Part 5 (1/2)

The golden mean is G.o.d's delight: Extremes are hateful in His sight.

Hold by the mean, and glorify Nor anarchy nor slavery.

Characteristic of Socrates was his _irony_, or way of understating himself, in protest against the extravagant professions of the Sophists. In the reckoning of the Pythagoreans, the Infinite, the Unlimited, or Unchecked, was marked as evil, in opposition to good, which was the Limited. From thence, Plato, taking up his parable, writes: ”The G.o.ddess of the Limit, my fair Philebus, seeing insolence and all manner of wickedness breaking loose from all limit in point of gratification and gluttonous greed, established a law and order of limited being; and you say this restraint was the death of pleasure; I say it was the saving of it.” Going upon the tradition of his countrymen, upon their art and philosophy, their poetry, eloquence, politics, and inmost sentiment, Aristotle formulated the law of moral virtue, to hold by the _golden mean_, as discerned by the prudent in view of the present circ.u.mstances, between the two extremes of excess and defect.

6. There is only one object on which man may throw himself without reserve, his last end, the adequate object of his happiness, G.o.d. G.o.d is approached by faith, hope, and charity; but it belongs not to philosophy to speak of these supernatural virtues. There remains to the philosopher the natural virtue of religion, which is a part of justice. Religion has to do with the inward act of veneration and with its outward expression. To the latter the rule of the mean at once applies. Moderation in religion is necessary, so far as externals are concerned. Not that any outward a.s.siduity, pomp, splendour, or costliness, can be too much in itself, or anything like enough, to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d with, but it may be too much for our limited means, which in this world are drawn on by other calls. But our inward veneration for G.o.d and desire to do Him honour, can never be too intense: ”Blessing the Lord, exalt Him as much as you can: for He is above all praise.” (Ecclus. xliii. 33.)

7. The rule of the mean, then, is a human rule, for dealing with men, and with human goods considered as means. It is a Greek rule: for the Greeks were of all nations the fondest admirers of man and the things of man. But when we ascend to G.o.d, we are out among the immensities and eternities. The vastness of creation, the infinity of the Creator,--there is no mode or measure there. In those heights the Hebrew Psalmist loved to soar. Christianity, with its central dogma of the Incarnation, is the meeting of Hebrew and Greek. That mystery clothes the Lord G.o.d of hosts with the measured beauty, grace, and truth, that man can enter into. But enough of this. Enough to show that the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean is a highly suggestive and wide-reaching doctrine beyond the sphere of Morals. It throws out one great branch into Art, another into Theology.

8. The vicious extremes, on this side and on that of a virtue, are not always conterminous with the virtue itself, but sometimes another and more excellent virtue intervenes; as in giving we may pa.s.s from justice to liberality, and only through pa.s.sing the bounds of liberality, do we arrive at the vicious extreme of prodigality. So penitential fasting intervenes between temperance in food and undue neglect of sustenance. But it is to be noted that the _central virtue_, so to speak, as justice, sobriety, chast.i.ty, is for all persons on all occasions: the more excellent _side-virtue_, as liberality, or total abstinence, is for special occasions and special cla.s.ses of persons.

_Readings_.--Ar., _Eth_., II., ii., 6, 7; _ib_., II., cc. 6-9; Hor., _Odes_, II., 10; Ruskin, _Modern Painters_, p. 3, s. i., c. x.

SECTION V.--_Of Cardinal Virtues_.

1. The enumeration of cardinal virtues is a piece of Greek philosophy that has found its ways into the catechism. Prudence, justice, fort.i.tude, and temperance are mentioned by Plato as recognised heads of virtue. They are recognised, though less clearly, by Xenophon, reporting the conversations of Socrates. It does not look as though Socrates invented the division: he seems to have received it from an earlier source, possibly Pythagoras. They are mentioned in Holy Scripture (Wisdom viii., 7, which is however a Greek book), and Proverbs viii., 14. They make no figure in the philosophies of India and China.

2. The cardinal virtues are thus made out.--Virtue is a habit that gives a man readiness in behaving according to the reason that is in him. Such a habit may be fourfold. (a) It may reside in the reason, or intellect itself, enabling it readily to discern the reasonable thing to do, according to particular circ.u.mstances as they occur. That habit is the virtue of _prudence_. (b) It may reside in the rational appet.i.te, otherwise called the will, disposing a man to act fairly and reasonably in his dealings with other men. That is _justice_. (c) It may reside in the irrational, or sensitive, appet.i.te, and that to a twofold purpose; (a) to restrain the said appet.i.te in its concupiscible part from a wanton and immoderate eagerness after pleasure; that is _temperance_: (b) to incite the said appet.i.te in its irascible part not to shrink from danger, where there is reason for going on in spite of danger; that is _fort.i.tude_.

