GREEK AND GRAECO-ROMAN ETHICS The Pre-Socratic Philosophers.—The ethical speculation of Greece, and theref ore of Europe, had no abrupt and absolute beginning. The naïve and fragmentary precepts of conduct, which are everywhere the earliest manifestation of nascent moral re flection, are a noteworthy element in the gnomic poetry of the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. Their importance is shown by the traditional enumeration of the Seven Sages of the 6th century, and their influence on ethical thought is attested by the references of Plato and Aristotle. But from these unscientific utterances to a philosophy of morals was a long process. In the practical wis dom of Thales (q.v.), one of the seven, we cannot discern any systematic theory of morality. In the case of Pythagoras, con spicuous among pre-Socratic philosophers as the founder not merely of a school, but of an order bound by a common rule of life, there is a closer connection between moral and metaphysical speculation. The doctrine of the Pythagoreans that the essence of justice (conceived as equal retribution) was a square number, indicates a serious attempt to extend to the region of conduct their mathematical view of the universe ; and the same may be said of their classification of good with unity, straightness and the like. and of evil with the opposite qualities. Still, the enuncia tion of the moral precepts of Pythagoras appears to have been dogmatic, or even prophetic, rather than philosophic, and to have been accepted by his disciples with an unphilosophic reverence as the ipse dixit of the master. Hence, whatever influence the Pythagorean blending of ethical and mathematical notions may have had on Plato, and, through him, on later thought, we cannot regard the school as having really forestalled the Socratic enquiry of ter a completely reasoned theory of conduct. The ethical ele ment in the "dark" philosophizing of Heraclitus (c. B.C.), though it anticipates Stoicism in its conceptions of a law of the universe, to which the wise man will carefully conform, and a divine harmony, in the recognition of which he will find his truest satisfaction, is more profound, but even less systematic. It is only when we come to Democritus, a contemporary of Soc rates, that we find anything which we can call an ethical sys tem. The fragments that remain of the moral treatises of Democritus are sufficient, perhaps, to convince us that the turn of Greek philosophy in the direction of conduct, which was actually due to Socrates, would have taken place without him, though in a less decided manner; but when we compare the De mocritean ethics with the post-Socratic system to which it has most affinity, Epicureanism, we find that it exhibits a very rudi mentary apprehension of the formal conditions which moral teaching must fulfil before it can be treated as scientific.
The truth is that no system of ethics could be constructed until attention had been directed to the vagueness and inconsist ency of the common moral opinions of mankind. For this purpose was needed the concentration of a philosophic intellect of the first order on the problems of practice. In Socrates first we find the required combination of a paramount interest in conduct and an ardent desire for knowledge.
Socrates, first in the history of thought, propounds a positive law of conduct. Virtue is knowledge. This principle involved the paradox that no man, knowing good, would do evil. But it was a paradox derived from his unanswerable truisms, "Every one wishes for his own good, and would get it if he could," and "No one would deny that justice and virtue generally are goods, and of all goods the best." But this good is not, for Socrates, duty as dis tinct from interest. The force of the paradox depends upon a blending of duty and interest in the single notion of good. This it is which forms the kernel of the positive thought of Socrates according to Xenophon. He could give no satisfactory account of Good in the abstract, and evaded all questions on this point by saying that he knew "no good that was not good for something in particular," but that good is consistent with itself. For him self he prized above all things the wisdom that is virtue, and in the task of producing it he endured the hardest penury, main taining that such life was richer in enjoyment than a life of luxury. The historically important characteristics of his moral philo sophy, if we take his teaching and character together, may be summarized as follows : (I) an ardent enquiry for knowledge nowhere to be found, but which, if found, would perfect human conduct; (2) a demand meanwhile that men should act as far as possible on some consistent theory; (3) a provisional adhesion to the commonly received view of good, and a perpetual readiness to maintain the harmony of its different elements, and demonstrate the superiority of virtue by an appeal to the standard of self interest ; (4) personal firmness in carrying out consistently such practical convictions as he had attained. It is only when we keep all these points in view that we can understand how from Socratic conversation came all Greek ethical thought.
Aristippus (see CYRENAICS) argued that, if all that is beautiful or admirable in conduct has this quality as being useful, i.e., pro ductive of some further good ; this good must be pleasure. Bodily pleasures and pains Aristippus held to be the keenest, though he admitted the existence of purely mental pleasures, such as joy in the prosperity of one's native land. He fully recognized that his good was capable of being realized only in successive parts, and gave even exaggerated emphasis to the rule of seeking the pleasure of the moment, and not troubling oneself about a dubious future. It was in the calm, resolute, skilful culling of such pleasures as circumstances afforded from moment to moment, undisturbed by passion, prejudices or superstition, that he conceived the qual ity of wisdom to be exhibited. Among the prejudices from which the wise man was free he included all regard to customary mo rality beyond what was due to the actual penalties attached to its violation; though he held, with Socrates, that these penalties actually render conformity reasonable. Thus early appeared the most thoroughgoing exposition of hedonism.
