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Title: The Five Great Philosophies of Life
Author: Hyde, William De Witt, 1858-1917
Language: English
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THE
FIVE GREAT PHILOSOPHIES
OF LIFE
BY
WILLIAM DE WITT HYDE
PRESIDENT OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1924
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1904. Reprinted
January, 1905; January, 1906; January, 1908; June, 1910.
COPYRIGHT, 1911,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911. Reprinted
May, 1912; May, 1913; May, 1914; July, 1915; January, November,
1917; August, 1919; February, October, 1920; June, November,
1921; September, 1922; June, 1923; September, 1924.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
When asked why some men with moderate talents and meagre technical
equipment succeed, where others with greater ability and better
preparation fail; why some women with plain features and few
accomplishments charm, while others with all the advantages of beauty
and cultivation repel, we are wont to conceal our ignorance behind the
vague term _personality_. Undoubtedly the deeper springs of personality
are below the threshold of consciousness, in hereditary traits and early
training. Still some of the higher elements of personality rise above
this threshold, are reducible to philosophical principles, and amenable
to rational control.
The five centuries from the birth of Socrates to the death of Jesus
produced five such principles: the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure, genial
but ungenerous; the Stoic law of self-control, strenuous but forbidding;
the Platonic plan of subordination, sublime but ascetic; the
Aristotelian sense of proportion, practical but uninspiring; and the
Christian Spirit of Love, broadest and deepest of them all.
The purpose of this book is to let the masters of these sane and
wholesome principles of personality talk to us in their own words; with
just enough of comment and interpretation to bring us to their points of
view, and make us welcome their friendly assistance in the philosophical
guidance of life.
Why a new edition under a new title? Because "From Epicurus to Christ"
had an antiquarian flavor; while the book presents those answers to the
problem of life, which, though offered first by the ancients, are still
so broad, deep, and true that all our modern answers are mere varieties
of these five great types. Because the former title suggested that the
historical aspect was a finality; whereas it is here used merely as the
most effective approach to present-day solutions of the fundamental
problems of life.
"Why rewrite the last chapter?" Because, while the faith of the world
has found in Jesus much more than a philosophy of life, in its quest for
greater things it has almost overlooked that. Yet Jesus' Spirit of Love
is the final philosophy of life.
To the question in its Jewish form, "What is the great commandment?"
Jesus answers, "The first is Love to God; and the second, just like it,
Love to man." Translated into modern, ethical terms his philosophy of
life is a grateful and helpful appreciation; first of the whole system
of relations, physical, mental, social, and spiritual, as Personal like
ourselves, but Infinite, seeking perfection, caring for each lowliest
member as an essential and precious part of the whole; and, second, of
other finite and imperfect persons, whose aims, interests, and
affections are just as real, and therefore to be held just as sacred, as
our own.
To love, to dwell in this grateful and helpful appreciation of the
Father and our brothers,--this is life: and all that falls short of it
is intellectually the illusion of selfishness; spiritually the death
penalty of sin.
From this central point of view every phase of Jesus' teaching, his
democracy, compassion, courage, humility, earnestness, charitableness,
sacrifice, can be shown to flow straight and clear.
Of course such a limitation to his philosophy of life leaves out of
account all supernatural and eschatological considerations. We here
consider only the truth and worth of the teaching; not who the Teacher
is, nor what may happen to us hereafter if we obey or disobey.
Yet even from this limited point of view we may get a glimpse, more real
and convincing than any to be gained by the traditional, dogmatic
approach, of the divine and eternal quality of both Teacher and
teaching--we may see that beyond Love truth cannot go; above Love life
cannot rise; that he who loves is one with God; that out of Love all is
hell, whether here or hereafter; and that in Love lies heaven, both now
and forevermore.
WILLIAM DE WITT HYDE.
BOWDOIN COLLEGE,
BRUNSWICK, MAINE,
July 25, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE EPICUREAN PURSUIT OF PLEASURE PAGE
I. Selections from the Epicurean Scriptures 1
II. The Epicurean View of Work and Play 20
III. The Epicurean Price of Happiness 29
IV. The Defects of Epicureanism 36
V. An Example of Epicurean Character 46
VI. The Confessions of an Epicurean Heretic 53
CHAPTER II
STOIC SELF-CONTROL BY LAW
I. The Psychological Law of Apperception 66
II. Selections from the Stoic Scriptures 71
III. The Stoic Reverence for Universal Law 82
IV. The Stoic Solution of the Problem of Evil 87
V. The Stoic Paradoxes 90
VI. The Religious Aspect of Stoicism 95
VII. The Permanent Value of Stoicism 101
VIII. The Defects of Stoicism 106
CHAPTER III
THE PLATONIC SUBORDINATION OF LOWER TO HIGHER
I. The Nature of Virtue 110
II. Righteousness writ Large 116
III. The Cardinal Virtues 123
IV. Plato's Scheme of Education 131
V. Righteousness the Comprehensive Virtue 138
VI. The Stages of Degeneration 143
VII. The Intrinsic Superiority of Righteousness 153
VIII. Truth and Error in Platonism 159
CHAPTER IV
THE ARISTOTELIAN SENSE OF PROPORTION
I. Aristotle's Objections to Previous Systems 169
II. The Social Nature of Man 176
III. Right and Wrong determined by the End 179
IV. The Need of Instruments 191
V. The Happy Mean 194
VI. The Aristotelian Virtues and their Acquisition 199
VII. Aristotelian Friendship 209
VIII. Criticism and Summary of Aristotle's Teaching 212
CHAPTER V
THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF LOVE
I. The Teaching of Love 215
II. The Fulfilment of Law through Love 219
III. The Counterfeits of Love 239
IV. The Whole-heartedness of Love 247
V. The Cultivation of Love 257
VI. The Blessedness of Love 264
VII. The Supremacy of Love 277
INDEX 293
THE FIVE GREAT PHILOSOPHIES
OF LIFE
CHAPTER I
THE EPICUREAN PURSUIT OF PLEASURE
I
SELECTIONS FROM THE EPICUREAN SCRIPTURES
Epicureanism is so simple a philosophy of life that it scarcely needs
interpretation. In fact, as the following citations show, it was
originally little more than a set of directions for living "the simple
life," with pleasure as the simplifying principle. The more subtle
teaching of the other philosophies will require to be introduced by
explanatory statement, or else accompanied by a running commentary as it
proceeds. The best way to understand Epicureanism, however, is to let
Epicurus and his disciples speak for themselves. Accordingly, as in
religious services the sermon is preceded by reading of the Scriptures
and singing of hymns, we will open our study of the Epicurean philosophy
of life by selections from their scriptures and hymns. First the master,
though unfortunately he is not so good a master of style as many of his
disciples, shall speak. The gist of Epicurus's teaching is contained in
the following passages.
"The end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear; and when
once we have attained this, all the tempest of the soul is laid, seeing
that the living creature has not to go to find something that is
wanting, or to seek something else by which the good of the soul and of
the body will be fulfilled." "Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and
omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. From it
is the commencement of every choice and every aversion, and to it we
come back, and make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good
thing." "When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not
mean the pleasures of the prodigal, or the pleasures of sensuality, as
we are understood by some who are either ignorant and prejudiced for
other views, or inclined to misinterpret our statements. By pleasure we
mean the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul. It is not
an unbroken succession of drinking feasts and of revelry, not the
enjoyments of the fish and other delicacies of a splendid table, which
produce a pleasant life: it is sober reasoning, searching out the
reasons for every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs
through which great tumults take possession of the soul." "Nothing is so
productive of cheerfulness as to abstain from meddling, and not to
engage in difficult undertakings, nor force yourself to do something
beyond your power. For all this involves your nature in tumults." "The
main part of happiness is the disposition which is under our own
control. Service in the field is hard work, and others hold command.
Public speaking abounds in heart-throbs and in anxiety whether you can
carry conviction. Why then pursue an object like this, which is at the
disposal of others?" "Wealth beyond the requirements of nature is no
more benefit to men than water to a vessel which is full. Both alike
overflow. We can look upon another's goods without perturbation and can
enjoy purer pleasure than they, for we are free from their arduous
struggle."
"Thou must also keep in mind that of desires some are natural, and some
are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as
natural, and some are natural only. And of the necessary desires, some
are necessary if we are to be happy, and some if the body is to remain
unperturbed, and some if we are even to live. By the clear and certain
understanding of these things we learn to make every preference and
aversion, so that the body may have health and the soul tranquillity,
seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life." "Cheerful
poverty is an honourable thing." "Great wealth is but poverty when
matched with the law of nature." "If any one thinks his own not to be
most ample, he may become lord of the whole world, and will yet be
wretched." "Fortune but slightly crosses the wise man's path." "If thou
wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from his
desires."
"And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do
not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but oftentimes pass over many
pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And oftentimes we
consider pains superior to pleasures, and submit to the pain for a long
time, when it is attended for us with a greater pleasure. All pleasure,
therefore, because of its kinship with our nature, is a good, but it is
not in all cases our choice, even as every pain is an evil, though pain
is not always, and in every case, to be shunned."
"It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the
conveniences and inconveniences, that all these things must be judged.
Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary,
as a good; and we regard independence of outward goods as a great good,
not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with
little, if we have not much, being thoroughly persuaded that they have
the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that
whatever is natural is easily procured, and only the vain and worthless
hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when
once the pain due to want is removed; and bread and water confer the
highest pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate
self, therefore, to plain and inexpensive diet gives all that is needed
for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life
without shrinking, and it places us in a better frame when we approach
at intervals a costly fare, and renders us fearless of fortune."
"Riches according to nature are of limited extent, and can be easily
procured; but the wealth craved after by vain fancies knows neither end
nor limit. He who has understood the limits of life knows how easy it is
to get all that takes away the pain of want, and all that is required to
make our life perfect at every point. In this way he has no need of
anything which involves a contest." "The beginning and the greatest good
is prudence. Wherefore prudence is a more precious thing even than
philosophy: from it grow all the other virtues, for it teaches that we
cannot lead a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence,
honour, and justice; nor lead a life of prudence, honour, and justice,
which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into
one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them."
"Of all the things which wisdom procures for the happiness of life as a
whole, by far the greatest is the acquisition of friendship."
"We ought to look round for people to eat and drink with, before we look
for something to eat and drink: to feed without a friend is the life of
a lion and a wolf." "Do everything as if Epicurus had his eye upon you.
Retire into yourself chiefly at that time when you are compelled to be
in a crowd." "We ought to select some good man and keep him ever before
our eyes, so that we may, as it were, live under his eye, and do
everything in his sight." "No one loves another except for his own
interest." "Among the other ills which attend folly is this: it is
always beginning to live." "A foolish life is restless and disagreeable:
it is wholly engrossed with the future." "We are born once: twice we
cannot be born, and for everlasting we must be non-existent. But thou,
who art not master of the morrow, puttest off the right time.
Procrastination is the ruin of life for all; and, therefore, each of us
is hurried and unprepared at death." "Learn betimes to die, or if it
please thee better to pass over to the gods." "He who is least in need
of the morrow will meet the morrow most pleasantly." "Injustice is not
in itself a bad thing: but only in the fear, arising from anxiety on the
part of the wrong-doer, that he will not escape punishment." "A wise man
will not enter political life unless something extraordinary should
occur." "The free man will take his free laugh over those who are fain
to be reckoned in the list with Lycurgus and Solon."
"The first duty of salvation is to preserve our vigour and to guard
against the defiling of our life in consequence of maddening desires."
"Accustom thyself in the belief that death is nothing to us, for good
and evil are only where they are felt, and death is the absence of all
feeling: therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us
makes enjoyable the mortality of life, not by adding to years an
illimitable time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For
in life there can be nothing to fear, to him who has thoroughly
apprehended that there is nothing to cause fear in what time we are not
alive. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not
because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the
prospect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present causes only
a groundless pain by the expectation thereof. Death, therefore, the most
awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that when we are, death is not
yet, and when death comes, then we are not. It is nothing then, either
to the living or the dead, for it is not found with the living, and the
dead exist no longer."
These words of the master, given with no attempt to reconcile their
apparent inconsistencies, convey very fairly the substance of his
teaching, including both its excellences and its deep defects. The
exalted esteem in which his doctrines were held, leading his disciples
to commit them to memory as sacred and verbally inspired; the personal
reverence for his character; and the extravagant expectations as to what
his philosophy was to do for the world, together with a glimpse into the
Epicurean idea of heaven, are well illustrated by the following
sentences at the opening of the third book of Lucretius, addressed to
Epicurus:--
"Thee, who first wast able amid such thick darkness to raise on high so
bright a beacon and shed a light on the true interests of life, thee I
follow, glory of the Greek race, and plant now my footsteps firmly fixed
in thy imprinted marks, not so much from a desire to rival thee as that
from the love I bear thee I yearn to imitate thee. Thou, father, art
discoverer of things, thou furnishest us with fatherly precepts, and
like as bees sip of all things in the flowery lawns, we, O glorious
being, in like manner, feed from out thy pages upon all the golden
maxims, golden I say, most worthy ever of endless life. For soon as thy
philosophy issuing from a godlike intellect has begun with loud voice to
proclaim the nature of things, the terrors of the mind are dispelled,
the walls of the world part asunder, I see things in operation
throughout the whole void: the divinity of the gods is revealed, and
their tranquil abodes which neither winds do shake, nor clouds drench
with rains nor snow congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall: an
ever cloudless ether o'ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed
largely round. Nature too supplies all their wants, and nothing ever
impairs their peace of mind."
Horace is so saturated with Epicureanism that it is hard to select any
one of his odes as more expressive of it than another. His ode on the
"Philosophy of Life" perhaps presents it in as short compass as any. He
asks what he shall pray for? Not crops, and ivory, and gold gained by
laborious and risky enterprise; but healthy, solid contentment with the
simple, universal pleasures near at hand.
"Why to Apollo's shrine repair
New hallowed? Why present with prayer
Libation? Not those crops to gain,
Which fill Sardinia's teeming plain,
"Herds from Calabria's sunny fields,
Nor ivory that India yields,
Nor gold, nor tracts where Liris glides
So noiseless down its drowsy sides.
"Blest owners of Calenian vines,
Crop them; ye merchants, drain the wines,
That cargoes brought from Syria buy,
In cups of gold. For ye, who try
"The broad Atlantic thrice a year
And never drown, must sure be dear
To gods in heaven. Me--small my need--
Light mallows, olives, chiccory, feed.
"Give me then health, Apollo; give
Sound mind; on gotten goods to live
Contented; and let song engage
An honoured, not a base, old age."
For a lesson from the new Epicurean testament we cannot do better than
turn to the sensible pages of Herbert Spencer's "Data of Ethics."
"The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by
social conditions is the first requisite to the attainment of the
greatest general happiness. To see this it needs but to contrast one
whose self-regard has maintained bodily well-being with one whose
regardlessness of self has brought its natural results; and then to ask
what must be the contrast between two societies formed of two such kinds
of individuals.
"Bounding out of bed after an unbroken sleep, singing or whistling as he
dresses, coming down with beaming face ready to laugh on the smallest
provocation, the healthy man of high powers, conscious of past successes
and, by his energy, quickness, resource, made confident of the future,
enters on the day's business not with repugnance but with gladness; and
from hour to hour experiencing satisfactions from work effectually done,
comes home with an abundant surplus of energy remaining for hours of
relaxation. Far otherwise is it with one who is enfeebled by great
neglect of self. Already deficient, his energies are made more deficient
by constant endeavours to execute tasks that prove beyond his strength,
and by the resulting discouragement. Hours of leisure which, rightly
passed, bring pleasures that raise the tide of life and renew the powers
of work, cannot be utilized: there is not vigour enough for enjoyments
involving action, and lack of spirits prevents passive enjoyments from
being entered upon with zest. In brief, life becomes a burden. Now if,
as must be admitted, in a community composed of individuals like the
first the happiness will be relatively great, while in one composed of
individuals like the last there will be relatively little happiness, or
rather much misery; it must be admitted that conduct causing the one
result is good and conduct causing the other is bad.
"He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health
and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source
of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the
ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose
bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried
too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of
depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less
capable, of actively furthering their welfare.
"Full of vivacity, the one is ever welcome. For his wife he has smiles
and jocose speeches; for his children stores of fun and play; for his
friends pleasant talk interspersed with the sallies of wit that come
from buoyancy. Contrariwise, the other is shunned. The irritability
resulting now from ailments, now from failures caused by feebleness,
his family has daily to bear. Lacking adequate energy for joining in
them, he has at best but a tepid interest in the amusements of his
children; and he is called a wet blanket by his friends. Little account
as our ethical reasonings take note of it, yet is the fact obvious that
since happiness and misery are infectious, such regard for self as
conduces to health and high spirits is a benefaction to others, and such
disregard of self as brings on suffering, bodily or mental, is a
malefaction to others.
"The adequately egoistic individual retains those powers which make
altruistic activities possible. The individual who is inadequately
egoistic loses more or less of his ability to be altruistic. The truth
of the one proposition is self-evident; and the truth of the other is
daily forced on us by examples. Note a few of them. Here is a mother
who, brought up in the insane fashion usual among the cultivated, has a
physique not strong enough for suckling her infant, but who, knowing
that its natural food is the best, and anxious for its welfare,
continues to give milk for a longer time than her system will bear.
Eventually the accumulating reaction tells. There comes exhaustion
running, it may be, into illness caused by depletion; occasionally
ending in death, and often entailing chronic weakness. She becomes,
perhaps for a time, perhaps permanently, incapable of carrying on
household affairs; her other children suffer from the loss of maternal
attention; and where the income is small, payments for nurse and doctor
tell injuriously on the whole family. Instance, again, what not
unfrequently happens with the father. Similarly prompted by a high sense
of obligation, and misled by current moral theories into the notion that
self-denial may rightly be carried to any extent, he daily continues his
office work for long hours regardless of hot head and cold feet; and
debars himself from social pleasures, for which he thinks he can afford
neither time nor money. What comes of this entirely unegoistic course?
Eventually a sudden collapse, sleeplessness, inability to work. That
rest which he would not give himself when his sensations prompted he has
now to take in long measure. The extra earnings laid by for the benefit
of his family are quickly swept away by costly journeys in aid of
recovery and by the many expenses which illness entails. Instead of
increased ability to do his duty by his offspring there comes now
inability. Lifelong evils on them replace hoped-for goods. And so is it,
too, with the social effects of inadequate egoism. All grades furnish
examples of the mischiefs, positive and negative, inflicted on society
by excessive neglect of self. Now the case is that of a labourer who,
conscientiously continuing his work under a broiling sun, spite of
violent protests from his feelings, dies of sunstroke; and leaves his
family a burden to the parish. Now the case is that of a clerk whose
eyes permanently fail from overstraining, or who, daily writing for
hours after his fingers are painfully cramped, is attacked with
'scrivener's palsy,' and, unable to write at all, sinks with aged
parents into poverty which friends are called on to mitigate.
"And now the case is that of a man devoted to public ends who,
shattering his health by ceaseless application, fails to achieve all he
might have achieved by a more reasonable apportionment of his time
between labour on behalf of others, and ministration to his own needs."
After this lengthy prose extract, let us turn to the modern Epicurean
poets.
At once the best and the worst rendering of Epicureanism into verse is
Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam. It is the best because of the
frankness with which it draws out to its logical conclusion, in a
cynical despair of everything nobler than the pleasure of the moment,
the consequences of identifying the self with mere pleasure-seeking. It
is the worst because, instead of presenting Epicureanism mixed with
nobler elements, as Walt Whitman and Stevenson do, it gives us the pure
and undiluted article as a final gospel of life. The fact that it has
proved such a fad during the past few years is striking evidence of the
husky fare on which our modern prodigals can be content to feed.
"Come fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of repentance fling:
The bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.
"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow.
"Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
_To-day_ of past Regrets and future Fears:
_To-morrow!_--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years.
"I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd, "I myself am Heav'n and Hell:
"Heav'n but the vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on Fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire."
From this melancholy attempt to offer us Epicureanism as a complete
account of life, overshadowed as it is by the gloom of the Infinite
which the man who stakes his all on momentary pleasure feels doomed to
forego, it is a relief to turn to men who strike cheerfully and firmly
the Epicurean note; but pass instantly on to blend it with sterner notes
and larger views of life, in which it plays its essential, yet strictly
subordinate part.
Of all the men who thus strike scattered Epicurean notes, without
attempting the impossible task of making a harmonious and satisfactory
tune out of them, our American Pagan, Walt Whitman, is the best example.
"What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.
"O the joy of manly self-hood!
To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known
or unknown,
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
To look with calm gaze or with flashing eye,
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,
To confront with your personality all the other personalities of
the earth.
"O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
To these proud laws of the air, the water, and the ground, proving
my interior soul impregnable,
And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.
"For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating--the joy of death!
The beautiful touch of death, soothing and benumbing a few moments,
for reasons,
Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd, or render'd
to powder, or buried,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications,
further offices, eternal uses of the earth.
"O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys."
Whitman, with this wild ecstasy, to be sure is an Epicurean and
something more. Indeed, pure Epicureanism, unmixed with better elements,
is rather hard to find in modern literature. One other hymn, by Robert
Louis Stevenson, likewise adds to pure Epicureanism a note of strenuous
intensity in the great task of happiness which was foreign to the more
easy-going form of the ancient doctrine. In Stevenson Epicureanism is
only a flavour to more substantial viands.
THE CELESTIAL SURGEON
"If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:--
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake!
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in."
While we are with Stevenson, we may as well conclude our selections from
the Epicurean scriptures in these words from his Christmas Sermon:
"Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before all morality: they are
the perfect duties. If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they
are wrong. I do not say, 'give them up,' for they may be all you have;
but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better
men."
II
THE EPICUREAN VIEW OF WORK AND PLAY
Pleasure is our great task, "the gist of life, the end of ends." To be
happy ourselves and radiating centres of happiness to choice circles of
congenial friends,--this is the Epicurean ideal. The world is a vast
reservoir of potential pleasures. Our problem is to scoop out for
ourselves and our friends full measure of these pleasures as they go
floating by. We did not make the world. It made itself by a fortuitous
concourse of atoms. It would be foolish for us to try to alter it. Our
only concern is to get out of it all the pleasure we can; without
troubling ourselves to put anything valuable back into it. Since it is
accidental, impersonal, we owe it nothing. We simply owe ourselves as
big a share of pleasure as we can grasp and hold.
This, however, is a task in which it is easy to make mistakes. We need
prudence to avoid cheating ourselves with short-lived pleasures that
cost too much; wisdom to choose the simpler pleasures that cost less and
last longer. Such shrewd calculation of the relative cost and worth of
different pleasures is the sum and substance of the Epicurean
philosophy. He who is shrewd to discern and prompt to snatch the most
pleasure at least cost, as it is offered on the bargain counter of
life,--he is the Epicurean sage.
We might work this out into a great variety of applications: but one or
two spheres must suffice. Eating and drinking, as the most elemental
relations of life, are the ones commonly chosen as applications of the
Epicurean principle. These applications, however, the selections from
Epicurus and Horace have already made clear.
The Epicurean will regulate his diet, not by the immediate, trivial,
short-lived pleasures of taste, though these he will by no means
despise, but mainly by their permanent effects upon health. Wholesome
food, and enough of it, daintily prepared and served, he will do his
best to obtain. But elaborate and ostentatious feasting he will avoid,
as involving too much expense and trouble, and too heavy penalties of
disease and discomfort. He will find out by practical experience the
quantity, quality, and variety of simple food that keeps him in perfect
condition; and no enticements of sweetmeats or stimulants will divert
him from the simplicity in which the most permanent pleasure is found.
To eat cake and candy between meals, to sip tea at all hours, no less
than to drink whiskey to the point of intoxication, are sins against
the simplicity of the true Epicurean regimen.
The Epicurean will not lose an hour of needed sleep nor tolerate such an
abomination as an alarm clock in his house. If he permits himself to be
awakened in the morning, it will be as Thomas B. Reed used to when, as a
student at Bowdoin College, he was obliged to be in chapel at six
o'clock. He had the janitor call him at half-past four, in order that he
might have the luxury of feeling that he had another whole hour in which
to sleep, and then call him again at the last moment which would permit
him to dress in time for chapel.
These things, however, we may for the most part take for granted. We do
not require a philosopher to regulate our diet for us; or to put us to
bed at night, and tuck us in, and hear us say our prayers. Those
elementary lessons were doubtless needed in the childhood of the race.
The selection from Spencer on work and play strikes closer to the
problem of the modern man; and it is at this point that we all sorely
need to go to school to Epicurus. Perhaps we are inclined to look down
on Epicurus's ideal as a low one. Well, if it is a low ideal, it is all
the more disgraceful to fall below it. And most of us do fall below it
every day of our tense and restless lives. Let us test ourselves by this
ideal, and answer honestly the questions it puts to us.
How many of us are slaving all day and late into the night to add
artificial superfluities to the simple necessities? How many of us know
how to stop working when it begins to encroach upon our health; and to
cut off anxiety and worry altogether? How many of us measure the amount
and intensity of our toil by our physical strength; doing what we can do
healthfully, cheerfully, joyously, and leaving the rest undone, instead
of straining up to the highest notch of nervous tension during early
manhood and womanhood, only to break down when the life forces begin to
turn against us? Every man in any position of responsibility and
influence has opportunity to do the work of twenty men. How many of us
in such circumstances choose the one thing we can do best, and leave the
other nineteen for other people to do, or else to remain undone? How
many of us have ever seriously stopped to think where the limit of
healthful effort and endurance lies, unless insomnia or dyspepsia or
nervous prostration have laid their heavy hands upon us and compelled us
to pause? Every breakdown from avoidable causes, every stroke of work
we do after the border-land of exhaustion and nervous strain is crossed,
is a crime against the teaching of Epicurus; and these diseases that
beset our modern business life are the penalties with which nature
visits us in vindication of the wisdom of his teachings. Every day that
we work beyond our strength; every hour that we spend in consequent
exhaustion and depression; every minute that we give over to worrying
about things beyond our immediate control, we either fall below, or else
rise above, Epicurus's level.
If we rise above him, to serve higher ideals, conscious of the sacrifice
we make, and clear about the superior ends we gain thereby, then we may
be forgiven. What some of those higher ideals are we shall have occasion
to consider later. But to work ourselves into depression, disease, and
pain, for no better reason than to get high mark in some rank-book or
other, to gratify somebody's false vanity, to get together a little more
gold than we can spend wisely or our children can inherit without
enervation, to live in a bigger house than our neighbour has or we can
afford to take care of--to work for such ends as these beyond the point
where work is healthy and happy, is to commit a sin which neither
Epicurus nor Nature will forgive. With the people who have risen above
Epicurus, and are deliberately sacrificing to some extent the Epicurean
to one of the higher ideals, as I have said, we have no quarrel; for
them we have only hearty commendation. We do not ask the mother whose
child is dangerously sick, the statesman in a political crisis, the
artist when the conception of his great work comes over him, to heed for
the time being the limits of strength and the conditions of completest
health. All we ask of them is that later on, when the child has
recovered, when the crisis is past, when the picture is painted, they
shall reverently and humbly pay to Epicurus, or to Nature whom he
represents, the penalty for their sin, by a corresponding period of
complete rest and relaxation. We must bear strain at times; and Nature
will forgive us if we do not take it too often. But we must not bunch
our strains. We must not pass from one strain to another, and another,
without periods of relaxation between. We must not let the attitude of
strain become chronic, and develop into a moral tetanus, which keeps us
forever on the rack of exertion from sheer restless inability to sit
down and enjoy ourselves.
What we take from excessive work Epicurus would bid us add to needed
play. Play is an arrangement by which we get artificially, in highly
concentrated form, the pleasure which in ordinary life is diffused over
long periods, and attainable only in attenuated form. Play puts the
great fundamental pleasures of the race at the disposal of the
individual.
Foot-ball, for instance, gives the student of to-day the essential joy
in combat of his barbarian ancestors, with the modern field-marshal's
delight in subtle tragedy thrown in. Base-ball gives the intense zest
that comes of speed, accuracy, and cunning exercised in emergencies.
Golf, in milder form, gives us the pleasure that comes of accuracy of
aim and calculation of conditions in good company and in the open air.
Billiards give to the clerk cramped all day over his desk the joy of a
delicate touch which otherwise would be the exclusive property of his
artisan brother. The various games of cards give the mechanic and the
housewife a taste at evening of the eager interests that fill the
banker's and the broker's days. Checkers and chess give to the humblest
in their homes some touch of the pleasures of the general and admiral.
Dancing carries to the limit of orderly expression that delight in the
person and presence of the opposite sex which otherwise would have to be
postponed until youth was able to assume the more serious
responsibilities of permanent relationships. Sailing, tramping, camping
out, hunting, fishing, mountain climbing, are all devices for bringing
into the lives of studious, strenuous, city people the elemental
pleasures which otherwise would be the monopoly of sailors, fishermen,
foresters, and explorers. Swimming, skating, bicycle riding, driving a
horse or an automobile, all give the keen joy that comes of the mastery
of graceful and forceful motion.
The theatre, which embodies so distinctively the peculiar essence of
play that its performances have appropriated the name, takes us in a
couple of hours through the epitomised experience of many persons
extending over many years in circumstances far removed from our
individual lives. Poetry, novels, biographies, histories, painting,
music, and all the forms of art perform for us this same function. They
take us out of our local and temporal situation, and let us live in
other days and other lands, in other customs and costumes; and so
enormously widen the world of experience we imaginatively make our own.
Besides in all the forms of play and art the ends are made artificially
simple, the means are made supernaturally accessible; so that instead of
toiling for years in doubt of results as in actual work, we experience
in play, and witness in artistic representation, the whole process of
selecting materials and moulding them to a successful issue in a few
minutes, or a few hours at most. All this reacts upon our power to
prosecute with confidence the remoter ends, and marshal the more
obdurate means of real work. It expands and limbers our capacity to
subordinate means to ends and find delight in the process as well as in
the outcome. Hence a man who goes a year without a considerable period
given over to play, or a week without at least one or two solid periods
of it, or lets many days go by without any play whatever, is selling his
birthright of personality for a mess of pottage. Psychology and pedagogy
are recognising the important function of play in the development of
personality as never before. Professor Baldwin, in his "Social and
Ethical Interpretations," sums up the functions of play in these words:
"In the education of the individual for his life-work in a network of
social relationships play is a most important form of organic
exercise,--a most important method of realisation of the social
instincts; gives flexibility of mind and body with self-control; gives
constant opportunity for imitative learning and invention, and is the
experimental verification of the benefits and pleasures of united
action."
III
THE EPICUREAN PRICE OF HAPPINESS
Whoever contracts his work and expands his play, on Epicurean
principles, will of course have common sense enough to cut off hurry and
worry altogether. Both are sheer waste and wantonness,--the most foolish
and wicked things in the whole list of forbidden sins. The Epicurean
will live his life in care-tight, worry-proof compartments; working with
all his might while he works; and then cutting it off short; never
letting the cares of work intrude on the precious precincts of
well-earned leisure, or permitting the strain of remembered or
anticipated toil to mar the hours sacred to rest and recreation. Some
things are bound to go wrong in every life. That is our misfortune. But
there is no need of brooding over them in gratuitous grief after they
have gone, or dreading them in gloomy anticipation before they come. If
either in anticipation or in retrospect these evils are permitted to
darken the hours when they are physically absent, that is not our
misfortune; it is our folly and our fault.
We hear a great deal in these days about mind cures, and rest cures, and
faith cures, and cures by hypnotism, and cures by patent medicines. If
anybody needs these cures, of course he is welcome to them; though there
is much to be said for the stalwart conservative who refused proffered
aid of this sort with the remark that he would rather die in the hands
of a skilful physician than be cured by a quack. Strict obedience to the
plain, homely doctrine of Epicurus would prevent ninety-nine one
hundredths of the physical and mental ailments which these various
systems of healing profess to cure. In almost every such case work, or
the square of work which is hurry, or the cube of work which is worry,
carried beyond the sane limits which Epicurus prescribes, is at the root
of trouble. Where it is not work and worry, it is their passive
counterparts, grief nursed long after its occasion has gone by, or fear
harboured long before its appropriate object has arrived. Cut these off
and all the use you will have for either healers or physicians will be
on such comparatively rare occasions as birth, death, contagious
diseases, and unavoidable accident. You will not be the chronic patient
of any doctor regular or irregular; or the consumer of any medicine,
patented or prescribed.
Neither useless regrets for the past nor profitless forebodings for the
future should ever cast their shadows over the present, which taken in
itself is always endurable, and may generally be made positively happy.
Memory should be purged of all its unpleasantness before its pictures
are permitted to appear before the footlights of reflection; and the
searchlight of expectation should always be turned toward the pleasures
that are still in store for us. Past and future are mainly in our power,
so far as the quality of things we remember and anticipate are
concerned. And even the brief and fleeting present is mainly filled by
reminiscence and anticipation, so that it too is largely what we please
to make it.
"The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."
If any one of us is not happy all the time, except at the rare instants
when toothache, or the news of a friend's illness or death, or a bad
turn in our investments takes us by surprise--if happiness is not the
dominant tone of our ordinary life, it is simply because we do not want
it, in that thoughtful, enterprising, insistent way in which the
scholar wants knowledge, or the business man wants money, or the
politician wants votes. Whoever is willing to pay the price in prudent
planning of his daily pleasures, in relentless exclusion of the
enterprises and indulgences that cost more pain than they can return in
pleasure; whoever will cut out remorselessly the things in his past life
on which he cannot dwell with pleasure, and lop off the considerations
which give rise to dread; whoever is willing to pay this Epicurean price
for happiness can have it just as soon and just as often as he pays down
the cash of a faithful and consistent application of these principles.
If any man goes about the world in a chronic unhappiness, it is
ninety-nine per cent the fault, not of his circumstances, but of
himself. There is not a reader of this book whose circumstances are so
black that another person, in those same circumstances, would not find a
way to be supremely and dominantly, if not exclusively and continuously,
happy. There is not a reader of this book so rich, so blessed with
family and friends, so occupied and diverted, but that another person in
those same circumstances would be miserable himself, and a source of
misery to everybody with whom he came in contact. Epicurus is right,
that happiness is up at auction all the time, and sold in lots to suit
the purchaser whenever he bids high enough. And the price is not
exorbitant: prudence to plan for the simple pleasures that can be had
for the asking; resolution to cut off the pleasures that come too high;
determination to amputate our reflections the instant they develop
morbid symptoms, and to take an anti-toxine against fret and worry, the
moment we feel the approach of their contagious atmosphere;
concentration, to live in a self-chosen present from which profitless
regret and unprofitable anxieties, projected from the past or borrowed
from the future, are absolutely banished.
