LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO.
Edited by £. Ilaldeman-Julius
39
The Story of Aristotle's
Philosophy
Will Durant, Ph.D.
LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. ^>Q
Edited by E. Haldeman- Julius «3>7
The Story of Aristotle's
Philosophy
Will Durant, Ph.D.
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1923
Haldeman-Julius Company.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEBIC*
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
A Word to the Reader 4
I. The Historical Background 5
II. The Work of Aristotle 11
III. The Foundation of Logic 17
IV. The Organization of Science 22
1. Greek Science Before Aristotle 22
2. Aristotle as a Naturalist 26
3. The Foundation of Biology 28
V. Metaphysics and the Nature of God.. 32
VI. Psychology and the Nature of Art. . . .35
VII. Ethics and the Nature of Happiness. .38
VIII. Politics 45
1. Communism and Conservatism 45
2. Marriage and Education 50
3. Democracy and Aristocracy 54
IX. Criticism 58
X. Later Life and Death 63
A WORD TO THE READER
The student who has come to philosophy un-
der the spur of Plato's eloquence will need
some encouragement to face the more practi-
cal and prosaic work of Aristotle. If he finds
the following essay difficult and unattractive,
let him reflect that Aristotle's is almost the
most abstract and obscure of all the great
philosophies; and that only the exigencies of
logical and chronological sequence have led us
to study him before mastering simpler sys-
tems. Aristotle is hard to grasp because his
work is so varied and manifold that no cen-
tralizing unity can be found to co-ordinate it
for easier comprehension. Nor is there in his
work any enthralling drama of passionate re-
form; he is a man of the world who has be-
come almost reconciled to the eternity of hu-
man imperfections. The author has spared
neither time nor labor to make out under the
mummy-like mass of lecture notes in which
Aristotle has come down to us, the features
of the living man; but he is* very much afraid
that he has failed. W. D.
THE STORY OF ARISTOTLE'S
PHILOSOPHY
I. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Aristotle was born at Stagira, a Macedonian
city some two hundred miles to the north of
Athens, in the year 384 B. C. His father was
friend and physician to Amyntas, King of
Macedon and grandfather of Alexander. Aris-
totle himself seems to have become a member
of the great medical fraternity of Asclepiads.
He was brought up in the odor of medicine as
many later philosophers were brought up in.
the odor of sanctity; he had every opportunity
and encouragement to develop a scientific bent
of mind; he was prepared from the beginning
to become the founder of science.
We have a choice of stories for his youth.
One narrative represents him as squandering
his patrimony in riotous living, joining the
army to avoid starvation, returning to Stagira
to practice medicine, and going to Athens at
the age of thirty to study philosophy under
Plato. A more dignified story takes him to
Athens at the age of eighteen, and puts him at
once under the tutelage of the great Master;
but even in this likelier account there is suf-
ficient echo of a reckless and irregular youth,
living rapidly.1 The horrified reader may con-
sole himself by observing that in either story
our philosopher anchors at last in the quiet
groves of the Academy.
Under Plato he studied eight — or twenty —
^rote, Aristotle, London, 1872, p. 4 ; Zeller, Aris~
totle and the Earlier Peripatetics, London, 1897#
vol. i, pp. 6f.
6 THE STORY OF
years; and,* indeed the pervasive Platonism of
Aristotle's speculations — even of those most
anti-Platonic — suggests the longer period. One
"would like to imagine these as very happy
years: a brilliant pupil guided by an incompar-
able teacher, walking like Greek lovers in the
gardens of philosophy. But they were both
geniuses; and it is notorious that geniuses ac-
cord with one another as harmoniously as
dvnamite with fire. Almost half a century
separated them; it was difficult for under-
standing to bridge this gap of years and cancel
the incompatibility of souls. Plato recognized
the greatness of this strange new pupil from
the supposedly barbarian north, and spoke of
him once as the Nous of the Academy, — as if to
say, Intelligence personified. Aristotle had
spent money lavishly on the collection of books
(that is, in those printless days, manuscripts);
he was the first, after Euripides, to gather to-
gether a library, and the foundation of the
principles of library classification was among
his many contributions to scholarship. There-
fore Plato spoke of Aristotle's home as "the
house of the reader," and seems to have meant
the sincerest compliment; but some ancient
gossip will have it that the Master intended a
sly but vigorous dig at a certain book-wormish-
ness in Aristotle. A more authentic quarrel
seems to have arisen towards the end of Plato's
life. Our ambitious youth apparently developed
an "CEdipus complex" against his spiritual
father for the favors and affections of philoso-
phy, and began to hint that wisdom would not
die with Plato; while the old sage spoke of his
pupil as a foal that kicks his mother after
draining her dry.2 The learned Zeller,* in
2Benn, The Greek Philosophers, London, 1882, vol.
i. p. 283.
3Vol. i, p. 11.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 7
whose pages Aristotle almost achieves the
Nirvana of respectability, would have us reject
these stories; but we may presume that where
there is still so much smoke there was once a
fire.
The other incidents of this Athenian period
are still more problematical. Some biographers
tell us that Aristotle founded a school of
oratory to rival Isocrates; and that he had
among his rupils in this school the wealthy
Hermias, who was soon to become autocrat of
the city-state of Atarneus. After reaching this
elevation Hermias invited Aristotle to his
court; and in the year 344 B. C. he rewarded
his teacher for past favors by bestowing upon
him a sister (or a niece) in marriage. One
might suspect this as a Greek gift; but the
historians hasten to assure us that Aristotle,
despite his genius, lived happily enough with
his wife, and spoke of her most affectionately
in his will. It was just a year later that Philip,
King of Macedon, called Aristotle to the court
at Pella to undertake the education of
Alexander. It bespeaks the rising repute of
our philosopher that the greatest monarch of
the time, looking about for the greatest teacher,
should single out Aristotle to be the tutor of
the future master of the world.
Philin was determined that his son should
have every educational advantage, for he had
made for him illimitable designs. His conquest
of Thrace in 356 B. C. had given him command
of gold mines which at once began to yield him
precious metal to ten times the amount then
coming to Athens from the failing silver of
Laurium; his people were vigorous peasants
and warriors, as yet unspoiled by city luxury
and vice: here was the combination that would
make possible the subjugation of a hundred
petty city-states and the political unification
8 THE STORY OF
of Greece. Philip had no sympathy with the in-
dividualism that had fostered the art and in-
tellect of Greece, but had at the same time dis-
integrated her social order; in all these little
capitals he saw not the exhilarating culture and
the unsurpassable art, but the commercial cor-
ruption and the political chaos; he saw in-
satiable merchants and bankers absorbing the
vital resources of the nation, incompetent
politicians and clever orators misleading a busy
populace into disastrous plots and wars, fac-
tions cleaving classes and classes congealing
into castes: this, said Philip, was not a nation
but only a welter of individuals, — geniuses and
slaves; he would bring the hand of order down
i^on this turmoil, and make all Greece stand
up united and strong as the political center and
basis of the world. In his youth in Thebes he
had learned the arts of military strategy and
civil organization under the noble Epami-
nondas; and now, with courage as boundless
as his ambition, he bettered the instruction.
