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THE ETHICS OF SOCRATES AND PLATO 51
effect a circular argument. What, we want to know, is
virtue? Socrates answers that it is insight or knowledge.
Insight or knowledge into what? Into the Good, says
Socrates. Now virtue is good or it is at least a good. Virtue,
then, which is good, is defined as insight into what is good.
This element of circularity affects all Socrates'* reasoning
on the subject Courage, for example, is, as we have seen,
described as knowledge of what is truly formidable. What,
then, is truly formidable? Answer, an impending evil.
Now courage is good* Good, then, consists in being able to
recognize an impending evil; it consists, that is to say, in the
ability to recognize by contrast with the evil what is good.
Secondly,
the definition leaves out of account what all
would agree to be an obvious element in the good life,
namely, some form of pleasurable or gratified feeling.
Whatever may be the proper definition of virtue, the habit
and practice of virtue must, it may be said, contain at
least some element of feeling. Goodness, in fact, is not
purely knowledge; it is always also emotional and passional.
Unless we derive some satisfaction from doing our duty,
it cannot be said that we are really good; unless the
unselfish man is willingly or even gladly unselfish, his
so-called unselfishness lays a blight upon his actions. 1
For this undoubted element in goodness or virtue, Socrates 's
definition makes no provision. Thirdly, there is the fact
to which I have already drawn attention, that, while the
ethical problem is prima facie a double one the problem,
first, of knowing our duty and, secondly, of doing the duty
that we know, Socrates's definition only takes into account
the first of these. Fourthly, if Socrates is right, we cannot
distinguish between the virtues. For, if virtue consists in
knowing the Good, then it will be true of every 'virtue
that it is a knowing of the Good; every virtue, that is to
say, will be a knowing of one and the same thing. How
then, it may be asked, can a man have a virtue and also
a vice. How can a generous man be profligate or an
1 See Chapter VI, pp. 217-224, for a further discuuion of the
question how far virtue must be agreeable.