It is high time to treat melancholy, depression, gloom, fretfulness,
unhappiness, not merely as diseases, but as the inexcusable follies, the
intolerable vices, the unpardonable sins which a sane and wholesome
Epicureanism pronounces them to be.
The Epicurean principle, then, forbids us to go whining, whimpering, and
weeping through this glorious and otherwise cheery world, making
ourselves a burden and nuisance to our friends; and tells us frankly
that if we are so much as tempted to such melancholy living, it is
because we are too improvident, too slothful, too stupid to cast out
these devils, which a little plain fare, hard work, outdoor exercise,
vigorous play, and unworried rest would exorcise forever. It bids us put
in place of these banished sighs and groans and tears, the laughter,
song, and shout that "spin the great wheel of earth about." We may sum
it all up in the picture of a worthy Epicurean's day.
After a night of sleep too sound to harbour an unpleasant dream, he
greets the hour of rising with a shout and bound, plunges into the bath,
meets with gusto the shock it gives, and rejoices in the glow of
exhilaration a vigorous rubbing brings; greets the household "with
morning face and morning heart," eager to share with the family the
meal, the news, the outlook on the day, resolved like Pippa to "waste no
wavelet of his twelve-hours' treasure"; then, whether work calls him
forth immediately or not, takes a few minutes of brisk walking and deep
breathing in the open air until he feels the great forces of earth, air,
and sunshine pulsing in his veins; then greets the work of kitchen or
factory, office or field, schoolroom or counter, bench or desk with an
inward cheer, as something to put forth his surplus energy upon; and
through the swift, precious forenoon hours delights in the mastery over
difficulty his stored-up power imparts; takes the noon-day meal gayly
and leisurely with congenial people; through the early afternoon hours
does the lighter portion of the day's work if he must; gets out for an
hour or two in the open air if he may, with horse, or wheel, or
automobile, or boat, or racket, or golf clubs, or skates, or rod, or
gun, or at least a friend and two stout walking shoes; comes to the
evening meal in the family circle widened to include a few welcome
guests, or at the home of some hospitable host, in garments from which
all trace of stain or hint of strain has been removed, to share the best
things market and purse afford, served in such wise as to prolong the
opportunity for the interchange of wit and banter, cursory discussion
and kindly compliment; spends the evening in quiet reading or public
entertainment, games with his children or visiting with friends; and
then returns again to sleep with such a sense of gratitude for the dear
joys of the day as sends an echo of "All's well" down through even the
shadowy substance of his unconscious dreams. Surely there are some
features of this Epicurean day which we, in our bustling, restless,
overelaborated lives, might introduce with great profit to ourselves,
and great advantage to the people with whom we are intimately thrown. A
series of such days, varied by even happier holidays and Sundays, broken
once or twice a year at least by considerable vacations, added together,
will make a life which Epicurus says a man may live with satisfaction,
and after which he may pass away content.
If there be no other life, let us by all means make the most of this.
And if, both here and hereafter, there be a larger life than that
perceivable by sense,--as, on deeper grounds than the Epicurean
psychology recognises, most of us believe there is,--this healthy,
hearty, wholesome determination to live intensely and exclusively in the
present is a much more sincere and effective way to develop it than the
foolish attempt of a false other-worldliness to anticipate or discount
the future, by a half-hearted, far-away affectation of superiority to
the simple homely pleasures of to-day.
IV
THE DEFECTS OF EPICUREANISM
Thus far we have pointed out certain valuable elements of truth which
Epicureanism contains. Only incidentally have we encountered certain
deep defects. Epicurus's "free laugh" at those who attempt to fulfil
their political duties, his quiet ignoring of all interests that lie
outside his little circle, or reach beyond the grave, his naïve remark
about the intrinsic harmlessness of wrong-doing, provided only the
wrong-doer could escape the fear of being caught, must have made us
aware that there are heights of nobleness, depths of devotion, lengths
of endurance, breadths of sympathy altogether foreign to this
easy-going, pleasure-seeking view of life. Justice requires us to dwell
more explicitly on these Epicurean shortcomings. Much that has been
charged against the school in the form of swinish sensuality is the
grossest slander. Still there are defects in this view of life which are
both logically deducible from its premises, and practically visible in
the lives of its consistent disciples.
The fundamental defect of Epicureanism is its false definition of
personality. According to Epicurus the person is merely a bundle of
appetites and passions; and the gratification of these is made
synonymous with the satisfaction of himself. But gratifications are
short; while appetites are long. The result is that which Schopenhauer
has so conclusively pointed out. During the long periods when desire
burns unsatisfied, the balance of pleasure is against us. In the
comparatively brief and rare intervals when passions are in process of
gratification, the balance can never be more than even. Therefore our
account with the world at the end of any period, whether a week or a
year or a lifetime, is bound to stand as follows: credit, a few rare,
brief moments--moments, too, which have long since vanished into
nothingness--when appetites and passions were in process of
satisfaction. Debit, the vast majority of moments, amounting in the
aggregate to almost the total period considered, when appetites and
passions were clamouring for a satisfaction that was not forthcoming.
The obvious conclusion from the frequent examination of the Epicurean
account-book is that which Schopenhauer so triumphantly
demonstrates,--pessimism. The sooner we cease doing business on those
terms, the less will be the balance of pain, or unsatisfied desire,
against us. To be entirely frank, the devotees of Omar Khayyam would
have to confess that it is this note of pessimism, despair, and
self-pity, at the sorry contrast of the vast unattainable and the petty
attained, which is the secret of his unquestionably fascinating lines.
Here the blasé amusement-seeker finds consolation in the fact that a
host of other people are also yielding to the temptation to bury the
unwelcome consciousness of a self they cannot satisfy in wine, or any
other momentary sensuous titillation that will conceal the sense of
their spiritual failure--a failure, however, which they are glad to be
assured is shared by so many that the sense of it has been dignified by
the name of a philosophy and sung by a poet.
Pleasure cannot be sought directly with success; for pleasure comes
indirectly as the effect of causes far higher and deeper and wider than
any that are recognised in the Epicurean philosophy. Pleasure comes
unsought to those who lose themselves in large intellectual, artistic,
social, and spiritual interests. But such noble losing of self without
thought of gain is explicitly excluded from the consistent Epicurean
creed.
In the picture of the Epicurean life already drawn, while domestic and
political life have been presupposed as a background, nothing has been
said about the sacrifice which one is called upon to make in the support
and defence of a pure home and a free country. That was expressly
excluded by Epicurus. Whatever attractiveness there was in the picture
of the Epicurean life previously presented was largely due to this
background of presupposition that this happy life was lived in a
well-ordered and stable family, and in a free and just municipal and
national life. In fact it is only as a parasite on these great
domestic, social, and political institutions which it does nothing to
create or maintain, and much to weaken and destroy, that Epicureanism is
even a tolerable account of life. If we now paint our picture of the
Epicurean man and woman with this background of domestic and civic life
withdrawn, the ugliness and meanness of this parasitic Epicureanism will
stare us in the face; and while we ought not to forget the valuable
lessons it has to teach us, we shall shrink from the completed picture
as a thing of deformity and degradation.
Who then is the consistent Epicurean man? He is the club man, who lives
in easy luxury and fares sumptuously every day. Everything is done for
him. Servants wait on him. He serves nobody, and is responsible for no
one's welfare. He has a congenial set of cronies, loosely attached to be
sure; and constantly changing, as matrimony, financial reverses,
business engagements, professional responsibilities call one or another
of his circle away to a more strenuous life. He is a good fellow,
genial, free-handed with his set, indifferent to all who are outside. He
generally hires some woman to serve for a few months as the instrument
of his passions; only to cast her off to be hired by another and
another until in due time she dies, he cares not when or how.
As business men these Epicureans are apt to be easy-going, and therefore
failures. As debtors, they are the hardest people in the world from whom
to collect a bill. As creditors or landlords they are the most merciless
in their exactions. Their devotion to the state is generally confined to
betting on the elections; the returns of which they watch with the same
interest as the results of a horse-race. Their religion is confined to
poking fun at the people who are foolish enough to be going to church
while they are at their Sunday morning breakfast.
We all know these Epicureans; we do business with them; we meet them
socially; we treat them decently; but it is to be hoped that underneath
the smooth exterior we all detect their selfish heartlessness. They have
taken a doctrine, which, as applied to the good things which are made to
minister to our appetites is sound and true, and have perverted it into
a moral monstrosity by daring to treat human hearts and social
institutions as mere things, mere instruments of their selfish
pleasures.
Epicurean women, likewise, abound in every wealthy community. They
spend the winter in Florida, New York, or Washington; dividing the rest
of the year between the sea-shore, the mountains, and the lakes, with
occasional visits to what they call their homes. They must have the best
of everything, and assume no responsibility beyond running up bills for
their husbands to pay, or to remain unpaid. Their special paradise is
foreign travel, and no pension or hotel along the beaten highways of
Europe is without its quota of these precious daughters of Epicurus.
They flit hither and thither where least ennui and most diversion
allures. Two or three years of this irresponsible existence is
sufficient to disqualify them for usefulness either in Europe or
America, either here or hereafter. When they return, if they ever do, to
their native town or city, the drudgery of housekeeping has become
intolerable, the responsibilities of social life unendurable, and their
poor husbands are glad enough when the restless fit seizes them again
and they can be packed off to Egypt, or Russia, or whatever remote
corner of the earth remains for their idle hands and restless feet,
their empty minds and hollow hearts, to invade with their unearned gold.
There is no guarantee that the Epicurean will be the chaste husband of
one wife, or a faithful mother, or a good provider for the family, or a
devoted citizen of the republic, or a strenuous servant of art or
science, or a heroic martyr in the cause of progress and reform. If all
men were Epicureans, the world would speedily retrograde into the
barbarism and animalism whence it has slowly and painfully emerged. The
great interests of the family, the state, society, and civilisation are
not accurately reflected in the feelings of the individual; and if the
individual has no guide but feeling, he will prove a traitor to such of
these higher interests as may have the misfortune to be intrusted to his
pleasure-loving, self-indulgent, unheroic hands.
There are hard things to do and to endure; and if we are to meet them
bravely, we shall have to call the Stoic to our aid. There are sordid
and trivial things to put up with, or to rise above, and there we may
need at times the Platonist and the mystic to show us the eternal
reality underneath the temporal appearance. There are problems of
conduct to be solved; conflicting claims to be adjusted; and for this
the Aristotelian sense of proportion must be developed in our souls.
Finally there are other persons to be considered, and one great Personal
Spirit living and working in the world; and for our proper attitude
toward these persons, human and divine, we must look to the Christian
principle. To meet these higher relationships with no better equipment
than Epicureanism offers, would be as foolish as to try to run barefoot
across a continent, or swim naked across the sea. Naked, barefoot
Epicureanism has its place on the sandy beaches and in the sheltered
coves of life; but has no business on the mountain tops or in the depths
of human experience.
It will not make a man an efficient workman, or a thorough scholar, or a
brave soldier, or a public-spirited citizen. It spoils completely every
woman whom it gets hold of, unless at the same time she has firm hold on
something better; unless she has a husband and children whom she loves,
or work in which she delights for its own sake, or friends and interests
dearer than life itself. Epicureanism will not lift either man or woman
far toward heaven, or save them in the hour when the pains of hell get
hold of them. No home can be reared on it. The divorce court is the
logical outcome of every marriage between a man and a woman who are both
Epicureans. For it is the very essence of Epicureanism to treat others
as means; while no marriage is tolerable unless at least one of the two
parties is large and unselfish enough to treat the other as an end. No
Epicurean state or city could endure longer than it would take for the
men who are in politics for their pockets to plunder the people who are
out of politics for the same reason. An Epicurean heaven, a place where
eternally each should get his fill of pleasure at the expense of
everybody else, would be insufferably insipid, incomparably unendurable.
It is fortunate for the fame of Epicurus and the permanence of his
philosophy that he evaded the necessity of thinking out the conditions
of immortal blessedness by his specious dilemma in which he thought to
prove that death ends all. As a temporary parasite upon a political and
moral order already established, Epicureanism might thrive and flourish;
but as a principle on which to rest a decent society here or a hope of
heaven hereafter, Epicureanism is utterly lacking. If there were nothing
better than Epicureanism in store for us through the long eternities, we
all might well pray to be excused, as Epicurus happily believed we
should be. For any ultimate delight in life must be rooted in something
deeper than self-centred pleasure: it must love persons and seek ends
for their own sake; and find its joy, not in the satisfaction of the man
as he is, but in the development of that which his thought and love
enable him to become.
V
AN EXAMPLE OF EPICUREAN CHARACTER
The clearest example of the shortcomings of Epicureanism is the
character of Tito Melema in George Eliot's "Romola." Pleasure and the
avoidance of pain are this young Greek's only principles. He is "of so
easy a conscience that he would make a stepping-stone of his father's
corpse." "He has a lithe sleekness about him that seems marvellously
fitted for slipping into any nest he fixes his mind on." "He had an
unconquerable aversion to any thing unpleasant, even when an object very
much loved and admired was on the other side of it." According to his
thinking "any maxims that required a man to fling away the good that was
needed to make existence sweet, were only the lining of human
selfishness turned outward; they were made by men who wanted others to
sacrifice themselves for their sake." "He would rather that Baldassarre
should not suffer; he liked no one to suffer; but could any philosophy
prove to him that he was bound to care for another's suffering more than
for his own? To do so, he must have loved Baldassarre devotedly, and he
did not love him: was that his own fault? Gratitude! seen closely, it
made no valid claim; his father's life would have been dreary without
him; are we convicted of a debt to men for the pleasure they give
themselves?" "He had simply chosen to make life easy to himself--to
carry his human lot if possible in such a way that it should pinch him
nowhere; but the choice had at various times landed him in unexpected
positions." "Tito could not arrange life at all to his mind without a
considerable sum of money, and that problem of arranging life to his
mind had been the source of all his misdoing." "He would have been equal
to any sacrifice that was not unpleasant." "Of other goods than pleasure
he can form no conception." As Romola says in her reproaches: "You talk
of substantial good, Tito! Are faithfulness, and love, and sweet
grateful memories no good? Is it no good that we should keep our silent
promises on which others build because they believe in our love and
truth? Is it no good that a just life should be justly honoured? Or, is
it good that we should harden our hearts against all the wants and hopes
of those who have depended on us? What good can belong to men who have
such souls? To talk cleverly, perhaps, and find soft couches for
themselves, and live and die with their base selves as their best
companions."
This pleasure-loving Tito Melema, "when he was only seven years old,
Baldassarre had rescued from blows, had taken to a home that seemed like
opened paradise, where there was sweet food and soothing caresses, all
had on Baldassarre's knee; and from that time till the hour they had
parted, Tito had been the one centre of Baldassarre's fatherly cares."
Instead of finding and rescuing this man who, long years ago, had
rescued Tito when a little boy from a life of beggary, filth, and cruel
wrong, had reared him tenderly and been to him as a father, Tito sold
the jewels which belonged to his father and would have been sufficient
to ransom him from slavery, and finally, when found by Baldassarre in
Florence, denied him and pronounced him a madman. He betrayed an
innocent, trusting young girl into a mock marriage, at the same time
ruining her and proving false to his lawful wife. He sold the library
which it was Romola's father's dying wish to have kept in Florence as a
distinct memorial to his life and work. He entered into selfish
intrigues in the politics of the city, ready to betray his associates
and friends whenever his own safety required it.
What wonder that Romola came to have "her new scorn of that thing called
pleasure which made men base--that dexterous contrivance for selfish
ease, that shrinking from endurance and strain, when others were bowing
beneath burdens too heavy for them, which now made one image with her
husband." In her own distress she learns from Savonarola that there is a
higher law than individual pleasure. "She felt that the sanctity
attached to all close relations, and therefore preëminently to the
closest, was but the expression in outward law, of that result toward
which all human goodness and nobleness must spontaneously tend; that the
light abandonment of ties, whether inherited or voluntary, because they
had ceased to be pleasant, was the uprooting of social and personal
virtue. What else had Tito's crime toward Baldassarre been but that
abandonment working itself out to the most hideous extreme of falsity
and ingratitude? To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments
in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only
without external law to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not
unarmed with Divine lightnings--lightnings that may yet fall if the
warrant has been false." The whole teaching of the book is summed up in
the Epilogue. In the conversation between Romola and Tito's illegitimate
son Lillo, Lillo says, "I should like to be something that would make
me a great man, and very happy besides--something that would not hinder
me from having a good deal of pleasure."
"That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that
could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We
can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a
great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the
world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so
much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what
we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is
good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no
man can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless he
gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to
endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that
belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than
falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo--you know why I keep to-morrow
sacred; he had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling
against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds
they are capable of. And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and
seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must
learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you
because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and
make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure, and escape from
what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be
calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that
has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It would have been
better for me if I had never been born.'"
The trouble with Epicureanism is its assumption that the self is a
bundle of natural appetites and passions, and that the end of life is
their gratification. Experience shows, as in the case of Tito, that such
a policy consistently pursued, brings not pleasure but pain--pain first
of all to others, and then pain to the individual through their
contempt, indignation, and vengeance. The truest pleasure must come
through the development within one of generous emotions, kind
sympathies, and large social interests. The man must be made over before
the pleasures of the new man can be rightly sought and successfully
found. This making over of man is no consistent part of the logical
Epicurean programme, and consequently pure Epicureanism is sure to land
one in the narrowness, selfishness, and heartlessness of a Tito Melema,
and to bring upon one essentially the same condemnation and disaster.
Still, not in criticism or unkindness would we take leave of the serene
and genial Epicurus. We may frankly recognise his fundamental
limitations, and yet gratefully accept the good counsel he has to give.
Parasite as it is,--a thing that can only live by sucking its life out
of ideals and principles higher and hardier than itself, it is yet a
graceful and ornamental parasite, which will beautify and shield the
hard outlines of our more strenuous principles. There are dreary wastes
in all our lives, into which we can profitably turn those streams of
simple pleasure he commends. There are points of undue strain and
tension where Epicurean prudence would bid us forego the slight fancied
gain to save the ruinous expense to health and happiness. Let us fill up
these gaps with hearty indulgence of healthy appetite, with vigorous
exercise of dormant powers, with the eager joys of new-learned
recreations. Let us tone down the strain and tension of our anxious,
worried, worn, and weary lives by the rigid elimination of the
superfluous, the strict concentration on the perpetual present, the
resolute banishment from it of all past or future springs of depression
and discouragement. Before we are through we shall see far nobler ideals
than this; but we must not despise the day of small things. Though the
lowest and least of them all, the Epicurean is one of the historical
ideals of life. It has its claims which none of us may with impunity
ignore. To serve him faithfully in the lower spheres of life is a
wholesome preparation for the intelligent and reasonable service of
Stoic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Christian ideals which rule the
higher realms. He who is false to the humble, homely demands of Epicurus
can never be quite at his best in the grander service of Zeno and Plato,
Aristotle and Jesus.
VI
THE CONFESSIONS OF AN EPICUREAN HERETIC
A heretic is a man who, while professing to hold the tenets of the sect
to which he adheres, and sincerely believing that he is in substantial
agreement with his more orthodox brethren, yet in his desire to be
honest and reasonable, so modifies these tenets as to empty them of all
that is distinctive of the sect in question, and thus unintentionally
gives aid and comfort to its enemies. Every vigorous and vital school of
thought soon or late develops this species of _enfant terrible_. Like
the Christian church, the Epicurean school has been blessed with
numerous progeny of this disturbing sort. The one among them all who
most stoutly professes the fundamental principles of Epicureanism, and
then proceeds to admit pretty much everything its opponents advance
against it, is John Stuart Mill. His "Utilitarianism" is a fort manned
with the most approved idealistic guns, yet with the Epicurean flag
floating bravely over the whole. He "holds that actions are right in
proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to
produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and
the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.
Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends;
and all desirable things are desirable either for the pleasure inherent
in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the
prevention of pain." A more square and uncompromising statement of
Epicureanism than this it would be impossible to make.
Having thus squarely identified himself with the Epicurean school, Mr.
Mill proceeds to add to this doctrine in turn the doctrines of each one
of the four schools which we are to consider later. First he introduces
a distinction in the kind of pleasure, "assigning to the pleasures of
the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral
sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere
sensation." When asked what he means by difference of quality in
pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely
as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, although he tells us
there is but one possible answer, he gives us two or three. First he
appeals to the verdict of competent judges. "Of two pleasures, if there
be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a
decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to
prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by
those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the
other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a
greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity
of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified
in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so
far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small
account."
This appeal to competent judges, or, in other words, to authority,
involves no philosophical principle at all unless we may call the
doctrine of papal infallibility, to which this appeal of Mill is
essentially akin, a principle. If these judges are competent, there must
be a reason for the preference they give. In the next paragraph Mill
tells us what that principle is; but in doing so introduces the
principle of the subordination of lower to higher faculties, which we
shall see later is the distinguishing principle of Plato. On this point
Mill is as clear as Plato himself. "Now it is an unquestionable fact
that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of
appreciating and enjoying both, do give a most marked preference to the
manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human
creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for
a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no
intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person
would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be
selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool,
the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are
with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he, for
the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in
common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of
unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their
lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being
of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably
of more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it at more
points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities,
he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade
of existence." This appeal to quality rather than quantity of pleasure
puts Mill, in spite of himself, squarely on Platonic ground and abandons
consistent Epicureanism. An illustration will make this clear. A man
professes that money is his supreme end, the only thing he cares for in
the world; he tells us that whatever he does is done for money, and
whenever he refrains from doing anything it is to avoid losing money. So
far he puts his conduct on a consistently mercenary basis. Suppose,
however, that in the next sentence he tells us that he prizes certain
kinds of money. If we ask him what is the basis of the distinction, he
replies that he prizes money honestly earned and despises money
dishonestly acquired. Should we not at once recognise, that in spite of
his original declaration, he is not the consistently mercenary being he
professed himself to be? The fact that he prefers honest to dishonest
money shows that honesty, not money, is his real principle; and, in
spite of his original profession, this distinction lifts him out of the
class of mercenary money lovers into the class of men whose real
principle is not money but honesty. Precisely so Mill's confession that
he cares for the height and dignity of the faculties employed rather
than the quantity of pleasure gained lifts him out of the Epicurean
school to which he professes adherence and makes him an idealist.
When asked for an explanation of his preference of higher to lower, Mill
at once shifts to Stoic ground in the following sentences: "We may give
what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to
pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to
some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we
may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an
appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for
the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of
excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it; but
its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human
beings possess in one form or another, and in some, though by no means
in exact, proportion to their highest faculties, and which is so
essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that
nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an
object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes
place at a sacrifice of happiness--that the superior being, in anything
like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior--confounds
the two very different ideas of happiness and content. It is
indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has
the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed
being will always feel that any happiness which we can look for, as the
world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its
imperfections if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him
envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only
because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied;
better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the
fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only
know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison
knows both sides."
When pressed for a sanction of motive Mill appeals to the Aristotelian
principle that the individual can only realise his conception of himself
through union with his fellows in society: to the social nature of man
and his inability to find himself in any smaller sphere, or through
devotion to any lesser end. "This firm foundation is that of the social
feelings of mankind; the desire to be in unity with our
fellow-creatures, which is already a powerful principle in human nature,
and happily one of those which tend to become stronger, even without
express inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilisation. The
social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to
man, that, except in some unusual circumstances or by an effort of
voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than as a
member of a body; and this association is riveted more and more, as
mankind are farther removed from the state of savage independence. Any
condition, therefore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes
more and more an inseparable part of every person's conception of the
state of things which he is born into, and which is the destiny of a
human being. In this way people grow up unable to conceive as possible
to them a state of total disregard of other people's interests. They are
under a necessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining from
all the grosser injuries, and (if only for their own protection) living
in a state of constant protest against them. They are also familiar with
the fact of coöperating with others, and proposing to themselves a
collective, not an individual, interest, as the aim (at least for the
time being) of their actions. So long as they are coöperating, their
ends are identified with those of others; there is at least a temporary
feeling that the interests of others are their own interests. Not only
does all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of
society, give to each individual a stronger personal interest in
practically consulting the welfare of others; it also leads him to
identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an
ever greater degree of practical consideration for it. He comes, as
though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of
course pays regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing
naturally and necessarily to be attended to. This mode of conceiving
ourselves and human life, as civilisation goes on, is felt to be more
and more natural. Every step in political improvement renders it more so
by removing the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling those
inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or classes, owing to
which there are large portions of mankind whose happiness it is still
practicable to disregard. In an improving state of the human mind, the
influences are constantly on the increase, which tend to generate in
each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest; which feeling, if
perfect, would make him never think of, or desire, any beneficial
condition for himself, in the benefits of which they are not included.
The deeply rooted conception which every individual even now has of
himself as a social being tends to make him feel it one of his natural
wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and
those of his fellow-creatures. It does not present itself to their minds
as a superstition of education, or a law despotically imposed by the
power of society, but as an attribute which it would not be well for
them to be without."
Lastly Mill introduces the Christian ideal. "As between his own
happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as
strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the
golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the
ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's
neighbour as one's self, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian
morality." In his attempt to prove the Christian obligation on an
Epicurean basis the inconsistency between his Epicurean principle and
his Christian preaching and practice becomes evident. Master of logic as
Mill was, an author of a standard text-book on the subject, yet so
desperate was the plight in which his attempt to stretch Epicureanism to
Christian dimensions placed him, that he was compelled to resort to the
following fallacy of composition, the fallaciousness of which every
student of logic recognises at a glance. "Happiness is a good; each
person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness,
therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons." As Carlyle has
pointed out, this is equivalent to saying, since each pig wants all the
swill in the trough for itself, a litter of pigs in the aggregate will
desire each member of the litter to have its share of the whole,--a
fallacy which a single experience in feeding pigs will sufficiently
refute. It requires something deeper and higher than Epicurean
principles to lift men to a plane where Christian altruism is the
natural and inevitable conduct which Mill rightly says it ought to be.
These confessions of an Epicurean heretic, wrung from a man who had been
rigidly trained by a stern father in Epicurean principles, yet whose
surpassing candour compelled him to make these admissions, so fatal to
the system, so ennobling to the man and to the doctrine he proclaimed,
serve as an admirable preparation for the succeeding chapters, where
these same principles, which Mill introduces as supplements, and
modifications, and amendments to Epicureanism, will be presented as the
foundation-stones of larger and deeper views of life. Mill starts with a
jack-knife which he publicly proclaims to be in every part of the handle
and in every blade through and through Epicurean; then gets a new handle
from the Stoics; borrows one blade from Plato, and another from
Aristotle; unconsciously steals the biggest blade of all from
Christianity; makes one of the best knives to be found on the moral
market: yet still, in loyalty to early parental training, insists on
calling the finished product by the same name as that with which he
started out. The result is a splendid knife to cut with; but a
difficult one to classify. Our quest for the principles of personality
will not bring us anything much better, for practical purposes, than the
lofty teaching of Mill's "Utilitarianism," and its companion in
inconsistency, Herbert Spencer's "Principles of Ethics." All our five
principles are present in these so-called hedonistic treatises. But it
is a great theoretical advantage, and ultimately carries with it
considerable practical gain, to give credit where credit is due, and to
call things by their right names. Thanks to the candour of these
heretics, though the names we encounter hereafter will be new, we shall
greet most of the principles we discover under these new names as old
friends to whom the Epicurean heretics gave us our first introduction.
CHAPTER II
STOIC SELF-CONTROL BY LAW
I
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF APPERCEPTION
The shortest way to understand the Stoic principle is through the
psychological doctrine of apperception. According to this now
universally accepted doctrine, the mind is not an empty cabinet into
which ready-made impressions of external things are dumped. The mind is
an active process; and the meaning and value of any sensation presented
from without is determined by the reaction upon it of the ideas and aims
that are dominant within. This doctrine has revolutionised psychology
and pedagogy, and when rightly introduced into the personal life proves
even more revolutionary there. Stoicism works this doctrine for all that
it is worth. Christian Science and kindred popular cults of the present
day are perhaps working it for rather more than it is worth.
Translated into simple everyday terms, this doctrine in its application
to the personal life means that the value of any external fact or
possession or experience depends on the way in which we take it. Take
riches, for example. Stocks and bonds, real estate and mortgages, money
and bank accounts, in themselves do not make a man either rich or poor.
They may enrich or they may impoverish his personality. It is not until
they are taken up into the mind, thought over, related to one's general
scheme of conduct, made the basis of one's purposes and plans, that they
become a factor in the personal life. Obviously the same amount of
money, a hundred thousand dollars, may be worked over into personal life
in a great variety of ways. One man is made proud by it. Another is made
lazy. Another is made hard-hearted. Another is made avaricious for more.
Another is fired with the desire to speculate. Another is filled with
anxiety lest he may lose it. All these are obviously impoverished by the
so-called wealth which they possess. To rich men's wives and children,
whose wealth comes without the strenuous exertion and close human
contact involved in earning it, it generally works their personal
impoverishment in one or more of these fatal ways. For wealth, in an
indolent, self-indulgent, vain, conceited, ostentatious, unsympathetic
mind, takes on the colour of these odious qualities, and becomes a
curse to its possessor; just because he or she is cursed with these evil
propensities already, and the wealth simply adds fuel to the
preëxistent, though perhaps latent and smouldering flames.
On the other hand one man is made grateful for the wealth he has been
able to accumulate. Another is made more sympathetic. Another is made
generous. Another is urged into the larger public service his
independent means makes possible. Another is lifted up into a sense of
responsibility for its right use. On the whole the men and women who
earn their money honestly are usually affected in one or more of these
beneficial ways, and their wealth becomes an enrichment of their
personality.
Now it is impossible that this hundred thousand dollars should get into
any man's mind, and become a mental state, without its being mixed with
one or other of these mental, emotional, and volitional accompaniments.
The mental state, in other words, is a compound, of which the external
fact, in this case the hundred thousand dollars, is the least important
ingredient. It is so unimportant a factor that the Stoics pronounced it
indifferent. The tone and temper in which we accept our riches, the ends
to which we devote them, the spirit in which we hold them, the way in
which we spend them, are so vastly more important than the mere fact of
having them, that by comparison, the fact itself seems indifferent. Like
all strong statements, this is doubtless an exaggeration. You cannot
have just the same mental state without riches that you can have with
them. The external fact is a factor, though a relatively small one, in
the composite mental state. The virtues of a rich man are not precisely
the same as the virtues of a poor man. Yet the Stoic paradox is very
much nearer the truth than the statement of the average man, that
external things are the whole, or even the most important part of our
mental states.
The same thing is true of health and sickness. Health often makes one
careless, insensitive, negligent of duty; while sickness often makes one
conscientious, considerate, faithful, and thus more useful and efficient
than his healthy brother. Popularity often puffs up with pride; while
persecution, by humbling, prepares the heart for truer blessedness.
Hence whether an external fact is good or evil, depends on how we take
it, what we make of it, the state of mind and heart and will into which
it enters as a factor; and that in turn depends, the Stoic tells us, on
ourselves, and is under our control Stoicism is fundamentally this
psychological doctrine of apperception, carried over and applied in the
field of the personal life,--the doctrine, namely, that no external
thing alone can affect us for good or evil, until we have woven it into
the texture of our mental life, painted it with the colour of our
dominant mood and temper, and stamped it with the approval of our will.
Thus everything except a slight residuum is through and through mental,
our own product, the expression of what we are and desire to be. The
only difference between Stoicism and Christian Science at this point is
that Stoicism recognises the material element; though it does so only to
minimise it, and pronounce it indifferent. Christian Science denies that
there is any physical fact, or even the raw material out of which to
make one. All is merely mental, says the consistent Christian Scientist
with the toothache. There is no matter there to ache. The Stoic, truer
to the facts, and in not less but more heroic spirit declares: "There is
matter, but it doesn't matter if there is." The toothache can be taken
as a spur to greater fortitude and equanimity than the man whose teeth
are all sound has had opportunity to practically exemplify; and so the
total mental state, toothache-borne-with-fortitude, may be positively
good.
This doctrine that external things never in themselves constitute a
mental state; that they are consequently indifferent; that the
all-important contribution is made by the mind itself; that this
contribution from the mind is what gives the tone and determines the
worth of the total mental state; and that this contribution is
exclusively our own affair and may be brought entirely under our own
control;--this is the first and most fundamental Stoic principle. If we
have grasped this principle, we are prepared to read intelligently and
sympathetically the otherwise startling and paradoxical deliverances of
the Stoic masters.
II
SELECTIONS FROM THE STOIC SCRIPTURES
First let us listen to Epictetus, the slave, the Stoic of the cottage as
he has been called:--
"Everything has two handles: one by which it may be borne, another by
which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold on the
affair by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be borne;
but rather by the opposite, that he is your brother, that he was brought
up with you, and thus you will lay hold on it as it is to be borne."
Here the handle is a homely but effective figure for the mass of mental
association into which the external fact of a brother who acts unjustly
is introduced before he actually enters our mental state, and determines
how we shall feel and act.
"If a person had delivered up your body to some passer-by, you would
certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your mind
to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?" The reviling does
not become a determining factor in my own mental state unless I choose
to let it. If I feel humiliated and stung by it, it is because I am weak
and foolish enough to stake my estimate of myself, and my consequent
happiness, upon what somebody who does not know me says about me, rather
than on what I, who know myself better than anybody else, actually
think. A boy at Phillips Andover Academy once drew this distinction very
adroitly for another boy. There had been a free fight among the boys
causing a great deal of disturbance, and Principal Bancroft had traced
the beginning of it to an insulting remark on the part of the boy in
question. Dr. Bancroft accused him of beginning the trouble. "No, sir,"
said the boy, "I did not begin it. The other fellow began it." "Well,"
said Principal Bancroft, "you tell me precisely what took place, and I
will decide who began it." "Oh," replied the boy, "I simply called him a
'darned' fool, and he took offence." Now if the other boy had been a
Stoic, he would not have taken offence, and the first boy might have
called him a fool with impunity. Imputing Stoicism to that extent to
other people, however, is very dangerous business. Stoicism is a
doctrine to be strictly applied to ourselves, but never imputed to other
people, least of all to the people we wish to abuse and revile.