In 338 B. C. he defeated the Athenians at
Chaeronea, and saw at last a Greece united,
though with chains. And then, as he stood
upon this victory* and planned how he and his
son should master and unify the world, he fell
under an assassin's hand.
Alexander, when Aristotle came, was a wild
youth of thirteen: passionate, epileptic, almost
alcoholic; it was his pastime to tame horses
untamable by men. The efforts of the
philosopher to cool the fires of this budding
volcano were not of much avail; Alexander had
better success with Bucephalus than Aristotle
with Alexander. "For a while," says Plutarch,
"Alexander loved and cherished Aristotle no
less than as if he had been his own father; say-
ing that though he had received life from the
one, the other had taught him the art of liv-
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 9
ing." ("Life," says a fine Greek adage, "is the
gift of Nature; but beautiful living is the gift
of wisdom.") "For my part," said Alexander
in a letter to Aristotle, "I had rather excel in
the knowledge of what is good than in the
extent of my power and dominion." But this
was probably no more than a royal-youthful
compliment; beneath the enthusiastic tyro of
philosophy was the fiery son of a barbarian
princess and an untamed king; the restraints
of reason were too delicate to hold these an-
cestral passions in leash; and Alexander left
philosophy after two years to mount the throne
and ride the world. History leaves us free to
believe (though we should suspect these
pleasant thoughts) that Alexander's unifying
passion derived some of its force and grandeur
from his teacher, the most synthetic thinker
in the history of thought; and that the con-
quest of order in the political realm by the
pupil, and in the philosophic realm by the
master, were but diverse sides of one noble
and epic project — two magnificent Macedonians
unifying two chaotic worlds.
But as usual, impersonal economic factors lay
hidden under the surface of personal and
dramatic events. The development of com-
merce had bound the Mediterranean nations,
from Persia to Spain, into one great web of
trade; and this commercial unity, harassed in
a thousand ways by political frontiers, auto-
cratic tolls, and the vicissitudes of unprotected
transport, called insistently for unity of
political and military administration. Persia
controlled the Asiatic land routes of the eastern
half of tnis economic system; Greece (or, since
Philip, Macedon) controlled the Mediterranean
sea-routes of the western half. It appeared to
Alexander thnt the absorption of one of these
political systems by the other was made in-
10 THE STORY OV
evitable by the growing pressure of economic
circumstance. Hence his reply to the Persian
embassy which came to him from Darius, sug-
gesting conciliation and division of rule: "As it
would be impossible for order to reign in the
world with two suns, so it is impossible for
the earth to be at peace with two masters."
And so he set out, in the year 334 B. C, to con-
quer Persia. Three years later the task was
accomplished, and the Mediterranean world
was one.
He had left behind him, in the cities of
Greece, governments favorable to him but
populations resolutely hostile. The long
tradition of a free and once imperial Athens
made subjection — even to a brilliant world-con-
cjuering despot — intolerable; and the bitter
eloquence of Demosthenes kept the Assembly
always on the edge of revolt against the
"Macedonian rqrty" that held the reins of city
power. Now when Aristotle, after another
period of travel, returned to Athens in the year
334 B. C, he very naturally associated with
this Macedonian group, and took no pains to
conceal his approval of Alexander's unifying*
rule. As we study the remarkable succession
of works, in speculation and research, which
Aristotle proceeded to unfold in the last twelve
years of his life; and as we watch him in
his multifold tasks of organizing his school,
and of organizing such a wealth of knowledge
as probably never before had passed through
the mind of one man; let us occasionally
remember that this was no quiet and secure
pursuit of truth; that at any minute the
political sky might change, and precipitate a
storm in this peaceful philosophic life. Only
with this situation in mind shall we understand
Aristotle's political philosophy, and his tragic
end.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 11
II. THE WORK OF ARISTOTLE
It was not hard for the instructor of the
king of kings to find pupils even in so hostile
a city as Athens. When, in the fifty-third year
of his age, Aristotle established his school, the
Lyceum, so many students flocked to him that
it became necessary to make complicated regu-
lations for the maintenance of order. The
students themselves determined the rules, and
elected, every ten days, one of their number
to supervise the School. But we must not
think of it as a place of rigid discipline; rather
the picture which comes down to us is of
scholars eating their meals in common with
the master, and learning from him as he and
they strolled up and down the Walk along the
athletic field from which the Lyceum took its
name.4
The new School was no mere replica of that
which Plato had left behind him. The Academy
was devoted above all to mathematics and to
speculative and political philosophy; the
Lyceum had rather a tendency to biology and
the natural sciences. If we may believe Pliny,5
Alexander instructed his hunters, gamekeepers,
gardeners and fishermen to furnish Aristotle
with all the zoological and botanical material
he might desire; other ancient writers tell us
that at one time he had at his disposal a
thousand men scattered throughout Greece
and Asia, collecting for him specimens of the
fauna and flora of every land. With this
4The Walk was called Peripatos ; hence the later
name, Peripatetic School. The athletic field was
part of the grounds of the temple of Apollo Lyceus
— the protector of the flock against the wolf (lycos).
iHist. Nat., viii, 16 ; in Lewes, Aristotle, a Chap-
ter from the History of Science, London, 1864, p. 15.
12 THE STORY OP
wealth of material he was enabled to establish
the first great zoological garden that the world
had seen. We can hardly exaggerate the in-
fluence of this collection upon his science and
his philosophy.
Where did Aristotle derive the funds to
finance these undertakings? He was himself,
lw this time, a man of spacious income; and he
had married into the fortune of one of the most
powerful public men in Greece. Athenaeus (no
doubt with some exaggeration) relates that
Alexander gave Aristotle, for physical and
biological equipment and research, the sum of
800 talents (in modern purchasing power, some
$4,000,000). 8 It was at Aristotle's suggestion,
some think, that Alexander sent a costly ex-
pedition to explore the sources of the Nile and
discover the causes of its periodical overflow.7
Such works as the digest of 158 political con-
stitutions, drawn up for Aristotle, indicate a
considerable corps of aides and secretaries. In
short we have here the first example in
European history of the large-scale financing of
science by public wealth. What knowledge
would we not win if modern states were to sup-
port research on a proportionately lavish scale!
Yet we should do Aristotle injustice if we
were to ignore the almost fatal limitations of
equipment which accompanied these unpre-
cedented resources and facilities. He wras com-
pelled "to fix time without a watch, to compare
degrees of heat without a thermometer, to
observe the heavens without a telescope, and
the weather without a barometer. ... Of all
our mathematical, optical and physical instru-
ments he possessed only the rule and compass,
fGrant, Aristotle, Edinburgh, 1877, p. 18.
