Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/62

Rh. Such a tyrannical man will delight to remain a tyrant, and that will be the end of life for him.

The suggestiveness, the deeper significance of this Platonic doctrine, we do not deny. But, as it stands, the doctrine is not complete nor consistent. For Plato himself has given us as the support for his ideal, a fact, or a supposed fact, of human nature. A moral skeptic will deal with it as Glaucon and Adeimantos had dealt with the popular morality. The supposed fact, they will say, may be doubted. Perhaps some tyrant will actually feel happier than some struggling and aspiring soul far higher up in the heavens. But, leaving that doubt aside, there is the other objection. The ideal justice has come to be founded on a bare physical fact, namely, on the constitution of the soul, which might, for all we can see, have been different.

Important as he is in concrete ethical questions, Aristotle does nothing of importance to remove this fundamental difficulty, since his position as to this matter is too near to Plato’s. Still less do the Epicureans, for whom in fact just this difficulty does not exist. Plainly they declare that they merely state physical facts. Generosity, fidelity to friends, and other idealistic activities they indeed regard as the part of the wise man, but the end of all is very frankly declared to be his selfish advantage. As Cicero expresses their view: “Cum solitudo et vita sine amicis insidiarum et metus plena sit, ratio ipsa monet amicitias comparare, quibus partis