Epictetus again states his doctrine most explicitly on the subject of
terrors. "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they
take of things. Thus death is nothing terrible else it would have
appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death,
that it is terrible. When, therefore, we are hindered, or disturbed, or
grieved, let us never impute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to
our views."
Again he makes a sharp distinction between what is in our power,--that
is, what we think about things; and what are not in our power,--that is
external facts. "There are things which are within our power, and there
are things which are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion,
aim, desire, aversion, and, in one word, whatever affairs are our own.
Beyond our power are body, property, reputation, office, and, in one
word, whatever are not properly our own affairs."
"Now the things within our power are by nature free, unrestricted,
unhindered; but those beyond our power are weak, dependent, restricted,
alien. Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things by nature
dependent, and seek for your own that which is really controlled by
others, you will be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed,
you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you take for your own
only that which is your own, and view what belongs to others just as it
really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you;
you will find fault with no one, you will accuse no one, you will do
nothing against your will; no one will hurt you, you will not have an
enemy, nor will you suffer any harm."
All this is simply carrying out the principle that we need not concern
ourselves about purely external things, for those things pure and simple
can never get into our minds, or affect us one way or the other. The
only things that enter into us are things as we think about them, facts
as we feel about them, forces as we react upon them, and these thoughts,
feelings, and reactions are our own affairs; and if we do not think
serenely, feel tranquilly, and act freely with reference to them, it is
not the fault of external things, but of ourselves.
In his discourse on tranquillity Epictetus gives us the same counsel.
"Consider, you who are about to undergo trial, what you wish to
preserve, and in what to succeed. For if you wish to preserve a mind in
harmony with nature, you are entirely safe; everything goes well; you
have no trouble on your hands. While you wish to preserve that freedom
which belongs to you, and are contented with that, for what have you
longer to be anxious? For who is the master of things like these? Who
can take them away? If you wish to be a man of modesty and fidelity, who
shall prevent you? If you wish not to be restrained or compelled, who
shall compel you to desires contrary to your principles? to aversions
contrary to your opinion? The judge, perhaps, will pass a sentence
against you which he thinks formidable; but can he likewise make you
receive it with shrinking? Since, then, desire and aversion are in your
power, for what have you to be anxious?"
Epictetus bids us meet difficulties in the same way. "Difficulties are
things that show what men are. For the future, in case of any
difficulty, remember that God, like a gymnastic trainer, has pitted you
against a rough antagonist. For what end? That you may be an Olympic
conqueror; and this cannot be without toil. No man, in my opinion, has a
more profitable difficulty on his hands than you have, provided you but
use it as an athletic champion uses his antagonist."
Epictetus does not shrink from the logic of his teaching in its
application to the sorrows of others, though here it is tempered by a
concession to the weakness of ordinary mortals. "When you see a person
weeping in sorrow, either when a child goes abroad, or when he is dead,
or when the man has lost his property, take care that the appearance do
not hurry you away with it as if he were suffering in external things.
But straightway make a distinction in your mind, and be in readiness to
say, it is not that which has happened that afflicts this man, for it
does not afflict another, but it is the opinion about this thing which
afflicts the man. So far as words, then, do not be unwilling to show him
sympathy, and even if it happens so, to lament with him. But take care
that you do not lament internally also." At this point, if not before,
we feel that Stoicism is doing violence to the nobler feelings of our
nature, and are prepared to break with it. Stoicism is too hard and cold
and individualistic to teach us our duty, or even to leave us free to
act out our best inclinations, toward our neighbour. We may be as
Stoical as we please in our own troubles and afflictions; but let us
beware how we carry over its icy distinctions into our interpretation of
our neighbour's suffering.
I have drawn most of my illustrations from Epictetus, because this
resignation comes with rather better grace from a poor, lame man, who
has been a slave, and who lives on the barest necessities of life, than
from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the wealthy courtier Seneca. Yet
the most distinctive utterances of these men teach the same lesson.
Seneca attributes it to his pilot in the famous prayer, "Oh, Neptune,
you may save me if you will; you may sink me if you will; but whatever
happens, I shall keep my rudder true." Marcus Aurelius says: "Let the
part of thy soul which leads and governs be undisturbed by the movements
in the flesh, whether of pleasure or pain; and let it not unite itself
with them, but let it circumscribe itself, and limit those effects to
their parts." "Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold
or warm, if thou art doing thy duty, and whether dying or doing
something else. For it is one of the acts of life,--this act by which we
die; it is sufficient then in this act also to do well what we have in
hand." "External things touch not the soul, not in the least degree."
"Remember on every occasion which leads thee to vexation to apply this
principle: that this is not a misfortune, but to bear it nobly is good
fortune."
The most recent prophet of Stoicism is Maurice Maeterlinck. In "Wisdom
and Destiny," he says:--
"The event itself is pure water that flows from the pitcher of fate, and
seldom has it either savour or perfume or colour. But even as the soul
may be wherein it seeks shelter, so will the event become joyous or sad,
become tender or hateful, become deadly or quick with life. To those
round about us there happen incessant and countless adventures, whereof
every one, it would seem, contains a germ of heroism; but the adventure
passes away, and heroic deed there is none. But when Jesus Christ met
the Samaritan, met a few children, an adulterous woman, then did
humanity rise three times in succession to the level of God."
"It might almost be said that there happens to men only that they
desire. It is true that on certain external events our influence is of
the feeblest, but we have all-powerful action on that which these events
shall become in ourselves--in other words, on their spiritual part. The
life of most men will be saddened or lightened by the thing that may
chance to befall them,--in the men whom I speak of, whatever may happen
is lit up by their inward life. If you have been deceived, it is not the
deception that matters, but the forgiveness whereto it gave birth in
your soul, and the loftiness, wisdom, completeness of this
forgiveness,--by these shall your eyes see more clearly than if all men
had ever been faithful. But if, by this act of deceit, there have come
not more simpleness, loftier faith, wider range to your love, then have
you been deceived in vain, and may truly say nothing has happened."
"Let us always remember that nothing befalls us that is not of the
nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the
shape of our everyday thoughts; and deeds of heroism are but offered to
those who, for many long years, have been heroes in obscurity and
silence. And whether you climb up the mountain or go down the hill to
the valley, whether you journey to the end of the world or merely walk
round your house, none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of
fate. If Judas go forth to-night, it is toward Judas his steps will
tend, nor will chance for betrayal be lacking; but let Socrates open his
door,--he shall find Socrates asleep on the threshold before him, and
there will be occasion for wisdom. We become that which we discover in
the sorrows and joys that befall us; and the least expected caprices of
fate soon mould themselves to our thought. It is in our past that
Destiny finds all her weapons, her vestments, her jewels. A sorrow your
soul has changed into sweetness, to indulgence or patient smiles, is a
sorrow that shall never return without spiritual ornament; and a fault
or defect you have looked in the face can harm you no more. All that has
thus been transformed can belong no more to the hostile powers. Real
fatality exists only in certain external disasters--as disease,
accident, the sudden death of those we love; but inner fatality there is
none. Wisdom has will power sufficient to rectify all that does not deal
death to the body; it will even at times invade the narrow domain of
external fatality. Even when the deed has been done, the misfortune has
happened, it still rests with ourselves to deny her the least influence
on that which shall come to pass in our soul. She may strike at the
heart that is eager for good, but still is she helpless to keep back the
light that shall stream to this heart from the error acknowledged, the
pain undergone. It is not in her power to prevent the soul from
transforming each single affliction into thoughts, into feelings, and
treasure she dare not profane. Be her empire never so great over all
things external, she always must halt when she finds on the threshold a
silent guardian of the inner life. For even as triumph of dictators and
consuls could be celebrated only in Rome, so can the true triumph of
Fate take place nowhere save in our soul."
It would be easy to cite passage after passage in which the great
masters of Stoicism ring the changes on this idea, that the external
thing, whether it be good or evil, cannot get into the fortified citadel
of my mind, and therefore cannot touch me. Before it can touch me it
must first be incorporated into my mind. In the very act of
incorporation it undergoes a transformation, which in the perverse man
may change the best external things into poison and bitterness; and in
the sage is able to convert the worst of external facts into virtue,
glory, and honour. Out of indifferent external matter, thinking makes
the world in which we live; and if it is not a good world, the fault is,
not with the indifferent external matters,--such as, to take Epictetus's
enumeration of them, "wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain,
which lie between the virtues and the vices,"--but in our weak and
erroneous thinking.
III
THE STOIC REVERENCE FOR UNIVERSAL LAW
The first half of the Stoic doctrine is that we give our world the
colour of our thoughts. The second half of Stoicism is concerned with
what these thoughts of ours shall be. The first half of the doctrine
alone would leave us in crude fantastic Cynicism,--the doctrine out of
which the broader and deeper Stoic teaching took its rise. The Cynic
paints the world in the flaring colours of his undisciplined, individual
caprice. Modern apostles of the essential Stoic principle incline to
paint the world in the roseate hues of a merely optional optimism. They
want to be well, and happy, and serene, and self-satisfied; they think
they are; and thinking makes them so. If Stoicism had been as
superficial as that, as capricious, and temperamental, and
individualistic, it would not have lasted as it has for more than two
thousand years. The Stoic thought had substance, content, objective
reality, as unfortunately most of the current phases of popular
philosophy have not. This objective and universal principle the Stoic
found in law. We must think things, not as we would like to have them,
which is the optimism of the fabled ostrich, with its head in the sand;
not in some vague, general phrases which mean nothing, which is the
optimism of mysticism: but in the hard, rigid terms of universal law.
Everything that happens is part of the one great whole. The law of the
whole determines the nature and worth of the part. Seen from the point
of view of the whole, every part is necessary, and therefore
good,--everything except, as Cleanthes says in his hymn, "what the
wicked do in their foolishness." The typical evils of life can all be
brought under the Stoic formula, under some beneficial law; all, that
is, except sin. That particular form of evil was not satisfactorily
dealt with until the advent of Christianity.
Take evils of accident to begin with. An aged man slips on the ice,
falls, breaks a bone, and is left, like Epictetus, lame for life. The
particular application of the law of gravitation in this case has
unfortunate results for the individual. But the law is good. We should
not know how to get along in the world without this beneficent law.
Shall we repine and complain against the law that holds the stars and
planets in their courses, shapes the mountains, sways the tides, brings
down the rain, and draws the rivers to the sea, turning ten thousand
mill-wheels of industry as it goes rejoicing on its way; shall we
complain against this law because in one instance in a thousand million
it chances to throw down an individual, which happens to be me, and
breaks a bone or two of mine, and leaves me for the brief span of my
remaining pilgrimage with a limping gait? If Epictetus could say to his
cruel master under torture, "You will break my leg if you keep on," and
then when it broke could smilingly add, "I told you so,"--cannot we
endure with fortitude, and even grateful joy, the incidental inflictions
which so beneficent a master as the great law of gravitation in its
magnificent impartiality may see fit to mete out to us?
A current of electricity, seeking its way from sky to earth, finds on
some particular occasion the body of a beloved husband, a dear son, an
honoured father of dependent children, the best conductor between the
air and the earth, and kills the person through whose body it takes its
swift and fatal course. Yet this law has no malevolence in its impartial
heart. On the contrary the beneficent potency of the laws of electricity
is so great that our largest hopes for the improvement of our economic
condition rest on its unexplored resources.
A group of bacteria, ever alert to find matter not already appropriated
and held in place by vital forces stronger than their own, find their
food and breeding place within a human body, and subject our friend or
our child to weeks of fever, and perchance to death. Yet we cannot call
evil the great biological law that each organism shall seek its meat
from God wherever it can find it. Indeed were it not for these
micro-organisms, and their alertness to seize upon and transform into
their own living substance everything morbid and unwholesome, the whole
earth would be nothing but a vast charnel house reeking with the
intolerable stench of the undisintegrated and unburied dead.
The most uncompromising exponent of this second half of the Stoic
doctrine in the modern world is Immanuel Kant. According to him the
whole worth and dignity of life turns not on external fortune, nor even
on good natural endowments, but on our internal reaction, the reverence
of our will for universal law. "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the
world, or even out of it, which can be called good without
qualification, except a Good Will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and the
other _talents_ of the mind, however they may be named, or courage,
resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly
good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also
become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of
them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is
not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune. Power, riches,
honour, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with
one's condition which is called happiness, inspire pride and often
presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of
these on the mind."
"Everything in nature works according to laws. Rational beings alone
have the faculty of acting according to the conception of laws, that is,
according to principles; _i.e._ have a will."
"Consequently the only good action is that which is done out of pure
reverence for universal law. This categorical imperative of duty is
expressed as follows: 'Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become
by thy will a Universal Law of Nature.' And since every other rational
being must conduct himself on the same rational principle that holds for
me, I am bound to respect him as I do myself. Hence the second practical
imperative is: 'So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person
or in that of any other, in every case as an end, never as means only.'"
In Kant Stoicism reaches its climax. Law and the will are everything:
possessions, even graces are nothing.
IV
THE STOIC SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
The problem of evil was the great problem of the Stoic, as the problem
of pleasure was the problem of the Epicurean. To this problem the Stoic
gives substantially four answers, with all of which we are already
somewhat familiar:--
First: Only that is evil which we choose to regard as such. To quote
Marcus Aurelius once more on this fundamental point: "Consider that
everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away then, when
thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner who has doubled the
promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay."
"Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint: I
have been harmed. Take away the complaint: I have been harmed, and the
harm is done away."
Second: Since virtue or integrity is the only good, nothing but the loss
of that can be a real evil. When this is present, nothing of real value
can be lacking. A Stoic then says, "Virtue suffers no vacancy in the
place she inhabits; she fills the whole soul, takes away the
sensibility of any loss, and is herself sufficient." "As the stars hide
their diminished heads before the brightness of the sun, so pains,
afflictions, and injuries are all crushed and dissipated by the
greatness of virtue; whenever she shines, everything but what borrows
its splendour from her disappears, and all manner of annoyances have no
more effect upon her than a shower of rain upon the sea." "It does not
matter what you bear, but how you bear it." "Where a man can live at
all, he can live well." "I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must
go into exile. Does any man hinder me from going with smiles and
cheerfulness and contentment?" "Life itself is neither good nor evil,
but only a place for good and evil." "It is the edge and temper of the
blade that make a good sword, not the richness of the scabbard; and so
it is not money and possessions that make a man considerable, but his
virtue." "They are amusing fellows who are proud of things which are not
in our power. A man says: I am better than you for I possess much land,
and you are wasting with hunger. Another says: I am of consular rank;
another: I have curly hair. But a horse does not say to a horse: I am
superior to you, for I possess much fodder and much barley, and my bits
are of gold, and my harness is embroidered; but he says: I am swifter
than you. And every animal is better or worse from his own merit or his
own badness. Is there then no virtue in man only, and must we look to
our hair, and our clothes, and to our ancestors?" "Let our riches
consist in coveting nothing, and our peace in fearing nothing."
Third: What seems evil to the individual is good for the whole: and
since we are members of the whole is good for us. "Must my leg be
lamed?" the Stoic asks. "Wretch, do you then on account of one poor leg
find fault with the world? Wilt thou not willingly surrender it for the
whole? Know you not how small a part you are compared with the whole?"
"If a good man had foreknowledge of what would happen, he would
coöperate toward his own sickness and death and mutilation, since he
knows that these things are assigned to him according to the universal
arrangement, and that the whole is superior to the part."
Fourth: Trial brings out our best qualities, is "stuff to try the soul's
strength on," and "educe the man," as Browning puts it. This
interpretation of evil as a means of bringing out the higher moral
qualities, though not peculiar to Stoicism, was very congenial to their
system, and appears frequently in their writings. "Just as we must
understand when it is said that Æsculapius prescribed to this man horse
exercise, or bathing in cold water, or going without shoes, so we must
understand it when it is said that the nature of the universe prescribed
to this man disease, or mutilation, or loss of anything of the kind."
"Calamity is the touchstone of a brave mind, that resolves to live and
die master of itself. Adversity is the better for us all, for it is
God's mercy to show the world their errors, and that the things they
fear and covet are neither good nor evil, being the common and
promiscuous lot of good men and bad."
V
THE STOIC PARADOXES
A good test of one's appreciation of the Stoic position is whether or
not one can see the measure of truth their paradoxes contain.
The first paradox is that there are no degrees in vice. In the words of
the Stoic, "The man who is a hundred furlongs from Canopus, and the man
who is only one, are both equally not in Canopus."
One of the few bits of moral counsel which I remember from the infant
class in the Sunday-school runs as follows:--
"It is a sin
To steal a pin:
Much more to steal
A greater thing."
This, in spite of its exquisite lyrical expression, the Stoic would
flatly deny. The theft of a pin, and the defalcation of a bank cashier
for a hundred thousand dollars; a cross word to a dog, and a course of
conduct which breaks a woman's heart, are from the Stoic standpoint
precisely on a level. For it is not the consequences but the form of our
action that is the important thing. It is not how we make other people
feel as a result of our act, but how we ourselves think of it, as we
propose to do it, or after it is done, that determines its goodness or
badness. If I steal a pin, I violate the universal law just as clearly
and absolutely as though I stole the hundred thousand dollars. I can no
more look with deliberate approval on the cross word to a dog, than on
the breaking of a woman's heart. There are things that do not admit of
degrees. We must either fire our gun off or not fire it. We cannot fire
part of the charge. We want either an absolutely good egg for breakfast,
or no egg at all. One that is partially good, or on the line between
goodness and badness, we send back as altogether bad. If there is a
little round hole in a pane of glass, cut by a bullet, we reject the
whole pane as imperfect, just as though a big jagged hole had been made
in it by a brickbat. We get an echo of this paradox in the statement of
St. James, "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in
one point, he is guilty of all."
This paradox becomes plain, self-evident truth, the moment we admit the
Stoic position that not external things, and their appeal to our
sensibility, but our internal attitudes toward universal law, are the
points on which our virtue hangs. Either we intend to obey the universal
law of nature or we do not; and between the intention of obedience and
the intention of disobedience there is no middle ground.
Second: The wise man, the Stoic sage, is absolutely perfect, the
complete master of himself, and rightfully the ruler of the world. If
everything depends on our thought, and our thought is in tune with the
universal law, then obviously we are perfect. Beyond such complete inner
response to the universal law it is impossible for man to advance.
Curiously enough, the religious doctrine of perfectionism, which often
arises in Methodist circles, and in such holiness movements as have
taken their rise from the influence of Methodism, shows this same root
in the conception of law. Wesley's definition of sin is "the violation
of a known law." If that be all there is of sin, then any of us who is
ordinarily decent and conscientious, may boast of perfection. You can
number perfectionists by tens of thousands on such abstract terms as
these. But if sin be not merely deliberate violation of abstract law; if
it be failure to fulfil to the highest degree the infinitely delicate
personal, domestic, civic, and social relations in which we stand; then
the very notion of perfection is preposterous, and the profession of it
little less than blasphemy. But like the modern religious
perfectionists, the Stoics had little concern for the concrete,
individual, personal ties which bind men and women together in families,
societies, and states. Perfection was an easy thing, because they had
defined it in such abstract terms. Still, though not by any means the
whole of virtue as deeper schools have apprehended it, it is something
to have our inner motive absolutely right, when measured by the standard
of universal law. That at least the Stoic professed to have attained.
Third: The Stoic is a citizen of the whole world. Local, domestic,
national ties bind him not. But this is a cheap way of gaining
universality,--this skipping the particulars of which the universal is
composed. To be as much interested in the politics of Rio Janeiro or
Hong Kong as you are in those of the ward of your own city does not mean
much until we know how much you are interested in the politics of your
own ward. And in the case of the Stoic this interest was very
attenuated. As is usually the case, extension of interest to the ends of
the earth was purchased at the cost of defective intensity close at
home, where charity ought to begin. As a matter of fact the Stoics were
very defective in their standards of citizenship. Still, what the law of
justice demanded, that they were disposed to render to every man; and
thus, though on a very superficial basis, the Stoics laid the broad
foundation of an international democracy which knows no limits of
colour, race, or stage of development. Though Stoicism falls far short
of the warmth and devotion of modern Christian missions, yet the early
stage of the missionary movement, in which people were interested, not
in the concrete welfare of specific peoples, but in vast aggregates of
"souls," represented on maps, and in diagrams, bears a close
resemblance to the Stoic cosmopolitanism. We have all seen people who
would give and work to save the souls of the heathen, who would never
under any circumstances think of calling on the neighbour on the same
street who chanced to be a little below their own social circle. The
soul of a heathen is a very abstract conception; the lowly neighbour a
very concrete affair. The Stoics are not the only people who have
deceived themselves with vast abstractions.
VI
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF STOICISM
The Stoics had a genuine religion. The Epicureans, too, had their gods,
but they never took them very seriously. In a world made up of atoms
accidentally grouped in transient relations, of which countless
accidental groupings I happen to be one, there is no room for a real
religious relationship. Consequently the Epicurean, though he amused
himself with poetic pictures of gods who led lives of undisturbed
serenity, unconcerned about the affairs of men, had no consciousness of
a great spiritual whole of which he was a part, or of an Infinite Person
to whom he was personally related.
To the Stoic, on the contrary, the round world is part of a single
universe, which holds all its parts in the grasp and guidance of one
universal law, determining each particular event. By making that law of
the universe his own, the individual man at once worships the
all-controlling Providence, and achieves his own freedom. For the law to
which he yields is at once the law of the whole universe, and the law of
his own nature as a part of the universe. "We are born subjects,"
exclaims the Stoic, "but to obey God is perfect liberty." "Everything,"
says Marcus Aurelius, "harmonises with me which is harmonious to thee, O
universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time
for thee."
A characteristic prayer and meditation and hymn will show us, far better
than description, what this Stoic religion meant to those who devoutly
held it. Epictetus gives us this prayer of the dying Cynic: "I stretch
out my hands to God and say: The means which I have received from thee
for seeing thy administration of the world and following it I have not
neglected: I have not dishonoured thee by my acts: see how I have used
my perceptions: have I ever blamed thee? have I been discontented with
anything that happens or wished it to be otherwise? Have I wished to
transgress the relations of things? That thou hast given me life, I
thank thee for what thou hast given: so long as I have used the things
which are thine I am content; take them back and place them wherever
thou mayest choose; for thine were all things,--thou gavest them to me.
Is it not enough to depart in this state of mind, and what life is
better and more becoming than that of a man who is in this state of
mind, and what end is more happy?"
He also offers us this meditation on the inevitable losses of life, by
which he consoles himself with the thought that all he has is a loan
from God, which these seeming losses but restore to their rightful
owner, who had lent them to us for a while.
"Never say about anything, I have lost it; but say, I have restored it.
Is your child dead? It has been restored. Is your wife dead? She has
been restored. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not this been
also restored? 'But he who has taken it from me is a bad man.' But what
is it to you by whose hands the giver demanded it back? So long as he
may allow you, take care of it as a thing which belongs to another, as
travellers do with their inn."
The grandest expression of the Stoic religion, however, is found in the
hymn of Cleanthes. Elsewhere there is too evident a disposition to
condescend to use God's aid in keeping up the Stoic temper; with little
of outgoing adoration for the greatness and glory which are in God
himself. But in this grand hymn we have genuine reverence, devotion,
worship, praise, self-surrender,--in short, that confession of the glory
of the Infinite by the conscious weakness of the finite in which the
heart of true religion everywhere consists. Nowhere outside of the
Hebrew and Christian Scriptures has adoration breathed itself in more
exalted and fervent strains. The hymn is addressed to Zeus, as the
Stoics freely used the names of the popular gods to express their own
deeper meanings.
HYMN TO ZEUS
"Thee it is lawful for all mortals to address. For we are Thy offspring,
and alone of living creatures possess a voice which is the image of
reason. Therefore I will forever sing Thee and celebrate Thy power. All
this universe rolling round the earth obeys Thee, and follows willingly
at Thy command. Such a minister hast Thou in Thy invincible hands, the
two-edged, flaming, vivid thunderbolt. O King, most High, nothing is
done without Thee, neither in heaven or on earth, nor in the sea, except
what the wicked do in their foolishness. Thou makest order out of
disorder, and what is worthless becomes precious in Thy sight; for Thou
hast fitted together good and evil into one, and hast established one
law that exists forever. But the wicked fly from Thy law, unhappy ones,
and though they desire to possess what is good, yet they see not,
neither do they hear the universal law of God. If they would follow it
with understanding, they might have a good life. But they go astray,
each after his own devices,--some vainly striving after reputation,
others turning aside after gain excessively, others after riotous living
and wantonness. Nay, but, O Zeus, Giver of all things, who dwellest in
dark clouds and rulest over the thunder, deliver men from their
foolishness. Scatter it from their souls, and grant them to obtain
wisdom, for by wisdom Thou dost rightly govern all things; that being
honoured we may repay Thee with honour, singing Thy works without
ceasing, as it is right for us to do. For there is no greater thing than
this, either for mortal men or for the gods, to sing rightly the
universal law."
Modern literature of the nobler sort has many a Stoic note; and we ought
to be able to recognise it in its modern as well as in its ancient
dress. The very best brief expression of the Stoic creed is found in
Henley's Lines to R. T. H. B.:--
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
"Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me unafraid.
"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."
The chief modern type of Stoicism, however, is Matthew Arnold. His great
remedy for the ills of which life is so full is stated in the concluding
lines of "The Youth of Man":--
"While the locks are yet brown on thy head,
While the soul still looks through thine eyes,
While the heart still pours
The mantling blood to thy cheek,
Sink, O youth, in thy soul!
Yearn to the greatness of Nature;
Rally the good in the depths of thyself!"
VII
THE PERMANENT VALUE OF STOICISM
If now we know the two fundamental principles of Stoicism, the
indifference of external circumstance as compared with the reaction of
our own thought upon it, and the sanctification of our thought by
self-surrender to the universal law; and if we have learned to recognise
these Stoic notes alike in ancient and modern prose and poetry, we are
ready to discriminate between the good in it which we wish to cherish,
and the shortcomings of the system which it is well for us to avoid.
We can all reduce enormously our troubles and vexations by bringing to
bear upon them the two Stoic formulas. Toward material things, toward
impersonal events at least, we may all with profit put on the Stoic
armour, or to use the figure of the turtle, which is most expressive of
the Stoic attitude, we can all draw the soft sensitive flesh of our
feelings inside the hard shell of resolute thoughts. There is a way of
looking at our poverty, our plainness of feature, our lack of mental
brilliancy, our humble social estate, our unpopularity, our physical
ailments, which, instead of making us miserable, will make us modest,
contented, cheerful, serene. The mistakes that we make, the foolish
words we say, the unfortunate investments into which we get drawn, the
failures we experience, all may be transformed by the Stoic formula into
spurs to greater effort and stimulus to wiser deeds in days to come.
Simply to shift the emphasis from the dead external fact beyond our
control, to the live option which always presents itself within; and to
know that the circumstance that can make us miserable simply does not
exist, unless it exists by our consent within our own minds;--this is a
lesson well worth spending an hour with the Stoics to learn once for
all.
And the other aspect of their doctrine, its quasi-religious side, though
not by any means the last word about religion, is a valuable first
lesson in the reality of religion. To know that the universal law is
everywhere, and that its will may in every circumstance be done; to
measure the petty perturbations of our little lives by the vast orbits
of natural forces moving according to beneficent and unchanging law;
when we come out of the exciting political meeting, or the roar of the
stock-exchange, to look up at the calm stars and the tranquil skies and
hear them say to us, "So hot, my little man";--this elevation of our
individual lives by the reverent contemplation of the universe and its
unswerving laws, is something which we may all learn with profit from
the old Stoic masters. Business, house-keeping, school-teaching,
professional life, politics, society, would all be more noble and
dignified if we could bring to them every now and then a touch of this
Stoic strength and calm.
Criticism, complaint, fault-finding, malicious scandal, unpopularity,
and all the shafts of the censorious are impotent to slay or even wound
the spirit of the Stoic. If these criticisms are true, they are welcomed
as aids in the discovery of faults which are to be frankly faced, and
strenuously overcome. If they are false, unfounded, due to the
querulousness or jealousy of the critic rather than to any fault of the
Stoic, then he feels only contempt for the criticisms and pity for the
poor misguided critic. The true Stoic can be the serene husband of a
scolding shrew of a wife; the complacent representative of dissatisfied
and enraged constituents; maintain unruffled equanimity when cut by his
aristocratic acquaintances and excluded from the most select social
circles: for he carries the only valid standard of social measurement
under his own hat, and needs not the adoration of his wife, the cheers
of his constituents, the cards and invitations, the nods and smiles of
the four hundred to assure him of his dignity and worth. If he is an
author, it does not trouble him that his books are unsold, unread,
uncut. If the many could appreciate him, he would have to be one of
themselves, and then there would be no use in his trying to instruct
them. His book is what the universal law gave him to say, and decreed
that it should be; and whether there be many or few to whom the
universal law has revealed the same truth, and granted power to
appreciate it, is the concern of the universal, not of himself, the
individual author. Again, if he is in poor health, weary, exhausted, if
each stroke of work must be wrought in agony and pain,--that, too, is
decreed for him by those just laws which he or his ancestors have
blindly violated; and he will accept even this dictate of the universal
law as just and good: he will not suffer these trifling incidental pains
and aches to diminish by one jot the output of his hand or brain. When
disillusion and disappointment overtake him; when the things his youth
had sighed for finally take themselves forever out of his reach; when he
sees clearly that only a few more years remain to him, and those must be
composed of the same monotonous round of humdrum details, duties that
have lost the charm of novelty, functions that have long since been
relegated to the unconsciousness of habit, vexations that have been
endured a thousand times, petty pleasures that have long since lost
their zest: even then the Stoic says that this, too, is part of the
universal programme, and must be accepted resignedly. If there is little
that nature has left to give him for which he cares, yet he can return
to her the tribute of an obedient will and a contented mind: if he can
expect little from the world, he can contribute something to it; and so
to the last he maintains,--
"One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
When there is hard work to be done, to which there is no pleasure, no
honour, no emolument attached; when there are evils to be rebuked which
will bring down the wrath and vengeance of the powers that be on him who
exposes the wrong; when there are poor relatives to be supported, and
slights to be endured, and injustice to be borne, it is well for us all
to know this Stoic formula, and fortify our souls behind its
impenetrable walls. To consider not what happens to us, but how we react
upon it; to measure good in terms not of sensuous pleasure, but of
mental attitude; to know that if we are for the universal law, it
matters not how many things may be against us; to rest assured that
there can be no circumstance or condition in which this law cannot be
done by us, and therefore no situation of which we cannot be more than
master, through implicit obedience to the great law that governs
all,--this is the stern consolation of Stoicism; and there are few of us
so happily situated in all respects that there do not come to us times
when such a conviction is a defence and refuge for our souls. Beyond and
above Stoicism we shall try to climb in later chapters. But below
Stoicism one may not suffer his life to fall, if he would escape the
fearful hells of depression, despair, and melancholia. As we lightly
send back across the centuries our thanks to Epicurus for teaching us to
prize at their true worth health and the good things of life, so let us
reverently bow before the Stoic sages, who taught us the secret of that
hardy virtue which bears with fortitude life's inevitable ills.
VIII
THE DEFECTS OF STOICISM
Why we cannot rest in Stoicism as our final guide to life, the mere
statement of their doctrine must have made clear to every one; and in
calling attention to its limitations I shall only be saying for the
reader what he has been saying to himself all through the chapter. It
may be well enough to treat things as indifferent, and work them over
into such mental combinations as best serve our rational interests. To
treat persons in that way, however, to make them mere pawns in the game
which reason plays, is heartless, monstrous. The affections are as
essential to man as his reason. It is a poor substitute for the warm,
sweet, tender ties that bind together husband and wife, parent and
child, friend and friend,--this freezing of people together through
their common relation to the universal law. I suppose that is why, in
all the history of Stoicism, though college girls usually have a period
of flirting with the Stoic melancholy of Matthew Arnold, no woman was
ever known to be a consistent and steadfast Stoic. Indeed a Stoic woman
is a contradiction in terms. One might as well talk of a warm iceberg,
or soft granite, or sweet vinegar. Stoicism is something of which men,
unmarried or badly married men at that, have an absolute monopoly.
Again if its disregard of particulars and individuals is cold and hard,
its attempted substitute of abstract, vague universality is a bit
absurd. Sometimes the lighter mood of caricature best brings out the
weaknesses that are concealed in grave systems when taken too seriously.
Mr. W. S. Gilbert has put the dash of absurdity there is in the Stoic
doctrines so convincingly that his lines may serve the purpose of
illustrating the inherent weakness of the Stoic position better than
more formal criticism. They are addressed
TO THE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE
"Roll on, thou ball, roll on;
Through pathless realms of space
Roll on.
What though I'm in a sorry case?
What though I cannot pay my bills?
What though I suffer toothache's ills?
What though I swallow countless pills?
Never you mind!
Roll on.
"Roll on, thou ball, roll on;
Through seas of inky air
Roll on.
It's true I've got no shirts to wear;
It's true my butcher's bills are due;
It's true my prospects all look blue--
But don't let that unsettle you--
Never you mind!
Roll on.
(It rolls on.)"
The incompleteness of the Stoic position is precisely this tendency to
slight and ignore the external conditions out of which life is made.
Its God is fate. Instead of a living, loving will, manifest in the
struggle with present conditions, Stoicism sees only an impersonal law,
rigid, fixed, fatal, unalterable, unimprovable, uncompanionable. Man's
only freedom lies in unconditional surrender to what was long ago
decreed. Of glad and original coöperation with its beneficent designs,
thus helping to make the world happier and better than it could have
been had not the universal will found and chosen just this individual
me, to work freely for its improvement, Stoicism knows nothing. Its
satisfaction is staked on a dead law to be obeyed, not a live will to be
loved. Its ideal is a monotonous identity of law-abiding agents who
differ from each other chiefly in the names by which they chance to be
designated. It has no place for the development of rich and varied
individuality in each through intense, passionate devotion to other
individuals as widely different as age, sex, training, and temperament
can make them. Before we find the perfect guidance of life we must look
beyond the Stoic as well as the Epicurean, to Plato, to Aristotle, and,
above all, to Jesus.
