Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/607

Rh ETHICS 585 1 iomotes these still constitute the outward objects at which reason is to aim; there is a certain value (uia) in them, in proportion to which they are &quot; preferred&quot; (Trpo^y/uVa) and their opposites &quot; rejected&quot; (aircnrporjyiJLeva.) ; indeed, it is only iu the due and consistent exercise of such preference and rejection that wisdom can find its practical manifestation. In this way all or most of the things commonly judged to be &quot;goods&quot; health, strength, wealth, fame, 1 &c., are brought within the sphere of the sage s choice, though his real good still is solely in the wisdom of the choice, and not in the thing chosen ; just as an archer aims at a bull s eye, his end being not the mark itself, but the manifestation of his skill in hitting it. It is to be observed that the adoption of &quot; conformity to nature,&quot; as the general positive rule for outward conduct, originated in the Academic school, which, after Plato s death, seems to have separated ethics from ontology as completely as Aristotle. We find &quot; nature&quot; used as a cardinal notion in ethics both by Speusippus, Plato s immediate successor, and by Xenocrates, the contemporary of Aristotle. Indeed, their fundamental doctrine apparently differed from the Stoic s only in calling &quot; good&quot; what the latter called &quot; preferred,&quot; and consistently affirming that virtue was sufficient by itself for happiness, but not for perfect happiness. A view nearly the same, but allowing more import ance to outward circumstances, was maintained by the Peri patetics ; on whom, when the energies of Plato s school were absorbed in scepticism (250-100 B.C.), it chiefly devolved to maintain the more moderate 2 claims of morality in contrast to the paradoxes of Stoicism. It is easy to understand how the one school thought it mere perversity to refuse the common names of &quot;good&quot; and &quot; evil &quot; to things &quot; preferred &quot; and &quot; rejected,&quot; and patent inconsistency to make wisdom manifest itself in choosing among objects that wisdom knew to be indifferent ; while to the other it seemed the essence of philosophy to be thus independent of outward things while yet exercised upon them. So far we have considered the &quot;nature &quot; of the individual man as apart from his social relations ; but it is obvious that the sphere of virtue, as commonly conceived, lies chiefly in these, and this was fully recognized in the Stoic account of duties (KadrJKovTa) ; indeed, their exposition of the &quot; natural &quot; basis of justice, the evidences in man s mental and physical constitution that he was born not for himself but for mankind, is the most important part of their work in the region of practical morality. Here, however, we especially notice the double significance of &quot; natural,&quot; as applied to (1) what actually exists everywhere or for the most part, and (2) what would exist if the original plan of man s life were fully carried out ; and we find that the Stoics have not clearly harmonized the two elements of the notion. That man was &quot; naturally &quot; a social animal Aristotle had already taught ; that all rational beings, in the unity of the reason that is common to all, form naturally one community with a common law was (as we saw) an immediate inference from the Stoic conception of the universe as a whole. That the members of this &quot; city of Zeus &quot; should observe their contracts, abstain from mutual nann, combine to protect each other from injury, were obvious points of natural law ; while, again, it was clearly necessary to the preservation of human society that 1 The Stoics seem to have varied in their view of &quot; good repute, &quot; eu5oi a ;. it first, when the school wns more Tinder the influence of Cynicism, they professed an outward as well as an inward indifference to it ; ultimately they conceded the point to common sense, and includ ed it among irpo-n-yfj.ti&amp;gt;a. &quot; There were different degrees of this moderation, but in no case was it very moderate ; if we may judge from the extent to which Aristotle s successor Theophrastus was attacked for his weakness in conceding that there was a degree of torture which womld prevent a pond man from being happy. 1S its members should form sexual unions, produce children. and bestow care on their rearing and training. But beyond this nature did not seem to go in determining the relations of the sexes ; accordingly, we find that community of wives was a feature of Zeno s ideal commonwealth, just as it was of Plato s; and other Stoics are represented as main taining, and illustrating with rather offensive paradoxes, the conventionality and relativity of the received code of sexual morality; while, again, the strict theory of the school recognized no government or laws as true or bind ing except those of the sage ; he alone is the true ruler, the true king. So far, the Stoic &quot; nature&quot; seems in danger of being as revolutionary as Rousseau s. Practically, however, this revolutionary aspect of the notion was kept for the most part in the background ; the rational law of an ideal community was peacefully undistinguished from the positive ordinances and customs of actual society ; and the &quot;natural&quot; ties that actually bound each man to family, kinsmen, fatherland, and to unwise humanity generally, supplied the outline on which the external manifestation of justice was delineated. It was a fundamental maxim that the sage was to take part in public life; and it does not appear that his political action was to be regulated by any other principles than those commonlv accepted in his com munity. Similarly, in the view taken by the Stoics of the duties of social decorum, and in their attitude to the popular religion, we find a fluctuating compromise between the dis position to repudiate what is artificial and conventional, and the disposition to revere what is actual and established which both equally spring from the very core of thei creed. Among the primary ends of nature, in which wisdom re- stoics cognized a certain preferability, the Stoics included freedom and from bodily pain ; but they refused, even in this outer court h of wisdom, to find a place for pleasure. They held that the latter was not an object of uncorrupted natural impulse, but an &quot; aftergrowth,&quot; a mere consequence of natural im pulses attaining their ends. They thus endeavoured to resist Epicureanism even on the ground where the latter seems prima facie strongest ; in its appeal, namely, to the natural pleasure-seeking of all living things. Nor did they merely mean by pleasure (r/Sov??) the gratification of bodily appetite: we find (e.g.] Chrysippus urging, as a decisive argument against Aristotle that pure speculation was &quot; a kind of amusement ; that is, pleasure.&quot; This being so, the distinction that they drew between pleasure, and the &quot;joy and gladness&quot; (^apa, ev^pocrwr;) that accompanied the exercise of virtue, cannot but seem somewhat arbitrary. We must observe, however, that even this &quot; moral pleasure,&quot; as a modern would consider it, though inseparable in the Stoic view from wellbeing, was not its most essential con stituent. It is only by a modern misrepresentation of Stoicism that tranquillity or serenity of soul is taken as the real ultimate end, to which the exercise of virtue is merely a means. In Zeno s system, as in Aristotle s, it is good activity, and not the feeling that attends it, which con stitutes the essence of good life. At the same time, since pleasant feeling of some kind must always have been the chief element in the common conception of Greek rvSoiftovta as well as of English &quot;happiness,&quot; it is probable that the serene joys of virtue and the grieflessness which the sage was conceived to maintain amid the worst tor tures, formed the main attractions of Stoicism for ordinary minds. In this sense it may be fairly said that Stoics and Epicureans made rival offers to mankind of the same kind of happiness ; and the philosophical peculiarities of Cither system may be equally traced to the same desire of maintaining that independence of the changes and chances of life which seemed essential to a settled serenity of soul. The Stoic claims on this head were the loftiest; aa the VIII. - 74