Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/602

Rh 580 ETHICS things is but a shadow, it is plain that the highest, most real life must -lie in the former region and not in the latter. We thus reach the paradox that Plato enforced in more than one of his most impressive dialogues, that the true art of living is really au &quot; art of dying &quot; as far as possible to mere sense, iu order more fully to exist in intimate union with absolute goodness and beauty. On the other hand, in so far as this philosophic abstraction from ordinary human interests can never be complete, since the philo sopher must still live and act iu the concrete sensible world, the Socratic identification of wisdom and virtue is fully maintained by Plato. Only he who apprehends good in the abstract can imitate it in such transient and imperfect good as admits of being realized in human life, and it is impossible, having this knowledge, that he should not act on it, whether in private or public affairs. Thus, in the true philosopher, we shall necessarily find the practically good man, he who being &quot; likest of men to the gods is best loved by them ; &quot; and also the perfect statesman, if only the conditions of his society allow him a sphere for exercising his statesmanship. When we come to examine the characteristics of this practical goodness, we find that they correspond to the fundamental conceptions in Plato s view of the universe. We have seen that he conceives the world of being as (1) essentially ideal and knowable ; (2) organized and fitted for realization of good. Accordingly the soul of man, in its good or normal condition, must be (1) wise or knowing, (2) ordered, regulated, and harmonized. The question then arises, &quot; Wherein does this order or harmony precisely consist]&quot; In explaining how Plato was led to answer this question, it will be well to notice that, while faithfully maintaining the Socratic doctrine that the highest virtue was inseparable from knowledge of the good, he had come, as his conception of this knowledge deepened and expanded, to recognize an inferior kind of virtue, possessed by men who were not philosophers. It is plain that if the good that is to be known is the ultimate ground of the whole of things, so that the knowledge of it includes all other know ledge, it is only attainable by a select and carefully trained few, and we can hardly restrict all virtue to these alone. What account, then, was to be given of ordinary &quot;civic&quot; bravery, temperance, and justice 1 ? It seemed clear that meu who did their duty, resisting the seductions of fear and desire, must have right opinions, if not knowledge, as to the good and evil in human life ; but whence comes this right &quot;opinion 1 ?&quot; Partly, Plato said, it comes by nature and &quot; divine allotment,&quot; but for its adequate development &quot;custom and practice&quot; are required. Hence the para mount importance of education and discipline for civic virtue ; and even for future philosophers such moral culture, in which physical and {esthetic training must co-operate, is an indispensable prerequisite ; no merely intellectual preparation will suffice. What, then, is the precise effect of this culture if it does not merely develop the intellect 1 A distinct step in psychological analysis was taken when Plato recognized that itseffect was to produce the &quot;harmony&quot; above mentioned among different parts of the soul, by subordinating the impulsive elements to reason. These impulsive elements he further distinguished as appetitive and combative, founding on this triple division of the soul a systematic view of the four kinds of goodness chiefly recognized by the common moral consciousness of Greece, and in later times known as the cardinal 1 virtues. Of these the two most fundamental were (as has been already indicated) wisdom in its highest form philosophy and that harmonious regulation of psychical impulses and 1 The terra &quot;cardinalis &quot; is Christian; it is first found in Ambrose In Luc. 02). activities which Plato gives as the essence of This term in ordinary use had a wider meaning than our &quot;justice,&quot; and might without much straining denote uprightness in social relations generally. Still its import is essentially social; and we can only explain Plato s use of it by reference to the analogy which his analysis of the soul led him to draw between the individual man and the community. For in this latter also he regarded the regula tive and combative elements as naturally distinct from the common herd, who are concerned with merely material interests ; so that social and individual wellbeing would depend on the same harmonious action of diverse elements, which in its social application is more naturally termed SiKcuoo-vVT;. We see that these two fundamental virtues are mutually involved. Wisdom will necessarily maintain orderly activity, and this latter consists in regula tion by wisdom, while the two more special virtues of courage and temperance (&amp;lt;rw&amp;lt;j&amp;gt;pocnjv&amp;gt;]) are only different sides or aspects of this wisely regulated action of the complex soul. We may observe that this fourfold division of virtue was generally accepted in ethical discussion after Plato ; though the notions were somewhat differently defined by different thinkers, and the peculiar Platonic interpretation of justice for the most part abandoned. Such, then, are the forms in which essential good seemed to manifest itself in human life; it remains to ask whether the statement of these gives a complete account of human wellbeing, or whether pleasure is also to be included. On this point Plato s view seems to have gone through several oscillations. After apparently maintaining (Protagoras) that pleasure is the good, he passes first to the opposite extreme, and denies it (P/ucdo, Goryiax) to be a good at all. Not only is it, as concrete and transient, obviously not the real essential good that the philosopher seeks ; it is found further that the feelings most prominently recognized as pleasures are bound up with pain, as good can never be with evil; since they are the mere satisfaction of painful wants and cease with the removal of these; in so far, then, as com mon sense rightly recognizes some pleasures as good, it can only be from their tendency to produce some further good. This view, however, was too violent a divergence from Socratism for Plato to remain in it. That pleasure is not the real absolute good, was no ground for not including it in the good of concrete human life; and after all it was only coarse and vulgar pleasures that were indissolubly linked to the pains of want. Accordingly, in the Republic he has no objection to try the question of the intrinsic superiority of philosophic or virtuous 2 life by the standard of pleasure ; arguing that the philosophic (or good) man alone enjoys real pleasure, while the sensualist spends his life in oscillat ing between painful want and the merely neutral state of painlessness, which he mistakes for positive pleasure. In the Philelius, however, though a more careful psychological analysis leads him tu soften down the exaggerations of this attack on sensual pleasure, the antithesis of knowledge and pleasure is again sharpened, and a desire to depreciate even good pleasures is more strongly shown ; still even here plea sure is recognized as a constituent of that philosophic life which is the highest human good, while in the Laivs, where the subject is more popularly treated, it is admitted that we cannot convince man that the just life is the best unless we can also prove it to be the pleasantest. When a student passes from Plato to Aristotle, he is so put forcibly impressed by the contrast between the habits of Aria mind of the two authors and their manners of literary ex- 2 It is highly characteristic of Platonism that the issue in this dia logue, as originally stated, is between virtue and vice, whereas, without any avowed change of ground, the issue ultimately discussed is between the philosophic life and the life of vulgar ambition or sensual enjoy ment.