Part 13

What Aristotle enunciated therefore was merely the most commonplace wisdom; and so much the better. Commonplace wisdom is the best kind of wisdom for common needs and every-day occasions. It is too late in the day now, and was too late in Aristotle’s time certainly, to be discovering altogether new rules for keeping the consciences and the stomachs of the human millions in good order. Things absolutely necessary to healthy existence were necessarily known from the earliest ages, unless indeed we imagine that the primeval man was created in a state of physical and moral disease, that he might grope and blunder his way into health, as some theorists assert that he groped and blundered his way from a tiger into a moral being, and from a monkey into a man. So far unquestionably, Henry Thomas Buckle was right: there are no discoveries to be made in morals. We do not discover the sun; we only recognise it when the clouds are blown and the rain has exhausted itself. So it is in morals--in the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. We do not discover moral principles by a fingering induction, or in any other way; we merely remove obstructions; we can apply the {156} bellows also and blow the small spark into a mighty flame. Our endeavours therefore as preachers, and as philosophers, like Aristotle, are not in vain. We have much to do, if not in the way of discovering absolutely new principles, certainly in a thousand and one ways of applying those principles. A burning-glass when first invented did not discover the sun; it utilized the sun. And in the same way the institution of every new church or the establishment of every new school is an invention in morals, though not a discovery of a new moral principle. Sabbath-schools were a discovery in morals; Voluntary Churches were a discovery in morals; Reform Bills were a discovery in morals. And in the world of books, we must say also that the principle of the mean asserted and systematically set forth in the Nicomachean Ethics was a great discovery in moral philosophy. The discovery consisted in the sagacity which seized, among a thousand others, a floating proverb, as alone fit, or mainly fit, for being made the corner-stone of a comprehensive canon of human conduct. To pick up a rough stone from the road, and polish it, and set it in a ring, and carve upon it the signature of the king’s imperial will, is no small achievement; and this simile precisely appraises the merit of the Stagirite, in reference to that old maxim μηδὲν ἄγαν, which we have just quoted. He has stamped it with the authority of his own regal intellect, in a manner appealing not less effectively to the analytic habits of the scientific man, than to the broad views so dear to the so-called practical man. And that he was grandly right in seizing upon this rule of conduct, no person who has ever seriously applied, himself to the wisdom of life, as to the one {157} thing needful, will hare any difficulty in admitting. For there is hardly a man of any self-knowledge who will not be willing to confess that the greatest blunders he has made in the difficult game of life have arisen from the neglect of this rule, as his most signal successes have sprung from the observance of it. The attainment of this golden mean, indeed, in one shape or another, is the constant problem of existence; and it will be difficult to point out any defects of moral character which do not arise either from a certain feebleness and deficiency of some necessary practical energy, or from the exaggeration and misapplication of virtues--a misapplication, be it observed, which almost always proceeds from an excess; for as a mother is apt to have her pet child, and an old maid her green parrot, her Skye terrier, or her tortoise-shell cat, on which she spends the overflow of her non-utilized sympathies, so every man is apt to have his pet virtue, his idol excellence, on which he prides himself, and of which he is fond of making a parade on all proper and improper occasions. It is the excessive sway of the favourite affection that makes a man blind to discern and weak to prevent its improper application. This is a great truth--and somewhat of a comfortable truth, too; for to sin by excess of good is always better than to offend from pure viciousness; and man is upon the whole (notwithstanding the floating lies of the hour, and the Devil’s Paradise in New York) a blundering rather than a diabolical creature. The importance of Aristotle’s rule arises from the fact that it is a regulative principle of universal application; and in this way it may well be taken in the left hand, along with the golden rule in the right {158} hand, “Do unto others as ye would that they would do unto you;” for this sacred sentence is founded on a just, delicate, and broad sympathy, and belongs rather to the emotional element--the moral steam, so to speak--of our nature, which, to avoid great perils, must always be associated with the regulative principle of the mean, or something to that effect. These two famous maxims indeed may, for practical purposes, be regarded as complementary of each other. For persons in whom the sympathetic emotions predominate are often deficient in the