Mr. Mill, Mr. Austin, and others, in their eagerness to maintain the
doctrine of utility, are fond of repeating that we are in a lamentable
state of uncertainty about morals. While other branches of knowledge
have made extraordinary progress, in moral philosophy we are supposed by
them to be no better than children, and with few exceptions--that is to
say, Bentham and his followers--to be no further advanced than men were
in the age of Socrates and Plato, who, in their turn, are deemed to be
as backward in ethics as they necessarily were in physics. But this,
though often asserted, is recanted almost in a breath by the same
writers who speak thus depreciatingly of our modern ethical philosophy.
For they are the first to acknowledge that we have not now to begin
classifying actions under the head of utility; they would not deny that
about the general conceptions of morals there is a practical agreement.
There is no more doubt that falsehood is wrong than that a stone falls
to the ground, although the first does not admit of the same ocular
proof as the second. There is no greater uncertainty about the duty
of obedience to parents and to the law of the land than about the
properties of triangles. Unless we are looking for a new moral world
which has no marrying and giving in marriage, there is no greater
disagreement in theory about the right relations of the sexes than about
the composition of water. These and a few other simple principles, as
they have endless applications in practice, so also may be developed in
theory into counsels of perfection.
To what then is to be attributed this opinion which has been often
entertained about the uncertainty of morals? Chiefly to this,--that
philosophers have not always distinguished the theoretical and the
casuistical uncertainty of morals from the practical certainty. There
is an uncertainty about details,--whether, for example, under given
circumstances such and such a moral principle is to be enforced, or
whether in some cases there may not be a conflict of duties: these are
the exceptions to the ordinary rules of morality, important, indeed, but
not extending to the one thousandth or one ten-thousandth part of human
actions. This is the domain of casuistry. Secondly, the aspects under
which the most general principles of morals may be presented to us are
many and various. The mind of man has been more than usually active
in thinking about man. The conceptions of harmony, happiness, right,
freedom, benevolence, self-love, have all of them seemed to some
philosopher or other the truest and most comprehensive expression of
morality. There is no difference, or at any rate no great difference, of
opinion about the right and wrong of actions, but only about the
general notion which furnishes the best explanation or gives the most
comprehensive view of them. This, in the language of Kant, is the sphere
of the metaphysic of ethics. But these two uncertainties at either end,
en tois malista katholou and en tois kath ekasta, leave space enough for
an intermediate principle which is practically certain.
The rule of human life is not dependent on the theories of philosophers:
we know what our duties are for the most part before we speculate about
them. And the use of speculation is not to teach us what we already
know, but to inspire in our minds an interest about morals in general,
to strengthen our conception of the virtues by showing that they confirm
one another, to prove to us, as Socrates would have said, that they
are not many, but one. There is the same kind of pleasure and use in
reducing morals, as in reducing physics, to a few very simple truths.
And not unfrequently the more general principle may correct prejudices
and misconceptions, and enable us to regard our fellow-men in a larger
and more generous spirit.
The two qualities which seem to be most required in first principles of
ethics are, (1) that they should afford a real explanation of the facts,
(2) that they should inspire the mind,--should harmonize, strengthen,
settle us. We can hardly estimate the influence which a simple principle
such as 'Act so as to promote the happiness of mankind,' or 'Act so that
the rule on which thou actest may be adopted as a law by all rational
beings,' may exercise on the mind of an individual. They will often seem
to open a new world to him, like the religious conceptions of faith or
the spirit of God. The difficulties of ethics disappear when we do not
suffer ourselves to be distracted between different points of view.
But to maintain their hold on us, the general principles must also be
psychologically true--they must agree with our experience, they must
accord with the habits of our minds.
When we are told that actions are right or wrong only in so far as they
tend towards happiness, we naturally ask what is meant by 'happiness.'
For the term in the common use of language is only to a certain extent
commensurate with moral good and evil. We should hardly say that a good
man could be utterly miserable (Arist. Ethics), or place a bad man in
the first rank of happiness. But yet, from various circumstances, the
measure of a man's happiness may be out of all proportion to his desert.
And if we insist on calling the good man alone happy, we shall be
using the term in some new and transcendental sense, as synonymous with
well-being. We have already seen that happiness includes the happiness
of others as well as our own; we must now comprehend unconscious as well
as conscious happiness under the same word. There is no harm in this
extension of the meaning, but a word which admits of such an extension
can hardly be made the basis of a philosophical system. The exactness
which is required in philosophy will not allow us to comprehend under
the same term two ideas so different as the subjective feeling of
pleasure or happiness and the objective reality of a state which
receives our moral approval.
