On Moral Virtue (4-6)

Those who wonder how it is that this part is irrational, yet subservient to reason, do not seem to me to reflect thoroughly upon the power of reason,

How great it is, how far it penetrates,[*]

through its mastery and guidance, not by harsh and inflexible methods, but by flexible ones, which have a quality of yielding and submitting to the rein which is more effective than any possible constraint or violence. For, to be sure, even our breathing, our sinews and bones, and the other parts of the body, though they are irrational, yet when an impulse comes, with reason shaking the reins, as it were, they all grow taut and are drawn together in ready obedience. So, when a man purposes to run, his feet are keyed for action; if he purposes to throw or to grasp, his hands fall to their business. And most excellently does the Poet[*] portray in the following words the sympathy and conformity of the irrational with reason:

Thus were her fair cheeks wet with tears, as she

Wept for her lord, though he sat by. In heart

Odysseus pitied his lamenting wife,

But kept his eyes firm-fixed within their lids

Like horn or iron: with guile he hid his tears.

Under such subjection to his judgement did he keep

his breathing and his blood and his tears.

An evident proof of this is also the shrinking and withdrawal of the private parts, which hold their peace and remain quiet in the presence of such beautiful maidens and youths as neither reason nor law allows us to touch. This is particularly the case with those who first fall in love and then hear that they have unwittingly become enamoured of a sister or a daughter; for lust cowers as reason asserts itself and, at the same time, the body brings its parts into decent conformity with the judgement. Indeed, very often with foods and meat, when men have partaken of them with gusto, if they then perceive or come to know that they have eaten something unclean or unlawful, not only is this judgement of theirs attended by displeasure and remorse, but the body itself, revolted and sharing the mind’s disgust, falls a prey to the retchings and vomitings of nausea.

But I fear that I shall be thought to be rounding out my discourse with instances which are altogether seductive and exotic, if I recount in full how harps and

lyres, pipes and flutes, and all the other harmonious and consonant instruments which musical art has devised, void of soul though they be, accord in songs of both joy and grief, in stately measures and dissolute tunes, with human experiences, reproducing the judgements, the experiences, and the morals of those who use them. And yet they say that even Zeno[*] on his way to the theatre when Amoebeus[*] was singing to the lyre, remarked to his pupils, Come, let us observe what harmony and music gut and sinew, wood and bone, send forth when they partake of reason, proportion, and order.

But, letting these subjects pass, I would gladly learn from my opponents whether, when they see dogs, horses, and domestic birds, through habituation, breeding, and teaching, uttering intelligible sounds and moving and assuming postures in subordination to reason, and acting in a manner conformable to due proportion and our advantage; and when they hear Homer declaring that Achilles

Urged on both horses and men[*]

to battle - whether, I say, they still wonder and are in doubt that the element in us which is spirited and appetitive and experiences pain and pleasure, does, by its very nature, harken to the intelligence, and is affected and harmoniously disposed by its agency, and does not dwell apart from the intelligence, nor is it separated therefrom, nor moulded from without the body, nor formed by any extraneous violence or blows, but that by its nature it is dependent upon the intelligence and is always in association with it and nurtured together with it and influenced by familiar intercourse.

Therefore, also, ethical, or moral, virtue (ethos) is well named,[*] for ethical virtue is, to but sketch the subject, a quality of the irrational, and it is so named because the irrational, being formed by reason, acquires this quality and differentiation by habit (ethos), since reason does not wish to eradicate passion completely (for that would be neither possible[*] nor expedient), but puts upon it some limitation and order and implants the ethical virtues, which are not the absence of passion but a due proportion and measure therein; and reason implants them by using prudence to develop the capacity for passion into a good acquired disposition. For these three things the soul is said to possess[*]: capacity, passion, acquired state. Now capacity[*] is the starting-point, or raw material, of passion, as, for instance, irascibility, bashfulness, temerity. And passion is a kind of stirring or movement of the capacity, as anger, shame, boldness. And finally, the acquired state is a settled force and condition of the capacity of the irrational, this settled condition being bred by habit and becoming on the one hand vice, if the passion has been educated badly, but virtue, if educated excellently by reason.