CHAPTER III
THE PLATONIC SUBORDINATION OF LOWER TO HIGHER
I
THE NATURE OF VIRTUE
Epicureanism tells us how to gain pleasure; Stoicism tells us how to
bear pain. But life is not so simple as these systems assume. It is not
merely the problem of getting all the pleasure we can; nor of taking
pain in such wise that it does not hurt. It is a question of the worth
of the things in which we find our pleasure, and the relative values of
the things we suffer for. Plato squarely attacks that larger problem. He
says that the Epicurean is like a musician who tunes his violin as much
as he can without breaking the strings. The wise musician, on the
contrary, recognises that the tuning is merely incidental to the music;
and that when you have tuned it up to a certain point, it is worse than
useless to go on tuning it any more. Just as the tuning is for the sake
of the music, and when you have reached a point where the instrument
gives perfect music, you must stop the tuning and begin to play; so when
you have brought any particular pleasure, say that of eating, up to a
certain point, you must stop eating, and begin to live the life for the
sake of which you eat. To the Stoic Plato gives a similar answer. The
Stoic, he says, is like a physician who gives his patient all the
medicine he can, and prides himself on being a better physician than
others because he gives his patients bigger doses, and more of them. The
wise physician gives medicine up to a certain point, and then stops.
That point is determined by the health, which the medicine is given to
promote. Precisely so, it is foolish to bear all the pain we can, and
boast ourselves of our ability to swallow big doses of tribulation and
pronounce it good. The wise man will bear pain up to a certain point;
and when he reaches that limit, he will stop. What is the point? Where
is the limit? Virtue is the point up to which the bearing of pain is
good, the limit beyond which the bearing of pain becomes an evil.
Virtue, then, is the supreme good, and makes everything that furthers
it, whether pleasurable or painful, good. Virtue makes everything that
hinders it, whether pleasurable or painful, bad. What, then, is virtue?
In what does this priceless pearl consist? We have our two analogies.
Virtue is to pleasure what the music is to the tuning of the instrument.
Just as the perfection of the music proves the excellence of the tuning,
so the perfection of virtue justifies the particular pleasures we enjoy.
Virtue stands related to the endurance of pain, as health stands related
to the taking of medicine. The perfection of health proves that, however
distasteful the medicine may be, it is nevertheless good; and any
imperfection of health that may result from either too much or too
little medicine shows that in the quantity taken the medicine was bad
for us. Precisely so pain is good for us up to the point where virtue
requires it. Below or above that point, pain becomes an evil.
Plato spared no pains to disentangle the question of virtue from its
complications with rewards and penalties, pleasures and pains. As the
virtue of a violin is not in its carving or polish, but in the music it
produces; as the virtue of medicine is not in its sweetness or its
absence of bitterness, so the virtue of man has primarily nothing to do
with rewards and penalties, pleasures or pains. In our study of virtue,
he says, we must strip it naked of all rewards, honours, and emoluments;
indeed we must go farther and even dress it up in the outer habiliments
of vice; we must make the virtuous man poor, persecuted, forsaken,
unpopular, distrusted, reviled, and condemned. Then we may be able to
see what there is in virtue which, in every conceivable circumstance,
makes it superior to vice. He makes one of his characters in the
Republic complain that: "No one has ever adequately described either in
verse or prose the true essential nature of either righteousness or
unrighteousness immanent in the soul, and invisible to any human or
divine eye; or shown that of all the things of a man's soul which he has
within him, righteousness is the greatest good, and unrighteousness the
greatest evil. Therefore I say, not only prove to us that righteousness
is better than unrighteousness, but show what either of them do to the
possessors of them, which makes the one to be good and the other evil,
whether seen or unseen by gods and men." Accordingly he attributes to
the unrighteous man skill to win a reputation for righteousness, even
while acting most unrighteously. He clothes him with power and glory,
and fame, and family, and influence; fills his life with delights;
surrounds him with friends; cushions him in ease and security. Over
against this man who is really unrighteous, but has all the advantages
that come from being supposed to be righteous, he sets the man who is
really righteous, and clothes him with all the disabilities which come
from being supposed to be unrighteous. "Let him be scourged and racked;
let him have his eyes burnt out, and finally, after suffering every kind
of evil, let him be impaled." Then, says Plato, when both have reached
the uttermost extreme, the one of righteousness treated shamefully and
cruelly, the other of unrighteousness treated honourably and
obsequiously, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the
two. Translating the language of the "Gorgias" and the "Republic" into
modern equivalents: Who would we rather be, a man who by successful
manipulation of dishonest financial schemes had come to be a
millionnaire, the mayor of his city, the pillar of the church, the
ornament of the best society, the Senator from his state, or the
Ambassador of his country at a European Court; or a man who in
consequence of his integrity had won the enmity of evil men in power,
and been sent in disgrace to State prison; a man whom no one would speak
to; whom his best friends had deserted, whose own children were being
brought up to reproach him? Which of the two men would we rather be? And
we must not introduce any consideration of reversals hereafter.
Supposing that death ends all, and that there is no God to reverse the
decisions of men; suppose these two men were to die as they lived,
without hope of resurrection; which of the two would we rather be for
the next forty years of our lives, assuming that after that there is
nothing?
Plato in a myth puts the case even more strongly than this. Gyges, a
shepherd and servant of the king of Lydia, found a gold ring which had
the remarkable property of making its wearer visible when he turned the
collet one way, and invisible when he turned it the other way. Being
astonished at this, he made several trials of the ring, always with the
same result; when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when
outwards he reappeared. Perceiving this he immediately contrived to be
chosen messenger to the court, where he no sooner arrived than he
seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew
him, and took the kingdom. Plato asks us what we should do if we had
such a ring. We could do anything we pleased and no one would be the
wiser. We could become invisible, out of the reach of external
consequences, the instant our deed was done. Would we, with such a ring
on our finger, stand fast in righteousness? Could we trust ourselves to
wear that ring night and day? Would we feel safe if we knew that our
next-door neighbour, even our most intimate friend, had such a ring, and
could do just what he pleased to us, and yet never get caught? Can we
tell why a man with such a ring on his finger should not do any unjust,
unkind, impure, or dishonourable deed?
II
RIGHTEOUSNESS WRIT LARGE
The Republic is Plato's answer to this question. Why, you may ask,
should he give us a treatise on politics in answer to a question of
personal character? Because the state is simply the individual writ
large, and as we can read large letters more easily than small letters,
we shall get at the principle of righteousness more readily if we first
consider what it is in the large letters of the state. In presenting
this analogy of the state I shall freely translate Plato's teachings
into their modern equivalent. What, then, is the difference between a
righteous and unrighteous state?
An unrighteous state is one in which the working-men in each industry
are organised into a union which uses its power to force the wages of
its members up to an exorbitant level, and uses intimidation and
violence to prevent any one else from working for less or producing more
than the standards fixed by the union; it is a state in which the owners
of capital, in each line of industry, combine into overcapitalised
trusts for the purpose of making the small sums which they put into the
business, and the larger sums which they do not put in at all, except on
paper, earn exorbitant dividends at the expense of the public; it is a
state in which the politicians are in politics for their pockets, using
the opportunities for advantageous contracts which offices afford, and
the opportunities for legislation in favour of private schemes, to
enrich themselves out of the public purse; it is a state in which the
police intimidate the other citizens, and sell permission to commit
crime to the highest bidder; it is a state in which the scholars concern
themselves exclusively about their own special and technical interests,
and as long as the institutions with which they are connected are
supported by the gifts of rich men, care little how the poor are
oppressed and the many are made to suffer by the corrupt use of wealth
and the selfish misuse of power. Such is the unrighteous state. And
wherein does its unrighteousness consist? Obviously in the fact that
each of the great classes in the state--working-men, capitalists,
police, politicians, scholars--are living exclusively for themselves and
are ready to sacrifice the interests of the community as a whole to
their private interests. Now a state which should be completely
unrighteous, in which everybody should succeed in carrying out his own
selfish interests at the expense of everybody else, would be
intolerable. United action would be impossible. No one would wish to
live in such a state. There must be honour even among thieves; otherwise
stealing could not be successful on any considerable scale. The trouble
with it is that each part is arrayed in antagonism against every other
part, and the whole is sacrificed to the supposed interests of its
constituent members.
What, then, in contrast to this would be a righteous state? It would be
a state in which each of these classes fulfils its part well, with a
view to the good of the whole. It would be a state where labour would be
organised into unions, which would not insist on having the greatest
possible wages for the least possible work, but which would maintain a
high standard of efficiency, and intelligence, and character in the
members, with a view to doing the best possible work in their trade, at
such wages as the resources and needs of the community, as indicated by
the normal action of demand and supply, would warrant. It would be a
state in which the capitalists would organise their business in such a
way that they might invite public inspection of the relation between the
capital, enterprise, skill, economy, and industry expended, and the
prices they charge for commodities furnished and services rendered. It
would be a state in which the police would maintain that order and law
which is the equal interest of the rich and poor alike. It would be a
state in which the men in political offices would use their official
positions and influence for the protection of the lives and promotion of
the interests of the whole people whom they represent and profess to
serve. It would be a state in which the colleges and universities would
be intensely alive to economic, social, and public questions, and devote
their learning to the maintenance of healthful material conditions, just
distribution of wealth, sound morals, and wise determination of public
policy.
Wherein, then, does the difference between an unrighteous and a
righteous state consist? Simply in this--that in the unrighteous state
each class in the community is playing for its own hand and regarding
the community as a mere means to its own selfish interests as the
supreme end,--while a righteous state on the contrary is one in which
each class in the community is doing its own work as economically and
efficiently as possible, with a view to the interests of the community
as a whole. In the unrighteous state the whole is subordinated to each
separate part; in the righteous state each part is subordinated to the
common interests of the whole. If, then, we ask as did Adeimantus in the
Republic, "Where, then, is righteousness, and in which particular part
of the state is it to be found," our answer will be that given by
Socrates, "that each individual man shall be put to that use for which
nature designs him, and every man will do his own business so that the
whole city will be not many but one." Righteousness, then, in the state
consists in having each class mind its own business with a view to the
good of the whole. On this, which is Plato's fundamental principle, we
can all agree.
As to the method by which the righteous state is to be brought about
probably we should all profoundly differ from him. His method for
securing the subordination of what he calls the lower class of society
to what he calls the higher class is that of repression, force, and
fraud. The obedience of the working-men is to be secured by
intimidation; the devotion of the higher classes is to be secured partly
by suppression of natural instincts and interests, partly by an
elaborate and prolonged education. The rulers are to have no property
and no wives and families that they can call their own. He attempts to
get devotion to the whole by suppressing those more individual and
special forms of devotion which spring from private property and family
affection. In all these details of his scheme we must frankly recognise
that Plato was profoundly wrong. The working classes cannot and ought
not to be driven like dumb cattle to their tasks by a force external to
themselves. The ruling class, the scholars and statesmen, can never be
successfully trained for disinterested public life by taking away from
them those fundamental interests and affections out of which, in the
long run, all public spirit takes its rise and draws its inspiration. In
opposition to this communism based on repression and suppression by
force and fraud, the modern democracy sets a community of interest and a
devotion of personal resources, be they great or small, to the common
good on the part of every citizen of every class. The utter inadequacy
and impracticability of the details of Plato's communistic schemes
about the wives and property of his ruling class should not blind us to
the profound truth of his essential definition of righteousness in a
state: That each class shall "do the work for which they draw the wage"
with a view to the effect it will have, not on themselves alone, but
primarily on the welfare of the whole state, of which each class is a
serving and contributing member. This essential truth of Plato our
modern democracy has taken up. The difference is that, while Plato
proposed to have intelligence and authority in one, and obedience and
manual labour in another class, the problem of modern democracy is to
give an intelligent and public-spirited outlook to the working-man, and
a spirit of honest work to the scholar and the statesman.
The defect of Plato lies in the external arrangements by which he
proposed to secure the right relation of parts to the whole. His
measures for securing this subordination were partly material and
physical, partly visionary and unnatural, where ours must be natural,
social, intellectual, and spiritual. But he did lay down for all time
the great principle that the due subordination of the parts to the
whole, of the members to the organism, of the classes to society, of
individuals to the state is the essence of righteousness in a state,
and an indispensable condition of political well-being.
III
THE CARDINAL VIRTUES
Righteousness in a state then consists in each class minding its own
business, and performing its specific function for the good of the state
as a whole. Righteousness in the individual is precisely the same thing.
There are three grand departments of each man's life: his appetites, his
spirit, and his reason. Neither of these is good or bad in itself.
Neither of them should be permitted to set up housekeeping on its own
account. Any one of them is bad if it acts for itself alone, regardless
of the interests of the self as a whole. Let us take up these
departments in order, and see wherein the vice and the virtue of each
consists. First the appetites, which in the individual correspond to the
working class in the state.
Let us take eating as a specimen, remembering, however, that everything
we say about the appetite for food is equally true of all the other
elementary appetites, such as those that deal with drink, sex, dress,
property, amusement, and the like. The Epicurean said they are all good
if they do not clash and contradict each other. The Stoic implied that
they are all, if not positively bad, at least so low and unimportant
that the wise man will not pay much attention to them. Plato says they
are all good in their place, and that they are all bad out of their
place. What, then, is their place? It is one of subordination and
service to the self as a whole. Which is the better breakfast: a half
pound of beefsteak, with fried potatoes, an omelette, some griddle cakes
and maple syrup, with a doughnut or two, and a generous piece of mince
pie? or a little fruit and a cereal, a roll, and a couple of eggs?
Intrinsically the first breakfast is, if anything, better than the
second. There is more of it. It offers greater variety. It takes longer
to eat it. It will stay by you longer. If you are at a hotel conducted
on the American plan, you are getting more for your money.
Righteousness, however, is concerned with none of these considerations.
What makes one breakfast better than the other is the way it fits into
one's life as a whole. Which breakfast will enable you to do the best
forenoon's work? Which one will give you acute headache and chronic
dyspepsia? Immediate appetite cannot answer these questions. Reason is
the only one of our three departments that can tell us what is good for
the self as a whole. Now for most people in ordinary circumstances,
reason prescribes the second breakfast, or something like it. The second
breakfast fits into one's permanent plan of life. The work to be done in
the forenoon, the feelings one will have in the afternoon, the general
efficiency which we desire to maintain from day to day and year to year,
all point to the second breakfast as the more adapted to promote the
welfare of the self as a whole throughout the entire life history. If we
eat the first breakfast, appetite rules and reason is thrust into
subjection. The lower has conquered the higher; the part has domineered
the whole. To eat such a breakfast, for ninety-nine men out of every
hundred, would be gluttony. Yet, though eating it is vicious, the fault
is not in the breakfast, not in the hunger for it; but in the fact that
the appetite had its own way, regardless of the permanent interests of
the self as a whole; and that so far forth reason was dethroned, and
appetite set up as ruler in its place. Indeed there are circumstances in
which the first breakfast would be the right one to choose. If one were
on the borders of civilisation, setting out for a long tramp through the
wilderness, where every ounce of food must be carried on his back, and
no more fresh meat and home cooking could be expected for several days,
even reason herself might prescribe the first breakfast as more
beneficial to the whole man than the second. Precisely the same
breakfast which is good in one set of circumstances becomes bad in
another. The raw appetite of hunger is obviously neither good nor bad.
The rule of appetite over reason and the whole self, however, is bad
always, everywhere, and for everybody. It is in this rising up of the
lower part of the self against the higher, and its sacrifice of the self
as a whole to a particular gratification that all vice consists.
On the other hand, the rule of reason over appetite, the gratification
or the restraint of appetite according as the interests of the total
self require, is always and everywhere and for everybody good. This is
the essence of virtue; and the particular form of virtue that results
from this control of the appetites by reason in the interest of the
permanent and total self is temperance--the first and most fundamental
of Plato's cardinal virtues.
The second element of human nature, spirit, must be dealt with in the
same way. By spirit Plato means the fighting element in us, that which
prompts us to defend ourselves, the faculty of indignation, anger, and
vengeance. To make it concrete, let us take a case. Suppose the cook in
our kitchen has times of being careless, cross, saucy, wilful, and
disobedient. The spirit within prompts us to upbraid her, quarrel with
her, and when she grows in turn more insolent and impertinent, to
discharge her. Is such an exercise of spirit a virtuous act? It may be
virtuous, or it may be vicious. In this element, considered in itself,
there is no more virtue or vice than in appetite considered in itself.
It is again a question of how this particular act of this particular
side of our nature stands related to the self as a whole. What does
reason say?
If I send this cook away, shall I be a long while without any; and after
much vexation probably put up with another not half so good? Will my
household be thrown into confusion? Will hospitality be made impossible?
Will the working power of the members of my household be impaired by
lack of well-prepared, promptly served food? In the present state of
this servant problem, all these things and worse are quite likely to
happen. Consequently reason declares in unmistakable terms that the
interests of the self as a whole demand the retention of the cook. But
it galls and frets our spirit to keep this impertinent, disobedient
servant, and hear her irritating words, and see her aggravating
behaviour. Never mind, reason says to the spirited element in us. The
spirit is not put into us in order that it may have a good time all by
itself on its own account. It is put into us to protect and promote the
interests of the self as a whole. You must bear patiently with the
incidental failings of your cook, and return soft answers to her harsh
words; because in that way you will best serve that whole self which
your spirit is given you to defend. In ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred a quarrel with a cook, on such grounds, in present conditions,
would be prejudicial to the interests of the self as a whole. It is the
sacrifice of the whole to the part; which as we saw in the case of
appetite is the essence of all vice. Only in this case the vice would
be, not intemperance, but cowardice, inability to bear a transient,
trifling pain patiently and bravely for the sake of the self as a whole.
Still, there might be aggravated cases in which the sharp reproof, the
quarrel, and the prompt discharge might be the brave and right thing to
do. If one felt it a contribution one was required to make to the whole
servant problem, and after considering all the inconvenience it would
cost, still felt that life as a whole was worth more with this
particular servant out of the house than in it, then precisely the same
act, which ordinarily would be wrong, in this exceptional case would be
right. It is not what you do, but how you do it, that determines whether
an outburst of anger is virtuous or vicious. If the whole self is in it,
if all interests have been fully weighed by the reason, if, in short,
you are all there when you do it, then the act is a virtuous act, and
the special name of this virtue of the spirit is courage or fortitude.
Anger and indignation going off on its own account is always vicious.
Anger and indignation properly controlled by reason in the interest of
the total self is always good. Precisely the same outward act done by
one man in one set of circumstances is bad, and shows the man to be
vicious, cowardly, and weak; while, if done by another man in other
circumstances, it shows him to be strong, brave, and manly. Virtue and
vice are questions of the subordination or insubordination of the lower
to the higher elements of our nature; of the parts of our selves to the
whole. The subordination of appetite to reason has given us the first of
the four virtues. The subordination of spirit to reason has given us
fortitude, the second.
Wisdom, the third of Plato's cardinal virtues, consists in the supremacy
of reason over spirit and appetite; just as temperance and courage
consisted in the subordination of appetite and spirit to reason. Wisdom,
then, is much the same thing as temperance and courage, only in more
positive and comprehensive form. Wisdom is the vision of the good, the
true end of man, for the sake of which the lower elements must be
subordinated. What, then, is the good, according to Plato? The good is
the principle of order, proportion, and harmony that binds the many
parts of an object into the effective unity of an organic whole. The
good of a watch is that perfect working together of all its springs and
wheels and hands, which makes it keep time. The good of a thing is the
thing's proper and distinctive function; and the condition of its
performing its function is the subordination of its parts to the
interest of the whole.
The good of a horse is strength and speed; but this in turn involves the
coördination of its parts in graceful, free movement. The good of a
state is the coöperation of all its citizens, according to their several
capacities, for the happiness and welfare of the whole community. Wisdom
in the statesman is the power to see such an ideal relation of the
citizens to each other, and the means by which it can be attained and
conserved. The good of the individual man, likewise, is the harmonious
working together of all the elements in him, so as to produce a
satisfactory life; and wisdom is the vision of such a truly satisfactory
life, and of the conditions of its attainment. Since man lives in a
world full of natural objects, and of works of art; since he is
surrounded by other men and is a member of a state; and since his
welfare depends on his fulfilling his relations to these objects and
persons, it follows that wisdom to see his own true good will involve a
knowledge of these objects, persons, and institutions around him. Hence
rather more than half the Republic is occupied with the problem of
education; or the training of men in that wisdom which consists in the
knowledge of the good.
IV
PLATO'S SCHEME OF EDUCATION
Education, therefore, in Plato's ideal Republic, was a lifelong affair,
and from first to last practical. For the guardians, the men who were to
be rulers or, as we should say, leaders of their fellows, he prescribed
the following course: From early childhood until the age of
seventeen,--that is, through our elementary and high school periods,--he
would give chief attention to what he calls music; that is, to
literature, music, and the plastic arts, with popular descriptive
science, or, as we call it nowadays, nature study. This, with elementary
mathematics and gymnastics as incidental, constituted the curriculum for
the first ten or twelve years. The chief stress through all these years
he lays on good literature,--good both in substance and in form; for
children at this age are intensely imitative. Plato practically
anticipated the latest results of child study, which tell us that the
child builds up the whole substance of his conception of himself out of
materials borrowed from others and incorporated in himself by imitative
reproduction; and then in turn interprets and understands others only in
so far as he can eject this borrowed material into other persons. Hence
Plato says it is of supreme importance that the children shall learn to
admire and love good literature. That teachers should be able to teach
the children to read and write and cipher and draw he would take for
granted. The prime qualification, however, would be the ability to so
interpret the best literature as to make the children admire and imitate
and incorporate the noble qualities this literature embodies. Into the
literature thus inspiringly taught in the school, only that which
praised noble deeds in noble language should be admitted. Plato's
description of good literature for schools will bear repeating: "Any
deeds of endurance which are acted or told by famous men, these the
children ought to see and hear. If they imitate at all, they should
imitate the temperate, holy, free, courageous, and the like; but they
should not depict or be able to imitate any kind of illiberality or
other baseness, lest from imitation they come to be what they imitate.
Did you never observe how imitations, beginning in early youth, at last
sink into the constitution and become a second nature of body, voice,
and mind?" "Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one
warlike, which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in
the hour of danger and stern resolve, or when his cause is failing and
he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and
at every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and
another which may be used by him in times of peace and freedom of
action, when there is no pressure of necessity--expressive of entreaty,
or persuasion, or prayer to God, or instruction of man, or again of
willingness to listen to persuasion or entreaty or advice; and which
represents him when he has accomplished his aim, not carried away by
success, but acting moderately and wisely, and acquiescing in the
event. These two harmonies I ask you to leave: the strain of necessity
and the strain of freedom, the strain of courage, and the strain of
temperance. We would not have our guardians grow up amid images of moral
deformity, as in some noxious pasture, and there browse and feed upon
many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little by little, until they
silently gather a festering mass of corruption in their own souls. Let
our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of
beauty and grace; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid
fair sights and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will
meet the sense like a breeze, and insensibly draw the soul, even in
childhood, into harmony with the beauty of reason. Rhythm and harmony
find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they
mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements, and making the soul
graceful of him who is rightly educated, or ungraceful if ill educated;
and also because he who has received this true education of the inner
being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art or nature,
and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives
into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly
blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is
able to know the reason of the thing; and when reason comes, he will
recognise and salute her as a friend with whom his education has made
him long familiar."
Thus, according to Plato, the important thing for a youth to secure by
the time he is seventeen is the admiration of noble deeds, and noble
words, and noble character. The love of good literature is the backbone
of this elementary education. Manual training and nature study, as a
means to the appreciation of beautiful works of art and beautiful
objects in nature, he would also approve. On the whole Plato is an
advocate of those very reforms which are now being introduced into the
elementary and secondary schools in the name of the New Education. What
one loves is of more importance than what one knows; what one wants to
do, and is interested in trying to do, is of more consequence at this
stage than what one has done. Early education should be an introduction
to the true, the beautiful, and the good in the form of great men, brave
deeds, beautiful objects, and beneficent laws. The development of taste
is more than the acquisition of information; the inspiration of
literature, history, art, and descriptive science is far more valuable
than drill beyond the essentials in grammar, geography, and arithmetic.
Plato's programme for the years from seventeen to twenty, three of our
four college years, is even more startling and heretical; and quite in
line with certain tendencies in our own day. He would set apart the
three years from seventeen to twenty for gymnastic exercises, including
in such exercises, however, military drill. Plato appreciated both the
advantage and disadvantage of intense athletic exercises. "The period,
whether of two or three years, which passes in this sort of training is
useless for any other purpose,--for sleep and exercise are unpropitious
to learning; and the trial is one of the most important tests to which
they are subjected."
At the age of twenty he would select the most promising youths and give
them a ten years' course in severe study of science. This systematic
study corresponds to the graduate and professional period in modern
education, only he extends it over ten years, where we confine it to
three or four. Again at thirty there is another selection of those who
are most steadfast in their learning and most faithful in their military
and public duties, and these are given a five years' course in dialectic
or philosophy. They are trained to see the relation of the special
sciences to each other and how each department of truth is related to
the whole. At the age of thirty-five they must be appointed to military
and other offices. "In this way they will get their experience of life,
and there will be an opportunity to try whether, when they are drawn all
manner of ways by temptation, they will stand firm or stir at all." And
when they have reached the age of fifty, after fifteen years of this
laboratory work in actual public service, holding subordinate offices
and learning to discriminate good and evil, not as we find them done up
in packages and labelled in the study, but as they are interwoven in the
complicated texture of real life, "those who still survive and have
distinguished themselves in every deed and in all knowledge, come at
last to their graduation; the time has now arrived at which they must
raise the eye of the soul to the universal light which lightens all
things and behold the absolute good; for that is the pattern according
to which they are to order the state and the lives of individuals and
the remainder of their own lives also, making philosophy their chief
pursuit; but when their turn comes, also toiling at politics and ruling
for the public good."
The wisdom which comes of this prolonged and elaborate education is the
third of Plato's four cardinal virtues. In the state it is the ruling
principle, and its agents are the philosophers. As Plato says in a
famous passage: "Until then philosophers are kings, or the kings and
princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and
political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures
who follow either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand
aside, cities will never cease from ill,--no, nor the human race, as I
believe,--and then only will this our state have a possibility of life
and behold the light of day." Precisely so, no individual will attain
his true estate until this philosophic principle, which sees the good,
through training has been so developed that it can bring both appetite
and spirit into subjection to it, as a charioteer controls his
headstrong horses.
V
RIGHTEOUSNESS THE COMPREHENSIVE VIRTUE
We now have three of the cardinal virtues: temperance, the subjection of
appetite to reason; fortitude, the control of the spirit by reason; and
wisdom, won through education, the assertion of the dictates of reason
over the clamour of both appetite and spirit. But where, amid all this,
Plato asks, is righteousness? In reply he remarks, "that when we first
began our inquiry, ages ago, there lay righteousness rolling at our
feet, and we, fools that we were, failed to see her, like people who go
about looking for what they have in their hands. Righteousness is the
comprehensive aspect of the three virtues already considered in detail.
It is the ultimate cause and condition of the existence of all of them.
Righteousness in a state consists in each citizen doing the thing to
which his nature is most perfectly adapted: in minding one's own
business, in other words, with a view to the good of the whole.
Righteousness in an individual, then, consists in having each part of
one's nature devoted to its specific function: in having the appetites
obey, in having the spirit steadfast in difficulty and danger, and in
having the reason rule supreme. Thus righteousness, that subordination
and coordination of all the parts of the soul in the service of the soul
as a whole, includes each of the other three virtues and comprehends
them all in the unity of the soul's organic life.
"For the righteous man does not permit the several elements within him
to meddle with one another, but he sets in order his own inner life, and
is his own master, and at peace with himself; when he has bound
together the three principles within him, and is no longer many, but has
become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he
will begin to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or
in the treatment of the body, or in some affairs of politics or of
private business; in all which cases he will think and call just and
good action, that which preserves and coöperates with this condition,
and the knowledge which presides over this wisdom."
Unrighteousness, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of this. "Then
assuming the threefold division of the soul, must not unrighteousness be
a kind of quarrel between these three--a meddlesomeness and
interference, a rising up of a part of the soul against the whole soul,
an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a rebellious
subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal--this is
the sort of thing; the confusion and error of these parts or elements in
unrighteousness and intemperance, cowardice, and ignorance, and in
general all vice." In other words, righteousness and unrighteousness
"are like disease and health; being in the soul just what disease and
health are in the body." "Then virtue is the health and beauty and
well-being of the soul, vice is the disease and weakness and deformity
of the soul." From this point of view our old question of the
comparative advantage of righteousness and unrighteousness answers
itself. Indeed, the question whether it is more profitable to be
righteous and do righteously and practice virtue, whether seen or unseen
of gods and men, or to be unrighteous and act unrighteously if only
unpunished, becomes, Plato says, ridiculous. "If when the bodily
constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with
every sort of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power,
shall we be told that life is worth having when the very essence of the
vital principle is undermined and corrupted, even though a man be
allowed to do whatever he pleases, if at the same time he is forbidden
to escape from vice and unrighteousness, or attain righteousness and
virtue, seeing that we now know the true nature of each?"
Righteousness, according to Plato, is the condition of the soul's health
and life. To part with righteousness for any external advantage is to
commit the supreme folly of selling our own souls. Righteousness is the
organising principle of the soul; unrighteousness is the disorganising
principle. Health and life rest on organisation. Disorganisation and
vice are synonymous with disease and death. Therefore, all seeming gains
that one may win in the paths of unrighteousness really involve the
greatest possible loss.
We have now seen what righteousness is, whether in a state or in an
individual. It is the health, harmony, beauty, excellence of the whole
state or the whole man, secured by having each member attend strictly to
its own distinctive work, with a view to the good of the whole state or
the whole man. Thus defined it is something so obviously desirable and
essential, that nothing else is worthy to be compared with it. Whoever
parts with it even in exchange for the greatest outward honours,
emoluments, comforts, or pleasures, is bound to get the worst of the
bargain. Yet men do part with it; states do part with it. And the eighth
and ninth books of the Republic are devoted to a description of the four
stages of degeneration through which states and individuals pass on the
downward road from righteousness and virtue to unrighteousness and vice.
The breaking up of a thing often reveals its nature as effectually as
the putting it together; and as we have traced the four virtues by which
either the state or the soul is constructed, it will throw added light
upon the problem to trace in conclusion the four stages through which
men and states go down to destruction.
VI
THE STAGES OF DEGENERATION
The first step down is where, instead of the good, men seek personal
honour and distinction. At first the deterioration, whether in state or
individual, is hardly noticeable. An ambitious statesman, on the whole,
will advocate, if he is shrewd and far-sighted, much the same measures
as the statesman who is intent on the welfare of the state. For he knows
that by promoting the public welfare he will most effectively gain the
reputation and distinction he desires. Yet there is a marked difference
in the attitude of mind, and in the long run that difference will
express itself in action. When it comes to a close and hard decision,
where the real interest of the state lies in one direction, and the
waves of popular enthusiasm are running in an opposite direction, the
man who cares for the real welfare of the state will stand fast, while
the man who cares supremely for honour and distinction will be more
likely to give way. Besides, contention and strife will arise, since the
ambitious man is more anxious to do something himself than he is to have
the best thing done by some one else. Hence the state where the
statesmen love power, office, and honour will be less well off than the
state where they are disinterestedly devoted to the public good.
Just so the man who is supremely covetous of power and honour will be
weaker than the man who loves the good and follows the guidance of
reason as supreme, in both these respects. He will be prone to follow
the clamour of the multitude when he knows it is not the voice of
reason; and he will try to have his own way, even when he knows that the
way of another man is better than his. As Plato says, "He gives up the
kingdom that is within him to the middle principle of contentiousness
and passion, and becomes proud and ambitious." Here, then, are the two
tests by which each man may judge for himself whether he is a degenerate
of the first grade or not. First: Will you do what reason shows you to
be right every time, at all costs, no matter if all the honours and
emoluments are attached to doing something a shade or two off from this
absolutely right and reasonable course? Second: Would you rather have
what is best done by somebody else, and let him have the credit of it,
rather than get all the credit yourself by doing something not quite so
good? The man of pride and ambition can never be quite disinterested in
his service of the good, although incidentally most of the things he
does will be good things. As Plato puts it, "He is not single-minded
toward virtue, having lost his best guardian." He has neglected "the one
thing that can preserve a man's goodness through his life--reason
blended with music."
It is a short and easy step, in state and individual, from the love of
honour down to the love of money as the guiding principle of life. The
appetitive side of life is always present, even in the most upright of
men. It may be asleep, but it is never dead. And when there is nothing
more deep and vital than the love of honour to hold it in restraint, it
is sure to wake up and prowl about. Rivalry for honour soon reveals the
fact that directly or indirectly honour and office can be bought. Then
comes the state of things where only rich men can get office, or can
afford to hold it if it comes to them. That in the state is what Plato
calls an oligarchy. The deterioration of a state under this condition is
very rapid, for, as he says, "When riches and virtue are placed together
in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.
And so at last, instead of loving contention and glory, men become
lovers of trade and of money, and they honour and reverence the rich man
and make a ruler of him, and dishonour the poor man." The evils of this
oligarchical rule, he says, are illustrated by considering the nature of
the qualification for office and influence. "Just think what would
happen if the pilots were to be chosen according to their property, and
a poor man refused permission to steer, even though he were the better
pilot?" The other defect is "the inevitable division; such a state is
not one but two states, the one of poor men, the other of rich men, who
are living on the same spot and ever conspiring against one another."
The avaricious man is like the state which is governed by rich men. "Is
not this man likely to seat the concupiscent and covetous elements on
the vacant throne? And when he has made the reasoning and passionate
faculties sit on the ground obediently on either side, and taught them
to know their place, he compels the one to think only of the method by
which lesser sums may be converted into larger ones, and schools the
other into the worship and admiration of riches and rich men. Of all
conversions there is none so speedy or so sure as when the ambitious
youth changes into the avaricious one."
Nowhere is Plato more keen or more fair than in his judgment of the
money-maker. He says that he will generally do the right thing; he will
be eminently respectable; he will not sink to very low or disreputable
courses. All his goodness, however, will be of a forced, constrained,
artificial, and at bottom unreal character. He will be good because he
has to, in order to maintain that standing in the community on which his
wealth depends. In Plato's own words: "He coerces his bad passions by an
effort of virtue; not that he convinces them of evil, or exerts over
them the gentle influence of reason, but he acts upon them by necessity
and fear, and because he trembles for his possessions. This sort of man
will be at war with himself: he will be two men, not one; but, in
general, his better desires will be found to prevail over his inferior
ones. For these reasons such an one will be more decent than many are;
yet the true virtue of a unanimous and harmonious soul will be far out
of his reach."
