f views as to the nature, the standard, and the criterion of
virtue, according as it is believed to consist in conformity to the
fitness of things, in harmony with an unsophisticated taste, in accordance
with the interior moral sense, or in obedience to the will of God. There
are, also, border theories, which blend, or rather force into
juxtaposition, the ideas that underlie the two classes respectively.

It is proposed, in the present chapter, to give an outline of *the history
of ethical philosophy in Greece and Rome*, or rather, in Greece; for Rome
had no philosophy that was not born in Greece.

*Socrates* was less a moral philosopher than a preacher of virtue.
Self-ordained as a censor and reformer, he directed his invective and
irony principally against the Sophists, whose chief characteristic as to
philosophy seems to have been the denial of objective truth, and thus, of
absolute and determinate right. Socrates, in contrast with them, seeks to
elicit duty from the occasions for its exercise, making his collocutors
define right and obligation from the nature of things as presented to
their own consciousness and reflection. Plato represents him, whenever a
moral question is under discussion, as probing the very heart of the case,
and drawing thence the response as from a divine oracle.

*Plato* held essentially the same ground, as may be seen in his
identifying the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; but it is impossible to
trace in his writings the outlines of a definite ethical system, whether
his own, or one derived from his great master.

The three *principal schools of ethical philosophy in Greece* were the
Peripatetic, the Epicurean, and the Stoic.

The *Peripatetics* derived their philosophy from Aristotle, and their name
from his habit of walking up and down under the plane-trees of the Lyceum.
According to him, virtue is conduct so conformed to human nature as to
preserve all its appetites, proclivities, desires, and passions, in mutual
check and limitation. It consists in shunning extremes. Thus courage
stands midway between cowardice and rashness; temperance, between excess
and self-denial; generosity, between prodigality and parsimony; meekness,
between irascibility and pusillanimity. Happiness is regarded as the
supreme good; but while this is not to be attained without virtue, virtue
alone will not secure it. Happiness requires, in addition, certain outward
advantages, such as health, riches, friends