صفحة 520 من 1391

Even if we admit the physical basis, and resolve all virtue into

health of body 'la facon que notre sang circule,' still on merely

physical grounds we must come back to ideas. Mind and reason and

duty and conscience, under these or other names, are always

reappearing. There cannot be health of body without health of

mind; nor health of mind without the sense of duty and the love

of truth (Charm).

That the greatest of ancient philosophers should in his

regulations about marriage have fallen into the error of

separating body and mind, does indeed appear surprising. Yet the

wonder is not so much that Plato should have entertained ideas of

morality which to our own age are revolting, but that he should

have contradicted himself to an extent which is hardly credible,

falling in an instant from the heaven of idealism into the

crudest animalism. Rejoicing in the newly found gift of

reflection, he appears to have thought out a subject about which

he had better have followed the enlightened feeling of his own

age. The general sentiment of Hellas was opposed to his monstrous

fancy. The old poets, and in later time the tragedians, showed no

want of respect for the family, on which much of their religion

was based. But the example of Sparta, and perhaps in some degree

the tendency to defy public opinion, seems to have misled him.