The Press. — London, England, 1858-12-11 00:00:00

1216 But, whether coloured too darkly or no, the General's picture is a striking one. We prefer quoting from the chapters on Afghan manners to giving a specimen of our author's narration, because a picture of manners is always instructive and interesting, whereas the history of a bar barous nation is always more or less dull, as well as painful, from the want of great characters, and from the barrenness of all but wickedness inherent in barbarism : Their cupidity and avarice are extreme; there is no tie they would not break, no duty they would not desert, to gratify their avidity for wealth. This surpasses all that can be imagined ; it is insatiable, and to satisfy it they are capable of committing the greatest crimes. For it they will sacrifice all—their native and independent pride ; even prostitute the honour of their wives and daughters, whom they frequently put to death after they have received the price of their dishonour. Gold in Afghanistan is, more than anywhere else, the god of the human race ; it stifles the still small cry of every man's conscience, if, indeed, it can be admitted that an Afghan has a conscience at all : it is impossible to rely on their promises, their friendship, or their fidelity. They enter into engagements, and bind themselves by the most solemn oaths to respect them, and, in order to give them a sacred character, transcribe them on a Koran, to which they affix their seal. but nevertheless perjure themselves with an impudence perfectly inconceivable. Towns and villages by hundreds have surrendered on the faith of such obligations, stipulating that the lives of the inhabitants should be spared, and yet the examples are rare, that, once in the victor's power, they have not been exterminated. It is extraordinary that, knowing their own bad faith, they allow themselves to fall into these snares. The majority of the wars which they wage against one another generally terminate by one or more of these massacres. Murder is a game, and they evince a feeling of vanity when they commit one, and glory in the perfidy and cruelty which they show in their acts of deva3tation ; when they can cite an example of a town which they have depopulated and razed to the ground, they imagine they have given the grandest idea of their power and valour; they are, in short, real Hans, and Attdas are never wanting amongst them. They submit to the laws only after they have tried every means to evade them ; they consider it perfectly lawful in those who are stronger or more powerful than themselves to plunder them, and consequently they have no scruple in despoiling those who ate weaker. Accus- tomed from their childhood to see human blood spilt, to hear murder not only excused but gloried in, they are soon familiar with the idea of death, which they confront with the greatest coolness. It is rare to see them make war for the simple purpose of defending their nationality, for this sentiment does not exist, and can be uoustaesca applicable only to the tribe, its district, or encampment. Their ideas are of a totally different character ; the hope of enriching himself by booty, of bathing himself in blood —these are what from his earliest youth an Afghan pro to indulge in, and these are the principles in which pro poses ap. They hate all Governments which in troduce law and order into a country, or enter into treaties of peace with their neighbours; to do so is in their eyes an attack upon their rights, which deprives them of pillage, and consequently the best part of their revenues. If an Afghan is put to death by his sovereign for maraud. ing, his countrymen look upon him as a victim; but they establish between him who exposes his life in combat and the obscure domestic thief who does not an immense dif ference ; the first is in their estimation a brave man, whereas the other is treated with contempt, banished from the tribe, and sometimes put to death. At first sight an Aftian pleases, and this in spite of his rough and savage PhYsioirnomy and exterior: the fact is, that, when he has an object in view, and he has something to gain, he knows how to play, and with great suppleness, the part which policy dictates ; but if he loses the hope of obtaining any thing oat of you, it is easy to see into the details of his character, and he will stand without scruple unmasked, and in all the ari litv of his evil nature. This very disreputable, but very energetic, character stands in sharp contrast with that of the Persians, who are clever, eloquent, but voluptuous, insincere, and treacherous. The Persian is the Greek described by Juvenal ; the Afghan is the primitive Roman of the asylum. This comparison reminds us that a great nation has arisen, or supposed itself to have arisen, from a gang of thieves. If a great nation should ever arise in Afghanistan, its satirists will certainly have a good right to rebuke the violence of its noblesse by the classical sarcasm, Najorum prima' qoisquis fait ills taorum, ♦ut pastor tau, cut Wed (pod dicere Role. The Ethics of Aristotle. By Sir Alexander Grant, Bart., M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. In Three Vols. Vol. 11. Containing the Nicomachean Ethics, With Notes Critical and Explanatory. London : J. W. Parker and Son. 1 - The Ethics of Aristotle," says Sir Alexander Grant, " are adapted to form an era in the edu " cation of a student. They are the best intro " dnction to philosophy. Standing as they do on an extreme limit and broken verge of ancient THE PRESS, DECEMBER 11,1§58. " thought, they suggest a systematic inquiry back " wards into the history and progress of the Gre " ciao mind, and forwards they suggest a mani " fold comparison and contrast with the ideas of " modern times. Again, independently of their " historical position, they have much to teach " about human life and the nature of man. But " they must not be studied in a medieval !spirit. " It has been my object to ascertain as far as " possible, and to make clear, the meanin,67 of " these Ethics from the point of view of their " writer." The above paragraph expresses a modification of the opinion with which our latest Aristotelian critic concluded his volume of essays upon Aris totle, which we observe with pleasure. He there observed of the Ethics that "its main interest "is historical." He here seems to confess that, in so expressing himself, he has run the risk of being misunderstood, and to have intended the sentences we have quoted as a sort of amende honorable for the unintentional slight so passed on the philosopher. The importation of the idea of "duty" into mo• dern ethical systems is what, in Sir Alexander Grant's opinion, gives even the worst of them a superiority over Aristotle for all practical pur poses; and, no doubt, it would not be practicable to acquire from a moral teacher, who concerned himself only with this world, the idea of excel lence which is based on our belief in another. The Greek's "end in itself" was here. He was perfectly able to estimate the value of that re ward which his master promised to the virtuous. He understood distinctly the reason why he was to practise certain acts of self-restraint. He saw the object clearly in view; and when he acted, he acted from inclination, and not from a sense of what we denominate duty. This at least is the formal distinction. But the word duty is a very difficult word to define. In the present instance it is almost interchangeable with faith, because, as soon as we distinctly understand the good to be gained from any action, we inevitably incline to do it ; when we do not, we perform it from faith in some good to follow which lies beyond our present ken. Thus it would appear to he the conception of a future state of rewards and punishments as a substantial certainty, rather than the conception of duty, which underlies the distinction between ancient and modern ethics. 