14 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



ficient to know the theory of virtue, but we must endea- 

 vour to possess and employ it ; or pursue whatever other 

 means there may be of becoming good. Now, if mere 

 treatises were sufficient of themselves to make men good, 

 justly ' would they have received many and great re- 

 wards,' as Theognis says, and it would be our duty to 

 provide ourselves with them. But the truth is, that they 

 seem to have power to urge on and to excite young men 

 of liberal minds, and to make a character that is generous 

 and truly fond of the honourable, easily influenced by 

 virtue ; but that they have no power to persuade the 

 multitude to what is virtuous and honourable." ^ The 

 commentator observes : " The very fact of loving virtue 

 for virtue's sake presupposes a proficiency in morals far 

 beyond the general state of mankind. Some other motive 

 was then clearly necessary for men sunk in vice as the 

 heathen world, a powerful motive, which no heathen, no 

 human philosophy could supply." 



Sir John Seeley called attention to the same fact after 

 our Lord came. He says : " Stoicism and Christianity 

 existed side by side at the end of the first century. Was 

 their view of the obligations resting upon them similar? 

 It was totally different. The Stoic rules were without 

 sanctions. If they were violated what could be said to 

 the offender ? All that could be said was, * Chrysippus 

 non dicet idem. '. To which how easy to reply, ' I esteem 

 Chrysippus, but on this point I differ from him!' To 

 Christian /apsz it was said, ' You have renounced your 

 baptism ; you have denied your Master ; you are cut off 

 from the Church ; the Judge will condemn you '. Is this 

 distinction a verbal or a practical one ? " - 



' The Nicomachean Ethics, bk. x,, chap. 9. Translated and annotated 

 by R. W. Browne, 1853. 



'^Ecce Homo, Preface, p. xi. 