The next step down for the state is what Plato calls democracy. Of the
democracy of intelligence and self-control diffused throughout the body
of self-respecting citizens Plato had formed and could form no
conception. By democracy he meant the state of things where each man
does that which is right in his own eyes. "In the first place the
citizens are free. The city is full of freedom and frankness--there a
man may do as he likes. They have a complete assortment of
constitutions; and if a man has a mind to establish a state, he must go
to a democracy as he would go to a bazaar, where they sell them, and
pick out one that suits him. Democracy is a most accommodating and
charming form of government, full of variety and diversity, and (this,
perhaps, is the keenest of all Plato's keen thrusts) _dispensing
equality to equals and unequals alike_."
The man corresponding to democracy in the state, is the man whose life
is given over to the undiscriminating enjoyment of all sorts of
pleasures. "In this way the young man passes out of his original nature
which was trained in the school of necessity, into the freedom and
libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures, putting the government
of himself into the hands of the one of his pleasures that offers and
wins the turn; and when he has had enough of that, then into the hands
of another, and is very impartial in his encouragement of them all.
Neither does he receive or admit into the fortress any true word of
advice; if any one says to him that some pleasures are the satisfactions
of good and noble desires, and others of evil desires, and that he
ought to use and honour some and curtail and reduce others--whenever
this is repeated to him he shakes his head and says that they are all
alike, and that one is as honourable as another. He lives through the
day, indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in
drink and strains of the flute; then he is for total abstinence, and
tries to get thin; then again, he is at gymnastics; sometimes idling and
neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher;
often he is at politics, and starts to his feet and says and does
anything that may turn up; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a
warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more
in that. His life has neither order nor law; and this is the way of
him,--this he terms joy and freedom and happiness. There is liberty,
equality, and fraternity enough in him."
The life of chance desire, unregulated by any subordinating principle,
then, is the third stage of the descent and degradation of the soul.
In the state democracy speedily and inevitably passes over into tyranny.
All appetite is insatiable. In a state where each citizen does what he
pleases "all things are just ready to burst with liberty; excess of
liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into
excess of slavery. Then tyranny naturally arises out of democracy." He
then proceeds, with prophetic pen, to trace the evolution of the modern
political boss. First there develops a class of drones who get their
living as professional politicians. Second, "there is the richest class,
which, in a nation of traders, is generally the most orderly; they are
the most squeezable persons and yield the largest amount of honey to the
drones; this is called the wealthy class, and the drones feed upon them.
There is also a third class, consisting of working-men who are not
politicians and have little to live upon; these, when assembled, are the
largest and most powerful class in a democracy; but then, the multitude
is seldom willing to meet unless they get a little honey. Their leaders
take the estates of the rich and give to the people as much of them as
they can consistently with keeping the greater part themselves. The
people have always some one as a champion whom they raise into
greatness. This is the very root from which a tyrant (that is, as we
should say, a boss) comes. When he first appears above ground, he is a
protector. At first, in the early days of his power, he smiles upon
every one and salutes every one; he, to be called a tyrant who is making
promises in public and also in private, and wanting to be kind and good
to every one! Thus liberty, getting out of all order and reason, passes
into the harshest and bitterest form of slavery." The worst form of
government, according to Plato, is that which we know too well to-day in
our great cities: the government of the professional politician who
maintains himself by buying the votes of the poor with the money he has
squeezed out of the rich. All pretence of administering the government
in the interest of the community is frankly abandoned. The boss, or
tyrant, as Plato calls him, frankly and unblushingly avows that he is in
politics for what he can get out of it.
The true statesman, the philosopher king, in Plato's phrase, sees and
serves the public good. Such a government Plato calls an aristocracy, or
the government of the best for the good of all. First below that comes
timocracy, or the government of those who are ambitious for power and
place. Next comes oligarchy, the government of the rich for the
protection of the interests of the moneyed class. Next below that, and
as a logical consequence, comes populism, which is our word for what
Plato calls democracy; a government which aims to satisfy the immediate
wants of everybody, regardless of moral, legal, or constitutional
restraints. Last, and lowest of all, comes the rule of the professional
politician who has thrown all pretence of regard for the public good,
all consideration of honour, all loyalty to the rich and genuine
sympathy for the poor to the winds, and is simply manipulating the forms
of government, getting and distributing offices, collecting assessments
and distributing bribes, all in the interests of his own private pocket.
Between disinterested service of the public good and such unblushing
pursuit of private gain, Plato says that there is no stopping place.
Logically Plato is right; historically, too, he was right at the time
when he was writing. Modern democracy, however, is a very different
thing from the populistic democracy with which Plato was familiar and
which our large cities know too well. A democracy, resting on
intelligence and public spirit, diffused through rich and poor alike,
was beyond Plato's profoundest dreams. That great experiment the
American people, with their public-school system, and their principle of
the equality of all before the law, are now trying on a gigantic scale.
Corresponding to the tyrannical state comes the tyrannical man. "The
wild beast in our nature gets the upper hand and the man becomes
drunken, lustful, passionate, the best elements in him are enslaved;
and there is a small ruling part which is also the worst and the
maddest. He has the soul of the slave, and the tyrannical soul must
always be poor and insatiable. He is by far the most miserable of all
men." "He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real
servant and is obliged to practice the greatest adulation and servility
and be the flatterer of mankind; he has desires which he is truly unable
to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor if you
know how to inspect the soul of him. All his life long he is beset with
fear and is full of convulsions and distractions. Even as the state
which he resembles, he grows worse from having power; he becomes of
necessity more jealous, more faithless, more unjust, more impious; he
entertains and nurtures every evil sentiment, and the consequence is
that he is supremely miserable and thus he makes everybody else equally
miserable."
VII
THE INTRINSIC SUPERIORITY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
Plato first constructs the ideal character and shows that it consists in
the righteous rule of the intelligent principle in man over the spirit
and the appetites. A soul thus in harmony with itself, under the rule
of reason, is at once healthy, happy, beautiful, and good. Later,
reversing the process, he shows how the good, beautiful, true, healthy
condition of the soul may be destroyed through the successive steps of
pride, avarice, lawless liberty, ending at last in the tyrannous rule of
some single appetite or passion which has dethroned reason and set
itself up as supreme. The consequence of it all is that "the most
righteous man is also the happiest, and this is he who is the most royal
master of himself; the worst and most unrighteous man is also the most
miserable; this is he who is also the greatest tyrant of himself and the
most complete slave."
The reason why the life of a righteous man is happier than the life of
an unrighteous man is that it has "a greater share in pure existence as
a more real being." "If there be a pleasure in being filled with that
which agrees with nature; that which is more really filled with more
real being will have more real and true joy and pleasure; whereas, that
which participates in less real being will be less truly and surely
satisfied and will participate in a less true and real pleasure. Those,
then, who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with gluttony
and sensuality, never pass into the true upper world; neither are they
truly filled with true being, nor do they taste of true and abiding
pleasure. Like brute animals, with their eyes down and bodies bent to
the earth, or leaning on the dining table, they fatten and feed and
breed, and, in their excessive love of these delights, they kick and
butt at one another with horns and hoofs which are made of iron; they
kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they fill
themselves with that which is not substantial, and the part of
themselves which they fill is also unsubstantial and incontinent." "Thus
when the whole soul follows the philosophical principle, and there is no
division, the several parts, each of them, do their own business and are
righteous, and each of them enjoy their own best and truest pleasures.
But when either of the other principles prevails, it fails in attaining
its own pleasure and compels the others to pursue after a shadow of
pleasure which is not theirs."
Having reached this point Plato introduces a figure, which carries the
whole point of his argument. "Do you now model the form of a
multitudinous, polycephalous beast, having a head of all manner of
beasts, tame and wild, making a second form as of a lion, and a third of
a man; the second smaller than the first, and the third smaller than
the second; then join them and let the three grow into one. Now fashion
the outside into a single image as of a man, so that he who is not able
to look within may believe the beast to be a single human creature. Now
unrighteousness consists in feasting the monster and strengthening the
lion in one in such wise as to weaken and starve the man; while
righteousness consists in so strengthening the man within him that he
may govern the many-headed monster." "Righteousness subjects the beast
to the man, or rather to the god in man, and unrighteousness is that
which subjects the man to the beast."
Finally Plato sums up the discussion by anticipating the question which
Jesus asked four centuries later. "How would a man profit if he receive
gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part
of him to the worst? Who can imagine that a man who sold his son or
daughter into slavery for money, especially if he sold them into the
hands of fierce and evil men, would be the gainer, however much might be
the sum which he received? And will any one say that he is not a
miserable caitiff who sells his own divine being to that which is most
godless and detestable and has no pity? Eriphyle took the necklace as
the price of her husband's life, but he is taking a bribe in order to
compass a worse ruin." He even pushes the question a step further and
asks, "What shall a man be profited by unrighteousness even if his
unrighteousness be undetected? For he who is undetected only gets worse;
whereas he who is detected and punished has the brutal part of his
nature silenced and humanised; the gentler element in him is liberated
and his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement of
righteousness and temperance and wisdom. The man of understanding will
concentrate himself on this as the work of life. In the first place he
will honour studies which impress these qualities on his soul and will
disregard others. In the next place he will keep under his body and will
be far from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasures, and he will be
always desirous of preserving the harmony of the body for the sake of
the concord of the soul. He will not allow himself to be dazzled by the
opinion of the world and heap up riches to his own infinite harm. He
will look at the city which is within him, and he will duly regulate his
acquisition and expense, in so far as he is able, and for the same
reason he will accept such honours as he deems likely to make him a
better man. He will look at the nature of the soul, and, from the
consideration of this, he will determine which is the better and which
is the worst life and make his choice, giving the name of evil to the
life which will make his soul more unrighteous, and good to the life
which will make his soul more righteous; for this is the best
choice,--best for this life and after death. Wherefore my counsel is,
that we hold fast to the heavenly way and follow after righteousness and
virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure
every sort of good and every sort of evil; then shall we live dear to
one another and the gods, both while remaining here and when, like
conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our
reward."
With this magnificent tribute to the intrinsic superiority of
righteousness over unrighteousness Plato concludes his greatest work.
The question why a man should do right, even if he wore the ring of
Gyges which would exempt him from all external consequences of his
misdeeds, has been answered by a thoroughgoing analysis of the nature of
the soul, and the demonstration that righteousness is that organisation
of the elements of the soul into an active and harmonious unity, wherein
its health and beauty and life and happiness consist. In conclusion let
us borrow from another of Plato's dialogues the prayer which he ascribes
to Socrates,--a brief and simple prayer, yet one which, in the light of
our study of the Republic, I trust we shall recognise as summing up the
spirit of his teaching as a whole. "Beloved Pan, and all ye gods who
haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward
and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy; and
may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry.
Anything more? That prayer, I think, is enough for me."
VIII
TRUTH AND ERROR IN PLATONISM
Obviously this Platonic principle is vastly deeper and truer than
anything we have had before. The personality at which both Stoic and
Epicurean aimed was highly abstract,--something to be gained by getting
away from the tangle and complexity of life rather than by conquering
and transforming the conditions of existence into expressions of
ourselves. Epicurus makes a few sallies from his cosey comfortable camp,
to forage for provender. The Stoic draws into the citadel of his own
self-sufficiency; and from this fortified position defies attack. Plato
comes out into the open field, and squarely gives battle to the hosts
of appetite, passion, temptation, and corruption, of which the world
outside, and our hearts inside are full. In this he is true to the moral
experience of the race: and his trumpet-call to the higher departments
of our nature to enter the "great combat of righteousness"; his demand
of instantaneous and absolute surrender which he presents to everything
low and sensual within us, are clear, strong notes which it is good for
every one of us to hear and heed. To him as to Carlyle, "Life is not a
May-game, but a battle and a march, a warfare with principalities and
powers. No idle promenade through fragrant orange-groves and green
flowery spaces waited on by the choral muses and the rosy hours; it is a
stern pilgrimage through the rough, burning sandy solitudes, through
regions of thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men, loves men with
inexpressible soft pity, as they _cannot_ love him; but his soul dwells
in solitude, in the uttermost parts of creation. All Heaven, all
Pandemonium are his escort. The stars, keen glancing, from the
immensities, send tidings to him; the graves, silent with their dead,
from the eternities. Deep calls for him unto deep.
"Thou, O World, how wilt thou secure thyself against this man? None of
thy promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of
Heaven; to thee it may be momentous, to thee it may be life or death; to
him it is indifferent, whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or
forty feet higher at the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on
Earth. He wants none of thy rewards; behold also he fears none of thy
penalties. Thou canst not hire him by thy guineas; nor by thy gibbets
and law-penalties restrain him. Thou canst not forward him; thou canst
not hinder him. Thy penalties, thy poverties, neglects,
contumelies,--behold all these are good for him. To this man death is
not a bugbear; to this man life is already as earnest and awful, and
beautiful and terrible as death."
This is a note which appeals forcibly to every noble youth. It has been
struck by the Hebrew Prophets and the Christian Apostles: by Savonarola
and Fichte, and a host of heroic souls; but by no one more clearly and
constrainingly than by Plato. It is the note of earnest and aggressive
righteousness; without which no personality can be either sound or
strong. The man who has never heard this summons to go forth and conquer
the evils of the world without and of his own heart within him, in the
name of a righteousness high above both his own attainment and the
attainment of the world about him as the heavens are higher than the
earth, is still in the nursery stage of personal development.
On the other hand, there is danger in the very sharpness of the
antithesis which Platonism makes between the higher and the lower. For
the most part this danger is latent in Plato himself; though even in him
it came out in his tendency to regard family life and private property
as detrimental rather than serviceable to that development of character
on which the larger devotion to the state, and the ideal order, must
ultimately rest.
In Neoplatonism, in the many forms of mysticism, in certain aspects of
Christian asceticism, and notably in the numerous phases of what calls
itself "New Thought" to-day, what was for the most part latent in Plato,
becomes frankly explicit. In general it is a loosening of the ties that
hold us to drudgery and homely duty; a weakening of the bonds that bind
us to the men and women by our side, in order to gaze more serenely on
the ineffable beyond the clouds. This developed Platonism admits that we
must live after a fashion in this very imperfect world; but says our
real conversation all the time must be in heaven. Individual people are
but faulty, imperfect copies of the pattern of the perfect good laid up
on high. We must buy and sell, work and play, laugh and cry, love and
hate down here among the shadows; but we must all the time feed our
souls on the good, the true, the beautiful, which these distorted human
shadows only serve to hide. These Platonic lovers of something better
than their husbands or wives, or associates or friends, go through the
world with a serene smile, and an air of other-worldliness which, if we
do not inquire too closely into their domestic life and business
efficiency, we cannot but admire. They undoubtedly exert a
tranquillising influence in their way, especially on those who are so
fortunate as to behold them from a little distance. But they are not the
most comfortable people to live with, as husband or wife, colleague or
business partner. Louisa Alcott had this Platonic type in mind when she
defined a philosopher as a man up in a balloon, with his family and
friends having hold of the ropes, trying to pull him down to earth.
A good deal that passes for religion is this Neoplatonism masquerading
in Christian dress. All such hymns as "The Sweet By and By," "Oh,
Paradise, Oh, Paradise," and the like, which set heaven and eternity in
sharp antithesis against earth and time, are simply Neoplatonism
baptized into Christian phraseology; and the baptism is by sprinkling
rather than immersion.
Thomas à Kempis's "Imitation of Christ," and indeed all the mystical
books of devotion--Tauler, Fénelon, "The Theologia Germanica"--are
saturated with this Platonic or Neoplatonic spirit. "Thou shalt
lamentably fall away, if thou set a value upon any worldly thing." "Let
therefore nothing which thou doest seem to thee great; let nothing be
grand, nothing of value or beauty, nothing worthy of honour save what is
eternal." "Man approacheth so much the nearer unto God, the farther he
departeth from all earthly comfort." These words from the "Imitation of
Christ" sound orthodox enough in our ears. But we ought to understand
once for all that it is Neoplatonic mysticism, not essential
Christianity, that breathes through them.
This type of personality reduces the world to two mutually exclusive
elements, God and self; and permits no reconciliation or mediation
between them. Fénelon puts this dualism in the form of a dilemma. "There
is no middle course; we must refer everything either to God or to self;
if to self, we have no other God than self; if to God, we are then
without selfish interests, and we enter into self-abandonment."
Undoubtedly for evangelistic purposes the sharp antithesis has great
practical advantages. It is an easy way to reach heaven--this of
scorning earth; an easy definition of the infinite to pronounce it the
negation of the finite.
As Carlyle has represented for us the stronger side of Platonism, his
friend Emerson shall serve to illustrate the weakness that lurks half
hidden in all this way of thinking. It is so concealed that we shall
hardly detect it unless we are sharply on the watch for this tendency to
exalt the Infinite at the expense of the finite; the Universal at the
expense of the particular; God at the expense of our neighbour.
"Higher far into the pure realm,
Over sun and star,
Over the flickering Dæmon film,
Thou must mount for love;
Into vision where all form
In one only form dissolves;
Where unlike things are like;
Where good and ill,
And joy and moan,
Melt into one."
"Thus we are put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person,
nor partiality. We are made to feel that our affections are but tents of
a night. There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the man,
and make his happiness depend on a person or persons. But the warm loves
and fears that swept over us as clouds must lose their finite character,
and blend with God, to attain their own perfection." "Before that heaven
which our presentiments foreshow us, we cannot easily praise any form of
life we have seen or read of. Pressed on our attention, the saints and
demigods whom history worships fatigue and invade. The soul gives
itself, alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure,
who on that condition gladly inhabits it." "The higher the style we
demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh
and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends such as we desire are
dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart,
that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now
acting, enduring, daring, which can love us and which we can love."
"I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them
where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on
our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot
afford to speak much with my friend. Then, though I prize my friends, I
cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I lose my
own. It would indeed give me a certain household joy to quit this lofty
seeking, this spiritual astronomy or search of stars, and come down to
warm sympathies with you; but then I know well I shall mourn always the
vanishing of my mighty gods." "True love transcends the unworthy object
and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask
crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its
independency the surer."
Here you have Plato and Thomas à Kempis in the elegant garb of a
heretical transcendentalist. But you get the same dualism of finite and
infinite, perfect and imperfect; unworthy, crumbling earth-mask to be
gotten rid of here on earth, and the stars to be sought out and gazed at
up in heaven.
The combat of the higher against the lower is one in which we must all
engage; and no doubt in order to win we must at times keep the lower
solicitations at arm's-length. If, however, what appeals to us in the
name of the highest counsels any relaxing of definite obligation, any
alienation from the man or woman whom social institutions have placed
closest by our side; any disloyalty to the plain companions and humble
associates whom society or business places in our way; any breaking of
social bonds which generations of self-sacrifice and self-control have
laboriously woven, and centuries of experience have approved as
beneficent; then it is time to abandon Plato, or rather those who have
assumed to wear his mantle, and look for personal guidance to those
greater masters who have transcended the antithesis of higher and lower,
which it was Plato's great mission to make so sharp and clear. The
principle of such a reconciliation we shall find in Aristotle; its
complete accomplishment we shall find in Jesus.
CHAPTER IV
THE ARISTOTELIAN SENSE OF PROPORTION
I
ARISTOTLE'S OBJECTIONS TO PREVIOUS SYSTEMS
Our principles of personality thus far, though increasingly complex,
have all been comparatively simple. To get the maximum of pleasure; to
keep the universal law; to subordinate lower impulses to higher
according to some fixed scale of value, are all principles which are
easy to grasp and by no means difficult to apply. The fundamental
trouble with them all is that they are too easy. Life is not the
cut-and-dried affair which they presuppose. A man might have a lot of
pleasure, and yet be contemptible. He might keep all the commandments,
and yet be no better than a Pharisee. Even Plato's principle in actual
practice has not always escaped the awful abyss of asceticism.
In opposition to Epicurus Aristotle says, "Pleasure is not the good and
all pleasures are not desirable. No one would choose to live on
condition of having no more intellect than a child all his life, even
though he were to enjoy to the full the pleasures of a child. With
regard to the pleasures which all admit to be base, we must deny that
they are pleasures at all, except to those whose nature is corrupt. What
the good man thinks is pleasure will be pleasure; what he delights in
will be truly pleasant. Those pleasures which perfect the activity of
the perfect and truly happy man may be called in the truest sense the
pleasures of a man. The pleasure which is proper to a good activity is
therefore good; that attached to a bad one is bad. As, then, activities
differ, so do the pleasures which accompany them."
In our discussion of Epicureanism we saw that the principle of pleasure
consistently carried out produced bad results, and, as in the case of
Tito Melema, developed the most contemptible character. Aristotle shows
conclusively why this must be so. Pleasure is the sign and seal of
healthful exercise of function. A life which has all its powers in
effective and well-proportioned exercise will, indeed, be a life crowned
with pleasure. You cannot, however, reverse this proposition, as the
Epicurean attempts to do, and say that a life which seeks the maximum of
pleasure will inevitably have the healthy and proportionate exercise of
function as its consequent. According to Aristotle healthy exercise of
function in a well-proportioned life in devotion to wide social ends and
permanent personal interests, is the cause of which happiness is the
appropriate and inevitable effect. Seek the cause and you will get the
effect. Seek directly the effect, and you will miss both the cause you
neglect and the effect which only the cause can bring. The criticism
which we quoted from George Eliot on the career of Melema is the
quintessence of the Aristotelian doctrine. To put it in a figure: Build
a good fire and warm your room, and the mercury in the thermometer will
rise. The cause produces the effect. But it does not follow that because
you raise the mercury in the thermometer by breathing on the bulb, or
holding it in your hand, that the fire will burn, or the room will be
warmed. The Epicureans and hedonists are people who go about with the
clinical thermometer of pleasure under their tongues all the time, and
expect to see the world lighted with benevolence and warmed with love in
consequence. Aristotle bids them take their clinical thermometers out of
their mouths; stop fingering their emotional pulse; go to work about
some useful business; pursue some large and generous end; and then, not
otherwise, in case from time to time they have occasion to feel their
pulse and take their temperature, they will as a matter of fact find
that they are normal. But it isn't taking the temperature and feeling
the pulse that makes them morally sound; it is doing their proper work
and keeping in vigorous exercise that gives them the healthy pulse and
normal temperature.
There are, however, two apparently contradictory teachings about
pleasure in Aristotle, and it is a good test of our grasp of his
doctrine to see whether we can reconcile them. First he says, "In all
cases we must be especially on our guard against pleasant things, and
against pleasure; for we can scarce judge her impartially. And so, in
our behaviour toward her, we should imitate the behaviour of the old
counsellors toward Helen, and in all cases repeat their saying: If we
dismiss her, we shall be less likely to go wrong." "It is pleasure that
moves us to do what is base, and pain that moves us to refrain from what
is noble."
On the other hand he says: "The pleasure or pain that accompanies the
acts must be taken as a test of character. He who faces danger with
pleasure, or, at any rate, without pain, is courageous, but he to whom
this is painful is a coward. Indeed we all more or less make pleasure
our test in judging actions."
Can we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory statements?
Perfectly. On the one hand if we do an act simply for the pleasure it
will give, without first asking how the proposed act will fit into our
permanent plan of life, we are pretty sure to go astray. For pleasure
registers the goodness of the isolated act; not the goodness of the act
as related to the whole plan of life. Thus if I drink strong coffee at
eleven o'clock at night, the taste is pleasant and the immediate effect
is stimulating. But if it keeps me awake half the night and unfits me
for the duties of the next day, in spite of the pleasure gained, the act
is wrong. And it is wrong, not fundamentally because of the pains of
wakefulness it brings; it is wrong because it takes out of my life as a
whole, and my contribution to the life of the world, something for which
the petty transient pleasure I gained at the moment of indulgence is no
compensation whatsoever. Is not Aristotle right? Do we not pity as a
miserable weakling, hardly fit to have been graduated from the nursery,
any man or woman who will let the mere physical sensation of a few
moments at the end of an evening count so much as the dust in the
balance against the efficiency of the coming forenoon's life and work?
If we see this half of Aristotle's truth, we see that the other is not
its contradiction but its complement. If we are sorely and grievously
tempted by the coffee, if we give it up with pain, if saying "No, I
thank you," comes fearfully hard, if we cannot forego it cheerfully
without so much as seriously considering the drinking of it as possible
for us, why then it reveals how little we care for the life and work of
the morrow; and since life and work are but a succession of to-morrows,
how little we care for our life and work anyway. If we had great aims
burning in our minds and hearts, wide interests to which body and soul
were devoted, it would not be a pain, it would be a pleasure, to give up
for the sake of them ten thousand times as big a thing as a cup of
coffee, if it stood in the way of their accomplishment. Yes; Aristotle
is right on both points. Pleasure isolated from our plan of life and
followed as an end will lead us into weakness and wickedness every time
we yield to its insidious solicitation. On the other hand, the resolute
and consistent prosecution of large ends and generous interests will
make a positive pleasure of everything we either endure or do to promote
those ends and interests. Pleasure directly pursued is the utter
demoralisation of life. Ends and interests, pursued for their own sakes,
inevitably carry with them a host of noble pleasures, and the power to
conquer and transform what to the aimless life would be intolerable
pains.
Aristotle rejects the Epicurean principle of pleasure; because, though a
proof that isolated tendencies are satisfied, it is no adequate
criterion of the satisfaction of the self as a whole. He rejects the
Stoic principle of conformity to law; because it fails to recognise the
supreme worth of individuality. He rejects the Platonic principle of
subordination of appetites and passions to a supreme good which is above
them; because he dreads above all things the blight of asceticism, and
strives for a good which is concrete and practical.
What, then, is this good, which is neither a sum of pleasures, nor
conformity to law; nor yet superiority to appetite and passion? What is
this principle which can at once enjoy pleasure to the full, and at the
same time forego it gladly; which can make laws for itself more severe
than any lawgiver ever dared to lay down; and yet is not afraid to break
any law which its own conception of good requires it to break; which
honours all our elemental appetites and passions, uses money and honour
and power as the servants of its own ends, without ever being enslaved
by them? Evidently we are now on the track of a principle infinitely
more subtle and complex than anything the pleasure-loving Epicurean, or
the formal Stoic, or the transcendental Platonist has ever dreamed of.
We are entering the presence of the world's master moralist; and if we
have ever for a moment supposed that either of these previous systems
was satisfactory or final, it behooves us now to take the shoes from off
our feet, and reverently listen to a voice as much profounder and more
reasonable than them all, as they are superior to the senseless
appetites and blind passions of the mob. For if we have a little
patience with his subtlety, and can endure the temporary shock of his
apparent laxity, he will admit us to the very holy of holies of
personality.
II
THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN
Before coming to Aristotle's positive doctrine we must consider one
fundamental axiom. Man is by nature a social being. Whatever a man seeks
has a necessary and inevitable reference to the judgment of other men,
and the interest of society as a whole. Strip a man of his relations and
you have no man left. The man who is neither son, brother, husband,
father, citizen, neighbour or workman, is inconceivable. The good which
a man seeks, therefore, will express itself consciously or unconsciously
in terms of other men's approval, and the furtherance of interests which
he inevitably shares with them. The Greek word for private, peculiar to
myself, unrelated to the thought or interest of anybody else, is our
word for idiot. The New Testament uses this word to describe the place
to which Judas went; a place which just suited such a man as he, and was
fit for nobody else. Now a man who tries to be his own scientist, or his
own lawgiver, or his own statesman, or his own business manager, or his
own poet, or his own architect, without reference to the standards and
expectations of his fellow-men, is just an idiot; or, as we say, a
"crank." A wise man may defy these standards. The reformer often must do
so. But if he is really wise, if he is a true reformer, he must reckon
with them; he must understand them; he must appeal to the actual or
possible judgment and interest of his fellows for the confirmation of
what he says and the justification of what he does. This social
reference of all our thoughts and actions, which Aristotle grasped by
intuition, psychology in our day is laboriously and analytically
seeking to confirm. Aristotle lays it down as an axiom, that a man who
does not devote himself to some section of the social and spiritual
world, if such a being were conceivable, would be no man at all. Family,
or friends, or reputation, or country, or God are there in the
background, secretly summoned to justify our every thought and word and
deed.
Because man's nature is social, his end must be social also. It will
prevent misunderstanding later, if we put the question squarely here,
Does the end justify the means? As popularly understood, most
emphatically No. The support of a school is a good end. Does it justify
the raising of money by a lottery? Certainly not. The support of one's
family is a good end. Does it justify drawing a salary for which no
adequate services are rendered? Certainly not.
Yet if we push the question farther, and ask why these particular ends
do not justify these particular means, we discover that it is because
these means employed are destructive of an end vastly higher and greater
than the particular ends they are employed to serve. They break down the
structure and undermine the foundations of the industrial and social
order; an end infinitely more important than the maintenance of any
particular school, or the support of any individual family. Hence these
means are not to be judged by their promotion of certain specific ends,
but by their failure to promote the greatest and best end of all; the
comprehensive welfare of society as a whole, of which all institutions
and families and individuals are but subordinate members.
Throughout our discussion of Aristotle we must understand that the word
"end" always has this large social reference, and includes the highest
social service of which the man is capable. If we attempt to apply to
particular private ends of our own what Aristotle applies to the
universal end at which all men ought to aim, we shall make his teaching
a pretext for the grossest crimes, and reduce it to little more than
sophisticated selfishness. With this understanding of his terms, we may
venture to plunge boldly into his system and state it in its most
paradoxical and startling form.
III
RIGHT AND WRONG DETERMINED BY THE END
We are not either good or bad at the start. Pleasure in itself is
neither good nor bad. Laws in themselves are neither good nor bad. It is
impossible to say with Plato that some faculties are so high that they
always ought to be exercised, and others are so low that as a rule they
ought to be suppressed. The right and wrong of eating and drinking, of
work and play, of sex and society, of property and politics, lie not in
the elemental acts involved. All of these things are right for one man
in one set of circumstances, wrong for another man in another set of
circumstances. We cannot say that a man who takes a vow of poverty is
either a better or a worse man than a multi-millionnaire. We cannot say
that the monk who takes a vow of celibacy is a purer man than one who
does not. For the very fact that one is compelled to take a vow of
poverty or celibacy is a sign that these elemental impulses are not
effectively and satisfactorily related to the normal ends they are
naturally intended to subserve. All attempts to put virginity above
motherhood, to put poverty above riches, to put obscurity above fame
are, from the Aristotelian point of view, essentially immoral. For they
all assume that there can be badness in external things, wrong in
isolated actions, vice in elemental appetites, and sin in natural
passions; whereas Aristotle lays down the fundamental principle that the
only place where either badness or wrong or vice or sin can reside is in
the relation in which these external things and particular actions
stand to the clearly conceived and deliberately cherished end which the
man is seeking to promote. A simpler way of saying the same thing, but a
way so simple and familiar as to be in danger of missing the whole
point, is to say that virtue and vice reside exclusively in the wills of
free agents. That, every one will admit. But will is the pursuit of
ends. A will that seeks no ends is a will that wills nothing; in other
words, no will at all. Whether an act is wrong or right, then, depends
on the whole plan of life of which it is a part; on the relation in
which it stands to one's permanent interests. For these many years I
have defied class after class of college students to bring in a single
example of any elemental appetite or passion which is intrinsically bad;
which in all circumstances and relations is evil. And never yet has any
student brought me one such case. If brandy will tide the weak heart
over the crisis that follows a surgical operation, then that glass of
brandy is just as good and precious as the dear life it saves. The
proposition that sexual love is intrinsically evil, and those who take
vows of celibacy are intrinsically superior, is true only on condition
that racial suicide is the greatest good, and all the sweet ties of
home and family and parenthood and brotherly love are evils which it is
our duty to combat. To deny that wealth is good is only possible to him
who is prepared to go farther and denounce civilisation as a calamity.
He who brands ambition as intrinsically evil must be prepared to herd
with swine, and share contentedly their fare of husks.
The foundation of personality, therefore, is the power to clearly grasp
an imaginary condition of ourselves which is preferable to any practical
alternative; and then translate that potential picture into an
accomplished fact. Whoever lives at a lower level than this constant
translation of pictured potency into energetic reality: whoever, seeing
the picture of the self he wants to be, suffers aught less noble and
less imperative than that to determine his action misses the mark of
personality. Whoever sees the picture, and holds it before his mind so
clearly that all external things which favour it are chosen for its
sake, and all proposed actions which would hinder it are remorselessly
rejected in its holy name and by its mighty power;--he rises to the
level of personality, and his personality is of that clear, strong,
joyous, compelling, conquering, triumphant sort which alone is worthy of
the name.
How much deeper this goes than anything we have had before! A man comes
up for judgment. If Epicurus chances to be seated on the throne, he asks
the candidate, "Have you had a good time?" If he has, he opens the gates
of Paradise; if he has not, he bids him be off to the place of torment
where people who don't know how to enjoy themselves ought to go.
The Stoic asks him whether he has kept all the commandments. If he has,
then he may be promoted to serve the great Commander in other
departments of the cosmic order. If he has broken the least of them, no
matter on what pretext, or under what temptation, he is irrevocably
doomed. Plato asks him how well he has managed to keep under his
appetites and passions. If the man has risen above them, Plato will
promote him to seats nearer the perfect goodness of the gods. If he has
slipped or failed, then he must return for longer probation in the
prison-house of sense.
Aristotle's judgment seat is a very different place. A man comes to him
who has had a very sorry time: who has broken many commandments; who has
yielded time and again to sensuous desires; yet who is a good husband, a
kind father, an honest workman, a loyal citizen, a disinterested
scientist or artist, a lover of his fellows, a worshipper of God's
beauty and beneficence; and in spite of the sad time he has had, in
spite of the laws he has broken, in spite of the appetites which have
proved too strong for him, Aristotle gives him his hand, and bids him go
up higher. For that man stands in genuine relations to some aspects of
the great social end to which he devotes himself. And because some
portion of the real world has been made better by the conception of it
he has cherished, and the fidelity with which he has translated his
conception into fact, therefore a share in the great glory of the
splendid whole belongs of right to him. Good honest work, after an ideal
plan, to the full measure of his powers, with wise selection of
appropriate means, gives each individual his place and rank in the vast
workshop wherein the eternal thoughts of God, revealed to men as their
several ideals, are wrought out into the actuality of the social,
economic, political, æsthetic and spiritual order of the world.
On the other hand, the man of scattered and unfruitful pleasures, the
man of merely clear conscience, pure life, unstained reputation, with
his boast of rites observed, and ceremonies performed, and laws
unbroken, "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null," is the
man above all others whom Aristotle cannot endure.
