Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/61

36 it means the victory of the desires over the reason, it is inconsistent with the life of the soul that is given to blessed contemplation of the eternal ideas. For such a blessed soul its blessedness is, in the fine phrase that Spinoza long afterwards created, not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; so that such a soul will not do the right as a means by which it may procure the blessed contemplation of the eternal, but, being engaged in this blessed contemplation, it is thereby enabled to do right.

But to the wicked soul of the unjust man Plato seemingly has no inducement to offer in order to persuade it to become just, save the eloquent statement of the pains that accompany injustice, the picture of the warfare of desires, the proof of the wretched instability and of the possibly eternal misery in which the tyrannical soul must live. And thus Plato himself would be in so far open to the objection that his Glaucon and Adeimantos had made to all previous moralists, namely, that they never gave a reason why justice in itself was to be chosen, but always made justice desirable by reason of the rewards that result from it. For Plato’s view, as for that of less ideal moralists, the unjust man should seek to become just because, until he does become just, he will be wretched. Can no other basis for the virtue of justice be found save this one? If none can be found save this, then whenever a soul exists that prefers the tumult of desire, with average success in injustice, to the solemn peace of the contemplation of ideal good apart from the satisfaction of sensuous desires, for that soul Plato’s argument will be