Like Protarchus in the Philebus, we can give no answer to the question,
'What is that common quality which in all states of human life we call
happiness? which includes the lower and the higher kind of happiness,
and is the aim of the noblest, as well as of the meanest of mankind?' If
we say 'Not pleasure, not virtue, not wisdom, nor yet any quality which
we can abstract from these'--what then? After seeming to hover for a
time on the verge of a great truth, we have gained only a truism.
Let us ask the question in another form. What is that which constitutes
happiness, over and above the several ingredients of health, wealth,
pleasure, virtue, knowledge, which are included under it? Perhaps we
answer, 'The subjective feeling of them.' But this is very far from
being coextensive with right. Or we may reply that happiness is the
whole of which the above-mentioned are the parts. Still the question
recurs, 'In what does the whole differ from all the parts?' And if we
are unable to distinguish them, happiness will be the mere aggregate of
the goods of life.
Again, while admitting that in all right action there is an element of
happiness, we cannot help seeing that the utilitarian theory supplies
a much easier explanation of some virtues than of others. Of many
patriotic or benevolent actions we can give a straightforward account by
their tendency to promote happiness. For the explanation of justice, on
the other hand, we have to go a long way round. No man is indignant
with a thief because he has not promoted the greatest happiness of
the greatest number, but because he has done him a wrong. There is an
immeasurable interval between a crime against property or life, and the
omission of an act of charity or benevolence. Yet of this interval the
utilitarian theory takes no cognizance. The greatest happiness principle
strengthens our sense of positive duties towards others, but weakens
our recognition of their rights. To promote in every way possible the
happiness of others may be a counsel of perfection, but hardly seems
to offer any ground for a theory of obligation. For admitting that our
ideas of obligation are partly derived from religion and custom, yet
they seem also to contain other essential elements which cannot be
explained by the tendency of actions to promote happiness. Whence comes
the necessity of them? Why are some actions rather than others which
equally tend to the happiness of mankind imposed upon us with the
authority of law? 'You ought' and 'you had better' are fundamental
distinctions in human thought; and having such distinctions, why should
we seek to efface and unsettle them?
Bentham and Mr. Mill are earnest in maintaining that happiness includes
the happiness of others as well as of ourselves. But what two notions
can be more opposed in many cases than these? Granting that in a perfect
state of the world my own happiness and that of all other men would
coincide, in the imperfect state they often diverge, and I cannot truly
bridge over the difficulty by saying that men will always find pleasure
in sacrificing themselves or in suffering for others. Upon the greatest
happiness principle it is admitted that I am to have a share, and in
consistency I should pursue my own happiness as impartially as that of
my neighbour. But who can decide what proportion should be mine and what
his, except on the principle that I am most likely to be deceived in my
own favour, and had therefore better give the larger share, if not all,
to him?
Further, it is admitted that utility and right coincide, not in
particular instances, but in classes of actions. But is it not
distracting to the conscience of a man to be told that in the particular
case they are opposed? Happiness is said to be the ground of moral
obligation, yet he must not do what clearly conduces to his own
happiness if it is at variance with the good of the whole. Nay, further,
he will be taught that when utility and right are in apparent conflict
any amount of utility does not alter by a hair's-breadth the morality
of actions, which cannot be allowed to deviate from established law or
usage; and that the non-detection of an immoral act, say of telling a
lie, which may often make the greatest difference in the consequences,
not only to himself, but to all the world, makes none whatever in the
act itself.
Again, if we are concerned not with particular actions but with classes
of actions, is the tendency of actions to happiness a principle upon
which we can classify them? There is a universal law which imperatively
declares certain acts to be right or wrong:--can there be any
universality in the law which measures actions by their tendencies
towards happiness? For an act which is the cause of happiness to one
person may be the cause of unhappiness to another; or an act which if
performed by one person may increase the happiness of mankind may have
the opposite effect if performed by another. Right can never be wrong,
or wrong right, that there are no actions which tend to the happiness
of mankind which may not under other circumstances tend to their
unhappiness. Unless we say not only that all right actions tend to
happiness, but that they tend to happiness in the same degree in which
they are right (and in that case the word 'right' is plainer), we weaken
the absoluteness of our moral standard; we reduce differences in kind
to differences in degree; we obliterate the stamp which the authority of
ages has set upon vice and crime.
