Greek. It is true, friendship seeks the good of its object, but not primarily and directly. Friendship makes the friend ours in a certain sense, and we love ours in him. It loves only in proportion as its object is of worth to it. Self-sacrificing maternal love Aristotle observes, but does not comprehend.

He speaks but briefly of wedlock and sexual love. Marriage is the most natural of friendships. It looks not merely to offspring, but also to mutual aid and culture in the whole sphere of life. It is man's to protect and be faithful to the wife, and, in his appropriate sphere, to govern her. Children are under perpetual obligation to parents, though the father may cast off the son.

THE STATE.

Aristotle's conception of the State is quite characteristic. It does not rest on the family, or on the consent of the governed, but is formed by the wisest, the most gifted, for the general good. It does not aim at radical reformation of the masses, but only, as far as practicable, to hold their evil tendencies in check. Only the few can attain to the highest virtues, and their motive to this is simply the happiness resulting from virtue in this transitory life.

The State is to the citizen, the family, etc., as the animating body to its members. It presupposes the threefold subordination of husband and wife, parent and children, master and slave. Insisting more than Plato on the education of the citizen to higher freedom, he does not render the State so despotically absolute. But it is not the product of the moral life of the individuals, it is the necessary antecedent condition thereof. The State is the generator; the moral citizen, the product. The whole precedes the parts.

The relation of master and slave is a weighty element in the State. Aristotle was the first to give a formal theory and defense of slavery. Slavery is neither of legal nor of violent origin, it is natural. An artisan might as well be without tools as the head of a household without slaves. Slaves are to their masters as the body to the soul. Men are every-where of the two classes, the thoughtful and the unthinking, the governing and the governed. These are the body, those the soul, of the race. Nature makes the difference; and it is a blessing

to the lower classes that they are spiritually controlled and guided by the higher. These lower classes, these slaves by nature, Aristotle expressly says, are the non-Greeks, the barbarians. Slaves have no rights, and are as much in the power of their masters as are domestic animals.

Aristotle subjects the Platonic State to a sharp criticism. He rejects the community of goods and of wives; but in giv ing his own views he is not very explicit. He admits to a share in the Government only such as have leisure to cultivate the higher virtues. Day-laborers, artisans, and farmers are excluded. A normal State looks to the good of all of its free citizens. It may be a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy of the free citizens. Abnormal perversions of these are tyranny, oligarchy, and universal democracy. It is always best that the most gifted should govern. Aristotle evidently prefers a constitutional monarchy. He greatly admired Alexander.

To secure a vigorous citizenship the State regulates marriage, and the care of children. Girls should marry at eighteen ; men, at about thirty-seven. It prescribes the mode of life of the pregnant. "No physically defective (Tεπηрwμévov) child is to be raised "—it is to be let perish. But where traditional laws forbid this, superfluous population must be prevented by abortion, brought about before the fœtus has life and feeling. The State oversees the rearing of children up to seven years, and then entirely assumes it. Boys are to be trained in grammar and drawing, gymnastics and music.

SLAVERY.

In none of the possible forms of the State does Aristotle rise to the idea of genuine freedom. Every-where it rests on slavery; nowhere does it look to educating the slaves into freemen. And it is no marked instance of impartiality when a modern, unchristian, self-styled humanitarian school would have us take the Greeks as the apostles of true humanitarianism, and their age and opinions as the "paradise of the human soul." The very opposite was the case. To the Greeks all non-Greeks were by nature only a sort of half-men. War upon them, and slavery for them, were the natural prerogatives of the Greeks. The Greek knows no mission of the word but only of the sword.

GREEK ETHICS AT ITS HIGHEST.

Non-Christian morality attained in Aristotle to its highest perfection. This morality is that of the natural and selfcomplaisant man. It lacks a consciousness of the historical origin and workings of sin, of the antagonism of the natural man to the moral idea, and of an earnest moral struggle against evil; and instead of this it presents a natural distinction of mankind into the morally incapable multitude and the naturally moral and free-born few. Morality rests not on religious consciousness, nor on love to God or man; but on a direct intellectual knowledge of the good on the part of man. Not love or benevolence, but intellectual calculation of advantage, is the motive to associations among mankind. Thus the ethical views of Aristotle, and hence of the Greeks, stand in direct antagonism to those of Christianity. And it is important to mark this, as a means of understanding the wide-reaching and often perverting influences of Aristotle on the development of Christian ethics even down to the present day.