'This conception has g►ven a tone to the thought of Christendom which has remained even when the conception itself has faded, and is at the bot tom of all those forms of self-sacrifice in which Christian virtue is generally supposed to consist. We are, perhaps, not going very wide of the mark in saying that the usefulness of Aristotle as a moral teacher depends very much upon the es timation in which dogmatic theology is held at the same time. Aristotle, for instance, would be of very little use in an age or a country when or where orthodoxy was supposed to redeem immo rality; though even under these circumstances the well proportioned and humane theory of ex cellence propunded in the Ethics is no mean auxiliary against the forces of asceticism or en thusiasm. But in a sceptical age, such as it would be useless to deny is the present, when the humanity of men occupies a more dignified position, and the doctrine of human corruption is reluctantly accepted by so numerous a class of thinkers, we should be especially unwise to neglect the assistance of Aristotle, not more for the sake of what he does than for the sake of what he leaves undone. On the one hand he certainly may be allowed to supply us with a pro visional standard of goodness ; on the other he teaches us the want of something more than himself to call into play those qualities of human nature which we are conscious are among its noblest elements, but which the life and know ledge of the heathen world were inadequate to develop. While to the positive advantages of Aristotelian study may be added the powerful antidote which it contains to all morbid mental or moral tendencies, and the clear and healthy, if contracted, view of our duties which the philo sopher himself exhibits. The educational value of Aristotle, as we pointed out in our review of Sir Alexander's first volume, is quite distinct from the question of his position in philosophy ; and it is to the extension of his utility in the former direction that his present editor seems to have principally devoted his efforts. The notes are full, but almost wholly devoted to the elucidation of the text, and the • - • introductory analyses prefi xe d to each book, the plan of those in the Bibli at h eca Classico are° 11 extremely serviceable. At t h e same time' we cannot help wishing that in some cases Sir Alex ander had ventured to give us a li tt l e more ori ginal matter than he has d one . S at i s fi ed with stating his author's argument, he a l most a l ways leaves us to find the conclusion for ourselves,--a practice to which as a rule we do not object, but it will be occasionally provoking to those who take up the work, not as a matter of discipline, but to ascer tain given points. In the fifth chapter of the third book, for instance (17-20), he gives us an analysis of an interesting argument of Aristotle on the doctrine of necessity, of which the point is that if our virtuous actions are free so are our vicious ones. But then who grants the first? Here, then, is a point in which editorial explana- tions might have been given with advantage. So, too, on the subject of iw,fixtm in the fifth book, and in one or two other places, Sir Alex ander is silent on points where all Aristotelians will look for some expression of opinion. These, however, are very trifling defects. The volume on the whole is executed with remarkable skill and judgment. And the notes display that per fect familiarity with all Aristotle's works which enables the editor at once to pour all the light that it is perhaps possible to pour on doubtful words, phrases, or arguments. Our readers have already seen from our review of the first volume of this edition what is our general opinion of Sir Alexander Grant as an editor of Aristotle. We shall reserve any further remarks till the publication of his concluding volume, which, we see, will embrace topics more suitable for newspaper criticism than the present one. Enough, however, has been done to show us that this is likely to be a standard book, and that the editor has hit that happy medium between a too rigidly scientific and a too loosely popular mode of treatment which only a man of sense could have aimed at, and only a man of thoroughness could have satisfactorily achieved. Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical. By Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., Canon of Westminster. A New Edition. With nume- rous Engravings ; and a History of the Cha racteristics of Greek Art by George Scharf, F.S.A. London : Murray. THE geographical treatment of history has a charm peculiar to itself. To pass in review, as we set our foot on each successive spot, the trans actions of which it has been the scene in ages long past ; to retrace the shadows of the forms that once moved within walls now laid in ruins; to recall the stirring events, the mighty deeds, which have for ever consecrated in the memory of mankind localities now deserted and neglected except by the solitary wanderer whom love for the associations connected with them impels to seek them out ; to revive the echoes of sounds which have long died away, sounds instinct with life and thought and the heart's deepest feelings, in the presence of those mute witnesses, the shat tered works of human art, and the imperishable works of nature, which have survived the utter ance of the poet and the orator, but not their fame—is among intellectual feasts one of the richest and most recondite. And if there is one country more than another, on the face of this earth, which furnishes to the traveller versed in historic lore ample materials for such a treatment of its topography, that country is ancient Greece. Every mountain and valley, every lake and bay, every river and brook., of that favoured land. teems with re\niniscences of what is most beauti ful in art, most rich in fancy, most noble in achievement. Such a theme, handled by such a pen as Dr. Wordsworth's. could not fail to prove more than ordinarily attractive ; and we are not, therefore, surprised at the reappearance of a work of wh hrichee, since its fi rst publication twenty years en ago, large editions have successively exhausted, and the value of which is further attested by its translation into the languages of Fr ance and t Italy. Its subject, though belonging to a bygone world, will never be out of date : as long as there are minds capable of appreciating the thougini. and sympathizing with the emotions, vrinch animated the sons of ancient Hellas, so long 14 an author who with the most extensive historical knowledge combines a .deep sense of the poetrY +.41044. i l t l f f i