Once more: turning from theory to practice we feel the importance of
retaining the received distinctions of morality. Words such as truth,
justice, honesty, virtue, love, have a simple meaning; they have become
sacred to us,--'the word of God' written on the human heart: to no other
words can the same associations be attached. We cannot explain them
adequately on principles of utility; in attempting to do so we rob them
of their true character. We give them a meaning often paradoxical and
distorted, and generally weaker than their signification in common
language. And as words influence men's thoughts, we fear that the hold
of morality may also be weakened, and the sense of duty impaired, if
virtue and vice are explained only as the qualities which do or do not
contribute to the pleasure of the world. In that very expression we seem
to detect a false ring, for pleasure is individual not universal; we
speak of eternal and immutable justice, but not of eternal and immutable
pleasure; nor by any refinement can we avoid some taint of bodily sense
adhering to the meaning of the word.
Again: the higher the view which men take of life, the more they lose
sight of their own pleasure or interest. True religion is not working
for a reward only, but is ready to work equally without a reward. It is
not 'doing the will of God for the sake of eternal happiness,' but doing
the will of God because it is best, whether rewarded or unrewarded. And
this applies to others as well as to ourselves. For he who sacrifices
himself for the good of others, does not sacrifice himself that they
may be saved from the persecution which he endures for their sakes,
but rather that they in their turn may be able to undergo similar
sufferings, and like him stand fast in the truth. To promote their
happiness is not his first object, but to elevate their moral nature.
Both in his own case and that of others there may be happiness in the
distance, but if there were no happiness he would equally act as he
does. We are speaking of the highest and noblest natures; and a passing
thought naturally arises in our minds, 'Whether that can be the first
principle of morals which is hardly regarded in their own case by the
greatest benefactors of mankind?'
The admissions that pleasures differ in kind, and that actions are
already classified; the acknowledgment that happiness includes the
happiness of others, as well as of ourselves; the confusion (not made
by Aristotle) between conscious and unconscious happiness, or between
happiness the energy and happiness the result of the energy, introduce
uncertainty and inconsistency into the whole enquiry. We reason readily
and cheerfully from a greatest happiness principle. But we find that
utilitarians do not agree among themselves about the meaning of the
word. Still less can they impart to others a common conception or
conviction of the nature of happiness. The meaning of the word is always
insensibly slipping away from us, into pleasure, out of pleasure, now
appearing as the motive, now as the test of actions, and sometimes
varying in successive sentences. And as in a mathematical demonstration
an error in the original number disturbs the whole calculation which
follows, this fundamental uncertainty about the word vitiates all the
applications of it. Must we not admit that a notion so uncertain in
meaning, so void of content, so at variance with common language and
opinion, does not comply adequately with either of our two requirements?
It can neither strike the imaginative faculty, nor give an explanation
of phenomena which is in accordance with our individual experience. It
is indefinite; it supplies only a partial account of human actions:
it is one among many theories of philosophers. It may be compared
with other notions, such as the chief good of Plato, which may be best
expressed to us under the form of a harmony, or with Kant's obedience to
law, which may be summed up under the word 'duty,' or with the Stoical
'Follow nature,' and seems to have no advantage over them. All of these
present a certain aspect of moral truth. None of them are, or indeed
profess to be, the only principle of morals.
And this brings us to speak of the most serious objection to the
utilitarian system--its exclusiveness. There is no place for Kant or
Hegel, for Plato and Aristotle alongside of it. They do not reject the
greatest happiness principle, but it rejects them. Now the phenomena of
moral action differ, and some are best explained upon one principle and
some upon another: the virtue of justice seems to be naturally connected
with one theory of morals, the virtues of temperance and benevolence
with another. The characters of men also differ; and some are more
attracted by one aspect of the truth, some by another. The firm
stoical nature will conceive virtue under the conception of law, the
philanthropist under that of doing good, the quietist under that of
resignation, the enthusiast under that of faith or love. The upright man
of the world will desire above all things that morality should be plain
and fixed, and should use language in its ordinary sense. Persons of an
imaginative temperament will generally be dissatisfied with the words
'utility' or 'pleasure': their principle of right is of a far higher
character--what or where to be found they cannot always distinctly
tell;--deduced from the laws of human nature, says one; resting on the
will of God, says another; based upon some transcendental idea which
animates more worlds than one, says a third:
on nomoi prokeintai upsipodes, ouranian
di aithera teknothentes.
