some of the greatest and 
 most reverent minds of the world in past and present 
 times, and who have thereby placed ethics on a rational, 
 natural and self-commending basis as distinct from the 
 purely arbitrary and dogmatic ground of Theistic Schools. 
 And it is very interesting to here note that our old friend, 
 
 (179) 
 
i8o Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Socrates, who we have already found to be the real 
 father of the modern utilitarian school of rational ethics, 
 was yet one of the greatest Theists among the Pagan 
 philosophers, and in many features of his religious belief, 
 as we have already shown, very closely approached the 
 belief of the Jew and Christian of apostolic days. And 
 yet, again, this great philosophic and religious Socrates 
 — the almost Christian Pagan — saw nothing derogatory 
 to his Theistic conception of God and the goyernment of 
 the Universe in founding the true motive-basis of ethics 
 or good conduct in man on the ground primarily and 
 essentially of benefit, utility, pleasure, happiness, or 
 welfare, to man himself and not primarily on the " will," 
 "pleasure," "honor," or "glory" of God as in the purely 
 Theistic system of ethics formulated both before and 
 since the days of Socrates. 
 
 Now to found the motive-basis for good conduct in 
 man on the ground primarily of "benefit" to an "Infinite 
 and All-Perfect Being," instead of primarily on benefit 
 to man himself, would to the logical and rational utili- 
 tarian seem not only extravagant and essentially irrever- 
 ent and absurd, but as a vain and childish attempt to 
 patronize the Infinite. For, obviously, "The Infinite" 
 stands in no need of "benefits" from man, but man does 
 very much need the great benefits which right conduct 
 can confer upon himself. Hence it is reverently believed 
 that there can be no higher, more sane, or more practical 
 ground for human ethics than that of "enlightened self- 
 interest " for one's-self and one's neighbor on the great 
 lines of Prudence, Justice and Fortitude, which form the 
 trinity of practical Virtue. 
 
 Not only do the greatest philosophers of the Greek 
 and Roman civilizations agree with the ethics of our 
 modern rationalists as already shown, but it is further 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. i8i 
 
 interesting to note that a still more ancient and extensive 
 rational school — the Confucianists of China — is also in 
 full accord with them. Thus the Chinese Sages teach 
 these clear utilitarian doctrines : 
 
 " The senses and the mind are what Heaven has given 
 us. To preserve our mental constitution and nourish 
 our nature is the way to serve Heaven." 
 
 " To give one's-self earnestly to the duties due to men, 
 and while respecting spiritual beings to keep aloof from 
 them, may be called Wisdom." 
 
 " The doctrine of our Master is to be true to the prin- 
 ciples of our nature and the benevolent exercise of them 
 to others — this and nothing more." * 
 
 Now the foregoing texts give us a pure utilitarianism 
 in the Chinese form which is as true and rational in tone 
 as anything expressed by Socrates, Epicurus or Herbert 
 Spencer, and when taken in connection with what we 
 have quoted from the Greek Philosophers, proves how 
 wide and deep is the philosophic support for the utili- 
 tarian theory in ancient as well as in modern thought. 
 
 Even that great old ethical Hebrew, the prophet Micah, 
 who was almost contemporary with Confucius, may be 
 claimed also as a true utilitarian in Ethics, as is shown 
 in that grand little verse which may be said to be one of 
 the purest pieces of ethics in the Old Testament : 
 
 " What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, 
 and to love mercy, and to walk humbly."t In this we 
 have a purely ethical creed, sufficient for the regulation 
 of any life — Justice, Kindness, Simplicity and Reason- 
 ableness — and it is purely utilitarian, as it concerns itself 
 primarily and directly with benefit to man. — C. M. H. 
 
 ' See Legge' s Chinese Classics, and Prof. James' Ethics of Chinese Sages, 
 t Micah, VI. 8. King James Version. 
 
ARISTOTLE ON THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 Note: — This extract is taken from Aristotle's Meta- 
 physics. 
 
 After having presented the arguments for the exist- 
 ence of God as the first cause of the world's order, Aris- 
 totle proceeds to describe His nature more definitely in 
 a separate chapter. The argument consists in the ne- 
 cessity of a prime mover as the condition of the world's 
 motion which is supposed to be circular. — J. H. H. 
 
 " Since this is the fact of the case, and since, if it is 
 not so, the world must have originated from chaos and 
 nothing, which difficulties are removed by the above 
 supposition, there exists something which never ceases 
 to move and which moves in a circle. This is evident, 
 both from reason and from the facts of observation. 
 Consequently the first heaven is eternal and there exists 
 something that moves it, and as that which is both 
 moved and moving stands between these, there must also 
 exist something which moves without being moved, 
 which is eternal and a self-existent reality. It imparts 
 motion thus. The appetitive and the conscious move 
 without being moved. Both are in their origin one and 
 
 the same. For that which appears as pleasant is desired 
 
 (182) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 183 
 
 and the original object of the will is that which appears 
 pleasant. We desire it because it is pleasant, but it does 
 not appear pleasant because it is beautiful. The begin- 
 ning is thought. Reason, however, is moved by the 
 thought of the intelligible. But the intelligible is in 
 itself only a series of things of like kind, and in this is 
 the independent first cause, and from it comes the simple 
 and actual. The one and the simple are nevertheless 
 not the same. The one is that which indicates a limit ; 
 the simple is that which indicates quality. But the 
 pleasant and that which is desirable on its own account, 
 is also found in this series, and the first cause is always 
 the highest or something like it. Also the final cause 
 exists in the unmoved, and is shown in this division 
 itself. For the final cause is contained in something. 
 The one is or exists already, the other does not. The 
 final cause moves as a thing that is desired. The moved 
 imparts motion to other things. When now anything 
 is moved it is such that it might have been otherwise. 
 Circular motion is the first form and if this is actual this 
 motion cannot occur otherwise than in space, although 
 this is not according to its nature in itself. But if a 
 moving cause which is itself unmoved but active, be 
 assumed, it is impossible that its conduct should be 
 otherwise. Motion is the first step in evolution and this 
 first motion is circular and was caused by the first mover. 
 For this reason must the first mover be necessarily ex- 
 istent, and in so far as it is necessary it is also noble, and 
 with this constitutes the first principle. Necessity or 
 the necessary has two meanings. One of them is that 
 which is effected by some power against a natural 
 impulse. Then there is one which denotes that without 
 which the good cannot take place, and finally, it denotes 
 that which cannot be otherwise, that which is absolutely. 
 
1 84 ■ Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 On such a first cause depends both the heavens and the 
 order of physical nature. His life is of such excellence 
 that we can only realize it for a limited period. But 
 this Being remains always so. For us this is impossible, 
 but not for this Supreme Being for whom also pleasure 
 is activity. For this reason also consciousness, per- 
 ception, and thought are the most pleasant. Hopes 
 and recollection, however, are effected through these. 
 Thought belongs to God as his best attribute and the 
 highest degree of thought belongs to the best Being in 
 the highest degree. Reason knows itself by compre- 
 hending or participating in its object. It is through this 
 comprehension and reflection that it becomes a thinking 
 Being, so that Reason and the object thought are one 
 and the same: for reason is that which can comprehend 
 the thinkable and the real or existent. It is active in as 
 much as it has this within itself. What Reason seems 
 to possess as divine, God also has in a higher degree, 
 and this intuitive thought is the noblest and best. If 
 now God is always so excellent in his nature, as we are 
 only at times and for a limited period, and this quality 
 is worthy of reverence, so it is still more to be reverenced 
 when it is possessed by God in a higher degree. This 
 is the fact in his case. He is the seat of life : for the 
 activity of Reason is life and the nature of God is activity. 
 We say of Divinity that it is the eternal and most ex- 
 cellent form of life, so that this quality must belong to 
 the eternal and uninterrupted existence of the Godhead." 
 
 Note : — It will be observed that Aristotle's conception 
 of God as above given is substantially the same as Plato's 
 conception of " Soul," as given in the extract from the 
 Phaedrus and the Laws on pages 144-5, the "Universal 
 Soul" or the "Soul of the Universe" being of course 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 185 
 
 only another name for "the Deity." And it is plain that 
 Aristotle got his conception of God from the Platonic 
 conception of soul, which in both cases is declared to be 
 in essence Motion which is self -moved. 
 
 For further light on Aristotle's conception of God, 
 see the last paragraphs given in the abstract of his 
 Ethics.— C. M. H. 
 
ARISTOTLE ON THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 Note : — This extract is taken from Aristotle's "His- 
 tory of Animals," Cresswell's Translation, Bohn Edition. 
 J. H. H. 
 
 " Nature passes so graduallj^ from inanimate to ani- 
 mate things, that from their continuity their boundary 
 and the intermediate forms are indistinct or indeter- 
 minate. The race of plants succeeds immediately that 
 of inanimate objects, and these differ from each other in 
 the proportion of life in which they participate; for com- 
 pared with other objects appear to possess life, though 
 when compared with animals, they appear inanimate. 
 
 "The change from plants to animals, however, is 
 gradual, as I before observed. For a person might ques- 
 tion to which of these classes some marine objects be- 
 long : for many of them are attached to the rocks and 
 perish as soon as they are separated from it. The pinnae 
 (moUusk) are attached to the rocks, the solens (shell- 
 fish) cannot live after they are taken away from their 
 localities ; and, on the whole, all the testacea resemble 
 plants, if we compare them with locomotive animals. 
 Some of them appear to have no sensation ; in others it 
 
 is very dull. The body of some of them is naturally 
 
 (i86) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 187 
 
 flesh-like, as in those called tethides (gastropod) ; and 
 the Medusae and the sponges entirely resemble plants. 
 The progress is always gradual by which one appears 
 to have more life and motion than another." 
 
 Note : — In that very interesting and informing work 
 " From the Greeks to Darwin," by Prof. Osborn of 
 Columbia University, we quote the following paragraphs 
 which will show the great contribution which Aristotle 
 has made to the Evolution Theory as one of its early 
 pioneers. — C. M. H. 
 
 " With Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) we enter a new world. 
 He towered above his predecessors, and by the force of 
 his own genius created Natural History. In his own 
 words, lately quoted by Romanes, we learn that the cen- 
 turies preceding him yielded him nothing but vague 
 speculation : — 
 
 "'I found no basis prepared; no models to copy. . . . 
 Mine is the first step, and therefore a small one, though 
 worked out with much thought and hard labor. It must 
 be looked at as a first step and judged with indulgence. 
 You, my readers, or hearers of my lectures, if you think 
 I have done as much as can fairly be required for an 
 initiatory start, as compared with more advanced depart- 
 ments of theory, will acknowledge what I have achieved 
 and pardon what I have left for others to accomplish.' 
 ****** 
 
 " He was attracted to natural history by his boyhood 
 life upon the seashore, and the main parts of his ideas 
 upon Evolution were evidently drawn from his own ob- 
 ser^'ations upon the gradations between marine plants 
 and the lower and higher forms of marine animals. He 
 was the first to conceive of a genetic series, and his con- 
 
1 88 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 ception of a single chain of evolution from the polyps 
 to man was never fully replaced until the beginning of 
 this century. It appeared over and over again in differ- 
 ent guises. In all his philosophy of Nature, Aristotle 
 was guided partly by his preconceived opinions derived 
 from Plato and Socrates, and partly by convictions de- 
 rived from his own. observations upon the wonderful 
 order and perfection of the Universe. His 'perfecting 
 principle ' in Nature is only one of a score of his legacies 
 to later speculation upon Evolution causation. Many 
 of our later writers are Aristotelians without apparently 
 being conscious of it. 
 
 if -if ^ it^ -i^ -^ 
 
 " We can pass leniently by errors which are strewn 
 among such grand contributions to Biology and to the 
 very foundation-stones of the Evolution idea. 
 
 "While Plato had relied upon intuitions as the main 
 ground of true knowledge, Aristotle relied upon experi- 
 ment and induction. ' We must not,' he said, ' accept 
 a general principle from logic only, but must prove its 
 application to each fact ; for it is in facts that we must 
 seek general principles, and these must always accord 
 with facts. Experience furnishes the particular facts 
 from which induction is the pathway to general laws ' 
 (History of Animals, 1.6.) He held that errors do not 
 arise because the senses are false media, but because we 
 put false interpretations upon their testimony. 
 
 "Aristotle's theories as to the origin and succession of 
 life went far beyond what he could have reached by the 
 legitimate application of his professed method of pro- 
 cedure. Having now briefly considered the materials of 
 his knowledge, let us carefully examine how he piit his 
 facts together into an Evolution system which had the 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 189 
 
 teachings of Plato and Socrates for its primary philo- 
 sophical basis. 
 
 " Aristotle believed in a complete gradation in Nature, 
 a progressive development corresponding with the pro- 
 gressive life of the soul. Nature, he says, proceeds con- 
 stantly by the aid of gradual transitions from the most 
 imperfect to the most perfect, while the numerous 
 analogies which we find in the various parts of the ani- 
 mal scale, show that all is governed by the same laws,— 
 in other words. Nature is a unit as to its causation. The 
 lowest stage is the inorganic, and this passes into the 
 organic by direct metamorphosis, matter being trans- 
 formed into life. Plants are animate as compared with 
 minerals, and inanimate as compared with animals ; they 
 have powers of nourishment and reproduction, but no 
 feeling or .sensibility. Then come the plant-animals, or 
 Zoophytes ; these are the marine creatures, such as 
 sponges and sea anemones, which leave the observer most 
 in doubt, for they grow upon rocks and die if detached. 
 (Polyps, Aristotle wrongly thought were plants, while 
 sponges he rightly considered animals). The third step 
 taken by Nature is the development of animals with 
 sensibility, — hence desire for food and other needs of life, 
 and hence locomotion to fulfil these desires. Here was 
 a more complex and energetic form of the original life. 
 Man is the highest point of one long and continuous 
 ascent ; other animals have the faculty of thought ; man 
 alone generalizes and forms abstractions ; he is physically 
 superior in his erect position, in his purest and largest 
 blood supply, largest brain, and highest temperature. 
 * * * 
 
 " Aristotle perceived a most marvelous adaptation in 
 the arrangement of the world, and felt compelled to as- 
 sume Intelligent Design as the primary cause of things. 
 
I go Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 by the perfection and regularity which he observed in 
 Nature. Nothing, he held, which occurs regularly, can 
 be the result of accident. This perfection is the outcome 
 of an all-pervading movement, which we should, in nine- 
 teenth-century language, speak of as an 'internal per- 
 fecting tendency.' In Aristotle's conception of ' move- 
 ment,' as outlined in his Physics, we find something very 
 analogous to our modern biological conception of trans- 
 formation in development, for he analyzes 'movement' 
 as every change, as every realization of what is possible, 
 consisting in: (a) Substantial movement, origin and 
 decay, as we should now sas'', development and degenera- 
 tion ; (b) Quantitative movement, addition and subtrac- 
 tion, or, in modern terms, the gain and loss of parts; (c) 
 Qualitative movement, or the transition of one material 
 into another, in metamorphosis and change of function ; 
 (d) Local movement, or change of place, in the trans- 
 position of parts. 
 
 " Thus Aristotle thought out the four essential features 
 of Evolution as a process ; but we have found no evi- 
 dence that he actually applied this conception to the 
 development of organisms or of organs, as we do now 
 in the light of our modern knowledge of the actual stages 
 of Evolution. This enables us to understand Aristotle's 
 view of Nature as the principle of motion and rest com. 
 prised in his four Causes. Here again he is more or 
 less metaphysical. The first is the ' physical Material 
 cause,' or matter itself ; the second is the ' physical 
 Formal cause,' or the forces of the ' perfecting principle ; ' 
 the third is the ' abstract Final cause,' the fitness, adapta- 
 tion, or purpose, the good of each and" all ; the fourth, 
 presiding over all, is the ' Efficient cause,' the Prime 
 
 Mover, or God. 
 
 ******* 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 191 
 
 " Whether or not Aristotle viewed the Prime Mover 
 as sustaining his laws or as having preordained them, 
 he certainly does not believe in Special Creation, either 
 of adaptations or of organisms, nor in the interference of 
 the Prime Mover in Nature; the struggle towards per- 
 fection is a natural process, as where he says : ' It is due 
 to the resistance of matter to form that Nature can 
 only rise by degrees from lower to higher types.' There 
 is, therefore, no doubt that he was not a teleologist in 
 the ordinary sense ; at the very heart of his theory of 
 Evolution was this ' internal perfecting tendency,' driv- 
 ing organisms progressively forward into more perfect 
 types. He viewed man as the flower of Nature, towards 
 which all had been tending, the crowning end, purpose, 
 or final cause. His theory was then anthropocentric : 
 ' plants are evidently for the sake of animals, and animals 
 for the sake of man ; thus Nature, which does nothing 
 in vain, has done all things for the sake of man.' 
 
 " Aristotle's view is brought out clearly and emphatic- 
 ally in the most striking passage of all his writings 
 where he undertakes to refute Empedocles. This is of 
 the greatest interest to-day, because Aristotle clearly 
 states and rejects a theory of the origin or adaptive 
 structures in animals altogether similar to that of 
 Darwin. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "These passages seem to contain absolute evidence 
 that Aristotle had substantially the modern conception 
 of the Evolution of life, from a primordial, soft mass of 
 living matter to the most perfect forms, and that even 
 in these he believed Evolution was incomplete, for they 
 were progressing to higher forms. His argument of the 
 analogy between the operation of natural law% rather 
 than of chance, in the lifeless and in the living world, is 
 
192 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 a perfectly logical one, and his consequent rejection of 
 tHe hypothesis of the Survival of the Fittest, a sound 
 induction from his own limited knowledge of Nature. 
 It seems perfectly clear that he placed all under second- 
 ary natural laws. If he had accepted Empedocles' 
 hypothesis, he would have been the literal prophet of 
 Darwinism." 
 
ABSTRACT OF ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS. 
 
 Note: — After indicating that the ground of what is 
 right is the end, as distinguished from the theories of 
 earlier writers, Aristotle defines this end as follows: — 
 J. H. H. 
 
 " The best of all things must be something final. If 
 then there be only one final end, this will be what we 
 are seeking, or if there be more than one, then the most 
 final of them. 
 
 " Now that which is pursued as an end in itself is more 
 final than that which is pursued as means to something 
 else, and that is strictly final which is always chosen as 
 an end in itself and never as a means. 
 
 "Happiness or welfare seems more than anything else 
 to answer to this description ; for we always choose it for 
 itself, and never for the sake of something else. 
 
 " But a still more precise definition is needed. This 
 will be gained b}"^ asking, what is the function of man? 
 For as the good or excellence of a piper or a sculptor, 
 or the practiser of any art, and generally of those who 
 have any function or business to do, lies in that function, 
 so man's good would seem to lie in his function, if he 
 has one. What then is it ? 
 
 (193) 
 
194 Ethics of tfie Greek Philosophers. 
 
 "The function of man is exercise of his vital faculties 
 on one side in obedience to reason, and on the other with 
 reason. Mad's function then being, as we say, a kind 
 of life or exercise of his faculties, the good man's function 
 is to do this well and nobly. 
 
 " Nothing human is so constant as the exercise of our 
 faculties. The highest of these exercises are the most 
 abiding, because the happy are occupied with them most 
 of all and most continuously. The happy man, then, as 
 we define him, will have this required property of con- 
 stancy, and all through life will preserve his character; 
 for he will be occupied continually, or with the least 
 possible interruption, in excellent deeds and excellent 
 speculations : and whatever his fortune be he will take 
 it in the noblest fashion, and bear himself always and 
 in all things suitably, since he is truly good and ' four- 
 square without a flaw.' 
 
 "But the dispensations of fortune are many, some 
 great, some small. The small ones, whether good or 
 evil, plainly are of no weight in the scale. But the great 
 ones, when numerous, will make life happier if they be 
 good ; for they help to give a grace to life themselves, 
 and their use is noble and good. But if they be evil, 
 they will enfeeble and spoil happiness, for they bring 
 pain, and often impede the exercise of our faculties. 
 
 " But nevertheless true worth shines out even here, in 
 the calm endurance of many great misfortunes, not 
 through insensibilitj', but through nobility and greatness 
 of soul. And if it is what man does that determines the 
 character of his life, then no happy man ^ will become 
 afflicted ; for he will never do what is hateful and base. 
 For we hold that the man who is truly good and wise 
 will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will 
 always make the best of his circumstances, as a good 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 195 
 
 general will turn the forces at his command to the best 
 account." Nic. Eth. Book I. 
 
 " Excellence being of these two kinds, intellectual and 
 moral, intellectual excellence owes its birth and growth 
 mainly to instruction, and so requires time and experi- 
 ence, while moral excellence is the result of habit or 
 custom. From this' it is plain that none of the moral 
 excellences or virtues is implanted in us by nature : for 
 that which is by nature cannot be altered by training. 
 For instance, a stone naturally tends to fall downwards, 
 and you could not train it to rise upwards, though you 
 tried to do so by throwing it up ten thousand times, nor 
 could you train fire to move downwards, nor accustom 
 anything which naturally behaves in one way to behave 
 in another way. The virtues then come neither by 
 nature nor against nature, but nature gives the capacity 
 for acquiring them, and this is developed by training. 
 
 " Both virtues and vices result from and are formed 
 by the same acts in which they manifest themselves, as 
 is the case with the arts also. It is by harping that good 
 harpers and bad harpers alike are produced ; and so with 
 builders and the rest. Indeed, if it were not so, they 
 would not want anybody to teach them, but would all be 
 born either good or bad at their trades. And it is just 
 the same with the virtues also. It is by our conduct in 
 our intercourse with other men that we become just or 
 unjust, and by acting in circumstances of danger, and 
 training ourselves to feel fear and confidence, that we 
 become courageous or cowardly. In a word, the several 
 habits or characters are formed by the same kind of acts 
 as those which they produce. 
 
 "The pleasure or pain that accompanies the acts must 
 be taken as a test of the formed habit or character. He 
 who abstains from the pleasures of the body and rejoices 
 
196 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 in abstinence, is temperate, while he who is vexed at 
 having to abstain, is profligate. It is pleasure that moves 
 us to do what is base, and pain moves us to refrain from 
 what is noble. And therefore, as Plato says, man needs 
 to be so trained from his youth up as to find pleasure 
 and pain in the right objects. This is what a sound 
 education means. 
 
 " Virtue, then, has to do with feelings or passions and 
 with outward acts in which excess is wrong and de- 
 ficiency is also blamed, but the mean is praised and is 
 right — both of which are characteristics of virtue. 
 Virtue, then, is a kind of moderation in as much as it 
 aims at the mean or moderate amount. And it is a 
 moderation in as much as it comes in the middle or mean 
 between two vices, one on the side of excess, the other 
 on the side of defect, and in as much as, while these vices 
 fall short of or exceed the due measure in feeling and in 
 action, it finds and chooses the mean." Nic. Eth. 
 Book II. 
 
 " Virtue, as we have seen, has to do with feelings and 
 actions. Now praise or blame is given only to what is 
 voluntary: that which is involuntary receives pardon, 
 and sometimes pity. 
 
 " It seems, therefore, that a clear distinction between 
 the voluntary and the involuntary is necessary for those 
 who are investigating the nature of virtue, and will also 
 help legislators in assigning rewards and punishments. 
 That is generally held to be involuntary which is done 
 under compulsion or through ignorance. (That is 
 voluntary which is intentional and done with knowl- 
 edge.) 
 
 " Now that we have distinguished voluntary from in- 
 voluntary acts, our next task is to discuss choice or pur- 
 pose. For it seems to be most intimately connected with 
 
THE TRUE LIFE OF REASON AND 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 " This exercise of faculty must be the highest pos- 
 sible ; for reason is the highest of our faculties^ and of 
 all knowable things those that reason deals with are 
 the highest. 
 
 " The exercise of reason seems to be superior in 
 seriousness^ and to aim at no end beside itself and to 
 have its proper pleasure. Its exercise seems further 
 to be self-sufficient and inexhaustible^ and to have all 
 the other characteristics ascribed to happiness. A life 
 that realized this idea would be something m.ore than 
 human; for it would not be the expression of m.an's 
 nature^ but of some divine elem^ent in that nature — the 
 exercise of which is as far superior to the exercise of 
 the other kind of virtue as this divine element is su- 
 perior to our compound nature. If then reason be di- 
 vine as compared with man^ the life which consists in 
 the exercise of reason will also be divine in comparison 
 with human life. Nevertheless^ instead of listening 
 to those who advise us as men and mortals not to lift 
 our thoughts above what is human and m.ortal, we 
 ought rather, as far as possible, to pmt off our mor- 
 tality and make every effort to live in the exercise of 
 the highest of our faculties ; for though it be but a 
 small part of us, yet in pozver and value it far sur- 
 passes all the rest. And indeed this part would seem 
 to constitute our true self, since it is the sovereign attd 
 the better part. It would be strange, then, if a m.an 
 were to prefer the life of something else to the life of 
 his true self'' 
 
 From Aristotle'' s Ethics. 
 
 B. C.350. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 197 
 
 virtue, and to be a surer test of character than virtue 
 itself. 
 
 " It seems that choosing is willing, but that the two 
 terms are not identical, willing being the wider. For 
 children and animals have will, but not choice or pur- 
 pose : and acts done upon the spur of the moment are 
 said to be voluntary, but not to be done with deliberate 
 purpose. 
 
 " We have seen that, while we wish for the end, we de- 
 liberate upon and choose the means thereto. Actions 
 that are concerned with means will be guided by choice, 
 and so will be voluntary. But the acts in which the 
 virtues are manifested are concerned with means. 
 
 " Therefore, virtue depends upon ourselves : and vice 
 likewise. For where it lies with us to do, it lies with us 
 not to do. Where we can say no, we can say yes. If 
 then the doing of a deed, which is noble, lies with us, 
 the not doing it, which is disgraceful, also lies with us. 
 
 " If these statements commend themselves to us, and if 
 we are unable to trace our acts to any other sources than 
 those that depend upon ourselves, then that whose source 
 is within us must depend upon us and be voluntary. 
 This seems to be attested by each one of us in private 
 life, and also by the legislators ; for they correct and 
 punish those that do evil, except when it is done under 
 compulsion, or through ignorance for which the agent is 
 not responsible, and honor those that do noble deeds. 
 
 "I say 'ignorance for which the agent is not re- 
 sponsible,' for the ignorance itself is punished by the 
 law, if the agent appears to be responsible for his defect- 
 ive knowledge. Ignorance of any of the ordinances of 
 the law, which a man ought to know, and easily can 
 know, does not avert punishment. And so in other 
 cases, where ignorance seems to be the result of negli- 
 
198 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 gence, the ofEender is punished, since it lay with him to 
 remove this ignorance, for he might have taken the req- 
 uisite trouble. 
 
 " It might be objected that it was the man's character 
 not to take the trouble. 
 
 " We reply that men are themselves responsible for ac- 
 quiring such a character by a dissolute life, and for being 
 unjust or profligate in consequence of repeated acts of 
 wrong, or of spending their time in drinking, and so on. 
 For it is repeated acts of a particular kind that give a 
 man a particular character. 
 
 " We see, then, that of the vices of the body it is those 
 that depend on ourselves that are censured, while those 
 that do not depend upon ourselves are not censured. 
 And if this be so, then in other fields also those vices 
 that are blamed must depend upon ourselves. 
 
 " Some people may perhaps object to this. 'AH men,' 
 they may say, ' desire that which appears good to them, 
 but cannot control this appearance ; a man's character, 
 whatever it be, decides what shall appear to him to be 
 the end.' ^ 
 
 " If, I answer, each man be in some way responsible for 
 his habits of character, then in some way he must be 
 responsible for this appearance also. But if this be not 
 the case, then a man is not responsible for, or is not the 
 cause of, his own evil doing, but it is through ignorance 
 of the end that he does evil. 
 
 " Now supposing this to be true, how will virtue be any 
 more voluntary than vice? For whether it be nature or 
 anything else that determines what shall appear to be the 
 end, it is determined in the same way for both alike, for 
 the good man as well as the bad, and both alike refer all 
 their acts of whatever kind, to it. 
 
 "And so whether we hold that it is not merely nature 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 199 
 
 that decides what appears to each to be the end, but that 
 the man himself contributes something ; or whether we 
 hold that the end is fixed by nature, but that virtue is 
 voluntary, in as much as the good man voluntarily takes 
 the steps to that end — in either case vice will be just as 
 voluntary as virtue, for self is active in the bad man just 
 as much as in the good man, in choosing the particular 
 acts at least, if not in determining the end. 
 
 " We have thus described in outline the nature of the 
 virtues in general, viz., that they are forms of modera- 
 tion or modes of observing the mean, and that they are 
 habits or trained faculties ; and we have shown what 
 produces them, and how they themselves issue in the 
 performance of the same acts which produce them, and 
 that thej' depend on ourselves and are voluntary, and 
 that they follow the guidance of right reason. 
 
 " But our particular acts are not voluntary in the same 
 sense as our habits. We are masters of our acts from 
 beginning to end, when we know the particular circum- 
 stances; but we are masters of the beginnings only of 
 our habits or characters, while their growth bj' gradual 
 steps is imperceptible, like the growth of disease. In as 
 much, however, as it lay with us to employ our faculties 
 in this way, the resulting characters are on that account 
 voluntary." Nic. Eth. Book III. 
 
 "We have now to inquire about justjce and injustice, 
 and to ask what sort of acts they are concerned with, 
 and in what sense justice observes the mean, and what 
 are the extremes whose mean is that which is just. 
 
 "We see that all men intend by justice to signify the 
 sort of habit or character that makes men apt to do what 
 is lawful, and which further makes them act lawfully 
 and wish what is lawful or just. By injustice they in- 
 tend in like manner to signify the sort of character that 
 
200 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 makes men act unlawfully and wish what is unlawful 
 or unjust. 
 
 " Plainly, then, a just man will be ( i ) a law-abiding and 
 (2) a fair man. A just thing, then, will be (i) that 
 which is in accordance with law, (2) that which is fair; 
 and the unjust thing will be (i) that which is contrary 
 to law, and (2) that which is unfair. 
 
