Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/601

ETHICS 571) understood it to consist in the faithful performance of customary duties, maintaining always that his own happi ness -was therewith bound up. The Cynics more boldly discarded 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 1 ?" to have nothing positive to reply but " of the good ," but the Cynics do not seem to have made any serious effort to escape from this absurdity. The ultimate views of these two one-sided Socraticisms we shall have to notice presently when we come to the post Aristotelian schools, We must now proceed to the more complicated task of tracing the fuller development of the Socratic germ to its Platonic blossom and Aristotelian fruit. We can see that the influence of more than one of the earlier metaphysical schools combined with that of Socrates to produce the famous idealism which subsequent genera tions have learnt from Plato s dialogues ; but the precise extent and manner in which each element co-operated is difficult even to conjecture ] Here, however, we may con sicler Plato s views merely in their relation to the teaching of Socrates, since to the latter is certainly due the ethical aspect of idealism with which we are at present concernerl. The ethics of Plato cannot properly be treated as a finished result, but rather as a continual movement from the position of Socrates towards the more complete and articulate system of Aristotle ; except that there is a mystical element at the core of Plato s teaching which finds no counterpait in Aristotle, and in fact disappears from Creek philosophy soon after Plato s death until it finds a partial revival and fantastic development in Neo Pythagoreanism and Neo Platonism, The first stage at which we can distinguish Plato s ethical view from that of Socrates is presented in the Protagoras, where he makes a serious, though clearly tenta tive, effort to define the object of that knowledge which he regards, with his master, as the essence of all virtue. This science, he here maintains, is really mensuration of pleasures and pains, by which the wise man avoids those mistaken undcr-estimates of the value of future feelings in comparison with present which we commonly call "yielding to fear or desire." This thorough going hedonism has somewhat per plexed Plato s readers ; but (as was said in speaking of the similar view of the Cyrenaics), when a disciple sought to make clear and definite the essentially Socratic doctrine that the different common notions of good, the beauti ful, the pleasant, and the useful, were to be somehow identified and interpreted by each other, hedonism pre sented itself as the most obvious conclusion. By Plato, however, this conclusion could only have been held before he had accomplished the movement of thought by which he carried the Socratic method beyond the range of human conduct, ami developed it into a metaphysical system. This movement may be briefly expressed thus. " If we know/ said Socrates, " what justice is, we can give an account or definition of it ;" true knowledge to put it more technically must be knowledge of the general fact, common to all the individual cases to which we apply our general notion. But why should we restrict this notion within the range of human conduct? The same relation of general notions to particular examples extends through the whole physical universe ; we can only think and talk of it by means of such notions. It must be equally true every- 1 The difficulty arises thus : (1) Aristotle represents Platonism as having sprung from Socratic teaching combined with Heraclitns s doc trine of the flux of sensible things, and the Pythagorean theory that numbers were the real; but (2) in the Megarian dextrine the non- Sotratic element is clearly the one changeless being cf Parmenides ; while (3) the original connexion of Plato and Euclides is equally evi dent. where that true or scientific knowledge is general know ledge, 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. Put, again, the object of true knowledge must be what really exists ; hence the most real reality, the essence of the universe, must lie in these general facts, and not in the individuals that ex emplify them. So far the steps are plain enough , but we do not yet .ee how this logical Realism (as it was afterwards called) comes to have the essentially ethical character that especially interests us in Platom.sm. For though Plato s philosophy is now concerned with the whole universe of being, the ultimate object of his philosophic contemplation is still " tbe good," now conceived as the ultimate ground of all being and knowledge. That is, the essence of the universe is identified with its end, the formal " with the "final " cause of things, to use the later Aristotelian phraseology How comes this about? Perhaps we may best explain this by recurring to the ordinal application of the Socratic method to human affairs. S ee all rational activity is for some end, the different arts or functions into which human industry is divided aro 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 the: r end, " what they are good for " It is only so far as they realize this end that they are what we call them. A painter who cannot paint is, as we say, "no painter;" or, to take a favourite Socratic illustration, a ruler is essentially one who realizes the wellbeing of the ruled ; if he fails to do this, he is not, properly speaking, a ruler at all. And in a society well- ordered on Socratic principles, every human being would be put to some use ; tbe essence of his life would consist in doing what he was good for. But again it is easy to ex tend this view throughout the whole region of organized 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 it, then, we conceive the whole universe organically, as a complex arrangement of means to ends, we shall under stand how Plato might hold that all things really toert, or (as we say) " realized their idea," in proportion as they accomplished the special end or good for which they were adapted. Even Socrates, in spite of his aversion to physics, was led by pious reflection to expound a teleological view of the physical world, as subservient in all its parts to divine ends ; and in the metaphysical turn which Plato gave to this view, he was probably anticipated by Euclides of Megara, who held that the one real being is " that which we call by many names, Good, Wisdom, Reason, or God ;" to which Plato, raising to a loftier significance the Socratic identification of the beautiful with the useful, added the further name of absolute Beauty. Let us conceive, then, that Plato has taken this vast stride of thought, and identified the ultimate notions of ethics and ontology We have now to see what attitude this will lead him to adopt towards the practical inquiries from which he started. What will now be his view of wisdom, virtue, pleasure, and their relation to human wellheing? The answer to this question is inevitably somewhat com plicated. In the first place we have to observe that philosophy has now passed definitely from the market place into the study or lecture-room. The quest of Socrates was for the true art of conduct for an ordinary member of the human society, a man living a practical lile among his fellows. But if the objects of abstract thought con

stitute the real world, of which this world of individual