VIII.

A SUMMARY OF ARISTOTLE'S ETHICS AS COMPARED WITH MODERN

ETHICAL THEORIES.

MAN is distinguished from the rest of the animal kingdom by the possession of reason. This reason shows itself in the search for knowledge, and the search for an end, πάντες ὀρέγονται τοῦ εἰδέναι : hence arise metaphysics and science (Eth., I. i. 1). Hence, too, Ethics and the practical sciences; πãoα τέχνη καὶ πᾶσα μέθοδος ὁμοίως δὲ πρᾶξίς τε καὶ προάιρεσις ἀγαθοῦ τινὸς ἐφίεσθαι δοκεῖ. As rational, man always aims at truth, for truth is the correlate of reason; but in speculation it is ταληθές ἁπλῶς, in practice it is ἀληθεία ὁμολόγως ἐχουσα τῇ ὀρέξει τῇ ὀρθῇ.

In

Man's superiority to the brute is shown in both opóvnois and copía, for both are impossible for the irrational, but φρόνησις is lower than σοφία. σopía, man approximates to God; while brutes, though strictly incapable of ppóvnois, show signs (ἴχνη) of that which in man is φρόνησις. In the

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Politics, 1253* 16, it is said to be the property of man that he passes moral judgments, ἀνθρώποις ἴδιον τὸ δικαίου καὶ ἀδίκου αἴσθησιν ἔχειν, yet in the Natural History (588a 20), it is admitted that traces are to be found in the brutes of moral states. So man is φύσει πολιτικόν ζῶον (Pol., 1253* 2. 8., Eth., 1097 11), yet among gregarious animals we see the beginnings of this (Z. 588). Brutes, by a sort οἱ φυσικὴ δύναμις (588* 30), show a resemblance to the conscious life of man. They are to humanity as the child to the full-grown man. If man is the perfect animal, animals are imperfect men, and so right down the scale, for Aristotle feels the break between living and not living, as little as the break between brute and man or plant and animal. Οὕτω δ ̓ ἐκ τῶν ἀψύχων εἰς τὰ ζῶα μεταβαίνει κατὰ μικρὸν ἡ φύσις ὥστε τῇ συνεχείᾳ λανθάνειν τὸ μεθόριον αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ μέσον ποτέρων ἐστιν· μετὰ γὰρ τὸ τῶν ἀψύχων γένος τὸ τῶν φυτῶν πρῶτόν ἐστι· και τούτων ἕτερον πρὸς ἕτερον διαφέρει τῷ μᾶλλον δοκεῖν μετέχειν ζωῆς· ὅλον δὲ τὸ γένος πρὸς μὲν τἄλλα σώματα φαίνεται σχέδον ὥσπερ ἔμψυχον, πρὸς δὲ τὸ τῶν ζώων ἄψυχον. Ἡ δὲ ματάβασις ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐις τὰ ζῶα συνεχής ἐστιν (588 4, etc.).

Still the line which separates man from brute is a real one since man can consciously set before himself an end, an ideal of knowledge or of action. He alone has speech λόγος. Mere sounds φωναὶ, indicate sensation, but speech indicates ouμpepov and

βλαβερον, δίκαιον and ἄδικον (Pol., 1253). He not only instinctively satisfies wants, he seeks for good; he not only feels, he seeks to know. The opic of man and of the brute is different. In the brute it is ἐπιθυμία and θυμὸς ; in man it is these plus Bouλnois, which, being a wish for good, is implicitly rational. It is λογιστικὴ ὄρεξις, as opposed to the ἄλογοι ορέξεις.

Contrast with modern thought. It is clear that for us this question is far more complicated. Evolution has brought out the close affinity of man with the brute, but (a) the breach between ἄψυχον and ἔμψυχον is more marked, and (β) though we trace the beginnings of consciousness in the animal world, it still remains true, as Tyndall puts it,1 that the chasm between physical processes and facts of consciousness remains "intellectually impassable." Herbert Spencer admits the śame while asserting the origin of consciousness out of unconsciousness, of the physical from the physiological.2

The great metaphysical problem of the day is personality implying (a) self-consciousness, (B) freedom. Can these be put on one side as illusory or reduced to the unconscious and the necessary? Is man a thing of nature, or is he, as he thinks he is, greater than nature? If so, is not conscious

1 Scientific Materialism, p. 420.

2 See, too, Fiske, Destiny of Man, pp. 62-65.

personal life, on which ethics, religion, and law depend, as much a new departure with regard to nature as the living is to the not living?

The practical end. Here Aristotle has no hesitation, and he claims every one on his side. Man, as a practical being, sets before himself GOOD, TO ἀγαθὸν, not an abstract ιδέα τἀγαθοῦ, which is an object of reverence and worship as well as of desire, but ro dyalov, the good, which, in the region of art, mechanic or aesthetic, is a tangible result (pyov), in the region of practice, a condition which is not passive, but active. This is admitted to be εvdaιμovía, welfare or well-being, rather than what we understand by happiness.

But man is a social as well as an active being, φύσει πολιτικόν ζῶον, and the individual cannot be abstracted from the family and the state. ПоλTIKй deals with the welfare of the state; bukovoμký with the welfare of the family; rà nouά with the welfare of the individual. Yet Ethics is πολιτική τις, because man is a πολιτικὸν ζωον, and to abstract his happiness from that of the whole is to make happiness impossible.

Contrast with modern thought. When we turn from Aristotle to the modern world, we find that a new conception has appeared, that of duty. There is a life which I ought to live apart from the fact that such a life is both happy and the only happy life and also the life which wins by its moral

beauty. There are endless views as to what our duty is, and why it is our duty; but few would accept Bentham's paradox that the word "ought" ought to be banished from morals. This sterner view is due to two causes, the Stoic necessitarianism, and the religious sanction. Whether we talk of a perfect life as " following nature" or as conformity to the will of God, it has a character of necessity and universality which the Greek ɛvdayovía certainly had not; and in both cases it subordinates man to what is conceived of as greater than himself. The Kantian conception of "Duty" lies between the Stoic and the religious view; it has the sternness and inflexibility of the one, and the moral authority of the other.

The method of realizing τὸ ἀγαθὸν Εὐδαιμονία as equivalent to rayalóv is the well-being of the whole man, therefore it is an activity or perfect realization of his being (vɛpyɛía). But his nature is not like God's, anλn. He has body as well as soul, and the soul is not a simple whole: that which is an irrational principle of life in the plant, and of life and movement in the animal, is capable in man of transfusion by the rational. Yet the irrational rationalized is distinguished from that which is reason in itself. Man's nature, though not like. God's, μía кaì áπλñ, is yet a unity, a σúornua, in which there is a naturally higher and a naturally lower. And, just as in the world of nature, rò QUTÒV