"What are 'Aristotle's checks?'"
This is the question that MR. COLLIER proposed in support of the alteration
of _checks_ into _ethics_, at p. 144. of his _Notes and Emendations_. He
terms _checks_ "an absurd blunder," and in the preface he again introduces
it, passing upon it the same unqualified sentence of excommunication, as
upon "bosom multiplied," viz. "it can never be repeated." In this opinion
he is backed by most of the public scribes of the day, especially by the
critic of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for April, who declares "we should be
very sorry to have to discover what the editors have understood by the
_checks_ of Aristotle." Furthermore, this critic thinks that "it is
extremely singular that the mistake should have remained so long
uncorrected;" and he intimates that they who have found any meaning in
_checks_, have done so only because, through ignorance, they could find no
meaning in _ethics_.
Hence it becomes necessary for those who do find a meaning in _checks_, to
defend that meaning; and hence I undertake to answer MR. COLLIER'S
question.
Aristotle's _checks_ are those _moral adjustments_ that form the
distinguishing feature of his philosophy.
They are _the eyes of reason_, whereby he would teach man to avoid
divergence from the straight path of happiness.
They are his moderators, his mediocrities, his metriopathics.
They are his philosophical steering-marks, his moral guiding-lines, whereby
the passions are to be kept in the _via media_; as much removed from total
abnegation on the one hand, as from immoderate indulgence on the other.
Virtue, according to Aristotle, consists in checked or _adjusted_
propensities. Our passions are not in themselves evil, except when
unchecked by reason. And inasmuch as we may overeat, or underfeed ourselves
(the check being temperance), so may we suffer our other propensities to
deviate from the _juste milieu_, either in the direction of indulgence or
of privation. {497}
The art of adjusting the passions requires an apprenticeship to virtue. The
end to be attained is the establishment of good habits. These good habits,
like any other skill, can only be attained by practice. Therefore the
practice of virtue is the education of the passions.
_Ethics_ is the doctrine of _habits_; but habits may be good or bad. When
good, they constitute virtue; when bad, licentiousness.
The doctrine of _checks_ is that branch of _ethics_ which teaches moral
adjustment and restraint.
Therefore _checks_ and _licentiousness_ are in better antithesis to each
other, than _ethics_ can be to either, because ethics includes both.
The Aristotelian idea of _adjustment_, rather than _denial_, of the
passions, is well illustrated in the following passage from Plutarch's
_Morall Vertue_, by Philemon Holland, a contemporary of Shakspeare:
"For neither do they shed and spill the wine upon the floure who are
afraide to be drunke, but delay the same with water: nor those who
feare the violence of a passion, do take it quite away, but rather
temper and qualifie the same: like as folke use to breake horses and
oxen from their flinging out with their heeles, their stiffenes and
curstnes of the head, and stubburnes in receiving the bridle or the
yoke, but do not restraine them of other motions of going about their
worke and doing their deede. And even so, verily, reason maketh good
use of these passions, when they be well tamed, and, as it were,
brought to hand: without overweakening or rooting out cleane that parte
of the soule which is made for to second reason and do it good
service.... Whereas let passions be rid cleane away (if that were
possible to be done), our reason will be found in many things more dull
and idle: like as the pilot and master of a ship hath little to do if
the winde be laid and no gale at all stirring ... as if to _the
discourse of reason_ the gods had adjoined passion as a pricke to
incite, and a chariot to set it forward."