ARISTOTLE—LIFE AND WORKS

Aristotle, in my opinion, stands almost alone in philosophy.—Cicero.

Aristotle, Nature's private secretary, dipping his pen in intellect.—Eusebius.

Wherever the divine wisdom of Aristotle has opened its mouth, the wisdom of others, it seems to me, is to be disregarded.—Dante.

I could soon get over Aristotle's prestige, if I could only get over his reasons.—Lessing.

If, now in my quiet days, I had youthful faculties at my command, I should devote myself to Greek, in spite of all the difficulties I know. Nature and Aristotle should be my sole study. It is beyond all conception what that man espied, saw, beheld, remarked, observed. To be sure he was sometimes hasty in his explanations; but are we not so, even to the present day?—Goethe (at 78).

If the proper earnestness prevailed in philosophy, nothing would be more worthy of establishing than a foundation for a special lectureship on Aristotle; for he is, of all the ancients, the most worthy of study.—Hegel.

Aristotle was one of the richest and most comprehensive geniuses that ever appeared—a man beside whom no age has an equal to place.—Id.

Physical philosophy occupies itself with the general qualities of matter. It is an abstraction from the dynamic manifestations of the different kinds of matter; and even where its foundations were first laid, in the eight books of Aristotle's Physical Lectures, all the phenomena of nature are represented as the motive vital activity of a universal world-force.—Alexander von Humboldt.

It was characteristic of this extraordinary genius to work at both ends of the scientific process. He was alike a devotee to facts and a master of the highest abstractions.—Alexander Bain.

Aristotle is the Father of the Inductive Method, and he is so for two reasons: First, he theoretically recognized its essential principles with a clearness, and exhibited them with a conviction, which strike the modern man with amazement; and then he made the first comprehensive attempt to apply them to all the science of the Greeks.—Wilhelm Oncken.

Aristotle, for whose political philosophy our admiration rises, the more we consider the work of his successors, is less guided by imagination than Plato, examines reality more carefully, and recognizes more acutely, the needs of man.—Bluntschli.

It appears to me that there can be no question, that Aristotle stands forth, not only as the greatest figure in antiquity, but as the greatest intellect that has ever appeared upon the face of this earth.—George J. Romanes.

Aristotle, with all the wisdom of Plato before him, which he was well able to appropriate, could find no better definition of the true good of man than the full exercise or realization of the soul's faculties in accordance with its proper excellence, which was excellence of thought, speculative and practical.—Thomas Hill Green.

It is pretty definitely settled, among men competent to form a judgment, that Aristotle was the best educated man that ever walked on the surface of this earth. He is still, as he was in Dante's time, the "master of those that know." It is, therefore, not without reason that we look to him, not only as the best exponent of ancient education, but as one of the worthiest guides and ensamples in education generally. That we may not lose the advantage of his example, it will be well, before we consider his educational theories, to cast a glance at his life, the process of his development, and his work. Aristotle was born about b.c. 384, in the Greek colony of Stagira in Thrace, near the borders of Macedonia. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician of good standing, the author of several medical works, and the trusted friend of Amyntas, the Macedonian King. His mother, PhÆstis, was descended from the early settlers of the place. It was doubtless under his father's guidance that the boy Aristotle first became interested in those physical studies in which he was destined to do such wonderful work. Losing, however, both his parents at an early age, he came under the charge of Proxenus, of Atarneus, who appears to have done his duty by him. At the age of eighteen he came to Athens for his higher education, and entered the school of Plato in the Academy. Here he remained for nearly twenty years, listening to Plato, and acquiring those vast stores of information which in later life he worked up into lectures and scientific treatises. Nothing escaped him, neither art, science, religion, philosophy, nor politics. He seems, being well off, to have begun early to collect a library, and to aim at encyclopÆdic knowledge. About his methods of study we know very little; but we hear that at times he assisted Plato in his work and was very careful of his own attire. It is clear that, in course of time, he rose in thought above the teachings of his master, and even rejected the most fundamental of them, the doctrine of self-existent ideas. But he never lost respect for that master, and when the latter died, he retired with Xenocrates, son of the new head of the Academy, to Atarneus, the home of his old guardian Proxenus, and of his fellow-Academic, Hermias, now king or tyrant of the place. Here he remained for three years, in the closest intimacy with his friend, until the latter was treacherously murdered by the Persians. He then crossed over to Mytilene, taking with him Pythias, Hermias' sister or niece, whom he had married, and to whom he was deeply devoted. He erected in Delphi a statue to his dead friend, and dedicated to him a poem, of which we shall hear more in the sequel. About b.c. 343, when he was over forty years old, he was called to Macedonia, as tutor to Alexander, the thirteen-year-old son of King Philip, and grandson of his own father's old patron, Amyntas. This office he filled for about three years with distinguished success, and it may be safely said that never had so great a tutor so great a pupil. During the latter part of the time, at least, Aristotle and Alexander seem to have lived at Stagira. This town had been captured and destroyed by Philip, and its inhabitants scattered. With the permission of the conqueror, Aristotle reassembled the inhabitants, rebuilt the town, drew up its laws, and laid out near it, at Mieza, in imitation of the Academy, a gymnasium and park, which he called the NymphÆum. Hither he appears to have retired with his royal pupil and several other youths who were receiving education along with him, among them Theophrastus and the ill-fated Callisthenes. It was probably here that Aristotle adopted the habit of walking while imparting instruction, a habit which afterwards gave the name to his school. When Alexander, at sixteen, entered his father's army, Aristotle still continued to teach in the NymphÆum, which existed even in Plutarch's time, more than four hundred years afterwards. But this lasted only for about five years; for in 335, when Alexander, who in the previous year had succeeded his murdered father, was preparing to invade Persia, Aristotle moved to Athens. Finding that his old friend, Xenocrates, was director of the school in the Academy, he established himself, as a public teacher or professor, in the Lyceum, the Periclean gymnasium, used chiefly, it should seem, by the lower classes and by foreign residents, of whom he himself was one. As an alien, as the friend of the victorious Macedonians, who three years before had broken the power of Greece at ChÆronea, and taken away her autonomy forever, as a rival of the Platonists, and as a wealthy, well-dressed gentleman, he had many enemies and detractors; but his conduct seems to have been so unobjectionable that no formal charge could be brought against him. His very numerous pupils were mostly foreigners, a fact not without its influence on the subsequent course of thought. He divided his days between writing and teaching, taking his physical exercise while engaged in the latter occupation. In the mornings he gave lectures to a narrow circle, in a strictly formal and scientific way, upon the higher branches of science; while in the afternoons he conducted conversations upon more popular themes with a less select audience. The former were called his esoteric, the latter his exoteric, discourses.

