The combat of the higher against the lower is one in which we must all engage; and no doubt in order to win we must at times keep the lower solicitations at arm's-length. If, however, what appeals to us in the name of the highest counsels any relaxing of definite obligation, any alienation from the man or woman whom social institutions have placed closest by our side; any disloyalty to the plain companions and humble associates whom society or business places in our way; any breaking of social bonds which generations of self-sacrifice and self-control have laboriously woven, and centuries of experience have approved as beneficent; then it is time to abandon Plato, or rather those who have assumed to wear his mantle, and look for personal guidance to those greater masters who have transcended the antithesis of higher and lower, which it was Plato's great mission to make so sharp and clear. The principle of such a reconciliation we shall find in Aristotle; its complete accomplishment we shall find in Jesus. CHAPTER IV THE ARISTOTELIAN SENSE OF PROPORTION I ARISTOTLE'S OBJECTIONS TO PREVIOUS SYSTEMS Our principles of personality thus far, though increasingly complex, have all been comparatively simple. To get the maximum of pleasure; to keep the universal law; to subordinate lower impulses to higher according to some fixed scale of value, are all principles which are easy to grasp and by no means difficult to apply. The fundamental trouble with them all is that they are too easy. Life is not the cut-and-dried affair which they presuppose. A man might have a lot of pleasure, and yet be contemptible. He might keep all the commandments, and yet be no better than a Pharisee. Even Plato's principle in actual practice has not always escaped the awful abyss of asceticism. In opposition to Epicurus Aristotle says, "Pleasure is not the good and all pleasures are not desirable. No one would choose to live on condition of having no more intellect than a child all his life, even though he were to enjoy to the full the pleasures of a child. With regard to the pleasures which all admit to be base, we must deny that they are pleasures at all, except to those whose nature is corrupt. What the good man thinks is pleasure will be pleasure; what he delights in will be truly pleasant. Those pleasures which perfect the activity of the perfect and truly happy man may be called in the truest sense the pleasures of a man. The pleasure which is proper to a good activity is therefore good; that attached to a bad one is bad. As, then, activities differ, so do the pleasures which accompany them."