Far otherwise was the Socratic spirit understood by Antisthenes and the Cynics (q.v.). They equally held that no speculative research was needed for the discovery of good and virtue, and maintained that the Socratic wisdom was exhibited, not in the skilful pursuit, but in the rational disregard of pleasure—in the clear apprehension of the intrinsic worthlessness of this and most other objects of men's ordinary desires and aims. Pleasure, in deed, Antisthenes declared evil. He did not overlook the need of supplementing merely intellectual insight by "Socratic force of soul"; but it seemed to him that, by insight and self-mastery combined, an absolute spiritual independence might be attained which left nothing wanting for perfect well-being (see DIOGENES). For, regarding poverty, painful toil, disrepute, and such evils men dread most, these, he argued, were positively useful as means of progress in spiritual freedom and virtue. There is, however, in the Cynic notion of wisdom, no positive criterion beyond the mere negation of irrational desires and prejudices. We saw that Socrates, while not claiming to have found the abstract theory of good or wise conduct, practically understood by it the faithful performance of customary duties. The Cynics more boldly dis carded both pleasure and mere custom as alike irrational; but in so doing they left the freed reason with no definite aim but its own freedom. It is absurd, as Plato urged, to say that knowledge is the good, and then when asked "knowledge of what?" to have no positive reply but "of the good"; but the Cynics do not seem to have made any serious effort to escape from this absurdity.
This movement may be expressed thus. "If we know," said Socrates, "what justice is, we can give an account or definition of it"; true knowledge must be knowledge of the general fact, common to all the individual cases to which we apply our general notion. But this must be no less true of other objects of thought; the same relation of general notions to particular examples ex tends through the whole physical universe ; we can think of it only by means of such notions. True knowledge then must be general knowledge, relating not to individuals primarily, but to the general facts or qualities which individuals exemplify; in fact, our notion of an individual, when examined, is found to be an aggregate of such general qualities. But, again, the object of true knowledge must be what really exists; hence the reality of the universe must lie in general facts or relations.
Plato's philosophy is now concerned with the whole universe of being; yet the ultimate object of his philosophic contemplation is still "the good," now conceived as the ultimate ground of all being and knowledge. How comes this about? Perhaps we may best explain this by recurring to the original application of the Socratic method to human affairs. Since all rational activity is for some end, the different arts or functions of human industry are naturally defined by a statement of their ends or uses; and similarly, in giving an account of the different artists and functionaries, we necessarily state their end, "what they are good for." In a society well ordered on Socratic prin ciples, every human being would be put to some use ; the essence of his life would consist in doing what he was good for. But again, it is easy to extend this view throughout the whole region of or ganized life ; an eye that does not attain its end by seeing is with out the essence of an eye. In short, we may say of all organs and instruments that they are what we think them in proportion as they fulfil their function and attain their end. If, then, we con ceive the whole universe organically, as a complex arrangement of means to ends, we shall understand how Plato might hold that all things really were, or "realized their idea," in proportion as they accomplished the special end for which they were adapted.
Plato, therefore, took this vast stride of thought, and identified the ultimate notions of ethics and ontology. We have now to see what attitude he will adopt towards the practical enquiries from which he started. What will now be his view of wisdom, virtue, pleasure and their relation to human well-being? The answer to this question is somewhat complicated. In the first place we have to observe that philosophy has now passed definitely from the market-place into the lecture-room. The quest of Socrates was for the true art of conduct for a man living a practical life among his fellows. But if the objects of abstract thought constitute the real world, of which this world of indi vidual things is but a shadow, it is plain that the highest, most real life must lie in the former region and not in the latter. It is in contemplating the abstract reality which concrete things ob scurely exhibit, the type or ideal which they imperfectly imitate, that the true life of the mind in man must consist ; and as man is most truly man in proportion as he is mind, the desire of one's own good, which Plato, following Socrates, held to be permanent and essential in every living thing, becomes in its highest form the philosophic yearning for knowledge. This yearning, he held, springs from a sense of want of something formerly possessed, of which there remains a latent memory in the soul, strong in proportion to its philosophic capacity ; hence it is that in learning any abstract truth by scientific demonstration we merely bring into clear consciousness hide en memories of a state in which the soul looked upon Reality and Good face to face, before the lapse that imprisoned her in an alien body and mingled her true nature with fleshly feelings and impulses. We thus reach the paradox that the true art of living is really an "art of dying" as far as possible to mere sense, in order more fully to exist in inti mate union with absolute goodness and beauty. On the other hand, since the philosopher must still live and act in the concrete sensible world, the Socratic identification of wisdom and virtue is fully maintained by Plato. Only he who apprehends good in the abstract can imitate it in such transient and imperfect good as may be realized in human life; and it is impossible that, having this knowledge, he should not act on it, whether in private or pub lic affairs. Thus, in the true philosopher, we shall necessarily find the practically good man, and also the perfect statesman, if only conditions allow him a sphere for exercising his statesmanship.