The expedition reported that the inundations
were due to the melting of the snow on the moun-
tains of Abyssinia.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 13
together with the most imperfect substitutes
ior some few others. Chemical analysis, cor-
rect measurements ar * weights, and a thorough
application of mathematics to physics, were
unknown. The attractive force of matter, the
law of gravitation, electrical phenomena, the
conditions of chemical combination, pressure of
air and its effects, the nature of light, heat,
combustion, etc.; in short, all the facts on
which the physical theories of modern science
are based were wholly, or almost wholly, un-
discovered."5
See, here, how inventions make history: for
lack of a telescope, Aristotle's astronomy is a
tissue of childish romance; for lack of a micro-
scope his biology wranders endlessly astray.
Indeed, it was in industrial and technical in-
vention that Greece fell furthest below the
general standard of its unparalleled achieve-
ments. The Greek disdain of manual work
kept everybody but the listless slave from
direct acquaintance with the processes of pro-
duction, from that stimulating contact with
machinery which reveals defects and prefigures
possibilities; technical invention was possible
only to those who had no interest in it, and
could not derive from it any material reward.
Perhaps the very cheapness of the slaves made
invention lag; muscle was still less costly than
machines. And so, while Greek commerce con-
quered the Mediterranean Sea, and Greek
philosophy conquered the Mediterranean mind,
Greek science straggled, and Greek industry
remained almost where iEgean industry had
been when the invading Greeks had come down
upon it, at Cnossos, at Tiryns and Mycene, a
thousand years before. No doubt we have here
the reason why Aristotle so seldom appeals to
sZeller, i, 264, 443.
14 THE STORY OF
experiment; the mechanisms of experiment
had not yet been made; and the best he could
do was to achieve an almost universal and con-
tinuous observation. Nevertheless the vast
body of data gathered by him and his assistants
became the groundwork of the progress of
science, the text-book of knowledge for two
thousand years; one of the wonders of the
work of man.
Aristotle's writings ran into the hundreds.
Some ancient authors credit him with four
hundred volumes, others with a thousand. What
remains is but a part, and yet it is a library
in itself — conceive the scope and grandeur of
the whole. There are, first, the Logical works:
''Categories," "Topics," "Prior" and "Posterior
Analytics," "Propositions," and "Sophistical
Refutations"; these works were collected and
edited by the later Peripatetics under the gen-
eral title of Aristotle's "Organon," — that is, the
organ or instrument of correct thinking. Sec-
ondly, there are the Scientific works: "Phys-
ics," "On the Heavens," "Growth and Decay,"
"Meteorology," "Natural History," "On the
Soul," "The Parts of Animals," "The Move-
ments of Animals," and "The Generation of
Animals." There are, thirdly, the Esthetic
works: "Rhetoric" and "Poetics." And fourthly
come the more strictly Philosophical works:
"Ethics," "Politics," and "Metaphysics."9 Here,
evidently, is the Encyclopaedia Britannica of
Greece: every problem under the sun and
about it finds a place; no wonder there are
more errors and absurdities here than in
any other philosopher who ever wrote. Here
°This is the chronological order, so far as known
(Zeller, i, 156f). Our discussion will follow this
order except in the case of the "Metaphysics."
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 15
is such a synthesis of knowledge and theory as
no man would ever achieve again till Spencer's
day, and even then not half so magnificently;
here, better than Alexander's fitful and brutal
victory, was a conquest of the world. If philoso-
phy is the quest of unity Aristotle deserves the
high name that twenty centuries gave him — IUe
Philosophus: The Philosopher.
Naturally, in a mind of such scientific turn,
poesy was lacking. We must not expect of
Aristotle such literary brilliance as floods the
pages of the dramatist-philosopher Plato. In-
stead of giving us great literature, in which
philosophy is embodied (and obscured) in myth
and imagery, Aristotle gives us science, tech-
nical, abstract, concentrated; if we go to him
for entertainment we shall sue for the return
of our money. Instead of giving terms to lit-
erature, as Plato did, he builds the terminology
of science and philosophy; we can hardly speak
of any science today without employing terms
which he invented; they lie like fossils in the
strata of our speech: faculty, mean, maxim
(meaning, in Aristotle, the major premise of a
syllogism), category, energy, actuality, motive,
end, principle, form — these indispensable coins
of philosophic thought were minted in his mind.
And perhaps this passage from delightful dia-
logue to precise scientific treatise was a neces-
sary step in the development of philosophy; and
science, which is the basis and backbone of
philosophy, could not grow until it had evolved
its own strict methods of procedure and ex-
pression. Aristotle, too, wrote literary dia-
logues, as highly reputed in their day as Plato's,
but they are lost, just as the scientific treatises
of Plato have perished. Probably time has pre-
served of each man the better part.
Finally, it is possible that the writings at-
16 THE STORY OF
tributed to Aristotle were not his, but were
largely the compilations of students and fol-
lowers who had embalmed the unadorned sub-
stance of his lectures in their notes. It does
not appear that Aristotle published in his life-
time any writings except those on logic and
rhetoric; and the present form of the logical
treatises is due to later editing. In the case of
the Metaphysics and the Politics the notes left
by Aristotle seem to have been put together by
his executors without revision or alteration.
Even the unity of style which marks Aristotle's
writings, and offers an argument to those who
defend his direct authorship, may be, after all,
merely a unity given them through common
editing by the Peripatetic School. About this
matter there rages a sort of Homeric question,
of almost epic scope, into which the busy reader
vrill not care to go, and on which a modest
student will not undertake to judge.10 We may
at all events be sure that Aristotle is the spir-
itual author of all these books that bear his
name: that the hand may be in some cases
another's hand, but that the head and the heart
are his.11
10Cf. Zeller, ii, 204, note ; Encyc. Brit., ii, 509 ;
and Shuie : History of the Aristotelian Writings.
nThe reader who wishes to go to the philosopher
himself will find the Meteorology an interesting ex-
ample of Aristotle's scientific work ; he will de-
rive much practical instruction from the Rhetoric;
and he will find Aristotle at his best in books i-ii
of the Ethics, and books i-iv of the Politics. The
best translation of the Ethics is Welldon's ; of the
Politics, Jowett's. Sir Alexander Grant's Aristotle
is a simple book; Zeller's Aristotle (vols, iii-iv in
his Greek Philosophy) is scholarly but dry; Gom-
perz's Greek Thinkers (vol. iv) is masterly but
difficult.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 17
III. THE FOUNDATION OF LOGIC
The first great distinction of Aristotle is that
almost without predecessors, almost entirely by
his own hard thinking, he created a new science
— Logic. Renan12 speaks of "the ill training
of every mind that has not, directly or in-
directly, come under Greek discipline"; but in
truth the Greek intellect itself was undisci-
plined and chaotic till the ruthless formulae of
Aristotle provided a ready method for the test
and correction of thought. Even Plato (if a
lover may so far presume) was an unruly and
irregular soul, caught up too frequently in a
cloud of myth, and letting beauty too richly
veil the face of truth. Aristotle himself, as we
shall see, violated his own canons plentifully;
but then he was the product of his past, and
not of that future which his thought would
build. The political and economic decay of
Greece brought a weakening of the Hellenic
mind and character after Aristotle; but when
a new race, after a millennium of barbaric dark-
ness, found again the leisure and ability for
speculation, it was Aristotle's "Organon" of
logic, translated by Boethius (470-525 A. D.),
that became the very mould of medieval
thought, the strict mother of that scholastic
philosophy which, though rendered sterile by
encircling dogmas, nevertheless trained the in-
tellect of adolescent Europe to reasoning and
subtlety, constructed the terminology of modern
science, and laid the bases of that same matu-
rity of mind which was to outgrow and over-
throw the very system and methods which had
given it birth and sustenance.