 "Now the laws prescribe about all manner of things, 
 aiming at the common interest of all, or of the best men, 
 or of those who are supreme in the state ; and so in one 
 sense we apply the term 'just' to whatever tends to pro- 
 duce and preserve the happiness of the community, and 
 the several elements of that happiness. The law bids 
 us to display courage (as not to leave our ranks, or to 
 run, or throw away our arms), and temperance, (as not 
 to commit adultery or outrage), and gentleness, (as not 
 to strike or revile our neighbors), and so on with all the 
 other virtues and vices. 
 
 "Justice, then, in this sense of the word, is complete 
 virtue, with the addition that it is displayed toward 
 others. On this account it is often spoken of as the chief 
 of the virtues, and such that ' neither evening nor morn- 
 ing star is so lovely ; ' and the saying has become 
 proverbial, 'Justice sums up all virtues in itself.' 
 
 "It is complete virtue because it is the exhibition of 
 complete excellence : it is also complete because he that 
 has it is able to exhibit virtue in dealing with his neigh- 
 bors, and not merely in his private affairs ; for there are 
 many who can be virtuous at home, but fail in dealing 
 with their neighbors. This is the reason why people 
 commend the saying of Bias : ' Office will show the man ; ' 
 for he that is in office ipso facto stands in relation to 
 others and has dealings with them. 
 
 " This too is the reason why justice alone of all the 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 201 
 
 virtues is thought to be another's good, as implying this 
 relation to others : for it is another's interest that justice 
 aims at — the interest, namely, of the ruler or of our 
 fellow-citizens. 
 
 " We have next to speak of equity and of that which 
 is equitable, and to inquire how equity is related to jus- 
 tice, and how that which is equitable to that which is just. 
 For, on consideration, they do not Beem to be absolutely 
 identical, nor yet generically different. At one time we 
 praise that which is equitable and the equitable man, 
 and even use the word metaphoricall}' as a term of praise 
 synonymous with good, showing that we consider that 
 the more equitable a thing is the better it is. At another 
 time we reflect and find it strange that what is equitable 
 should be praiseworthy, if it be different from what is 
 just; for, we argue, if it be something else, either what 
 is just is not good, or what is equitable is not good; if 
 both be good, they are the same. 
 
 " But what obscures the matter is that, though what 
 is equitable is just, it is not identical with, but a correc- 
 tion of, that which is just according to law. The reason 
 for this is that every law is laid down in general terms, 
 while there are matters about which it is impossible to 
 speak correctly in general terms. Where, then, it is nec- 
 essary to speak in general terms, but impossible to do so 
 correctly, the legislator lays down that which holds good 
 for the majority of cases, being quite aware that it does 
 not hold good for all. What is equitable, then, is just, 
 and better than what is just in one sense of the word — 
 not better than what is absolutely just, but better than 
 that which fails through its lack of qualification. And 
 the essence of what is equitable is that it is an amend- 
 ment of the law, in those points where it fails through 
 the generality of its language." Nic. Eth. Book V. 
 
202 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " Now that we have discussed the several kinds of 
 virtue, it remains to give a summary account of happi- 
 ness, since we are to assume that it is the end of all that 
 man does. 
 
 "As we have often said, that is truly valuable and 
 pleasant which is so to the perfect man. Now, the ex- 
 ercise of those trained faculties which are proper to him 
 is what each man finds most desirable ; what the perfect 
 man finds most desirable, therefore, is the exercise of 
 virtue. Happiness, consequently, does not consist in 
 amusement, and, indeed, it is absurd to suppose that the 
 end is amusement, and that we toil and moil all our life 
 long for the sake of amusing ourselves. The happj' life 
 is thought to be that which exhibits virtue ; and such a 
 life must be serious and cannot consist in amusement. 
 
 " But if happiness be the exercise of virtue, it is rea- 
 sonable to suppose that it will be the exercise of the 
 highest virtue, and that it will be the virtue or excellence 
 of the best part of us. Now that part or faculty — call it 
 reason or what you will — which seems naturally to rule 
 and take the lead, and to apprehend things noble and 
 divine — whether it be itself divine, or only the divinest 
 part of us — is the faculty, the exercise of which, in its 
 proper excellence, will be perfect happiness. 
 
 " That this consists in the contemplative life we have 
 already said. This exercise of faculty must be the high- 
 est possible ; for reason is the highest of our faculties, 
 and of all knowable things those that reason deals with 
 are the highest. We think too, that pleasure ought to 
 be one of the ingredients of happiness ; but of all virtu- 
 ous exercises it is allowed that the pleasantest is the 
 exercise of wisdom. At least philosophy is thought to 
 have pleasures that are admirable in purity and stead- 
 fastness. What is called self-sufficiency will be most of 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 203 
 
 all found in the reflective life. The necessaries of life, 
 indeed, are needed by the wise man as well as by the just 
 man and others ; but, when these have been provided in 
 due quantity, the just man further needs further persons 
 towards whom, and along with whom, he may act justly, 
 while the wise man is able to contemplate even by him- 
 self, and the wiser he is the more he is able to do this. 
 
 "The exercise of reason seems to be superior in seri- 
 ousness, and to aim at no end besides itself, and to have 
 its proper pleasure. Its exercise seems further to be 
 self-sufi&cient and inexhaustible, and to have all the other 
 characteristics ascribed to happiness. A life that realized 
 this idea would be something more than human; for it 
 would not be the expression of man's nature, but of some 
 divine element in that nature — the exercise of which is 
 as far superior to the exercise of the other kind of virtue, 
 as this divine element is superior to our compound 
 nature. If then reason be diviie as compared with man, 
 the life which consists in the exercise of reason will also 
 be divine in comparison with human life. Nevertheless, 
 instead of listening to those who advise us as men and 
 mortals, not to lift our thoughts above what is human 
 and mortal, we ought rather, as far as possible, to put 
 off our mortality and make every effort to live in the 
 exercise of the highest of our faculties ; for though it be 
 but a small part of us, yet in power and value it far sur- 
 passes all the rest. And indeed, this part would seem to 
 constitute our true self, since it is the sovereign and the 
 better part. It would be strange, then, if a man were 
 to prefer the life of something else to the life of his true 
 self. 
 
 "The life that consists in the exercise of the other 
 kind of virtue is happy in a secondary sense; for the 
 manifestation of moral virtue is emphatically human. 
 
204 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Justice, I mean, and courage and the other moral virtues 
 (contrasted with the intellectual) are displayed in our 
 relations towards one another by the observance, in every 
 case, of what is due in contracts and services, and all 
 sorts of outward acts as well as in our inward feelings. 
 All these seem to be emphatically human affairs. But 
 the happiness which consists in the exercise of the 
 reason, is separate from our lower nature. 
 
 "That perfect happiness is some kind of speculative 
 or reflective activity may also be shown in the following 
 way : 
 
 " It is always supposed that the gods are, of all beings, 
 the most blessed and happy ; but what kind of actions 
 shall we ascribe to them ? Acts of justice? Surely it is 
 ridiculous to conceive the gods engaged in trade and re- 
 storing deposits, and so on. Or acts of courage? Can 
 we conceive them enduring fearful risks and facing 
 danger because it is noble to do so ? Or acts of liberality ? 
 But to whom are they to give? Is it not absurd to sup- 
 pose that they have any money or anything of the kind? 
 And what could acts of temperance rnean with them ? 
 Surely it would be an insult to praise them for having 
 no evil desires. In short, if we were to go through the 
 whole list, we should find that all action is petty and 
 unworthy of the gods. 
 
 " And yet it is universally supposed that they live, 
 and therefore that they exert their powers ; for we can- 
 not suppose that they are sleeping like Endymion. 
 Now if a being lives, and action cannot be ascribed to 
 him, still less production, what remains but contempla- 
 tion? It follows, then, that the divine life, which sur- 
 passes all others in blessedness, consists in contempla- 
 tion." Nic. Eth. Book X. 
 
FROM ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS. 
 
 Books i and 2. 
 
 The Fundamental Nature of a Political 
 State or Government. 
 
 Status of Property — Socialisticj^jand 
 Individualistic Considered. 
 
 "Every state is a community of some kind, and every 
 community is established with a view to some good ; for 
 mankind always act in order to obtain that which they 
 think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, 
 the state or political community, which is the highest of 
 all, and which embraces all the rest, aims, and in a 
 greater degree than any other, at the highest good. 
 
 "The family is the association established by nature 
 for the supply of men's every day wants, and the mem- 
 bers of it are called by Charondas ' companions of the 
 cupboard,' and by Epimenides the Cretan, 'companions 
 of the manger.' But when several families are united, 
 and the association aims at something more than the 
 supply of daily needs, then comes into existence the 
 village. 
 
 " When several villages are united in a single com- 
 munity, perfect and large enough to be nearly or quite 
 self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating 
 in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for 
 the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier 
 
 (205) 
 
2o6 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the 
 end of them, and the (completed) nature is the end. 
 For what each thing is when fully developed, we call 
 its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, 
 or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing 
 is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the 
 best. 
 
 " Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of na- 
 ture, and that man is by nature a political animal. And 
 he who by nature and not by mere accident is without 
 a state, is either above humanity, or below it ; he is the 
 
 ' Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one,' 
 whom Homer denounces — the outcast who is a lover of 
 war; he maj' be compared to a bird which flies alone. 
 
 " Now the reason why man is more of a political ani- 
 mal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evi- 
 dent. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, 
 and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with 
 the gift of speech. 
 
 "And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has 
 any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the 
 association of living beings who have this sense makes 
 a family and a state. 
 
 " The proof that the state is a creation of nature and 
 prior to the individual is that the individual, when 
 isolated, is not self-sufficing ; and therefore he is like a 
 part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to 
 live in society, or who has no need because he is suffi- 
 cient for himself, must be either a beast or a god : he is 
 no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all 
 men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state 
 was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when per- 
 fected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from 
 law and justice, he is the worst of all ; since armed in- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 207 
 
 justice is the more dangerous, and lie is equipped at birth 
 with the arms of intelligence and with moral qualities 
 which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he 
 have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most 
 savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. 
 But justice is the bond of men in states, and the ad- 
 ministration of justice, which is the determination of 
 what is just, is the principle of order in political society. 
 
 " The relations of husband and wife, paTffit and child, 
 their several virtues, what in their intercourse with one 
 another is good, and what is evil, and how we may 
 pursue the good and escape the evil, will have to be dis- 
 cussed when we speak of the different forms of govern- 
 ment. For, inasmuch as every family is a part of a 
 state, and these relationships are the parts of a family, 
 the virtue of the part must have regard to the virtue of 
 the whole. And therefore women and children must be 
 trained by education with an eye to the state, if the 
 virtues of either of them are supposed to make any dif- 
 ference in the virtues of the state. And they must make 
 a difference : for the children grow up to be citizens, and 
 half the free persons in a state are wonen. 
 
 "Next let us consider what should be our arrangements 
 about property : should the citizens of the perfect state 
 have their possessions in common or not ? 
 
 " Property should be in a certain sense common, but, as 
 a general rule, private ; for, when everyone has a distinct 
 interest, men will not complain of one another, and they 
 will make more progress, because every one will be at- 
 tending to his own business. And yet among the good, 
 and in respect of use, 'Friends,' as the proverb says, 
 'will have all things common.' 
 
 " No one, when men have all things in common, will 
 any longer set an example of liberality or do any liberal 
 
2o8 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 action; for liberality consists in the use which is made 
 of property. 
 
 " Such legislation may have a specious appearance of 
 benevolence; men readily listen to it, and are easily in- 
 duced to believe that in some wonderful manner every- 
 body will become everybodj'''s friend, especially when 
 some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in 
 states, suits about contracts, convictions for perjury, 
 flatteries of rich men and the like, which are said to 
 arise out of the possession of private property. These 
 evils, however, are due to a very different cause — the 
 wickedness of human nature. Indeed, we see that there 
 is more quarreling among those who have all things in 
 common, though there are not many of them when com- 
 pared with the vast numbers who have private property. 
 
 " Some, indeed, say that the best constitution is a com- 
 bination of all existing forms, and they praise the 
 Lacedaemonian because it is made up of oligarchy, 
 monarchy, and democracy, the king forming the mon- 
 archy, and the council of elders the oligarchy, while the 
 democratic element is represented by the Ephors; for 
 the Ephors are selected from the people. Others, how- 
 ever, declare the Ephoralty to be a tyranny, and find the 
 element of democracy in the common meals and in the 
 habits of daily life. In the Laws,* it is maintained that 
 the best state is made up of democracy and tyranny, 
 which are either not constitutions at all, or are the worst 
 of all. But they are nearer the truth who combine many 
 forms ; for the state is better which is made up of more 
 numerous elements. The constitution proposed in the 
 Laws has no element of monarchy at all ; it is nothing 
 but oligarchy and democracy,leaning rather to oligarchy. 
 
 " In the opinion of some, the regulation of property is 
 the chief point of all, that being the question upon which 
 
 * Plato*s ' ' Laws " is liere referred to. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 209 
 
 all revolutions turn. This danger was recognized by 
 Phaleas of Chalcedon, who was the first to affirm that 
 the citizens of a state ought to have equal possessions. 
 He thought that in a new colony the equalization might 
 be accomplished without difficulty, not so easily when 
 a state was already established ; and that then the short- 
 est way of compassing the desired end would be for the 
 rich to give and not to receive hiarriage portions, and 
 for the poor not to give but to receive them. 
 
 " Plato in the Laws was of opinion that, to a certain 
 extent, accumulation should be allowed, forbidding, as 
 I have already observed, any citizen to possess more 
 than five times the minimum qualification. But those 
 who make such laws should remember what they are 
 apt to forget, — that the legislator who fixes the amount 
 of property should also fix the number of children ; for, 
 if the children are too many for the property, the law 
 must be broken. And, besides the violation of the law, 
 it is a bad thing that many from being rich should be- 
 come poor ; for men of ruined fortunes are sure to stir 
 up revolutions. That the equalization of property 
 exercises an influence on political society was clearly 
 understood even by some of the old legislators. Laws 
 were made by Solon and others prohibiting an individual 
 from possessing as much land as he pleased ; and there 
 are other laws in states which forbid the sale of propert}' : 
 among the Locrians, for example, there is a law that a 
 man is not to sell his property unless he can prove un- 
 mistakably that some misfortune has befallen him. 
 Again, there have been laws which enjoin the preserva- 
 tion of the original lots. Such a law existed in the 
 island of Leucas, and the abrogation of it made the con- 
 stitution too democratic, for the rulers no longer had the 
 prescribed qualification." 
 
FROM ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS. 
 
 Book IIL 
 
 Citizens and States of Various Kinds Considered. 
 
 The Best Forms of Government and 
 
 THE Best Citizen Discussed. 
 
 " He who would inquire into the nature and various 
 kinds of government must first of all determine 'What is 
 a state? ' At present this is a disputed question. But a 
 state is composite, and, like any other whole, made up 
 of many parts — these are the citizens, who compose it. 
 It is evident, therefore, that we must begin by asking. 
 Who is the citizen, and what is the meaning of the term ? 
 For here again there may be a difference of opinion. 
 He who is a citizen in a democracy will often not be a 
 citizen in an oligarchy. 
 
 "But the citizen, whom we are seeking to define, is a 
 citizen in the strictest sense, against whom no such ex- 
 ception can be taken, and his special characteristic is 
 that he shares in the administration of justice, and in 
 offices. 
 
 " The citizen then of necessity differs under each form 
 of government ; and our definition is best adapted to the 
 citizens of a democracy; but not necessarily to other 
 states. 
 
 " He who has the power to take part in the deliberative 
 
 or judicial administration of any state is said by us to 
 
 (210) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 211 
 
 be a citizen of that state ; and speaking generally, a state 
 is a body of citizens sufficing for the purposes of life. 
 
 " But in practice a citizen is defined to be one of whom 
 both the parents are citizens; others insist on going 
 further back ; say to two or three or more grandparents. 
 This is a short and practical definition ; but there are 
 some who raise the further question : How this third or 
 fourth ancestor came to be a citizen? Gorgias of 
 Leontina, partly because he was in a difficulty, partly 
 in irony, said — ' Mortars are made by the mortar-makers, 
 and the citizens of Larissa are also a manufactured 
 article, made, like the kettles which bear their name, 
 by the magistrates.' Yet the question is really simple, 
 for, if according to the definition just given they shared 
 in the government, they were citizens. (This is a better 
 definition than the other). For the words, 'born of a 
 father or mother, who is a citizen,' cannot possibly 
 apply to the first inhabitants or founders of a state. 
 
 "It has been well said that 'he who has never learned 
 to obey cannot be a good commander.' The two are 
 not the same, but the good citizen ought to be capable 
 of both ; he should know how to govern like a freeman, 
 and how to obey like a freeman — these are the virtues 
 of a citizen. And, although the temperance and justice 
 of a ruler are distinct from those of a subject, the virtue 
 of a good man will include both : for the good man, who 
 is free and also a subject, will not have one virtue only, 
 say justice — but he will have distinct kinds of virtue, 
 the one qualifying him to rule, the other to obey, and 
 differing as the temperance and courage of men and 
 women differ. 
 
 "Since there are many forms of government, there must 
 be many varieties of citizens, and especially of citizens 
 who are subjects; so that under some governments the 
 
212 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 mechanic and the laborer will be citizens, but not in 
 others, as, for example, in aristocracy or the so-called 
 government of the best (if there be such an one), in 
 which honors are given according to virtue and merit; 
 for no man can practice virtue who is living the life of a 
 mechanic or laborer. In oligarchies the qualification 
 for office is high, and therefore no laborer can ever be 
 a citizen ; but a mechanic may, for many of them are 
 rich. At Thebes there was a law that no man could 
 hold office who had not retired from business for ten 
 years. In many states the law goes to the length of 
 admitting aliens ; for in some democracies a man is a 
 citizen though his mother only be a citizen (and his 
 father an alien) ; and a similar principle is applied to 
 illegitimate children ; the law is relaxed when there is a 
 dearth of population. But when the number of citizens 
 increases, first the children of a male or a female slave 
 are excluded ; then those whose mothers only are citizens ; 
 and at last the right of citizenship is confined to those 
 whose fathers and mothers are both citizens. 
 
 "Hence, as is evident, there are different kinds of 
 citizens; and he is a citizen in the highest sense who 
 shares in the honors of the state. In the poems of 
 Homer (Achilles complains of Agamemnon treating 
 him) 'like some dishonored stranger,' for he who is ex- 
 cluded from the honors of the state is no better than an 
 alien. But when this exclusion is concealed, then the 
 object is to deceive the inhabitants. 
 
 " Having determined these questions, we have next to 
 consider whether there is only one form of government 
 or many, and if many, what they are, and how many, 
 and what are the differences between them. 
 
 "A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in 
 a state, especially of the highest of all. The govern- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 213 
 
 ment is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the con- 
 stitution is in fact the government. For example, in 
 democracies the people are supreme, but in oligarchies, 
 the few; and, therefore, we say that these two forms of 
 government are different ; and so in other cases. 
 
 " First, let us consider what is the purpose of a state, 
 and how many forms of government there are by which 
 human society is regulated. We have already said, in 
 the former part of this treatise, when drawing a dis- 
 tinction between household management and the rule 
 of a master, that man is by nature a political animal. 
 And therefore, men, even when they do not require one 
 another's help, desire to live together all the same, and 
 are in fact brought together by their common interests 
 in proportion as they severally attain to any measure of 
 well-being. This is certainly the chief end, both of in- 
 dividuals and of states. And also for the sake of mere 
 life (in which there is possiblj' some noble element) 
 mankind meet together and maintain the political com- 
 munity, so long as the evils of existence do not greatly 
 overbalance the good. And we all see that men cling 
 to life even in the midst of misfortune, seeming to find 
 in it a natural sweetness and happiness. 
 
 "There is no difficulty in distinguishing the various 
 kinds of authority ; they have been often defined already 
 in popular works. The rule of a master, although the 
 slave by nature and the master by nature, have in reality 
 the same interests, is nevertheless exercised primarily 
 with a view to the interest of the master, but acciden- 
 tally considers the slave, since, if the slave perish, the 
 rule of the master perishes with him. On the other 
 hand, the government of a wife and children and of a 
 household, which we have called household-management, 
 is exercised in the first instance for the good of the 
 
214 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 governed or for the common good of both parties, but 
 essentially for the good of the governed. 
 
 " Having determined these points, we have next to 
 consider how many forms of government there are, and 
 what they are ; and in the first place what are the true 
 forms, for when they are determined the perversions of 
 them will at once be apparent. The words constitution 
 and government have the same meaning, and the gov- 
 ernment, which is the supreme authority in states, must 
 be in the hands of one, or of a few, or of many. The 
 true forms of government, therefore, are those in which 
 the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to 
 the common interest; but governments which rule with 
 a view to the private interest, whether of the one, or of 
 the few, or of the many, are perversions. For citizens, 
 if they are truly citizens, ought to participate in the ad- 
 vantages of a state. Of forms of government in which 
 one rules, we call that which regards the common in- 
 terests, kingship or royalty ; that in which more than 
 one, but not many, rule, aristocracy (the rule of the 
 best) ; and it is so called, either because the rulers are 
 the best men, or because they have at heart the best in- 
 terests of the state and of the citizens. But when the 
 citizens at large administer the state for the common in- 
 terest, the government is called by the generic name, — 
 a constitution. And there is a reason for this use of 
 language. One man or a few may excel in virtue; but 
 of virtue there are many kinds : and as the number in- 
 creases it becomes more diflScult for them to attain per- 
 fection in every kind, though they may in military virtue, 
 for this is found in the masses. Hence, in a constitu- 
 tional government the fighting-men have the supreme 
 power, and those who possess arms are the citizens. 
 
 "Of the above-mentioned forms, the perversions areas 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 215 
 
 follows : — of royalty, tyranny ; of aristocracy, oligarchy ; 
 of constitutional government, democracy. For tyranny 
 is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interests 
 of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest 
 of the wealthy ; democracy, of the needy ; none of them 
 the common good of all. 
 
 "The argument seems to show that, whether in oli- 
 garchies or in democracies, the number of the governing 
 body, whether the greater number, as in a democracy, 
 or the smaller number, as in an oligarchy, is an accident 
 due to the fact that the rich everywhere are few, and 
 the poor numerous. But if so, there is a misapprehen- 
 sion of the causes of the difference between them. For 
 the real difference between democracy and oligarchy is 
 poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of 
 their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an;; 
 oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.' 
 But as a fact the rich are few and the poor many ; for 
 few are well-to-do, whereas, freedom is enjoyed by all, 
 and wealth and freedom are the grounds on which the 
 oligarchical and democratical parties respectively claim 
 power in the state. 
 
 "Let us begin by considering the common definitions 
 of oligarchy and democracy, and what is justice oli- 
 garchical and democratical. For all men cling to justice 
 of some kind, but their conceptions are imperfect and 
 they do not express the whole idea. For example, jus- 
 tice is thought by them to be, and is, equality, not, how- 
 ever, for all, but only for equals. And inequality is 
 thought to be, and is, justice; neither is this for all, but 
 only for unequals. When the persons are omitted, then 
 men judge erroneously. The reason is that they are 
 passing judgment on themselves, and most people are 
 bad judges in their own case. 
 
2i6 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " But a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not 
 for the sake of life only: if life only were the object, 
 slaves and brute animals might form a state, but they 
 cannot, for they have no share in happiness or in a life 
 of free choice. Nor does a state exist for the sake of 
 alliance and security from injustice, nor yet for the sake 
 of exchange and mutual intercourse; for then the 
 Tyrrhenians and the Carthaginians, and all who have 
 commercial treaties with one another, would be the 
 citizens of one state. 
 
 "Whereas, those who are for good government take 
 into consideration (the larger question of) virtue and 
 vice in states. Whence it may be further inferred that 
 virtue must be the serious care of a state which truly 
 deserves the name; for (without this ethical end) the 
 community becomes a mere alliance which differs only 
 in place from alliances of which the members live apart ; 
 and law is only a convention, ' a surety to one another 
 of justice,' as the sophist Lycophron says, and has no 
 real power to make the citizens good and just. 
 
 " It is clear, then, that a state is not a mere society, 
 having a common place, established for the prevention 
 of crime and for the sake of exchange. These are con- 
 ditions without which a state cannot exist ; but all of 
 them together do not constitute a state, which is a cohit 
 munity of well-being in families and aggregations of 
 families, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. 
 Such a community can only be established among those 
 who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise 
 in cities family connections, brotherhoods, common 
 sacrifices, amusements which draw men together. They 
 are created by friendship, for friendship is the motive of 
 society. The end is the good life, and these are the 
 means towards it. And the state is the union of families 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 217 
 
 and villages having for an end a perfect and self-suflfic 
 ing life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life. 
 
 " Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists 
 for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companion- 
 ship. And they who contribute most to such a society 
 have a greater share in it .than those who have the same 
 or a greater freedom or nobility of birth but are inferior 
 to them in political virtue; or than those who exceed 
 them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue. 
 
 " From what has been said it will be clearly seen that 
 all the partisans of different forms of government speak 
 of a part of justice only. 
 
 " There is also a doubt as to what is to be the supreme 
 power in the state: — Is it the multitude? Or the 
 wealthy? Or the good? Or the one best man? Or a 
 tyrant? Any of these alternatives seems to involve 
 disagreeable consequences. If the poor, for example, 
 because they are more in number, divide among them- 
 selves the property of the rich, — is not this un j ust ? No, 
 by heaven (will be the reply), for the lawful authority 
 (z. e., the people) willed it. But if this is not injustice, 
 pray what is? Again, when (in the first division) all 
 has been taken, and the majority divide anew the prop- 
 erty of the minority, is it not evident, if this goes on, 
 that they will ruin the state? Yet surely, virtue is not 
 the ruin of those who possess her, nor is justice destruc- 
 tive of a state; and therefore this law of confiscation 
 clearly cannot be just. If it were, all the acts of a tyrant 
 must of necessity be just; for he only coerces other men 
 by superior power, just as the multitude coerce the rich. 
 But is it just then that the few and the wealthy should 
 be the rulers? And what if they, in like manner, rob 
 and plunder the people, — is this just? If so, the other 
 case (J., e., the case of the majority plundering the 
 
2i8 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 minority) will likewise be just. But there can be no 
 doubt that all these things are wrong and unjust. 
 
 " Most of these questions may be reserved for another 
 occasion. The principle that the multitude ought to be 
 supreme rather than the few best is capable of a satis- 
 factory explanation, and, though not free from difficulty, 
 yet seems to contain an element of truth. For the many, 
 of whom each individual is but an ordinary per-son, 
 when they meet together may very likely be better than 
 the few good, if regarded not individually but collective- 
 ly, just as a feast to which many contribute, is better 
 than a dinner provided out of a single purse. For each 
 individual among the many has a share of virtue and 
 prudence, and when they meet together they become in 
 a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and 
 senses; that is, a figure of their mind and disposition. 
 Hence the many are better judges than a single man of 
 music and poetry ; for some understand one part, and 
 some another, and among them, they understand the 
 whole. There is a similar combination of qualities in 
 good men, who differ from any individual of the many, 
 as the beautiful are said to differ from those who are 
 not beautiful, and works of art from realities, because 
 in them the scattered elements are combined, although, 
 if taken separately, the eye of one person or some other 
 feature in another person, would be fairer than in the 
 picture. Whether this principle can apply to every 
 democracy, and to all bodies of men, is not clear. Or 
 rather, by heaven, in some cases it is impossible of ap- 
 plication ; for the argument would equally hold about 
 brutes ; and wherein, it will be asked, do some men differ 
 from brutes? But there may be bodies of men about 
 whom our statement is nevertheless true. And if so, 
 the difficulty which has been already raised, and also 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 219 
 
 another which is akin to it — viz., what power should be 
 assigned to the mass of freemen and citizens, who are 
 not rich and have no personal merit — are both solved. 
 There is still a danger in allowing them to share the 
 great offices of state, for their folly will lead them into 
 error, and their dishonesty into crime. But there is a 
 danger also in not letting them share, for a state, in 
 which many poor men are excluded from office will nec- 
 essarily be full of enemies. The only way of escape is 
 to assign to them some deliberative and judicial 
 functions. For this reason Solon and certain other 
 legislators give them the power of electing to offices, and 
 of calling the magistrates to account, but they do not 
 allow them to hold office singly. When they meet to- 
 gether their perceptions are quite good enough, and 
 combined with the better class they are useful to the 
 state (just as impure food when mixed with what is 
 pure, sometimes makes the entire mass more wholesome 
 than a small quantity of the pure would be), but each 
 individual, left to himself, forms an imperfect judgment. 
 "Now, does not the same principle apply to elections? 
 For a right election can only be made by those who 
 have knowledge ; a geometrician, for example, will 
 choose rightly in matters of geometry, or a pilot in mat- 
 ters of steering; and, even if there be some occupations 
 and arts with which private petsons are familiar, they 
 certainly cannot judge better than those who know. 
 So that, according to this argument, neither the election 
 of magistrates, nor the calling of them to account, should 
 be intrusted to the many. Yet possibly these objections 
 are to a great extent met by our old answer, that if the 
 people are not utterly degraded, although individually 
 they may be worse judges than those who have special 
 knowledge — as a body they are as good or better. More- 
 
220 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 over, there are some artists whose works are judged of 
 solely, or in the best manner, not by themselves, but by 
 those who do not possess the art ; for example, the 
 knowledge of the house is not limited to the builder only ; 
 the user, or, in other words, the master, of the house 
 will even be a better judge than the builder, just as the 
 pilot will judge better of a rudder than the carpenter, 
 and the guest will judge better of a feast than the cook. 
 