The characteristics of this practical goodness in Plato's matured thought correspond to the fundamental conceptions in his view of the universe. The soul of man, in its good or normal condi tion, must be ordered and harmonized under the guidance of reason. The question then arises, "Wherein does this order or harmony precisely consist?" In explaining how Plato was led to answer this question, it will be well to notice that, while faith fully maintaining the Socratic doctrine that the highest virtue was inseparable from knowledge of the good, he had come to recognize an inferior kind of virtue, possessed by men who were not philosophers. It is plain that if the good that is to be known is the ultimate ground of the whole of things, it is attainable only by a select and carefully trained few. Yet we can hardly restrict all virtue to these alone. What account, then, was to be given of ordinary "civic" bravery, temperance and justice? It seemed clear that men who did their duty, resisting the seductions of fear and desire, must have right opinions, if not knowledge, as to the good and evil in human life; but whence comes this right "opinion"? Partly, Plato said, it comes by the nature and "divine allot ment," but for its adequate development "custom and practice" are required. Hence the importance of education and discipline for civic virtue ; and even for future philosophers such moral culture, in which physical and aesthetic training must co-operate, is indispensable ; no merely intellectual preparation will suffice. His point is that perfect knowledge cannot be implanted in a soul that has not gone through a course of preparation. What, then, is this preparation? A distinct step in psychological analysis was taken when Plato recognized that its effect was to produce the "harmony" above mentioned among different parts of the soul, by subordinating the impulsive elements to reason. These non-rational elements he further distinguished as appetitive and spirited—the practical separateness of which from each other and from reason he held to be established by our inner experience.
On this triple division of the soul he founded a systematic view of the four kinds of goodness recognized by the common moral consciousness of Greece, and in later times known as the Cardinal Virtues (q.v). Of these the two most fundamental were wisdom—in its highest form philosophy—and that harmonious and regulated activity of all the elements of the soul which Plato regards as the essence of uprightness in social relations. The im port of this term is essentially social; and we can explain Plato's use of it only by reference to the analogy which he drew between the individual man and the community. In a rightly ordered polity social and individual well-being alike would depend on that harmonious action of diverse elements, each performing its proper function, which in its social application is more naturally termed Justice. We see, moreover, how in Plato's view the fundamental virtues, Wisdom and Justice, are mutually involved. Wisdom will necessarily maintain orderly activity, and this latter consists in regulation by wisdom, while the two more special virtues of Courage and Temperance are only different sides or aspects of this wisely regulated action of the complex soul.
Such, then, are the forms in which essential good seemed to manifest itself in human life. It remains to ask whether the statement of these gives a complete account of human well-being, or whether pleasure also is to be included. On this point Plato's view seems to have gone through several oscillations. After apparently maintaining (Protagoras) that pleasure is the good, he passes first to deny it (Phaedo, Gorgias) to be a good at all. This view, however, was too violent a divergence from Socratism for Plato to remain in it. That pleasure is not the real absolute good, was no ground for not including it in the good of concrete human life ; and after all only vulgar pleasures were indissolubly linked to the pains of want. Accordingly, in the Republic he has no objection to trying the question of the intrinsic superiority of virtuous life by the standard of pleasure, and argues that the good man alone enjoys real pleasure, while the sensualist spends his life in oscillating between painful want and the merely neutral state of painlessness, which he mistakes for positive pleasure. Still more emphatically is it declared in the Laws that when we are "discoursing to men, not to gods," we must show that the life which we praise as best and noblest is also that in which there is the greatest excess of pleasure over pain. But though in the Philebus a place is allowed to pleasures of colour, form and sound, of intellectual exercise, and even to the "necessary" satisfaction of appetite, it is only a subordinate one. At the same time Plato avoids the exaggeration of denying all positive quality of pleas ure even to the coarser sensual gratifications ; they are un doubtedly cases of that "replenishment" or "restoration" to its "natural state" of a bodily organ, in which he defines pleasure to consist (see Timaeus, pp. 64, 65) ; he merely maintains that the common estimate of them is to a large extent illusory, or a false appearance of pleasure is produced by contrast with the ante cedent or concomitant painful condition of the organ. In the Philebus, however, the antithesis of knowledge and pleasure is again sharpened, and a desire to depreciate even good pleasures is more strongly shown ; still even here pleasure is recognized as a constituent of that philosophic life which is the highest human good, while in the Laws, where the subject is more popu larly treated, it is admitted that we cannot convince man the just life is best unless we can also prove it the pleasantest.
