Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/617

601 answer is plain enough, "By right reason"; but the question arises: How are reason and the boniform faculty related to each other? Are they different things or different aspects of the same thing?

In the Enchiridion there are three statements, all distinct and all apparently inconsistent with one another: (1) right reason is the boniform faculty; (2) the part that the boniform faculty plays in men of virtue is taken by right reason when the boniform faculty is lost; (3) the boniform faculty is the interpreter of right reason; in bad men, since the boniform faculty is lost, resort must be had to certain principles derived from right reason. That is, right reason is the judge of right and wrong, but the dictates of right reason are comprehended by men in different ways in proportion to their virtue. In the preceding exposition the last definition was the one advanced. A reconciliation of the three is difficult, but not impossible, if one remembers the obscurity of More's treatment and looks at the passages in the light of their context. Such a man as he would have been likely to hold opinions which were inconsistent with one another; but that he would explicitly state within twenty pages three different theories of the same thing is too much to suppose even of More.

In the discussion of the summum bonum More does not display so much originality as in the treatment of right reason and the boniform faculty; yet the question is perhaps more carefully worked out. The discussion embraces a consideration of virtue and happiness and the relation between the two. "Virtue is the intellectual force of the mind which so rules the animal impressions and bodily passions that in single actions that which is simply and absolutely best is easily chosen." In this definition is contained, expressly or by implication, the whole of More's theory concerning virtue. In the first place, the point of view is altogether subjective. The motive is the important thing; there is no question as to results. In fact,