gratification; and he describes the brave man (‘Eth.’ III. ix. 4) as consciously meeting death in a good cause, and consciously sacrificing a happy life, full of objects which he holds dear, because by so doing he attains “the beautiful.” If we ask, however, what constituted the beauty of this act? Aristotle’s doctrine can only tell us that the brave man dared and feared neither too much nor too little, but in the proper degree and manner, considering the circumstances of the moment. These formulæ, however, do not appear to explain what we should consider the moral beauty of the act in question. We should rather point to the self-sacrifice of the act; the spectacle of an individual preferring to his own life the good of others, the defence of his country, the maintenance of some noble cause—as what was beautiful and touching. “The mean” may serve as a general expression for the law of artistic beauty, but it seems not deep enough to express what we prize most in human action.
Aristotle’s table of the virtues does not, of course, comprise the Christian qualities of humility, charity, chastity, self-devotion, and the like. It even falls short of the summary of human excellence given by Plato in his enumeration of the five cardinal virtues (‘Protag.,’ p. 349)—courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, and holiness. Aristotle separates ethics from religion, and thus leaves out all consideration of “holiness,” or man’s conduct in relation to God. “Wisdom” and “Justice” he reserves to be made the subject of separate discussions: the one as being an excellence of the intellect, and not a “mean state” of the passions; the other as
