TWO:This search after a scientific basis for conduct was quite in the spirit of Socrates, but Plato seems to have set very little value on his masters positive contributions to the systematisation of life. We have seen that the Apologia is purely sceptical in its tendency; and we find a whole group of Dialogues, probably the earliest of Platos compositions, marked by the same negative, inconclusive tone. These are commonly spoken of as Socratic, and so no doubt they are in reference to the subjects discussed; but they would be more accurately described as an attempt to turn the Socratic method against its first originator. We know from another source that tem183perance, fortitude, and piety were the chief virtues inculcated and practised by Socrates; while friendship, if not strictly speaking a virtue, was equally with them one of his prime interests in life. It is clear that he considered them the most appropriate and remunerative subjects of philosophical discussion; that he could define their nature to his own satisfaction; and that he had, in fact, defined them as so many varieties of wisdom. Now, Plato has devoted a separate Dialogue to each of the conceptions in question,119 and in each instance he represents Socrates, who is the principal spokesman, as professedly ignorant of the whole subject under discussion, offering no definition of his own (or at least none that he will stand by), but asking his interlocutors for theirs, and pulling it to pieces when it is given. We do, indeed, find a tendency to resolve the virtues into knowledge, and, so far, either to identify them with one another, or to carry them up into the unity of a higher idea. To this extent Plato follows in the footsteps of his master, but a result which had completely satisfied Socrates became the starting-point of a new investigation with his successor. If virtue is knowledge, it must be knowledge of what we most desireof the good. Thus the original difficulty returns under another form, or rather we have merely restated it in different terms. For, to ask what is temperance or fortitude, is equivalent to asking what is its use. And this was so obvious to Socrates, that, apparently, he never thought of distinguishing between the two questions. But no sooner were they distinguished than his reduction of all morality to a single principle was shown to be illusive. For each specific virtue had been substituted the knowledge of a specific utility, and that was all. Unless the highest good were one, the means by which it was sought could not converge to a single point; nor, according to the new ideas, could their mastery come under the jurisdiction of a single art.It is possible, we think, to trace a similar evolution in the history of the Attic drama. The tragedies of Aeschylus resemble the old Ionian philosophy in this, that they are filled with material imagery, and that they deal with remote interests, remote times, and remote places. Sophocles withdraws his action into the subjective sphere, and simultaneously works out a pervading contrast between the illusions by which men are either lulled to false security or racked with needless anguish, and the terrible or consolatory reality to which they finally awaken. We have also, in his well-known irony, in the unconscious self-betrayal of his characters, that subtle evanescent allusiveness to a hidden truth, that gleaming of reality through appearance which constitutes, first the dialectic, then the mythical illustration, and finally the physics of Plato. In Aeschylus also we have the spectacle of sudden and violent vicissitudes, the abasement of insolent prosperity, and the punishment of long successful crime; only with him the characters which attract most interest are not the blind victims, but the accomplices or the confidants of destinythe great figures of a Prometheus, a Darius, an Eteocles, a Clytemnestra, and a Cassandra, who are raised above the common level to an eminence where the secrets of past and future are unfolded to their gaze. Far otherwise with Sophocles. The leading actors in his most characteristic works, Oedipus, Electra, Dejanira, Ajax, and Philoctetes, are surrounded by forces which they can neither control nor understand; moving in a world of illusion, if they help to work out their own destinies it is unconsciously, or even in direct opposition to their own designs.208 Hence in Aeschylus we have something324 like that superb self-confidence which distinguishes a Parmenides and a Heracleitus; in Sophocles that confession of human ignorance which the Athenian philosophers made on their own behalf, or strove to extract from others. Euripides introduces us to another mode of thought, more akin to that which characterises Aristotle. For, although there is abundance of mystery in his tragedies, it has not the profound religious significance of the Sophoclean irony; he uses it rather for romantic and sentimental purposes, for the construction of an intricate plot, or for the creation of pathetic situations. His whole power is thrown into the immediate and detailed representation of living passion, and of the surroundings in which it is displayed, without going far back into its historical antecedents like Aeschylus, or, like Sophocles, into the divine purposes which underlie it. On the other hand, as a Greek writer could not be other than philosophical, he uses particular incidents as an occasion for wide generalisations and dialectical discussions; these, and not the idea of justice or of destiny, being the pedestal on which his figures are set. And it may be noticed as another curious coincidence that, like Aristotle again, he is disposed to criticise his predecessors, or at least one of them, Aeschylus, with some degree of asperity.
THREE:"You don't mean to say he's in it!" Isidore cried, grimly amused. "The cunningest fox in all Europe. Truly the Lalage is a wonderful woman! But I see our friend Dr. Bruce is burning to tell me a story. Pray go on."
THREE:
THREE:But, if this be so, it follows that Mr. Edwin Wallaces appeal to Aristotle as an authority worth consulting on our present social difficulties cannot be upheld. Take the question quoted by Mr. Wallace himself: Whether the State is a mere combination for the preservation of goods and property, or a moral organism developing the idea of right? Aristotle certainly held very strong opinions in favour of State interference with education and private morality, if that is what the second alternative implies; but does it follow that he would agree with those who advocate a similar supervision at the present day? By no means; because experience has shown that in enormous industrial societies like ours, protection is attended with difficulties and dangers which he could no more foresee than he could foresee the discoveries on which our physical science is based. Or, returning for a moment to ethics, let us take another of Mr. Wallaces problems: Whether intellectual also involves moral progress? What possible light can be thrown on it by Aristotles exposure of the powerlessness of right knowledge to make an individual virtuous, when writers like Buckle have transferred the whole question from a particular to a general ground; from the conduct of individuals to the conduct of men acting in large masses, and over vast periods of time? Or, finally, take the question which forms a point of junction between Aristotles ethics and his politics: Whether the highest life is a life of thought or a life of action? Of what importance is his299 decision to us, who attend far more to the social than to the individual consequences of actions; who have learned to take into account the emotional element of happiness, which Aristotle neglected; who are uninfluenced by his appeal to the blissful theorising of gods in whom we do not believe; for whom, finally, experience has altogether broken down the antithesis between knowledge and practice, by showing that speculative ideas may revolutionise the whole of life? Aristotle is an interesting historical study; but we are as far beyond him in social as in physical science.
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