n all the qualities which are required in a
philosopher is a rare plant seldom seen among men."[36]

[Footnote 35: _Ethics_, Book VII, ch. iii, pp. 206-207.]

[Footnote 36: _Republic_, VI, 491.]

It would be well if those people who are going about the world today
teaching social hygiene to adolescents (on the whole an admirable
thing to do) but proceeding on the assumption that when youth knows
what is right and what is wrong, and why it is right and why it is
wrong, and what are the consequences of right and wrong, that then,
_ipso facto_, youth will become chaste,--well if they would acquaint
themselves either with the ethics of Aristotle or with the Christian
doctrine of salvation. For if men think that knowledge by itself ever
yet produced virtue in eager and unsated lives, they are either knaves
or fools. They will find that knowledge uncontrolled by a purified
spirit and a reinforced will is already teaching men not how to
be good, but how to sin the more boldly with the better chance of
physical impunity. "Philosophy," says Black, "is a feeble antagonist
before passion, because it does not supply an adequate motive for the
conflict."[37] There were few men in the nineteenth century in whom
knowledge and virtue were more profoundly and completely joined than
in John Henry Newman. But did that subtle intellect suffice? could it
make the scholar into the saint? Hear his own words:

"O Holy Lord, who with the children three
Didst walk the piercing flame;
Help, in those trial hours which, save to Thee,
I dare not name;
Nor let these quivering eyes and sickening heart
Crumble to dust beneath the tempter's dart.

"Thou who didst once Thy life from Mary's breast
Renew from day to day;
O might her smile, severely sweet, but rest
On this frail clay!
Till I am Thine with my whole soul, and fear
Not feel, a secret joy, that Hell is near."

So, only when we include in the term "knowledge" understanding plus
good will, is the humanist position true, and this, I suppose, is
what Aristotle meant when he finally says, "Vice is consistent with
knowledge of some kind, but it excludes knowledge in the full and
proper sense of the word."[38]

[Footnote 37: _Culture and Restraint_, p. 104.]

[Footnote 38: _Ethics_, Book VII, ch. v, p. 215.]

Now, so finespun a discussion of intricate and psychological
subtleties is mildly interesting presumably to middle-aged scholars,
but I submit t