regulative faculty; while those whose power of regulation is great have sometimes little to regulate, and like a great commander with few soldiers, make a very poor appearance in the battle-field. In the struggle of life, the man whose sympathetic unselfish impulses are strong will perhaps find more benefit from the constant reference to Aristotle’s mean than even to the Scriptural golden rule; while the well-tempered Aristotelian will, on the other hand, find it for his advantage to inquire whether the even pace at which he goes is not as much owing to the dullness of the charger’s blood as to the skill with which the rider wields the rein. For there is no single maxim in morals that will conduct a man through all practical difficulties without the consideration of some other maxim qualifying it, and perhaps, for the nonce, giving it a flat contradiction; as I have known a gentleman who confessed to me that by nothing had he been led into so many serious blunders as by the indiscriminate application of this very text, “Do unto others,” etc.; for, being a man of a peculiar idiosyncrasy, and not having learned that the golden rule applies only to that which we {159} hold in common with our fellow-men, and not to those points on which we differ, he was constantly led into a course of behaviour towards certain persons, meant by him as a great kindness, but taken as a serious offence. While he wished not to be troublesome, he was considered to be neglectful; while he abstained from mentioning certain subjects for fear of rousing painful feelings he was accused of coldness and indifference; while he meant to be frank and confiding, he was met with a rebuff that he was rude and impertinent. All this shows how little mere preaching and parading of general maxims has to do with the difficult task of the formation of character; and no writer deserves greater praise for having gravely enunciated this truth than the author of the Nicomachean Ethics. In order fully to realize the value of the Aristotelian mean in the conduct of life, we may follow the method of the great moralist himself, and cull a few examples at random for its verification. We shall take three virtues--courage, truthfulness, self-esteem--and see how distinctly they stand out each as the middle-point of two vicious extremes. That courage is the mean between cowardice and rashness does not require to be told: but what a wide field of operation does this triad open to us, while we proceed to realize it in education, and in the conduct of public affairs, and in the events of life! What a nice judgment is required to know at what exact point the too much and the too little commences, where the right way swerves into an error of which the consequences may be incalculable! For the mean point is variable; and the hesitation which would be prudence in one person, or on one occasion, is cowardice in another. A sailor sailing without a {160} chart among blind reefs and strong currents--such as occur everywhere in the Shetland seas--can scarcely be too cautions; with a soldier, a bold dash into a difficulty with a fearlessness which can, scarcely be distinguished from rashness is sometimes the nearest road to a brilliant success. And as good amusements are a mimicry of life, there is a moment at bowls, or croquet, or backgammon, or even deliberate whist, when the fortune of a whole game may depend on a move which at other times would be either the most stupid ignorance or the most reckless folly. The wisdom of life, considered as a battle, depends at every moment on the skill to know when to advance and when to retreat, when to dash on with the spear, and when to crouch behind the shield; to know this moment is to know the just mean between rashness and cowardice, which the Greeks by a very significant name called manhood (ἀνδρειότης) or courage. Take another virtue. Of all commodities in the world, the most difficult to deal with is truth. If, indeed, all men went about the streets, like Socrates, in search of nothing but truth, and thanking everybody most fervidly for any contribution to his stock of it, even in the most disagreeable shape, truthfulness would be an easy virtue; as easy for a human being, one might imagine, as for a quick fountain to spout water, and for an eager fire to spit flame. But we all know it is not so--rather quite otherwise, for truth is an article to which, except in so far as particular truths may happen to prop up their prejudices, to flatter their vanity, and to inflate their conceit, many persons have serious objections. To fling it in their face is to insult them; to put it down their throats, {161} even with a silver spoon and sugar-candy, a difficult operation. Hence, in the conduct of life, the great importance of not speaking too much truth, lest we frighten people, and not speaking too little, lest we learn altogether to live upon lies. In mixed society, on account of the extreme sensitiveness of all sorts of vain and self-important persons, the rule is generally adopted of speaking as little truth as possible--that is, as little serious truth about important matters; for truth about trifles will discompose no one. But this conventional reticence is by no means the μεσότης