 " In all sciences and arts the end is a good, and especi- 
 ally and above all in the highest of all — this is the 
 political science of which the good is justice, in other 
 words, the common interest. All men think justice to 
 be a sort of equality ; and to a certain extent they agree 
 in the philosophical distinctions which have been laid 
 down by us about Ethics. For they admit that justice 
 is a thing having relation to persons, and that equals 
 ought to have equality. But there still remains a ques- 
 tion ; equality or inequality of what ? Here is a difficulty 
 which the political philosopher has to resolve. For 
 verj' likely some persons will say that offices of state 
 ought to be unequally distributed according to superior 
 excellence, in whatever respect, of the citizen, although 
 there is no other difference between him and the rest of 
 the community ; for that those who differ in any one 
 respect have different rights and claims. But, surely, if 
 this is true, the complexion or height of a man, or any 
 other advantage, will be a reason for his obtaining a 
 greater share of political rights. 
 
 "But since no such comparison can be made, it is evi- 
 dent that there is good reason, why in politics men do 
 not ground their claim to office on every sort of in- 
 equality any more than in the arts. For if some be 
 slow, and others swift, that is no reason why the one 
 should have little and the others much ; it is in gymnastic 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 221 
 
 contests that such excellence is rewarded. Whereas the 
 rival claims of candidates for office 'can only be based on 
 the possession of elements which enter into the com- 
 position of a state, (such as wealth, virtue, etc.) And 
 therefore the noble, or free-born, or rich, may with good 
 reason claim office; for holders of offices must be free- 
 men and taxpayers ; a state can be no more composed 
 entirely of poor men than entirely of slaves. But if 
 wealth and freedom are necessary elements, justice and 
 valor are equally so ; for without the former a state 
 cannot exist at all, without the latter, not well. 
 
 " If the existence of the state is alone to be considered, 
 then it would seem that all, or some at least, of these 
 claims are just; but, if we take into account a good life, 
 as I have already said, education and virtue have su- 
 perior claims. As, however, those who are equal in one 
 thing ought not to be equal in all, nor those who are 
 unequal in one thing to be unequal in all, it is certain 
 that all forms of government which rest on either of 
 these principles are perversions. All men have a claim 
 in a certain sense, as I have already admitted, but they 
 have not an absolute claim. The rich claim because 
 they have a greater share in the land, and land is the 
 common element of the state ; also they are generally 
 more trustworthy in contracts. The free claim under 
 the same title as the noble; for they are nearly akin. 
 And the noble are citizens in a truer sense than the 
 ignoble, since good birth is always valued in a man's 
 own home and country. Another reason is, that those 
 who are sprung from better ancestors are likely to be 
 better men, for nobility is excellence of race. Virtue, 
 too, may be truly said to have a claim, for justice has 
 been acknowledged by us to be a social virtue, and it 
 implies all others. Again, the many may urge their 
 
222 Ethics qf the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 claim against the few ; for, when taken collectively, and 
 compared with the few, they are stronger and richer and 
 better. But, what if the good, the rich, the noble, and 
 the other classes who make up a state, are all living to- 
 gether in the same city, will there, or will there not, be 
 any doubt who shall rule? — No doubt at all in determin- 
 ing who ought to rule in each of the above-mentioned 
 forms of government. For states are characterized by 
 differences in their governing bodies — one of them has 
 a government of the rich, another of the virtuous, and 
 so on. But a difficulty arises when all these elements 
 co-exist. How are we to decide ? Suppose the virtuous 
 to be very few in number; may we consider their 
 numbers in relation to their duties, and ask whether 
 they are enough to administer the state, or must they 
 be so many as will make up a state? Objections may 
 be urged against all the aspirants to political power. 
 For those who found their claims on wealth or family 
 have no basis of j ustice ; on this principle, if any one 
 person were richer than all the rest, it is clear that he 
 ought to be the ruler of them. In like manner he who 
 is very distinguished by his birth ought to have the 
 superiority over all those who claim on the ground that 
 they are free-born. In an aristocracy, or government of 
 the best, a like difficulty occurs about virtue ; for if one 
 citizen be better than the other members of the govern- 
 ment, however good they may be, he too, upon the same 
 principle of justice, should rule over them. And if the 
 people are to be supreme because they are stronger than 
 the few, then if one man, or more than one, but not a 
 majority, is stronger than the many, they ought to rule, 
 and not the many. 
 
 "All these considerations appear to show that none of 
 the principles on which men claim to rule, and hold all 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 223 
 
 other men in subjection to them, are strictly right. To 
 those who claim to be masters of the state on the ground 
 of their virtue or their wealth, the many might fairly 
 answer that they themselves are often better and richer 
 than the few — I do not say individually, but collectively. 
 And another ingenious objection which is sometimes 
 put forward may be met in a similar manner. Some 
 persons doubt whether the legislator who desires to 
 make the justest laws ought to legislate with a view to 
 the good of the higher clashes or of the many, when the 
 case which we have mentioned occurs {i. e. when all the 
 elements co-exist.) Now what is just or right is to be 
 interpreted in the sense of "what is equal;" and that 
 which is right in the sense of being equal is to be con- 
 sidered with reference to the advantage of the state, and 
 the common good of the citizens. And a citizen is one 
 who shares in governing and being governed. He 
 differs under different forms of government, but in the 
 best state he is one who is able and willing to be 
 governed and to govern with a view to the life of virtue. 
 " If, however, there be some one person, or more than 
 one, although not enough to make up the full comple- 
 ment of a state, whose virtue is so pre-eminent that the 
 virtues or the political power of all the rest admit of no 
 comparison with his or theirs, he or they can be no 
 longer regarded as part of a state ; for justice will not 
 be done to the superior, if he is reckoned only as the 
 equal of those who are so far inferior to him in virtue 
 and in political power. Such an one may truly be 
 deemed a God among men. Hence we see that legisla- 
 tion is necessarily concerned only with those who are 
 equal in birth and in power ; and that for men of pre- 
 eminent virtue there is no law — they are themselves a 
 law. Any one would be ridiculous who attempted to 
 
224 Ethics of the Greek Phitosophers. 
 
 make laws for them. And for this reason democratic 
 states have instituted ostracism ; equality is above all 
 tilings their aim, and therefore they ostracise and banish 
 from the city for a time those who seem to predominate 
 too much through their wealth, or the number of their 
 friends, or through any other political influence. 
 
 " The problem is a universal one, and equally concerns 
 all forms of government, true as well as false; for, 
 although perverted forms with a view to their own in- 
 terests may adopt this policy, those which seek the 
 common interest do so likewise. 
 
 " Hence where there is an acknowledged superiority the 
 argument in favor of ostracism is based upon a kind of 
 political justice. It would certainly be better that the 
 legislator should, from the first so order his state as to 
 have no need of such a remedy. But if the need arises, 
 the next best thing is that he should endeavor to correct 
 the evil by this or some similar measure. The principle, 
 however, has not been fairly applied in states ; for, in- 
 stead of looking to the public good, they have used 
 ostracism for factious purposes. It is true that under 
 perverted forms of government, and from their special 
 point of view, such a measure is just and expedient, but 
 it is also clear that it is not absolutely just. In the 
 perfect state there would be great doubts about the use 
 of it, not when applied to excess in strength, wealth, 
 popularity, or the like, but when used against some one 
 who is pre-eminent in virtue, — what is to be done with 
 him? Mankind will not say that such an one is to be 
 expelled and exiled; on the other hand, he ought not 
 to be a subject^that would be as if in the division of 
 the empire of the Gods, the other Gods should claim to 
 rule over Zeus. The only alternative is that all should 
 joyfully obey such a ruler, according to what seems to 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 225 
 
 be the order of nature, and that men like him should be 
 kings in their state for life. 
 
 "The preceding discussion, by a natural transition, 
 leads to the consideration of royalty, which we admit to 
 be one of the true forms of government. Let us see 
 whether, in order to be well governed, a state or country 
 should be under the rule of a king or under some other 
 form of government; and whether monarchy, although 
 . good for some, may not be bad for others. But first we 
 must determine whether there is one species of royalty 
 or many. It is easy to see that there are many, and that 
 the manner of government is not the same in all of them. 
 
 " These, then, are the four kinds of royalty. First the 
 monarchy of the heroic ages; this was exercised over 
 voluntary subjects, but limited to certain functions; the 
 king was a general and a judge, and had the control of 
 religion. The second is that of the barbarians, which is 
 an hereditary despotic government in accordance with 
 law. A third is the power of the so-called Aesymnete 
 or Dictator ; this is an elective tyranny. The fourth is 
 the Lacedaemonian, which is in fact a generalship, he- 
 reditary and perpetual. These four forms differ from 
 one another in the manner which I have described. 
 
 " There is a fifth form of kingly rule in which one has 
 the disposal of all, just as each tribe or each state has 
 the disposal of the public property ; this form corre- 
 sponds to the control of a household. For as household 
 management is the kingly rule of a house, so kingly rule 
 is the household management of a city, or of a nation, 
 or of many nations. 
 
 " Of these forms we need only consider two, the 
 Lacedaemonian and the absolute royalty ; for most of the 
 others lie in a region between them, having less power 
 than the last, and more than the first. Thus the inquiry 
 
226 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 is reduced to two points: first, is it advantageous to the 
 state that there should be a perpetual general, and if so, 
 should the office be confined to one family, or open to 
 the citizens in turn ? Secondly, is it well that a single 
 man should have the supreme power in all things ? The 
 first question falls under the head of laws rather than of 
 constitutions; for perpetual generalship might equally 
 exist under any form of government, so that this matter 
 may be dismissed for the present. The other kind of 
 royalty is a sort of constitution ; this we have now to ' 
 consider, and briefly to run over the difficulties involved 
 in it. We will begin by inquiring whether it is more 
 advantageous to be ruled by the best man or by the best 
 laws. 
 
 "The advocates of royalty maintain that the laws speak 
 only in general terms, and cannot provide for circum- 
 stances; and that for any science to abide by written 
 rules is absurd. Even in Egypt the physician is allowed 
 to alter his treatment after the fourth day, but if sooner, 
 he takes the risk. Hence it is argued that a govern- 
 ment acting according to written laws is plainly not the 
 best. Yet surely the ruler cannot dispense with the 
 general principle which exists in law ; and he is a better 
 ruler who is free from passion than he who is passionate. 
 Whereas the law is passionless, passion must ever sway 
 the heart of man. 
 
 " Yes, some one will answer, but then On the other hand 
 an individual will be better able to advise in particular 
 cases. (To whom we in turn make reply :) A king 
 must legislate, and laws must be passed, but these laws 
 will have no authority when they miss the mark, though 
 in all other cases retaining their authority. (Yet a 
 further question remains behind :) When the law can- 
 not determine a point at all, or not well, should the one 
 
, Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 227 
 
 best man, or should all, decide ? According to our pres- 
 ent practice assemblies meet, sit in judgment, deliberate 
 and decide, and their judgments all relate to individual 
 cases. Now any member of the assembly, taken sepa- 
 rately, is certainly inferior to the wise man. But the 
 state is made up of many individuals. And as a feast 
 to which all the guests contribute is better than a 
 banquet furnished by a single man, so a multitude is a 
 better j udge of many things than any individual. 
 
 "Again, the many are more incorruptible than the few; 
 they are like the greater quantity of water which is less 
 easily corrupted than a little. The individual is liable 
 to be overcome by anger or by some other passion, and 
 then his judgment is necessarily perverted; but it is 
 hardly to be supposed that a great number of persons 
 would all get into a passion and go wrong at the same 
 moment. Let us assume that they are freemen, never 
 acting in violation of the law, but filling up the gaps 
 which the law is obliged to leave. Or, if such virtue is 
 scarcely attainable by the multitude, we need only sup- 
 pose that the majority are good men and good citizens, 
 and ask which will be the more incorruptible, the one 
 good ruler, or the many who are all good? Will not 
 the many? But, you will say, there may be parties 
 among them, whereas the one man is not divided against 
 himself. To which we may answer that their character 
 is as good as his. If we call the rule of many men, who 
 are all of them good, aristocracy, and the rule of one 
 man royalty, then aristocracy will be better for states 
 than royalty, whether the government is supported by 
 force or not, provided only that a number of men equal 
 in virtue, can be found. 
 
 " The first governments were kingships, probably for 
 this reason, because of old, when cities were small, men 
 
228 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 of eminent virtue were few. They were made kings 
 because they were benefactors, and benefits can only be 
 bestowed by good men. But when many persons equal 
 in merit arose, no longer enduring the pre-eminence of 
 one, they desired to have a commonwealth, and set up a 
 constitution. The ruling class soon deteriorated and 
 enriched themselves out of the public treasury ; riches 
 became the path to honor, and so oligarchies naturally 
 grew up. These passed into tyrannies and tyrannies 
 into democracies; for love of gain in the ruling classes 
 was always tending to diminish their number, and so to 
 strengthen the masses, who in the end set upon their 
 masters and established democracies. Since cities have 
 increased in size, no other form of government appears 
 to be any longer possible. 
 
 " Now, absolute tnonarchy, or the arbitrary rule of a 
 sovereign over all the citizens, in a city which consists 
 of equals, is thought by some to be quite contrary to 
 nature ; it is argued that those who are by nature equals 
 must have the same natural right and worth, and that 
 for unequals to have an equal share, or for equals to 
 have an unequal share, in the offices of state, is as bad 
 as for different bodily constitutions to have the same 
 food and clothing or the same different. Wherefore, it 
 is thought to be just, that among equals every one be 
 ruled as well as rule, and that all should have their turn. 
 We thus arrive at law ; for an order of succession implies 
 law. And the rule of the law is preferable to that of 
 any individual. On the same principle, even if it be 
 better for certain individuals to govern, they should be 
 made only guardians and ministers of the law. 
 
 " He who bids the law rule,may be deemed to bid God 
 and Reason alone rule, but he who bids man rule adds 
 an element of the beast ; for desire is a wild beast, and 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 229 
 
 passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they 
 are the best of men. The law is reason unaffected by 
 desire. 
 
 "Hence it is evident, that in seeking for justice men 
 seek for the mean or neutral, and the law is the mean. 
 Again, customary laws have more weight, and relate to 
 more important matters, than written laws, and a man 
 may be a safer ruler than the written law, but not safer 
 than the customary law. 
 
 " If, as I said before, the good man has a right to rule 
 because he is better, then two good men are better than 
 one: this is the old saying. 
 
 "Now, from what has been said, it is manifest that, 
 where men are alike and equal, it is neither expedient 
 nor just that one man should be lord of all, whether 
 there are laws or whether there are no laws, but he him- 
 self is in the place of law. Neither should a good man 
 be lord over good men, or a bad man over bad; nor, even 
 if he excels in virtue, should he have a right to rule, un- 
 less in a particular case, which I have already mentioned, 
 and to which I will once more recur. But first of all, I 
 must determine what natures are suited for royalties, 
 and what for an aristocracy, and what for a constitution- 
 al government. 
 
 "A people who are by nature capable of producing a 
 race superior in virtue and political talent are fitted for 
 kingly government; and a people submitting to be ruled 
 as freemen by men whose virtue renders them capable 
 of political command are adapted for an aristocracy ; 
 while the people who are suited for constitutional free- 
 dom, are those among whom there naturally exists a 
 warlike multitude able to rule and to obey, in turn by a 
 law which gives office to the well-to-do according to 
 their desert. 
 
230 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " We maintain that the true forms of government are 
 three, and that the best must be . that which is ad- 
 ministered by the best, and in which there is one man, 
 or a whole family, or many persons, excelling in virtue, 
 and both rulers and subjects are fitted, the one to rule, 
 the others to be ruled, in such a manner as to attain the 
 most eligible life. We showed at the commencement of 
 our inquiry that the virtue of the good man is neces- 
 saril}' the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect 
 state. Clearly then in the same manner, and by the 
 same means through which a man becomes truly good, 
 he will frame a state (which will be truly good) whether 
 aristocratical, or under kingly rule, and the same educa- 
 tion and same habits will be found to make a good man, 
 and a good statesman and king." 
 
THE BEST CONSTITUTION FOR A STATE. 
 
 Preponderance of the Middle Class Recommended. 
 From Aristotle's Politics, Book IV. 
 
 " We have now to enquire what is the best constitution 
 for most states, and the best life for most men, neither 
 assuming a standard of virtue which is above ordinarj' 
 persons, nor an education which is exceptionally favored 
 by nature and circumstances, nor yet an ideal state 
 which is an aspiration only, but having regard to the 
 life in which the majority are able to share, and to the 
 form of government which states in general can attain. 
 As to those aristocracies, as they are called, of which we 
 were just now speaking, they either lie beyond the pos- 
 sibilities of the greater number of states, or they ap- 
 proximate to the so-called constitutional government, 
 and therefore need no separate discussion. And in fact 
 the conclusion at which we arrive respecting all these 
 forms rests upon the same grounds. For if it has been 
 truly said in the Ethics that the happy life is the life 
 according to unimpeded virtue, and that virtue is a mean, 
 then the life which is in a mean, and in a mean attain- 
 able by every one, must be the best. And the same 
 principles of virtue and vice are characteristic of cities 
 and of constitutions ; for the constitution is in a figure 
 
 the life of the city. 
 
 (231) 
 
232 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " Now in all states there are three elements ; one class is 
 very rich, another very poor, and a third in a mean. It 
 is admitted that moderation and the mean are best, and 
 therefore it will clearly be best to possess the gifts of 
 fortune in moderation ; for in that condition of life men 
 are most ready to listen to reason. But a city ought to 
 be composed, as far as possible, of equals and similars ; 
 and these are generally the middle classes. Wherefore, 
 the city which is composed of middle-class citizens is 
 necessarily best governed; they are, as we say, the 
 natural elements of a state. And this is the class of 
 citizens which is most secure in a state, for they do not, 
 like the poor, covet their neighbors' goods ; nor do others 
 covet theirs, as the poor covet the goods of the rich ; and 
 as they neither plot against others, nor are themselves 
 plotted against, they pass through life safely. Wisely 
 then, did Phocylides praj', — 
 
 "Many things are best in the mean; I desire to be of 
 a middle condition in my city." 
 
 "Thus it is manifest that the best political community 
 is formed by citizens of the middle class, and that those 
 states are likely to be well-administered, in which the 
 middle class is large, and larger if possible, than both 
 the other classes, or at any rate, than either singly ; for 
 the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and 
 prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. 
 Great, then, is the good fortune of a state in which the 
 citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for 
 where some possess much, and the others nothing, there 
 may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; 
 or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme, — either 
 out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oli- 
 garchy ; but it is not so likely to arise out of a middle 
 and nearly equal condition. I will explain the reason 
 
THE BEST AND SAFEST GOVERNMENT. 
 
 A Democracy with the Middle Class Prepon- 
 derating. 
 
 " The mean condition of states is clearly best, for no 
 other is free from faction ; and where the middle class 
 is large there are least likely to be factions and dis- 
 sensions. For a similar reason, large states are less 
 liable to faction than small ones, because in them, the 
 middle class is large ; whereas in small states it is 
 easy to divide all the citizens into two classes who are 
 either rich or poor, and to leave nothing in the middle. 
 And democracies are safer andm-ore permanent than 
 oligarchies, because they have a middle class which is 
 more numerous and has a greater share in the gov- 
 ernment ; for when there is no tniddle class and the 
 poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the 
 state soon comes to an end. A proof of the superiority 
 of the middle class is that the best legislators have been 
 of a middle condition ; for example, Solon, as his own 
 verses testify; and Lycurgus, for he was not a King; 
 and Charondas, and almost all legislators.'''' 
 
 Aristotle'' s Politics- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 233 
 
 of this hereafter, when I speak of the revolutions of 
 states. The mean condition of states is clearly best, for 
 no other is free from faction ; and where the middle class 
 is large, there are least likely to be factions and dissen- 
 sions. For a similar reason large states are less liable 
 to faction than small ones, becaiise in them the middle 
 class is large ; whereas in small states it is easy to divide 
 all the citizens into two classes who are either rich or 
 poor, and to leave nothing in the middle. And 
 democracies are safer and more permanent than oli- 
 garchies, because they have a middle class which is more 
 numerous and has a greater share in the government; 
 for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly 
 exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon 
 comes to an end. A proof of the superiority of the 
 middle class is that the best legislators have been of a 
 middle condition ; for example, Solon, as his own verses 
 testify; and Lycurgus, for he was not a king; and 
 Charondas, and almost all legislators. 
 
 "We have now to consider what, and what kind of gov- 
 ernment is suitable, to what, and what kind of men. I 
 may begin by assuming, as a general principle common 
 to all governments, that the portion of the state which 
 desires permanence ought to be stronger than that which 
 desires the reverse. Now every city is composed of 
 quality and quantity. By quality I mean freedom, 
 wealth, education, good birth, and by quantity, su- 
 periority of numbers. Quality may exist in one of the 
 classes which make up the state, and quantity in the 
 other. For example, the meanly-born may be more in 
 number than the well-born, or the poor than the rich, 
 yet they may not so much exceed in quantity as they fall 
 short in quality ; and therefore there must be a com- 
 parison of quantity and quality. Where the number of 
 
234 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 the poor is more than proportioned to the wealth of the 
 rich, there will naturally be a democracy, varying in 
 form with the sort of people who compose it in each 
 case. If, for example, the husbandmen exceed in num- 
 ber, the first form of democracy will then arise; if the 
 artisans and laboring class, the last; and so with the 
 intermediate forms. But where the rich and the notables 
 exceed in quality more than they fall short in quantity, 
 there oligarchy arises, similarly assuming various forms 
 according to the kind of superiority possessed by the 
 oligarchs. 
 
 "The legislator should always include the middle class 
 in his government; if he makes his laws oligarchical, to 
 the middle class let him look; if he makes them demo- 
 cratical, he should equally by his laws try to attach this 
 class to the state. There only can the government ever 
 be stable where the middle class exceeds one or both of 
 the others, and in that case there will be no fear that the 
 rich will unite with the poor against the rulers. For 
 neither of them will ever be willing to serve the other, 
 and if they look for some form of government more suit- 
 able to both, they will find none better than this, for the 
 rich and the poor will never consent to rule in turn, be- 
 cause they mistrust one another. The arbiter is always 
 the one trusted, and he who is in the middle is an arbiter. 
 The more perfect the admixture of the political elements, 
 the more lasting will be the state. Many even of those 
 who desire to form aristocratical governments make a 
 mistake, not only in giving too much power to the rich, 
 but in attempting to overreach the people. There comes 
 a time when, out of a false good there arises a true evil, 
 since the encroachments of the rich are more destructive 
 to the state than those of the people." 
 
EXTRACTS FROM ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS, 
 
 Book V. 
 
 Cause of Revolutions. 
 
 " Still democracy appears to be safer and less liable to 
 revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is 
 the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among 
 themselves and also with the people ; but in democracies 
 there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. 
 No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people 
 themselves. And we may further remark that a gov- 
 ernment which is composed of the middle class, more 
 nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, 
 and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government. 
 
 " In considering how dissensions and political revolu- 
 tions arise, we must first of all ascertain the beginnings 
 and causes of them which affect constitutions generally. 
 They may be said to be three in number; and we have 
 now to give an outline of each.. We want to know (i) 
 what is the feeling? and (2) what are the motives of 
 those who make them? (3) whence arise political dis- 
 turbances and quarrels ? The universal and. chief cause 
 of this revolutionary feeling has been already mentioned ; 
 viz., the desire of equality, when men think that they 
 are equal to others who have more than themselves ; or, 
 again, the desire of inequality and superiority, when 
 conceiving themselves to be superior they think that 
 
 {235) 
 
236 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 they have, not more, but the same or less than their in- 
 feriors; pretensions which may, and may not, be just. 
 Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and 
 equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of 
 mind which creates revolutions. The motives for mak- 
 ing them are the desire of gain and honor, or the fear of 
 dishonor and loss ; the authors of them want to divert 
 punishment or dishonor from themselves or their friends. 
 The causes and reasons of these motives and dispo- 
 sitions which are excited in men, about the things which 
 I have mentioned, viewed iu one way, may be regarded 
 as seven, and in another, as more than seven. Two of 
 them have been already noticed ; but they act in a 
 different manner, for men are excited against one an- 
 other by the love of gain and honor — not, as in the case 
 which I have just supposed, in order to obtain them for 
 themselves, but at seeing others, justly or unjustly, en- 
 grossing them. Other causes are insolence, fear, love of 
 superiority, contempt, disproportionate increase in some 
 part of the state ; causes of another sort are election 
 intrigues, carelessness, neglect about trifles, dissimilarity 
 of elements. 
 
 "Political revolutions also spring from a disproportion- 
 ate increase in any part of the state. For as a body is 
 made up of many members, and every member ought to 
 grow in proportion, that symmetry may be preserved ; 
 but loses its nature if the foot be four cubits long and 
 the rest of the body two spans ; and, should the abnormal 
 increase be one of quality as well as of quantity, may 
 even take the form of another animal : even so a state 
 has many parts, of which some one may often grow im- 
 perceptibly ; for example, the number of poor in de- 
 mocracies and in constitutional states. And this dis- 
 proportion may sometimes happen by an accident, as at 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 237 
 
 Tarentum, from a defeat in which many of the notables 
 were slain in a battle with the lapygians just after the 
 Persian War, the constitutional government in conse- 
 quence becoming a democracy; or, as was the case at 
 Argos, where, after the battle at Hebdomfe, the Argives, 
 having been cut to pieces by Cleomenes the Lacedae- 
 monian, were compelled to admit to citizenship some of 
 their perioeci ; and at Athens, when, after frequent de- 
 feats of their infantry in the times of the Peloponnesian 
 War, the notables were reduced in number, because the 
 soldiers had to be taken from the roll of citizens. 
 Revolutions arise from this cause in democracies as well 
 as in other forms of government, but not to so great an 
 extent. When the rich grow numerous or properties 
 increase, the form of government changes into an oli- 
 garchy or a government of families. Forms of govern- 
 ment also change — sometimes even without revolution, 
 owing to election contests, as at Herasa (where, instead 
 of electing their magistrates, they took them by lot, be- 
 cause the electors were in the habit of choosing their 
 own partisans) ; or owing to carelessness, when disloyal 
 persons are allowed to find their way into the highest 
 offices, as at Oreum, where, upon the accession of 
 Heracleodorus to office, the oligarchy was overthrown, 
 and changed bj' him into a constitutional and demo- 
 cratical government. 
 
 "Another cause of revolution is difference of races 
 which do not at once acquire a common spirit; for a 
 state is not the growth of a day, neither is it a multitude 
 brought together by accident. Hence the reception of 
 strangers in colonies, either at the time of their founda- 
 tion or afterwards, has generally produced revolution ; 
 for example, the Achaeans who joined the Troezenians 
 in the foundation of Sybaris, being the more numerous, 
 
238 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 afterwards expelled them ; hence the curse fell upon 
 Sj'baris. At Thurii the Sybarites quarreled with their 
 fellow-colonists; thinking that the land belonged to 
 them, they wanted too much of it and were driven out. 
 At Byzantium the new colonists were detected in a con- 
 spiracy, and were expelled by force of arms; the people 
 of Antissa, who had received the Chian exiles, fought 
 with them, and drove them out ; and the Zancleans, after 
 having received the Samians, were driven by them out 
 of their own city. The citizens of Apollonia on the 
 Euxine, after the introduction of a fresh body of colon- 
 ists, had a revolution ; the Syracusans, after the expul- 
 sion of their tyrants, having admitted strangers and 
 mercenaries to the rights of citizenship, quarreled and 
 came to blows; the people of Amphipolis, having re- 
 ceived Chalcidian colonists, were nearly all expelled by 
 them. 
 
 "Now, in oligarchies the masses make revolution under 
 the idea that they are unjustly treated, because, as I said 
 before, they are equals, and have not an equal share, and 
 in democracies the notables revolt, because they are not 
 equals, and yet have only an equal share. 
 
 "Again, the situation of cities is a cause of revolution 
 when the country is not naturally adapted to preserve 
 the unity of the state. For example, the Chytrians at 
 Clazomense did not agree with the people of the island ; 
 and the people of Colophon quarreled with the Notians ; 
 at Athens, too, the inhabitants of the Piraeus are more 
 democratic than those who live in the city. For just as 
 in war, the impedpnent of a ditch, though ever so small, 
 may break a regiment, so every cause of difference, how- 
 ever slight, makes a breach in a cit}'. The greatest 
 opposition is confessedly that of virtue and vice ; next 
 comes that of wealth and poverty ; and there are other 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 239 
 
 antagonistic elements, greater 05 less, of which one is 
 this difference of place. 
 
 "Governments also change into oligarchy or into de- 
 mocracy or into a constitutional government, because 
 the magistrates, or some other section of the state, in- 
 crease in power or renown. Thus at Athens the reputa- 
 tion gained by the court of the Areopagus, in the Persian 
 War, seemed to tighten the reins of government. On 
 the other hand, the victory of Salamis, which was gained 
 by the common people who served in the fleet, and won 
 for the Athenians the empire of the sea, strengthened 
 the democracy. At Argos, the notables, having dis- 
 tinguished themselves against the Lacedsemonians in the 
 battle of Mantinea, attempted to put down the democracy. 
 At Syracuse, the people having been the chief authors 
 of the victory in the war with the Athenians, changed 
 the constitutional government into democracy. At 
 Chalcis, the people, uniting Vith the notables, killed 
 Phoxus the tyrant, and then seized the government. At 
 Ambracia, the people, in like manner, having joined 
 with the conspirators in expelling the tyrant Periander, 
 transferred the government to themselves. And gen- 
 erally, it should be remembered that those who have 
 secured power to the state, whether private citizens, or 
 magistrates, or tribes, or any other part or section of the 
 state, are apt to cause revolutions. For either envy of 
 their greatness draws others into rebellion, or they them- 
 selves, in their pride of superiority, are unwilling to 
 remain on a level with others. 
 
