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CHAPTER II.

RATIONALISM, OR THE ETHICS OF REASON.

1. The rationalistic point of view.- -We have traced the implicit rationalism of the hedonistic theory gradually becoming explicit as we passed from Cyrenaicism to Epicureanism, from Paley and Bentham to Mill and Professor Sidgwick. This appeal to reason became necessary, first, for the guidance of individual choice by reference to a criterion of the higher and lower, and even of the greater and less, in pleasure; and, secondly, as the only possible means of transition from egoism to altruism, from selfishness to benevolence.

But, in both ancient and modern times, the ethical rights of reason have been emphasised no less strongly, and often no less exclusively, than the ethical rights of sensibility. This assertion of the claims of reason in the life of a rational being is at the basis of the common modern antithesis, or at any rate distinction, between duty and pleasure, between virtue and prudence, between the right and the expedient. It is at the heart of the conviction that

"To live by law,

Acting the law we live by without fear

And because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."

In ethical theory, too, 'duty for duty's sake' has been proclaimed with no less emphasis than 'pleasure for

The

pleasure's sake,' as the last word of the moral life. effort to idealise or spiritualise the moral man has been no less strenuously pursued than the effort to naturalise him. In reason, rather than in sensibility, it has been maintained, is to be found the characteristic element of human nature, the quality which differentiates man from all lower beings, and makes him man. This is not so much an explicit theory of the end or ideal, as a vindication of the absoluteness of moral law or obligation, of the category of duty as the supreme ethical category. But it is, at any rate, a delineation of the ideal life, and therefore, implicitly or explicitly, of the moral ideal itself.

The rational, like the hedonistic, ethics takes two forms-an extreme and a moderate. The former is that the good life is a life of pure reason, from which all sensibility has been eliminated. The latter is that it is a life which, though containing sensibility as an element, is fundamentally rational-a life of sensibility guided by reason. In either case, the entire emphasis is laid upon reason, and the theory may be called rigoristic, because the attitude to sensibility is that of rational superiority and stern control, where it is not that of rational intolerance and exclusiveness. Reason claims the sovereignty, and sensibility is either outlawed, or degraded to the status of passive obedience.

Whether in its extreme or in its moderate form, Rationalism is the expression of ethical idealism, as Hedonism is the expression of ethical realism. The one is the characteristic temper of the modern Christian world, as the other is the characteristic temper of the ancient Classical world. Our normal and dominant mood is that of strenuous enthusiasm, of dissatisfaction with the actual, of aspiration after the ideal; the supreme category of our life is duty or oughtness. The normal and dominant mood of the Greeks was just the reverse, the mood of sunny sensuous contentment with the present and the actual. That discontent which we

account the evidence of our diviner destiny was foreign to their spirit. The ethics of Socrates is the philosophical expression of this characteristic Greek view of life; moderation or self-control is the deepest principle he knows. For Aristotle, too, the sum of all virtue is the middle way' between the two extremes of excess and defect. The master-virtue of the Greeks, in life and in theory, is a universal temperance or σωφροσύνη.

Yet it is to the Greeks that we must trace back the rationalistic, no less than the hedonistic, view of life. For the Greek mind, though sensuous, was always clear and rational, always lucid, always appreciative of form; and the rational life had therefore always a peculiar charm for it. This appreciation of the rational life finds expression in the Socratic ideal of human life as a life worthy of a rational being, founded in rational insight and self-knowledge-a life that leaves the soul not demeaned and impoverished, but enriched and satisfied, adorned with her own proper jewels of righteousness and truth. Plato and Aristotle follow out this Socratic clue of the identity of the good with the rational life. For both, the life of virtue is a life according to right reason,' and the vicious life is the irrational life. Both, however, distinguish two degrees of rationality in what was, for Socrates, a single life of reason. First there is the reason-guided life of sensibility, or the life according to reason; but beyond that lies the higher life of reason itself, the intellectual, contemplative, or philosophic life. The chief source of this ethical idealism in Greek philosophy, which was destined to receive such a remarkable development in the Stoic school, and, through the Stoics, in our modern life and thought, is to be found in Plato's separation of the ideal reality from the sensible appearance. If, however, we would learn the original exposition of Greek Rationalism, we must go back to the immediate disciples of Socrates, the notorious Cynic school.

For

2. (4) Extreme Rationalism. (a) Ancient: (a) Cynicism. The quality in the Socratic character which most impressed the Cynics was its perfect self-control (Eуkpárɛia), its sublime independence of circumstances, its complete self-containedness and self-sufficiency. This became the ideal of the school. Happiness, they maintained, is to be sought within, not without; in virtue or excellence of character, not in pleasure (avтáρÊη TÙν ἀρετὴν πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν). Wisdom and happiness are synonymous, and the life of the wise is the passionless life of reason. The life of pleasure is the life of folly, the wise man would rather be mad than pleased. pleasure makes man the slave of fortune, the servant of circumstance. Independence is to be purchased only by indifference to pleasure and pain, by insensibility (amálɛia), by the uprooting of the desires which bind us to outward things. There must be no rifts in the armour of the soul, through which the darts of fortune may strike the man who has killed out all desire is alone impenetrable by evil. But the wise man is impenetrable. Not without, but within the soul, are the issues of life. Desire binds us to that which is external, and foreign (Eεvikóv) to the soul. But "for each thing that alone can be a good which belongs to it, and the only thing which belongs to man is mind or reason" (vous, λóyos). This λόγος). man's proper inner good, outward evil cannot touch; as Socrates said, "no evil can happen to a good man." Without such virtue, nothing is good; with it, there is no evil. This is the constant text of Cynic morality— the supremacy of the human spirit over circumstance, its perfect mastery of its own fortunes, founded on the sovereignty of reason over passion. The sum of Cynic wisdom is the sublime pride of the masterful rational self, which can acknowledge no other rule than its own, and which makes its possessor a king in a world of slaves.

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But these 'counsels of perfection' are hard to follow.

The life of wisdom is a veritable choice of Hercules.' The true riches of the soul are to be purchased only by selling all the deceitful riches of pleasure; the one pathway to heaven is the beggar-life. The emancipation from the outward is difficult, and the Cynic rule of life is one long course of self-denial. We must reduce our wants to a minimum, we must extirpate all artificial, luxurious, and conventional needs, and return to the simplicity of nature. Better far to climb with staff and scrip the steep ascent of virtue, than, burdened with wealth and houses and lands, to remain in the City of Destruction. For the reward of such selfdenial is a perfect peace of mind, which nothing can perturb. The man who has attained to the wisdom of life has penetrated all illusions, and conquered death itself; if none of the experiences of life are truly evil, since they cannot touch the soul that has steeled itself in an armour of indifference, least of all is that an evil which is not an experience at all.

This pride of reason led the Cynics into strange extravagance and fanaticism. Their 'return to nature,' their scorn for public opinion, their self-conscious affectations, their lack of personal dignity, their contempt for their fellows, whom they, like Carlyle, regarded as 'mostly fools,' have become proverbial. Yet Cynicism is no mere irresponsible or unimportant vagary of the human mind. It is the first philosophical expression, among the Greeks, of that tendency with which we have since become so familiar, the tendency to see in the life of reason the only life worthy of a rational being, and in all natural sensibility a trap laid for the soul of man, in which he will be snared if he avoids it not altogether; it is the first and the most extreme expression of the ascetic principle. That principle was reasserted later, by the Stoics, with such impressiveness and dignity that the importance and originality of its earlier statement have perhaps been under-estimated.