Seventh Book, Chapter I (6)

Ethics divided into the Doctrine of Models and the Georgics (Culture) of the Mind. Division of Models into the Absolute and Comparative Good. Absolute Good divided into Personal and National

WE NEXT, excellent King, proceed to ethics, which has the human will for its subject. Reason governs the will, but apparent good seduces it: its motives are the affections, and its ministers the organs and voluntary motions. It is of this doctrine that Solomon says, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the actions of life.” The writers upon this science appear like writing-masters, who lay before their scholars a number of beautiful copies, but give them no directions how to guide their pen or shape their letters; for so the writers upon ethics have given us shining drafts, descriptions, and exact images of goodness, virtue, duties, happiness, etc., as the true objects and scope of the human will and desire; but for obtaining these excellent and well-described ends, or by what means the mind may be broke and fashioned for obtaining them, they either touch this subject not at all or slightly. We may dispute as much as we please, that moral virtues are in the human mind by habit, not by nature; that generous spirits are led by reason, but the herd by reward and punishment; that the mind must be set straight, like a crooked stick, by bending it the contrary way, etc. But nothing of this kind of glance-and-touch can in any way supply the want of the thing we are now in quest of.

The cause of this neglect I take to be that latent rock whereon so many of the sciences have split, viz., the aversion that writers have to treat of trite and vulgar matters, which are neither subtle enough for dispute nor eminent enough for ornament. It is not easy to see how great a misfortune has proceeded hence—that men, through natural pride and vainglory, should choose such subjects and methods of treating them, as may rather show their own capacities, than be of use to the reader. Seneca says excellently, “Eloquence is hurtful to those it inspires with a desire of itself, and not of things”; for writings should make men in love with the subject, and not with the writer. They, therefore, take the just course who can say of their counsels as Demosthenes did—“If you put these things in execution, you shall not only praise the orator for the present, but yourselves also soon after, when your affairs are in a better posture.” As for myself, excellent King, to speak the truth, I have frequently neglected the glory of my order, name, and learning, both in the works I now publish and those which I have already designed to execute, in following out my direct purpose of advancing the happiness of mankind; so that I may fairly say, though marked out by nature to be the architect of philosophy and the sciences, I have submitted to become a common workman and laborer, there being many mean things necessary to the erection of the structure, which others, out of a natural disdain, refused to attend to. But in ethics the philosophers have culled out a certain splendid mass of matter, wherein they might principally show their force of genius or power of eloquence; but for other things that chiefly conduce to practice, as they could not be so gracefully set off, they have entirely neglected them. Yet so many eminent men, surely, ought not to have despaired of a like success with Virgil, who procured as much glory for eloquence, ingenuity, and learning, by explaining the homely observations of agriculture as in relating the heroic acts of Æneas—

And certainly, if men were bent, not upon writing at leisure what may be read at leisure, but really to cultivate and improve active life, the georgics of the mind ought to be as highly valued as those heroical portraits of virtue, goodness, and happiness wherein so much pains have been taken.

We divide ethics into two principal doctrines—the one of the model or image of good, the other of the regulation and culture of the mind, which I commonly express by the word georgics. The first describes the nature of good, and the other prescribes rules for conforming the mind to it. The doctrine of the image of good, in describing the nature of good, considers it either as simple or compounded, and either as to the kinds or degrees thereof. In the latter of these the Christian faith has at length abolished those infinite disputes and speculations as to the supreme degree of good, called happiness, blessedness, or the “summum bonum,” which was a kind of heathen theology. For, as Aristotle said, “Youth might be happy, though only in hope”; so, according to the direction of faith, we must put ourselves in the state of minors, and think of no other felicity, but that founded in hope. Being, therefore, thus delivered from this ostentatious heaven of the heathens, who, following Seneca, “Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei,” exaggerated the perfectibility of man’s nature—we may, with less offence to truth and sobriety, receive much of what they deliver about the image of good. As for the nature of positive and simple good, they have certainly drawn it beautifully and according to the life, in several pieces exactly representing the form of virtue and duty—their order, kinds, relations, parts, subjects, provinces, actions, and dispensations. And all this they have recommended and insinuated to the mind with great vivacity and subtilty of argument, as well as sweetness of persuasion, at the same time faithfully guarding, as much as was possible by words, against depraved and popular errors and insults. And in deducing the nature of comparative good they have not been wanting, but appointed three orders thereof—they have compared contemplative and active life together; distinguished between virtue with reluctance, and virtue secured and confirmed; represented the conflict between honor and advantage; balanced the virtues, to show which overweighed, and the like—so that this part of the image of good is already nobly executed; and herein the ancients have shown wonderful abilities. Yet the pious and strenuous diligence of the divines, exercised in weighing and determining studies, moral virtues, cases of conscience, and fixing the bounds of sin, have greatly exceeded them. But if the philosophers, before they descended to the popular and received notions of virtue and vice, pain and pleasure, etc., had dwelt longer upon discovering the roots and fibres of good and evil, they would, doubtless, have thus gained great light to their subsequent inquiries, especially if they had consulted the nature of things, as well as moral axioms, they would have shortened their doctrines and laid them deeper. But as they have entirely omitted this or confusedly touched it, we will here briefly touch it over again, and endeavor to open and cleanse the springs of morality, before we come to the georgics of the mind, which we set down as deficient.

