Aristotle
society, the end and object (as he himself tells us) of the
statesman.
"What then," says Aristotle," prevents our calling him happy who is
in the active exercise of his soul agreeably to perfect virtue, and
is sufficiently well furnished with external goods, not for a casual
period but for a complete lifetime?" (i. 10). He thinks himself
obliged to add, however, that this is not quite sufficient--for that
after death a man will still be affected with sympathy for the good
or bad fortunes and conduct of his surviving relatives, affected
however faintly and slightly, so as not to deprive him of the title
to be called _happy_, if on other grounds he deserves it. The
deceased person sees the misfortunes of his surviving friends with
something of the same kind of sympathetic interest, though less in
degree, as is felt by a living person in following the representation
of a tragedy (i. 11). The difference between a misfortune, happening
during a man's life or after his death, is much greater than that
between scenic representation of past calamities and actual reality
(_ib._).
It seems as if Aristotle was reluctantly obliged to make this
admission--that deceased persons were at all concerned in the
calamities of the living--more in deference to the opinions of others
than in consequence of any conviction of his own. His language in the
two chapters wherein he treats of it is more than usually hesitating
and undecided: and in the beginning of Chapter XI., he says--"To have
no interest whatever in the fortunes of their descendants and
friends, seems exceedingly heartless and contrary to what we should
expect"--he then, farther on, states it to be a great matter of doubt
whether the dead experience either good or evil--but if anything of
the kind does penetrate to them, it must be feeble and insignificant,
so as to make no sensible difference to them.
II.
Aristotle distributes _good things_ into three classes--the
_admirable_ or worshipful--the _praiseworthy_--the _potential_.
1. _Good_--as an End: that which is worthy of being honoured and
venerated in itself and from its own nature, without regard to
anything ulterior: that which comes up to our idea of perfection.
2. _Good_--as a means: that which is good, not on its own account nor
in its own nature, but on account of certain ulterior consequences
which flow from it.
3. _Good_--as a means, but not a certain and constant means: that
which produces _generally_, but _not always_, ulterior consequences
finally good: that which, in order to produce consequences in
themselves good, requires to be coupled with certain concomitant
conditions.
1. _Happiness_ belongs to the first of these classes: it is put along
with _the divine_, _the better_, _soul_, _intellect_, _the more
ancient_, _the principle_, _the cause_, &c. (Mag. Moral. i. 2). Such
objects as these, we contemplate with awe and reverence.
2. _Virtue_ belongs to the second of the classes: it is good from the
acts to which it gives birth, and from the end (happiness) which
those acts, when sufficiently long continued, tend to produce.
3. _Wealth_, _power_, _beauty_, _strength_, &c., belong to the third
class: these are generally good because under most circumstances they
tend to produce happiness: but they may be quite otherwise, if a
man's mind be so defectively trained as to dispose him to abuse them.
It is remarkable that this classification is not formally laid down
and explained, but is assumed as already well known and familiar, in
the Nicom. Ethics, i. 12: whereas it is formally stated and explained
in the Magna Moralia, i. 2.
_Praise_, according to Aristotle, "does not belong to the best
things, but only to the second-best. The Gods are to be _macarised_,
not _praised_:" the praise of the Gods must have reference to
ourselves, and must be taken in comparison with ourselves and our
acts and capacities: and this is ridiculously degrading, when we
apply it to the majesty of the Gods. In like manner the most divine
and perfect men deserve to be macarised rather than praised. "No man
praises happiness, as he praises justice, but _macarises_ (_blesses_)
it as something more divine and better."
Happiness is to be numbered amongst the perfect and worshipful
objects--it is the [Greek: a)rchê\] for the sake of which all of us
do everything: and we consider the principle and the cause of all
good things to be something divine and venerable (i. 12).
Since then Happiness is the action of the soul conformably to perfect
virtue, it is necessary to examine what human virtue is: and this is
the most essential mark to which the true politician will direct his
attention (i. 13).
There are two parts of the soul--the rational and the irrational.
Whether these two are divisible in fact, like the parts of the body,
or whether they are inseparable in fact, and merely susceptible of
being separately dealt with in reasoning, like the concavity and
convexity of a circle, is a matter not necessary to be examined in
the present treatise. Aristotle speaks as if he considered this as
really a doubtful point.
Of the irrational soul, one branch is, the nutritive and vegetative
faculty, common to man with animals and plants. The virtue of this
faculty is not special to man, but common to the vegetable and animal
world: it is in fact most energetic during sleep, at the period when
all virtue special to man is for the time dormant (i. 13).
But the irrational soul has also another branch, the appetites,
desires, and passions: which are quite distinct from reason, but may
either resist reason, or obey it, as the case may happen. It may thus
in a certain sense be said to partake of reason, which the vegetative
and nutritive faculty does not in any way. The virtue of this
department of the soul consists in its due obedience to reason, as to
the voice of a parent (i. 13).
