Cynics and Cyrenaics both answer (1) by individualism, but diverge on (2), the Cynics placing emphasis on independence from wants, the Cyrenaics on gratification of wants. Stoics and Epicureans represent broader and more social development of the same principles, the Stoics seeking a cosmopolitan state, the Epicureans a community of friends; the Stoics emphasizing reason or wisdom as the only good; the Epicureans finding for wisdom a field in the selection of refined pleasures. Plato and Aristotle, with varying emphasis but essential agreement, insist (1) that the good of man is found in fulfilling completely his highest possible functions, which is possible only in society; (2) that wisdom is not merely to apply a standard but to form one; that while neither reason alone nor feeling alone is enough for life, yet that pleasure is rather for life than life for pleasure. Finally, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, as well as the tragic poets, contribute successively to the formation of an ideal of responsible character.
Early Individualistic Theories.—Cynics and Cyrenaics were alike individualists. Society, they held, is artificial. Its so-called goods, on the one hand, and its restrictions on the other, are to be rejected unless they favor the individual's happiness. Independence was the mark of wisdom among the Cynics; Antisthenes, proud of the holes in his garment; Diogenes, dwelling in his tent or sleeping in the street, scoffing at the current "conventions" of decency, asking from Philip only that he would get out of his sunshine—are the characteristic figures. The "state of nature" was opposed to the State. Only the primitive wants were recognized as natural. "Art and science, family and native land, were indifferent. Wealth and refinement, fame and honor, seemed as superfluous as those enjoyments of the senses which went beyond the satisfaction of the natural wants of hunger and sex."
The Cyrenaics, or hedonists (hēdonē, pleasure), gave a different turn to wisdom. The good is pleasure, and wisdom is found in that prudence which selects the purest and most intense. Hence, if this is the good, why should a man trouble himself about social standards or social obligations? "The hedonists gladly shared the refinement of enjoyment which civilization brought with it; they found it convenient and permissible that the intelligent man should enjoy the honey which others prepared; but no feeling of duty or thankfulness bound them to the civilization whose fruits they enjoyed. Sacrifice for others, patriotism, and devotion to a general object, Theodorus declared to be a form of foolishness which it did not become the wise man to share."[69]
§ 5. THE DEEPER VIEW OF NATURE AND THE GOOD; OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SOCIAL ORDER
Value of a State.—Plato and Aristotle take up boldly the challenge of individualism. It may indeed be granted that existing states are too often ruled by classes. There are oligarchies in which the soldier or the rich control for their own interests; there are tyrannies in which the despot is greed and force personified; there are democracies (Plato was an aristocrat) in which the mob bears rule, and those who flatter and feed its passions are in authority. But all these do but serve to bring out more clearly the conception of a true State, in which the rule is by the wisest and best and is not for the interest of a class, but for the welfare of all. Even as it was, the State of Athens in Plato's day—except when it condemned a Socrates—meant completeness and freedom of life. It represented not merely a police force to protect the individual, but stood for the complete organization of all the life which needs coöperation and mutual support. The State provided instruction for the mind and training for the body. It surrounded the citizen with an atmosphere of beauty and provided in the tragedy and comedy opportunities for every citizen to consider the larger significance of life or to join in the contagious sympathy of mirth. In festivals and solemn processions it brought the citizen into unity of religious feeling. To be an Athenian citizen meant to share in all the higher possibilities which life afforded. Interpreting this life, Aristotle proclaims that it is not in isolation, but in the State, that "the goal of full independence may be said to be first attained."
The Natural.—Aristotle goes directly to the heart of the problem as to what is natural by asserting that nature is not to be found in the crude beginning, but rather in the complete development. "The nature of anything, e.g., of a man, a horse, or a house, may be defined to be its condition when the process of production is complete." Hence the State "in which alone completeness of life is attained" is in the highest sense natural:
"The object proposed or the complete development of a thing is its highest good; but independence which is first attained in the State is a complete development or the highest good and is therefore natural." "For as the State was formed to make life possible, so it exists to make life good."
"Thus we see that the State is a natural institution, that man is naturally a political animal and that one who is not a citizen of any State, if the cause of his isolation be natural and not accidental, is either a superhuman being or low in the scale of human civilization, as he stands alone like a 'blot' on the backgammon board. The 'clanless, lawless, hearthless man,' so bitterly described by Homer, is a case in point, for he is naturally a citizen of no state and a lover of war."[70]
Nor does Aristotle stop here. With a profound insight into the relation of man to society, and the dependence of the individual upon the social body, a relation which modern social psychology has worked out in greater detail, Aristotle asserts that the State is not merely the goal of the individual's development, but the source of his life.
"Again, in the order of nature the State is prior to the household or individual. For the whole must needs be prior to its part. For instance, if you take away the body which is the whole, there will not remain any such thing as a hand or foot, unless we use the same word in a different sense, as when we speak of a stone hand as a hand. For a hand separated from the body will be a disabled hand; whereas it is the faculty or function of a thing which makes it what it is, and therefore when things lose their function or faculty, it is not correct to call them the same things, but rather homonymous, i.e., different things having the same name. We see, then, the State is a natural institution, and also that it is prior to the individual. For if the individual as a separate unit is not independent, he must be a part and must bear the same relation to the State as the other parts to their wholes; and one who is incapable of association with others or is independent and has no need of such association, is no member of a State; in other words, he is either a brute or a God."[71]
And, moreover, when we look into the nature of the individual, we do not find him a being devoid of the sympathies and qualities which find their natural expression not only in the State, but in various social and friendly relations. There is "an impulse toward the life in common" (φιλία) which expresses itself in friendship, but which is also so essential to that recognition of others called justice that we may say "it is the most just of all just things." There is also a unity of disposition and purpose (ὁμόνοια) which may be called "political friendship."[72]
Plato's Ideal State.—How then is the State constituted and governed which is to provide for man's full development, his complete good? Evidently two principles must control. In the first place, it must be so constituted that every man may develop in it the full capacities of his nature, and thereby serve at once the perfection of the State and his own completeness; and in the second place, the State or social whole must be ruled by those best fitted for this work. Not the soldier, nor the plutocrat, nor the artisan, but the man who knows, is the suitable ruler for our ideal community. The soldier may defend, the artisan may support, but the scientific or intelligent man should rule. And it is evident that in settling this principle, we have also answered our first problem; for the soldier and the artisan will find his full development by doing the work which he can do well, not by meddling with a task in which he must necessarily fail. In order to guard against the greed which was so characteristic of the governments of his day, Plato would
