These thirty sketches at the beginning of the post-classical age do not represent, properly speaking, vices, and yet they were vices to the mind of the Greek, who measured his morality largely by the canons of good form. Any violation of good taste or breach of courtesy was morally vicious. The disposition was to maintain in close unity the natures of beauty and goodness (καλοκἀγαθία); moderns discriminate sharply between the æsthetic and the moral. The social virtues of gentle breeding and the graces of politeness toward their fellow men had for the classical Greeks an ethical nature, as is witnessed in Aristotle’s _Ethics_. Manners and morals were not sundered. What we call a social weakness, or defect, or boorish crudity, Theophrastus called a vice. It is necessary to bear this in mind when one reads the “_moral_ characters,”[5] as they are called in the Greek title. [Sidenote: _Virtues not Delineated_] [Sidenote: _The Subject-matter of the Sketches_] Amongst these characters there are no virtues, and one may ask: Why is it that in his portrayal of types Theophrastus has altogether omitted any description of good men? The answer is not to be found in the supposition that such characters were originally included in the work, but have since perished. The real ground for the omission is probably to be discovered in the nature of the conditions under which Theophrastus wrote. These, as we have already indicated, were closely connected with the development of the New Comedy. The portrayal of a good character may be edifying, and may serve the conditions of tragedy, but it does not suit the purposes or surroundings of the comic stage, where the ludicrous elements of weak, eccentric, or faulty personalities are the materials employed. The aim of Theophrastus is both to amuse and to instruct, but his instruction is given by exposing to ridicule certain faults which he elevates into the striking tangibility of concrete character. The serious dignity and excellence of the good man, while it may suit the heroic conditions of the epic, the grave purpose of tragedy, or the aims of moral allegory, offers no material for such sketches as these. Theophrastus has no concern either with the grossly immoral or with the helplessly weak; the former awaken only disgust and hate, while the latter stir only feelings of pity, and neither of these emotions can be kept active in the true art of comedy. Rightly speaking, the art of Theophrastus has to do only with folly or with such eccentricities and weaknesses as have a humorous aspect. And it is only moral imperfections of this sort that we actually find in _The Characters_. [Sidenote: _Ridicule as an Instrument of Instruction_]