Human virtue, then, distributes itself into two grand divisions--1.
The virtue of the rational soul, or Intellectual Virtue. 2. The
virtue of the semi-rational soul, or Ethical Virtue.
Perhaps the word _Excellence_ more exactly corresponds to [Greek:
a)retê\], than _Virtue_.
Intellectual excellence is both generated and augmented by teaching
and experience. Ethical excellence by practical training. The
excellence is not natural to us: but we are susceptible of being
trained, and the training creates it. By training, according as it is
either good or bad, all excellence is either created or destroyed:
just as a man becomes a good or a bad musician, according as he has
been subjected to a good or a bad mode of practice.
It is by doing the same thing many times that we acquire at last the
habit of doing it--"For what things we have to learn to do, these we
learn by doing" (ii. 1): according as the things we are trained to do
are good or bad, we acquire good habits or bad habits. By building we
become builders, by playing on the harp we become harpers--good or
indifferent, according to the way in which we have practised. All
legislators wish and attempt to make their citizens good, by means of
certain habits: some succeed in the attempt, others fail: and this is
the difference between a good and a bad government. It is by being
trained to do acts of justice and courage that we become at last just
and courageous--"In one word, habits are generated by (a succession
of) like operations: for this reason it is the character of the
operations performed which we ought chiefly to attend to: for
according to the difference of these will be the habits which ensue.
It is therefore not a matter of slight difference whether immediately
from our earliest years we are _ethised_ in one way or in another--it
makes a prodigious difference--or rather, it makes the whole
difference" (ii. 1).
Uniform perseverance in action, then, creates a habit: but of what
nature is the required action to be? In every department of our
nature, where any good result is to be produced, we may be
disappointed of our result by two sorts of error: either an excess or
on the side of defect. To work or eat too much, or too little,
prevents the good effects of training upon the health and strength:
so with regard to temperance, courage and the other virtues--the man
who is trained to fear everything and the man who is trained to fear
nothing, will alike fail in acquiring the genuine habit of courage.
The acquisition of the habit makes the performance of the action
easy: by a course of abstinent acts, we acquire the habit of
temperance: and having acquired this habit, we can with the greater
ease perform the act of abstinence (ii. 2).
The symptom which indicates that the habit has been perfectly
acquired, is the facility or satisfaction with which the act comes to
be performed (ii. 3). The man who abstains from bodily pleasures, and
who performs this contentedly ([Greek: au)tô=| tou/tô| chai/rôn]), is
the _temperate_ man: the man who does the same thing but reluctantly
and with vexation ([Greek: a)chtho/nimos]) is _intemperate_: the like
with courage. Ethical excellence, or ethical badness, has reference
to our pleasures and pains: whenever we do any thing mean, or shrink
from any thing honourable, it is some pleasure or some pain which
determines our conduct: for which reason Plato rightly prescribes
that the young shall be educated even from the earliest moment so as
to give a proper direction to their pleasures and pains (ii. 3). By
often pursuing pleasure and pain under circumstances in which we
ought not to do so, we contract bad habits, by a law similar to that
which under a good education would have imparted to us good habits.
Ethical virtue then consists in such a disposition of our pleasures
and pains as leads to performance of the best actions. Some persons
have defined it to consist in apathy and imperturbability of mind:
but this definition is erroneous: the mind ought to be affected under
proper circumstances (ii. 3). (This seems to be the same doctrine
which was afterwards preached by the Stoic school.)
There are three ingredients which determine our choice, _the
honourable_--_the expedient_--_the agreeable_: and as many which
occasion our rejection--_the base_--_the inexpedient_--_the painful_
or _vexatious_. In respect to all these three the good man judges
rightly, the wicked man wrongly, and especially in regard to the
latter. Pleasure and pain are familiar to us from our earliest
childhood, and are ineffaceable from human nature: all men measure
and classify actions ([Greek: kanoni/zomen ta\s pra/xeis]) by
pleasure and pain: some men to a greater degree, others to a less
degree.
All ethical excellence, and all the political science, turns upon
pleasure and pain (ii. 3).
A man becomes just and temperate by doing just and temperate actions,
thus by degrees acquiring the habit. But how (it is asked) can this
be true? for if a man performs just and temperate actions, he must
already start by being just and temperate.
The objection is not well founded. A man may do just and temperate
actions, and yet not be just and temperate. If he does them, knowing
what he does, intending what he does, and intending to do the acts
for their own sake, then indeed he is just and temperate, but not
otherwise. The productions of art carry their own merit along with
them: a work of art is excellent or defective, whatever be the state
of mind of the person who has executed it. But the acts of a man
cannot be said to be justly or temperately done, unless there be a
certain state of mind accompanying their performance by the doer:
they may indeed be called just and temperate acts, meaning thereby
that they are such as a just and temperate man would do, but the man
who does them does not necessarily deserve these epithets. It is only