170 SSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



lost for a Greek its earlier meaning of a law of 

 proportion, was the principle which secured this 

 order. Virtue was the life Kara rov opOov \6yov, 

 or, rather, the life ^ra Aoyou, and vice the lawless 

 and irrational life. If it is not clear in Aristotle 

 whether this Aoyoe is external or immanent, this 

 is only the difficulty which appeared " writ large " 

 in his account of the world where the reign of law 

 prevails. There, too, he cannot settle the question 

 whether it exists like a general commanding an 

 army, or as an immanent principle of order in 

 the army itself. It only needed that this should 

 be expressed in Stoic language, as Kara QIKTIV ?f)v, 

 to arrive at the conclusion, already implicit in 

 Aristotle, that the man who is in harmony with 

 himself is ipso facto in harmony with the world, 

 for it is the same Ao-yoc, or balancing principle, 

 which in nature shows itself as law, and in man as 

 rationality. 



Now, it is a remarkable thing that one of the 

 chief Confucianist writings, which deals with the 

 theory of morals, should have for its title "The 

 Doctrine of the Mean." This treatise (known as 

 Chung Yung) is a part of the " Li-Ki," or " Book 

 of Rites," one of the five great canonical works 

 of Confucianism. In 1861 it was translated by 

 Dr. Legge, with the title "The Doctrine of the 

 Mean." When in 1885 he retranslated it for the 

 " Sacred Books of the East " (vols. xxvii. xxviii.), 