To satisfy an imaginative nature in any degree, the doctrine of utility
must be so transfigured that it becomes altogether different and loses
all simplicity.
But why, since there are different characters among men, should we not
allow them to envisage morality accordingly, and be thankful to the
great men who have provided for all of us modes and instruments of
thought? Would the world have been better if there had been no Stoics or
Kantists, no Platonists or Cartesians? No more than if the other pole
of moral philosophy had been excluded. All men have principles which
are above their practice; they admit premises which, if carried to their
conclusions, are a sufficient basis of morals. In asserting liberty of
speculation we are not encouraging individuals to make right or wrong
for themselves, but only conceding that they may choose the form under
which they prefer to contemplate them. Nor do we say that one of these
aspects is as true and good as another; but that they all of them, if
they are not mere sophisms and illusions, define and bring into relief
some part of the truth which would have been obscure without their
light. Why should we endeavour to bind all men within the limits of a
single metaphysical conception? The necessary imperfection of language
seems to require that we should view the same truth under more than one
aspect.
We are living in the second age of utilitarianism, when the charm of
novelty and the fervour of the first disciples has passed away. The
doctrine is no longer stated in the forcible paradoxical manner of
Bentham, but has to be adapted to meet objections; its corners are
rubbed off, and the meaning of its most characteristic expressions is
softened. The array of the enemy melts away when we approach him. The
greatest happiness of the greatest number was a great original idea when
enunciated by Bentham, which leavened a generation and has left its mark
on thought and civilization in all succeeding times. His grasp of it
had the intensity of genius. In the spirit of an ancient philosopher he
would have denied that pleasures differed in kind, or that by happiness
he meant anything but pleasure. He would perhaps have revolted us by his
thoroughness. The 'guardianship of his doctrine' has passed into other
hands; and now we seem to see its weak points, its ambiguities, its want
of exactness while assuming the highest exactness, its one-sidedness,
its paradoxical explanation of several of the virtues. No philosophy has
ever stood this criticism of the next generation, though the founders
of all of them have imagined that they were built upon a rock. And the
utilitarian system, like others, has yielded to the inevitable analysis.
Even in the opinion of 'her admirers she has been terribly damaged'
(Phil.), and is no longer the only moral philosophy, but one among many
which have contributed in various degrees to the intellectual progress
of mankind.
But because the utilitarian philosophy can no longer claim 'the prize,'
we must not refuse to acknowledge the great benefits conferred by it on
the world. All philosophies are refuted in their turn, says the sceptic,
and he looks forward to all future systems sharing the fate of the past.
All philosophies remain, says the thinker; they have done a great work
in their own day, and they supply posterity with aspects of the truth
and with instruments of thought. Though they may be shorn of their
glory, they retain their place in the organism of knowledge.
And still there remain many rules of morals which are better explained
and more forcibly inculcated on the principle of utility than on any
other. The question Will such and such an action promote the happiness
of myself, my family, my country, the world? may check the rising
feeling of pride or honour which would cause a quarrel, an estrangement,
a war. 'How can I contribute to the greatest happiness of others?' is
another form of the question which will be more attractive to the
minds of many than a deduction of the duty of benevolence from a priori
principles. In politics especially hardly any other argument can be
allowed to have weight except the happiness of a people. All parties
alike profess to aim at this, which though often used only as the
disguise of self-interest has a great and real influence on the minds
of statesmen. In religion, again, nothing can more tend to mitigate
superstition than the belief that the good of man is also the will of
God. This is an easy test to which the prejudices and superstitions of
men may be brought:--whatever does not tend to the good of men is not of
God. And the ideal of the greatest happiness of mankind, especially if
believed to be the will of God, when compared with the actual fact, will
be one of the strongest motives to do good to others.
