And this is the
conclusion that Aristotle also comes to when he says: "Some people
say that incontinence is impossible, if one has knowledge. It seems
to them strange, as it did to Socrates, that where knowledge exists in
man, something else should master it and drag it about like a slave.
Socrates was wholly opposed to this idea; he denied the existence of
incontinence, arguing that nobody with a conception of what was best
could act against it, and therefore, if he did so act, his action
must be due to ignorance." And then Aristotle adds, "The theory is
evidently at variance with the facts of experience."[35] Plato himself
exposes the theoretical nature of the assertion, its inhuman demand
upon the will, the superreasonableness which it expects but offers no
way of obtaining, when he says, "Every one will admit that a nature
having in perfection all the qualities which are required in a
philosopher is a rare plant seldom seen among men."[36]
[Footnote 35: _Ethics_, Book VII, ch. iii, pp. 206-207.]
[Footnote 36: _Republic_, VI, 491.]
It would be well if those people who are going about the world today
teaching social hygiene to adolescents (on the whole an admirable
thing to do) but proceeding on the assumption that when youth knows
what is right and what is wrong, and why it is right and why it is
wrong, and what are the consequences of right and wrong, that then,
_ipso facto_, youth will become chaste,--well if they would acquaint
themselves either with the ethics of Aristotle or with the Christian
doctrine of salvation.
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