like Aristotle's magnanimous man, but still he is expected to be rather different from the
average citizen, and to have certain merits connnected with his station. These peculiar merits
would perhaps not be considered "ethical," but that is because we use this adjective in a
narrower sense than that in which it is used by Aristotle.
As a result of Christian dogma, the distinction between moral and other merits has become
much sharper than it was in Greek times. It is a merit in a man to be a great poet or composer or
painter, but not a moral merit; we do not consider him the more virtuous for possessing such
aptitudes, or the more likely to go to heaven. Moral merit is concerned solely with acts of will,
i.e. with choosing rightly among possible courses of action. * I am not to blame for not
composing an opera, because i don't know how to do it. The orthodox view is that, wherever
two courses of action are possible, conscience tells me which is right, and to choose the other is
sin. Virtue consists mainly in the avoidance of sin, rather than in anything positive. There is no
reason to expect an educated man to be morally better than an uneducated man, or a clever man
than a stupid man. In this way, a number of merits of great social importance are shut out from
the realm of ethics. The adjective "unethical," in modern usage, has a much narrower range than
the adjective "undesirable." It is undesirable to be feeble-minded, but not unethical.
Many modern philosophers, however, have not accepted this view of ethics. They have thought
that one should first define the good, and then say that our actions ought top be such as tend to
realize the good. This point of view is more like that of Aristotle, who holds that happiness is
the good. The highest happiness, it is true, is only open to the philosopher, but to him that is no
objection to the theory.
Ethical theories may be divided into two classes, accroding as they regard virtue as an end or a
means. Aristotle, on the whole, takes the view that virtues are means to an end, namely
happiness. "The end, then, being what we wish for, the means what we deliberate about and
choose, actions concerning means most be according to choice and voluntary. Now the exercise
of the virtues is concerned with means" (1113b). But there is another sense of virtue in which it
is included in the ends of action: Human good is activityof soul
* It is true that Aristotle also says this (1105a), but as he means it the consequences are not
so far-reaching as in the Christian interpretation.