Ethics | Page 8

of the right rule
may be present, nay the rightfulness of its authority may be acknowledged, and yet time
after time it may be disobeyed; the will may be good and yet overmastered by the force
of desire, so that the act done is contrary to the agent's will. Nevertheless the act may be
the agent's, and the will therefore divided against itself. Aristotle is aware of the
seriousness and difficulty of the problem, but in spite of the vividness with which he
pictures, and the acuteness with which he analyses, the situation in which such action
occurs, it cannot be said that he solves the problem. It is time that he rises above the
abstract view of it as a conflict between reason and passion, recognising that passion is
involved in the knowledge which in conduct prevails or is overborne, and that the force
which leads to the wrong act is not blind or ignorant passion, but always has some reason
in it. But he tends to lapse back into the abstraction, and his final account is perplexed
and obscure. He finds the source of the phenomenon in the nature of the desire for bodily
pleasures, which is not irrational but has something rational in it. Such pleasures are not
necessarily or inherently bad, as has sometimes been maintained; on the contrary, they
are good, but only in certain amounts or under certain conditions, so that the will is often
misled, hesitates, and is lost.
Books VIII. and IX. (on Friendship) are almost an interruption of the argument. The
subject-matter of them was a favourite topic of ancient writers, and the treatment is
smoother and more orderly than elsewhere in the Ethics. The argument is clear, and may
be left without comment to the readers. These books contain a necessary and attractive
complement to the somewhat dry account of Greek morality in the preceding books, and

there are in them profound reflections on what may be called the metaphysics of
friendship or love.
At the beginning of Book X. we return to the topic of Pleasure, which is now regarded
from a different point of view. In Book VII. the antagonists were those who
over-emphasised the irrationality or badness of Pleasure: here it is rather those who so
exaggerate its value as to confuse or identify it with the good or Happiness. But there is
offered us in this section much more than criticism of the errors of others. Answers are
given both to the psychological question, "What is Pleasure?" and to the ethical question,
"What is its value?" Pleasure, we are told, is the natural concomitant and index of perfect
activity, distinguishable but inseparable from it--"the activity of a subject at its best
acting upon an object at its best." It is therefore always and in itself a good, but its value
rises and falls with that of the activity with which it is conjoined, and which it intensifies
and perfects. Hence it follows that the highest and best pleasures are those which
accompany the highest and best activity.
Pleasure is, therefore, a necessary element in the best life, but it is not the whole of it nor
the principal ingredient. The value of a life depends upon the nature and worth of the
activity which it involves; given the maximum of full free action, the maximum of
pleasure necessary follows. But on what sort of life is such activity possible? This leads
us back to the question, What is happiness? In what life can man find the fullest
satisfaction for his desires? To this question Aristotle gives an answer which cannot but
surprise us after what has preceded. True Happiness, great satisfaction, cannot be found
by man in any form of "practical" life, no, not in the fullest and freest exercise possible of
the "moral virtues," not in the life of the citizen or of the great soldier or statesman. To
seek it there is to court failure and disappointment. It is to be found in the life of the
onlooker, the disinterested spectator; or, to put it more distinctly, "in the life of the
philosopher, the life of scientific and philosophic contemplation." The highest and most
satisfying form of life possible to man is "the contemplative life"; it is only in a
secondary sense and for those incapable of their life, that the practical or moral ideal is
the best. It is time that such a life is not distinctively human, but it is the privilege of man
to partake in it, and such participation, at however rare intervals and for however short a
period, is the highest Happiness which human life can offer. All other activities have
value only because and in so far as they render this life possible.
But it must not be forgotten