The Christian consciousness rests throughout on the recognition of the necessity of general redemption, occasioned by the historical entrance of sin into the race. But of this Aristotle knows nothing; for, though he views the mass of mankind as incapable of high virtue, it is not because of an innate adverseness to virtue, but simply because of this normal non-endowment therefor-in some sense as brutes are thus non-endowed. And over against these he places the free Greek sage, who is absolutely and normally good, and, of course, without any need of redemption. And equally unchristian is the spirit of lofty selfrespect and contemptuous unconcern with which these chosen few may, and do, look down upon all the rest of mankind.

In fact the perfect ideal of manhood, as conceived by the Greeks, is, in some essential respects, the very opposite of the Christian character. Take, as an example, the following picture of the magnanimous sage, as given by Aristotle himself, and which may justly be regarded as the highest ideal of character to which the Greek mind ever rose. In speaking of magnanimity, the crown of all the virtues, he says: "Magnanimous is he who is worthy of great things, and who esteems himself as worthy of great things. The greatest of out

ward goods is honor; the magnanimous man has, therefore, to act becomingly in regard to honor and dishonor. . . . As the magnanimous one is worthy of the greatest things, he must necessarily be perfectly good to him belongs all that is great in every virtue; . . . hence it is very difficult to be magnanimous. . . . In great honors, and honors tendered to him by distinguished men, the magnanimous man rejoices, but moderately, as if such honors were due him, or even fell below his deserts; for to perfect virtue no sufficient honor can be offered. And yet he accepts it, because there can be no greater one shown him. But honors offered to him by ordinary men, or for unimportant things, he despises, for they are not worthy of him." After adding that favorable external circumstances are necessary to true magnanimousness, and that the magnanimous one thinks only very moderately of men and things, and esteems very few things so highly as to expose himself to dangers on their account, he continues: "He is inclined to confer benefits, but disdains to receive a favor; for the former benefits an eminent personage, while the latter implies inferiority. If he does receive a favor, however, he returns it in greater measure; for thereby the one who before had the advantage is now made a debtor. Also he gladly recalls to mind those to whom he has done favors, but not those from whom he has received favors! For the receiver of a benefit is subordinate to him who confers, whereas his own aim is, to be preeminent over others. For this reason he is glad to have the former (his benefactions) mentioned, but disdains to hear of the latter (the favors received). . . He remains inactive and unconcerned when the matter is not one of great honor, nor a great work. He does but little, but what he does is great and brings fame. He is free-spoken, for he cherishes contempt. He speaks the truth, save when indulging in irony; and he does this when speaking with the masses. He is never aston. ished, for nothing seems great to him. . . . The movements of a magnanimous man are slow, his voice low-pitched, and his pronunciation measured. For he who is not interested for many things is in no hurry; and he who esteems nothing great is not enthusiastic." Such is Aristotle's picture of a pɛyaλóψυχος. In the eyes of Christianity it is that of a courtly fool; but he proposes it to us as the beau ideal of virtue!

An essential defect in Aristotle's ethics, and one wherein it falls far below Plato's, is its lack of a religious character. It fails almost entirely to teach that morality is based on the will of God, that it brings man in communion with God, that man has a direct moral relation to God, and that piety is the mainspring of virtue. And this is all the more surprising as Aristotle's very correct conception of God as a rational, living, personal First Cause would naturally have led to such a view of the ground of morality. It was evidently not so much the logic of his philosophy as the general feebleness of the Greek religious consciousness that prevented him from giving morality a religious sanction.

But by this very failure he deprived morality of a sufficient motive. For he repeatedly asserts, as against Socrates, that the knowledge of the good does not necessarily lead to its performance; that, in fact, there may be an antagonism between knowing and willing. But if knowing the good does not lead to its willing, what does? It is not love, for that is only a phase of friendship, and hence is simply a single phenomenon of the moral life along side of many others. Misconceiving, thus, of the true nature of this element, which plays in Christianity so important a part--binding all mankind into one, and the whole to God-his ethical system lacks a sufficient anchorage, and is tossed hither and thither among sands and waves. And it is because of this want of knowledge of the moral power of love that Aristotle can assign no other motive for the civil virtues of the great multitude than that of fear. This admission of a possible antagonism between knowledge and volition, though evincing, on the one hand, that Aristotle was a less prejudiced observer of actual life than Socrates, yet, on the other, renders it impossible for him, consistently with his own ethical system, adequately to explain the phenomena of the moral life.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXII.-38