the moral life. But the main defect of Aristotle's treatment
of virtue is that he tends to regard the passions as irrational, and he
does not see that passions if wholly evil could have no 'mean.' Reason
pervades all the lower appetites of man: and the instincts and desires,
instead of being treated as elements which must be suppressed, ought to
be regarded rather as powers to be transformed and employed as vehicles
of the moral life. At the same time there are not wanting passages in
Aristotle as well as in Plato which, instead of emphasising the
avoidance of excess, regard virtue as consisting in complementary
elements--the addition of one virtuous characteristic to another--'that
balance of contrasted qualities which meets us at every turn in the
distinguished personalities of the Hellenic race, and which is too
often thought of in a merely negative way, as the avoidance of excess
rather than as the highest outcome of an intense and many-sided
vitality.'[5]

4. After Aristotle philosophy rapidly declined, and Ethics degenerated
into popular moralising which manifested itself chiefly in a growing
depreciation of good as the end {42} of life. The conflicting elements
of reason and impulse, which neither Plato nor Aristotle succeeded in
harmonising, gave rise ultimately to two opposite interpretations of
the moral life. The _Stoics_ selected the rational nature as the true
guide to an ethical system, but they gave to it a supremacy so rigid as
to threaten the extinction of the affections. The _Epicureans_, on the
other hand, fastening upon the emotions as the measure of truth,
emphasised the happiness of the individual as the chief good--a
doctrine which led some of the followers of Epicurus to justify even
sensual enjoyment. It is not necessary to dwell upon the details of
Epicureanism, for though its description of the 'wise man,' as that of
a person who prudently steered a middle course between passion and
asceticism, was one which exercised considerable influence upon the
morals of the age, it is the doctrines of Stoicism which more
especially have come into contact with Christianity. Without
discussing the Stoic conception of the world as interpenetrated and
controlled by an inherent spirit, and the consequent view of life as
proceeding from God and being in all its parts equally divine, we may
note that the Stoics, under the influence of Platonism, regarded
self-realisation as the true end of man. This i