extremes implies, indeed, that a man must know what are the opposite faults which he is to steer between, and where they lie, before he can know where the mean is; but it is an indication, so far as it goes, and-if taken in conjunction with his definition of justice, as what is due from man to man-is by no means an unintelligible one, of a common principle underlying not the four cardinal virtues only, but every virtue within the reach of humanity.

But the most momentous question of all, in regard to which Aristotle is an ally, and an energetic one, of truth against error, is the question of free will. He may write as a pantheist when discoursing of the motions of celestial bodies, but he writes as a Christian philosopher may write in treating of man's power to choose and reject the right course or the wrong, and to fashion his own habits, his own character, well or ill, by the daily indulgence of good or evil propensities. With the shrewdness and common sense which distinguish him, he saw more clearly than Plato, that to wish is not the same thing as to will, to intend as to resolve, to know as to act according to knowledge. The man who knows and admires what is best, and yet in practice prefers what is less worthy, is just the sort of person Aristotle anatomises with contempt rather than pity. The constant selfrestraint, without which it is impossible for a man's higher nature to triumph over his lower appetites, is just what Aristotle understands and portrays feelingly. He saw clearly how many and how varied are the processes to be gone through, before thought and desire culminate in action. He felt that when a thing has been wished for, planned, and purposed, there is still wanting the deliberate and conscious assent of the will, that is, of the man himself, to crown the whole, to make it complete and irrevocable. Aristotle may seem to extol unduly the contemplative life over the life of action. Considering how much there was in the world at that time from which a pure and serene philosophy must have recoiled in disgust, and how little there was to satisfy its longings, this is not wonderful. On the other hand, the emphasis with which, after analysing, with unrivalled skill, the complex elements of man's nature, he teaches that man himself is no mere machine, no abject victim of circumstances, but that he is lord and master of all his faculties, conscious of this lordship, and of the responsibilities which it entails, is enough to stamp his philosophy with a practical value in the truest sense of the word.

As was to be expected, the political philosophy of ancient Greece neither surpasses nor falls short of the ethical. Both Aristotle and his master exaggerate from causes already indicated, the importance of politics. As mutual convenience was the end

in view, rather than the training of souls for a future existence, the individual was nothing in comparison with the state. As conscience had no higher authority to appeal to, it was forced to create for itself a moral dictatorship in the powers that be.' The same wants, and the same remedy for them, distinguish the Mosaic economy from that of Christ. The standard of right and wrong which Greek philosophy proposes to itself and to its votaries is honour. The Apostle enjoins the Christians to practise things that are 'lovely' and 'of good report,' but it is in order that their Master may not be spoken against, and that their Father in Heaven may be glorified. With Plato or Aristotle honour is an end by itself. Whatever brings with it praise and renown, whatever enhances a man's reputation among his fellowcitizens is right; and the verdict admits of no reversal by a higher tribunal. Exile was ignominious beyond what we with our notions can understand, simply because to be expelled in disgrace by his neighbours branded a man as having forfeited the good opinion which was the only criterion of virtue.

Plato's commonwealth, like his philosophy, is a glorious but impracticable confusion of things which the infirmities of human nature and the conditions of an earthly existence require imperatively to be kept distinct at present. His communism, his attempt to obliterate the essential differences between the vocations of man and woman, his misappropriation of authority to the class of persons least fitted for it practically, are not merely freaks of his imagination, but an abortive anticipation of a state of things such as, according to Christianity, if ever to be realized, is not to be realised in this life. It is a dream, such as poets fabled in their Isles of the Blest; it is a dazzling vision of a heavenly city, such as earth may never know. Similarly his doctrine of the transmigration of souls, or rather his assent to that Pythagorean doctrine, is a poetic adumbration of the gradual probation which the soul must pass through before it can be perfected. Aristotle, always averse to gratuitous theorising, was, besides, a practical politician, which Plato was not. of proportion qualified him peculiarly for understanding that balance of contending interests, which is the equilibrium of a state, and without which one class or another gains undue preponderance. But even Aristotle, invaluable as are the political aphorisms which may be extracted from his pages, fails to delineate such a commonwealth as Christianity has rendered possible. Not to specify other deficiencies, a slave with Aristotle is only a living tool. Christianity may allow slavery, under certain modifications, as a temporary necessity, as a lesser evil than lawlessness and anarchy, as the only way to restrain brute force until the slave can be educated for citizenship; but

His sense

Christianity never forgets that slave as well as freeman has inalienable rights, which belong to every being who is endowed with free will and an heir of immortality.

