virtue depends of which we must take note unless we are to misunderstand
Aristotle seriously. To begin with, the definition expressly says that
"moral goodness is a state of will or choice." Thus it is not enough
that one should follow the rule of the mean outwardly in one's actions;
one's personal will must be regulated by it. Goodness of character is
inward; it is not merely outward. Next we must not suppose that
Aristotle means that the "just enough" is the same for all our feelings,
that every impulse has a moral right to the same authority in shaping
our conduct as any other. How much or how little is the just enough in
connection with a given spring of action is one of the things which the
wise man's rule has to determine, just as the wise physician's rule may
determine that a very little quantity is the just enough in the case of
some articles of diet or curative drugs, while in the case of others the
just enough may be a considerable amount. Also the right mean is not
the same for every one. What we have to attain is the mean relatively
to _ourselves_, and this will be different for persons of different
constitutions and in different conditions. It is this relativity of the
just enough to the individual's personality and circumstances which
makes it impossible to lay down precise rules of conduct applicable
alike to everybody, and renders the practical attainment of goodness so
hard. It is my duty to spend some part of my income in buying books on
philosophy, but no general rule will tell me what percentage of my
income is the right amount for me to spend in this way. That depends on
a host of considerations, such as the excess of my income above my
necessary expenses and the like. Or again, the just enough may vary
with the same man according to the circumstances of the particular case.
No rule of thumb application of a formula will decide such problems.
Hence Aristotle insists that the right mean in the individual case has
always to be determined by immediate insight. This is precisely why
goodness of intellect needs to be added to goodness of character. His
meaning is well brought out by an illustration which I borrow from
Professor Burnet. "On a given occasion there will be a temperature which
is just right for my morning bath. If the bath is hotter than this, it
will be too hot; if it is colder, it will be too cold. But as this just
right temperature varies with the condition of my body, it cannot be
ascertained by simply using a thermometer. If I am in good general
health I shall, however, know by the feel of the water when the
temperature is right. So if I am in good moral health I shall know,
without appealing to a formal code of maxims, what is the right degree,
_e.g._ of indignation to show in a given case, how it should be shown
and towards whom." Thus we see why Aristotle demands goodness of
character as a preliminary condition of goodness of intellect or
judgment in moral matters. Finally, if we ask by _what_ rule the mean
is determined, the answer will be that the rule is the judgment of the
legislator who determines what is the right mean by his knowledge of the
conditions on which the well-being of the community depends. He then
embodies his insight in the laws which he makes and the regulations he
imposes on the educators of youth. The final aim of education in
goodness is to make our immediate judgment as to what is right coincide
with the spirit of a wise legislation.
The introduction of the reference to will or choice into the definition
of goodness of character leads Aristotle to consider the relation of
will to conduct. His main object is to escape the paradoxical doctrine
which superficial students might derive from the works of Plato, that
wrong-doing is always well-meaning ignorance. Aristotle's point is that
it is the condition of will revealed by men's acts which is the real
object of our approval or blame. This is because in voluntary action
the man himself is the efficient cause of his act. Hence the law
recognises only two grounds on which a man may plead, that he is not
answerable for what he does. (1) Actual physical compulsion by _force
majeure_. (2) Ignorance, not due to the man's own previous negligence,
of some circumstances material to the issue. When either of these pleas
can be made with truth the man does not really contribute by his choice
to the resulting act, and therefore is not really its cause. But a plea
of ignorance of the general laws of morality does not excuse. I cannot
escape responsibility for a murder by pleading that I did not know that
murder is wrong. Such a plea does not exempt me from having been the
cause of the murder; it only shows that my moral principles are
depraved.
More precisely will is a process which has both an intellectual and an
appetitive element. The appetitive element is our wish for some result.
The intellectual factor is the calculation of the steps by which that
result may be obtained. When we wish for the result we begin to consider
how it might be brought about, and we continue our analysis until we
find that the chain of conditions requisite may be started by the
performance of some act now in our power to do. Will may thus be
defined as the deliberate appetition of something within our power, and
the very definition shows that our choice is an efficient cause of the
acts we choose to do. This is why we rightly regard men as responsible
or answerable for their acts of choice, good and bad alike.
From the analysis of goodness of character, we proceed to that of
goodness of intellect. The important point is to decide which of all
the forms of goodness of intellect is that which must be combined with
goodness of character to make a man fit to be a citizen of the state.
It must be a kind of intellectual excellence which makes a man see what
the right rule by which the mean is determined is. Now when we come to
consider the different excellences of intellect we find that they all
fall under one of two heads, theoretical or speculative wisdom and
practical wisdom.