which a reasonable compliance with the Aristotelian rule in this case would require; for though a surplus of truth is sure to make society uncomfortable, and a deluge of it makes it impossible, a great deficiency will certainly make it tame and stupid; and this is the extreme to which, in this country, we have lately been drifting with a gentle, but not the less a dangerous, current. Even in our pulpits we find a sort of cowardice sometimes formally enthroned, and a tame coldness set up as the standard in a place where, above all others, an indiscreet fervour might occasionally be allowed to pass for full cousin to the greatest excellence. Take again, self-esteem, which is partly an instinct, partly with wise men the result of that self-knowledge which long and varied experience ought always to produce. This is a moral mean perhaps even more difficult to strike than truthfulness; for in speaking, or rather not speaking, the truth, the principal difficulty a wise man has to deal with is the weakness of a brother; whereas, in estimating himself, the wisest man is constantly liable to be bribed by that love of self which, indeed, is the necessary root of {162} our vitality, but never can be the blooming crown of our glory. In reference to this quality, the general tendency of the world is towards overestimate; most persons are apt to measure too highly the value of their own particular strong point, and to under-estimate, or altogether misprize, that of their neighbours; as a gentleman in the month of August scouring the moors in triumph with a gun will be apt to think himself a much more sublime character than a poet lying lazily on a heather brae, and spinning out pretty fancies to the tune of a brown burn that eddies lazily round an old granite boulder; while the rhymer, on the other hand, thinks it a daintier occupation to sympathize quietly with feathered life than to take it away with powder and shot. So it is with us all, women as well as men--

“If a fair girl has but a pretty face, She has the wit to know it.”

And there is no reason why she should not know it. If a woman does not know her points, according to a high authority, she cannot even dress well; only, experience has proved that the less men and women think about their strong points, except, of course, when they are dressing, the better; for there is no more certain way of committing suicide on the higher moral nature than by falling in love with ourselves. In reference to this matter, therefore, it may be thought that the other and less common extreme is the more safe--it is better to think too lowly of ourselves than too highly. And it is a fact, capable of being proved from a hundred biographies, that the greatest men have been the least given to self-glorification; that modesty, as is commonly said, {163} is the invariable accompaniment of genuine power, while forward conceit, and empty inflation, and boastful exhibition of all kinds, are the natural characteristics of the young, the superficial, and the small. The under-estimate of self often found in connexion with the highest genius, especially in the early period of its experiments, arises naturally from the high ideal of perfection, by the contemplation of which excellence grows. No young man who puts a few well-adjusted and well-toned figures together on a piece of canvas can know, and certainly ought never to imagine, that he carries Raphael and Michael Angelo, and something better than both perhaps, in his bosom. But though this be true, I do not know whether I have not seen more sad mistakes made in life by persons who were rather depressed by too little than elevated by too much self-esteem. I have sometimes thought that the conceit so natural to young men is given to them by a gracious provision as a superfluity that is sure to be pruned off. The world is constantly employed in pulling down outrageous conceit; but when a poor fellow starts in the hot race of life, afflicted with that disease which the Greeks call δυσωπία, or _difficult-facedness_--that is, so modest as not to be able to look a fellow-being in the face--I must confess, though I have a kindly feeling towards a person so deficient which I never can have to the smart and pert self-conscious mannikin, I feel that the defect of the one is a much greater misfortune, and a malady much more difficult to cure, than the excess of the other. With some persons, and indeed whole families, the tendency to underrate their own capacity acts like a positive taint in the blood; it cuts the wing from hope, dulls the nerve {164} of aspiration, and palsies the arm of action. It makes an honest man useless where God has put him, and opens the door for a dishonest man with a little natural confidence to do badly what the honest man for sheer lack of confidence has not been able to do at all. The man of defective self-esteem thus commits two great wrongs--he wrongs himself, because he allows himself to be shunted out of his natural sphere, and becomes a hindrance where he might have been a help; and he wrongs the public, which lacks both the insight and the leisure to drag modest merit from its den and to look with an unwinking eye on the juggling glamoury of the bold pretender.