II The Platonic Ethics
Believing firmly that there are unchangeable, necessary, and absolute principles, which are the perfections of the Eternal Mind, Plato must, of course, have been a believer in an immutable morality. He held that there is a rightness, a justice, an equity, not arbitrarily constituted by the Divine will or legislation, but founded in the nature of God, and therefore eternal. The independence of the principles of morality upon the mere will of the Supreme Governor is proclaimed in all his writings. 662 The Divine will is the fountain of efficiency, the Divine reason, the fountain of law. God is no more the creator of virtue than he is the creator of truth.
And inasmuch as man is a partaker of the Divine essence, and as the ideas which dwell in the human reason are “copies” of those which dwell in the Divine reason, man may rise to the apprehension and recognition of the immutable and eternal principles of righteousness, and “by communion with that which is Divine, and subject to the law of order, may become himself a subject of order, and divine, so far as it is possible for man.” 663
Footnote 662: (return) In “Euthyphron” especially.
Footnote 663: (return) “Republic,” bk. vi. ch. xiii.
The attainment of this consummation is the grand purpose of the Platonic philosophy. Its ultimate object is “the purification of the soul,” and its pervading spirit is the aspiration after perfection. The whole system of Plato has therefore an eminently ethical character. It is a speculative philosophy directed to a practical purpose.
Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Now wisdom (σοφία) is expressly declared by Plato to belong alone to the Supreme Divinity, 664 who alone can contemplate reality in a direct and immediate manner, and in whom, as Plato seems often to intimate, knowledge and being coincide. Philosophy is the aspiration of the soul after this wisdom, this perfect and immutable truth, and in its realization it is a union with the Perfect Wisdom through the medium of a divine affection, the love of which Plato so often speaks. The eternal and unchangeable Essence which is the proper object of philosophy is also endowed with moral attributes. He is not only “the Being,” but “the Good” (τὸ ἀγαθόν), and all in the system of the universe which can be the object of rational contemplation, is an emanation from that goodness. The love of truth is therefore the love of God, and the love of Good is the love of truth. Philosophy and morality are thus coincident. Philosophy is the love of Perfect Wisdom; Perfect Wisdom and Perfect Goodness are identical; the Perfect Good is God; philosophy is the “Love of God.” 665 Ethically viewed, it is this one motive of love for the Supreme Wisdom and Goodness, predominating over and purifying and assimilating every desire of the soul, and governing every movement of the man, raising man to a participation of and communion with Divinity, and restoring him to “the likeness of God.” “This flight,” says Plato, “consists in resembling God (όµοίωσιϛ Θεῷ), and this resemblance is the becoming just and holy with wisdom.” 666 “This assimilation to God is the enfranchisement of the divine element of the soul. To approach to God as the substance of truth is Science; as the substance of goodness in truth is Wisdom, and as the substance of Beauty in goodness and truth is Love.” 667
The two great principles which can be clearly traced as pervading the ethical system of Plato are—
1. That no man is willingly evil. 668
2. That every man is endued with the power of producing changes in his moral character 669
Footnote 664: (return) “Phædrus,” § 145.
Footnote 665: (return) Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 61.
Footnote 666: (return) “Theætetus,” § 84.
Footnote 667: (return) Butler’s “Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,” vol. ii. p. 277.
Footnote 668: (return) “Timæsus,” ch. xlviii.
Footnote 669: (return) “Laws,” bk. v. ch. i., bk. ix. ch. vi., bk. x. ch. xii.
The first of these principles is the counterpart ethical expression of his theory of immutable Being. The second is the counterpart of his theory of phenomenal change, or mere Becoming.
The soul of man is framed after the pattern of the immutable ideas of the just, and the true, and the good, which dwell in the Eternal Mind—that is, it is made in the image of God. The soul in its ultimate essence is formed of “the immutable” and “the permanent.” The presence of the ideas of the just, and the true, and the good in the reason of man, constitute him a moral nature; and it is impossible that he can cease to be a moral being, for these ideas, having a permanent and immutable being, can not be changed. All the passions and affections of the soul are merely phenomenal. They belong to the mortal, the transitory life of man; they are in endless flow and change, and they have no permanent reality. As phenomena, they must, however, have some ground; and Plato found that ground in the mysterious, instinctive longing for the good and the true which dwells in the very essence of the soul. These are the realities after which it strives, even when pursuing pleasure, and honor, and wealth, and fame. All the restlessness of human life is prompted by a longing for the good. But man does not clearly perceive what the good really is. The rational element of the soul has become clouded by passion and ignorance, and suffered an eclipse of its powers. Still, man longs for the good, and bears witness, by his restlessness and disquietude, that he instinctively desires it, and that he can find no rest and no satisfaction in any thing apart from the knowledge and the participation of the Supreme, the Absolute Good.
This, then, is the meaning of the oft-repeated assertion of Plato “that no man is willingly evil;” viz., that no man deliberately chooses evil as evil. And Plato is, at the same time, careful to guard the doctrine from misconception. He readily grants that acts of wrong are distinguished as voluntary and involuntary, without which there could be neither merit nor demerit, reward nor punishment. 670 But still he insists that no man chooses evil in and by itself. He may choose it voluntarily as a means, but he does not choose it as an end. Every volition, by its essential nature, pursues, at least, an apparent good; because the end of volition is not the immediate act, but the object for the sake of which the act is undertaken. 671
Footnote 670: (return) “Laws,” bk. ix. ch. vi.
Footnote 671: (return) “Gorgias,” §§ 52, 53.
How is it, then, it may be asked, that men become evil? The answer of Plato is, that the soul has in it a principle of change, in the power of regulating the desires—in indulging them to excess, or moderating them according to the demands of reason. The circumstances in which the soul is placed, as connected with the sensible world by means of the body, present an occasion for the exercise of that power, the end of this temporal connection being to establish a state of moral discipline and probation. The humors and distempers of the body likewise deprave, disorder, and discompose the soul. 672 “Pleasures and pains are unduly magnified; the democracy of the passions prevails; and the ascendency of reason is cast down.” Bad forms of civil government corrupt social manners, evil education effects the ruin of the soul. Thus the soul is changed—is fallen from what it was when first it came from the Creator’s hand. But the eternal Ideas are not utterly effaced, the image of God is not entirely lost. The soul may yet be restored by remedial measures. It may be purified by knowledge, by truth, by expiations, by sufferings, and by prayers. The utmost, however, that man can hope to do in this life is insufficient to fully restore the image of God, and death must complete the final emancipation of the rational element from the bondage of the flesh. Life is thus a discipline and a preparation for another state of being, and death the final entrance there. 673
Footnote 672: (return) “Gorgias,” §§ 74-76.
Footnote 673: (return) “Phædo,” §§ 130, 131.
Independent of all other considerations, virtue is, therefore, to be pursued as the true good of the soul. Wisdom, Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, the four cardinal virtues of the Platonic system, are to be cultivated as the means of securing the purification and perfection of the inner man. And the ordinary pleasures, “the lesser goods” of life, are only to be so far pursued as they are subservient to, and compatible with, the higher and holier duty of striving after “the resemblance to God.”