Theoretical wisdom is contained in the sciences which give us universal
truths about the fixed and unalterable relations of the things in the
universe, or, as we should say, which teach us the laws of Nature. Its
method is syllogism, the function of which is to make us see how the
more complex truths are implied in simpler principles. Practical wisdom
is intelligence as employed in controlling and directing human life to
the production of the happy life for a community, and it is this form of
intellectual excellence which we require of the statesman. It is
required of him not only that he should know in general what things are
good for man, but also that he should be able to judge correctly that in
given circumstances such and such an act is the one which will secure
the good. He must not only know the right rule itself, which
corresponds to the major premiss of syllogism in theoretical science,
but he must understand the character of particular acts so as to see
that they fall under the right rule. Thus the method of practical
wisdom will be analogous to that of theoretical wisdom. In both cases
what we have to do is to see that certain special facts are cases of a
general law or rule. Hence Aristotle calls the method of practical
wisdom the practical syllogism or syllogism of action, since its
peculiarity is that what issues from the putting together of the
premisses is not an assertion but the performance of an act. In the
syllogism of action, the conclusion, that is to say, the performance of
a given act, just as in the syllogism of theory, is connected with the
rule given in the major premiss by a statement of fact; thus _e.g._ the
performance of a specific act such as the writing of this book is
connected with the general rule what helps to spread knowledge ought to
be done by the conviction that the writing of this book helps to spread
knowledge. Our perception of such a fact is like a sense-perception in
its directness and immediacy. We see therefore that the kind of
intellectual excellence which the statesman must possess embraces at
once a right conception of the general character of the life which is
best for man, because it calls into play his specific capacities as a
human being, and also a sound judgment in virtue of which he sees
correctly that particular acts are expressions of this good for man.
This, then, is what we mean by practical wisdom.
So far, then, it would seem that the best life for man is just the life
of co-operation in the life of the state, which man, being the only
political animal or animal capable of life in a state, has as his
peculiar work, and as if the end of all moral education should be to
make us good and efficient citizens. But in the _Ethics_, as elsewhere,
the end of Aristotle's argument has a way of forgetting the beginning.
We find that there is after all a still higher life open to man than
that of public affairs. Affairs and business of all kinds are only
undertaken as means to getting leisure, just as civilised men go to war,
not for the love of war itself, but to secure peace. The highest aim of
life, then, is not the carrying on of political business for its own
sake, but the worthy and noble employment of leisure, the periods in
which we are our own masters. It has the advantage that it depends more
purely on ourselves and our own internal resources than any other life
of which we know, for it needs very little equipment with external goods
as compared with any form of the life of action. It calls into play the
very highest of our own capacities as intelligent beings, and for that
very reason the active living of it is attended with the purest of all
pleasures. In it, moreover, we enter at intervals and for a little
while, so far as the conditions of our mundane existence allow, into the
life which God enjoys through an unbroken eternity. Thus we reach the
curious paradox that while the life of contemplation is said to be that
of our truest self, it is also maintained that this highest and happiest
life is one which we live, not in respect of being human, but in respect
of having a divine something in us. When we ask what this life of
contemplation includes, we see from references in the _Politics_ that it
includes the genuinely aesthetic appreciation of good literature and
music and pictorial and plastic art, but there can be no doubt that what
bulks most largely in Aristotle's mind is the active pursuit of science
for its own sake, particularly of such studies as First Philosophy and
Physics, which deal with the fundamental structure of the universe.
Aristotle thus definitely ends by placing the life of the scholar and
the student on the very summit of felicity.
It is from this doctrine that mediaeval Christianity derives its
opposition between the _vita contemplativa_ and _vita activa_ and its
preference for the former, though in the mediaeval mind the
contemplative life has come to mean generally a kind of brooding over
theological speculations and of absorption in mystical ecstasy very
foreign to the spirit of Aristotle. The types by which the contrast of
the two lives is illustrated, Rachael and Leah, Mary and Martha, are
familiar to all readers of Christian literature.
