have offered
them as solutions of the difficulties men experience in controlling
their own passions and in adapting their desires to the
conditions which limit their fulfillment.

[Footnote 1: Aristotle: _loc. cit._, p. 36.]

"Our present study," writes Aristotle, "is not, like other
studies, purely speculative in its intention; for the object
of our inquiry is not to know the nature of virtue, but to
become ourselves virtuous, as that is the sole benefit which
it conveys."[2] Reflection upon morals can map out the road;
it cannot make people travel it. For that, an early habituation
to the good is necessary.

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 36.]

But it should be noted further that the greatest ethical
reformers have not been those who have convinced men
through the impeccability of their logic. They have been
rather the supreme seers, the Hebrew prophets, Christ, Saint
Francis, who have won followers not so much by the conclusiveness
of their demonstration as through the persuasive
fervor and splendor of their vision.

THE DANGER OF INTELLECTUALISM IN MORALS. There has been
throughout the history of ethical theory a tendency to oversimplify
life by cramping it into the categories fixed by reason.
Reflection tends to set up certain standards which the infinite
variety of human experience tends to outrun. In the mere
fact of setting up generalizations, reflection is arbitrary. Any
generalization, by virtue of the very fact that it does apply
to a wide variety of situations, must forego concern with the
peculiar colors and qualities inhering in any specific experience.
Various ethical writers have set up general rules, which
they have attempted to apply to life with indiscriminate
ruthlessness. They have tried to shear down the endless rich
variety of human situations to fit the categories which they
assume to start with. Unsophisticated men have complained
with justice against the recurrent attempts of moralists to set
up absolute laws, standards, virtues, which were to be applied
regardless of the specific circumstances of specific situations.
It was such formalism that Aristotle protested against
throughout his _Ethics_.

There is the same sort of uncertainty with regard to good things,
as it often happens that injuries result from them; thus there have
been cases in which people were ruined by wealth, or again by courage.
As our subjects [moral inquiries] then and our premises are of
this nature, we must be con