On the other hand, when the temptation is to speak falsely, to be
dishonest or unjust, or in any way to interfere with the rights of
others, the argument that these actions regarded as a class will not
conduce to the happiness of mankind, though true enough, seems to have
less force than the feeling which is already implanted in the mind by
conscience and authority. To resolve this feeling into the greatest
happiness principle takes away from its sacred and authoritative
character. The martyr will not go to the stake in order that he may
promote the happiness of mankind, but for the sake of the truth:
neither will the soldier advance to the cannon's mouth merely because he
believes military discipline to be for the good of mankind. It is better
for him to know that he will be shot, that he will be disgraced, if he
runs away--he has no need to look beyond military honour, patriotism,
'England expects every man to do his duty.' These are stronger motives
than the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which is the thesis
of a philosopher, not the watchword of an army. For in human actions
men do not always require broad principles; duties often come home to
us more when they are limited and defined, and sanctioned by custom and
public opinion.
Lastly, if we turn to the history of ethics, we shall find that our
moral ideas have originated not in utility but in religion, in law, in
conceptions of nature, of an ideal good, and the like. And many may be
inclined to think that this conclusively disproves the claim of utility
to be the basis of morals. But the utilitarian will fairly reply (see
above) that we must distinguish the origin of ethics from the principles
of them--the historical germ from the later growth of reflection. And he
may also truly add that for two thousand years and more, utility, if
not the originating, has been the great corrective principle in law, in
politics, in religion, leading men to ask how evil may be diminished
and good increased--by what course of policy the public interest may be
promoted, and to understand that God wills the happiness, not of some
of his creatures and in this world only, but of all of them and in every
stage of their existence.
'What is the place of happiness or utility in a system of moral
philosophy?' is analogous to the question asked in the Philebus, 'What
rank does pleasure hold in the scale of goods?' Admitting the greatest
happiness principle to be true and valuable, and the necessary
foundation of that part of morals which relates to the consequences of
actions, we still have to consider whether this or some other general
notion is the highest principle of human life. We may try them in this
comparison by three tests--definiteness, comprehensiveness, and motive
power.
There are three subjective principles of morals,--sympathy, benevolence,
self-love. But sympathy seems to rest morality on feelings which differ
widely even in good men; benevolence and self-love torture one half
of our virtuous actions into the likeness of the other. The greatest
happiness principle, which includes both, has the advantage over all
these in comprehensiveness, but the advantage is purchased at the
expense of definiteness.
Again, there are the legal and political principles of morals--freedom,
equality, rights of persons; 'Every man to count for one and no man
for more than one,' 'Every man equal in the eye of the law and of the
legislator.' There is also the other sort of political morality, which
if not beginning with 'Might is right,' at any rate seeks to deduce
our ideas of justice from the necessities of the state and of society.
According to this view the greatest good of men is obedience to law: the
best human government is a rational despotism, and the best idea which
we can form of a divine being is that of a despot acting not wholly
without regard to law and order. To such a view the present mixed
state of the world, not wholly evil or wholly good, is supposed to be a
witness. More we might desire to have, but are not permitted. Though a
human tyrant would be intolerable, a divine tyrant is a very tolerable
governor of the universe. This is the doctrine of Thrasymachus adapted
to the public opinion of modern times.
There is yet a third view which combines the two:--freedom is obedience
to the law, and the greatest order is also the greatest freedom; 'Act so
that thy action may be the law of every intelligent being.' This view
is noble and elevating; but it seems to err, like other transcendental
principles of ethics, in being too abstract. For there is the same
difficulty in connecting the idea of duty with particular duties as
in bridging the gulf between phainomena and onta; and when, as in the
system of Kant, this universal idea or law is held to be independent of
space and time, such a mataion eidos becomes almost unmeaning.
Once more there are the religious principles of morals:--the will of
God revealed in Scripture and in nature. No philosophy has supplied a
sanction equal in authority to this, or a motive equal in strength to
the belief in another life. Yet about these too we must ask What will of
God? how revealed to us, and by what proofs? Religion, like happiness,
is a word which has great influence apart from any consideration of its
content: it may be for great good or for great evil. But true religion
is the synthesis of religion and morality, beginning with divine
perfection in which all human perfection is embodied. It moves among
ideas of holiness, justice, love, wisdom, truth; these are to God, in
whom they are personified, what the Platonic ideas are to the idea of
good. It is the consciousness of the will of God that all men should
be as he is. It lives in this world and is known to us only through
the phenomena of this world, but it extends to worlds beyond. Ordinary
religion which is alloyed with motives of this world may easily be
in excess, may be fanatical, may be interested, may be the mask of
ambition, may be perverted in a thousand ways. But of that religion
which combines the will of God with our highest ideas of truth and right
there can never be too much. This impossibility of excess is the note of
divine moderation.
