ct. 82. But if a man's life be regarded as a truer representation of
his ideals than is his spoken theory, there is little to identify
Socrates with the hedonists. At the conclusion of the defence of his own
life, which Plato puts into his mouth in the well-known "Apology," he
speaks thus:

"When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to
punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have
troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything,
more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something
when they are really nothing,--then reprove them, as I have
reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought
to care, and thinking that they are something when they are
really nothing."[194:10]

It is plain that the man Socrates cared little for the pleasurable or
painful consequences of his acts, provided they were worthy of the high
calling of human nature. A man's virtue would now seem to possess an
intrinsic nobility. If knowledge be virtue, then on this basis it must
be because knowledge is itself excellent. Virtue as knowledge
contributes to the good by constituting it. We meet here with the
_rationalistic_ strain in ethics. It praises conduct for the _inherent
worth which it may possess if it express that reason_ which the Stoics
called "_the ruling part_." The riches of wisdom consist for the
hedonist in their purchase of pleasure. For the rationalist, on the
other hand, wisdom is not coin, but itself the very substance of value.

[Sidenote: Eudaemonism and Pietism. Rigorism and Intuitionism.]

Sect. 83. Rationalism has undergone modifications even more significant
than those of hedonism, and involving at least one radically new group
of conceptions. Among the Greeks rationalism and hedonism alike are
_eudaemonistic_. They aim to portray _the fulness of life_ that makes
"the happy man." In the ethics of Aristotle, whose synthetic mind weaves
together these different strands, the Greek ideal finds its most
complete expression as "the high-minded man," with all his powers and
trappings. But the great spiritual transformation which accompanied the
decline of Greek culture and the rise of Christianity, brought with it a
new moral sensibility, which finds in man no virtue of himself, but only
through the grace of God.

"And the virtues themselves," says St. Augustine, "if they
bear no relation to God, are in truth vices rather t