3. Plato compares the rational soul in man to a charioteer, driving two horses: one horse representing the concupiscible, the other the irascible part of the sensitive appet.i.te. He draws a vivid picture of the resistance of the concupiscible part against reason, how madly it rushes after lawless pleasure, and how it is only kept in restraint by main force again and again applied, till gradually it grows submissive. This submissiveness, gradually acquired, is the virtue of temperance. Clearly the habit dwells in the appet.i.te, not in reason: in the horse, not in the charioteer. It is that habitual state, which in a horse we call _being broken in_.

The concupiscible appet.i.te is _broken in_ to reason by temperance residing within it. Plato lavishes all evil names on the steed that represents the concupiscible part. But the irascible part, the other steed, has its own fault, and that fault twofold, sometimes of over-venturesomeness, sometimes of shying and turning tail. The habit engendered, in the irascible part, of being neither over-venturesome nor over-timorous, but going by reason, is termed fort.i.tude. [Footnote 6]

[Footnote 6: It will help an Englishman to understand Plato's comparison, if instead of _concupiscible part_ and _irascible part_, we call the one steed Pa.s.sion and the other Pluck. Pluck fails, and Pa.s.sion runs to excess, till Pluck is formed to fort.i.tude, and Pa.s.sion to temperance.]

4. As the will is the rational appet.i.te, the proper object of which is rational good, it does not need to be prompted by any habit to embrace rational good in what concerns only the inward administration of the agent's own self. There is no difficulty in that department, provided the sensitive appet.i.te be kept in hand by fort.i.tude and temperance.

But where there is question of external relations with other men, it is not enough that the sensitive appet.i.te be regulated, but a third virtue is necessary, the habit of justice, to be planted in the will, which would otherwise be too weak to attend steadily to points, not of the agent's own good merely, but of the good of other men.

5. Thus we have the four cardinal virtues: prudence, a habit of the intellect; temperance, a habit of the concupiscible appet.i.te; fort.i.tude, a habit of the irascible appet.i.te; and justice, a habit of the will. Temperance and Fort.i.tude in the Home Department; Justice for Foreign Affairs; with Prudence for Premier. Or, to use another comparison, borrowed from Plato, prudence is the health of the soul, temperance its beauty, fort.i.tude its strength, and justice its wealth.

_Readings_.--St. Thos., 1a 2ae, q. 61, art. 2, in corp.; _ib_., q. 56, art. 4, in corp., ad 1-3; _ib_., q. 56, art. 6, in corp., ad 1, 3; _ib_., q. 59, art. 4, in corp., ad 2; Plato, _Laws_, 631 B, C.

SECTION VI.--_Of Prudence_.

1. Prudence is _right reason applied to practice_, or more fully it may be defined, the habit of intellectual discernment that enables one to hit upon the golden mean of moral virtue and the way to secure that mean. Thus prudence tells one what amount of punishment is proper for a particular delinquent, and how to secure his getting it. It is to be observed that prudence does not will the golden mean in question, but simply indicates it. To will and desire the mean is the work of the moral virtue concerned therewith: as in the case given it is the work of vindictive justice.

2. From the definition of moral virtue above given (c. v., s. iv., n.

4, p. 79), it is clear that no moral virtue can come into act without prudence: for it is the judgment of the prudent man that must define in each case the _golden mean_ in relation to ourselves, which every moral virtue aims at. Thus, without prudence, fort.i.tude pa.s.ses into rashness, vindictive justice into harshness, clemency into weakness, religion into superst.i.tion.

3. But may not one with no prudence to guide him hit upon the _golden mean_ by some happy impulse, and thus do an act of virtue? We answer, he may do a good act, and if you will, a virtuous act, but not an act of virtue, not an act proceeding from a pre-existent habit in the doer. The act is like a good stroke made by chance, not by skill; and like such a stroke, it cannot be readily repeated at the agent's pleasure. (See c. v., s. i., n. 4, p. 66; and Ar., _Eth_., II., iv., 2.)

4. Prudence in its essence is an intellectual virtue, being a habit resident in the understanding: but it deals with the subject-matter of the moral virtues, pointing out the measure of temperance, the bounds of fort.i.tude, or the path of justice. It is the habit of intellectual discernment that must enlighten every moral virtue in its action.

There is no virtue that goes blundering and stumbling in the dark.

5. He is a prudent man, that can give counsel to others and to himself in order to the attainment of ends that are worthy of human endeavour.

If unworthy ends are intended, however sagaciously they are pursued, that is not prudence. We may call it _sagacity_, or _shrewdness_, being a habit of ready discernment and application of means to ends.