+The Theory of the State+.--Man is by nature a political animal, a being
who can only develop his capacities by sharing in the life of a
community. Hence Aristotle definitely rejects the view that the state
or society is a mere creature of convention or agreement, an institution
made by compact between individuals for certain special ends, not
growing naturally out of the universal demands and aspirations of
humanity. Mankind, he urges, have never existed at all as isolated
individuals. Some rudimentary form of social organisation is to be
found wherever men are to be found. The actual stages in the
development of social organisation have been three--the family, the
village community, the city state. In the very rudest forms of social
life known to us, the patriarchal family, not the individual, is the
social unit. Men lived at first in separate families under the control
of the head of the family. Now a family is made up in its simplest form
of at least three persons, a man, his wife, and a servant or slave to do
the hard work, though very poor men often have to replace the servant by
an ox as the drudge of all work. Children when they come swell the
number, and thus we see the beginnings of complex social relations of
subordination in the family itself. It involves three such distinct
relations, that of husband and wife, that of parent and child, that of
master and man. The family passes into the village community, partly by
the tendency of several families of common descent to remain together
under the direction of the oldest male member of the group, partly by
the association of a number of distinct families for purposes of mutual
help and protection against common dangers. Neither of these forms of
association, however, makes adequate provision for the most permanent
needs of human nature. Complete security for a permanent supply of
material necessaries and adequate protection only come when a number of
such scattered communities pool their resources, and surround themselves
with a city wall. The city state, which has come into being in this way,
proves adequate to provide from its own internal resources for all the
spiritual as well as the material needs of its members. Hence the
independent city state does not grow as civilisation advances into any
higher form of organisation, as the family and village grew into it. It
is the end, the last word of social progress. It is amazing to us that
this piece of cheap conservatism should have been uttered at the very
time when the system of independent city states had visibly broken down,
and a former pupil of Aristotle himself was founding a gigantic empire
to take their place as the vehicle of civilisation.
The end for which the state exists is not merely its own
self-perpetuation. As we have seen, Aristotle assigns a higher value to
the life of the student than to the life of practical affairs. Since it
is only in the civilised state that the student can pursue his vocation,
the ultimate reason for which the state exists is to educate its
citizens in such a way as shall fit them to make the noble use of
leisure. In the end the state itself is a means to the spiritual
cultivation of its individual members. This implies that the chosen few,
who have a vocation to make full use of the opportunities provided for
leading this life of noble leisure, are the real end for the sake of
which society exists. The other citizens who have no qualification for
any life higher than that of business and affairs are making the most of
themselves in devoting their lives to the conduct and maintenance of the
organisation whose full advantages they are unequal to share in. It is
from this point of view also that Aristotle treats the social problem of
the existence of a class whose whole life is spent in doing the hard
work of society, and thus setting the citizen body free to make the best
use it can of leisure. In the conditions of life in the Greek world
this class consisted mainly of slaves, and thus the problem Aristotle
has to face is the moral justifiability of slavery. We must remember
that he knew slavery only in its comparatively humane Hellenic form. The
slaves of whom he speaks were household servants and assistants in small
businesses. He had not before his eyes the system of enormous
industries carried on by huge gangs of slaves under conditions of
revolting degradation which disgraced the later Roman Republic and the
early Roman Empire, or the Southern States of North America. His
problems are in all essentials much the same as those which concern us
to-day in connection with the social position of the classes who do the
hard bodily work of the community.
Much consideration is given in the _Politics_ to the classification of
the different types of constitution possible for the city-state. The
current view was that there are three main types distinguished by the
number of persons who form the sovereign political authority, monarchy,
in which sovereign power belongs to a single person; oligarchy, in which
it is in the hands of a select few; democracy, in which it is enjoyed by
the whole body of the citizens. Aristotle observes, correctly, that the
really fundamental distinction between a Greek oligarchy and a Greek
democracy was that the former was government by the propertied classes,
the latter government by the masses. Hence the watchword of democracy
was always that all political rights should belong equally to all
citizens, that of oligarchy that a man's political status should be
graded according to his "stake in the country." Both ideals are,
according to him, equally mistaken, since the real end of government,
which both overlook, is the promotion of the "good life." In a state
which recognises this ideal, an aristocracy or government by the best,
only the "best" men will possess the full rights of citizenship, whether
they are many or few. There might even be a monarch at the head of such
a state, if it happened to contain some one man of outstanding
intellectual and moral worth. Such a state should be the very opposite
of a great imperial power. It should, that its cultivation may be the
more intensive, be as small as is compatible with complete independence
of outside communities for its material and spiritual sustenance, and
its territory should only be large enough to provide its members with
the permanent possibility of ample leisure, so long as they are content
with plain and frugal living. Though it ought not, for military and
other reasons, to be cut off from communication with the sea, the great
military and commercial high road of the Greek world, it ought not to be
near enough to the coast to run any risk of imperilling its moral
cultivation by becoming a great emporium, like the Athens of Pericles.