12History of the People of Israel, vol. v, p. 338.
18 THE STORY OF
Logic means, simply, the art and method of
correct thinking. It is the logy or method of
every science, of every discipline and every
art; and even music harbors it. It is a science
because to a considerable extent the processes
of right thinking (and we use "right" not in a
moral but in a mathematical sense) can be re-
duced to rules like physics and geometry, and
taught to any normal mind; it is an art because
by practice it gives to thought, at last, that
unconscious and immediate accuracy which
guides the fingers of the pianist over his in-
strument to effortless harmonies. Nothing is
so dull as logic, and nothing is so important.
There was a hint of this new science in
Socrates' maddening insistence on definitions,
and in Plato's constant refining of every con-
cept. Aristotle's little treatise on Definitions
shows how his logic found nourishment at this
source. "If you wish to converse with me,"
said Voltaire, "define your terms." How many
a debate would have been deflated into a para-
graph if the disputants had dared to define
their terms! This is the alpha and omega of
logic, the heart and soul of it, that every im-
portant term in serious discourse shall be sub-
jected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It
is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but
once done it is half of any task.
Yet how shall we proceed to define an object
or a term? Aristotle answers that every good
definition has two parts, stands on two solid
feet: first, it assigns the object in question to
a class or group of objects whose general char-
acteristics are also its own — so man is, first
of all, an animal; and secondly, it indicates
wherein the object differs from all the other
members of its class — so man, in the Aristote-
lian system, is a rational animal, his "specific
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 19
difference" is that unlike all other animals he
is rational (here, you see, is the origin of a
pretty legend). Aristotle drops an object into
the ocean of its class, then takes it out all drip-
ping with generic meaning, with the marks of
its kind and group; while its individuality and
difference shine out all the more clearly for
this juxtaposition with other objects which re-
semble it so much and are so different.
Passing out from this rear line of logic we
come into the great battlefield on which Aris-
totle fought out with Plato the dread question
of "universals"; it was the first conflict in a
war which was to last till our own day, and
make all medieval Europe ring with the clash
of "realists" and "nominalists."13 A universal,
to Aristotle, is any common noun, any name
capable of universal application to the members
of a class: so animal, man, book, tree, are
universals. But these universals are subjective
notions, not tangibly objective realities; they
are nomina (names), not res (things); all that
exists outside us is a world of individual and
specific objects, not of generic and universal
things; men exist, and trees, and animals; but
man-in-general, or the universal man, does not
exist, except in thought; he is a handy mental
abstraction, not an external presence or re-
ality. Now Aristotle understands Plato to have
held that great universals have objective ex-
istence; and indeed Plato had said that the
universal is incomparably more lasting and im-
portant and substantial than the individual — ■
the latter being but a little wavelet in a cease-
less surf; men come and go, but man goes on
forever. Aristotle's is a matter-of-fact mind;
13It was in reference to this debate that Fried-
rich Schlegel said, "Every man is born either a
Platonist or an Aristotelian" (in Benn, i, 291).
20 THE STORY OF
as William James would say, a tough, not a
tender, mind; he sees the root of endless mysti-
cism and scholarly nonsense in this Platonic
"realism"; and he attacks it with all the vigor
of a first polemic. As Brutus loved not Caesar
less but Rome more, so Aristotle says, Amicus
Plato, sed magls arnica Veritas — "Dear is Plato,
but dearer still is truth." A hostile com-
mentator might remark that Aristotle (like
Nietzsche) criticizes Plato so keenly because he
is conscious of having borrowed from him gen-
erously; no man is a hero to his debtors. But
Aristotle has a healthy attitude, nevertheless;
he is a realist almost in the modern sense; he
is resolved to concern himself with the objec-
tive presence, while Plato is absorbed in a sub-
jective future; or, to juggle with the words,
Aristotle has a present objective, and Plato's
subject is the future. There was, in the So-
cratic-Platonic demand for definitions, a tend-
ency away from things and facts to theories
and ideas, from particulars to generalities, from
science to scholasticism; at last Plato became
so devoted to generalities that they began to
determine his particulars, so devoted to ideas
that they began to define or select his facts.
Aristotle preaches a return to things, to the
"unwithered face of nature" and reality; he had
a lusty preference for the concrete particular,
for the flesh and blood individual. But Plato
so loved the general and universal that in the
Republic he destroyed the individual to make
a perfect state.
Yet, as is the usual humor of history, the
young warrior takes over many of the qualities
of the old master whom he assails. We have
always goodly stock in us of that which we
condemn: as onlv similars can be profitably
contrasted, so onlv similar people quarrel, and
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 21
the bitterest wars are over the slightest
variations of purpose or belief. The knightly
Crusaders found in Saladin a gentleman with
whom they could quarrel amicably; but when
tae Christians of Europe broke into hostile
camps there was no quarter for even the
courtliest foe. Aristotle is so ruthless with
Plato because there is so much of Plato in him;
he too remains a lover of. abstractions and gen-
eralities, repeatedly betraying the simple fact
for some speciously bedizened theory, and com-
pelled to a continuous struggle to conquer the
philosophic passion for exploring the empyrean.
There is a heavy trace of this in the most
characteristic and original of Aristotle's con-
tributions to philosophy — the doctrine of the
syllogism. A syllogism is a trio of propositions
of which the third (the conclusion) follows
from the conceded truth of the other two (the
"major" and "minor" premises). E. g., man
is a rational animal; but Socrates is a man;
therefore Socrates is a rational animal. The
mathematical reader will see at once that the
structure of the syllogism resembles the
proposition that two things equal to the same
thing are equal to each other; if A is B, and
C is A, then C is B. As in the mathematical
case the conclusion is reached by canceling
from both premises their common term, A;
so in our syllogism the conclusion is reached
by canceling from both premises their common
term "man," and combining what remains.