The substantial good of the universe, in Aristotle's view, is the pure activity of universal abstract thought, at once subject and object, which, itself changeless and eternal, is the final cause and first source of the whole process of change in the concrete world. And both he and Plato hold that a similar activity of pure specu lative intellect is that in which the philosopher will seek to exist, though he must, being a man, concern himself with the affairs of ordinary human life, a region in which his highest good will be attained by realizing perfect moral excellence. Both accept the paradox in the qualified sense that no one can deliberately act con trary to what appears to him good, and that perfect virtue is inseparably bound up with perfect wisdom or moral insight. Both, however, recognize that this actuality of moral insight is not a function of the intellect only, but depends rather on careful train ing in good habits applied to minds of good natural dispositions, though the doctrine has no doubt a more definite and prominent place in Aristotle's system. The disciple certainly takes a step in advance by stating definitely, as an essential characteristic of vir tuous action, that it is chosen for its own sake, for the beauty of virtue alone ; but herein he merely formulates the conviction that his master inspires. Nor, finally, does Aristotle's account of the relation of pleasure to human well-being (although he has to com bat the extreme anti-hedonism to which the Platonic school under Speusippus had been led) differ materially from the outcome of Plato's thought on this point, as the later dialogues present it to us. Pleasure, in Aristotle's view, is not the primary constituent of well-being, but rather an inseparable accident of it. He no doubt criticizes Plato's account of the nature of pleasure, arguing that we cannot properly conceive pleasure either as a "process" or as "replenishment." But this does not interfere with the general ethical agreement between the two and the doctrine that vicious pleasures are not true or real pleasures is so characteristically Platonic that we are almost surprised to find it in Aristotle.
Aristotle, discarding the transcendentalism of Plato, naturally retained from Plato's teaching the original Socratic method of in duction from and verification by common opinion. Indeed, the windings of his exposition are best understood if we consider his literary manner as a kind of Socratic dialogue formalized and re duced to a monologue. He first leads us by an induction to the fundamental notion of ultimate end or good for man. All men, in acting, aim at some result, either for its own sake or as a means to some further end ; but obviously not everything can be sought merely as a means ; there must be some ultimate end. In fact men commonly recognize such an end, and agree to call it well-being. But they take very different views of its nature; how shall we find the true view? We observe that men are classified according to their functions ; all kinds of man, and indeed all organs of man, have their special functions, and are judged as functionaries and organs according as they perform their functions well or ill. May we not then infer that man, as man, has his proper function, and that the well-being or "doing-well" that all seek really lies in ful filling well the proper function of man—that is, in living well that life of the rational soul which is man's distinctive attribute? The most important element, then, of well-being or good life for ordinary men Aristotle holds to consist in well-doing as deter mined by the notions of the different moral excellences. Ethi cal truth, in his view, is to be attained by careful comparison of particular moral opinions, just as physical truth is to be obtained by induction from particular physical observations. On account of the conflict of opinion in ethics we cannot hope to obtain certainty upon all questions ; still reflection will lead us to discard some of the conflicting views and find a reconciliation for others, and will furnish, on the whole, a practically sufficient residuum of moral truth. This adhesion to common sense, though it involves a sacri fice of both depth and completeness in Aristotle's system, gives at the same time an historical interest which renders it deserving of special attention as an analysis of the current Greek ideal of "fair and good life" (KaXoK&yaOia). His virtues are not arranged on any clear philosophic plan ; the list shows no serious attempt to consider human life exhaustively, and exhibit the standard of ex cellence appropriate to its different departments or aspects. He seems to have taken as a starting-point Plato's four cardinal vir tues. The two comprehensive notions of Wisdom and Justice (BIKacowvf) he treats separately. As regards both, his analysis leads him to diverge considerably from Plato. As we saw, his distinction between practical and speculative Wisdom belongs to the deepest of his disagreement with his master; and in the case of Sucatocrbvn again he distinguishes the wider use of the term to express Law-observance, which (he says) coincides with the social side of virtue generally, and its narrower use for the virtue that "aims at a kind of equality," whether (I) in the distribution of wealth, honour, etc., or (2) in commercial exchange, or (3) in the reparation of wrong done. Then, in arranging the other special virtues, he begins with courage and temperance, which (after Plato) he considers as the excellences of the "irrational element" of the soul. Next follow two pairs of excellences, concerned respectively with wealth and honour: (I) liberality and magnifi cence, of which the latter is exhibited in greater matters of ex penditure, and (2) laudable ambition and highmindedness simi larly related to honour. Then comes gentleness—the virtue regu lative of anger; and the list is concluded by the excellences of social intercourse, friendliness, truthfulness and decorous wit.