Do you wish, then, to know precisely where you stand in the scale of
personality? Here is the test. How large a section of this world do you
care for, in such a vital, responsible way, that you are thinking about
its welfare, forming schemes for its improvement, bending your energies
toward its advancement? Do you care for your profession in that way? Do
you care for your family like that? Do you love your country with such
jealous solicitude for its honour and prosperity? Can you honestly say
that your neighbour gets represented in your mind in this imaginative,
sympathetic, helpful way? Do you think of God's great universe as
something in the goodness of which you rejoice, and for the welfare of
which you are earnestly enlisted? Begin down at the bottom, with your
stomach, your pocket-book, your calling list, and go up the scale until
you come to these wider interests, and mark the point where you cease to
think how these things might be better than they are and to work to make
them so, and that point where your imagination and your service stops,
and your indifference and irresponsibility begins, will show you
precisely how you stand on the rank-book of God. The magnitude of the
ends you see and serve is the measure of your personality. Personality
is not an entity we carry around in our spiritual pockets. It is an
energy, which is no whit larger or smaller than the ends it aims at and
the work it does. If you are not doing anything or caring for anybody,
or devoted to any end, you will not be called up at some future time and
formally punished for your negligence. Plato might flatter your
self-importance with that notion, but not Aristotle. Aristotle tells
you, not that your soul will be punished hereafter, but that it is lost
already.
Goodness does not consist in doing or refraining from doing this or that
particular thing. It depends on the whole aim and purpose of the man who
does it, or refrains from doing it. Anything which a good man does as
part of the best plan of life is made thereby a good act. And anything
that a bad man does, as part of a bad plan of life, becomes thereby an
evil act. Precisely the same external act is good for one man and bad
for another. An example or two will make this clear.
Two men seek political office. For one man it is the gate of heaven; to
the other it is the door to hell. One man has established himself in a
business or profession in which he can earn an honest living and support
his family. He has acquired sufficient standing in his business so that
he can turn it over temporarily to his partners or subordinates. He has
solved his own problem; and he has strength, time, energy, capacity,
money, which he can give to solving the problems of the public. Were he
to shirk public office, or evade it, or fail to take all legitimate
means to secure it, he would be a coward, a traitor, a parasite on the
body politic. For there is good work to be done, which he is able to do,
and can afford to do, without unreasonable sacrifice of himself or his
family. Hence public office is for this man the gateway of heaven.
The other man has not mastered any business or profession; he has not
made himself indispensable to any employer or firm; he has no permanent
means of supporting himself and his family. He sees a political office
in which he can get a little more salary for doing a good deal less work
than is possible in his present position. He seeks the office, as a
means of getting his living out of the public. From that day forth he
joins the horde of mere office-seekers, aiming to get out of the public
a living he is too lazy, or too incompetent, or too proud to earn in
private employment. Thus the very same external act, which was the
other man's strait, narrow gateway to heaven, is for this man the broad,
easy descent into hell.
Two women join the same woman's club, and take part in the same
programme. One of them has her heart in her home; has fulfilled all the
sweet charities of daughter, sister, wife, or mother; and in order to
bring back to these loved ones at home wider interests, larger
friendships, and a richer and more varied interest in life, has gone out
into the work and life of the club. No angel in heaven is better
employed than she in the preparation and delivery of her papers and her
attendance on committee meetings and afternoon teas.
The other woman finds home life dull and monotonous. She likes to get
away from her children. She craves excitement, flattery, fame, social
importance. She is restless, irritable, out of sorts, censorious,
complaining at home; animated, gracious, affable, complaisant abroad.
For drudgery and duty she has no strength, taste, or talent; and the
thought of these things are enough to give her dyspepsia, insomnia, and
nervous prostration. But for all sorts of public functions, for the
preparation of reports, and the organisation of new charitable and
philanthropic and social schemes, she has all the energy of a
steam-engine, the power of a dynamo. When this woman joins a new club,
or writes a new paper, or gets a new office, though she does not a
single thing more than her angel sister who sits by her side, she is
playing the part of a devil.
It is not what one does; it is the whole purpose of life consciously or
unconsciously expressed in the doing that measures the worth of the man
or woman who does it. At the family table, at the bench in the shop, at
the desk in the office, in the seats at the theatre, in the ranks of the
army, in the pews of the church, saint and sinner sit side by side; and
often the keenest outward observer cannot detect the slightest
difference in the particular things that they do. The good man is he
who, in each act he does or refrains from doing, is seeking the good of
all the persons who are affected by his action. The bad man is the man
who, whatever he does or refrains from doing, leaves out of account the
interests of some of the people whom his action is sure to affect. Is
there any sphere of human welfare to which you are indifferent? Are
there any people in the world whose interests you deliberately
disregard? Then, no matter how many acts of charity and philanthropy,
and industry and public spirit you perform--acts which would be good if
a good man did them--in spite of them all, you are to that extent an
evil man.
We have, then, clearly in mind Aristotle's first great concept. The end
of life, which he calls happiness, he defines as the identification of
one's self with some large social or intellectual object, and the
devotion of all one's powers to its disinterested service. So far forth
it is Carlyle's gospel of the blessedness of work in a worthy cause.
"Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
He has a work, a life purpose; he has found it, and will follow it. The
only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself with asking much about
was happiness enough to get his work done. Whatsoever of morality and of
intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness of method,
insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of strength the man
had in him will lie written in the work he does. To work: why, it is to
try himself against Nature and her everlasting unerring laws; these will
tell a true verdict as to the man."
When we read Carlyle, we are apt to think such words merely exaggerated
rhetoric. Now Aristotle says the same thing in the cold, calculated
terms of precise philosophy. A man is what he does. He can do nothing
except what he first sees as an unaccomplished idea, and then bends all
his energies to accomplish. In working out his ideas and making them
real, he at the same time works out his own powers, and becomes a living
force, a working will in the world. And since the soul is just this
working will, the man has so much soul, no more, no less, than he
registers in manual or mental work performed. To be able to point to
some sphere of external reality, a bushel of corn, a web of cloth, a
printed page, a healthful tenement, an educated youth, a moral
community, and say that these things would not have been there in the
outward world, if they had not first been in your mind as an idea
controlling your thought and action;--this is to point to the external
and visible counterpart and measure of the invisible and internal energy
which is your life, your soul, your self, your personality.
IV
THE NEED OF INSTRUMENTS
Aristotle's first doctrine, then, is that we must work for worthy ends.
The second follows directly from it. We must have tools to work with;
means by which to gain our ends. General Gordon, who was something of a
Platonist, remarked to Cecil Rhodes, who was a good deal of an
Aristotelian, that he once had a whole room full of gold offered him,
and declined to take it. "I should have taken it," replied Mr. Rhodes.
"What is the use of having great schemes if you haven't the means to
carry them out?" As Aristotle says: "Happiness plainly requires external
goods; for it is impossible, or at least not easy, to act nobly without
some furniture of fortune. There are many things that can be done only
through instruments, so to speak, such as friends and wealth and
political influence; and there are some things whose absence takes the
bloom off our happiness, as good birth, the blessing of children,
personal beauty. Happiness, then, seems to stand in need of this kind of
prosperity."
How different this from all our previous teachings! The Epicurean wants
little wealth, no family, no official station; because all these things
involve so much care and bother. The Stoic barely tolerates them as
indifferent. Plato took especial pains to deprive his guardians of most
of these very things. Aristotle on this point is perfectly sane. He says
you want them; because, to the fullest life and the largest work, they
are well-nigh indispensable. The editor of a metropolitan newspaper, the
president of a railroad, the corporation attorney cannot live their
lives and do their work effectively without comfortable homes, enjoyable
vacations, social connections, educational opportunities, which cost a
great deal of money. For them to despise money would be to despise the
conditions of their own effective living, to pour contempt on their own
souls.
Is Aristotle, then, a gross materialist, a mere money-getter,
pleasure-lover, office-seeker? Far from it. These things are not the end
of a noble life, but means by which to serve ends far worthier than
themselves. To make these things the ends of life, he explicitly says is
shameful and unnatural. The good, the true end, is "something which is a
man's own, and cannot be taken away from him."
Now we have two fundamental Aristotelian doctrines. We must have an end,
some section of the world which we undertake to mould according to a
pattern clearly seen and firmly grasped in our own minds.
Second, we must have instruments, tools, furniture of fortune in the
shape of health, wealth, influence, power, friends, business and social
and political connections with which to carry out our ends. And the
larger and nobler our ends, the more of these instruments shall we
require. If, like Cecil Rhodes, we undertake for instance to paint the
map of Africa British red, we shall want a monopoly of the product of
the Kimberley and adjacent diamond mines.
V
THE HAPPY MEAN
The third great Aristotelian principle follows directly from these two.
If we are to use instruments for some great end, then the amount of the
instruments we want, and the extent to which we shall use them, will
obviously be determined by the end at which we aim. We must take just so
much of them as will best promote that end. This is Aristotle's much
misunderstood but most characteristic doctrine of the mean. Approached
from the point of view which we have already gained, this doctrine of
the mean is perfectly intelligible, and altogether reasonable. For
instance, if you are an athlete, and the winning of a foot-ball game is
your end, and you have an invitation to a ball the evening before the
game, what is the right and reasonable thing to do? Dancing in itself is
good. You enjoy it. You would like to go. You need recreation after the
long period of training. But if you are wise, you will decline. Why?
Because the excitement of the ball, the late hours, the physical effort,
the nervous expenditure will use up more energy than can be recovered
before the game comes off upon the morrow. You decline, not because the
ball is an intrinsic evil, or dancing is intrinsically bad, or
recreation is inherently injurious, but because too much of these
things, in the precise circumstances in which you are placed, with the
specific end you have in view, would be disastrous. On the other hand,
will you have no recreation the evening before the game; but simply sit
in your room and mope? That would be even worse than going to the ball.
For nature abhors a vacuum in the mind no less than in the world of
matter. If you sit alone in your room, you will begin to worry about the
game, and very likely lose your night's sleep, and be utterly unfitted
when the time arrives. Too little recreation in these circumstances is
as fatal as too much. What you want is just enough to keep your mind
pleasantly diverted, without effort or exertion on your part. If the
glee club can be brought around to sing some jolly songs, if a funny man
can be found to tell amusing stories, you have the happy mean; that is,
just enough recreation to put you in condition for a night's sound
sleep, and bring you to the contest on the morrow in prime physical and
mental condition.
Aristotle, in his doctrine of the mean, is simply telling us that this
problem of the athlete on the night before the contest is the personal
problem of us all every day of our lives.
How late shall the student study at night? Shall he keep on until past
midnight year after year? If he does, he will undermine his health, lose
contact with society, and defeat those ends of social usefulness which
ought to be part of every worthy scholar's cherished end. On the other
hand, shall he fritter away all his evenings with convivial fellows, and
the society butterflies? Too much of that sort of thing would soon put
an end to scholarship altogether. His problem is to find that amount of
study which will keep him sensitively alive to the latest problems of
his chosen subject; and yet not make all his acquisitions comparatively
worthless either through broken health, or social estrangement from his
fellow-men. How rare and precious that mean is, those of us who have to
find college professors are well aware. It is easy to find scores of men
who know their subject so well that they know nothing and nobody else
aright. It is easy to find jolly, easy-going fellows who would not
object to positions as college professors. But the man who has enough
good fellowship and physical vigour to make his scholarship attractive
and effective, and enough scholarship to make his vigour and good
fellowship intellectually powerful and personally stimulating,--he is
the man who has hit the Aristotelian mean; he is the man we are all
after; he is the man whom we would any of us give a year's salary to
find.
The mean is not midway between zero and the maximum attainable. As
Aristotle says, "By the mean relatively to us I understand that which is
neither too much nor too little for us; and that is not one and the same
for all. For instance, if ten be too large and two be too small, if we
take six, we take the mean relatively to the thing itself, or the
arithmetical mean. But the mean relatively to us cannot be found in this
way. If ten pounds of food is too much for a given man to eat, and two
pounds too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order him
six pounds; for that also may perhaps be too much for the man in
question, or too little; too little for Milo, too much for the beginner.
And so we may say generally that a master in any art avoids what is too
much and what is too little, and seeks for the mean and chooses it--not
the absolute but the relative mean. So that people are wont to say of a
good work, that nothing could be taken from it or added to it, implying
that excellence is destroyed by excess or deficiency, but secured by
observing the mean."
The Aristotelian principle, of judging a situation on its merits, and
subordinating means to the supreme end, was never more clearly stated
than in Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley: "I would save the Union. If
there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the
same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who
would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy
slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle
is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and
if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that.
What I do about slavery and the coloured race, I do because I believe it
helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not
believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I
believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more when I
shall believe doing more will help the cause."
VI
THE ARISTOTELIAN VIRTUES AND THEIR ACQUISITION
The special forms that the one great virtue of seeking the relative mean
takes in actual life bear a close correspondence to the cardinal virtues
of Plato; yet with a difference which marks a positive advance in
insight. Aristotle, to begin with, distinguishes wisdom from prudence.
Wisdom is the theoretic knowledge of things as they are, irrespective of
their serviceableness to our practical interests. In modern terms it is
devotion to pure science. This corresponds to Plato's contemplation of
the Good. According to Aristotle this devotion to knowledge for its own
sake underlies all virtue; for only he who knows how things stand
related to each other in the actual world, will be able to grasp aright
that relation of means to ends on which the success of the practical
life depends. Just as the engineer cannot build a bridge across the
Mississippi unless he knows those laws of pure mathematics and physics
which underlie the stability of all structures, so the man who is
ignorant of economics, politics, sociology, psychology, and ethics is
sure to make a botch of any attempts he may make to build bridges
across the gulf which separates one man from another man; one group of
citizens from another group. Pure science is at the basis of all art,
consciously or unconsciously; and therefore wisdom is the fundamental
form of virtue.
Prudence comes next; the power to see, not the theoretical relations of
men and things to each other, but the practical relationships of men and
things to our self-chosen ends. Wisdom knows the laws which govern the
strength of materials. Prudence knows how strong a structure is
necessary to support the particular strain we wish to place upon it.
Wisdom knows sociology. Prudence tells us whether in a given case it is
better to give a beggar a quarter of a dollar, an order on a central
bureau, a scolding, or a kick. The most essential, and yet the rarest
kind of prudence is that considerateness which sensitively appreciates
the point of view of the people with whom we deal, and takes proper
account of those subtle and complex sentiments, prejudices, traditions,
and ways of thinking, which taken together constitute the social
situation.
Temperance, again, is not the repression of lower impulses in the
interest of those abstractly higher, as it came to be in the popular
interpretations of Platonism, and as it was in Stoicism. With Aristotle
it is the stern and remorseless exclusion of whatever cannot be brought
into subjection to my chosen ends, whatever they may be. As Stevenson
says in true Aristotelian spirit, "We are not damned for doing wrong: we
are damned for not doing right." For temperance lies not in the external
thing done or left undone; but in that relation of means to worthy ends
which either the doing or the not doing of certain things may most
effectively express. We shall never get any common basis of
understanding on what we call the temperance question of to-day until we
learn to recognise this internal and moral, as distinct from the
external and physical, definition of what true temperance is. Temperance
isn't abstinence. Temperance isn't indulgence. Neither is it moderation
in the ordinary sense of that term. True temperance is the using of just
so much of a thing,--no more, no less, but just so much,--as best
promotes the ends one has at heart. To discover whether a man is
temperate or not in anything, you must first know the ends at which he
aims; and then the strictness with which he uses the means that best
further those ends, and foregoes the things that would hinder them.
Temperance of this kind looks at first sight like license. So it is if
one's aims be not broad and high. In the matter of sexual morality,
Aristotle's doctrine as applied in his day was notoriously loose.
Whatever did not interfere with one's duties as citizen and soldier was
held to be permissible. Yet as Green and Muirhead, and all the
commentators on Aristotle have pointed out, it is a deeper grasp of this
very principle of Aristotle, a widening of the conception of the true
social end, which is destined to put chastity on its eternal rock
foundation, and make of sexual immorality the transparently weak and
wanton, cruel and unpardonable vice it is. To do this, to be sure, there
must be grafted on to it the Christian principle of democracy,--a regard
for the rights and interests of persons as persons. The beauty of the
Aristotelian principle is that it furnishes so stout and sturdy a stock
to graft this principle on to. When Christianity is unsupported by some
such solid trunk of rationality, it easily drops into a sentimental
asceticism. Take, for example, this very matter of sexual morality.
Divorced from some such great social end as Aristotelianism requires,
the only defence you have against the floods of sensuality is the vague,
sentimental, ascetic notion that in some way or other these things are
naughty, and good people ought not to do them. How utterly ineffective
such a barrier is, everybody who has had much dealing with young men
knows perfectly well. And yet that is pretty much all the opposition
current and conventional morality is offering at the present time. The
Aristotelian doctrine, with the Christian principle grafted on, puts two
plain questions to every man. Do you include the sanctity of the home,
the peace and purity of family life, the dignity and welfare of every
man and woman, the honest birthright of every child, as part of the
social end at which you aim? If you do, you are a noble and honourable
man. If you do not, then you are a disgrace to the mother who bore you,
and the home where you were reared. So much for the question of the end.
The second question is concerned with the means. Do you honestly believe
that loose and promiscuous sexual relations conduce to that sanctity of
the home, that peace and purity of family life, that dignity and welfare
of every man and woman, that honest birthright of every child, which as
an honourable man you must admit to be the proper end at which to aim?
If you think these means are conducive to these ends, then you are
certainly an egregious fool. Temperance in these matters, then, or to
use its specific name, chastity, is simply the refusal to ignore the
great social end which every decent man must recognise as reasonable and
right; and the resolute determination not to admit into his own life, or
inflict on the lives of others, anything that is destructive of that
social end. Chastity is neither celibacy nor licentiousness. It is far
deeper than either, and far nobler than them both. It is devotion to the
great ends of family integrity, personal dignity, and social stability.
It is including the welfare of society, and of every man, woman, and
child involved, in the comprehensive end for which we live; and holding
all appetites and passions in strict relation to that reasonable and
righteous end.
Aristotelian courage is simply the other side of temperance. Temperance
remorselessly cuts off whatever hinders the ends at which we aim.
Courage, on the other hand, resolutely takes on whatever dangers and
losses, whatever pains and penalties are incidental to the effective
prosecution of these ends. To hold consistently an end, is to endure
cheerfully whatever means the service of that end demands. Aristotelian
courage, rightly conceived, leads us to the very threshold of Christian
sacrifice. He who comes to Christian sacrifice by this approach of
Aristotelian courage, will be perfectly clear about the reasonableness
of it, and will escape that abyss of sentimentalism into which too
largely our Christian doctrine of sacrifice has been allowed to drop.
Courage does not depend on whether you save your life, or risk your
life, or lose your life. A brave man may save his life in situations
where a coward would lose it and a fool would risk it. The brave man is
he who is so clear and firm in his grasp of some worthy end that he will
live if he can best serve it by living; that he will die if he can best
serve it by dying; and he will take his chances of life or death if
taking those chances is the best way to serve this end.
The brave man does not like criticism, unpopularity, defeat, hostility,
any better than anybody else. He does not pretend to like them. He does
not court them. He does not pose as a martyr every chance that he can
get. He simply takes these pains and ills as under the circumstances the
best means of furthering the ends he has at heart. For their sake he
swallows criticism and calls it good; invites opposition and glories in
overcoming it, or being overcome by it, as the fates may decree; accepts
persecution and rejoices to be counted worthy to suffer in so good a
cause.
It is all a question here as everywhere in Aristotle of the ends at
which one aims, and the sense of proportion with which he chooses his
means. In his own words: "The man, then, who governs his fear and
likewise his confidence aright, facing dangers it is right to face, and
for the right cause, in the right manner, and at the right time, is
courageous. For the courageous man regulates both his feelings and his
actions with due regard to the circumstances and as reason and
proportion suggest. The courageous man, therefore, faces danger and does
the courageous thing because it is a fine thing to do." As Muirhead sums
up Aristotle's teaching on this point: "True courage must be for a noble
object. Here, as in all excellence, action and object, consequence and
motive, are inseparable. Unless the action is inspired by a noble
motive, and permeated throughout its whole structure by a noble
character, it has no claim to the name of courage."
The virtues cannot be learned out of a book, or picked up ready-made.
They must be acquired, by practice, as is the case with the arts; and
they are not really ours until they have become so habitual as to be
practically automatic. The sign and seal of the complete acquisition of
any virtue is the pleasure we take in it. Such pleasure once gained
becomes one's lasting and inalienable possession.
In Aristotle's words: "We acquire the virtues by doing the acts, as is
the case with the arts too. We learn an art by doing that which we wish
to do when we have learned it; we become builders by building, and
harpers by playing on the harp. And so by doing just acts we become
just, and by doing acts of temperance and courage we become temperate
and courageous. It is by our conduct in our intercourse with other men
that we become just or unjust, and by acting in circumstances of danger,
and training ourselves to feel fear or confidence, that we become
courageous or cowardly." "The happy man, then, as we define him, will
have the property of permanence, and all through life will preserve his
character; for he will be occupied continually, or with the least
possible interruption, in excellent deeds and excellent speculations;
and whatever his fortune may be, he will take it in the noblest fashion,
and bear himself always and in all things suitably. And if it is what
man does that determines the character of his life, then no happy man
will become miserable, for he will never do what is hateful and base.
For we hold that the man who is truly good and wise will bear with
dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his
circumstances, as a good general will turn the forces at his command to
the best account."
This doctrine that virtue, like skill in any game or craft, is gained by
practice, deserves a word of comment. It seems to say, "You must do the
thing before you know how, in order to know how after you have done it."
Paradox or no paradox, that is precisely the fact. The swimmer learns to
swim by floundering and splashing around in the water; and if he is
unwilling to do the floundering and splashing before he can swim, he
will never become a swimmer. The ball-player must do a lot of muffing
and wild throwing before he can become a sure catcher and a straight
thrower. If he is ashamed to go out on the diamond and make these
errors, he may as well give up at once all idea of ever becoming a
ball-player. For it is by the progressive elimination of errors that the
perfect player is developed. The only place where no errors are made,
whether in base-ball or in life, is on the grand stand. The courage to
try to do a thing before you know how, and the patience to keep on
trying after you have found out that you don't know how, and the
perseverance to renew the trial as many times as necessary until you do
know how, are the three conditions of the acquisition of physical skill,
mental power, moral virtue, or personal excellence.
VII
ARISTOTELIAN FRIENDSHIP
We are now prepared to see why Aristotle regards friendship as the crown
and consummation of a virtuous life. No one has praised friendship more
highly, or written of it more profoundly than he.
Friendship he defines as "unanimity on questions of the public advantage
and on all that touches life." This unanimity, however, is very
different from agreement in opinion. It is seeing things from the same
point of view; or, more accurately, it is the appreciation of each
other's interests and aims. The whole tendency of Aristotle thus far has
been to develop individuality; to make each man different from every
other man. Conventional people are all alike. But the people who have
cherished ends of their own, and who make all their choices with
reference to these inwardly cherished ends, become highly
differentiated. The more individual your life becomes, the fewer people
there are who can understand you. The man who has ends of his own is
bound to be unintelligible to the man who has no such ends, and is
merely drifting with the crowd. Now friendship is the bringing together
of these intensely individual, highly differentiated persons on a basis
of mutual sympathy and common understanding. Friendship is the
recognition and respect of individuality in others by persons who are
highly individualised themselves. That is why Aristotle says true
friendship is possible only between the good; between people, that is,
who are in earnest about ends that are large and generous and
public-spirited enough to permit of being shared. "The bad," he says,
"desire the company of others, but avoid their own. And because they
avoid their own company, there is no real basis for union of aims and
interests with their fellows." "Having nothing lovable about them, they
have no friendly feelings toward themselves. If such a condition is
consummately miserable, the moral is to shun vice, and strive after
virtue with all one's might. For in this way we shall at once have
friendly feelings toward ourselves and become the friends of others. A
good man stands in the same relation to his friend as to himself, seeing
that his friend is a second self." "The conclusion, therefore, is that
if a man is to be happy, he will require good friends."
Friendship has as many planes as human life and human association. The
men with whom we play golf and tennis, billiards and whist, are friends
on the lowest plane--that of common pleasures. Our professional and
business associates are friends upon a little higher plane--that of the
interests we share. The men who have the same social customs and
intellectual tastes; the men with whom we read our favourite authors,
and talk over our favourite topics, are friends upon a still higher
plane--that of identity of æsthetic and intellectual pursuits. The
highest plane, the best friends, are those with whom we consciously
share the spiritual purpose of our lives. This highest friendship is as
precious as it is rare. With such friends we drop at once into a
matter-of-course intimacy and communion. Nothing is held back, nothing
is concealed; our aims are expressed with the assurance of sympathy;
even our shortcomings are confessed with the certainty that they will be
forgiven. Such friendship lasts as long as the virtue which is its
common bond. Jealousy cannot come in to break it up. Absolute sincerity,
absolute loyalty,--these are the high terms on which such friendship
must be held. A person may have many such friends on one condition: that
he shall not talk to any one friend about what his friendship permits
him to know of another friend. Each such relation must be complete
within itself; and hermetically sealed, so far as permitting any one
else to come inside the sacred circle of its mutual confidence. In such
friendship, differences, as of age, sex, station in life, divide not,
but rather enhance, the sweetness and tenderness of the relationship. In
Aristotle's words: "The friendship of the good, and of those who have
the same virtues, is perfect friendship. Such friendship, therefore,
endures so long as each retains his character, and virtue is a lasting
thing."
VIII
CRITICISM AND SUMMARY OF ARISTOTLE'S TEACHING
If finally we ask what are the limitations of Aristotle, we find none
save the limitations of the age and city in which he lived. He lived in
a city-state where thirty thousand full male citizens, with some seventy
thousand women and children dependent upon them, were supported by the
labour of some hundred thousand slaves. The rights of man as such,
whether native or alien, male or female, free or slave, had not yet been
affirmed. That crowning proclamation of universal emancipation was
reserved for Christianity three centuries and a half later. Without
this Christian element no principle of personality is complete. Not
until the city-state of Plato and Aristotle is widened to include the
humblest man, the lowliest woman, the most defenceless little child,
does their doctrine become final and universal. Yet with this single
limitation of its range, the form of Aristotle's teaching is complete
and ultimate. Deeper, saner, stronger, wiser statement of the principles
of personality the world has never heard.
His teaching may be summed up in the following:--
TEN ARISTOTELIAN COMMANDMENTS
Thou shalt devote thy utmost powers to some section of our common social
welfare.
Thou shalt hold this end above all lesser goods, such as pleasure,
money, honour.
Thou shalt hold the instruments essential to the service of this end
second only to the end itself.
Thou shalt ponder and revere the universal laws that bind ends and means
together in the ordered universe.
Thou shalt master and obey the specific laws that govern the relation of
means to thy chosen end.
Thou shalt use just so much of the materials and tools of life as the
service of thy end requires.
Thou shalt exclude from thy life all that exceeds or falls below this
mean, reckless of pleasure lost.
Thou shalt endure whatever hardship and privation the maintenance of
this mean in the service of thy end requires, heedless of pain involved.
Thou shalt remain steadfast in this service until habit shall have made
it a second nature, and custom shall have transformed it into joy.
Thou shalt find and hold a few like-minded friends, to share with thee
this lifelong devotion to that common social welfare which is the task
and goal of man.
CHAPTER V
THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT OF LOVE
I
THE TEACHING OF LOVE
Jesus taught His philosophy of life in three ways: the personal, by
example; the artistic, by parable; and the scientific, by propositions.
The first, though most vital and effective of all, is expensive and
wasteful. For in life principles are so embedded in "muddy particulars,"
trivial and sordid details, that they are liable to get lost. The Master
may be a long time with His disciples, and yet not really be known. Even
the disciples themselves, after months of such teaching, like James and
John may not know what manner of spirit they are of. Indeed it may
become expedient for them that the Master go away, that His Spirit may
be more clearly revealed.
The artistic method, too, has drawbacks. For though it gives the
principles a new artificial setting, with carefully selected details to
catch the crowd, yet the crowd catch simply the story. Only the
initiated are instructed; those who do not already know the principles
learn nothing, but "seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not
understand," as Jesus, past master of this art though He was, so often
lamented.
The third or scientific method is dry and prosaic. It observes what
qualities go together, or refuse to go together, in the swift stream of
life; pulls them out of the stream; fixes them in concepts; marks them
by names; and states propositions about them. It may go one short step
farther: it may arrange its propositions in syllogisms, and deduce
general conclusions, or laws. It may take, for instance, as its major
premise, Love is the divine secret of blessedness. Then for its minor
premise it may take some plain observed fact, Humility is essential to
Love. Then the conclusion or law will be, The humble share the divine
life and all the blessings it brings. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Of course no one but a pedant draws out his teaching in this laboured
logical form. The syllogism is condensed; the major, and perhaps even
the minor, premise is omitted, and often only the conclusion appears.
At its best this method is hard and dry; yet this is the method employed
in such sayings as those handed down in the summary called the Sermon on
the Mount. Perhaps that is why the teaching of the "Sermon," in spite of
its clear-cut form, is much less studied and understood than the
teaching of Jesus' life and parables. To recover this largely lost
teaching one must warm and moisten the cold, dry terms; supply, when
necessary, omitted premises; use some one word rather than many for the
often suppressed middle term; and so draw out the latent logic that
underlies these laws.
The middle term of all this argument is Love. For that old-fashioned
word, in spite of its sentimental associations, much better than its
modern scientific synonyms, such as the socialising of the self,
expresses that outgoing of the self into the lives of others, which,
according to Jesus, is the actual nature of God, the potential nature of
man, the secret of individual blessedness and the promise of social
salvation.
In the two or three cases where the logic of His principle, applied to
our complex modern life, points clearly to a modification of His literal
precepts, as in the management of wealth and the bestowal of charity, I
shall not hesitate to put the logic of the teaching in place of the
letter of the precept, citing the latter afterward for comparison.
A logical commentary like this will be most helpful if it reverses the
order usual in commentaries of mere erudition, and introduces the steps
of the argument before rather than after the passage they seek to make
clear.
In whichever of the three ways it is taught, Love shines by its own
light and speaks with its own authority to all who have eyes to see and
ears to hear.
A person who loves carries with him a generous light-heartedness, a
genial optimism, which show all his friends that he has found some
secret which it is worth their while to learn.
Every well-told parable or fable, every artistically constructed novel
or play, makes us take sides with the large-hearted hero against the
mean, selfish villain.
In the same way Love's formulated laws, showing on what conditions it
depends and to what results it leads, convince every one who has the
experience by which to interpret them (and only to him who hath
experience is interpretation given) that Love is the supreme law of
life, and its requirements the right and reasonable conditions of
individual and social well-being.
II
THE FULFILMENT OF LAW THROUGH LOVE
Jesus was born in a nation which had developed law to the utmost nicety
of detail, and recognised all laws as expressions of the good will of
God seeking the welfare of men. Prolonged experiments in living had
proved certain kinds of conduct disastrous, and the states of mind
corresponding to them, despicable. Law had prohibited this disastrous
conduct, and the prophets had denounced these despicable traits.
Of course latent in the prohibitions of law was the constitution of the
blessed Kingdom that would result if the law were observed; and dimly
foreshadowed in the figurative expressions of the prophets was the
vision of the glorified human society that would emerge when the
despicable traits should be extirpated and the better order introduced.
This negative and latent implication of law Jesus developed into Love as
the positive and explicit principle of life; and this figuratively
foreshadowed prophet's vision He translated into the actual fact of a
community united in Love. He fulfilled the law by putting Love in the
heart, and fulfilled the prophets by establishing a community based on
Love. Jesus taught us to make every human interest we touch as precious
as our own, and to treat all persons with whom we deal as members of
that beneficent system of mutual good-will which is the Kingdom of
Heaven. But the moment we begin to do that, law as law becomes
superfluous; for what the law requires is the very thing we most desire
to do: prophecy as prophecy is fulfilled; for the best man's heart can
dream has come to pass.
In the ideal home, between well-married husband and wife, child and
parent, brother and sister, this sweet law prevails. In choice circles
of intimate friends it is found. Jesus extended this interpretation of
others in terms of ourselves, and of both others and self in terms of
the system of relations in which both self and others inhere, so as to
include all the dealing of official and citizen, teacher and pupil,
dealer and customer, employer and employee, man and man.
Jesus does not judge us by the formal test of whether we have kept or
broken this or that specific commandment, but by the deeper and more
searching requirement that our lives shall detract nothing from and add
something to the glory of God and the welfare of man.
Is the world a happier, holier, better world because we are here in it,
helping on God's good-will for men? If that be the grand, comprehensive
purpose of our lives, honestly cherished, frankly avowed, systematically
cultivated, then, no matter how far below perfection we may fall, that
single purpose, in spite of failure, defeat, and repented sin, pulls us
through. If we have this Spirit of Love in our hearts, and if with
Christ's help we are trying to do something to make it real in our lives
and effective in the world, our eternal salvation is assured. On the
other hand, is there a single point on which we deliberately are working
evil? Is the lot of any poor man harder, or the life of any unhappy
woman more sad and bitter, for aught that we have done or left undone?
Is any good institution the weaker, or any bad custom more prevalent,
for aught that we are deliberately and persistently withholding of help
or contributing of harm? If so, if in any one point we are consciously
and unrepentingly arrayed against God's righteous purpose, and the human
welfare which is dear to God; if there is a single point on which we are
deliberately setting aside His righteous will, and doing intentional
evil to the humblest of His children; then, notwithstanding our high
rank on other matters, our lack of the right purpose, at even a single
point, makes us guilty of the whole; we are unfit for His kingdom.
Jesus' principle of Love, though for clearness and incisiveness often
stated in terms of mere altruism, or regard for others, yet taken in its
total context, in the light of His never absent reference to the
Father's will and the Kingdom of Heaven, is much deeper and broader than
that. It gives each man his place and function in the total beneficent
system which is the coming Kingdom of God, and then treats him not
merely as he may wish to be treated, or we may wish to treat him, but as
his place and function in that system require.
Mere altruism is often weakly kind, making others feebly dependent on
our benefactions instead of sturdily self-supporting; making others
unconsciously egotistic as the result of our superfluous ministrations
or uncritical indulgence; and even fostering a subtle egotism in
ourselves, as the result of the fatal habit of doing the easy, kind
thing rather than the hard, severe thing that is needed to lift them to
their highest attainment. A true mother is never half as sentimentally
altruistic toward her child as a grandmother or an aunt; she does not
hesitate to reprove and correct, when that is what the child needs to
suppress the low and lazy, and rouse the higher and stronger self. The
just administrator discharges the incompetent and exposes the dishonest
employee, not merely because the good of the whole requires it; but
because even for the person discharged or exposed, that is better than
it would be to allow him to drag out an unprofitable and cumbersome life
in tolerated uselessness or countenanced graft.
