allotted in this treatise to the Will—the true personality of Man,—and the entire and strange exclusion from the phenomena of Soul, of the Moral Faculties, necessarily deprived a thinker of so searching a genius, of the power to approach to certainty on these ultimate and momentous themes.
2.—We next turn to one of Aristotle's most pleasing productions—the famous treatise in which he has fully recorded his thoughts on the subject of Human Morality. Outside the volume containing the writings of Plato, antiquity has not transmitted a better work than the Nicomachean Ethics, and if we except the "Critique of the Practical Reason," it has no rival among the speculations of the modern world. Fortunately, it is also the clearest of Aristotle's writings, insomuch that it has been a favourite with younger students in every age. The account just given of the περὶ ψυχῆς, will, of course, have prepared the reader to apprehend defects of a serious kind in an Aristotelian theory of morals; and such defects there undoubtedly are.—The true theory of morals, as completed by the efforts of the array of great thinkers who have preceded our age, and which appears to commend itself to the conscience of modern times, may be summed up in a few substantive propositions:—First, there is a law of morality, which human nature feels to be imperative—a law whose behests are revealed by the Conscience. Obedience to this sovereign law is Duty; and the performance of duty is man's Supreme Good. Secondly, men are free. We can obey the commands of conscience or we may disobey them. Because of this freedom, we are responsible. Third, the law declared by conscience is of external origin, and overhangs all humanity. We feel that its dicta are not of personal origin, or private interpretation: it is an universal law imposed on man; and, as Laws imply a Legislator, we are led to a sovereign Legislator, or an active and moral God. To that august Being lies our responsibility; and the full realization of such responsibility implies the conception and the reality of Immortality. These few principles kept steadily in view, will enable us to appreciate the position and the labours of Aristotle.—Now, there is not a doubt that in regard to the second of these elemental propositions—considering it as the assertion of a fact—the Stagyrite never felt hesitation; and that in this respect he saw much more clearly than Plato. In the first five chapters of the Third book of the Morals, for instance, we find the following unmistakable expressions:—"The end pursued being an object of the will, and the means which lead to that end being capable of being submitted to our deliberation and preference, it follows that the acts related to these means are acts of intention and voluntary acts; and this is the domain within which all the virtues are exercised." . . . . . "If virtue depends on us, so does vice: whenever it is in our sole power to do a thing, it must also be in our power not to do it; whenever we can say No, we may also say Yes." . . . . . "If to do good or evil depends on ourselves, it is also in our own power not to do them; and this is what we mean when we speak of men being good or bad." . . . . . "The assertion" (alluding evidently to Plato), "that no one is perverse of his own free will, neither is any one happy in spite of himself, contains both truth and error. No! no man enjoys the happiness that virtue gives against his will; but vice is voluntary." . . . . . "Shall it be alleged that a man is not the principle and father of his actions, as he is of his children? If this paternity is undoubted, if we cannot refer one action to other principles than those within us, it must be acknowledged that the acts whose principle is within ourselves, depend on us, and that they are voluntary." Had all disciples of the Stagyrite but followed him in this clear assertion of human liberty, History might still have required to record many speculative aberrations, but she would not have been called upon to blush over multitudes of unworthy practical heresies. Unfortunately, the concurrence of Aristotle with the complete theory of morals, is limited to the above. In the first place, his method is at fault, exactly as in the treatise on the Soul. Instead of counselling the moralist to inquire within—himself setting the example—he seeks the solution of his problem through inductive treatment of external phenomena; and—again yielding to his passionate fondness for generalization—he even accepts the paradox, that the science of politics is the primary moral science—the science of private or personal morals being a secondary or derived science! In the former, the action and attributes of virtue are manifested on the most important theatre and largest scale; therefore, the laws of virtue as thus determined ought to control the life of every individual constituent member of society! Surely, a practical inversion, sufficiently strange to have started some joints even of the cunning and compact system of the Stagyrite! Aristotle's second error is much more grievous—affecting his entire theory; but the existence of that error will surprise no one, since it is an inevitable consequence of his method in psychology. Starting with the undeniable proposition, that the incitement to action is the expectation of Good; he asks what is the good which man covets or ought to covet,—what ought he to covet as the Supreme Good? Plato would have answered in an instant, and in words that would have been reechoed by all mankind;—the sovereign good is to obey the imperative law of duty. Aristotle had not descended through the path of consciousness among the arcana of the soul; he sought truth from a scrutiny of outward acts, and he gave the fatal reply—The supreme good is Happiness. That the sovereign Ruler has not constituted this world so that man's right actions may not consist with his happiness, is most true; but happiness is the sequel and natural concomitant of right actions; and the hope of it is not the cause of such actions or our stimulus to accomplish them. It scarcely requires to be remarked, that in this unfortunate doctrine, we have the parentage of Epicurus, and, what is infinitely worse, of his modern representatives. But though the name of Aristotle has been made their shield, his own purity and nobility saved this great philosopher from excesses or even from serious practical error,—just as we have seen him lingering around the grand conception of immortality, albeit his imperfect system could in nowise lift him so high! No sooner, indeed, does he escape from these first perplexities, than he reascends to the level of himself. What is Happiness, he asks—what is it, which, in view of the conditions of humanity, is alone worthy of that name? Discern first the end, or chief function of man upon the earth. The privileged distinction of our race is this—to live in the exercise of activity of mind, guided by virtue. To choose and follow out a life with such an end, is—according to Aristotle—to secure Happiness or the Supreme Good. Fain would we have offered an adequate analysis of the remainder of the Ethics, but our space restricts us to the merest outline. The philosopher takes up, in the first place, the general theory of Virtue. That we be guided by virtue, we must first learn what virtue is. And he produces here his famous doctrine of the Mean. He tells us that, as with physical so with moral causes, evil and sure destruction may issue from the best impulse, provided it does not act with sufficient force, or is allowed to act too strongly. Courage, for instance, consists in avoiding certain dangers and confronting others. But to brave all hazards indiscriminately, were rashness; while the effort to escape danger in every case, and to shrink from injury and sacrifice, is sheerest cowardice. The virtue consists, then, in a Mean between two excesses which equally ruin it. Of course, Aristotle does not apply this universally; nay, he avers that there are acts, which, so soon as their name is pronounced, we know to be evil and vicious; but he contends that, in general, virtue is such a Mean, detected and determined by the Reason. It is easy to see why this theory was a great favourite with Aristotle. It enabled him, in as far as practical guidance was concerned, to substitute for the moral faculty which he scarcely owned, a rale of right—dependent on the Reason—compliance with which must preserve humanity from vice. Passing with a single remark the section in which the important distinction between the intellectual and the moral virtues is established, and its consequences so acutely and vigorously traced—a distinction which is the very corner-stone of the theory of Education—we would rest for a moment on those most delightful chapters to which reference has already been made—viz., the analysis of the separate virtues—chapters altogether fragrant with truth and beauty. Aristotle has put these careful analyses into something of the form of portraits; but how unlike the characters of Theophrastus! How utterly unlike the characters of Bruyere! The impression uniformly left by a perusal of such writings as these last, is, that the writer oftenest searches for a sneer, a stroke of wit, or a piece of wickedness. Aristotle, on the contrary, is filled by a sense of the majesty of truth and the solemnity of his object. Virtue is the noblest of all things—vice the meanest; and men should see both as they are. No one could have written as he has done, unless his own soul had known those virtues, and his life been inspired by them—an inference one does not draw regarding Theophrastus or Bruyere, or very many of the members of that profession of modern times, whose aim is to teach virtue by a jest. "In my opinion," says