The difficulty, as logicians have pointed out
from the days of Pyrrho to those of Stuart
Mill, lies in this, that the major premise of the
syllogism takes for granted precisely the point
to be proved; for if Socrates is not rational
(and since no one questions that he is a man)
it is not universally true that man is a rational
animal. Aristotle would reply, no doubt, that
22 THE STORY OF
where an individual is found to have a large
number of qualities characteristic of a class
("Socrates is a man"), a strong presumption
is established that the individual has the other
qualities characteristic of the class ("rational-
ity"). But apparently the syllogism is not a
mechanism for the discovery of truth so much
as for the clarification of exposition and
thought.
All this, then, like the many other items of
the Organon, has its value: "Aristotle has dis-
covered and formulated every canon of theoreti-
cal consistency, and every artifice of dialectical
debate, with an industry and acuteness which
cannot be too highly extolled; and his labors
in this direction have perhaps contributed more
than any other single writer to the intellectual
stimulation of after ages."14 But no man ever
lived who could lift logic to a lofty strain: a
guide to correct reasoning is as elevating as a
manual of etiquette; we may ' use it, but it
hardly spurs us to nobility. Not even the brav-
est philosopher would sing to a book of logic
underneath the bough. One always feels towards
logic as Virgil bade Dante feel towards those
who had been damned because of their color-
less neutrality: Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda
e passa — "Let us think no more about them,
but look once and pass on."15
IV. THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENCE
1. GREEK SCIENCE BEFORE ARISTOTLE
"Socrates," says Renan,18 "gave philosophy to
mankind, and Aristotle gave it science. There
was philosophy before Socrates, and science be-
fore Aristotle; and since Socrates and since
14Benn, i, 307.
^Inferno, iii, 60.
uLife of Jesus, ch. 2&
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 23
Aristotle, philosophy and science have made
immense advances. But all has been built upon
tiie foundation which they laid." Before Aris-
totle, science was in embryo; with him it was
born.
Earlier civilizations than the Greek had made
attempts at science; but so far as we can catch
their thought through their still obscure cunei-
form and hieroglyphic script, their science was
indistinguishable from theology. That is to
say, these pre-Hellenic peoples explained every
obscure operation in Nature by some supernat-
ural agency; everywhere there were gods. Ap-
parently it was the Ionian Greeks who first
dared to give natural explanations of cosmic
complexities and mysterious events: they
sought in physics the natural causes of par-
ticular incidents, and in philosophy a natural
theory of the whole. Thales (640-550 B. C.),
the "Father of Philosophy/' was primarily an
astronomer, who astonished the natives of Mi-
letus by informing them that the sun and stars
(which they were wont to worship as gods)
were merely balls of fire. His pupil Anaxi-
mander (610-540 B. C), the first Greek to make
astronomic and geographical charts, believed
that the universe had begun as an undiffer-
entiated mass, from which all things had arisen
by the separation of opposites; that astronomic
history periodically repeated itself in the evo-
lution and dissolution of an infinite number of
worlds; that the earth was at rest in space by
a balance of internal impulsions (like Buri-
dan's ass); that all our planets had once been
fluid, but had been evaporated by the sun;
that Jife had first been formed in the sea, but
had been driven upon the land by the sub-
sidence of the water; that of these stranded
animals some had developed the capacity to
breathe air, and had so become the progenitors
24 THE STORY OF
of all later land life; that man could not from
the beginning have been what he now was, for
if man, on his first appearance, had been so
helpless at birth, and had required so long an
adolescence, as in these later days, he could not
possibly have survived. Anaximenes, another
Milesian (fl. 450 B.C.), described the primeval
condition of things as a very rarefied mass,
gradually condensing into wind, cloud, water,
earth, and stone; the three forms of matter —
gas, liquid and solid — were progressive stages
of condensation; heat and cold were merely
rarefaction and condensation; earthquakes were
due to the solidification of an originally fluid
earth; life and soul were one, an animating and
expansive force present in everything every-
where. Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.), teacher of
Pericles, seems to have given a correct explana-
tion of solar and lunar eclipses; he discovered
the processes of respiration in plants and
fishes; and he explained man's intelligence by:
the power of manipulation that came when the
fore-limbs were freed from the tasks of locomotion.
Heraclitus (530-470 B.C.), who left wealth and
its cares to live a life of poverty and study in
the shade of the temple porticoes at Ephesus,
turned science from astronomy to earthlier con-
cerns. All things forever flow and change, he
said; even in the stillest matter there is un-
seen flux and movement. Cosmic history runs
in repetitious cycles, each beginning and ending
in fire (here is one source of the Stoic and
Christian doctrine of last judgment and hell).
"Through strife," says Heraclitus, "all things
arise and pass away. . . War is the father and
king of all: some he has made gods and some
men; some slaves, and some free." Where there
is no strife there is decay: "the mixture which
is not shaken decomposes." In this flux of
change and struggle and selection, only one
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 25
thing is constant, and that is law. "This order,
the same for all things, no one of gods or men
has made; but it always was, and is, and shall
he."— Empedocles (fl. 445 B. C, in Sicily) de-
veloped to a further stage the idea of evolution."
Organs arise not by design but by selection.
Nature makes many trials and experiments with
organisms, combining organs variously; where
the combination fails, the organism is weeded
out; as time goes on, organisms are more and
more intricately and successfully adapted to their
surroundings. — Finally, in Leucippus (fl. 445 B.
C.) and Democritus (460-360), master and pupil
in Thracian Abdera, we get the last stage of pre-
Aristotelian science — materialistic, deterministic
atomism. "Everything," said Leucippus, "isdriven
bv necessity." "In reality," says Democritus,13
"there are only atoms and the void." Perception
is due to the expulsion of atoms from the object
upon the sense organ.19 There are or have been or
will be an infinite number of worlds; at every
moment planets are colliding and dying, and new
worlds are rising out of chaos by the selective
aggregation of atoms of similar size and shape.
There is no design; the universe is a machine.
This, in dizzy and superficial summary, is the
story of Greek science before Aristotle. Its cruder
items can be well forgiven when we consider the
narrow circle of experimental and observational
equipment within which these pioneers were
compelled to work. The stagnation of Greek in-
dustry under the incubus of slavery prevented
the full development of these magnificent be-
17Cf. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin; and M.
Arnold, Empedocles on Etna.
KDemocritus is ranked above Plato and Aristotle
in Francis Bacon's De Principiis (Philosophical
Works, ed. Robertson, London, 1905, p. 650).
19Cf. Newton's theory of light, now (through Ein-
stein) returning into favor.
26 THE STORY OF
ginnins; and the rapid complication of politi-
cal life in Athens turned the Sophists and Soc-
rates and Plato away from these physical and
biological researches into the vaguer paths of
ethical and political theory. It i- one of the
many glories of Aristotle that he was broad and
brave enough to compass and combine these two
lines of Greek thought, the physical and the
moral; that going back beyond his teacher, he
caught again the thread of scientific develop-
ment in the pre-Socratic Greeks, carried on their
work with more resolute detail and more varied
observation, and brought together all the accu-
mulated results in a magnificent body of organ-
ized science.
