well-ordered mind-Justice-is above all things the source of happiness. Apart from all consequences of Justice, this is true; the addition of the natural results only enhances the strength of the position.

In TIMEUS, Plato repeats the doctrine that wickedness is to the mind what disease is to the body. The soul suffers from two distempers, madness and ignorance; the man under passionate heat is not wicked voluntarily. No man is bad willingly; but only from some evil habit of body, the effect of bad bringing-up [very much the view of Robert Owen].

The long treatise called the Laws, being a modified scheme of a Republic, goes over the same ground with more detail. We give the chief ethical points. It is the purpose of the lawgiver to bring about happiness, and to provide all good things divine and human. The divine things are the cardinal virtues -Wisdom, Justice, Temperance, Courage; the human are the leading personal advantages-Health, Beauty, Strength, Activity, Wealth. He requires the inculcation of self-command, and a training in endurance. The moral and religious feelings are to be guided in early youth, by the influence of Poetry and the other Fine Arts, in which, as before, a stringent censorship is to be exercised; the songs and dances are all to be publicly authorized. The ethical doctrine that the just man is happy and the unjust miserable, is to be preached; and every one prohibited from contradicting it. Of all the titles to command in society, Wisdom is the highest, although policy may require it to be conjoined with some of the others (Birth, Age, Strength, Accident, &c.). It is to be a part of the constitution to provide public exhortations, or sermons, for inculcating virtue; Plato having now passed into an opposite phase as to the value of Rhetoric, or continuous address. The family is to be allowed in its usual form, but with restraints on the age of marriage, on the choice of the parties, and on the increase of the number of the population. Sexual intercourse is to be as far as possible confined to persons legally married; those departing from this rule are, at all events, to observe secresy. The slaves are not to be of the same race as the masters. As regards punishment, there is a great complication, owing to the author's theory that wickedness is not properly voluntary. Much of the harm done by persons to others is unintentional or involuntary, and is to be made good by reparation. For the loss of balance or selfcontrol, making the essence of injustice, there must be a penal and educational discipline, suited to cure the moral distemper;

SUMMARY OF PLATO'S ETHICS.

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not for the sake of the past, which cannot be recalled, but of the future. Under cover of this theory, the punishments are abundantly severe; and the crimes include Heresy, for which there is a gradation of penalties terminating in death.

We may now summarize the Ethics of Plato, under the general scheme as follows:

:

I. The Ethical Standard, or criterion of moral Right and Wrong. This we have seen is, ultimately, the Science of Good and Evil, as determined by a Scientific or Wise man; the Idea of the Good, which only a philosopher can ascend to. Plato gave no credit to the maxims of the existing society; these were wholly unscientific.

It is obvious that this vague and indeterminate standard would settle nothing practically; no one can tell what it is. It is only of value as belonging to a very exalted and poetic conception of virtue, something that raises the imagination above common life into a sphere of transcendental existence. II. The Psychology of Ethics.

1. As to the Faculty of discerning Right. This is implied in the foregoing statement of the criterion. It is the Cognitive or Intellectual power. In the definite position taken up in Protagoras, it is the faculty of Measuring pleasures against one another and against pains. In other dialogues, measure is still the important aspect of the process, although the things to be measured are not given.

2. As regards the Will. The theory that vice, if not the result of ignorance, is a form of madness, an uncontrollable fury, a mental distemper, gives a peculiar rendering of the nature of man's Will. It is a kind of Necessity, not exactly corresponding, however, with the modern doctrine of that name.

3. Disinterested Sentiment is not directly and plainly recognized by Plato. His highest virtue is self-regarding; a concern for the Health of the Soul.

III.-On the Bonum, or Summum Bonum, Plato is ascetic and self-denying. 1. We have seen that in Philebus, Pleasure is not good, unless united with Knowledge or Intelligence; and the greater the Intelligence, the higher the pleasure. That the highest happiness of man is the pursuit of truth or Philosophy, was common to Plato and to Aristotle.

2. Happiness is attainable only through Justice or Virtue. Justice is declared to be happiness, first, in itself, and secondly, in its consequences. Such is the importance attached to this maxim as a safeguard of Society, that, whether true or not, it is to be maintained by state authority.

3. The Psychology of Pleasure and Pain is given at length in the Philebus.

IV. With regard to the scheme of Duty. In Plato, we find the first statement of the four Cardinal Virtues.

As to the Substance of the Moral Code, the references above made to the Republic and the Laws will show in what points his views differed from modern Ethics.

Benevolence was not one of the Cardinal Virtues.

His notions even of Reciprocity were rendered hazy and indistinct by his theory of Justice as an end in itself.

The inducements, means, and stimulants to virtue, in addition to penal discipline, are training, persuasion, or hortatory discourse, dialectic cognition of the Ideas, and, above all, that ideal aspiration towards the Just, the Good, around which he gathered all that was fascinating in poetry, and all the associations of religion and divinity. Plato employed his powerful genius in working up a lofty spiritual reward, an ideal intoxication, for inciting men to the self-denying virtues. He was the first and one of the greatest of preachers. His theory of Justice is suited to preaching, and not to a scientific analysis of society.