All things are indued with an appetite to two kinds of good—the one as the thing is a whole in itself, the other as it is a part of some greater whole; and this latter is more worthy and more powerful than the other, as it tends to the conservation of a more ample form. The first may be called individual or self good, and the latter, good of communion. Iron by a particular property moves to the loadstone, but if the iron be heavy, it drops its affection to the loadstone and tends to the earth, which is the proper region of such ponderous bodies. Again, though dense and heavy bodies tend to the earth, yet rather than nature will suffer a separation in the continuity of things, and leave a vacuum, as they speak, these heavy bodies will be carried upward, and forego their affection to the earth, to perform their office to the world. And thus it generally happens, that the conservation of the more general form regulates the lesser appetites. But this prerogative of the good of communion is more particularly impressed upon man, if he be not degenerate, according to that remarkable saying of Pompey, who, being governor of the city purveyance at a time of famine in Rome, and entreated by his friends not to venture to sea while a violent storm was impending, answered, “My going is necessary, but not my life”; so that the desire of life, which is greatest in the individual, did not with him outweigh his affection and fidelity to the state. But no philosophy, sect, religion, law, or discipline, in any age, has so highly exalted the good of communion, and so far depressed the good of individuals, as the Christian faith; whence it may clearly appear that one and the same God gave those laws of nature to the creatures and the Christian law to men. And hence we read that some of the elect and holy men, in an esctasy of charity and impatient desire of the good of communion, rather wished their names blotted out of the book of life than that their brethren should miss of salvation.

This being once laid down and firmly established, will put an end to some of the soberest controversies in moral philosophy. And first, it determines that question about the preference of a contemplative to an active life, against the opinion of Aristotle; as all the reasons he produces for a contemplative life regard only private good, and the pleasure or dignity of an individual person, in which respects the contemplative life is doubtless best, and like the comparison made by Pythagoras, to assert the honor and reputation of philosophy, when being asked by Hiero who he was, he answered, “I am a looker-on; for as at the Olympic games some come to try for the prize, others to sell, others to meet their friends and be merry, but others again come merely as spectators, I am one of the latter.” But men ought to know that in the theatre of human life it is only for God and angels to be spectators. Nor could any doubt about this matter have arisen in the Church, if a monastic life had been merely contemplative and unexercised in ecclesiastical duties—as continual prayer, the sacrifice of vows, oblations to God, and the writing of theological books, for propagating the Divine law—as Moses retired in the solitude of the mount, and Enoch, the seventh from Adam, who, though the Scripture says he walked with God, intimating he was the first founder of the spiritual life, yet enriched the Church with a book of prophecies cited by St. Jude. But for a mere contemplative life, which terminates in itself, and sends out no rays either of heat or light into human society, theology knows it not.

It also determines the question that has been so vehemently controverted between the schools of Zeno and Socrates on the one side, who placed felicity in virtue, simple or adorned, and many other sects and schools on the other—as particularly the schools of the Cyrenaics and Epicureans, who placed felicity in pleasure; thus making virtue a mere handmaid, without which pleasure could not be well served. Of the same side is also that other school of Epicurus, as on the reformed establishment, which declared felicity to be nothing but tranquillity and serenity of mind. With these also joined the exploded school of Pyrrho and Herillus, who placed felicity in an absolute exemption from scruples, and the allowing no fixed and constant nature of good and evil, but accounting all actions virtuous or vicious, as they proceed from the mind by a pure and undisturbed motion, or with aversion and reluctance. But it is plain that all things of this kind relate to private tranquillity and complacency of mind, and by no means to the good of communion.

Again, upon the foundation above laid we may confute the philosophy of Epictetus, which rests upon supposing felicity placed in things within our power, lest we should otherwise be exposed to fortune and contingence, as if it were not much happier to fail of success in just and honorable designs, when that failure makes for the public good, than to secure an uninterrupted enjoyment of those things which make only for our private fortune. Thus Gonsalvo at the head of his army, pointing to Naples, nobly protested he had much rather, by advancing a step, meet certain death, than by retiring a step prolong his life. And to this agrees the wise king, who pronounces “a good conscience to be a continual feast”; thereby signifying that the consciousness of good intentions, however unsuccessful, affords a joy more real, pure, and agreeable to nature, than all the other means that can be furnished, either for obtaining one’s desires or quieting the mind.

It likewise censures that abuse which prevailed about the time of Epictetus, when philosophy was turned into a certain art or profession of life, as if its design were not to compose and quiet troubles, but to avoid and remove the causes and occasions thereof, whence a particular regimen was to be entered into for obtaining this end, by introducing such a kind of health into the mind as was that of Herodicus in the body, mentioned by Aristotle, while he did nothing all his life long but take care of his health, and therefore abstained from numberless things, which almost deprived him of the use of his body; whereas, if men were determined to perform the duties of society, that kind of bodily health is most desirable which is able to suffer and support all sorts of attacks and alterations. In the same manner, that mind is truly sound and strong which is able to break through numerous and great temptations and disorders; whence Diogenes seems to have justly commended the habit which did not warily abstain, but courageously sustain— which could check the sallies of the soul on the steepest precipice, and make it, like a well-broken horse, stop and turn at the shortest warning.

Lastly, it reproves that delicacy and unsociable temper observed in some of the most ancient philosophers of great repute, who too effeminately withdrew from civil affairs, in order to prevent indignities and trouble to themselves, and live the more free and unspotted in their own opinions; as to which point the resolution of a true moralist should be such as Gonsalvo required of a soldier—viz., “Not to weave his honor so fine, as for everything to catch and rend it.”