We do not what we will, but what we wish.
[Sidenote: _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[29].
[Sidenote: _We ought to be, not to seem._]