On the whole, there is probably no treatise so masterly as Aristotle's Ethics, and containing so much close and valid thought, that yet leaves on the reader's mind so strong an impression of dispersive and incomplete work. It is only by dwelling on these defects that we can understand the small amount of influence that his system exercised during the five centuries after his death, as compared with the effect which it has had, directly or indirectly, in shaping the thought of modern Europe. Partly, no doubt, the limited influence of his disciples, the Peripatetics (q.v.), is to be attributed to that exaltation of the purely speculative life which distinguished the Aristotelian ethics from other later systems, and which was too alien from the common moral consciousness to find much acceptance in an age in which the ethical aims of philosophy had again become paramount. Partly, again, the analytical dis tinctness of Aristotle's manner brings into special prominence the difficulties that attend the Socratic effort to reconcile the ideal aspirations of men with the principles on which their practical reasonings are commonly conducted. The conflict between these two elements of Common Sense was too profound to be com promised ; and the moral consciousness of mankind demanded a more trenchant partisanship than Aristotle's. Its demands were met by the Stoic school, which separated the moral from the worldly view of life, with an absoluteness and definiteness that caught the imagination ; which regarded practical goodness as the highest manifestation of its ideal of wisdom; and which bound the common notions of duty into an apparently coherent system, by a formula that comprehended the whole of human life, and exhibited its relation to the ordered process of the universe. The intellectual descent of its ethical doctrines is principally to be traced to Socrates through the Cynics, though an important ele ment in them seems attributable to the school that inherited the "Academy" of Plato. Both Stoic and Cynic maintained, in its sharpest form, the fundamental tenet that the practical knowledge which is virtue, with the condition of soul that is inseparable from it, is alone to be accounted good. The Stoics seem generally to have regarded the eccentricities of Cynicism as an emphatic manner of expressing the essential antithesis betwcen philosophy and the world ; and though not necessary or even normal, might be advantageously adopted under certain circumstances.
Stoicism.—Wherein, then, consists this knowledge or wisdom that makes free and perfect? Both Cynics and Stoics (q.v.) agreed that the most important part of it was the knowledge that the sole good of man lay in this knowledge or wisdom itself. It must be understood that by wisdom they meant wisdom realized in act ; indeed, they did not conceive the existence of wisdom as separable from such realization. We may observe, too, that the Stoics rejected the divergence which we have seen gradually tak ing place in Platonic-Aristotelian thought from the position of Socrates, "that no one aims at what he knows to be bad." The stress that their psychology laid on the essential unity of the ra tional self that is the source of voluntary action prevented them from accepting Plato's analysis of the soul into a regulative ele ment and elements needing regulation. They held that what we call passion is a morbid condition of the rational soul, involving erroneous judgment as to what is to be sought or shunned. From such passionate errors the truly wise man will of course be free. He will be conscious indeed of physical appetite ; but he will not be misled into supposing that its object is really a good; he can not, therefore, hope for the attainment of this object or fear to miss it, as these states involve the conception of it as a good. Similarly, though like other men he will be subject to bodily pain, this will not cause him mental grief or disquiet, as his worst agonies will not disturb his clear conviction that it is really indif ferent to his true reasonable self.
That this impassive sage was a being not to be found among living men the later Stoics at least were fully aware. They faintly suggested that one or two mortal heroes of old time might have realized the ideal, but they admitted that all other philosophers, even, were merely in a state of progress towards it. This admis sion did not in the least diminish the rigour of their demand for absolute loyalty to the exclusive claims of wisdom. The assurance of its own unique value that such wisdom involved they held to be an abiding possession for those who had attained it ; and without this assurance no act could be truly wise or virtuous. Whatever was not of knowledge was of sin ; and the distinction between right and wrong being absolute and not admitting of degrees, all sins were equally sinful; whoever broke the least commandment was guilty of the whole law. Similarly, all wisdom was somehow involved in any one of the manifestations of wisdom, commonly distinguished as particular virtues; though whether these virtues were specifically distinct, or only the same knowledge in different relations, the Stoics do not seem to have agreed.
Aristotle had already been led to attempt a refutation of the Socratic identification of virtue with knowledge; but his attempt had only shown the profound difficulty of attacking the paradox, so long as it was admitted that no one could of deliberate pur pose act contrary to what seemed to him best. Now, Aristotle's divergence from Socrates had not led him so far as to deny this; while for the Stoics who had receded to the original Socratic po sition, the difficulty was still more patent. This theory of virtue led them into two dilemmas. Firstly, if virtue is knowledge, does it follow that vice is involuntary? If not, it must be that ignorance is voluntary. This alternative is the less dangerous to morality, and as such the Stoics chose it. But they were not yet at the end of their perplexities ; for while they were thus driven to an extreme extension of the range of human volition, their view of the physi cal universe involved an equally thorough-going determinism. How could the vicious man be responsible if his vice were strictly predetermined? The Stoics answered that the error which was the essence of vice was so far voluntary that it could be avoided if men chose to exercise their reason. No doubt it depended on the innate force and firmness of a man's soul whether his reason was effectually exercised; but moral responsibility was saved if the vicious act proceeded from the man himself and not from any external cause.