Rightly regarded, a state, or commonwealth, is an association for the preservation of life and property, in the widest sense of the phrase. It is something higher and better than a railway company, or a jointstock bank. It is the family on a larger scale. It does not regulate motives of action, as religion does, simply because it cannot. It is compelled to content itself with the regulation of overt acts, in their bearing on the community; with prescribing and encouraging such as tend to the general welfare, preventing and punishing such as are injurious. Where the state attempts, as with the Wahabees, to do more than this, and to interfere with the conscience of the individual, the result, as experience proves again and again, is an immoral conformity. It would be superfluous for our present purpose to dwell long on ancient philosophy in its connexion with rhetoric and poetry. Yet it would be an omission to pass by these subjects, without a tribute to the rare acuteness and perspicacity which Aristotle displays here as always. Logic, he saw, stripped of the adventitious considerations which disguised it, is purely and simply the art of reasoning. Rhetoric, he saw, is the art of persuading. The one is of fact, the other of action; the one of the past, the other of the future; the one is concerned only with what is; the other with what we wish for, choose, approve; the basis of the one is the sensation, that 'This is like that;' the basis of the other is the sensation 'This I like better than that.' The one is a work of the intellect solely, the other of intellect biassed by the passions. Logic is, in itself, a science invariable as mathematics, for it deals with things invariable so far as they exist already, and by invariable laws. Logic indeed would be as exact as mathematics, if it might always use figures for words; if words were as unvarying in their signification as numbers are. Rhetoric aims at influencing the will, variable and mutable as the wind; it treats of results uncertain as yet, however probable, because hidden in futurity; it draws its arguments from motives at which it can only guess, because they are latent in the breasts of those on whom it pours the tide of its eloquence. Logic convinces; rhetoric persuades; logic proves that a thing is; rhetoric that the hearers ought to make it so to be. It might be expected beforehand that a speech, for instance, on the repeal of the Corn-laws, or in recommendation of a new Budget, would be as drily logical, as a problem in Euclid. But, when human interests are at stake, human emotions insist on having a share in the argument and in the hands of a consummate orator, the speech, instead of being a mere didactic exposition of arithmetical

calculations, glows with the earnestness of moral persuasion. In short, rhetoric is to logic as the statue is to the skeleton, as the draped figure is to the nude. It is logic adorned or disguised, as the case may be. In the hands of an eloquent and honest speaker, it is reasoning invested with all its charms. In the hands of a low pettifogger it can only whisper: 'No case; abuse the plaintiff's attorney.'

There is only space for a very few words on the ancient theory of the poetic art. The old definition of poetry as imitation has often been disputed: and it is argued by Bishop Hampden and others, that this definition comes from the drama being the most prominent form of poetry in ancient Greece, and from all the scenic embellishments of the stage. But, if the word may be taken in a wider sense, it may fairly be admitted as a definition of poetry. Indeed it would not be easy to invent a better. For poetry is an attempt to interpret the world without man in accordance with the emotions within him struggling for utterance, and invoking the sympathy of nature. As philosophy attempts to introduce a logical order and unity into what would otherwise be a chaos, so poetry-with more impetuosity than precision, attempts to reconcile the passions which give it birth with all that is presented to them from without; it attempts even, in its own illogical way, not always without success, for even in this life glimpses are allowed of the intuitiveness which, like the electric flash, lights the sky from pole to pole-to appease the endless strife of passion with intellect. In this sense poetry is imitative; by the rapidity and vividness of its analogies, it presents the abstractions of thought as living, moving things before the eye, and brings them home to the heart. Imagination and fancy are the synthesis of intellect and emotion. When the intellectual element prevails, we call it fancy; when there is more of feeling and less of ingenuity we call it imagination. This imitativeness, or quick perception of even a superficial resemblance, is the very essence of poetry. A poet may always be tested by his metaphors. And it is through this power of reproducing things without and things within that poetry, according to Aristotle, purifies the soul by exciting pity and terror.

In whatever direction we turn, with the one exception of physical science, and even there occasionally, we find the ancient philosophy of Greece bequeathing to modern times a priceless legacy of truth. No nation ever undertook the study of philosophy more richly equipped with all appliances for such a work. It may safely be asserted, that no nation has ever surpassed the Greek in that exquisitive sensitiveness of the physical organization which is the first requisite of genius; no nation has ever

had at its command a language so peculiarly framed by the copiousness of its resources, and by the delicacy of its touch, to express the fine and impalpable distinctions of philosophy clearly and with ease. It is no wonder that modern treatises, whether ethical, logical, or metaphysical, however valuable they may be, fail to supersede the masterpieces of ancient Athens. Where these fail, there the teaching of Christianity supplies what is wanting; not indeed as a philosophical system, for its Divine Founder did not descend from Heaven to found a new school of philosophy, but so far as man needs a clearer light along his pathway through this life to something better. We may learn from Socrates not to expect a revelation more than is really needful for beings in a state of transit and probation. Socrates taught his followers to consult the oracle not about such things as they could learn for themselves by patient study, but about such things only as could not be known except by a direct revelation. It were better both for religion and science, if this distinction were not so often overlooked as it is on both sides. Where philosophy can give us the truth which we are in search of let us accept it thankfully. We may regret that to a philosopher of ancient Greece the soul was merely the intellect; and that the only immortality which he could ever imagine as possible, was of the most impersonal and shadowy kind; but we cannot wonder. It was a corollary of the doctrine that the Deity was only a name for the soul of the universe. A good and thoughtful man in those days had simply to choose between such impersonations of vice and folly as were the deities 1 of the vulgar mythology, and a mere abstraction, a being at any rate far too superior in goodness and power to take any notice of men. The prayer of the philosopher, if even the ineradicable instinct of prayer forced its way upward from his soul, would naturally be

'Thou Great First Cause, least understood.'

Or if in thought the philosopher could raise himself to the conception of a Person in whom the attributes of divinity might worthily reside, he would still be offering his homage to an Unknown God,'-

'To One, by many names adored,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.'

We have endeavoured to show that not even the Fathers of Greek Philosophy could conceive, much less embody, in their

The word 'Erastianism' is too often misapplied to any interference of the State with things spiritual. Paganism was Erastianism; for the State made the religion for the people, and was in fact the Church.