But inasmuch as philosophers do not make virtue as a whole a mean nor apply to it the term moral, we must discuss the difference, starting with first principles. Now in this world things

are of two sorts, some of them existing absolutely, others in some relation to us. Things that exist absolutely are earth, heavens, stars, sea; things that exist in relation to us are good and evil, things desirable and to be avoided, things pleasant and painful. Now reason[*] contemplates both of these, but when it is concerned merely with things which exist absolutely, it is called scientific and contemplative; and when it is engaged with those things which exist in relation to us, it is called deliberative and practical. The virtue of the latter activity is called prudence, that of the former wisdom; and prudence differs from wisdom in that when the contemplative faculty is occupied in a certain active relationship with the practical and passionate, prudence comes to subsist in accordance with reason. Therefore prudence[*] has need of chance, but wisdom has no need of it, nor yet of deliberation, to attain its proper end; for wisdom is concerned with things that remain ever the same and unchanging. And just as the geometer does not deliberate whether the triangle has its internal angles equal to two right angles, but knows it to be true (for deliberation concerns matters that are now one way, now another, not things that are sure and immutable), just so the contemplative mind has its activity concerning first principles, things that are permanent and have ever one nature incapable of mutation, and so has no occasion for deliberation. But prudence must often come down among things that are material and are full of error and confusion; it has to move in the realm of chance; to deliberate where the case is doubtful; and then at last to reduce deliberation to practice in activities in which decisions are both accompanied by and influenced by the irrational, whose impulsion they, as a matter of fact, need. The impulsion of passion springs from moral virtue; but it needs reason to keep it within moderate bounds and to prevent its exceeding or falling short of its proper season. For it is indeed true that the passionate and irrational moves sometimes too violently and swiftly, at other times more weakly and slothfully than the case demands. Therefore everything that we ever do can succeed but in one way, while it may fail in many ways[*]: for to hit the mark there is but one single, uncomplicated, way, yet it can be missed in several ways, according to whether we exceed the mean, or fall short of it. This, then, is the natural task of practical reason: to eliminate both the defects and the excesses of the passions. For wherever, through infirmity and weakness, or fear and hesitation, the impulsion yields too soon and prematurely forsakes the good,[*] there practical reason comes on the scene to incite and rekindle the impulsion; and where, again, the impulsion is borne beyond proper bounds, flowing powerfully and in disorder, there practical reason removes its violence and checks it. And thus by limiting the movement of the passions reason implants in the irrational the moral virtues, which are means between deficiency and excess. For we must not declare that every virtue comes into being by the observance of a mean, but, on the one hand, wisdom, being without any need of the irrational and arising in the activity of the mind, pure and uncontaminated by passion, is, as it were, a self-sufficing perfection and power[*] of reason, by which the most divine and blessed element of knowledge becomes possible for us; on the other hand, that virtue which is necessary to us because of our physical limitations, and needs, by Heaven, for its practical ends the service of the passions as its instrument, so to speak, and is not a destruction nor abolition of the irrational in the soul, but an ordering and regulation thereof, is an extreme as regards its power and quality, but as regards its quantity it is a mean, since it does away with what is excessive and deficient.

But since a mean [*] is capable of various interpretations (for that which is a compound is a mean between the simple uncompounded substances, as grey is of white and black; and that which contains and is contained is a mean between the contained and the container, as eight of twelve and four; and that which partakes of neither of the extremes is a mean, as the indifferent is a mean between good and bad), in none of these ways can virtue be called a mean, for it is not a mixture of the vices, nor, encompassing what falls short of due measure, is it encompassed by that which is in excess of it; nor is it entirely exempt from the impulses of the passions, wherein are found excess and deficiency. But it is a mean, and is said to be so, in a sense very like that which obtains in musical sounds and harmonies. For there the mean or mese, a properly-pitched note[*] like the neti and

the hypatê,[*] escapes the sharp highness of the one and the heavy deepness of the other; so virtue, being an activity and faculty concerned with the irrational, does away with the remissions and overstrainings of the impulse and its excesses and defects altogether, and reduces each passion to moderation and faultlessness. So, for instance, they declare courage[*] to be a mean between cowardice and rashness, of which the former is a defect, the latter an excess, of the spirited part of the soul; so, likewise, liberality is a mean between parsimony and prodigality, and gentleness between insensibility and cruelty; and temperance itself and justice are means, the latter distributing to itself in contracts neither more nor less than what is due, the former ever regulating the desires to a mean between lack of feeling and intemperance.