With all this we have not ascertained the positive practical con tent of this wisdom. How are we to emerge from the barren circle of affirming (I) that wisdom is the sole good and unwisdom the sole evil, and (2) that wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil; and attain some method for determining the particulars of good conduct? The Cynics made no attempt to solve this difficulty; they were content to mean by virtue what any plain man meant by it, except in so far as their sense of independence led them to reject certain received precepts and prejudices. The Stoics, on the other hand, not only worked out a detailed system of duties—or, as they termed them, "things meet and fit" for all occasions of life ; they were further especially concerned to comprehend them under a general formula. They found this by bringing out the posi tive significance of the notion of Nature, which the Cynic had used chiefly in a negative way, as an antithesis to the "conven tions" from which his knowledge had made him free. Even in this negative use of the notion it is necessarily implied that whatever active tendencies in man are found to be "natural"—that is, inde pendent of and uncorrupted by social customs and conventions— will properly take effect in outward acts, but the adoption of "con formity to nature" as a general positive rule for outward conduct seems to have been due to the influence on Zeno of Academic teaching. Whence, however, can this authority belong to the natural, unless nature be itself an expression or embodiment of divine law and wisdom? The conception of the world, as organ ized and filled by divine thought, was common, in some form, to all the philosophies that looked back to Socrates as their founder. This pantheistic doctrine harmonized thoroughly with the Stoic view of human good; but being unable to conceive substance idealistically, they (with considerable aid from the system of Heraclitus) supplied a materialistic side to their pantheism—con ceiving divine thought as an attribute of the purest and most primary of material substances, a subtle fiery aether. This theo logical view of the physical universe had a double effect on the ethics of the Stoic. In the first place it gave to his cardinal convic tion of the all-sufficiency of wisdom for human well-being a root of cosmical fact and an atmosphere of religious and social emo tion. The exercise of wisdom was now viewed as the pure life of that particle of divine substance which was in very truth the "god within him"; the reason whose supremacy he maintained was the reason of Zeus, and of all gods and reasonable men, no less than his own ; it might even be said that he was "as useful to Zeus as Zeus to him." But again, the same conception served to harmonize the higher and the lower elements of human life. For even in the physical or non-rational man, as originally constituted, we may see clear indications of the divine design, which it belongs to his rational will to carry into conscious execution ; indeed, in the first stage of human life, before reason is fully developed, uncorrupted natural impulse effects what is afterwards the work of reason. Thus the formula of "living according to nature," in its application to man as the "rational animal," may be under stood both as directing that reason is to govern and as indicating how that government is to be practically exercised. In man, as in every other animal, from the moment of birth natural impulse prompts to the maintenance of his physical frame ; then, when reason has been developed and has recognized itself as its own sole good, these "primary ends of nature" and whatever promotes these still constitute the outward objects at which reason is to aim ; there is a certain value in them, in proportion to which they are "preferred" (7rpon'yOva) and their opposites "rejected"; in deed it is only in the due and consistent exercise of such choice that wisdom can find its practical manifestation. In this way all or most of the things commonly judged to be "goods"—health, strength, wealth, fame, etc.—are brought within the sphere of the sage's choice, though his real good is solely in the wisdom of the choice, and not in the thing chosen.
The doctrine of conformity to Nature as the rule of conduct was not peculiar to Stoicism. It is found in the theories of Speusippus, Xenocrates and also to some extent in those of the Peripatetics. The peculiarity of the Stoics lay in their refusing to use the terms "good and evil" in connection with "things indif ferent," and in pointing out that philosophers, though independent of these things, must yet deal with them in practical life.