2. ARISTOTLE AS A NATURALIST
If we bcoin here chronologically, with his
Physics, we shall be disappointed; for we find
that this treatise is really a metaphysics, an
abstruse analysis of matter, motion, space, time,
infinitv cause, and other such "ultimate con-
cepts." One of the more lively passages is an at-
tack on Democritus' "void": there can be no void
or vacuum in nature, says Aristotle, for in a
vacuum all bodies would fall with equal veloci-
ty; this being impossible, "the supposed void!
turns out to have nothing in it" — an instance at
once of Aristotle's very occasional humor, his
addiction to unproved assumptions, ar<1 his tend-
ency to disparage his predecessors in philosophy.
It was the habit of our philosopher to preface
his works with historical sketches of previous
contributions to the subject in hand, and to add
to every contribution an annihilating refutation.
"Aristotle, after the Ottoman manner," says
Bacon, "thought he could not reign secure with-
out putting all his brethren to death."20 But to
this fratricidal mania we owe much of our
knowledge of pre-Socratic thought.
^Advancement of Learning, bk. iii. ch. 4.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 27
For reasons already given, Aristotle's astrono-
my represents very little advance upon his
predecessors. He rejects the view of Pythagoras
(six century B. C.) that the sun is the center of
our system; he prefers to give that honor to the
earth. But the little treatise on meteorology is
fnll of brilliant observations, and even its specu-
lations strike illuminating fire. This is a cyclic
world, says our philosopher: the sun forever
evaporates the sea, dries up rivers and springs,
and transforms at last the boundless ocean into
the barest rock; while conversely the uplifted
moisture, gathered into clouds, falls and renews
the rivers and the seas. Everywhere change
goes on, imperceptibly but effectively. Egypt is
''the work of the Nile," the product of its de-
posits through a thousand centuries. Here the
sea encroaches upon the land, there the land
reaches out timidly into the sea; new continents
and new oceans rise, old oceans and old conti-
nents disappear, and all the face of the world is
changed and rechanged in a great systole and
diastole of growth and dissolution. Sometimes
these vast effects occur suddenly, and destroy
the geological and material bases of civilization
and even of life; great catastrophes have peri-
odically denuded the earth and reduced man
again to his first beginnings; like Sisyphus,
civilization has repeatedly neared its zenith only
to fall back into barbarism and begin da capo its
upward travail. Hence the almost "eternal recur-
rence," in civilization after civilization, of the
same inventions and discoveries, the same "dark
ages" of slow economic and cultural accumula-
tion, the same rebirths of learning and science
and art. No doubt some popular myths are vague
traditions surviving from earlier cultures. So
the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because
he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.
28 THE STORY OF
3. THE FOUNDATION OF BIOLOGY
It is not so with life.
As Aristotle walked wondering through his
great zoological garden, he became convinced
that the infinite variety of life could be ar-
ranged in a continuous series in which each
link would be almost indistinguishable from the
next. In all respects, whether in structure, or
mode of life, or reproduction and rearing, or
sensation and feeling, there are minute grada-
tions and progressions from the lowest organ-
isms to the highest.21 At the bottom of the
scale we can scarcely divide the living from
the "dead": "nature makes so gradual a tran-
sition from the inanimate to the animate king-
dom that the boundary lines which separate
them are indistinct and doubtful"; and perhaps
a degree of life exists even in the inorganic.
Again, many species cannot with certainty be
called plants or animals. And as in these
lower organisms it is almost impossible at
times to assign them to their proper genus and
species, so similar are they; so in every order
of life the continuity of gradations and differ-
ences is as remarkable as the diversity of func-
tions and forms. But in the midst of this be-
wildering richness of structures certain things
stand out convincingly: that life has grown
steadily in complexity and in power;22 that in-
telligence has progressed in correlation with
complexity of structure and mobility of form;23
that there has been an increasing specialization
of function, and a continuous centralization of
physiological control.24 Slowly life created for
21Hist. AnUnalium, viii.
2De Anima, ii, 2.
^De Partibus Animalium, i, 7 ; ii, 10.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 29
itself a nervous system and a brain; and mind
moved resolutely on towards the mastery of
its environment.
The remarkable fact here is that with all
these gradations and similarities leaping to
Aristotle's eyes, he does not come to the theory
of evolution. He rejects Empedocles' doctrine
that all organs and organisms are a survival
of the fittest,25 and Anaxagoras' idea that man
became intelligent by using his hands for ma-
nipulation rather than for movement; Aristo-
tle thinks, on the contrary, that man so used
his hands because he had become intelligent."
Indeed, Aristotle makes as many mistakes as
possible tor a man who is founding the science
of biology. He thinks, for example, that the
male element in reproduction merely stimulates
and quickens; it does not occur to him (what
we now know from experiments in partheno-
genesis) that the essential function of the
sperm is not so much to fertilize the ovum as
to provide the embryo with the heritable qual-
ities of the male parent, and so permit the
offspring to be a vigorous variant, a new ad-
mixture of two ancestral lines. As human dis-
section was not practiced in his time, he is par-
ticularly fertile in physiological errors: he
knows nothing of muscles, not even of their
existence; he does not distinguish arteries
from veins; he thinks the brain is an organ
for cooling the blood; he believes, forgivably,
that man has more sutures in the skull than
woman; he believes, less forgivably, that man
has only eight ribs on each side; he believes,
incredibly and unfongivably, that woman has
-xDe Partialis AnimaUum, iv, 5-6.
KDe Anima, ii, 4.
**De Part. An., iv. 10.
30 THE STORY OF
fewer teeth than man.27 Apparently Aristotle's
relations with women were of the most ami-
cable kind.
Yet he makes a greater total advance in
biology than any Greek before or after him.
He perceives that birds and reptiles are near
allied in structure; that the monkey is in form
intermediate between quadrupeds and man; and
once he boldly declares that man belongs in
one group of animals with the viviparous quad-
rupeds (our "mammals").28 He remarks that
the soul in infancy is scarcely distinguishable
from the soul of animals.29 He makes the il-
luminating observation that diet often deter-
mines the mode of life; "for of beasts some
are gregarious, and others solitary — they live
in the way which is best adapted to . . . obtain
the food of their choice."30 He anticipates Von
Baer's famous law that characters common to
the genus (like eyes and ears) appear in the
developing organism before characters peculiar
to its species (like the "formula" of the teeth),
or to its individual self (like the final color of
the eyes) ;31 and he reaches out across two thou-
sand years to anticipate Spencer's generaliza-
tion that individuation > varies inversely as .
genesis — that is, that the more highly developed
and specialized a species or an individual hap-
pens to be, the smaller will be the number of its
offspring.32 He notices and explains reversion
to type — the tendency of a prominent variation
(like genius) to be diluted in mating and lost
^Gomperz, iv. 57 ; Zeller, i, 262, note ; Lewes, 158,
165. etc.
^Hist. An. i, 6; ii, 3.
^Ibid., viii, 1.
^Pontics, i, 8.
