Social Standards.—The social standards of propriety and honorable conduct were likewise brought in question by advancing intelligence. The word which summed up the early Greek idea of the best type was Kalokagathos. This word was very nearly the equivalent of our English word "gentleman." It combined the elements of birth, ability, and refinement, but in the earlier usage the emphasis was upon the fact of birth, even as our terms "generous," "noble," "gentle," originally referred to membership in a "gens." Socrates investigated the current estimates and found that the people who were generally regarded as the "respectable," or, as we should say, the "best" people of Athens, were not necessarily either "fine" or "good" in person or character; the term had come to be one of "convention," without basis in reason. Plato goes still further and with a direct application of the rational standard to the current estimates, pokes fun at the conventional judgment of what constitutes the respectable gentleman.
"When they sing the praises of family and say that some one is a gentleman because he has had seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he [the philosopher] thinks that their sentiments only betray the dullness and narrowness of vision of those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, many times over. And when some one boasts of a catalogue of twenty-five ancestors, and goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot understand his poverty of ideas. Why is he unable to calculate that Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was such as fortune made him, and he had a fiftieth, and so on? He is amused at the notion that he cannot do a sum, and thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of his senseless vanity."
The type of life that is really noble or fine and good is to be found in the seeker for true beauty and goodness. External beauty of form and appearance has its value in kindling the desire for the higher forms of beauty—beauty of mind, of institutions and laws, of science—until finally the conception of the true beauty is reached. This true beauty, as distinct from the particular beauties, and true good, as distinct from seeming or partial good, are discovered only by the "philosopher," the seeker for wisdom.
Popular Morals.—Nor did the more positively recognized types of moral excellence fare better. As recognized in common life, they were courage, prudence or moderation, holiness or a certain respect for the serious things of life, and justice: but none of these, Plato argues, is really an independent excellence, apart from conscious and intelligent action. Courage, for example, is not really courage unless one knows and foresees the danger in all its strength; otherwise there is merely reckless bravery. Prudence or moderation, to be really excellent, must be measured by wisdom. Even justice cannot be regarded as at bottom distinct from wisdom, the true measure of all the relations of life.
Science and the Laws.—The political control was likewise involved in question by the same forces of intelligence which had challenged the religious authority. The frequent changes of government, and the more or less arbitrary measures that were oftentimes adopted, were adapted to awaken doubt as to the absolute right and authority of the laws. The despot who gained control in many a Greek city was not bound by ties of blood to all members of the community, nor did he govern in accordance with the ancestral traditions of the tribe. The political authority frequently clashed with the instincts and traditions of family and kinship. Under such circumstances, the political authority was likely to be challenged and its constraining power stretched to the breaking point. So in the Antigone of Sophocles, the command of the ruler is opposed to the "higher law" of kinship and nature. The law of man is not the law of nature or of God. To disobey this conventional law of man is to be guilty of "holiest crime." The old standards, both of religion and of political life, crumbled before the analysis of the developing intelligence, and the demand for some standard could be met only by the intelligence itself. To question the old must inevitably seem irreverent and anarchical. Some questioned merely to doubt; others, and of these Socrates was the leader, questioned in order to find a firmer basis, a more authoritative standard. But naturally the popular mind did not distinguish between these two classes of questioners, and so Socrates perished, not merely as the victim of unjust popular calumny, but as the victim of the tragedy of moral progress, of the change from the established to the new.
§ 3. COMMERCIAL AND POLITICAL INDIVIDUALISM
A further line of development joined forces with this growth of intelligence, to emphasize the problem of moral control, and to set the individual with his standards over against the objective standards of society. This was the rapidly growing consciousness of individual goods and interests. The commercial life, with its possibilities of individual property, the rapid changes of political life, with the rise of individuals to power and privilege, the increasing opportunities which a high civilization brought both men and women for personal enjoyment and gratification of rapidly increasing wants, all tended to make the individual seek his own good, and to shift the emphasis of life from the question, What is proper, or honorable? to the question, What is good—good for me?
Class Interests.—The conviction that the authority of government and law was largely dictated by the very considerations of private interests which they were supposed to overrule and eliminate, made the situation more acute. For the Greek States were no longer groups with common interests. The growth of capital, the corresponding eagerness for gain, the formation of distinct classes, each intent on its interests, supplanted the older, more homogeneous State. "The whole development of the political life of the Hellenic republics depended ultimately on the decision of the question, which of the different social classes—the capitalistic minority, the middle class, or the poor—should obtain the dominant place." Aristotle defines an oligarchy as a State governed in the interest of the rich; a democracy, as a State governed in the interest of the poor. Another contemporary writer explains a democracy as consulting the interests of the democrats, the "lower classes," and considers this a matter of course, "for if the rich had the say, they would do what was good for themselves but not for the multitude." Naturally such dominance by classes called out vigorous criticisms upon the laws and standards so established. The aristocratic minority inveighed against "custom" or conventions which would tame the strong to the level of the weak. Nature demands rather the "survival of the fittest," i.e., of the strong. The enlightened spectator of the game of government, on the other hand, declares that all laws are made in the interest of ruling classes. The reader of current criticisms on laws and courts will see how close is the parallel to present complaints. We have to-day the same two classes: One inveighs against governmental interference with the right to combine, to contract, and in general to get from the earth or from men, women, and children all that superior power and shrewdness can possibly extract. The other complains that legislatures are owned by wealth, that judges are appointed from corporation lawyers, that common law is a survival of ancient aristocratic status, and that for these reasons labor can get no justice.
Let us first hear the plea for inequality:
"Custom and nature are generally at variance with one another; … for by the rule of nature, that only is the more disgraceful which is the greater evil; as, for example, to suffer injustice; but by the rule of custom, to do evil is the more disgraceful. For this suffering of injustice is not the part of a man, but of a slave, who indeed had better die than live; for when he is wronged and trampled upon, he is unable to help himself or any other about whom he cares. The reason, as I conceive, is that the makers of laws are the many weak; and they make laws and distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and their own interests; and they terrify the mightier sort of men, and those who are able to get the better of them, in order that they may not get the better of them; and they say that dishonesty is shameful and unjust; meanwhile, when they speak of injustice, they desire to have more than their neighbors, for knowing their own inferiority, they are only too glad of equality. And therefore, this seeking to have more than