So far we have considered the "nature" of the individual man as apart from his social relations; but the sphere of virtue, as com monly conceived, lies chiefly in these, and this was fully recognized in the Stoic account of duties; indeed, in their exposition of the "natural" basis of justice, the evidence that man was born not for himself but for mankind is the most important part of their work in the region of practical morality. Here, however, we es pecially notice the double significance of "natural," as applied to (I) what actually exists everywhere or for the most part, and (2) what would exist if the original plan of man's life were fully carried out ; and we find that the Stoics have not clearly harmo nized the two elements of the notion. That man was "naturally" a social animal Aristotle had already taught; that all rational beings, in the unity of the reason that is common to all, form naturally one community with a common law was (as we saw) an immediate inference from the Stoic conception of the universe as a whole. That the members of this "city of Zeus" should observe their contracts, abstain from mutual harm, combine to protect each other from injury, were obvious points of natural law; while again, it was clearly necessary to the preservation of human society that its members should form sexual unions, produce children and bestow care on their rearing and training. But beyond this nature did not seem to go in determining the relations of the sexes; accordingly, we find that community of wives was a feature of Zeno's ideal commonwealth, just as it was of Plato's; while, again, the strict theory of the school recognized no government or laws as true or binding except those of the sage ; he alone is the true ruler, the true king. So far, the Stoic "nature" seems in dan ger of being as revolutionary as Rousseau's. Practically, however, this revolutionary aspect of the notion was kept for the most part in the background; the rational law of an ideal community was not distinguished from the positive ordinances and customs of actual society ; and the "natural" ties that actually bound each man to family, kinsmen, fatherland, and to unwise humanity gen erally, supplied the outline on which the external manifestation of justice was delineated. It was a fundamental maxim that the sage was to take part in public life; and it does not appear that his political action was to be regulated by any other principles than those commonly accepted in his community. Similarly, in the view taken by the Stoics of the duties of social decorum, and in their attitude to the popular religion, we find a fluctuating compromise between the disposition to repudiate what is con ventional, and the disposition to revere what is established, each tendency expressing the principle of "conforming to nature." Epicureanism.—Among the primary ends of nature, in which wisdom recognized a certain preferability, the Stoics included freedom from bodily pain; but they refused, even in this outer court of wisdom, to find a place for pleasure. They held that the latter was not an object of uncorrupted natural impulse, but an "aftergrowth." They thus endeavoured to resist Epicureanism even on the ground where the latter seems prima facie strongest; in its appeal, namely, to the natural pleasure-seeking of all living things. Nor did they merely mean by pleasure the gratification of bodily appetite ; we find, e.g., Chrysippus urging, as a decisive argument against Aristotle, that pure speculation was "a kind of amusement; that is, pleasure." Even the "joy and gladness" that accompany the exercise of virtue seem to have been regarded by them as merely an inseparable accident, not the essential constit uent of well-being. It is only by a later modification of Stoicism that cheerfulness or peace of mind is taken as the real ultimate end, to which the exercise of virtue is merely a means. At the same time it is probable that the serene joys of virtue and the grieflessness which the sage was conceived to maintain amid the worst tortures, formed the main attractions of Stoicism for ordi nary minds. In this sense it may be fairly said that Stoics and Epicureans made rival offers to mankind of the same kind of hap piness; and the philosophical peculiarities of either system may be traced to the desire of being undisturbed by the changes and chances of life. The Stoic claims on this head were the loftiest; as the well-being of their sage was independent, not only of ex ternal things and bodily conditions, but of time itself ; it was fully realized in a single exercise of wisdom and could not be increased by duration. This paradox is violent, but it is quite in harmony with the spirit of Stoicism ; and we are more startled to find that the Epicurean sage, no less than the Stoic, is to be happy even on the rack; that his happiness, too, is unimpaired by being restricted in duration, when his mind has apprehended the natural limits of life; that, in short, Epicurus makes no less strenuous efforts than Zeno to eliminate imperfection from the conditions of human existence. This characteristic, however, is the key to the chief differences between Epicureanism and the more naive hedonism of Aristippus. The latter system gave the simplest and most obvious answer to the enquiry after ultimate good for man ; but besides being liable, when developed consistently, to offend the common moral consciousness, it conspicuously failed to provide the "completeness" and "security" which, as Aristotle says, "one divines to belong to man's true Good." Philosophy, in the Greek view, should be the art as well as the science of good life; and hedonistic philosophy would seem a bungling and un certain art of pleasure. Hence later thinkers of the Cyrenaic school felt themselves compelled to change their fundamental no tion; thus Theodorus defined the good as "gladness" depending on wisdom, as distinct from mere pleasure, while Hegesias pro claimed that happiness was unattainable, and that the chief func tion of wisdom was to render life painless by producing indiffer ence to all things that give pleasure. But by such changes their system lost the support that it had had in the pleasure-seeking tendencies of ordinary men. It was clear that if philosophic hedon ism was to be established on a broad and firm basis, it must in its notion of good combine what the plain man naturally sought with what philosophy could plausibly offer. Such a combination was effected, with some little violence, by Epicurus, whose system with all its defects showed a remarkable power of standing the test of time, as it attracted the unqualified adhesion of genera tion after generation of disciples for a period of some six centuries.