In this last instance, indeed, the irrational seems, with particular clearness, to allow us to observe the difference between itself and the rational, and to show that passion is essentially quite a different thing from reason. For self-control[*] would not differ from temperance, nor incontinence from intemperance, as regards the pleasures and desires, if it were the same part of the soul that we naturally use for desiring as for forming judgements. But the fact is that temperance belongs to the sphere where reason guides and manages the passionate element, like a gentle animal obedient to the reins, making it yielding in its desires and willingly receptive of moderation and propriety;

but the self-controlled man, while he does indeed direct his desire by the strength and mastery of reason, yet does so not without pain, nor by persuasion, but as it plunges sideways and resists, as though with blow and curb, he forcibly subdues it and holds it in, being the while himself full of internal struggle and turmoil. Such a conflict Plato[*] portrays in his simile of the horses of the soul, where the worse horse struggles against his better yoke-fellow and at the same time disconcerts the charioteer, who is ever forced to hold out against him and with might and main to rein him in,

Lest he let fall from his hands the crimson thongs,

as Simonides[*] has it. That is the reason why they do not account self-control even a virtue[*] in the absolute sense, but less than virtue. For it is not a mean which has been produced by the harmony of the worse with the better, nor has the excess of passion in it been eliminated, nor has the desiderative part of the soul become obedient and compliant to the intelligent part, but is vexed and causes vexation and is confined by compulsion and, though living with reason, lives as in a state of rebellion against it, hostile and inimical:

The city reeks with burning incense, rings

Alike with prayers for health and cries of woe[*]

even so is the soul of the self-controlled man because of its lack of consistency and its conflict. And on the same grounds they hold that incontinence also is something less than a vice, but that intemperance is a full-fledged vice. For intemperance possesses both an evil passion and an evil reason; under the influence of the former, it is incited by desire to shameful conduct; under the influence of the latter, which, since its judgement is evil, is enlisted with the desires, intemperance loses even the perception of its errors. But incontinence,[*] with the aid of reason, preserves its power of judgement intact, yet by its passions, which are stronger than its reason, it is swept along against its judgement. That is why incontinence differs from intemperance, for in it reason is worsted by passion, whereas with intemperance reason does not even fight; in the case of incontinence reason argues against the desires as it follows them, whereas with intemperance reason guides them and is their advocate; it is characteristic of intemperance that its reason shares joyfully in the sins committed, whereas with incontinence the reason shares in them, but with reluctance; with intemperance, reason is willingly swept along into shameful conduct, whereas with incontinence, it betrays honour unwillingly.

So also the difference between them is not less manifest in their words than in their actions. These are, for instance, the sayings of intemperate persons:

What pleasure can there be, what joy, without

The golden Aphrodite? May I die

When things like these no longer comfort me.[*]

And another says,

To eat, to drink, to have one’s way in love[*]:

All other things I call accessory,

as though with all his soul he were acquiescing in pleasures and were being subverted thereby. Not less than these does he[*] who says

Leave me to die, for that is best for me,

have his judgement suffering with the same ailment as his passions.

But the sayings of incontinence are otherwise and different:

A mind I have, but Nature forces me[*];

and

Alas I from God this evil comes to men

When, knowing what is good, they do it not[*];

and

The spirit yields and can resist no more,

Like anchor-hook in sand amid the surge.[*]

Here not inaptly the poet terms an anchor-hook in sand that which is not under the control of reason, nor firmly fixed, but surrenders its judgement to the loose and soft part of the soul. Very close to this imagery are also those famous lines[*]:

I, like some ship, am tied by ropes to shore,

And when winds blow, our cables do not hold.

For here the poet calls cables the judgements which resist shameful conduct and then are broken by passion, as by a great gust of wind. Truly the intemperate man is swept along to his pleasures by his desires with sails full-spread and delivers himself over to them and steers his course directly thither; whereas the course of the incontinent man zigzags here and there, as he strives to emerge from his passion and to stave it off and is yet swept down and shipwrecked on the reef of shameful conduct. Just as Timon[*] used to lampoon Anaxarchus:

The Cynic might of Anaxarchus seemed

Steadfast and bold, wherever he wished, to spring;

Well did he know the truth, they said, and yet

Was bad: for Nature smote him with desire

And led him back from truth - ’twas Nature’s dart,

Before whom trembles many a Sophist heart.

For neither is the wise man continent, though he is temperate, nor is the fool incontinent, though he is intemperate. For the wise man takes pleasure in what is honourable, but the fool is not vexed by shamefulness. Incontinence, therefore, is the mark of a sophistic soul, which has, indeed, reason, but reason which cannot stand firm by its own just decisions.