It was during his second residence in Athens, in the twelve years from b.c. 335 to 323, that Aristotle composed most of those great works in which he sought to sum up, in an encyclopÆdic way, the results of a life of all-embracing study and thought. He had been in no haste to put himself on record, and it was not until he had reached a consistent view of the world that he ventured to treat, in a definitive way, any aspect of it. Thus it was that each of his treatises formed part of one great whole of thought. Had he succeeded in completing his plan, he would have left to the world a body of science such as, even in our own day, would look in vain for a peer among the works of any one man. Unfortunately, his plan was not completed, and even of the works which he did write only a portion has come down to us. But that portion is sufficient to place their author at the head of all scientific men. Some of his works, for example, his Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics, still occupy the first place in the literature of these subjects. How a single man could have done all that he did, and in so many different departments, is almost inconceivable. No doubt he had helpers, in the shape of secretaries, learned slaves, and disciples; and it is certain that he received from his royal pupil munificent aid, which enabled him to do much, especially in the directions of physical and political research, that would have been impossible for a poor man; but, after all allowances have been made, his achievement still seems almost miraculous.

During all the years in which Aristotle was thus engaged, his position at Athens was becoming more and more insecure. The anti-Macedonian party were waiting for the first opportunity to rid the city of him, and were prevented from open attempts at this only by dread of Alexander's displeasure. Even when it was known that Aristotle had incurred disfavor with his old pupil, they did not venture to attack him; but in 323, when the news of Alexander's sudden death made all Greece feel that now the time had come to get rid forever of the hated Macedonians, and recover its liberty, they at once gave vent to their long-cherished hatred. How hard it was to find matter for an accusation against him, is shown by the fact that they had to go back to his old poem on Worth, written in memory of Hermias (see p. 4), and to base thereon a charge of impiety—a charge always easily made, and always sure to arouse strong popular prejudice. According to Athenian law, the defendant in any such case might, if he chose, escape punishment by leaving the city any time before the trial; and Aristotle, not being, like Socrates, a citizen, could have no ground for refusing to take advantage of this liberty. Accordingly, with the remark that he would not voluntarily allow the Athenians to sin a second time against philosophy, he withdrew to his country residence at Chalcis in Euboea, the old home of his mother's family, to wait till affairs should take another turn, as, indeed, they soon afterwards did, when Athens had to open her gates to Antipater. But, ere that happened, Aristotle was in his grave, having died in 322, shortly before Demosthenes, of disease of the stomach, from which he had long suffered. His remains are said to have been carried to Stagira, where the grateful inhabitants erected an altar over them and paid divine honors to his memory. His library and the manuscripts of his works he left in the hands of Theophrastus, who succeeded him in the Lyceum. His will, the text of which has come down to us, bears testimony, along with all else that we know of him, to the nobility, kindliness, and justice of his nature.

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