Arnold, Culture and Anarchy * (New York, Macmillan, 1912), p. 16.

147. MATTHEW ARNOLD ON CULTURE

"The pursuit of perfection then is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater-the passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; for it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light."

Arnold, Culture and Anarchy * (New York, Macmillan, 1912), p. 37.

148. MAN'S PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

(a) "On the occasion of every act he exercises every human being is led to pursue that line of conduct which, according to his view of the case, taken by him at the moment, will be in the highest degree contributory to his own greatest happiness. (ix 5.)

(b) "Man, from the very constitution of his nature, prefers his own happiness to that of all other sensitive beings put together." (x 80.)

Bentham (1882), Works.

149. THE GOOD MORAL CHARACTER

(a) "The genuinely moral person is one, then, in whom the habit of regarding all capacities and habits of self from the social standpoint is formed and active. Such an one forms his plans, regulates his desires, and hence performs his acts with reference to the effect they have upon the social groups of which he is a part. He is one whose dominant attitudes and interests are bound up with associated activities. Accordingly > he will find his happiness or satisfaction in the promotion of these activities irrespective of the particular pains and pleasures that accrue.' (p. 298.)

"

(b) "To one in whom these interests live (and they live to

some extent in every individual not completely pathological) their exercise brings happiness because it fulfills his life. To those in whom it is the supreme interest it brings supreme or final happiness. It is not preferred because it is the greater happiness, but in being preferred as expressing the only kind of self which the agent fundamentally wishes himself to be, it constitutes a kind of happiness with which others cannot be compared. It is unique, final, invaluable." (p. 301.)

Dewey and Tufts, Ethics* (New York, Holt, 1908).

150. DEMOCRITUS ON THE GOOD LIFE

"Men achieve tranquillity through moderation in pleasure and through the symmetry of life. Want and superfluity are apt to upset them and to cause great perturbations in the soul. The souls that are rent by violent conflicts are neither stable nor tranquil. One should therefore set his mind upon the things that are within his power, and be content with his opportunities, nor let his memory dwell very long on the envied and admired of men, nor idly sit and dream of them. Rather, he should contemplate the lives of those who suffer hardship, and vividly bring to mind their sufferings, so that your own present situation may appear to you important and to be envied, and so that it may no longer be your portion to suffer torture in your soul by your longing for more. And therefore one ought not to desire other men's blessings, and one ought not to envy those who have more, but rather, comparing his life with that of those who fare worse, and laying to heart their sufferings, deem himself blest of fortune in that he lives and fares so much better than they. Holding fast to this saying you will pass your life in greater tranquillity and will avert not a few of the plagues of life-envy and jealousy and bitterness of mind.

"All who delight in the pleasures of the belly, exceeding all measure in eating and drinking and love, find that the pleasures are brief and last but a short while-only so long as they are eating and drinking-but the pains that come after are many and endure. The longing for the same things keeps ever returning, and whenever the objects of one's desire are realized forthwith the pleasure vanishes, and one has no further use for them. The pleasure is brief, and once more the need for the same things returns."

Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy * (New York, Scribners, 1907), pp. 63-65.

151. ASSUMPTIONS OF A SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

"You . . . must allow me to make certain initial assumptions. I will be as modest as possible. I will not assume that life is something intrinsically good, but I must assume that the good for man is to be found in some kind of life, not in the negation of life. I will not assume that fullness of vitality is as such desirable, but I must assume that, other things equal, the fuller life is on the whole more desirable. I will not assume that happiness, however attained, is good, but I must assume that there is some form of happiness which is good, or, at lowest, that misery is an evil. I will not assume that the full realization of the capacities of mind defines the end of life, but I must assume that some form of such realization is an integral element in a desirable life. Finally, I will not assume that all social life is good, still less that social growth is necessarily a change for the better, but I must assume that a life which is completely social-which fully realizes the social capacities of man-is good, and that if we use the phrase 'social development' in a precise sense as a short expression for the accomplishment of such a life, social development is good."

Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory * (New York, Columbia University, 1911), p. 83.

152. PLATO'S IDEA OF THE GOOD

"He who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only-out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceived this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and

that personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing toward and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. .

"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty . . a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upward for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This... is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute; a beauty which if you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you; and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and conversing with them without meat or drink, if that were possible-you only want to look at them and to be with them. But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty-the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of

mortality and all the colors and vanities of human life-thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image, but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may."

Plato, Symposium (Trans. by Jowett. 2d ed., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1875), p. 210-212.

153. THE STOICS ON THE GOOD LIFE

"Cleanthes . . . asserts that virtue is a disposition of the mind always consistent and harmonious; that one ought to seek it out for its own sake, without being influenced by fear or hope of any external influence. Moreover, that it is in it that happiness consists, as producing in the soul the harmony of a life always consistent with itself, and that if a rational animal goes the wrong way, it is because it allows itself to be misled by the deceitful appearances of exterior things, or perhaps by the instigation of those who surround it; for nature herself never gives us any but good inclinations.

"They say also that the wise man is free from perturbations because he has no strong propensities. But that this freedom from propensities also exists in the bad man, being, however, then quite another thing, inasmuch as it proceeds in him only from hardness and unimpressibility of his nature. They also pronounce the wise man free from vanity, since he regards with equal eye what is glorious and what is inglorious. At the same time, they admit that there is another character devoid of vanity, who, however, is reckoned one of the rash men, being in fact the bad man. They also say that all the virtuous men are austere, because they do never speak with reference to pleasure, nor do they listen to what is said by others with reference to pleasure. At the same time, they call another man austere too, using the term in nearly the same sense as they do when they speak of austere wine, which is used in compounding medicines, but not for drinking.

"They also pronounce the wise to be honest-hearted men, anxiously attending to those matters which may make them better, by means of some principle which conceals what is bad, and brings to light what is good. Nor is there any hypocrisy