"Treat both others and yourself as their place and yours in God's coming
Kingdom require;" that is the Golden Rule in its complete form. "All
things, therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you"
(remembering that both you and they have places and functions in the
Father's Kingdom of Love); "even so do ye also unto them: for this is
the law and the prophets."
This fulfilment of law is a very different thing from selfishly breaking
the law. That such a reformer as Jesus ever took the conservative side
of any question seems at first sight so preposterous that most candid
critics believe that He never said the words attributed to Him about
breaking one of the least of these commandments, or else that He said
them in a lost context which would greatly alter their meaning. That,
however, is not quite sure. For Love at its best is never rudely
iconoclastic. Every good law in its original intent is aimed to lift
men out of their sensuality and selfishness into at least an outward
conformity to the requirements of social well-being. And however
grotesque, fantastic, and superfluous such a law under changed
conditions may become, its original intent will always keep it sacred
and precious, even after its purpose can be accomplished better without
it. To fulfil is not to destroy, or to take delight in destruction.
"Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to
destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth
shall pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from
the law, till all things be accomplished."
At the same time Love is always changing and superseding laws and
institutions by pressure of adjustment to the changing demands of
individual and social well-being. Laws and institutions are made for
men, rather than men for institutions and laws; and the instant an old
law ceases to serve a new need in the best possible way, Love erects the
better service into a new law or institution, superseding the old. Any
law that fails to promote the physical, mental, social, and spiritual
good of the persons and the community concerned, thereby loses Love's
sanction and becomes obsolete. Law for law's sake, rather than for the
sake of man and society, is the flat denial of Love. To exalt any
tradition, institution, custom, or prohibition above the human and
social good it has ceased to serve, is to sink to the level of the
scribe and Pharisee--the deadliest enemies of Jesus, and all for which
He stood. "For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no
wise enter into the kingdom of heaven."
In Love's eyes all anger, contempt, and quarrelsomeness are as bad as
murder--indeed are incipient murder, stopped short of overt crime
through fear. The look, or word, or deed of unkindness, the thought, or
wish, or hope that evil may befall another, even the attitude of cold
indifference, is murder in the heart. And it is only because we lack the
courage to translate wish into will that in such cases we do not do the
thing which, if done without our responsibility, by accident or nature,
we should rejoice to see accomplished.
From a strange and unexpected source there has come the confirmation of
this New Testament conception of the prevalence, not to say the
universality, of murder. A brilliant but grossly perverse English man of
letters was sentenced to imprisonment a few years ago for the foulest
crime. From the gaol in which he was confined there came a most
realistic description of the last days and final execution within its
walls of a lieutenant in the British army, who was condemned for killing
a woman whom he loved.
The poem has the exaggeration of a perverted and embittered nature; but
beneath the exaggeration there is the original truth, which underlies
Jesus' identification of murder and hate. After describing the last days
of the condemned man, his execution and his burial, the poem concludes
as follows:--
"In Reading Gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In a burning winding sheet he lies
And his grave has got no name.
"And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
"And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word:
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword."
Charge up against ourselves as murder the bitter looks, the hateful
words, the unkind thoughts, the selfish actions, which have lessened the
vitality, diminished the joy, wounded the heart, and murdered the
happiness of those whom we ought to love, whom perhaps at times we think
we do love, and who can profess to be guiltless?
The harboured grudge, the unrepented injury, the offence for which we
have not begged pardon, the employer's refusal to "recognise" his
employees or their representatives, and treat with them on fair and
equal terms, the workman's cultivated attitude of hostility to his
employer, are all such flagrant violations of Love that acts of formal
piety or public worship on the part of a person who harbours such
feelings are an affront.
Controversies, lawsuits, industrial or political warfare in mere pride
of opinion, class prejudice, or greed of gain, without first making
every effort to respect the rights and protect the interests of the
other party and so bring about a reconciliation, are all violations of
Love and doom the person who is guilty of them to dwell in the narrow
prison-house of a hard and hateful secularity, where the last farthing
of exacted penalty must be paid, and hate is lord of life. "Ye have
heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and
whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto
you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of
the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in
danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in
danger of the hell of fire. If, therefore, thou art offering thy gift at
the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against
thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way, first be
reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with
thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art with him in the way; lest haply
the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to
the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou
shalt by no means come out thence, till thou have paid the last
farthing."
Marriage to the Christian is an infinitely higher and holier estate than
it could have been to any of the earlier schools. It is an opportunity
to share with another person the creative prerogative of God. It brings
opportunity for Love enhanced by the highest of complementary
differences, under circumstances of tenderest intimacy, with the
requirement of lifelong constancy.
From Love's point of view any lack of tender reverence for the person
of another, whether in or out of marriage sinks man to the plane of the
brute. Not that the normal exercise of any appetite or passion is base
or evil in itself. All are holy, pure, divine, when Love through them
assumes the lifelong responsibilities they involve. All that falls short
of such tender reverence and permanent responsibility is lust. Jesus
established chastity on the broad, rational basis of respect for the
dignity of woman and the sanctity of sex. The logic of His teaching on
this point is to place chastity on the eternal rock foundation of
treating another only as Love and a true regard for the other's
permanent welfare will warrant. In other words, Jesus permits no man to
even wish to treat any woman as he would be unwilling another man should
treat his own mother, sister, wife, or daughter. For, from His
standpoint, all women are our sisters, daughters of the most high God.
This standard is searching and severe, no doubt; but it is reasonable
and right. There is not a particle of asceticism about it. And the man
who violates it is not merely departing a little from the beaten path of
approved conventionalities. He is doing a cruel, wanton wrong. He is
doing to another what he would bitterly resent if done to one whom he
held dear. And what right has any man to hold any woman cheap, a mere
means of his selfish gratification, and not an object of his protection,
and reverence, and chivalrous regard? The worst mark of uneliminated
brutality and barbarism which the civilised world is carrying over into
the twentieth century, to curse and blacken and pollute and embitter
human life for a few generations more, is this indifference to the
Spirit of Love, as it applies at this crucial point.
To destroy a wife's health, to purchase a moment's pleasure at the cost
of a woman's lasting degradation, or to participate in practices which
doom a whole class of wretched women to short-lived disease and shame,
and early and dishonoured death (a recent reliable report estimates the
cost of lives from this cause alone in a single city as 5000 a year) is
so gross and wanton a perversion of manhood, that in comparison it would
be better not to be a man at all.
All the devices for gratifying sexual passions without the assumption of
permanent responsibilities, such as seduction, prostitution, and the
keeping of mistresses, Christianity brands as the desecration of God's
holiest temple, the human body, and the wanton wounding of His most
sensitive creation,--woman's heart. The Greeks placed little restriction
on man's passions beyond such as was necessary to maintain sufficient
physical health and mental vigour to perform his duties as a citizen in
peace and in war. If the individual is complete in himself, with no God
above who cares, no Christ who would be grieved, no Spirit of Love to
reproach, no rights of universal brotherhood and sisterhood to be
sensitively respected and chivalrously maintained, then indeed it is
impossible to make out a valid claim for severer control in these
matters than Plato and Aristotle advocate. If there are persons in the
world who are practically slaves, persons who have no claim on our
consideration, then licentiousness and prostitution are logical and
legitimate expressions of human nature and inevitable accompaniments of
human society. Christianity, however, has freed the slave in a deeper
and higher sense than the world has yet realised. Christianity does not
permit any one who calls himself a Christian to leave any man or woman
outside the pale of that consideration which makes this other person's
dignity, and interest, and welfare as precious and sacred to him as his
own. Obviously all loose and temporary sexual connections involve such
degradation, shame, and sorrow to the woman involved, that no one who
holds her character, and happiness, and lasting welfare dear to him can
will for her these woful consequences. One cannot at the same time be a
friend of the kindly, generous, sympathetic Christ and treat a woman in
that way. It is for this reason, not on cold, ascetic grounds, that
Christianity limits sexual relations to the monogamous family; for there
only are the consequences to all concerned such as one can choose for
another whom he really loves. If Christianity, at these and other vital
points, asks man to give up things which Plato and Aristotle permit, it
is not that the Christian is narrower or more ascetic than they; it is
because Christianity has introduced a Love so much higher, and deeper,
and broader than anything of which the profoundest Greeks had dreamed,
that it has made what was permissible to their hard hearts forever
impossible for all the more sensitive souls in whom the Love of Christ
has come to dwell.
"Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I
say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her
hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right
eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it
is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not
thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand causeth thee to
stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for
thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go
into hell."
Divorce is a confession of failure in Love's supreme undertaking. No two
Christians, who have caught and kept alive the Spirit of Love in the
married state, ever were or ever will be, ever wished to be or ever can
be, divorced. No one Christian who has the true Christian Spirit of Love
toward husband or wife will ever seek divorce unless it be under such
circumstances of infidelity or brutality, neglect or cruelty, as render
the continuance of the relation a fruitless casting of the pearls of
affection before the swinishness of sensuality. The determination of the
grounds on which divorce shall be granted belongs to the sphere of the
state, and is a problem of social self-protection. The Christian church
makes a serious mistake when it spends its energies in trying to build
up legal barriers against divorce. Its real mission at this point is to
build up in the hearts of its adherents the Spirit of Love which will
make marriage so sweet and sacred that those who once enter it will
find, as all true Christians do find, divorce intolerable between two
Christians; and tolerable even for one Christian only as a last resort
against hopeless and useless degradation. To translate Christ's Spirit
into the life of the family is a much more Christian thing to do than to
attempt to enact this or that somewhat general and enigmatical answer of
His into civil law. It is generally a mistake, a departure from the
Spirit of the Master, when the Christian community as such turns from
its specific task of positive upbuilding of personality to the legal
prohibition of the things that are contrary to the Christian Spirit.
Laws and prohibitions, statutes and penalties against drunkenness,
Sabbath-breaking, theft, murder, gambling, and divorce, we must have.
But those laws and penalties are best devised and enforced by the state,
as the representative of the average sentiment of the community as a
whole, rather than by the distinctively Christian element in the
community, which in the nature of things is very far above the average
sentiment. Undoubtedly the Christian Spirit is the only force strong
enough to save the family from degeneration and dissolution in this
intensely individualistic, independent, materialistic, luxurious age.
But we must rely mainly on the Spirit working within, not on a law
imposed from without; on the healing touch of the gentle Master, not on
the hasty sword of the impetuous Peter.
"It was said also, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a
writing of divorcement; but I say unto you, that every one that putteth
away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an
adulteress; and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away
committeth adultery."
Love fulfils at once the law of truth-telling and the law against
swearing; for words spoken in Love need no adventitious support. The
appeal to anything outside one's self, and one's simple statement, is
clear evidence that there is no Love, and therefore no truth within.
Love has no desire to deceive, and hence no fear of being disbelieved.
To back up one's words with an oath is to confess one's own lack of
confidence in what one is saying, and to invite lack of confidence in
others. Anything more than a plain statement of fact or feeling comes
out of an insincere or unloving heart. Of course here, as in the case of
divorce, what is the obvious and only law for the disciple of Jesus may
or may not be wise for the civil authorities to enact into law and
impose upon all. If the state and the courts think an oath helpful, the
sensible Christian usually will conform to public custom and
requirement; even though for him the practice is superfluous and
meaningless.
"Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt
not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths; but I
say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by the heaven, for it is the
throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet;
nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt
thou swear by thy head, for thou canst not make one hair white or black.
But let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay; and whatsoever is more than
these is of the evil one."
Love is slow to take offence, and quick to overlook. Selfishness is
sensitive to slights, resentful at wrongs; for it sees others only as
their acts affect us. Love seeks out the whole man behind the harsh word
or bad deed, takes his point of view, and tries to discover some clue to
his concealed better self.
Whether he does well or ill, Love lets us appeal to nothing less than
his best self, and do nothing less than what on the whole is best for
him and for the community to which he and we both belong. Hence, whether
we give or withhold what he specifically asks (and Love enlightened by
modern sociology tells us we usually must withhold from beggars and
tramps what they ask), in either case we shall not consult merely our
personal convenience and impulse, but do what we should wish to have
done to us, for the sake of society and for our own good as members of
society, if we were in his unfortunate plight. "Ye have heard that it
was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto
you, Resist not him that is evil, but whosoever smiteth thee on thy
right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law
with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And
whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain. Give to
him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not
thou away."
Love is kind to the evil and vicious, and magnanimous to the hostile and
hateful. Kindness in return for favours received or in hope of favours
to come; kindness to those whose conduct and character we admire, is all
very well in its way, but is no sign whatever that he who is kind on
these easy terms is a true child of Love. To share the great Love of God
one must go out freely to all, regardless of return or desert,--be
impartial as sunshine and shower.
When our enemy is plotting to harm us, to break down our good name, to
injure those whom we love, even while we defend ourselves and our dear
ones against his malice and meanness, we must be secretly watching our
chances to do him a good turn, and win him from hatred to Love. Nothing
less than this complete identification with the interests of all the
persons we in any way touch, however bad some of their acts, however
unworthy some of their traits, can make us sharers and receivers, agents
and bestowers of that perfect Love which is at once the nature of God,
the capacity of man, the fulfilment of law, and the condition of social
well-being.
"Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate
thy enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that
persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven;
for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain
on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, what
reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute
your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the
Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect."
III
THE COUNTERFEITS OF LOVE
Just because Love is so costly, it has a host of counterfeits. These
counterfeits are chiefly devices for gaining the rewards and honours of
Love, without the effort and sacrifice of loving. One of the most
obvious rewards of Love is being thought kind, generous, good. But this
can be secured, apparently, by professing religion, joining the church,
repeating the creed, giving money to the poor, subscribing large sums to
good causes,--all of which are much cheaper and easier than being kind,
and true, and faithful, and considerate in the home, on the farm, in the
factory, in the store. Yet Jesus tells us that unless we have Love in
the close and intimate relations of our domestic, economic, social, and
political life, all symbols of its presence elsewhere, all "services"
directed otherwise, become intolerable nuisances, whose places would be
better filled, and whose work better done, if they were once well out of
the way and decently buried. All this, however, is not to deny, but by
contrast to affirm, the great indispensable uses of symbols, officers,
and institutions that are genuinely and effectively devoted to the
cultivation and propagation of Love.
The pure gold of the Spirit is most conveniently and effectually
circulated when mixed with the alloy of rites, ceremonies, creeds,
officers, and organisations. Though no essential part of the pure
Gospel, yet these forms and observances, these bishops and clergy, these
covenants and confessions, are as practically useful for the maintenance
and spread of the Christian Spirit as courts and constitutions,
governors and judges, are for the orderly conduct of the state. Their
authority is founded on their practical utility. When their utility
ceases, when they come to obscure rather than reveal the Spirit they are
intended to express, then schism and reformation serve the same
beneficent purpose in the church that declarations of independence and
revolution have so often achieved in the state. That form of church
government is best which in any given age and society works best; and
this may well be concentrated personal authority in one set of
circumstances, and democratic representative administration in another.
Each has its advantages and its disadvantages.
Modes of worship rest on the same practical basis. Spontaneous prayer or
elaborate ritual, much or little participation by the people, long or
short sermons, prayer-meetings or no prayer-meetings,--all are to be
determined by the test of practical experience. It is absurd to profess
to draw hard and fast rules about these matters from the precept or
practice of Jesus and His Apostles, or the early church fathers, working
as they did under conditions so widely different from our own. Probably
centralised authority and elaborate ritual are most effective when
bishops and priests can be found who will not abuse their power for
their own aggrandisement. Until then, more democratic forms of worship
and of government are doubtless more expedient. The friendly competition
of the two systems side by side helps to keep sacerdotalism modest and
make independency effective.
Creeds likewise have their practical usefulness, especially in times of
theological ferment and transition, serving the purposes of party
platforms in a political campaign. But it is the grossest perversion of
their function to make assent to them obligatory on all who wish to
enjoy the most intimate Christian fellowship, or to test Christian
character by their formulas. One might as well refuse citizenship to
every person who could not assent to every word in some party platform
or other. The creed is an intellectual formulation of the results of
Christian experience, interpreting the Christian revelation; and it
will vary from age to age with ripening experience, and maturer views of
the content of the revelation. No creed was altogether false at the time
of its formulation. No creed in Christendom is such as every intelligent
Christian can honestly assent to. The attempt to make creed subscription
a test of church membership, or even a condition of ministerial
standing, is sure to confuse intellectual and spiritual things to the
serious disadvantage of both. The most sensitively honest men will more
and more decline to enter the service of the church, until subscription
to antiquated formulas, long since become incredible to the majority of
well-trained scholars, ceases to be required either literally or "for
substance of doctrine." It is sufficient that each candidate for the
ministry be asked to make his own statement, either in his own words or
in the words of any creed he finds acceptable, leaving it for his
brethren to decide whether or not such intellectual statement is
consistent with that spiritual service which is to be his chief concern.
Unless Christianity, in the persons of its leaders as well as of its
laity, can breathe as free an intellectual atmosphere as that of Stoic
or Epicurean, Plato or Aristotle, it will at this point prove itself
their inferior. Infinitely superior as it is in every other respect, it
is a burning shame that its timid and conservative modern adherents
should endeavour, at this point of absolute intellectual openness and
integrity, to place it at a disadvantage with the least noble of its
ancient competitors. The pure Spirit of Love will win the devotion of
all honest hearts and candid minds. But the insistence on these
antiquated formulas is sure to repel an increasing number of the most
thoughtful and enlightened from organised Christian fellowship. The only
serious reason for preferring the independent to the hierarchical forms
of church organisation at the present time is the tendency of the latter
to keep up these forms of intellectual imposition and imposture. Until
the church as a whole shall rise to the standards of intellectual
honesty now universally prevalent in the world of secular science, the
mission of the independent protest will remain but partially fulfilled.
"Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savour,
wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to
be cast out and trodden under foot of men."
Any thought of the reputation or respectability or honour a right act
will bring, just because it puts something else in place of Love,
destroys the rightness of the act and the righteousness of the doer.
Righteousness will always remain a dry, dreary, forbidding, impossible
thing until we welcome right as the service of those whom we love, and
the promotion of interests we share with them; and shrink from wrong as
what harms them and defeats our common ends. Without Love, righteousness
either dries up into a cold, hard asceticism, or evaporates into a
hollow, formal respectability; and in one way or the other misses the
spontaneity and expansion of soul which is Love's crown and joy. "Take
heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them:
else ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven."
Love is too intent on its objects to be aware of itself or call
attention to its own operations. The air of doing a favour takes all the
Love out of an act; for Love gives so simply and quietly that it seems
to ask rather than bestow the favour. In this way both giver and
receiver together share Love's distinctive reward of two lives bound
together as one in the common Love of the Father.
"When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the
hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have
glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right
hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father which seeth
in secret shall recompense thee."
Professed Love, if unfruitful or pernicious, is false. If we make no one
happier; help no one over hard places; bind no wounds; comfort no
sorrows; serve no just cause; do no good work; still worse, if we make
any one's lot harder; add to his burden or sorrow; corrupt public
officials; break down beneficent institutions; plunder the poor, even if
within technical legal forms; drive the weak to the wall; and connive in
the perversion of justice,--then the absence of good fruits, or the
presence of bad ones, is proof positive that we have never seen or known
Love, that our profession of Love is a lie, our proper place is with
Love's foes, and our destiny with the doers of evil.
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree
bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil
fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt
tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good
fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits ye
shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall
enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my
Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord,
did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out devils, and by
thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I
never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
Neither eloquent speech nor elegant writing, neither ornate ceremonial
nor orthodox symbol, nor anything short of actual toil to serve human
need and help human joy can translate Love into life. Though the most
beautiful idea in the world, the mere idea of Love is of no more value
than any other mere idea. If it fails of expression in hard, costly
deeds, its ritualistic or verbal profession is a sham. In Love's
service, so far as things done are concerned, there is no high or low,
first or last. To preach sermons and conduct religious services, to
teach science in the university, or make laws in Congress, is no better
and no worse than to make shoes in the shoeshop or cook food in the
kitchen. All work done in Love counts, stands, endures. All work done in
vanity and self-seeking, all work shirked with pretence of religion, or
excuse of wealth, or pride of social station, leaves the soul hard,
hollow, unreal, and fails to stand Love's searching test.
"Every one therefore which heareth these words of mine, and doeth them,
shall be likened unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock; and
the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat
upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon the rock. And
every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be
likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; and the
rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and smote upon
that house, and it fell; and great was the fall thereof."
IV
THE WHOLE-HEARTEDNESS OF LOVE
Love asks for the whole heart or nothing; and all the heart has, be it
little or much, must go with it. The pursuit or possession of wealth, as
an end in itself, or a means to mere selfish ends, will drive Love out
of the soul.
All the wealth we can give to Love's service is most useful and welcome;
but the retention of any for miserly pride, or vain ostentation, or
indolent uselessness for ourselves or our children, fills the heart so
full of self that Love can find there no room. Not that giving away all
one has is essential or desirable; but that every dollar one gives,
spends, keeps, invests, or controls be held subject to the orders of
Love.
Wealth is not so essential to the Christian as it was to Epicurus and
Aristotle, for God can be glorified and man can be served with very
little furniture of fortune; and therefore the Christian is able, in
whatsoever material state he is, therewith to be content. On the other
hand, the Christian cares more for money than either the Stoic or Plato;
for there are ranges in God's universe of beauty, truth, and goodness
which cannot be æsthetically appreciated and artistically and
scientifically appropriated without large expenditure of labour and the
wealth by which labour is supported; and there are wide spheres of
business enterprise and social service essential to human welfare which
only the rich man or nation can effectively promote. Divine and human
service is possible in poverty; it is more effective and at the same
time more difficult in wealth. The Christian rich and the Christian poor
serve the same Lord, and have the same Spirit; but the accomplishment of
the Christian rich man can be so much greater than that of the
Christian widow with her mite, that the Christian who is strong enough
to stand it is in duty bound to treat money as a talent which in all
just ways he ought to multiply. On the contrary, the moment it begins to
make him less sympathetic, less generous, less thankful, less
responsible, he must give it away as the only alternative to the loss of
his soul, the deterioration of his personality.
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust
doth consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for
yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume,
and where thieves do not break through nor steal, for where thy treasure
is, there will thy heart be also."
Toward science and art, business and politics, the application of the
Christian Spirit is different from anything we have met before. The
Christian will not shirk these things, like the Epicurean and the Stoic;
because they are ways of serving that truth, beauty, welfare, and order
which are included in the Father's will for all His human children. In
all these things we are co-workers with God for the good of man.
Diligence and enthusiasm, devotion and self-sacrifice in one or more of
these directions is the imperative duty, the inestimable privilege of
every one who would be a grateful and obedient son of God, a helpful and
efficient brother to his fellow-men.
Yet in all his devotion to science or art, in all the energy with which
he gives himself to business or politics, the Christian can never forget
that God is greater than any one of these points at which we come in
contact with Him; and that, when we have done our utmost in one or
another of these lines, we are still comparatively unprofitable servants
in His vast household. As God is more than the thing at which we work,
so the Christian, through relation to Him, is always more than his work.
He never lets his personality become absorbed and evaporated in the work
he does; but ever renews his personal life at the fountain which is
behind the special work he undertakes to do. Thus the true Christian is
never without some useful social work to do; and he never lets himself
get lost in doing it. To keep this balance of energy in the task and
elevation above it, which enables one to take success without elation
and bear failure without depression, is perhaps the crowning achievement
of practical Christianity.
"The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy
whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole
body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in thee
be darkness, how great is the darkness! No man can serve two masters;
for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will
hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
He who heartily loves and serves others will trust Love in God and his
fellows to take proper care of himself. One who really loves others will
take reasonable care not to be a burden to them, and to the world, and
will avail himself of the insurance company, the savings bank, and the
bond market as the devices of a complex modern society to distribute
losses and conserve gains to the common advantage of all. Love does not
make the individual or his family a parasite on the economy and industry
of society. Love makes a man bear his own permanent burden as a
preliminary to being of much use and no harm to his family, his friends,
and his community. Such prudent provision of the means of Love's
independence and service is consistent with entire absence of worry
about one's personal fortunes. The essential question which Love, and
Jesus as the Lord and Master of Love, puts to a man is not "How much
money have you?" but "What use do you intend to make of whatever you
have, be that little or much?" If that aim is selfish, and the money is
either saved or spent in sordid, worried selfishness, that low aim makes
the money a curse. If held subject to whatever drafts Love may make upon
it,--whether gifts to the poor, or support of good causes, or employment
of honest workmen, or development of industrial enterprises, be the form
Love's drafts take,--then all wealth so held is a blessing to the world
and an honour to its owner, a glory to God and a service to man.
"Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall
eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put
on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment?
Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap,
nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye
of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add
one cubit unto his stature? And why are ye anxious concerning raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither
do they spin; yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of
the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Be not therefore
anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or,
Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the
Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all
these things."
Though material means sought as ends are fatal to Love, Love's ends kept
in view insure needed means. To worry about to-morrow is to fail in
devotion to the tasks of to-day, and so spoil both days. To do our best
work to-day is to gain power for to-morrow. Competition complicates, but
does not render insoluble, the problem of making all that we have and
all that we do express Love to all whom our action affects. To be sure,
there are city slums, uninsured accidents and sickness, unsanitary
tenements, unjust conditions of labour, where even the service of Love
does not bring to the worker appropriate means and rewards; but it is
because Love has not quite kept pace at these points with swift-moving
modern conditions. But public spirit, political progress, economic
reform, are more sensitive to these violations of its laws than ever
before, and eagerly bent on finding and applying the remedy,--more Love
of all for each, and each for all.
"But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these
things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow,
for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is
the evil thereof."
Love throws off all that hampers its action, as a runner his coat for a
race. Love requires the sound body, the clear mind, the strong will, the
sensitive heart, and foregoes all indulgences that impair these things,
though in themselves innocent as eating and drinking. Yet Love makes no
fuss about its sacrifices, takes them as a simple matter of course, not
worth mentioning; for what Love gives up in mere sensuous indulgence is
as nothing to the widened affections and enlarged interests gained. To
be solemn or sad over what we give up, to proclaim or parade one's
self-denials, would be an insult to Love; it would show that the persons
we love and the causes we serve are not really as dear to our hearts as
the pitiful things we forego for their sake--would show that our Love
was a sham.
All pleasure that comes from healthy exercise of body, rational exercise
of mind, sympathetic expansion of the affections, strenuous effort of
the will, in just and generous living, is at the same time a glorifying
of God and an enrichment of ourselves. All pleasure which sacrifices the
vigour of the body to the indulgence of some separate appetite, all
pleasure which enslaves or degrades or embitters the persons from whom
it is procured, all pleasure which breaks down the sacred institutions
on which society is founded,--is shameful and debasing, a sin against
God, and a wrong to our own souls. The Christian will forego many
pleasures which Epicurus and even Aristotle would permit, because he is
infinitely more sensitive than they to the effect his pleasures have on
poor men and unprotected women whose welfare these earlier teachers did
not take into account. On the other hand, the Christian will enter
heartily into the joys of pure domestic life, and the delights of
struggle with untoward social and political conditions, from which Plato
and the Stoics thought it honourable to withdraw. Where God can be
glorified and men can be served, there the Christian will either find
his pleasure, or with optimistic art, create a pleasure that he does not
find.
"Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance;
for they disfigure their faces, that they may be seen of men to fast.
Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when
thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face, that thou be not seen
of men to fast, but of thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father,
which seeth in secret, shall recompense thee."
Just because Love includes the interests of all the persons we deal
with, it excludes all mean, selfish traits from our hearts. There can be
no pride and guile, no lust and cruelty, no avarice and hypocrisy, no
malice and censoriousness, in a heart which welcomes to its interest and
affection, and serves and loves as its own, the aims and needs of its
fellows. That is why Love's true disciples are few, and the slaves of
selfishness many. Ask how many,--not entirely succeed, for none do,--but
how many make it the constant aim of their lives to treat others as more
widely extended aspects of themselves, and, in order to do that,
endeavour to keep out all the greed, hate, lust, pride, envy, jealousy,
that would draw lines between self and others, and we see the answer:
that the way must be narrow, a way few find, and still fewer follow when
found.
"Enter ye in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the
way, that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter in
thereby. For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth
unto life, and few be they that find it."
V
THE CULTIVATION OF LOVE
Love is so akin to our nature, so eager to enter our souls, that to want
is to get it; to seek is to find it; to open our hearts to its presence
is to discover it already there. Whoever knows what true prayer is--the
intense, eager yearning for good of insistent, importunate hearts--knows
that there never was and never can be one unanswered prayer. No man who
has longed to have Love the law of his life, and struggled for it as a
miser struggles for money, or a politician strives to win votes, ever
failed to get what he wanted. For every person we meet gives occasion
for Love, and every situation in life affords a chance to express it.
The difficulty is not to get all we want, but to want all we can have
for the asking.
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you, for every one that asketh receiveth; and he
that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or
what man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf,
will give him a stone, or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a
serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good
things to them that ask him?"
Love will not grow in our hearts without deep, unseen communion with the
Spirit of Love, who is God. To dwell reverently on the Infinite Love; to
keep in one's heart a sacred place where His holy name is adored; to
eagerly seek for Love's coming in our own hearts, in the hearts of all
men, and in all the affairs of the world; to gratefully receive all
material blessings as gifts for use in Love's service; to beseech for
ourselves and bestow on others that forgiveness which is Love's attitude
toward our human frailties and failings; to fortify ourselves in advance
against the allurements of sense, and the base desire to gain good for
ourselves at cost of evil to others; to remember that all right rule,
all true strength, all worthy honour inhere in and flow from Love, and
Love's Father, God,--to do this day by day sincerely and simply without
formality or ostentation,--this is to pray, and to insure prayer's
inevitable answer--a life through which Love freely flows to bless both
the world and ourselves.
"And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to
stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that
they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their
reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and
having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy
Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use
not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they shall
be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them; for
your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven,
so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one."
Our only ground of assurance that Love forgives us is our loving
forgiveness of others. In the light of that fact of experience it is
easy and obvious to believe that the Father whose children we are, is
not less loving and forgiving than we. If we restore to our esteem and
friendship those who have wronged us, then we are sure that Love at the
heart of the Universe, Love in the Father, Love in all the Father's true
children, fully and freely forgives us. If we have this experience of
our own forgiveness of our fellows, we know that Love would not be Love,
but hate, God would not be God, but a devil, if any sincerely repented
wrong or shortcoming of which we have been guilty could remain
unforgiven.
"For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also
forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will
your Father forgive your trespasses."
To judge harshly another man's failings, however bad they may be, shows
that we are less loving than he. For he may have failed through strength
of appetite, or heat of passion,--failings that are still consistent
with Love; but harsh judgment has no such excuse, and is therefore a
deadly--that is, loveless--sin. We would never think of proclaiming to
the idly curious or the coldly critical the failings of one whom we
love; hence proclamations of any one's failings is a sure sign that we
have no Love for him, and as long as there are any whom we do not love
and protect, we have no part or lot in the great Love of God. Yet such
charitableness does not forbid our practical judgment of the difference
between sheep and wolves, good men and bad, when important issues are
involved. That Love requires. What it forbids is the rolling as a sweet
morsel under our tongue, and the gleeful recital to others, of the
mistake or the sin of another, as something in which we take mean
delight because we think it makes him inferior to ourselves.
"Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye
shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured
unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye,
but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou
say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye, and lo,
the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam
out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the
mote out of thy brother's eye."
Love will waste no time trying to explain itself to the selfish. If Love
does not commend itself by its own light and warmth to a man, no forms
of words can make him understand it. The sensual, the greedy, the hard,
and the cruel Love will treat as gently and kindly as circumstances
permit; yet expect as a matter of course that they will interpret Love's
justice as hardness, kindness as weakness, temperance as asceticism,
forbearance as cowardice, sacrifice as stupidity. Those who love will
not mind being misunderstood by those who do not; knowing that any
attempted explanation would only increase their conceit and hardness of
heart, and so make a bad matter worse.
"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls
before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and
turn and rend you."
Since Love is "the greatest thing in the world," we are bound to stand
ready with girt loins, and trimmed, burning lamps, to shed its light far
and wide. To cover it up would be to deprive ourselves and our fellows
of the one sight in all the world best worth seeing, and so to hinder
its spread. False modesty that would keep Love's good works out of sight
is as bad as false pride that would thrust oneself forward. Though works
done merely to be seen are not good at all, yet good works genuinely
done for Love's sake gain added influence and lustre when frankly and
freely allowed to be seen as the beautiful things that they are. The
Christian is under spiritual compulsion to be a missionary. Other
systems draw their little circles of disciples about them, as Jesus
drew His twelve. One cannot hold what he believes to be a true and
helpful view of life without wishing to communicate it to others. Yet
this tendency, which is natural to every principle, is characteristic of
Christianity in a unique degree. For the Christian Spirit consists in
Love, the desire to give to others the best one has. And what can be so
good, so desirable to impart, as this very Spirit of Love, which is
Christianity itself? That is why the Christian must, in some form or
other,--by journeying to foreign lands, by contribution to missionary
work at home, by gifts to Christian education, by support of settlement
work, or perhaps best of all by the silent diffusion of a Christian
example in the neighbourhood, or the unnoticed expression of the
Christian Spirit in the home,--be a propagator of the Spirit of Love he
has himself received.
"Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a lamp and put it under the bushel, but on the
stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your
light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify
your Father which is in heaven."
VI
THE BLESSEDNESS OF LOVE
Does virtue bring happiness? is a question every philosophy of life must
meet. Yet before it can be rightly answered it must be rightly put.
For if by virtue you mean something negative, conventional,--not lying,
not cheating, not swearing, not drinking; and if by happiness you mean
something passive, external,--riches, offices, entertainments, and
honours; then virtue and happiness do not necessarily go together in
life, and no philosophy can show that they should.
If a man were to persuade himself that they do go together, and should
seek this sort of happiness by cultivating this sort of virtue, he would
miss true virtue and true happiness. For both virtue and happiness are
positive, active; so interrelated that the happiness must be found in
that furtherance of our common social interests in which the exercise of
virtue consists.