 " Revolutions break out when opposite parties, e.g., the 
 rich and the poor, are equally balanced, and there is 
 little or nothing between them ; for, if either party were 
 manifestly superior, the other would not risk an attack 
 upon them. And, for this reason, those who are eminent 
 
240 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 in virtue do not stir up insurrections, being always a 
 minority. Such are the beginnings and causes of the 
 disturbances and revolutions to which every form of 
 government is liable. 
 
 " Revolutions in democracies are generally caused b3'- 
 the intemperance of demagogues, who either in their 
 private capacity lay information against rich men until 
 they compel them to combine, (for a common danger 
 unites even the bitterest enemies), or coming forward in 
 public they stir up the people against them. The truth 
 of this remark is proved by a variety of examples. At 
 Cos the democracy was overthrown because wicked 
 demagogues arose, and the notables combined. At 
 Rhodes the demagogues not only provided pay for the 
 multitude, but prevented them from making good to the 
 trierarchs the sums which had been expended by them ; 
 and they, in consequence of the suits which were brought 
 against them, were compelled to combine and put down 
 the democracy. The democracy at Heraclea was over- 
 thrown shortly after the foundation of the colony by the 
 injustice of the demagogues, which drove out the 
 notables, who came back in a body and put an end to 
 the democracy. Much in the same manner the de- 
 mocracy at Megara was overturned; there the dema- 
 gogues drove out many of the notables in order that 
 they might be able to confiscate their property. At 
 length the exiles, becoming numerous, returned, and 
 engaging and defeating the people, established an oli- 
 garchy. The same thing happened with the democracy 
 of Cyme which was overthrown by Thrasymachus. 
 And we may observe that in most states the changes 
 have been of this character. For sometimes the dema- 
 gogues, in order to curry favor with the people, wrong 
 the notables and so force them to combine; either they 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 241 
 
 make a division of their property, or diminish their in- 
 comes by the imposition of public services, and some- 
 times they bring accusations against the rich that they 
 may have their wealth to confiscate. 
 
 " Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then 
 democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient 
 tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so 
 now, but they were then ; and the reason is, that they 
 were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet 
 come into fashion. Whereas in our day, when the art 
 of rhetoric has made such progress, the orators lead the 
 people, but their ignorance of military matters prevents 
 them from usurping power ; at any rate instances to the 
 contrary are few and slight. Formerly tyrannies were 
 more common than the}'' now are, because great power 
 was often placed in the hands of individuals; thus a 
 tyranny arose at Miletus out of the oflSceof the Prytanis, 
 who had supreme authority in many important matters. 
 Moreover, in those days, when cities were not large, the 
 people dwelt in the fields, busy at their work ; and their 
 chiefs, if they possessed any military talent, seized the 
 opportunity, and winning the confidence of the masses 
 by professing their hatred of the wealthy, they succeeded 
 in obtaining the tyranny. Thus at Athens Peisistratus 
 led a faction against the men of the plain, and Theagenes 
 at Megara slaughtered the cattle of the wealthy, which 
 he found by the river side where they put them to graze. 
 Dionysius, again, was thought worthy of the tyranny 
 because he denounced Daphnseus and the rich; his 
 enmity to the notables won for him the confidence of 
 the people. Changes also take place from the ancient 
 to the latest form of democracy ; for where there is a 
 popular election of the magistrates and no property 
 qualification, the aspirants for oflSce get hold of the 
 
242 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 people, and contrive at last even to set them above the 
 laws. A more or less complete cure for this state of 
 things is for the separate tribes, and not the whole people, 
 to elect the magistrates. 
 
 " These are the principal causes of revolutions in de- 
 mocracies." 
 
EXTRACTS FROM ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS. 
 
 Book VL 
 
 Democracy Analyzed and Commended. 
 
 " The basis of a democratic state is liberty ; which ac- 
 cording to the common opinion of men, can only be en- 
 joyed in such a state; — this they affirm to be the great 
 end of every democracy. One principle of liberty is for 
 all to rule and be ruled in turn, and indeed democratic 
 justice is the application of numerical not proportionate 
 equality; whence it follows that the majority must be 
 supreme, and that whatever the majority approve must 
 be the end and the just. Every citizen, it is said, must 
 have equality, and therefore in a democracy the poor 
 have more power than the rich, because there are more 
 of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. This, 
 then, is one note of liberty which all democrats affirm to 
 be the principle of their state. Another is that a man 
 should live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege 
 of a freeman, and, on the other hand, not to live as a 
 man likes is the mark of a slave. This is the second 
 characteristic of democracy, whence has arisen the claim 
 of men to be ruled by none, if possible, or, if this is im- 
 possible, to rule and be ruled in turn ; and so it coincides 
 with the freedom based upon equality (which was the 
 
 first characteristic.) 
 
 (243) 
 
244 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 "These are points common to all democracies; but 
 democracy and demos in their truest form are based upon 
 the recognized principle of democratic justice, that all 
 should count equally ; for equality implies that the rich 
 should have no more share in the government than the 
 poor, and should not be the only rulers, but that all 
 should rule equally according to their numbers. And 
 in this way men think that they will secure equality and 
 freedom in their state. 
 
 " Next comes the question, how is this equality to be 
 obtained? Is the qualification to be so distributed that 
 five hundred rich shall be equal to a thousand poor ? 
 and shall we give the thousand a power equal to that of 
 the five hundred ? or, if this is not to be the mode, ought 
 we, still retaining the same ratio, to take equal numbers 
 from each and give them the control of the elections 
 and of the courts? — Which, according to the democratical 
 notion^ is the juster form of the constitution, — this or 
 one based on numbers only ? Democrats say that justice 
 is that to which the majority agree, oligarchs that to 
 which the wealthier class; in their opinion the decision 
 should be given according to the amount of property. 
 In both principles there is some inequality and injustice. 
 For if justice is the will of the few, any one person who 
 has more wealth than all the rest of his class put to- 
 gether, ought, upon the oligarchical principle, to have 
 the sole power — but this would be tyranny; or if justice 
 is the will of the majority, as I was before saying, they 
 will unjustly confiscate the property of the wealthy 
 minority. To find a principle of oquality in which they 
 both agree we must inquire into their respective ideas of 
 justice. 
 
 " Now they agree in saying that whatever is decided by 
 the majority of the citizens is to be deemed law. Grant- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 245 
 
 ed : — but not without some reserve ; since there are two 
 classes out of which a state is composed, — the poor and 
 the rich,— that is to be deemed law, on which both or 
 the greater part of both agree ; and if they disagree, that 
 which is approved by the greater number, and by those 
 who have the higher qualification. For example, sup- 
 pose that there are ten rich and twenty poor, and some 
 measure is approved by six of the rich and is dis- 
 approved by fifteen of the poor, and the remaining four 
 of the rich join with the party of the poor, and the re- 
 maining five of the poor with that of the rich ; in such 
 a case the will of those whose qualifications, when both 
 sides are added up, are the greatest, should prevail. If 
 they turn out to be equal, there is no greater difiSculty 
 than at present, when, if the assembly or the courts are 
 divided, recourse is- had to the lot, or to some similar 
 expedient. But, although it may be difficult in theory 
 to know what is just and equal, the practical difSculty 
 of inducing those to forbear who can, if they like, en- 
 croach is far greater, for the weaker are always asking 
 for equality and justice, but the stronger care for none 
 of the.se things. 
 
 " Of the four kinds of democracy, as was said in the 
 previous discussion, the best is that which comes first in 
 order; it is also the oldest of them all. I am speaking 
 of them according to the natural classification of their 
 inhabitants. For the best material of democracy is an 
 agricultural population ; there is no difficulty in forming 
 a democracy where the mass of the people live by agri- 
 culture or tending of cattle. Being poor, they have no 
 leisure, and therefore do not often attend the assembly, 
 and not having the necessaries of life they are always at 
 work, and do not covet the property of others. Indeed, 
 they find their employment pleasanter than the cares of 
 
246 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 government or office where no great gains can be made 
 out of them, for the man}' are more desirous of gain 
 than of honor. A proof is that even the ancient tyrannies 
 were patiently endured by them, as they still endure oli- 
 garchies, if they are allowed to work and are not de- 
 prived of their property ; for some of them grow quickly 
 rich and the others are well enough off. Moreover, 
 they have the power of electing the magistrates and 
 calling them to account ; their ambition, if they have 
 any, is thus satisfied; and in some democracies, although 
 they do not all share in the appointment of offices, ex- 
 cept through representatives elected in turn out of the 
 whole people, as at Mantinea; — yet, if they have the 
 power of deliberating, the many are contented. Even 
 this form of government may be regarded as a de- 
 mocracj', and was such at Mantinea. Hence it is both 
 expedient and customary in such a democracy that all 
 should elect to offices, and conduct scrutinies, and sit in 
 the law-courts, but that the great offices should be filled 
 up by election and from persons having a qualification; 
 the greater requiring a greater qualification, or, if there 
 be no offices for which a qualification is required, then 
 those who are marked out by special ability should be 
 appointed. Under such a form of government the 
 citizens are sure to be governed well, (for the offices will 
 always be held by the best persons; the people are will- 
 ing enough to elect them and are not jealous of the 
 good). The good and the notables will then be satisfied, 
 for they will not be governed by men who are their in- 
 feriors, and the persons elected will rule justly, because 
 others will call them to account. Every man should be 
 responsible to others, nor should any one be allowed to 
 do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is al- 
 lowed there is nothing to restrain the evil which is in- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 247 
 
 herent in every man. But the principle of responsibility 
 secures that which is the greatest good in states ; the 
 right persons rule and are prevented from doing wrong, 
 and the people have their due. It is evident that this is 
 the best kind of democracy, and why? Because the 
 people are drawn from a certain class. 
 
 " Next best to an agricultural, and in many respects 
 similar, are a pastoral people, who live by their flocks ; 
 they are the best trained of any for war, robust in body 
 and able to camp out, the people of whom other de- 
 mocracies consist are far inferior to them, for their life 
 is inferior ; there is no room for moral excellence in any 
 of their employments, whether they be mechanics or 
 traders or laborers. 
 
 "The last form of democracy, that in which all share 
 alike, is one which cannot be borne by all states, and 
 will not last long unless well regulated by laws and 
 customs. The more general causes which tend to de- 
 stroy this or other kinds of government have now been 
 pretty fully considered. In order to constitute such a 
 democracy and strengthen the people, the leaders have 
 been in the habit of including as many as they can, and 
 making citizens not only of those who are legitimate, 
 but even of the illegitimate, and of those who have only 
 one parent, a citizen, whether father or mother; for 
 nothing of this sort comes amiss to such a democracy. 
 This is the way in which demagogues proceed. Where- 
 as the right thing would be to make no more additions 
 when the number of the commonalty exceeds that of 
 the notables or of the middle class, — beyond this not to 
 go. When in excess of this point the state becomes dis- 
 orderly, and the notables grow excited and impatient of 
 the democracy, as in the insurrection at Cyrene ; for no 
 notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it 
 strikes the eye. 
 
248 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " The mere establishment of a democracy is not the 
 only or principal business of the legislator, or of those 
 who wish to create such a state, for any state, howeveij: 
 badly constituted, may last one, two, or three days; a far 
 greater difficulty is the preservation of it. The legis- 
 lator should therefore endeavor to have a firm foundation 
 according to the principles already laid down concerning 
 the preservation and destruction of states; he should 
 guard against the destructive elements, and should make 
 laws, whether written or unwritten, which will contain 
 all the preservatives of states. He must not think the 
 truly democratical or oligarchical measure to be that 
 which will give the greatest amount of democracy or oli- 
 garchy, but that which will make them last longest. The 
 demagogues of our own day often get property confis- 
 cated in the law-courts to please the people. But those 
 wbo have the welfare of the state at heart should counter- 
 act them, and make a law that the property of the con- 
 demned which goes into the treasury, should not be 
 public but sacred. Thus offenders will be as much 
 afraidj for they will be punished all the same, and the 
 people, having nothing to gain, will not be so ready to 
 condemn the accused. Care should also be taken that 
 state trials are as few as possible, and heavy penalties 
 should be inflicted on those who bring groundless accu- 
 sations ; for it is the practice to indict, not members of 
 the popular party, but the notables, although the citizens 
 ought to be all equally attached to the state, or at any 
 rate should not regard their rulers as enemies. 
 
 " Now, since in the last and worst form of democracy 
 the citizens are very numerous, and can hardly be made 
 to assemble unless they are paid, and to pay them when 
 there are no revenues, presses hardly upon the notables 
 (for the money must be obtained by a property -tax and 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 249 
 
 confiscations and corrupt practices of the courts, things 
 which have before now overthrown many democracies) ; 
 where, I say, there are no revenues, the government 
 should hold few assemblies, and the law-courts should 
 consist of many persons, but sit for a few days only. 
 This system has two advantages : first, the rich do not 
 fear the expense, even although they are unpaid them- 
 selves when the poor are paid : and secondly, causes are 
 better tried, for wealthy persons, although they do not 
 like to be long absent from their own affairs, do not mind 
 going for a few days to the law-courts. Where there 
 are revenues the demagogues should not be allowed, 
 after their manner, to distribute the surplus; the poor 
 are always receiving and always wanting more and more, 
 for such help is like water poured into a leaky cask. 
 Yet the true friend of the people should see that they be 
 not too poor, for extreme poverty lowers the character 
 of the democracy ; measures also should be taken which 
 will give them lasting prosperity ; and as this is equally 
 the interest of all classes, the proceeds of the public 
 revenues should be accumulated and distributed among 
 them, if possible, in such quantities as may enable them 
 to purchase a little farm, or at any rate, make a begin- 
 ning in trade and husbandry. And if this benevolence 
 cannot be extended to all, money should be distributed 
 in turn according to tribes or other divisions, and in the 
 meantime the rich should pay the fee for the attendance 
 of the poor at the necessary assemblies ; and should in 
 return be excused from useless public services. By 
 administering the state in this spirit the Carthaginians 
 retain the affections of the people ; their policy is from 
 time to time to send some of them into their dependent 
 towns, where they grow rich. It is also worthy of a 
 generous and sensible nobility to divide the poor amongst 
 
250 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 them, and give them the means of going to work. The 
 example of the people of Tarentum is also well deserv- 
 ing of imitation, for, by sharing the use of their own 
 property with the poor, they gain their good will. 
 Moreover, they divide all their ofiEces into two classes, 
 one-half of them being elected by vote, the other by lot; 
 the latter, that the people may participate in them, and 
 the former, that the state may be better administered. 
 A like result may be gained by dividing the same ofl&ces, 
 so as to have two classes of magistrates, one chosen by 
 vote, the other by lot." 
 
EXTRACTS FROM ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS. 
 
 Book VII. 
 The Best Life for Individuals and States. 
 
 "He who would duly enquire about the best form 
 of a state ought first to determine which is the most eli- 
 gible life. 
 
 "Assuming that enough has been already said in 
 exoteric discourses concerning the best life, we will now 
 only repeat the statements contained in them. Certainly 
 no one will dispute the propriety of that partition of 
 goods which separates them into three classes, viz., ex- 
 ternal goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul, 
 or deny that the happy man must have all three. These 
 propositions are universally acknowledged as soon as 
 they are uttered, but men differ about the degree or 
 relative superiority of this or that good. Some think 
 that a very moderate amount of virtue is enough, but set 
 no limit to their desires of wealth, property, power, repu- 
 tation, and the like. To whom we reply by an appeal 
 to facts, which easily prove that mankind do not ac- 
 quire or preserve virtue by the help of external goods, 
 but external goods by the help of virtue, and that happi- 
 ness, whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, 
 is more often found with those who are most highly 
 
 (251) 
 
252 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 cultivated in their mind and in their character, and have 
 only a moderate share of external goods, than among 
 those who possess external goods to a useless extent, 
 but are deficient in higher qualities ; and this is not only 
 matter of experience, but, if reflected upon, will easily 
 appear to be in accordance with reason. For, whereas 
 external goods have a limit, like any other instrument, 
 and all things useful are of such a nature that where 
 there is too much of them they must either do harm, or 
 at any rate be of no use to their possessors, every good 
 of the soul, the greater it is, is also of greater use, if the 
 epithet, useful as well as noble, is appropriate to such 
 subjects. 
 
 "Let us acknowledge then that each one has just so 
 much of happiness as he has of virtue and wisdom, and 
 of virtuous and wise action. God is a witness to us of 
 this truth, for he is happy and blessed, not by reason of 
 any external good, but in himself and by reason of his 
 own nature. And herein of necessity lies the difference 
 between good fortune and happiness ; for external goods 
 come of themselves, and chance is the author of them, 
 but no one is just or temperate by or through chance. 
 In like manner, and by a similar train of argument, the 
 happy state may be shown to be that which is (morally) 
 best, and which acts rightly ; and rightly it cannot act 
 without doing right actions, and neither individual or 
 state can do right actions without virtue and wisdom. 
 Thus the courage, justice, and wisdom of a state have 
 the same form and nature as the qualities which give 
 the individual who possesses them the name of just, wise, 
 or temperate. 
 
 " Let us assume then that the best life, both for in- 
 dividuals and states, is the life of virtue, having external 
 goods enough for the performance of good actions. If 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 253 
 
 there are any who controvert our assertion, we will in 
 this treatise pass them over, and consider their objec- 
 tions hereafter. 
 
 " Now it is evident that the form of government is best 
 in which every man, whoever he is, can act for the best 
 and live happily. But even those who agree in thinking 
 that the life of virtue is the most eligible, raise a ques- 
 tion, whether the life of business and politics is, or is 
 not, more eligible than one which is wholly independent 
 of external goods, I mean than a contemplative life, 
 which by some is maintained to be the only one worthy 
 of a philosopher. For these two lives — the life of the 
 philosopher and the life of the statesman — appear to 
 have been preferred by those who have been most keen 
 in the pursuit of virtue, both in our own and in other 
 ages. "Which is the better is a question of no small 
 moment ; for the wise man, like the wise state, will nec- 
 essarily regulate his life according to the best end. 
 There are some who think that while a despotic rule over 
 others is the greatest injustice, to exercise a constitu- 
 tional rule over them, even though not unjust, is a great 
 impediment to a man's individual well-being. Others 
 take an opposite view; they maintain that the true life 
 of man is the practical and political, and that every 
 virtue admits of being practiced, quite as much by states- 
 men and rulers as by private individuals. Others, again, 
 are of opinion that arbitrary and tyrannical rule alone 
 consists with happiness; indeed,, in some states the en- 
 tire aim of the laws is to give men despotic power over 
 their neighbors. And, therefore, although in most cities 
 the laws may be said general Ij' to be in a chaotic state, 
 still, if they aim at anything, they aim at the mainte- 
 nance of power ; thus in Lacedsemon and Crete the system 
 of education and the greater part of the laws are framed 
 
254 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 with a view to war. And in all nations which are able 
 to gratify their ambition, military power is held in 
 esteem, for example, among the Scythians and Persians 
 and Thracians and Celts. In some nations there are 
 even laws tending to stimulate the war-like virtues, as 
 at Carthage, where we are told that men obtain the 
 honor of wearing as many rings as they have served 
 campaigns. There was once a law in Macedonia that 
 he who had not killed an enemy should wear a halter, 
 and among the Scythians no one who had not slain his 
 man was allowed to drink out of the cup which was 
 handed round at a certain feast. Among the Iberians, 
 a war-like nation, the number of enemies whom a man 
 has slain is indicated by the number of obelisks which 
 are fixed in the earth round his tomb; and there are 
 numerous practices among other nations of a like kind, 
 some of them established by law and others by custom. 
 Yet to a reflecting mind it must appear very strange that 
 the statesman should be always considering how he can 
 dominate and tyrannize over others, whether they will 
 or not. How can that which is not even lawful be the 
 business of the statesman or the legislator ? Unlawful 
 it certainly is to rule without regard to justice, for there 
 may be might where there is no right. The other arts 
 and sciences offer no parallel ; a physician is not ex- 
 pected to persuade or coerce his patients, nor a pilot the 
 passengers in his ship. Yet many appear to think that 
 a despotic government is a true political form, and what 
 men afl&rm to be unjust and inexpedient in their own 
 case they are not ashamed of practising towards others ; 
 they demand justice for themselves, but where other men 
 are concerned they care nothing about it. Such be- 
 havior is irrational; unless the one party is born to 
 command, and the other born to serve, in which case 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 255 
 
 men have a right to command, not indeed all their 
 fellows, but onlj' those who are intended to be subjects ; 
 just as we ought not to hunt mankind, whether for food 
 or sacrifice, but only the animals which are intended for 
 food or sacrifice, that is to say, such wild animals as are 
 eatable. And surely there may be a city happy in isola- 
 tion, which we will assume to be well-governed (for it 
 is quite possible that a city thus isolated might be well- 
 administered and have good laws) ; but such a city 
 would not be constituted with any view to war or the 
 conquest of enemies, — all that sort of thing must be ex- 
 cluded. Hence we see very plainly that warlike pur- 
 suits, although generally to be deemed honorable, are 
 not the supreme end of all things, but only means. And 
 the good lawgiver should enquire how states and races 
 of men and communities may participate in a good life, 
 and in the happiness which is attainable by them. His 
 enactments will not be always the same ; and where there 
 are neighbors he will have to deal with them according 
 to their characters, and to see what duties are to be per- 
 formed towards each. The end at which the best form 
 of government should aim may be properly made a matter 
 of future consideration. 
 
 " Let us now address those who, while they agree that 
 the life of virtue is the most eligible, differ about the 
 manner of practising it. For some renounce political 
 power, and think that the life of the freeman is different 
 from the life of the statesman and the best of all; but 
 others think the life of the statesman best. The argu- 
 ment of the latter is, that he who does nothing, cannot 
 do well, and that virtuous activity is identical with happi- 
 ness. To both we say : ' You are partly right and 
 partly wrong.' The first class are right in affirming 
 that the life of the freeman is better than the life of the 
 
256 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 despot ; for there is nothing grand or noble in having 
 the use of a slave, in so far as he is a slave ; or in issuing 
 commands about necessary things. But it is an error to 
 suppose that every sort of rule is despotic like that of a 
 master over slaves, for there is as great a difference be- 
 tween the rule over freemen and the rule over slaves, as 
 there is between slavery by nature and freedom by na- 
 ture, about which I have said enough at the commence- 
 ment of this treatise. And it is equally a mistake to 
 place inactivity above action, for happiness is activity, 
 and the actions of the just and wise are the realization 
 of much that is noble. 
 
 " But perhaps some one, accepting these premises, may 
 still maintain that supreme power is the best of all things, 
 because the possessors of it are able to perform the great- 
 est number of noble actions. If so, the man who is able 
 to rule, instead of giving up anything to his neighbor, 
 ought rather to take away his power; and the father 
 should make no account of his son, nor the son of his 
 father, nor friend of friend ; they should not bestow a 
 thought on one another in comparison with this higher 
 object, for the best is the most eligible, and ' doing well' 
 is the best. There might be some truth in such a view 
 if we assume that robbers and plunderers attain the chief 
 good. But this can never be; and hence we infer the 
 view to be false. For the actions of a ruler cannot really 
 be honorable, unless he is as much superior to other men 
 as a husband is to a wife, or a father to his children, or 
 a master to his slaves. And therefore he who violates 
 the law can never recover by any success, however great, 
 what he has already lost in departing from virtue. For 
 equals share alike in the honorable and the just, as is 
 just and equal. But that the unequal should be given 
 to equals, and the unlike to those who are like, is con- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 257 
 
 trary to nature, and nothing which is contrary to nature 
 is good. If, therefore, there is any one superior in virtue 
 and in the power of performing the best actions, him we 
 ought to follow and obey, but he must have the capacity 
 for action as well as virtue. 
 
 " If we are right in our view, and happiness is assumed 
 to be virtuous activity, the active life will be the best, 
 both for the city collectivelj', and for individuals. Not 
 that a life of action must necessarily have relation to 
 others, as some persons think, nor are these ideas only 
 to be regarded as practical which are pursued for the 
 sake of practical results, but much more the thoughts 
 and contemplations which are independent and complete 
 in themselves; since virtuous activity, and therefore 
 action, is an end, and even in the case of external actions, 
 the directing mind is most truly said to act. Neither, 
 again, is it necessary that states which are cut off from 
 others and choose to live alone, should be inactive; for 
 there may be activity also in the parts ; there are many 
 ways in which the members of a state act upon one an- 
 other. The same thing is equally true of every indi- 
 vidual. If this were otherwise, God and the universe, 
 who have no external actions over and above their own 
 energies, would be far enough from perfection. Hence 
 it is evident that the same life is best for each individual, 
 and for states, and for mankind collectively. 
 
 '"Thus far by way of introduction. In what has pre- 
 ceded I have discussed other forms of government ; in 
 what remains the first point to be considered is what 
 should be the conditions of the ideal or perfect state ; for 
 the perfect state cannot exist without a due supply of 
 the means of life. And therefore we must pre-suppose 
 many purely imaginary conditions, but nothing impos- 
 sible. There will be, a certain number of citizens, a 
 
258 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 country in which to place them, and the like. As the 
 weaver or shipbuilder or any other artisan must have 
 the material proper for his work (and in proportion as 
 this is better prepared, so will the result of his art be 
 nobler), so the statesman or legislator must also have 
 the materials suited to him. 
 
 "First among the materials required by the statesman 
 is population : he will considsr what should be the num- 
 ber and character of the citizens, and then what should 
 be the size and character of the country. Most persons 
 think that a state in order to be happy, ought to be 
 large : but even if they are right, they have no idea what 
 is a large and what is a small state. 
 
 "Moreover, experience shows that a very populous 
 city can rarely, if ever, be well governed ; since all cities 
 which have a reputation for good government have a 
 limit of population. We may argue on grounds of rea- 
 son, and the same result will follow. For law is order, 
 and good law is good order ; but a very great multitude 
 cannot be orderlj' ; to introduce order into the unlimited 
 is the work of a divine power — of such a power as holds 
 together the universe. Beauty is realized in number 
 and magnitude, and the state which combines magnitude 
 with good order, must necessarily be the most beautiful. 
 To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other 
 things, plants, animals, implements ; for none of these 
 retain their natural power when they are too large or too 
 small, but they either wholly lose their nature or a're 
 spoiled. 
 
 "A state then only begins to exist when it has attained 
 a population sufiBcient for a good life in the political 
 community : it may indeed somewhat exceed this number. 
 But, as I was saying, there must be a limit. What 
 should be the limit will be easily ascertained by experi- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 259 
 
 ence. For both governors and governed have duties to 
 be performed; the special functions of a governor are 
 to command and to judge. But if the citizens of a state 
 are to judge and to distribute offices according to merit, 
 then they must know each other's characters ; where they 
 do not possess this knowledge, both the election to offices 
 and the decision of lawsuits will go wrong. When the 
 population is very large they are manifestly settled at 
 haphazard, which clearly ought not to be. Besides, in 
 an overpopulous state foreigners and metics will readily 
 acquire the rights of citizens, for who will find them out? 
 Clearly then the best limit of the population of a state is 
 the largest number which suffices for the purposes of 
 life, and can be taken in at a single view. Enough con- 
 cerning the size of a city. 
 
 "Having spoken of the number of the citizens, we will 
 proceed to speak of what should be their character. 
 This is a subject which can be easily understood by any 
 one who casts his eye on the more celebrated states of 
 Hellas, and generall}' on the distribution of races in the 
 habitable world. Those who live in a cold climate and 
 in (northern) Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in 
 intelligence and skill ; and therefore they keep their 
 freedom, but have no political organization, and are in- 
 capable of ruling over others. Whereas the natives of 
 Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are wanting 
 in spirit, and therefore they are alwa3's in a state of sub- 
 jection and slavery. But the Hellenic race, which is 
 situated between them, is likewise intermediate in charac- 
 ter, being high-spirited and also intelligent. Hence it 
 continues free, and is the best-governed of any nation, 
 and, if it could be formed into one state, would be able 
 to rule the world. 
 
 " We must see also, how many things are indispensible 
 
26o Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 to the existence of a state, for what we call the parts of 
 a state will be found among them. Let us then enumer- 
 ate the functions of a state, and we shall easily elicit 
 what we want : 
 
 "First, there must be food; secondly, arts, for life re- 
 quires many instruments; thirdly, there must be arms, 
 for the members of a community have need of them in 
 order to maintain authority both against disobedient 
 subjects and against external assailants ; fourthly, there 
 must be a certain amount of revenue, both for internal 
 needs, and for the purposes of war ; fifthlj-, or rather 
 first, there must be a care of religion, which is commonly 
 called worship; sixthly, and most necessary of all, there 
 must be a power of deciding what is for the public inter- 
 est, and what is just in men's dealings with one another. 
 
 "These are the things which every state may be said 
 to need. For a state is not a mere aggregate of persons, 
 but a union of them sufficing for the purposes of life; 
 and if any of these things be wanting, it is simply im- 
 possible that the community can be self-sufficing. A 
 ,state then should be framed with a view to the fulfil- 
 ment of these functions. 
 
 "It is no new or recent discovery of political philoso- 
 phers, that the state ought to be divided into classes, and 
 that the warriors should be separated from the husband- 
 men. The system has continued in Egypt and in Crete 
 to this day, and was established, as tradition says, by a 
 law of Sesostris in Egypt and of Minos in Crete. The 
 institution of common tables also appears to be of 
 ancient date, being in Crete as old as the reign of Minos, 
 and in Italy far older. The Italian historians say that 
 there was a certain Italus king of Oenotria, from whom 
 the Oenotrians were called Italians, and who gave the 
 name of Italy to the promontory of Europe lying be- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 261 
 
 tween the Scylletic and Lametic Gulfs, which are distant 
 from one another only half-a-day's journey. They say 
 that this Italus converted the Oenotrians from shepherds 
 into husbandmen, and besides other laws which he gave 
 them, was the founder of their common meals; even in 
 our day some who are derived from him retain this in- 
 stitution and certain other laws of his. On the side of 
 Italy towards Tyrrhenia dwelt the Opici, who are now, 
 as of old, called Ausones ; and on the side towards 
 lapygia and the Ionian Gulf, in the district called 
 Syrtis, the Chones, who are likewise of Oenotrian race. 
 From this part of the world originally came the institu- 
 tion of common tables ; the separation into castes (which 
 was much older) from Egypt, for the reign of Sesostris 
 is of far greater antiquity than that of Minos. It is true, 
 indeed, that these, and many other things, have been in- 
 vented several times over in the course of ages, or rather, 
 times without number ; for necessity may be supposed 
 to have taught men the inventions which were abso- 
 lutely required, and when these were provided, it was 
 natural that other things which would adorn and enrich 
 life should grow up by degrees. And we may infer that 
 in political institutions the same rule holds. Egypt 
 witnesses to the antiquity of all things, for the Egyptians 
 appear to be of all people the most ancient ; and they 
 have laws and a regular constitution (existing from 
 time immemorial) . We should therefore make the best use 
 of what has been already discovered, and try to supply 
 defects. 
 
