that the other is not its contradiction but its complement. If we are sorely and grievously tempted by the coffee, if we give it up with pain, if saying "No, I thank you," comes fearfully hard, if we cannot forego it cheerfully without so much as seriously considering the drinking of it as possible for us, why then it reveals how little we care for the life and work of the morrow; and since life and work are but a succession of to-morrows, how little we care for our life and work anyway. If we had great aims burning in our minds and hearts, wide interests to which body and soul were devoted, it would not be a pain, it would be a pleasure, to give up for the sake of them ten thousand times as big a thing as a cup of coffee, if it stood in the way of their accomplishment. Yes; Aristotle is right on both points. Pleasure isolated from our plan of life and followed as an end will lead us into weakness and wickedness every time we yield to its insidious solicitation. On the other hand, the resolute and consistent prosecution of large ends and generous interests will make a positive pleasure of everything we either endure or do to promote those ends and interests. Pleasure directly pursued is the utter demoralisation of life. Ends and interests, pursued for their own sakes, inevitably carry with them a host of

noble pleasures, and the power to conquer and transform what to the aimless life would be intolerable pains.

Aristotle rejects the Epicurean principle of pleasure; because, though a proof that isolated tendencies are satisfied, it is no adequate criterion of the satisfaction of the self as a whole. He rejects the Stoic principle of conformity to law; because it fails to recognise the supreme worth of individuality. He rejects the Platonic principle of subordination of appetites and passions to a supreme good which is above them; because he dreads above all things the blight of asceticism, and strives for a good which is concrete and practical.

What, then, is this good, which is neither a sum of pleasures, nor conformity to law; nor yet superiority to appetite and passion? What is this principle which can at once enjoy pleasure to the full, and at the same time forego it gladly; which can make laws for itself more severe than any lawgiver ever dared to lay down; and yet is not afraid to break any law which its own conception of good requires it to break; which honours all our elemental appetites and passions, uses money and honour and power as the servants of its own ends, without ever being enslaved by

them? Evidently we are now on the track of a principle infinitely more subtle and complex than anything the pleasure-loving Epicurean, or the formal Stoic, or the transcendental Platonist has ever dreamed of. We are entering the presence of the world's master moralist; and if we have ever for a moment supposed that either of these previous systems was satisfactory or final, it behooves us now to take the shoes from off our feet, and reverently listen to a voice as much profounder and more reasonable than them all, as they are superior to the senseless appetites and blind passions of the mob. For if we have a little patience with his subtlety, and can endure the temporary shock of his apparent laxity, he will admit us to the very holy of holies of personality.

II

THE SOCIAL NATURE OF MAN

Before coming to Aristotle's positive doctrine we must consider one fundamental axiom. Man is by nature a social being. Whatever a man seeks has a necessary and inevitable reference to the judgment of other men, and the interest of society as a whole. Strip a man of his relations man left. The man who is

and you have no

neither son, brother, husband, father, citizen, neighbour or workman, is inconceivable. The good which a man seeks, therefore, will express itself consciously or unconsciously in terms of other men's approval, and the furtherance of interests which he inevitably shares with them. The Greek word for private, peculiar to myself, unrelated to the thought or interest of anybody else, is our word for idiot. The New Testament uses this word to describe the place to which Judas went; a place which just suited such a man as he, and was fit for nobody else. Now a man who tries to be his own scientist, or his own lawgiver, or his own statesman, or his own business manager, or his own poet, or his own architect, without reference to the standards and expectations of his fellow-men, is just an idiot; or, as we say, a "crank." A wise man may defy these standards. The reformer often must do so. But if he is really wise, if he is a true reformer, he must reckon with them; he must understand them; he must appeal to the actual or possible judgment and interest of his fellows for the confirmation of what he says and the justification of what he does. This social reference of all our thoughts and actions, which Aristotle grasped by intuition, psychology in our day is laboriously and analytically

N

seeking to confirm. Aristotle lays it down as an axiom, that a man who does not devote himself to some section of the social and spiritual world, if such a being were conceivable, would be no man at all. Family, or friends, or reputation, or country, or God are there in the background, secretly summoned to justify our every thought and word and deed.

Because man's nature is social, his end must be social also. It will prevent misunderstanding later, if we put the question squarely here, Does the end justify the means? As popularly understood, most emphatically No. The support of a school is a good end. Does it justify the raising of money by a lottery? port of one's family is a good end. Does it justify drawing a salary for which no adequate services are rendered? Certainly not.

Certainly not. The sup

Yet if we push the question farther, and ask why these particular ends do not justify these particular means, we discover that it is because these means employed are destructive of an end vastly higher and greater than the particular ends they are employed to serve. They break down the structure and undermine the foundations of the industrial and social order; an end infinitely more important than the maintenance of any par