culiar to
individuals. If the moral code is to be a law binding upon all men, it
can only be founded upon that which is common to all men, the
universal reason.

(4) The end of moral activity must fall within, and not outside, the
moral act itself. Morality must have an intrinsic, not a merely
extrinsic, value. We must not do right for the sake of something else.
We must do right because it is right, and thus make virtue an end in
itself. But the Sophistic theory places the end of morality outside
morality. We are to do right, not for its own sake, but for the sake
of pleasure. Morality is thus not an end in itself, but merely a means
towards a further end.

Virtue, therefore, is not pleasure, any more than knowledge is
perception. Likewise, just as knowledge is not right opinion, so
virtue is not right action. Right opinion may be held upon wrong
grounds, and right action may be performed on wrong grounds. For true
virtue we must not only know what is right, but why it is right. True
virtue is thus right action proceeding from a rational comprehension
of true values. Hence there arises in Plato's philosophy a distinction
between philosophic virtue and customary virtue. Philosophic virtue is
founded upon reason, and understands the {220} principle on which it
acts. It is, in fact, action governed by principles. Customary virtue
is right action proceeding from any other grounds, such as custom,
habit, tradition, good impulses, benevolent feelings, instinctive
goodness. Men do right merely because other people do it, because it
is customary, and they do it without understanding the reasons for it.
This is the virtue of the ordinary honest citizen, the "respectable"
person. It is the virtue of bees and ants, who act as if rationally,
but without any understanding of what they are doing. And Plato
observes--no doubt with an intentional spice of humour--that such
people may in the next life find themselves born as bees and ants.
Plato denies philosophic virtue not only to the masses of men, but
even to the best statesmen and politicians of Greece.

As true virtue is virtue which knows at what it is aiming, the
knowledge of the nature of the highest aim becomes the chief question
of ethics. What is the end of moral activity? Now we have just seen
that that end must fall within, and not outside, the moral act. The
end of goodness is the good. What, then, is the good? What is the
supreme good, the _summum bonum_?

A note