We do not what we will, but what we wish.
Socrates would teach us a lesson which we are slow to learn—that good
intentions, and even benevolent actions, when they are not prompted by
wisdom, are of no value. We believe something to be for our good which
we afterwards find out not to be for our good. The consequences may be
inevitable, for they may follow an invariable law, yet they may often
be the very opposite of what is expected by us. When we increase
pauperism by almsgiving; when we tie up property without regard to
changes of circumstances; when we say hastily what we deliberately
disapprove; when we do in a moment of passion what upon reflection we
regret; when from any want of self-control we give another an advantage
over us—we are doing not what we will, but what we wish. All actions of
which the consequences are not weighed and foreseen, are of this
impotent and paralytic sort; and the author of them has “the least
possible power” while seeming to have the greatest. For he is actually
bringing about the reverse of what he intended. And yet the book of
nature is open to him, in which he who runs may read if he will
exercise ordinary attention; every day offers him experiences of his
own and of other men’s characters, and he passes them unheeded by. The
contemplation of the consequences of actions, and the ignorance of men
in regard to them, seems to have led Socrates to his famous
thesis:—“Virtue is knowledge;” which is not so much an error or paradox
as a half truth, seen first in the twilight of ethical philosophy, but
also the half of the truth which is especially needed in the present
age. For as the world has grown older men have been too apt to imagine
a right and wrong apart from consequences; while a few, on the other
hand, have sought to resolve them wholly into their consequences. But
Socrates, or Plato for him, neither divides nor identifies them; though
the time has not yet arrived either for utilitarian or transcendental
systems of moral philosophy, he recognizes the two elements which seem
to lie at the basis of morality. (Compare the following: “Now, and for
us, it is a time to Hellenize and to praise knowing; for we have
Hebraized too much and have overvalued doing. But the habits and
discipline received from Hebraism remain for our race an eternal
possession. And as humanity is constituted, one must never assign the
second rank to-day without being ready to restore them to the first
to-morrow.” Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.)