 "Special care should be taken of the health of the in- 
 habitants, which will depend chiefly on the healthiness 
 of the locality and of the quarter to which they are ex- 
 posed, and secondly, on the u.se of pure water; this latter 
 point is by no means a secondary consideration. For 
 
262 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 the elements which we use most and oftenest for the 
 support of the body contribute most to health, and 
 among these are water and air. Wherefore, in all wise 
 states, if there is a want of pure water, and the supply, 
 is not all equally good, the drinking water ought to be 
 separated from that which is used for other purposes. 
 
 " Returning to the constitution itself, let us seek to 
 determine out of what and what sort of elements the 
 state which is to be happy and well-governed should be 
 composed. There are two things in which all well-being 
 consists, one of them is the choice of a right end and 
 aim of action, and the other the discovery of the actions 
 which are means towards it ; for the means and the end 
 may agree or disagree. Sometimes the right end is set 
 before men, but in practice they fail to attain it ; in other 
 cases they are successful in all the means, but they pro- 
 pose to themselves a bad end, and sometimes they fail in 
 both. 
 
 " The happiness and well-being which all men mani- 
 festly desire, some have the power of attaining, but to 
 others, from some accident or defect of nature, the at- 
 tainment of them is not granted ; for a good life requires 
 a supply of external goods, in a less degree when men 
 are in a good state, in a greater degree when the}' are in 
 a lower state. Others again, who possess the condition 
 of happiness, go utterly wrong from the first in the pur- 
 suit of it. But since our object is to discover the best 
 form of government, that, namely, under which a city 
 will be best governed, and since the city is best governed 
 which has the greatest opportunity of obtaining happi- 
 ness, it is evident that we must clearly ascertain the 
 nature of happiness. 
 
 " We have said in the Ethics, if the arguments there 
 adduced are of any value, that happiness is the realiza- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 263 
 
 tion and perfect exercise of virtue, and this not con- 
 ditional, but absolute. And I used the term ' conditional ' 
 to express that which is indispensible, and ' absolute ' to 
 express that which is good in itself. Take the case of 
 just actions ; just punishments and chastisements do in- 
 deed spring from a good principle, but they are good 
 only because we cannot do without them — it would be 
 better that neither individuals nor states should need 
 anything of the sort — but actions which aim at honor 
 and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional 
 action is only the choice of a lesser evil ; whereas these 
 are the foundation and creation of good. A good man 
 may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the 
 other ills of life ; but he can only obtain happiness under 
 the opposite conditions. As we have already said in the 
 Ethics, the good man is he to whom, because he is 
 virtuous, the absolute good is his good. It is also plain 
 that his use of other goods must be virtuous and in the 
 absolute sense . good. This makes men fancy that ex- 
 ternal goods are the cause of happiness, yet we might as 
 well say that a brilliant performance on the lyre was to 
 be attributed to the instrument and not to the skill of 
 the performer. 
 
 " It follows then from what has been said that some 
 things the legislator must find ready to his hand in a 
 state, others he must provide. And therefore we can 
 only say : May our state be constituted in such a manner 
 as to be blessed with the goods of which fortune disposes 
 (for we acknowledge her power) : whereas virtue and 
 goodness in the state are not a matter of chance but the 
 result of knowledge and purpose. A city can be virtu- 
 ous only when the citizens who have a share in the 
 government are virtuous, and in our state all the citizens 
 share in the government ; let us then enquire how a man 
 
264 Ethics of the Greek' Philosophers. 
 
 becomes virtuous. For even if we could suppose all the . 
 citizens to be virtuous, and not each of them, 5'et the 
 latter would be better, for in the virtue of each the virtue 
 of all is involved. 
 
 " There are three things which make men good and 
 virtuous : these are nature, habit, reason. In the first 
 place, every one must be born a man and not some other 
 animal ; in the second place, he must have a certain 
 character, both of body and soul. But some qualities 
 there is no use in having at birth, for they are altered 
 by habit, and there are some gifts of nature which may 
 be turned by habit to good or bad. Most animals lead 
 a life of nature, although in lesser particulars some 
 are influenced by habit as well. Man has reason in ad- 
 dition, and man only. Wherefore nature, habit, reason, 
 must be in harmony with one another; (for they do not 
 always agree) ; men do many things against habit and 
 nature, if reason persuades them that they ought. We 
 have already determined what natures are likely to be 
 most easily moulded by the hands of the legislator. All 
 else is the work of education ; we learn some things by 
 habit and some by instruction. 
 
 " Now the soul of man is divided into two parts, one 
 of which has reason in itself, and the other, not having 
 reason in itself, is able to obey reason. And we call a 
 man good because he has the virtues of these two parts. 
 In which of them the end is more likely to be found is 
 no matter of doubt to those who adopt our division ; for 
 in the world both of nature and of art the inferior always 
 exists for the sake of the better or superior, and the 
 better or superior is that which has reason. The reason 
 too, in our ordinary waj' of speaking, is divided into two 
 parts, for there is a practical and a speculative reason, 
 and there must be a corresponding division of actions ; 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 265 
 
 the actions of the naturally better principle are to be 
 preferred by those who have it in their power to attain 
 to both or to all, for that is always to every one the most 
 eligible which is the highest attainable by him. The 
 whole of life is further divided into two parts, business 
 and leisure, war and peace, and all actions into those 
 which are necessary and useful, and those which are 
 honorable. And the preference given to one or the other 
 class of actions must necessarily be like the preference 
 given to one or other part of the soul and its actions 
 over the other ; there must be war for the sake of peace, 
 business for the sake of leisure, things useful and neces- 
 sary for the sake of things honorable. All these points 
 the statesman should keep in view when he frames his 
 laws; he should consider the parts of the soul and their 
 functions, and above all, the better and the end ; he 
 should also remember the diversities of human lives and 
 actions. For men must engage in business and go to 
 war, but leisure and peace are better ; they must do what 
 is necessary and useful, but what is honorable is better. 
 In such principles children and persons of every age 
 which requires education should be trained. Whereas 
 even the Hellenes of the present day, who are reputed to 
 be best governed, and the legislators who gave them 
 their constitutions, do not appear to have framed their 
 governments with a regard to the best end, or to have 
 given them laws and education with a view to all the 
 virtues, but in a vulgar spirit have fallen back on those 
 which promised to be more useful and profitable. Many 
 modern writers have taken a similar view; they com- 
 mend the Lacedaemonian constitution, and praise the 
 legi.slator for making conquest and war his sole aim, a 
 doctrine which may be refuted by argument and has long 
 ago been refuted by facts. For most men desire empire 
 
266 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 in the hope of accumulating the goods of fortune ; and 
 on this ground Thibron and all those who have written 
 about the Lacedaemonian constitution have praised their 
 legislator, because the Lacedsemonians, by a training in 
 hardships, gained great power. But surely they are not 
 a happy people now that their empire has passed away,, 
 nor was their legislator right. How ridiculous is the 
 result, if, while they are continuing in the observance of 
 his laws, and no one interferes with them, they have lost 
 the better part of life. These writers further err about 
 the sort of government which the legislator should ap- 
 prove, for the government of freemen is noble, and im- 
 plies more virtue than despotic government. Neither is 
 a city to be deemed happy or a legislator to be praised 
 because he trains his citizens to conquer and obtain 
 dominion over their neighbors, for there is great evil in 
 this. On a similar principle any citizen who could, 
 would obviously try to obtain the power in his own 
 state, — the crime which the Lacedaemonians accuse King 
 Pausanias of attempting, although he had so great 
 honor already. No such principle and no law having^ 
 this object, is either statesmanlike or useful or right. 
 For the same things are best both for individuals and 
 for states, and these are the things which the legislator 
 ought to implant in the minds of his citizens. Neither 
 should men study war with a view to the enslavement of 
 those who do not deserve to be enslaved ; but first of all 
 they should provide against their enslavement, and in 
 the second place obtain empire for the good of the gov- 
 erned, and not for the sake of exercising a general 
 despotism, and in the third place they should seek to be 
 masters only over those who deserve to be slaves. 
 Facts, as well as arguments, prove that the legislator 
 should direct all his military and other measures to the 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 267 
 
 provision of leisure and the establishment of peace. For 
 most of these military states are safe only while they are 
 at war, but fall when they have acquired their empire ; 
 like unused iron they rust in time of peace. And for 
 this the legislator is to blame, he never having taught 
 them how to lead the life of peace. 
 
 " Since the end of individuals and of states is the same, 
 the end of the best man and of the best state must also 
 be the same ; it is therefore evident that there ought to 
 exist in both of them the virtues of leisure, for peace, as 
 has been often repeated, is the end of war, and leisure of 
 toil. But leisure and cultivation may be promoted, not 
 only by those virtues which are practised in leisure, but 
 also by some of those which are useful to business. 
 For many necessaries of life have to be supplied before 
 we can have leisure. Therefore a city must be tem- 
 perate and brave, and able to endure : for truly, as the 
 proverb says, ' There is no leisure for slaves,' and those 
 who cannot face danger like men are the slaves of any 
 invader. Courage and endurance are required for busi- 
 ness and philosophy for leisure, temperance and justice 
 for both, more especially in times of peace and leisure, 
 for war compels men to be just and temperate, whereas 
 the enjoyment of good fortune and the leisure which 
 comes with peace tends to make them insolent. Those, 
 then, who seem to be the best-off, and to be in the pos- 
 session of every good, have special need of ju.stice and 
 temperance — for example, those (if such there be, as the 
 poets say), who dwell in the Islands of the Blest ; they 
 above all will need philosophy and temperance and jus- 
 tice, and all the more the more leisure they have, living 
 in the midst of abundance. There is no diflBculty in 
 seeing why the state that would be happy and good ought 
 to have these virtues. If it be disgraceful in men not 
 
268 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 to be able to use the goods of life, it is peculiarly dis- 
 graceful uot to be able to use them in time of peace, — to 
 show excellent qualities in action and war, and when 
 they have peace and leisure to be no better than slaves. 
 Wherefore, we should not practice virtue after the man- 
 ner of the Lacedaemonians. For they, while agreeing 
 with other men in their conception of the highest goods, 
 differ from the rest of mankind in thinking that they 
 are to be obtained by the practice of a single virtue. 
 And since these goods and the enjoj'ment of them are 
 clearly greater than the enjoyment derived from the 
 virtues of which they are the end, we must now consider 
 how and by what means they are to be attained. 
 
 "We have alread)' determined that nature and habit 
 and reason are required, and what should be the charac- 
 ter of the citizens has also been defined by us. But we 
 have still to consider whether the training of early life 
 is to be that of reason or habit, for these two must accord, 
 and when in accord they will then form the best of har- 
 monies. Reason may make mistakes and fail in attain- 
 ing the highest ideal of life, and there may be a like evil 
 influence of habit. Thus much is clear in the first place, 
 that, as in all other things, birth implies some antecedent 
 principle, and that the end of anything has a beginning 
 in some former end. Now, in men reason and mind are 
 the end towards which nature strives, so that the birth 
 and moral discipline of the citizens ought to be ordered 
 with a view to them. In the second place, as the soul 
 and body are two, we see also that there are two parts 
 of the soul, the rational and the irrational, and two cor- 
 responding states — reason and appetite. And as the 
 body is prior in order of generation to the soul, so the 
 irrational is prior to the rational. The proof is that 
 anger and will and desire are implanted in children from 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 2.ii(^ 
 
 their very birth, but reason and understanding, are de- 
 veloped as they grow older. Wherefore, the care of the 
 body ought to precede that of the soul, and the training 
 of the appetitive part should follow ; none the less our 
 care of it must be for the sake of the reason, and our care 
 of the body for the sake of the soul. Since the legislator 
 should begin by considering how the frames of the 
 children whom he is rearing may be as good as possible, 
 his first care will be about marriage — at what age should 
 his citizens marry, and who are fit to marry ? 
 
 "Women should marry when they are about eighteen 
 years of age, and men at seven and thirty ; then they are 
 in the prime of life, and the decline in the powers of both 
 will coincide. Further, the children, if their birth takes 
 place at the time that may reasonably be expected, will 
 succeed in their prime, when the fathers are already in 
 the decline of life, and have nearly reached their term of 
 three-score years and ten. 
 
 " What constitution in the parent is most advantageous 
 to the offspring is a subject which we will hereafter con- 
 sider when we speak of the education of children, and 
 we will only make a few general remarks at present. 
 The temperament of an athlete is not suited to the life 
 of a citizen, or to health, or to the procreation of children, 
 any more than the valetudinarian or exhausted constitu- 
 tion, but one which is in a mean between them. A 
 man's constitution should be inured to labor, but not to 
 labor which is excessive or of one sort only, such as is 
 practiced by athletes; he should be capable of all the 
 actions of a freeman. These remarks apply equally to 
 both parents. 
 
 "After the children have been born, the manner of 
 rearing of them may be supposed to have a great effect 
 on their bodily strength. To accustom children to the 
 
270 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 cold from their earliest years is also an excellent practice, 
 which greatly conduces to health, and hardens them for 
 military service. Hence many barbarians have a custom 
 of plunging their children at birth into a cold stream: 
 others, like the Celts, clothe them in a light wrapper 
 only. For human nature should be early habituated to 
 endure all which by habit it can be made to endure ; but 
 the process must be gradual. And children, from their 
 natural warmth, may be easily trained to bear cold. Such 
 care should attend them in the first stage of life. 
 
 " The next period lasts to the age of five; during this 
 no demand should be made upon the child for study or 
 labor, lest its growth be impeded ; and there should be 
 sufiScient motion to prevent the limbs from being inactive. 
 This can be secured, among other waj's, by amusement, 
 but the amusement should not be vulgar or tiring or 
 riotous. The Directors of Education, as they are termed, 
 should be careful what tales or stories the children hear, 
 for the sports of children are designed to prepare the 
 way for the business bf later life, and should be for the 
 most part imitations of the occupations which they will 
 hereafter pursue in earnest. Those are wrong who (like 
 Plato) in the Laws attempt to check the loud crying and 
 screaming of children, for these contribute towards their 
 growth, and, in a like manner, exercise their bodies. 
 Straining the voice has an effect similar to that produced 
 by the retention of the breath in violent exertions. Be- 
 sides other duties, the Directors of Education should 
 have an eye to their bringing up, and should take care 
 that they are left as little as possible with slaves. For 
 until they are seven years old they must live at home ; 
 and therefore, even at this early age, all that is mean and 
 low should be banished from their sight and hearing. 
 Indeed, there is nothing which the legislator should be 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 2'j\ 
 
 more careful to drive away than indecency of speech, 
 for the light utterance of shameful words is akin to 
 shameful actions. The young especially should never 
 be allowed to repeat or hear anything of the sort. A 
 freeman who is found saying or doing what is forbidden, 
 if he be too j-oung as yet to have the privilege of a place 
 at the public tables, should be disgraced and beaten, and 
 an elder person degraded as his slavish conduct deserves. 
 And since we do not allow improper language, clearly 
 we should also banish pictures or tales which are in- 
 decent. Let the rulers take care that there be no image 
 or picture representing unseemly actions, except in the 
 temples of those Gods at whose festivals the law permits 
 even ribaldry, and whom the law also permits to be wor- 
 shipped by persons of mature age on behalf of them- 
 selves, their children, and their wives. But the legis- 
 lator should not allow youth to be hearers of satirical 
 Iambic verses or spectators of comedy until they are of 
 an age to sit at the public tables and to drink strong 
 wine; by that time education will have armed them 
 against the evil influences of such representations. 
 
 " And therefore, youth should be kept strangers to all 
 that is bad, and especially all things which suggest vice 
 or hate. When the five years have passed away, during 
 the two following years they must look on at the pursuits 
 which they are hereafter to learn. There are two periods 
 of life into which education has to be divided, from seven 
 to the age of puberty, and onwards to the age of one 
 and twenty. (The poets) who divide ages by sevens, 
 are not always right: we should rather adhere to the 
 divisions actually made by nature ; for the deficiencies 
 of nature are what art and education seek to fill up." 
 
EXTRACTS FROM ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS. 
 
 Book VIIL 
 
 Public Schools and Liberal Education, 
 
 Gymnastics, Music and Morals. 
 
 " And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest 
 that education should be one and the same for all, and 
 that it should be public, and not private, — not as at 
 present, when every one looks after his own children 
 separately, and gives them separate instruction of the 
 sort which he thinks best ; the training in things which 
 are of common interest should be the same for all. 
 Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens be- 
 longs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are 
 each of them a part of the state, and the care of each 
 part is inseparable from the care of the whole. In this 
 particular the Lacedaemonians are to be praised, for they 
 take the greatest pains about their children, and make 
 education the business of the state. 
 
 "That education should be regulated by law and 
 
 should be an affair of state is not to be denied, but what 
 
 should be the character of this public education, and 
 
 how young persons should be educated, are questions 
 
 which remain to be considered. For mankind are by 
 
 no means agreed about the things to be taught, whether 
 
 (272) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 273 
 
 we look to virtue or the best life. Neither is it clear 
 whether education is more concerned with intellectual 
 or with moral virtue. The existing practice is perplex- 
 ing ; no one knows on what principle we should proceed — 
 should the useful in life, or should virtue, or should the 
 higher knowledge, be the aim of our training; all three 
 opinions have been entertained. Again, about the 
 means there is no agreement ; for different persons, start- 
 ing with different ideas about the nature of virtue, 
 naturally disagree about the practice of it. There can 
 be no doubt that children should be taught those use- 
 ful things which are really necessary, but not all things; 
 for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal ; and 
 to young children should be imparted only such kinds 
 of knowledge as will be useful to them without vulgar- 
 izing them. And any occupation, art or science, which 
 makes the body or soul or mind of the freeman less fit 
 for the practice or exercise of virtue, is vulgar ; where- 
 fore, we call those arts vulgar which tend to deform the 
 body, and likewise all paid employments, for they ab- 
 sorb and degrade the mind. There are also some liberal 
 arts quite proper for a freeman to acquire, but only in a 
 certain degree, and if he attend to them too closely, in 
 order to attain perfection in them, the same evil effects 
 will follow. The object, also, which a man sets before 
 him makes a great difference ; if he does or learns any- 
 thing for his own sake or for the sake of his friends, or 
 with a view to excellence, the action will not appear 
 illiberal ; but if done for the sake of others, the very 
 same action will be thought menial and servile. The 
 received subjects of instruction, as I have already re- 
 marked, are partly of a liberal and partly of an illiberal 
 character. 
 
 "The customary branches of education are in number, 
 
274 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 four; thej' are — (i) reading and writing, (2) gymnastic 
 exercises, (3) music, to which is sometimes added (4) 
 drawing. Of these, reading and writing and drawing 
 are regarded as useful for the purposes of life in a variety 
 of ways, and gymnastic exercises are thought to infuse 
 courage. Concerning music a doubt may be raised — in 
 our own day most men cultivate it for the sake of 
 pleasure, but originally it was included in education, 
 because nature herself, as has been often said, requires 
 that we should be able, not only to work well, but to use 
 leisure well ; for, as I must repeat once and again, the 
 first principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, 
 but leisure is better than occupation ; and therefore the 
 question must be asked in good earnest, what ought we 
 to do when at leisure? Clearly we ought not to be 
 amusing ourselves, for then amusement would be the end 
 of life. But if this is inconceivable, and yet amid seri- 
 ous occupations amusement is needed more than at other 
 times (for he who is hard at work has need of relaxation, 
 and amusement gives relaxation, whereas occupation is 
 always accompanied with exertion and effort), at suitable 
 times we should introduce amusements, and they should 
 be our medicines, for the emotion which they create in 
 the soul is a relaxation and from the pleasure \Ve obtain 
 rest. Leisure of itself gives pleasure and happiness and 
 enjoyment of life, which are experienced, not by the busy 
 man, but by those who have leisure. For he who is 
 occupied has in view some end which he has not attained ; 
 but happiness is an end which all men deem to be ac- 
 companied with pleasure and not with pain. This 
 pleasure, however, is regarded differently by different 
 persons, and varies according to the habit of individuals; 
 the pleasure of the best man is the best, and springs from 
 the noblest sources. It is clear then, that there are 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 275 
 
 branches of learning and education which we must study 
 with a view to the enjoyment of leisure, and these are 
 to be valued for their own sake; whereas, those kinds of 
 knowledge which are useful in business are to be deemed 
 necessary, and exist for the sake of othef things. And 
 therefore our fathers admitted music into education, not 
 on the ground either of its necessity or utility, for it is 
 not necessary, nor indeed useful in the same manner as 
 reading and writing, which are useful in money-making, 
 in the management of a household, in cUe acquisition of 
 knowledge and in political life, nor like drawing, useful 
 for a more correct judgment of the works of artists, nor 
 again, like gymnastics, which give health and strength ; 
 for neither of these is to be gained from music. There 
 remains, then, the use of music for intellectual enjoy- 
 ment in leisure; which appears to have been the reason 
 of its introduction, this being one of the ways in which 
 it is thought that a freeman should pass his leisure. 
 
 "Of those states which in our own day seem to take 
 the greatest care of children, some aim at producing in 
 them an athletic habit, but they only injure their forms 
 and stunt their growth. Although the Lacedaemonians 
 have not fallen into this mistake, yet they brutalize their 
 children by laborious exercises which they think will 
 make them courageous. But in truth, as we have often 
 repeated, education should not be exclusively directed to 
 this or to any other single end. And even if we suppose 
 the Lacedaemonians to be right in their end, they do not 
 attain it. For among barbarians and among animals 
 courage is found associated, not with the greatest ferocity, 
 but with a gentle and lion-like temper. There are many 
 races who are ready enough to kill and eat men such as 
 the Achaeans and Heniochi, who both live about the 
 Black Sea; and there are other inland tribes, as bad or 
 
276 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 worse, who all live by plunder, but have no courage. It 
 is notorious that the Lacedaemonians, while they were 
 themselves assiduous in their laborious drill, were su- 
 perior to others, but now they are beaten both in war and 
 gymnastic exercises. For their ancient superiority did 
 not depend on their mode of training their youth, but only 
 on the circumstance that they trained them at a time 
 when others did not. Hence we may infer that what is 
 noble, not what is brutal, should have the first place; no 
 wolf or other wild animal will face a really noble danger; 
 such dangers are for the brave man. And parents who 
 devote their children to gymnastics while they neglect 
 their necessary education, in reality vulgarize them ; for 
 they make them useful to the state in one quality only, 
 and even in this the argument proves them to be inferior 
 to others. We should judge the Lacedaemonians not 
 from what they have been, but from what they are ; for 
 now they have rivals who compete with their education ; 
 formerly they had none. 
 
 " It is an admitted principle, that gymnastic exercises 
 should be employed in education, and that for children 
 they should be of a lighter kind, avoiding severe 
 regimen or painful toil, lest the growth of the body be 
 impaired. The evil of excessive training in early years 
 is strikinglj' proved by the example of the Olympic 
 victors; for not more than two or three of them have 
 gained a prize both as boys and as men ; their early train- 
 ing and severe gymnastic exercises exhausted their con- 
 stitutions. When boyhood is over, three years should 
 be spent in other studieti ; the period of life which follows 
 may then be devoted to hard exercise and strict regimen. 
 Men ought not to labor at the same time with their 
 minds and with their bodies; for the two kinds of 
 labor are opposed to one another, the labor of the 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 277 
 
 body impedes the mind, and the labor of the mind the 
 body. 
 
 " Concerning music there are some questions which we 
 have already raised ; these we may now resume and carry 
 further. 
 
 " The first question is whether music is or is not to be 
 a part of education. Of the three things mentioned in 
 our discussion, which is it ? — Education or amusement 
 or intellectual enjoyment, for it may be reckoned under 
 all three, and seems to share in the nature of all of them. 
 Amusement is for the sake of relaxation, and relaxation 
 is of necessity sweet, for it is the remedy of pain caused 
 by toil, and intellectual enjoyment is universally acknowl- 
 edged to contain an element, not only of the noble but of 
 the pleasant, for happiness is made up of both. All men 
 agree that music is one of the pleasantest things, whether 
 with or without song ; as Musaeus says, 
 
 ' Song is to mortals of all things the sweetest.' 
 
 " Hence, and with good reason it is introduced into 
 social gatherings and entertainments, because it makes 
 the hearts of men glad ; so that on this ground alone we 
 may assume that the young ought to be trained in it. 
 For innocent pleasures are not only in harmony with 
 the perfect end of life, but they also provide relaxation. 
 And whereas men rarely attain the end, but often rest by 
 the way and amuse themselves, not only with a view to 
 some good, but also for the pleasure's sake, it may be 
 well for them at times to find a refreshment in music. 
 It sometimes happens that men make amusement the 
 end, for the end probably contains some element of 
 pleasure, though not anj' ordinary or lower pleasure ; but 
 they mistake the lower for the higher, and in seeking for 
 the one find the other, since every pleasure has a like- 
 ness to the end of action. For the end is not eligible, 
 
278 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 nor do the pleasures which we have described exist, for 
 the sake of any future good but of the past, that is to 
 say, they are the alleviation of past toils and pains. And 
 we may infer this to be the reason why men seek happi- 
 ness from common pleasures. But music is pursued, 
 not only as an alleviation of past toil, but also as pro- 
 viding recreation. And who can say whether, having 
 this use, it may not also have a nobler one ? In addition 
 to this common pleasure, felt and shared in by all (for 
 the pleasure given by music is natural, and therefore 
 adapted to all ages and characters), may it not have also 
 some influence over the character and the soul ? It must 
 have such an influence if characters are affected by it. 
 And that they are so affected is proved by the power 
 which the songs of Olympus and of many others exer- 
 cise; for beyond question they inspire enthusiasm, and 
 enthusiasm is an emotion of the ethical part of the soul. 
 Besides, when men hear imitations, even unaccompanied 
 by melody or rhythm, their feelings move in sympathy. 
 Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in 
 rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly 
 nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and 
 to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments, 
 and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble 
 actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger 
 and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance, and 
 of virtues and vices in general, which hardly fall short 
 of the actual affections, as we know from our own ex- 
 perience, for in listening to such strains our souls under- 
 go a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at 
 mere representations is not far removed from the same 
 feeling about realities ; for example, if any one delights 
 in the sight of a statue for its beauty only, it necessarily 
 follows that the sight of the original will be pleasant to 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 279 
 
 him. No other sense, such as taste or touch, has any 
 resemblance to moral qualities; in sight only there is a 
 little, for figures are to some extent of a moral character, 
 and (so far) all participate in the feeling about them. 
 Again, figures and colors are not imitations, but signs of 
 moral habits, indications which the body gives of states 
 of feeling. The connection of them with morals is slight, 
 but in so far as there is any, young men should be taught 
 to look, not at the works of Pauson, but at those of 
 Polygnotus, or any other painter or statuary who ex- 
 presses moral ideas. On the other hand, even in mere 
 melodies there is an imitation of character, for the 
 musical modes differ essentially from one another, and 
 those who hear them are differently affected by each. 
 Some of them make men sad and grave, like the so-called 
 Mixolydian, others enfeeble the mind, like the relaxed 
 harmonies, others, again, produce a moderate and settled 
 temper, which appears to be the peculiar effect of the 
 Dorian ; the Phrygian inspires enthusiasm. The whole 
 subject has been well treated by philosophical writers 
 on this branch of education, and they confirm their 
 arguments by facts. The same principles apply to 
 rhythms ; some have a character of rest, others of motion, 
 and of these latter again, some have a more vulgar, 
 others a nobler movement. Enough has been said to 
 show that music has a power of forming the character, 
 and should, therefore, be introduced into the education 
 of the young. The study is suited to the stage of youth, 
 for young persons will not, if they can help, endure any- 
 thing which is not sweetened by pleasure, and music has 
 a natural sweetness. There seems to be in us a sort of 
 aflSnity to harmonies and rhythms, which makes some 
 philosophers say that the soul is a harmony, others, that 
 she possesses harmony. 
 
28o Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 " And now we have to determine the question which 
 has been already raised, whether children should be 
 themselves taught to sing and play, or not. Clearly, 
 there is a considerable difference made in the character 
 by the actual practice of the art. It is difficult, if not 
 impossible, for those who do not perform to be judges of 
 the performance of others. Besides, children should 
 have something to do, and the rattle of Archytas, which 
 people give to their children in order to amuse them and 
 prevent them from breaking anything in the house, was 
 a capital invention, for a young thing cannot be quiet. 
 The rattle is a toy suited to the infant mind, and 
 (musical) education is a rattle or toy for children of a 
 larger growth. We conclude then that they should be 
 taught music in such a way as to become not only critics 
 but performers. 
 