^Hist. An. I 6; ii. 8.
52De Generatione Animalium, ii, 12.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 31
in successive generations. He makes many
zoological observations which, temporarily re-
jected by later biologists, have been confirmed
by modern research — of fishes that make nests,
for example, and a species of shark that boasts
of a placenta.
And finally he establishes the science of em-
bryology. "He who sees things grow from their
beginning," he writes, "will have the finest
view of them." Hippocrates (b. 460 B. C),
greatest of Greek physicians, had given a fine
example of the experimental method, by break*
ing a hen's eggs at various stages of incubation;
and had applied the results of these studies in
his treatise "On the Origin of the Child." Aris-
totle followed this lead and performed experi-
ments which enabled him to give a description
of the development of the chick which even
today arouses the admiration of embryologists.33
He must have performed some novel experi-
ments in genetics, for he disproves the theory
that the sex of the child depends on what testis
supplies the reproductive fluid, by quoting a
case where the right testis of the father had
been tied and yet the children had been of dif-
ferent sexes.34 He raises some very modern
problems of heredity. A woman of Elis had
married a negro; her children were all whites,
but in the next generation negroes reappeared;
where, asks Aristotle, was the blackness hidden
in the middle generation?35 There was but a
step from such a vital and intelligent query to
the epochal experiments of Gregor Mendel (1822-
1882). Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae — \
^De Part. An., iii, 4.
^Lewes, 112.
^Gomperz, iv, 169.
32 THE STORY OF
to know what to ask is already to know half.
Surely, despite the errors that mar these bio-
logical works, they form the greatest monument
ever raised to the science by any one man.
When we consider that before Aristotle there
had been, so far as we know, no biology beyond
scattered observations, we perceive that this,
achievement alone might have sufficed for one
life-time, and would have given immortality*
But Aristotle had only begun.
V. METAPHYSICS AND THE NATURE OF GOD
His metaphysics grew out of his biology.
Everything in the world is moved by an inner
urge to become something greater than it is.
Everything is both the form or reality which
has grown out of something which was its
matter or raw material; and it may in its turn
be the matter out of which still higher forms
will grow. So the man is the form of which
the child was the matter; the child is the form
and its embryo the matter; the embryo the
form, the ovum the matter; and so back till we
reach in a vague way the conception of matter
without form at all. But such a formless mat-
ter would be no-thing, for every thing was a
form. Matter, in its widest sense, is the pos-
sibility of form; and form is the actuality, the
finished reality, of matter. Matter obstructs,
form constructs. Form is not merely the shape
but the shaping force, an inner necessity and
impulse which moulds mere material to a spe-
cific figure and purpose; it is the realization
of a potential capacity of matter; it is the sum
of the powers residing in anything to do, to be,
or to become. Nature is the conquest of matter
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 23
by form, the constant progression and victory
of life.36
Everything in the world moves naturally to a
specific fulfilment. Of the varied causes which
determine an event, the final cause, which de-
termines the purpose, is the most decisive and
important. The mistakes and futilities of na-
ture are due to the inertia of matter resisting
the forming force of purpose — hence the abor-
tions and the monsters that mar the panorama
'of life. Development is not haphazard or acci-
dental (else how could we explain the almost
universal appearance and transmission of use-
ful organs?) ; everything is guided in a certain
direction from within, by its nature and struc-
ture and entelechy;37 the egg of the hen is in-
ternally designed or destined to become not a
duck but a chick; the a-corn becomes not a wil-
low but an oak. This does not mean for Aris-
totle that there is an external providence
designing earthly structures and events; rather
the design is internal, and arises from the type
and function of the thing. "Divine Providence
S6Half of our readers will be pleased, and the
other half amused, to learn that among Aristotle's
favorite examples of manner and form are woman
and man ; the male is the active, formative prin-
ciple ; the female is passive clay, waiting to be
formed. Female offspring are the result of the
failure of form to dominate matter (Be Gen. An.,
i, 2).
87Entelecheia — having (echo, its purpose (telos)
within (entos); one of those magnificent Aristote-
lian terms which gather up into themselves a whole
philosophy. The informed reader need not be re-
minded that the "ortho-genic" school of evolution-
ists finds its first formulation in these passages of
Aristotle.
34 THE STORY OF
coincides completely for Aristotle with the
operation of natural causes."38
Yet there is a God, though not perhaps the
simple and human god conceived by the for-
givable anthropomorphism of the adolescent
mind. Aristotle approaches the problem from
the old puzzle about motion — how, he asks, does
motion begin? He will not accept the possi-
bility that motion is as beginningless as he con-
ceives matter to be: matter may be eternal,
because it is merely the everlasting possibility
of future forms; but when and how did that
vast process of motion and formation begin
which at last filled the wide universe with an
infinity of shapes? Surely motion has a source,
says Aristotle; and if we are not to plunge
drearily into an infinite regress, putting back
our problem step by step, endlessly, we must
posit a prime mover unmoved {primum mobile
immotum), sl being incorporeal, indivisible,
spaceless, sexless, passionless, changeless, per-
fect and eternal. God does not create, but he
moves, the world; and he moves it not as a
mechanical force but as the total motive of all
operations in the world; "God moves the world
as the beloved object moves the lover."39 He
is the final cause of nature, the drive and pur-
pose of things, the form of the world; the prin-
ciple of its life, the sum of its vital processes
and powers, the inherent goal of its growth,
the energizing entelechy of the whole. He is
pure energy;40 the Scholastic Actus Purus —
activity per se; perhaps the mystic "Force"
of modern physics and philosophy. He is not
so much a person as a magnetic power.*1
^Ethics, i, 10; Zeller, ii, 329.
^Metaphysics, ix, 7.
4°Ibid, xii, 8.
"Grant, 173.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 35
Yet, with his usual inconsistency, Aristotle
represents God as self-conscious spirit. A rath-
er mysterious spirit; for Aristotle's God never
does anything; he has no desires, no will, no
purpose; he is activity so pure that he never
acts. He is absolutely perfect; therefore he
cannot desire anything; therefore he does noth-
ing. His only occupation is to contemplate
the essence of things; and since he himself fs
the essence of all things, the form of all forms,
his sole employment is the contemplation of
himself.42 Poor Aristotelian God! — he is a roi-
faineant, a do-nothing king; "the king reigns,
but he does not rule." No wonder the British
like Aristotle; his God is obviously copied from
their king.
Or from Aristotle himself. Our philosopher
so loved contemplation that he sacrificed to it
his conception of divinity. His God is of the
quiet Aristotelian type, nothing romantic, with-
drawn to his ivory tower from the strife and
stain of things; all the world away from the
philosopher-kings of Plato, or from the stern
flesh-and-blood reality of Yahveh, or the gentle
and solicitous fatherhood of the Christian God.