So then, having briefly passed in review the various principles of moral
philosophy, we may now arrange our goods in order, though, like the
reader of the Philebus, we have a difficulty in distinguishing the
different aspects of them from one another, or defining the point at
which the human passes into the divine.
First, the eternal will of God in this world and in another,--justice,
holiness, wisdom, love, without succession of acts (ouch e genesis
prosestin), which is known to us in part only, and reverenced by us as
divine perfection.
Secondly, human perfection, or the fulfilment of the will of God in
this world, and co-operation with his laws revealed to us by reason and
experience, in nature, history, and in our own minds.
Thirdly, the elements of human perfection,--virtue, knowledge, and right
opinion.
Fourthly, the external conditions of perfection,--health and the goods
of life.
Fifthly, beauty and happiness,--the inward enjoyment of that which is
best and fairest in this world and in the human soul.
...
The Philebus is probably the latest in time of the writings of Plato
with the exception of the Laws. We have in it therefore the last
development of his philosophy. The extreme and one-sided doctrines of
the Cynics and Cyrenaics are included in a larger whole; the
relations of pleasure and knowledge to each other and to the good are
authoritatively determined; the Eleatic Being and the Heraclitean Flux
no longer divide the empire of thought; the Mind of Anaxagoras has
become the Mind of God and of the World. The great distinction between
pure and applied science for the first time has a place in philosophy;
the natural claim of dialectic to be the Queen of the Sciences is once
more affirmed. This latter is the bond of union which pervades the whole
or nearly the whole of the Platonic writings. And here as in several
other dialogues (Phaedrus, Republic, etc.) it is presented to us in a
manner playful yet also serious, and sometimes as if the thought of it
were too great for human utterance and came down from heaven direct. It
is the organization of knowledge wonderful to think of at a time when
knowledge itself could hardly be said to exist. It is this more than any
other element which distinguishes Plato, not only from the presocratic
philosophers, but from Socrates himself.
We have not yet reached the confines of Aristotle, but we make a
somewhat nearer approach to him in the Philebus than in the earlier
Platonic writings. The germs of logic are beginning to appear, but they
are not collected into a whole, or made a separate science or system.
Many thinkers of many different schools have to be interposed between
the Parmenides or Philebus of Plato, and the Physics or Metaphysics of
Aristotle. It is this interval upon which we have to fix our minds if we
would rightly understand the character of the transition from one to the
other. Plato and Aristotle do not dovetail into one another; nor does
the one begin where the other ends; there is a gulf between them not to
be measured by time, which in the fragmentary state of our knowledge
it is impossible to bridge over. It follows that the one cannot be
interpreted by the other. At any rate, it is not Plato who is to be
interpreted by Aristotle, but Aristotle by Plato. Of all philosophy
and of all art the true understanding is to be sought not in the
afterthoughts of posterity, but in the elements out of which they have
arisen. For the previous stage is a tendency towards the ideal at which
they are aiming; the later is a declination or deviation from them, or
even a perversion of them. No man's thoughts were ever so well expressed
by his disciples as by himself.
But although Plato in the Philebus does not come into any close
connexion with Aristotle, he is now a long way from himself and from the
beginnings of his own philosophy. At the time of his death he left his
system still incomplete; or he may be more truly said to have had
no system, but to have lived in the successive stages or moments of
metaphysical thought which presented themselves from time to time. The
earlier discussions about universal ideas and definitions seem to have
died away; the correlation of ideas has taken their place. The flowers
of rhetoric and poetry have lost their freshness and charm; and a
technical language has begun to supersede and overgrow them. But the
power of thinking tends to increase with age, and the experience of life
to widen and deepen. The good is summed up under categories which are
not summa genera, but heads or gradations of thought. The question of
pleasure and the relation of bodily pleasures to mental, which is hardly
treated of elsewhere in Plato, is here analysed with great subtlety. The
mean or measure is now made the first principle of good. Some of these
questions reappear in Aristotle, as does also the distinction between
metaphysics and mathematics. But there are many things in Plato which
have been lost in Aristotle; and many things in Aristotle not to be
found in Plato. The most remarkable deficiency in Aristotle is the
disappearance of the Platonic dialectic, which in the Aristotelian
school is only used in a comparatively unimportant and trivial sense.