 "The question, what is or is not, suitable for different 
 ages may be easily answered ; nor is there any difficulty 
 in meeting the objection of those who say that the study 
 of music is vulgar. We reply (i) in the first place, that 
 they who are to be judges must also be performers, and 
 that they should begin to practice early, although when 
 they are older they may be spared the execution ; they 
 must have learned to appreciate what is good and to de- 
 light in it, thanks to the knowledge which they acquired 
 in their youth. As to (2) the vulgarizing effect which 
 music is supposed to exercise, this is a question (of 
 degree), which we shall have no difficulty in determining, 
 when we have considered to what extent freemen who 
 are being trained to political virtue, should pursue the 
 art, what melodies and what rhythms they should be 
 allowed to use, and what instruments should be em- 
 ployed in teaching them to play, for even the instrument 
 makes a difference. The answer to the objection turns 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 281 
 
 upon these distinctions ; for it is quite possible that cer- 
 tain methods of teaching and learning music do really 
 have a degrading effect. It is evident then that the 
 learning of music ought not to impede the business of 
 riper years, or to degrade the body or render it unfit for 
 civil or military duties, whether for the early practice or 
 for the later stud3' of them. 
 
 "The right measure will be attained if students of 
 music stop short of the arts which are practised in pro- 
 fessional contests, and do not seek to acquire those fan- 
 tastic marvels of execution which are now the fashion 
 in such contests, and from these have passed into edu- 
 cation. Let the young pursue their studies until they 
 are able to feel delight in noble melodies and rhythms, 
 and not merely in that common part of music in which 
 every slave or child, and even some animals find pleasure. 
 
 "From these principles we may also infer what instru- 
 ments should be used. The flute, or any other instru- 
 ment which requires great skill, as for example the harp, 
 ought not to be admitted into education, but only such 
 as will make intelligent students of music or of the other 
 parts of education. Besides, the flute is not an instru- 
 ment which has a good moral effect ; it is too exciting. 
 The proper time for using it is when the performance 
 aims, not at instruction, but at the relief of the passions. 
 And there is a further objection ; the impediment which 
 the flute presents to the use of the voice detracts from 
 its educational value. The ancients were therefore right 
 in forbidding the flute to youths and freemen, although 
 they had once allowed it. For when their wealth gave 
 them greater leisure, and they had loftier notions of ex- 
 cellence, being also elated with their success, both before 
 and after the Persian War, with more zeal than discern- 
 ment they pursued every kind of knowledge, and so they 
 
282 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers . 
 
 introduced the flute into education. At Lacedsemon 
 there was a Choragus who led the Chorus with a flute, 
 and at Athens the instrument became so popular that 
 most freemen could play upon it. The popularity is 
 shown by the tablet which Thrasippus dedicated when 
 he furnished the Chorus to Ecphantides. Later experi- 
 ence enabled men to judge what was, or was not, really 
 conducive to virtue, and they rejected both the flute and 
 several other old-fashioned instruments, such as the 
 Lydian harp, the many-stringed lyre, the 'heptagon,' 
 ' triangle,' ' sambuca,' and the like — which are intended 
 only to give pleasure to the hearer, and require extra- 
 ordinary skill of hand. There is a meaning also in the 
 myth of the ancients, which tells how Athene invented 
 the flute and then threw it away. It was not a bad idea 
 of theirs, that the Goddess disliked the instrument be- 
 cause it made the face ugly ; but with still more reason 
 may we say that she rejected it because the acquirement 
 of flute-playing contributes nothing to the mind, since 
 to Athene we ascribe both knowledge and art. 
 
 "Thus then we reject the professional instruments and 
 also the professional mode of education in music — and 
 by professional we mean that which is adopted in con- 
 tests, for in this the performer practises the art, not for 
 the sake of his own improvement, but in order to give 
 pleasure, and that of a vulgar sort, to his hearers. For 
 this reason the execution of such music is not the part 
 of a freeman but of a paid performer, and the result is 
 that the performers are vulgarized, for the end at which 
 they aim is bad. The vulgarity of the spectator tends 
 to lower the character of the music and therefore of the 
 performers : they look to him — he makes them what they 
 are, and fashions even their bodies by the movements 
 which he expects them to exhibit. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 283 
 
 " We have also to consider rhythms and harmonies. 
 Shall we use them all in education or make a distinction ? 
 and shall the distinction be that which is made by those 
 who are engaged in education, or shall it be some other? 
 For we see that music is produced by melody and rhythm, 
 and we ought to know what influence these have respect- 
 ively on education, and whether we should prefer ex- 
 cellence in melody or excellence in rhythm. But as the 
 subject has been very well treated by many musicians of 
 the present day, and also by philosophers who have had 
 considerable experience of musical education, to these 
 we would refer the more exact student of the subject ; 
 we shall only speak of it now after the manner of the 
 legislator, having regard to general principles. 
 
 " We accept the division of melodies proposed by cer- 
 tain philosophers into ethical melodies, melodies of action, 
 and passionate or inspiring melodies, each having, as they 
 say, a mode or harmony corresponding to it. But we 
 maintain further that music should be studied, not for 
 the sake of one, but of many benefits, that is to say, with 
 a view to (i) education, (2) purification (the word ' puri- 
 fication ' we use at present without explanation, but when 
 hereafter we speak of poetry, we will treat the subject 
 with more precision) ; music may also serve (3) for in- 
 tellectual enjoyment, for relaxation and for recreation 
 after exertion. It is clear, therefore, that all the har- 
 monies must be employed by us, but not all of them in 
 the same manner. In education ethical melodies are to 
 be preferred, but we may listen to the melodies of action 
 and passion when they are performed by others. For 
 feelings such as pity and fear, or, again, enthusiasm, ex- 
 ist very strongly in some souls, and have more or less 
 influence over all. Some persons fall into a religious 
 frenzy, whom we see disenthralled by the use of mystic 
 
284 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 melodies, which bring healing and purification to the 
 soul. Those who are influenced by pity or fear, and 
 every emotional nature, have a like experience, others, 
 in their degree are stirred by something which specially 
 affects them, and all are in a manner purified, and their 
 souls lightened and delighted. The melodies of purifica- 
 tion likewise give an innocent pleasure to mankind. 
 Such are the harmonies and the melodies in which those 
 who perform music at the theatre should be invited to 
 compete. But since the spectators are of two kinds — the 
 one free and educated, and the other a vulgar crowd 
 composed of mechanics, laborers, and the like — there 
 ought to be contests and exhibitions instituted for the 
 relaxation of the^ second class also. And the melodies 
 will correspond to their minds ; for as their minds are 
 perverted from the natural state, so there are exaggerated 
 and corrupted harmonies which are in like manner a per- 
 version. A man receives pleasure from what is natural 
 to him, and therefore professional musicians may be 
 allowed to practice this lower sort of music before an 
 audience of a lower type. But, for the purposes of edu- 
 cation, as I have already said, those modes and melodies 
 should be employed which are ethical, such as the Dorian ; 
 though we may include any others which are approved 
 b}' philosophers who have had a musical education. The 
 Socrates of the Republic is wrong in retaining only the 
 Phrygian mode along w-ith the Dorian, and the more so 
 because he rejects the flute; for the Phrygian is to the 
 modes what the flute is to musical instruments — both of 
 them are exciting and emotional. Poetry proves this, 
 for Bacchic frenzy and all similar emotions are most 
 suitably expressed by the flute, and are better set to the 
 Phrygian than to any other harmony. The dithyramb, 
 for example, is acknowledged to be Phrygian, a fact of 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 285 
 
 which the connoisseurs of music offer many proofs, 
 saying, among other things, that Philoxenus, having at- 
 tempted to compose his tales as a dithyramb in the 
 Dorian mode, found it impossible, and fell back into the 
 more appropriate Phrygian. All men agree that the 
 Dorian music is the gravest and manliest. And, whereas 
 we say that the extremes should be avoided and the 
 mean followed, and whereas the Dorian is a mean between 
 the other harmonies (the Phrygian and the Lydian), it 
 is evident that our youth should be taught the Dorian 
 music. 
 
 "Two principles have to be kept in view, what is pos- 
 sible, what is becoming : at these every man ought to 
 aim. But even these are relative to age ; the old, who 
 have lost their powers, cannot very well sing the severe 
 melodies, and nature herself seems to suggest that their 
 songs should be of the more relaxed kind. Wherefore, 
 the musicians likewise blame Socrates, and with justice, 
 for rejecting the relaxed harmonies in education under 
 the idea that they are intoxicating, not in the ordinary 
 sense of intoxication (for wine rather tends to excite 
 men), but because they have no strength in them. And 
 so with a view to a time of life when men begin to grow 
 old, they ought to practice the gentler harmonies and 
 melodies as well as the others. And if there be any 
 harmony, such as the Lydian above all others appears 
 to be, which is suited to children of tender age, and pos- 
 sesses the elements both of order and of education, clearly 
 (we ought to use it, for) education should be based upon 
 three principles — the mean, the possible, the becomijag, 
 these three." 
 
Life of Socrates, 
 
 CONDENSED FROM 
 
 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS STANLEY. 
 
 London, 1701, 
 BY CHAS- M. HlGGINS. 
 
 Copyright, 1903, by CHAS. M. HlGGINS. 
 
 CHARLES M. HlGGINS & CO. 
 New York — Chicago — London. 
 1903. 
 
LIFE OF SOCRATES. 28^6. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 The nativity, parentage and training of Socrates, . 286 
 
 His original profession of sculptor abandoned to adopt the 
 role of moral philosopher, public reformer and teacher 
 
 of virtue, without fees, 287 
 
 His asceticism and voluntary poverty and his claim to divine 
 inspiration and a divine mission to mankind. His pro- 
 phetic spirit and his spiritual attendant or " damon." 288 
 The personal appearance, character and virtues of Socrates. 289 
 
 His wives and children, . 295 
 
 The Masters and Teachers of Socrates, .... 297 
 
 His school and pupils, 298 
 
 Philosophic sects influenced by and formed from his teach- 
 ings. Cynics, Stoics, Hedonists, Platonists, Aristotel- 
 ians, etc. . 307 
 
 Writings of Socrates — Poetry and Tragedy, . . 311 
 
 Socrates as a soldier — his military services and actions, 312 
 
 His quarrel with the Sophists and Rhetoricians and cause 
 
 of his death, . . , . .... 314 
 
 The trial of Socrates, .... ... 318 
 
 His imprisonment, 325 
 
 After his death. Decline of Greece. Honors paid and re- 
 morse and sorrow shown by Greeks nnd others . 331 
 
LIFE OF SOCRATES. 
 
 "The great English philosopher, John Stuart Mill, 
 has somewhere observed that mankind cannot be too 
 often reminded that there was once a man of the name 
 of Socrates." 
 
 Prof. Harnack— " What is Christianity?" 
 
 "Drink Socrates with Jove, next whom enthroned, 
 By Gods, and Wisdom's self, as wisest own'd. 
 Thee the Athenians gave a poisonous draught. 
 But first thy wisdom from your lips they quaffed." 
 
 Note : — In this condensation we ha%'e preserved as far 
 as possible the quaint language, punctuation, and obso- 
 lete words of this deep and interesting old book of two 
 centuries ago. 
 
 C. M. H. 
 
LIFE OF SOCRATES. 
 
 Condensed from Stanley's History of Philosophy, 
 
 London, 1701. 
 
 Socrates was by country an Athenian, born at Alopece, 
 a town belonging to tlie Antiochian Tribe. 
 
 His parents were very mean ; Sophroniscus (an Athen- 
 ian) his father, a statuary or carver of images in stone; 
 Phaenareta, his mother, a midwife, a woman of a bold, 
 generous and quick spirit, as is implied by the character 
 Plato gives her, of which professions of his parents, 
 he is observed to have been so far from feeling ashamed, 
 that he often took occasion to mention them. 
 
 The day of Socrates' birth was the sixth of the month 
 Thargelion (about May 20) memorable for the birth of 
 Diana. The day following, viz., the seventh of this 
 month, was the birthday of Plato, both of which were 
 kept with much solemnity by the Greek philosophers 
 (even to the time of Plotinus) as is affirmed by Plutarch. 
 
 Plutarch saith that as soon as he was born, Sophron- 
 iscus, his father, consulting- the oracle, was by it advised 
 to suffer his son to do what he pleased, never compelling 
 him to do what he disliked, nor diverting him from that 
 whereto he was inclined; to give thanks for him by 
 sacrifice to Jupiter Agorseus and the muses ; to be no 
 farther solicitous for him, he had one guide of his life 
 within him, better than five hundred masters. 
 
 But his father, not observant of the oracle's direction, 
 applied him to his own trade of carving statues, contrary 
 to his inclination, whereupon some have argued him of 
 disobedience, reporting that oftentimes, when his father 
 bade him work, he refused, and went away, following 
 his own will. {286) 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 287 
 
 His father dying, left liim fourscore minae, which, be- 
 ing entrusted with a friend for improvement, they mis- 
 carried. This loss, by which he was reduced to incredi- 
 ble poverty, Socrates passed over with silence, but was 
 thereupon necessitated to continue his trade for ordinary 
 subsistence. Duris, Pausauias, and the Scholiast of 
 Aristophanes aiSrm three statues of the Graces clothed 
 (for so they were most anciently made, not naked) set 
 up before the entrance into the tower at Athens, were his 
 work. Pausanias implieth as much of a statue of Mer- 
 cury in the same place ; which Pliny seems not to have 
 understood, who saith, they were made by a certain per- 
 son named Socrates, but not the painter. But being 
 naturally averse to this profession, he only followed it 
 when necessity enforced him. 
 
 These intermissions from his trade were bestowed 
 upon philosophy ; whereunto he was naturally addicted, 
 which being observed by Crito, a rich philosopher of 
 Athens, he took him from his shop, being much in love 
 with his candor and ingenuity, and instructed, or rather 
 gave him the means to be instructed by others ; taking 
 so much care of him, that he never suffered him to want 
 necessaries. And though his poverty was at first so 
 great as to be brought by some into a proverb, yet he 
 became at last, as Demetrius aflSrms, master of a house, 
 and fourscore minse, which Crito put out to interest: 
 But his mind (saith Libanius) was raised far above his 
 fortune, and more to the advantage of his country ; not 
 aiming at wealth, or the acquisition thereof by sordid 
 arts, he considered that of all things which man can call 
 his, the soul is the chief ; that he only is truly happy who 
 purifies that from vice ; that the only means conducing 
 thereto, is wisdom, in pursuit whereof he neglected all 
 other ways of profit and pleasure. 
 
288 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 We have alleged the universal consent of authors, 
 that Socrates possessed the spirit of prophecy and was 
 inspired and accompanied by a divine or spiritual at- 
 tendant; yet is there some disagreement concerning the 
 name, more concerning the nature of it. 
 
 It is commonly named his " daemon ", by which title, 
 he himself owned it: Plato sometimes calls it his 
 guardian; Apuleius his God, because (saith Saint 
 Augustine) the name of daemon at last grows odious.* 
 But we must observe, that he did not account it a God, 
 but sent from God, and in that sense affirmed the signs 
 to come from God, to wit, by mediation of this spirit. 
 This, besides other places, we may argue from his first 
 epistle, where he speaks of the sign itself ; he useth the 
 word daemon, when of the advice, whereof that sign was 
 the instrument, he names God. Thus are we to under- 
 stand these, and all other places of the same nature in 
 Plato, where Socrates, speaking of the daemon, saith, if 
 it pleases God, you shall learn much, and the sign from 
 God did not ofEer to stay me. 
 
 Others confine this prescience within the soul of Soc- 
 rates himself, that he said, his genius advised him, they 
 interpret it, as we usually say, his mind gave him, or so 
 inclined him : in this sense indeed daemon is not seldom 
 taken ; but this is inconsistent with the description 
 which Socrates gives of a voice and signs ab exteriore, 
 besides, this knowledge is not above human nature. 
 
 Some conceive it to be one of those spirits which have 
 a particular care of men ; which Maximus Tyrius, and 
 Apuleius describe in such manner, that they want only 
 the name of a good angel. 
 
 •By this Augustiue probably meant that the word "dsemon," had come to 
 mean, a.s it now does with us, au evil spiri t only, whereas originally the term 
 daemon or demon, was applied to a spiritual being either good or evil. Thus 
 in a similar way practically the same word or term was originally used either 
 for God or devil . For example, the word ' ' deuce ' ' we now apply to the great 
 evil spirit or devil only, whereas we apply the term ' ' Deus ' ' to the great good 
 spirit or God. yet both words, as may be seen, are substantially identical.— Ed. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 289 
 
 But there want not those who give it that appellation : 
 Lactanius having proved that God sends angels to guard 
 mankind, adds, and Socrates affirmed there was a daemon 
 constantly near him, which kept him company from a 
 child, by whose beck and instruction he guided his life. 
 Eusebius upon these words of the Psalmist, "He hath 
 given his angels charge over thee, that they should keep 
 thee in all thy ways." We learn out of Scripture (saith 
 he) that every man hath a guardian appointed him from 
 above ; and Plato doubteth not to write in this manner : 
 All souls having chosen a condition of living, they pro- 
 ceed in order thereto, being moved by the daemon, which 
 is proper to every one, and is sent along with them to 
 preserve them in this life, and to perfect those things 
 whereof they have made choice. And immediately after ; 
 you may believe, saith he, that Socrates means this, 
 when he often affirmed that he was governed by a 
 daemon. More plainly Eugubinus, the daemon of Soc- 
 rates, saith he, mentioned so often by Plato (seeing that 
 Socrates was a good man, and exhorted all men to virtue, 
 and by the dsemon was always excited to that which was 
 good) may perhaps not unjustly be thought his angel, 
 as that which appeared to Baalam the prophet, and di- 
 verted him from his wickedness. But, Ficinus expressly ; 
 if you are not pleased, saith he, speaking of this spirit, 
 to call the familiar guide of a man his spirit, call it if 
 you please, his good angel. 
 
 Of his Person and Virtues. 
 
 As to his person, he was very unhandsome, of a melan- 
 choly complexion, bald, a flat nose, eyes sticking out, a 
 severe downcast look, difficult in speech, and too concise, 
 his language rough and careless, but more efficacious 
 than all the eloquence of Themistocles, Pericles, or any 
 
290 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 other ; so acute that he could maintain either side in any 
 question, therefore is reproached by Aristophanes as 
 having two languages, whereof one was to defend 
 wrong ; fervent in dispute, often so transported, that he 
 would beat himself, and tear his beard, to the derision 
 of the standers-by, which he took quietly : patient to be 
 reargue'd; sometimes he covered his face in discourse, 
 that he might not be diverted by any object of sight : his 
 constitution strong and hardy, which he preserved such, 
 by taking diligent care of his health ; well bearing cold, 
 hunger, and upon occasion, excess of wine without dis- 
 turbance : his habit the same in winter as in sunimer, 
 having but one garment a year ; no shoes, his diet spar- 
 ing. In fine, his countenance promised so little, that 
 Zopyrus a physiognomist who undertook to discover the 
 dispositions of men by their looks said he was stupid, 
 because there were obstructions in his jugular parts; 
 adding, he was given to women and many other vices ; 
 whereat Alcibiades and other friends of his that were 
 present, knowing, him free from those imputations, fell 
 a laughing, but Socrates justified his skill, answering, 
 he was by nature prone to those vices, but suppressed 
 his inclinations by reason, whence Alcibiades used to 
 say, he resembled the image of Silenus as he did indeed 
 in his countenance, baldness, and flat nose carved on the 
 outside of little boxes, sitting and playing on a pipe ; for 
 as those boxes within held images of the Gods, so was 
 he adorned with chastity, ; integrity, alid all inward 
 beauty, ravished, as Plutarch saith, with a divine zeal to 
 virtue, in all kinds whereof Xenophon, Laertius and 
 others, assert these instances. 
 
 He was so wise, that he never erred in judging betwixt 
 better and worse, nor thereto needed any other help : 
 Yet he constantly professed, that he only knew that he 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 291 
 
 knew nothing : for which reason he was by the oracle o 
 
 Apollo at Delphi, declared of all men the most wise in 
 
 this manner to Charephon, many witnesses being 
 
 present : — 
 
 Wise Sophocles, wiser Euripedes, 
 But wisest of all men is Socrates. 
 
 Apollo (saith Cicero) conceiving the only wisdom of 
 mankind to consist in not thinking themselves to know 
 those things whereof they are ignorant. This oracle, 
 though he were nothing exalted with it himself, pro- 
 cured him much envy. 
 
 He was so religious, that he never did anything with- 
 out advising, first with the Gods, never was known to 
 attempt or speak any impiety. 
 
 He bore a reverence to the Gods, not human, but such 
 as transcended the greatest fear : some say it was out of 
 his great reverence to the divinity that he used to swear 
 by a cock, a dog, and a plain tree (under which they 
 used to sit) though it were interpreted atheism. 
 
 He was constant, and a lover of the public good, as 
 appears in his acquitting the ten captains, in his denying 
 thirty tyrants to fetch Leon in, his refusing to escape 
 out of prison, and reproving such as grieved for his 
 death. Xantippe used to say, that when the state was 
 oppressed with a thousand miseries, he always went 
 abroad and came home with the same look, never more 
 cheerful, or more troubled, for he bore a mind smooth 
 and cheerful upon all occasions, far remote from grief, 
 and above all, fear : in his declining age, falling sick, he 
 -was asked by one that came to visit him, how he did ? 
 Very well (saith he) either way ; if I live, I shall have 
 more emulation, if I die, more praise. 
 
 He was so temperate, that he never preferred that 
 which is pleasant before that which is wholesome. He 
 
292 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 never did eat more than appetite (which was his sauce) 
 made delightful ; all drink was pleasing to him, because 
 he never drank but when he was thirsty, and then with 
 such temperate caution, that he poured out the first 
 draught of water upon the ground, and if he were at 
 any time invited to a feast, he, which to others is very 
 difficult, with much ease took care not to eat more than 
 consisted with his health, whereof he was very careful, 
 because the exercises of the soul depend thereon and in 
 order thereto, used to walk constantly before meals, 
 whereupon being asked by one that observed it, what 
 he did, I get broth, saith he, for my supper. To this 
 temperance it is imputed, though Athens were often in 
 his time visited with the pestilence, he alone escaped it. 
 He was so frugal, that how little soever he had, it was 
 always enough. Wanting the means to live splendidly, 
 he taught not anxiously how to acquire more, but how 
 to accommodate his manner of life to that which he had, 
 wherewith he was so contented, that he affirmed himself 
 to come nearest the gods, because he wanted least. See- 
 ing the great variety of things exposed to sale, he would 
 say to himself, how many things there are that I need 
 not ; and often had in his mouth these verses. 
 
 Purple, which gold and gems adorn. 
 Is by tragedians to be worn. 
 
 Alcibiades ambitiously munificent, sent him many 
 gfreat presents : Xantippe admiring their value, desired 
 him to accept them: We (answered Socrates) will con- 
 test in liberality with Alcibiades, not accepting, by a 
 kind of munificence what he hath sent us. 
 
 To the same, who offered him a large plot of ground 
 to build a house upon : and if I wanted shoes (saith he) 
 would you give ma leather to make them ? But deserve 
 I not to be derided if I accepted it ? 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 293 
 
 He slighted Archelaus, Kiug of Macedonia, and 
 Scopas, son of Cranonias, and Euriloeus, son of Larisse- 
 us, not accepting their money nor going to them. 
 Archelaus sending to him to desire his company, he said, 
 he would not go to one, from whom he should receive 
 benefits, which he could not equal with return. To Per- 
 diccas, who demanded why he would not come to him, 
 he answered, lest I die the most ignoble death, that is 
 lest I receive a benefit which I cannot requite. 
 
 Coming home late one night from a feast, some wild 
 young men knowing of his return, lay in wait for him, 
 attired like furies, with vizards and torches, whereby 
 they used to affright such as they met ; Socrates as soon 
 as he saw them, nothing troubled, made a stand, and fell 
 to questioning them, according to his usual manner, as 
 if he had been in the Lyceum or Academy. 
 
 He despised those that cavilled at him. Being told 
 that such an one had reviled him behind his back : Let 
 him beat me, saith he, whilst I am not by : And that 
 another spoke ill of him : He hath not yet learned, said 
 he, to speak well. 
 
 Being kicked by an insolent young fellow, and seeing, 
 those that were with him much incensed, ready to pursue 
 him, he said, what if an ass kick me, would you have me 
 kick again, or sue him ? But the fellow escaped not 
 unpunished, for every one reproached him for this in- 
 solence, and called him the reviler, so that at last for 
 vexation he hanged himself. 
 
 Another striking him a box on the ear, he said no 
 more, but that it was hard a man knew not when to go 
 abroad with a helmet. 
 
 Another fell upon him with much violence, which he 
 endured without the least disturbance, suffering him to 
 vent his anger, which he did so long, till he made his 
 
294 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 face all swelled and bruised. Whensoever he perceived 
 himself to grow incensed with any of his friends, 
 
 Before the storm arose, 
 He to the harbor goes. 
 
 He used to moderate his voice, to look smilingly and 
 moderately upon them, reserving himself untainted with 
 passion, by recourse to the contrary. 
 
 He taught not such as conversed with him to be 
 covetous, for he took no money of his scholars, therein 
 expressing his own liberality. 
 
 Hunger or want could never force him to flatter any : 
 Yet was he very complaisant and facete in company : as 
 he one day openly at dinner reproved one of his friends 
 somewhat harshly. Plato said to him, had not this been 
 better told in private? Socrates immediately answered, 
 and had you not done better, if you had told me so in 
 private ? Being demanded what countryman he was, he 
 answered, neither of Athens, nor Greece, but of the 
 world. Sometimes he would feast in a fine robe, as 
 Plato describes him, and when the time allowed, learned 
 to sing, saying, it was no shame to learn anything which 
 one knew not: He also danced every day, conceiving 
 that exercise healthful ; nor was he ashamed to play with 
 little children. 
 
 He was so just, that he never in the least wronged 
 any man, but on the contrary, benefited all such as con- 
 versed with him, as much as he could. 
 
 His continence was invincible: He despised the 
 beauty of Alcibiades, derided Theodota and Caliste, two 
 eminent courtezans of that time. 
 
 He took great delight in the conversation of good 
 men ; to such he communicated whatsoever he knew ; 
 with them he studied the writings of the ancient wise 
 men, selecting what was good out of them. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 295 
 
 His Wives and Children. 
 
 He had two wives, the first Xantippe, a citizen's 
 daughter of Athens, as Theodoret affirms. 
 
 She was (according to the character A. Gellius gives 
 her) curst, froward, chiding and scolding always both 
 day and night, and for that reason he chose her, as he 
 professed to Antisthenes, from observing, that they who 
 would be excellent in horsemanship, chose the roughest 
 horses, knowing, if they are able to manage them, they 
 may easily rule others : He, desirous to use much con- 
 versation with men, took her to wife, knowing, if he 
 could bear with her, he might easily converse with all 
 men. To Alcibiades, who said, her scolding was intoler- 
 able, he professed it was nothing to him, being used to 
 it, like such as live in the continual noise of a mill: be- 
 sides, saith he, cannot you endure the cackling of hens ? 
 But they, answered Alcibiades, bring me eggs and 
 chickens: and my Xantippe, replies Socrates, children. 
 Of her impatience and his sufferance, there are several 
 instances : one day before some of his friends, she fell 
 into the usual extravagancies of her passion, whereupon 
 he not answering anything, went forth with them, but 
 was no sooner out at the door, when she, running up 
 into the chamber, threw down water upon his head, 
 whereat turning to his friends, did I not tell you, saith 
 he, that after so much thunder we should have rain ? 
 
 Having brought Euthydemus from the Palaestrae to 
 dine with him, Xantippe running to the table, angry, 
 overturned it ; Euthydemus, much troubled, rose up, and 
 would have gone away, when Socrates said : did not a 
 hen the other day, the very same thing at your house, 
 yet I was not angry thereat ? 
 
 His other wife was named Myrto, niece to Lysimachus, 
 
296 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 daughter of Aristedes, not the just, as Laertius, and 
 from him Suidas, affirms, but another of that name, the 
 third from hira, as is observed by Athenaeus, for the 
 two daughters of Aristides the Just, could not but be of 
 great age before the 77th Olympiad, wherein Socrates 
 was born, long before which time Aristides died an old 
 man in exile ; for that Themistocles died the second 
 year of the 77th Olympiad is certain, and as ^milius 
 Probus affirms, Aristides died four years before The- 
 mistocles was banished from Athens, hereupon Plutarch 
 more cautiously calls her not the daughter, but niece of 
 Aristides. 
 
 Some, because Xantippe (as is manifest from Plato) 
 outlived him, believe he was first married to Myrto, but 
 that he had both these wives at the same time, which is 
 attested by Demetrius Phalereus, Aristoxenus (to whom 
 Athenaeus saith, that Aristotle gave the ground) Cal- 
 isthenes and Porphyrius : whence Aristippus in his 
 epistle to his daughter Myrto, advised her to go to 
 Athens, and above all to honor Xantippe and Myrto, 
 and to live with them as he with Socrates. 
 
 The occasion, whereupon the Athenians, who from the 
 time of Cecrops had strictly observed single marriage, 
 allowed bigamy, in the time of Socrates, was this ; in the 
 second year of the 87th Olympiad and the third of the 
 88th, Athens was visited extremely with the pestilence, 
 which attended by war and famine occasioned so great 
 a scarcity of men, that they made an edict it might be 
 lawful for any that would to take two wives. Euripedes 
 made use of this indulgence, and that Socrates also did 
 so, is attested by Satyrus the peripatetic, and Hierony- 
 mus the Rhodian, who recorded the Order; to which 
 Athenaeus imputes the silence of the comic poets in this 
 particular, who omitted no grounds of reproach. Plu- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 297 
 
 tarch implies, that he took her out of charity, for she was 
 a widow (without any portion or dowry) extremely in 
 want. 
 
 Porphyrus reports, that when these two (Xantippe 
 and Myrto) quarrelled, they would at last fall both upon 
 Socrates, and beat him, because he stood by and never 
 parted them, but laughed as well when they fought with 
 him, as with one another. 
 