In the organisation of the society care should be taken to exclude the
agricultural and industrial population from full citizenship, which
carries with it the right to appoint and to be appointed as
administrative magistrates. This is because these classes, having no
opportunity for the worthy employment of leisure, cannot be trusted to
administer the state for the high ends which it is its true function to
further.
Thus Aristotle's political ideal is that of a small but leisured and
highly cultivated aristocracy, without large fortunes or any remarkable
differences in material wealth, free from the spirit of adventure and
enterprise, pursuing the arts and sciences quietly while its material
needs are supplied by the labour of a class excluded from citizenship,
kindly treated but without prospects. Weimar, in the days when
Thackeray knew it as a lad, would apparently reproduce the ideal better
than any other modern state one can think of.
The object of the _Politics_ is, however, not merely to discuss the
ideal state but to give practical advice to men who might be looking
forward to actual political life, and would therefore largely have to be
content with making the best of existing institutions. In the absence
of the ideal aristocracy, Aristotle's preference is for what he calls
Polity or constitutional government, a sort of compromise between
oligarchy and democracy. Of course a practical statesman may have to
work with a theoretically undesirable constitution, such as an oligarchy
or an unqualified democracy. But it is only in an ideal constitution
that the education which makes its subject a good man, in the
philosopher's sense of the word, will also make him a good citizen. If
the constitution is bad, then the education best fitted to make a man
loyal to it may have to be very different from that which you would
choose to make him a good man. The discussion of the kind of education
desirable for the best kind of state, in which to be a loyal citizen and
to be a good man are the same thing, is perhaps the most permanently
valuable part of the _Politics_. Though Aristotle's writings on
"practical" philosophy have been more read in modern times than any
other part of his works, they are far from being his best and most
thorough performances. In no department of his thought is he quite so
slavishly dependent on his master Plato as in the theory of the "good
for man" and the character of "moral" excellence. No Aristotelian work
is quite so commonplace in its handling of a vast subject as the
_Politics_. In truth his interest in these social questions is not of
the deepest. He is, in accordance with his view of the superiority of
"theoretical science," entirely devoid of the spirit of the social
reformer. What he really cares about is "theology" and "physics," and
the fact that the objects of the educational regulations of the
_Politics_ are all designed to encourage the study of these
"theoretical" sciences, makes this section of the _Politics_ still one
of the most valuable expositions of the aims and requirements of a
"liberal" education.
All education must be under public control, and education must be
universal and compulsory. Public control is necessary, not merely to
avoid educational anarchy, but because it is a matter of importance to
the community that its future citizens should be trained in the way
which will make them most loyal to the constitution and the ends it is
designed to subserve. Even in one of the "bad" types of state, where
the life which the constitution tends to foster is not the highest, the
legislator's business is to see that education is directed towards
fostering the "spirit of the constitution." There is to be an
"atmosphere" which impregnates the whole of the teaching, and it is to
be an "atmosphere" of public spirit. The only advantage which Aristotle
sees in private education is that it allows of more modification of
programme to meet the special needs of the individual pupil than a rigid
state education which is to be the same for all. The actual regulations
which Aristotle lays down are not very different from those of Plato.
Both philosophers hold that "primary" education, in the early years of
life, should aim partly at promoting bodily health and growth by a
proper system of physical exercises, partly at influencing character and
giving a refined and elevated tone to the mind by the study of letters,
art, and music. Both agree that this should be followed in the later
"teens" by two or three years of specially rigorous systematic military
training combined with a taste of actual service in the less exhausting
and less dangerous parts of a soldier's duty. It is only after this, at
about the age at which young men now take a "university" course, that
Plato and Aristotle would have the serious scientific training of the
intellect begun. The _Politics_ leaves the subject just at the point
where the young men are ready to undergo their special military
training. Thus we do not know with certainty what scientific curriculum
Aristotle would have recommended, though we may safely guess that it
would have contained comparatively little pure mathematics, but a great
deal of astronomy, cosmology, and biology.
With respect to the "primary" education Aristotle has a good deal to
say. As "forcing" is always injurious, it should not be begun too soon.
For the first five years a child's life should be given up to healthy
play. Great care must be taken that children are not allowed to be too
much with "servants," from whom they may imbibe low tastes, and that
they are protected against any familiarity with indecency. From five to
seven a child may begin to make a first easy acquaintance with the life
of the school by looking on at the lessons of its elders. The real work
of school education is to begin at seven and not before.