slip, it never grips the idea, and so easily
slides into the view that all is equally divine. The thought that all
is God, and the thought that there are higher and lower beings, are,
on the surface, opposed and inconsistent theories. Yet both are
necessary, and it is the business of philosophy to find a
reconciliation. This Aristotle does, but Hinduism fails to do. It
asserts both, but fails to bring them to unity. Now it asserts one
view, and again at another time it asserts the other. And this, of
course, is connected with the general defect of oriental thinking, its
vagueness. Everything is seen, but seen in a haze, in which all things
appear one, in which shapes flow into another, in which nothing has an
outline, in which even vital distinctions are obliterated. Hence it is
that, though oriental thought contains, in one way or another,
practically all philosophical ideas, it grips none, and can hold
nothing fast. It seizes its object, but its flabby grasp relaxes and
slips off. Hinduism, like modern science, has its doctrine of
evolution. But it has no philosophy of evolution.

{314}

5. Ethics.

_(a) The Individual_.

A strong note of practical moderation pervades the ethics of
Aristotle. While Plato's ethical teaching transcended the ordinary
limits of human life, and so lost itself in ideal Utopias, Aristotle,
on the other hand, sits down to make practical suggestions: He wishes
to enquire what the good is, but by this he means, not some ideal good
impossible of attainment upon this earth, but rather that good which,
in all the circumstances in which men find themselves, ought to be
realizable. The ethical theories of Plato and Aristotle are thus
characteristic of the two men. Plato despised the world of sense, and
sought to soar altogether beyond the common life of the senses.
Aristotle, with his love of facts and of the concrete, keeps close
within the bounds of actual human experience.

The first question for ethics is the nature of the _summum bonum_. We
desire one thing for the sake of a second, we desire that for the sake
of a third. But if this series of means and ends goes on _ad
infinitum_, then all desire and all action are futile and purposeless.
There must be some one thing which we desire, not for the sake of
anything else, but on its own account. What is this end in itself,
this _summum bonum_, at which all human activity ultimately aims.
Everybody, says Aristotle, is agreed about the na