 By Xantippe he had a son, named Lamprocles, who 
 could not brook her impatience so well as his father, 
 and being vexed by her into disobedience, was reclaimed 
 by Socrates ; he died young, as may be gathered from 
 Plutarch, who saith, Timarchus of Chaeronea, dying 
 very young, desired earnestly of Socrates that he might 
 be buried near his son Lamprocles, who died but few 
 days before, being his dear friend, and of the same age. 
 It appears from Plato, that he had more sons by her, for 
 in his Apology he mentions three, two grown men, the 
 other a child, which seems to be the same, brought by 
 Xantippe to him in prison the day of his death, and as 
 Plutarch describes it, held in her lap. 
 
 By Myrto he had two sons : the eldest Sophroniscus, 
 the youngest Menedemus, or Menexenus, though some 
 say he had Menedemus by Xantippe. 
 
 • The Teachers of Socrates. 
 
 The first master of Socrates was Anaxagoras. Aris- 
 toneus saith, that as soon as Anaxagoras left the city, 
 Socrates applied himself to Archelaus, which, according 
 to Porphyrins, was in the seventeenth year of his age. 
 Of him he was much beloved, and traveled with him to 
 Samos, to Pytho, and to the Isthmus. 
 
 He was pupil likewise to Damon, whom Plato calls a 
 most pleasing teacher of Music, and all other things that 
 
298 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 he would teach himself, to young men. Damon was 
 pupil to Agathocles, master to Pericles, Clinias and 
 others ; intimate with Prodicus. He was banished by 
 the unjust ostracism of the Athenians for his excellence 
 in music. 
 
 To these teachers add Diotyma and Aspasia, women 
 excellently learned, the first supposed to have been in- 
 spired with a prophetical spirit. By her Socrates 
 affirmed that he was instructed concerning love, by 
 corporeal beauty to find out that of the soul ; of the 
 angelical mind, of God. See Plato's Phaedrus, and that 
 long discourse in his Symposium upon this subject, 
 which Socrates confesseth to be owing to her. 
 
 Aspasia was a famous Milesian woman, not onlj- ex- 
 cellent herself in rhetoric, but brought many scholars to 
 great perfection in it, of whom were Pericles the Atheni- 
 an and (as himself acknowledgeth) Socrates. 
 
 Of Euenus he learned poetry, of Ichomachus, hus- 
 bandry, of Theodorus Geometry. 
 
 Aristagoras a Meliau, is named likewise as his master. 
 
 His School and Pupils. 
 
 That Socrates had a proper school, may be argued 
 from Aristophanes, who derided some particulars in it, 
 and calls it his Phrontisterium. 
 
 Plato and Phsedrus mention as places frequented bj' 
 him and his auditors, the academy Lycasum, and a pleas- 
 ant meadow without the city on the side of the River 
 Ilissus. 
 
 Xenophon affirms, he was continually abroad, that in 
 the morning he visited the places of public walking and 
 exercise ; when it was full, the forum; and the rest of 
 the day he sought out the most populous meetings, 
 where he disputed openly for every one to hear. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 299 
 
 He did only teach, saith Plutarch, when the benches 
 were prepared, and himself in the chair, or in set hours 
 of reading and discourse, or appointments of walking 
 with his friends, but even when he played, when he ate 
 or drank, when he was in the camp or market ; finally, 
 when he was in prison ; thus he made every place a 
 school of virtue. 
 
 His manner of teaching was answerable to his opinion, 
 that the soul pre-existent to the body, in her first sepa- 
 rate condition, endowed with perfect knowledge, by 
 immersion into matter, became stupefied, and in a 
 manner lost, until awakened by discourse from sensible 
 objects ; whereby by degrees she recovers her first 
 knowledge; for this reason he taught only by irony and 
 induction: In this irony (saith Cicero) and dissimula- 
 tion he far exceeded all men in pleasantness and 
 urbanity. 
 
 Induction is by Cicero defined a manner of discourse, 
 which gains the assent of him with whom it is held, to 
 things not doubtful, by which assents it causeth that he 
 yield to a doubtful thing, by reason of the likeness it 
 hath to those things whereunto he assented : This kind 
 of speech Socrates most used, because he would not him- 
 self use any argument of persuasion, but rather chose 
 to work something out of that which was granted by 
 him with whom he disputed, which he, by reason of that 
 which he already yielded unto, must necessarily approve ; 
 of which he gives a large example in Plato's Meno. 
 
 For this reason he used to say, his skill had some 
 afi&nity with that of his mother, he being like a midwife' 
 though barren (as he modestly affirms) in himself, en- 
 deavored with a particular gift in assisting others, to 
 bring forth what they had within themselves; and this 
 was one reason why he refused to take money, affirming 
 
300 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers, 
 
 that he knew nothing himself, and that he was never 
 master to any. 
 
 These disputes of Socrates were committed to writing 
 by his scholars, wherein Xenophon gave example to the 
 rest, in doing it first, with most punctualness, as Plato 
 with most liberty, intermixing so much of his own, that 
 it is not easy to distinguish the master from the scholar: 
 whence Socrates hearing him recite his Lysis, said, how 
 many things doth this young man feign of me ? 
 Of His Philosophy. 
 
 Porphyrins, who traduced Socrates, affirms, he was 
 ingenious in nothing, unlearned in all, scarce able to 
 write, which, when upon any occasion he did, it was to 
 derision, and that he could read no better than a stam- 
 mering schoolboy: To which we shall oppose these 
 authorities : Xenophon who attests he was excellent in 
 all kinds of learning, instanceth in Arithmetic, Geome- 
 try, and Astrology; Plato, in Natural Philosophy; 
 Idomeneus, in Rhetoric: Laertius in medicine: in a 
 word, Cicero avers, that by the testimony of learned 
 men, and the judgment of all Greece, as well in wisdom, 
 acuteness, politeness and subtlety, as in eloquence, 
 variety and copiousness, to whatsoever part he gave him- 
 self, he was without exception Prince of all. 
 
 Noting how little advantage speculation brought to the 
 life and conversation of mankind, Socrates opposed all 
 pure science or speculative philosophy, and applied him- 
 self almost purely to practical ethics. He first, saith 
 Cicero, called philosophy away from things involved by 
 nature in secrecy, wherein, until his time all philoso- 
 phers had been employed, and brought her to common 
 life, to inquire of virtues and vices, good and evil. 
 
 Man, who was the sole subject of his philosophy, hav- 
 ing a twofold relation of divine speculation and human 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 30i 
 
 conversation, his doctrines were in the former respect 
 metaphysical, in the latter moral. 
 
 His metaphysical opinions may be thu^ collected and 
 abridged out of Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch and others. 
 
 Philosophy is the way to true happiness, the offices 
 whereof are two, to contemplate God, and to abstract the 
 soul from corporeal sense. 
 
 There are three principles of all things, God, Matter, 
 and Ideas; God is the universal intellect; matter the 
 subject of generation and corruption; idea is an incor- 
 poreal substance, the intellect of God ; God the Intellect 
 of the World. 
 
 God is one, perfect in Himself, giving the being, and 
 well-being of every creature ; what He is (saith he) I 
 know not, what He is not, I know. 
 
 That God, not chance, made the world and all crea- 
 tures ; that He will reward such as please Him, and 
 punish such as displease Him. That God is such and 
 so great that He at .once sees all, hears all, is every- 
 where, and orders all. This is the sum of his discourse 
 with Aristodemus, to which we may annex what is cited 
 under his name (if not mistaken) by Stobaeus. 
 
 Care, if by care ought may effected be ; 
 
 If not, why car'st thou, when God cares for thee ? 
 
 He held, that the Gods know all things, said, done, or 
 
 silently desired. 
 
 The soul is immortal, for what is always movable is 
 immortal. 
 
 The soul is pre-existent to the body, endued with 
 knowledge of eternal ideas. Thus is all her learning 
 only reminiscence, a recovery of her first knowledge. 
 
 The body being compounded, that is, made up of sev- 
 eral combined elements, is, like all material compounds, 
 destructible, and is therefore dissolved by death : The 
 
302 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 soul, being simple or of the nature of an element, is, like 
 all elements, indestructible, and is therefore incapable of 
 corruption, and passeth into another life. The souls of 
 men are divine, to whom, when they go out of the body, 
 the way of their return to Heaven is open, which to the 
 best and most just is the most expedite. 
 
 The souls of the good after death, are in a happy 
 estate, united to God in a blessed inaccessible place ; the 
 bad, in convenient places, suffer condign punishment. 
 
 To do good, is the best course of life, therein fortune 
 hath share. 
 
 They are best, and best pleasing to God, who do 
 anything, with any art or calling ; who followeth none, 
 is useless, to the public, and hated of God. 
 
 He taught everywhere, that a just man and a happy, 
 were all one, and used to curse him who first by opinion 
 divided honesty and profit (which are coherent by na- 
 ture) as having done an impious act, for they are truly 
 wicked who separate profitable and just, which depends 
 on law. The Stoics have followed him so far, that what- 
 soever is honest, the same they esteem profitable. 
 
 Being demanded by Gorgius, if he accounted not the 
 great King of Persia happy ? I know not, answered he, 
 how he is furnished with learning and virtue; as con- 
 ceiving that true happiness consisteth in these two, not 
 in the frail gifts of fortune. 
 
 He said he wondered at those who carve images of 
 stone, that they take such care to make stones resemble 
 men, whilst they neglect, and sufEer themselves to re- 
 semble stones. 
 
 He advised young men to behold themselves every 
 day in a glass, that if they were beautiful, they might 
 study to deserve it ; if deformed, to supply or hide it by 
 learning. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 303 
 
 He said, to begin well is not a small thing, but de- 
 pending on a small moment. 
 
 He said, virtue was the beauty, vice the deformity of 
 the soul. 
 
 He said, outward beauty was a sign of inward beauty, 
 and therefore chose such auditors. 
 
 In the life of man, as in an image, every part ought 
 to be beautiful. 
 
 To one who demanded what nobility is, he answered, 
 a good temper of soul and body. 
 
 He said, the ofiSce of a wise man is to discern what is 
 good and honest, and to shun that which is dishonest. 
 Justice and every other virtue is wisdom. 
 To be ignorant of ourselves, to seem to know those 
 things whereof we are ignorant, is next to madness. 
 
 That a pious person is rightly defined, such a one as 
 knows what is lawful as to the Gods; just, he that knows 
 what is lawful to men ; that a man is wise as far as he 
 knows; that what is profitable is fair to that whereto it is 
 profitable. 
 
 He conceived the only wisdom of man to consist in 
 not thinking he understands those things which he doth 
 not understand. 
 
 He affirmed, there is but one good thing, knowledge ; 
 one ill, ignorance ; but that riches and nobility had no- 
 thing in them of worth, but on the contrary all evils. 
 
 When a man openeth his mouth, his virtues are as 
 manifest, as images in a temple. 
 
 Being demanded what wisdom was, he answered, the 
 composure of the soul; being demanded who were wise, 
 they, said he, who do not easily err. 
 
 He said, be not forward in speech, for many times the 
 tongue hath cut off the head. 
 
 In war, steel is better than gold ; in life, wisdom ex- 
 celleth wealth. 
 
304 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 That the greatest of vices is ingratitude ; the greatest 
 of obligations, that to parents ; that a disobedient son the 
 Gods will not bless, nor men love. 
 
 Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for 
 God knows best what is good for us; our offerings pro- 
 portioned to our abilities, for He considers integrity, not 
 munificence. 
 
 He said (with the Pythian Oracle) that the Gods are 
 to be worshipped according to the law of the city where 
 a man lives, they who do otherwise, he thought super- 
 stitious and vain. 
 
 The best way of worshipping God is to do what He 
 commands. 
 
 That a man ought to inure himself to voluntary labor 
 and sufferance, so as what shall be imposed by necessity, 
 may appear in him not compulsive but free ; that soft 
 ways of living in pleasures beget no good constitution 
 of body, nor knowledge of the mind ; that tolerance 
 raiseth us to high attempts, is the effect of his discourse 
 with Aristippus. 
 
 He said. Death resembled ei'ther a deep sleep, or a 
 long journey out of our native country, or an absolute 
 annihilation of soul and body, examining all which he 
 aflSrmed, death to be in none of those respects evil ; as 
 to the first, saith Plutarch, it is not ill with those that 
 sleep, and we esteem that sleep sweetest which is deep- 
 est; and if we look on it as a journey, it is rather a 
 blessing, for thereby we are freed from the slavery and 
 affections of the flesh which possess and infatuate the 
 mind ; in the last respect, it makes us insensible of ill 
 and pain, as well as of good and pleasure. 
 
 He said, an honest death is better than a dishonest life. 
 
 That happiness consists not in luxury and pride, that 
 to want nothing is divine, to want the least next to 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 305 
 
 divine, is the conclusion of his discourse with Antipho. 
 Being demanded whom he thought richest, he an- 
 swered, him who is contented with least, for content is 
 the riches of nature. It is the property of God to need 
 nothing; to need least, nighest to God. 
 
 That health of body ought diligently to be preserved, 
 as that whereon all knowledge of the soul depends, is 
 the sum of his discourse with Epigenes. 
 
 He advised one that complained he had no delight in 
 his meat, to refrain from eating, whereby his diet would 
 become more pleasant, cheap and wholesome. 
 
 He said, the hungry wanted no sauce, the thirsty no 
 choice of wines. 
 
 He commended quiet and leisure above all things. 
 
 Being asked what was a young man's virtue, he an- 
 swered, to do nothing too much. 
 
 He said, we ought not to seek pleasures in others, but 
 in ourselves, the body being predisposed according as it 
 ought. 
 
 Being demanded from what things we ought to re- 
 frain most, he answered, from sordid unjust pleasures. 
 
 When a woman saith she loveth thee, take heed of 
 those words, more than when she revileth thee. 
 
 There is no better way to glory than to endeavor to 
 be good, as well as to seem such. 
 
 Good men must let the world see that their manners 
 are more firm than an oath. 
 
 They are not kings, he said, who are in possession of 
 a throne, or come unjustly by it, but they who know 
 how to govern. 
 
 A king is a ruler of willing subjects according to the 
 laws, a tyrant is a ruler of subjects against their will, 
 not according to the laws, but arbitrary. 
 
 The oflEces of a good citizen are in peace, to enrich the 
 
3o6 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 commonwealth, in war to subdue the enemies thereof, 
 in embassy to make friends of foes, in sedition to ap- 
 pease the people by eloquence. 
 
 Being demanded, what city was strongest, he said, that 
 which hath good men. 
 
 Being deriianded, what city is best, he said, that where- 
 in are proposed most rewards of virtue. 
 
 Being demanded, what city lives best, he said, that 
 which liveth according to law, and punisheth the unjust. 
 His Scholars and Auditors. 
 
 Whereas (saith Cicero) many springing from Soc- 
 rates by reason that out of his several various disputes 
 diffused everywhere, one laid hold of one thing, another 
 of another ; there were some, as it were, so many several 
 families differing amongst themselves, much disjoined 
 and disagreeing, yet all these philosophers would be 
 called, and conceived themselves to be the Socratics : of 
 these were 
 
 Plato, from whom came Aristotle and Xenocrates, the 
 first taking the name of Peripatetic, the other of 
 Academic. 
 
 Antisthenes, who chiefly affected the patience and 
 hardiness in Socrates, his discourse, from whom came 
 first the Cynics, then the Stoics. 
 
 Aristippus, who was more delighted with his more 
 voluptuous disputations, from him sprung the Cyrenaic 
 Philosophy. 
 
 Others there were who likewise called themselves 
 Socratics, but their sects by the strength and arguments 
 of the former, are broken and quite extinct : such were 
 
 Phsedo, an Elean, who instituted a particular school, 
 from him called Eliack, which afterwards was called 
 Eretriack, from Menedemus, who taught at Eretria, 
 from him Pyrrho, thence the Pyrrhonians. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 307 
 
 Euclid of Megara, institutor of the Megaric school, so 
 named from Clinomachus, his disciple, called the dia- 
 lectic, ending in Zeno, the Citian, who introduced the 
 Stoic. 
 
 The Herillians are named also, as a sect that would 
 be called Socratic. To these recited by Cicero, Suidas 
 adds 
 
 Bryso of Heraclea, who, together with Euclid, in- 
 vented disputative logic. 
 
 Theodorus, surnamed the Atheist, who invented a 
 peculiar sect called Theodorean, the opinion which he 
 taught was indifference. 
 
 Other disciples of Socrates there were, who followed 
 his philo.sophy, not appropriating out of it any par- 
 ticular sect, and therefore most properly deserve the 
 title of Socratics, such are Crito, Chaerephon, Xenophon 
 ^schines, Simias, Cebes, Glauco, and Terpsion. 
 
 The last kind of his auditors were those who made no 
 profession of philosophy, of whom were 
 
 Critias and Alcibiades, who afterwards proved the 
 most ambitious spirits of the Athenians, but it was dis- 
 covered in neither whilst they conversed with Socrates, 
 either that their 3'outh was not capable of expressing 
 their vice, or that they cunningly complied (as Xeno- 
 phon conjectures) with Socrates, in hopes of being by 
 his conversation enabled to manage their former designs, 
 which as soon as they attempted they left off their friend- 
 ship with Socrates. Critias fell from him and converted 
 his affection into hate, because he reproved his love to 
 Euthydemus; Alcibiades, naturally dissolute, was re- 
 claimed by Socrates, and continued such whilst he con- 
 versed with him. He was of form so exquisite as gave 
 occasion to some to calumniate the friendship betwixt 
 him and Socrates, to which effect Aristoxenus is cited 
 
3o8 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 by L,aertius and Athenseus, and some verses of Aspasia 
 by the latter ; his vindication we refer to Plato and 
 Xenophon. 
 
 Of Socrates his instructions to Alcibiades there are 
 these instances. 
 
 He told him he was nothing of what a man ought to 
 be, that he had no advantage by the greatness of his 
 birth above an ordinary porter; whereat Alcibiades, 
 much troubled, with tears besought him to instruct him 
 in virtue, and to reform his vices. 
 
 Perceiving Alcibiades to be exceedingly proud of his 
 riches and lands, he showed him a map of the world, 
 and bade him find Attica therein ; which done, he de- 
 sired that he would show him his own lands, he an- 
 swered, that they were not there. Do you boast, re- 
 plies Socrates, of that which you see is no (considerable) 
 part of the earth ? 
 
 Alcibiades being bj' reason of his youth bashful and 
 fearful to make an oration to the people, Socrates thus 
 encouraged him. Do you not esteem (saith he) that 
 shoemaker (naming him) an inconsiderable fellow? 
 Alcibiades assenting; and so likewise (continues he) 
 that crier and that tent-maker? Alcibiades granting 
 this, doth not, saith he, the Athenian Commonwealth 
 consist of these ? If 5'ou contemn them single, fear 
 them not in an Assembly. To these add 
 
 The four sons of Crito the philosopher; the eldest, 
 Critobolus, exceeding handsome and rich, but by Soc- 
 rates (who valued his own estate at five minae) demon- 
 strated to be poorer than himself. 
 
 The second Aermogenes, who falling into poverty, 
 Socrates persuaded Diodorus his friend, to entertain. 
 
 The third, Epigenes, a young man of an infirm body, 
 whom Socrates advised to study his own health, as that 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 309 
 
 ■wherein consisted the well-being and knowledge of his 
 mind. 
 
 The youngest, Cresippus. 
 
 Of poets, Euripides (as the writer of his life affirms) 
 and Euenus. 
 
 Of orators, Lysias, eminent in that kind easy to be un- 
 derstood, hard to be imitated, he came to Athens in the 
 second year of the 82nd Olympiad. Lysis, whom of re- 
 fractory he made pliant, and Isocrates, of whom when 
 very young, Socrates presaged great things. 
 
 In the number of his scholars and auditors were also 
 
 Adimantus and Glauco, sons to Aristo, brothers to 
 Plato: and Charmides, son of Glauco. Glauco, before 
 he was twenty years old, had taken upon him to be an 
 orator, and aimed at some great office in the common- 
 wealth, not to be wrought off from this fancy which 
 made him everj'where appear ridiculous, until addressed 
 by some friends to Socrates, who made him acknowledge 
 his own error and ignorance of that which he had un- 
 dertaken. On the contrary, his son Glauco, of excellent 
 parts, fit for any office in the commonwealth, j'et timor- 
 ously shunning all public affairs, was by Socrates in- 
 duced to undertake the magistracy. 
 
 Nicostratus, son of Theidotides and his brother 
 Theodotus. 
 
 ^antodorus, and his brother ApoUodorus. 
 
 Lysanias, father of ^schines. 
 
 Cheerecrates, brother to Chaerephon, betwixt whom 
 there was a great quarrel, but reconciled by Socrates. 
 
 Paralus, son of Demodocus, whose brother was 
 Theages. 
 
 Antipho, a Cephisiean, father of Epigenes : with whom 
 he discoursed of self-indulgence, teaching gratis, and of 
 veracity in Xenophon. 
 
3IO Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Eumares, a Phliasian, and Xenomedes, an Athe- 
 nian. 
 
 Besides these, there are with whom Socrates dis- 
 coursed and instructed, 
 
 Aristodemus, surnamed the little, who would not 
 sacrifice, pray, or use divination, but derided all such as 
 did, was by Socrates convinced. 
 
 Aristarchus troubled that he had a charge of kindred 
 lying upon him, by Socrates converted to a willing lib- 
 erality towards them. 
 
 Eutherus, who returning from travel, his lands taken 
 away, his father having left him nothing, chose rather 
 to follow a trade than to apply himself to friends, but 
 diverted by Socrates. 
 
 Diodorus, whom Socrates persuaded to take Hermo- 
 genes. 
 
 Enthydemus, who had collected many sentences of 
 poets and sophists, thought he excelled all his equals, 
 and hoped no less of his superiors, who was by Socrates 
 constrained to acknowledge his own error and ignorance, 
 and departed much troubled. 
 
 Hippias, an Elean, with whom Socrates discoursed of 
 justice. 
 
 Nicomedes, Pericles, and Iphicrates, with whom he 
 discoursed concerning the oflSce of a General. Into the 
 last he infused courage, by showing him the cocks of 
 Midas brustling against those of Callias. 
 
 Theaetetus, disputing of Knowledge, he dismissed, in- 
 spired as it were with divine wisdom. 
 
 Euthyphron, who intended to accuse his own father, 
 he dissuaded. 
 
 With Pharrhasius, a painter, Clito, a statuary, and 
 Pistias, an armorer, he disputes in Xenophon concern- 
 ing their several arts. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 311 
 
 His Writings. 
 
 They who af&rm that Socrates wrote nothing (as 
 Cicero, Plutarch, Dion, Chrysostom, Aristides, Origen, 
 and others) mean in respect to his philosophy, in which 
 kind he never wrote anything himself, but what he dis- 
 coursed was committed to writing by Xenophon, Plato 
 and others of his scholars. Hence the works of Plato 
 (particularly Phaedo) went under the name of Socrates, 
 and are so cited by Aristotle ; but that some things were 
 written by Socrates himself, is evident from those who 
 affirm. 
 
 He wrote, together with Euripides, and aided him in 
 
 making tragedies, whence Mnesilochus. 
 
 The Phrygians is Euripides new play 
 But Socrates gave it the best array. 
 
 And again, Euripides is steered by Socrates and 
 Callias. 
 
 Now thou with pride and self-conceit o'erflow'st ; 
 But all the cause to Socrates thou owest. 
 
 Hither refer we that of Cicero, who saith, when 
 
 Euripides made his play Orestes, Socrates revoked the 
 
 three first verses. He wrote also some fables of .(Esop 
 
 in verse, not very elegant, mentioned by Plato, Plutarch, 
 
 and Lasrtius, beginning thus: 
 
 To those who dwelt in Corinth, .(Esop said, 
 Virtue with vulgar wisdom be not weigh'd. 
 
 A paean or hymn in honor of Apollo and Diana : One 
 
 that went under his name, beginning thus : 
 
 Daelian Apollo, and thou fair, 
 Diana, hail ; immortal pair. 
 
 is by Dyonisidorus denied to be his : This is mentioned 
 
 also by Plato, to which some add 
 
 The Encomium of Gryllus, son of Xenophon, slain 
 
 in the Mantinean Fight, which the disagreement of times 
 
 will not allow ; more certain it is he framed 
 
312 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Dialogues, which he gave to ^schines, seeing him in 
 want, that he might get money by them ; to these add 
 
 Epistles, some whereof are published by Leo Allatius; 
 that he writ more is implied by Arrian and Athenseus. 
 His Military Actions. 
 
 It is observed by many, that Socrates little affected 
 travel, his life being wholly spent at home, saving when 
 he went out in military service. 
 
 In the second year of the eighty-sixth Olympiad broke 
 forth a war, the greatest that ever happened amongst the 
 Grecians, betwixt the Lacedemonians and the Athenians. 
 In this war was Socrates thrice personally engaged; 
 first at the siege of Polydsea. Here Alcibiades, his com- 
 rade, attests, Socrates outwent all soldiers in hardiness ; 
 and if at any time, saith he, as it often happens in war, 
 the provisions failed, there was none could bear the want 
 of meat and drink like him, yet on the other side in 
 times of feasting, he only seemed to enjoy them, and 
 though of himself he would not drink, yet being invited, 
 he far out-drank all others, and which is strangest of 
 all, never any man saw him drunk. The excesses of 
 cold in the winter, which in that country are extraor- 
 dinary, he as wonderfulh' endured, when the frost was 
 so sharp, that very few durst go out of their tents, and 
 those wrapping their legs and thighs in skins and furs, 
 he went along with them, having no more clothes than 
 those he usually wore. He walked barefooted upon the 
 ice with less tenderness than others in shoes, to the 
 wonder of the soldiers, who thought themselves re- 
 proached by his hardiness. His contemplative rapture 
 at the same time was no less worthy admiration ; he fell 
 into a deep contemplation one morning, and continued 
 all the while standing in the same posture ; at noon it 
 was taken notice of by the soldiers ; who told it from 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 313 
 
 one anotfier, that Socrates had stood still in the same 
 place all that morning: in the evening some Ionian 
 soldiers wrapping themselves warm, came and lay down 
 by him in the open field, to watch if he would continue 
 all night in the same posture, which he did, until the 
 morning, and as soon as the sun arose, saluted it, and 
 retired. Of these kind of raptures A. Gellius saith he 
 had many. We must not omit how he behaved himself 
 there in fight ; seeing his friend Alcibiades deeply en- 
 gaged, and much wounded, he stepped before him, de- 
 fended him and his arms from the enemy, and brought 
 him safely off. Nor was his modesty inferior to his love 
 or courage, for whereas after the battle, the generals 
 w^ere to bestow an honorable reward upon him that had 
 fought best, the judges assigned it to Socrates, he de- 
 clined it, and by his earnest intercession, procured that 
 it might be conferred upon Alcibiades. 
 
 The second action of Socrates was in the first year of 
 the eighty-ninth Olympiad at Delium, a town in Boetia. 
 Socrates in this engagement behaved himself with his 
 accustomed valor (so well, that Laches confesseth, if the 
 rest had fought like him, they had not lost the day) and 
 care of his friends ; for seeing Xenophon unhorsed in 
 the flight, and thrown down on the ground (himself like- 
 wise having his horse slain under him, fought on foot) 
 he took him upon his shoulders and carried him many a 
 stadia, and defended him till they gave over the pursuit. 
 And being thus at the lo.ss of the day, with others dis- 
 persed in flight (amongst whom was Laches the Archon, 
 and Alcibiades) in the constant slowness of his retreat 
 expressed a courage far above Laches, frequently look- 
 ing back and round about, as greedy to be revenged of 
 the enemy, if any should pursue them ; which was the 
 means that brought him off more safeh', for they who 
 
314 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 express least fear in their retreat, are less svibject to be 
 assaulted, than such as repose their confidence in flying. 
 
 His Falling out with the Sophists and with 
 Anytus. The Cause of his Death. 
 
 The Sophists, masters of language in those times, 
 saith Cicero (whereof was Gorgius of Lecontium, Thra- 
 simachus of Chalcedon, Protagoras of Abdera, Erodicus 
 a Cian, Hippias an Elian, and many others) professed 
 in arrogant words to teach, how an inferior cause (such 
 was their phrase) might by speaking, be made superior, 
 and used a sweet fluent kind of rhetoric, argute in sen- 
 tence, lofty in words, fitter for ostentation than pleading, 
 for the schools and academies, rather than the forum, 
 were so highly esteemed, that wheresoever they came, 
 they could persuade the young men to forsake all other 
 conversation for theirs. These Socrates opposed; and 
 often by his subtlety of disputing, refelling their prin- 
 ciples, with his accustomed interrogatories, demonstrated 
 that they were indeed much beneath the esteem they 
 had gained, that they themselves understood nothing of 
 that which they undertook to teach others ; he withdrew 
 the young men from their empty conversation: these, 
 who till then had been looked upon as angels for wit and 
 eloquence, he proved to be vain affecters of words, 
 ignorant of those things which they professed, and had 
 more need to give money to be taught, than to take (as 
 they used) money for teaching. The Athenians taken 
 with these reproofs which Socrates gave them, derided 
 them, and excited their children to the study of solid 
 virtue. 
 
 Another quarrel Socrates had of long continuance, for 
 it was the occasion of his death, but begun many years 
 before, with Anytus, an orator bj' profession, privately 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 315 
 
 maintained and enriched by leather-dressers : He had put 
 two of his sons to Socrates to be taught, but not being 
 pleased, that whilst they were in that way, they had not 
 learned so much, as to be able thereby to get their living; 
 he took them from Socrates, and put them to that trade 
 which himself was ashamed to own ; wherewith Socrates 
 being much displeased in respect of the two youths, 
 whose ruin he presaged, (and truly, for they fell after- 
 wards into debaucheries which occasioned it) spared not 
 to reproach Any tus in discoursing to his scholars, telling 
 them, that the trade of dressing leather was not fit to be 
 spoken of amongst young men, for they who benefit 
 themselves by any art, cherish and profess it, as 
 Acumenus Physic, Damon and Connus Music ; even 
 Anytus, whilst his sons were his scholars, was not 
 ashamed of that which they learned, though it were not 
 sufficient to maintain them by pleading ; but for himself, 
 he gloried that he walked invisible with Pluto's Helmet, 
 or Gyges's Ring, concealing from the people the true 
 means of his subsistence, which indeed was by dressing 
 leather, which was not just; to be ashamed of the trade, 
 and not of the profit ; for he ought to own this, or to 
 disclaim that. 
 