In the fundamental principle of his philosophy Epicurus is not original. Aristippus (cf. also Plato in the Protagoras and Eudoxus) had already maintained that pleasure is the sole ultimate good, and pain the sole evil; that no pleasure is to be rejected except for its painful consequences, and no pain to be chosen except as a means to greater pleasure; that the stringency of all laws and customs depends solely on the legal and social penalties attached to their violation ; that, in short, all virtuous conduct and all spec ulative activity are empty and useless, except as contributing to the pleasantness of the agent's life. And Epicurus assures us that he means by pleasure what plain men mean by it; and that if the gratifications of appetite and sense are discarded, the notion is emptied of significance. The originality of Epicurus lay in his theory that the highest point of pleasure is attained by the mere removal of pain or disturbance, after which pleasure admits of variation only and not of augmentation ; that therefore the ut most gratification of which the body is capable may be provided by the simplest means, and that "natural wealth" is no more than any man can earn. When further he teaches that the attainment of happiness depends almost entirely upon insight and right calcu lation, fortune having very little to do with it ; that the pleasures and pains of the mind are far more important than those of the body, owing to the accumulation of feeling caused by memory and anticipation; and that an indispensable condition of mental happiness lies in relieving the mind of all superstitions, which can be effected only by a thorough knowledge of the physical universe —he introduces an ample area for the exercise of the philosophic intellect. So again, in the stress that he lays on the misery which the most secret wrong-doing must necessarily cause from the per petual fear of discovery, and in his exuberant exultation of the value of disinterested friendship, he shows a sincere, though not completely successful effort to avoid the offence that consistent egoistic hedonism is apt to give to ordinary human feeling. As regards friendship, Epicurus was a man of peculiarly unexclusive sympathies. The genial fellowship of the philosophic community that he collected in his garden remained a striking feature in the traditions of his school ; and certainly the ideal which Stoics and Epicureans equally cherished of a brotherhood of sages was most easily realized on the Epicurean plan of withdrawing from political and dialectical conflict to simple living and serene leisure, in imita tion of the gods apart from the fortuitous concourse of the world. No doubt it was rather the practical than the theoretical side of Epicureanism which gave it so strong a hold.
In no one of these schools was the outward coherence of tradi tion so much strained by inner changes as it was in Plato's. The alterations, however, in the metaphysical position of the Academics had little effect on their ethical teaching, as, even during the period of Scepticism, they appear to have presented as probable the same general view of human good which Antiochus afterwards dogmat ically announced as a revival of the common doctrine of Plato and Aristotle. And during the period of a century and a half between Antiochus and Plutarch, we may suppose the school to have maintained the old controversy with Stoicism on much the same ground, accepting the formula of "life according to nature," but demanding that the "good" of man should refer to his nature as a whole, the good of his rational part being the chief element, and always preferable in case of conflict, but yet not absolutely his sole good. In Plutarch, however, we see the same tendencies of change that we have noticed in later Stoicism. The conception of a normal harmony between the higher and lower elements of human life has begun to be disturbed, and the side of Plato's teaching that deals with the inevitable imperfections of the world , of concrete experience becomes again prominent. For example, we find Plutarch amplifying the suggestion in Plato's latest treatise (the Laws) that this imperfection is due to a bad world-soul that strives against the good--a suggestion which is alien to the general tenor of Plato's doctrine, and had consequently been unnoticed during the intervening centuries. We observe, again, the value that Plutarch attaches, not merely to the sustainment and conso lation of rational religion, but to the supernatural communications vouchsafed by the divinity to certain human beings in dreams, through oracles, or by special warnings, like those of the genius of Socrates. For these flashes of intuition, he holds, the soul should be prepared by tranquil repose and the subjugation of sensuality.
There is, however, a yet higher point to be reached in the upward ascent of the Neoplatonist from matter; and here the divergence of Plotinus from Platonic idealism is none the less striking, because it is a bona fide result of reverent reflection on Plato's teaching. The cardinal assumption of Plato's metaphysic is, that the real is definitely thinkable and knowable in proportion as it is real; so that the farther the mind advances in abstrac tion from sensible particulars and apprehension of real being, the more definite and clear its thought becomes. Plotinus, however, urges that, as all thought involves difference or duality of some kind, it cannot be the primary fact in the universe, what we call God. He must be an essential unity prior to this duality, a Being wholly without difference or determination ; and accordingly, the highest mode of human existence, in which the soul apprehends this absolute, must be one in which all definite thought is tran scended, and all consciousness of self lost in the absorbing ecstacy.
Porphyry tells us that his master Plotinus attained the highest state f our times during the six years which he spent with him.
Neoplatonism, originally Alexandrine, is often regarded as Hellenistic rather than Hellenic, a product of the mingling of Greek with Oriental civilization. But however Oriental may have been the cast of mind that welcomed this theosophic asceticism, the forms of thought by which these views were philosophically reached are essentially Greek ; and it is by a thoroughly intelligible process of natural development, in which the intensification of the moral consciousness represented by Stoicism plays an impor tant part, that the Hellenic pursuit of knowledge culminates in a preparation for ecstacy, and the Hellenic idealization of man's natural life ends in a settled antipathy to the body and its works. At the same time we ought not to overlook the affinities between the doctrine of Plotinus and that remarkable combination of Greek and Hebrew thought which Philo Judaeus had expounded two cen turies before ; nor the fact that Neoplatonism was developed in conscious antagonism to the new religion which had spread from Judea, and was already threatening the conquest of the Graeco Roman world, and also to the Gnostic systems (see GNosTicisM) ; nor, finally, that it furnished the chief theoretical support in the last desperate struggle under Julian to retain the old worship.