Jesus bids us take an active, devoted interest in the interests of
others and of society. Now whoever shares and serves a wide range of
interests has an interested, and therefore an interesting, life. But the
interesting life is the happy life. Love, whether it has much or little
wealth and station, always has interests and aims; always finds or
makes friends to share them,--in other words, is always happy.
The beatitudes are illustrations of this deep identity between interest
taken and happiness found; statements of the truth that Love going out
to serve and share the interests and aims of others, and blessedness
flowing in to fill the heart thereby enlarged for its reception, are the
outside and inside of the same spiritual experience.
To think little of self is the key to the joy that goes with much
thought for others.
Love is so going out to others as to make them as real as self. But that
is what no man puffed up with self-importance can do. Where self is much
in the foreground others are pushed to the rear. Self-importance and
Love cannot dwell together in the same house of clay. As one goes up in
the scales of the balance the other goes down. To be rich in the shared
lives of others one must be poor in his own self-esteem. The two are in
inverse proportion. Modesty is impossible of direct cultivation. It
isn't safe to talk or even think about it much. As Pascal remarks, "Few
people talk of humility humbly." Like Love it is the manifestation of
something deeper than itself. Unless one is in intimate personal
relations with one whom he reveres as greater, stronger, better than
himself, it is obviously impossible for him to be modest. If he is in
such relations, it is equally impossible for him not to be modest.
Hence, as Love is the inmost quality of the Christian, the inevitable
manifestation to his fellow-men of what the Father is to him, so modesty
is the surest outward sign of this inward grace. Conceit is a public
proclamation of the poverty of one's personal relations. For if this
conceited fellow, this vain woman, really had the honour of the intimate
acquaintance of some one better and greater than their petty, miserable
selves, they could not possibly be the vain, conceited creatures that
they are. Every one who lives in the presence of the great Father, and
walks in the company of His glorious Son, is sure to find modesty and
humility the natural and spontaneous expression of his side of these
great relationships. "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven."
Our shortcomings frankly confessed prepare us for Love's consolation.
We all fall short of that patient consideration, that courteous
kindliness, which makes the feelings and interests of others as precious
as our own. Some of us fail in one way, some in another. But we all are
unprofitable servants of the Love that would make our lives one with all
the lives that we touch. To forget or deny that we fail is to lose sight
of Love altogether. He who thinks he succeeds thereby shows that he
fails; he who knows and laments that he fails comes as near as man can
to the goal.
Love neither asks nor expects a clean record; else it would have no
disciples. Love fully and freely forgives, at the eleventh hour welcomes
the idler, and offers its fulness of joy to all who, whatever their
repented past may have been, make service and kindness to others their
eager present concern. For no sin frankly confessed, no wrong deed
sincerely repented, no loss squarely met, no bereavement bravely
endured, can shut out from Love's consolation those who serve with the
best there is in them the persons who still need their aid. "Blessed are
they that mourn; for they shall be comforted."
To meet criticism with kindness, crossness with geniality, insult with
courtesy, and injury with charity is the way to conquer the world.
By nature we are creatures of suggestion. A hateful look, an ugly word,
a spiteful sneer, a cruel blow, make us hateful and ugly and spiteful
and cruel in turn. For the empty heart flashes back in resentment
whatever attitude another's act suggests.
Meekness greets as a friend the just critic, and for unjust and unkind
treatment makes allowance as due to the blindness or hardness or
weakness of the pitiful person who has nothing better to give. Meekness
makes the soft answer that turns away wrath, and treats one who wrongs
us all the more gently. Thus the meekness of Love gives both power to
possess our own souls in patience under all provocation, and power, not
indeed to coerce the bodies of others, but to win the consent of their
souls. "Blessed are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth."
Righteousness is something of which we can have no more and no less than
we wish.
He who is good enough is not good at all, and never will be any better.
For righteousness is right relation to others; and so long as there are
things we can do to help others, its infinite task is unfinished. Yet
though the goal ever advances and never comes within reach, aspiration
is achievement; progress is attainment. If we could come to the end of
our journey; if we could see the world's claims on us met, the deeds of
which we are capable done, that moment would mark the death of our
souls. Just because Love grows by loving and serving, and makes ever
greater and greater demands, it prophesies there shall be forever and
ever things to do that will make life worth while. "Blessed are they
that hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled."
The depth of our sympathy for those below us in secular service and
station measures our worth in the eyes of those spiritually higher than
we.
Love is like a tree; if it is not to be scorched in the blaze of
ambition and withered in the heat of competition, its roots of sympathy
must go down as deep into the soil of the obscure and lowly lives on
whose humble toil we depend as its branches spread into the upper air of
social distinction and station.
Unless we have much sympathy for those who toil on the farm and on the
sea, in the factory and the mine, behind the counter and the desk, in
the kitchen and laundry, what we call courtesy in the drawing room, or
charity on the platform, is hollow mockery and Pharisaic sham. "Blessed
are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy."
In order for Love to shine through them there must be nothing else in
our hearts.
Love demands everything or nothing. It refuses to dwell in quarters or
halves of our souls. The least flaw of pride, greed, or lust is enough
to make them opaque. Greed, lust, pride, hate, so blind our eyes to the
real selves of others that we cannot see or treat them as they really
are; that is, cannot love them. It reduces them to mere means and tools
of our passions and pleasures; and one who so regards persons can never
love either them or any person aright. Only the pure can see Love; for
only the pure can experience that union of one's whole self with the
whole self of others in which Love consists. "Blessed are the pure in
heart; for they shall see God."
Just so sure as we love two or more persons we shall do all in our power
to keep them from hating each other.
We wish everyone to love those whom we love. If anybody hates one we
love, it hurts us as much as it does the one hated, even more than it
would to be hated ourselves. And if anyone whom we love is hating
another, we are even more sorry for him than we are for the person he
hates, and make all haste to deliver him from this most dreadful
condition. The more we love our fellows, the more we hate to see
misunderstanding, ill-will, strife, between them.
Not that the Christian is unwilling or afraid to fight. Where deliberate
wrong is arrayed against the rights of men, where fraud is practised on
the unprotected, where hypocrisy imposes on the credulous, where vice
betrays the innocent, where inefficiency sacrifices precious human
interests, where avarice oppresses the poor, where tyranny tramples on
the weak, there the man who shares the Father's Love for His maltreated
children, the man who walks daily in the companionship of the Christ who
owns all the downtrodden as His brothers, will be the most fearless and
uncompromising foe of every form of injustice and oppression. Property,
reputation, position, time, strength, influence, health, life itself if
need be, will be thrown unreservedly into the fight against vice and
sin. He cannot keep in with the Father and with Christ and not come out
in opposition to everything that wrongs and injures the humblest man,
the lowliest woman, the most defenceless little child.
Fighting, however, is not altogether uncongenial to the descendants of
our brute progenitors. To fight our own battles, and occasionally a few
for our neighbours, comes all too naturally to most of us. Fighting
God's battles on principle is a very different thing. To feel entirely
tranquil in the midst of the combat; to know that we are not alone on
the side of the right; to have the real interests of our opponents at
heart all the time; to be ever ready to forgive them, and to ask their
forgiveness for any excess of zeal we may have shown; to have the peace
of God in our hearts, and no trace of malice, in deed, or word, or
thought, or feeling,--this is not altogether natural, and the man who
does his fighting on that basis gives pretty good assurance of dwelling
in the Christian Spirit. No other adequate provision for maintaining
peace in the midst of effective warfare, and making peace for others as
well as for ourselves the instant the need for war is over, has ever
been devised. The peacemakers of this fearless, earnest, strenuous type
have the unmistakable right to be called the children of God. "Blessed
are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God."
All who love must expect to be hated by the foes of those whom they
love.
Because Jesus loved the common people and sought to deliver them from
their fears and errors, the men who traded on those fears and errors put
Him to an ignominious death. If we love and serve the despised, the
abused, the plundered, those who despise and abuse and plunder them will
do to us the worst they dare. The road of Love is marked at every turn
by a cross. Whoever in business, society, or politics makes as real as
his own the interests and the wrongs of all whom he can reach and touch,
will be disliked, criticised, misrepresented, vilified, condemned. He
will pay Love's price of persecution.
Christian sacrifice closely resembles Greek temperance and courage.
There is, however, this essential distinction. The Christian takes on
not merely the pains and privations which are essential to his personal
welfare, or the welfare of his community or state; he takes on whatever
suffering the Father's Love for all His children calls him to undergo;
gives up whatever indulgences the service of Christ requires him to
dispense with; adopts whatever mingling of hardship and self-denial will
keep him in most effective and sympathetic fellowship with those who
have discovered the same great spiritual secret as himself. Thus, though
to the uninitiated outsider much of his life looks hard and severe, on
the inside it is easy and light; for the companionship with the Father,
with Christ, and with Christian people is so much greater and dearer
than the material and sensuous delights it may incidentally take away,
that on the inside it does not wear the aspect of loss and sacrifice at
all, but rather that of a glory and a gain. Still, since this element
of pleasant things foregone, and hard things endured, is ever present,
and since it has to be judged by people on the outside as well as by
those on the inside of the experience, in recognition of this truth
Christianity has made its symbol before the uninitiated world the cross.
As in the life of the Master, so in the life of every faithful disciple,
the cross must be borne, the perpetual sacrifice must be made, as the
price of Love's presence in a world of selfishness and hate; but the
cross is transfigured into a crown of rejoicing, the sacrifice is
transformed into privilege and pleasure by those precious personal
relationships which are the supreme glory and gladness of the soul, and
which could be maintained on no cheaper terms. The sacrifice that the
Christian makes to get his Father's will, his Master's mission,
accomplished in the world which so sorely needs it, is like the
sacrifice a mother makes for her sick and suffering child,--the dearest
and sweetest experience of life. The cross thus gladly borne, the yoke
of sacrifice thus unostentatiously assumed, is the supreme expression of
the Christian Spirit.
Like all high-cost things, sacrifice for Love's sake carries a high
premium. It admits, as nothing else does, to the inner circle of the
immortal lovers of their fellows, to the intimate fellowship of the
Lord of Love, Jesus Christ.
Joy follows incidentally and inevitably from the maintenance of these
great Christian relationships. A gloomy, depressed, despondent tone and
temper, unless it be demonstrably pathological, is public proclamation
that the deep mines of these Christian relationships, with their
inexhaustible resources, are either undeveloped or unworked. For no man
who looks through sunshine and shower, through food and raiment, through
family and friendship, through society and the moral order of the world,
up into the face of the Giver of them all as his Father; who knows how
to summon to his side the gentle and gracious companionship of Christ,
alike in the pressure of perplexity and in the quiet of solitude; who
knows how to unlock the treasures of Christian literature, to
appropriate the meaning of Christian worship, and to avail himself of
the comfort and support that is always latent in the hearts of his
Christian friends,--no man in whom these vast personal resources are
developed and employed can ever long remain disconsolate.
Even in prosperity, popularity, and outward success it takes
considerable mixture of these deeper elements to keep the tone of life
constantly on the high level of joy. But adversity is the real test.
Then the man without these interior resources gives way, breaks down,
becomes querulous, fretful, irritable, sour. On the other hand, the man
who can make mistakes, and take the criticism they bring, and go on as
cheerfully as if no blunder had been made and no vote of censure had
been passed; the man who can be hated for the good things he tries to
do, and condemned for bad things he never did and never meant to do; the
man who can work hard, and contentedly take poverty for pay; the man who
can serve devotedly people who revile and betray him in return; the man
who can discount in advance the unpopularity, misrepresentation, and
defeat a right course will cost, and then resolutely set about it; the
man who takes persecution and treachery as serenely as other men take
honours and emoluments,--this man, we may be sure, has dug deep an
invested heavily in the field where the priceless Christian treasure
lies concealed.
"Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake; for
theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach
you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely,
for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward
in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."
VII
THE SUPREMACY OF LOVE
Jesus' Spirit of Love is capable of absorbing into itself whatever we
have found valuable in the four previous systems.
The Epicurean's varied and spontaneous joy in life is not diminished,
but enhanced, by the Christian Spirit, which multiplies this joy as many
times as there are persons whom one knows and loves. The Epicurean lives
in the little world of himself, and a few equally self-centred
companions. The Christian lives in the great world of God, and shares
its joys with all God's human children. It is the absence of this larger
world, the exclusive concern for his own narrow pleasures, that makes
the consistent Epicurean, with all his polish and charm, the essentially
mean and despicable creature we found him to be.
To be sure, Mill, Spencer, and others have endeavoured to graft the
altruistic fruits of Christianity on to the old Epicurean stock. There
is this great difference, however, between such Christianised
Epicureanism as that of Mill and Spencer, and Christianity itself.
These systems have no logical bridge, no emotional bond by which to pass
from the pleasures of self to the pleasures of others. They can and do
point out the incompleteness of merely egoistic Epicureanism; they
exhort us to care for the pleasures of others as we do for our own. But
the logical nexus, the moral dynamic, the spiritual motive, is lacking
in these systems; and consequently these systems fail to work, except
with the few highly altruistic souls who need no spiritual physician.
This logical bond, this moral dynamic, this spiritual motive which
impels toward altruistic conduct, the Christian finds in Christ. He
certainly did love all men, and care for their happiness as dearly as He
cared for His own. But this same Christ is the Christian's Lord and
Master and Friend. Yet friendship for Him, the acceptance of Him as Lord
and Master, is a contradiction in terms, unless one is at the same time
willing to cultivate His Spirit, which is the Spirit of service, the
Spirit which holds the happiness and welfare of others just as sacred
and precious as one's own. He that hath not this Spirit of Christ is
none of His. Hence what men like Mill and Spencer preach as a duty, and
support by what their critics have found to be very inadequate and
fallacious logical processes, Christianity proclaims as a fact in the
nature of God, as embodied in Christ, and a condition of the divine life
for everyone who desires to be a child of God, a follower and friend of
Jesus Christ. Christianity, therefore, includes everything of value in
Epicureanism, and infinitely more. It has the Epicurean gladness without
its exclusiveness, its joy without its selfishness, its naturalness
without its baseness, its geniality without its heartlessness.
In like manner Christianity takes up all that is true in the Stoic
teaching, without falling into its hardness and narrowness. The truth of
the Stoic teaching consisted in its power to transform into an
expression of the man himself, and of the beneficent laws of Nature,
whatever outward circumstance might befall him, Now put in place of the
abstract self the love of the perfect Christ, and instead of universal
law the loving will of the Father for all His children, and you have a
deepened, sweetened, softened Stoicism which is identical with a sturdy,
strenuous, and virile Christianity.
If a man has in his heart the earnest desire to be like Christ, and to
do the things that help to carry out Christ's Spirit in the world, it is
absolutely impossible that he should ever find himself in a situation
where what he most desires to do cannot be done. Now a man who in every
conceivable situation can do what he most desires to do is as completely
"master of his fate" and "captain of his soul" as the most strenuous
Stoic ever prayed to be. And yet he is saved from the coldness and
hardness and repulsiveness of the mere Stoic, because the object of his
devotion, the aim of his assertion, is not his own barren, frigid,
formal self, but the kindly, sympathetic, loving Christ, whom he has
chosen to be his better self. Like the Stoic, he brings every thought
into captivity; but it is not the captivity of a prison, the empty
chamber of his individual soul, swept and garnished; it is captivity to
the most gracious and gentle and generous person the world has ever
known,--it is captivity to Christ.
When misfortune and calamity overtakes him, he transforms it into a
blessing and a discipline, not like the mere Stoic through passive
resignation to an impersonal law, as of gravitation, or electricity, or
bacteriology, but through active devotion to that glory of God which is
to be furthered mainly by kindness and sympathy and service to our
fellow-men. The man who has this love of Christ in his heart, and who is
devoted to the doing of the Father's loving will, can exclaim in every
untoward circumstance, "I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth
me." He can shout with more than Stoic defiance: "O death, where is thy
sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" In all the literature of Stoic
exultation in the face of frowning danger and impending doom, there is
nothing that can match the splendid outburst of the great Apostle: "Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or
anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that
loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate
us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Everything that we found noble, and strong, and brave in Stoicism we
find also here; the power to transform external evil into internal good,
and to hold so tightly to our self-chosen good that no power in earth or
heaven can ever wrest it from us,--a good so universal that the
circumstance is inconceivable in which it would fail to work. Yet with
all this tenacious, world-conquering strength, there is, drawn from the
divine Source of this affection a gentleness, and sympathy, and
tenderness, and humble human helpfulness, which the Stoic in his
boastfulness, and hardness, and self-sufficiency could never know.
The Christian abhors lying and stealing, scolding and slandering,
slavery and prostitution, meanness and murder, not less but far more
than the Stoic. But he refrains from these things, not under constraint
of abstract law, but because he cares so deeply and sensitively for the
people whom these things affect that he cannot endure the thought that
any word or deed of his should bring them pain or loss or shame or
degradation. Thus he gets the Stoic strength without its hardness, the
Stoic universality without its barrenness, the Stoic exaltation without
its pride, the Stoic integrity without its formalism, the Stoic calm
without its impassiveness.
Christianity is as lofty as Platonism; but it gets its elevation by a
different process. Instead of rising above drudgery and details, it
lifts them up into a clearer atmosphere, where nothing is servile or
menial which can glorify God or serve a fellow-man.
The great truth which Plato taught was the subordination of the lower
elements in human nature to the higher. In the application of this
truth, as we saw, Plato went far astray. His highest was not attainable
by every man; and he proposed to enforce the dictates of reason by fraud
and intimidation on those incapable of comprehending their
reasonableness. Thus he was led into that fallacy of the abstract
universal which is common to all socialistic schemes. Christianity takes
the Platonic principle of subordination of lower to higher; but it adds
a new definition to what the higher or rather the highest is; and it
introduces a new appeal for the lowliest to become willing servants and
friends of the highest, instead of mere constrained serfs and slaves.
This highest principle is, of course, Love of the God who loves all His
human children, friendship to the Christ who is the friend of every man.
Consequently there are no humble working-men to be coerced and no
unfortunate women to be maltreated; no deformed and ill-begotten
children to be exposed to early death, as in Plato's exclusive scheme.
To the Christian every child is a child of God, every woman a sister of
Christ, every man a son of the Father, and consequently no one of them
can be disregarded in our plans of fellowship and sympathy and service;
for whoever should dare to leave them out of his own sympathy and love
would thereby exclude himself from the Love of God, likeness to Christ,
and participation in the Christian Spirit.
Thus Christianity gives us all that was wise and just in the Platonic
principle of the subordination of the lower elements in our nature to
the higher; but its higher is so much above the highest dream of Plato
that it guards certain forms of social good at points where, even in
Plato's ideal Republic, they were ruthlessly betrayed.
Christianity finally gathers up into itself whatever is good in the
principle of Aristotle. The Aristotelian principle was the devotion of
life to a worthy end and the selection of efficient means for its
accomplishment. On that general formula it is impossible to improve. "To
this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world," is
Jesus' justification of His mission, when questioned by Pontius Pilate.
"One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching
forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," is Paul's
magnificent apology for his way of life. The concentration of one's
whole energy upon a worthy end, and the willing acceptance of pains,
privations, and penalties which may be incidental to the effective
prosecution of that end, is the comprehensive formula of every brave
and heroic life, whether it be the life of Jew or Gentile, Greek or
Christian. It is not because it sets forth something different from this
wise and brave prosecution of a noble end that Christianity is an
improvement on the teaching of Aristotle; it is because the end at which
the Christian aims is so much higher, and the fortitude demanded by it
is so much deeper, that Christianity has superseded and deserves to
supersede the noblest teaching of the greatest Greeks. What was the end
which Aristotle set before himself and his disciples? Citizenship in a
city state half free and half enslaved, with leisure for the philosophic
contemplation of the learned few, bought by the constrained toil of the
ignorant, degraded many; the refined companionship of choice congenial
spirits for which it was expected that the multitude would be forever
incapacitated and from which they would be forcibly excluded. Over
against this aristocracy of birth, opportunity, leisure, training, and
intelligence Jesus sets the wide democracy of virtue, service, Love.
Whoever is capable of doing the humblest deed in Love to God and service
to man becomes thereby a member of the kingdom of the choicest spirits
to be found in earth or heaven, and entitled to the same courteous and
delicate consideration which the disciple would show to his Master. The
building up of such a kingdom and the extension of its membership to
include all the nations of the earth and all classes and conditions of
men within its happy fellowship, and in its noble service, is the great
end which Jesus set before himself and which He invites each disciple to
share.
Whatever hardship and toil, whatever pain and persecution, whatever
reviling and contumely, whatever privation and poverty may be necessary
to the accomplishment of this great end the Master himself gladly bore,
and He asks His followers to do the same. In a world full of hypocrisy
and corruption, pride and pretence, avarice and greed, cruelty and lust,
malice and hate, selfishness and sin, there are bound to be many trials
to be borne, much hard work to be done, many blows to be received, much
suffering to be endured. All that is inevitable, whatever view one takes
of life. Christ, however, shows us the way to do and bear these things
cheerfully and bravely as part of His great work of redeeming the world
from the bondage and misery of these powers of evil, and establishing
His kingdom of Love. To keep the clear vision of that great end before
our eyes, to keep the sense of His companionship warm and glowing
within our hearty never to lose the sense of the great liberation and
blessing this kingdom will bring to our downtrodden, maltreated brothers
and sisters in the humbler walks of life, Jesus tells us is the secret
of that sanity and sacrifice which is able to make the yoke of useful
toil easy, and the burden of social service light; and to transform the
cross of suffering into a crown of joy.
Each of these four previous principles is valuable and essential; and
the fact that Christianity is higher than them all, no more warrants the
Christian in dispensing with the lower elements, than the supremacy of
the roof enables it to dispense with the foundation and the intervening
stories. Both for ourselves, and for the world in which we live, we need
to make our ideal of personality broad and comprehensive. We need to
combine in harmonious and graceful unity the happy Epicurean disposition
to take fresh from the hand of nature all the pleasures she innocently
offers; the strong Stoic temper that takes complacently whatever
incidental pains and ills the path of duty may have in store for us; the
occasional Platonic mood which from time to time shall lift us out of
the details of drudgery when they threaten to obscure the larger outlook
of the soul; the shrewd Aristotelian insight which weighs the worth of
transient impulses and passing pleasures in the impartial scales of
intellectual and social ends; and then, not as a thing apart, but rather
as the crown and consummation of all these other elements, the generous
Christian Spirit, which makes the joys and sorrows, the aims and
interests, of others as precious as one's own, and sets the Will of God
which includes the good of all His creatures high above all lesser aims,
as the bond that binds them all together in the unity of a personal life
which is in principle perfect with some faint approximation to the
divine perfection.
The omission of any truth for which the other ancient systems stood
mutilates and impoverishes the Christian view of life. Ascetic
Puritanism, for instance, is Christianity minus the truth taught by
Epicurus. Sentimental liberalism is Christianity without the Stoic note.
Dogmatic orthodoxy is Christianity sadly in need of Plato's search-light
of sincerity. Sacerdotal ecclesiasticism is Christianity that has lost
the Aristotelian disinterestedness of devotion to intellectual and
social ends higher and wider than its own institutional aggrandisement.
The time is ripe for a Christianity which shall have room for all the
innocent joys of sense and flesh, of mind and heart, which Epicurus
taught us to prize aright, yet shall have the Stoic strength to make
whatever sacrifice of them the universal good requires; which shall
purge the heart of pride and pretence by questionings of motive as
searching as those of Plato, and at the same time shall hold life to as
strict accountability for practical usefulness and social progress as
Aristotle's doctrines of the end and the mean require. It is by some
such world-wide, historical approach, and the inclusion of whatever
elements of truth and worth other systems have separately emphasised,
that we shall reach a Christianity that is really catholic.
To take the duties and trials, the practical problems and personal
relationships of life up into the atmosphere of Love, so that what we do
and how we treat people becomes the resultant, not of the outward
situation and our natural appetites and passions, but of the outward
situation and Love within our hearts,--this is what it means to live in
the Christian Spirit; this is the essence of Christianity. Strengthened
character and straightened conduct are sure to follow the maintenance of
this spiritual relationship. Not that it will transform one's hereditary
traits and acquired habits all at once, or save one from many a slip
and flaw. Even the Christian Spirit of Love takes time to work its moral
transformation. The tendency of it, however, is steady and strong in the
right direction; and in due time it will conquer the heart and control
the action of any man who, whether verbally or silently, whether
formally or informally, maintains this conscious relationship to that
Love at the heart of things which most of us call God. Jesus and all who
have shared His spiritual insight tell us that the maintenance of this
relationship, close, warm, and quick, is the pearl of great price, the
one thing needful, the potency of righteousness, the secret of
blessedness; and that there is more hope of a man with a bad record and
many besetting sins who honestly tries to keep this relationship alive
within his breast, than there is of the self-righteous man who boasts
that he can keep himself outwardly immaculate without these inward aids.
Christianity of this simple, vital sort is the world's salvation.
Criticised by enemies and caricatured by friends; fossilised in the
minds of the aged, and forced on the tongues of the immature; mingled
with all manner of exploded superstition, false philosophy, science that
is not so, and history that never happened; obscured under absurd
rites; buried in incredible creeds; professed by hypocrites;
discredited by sentimentalists; evaporated by mystics; stereotyped by
literalists; monopolised by sacerdotalists; it has lived in spite of all
the grave-clothes its unbelieving disciples have tried to wrap around
it, and holds the keys of eternal life.
INDEX
Accident, Stoic explanation of, 83-85.
Adversity, test of Christian character, 276.
Altruism, 10-15, 222.
Ambition, 143-144, 182.
Amputation of morbid reflections, 33.
Apperception, 66-70.
Aristotle--
Limitations of, 212-213.
Summary of, 213-214.
On--
Celibacy, 180-181.
Chastity, 202-204.
Courage, 204-206.
Friendship, 209-212.
Need of instruments, 191-194.
Pleasure, 160-175.
Prudence, 200.
Social nature of man, 176-179.
Temperance, 201.
Test of character, 184.
The end, 179-191.
The mean, 194-198.
The virtues, 199-208.
Wealth, 192.
Wisdom, 199.
Completed in Christianity, 284-287.
Arnold, Matthew, 100, 107.
Avarice, 146-147.
Bacteria, on the whole beneficent, 84-85.
Beatitudes, 265.
Blessedness of Love, 264-277.
Boss, political, evolution of, 150-151.
Carlyle, 160-161, 190.
Celestial Surgeon, 19.
Celibacy, 180-181.
Chastity, 202-204, 229-232.
Cheerfulness, 19.
Christian--
Church government, 240.
Forgiveness, 259-260.
Joy, 275.
Modesty, 265.
Peace, 270-272.
Sacrifice, 254-256, 273-274.
Use and misuse of creeds, 241-243.
Worship, 240.
Interpretation of--
Art, 249-251.
Business, 249-251.
Divorce, 233-235.
Marriage, 228.
Murder, 225-228.
Pleasure, 255.
Politics, 249-251.
Profanity, 235.
Science, 249-251.
Wealth, 248-252.
Christianity--
The completion of--
Aristotle, 284-287.
Epicureanism, 277-279.
Plato, 282-284.
Stoicism, 279-282.
Missionary character of, 262-263.
In need of intellectual honesty, 241-243.
Supremacy of, 277-291.
Christmas Sermon, Stevenson's, 19.
Circumstances alter acts, 129.
Cleanthes' hymn, 97-99.
Clubs, women's, 188-189.
Commandments, Aristotelian, 213.
Cosmopolitanism, Stoic, 94-95.
Courage, 204-206.
Cowardice, 128.
Creeds, 241-243.
Cynicism, 82.
Cynic's prayer, 96-97.
Death, Christian triumph over, 281.
Epicurean disposition of, 7, 8, 45.
Stoic view of, 73, 77.
Whitman on, 18.
Degeneration, Plato's stages of, 143-153.
Democracy, ancient and modern, 122.
Plato on, 147-149.
Depression, 32-33.
Diet, 5, 21-22, 124-126.
Difficulty, Stoic attitude toward, 75-76.
Divorce, logical outcome of Epicureanism, 44.
Christian attitude toward, 233-235.
Education, Plato's scheme of, 131-138.
Egoism, duty of adequate, 10-15.
Electricity, beneficent, 84.
Eliot, George, 46-51.
Emerson, 165-167.
End, not justification of means, 178-179.
Epictetus, 71-77, 81, 84, 87, 88, 89, 96, 97.
Epicurean--
Day, 34-35.
Definition of personality, 37, 51.
Gods, 9, 95.
Heaven, 45.
Man, 40-41.
Woman, 42-44.
Epicureanism, defects of, 36-45, 110, 159, 169-172.
Merits of, 23-25, 52-53.
Parasitic character of, 40, 44-45, 52.
Epicurus, 1-9.
Equality, Plato on, 148.
Evil, Stoic solution of, 87-90.
Eye of good man upon us, 6.
Fighting, a Christian duty, 270-272.
Fitzgerald, 15-16.
Forgiveness, 79, 259-260.
Fortitude, 126-129.
Friendship, 6, 166-167, 209-212.
Gentleness before all morality, 19.
Gilbert, W.S., To the Terrestrial Globe, 108.
Gluttony, 125.
Golden Rule, 223.
Good, the, according to Plato, 130.
Gravitation, beneficent, 83-84.
Gyges' ring, 115-116.
Handles, two to everything, 71.
Happiness and Virtue, 264.
Harmony, effect of, in education, 134.
Health, 10-13, 69.
Henley, To R. T. H. B., 100.
Heretic, definition of, 53-54.
Honesty, intellectual, 241-243.
Horace, Ode on Philosophy of Life, 10.
Humility, 265.
Hurry, 29-30.
Imaginary presence of good man, 6.
Independence of outward goods, 4, 74.
Indifference to external things, 71, 77-78, 81.
Intellectual honesty, 241-243.
Jesus' three ways of teaching, 215-218.
Joy, 275.
Judas meets himself, 79.
Judging others, 260.
Judgment, Epicurean, Stoic, Platonic, and Aristotelian, 183.
Christian, 220-221.
Kant, categorical imperative, 86.
Good-will only real good, 85-86.
Uncompromising modern Stoic, 85.
Law, Jewish, transcended by Christianity, 219-238.
Stoic reverence for, 82-86.
Liberty, excess of, leads to slavery, 149.
Lincoln's letter to Greeley, 198.
Literature in education, 132-135.
Love, Christian, 215-291.
Lucretius, 8-9.
Marcus Aurelius, 77, 96.
Marriage, 228.
Mean, Aristotle's doctrine of the, 194-198.
Meekness, 268.
Melancholy, 33-34.
Mental healing, 30, 66, 70.
Mercy, 269.
Mill, Christian elements in his doctrine, 63.
Definition of happiness, 54.
Distinction in quality of happiness, 55-57.
Incompleteness of doctrine, 277-278.
Inconsistency of, 57-58, 63-65.
On social nature of man, 60-62.
Missionary character of Christianity, 262-263.
Modesty, 265.
Morrow, how meet most pleasantly, 7.
Murder, Christian definition of, 225-228.
Mysticism, 164.
Narrow way, 256.
Natural desires, 3.
Neoplatonism, 161-164.
"New Thought," 162.
Oaths, 235.
Obligation not to be relaxed, 167-168.
Office, good for one, bad for another, 186-187.
Omar Khayyam, 15-17, 38.
Opinion in our power, 74-75, 87.
Optimism, superficiality of modern, 82.
Otherworldliness, 36.
Pain, 2, 4.
Parasitic character of Epicureanism, 40, 44-45.
Patience, 128.
Penitence, 267.
Perfectionism, 92-93.
Persecution, 272-276.
Pessimism, 37-38.
Philosophers, as kings, 138.
Plato--
Defects of, 120-122, 162-168.
Merits of, 159-162, 278.
On--
Athletics, 136.
Cardinal virtues, 123-131.
Democracy, 147-149.
Education, 131-138.
Literature in education, 132-135.
Philosophers as kings, 138.
Riches and rich men, 145-147.
Righteousness, 113-223, 138-142, 153-159.
The good, 130, 137.
Completed in Christianity, 282-284.
Play, 26-28.
Pleasure, 2-4, 20, 39, 30-65, 110-111, 169-175, 255.
Politician, 117-119, 150-152.
Poverty, 4.
Power, things in our, 74.
Prayer, 257-258, 268.
Present, the time to live, 6, 36.
Procrastination, 6-7.
Prudence, 5-6, 20, 251.
Purity, 270.
Reading Gaol, 226.
Religion of Stoics, 95-100.
Reverence, 215.
Rewards and penalties not essential to virtue, 112-115.
Riches, 4-5, 67-69, 89, 145-147, 248-252.
Righteousness, 113-123, 138-142, 153-159.
Romola, 46-51.
Sacrifice, 254-256, 273-274.
Self-regard and excessive self-sacrifice, 10-15.
Seneca's pilot, 77.
Sexual morality, 202-204, 270.
Sin, 93.
Sleep, 22.
Social nature of man, 60-62, 176-179.
Socrates' prayer, 159.
Sorrow, Stoic attitude toward, 76-77.
Spencer, 10-15, 277-278.
Spirit, one of three elements in our nature, 126-128.
Stevenson, 18, 19, 201.
Stoic--
Acceptance of criticism, 103.
Attitude toward sorrow, 76-77, 78, 80, 101-102.
Cosmopolitanism, 94-95.
Doctrine of no degrees in vice, 90-92.
Equanimity, 103-105.
Fortitude, 105-106.
Indifference, 71-81.
Paradoxes, 90-95.
Perfection of the sage, 93-93.
Religion, 95-103.
Resignation, 97, 104-105.
Reverence for law, 82-86.
Solution of problem of evil, 87-90.
Stoicism, coldness of, 107-109.
Completed in Christianity, 279-282.
Defects of, 106-109, 159.
Permanent value of, 101-106, 279-282.
Two principles of, 101.
Temperance, 200-204.
Theatre, 27.
Tito Melema, 46-51.
Tranquillity, 75.
Travel, foreign, the paradise of Epicurean women, 42.
Trial, Stoic endurance of, 75,89-90.
Tyranny, Plato on, 149-153.
Tyrant, most miserable of men, 153.
Unrighteousness the greatest evil, 140-141, 154-157.
Vexation, Stoic formula for, 78.
Virtue, 87-88, 110-116, 199-208.
Wealth, 4-5, 67-69, 145-148, 182, 248-252.
Whitman, Walt, 17, 18.
Wisdom, 129-131, 199.
Work, excessive, 10-15, 23-25.
Worry, folly of, 24, 29-30, 33, 252-253.
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