V.-The relation of Ethics to Politics is intimate, and even inseparable. The Civil Magistrate, as in Hobbes, supplies the Ethical sanction. All virtue is an affair of the state, a political institution. This, however, is qualified by the demand for an ideal state, and an ideal governor, by whom alone anything like perfect virtue can be ascertained.

VI. The relationship with Theology is also close. That is to say, Plato was not satisfied to construct a science of good and evil, without conjoining the sentiments towards the Gods. His Theology, however, was of his own invention, and adapted to his ethical theory. It was necessary to suppose that the gods were the authors of good, in order to give countenance to virtue.

Plato was the ally of the Stoics, as against the Epicureans, and of such modern theorists as Butler, who make virtue, and not happiness, the highest end of man. With him, discipline was an end in itself, and not a means; and he endeavoured to soften its rigour by his poetical and elevated Idealism.

Although he did not preach the good of mankind, or direct beneficence, he undoubtedly prepared the way for it, by urging self-denial, which has no issue or relevance, except either by realizing greater happiness to Self (mere exalted

Prudence, approved of by all sects), or by promoting the welfare of others.

THE CYNICS AND THE CYRENAICS.

These opposing sects sprang from Sokrates, and passed, with little modification, the one into the Stoics, the other into the Epicureans. Both ANTISTHENES, the founder of the Cynics, and ARISTIPPUS, the founder of the Cyrenaics, were disciples of Sokrates.

Their doctrines chiefly referred to the Summum Bonumthe Art of Living, or of Happiness.

The CYNICS were most closely allied to Sokrates; they, in fact, carried out to the full his chosen mode of life. His favourite maxim-that the gods had no wants, and that the most godlike man was he that approached to the same statewas the Cynic Ideal. To subsist upon the narrowest means; to acquire indifference to pain, by a discipline of endurance; to despise all the ordinary pursuits of wealth and pleasure,—were Sokratic peculiarities, and were the beau idéal of Cynicism.

The Cynic succession of philosophers were, (1) ANTISTHENES, one of the most constant friends and companions of Sokrates; (2) DIOGENES of Sinope, the pupil of Antisthenes, and the best known type of the sect. (His disciple Krates, a Theban, was the master of Zeno, the first Stoic.) (3) STILPON of Megara, (4) MENEDEMUS of Eretria, (5) MONIMUS of Syracuse, (6) KRATES.

The two first heads of the Ethical scheme, so meagrely filled up by the ancient systems generally, are almost a total blank as regards both Cynics and Cyrenaics.

I. As regards a Standard of right and wrong, moral good or evil, they recognized nothing but obedience to the laws and customs of society.

II. They had no Psychology of a moral faculty, of the will, or of benevolent sentiment. The Cyrenaic Aristippus had a Psychology of Pleasure and Pain.

The Cynics, instead of discussing Will, exercised it, in one of its most prominent forms,-self-control and endurance.

Disinterested conduct was no part of their scheme, although the ascetic discipline necessarily promotes abstinence from sins against property, and from all the vices of public ambition.

III. The proper description of both systems comes under the Summum Bonum, or the Art of Living.

The Cynic Ideal was the minimum of wants, the habituation to pain, together with indifference to the common enjoy

ments. The compensating reward was exemption from fear, anxiety, and disappointment; also, the pride of superiority to fellow-beings and of approximation to the gods. Looking at the great predominance of misery in human life, they believed the problem of living to consist in a mastery over all the forms of pain; until this was first secured, there was to be a total sacrifice of pleasure.

The Cynics were mostly, like Sokrates, men of robust health, and if they put their physical constitution to a severe test by poor living and exposure to wind and weather, they also saved it from the wear and tear of steady industry and toil. Exercise of body and of mind, with a view to strength and endurance, was enjoined; but it was the drill of the soldier rather than the drudgery of the artisan.

In the eyes of the public, the prominent feature of the Cynic was his contemptuous jeering, and sarcastic abuse of everybody around. The name (Cynic, dog-like) denotes this peculiarity. The anecdotes relating to Diogenes illustrate his coarse denunciation of men in general and their luxurious ways. He set at defiance all the conventions of courtesy and of decency; spoke his mind on everything without fear or remorse; and delighted in his antagonism to public opinion. He followed the public and obtrusive life of Sokrates, but instead of dialectic skill, his force lay in vituperation, sarcasm, and repartee. 'To Sokrates,' says Epiktetus, Zeus assigned the cross-examining function; to Diogenes, the magisterial and chastising function; to Zeno (the Stoic), the didactic and dogmatical.'

The Cynics had thus in full measure one of the rewards of asceticism, the pride of superiority and power. They did not profess an end apart from their own happiness; they believed and maintained that theirs was the only safe road to happiness. They agreed with the Cyrenaics as to the end; they differed

as to the means.

The founders of the sect, being men of culture, set great store by education, from which, however, they excluded (as it would appear) both the Artistic and the Intellectual elements of the superior instruction of the time, namely, Music, and the Sciences of Geometry, Astronomy, &c. Plato's writings and teachings were held in low esteem. Physical training, self-denial and endurance, and literary or Rhetorical cultivation, comprise the items taught by Diogenes when he became a slave, and was made tutor to the sons of his master.

IV. As to the Moral Code, the Cynics were dissenters from the received usages of society. They disapproved of