 Anytus (saith ^lian) to answer this reproach, studied 
 all occasions and ways of revenge; but feared the 
 Athenians, doubting if he should accuse Socrates, how 
 they would take it, his name being in high esteem for 
 many respects, chiefly for opposing the Sophists, who 
 neither taught nor knew any solid learning. He advised 
 with Melitus, a young man, an orator, unknown to Soc- 
 rates, described by Plato, with long plain hair, a high 
 nose, and a thin beard, one that for a drachm might be 
 bought into anything, by whose counsel he begins by 
 making trial in lesser things, to found how the Athen- 
 
3i6 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 ians would entertain a charge against his life; for to 
 have accused him upon the very first, he conceived un- 
 safe, as well for the reason already mentioned, as lest 
 the friends and followers of Socrates should divert the 
 anger of the judges upon himself, for falsely accusing a 
 person so far from being guilt\'^ of any wrong to the 
 state, that he was the only ornament thereof. To this 
 end he suborns Aristophanes, a comic poet, whose only 
 business was to raise mirth, to bring Socrates upon the 
 stage, taxing him with crimes which most men knew 
 him free from, impertinent discourse, making an ill 
 cause by argument seem good, introducing new and 
 strange deities, whilst himself believed and reverenced 
 none ; hereby to insinuate an ill opinion of him, even into 
 those who most frequented him. Aristophanes taking 
 this theme, interweaves it with much abusive mirth ; the 
 best of the Grecians was his subject, not Cleon, the 
 Lacedaemonians, the Thebans, or Pericles himself, but a 
 person dear to all the Gods, especially Apollo. At first 
 (by reason of the novelty of the thing, the unusual per- 
 sonating of Socrates upon the stage) the Athenians, 
 who expected nothing less, were struck with wonder. 
 Then (being naturally envious, apt to detract from the 
 best persons, not only of such as bore office in the com- 
 monwealth, but any that were eminent for learning and 
 virtue) they begun to be taken with the Clouds (so was 
 the play named) and cried up the actor that personated 
 Socrates with more applause than ever any before, giv- 
 ing him with many shouts the victory, and sending word 
 to the judges, that they should set down no name but 
 that of Aristophanes. Socrates came seldom to the 
 theatre, unless when Euripides contested with any new 
 tragedian, there, or in the Pyrseum, then he went, for he 
 affected the wisdom, goodness, and sweetness of his 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosopliers. 317 
 
 verse; sometimes Alcibiades and Critias would invite 
 him to a comedy, and in a manner compel him ; for he 
 was so far from esteeming comedians, that he contemned 
 them as lying, abusing, and unprofitable ; whereat they 
 were much displeased : These (with other things sug- 
 gested by Anytus and Melitus) were the ground of 
 Aristophanes in his comedy, who, it is likely, got a great 
 sum of money by it, they being eager in prosecution of 
 their design, and he prepared by want, and malice, to 
 receive their impression : In fine, the play got extraor- 
 dinary credit, that of Cratonus being verified. 
 
 The theatre was then 
 Fill'd with malicious men. 
 
 It being at that time the feast of Bacchus, a multitude 
 of Grecians went to see the play : Socrates being per- 
 sonated on the stage and often named, (nor was it much 
 the players should represent him, for the potters fre- 
 quently did it upon their stone jugs) the strangers that 
 were present (not knowing whom the comedy abused) 
 raised a hum and whisper, everyone asking who that 
 Socrates was, which he observing (for he came not 
 thither by chance, but because he knew himself should 
 be abused in the play, had chosen the most conspicuous 
 seat in the theatre) to put the strangers out of doubt, 
 he rose up, and all the while the play lasted, continued 
 in that posture (laughing). One that was present asked 
 him if it did not vex him to see himself brought upon 
 the stage. Not at all (answered he) methinks I am at 
 a feast where every one enjoys me. This comedy was 
 first acted when Isarchus was Archon, Cratinus Victor 
 in the first year of the eighty-ninth Olympiad : Aristo- 
 phanes being by some reprehended for it, to vindicate 
 himself, caused it to be acted again the year following 
 Amintas being Archon, but with worse order than at first 
 
31 8 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Amipsias also (another comic poet) derided him thus 
 
 in Tribune. 
 
 O Socrates, the best of few, the vainest 
 Of many men ; and art thou come amongst us? 
 Where is thy gown ? did not this great misfortune 
 Befall thee by the leather-dresser's help ? 
 
 His Trial, 
 
 Many years passed since the first falling out betwixt 
 Socrates and Anytus, during which time one continued 
 openly reproving, the other, secretly undermining, until 
 at length Anytus seeing the time suit with his design, 
 procured Melitus to prefer a bill against him to the 
 Senate in these terms. 
 
 Melitus, son of Melitus, a Pythean, accuseth Socrates, 
 son of Sophroniscus, an Alopecian. Socrates, violates 
 the law, not believing the Deities which this city be- 
 lieveth, but introducing other new Gods. He violates 
 the law likewise in corrupting youth ; the punishment 
 death. 
 
 This Bill being preferred upon oath, Crito became 
 bound to the Judges for his appearance at the day of 
 trial. Soon after Anytus sent privately to him, desiring 
 him to forbear the mention of his trade, and assuring 
 him that he would thereupon withdraw his action ; but 
 Socrates returned answer, that he would never forbear 
 speaking truth as long as he lived, that he would always 
 use the same speeches concerning him ; that his accusa- 
 tion was not of force enough to make him refrain from 
 speaking those things which he thought himself before 
 obliged to say. 
 
 The interval of time betwixt his accusation and trial, 
 he employed in his usual philosophical exercises, not 
 taking any care to provide his defence, for which being 
 observed and questioned by Hermogenes, son of Hip- 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 319 
 
 ponicus, I provide apology enough (saith he) in consid- 
 ering and pursuing the constant course of my life ; 
 Hermogenes demanding how that could be, because 
 (saith he J I never did any unjust act, which I conceive 
 the best apology. But we often see judges (saith 
 Hermogenes) overswayed by rhetoric, to condemn the 
 innocent, and acquit the guilty. The truth is, replied 
 Socrates, going about to make my apology, I was twice 
 withheld b}' the daemon, whereat Hermogenes wonder- 
 ing, is it strange (continues he) that God should think 
 it fit for me to die at this time ? Hitherto no man hath 
 lived more uprightly, which as it is now my greatest 
 comfort, so it was the greatest delight to myself and 
 friends ; if I live longer, I know I must undergo what is 
 proper to old age, defects of hearing and sight, slowness 
 to apprehend, aptness to forget, how can I then be 
 pleased to live longer and grow worse : it is likely God 
 in His love to me hath ordained that I should die in the 
 most convenient age, and by the gentlest means ; for if I 
 die by sentence I am allowed the benefit of the most 
 easy kind of death ; I shall give my friends the least 
 trouble, I shall do nothing unseemly before those that 
 are present, and shall depart sound in body and soul ; 
 is not this very desirable ? God with much reason for- 
 bids me to make any defence. If I could effect it, I 
 should only stay longer to be taken away by the torment 
 of diseases, and imperfections of age, which truly Her- 
 mogenes I desire not ; if when I give an account of my 
 actions towards God aud men, the judges think fit to 
 condemn me, I will rather choose to die than beg of 
 them a life worse than death. 
 
 Other friends used the same persuasions to him with 
 assurance of victory. Lysias, an excellent orator, of- 
 fered him an oration, which he had written in his de- 
 
320 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 fence, desiring him if he thought good to make use of it 
 at his trial ; Socrates perused it, and told him, that it 
 was a good one, but not fit for him. Lysias asking how 
 that could be ? Why (saith he) may not a garment or 
 shoes be rich, yet not fit for me ? If you should bring 
 me Siciouian shoes, I would not wear them though they 
 were fit for my feet, because they are effeminate : He 
 conceived the oration to be ingenious and eloquent, but 
 not stout and manly ; for though it were very bitter 
 against the judges, yet was it more rhetorical than be- 
 came a philosopher. 
 
 The day of trial being come, Anytus, Lyco, and Meli- 
 tus prepared to accuse him, one in behalf of the people, 
 the second of the orators, the last of the poets. Melitus 
 first went up into the chair proper for that purpose, and 
 there spoke an oration which was in itself mean enough, 
 but withal delivered so unhappily and schoolboy like, 
 that sometimes he was out with fear, and turned about 
 to be prompted like a player, enough to beget laughter 
 even in those that were most concerned in so serious a 
 cause. 
 
 That Socrates persuaded his auditors to contemn the 
 received laws, saying it was fit only for fools to be gov- 
 erned by a bean (meaning the votes of the Senate 
 counted by beans.) 
 
 That he was intimately conversant with Critias and 
 Alcibiades, one most covetous and violent in the oli- 
 garchy, the other ambitious of tyranny. 
 
 That he taught disrespect and disobedience to parents, 
 telling his scholars he would make them wiser than 
 their fathers, and that it was lawful for any one to bind 
 his father if he were mad, and for those that were the 
 more wise, to do as much to those that were less wise. 
 
 That he taught also disrespect of all other kinsmen, 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 321 
 
 saying they were not useful to the sick, or to the ac- 
 cused, the first being in more need of a physician, the 
 latter of an orator ; that the goodwill of unable friends 
 was nothing worth, that only the most knowing persons 
 were most worthy of honor ; by which means he would 
 arrogate all respect to himself. 
 
 That he selected out of the poets some ill places, and 
 perverted others that were not so, to excite his friends to 
 impious acflions. 
 
 That he often repeated and misinterpreted these words 
 
 of Homer, as if the poet allowed the poor to be beaten. 
 
 When he a Prince, or some great person meets. 
 Such with soft language kindly thus he greets ; 
 Happy above the reach of fear are you ; 
 Sit down, and bid your followers do so too. 
 But of the lower sort when any speaks, 
 Forth these words with blows his anger breaks. 
 Be quiet ; to thy betters wretch submit ; 
 For action and advice alike unfit. 
 
 Melitus (his oration ended) came down; next him 
 came Anytus with a long malicious speech, and last of 
 all Lyco with all the artifice of rhetoric concluded the 
 accusation. 
 
 Socrates would not (as was the custom) procure an 
 advocate to plead for him ; all the while his accusers 
 were speaking, he seemed to employ his mind about 
 nothing less : as soon as they had done, he went up into 
 the chair, (in which action he observed that the daemon 
 did not withhold him) and with an angry smile begun 
 this unpremeditated answer, not as a suppliant, or guilty 
 person, but as if master of the judges themselves, with a 
 free contumacy proceeding not from pride, but the great- 
 ness of his mind. 
 
 But I wonder first (Athenians) how Melitus came by 
 this knowledge, that (as he saith) I do not worship 
 those Gods the city worships ? Others have seen me. 
 
322 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 (and so might Melitus if he had pleased) sacrifice at 
 common festivals on the public altars ; how do I intro- 
 duce new Deities when I profess to be directed in all my 
 adlions by the voice of God ? They who observe the 
 notes of birds, or answers of men, are guided b}'' the 
 voice : none doubts of thunder whether it be loud or 
 oraculous. Doth not the priestess on the tripod convey 
 to us by voice what the God delivers to her ? And that 
 He foreknows events, communicating them to whom 
 pleaseth him, all men (as well as I) believe and profess. 
 Others call those that foretell events, augurs, soothsay- 
 ers, and diviners, I the daemon, and (I conceive) more 
 religiously than they who ascribe a divine power to 
 birds. That I am no impostor herein, many can attest 
 who have asked my advice, and never found it fail. 
 Here there arose a murmur in the Senate, some not be- 
 lieving, others envying what he said, that he should 
 surpass them in such a particular favor of the Deity : 
 Let such as are incredulous hear this also to confirm 
 their opinion that I am not favored of the Gods ; when 
 Chaerephon in the presence of many witnesses, ques- 
 tioned the Delphian Oracle concerning me, Apollo an- 
 swered, that no man was more free, more just, or more 
 wise; (here another murmur arose amongst the judges: 
 he proceeded.) Yet the same God said more of Ly- 
 curgus the Lacedaemonian Law-giver, that he knew not 
 whether to call him a God or a Man ; me he compared 
 not with the Gods, though he gave me the priority 
 amongst men. But trust not the God herein, consider 
 me exactly yourselves; whom know you less a servant 
 to corporeal pleasures, whom more free ? I accept not 
 either rewards or gifts ; who more just than he who 
 conforms himself to the present time, as he needs not 
 the help of any other ; who will say he deserves not the 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 323 
 
 title of wise, who since he was able, never desisted to 
 learn by enquiry all good possible : and that I took not 
 this pains in vain, is evident in that, many citizetis and 
 strangers studious of virtue, prefer my conversation 
 above all others : What is the reason that though all 
 men know I have no wealth to requite them, so many- 
 desire to oblige me by gifts ? That I require no return 
 from any, yet engage so manj"^ ? That when the city 
 being besieged, every one lamented his condition, I was 
 no more moved than when it was most flourishing? 
 That whilst others lay out money on outward things to 
 please themselves, I furnish myself, from within myself, 
 with things that please me better. If none can disprove 
 what I have said, deserve I not the commendations both 
 of Gods and men? And yet you Melitus pretend that 
 with these instructions I corrupt youth; every one 
 knows what it is to corrupt youth : can you name but 
 one that I of religious have made impious, of modest, 
 impudent, of frugal, prodigal, of sober, debauched, of 
 hardy, effiminate, or the like ? But I know those, an- 
 swered Melitus, whom you have persuaded to be more 
 obedient to you than to their own parents. That as far 
 as concerns instruction, replied Socrates, I confess this 
 they know to be my proper care : For their health men 
 obey physicians before their parents, in lawsuits coun- 
 sellors before their kindred ; do j'ou not in war prefer 
 the most experienced soldiers to command before j^our 
 own allies ? Yes, answers Melitus, 'tis fit we, should ; 
 and do you think it reason, then, replies Socrates, if 
 others are preferred for such things as they are excellent 
 in, that because in the opinion of some, I have an ad- 
 vantage beyond others in educating youth, which is the 
 greatest benefit amongst men, I ought therefore to die ? 
 Anytus and Melitus (saith he, addressing himself to the 
 
324 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 judges) may procure my death, hurt me they cannot: 
 To fear death is to seem wise, and not to be so ; for it is 
 to pretend to understand that which we understand not : 
 No man knows what death is, whether it be not the 
 greatest happiness that can arrive to a man, and yet all 
 fear and shun it as if they were sure it were the greatest 
 misfortune. 
 
 This and more (saith Xenophon) was said both by 
 himself and his friends, but the judges were so little 
 pleased with his unusual manner of pleading, that as 
 Plato went up into the chair, and began a speech in these 
 words. Though I, Athenians, am the youngest of those 
 that come up in this place, they all cried out, of those 
 that go down, which he thereupon was constrained to 
 do, and they proceeding to vote, Socrates was cast by 
 281 voices; it was the custom of Athens, as Cicero ob- 
 serves, when any one was cast, if the fault were not 
 capital, to impose a pecuniary mulct ; when the judges 
 had voted in that manner, the guilty person was asked 
 the highest rate whereat he estimated his offence ; the 
 judges, willing to favor Socrates, propounded that de- 
 mand to him, he answered 25 (or as Eubulides saith) 
 100 drachms, nor would he suffer his friends, Plato, 
 Crito, Critobolus, and ApoUodorus (who desired him to 
 estimate it at 50 minse, promising to undertake the sum) 
 to pay anything for him, saying, that to pay a penalt}' 
 was to own an offence, and telling the judges that (for 
 what he stood accused) he deserved the highest honors 
 and rewards, and daily sustenance at the public charge 
 out of the Prytanseum, which was the greatest honor 
 that was amongst the Qrecians ; with this answer the 
 judges were so exasperated, that they condemned him 
 to death by eighty votes more. 
 
 The sentence being past, he could not forbear smiling. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 325 
 
 and turning to his friends, saith thus, They who have 
 suborned false witnesses against me, and they who have 
 born such testimonies, are doubtless conscious to them- 
 selves of great impiety and injustice; but as for me, 
 what should more deject me now than before I was con- 
 demned, being nothing the more guilty ; they could not 
 prove I named any new Gods for Jupiter, Juno, and the 
 rest, or swore by such : how did I corrupt young men 
 by inuring them to sufferance and frugality? Of 
 capital offences, as Sacrilege, Theft, and Treason, my 
 very adversaries acquit me ; which makes me wonder 
 ■ how I come to be condemned to die ; yet that I die un- 
 justly will not trouble me, it is not a reproach to me, 
 but to those who condemned me; I am much satisfied 
 with the example of Palamedes, who suffered death in 
 the like manner; he is much more commended than 
 Ulysses the procurer of his death. I know both future 
 and' past times will witness, I never hurt or injured any, 
 but on the contrary, have advantaged all that conversed 
 with me to my utmost ability, communicating what good 
 I could, gratis. This said, he went away, his carriage 
 answerable to his words, his eyes, gesture, and gait ex- 
 pressing much cheerfulness. 
 
 His Imprisonment. 
 Socrates (saith Seneca) with the same resolved look, 
 wherewith he singly opposed the thirty tyrants, entered 
 the prison, and took away all ignominy from the place, 
 which could not be a prison whilst he was there : Here 
 (being fettered by the eleven officers) he continued 
 thirty days after he was condemned upon this occasion : 
 The ship which carried Theseus and fourteen more per- 
 sons into Greet; he vowed if they got safe home (as it 
 fortuned they did) to dedicate to Apollo, and to send it 
 every year with a present to Delos, which custom the 
 
326 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 Athenians religiously observed ; before the solemnity, 
 they used to lustrate their city, and all condemned per- 
 sons were reprieved till it returned from Delos, which 
 sometimes, the wind not serving, was a long time. The 
 priest of Apollo began the solemnit}', by crowning the 
 poop of the ship, which happening the day before Soc- 
 rates was condemned, occasioned his lying in prison so 
 long after. 
 
 In this interval he was visited by his friend, with 
 whom he passed the time in dispute after his usual 
 manner : he was often solicited by them to an escape, 
 some of them offered to carry him away by force, which 
 he not only refused, but derided, asking, if they knew 
 any place out of Attica, whither death could not come. 
 Crito, two days before his death, came very early in the 
 morning to him to the same purpose, having by his fre- 
 quent visits and gifts gained some interest in the jailor, 
 but finding him asleep, sat still by him, admiring the 
 soundness of his sleep, the happy equality of his mind; 
 as soon as he waked, he told him that he came to bring 
 sad news, if not such to him, yet to all his friends, that 
 the ship would certainly be at home to-morrow at 
 furthest (some that came from Sunium affirming they 
 had left it there) but that in all likelihood it would 
 come that day, and he should die the next. In good 
 time be it, answered Socrates, but I do not believe it will 
 come to-day ; for the day following I must die, as they 
 say, who have the power in their hands; but that I shall 
 not die to-morrow, but the day after, I guess by a dream 
 I had this night, that a woman very beautiful, in a white 
 garment, saluted me by my name, saying 
 
 Thou, ere three days are told, 
 Rich Phithya shall behold. 
 
 (The same relation, according to Laertius, he made to 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 327 
 
 ^schines.) This occasion Crito took to persuade him to 
 save himself, which he pressed with many arguments ; 
 that his friends would be accused of covetousness, as 
 more desirous to spare their wealth, than to redeem him ; 
 that it might be effected with little trouble and expense 
 to them who were provided for it ; that himself was rich 
 enough to do it, or if not, Simmias, Cebes, and others 
 would join with him ; that he ought not voluntarily to 
 thrust himself into destruction, when he might avoid it; 
 that he should leave his children in an uncertain mean 
 estate ; that it would not be construed constancy, but 
 " want of courage. Consider well these reasons, saith he, 
 or rather (for it is now no time to stand considering) 
 be persuaded, wliat is to be done, must be done this 
 night, or it will be too late. Socrates answered, that his 
 cheerful readiness to relieve him was much to be es- 
 teemed, if agreeable to justice, otherwise, the less just, 
 the more blamable : that opinion and censure ought not 
 to be regarded, but truth and equity ; that wrong must 
 not be requited with wrong; that faith should be kept 
 more strictly with a city than with private persons ; that 
 he had voluntarily subjected himself to the laws of his 
 country, by living under their government, and to vio- 
 late them at last, were great injustice : That by breaking 
 prison, he should not only draw his friends into many 
 inconveniences, but himself also into many dangers, 
 only to live and die in exile ; that in such a condition, 
 he should be nothing more capable to bring up his 
 children well, but dying honestly, his friends would take 
 the more care of them : That whatsoever inconvenience 
 might ensue, nothing was to be preferred before justice; 
 that if he should escape by treachery, the remainder of 
 his life would be never the more happy, nor himself 
 after death better entertained in the next world. These 
 
328 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 things (saith he) I hear like the Corybantian Pipes, the 
 sound of these words makes me deaf to every thing else ; 
 therefore, whatever you shall say to the contrary, will 
 be to no purpose ; but if you have any other business, 
 speak. Crito answering, he had not any else : as for this 
 then (concludes he) speak no more of it, let us go the 
 way which God points out to us. * * * 
 
 Let every one, therefore, prepare for this journey 
 against the time that fate shall call him away: j'ou 
 Simmias, Cebes, and the rest here present shall go at 
 your appointed hour, me fate now summons (as the 
 tragedian saith), and perhaps it is time that I go into 
 the bath, for I think it best to wash before I take the 
 poison, that I may save the women the labor of washing 
 me when I am dead. ***** 
 
 I cannot persuade Crito, saith he, that I am any thing 
 more than the carcass you will anon behold, and there- 
 fore he takes this care for my interment ; it seems that 
 what even now I told him that as soon as I have taken 
 the poison, I shall go to the joys of the blessed, hath 
 been to little purpose ; he was my bail, bound to the 
 judges for my appearance, you must now be my sureties 
 to him that I am departed ; let him not say that Socrates 
 is carried to the grave, or laid under ground, for know, 
 dear Crito, such a mistake were a wrong to my soul ; be 
 not dejected, tell the world my tody only is buried, and 
 that after what manner thou pleasest. This said, he 
 arose and retired into an inward room, taking Crito 
 with him, leaving us discoursing upon our own misery, 
 shortly to be deprived like orphans of so dear a father. 
 After his bathing, came his wife and the other women 
 of his family with his sons, two of them children, one a 
 youth ; when he had taken order with these about his 
 domestic affairs, he dismissed them and came out to us. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. yiq 
 
 It was now sunset, (for he had staid long within) 
 when the officer entered, and after a little pause said : " I 
 have not, Socrates observed that carriage in you which 
 I have found in others, but as I thought you the most 
 generous, the mildest and best of all men that ever came 
 into this place, so I now see you hate me not, for that 
 whereof others are the cause : you know the message I 
 bring, farewell; bear what you cannot remedy:" With 
 that he departed weeping; "Fare thee well," (said Soc- 
 rates) "I will:" "How civil is this man! I found him 
 the same all the time of my imprisonment, he would 
 often visit me, discourse with me, used me always 
 courteously, and now see how kindly he weeps for me : 
 but come Crito, let us do as he bids us, if the poison be 
 ready, let it be brought in; " "The sun is yet scarce set," 
 answers Crito : " others take it late after a plentiful sup- 
 per and full cups; make not so much haste, there is 
 time enough," he replies, "They who do so think they 
 gain time, but what shall I gain by drinking it late? 
 Only deceive myself as covetous of life, and sparing of 
 that which is no longer mine; pray let it be as I say: " 
 Then Crito sent one of the attendants, who immediately 
 returned, and with him the man that was to administer 
 the poison, bringing a cup in his hand, to whom Soc- 
 rates said, "Prithee honest friend (for thou art well 
 versed in these businesses) what must I do ? " " No- 
 thing," said he, "but as soon as you have drunk, walk 
 till you find your legs begin to fail, then lie down," and 
 in so saying, he gave him the cup. Socrates took it 
 cheerfully, not changing either countenance or color, 
 and looking pleasantly upon him, demanded whether he 
 might spill any of it in libation, who answered, he 
 had made no more than would just serve; "yet," saith 
 Socrates, " I may pray to God, and will, that my passage 
 
330 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 hence may be happy, which I beseech Him to grant," 
 and in the same instant drank it off easily without any 
 disturbance; many of us who till now had refrained 
 from tears, when we saw him put the cup to his mouth 
 and drink off the poison, were not able to contain any 
 longer; which Socrates observing, friend (saith he) 
 what mean you ? For this reason I sent away the 
 women lest they should be so unquiet : I have heard 
 we should die with gratulation and applause, be quiet 
 then and take it patiently. These words made us with 
 shame suppress our tears ; when he had walked a while, 
 perceiving his legs to fail, he lay down on his back as 
 the executioner directed him, who looking on his feet 
 pinched them hard, asked him if he felt it, he answered 
 no, he did the like to his legs, and showing us how 
 everj' part successively grew cold and stiff, told us when 
 that chillness came at his heart he would die ; not long 
 after he spake these last words, O Crito, I owe .^Escu- 
 lapius a cock, pay it, neglect it not. It shall be done, 
 saith Crito ; will you have any thing else? He made no 
 answer, lay still a while, then stretched himself forth ; 
 with that the executioner uncovered him, his eyes were 
 set, Crito closed them. This (saith Plato) was the 
 end of the best, the wisest, and most just of men : a 
 story, which Cicero professeth, he never read wihout 
 tears. 
 
 Aristotle saith, that a Magus coming from Syria to 
 Athens, not only reprehended Socrates for many things, 
 but foretold him also that he should die a violent death. 
 
 Lsertius closeth his life with this epigram. 
 
 Drink Socrates with Jove, next whom enthron'd, 
 By Gods, and Wisdom's self as wisest own'd. 
 Thee the Athenians gave a pois'nous draught. 
 But first thy wisdom from your Ups they quaft. 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 331 
 
 What Happened After His Death. 
 
 He was buried with tears and much solemnity (con- 
 trary to his own direction) by his friends, amongst 
 whom the excessive grief of Plato is observed by Plu- 
 tarch, and the mourning habit of Isocrates : As soon as 
 they had performed that last service, fearing the cruelty 
 of the tyrants, they stole out of the city, the greater part 
 to Megara to Euclid, where they were kindly received, 
 the rest to other parts. 
 
 Soon after, a Lacedaemonian youth, who had never 
 more acquaintance with Socrates than what fame gave 
 him, took a journey to Athens, intending to become his 
 disciple ; being come as far as the City Gates, and ready 
 to enter with joy, to be so near the end at which he 
 aimed, instead of Socrates„he meets there the news of 
 his death, whereat he was so troubled, that he would 
 not go within the City Gates, but enquiring the place 
 where he was buried, went thither, and breaks forth into 
 a passionate discourse, accompanied with many tears, 
 to the enclosed dead body ; when night was come, he fell 
 asleep upon the sepulchre ; the next morning, affection- 
 ately kissing the dust that lay upon it, and with 
 much passion taking leave of the place, he returned to 
 Megara. 
 
 Suidas tells a like story, (for that there were more 
 examples than one of this kind, Libanius implies) of a 
 Chian named Crysas, who coming to Athens to hear 
 Socrates, went to his tomb, and slept there, to whom 
 Socrates appeared in a dream, and discoursed with him ; 
 with which only satisfaction he went directly home 
 again. 
 
 By these accidents the Athenians were awakened into 
 a sense of their injustice, considering they were ob- 
 
332 Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 
 
 noxious to the censure of the Lacedaemonians by extra- 
 ordinary crimes, whose children were so affectionate to 
 the philosophers whom they had murdered, as to take 
 such long journeys to see Socrates, whom they would not 
 keep when he was with them ; hereat they became so 
 exasperated, that they were ready to tear those wicked 
 men that were the occasion of his death piecemeal with 
 their teeth, the whole city cried out, they disclaimed the 
 act, and that the authors thereof ought to be put to 
 death. Antisthenes furthered their rage by this means. 
 Some young men of Pontus invited to Athens by the 
 fame of Socrates, met with Antisthenes, who carried 
 them to Anytus, telling them he was much wiser than 
 Socrates; whereupon those that were present, with much 
 indignation, turned Anytus out of the city : thence he 
 went to Heraclea, where some say the citizens also ex- 
 pelled him, others that they stoned him to death. Meli- 
 tus was by the Athenians condemned and put to death, 
 others affirm the like of all his accusers without trial. 
 Plutarch, that they so much hated them, as they would 
 not suffer them to kindle fire at their houses, they would 
 not answer them any question, they would not wash 
 with them, but threw away the water they had touched 
 as impure, until unable to brook this hatred, they 
 hanged themselves. 
 
 In further testimony of their penitence, they called 
 home his friends to their former liberty of meeting, they 
 forbade public spectacles of games and wrestling for a 
 time, they caused his statue, made in brass by Lysippus, 
 to be set up in the Pompeum, and (a plague ensuing, 
 which they imputed to the injustice of this act) they 
 made an order that no man should mention Socrates 
 publicly, or on the theatre, that so they might forget 
 what they had done : Euripides (restrained by this order 
 
Ethics of the Greek Philosophers. 333 
 
 from doing it directly) reproached them overtlj' in a 
 tragedy, named Palamedes (in whom he alluded to Soc- 
 rates) particularly in these verses, 
 
 A Philomele ne'r mischief knew. 
 Is slain, alas ! is slain by you. 
 
 At which words, all the spectators understanding they 
 were meant of Socrates, fell a weeping. 
 
 The death of this sole person (saith Eunapius) 
 brought a general calamity upon the city ; for it may 
 easily be collected by computation of times, that from 
 thenceforward the Athenians did nothing considera- 
 ble, but the city by degrees decayed, and with it all 
 Greece. 
 
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