The most remarkable additions are the invention of the Syllogism, the
conception of happiness as the foundation of morals, the reference of
human actions to the standard of the better mind of the world, or of
the one 'sensible man' or 'superior person.' His conception of ousia,
or essence, is not an advance upon Plato, but a return to the poor and
meagre abstractions of the Eleatic philosophy. The dry attempt to reduce
the presocratic philosophy by his own rather arbitrary standard of the
four causes, contrasts unfavourably with Plato's general discussion of
the same subject (Sophist). To attempt further to sum up the differences
between the two great philosophers would be out of place here. Any
real discussion of their relation to one another must be preceded by an
examination into the nature and character of the Aristotelian writings
and the form in which they have come down to us. This enquiry is not
really separable from an investigation of Theophrastus as well as
Aristotle and of the remains of other schools of philosophy as well as
of the Peripatetics. But, without entering on this wide field, even a
superficial consideration of the logical and metaphysical works which
pass under the name of Aristotle, whether we suppose them to have
come directly from his hand or to be the tradition of his school, is
sufficient to show how great was the mental activity which prevailed in
the latter half of the fourth century B.C.; what eddies and
whirlpools of controversies were surging in the chaos of thought, what
transformations of the old philosophies were taking place everywhere,
what eclecticisms and syncretisms and realisms and nominalisms were
affecting the mind of Hellas. The decline of philosophy during this
period is no less remarkable than the loss of freedom; and the two
are not unconnected with each other. But of the multitudinous sea of
opinions which were current in the age of Aristotle we have no exact
account. We know of them from allusions only. And we cannot with
advantage fill up the void of our knowledge by conjecture: we can only
make allowance for our ignorance.
There are several passages in the Philebus which are very characteristic
of Plato, and which we shall do well to consider not only in their
connexion, but apart from their connexion as inspired sayings or
oracles which receive their full interpretation only from the history
of philosophy in later ages. The more serious attacks on traditional
beliefs which are often veiled under an unusual simplicity or irony are
of this kind. Such, for example, is the excessive and more than human
awe which Socrates expresses about the names of the gods, which may
be not unaptly compared with the importance attached by mankind to
theological terms in other ages; for this also may be comprehended under
the satire of Socrates. Let us observe the religious and intellectual
enthusiasm which shines forth in the following, 'The power and faculty
of loving the truth, and of doing all things for the sake of the truth':
or, again, the singular acknowledgment which may be regarded as the
anticipation of a new logic, that 'In going to war for mind I must have
weapons of a different make from those which I used before, although
some of the old ones may do again.' Let us pause awhile to reflect on
a sentence which is full of meaning to reformers of religion or to the
original thinker of all ages: 'Shall we then agree with them of
old time, and merely reassert the notions of others without risk to
ourselves; or shall we venture also to share in the risk and bear the
reproach which will await us': i.e. if we assert mind to be the author
of nature. Let us note the remarkable words, 'That in the divine nature
of Zeus there is the soul and mind of a King, because there is in him
the power of the cause,' a saying in which theology and philosophy are
blended and reconciled; not omitting to observe the deep insight into
human nature which is shown by the repetition of the same thought 'All
philosophers are agreed that mind is the king of heaven and earth' with
the ironical addition, 'in this way truly they magnify themselves.' Nor
let us pass unheeded the indignation felt by the generous youth at the
'blasphemy' of those who say that Chaos and Chance Medley created the
world; or the significance of the words 'those who said of old time that
mind rules the universe'; or the pregnant observation that 'we are
not always conscious of what we are doing or of what happens to us,' a
chance expression to which if philosophers had attended they would have
escaped many errors in psychology. We may contrast the contempt which
is poured upon the verbal difficulty of the one and many, and the
seriousness with the unity of opposites is regarded from the higher
point of view of abstract ideas: or compare the simple manner in which
the question of cause and effect and their mutual dependence is regarded
by Plato (to which modern science has returned in Mill and Bacon), and
the cumbrous fourfold division of causes in the Physics and Metaphysics
of Aristotle, for which it has puzzled the world to find a use in so
many centuries. When we consider the backwardness of knowledge in
the age of Plato, the boldness with which he looks forward into the
distance, the many questions of modern philosophy which are anticipated
in his writings, may we not truly describe him in his own words as a
'spectator of all time and of all existence'?