The Five Great Philosophies of Life Part 8

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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 b.u.t.terflies? Too much of that sort of thing would soon put an end to scholars.h.i.+p 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 n.o.body 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 fellows.h.i.+p and physical vigour to make his scholars.h.i.+p attractive and effective, and enough scholars.h.i.+p to make his vigour and good fellows.h.i.+p intellectually powerful and personally stimulating,--he is the man who has. .h.i.t 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 relations.h.i.+ps 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 const.i.tute 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 d.a.m.ned for doing wrong: we are d.a.m.ned 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 s.e.xual 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 chast.i.ty on its eternal rock foundation, and make of s.e.xual 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 st.u.r.dy 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 s.e.xual 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 sanct.i.ty 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 n.o.ble 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 s.e.xual relations conduce to that sanct.i.ty 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, chast.i.ty, 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. Chast.i.ty is neither celibacy nor licentiousness. It is far deeper than either, and far n.o.bler 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 appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 n.o.ble object. Here, as in all excellence, action and object, consequence and motive, are inseparable. Unless the action is inspired by a n.o.ble motive, and permeated throughout its whole structure by a n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances 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 n.o.blest fas.h.i.+on, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 splas.h.i.+ng around in the water; and if he is unwilling to do the floundering and splas.h.i.+ng before he can swim, he will never become a swimmer. The ball-player must do a lot of m.u.f.fing 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 FRIENDs.h.i.+P

We are now prepared to see why Aristotle regards friends.h.i.+p as the crown and consummation of a virtuous life. No one has praised friends.h.i.+p more highly, or written of it more profoundly than he.

Friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p is the bringing together of these intensely individual, highly differentiated persons on a basis of mutual sympathy and common understanding. Friends.h.i.+p is the recognition and respect of individuality in others by persons who are highly individualised themselves. That is why Aristotle says true friends.h.i.+p 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."

Friends.h.i.+p has as many planes as human life and human a.s.sociation. 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 a.s.sociates 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 ident.i.ty of aesthetic and intellectual pursuits. The highest plane, the best friends, are those with whom we consciously share the spiritual purpose of our lives. This highest friends.h.i.+p 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 a.s.surance of sympathy; even our shortcomings are confessed with the certainty that they will be forgiven. Such friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p, differences, as of age, s.e.x, station in life, divide not, but rather enhance, the sweetness and tenderness of the relations.h.i.+p. In Aristotle's words: "The friends.h.i.+p of the good, and of those who have the same virtues, is perfect friends.h.i.+p. Such friends.h.i.+p, 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 hards.h.i.+p 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.