DISCOVERY 



219 



useless except in practice. Some, in considering what 

 Character is, shall endeavour to determine also what 

 it ought to be. " It is well said that a man becomes 

 just by performing just actions, and self-controlled by 

 acts of self-control. Yet most people neglect this, 

 and, resorting to abstract theorising, fancy themselves 

 philosophers, and hope by this means to achieve ex- 

 cellence — like invalids who pay careful attention as 

 the doctors prescribe for them, and yet fail altogether 

 to carry out their instructions." 



And it is no more accident that leads Aristotle to 

 draw so many of his illustrations from the training 

 and treatment of the human body. One example has 

 been given ; here are others : ' ' Too much exercise 

 may impair the strength, as well as too little ; and an 

 excess and a deficiency of food and drink are both 

 alike injurious to health." ... " It is possible to go 

 wrong in many ways, but right in one only ; conse- 

 quently the one is easy, and the other hard — easy to 

 miss the mark, and hard to hit it." . . . " Men's 

 actions make them what they are, as is clearly seen 

 from those practising for an athletic contest : they 

 are continuously in action. " . . . " As in the Olympic 

 games it is not the finest or strongest men present 

 who are crowned \'ictors, but only those who take part 

 in the contests (for the prize-winners are found among 

 these), so in life it is, of the men of noblest character, 

 those who act rightly to whom the prizes are given. " . . . 

 " The prize of virtue is happiness." 



Yet it must not be thought that the Greeks, least 

 of all that men of the stamp of Aristotle and his pupils, 

 were obsessed by athleticism. That their interests 

 were by no means confined to bodily health and 

 training can be seen by a glance at the other sources 

 of those illustrations which at every turn illuminate 

 and enliven the Ethics. Religion, mythology, history, 

 politics, law, warfare, navigation, commerce, manu- 

 facture, ethnology, natural history', physiology, physics, 

 mathematics, logic, art, literature, drama, music 

 — all these are laid under contribution ; and there 

 is constant reference also to the tenets of other schools 

 of thought, and to the traditional philosophy of 

 proverbs. 



Throughout this wealth and variety of illustration 

 runs an unmistakably personal note — which is one 

 of the reasons, indeed, for concluding that in the 

 Ethics we have the substance of lectures rather than 

 a formal treatise. We seem, for instance, to see the 

 t\vinkle in those " small eyes " of his, as Aristotle refers 

 (apropos of the pleasures of Touch) to the gourmand 

 who " wished that his throat could be longer than a 

 crane's " ; or reminds his hearers that " people eat 

 sweets in the theatre chiefly when tjie performance is 

 indifferent " ; or tells the story of the man who 

 justified his beating of his father on the ground that 



[ConimueU on p. 220 



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