VI. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE NATURE OF ART
Aristotle's psychology is marred with similar
obscurity and vacillation. There are many in-
teresting passages: the power of habit is em-
phasized, and is for the first time called "sec-
ond nature"; and the laws of association,
though not developed, find here a definite for-
mulation. But both the crucial problems of
philosophical psychology — the freedom of the
will and the immortality of the soul — are left
^Meta. xii, 8 ; Ethics, x, 8.
36 THE STORY OF
in haze and doubt. Aristotle talks at times
like a determinist — "We cannot directly will
to be different from what we are"; but he goes
on to argue, against determinism, that we can
choose what we shall be, by choosing now the
environment that shall mould us; so we are
free in the sense that we mould our own char-
acters by our choice of friends, books, occupa-
tions, and amusements.43 He does not anticipate
the determinist's ready reply that these forma-
tive choices are themselves determined by our
antecedent character, and this at last by un-
chosen heredity and early environment. He
presses the point that our persistent use of
praise and blame presupposes moral responsi-
bility and free will; it does not occur to him
that the determinist might reach from the
same premises a precisely opposite conclusion
— that praise and blame are given that they
may be part of the factors determining subse-
quent action.
Aristotle's theory of the soul begins with an
interesting definition. The soul is the entire
vital principle of any organism, the sum of its
powers and processes. In plants the soul is
merely a nutritive -and reproductive power; in
animals it is also a sensitive and locomotor
power; in man it is as well the power of reason
and thought.44 The soul, as the sum of the
powers of the body, cannot exist without it; the
two are as form and wax, separable only in
thought, but in reality one organic whole; the
soul is not put into the body like the quick-
silver inserted by Daedalus into the images of
Venus to make "stand-ups" of them. A personal
and particular soul can exist only in its own
"Ethics, ill, 7.
4iDe Amino, ii.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 37
body. Nevertheless the soul is not material,
as Democritus would have it; nor does it all
die. Part of the rational power of the human
soul is passive: it is bound up with memory,
and dies with the body that bore the memory;
but the "active reason," the pure power of
thought, is independent of memory and is un-
touched with decay. The active reason is the
universal as distinguished from the individual
element in man; what survives is not the per-
sonality, with its transitory affections and de-
sires, but mind in its most abstract and im-
personal form.45 In short, Aristotle destroys the
soul in order to give it immortality; the im-
mortal soul is "pure thought," undefiled with
reality, just as Aristotle's God is pure activity,
undefiled with action. Let him who can, be
comforted with this theology. One wonders
sometimes whether this metaphysical eating of
one's cake and keeping it is not Aristotle's sub-
tle way of saving himself from anti-Macedonian
hemlock?
In a safer field of psychology he writes more
originally and to the point, and almost creates
the study of esthetics, the theory of beauty and
art. Artistic creation, says Aristotle, springs
from the formative impulse and the craving for
emotional expression. Essentially the form of
art is an imitation of reality; it holds the mir-
ror up to nature.46 There is in man a pleasure
in imitation, apparently missing in lower ani-
mals. Yet the aim of art is to represent not
the outward appearance of things, but their
inward significance; for this, and not the ex-
ternal mannerism and detail, is their reality.
There may be more human verity in the sternly
**De Anima, ii, 4 ; i, 4 ; iii, 5.
"Poetics, i, 1447.
38 THE STORY OF
classic moderation of the (Edipus Rex than in
all the realistic tears of #.e Trojan Women,
The noblest art appeals to the intellect as
well as to the feelings (as a symphony appeals
to us not only by its harmonies and sequences
but by its structure and development); and
this intellectual pleasure is the highest form
of joy to which any man can rise. Hence a work
of art should aim at form, and above all at
unity, which is the backbone of structure and
the focus of form. A drama, e.g., should have
unity of action: there should be no confusing
sub-plots, nor any digressive episodes.47 But
above all, the function of art is catharsis, puri-
fication: emotions accumulated in us under
the pressure of social restraints, and liable to
sudden issue in unsocial and destructive action,
are touched off and sluiced away in the harm-
less form of theatrical excitement; so tragedy
"through pity and fear, effects the proper pur-
gation of these emotions."48 Aristotle misses
certain features of tragedy (e. g., the conflict of
principles and personalities) ; but in this theory
of catharsis he has made a suggestion endlessly
fertile in the understanding of the almost mys-
tic power of art. It is an illuminating instance
of his ability to enter every field of speculation,
and to adorn whatever he touches.
VII. ETHICS AND THE NATURE OF
HAPPINESS
And yet, as Aristotle developed, and young
men crowded about him to be taught and
47Aristotle gives only one sentence to unity of
time; and does not mention unity of place; so that
the "three unities" commonly foisted upon him are
later inventions (Norwood, Greek Tragedy, p. 42,
note).
48 Poetic s, vi, 1449.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 39
formed, more and more his mind turned from
the details of science to the larger and vaguer
problems of conduct and character. It came to
him more clearly that above all questions of
the physical world there loomed the question
of questions — what is the best life? — what is
life's supreme good? — what is virtue? — how
shall we find happiness and fulfilment?
. He is realistically simple in his ethics. His
scientific training keeps him from the preach-
ment of superhuman ideals and empty counsels
of perfection. "In Aristotle," says Santayana,
"the conception of human nature is perfectly
sound; every ideal has a natural basis, and
everything natural has an ideal development.,,
Aristotle begins by frankly recognizing that the
aim of life is not goodness for its own sake, but
happiness. "For we choose happiness for itself,
and never with a view to anything further;
whereas we choose honor, pleasure, intellect
. . . because we believe that through them
we shall be made happy."49 But he realizes
that to call happiness the supreme good is a
mere truism; what is wanted is some clearer
account of the nature of happiness, and the
way to it. He hopes to find this way by asking
wherein man differs from other beings; and
by presuming that man's happiness will lie in
the full functioning of this specifically human
quality. Now the peculiar excellence of man
is his power of thought; it is by this that he
surpasses and rules all other forms of life; and
as the growth of this faculty has given him his
supremacy, so, we may presume, its develop-
ment will give him fulfilment and happiness.
The chief condition of happiness, then, bar-
ring certain physical pre-requisites, is the life
of reason — the specific glory and power of
"Ethics, i, 7.
40 THE STORY OF
man. Virtue, or rather excellence,60 will depend
on clear judgment, self-control, symmetry of
desire, artistry of means; it is not the posses-
sion of the simple man, nor the gift of innocent
intent, but the achievement of experience in the
fully developed man. Yet there is a road to it,
a guide to excellence, which may save many
detours and delays: it is the middle way, the
golden mean. The qualities of character can be
arranged in triads, in each of which the first
and last qualities will be extremes and vices,
and the middle quality a virtue or an excel-
lence. So between cowardice and rashness is
courage; between stinginess and extravagance
is liberality; between sloth and greed is ambi-
tion; between humility and pride is modesty;
between secrecy and loquacity, honesty; be-
tween moroseness and buffoonery, good humor;
between quarrelsomeness and flattery, friend-
ship; between Hamlet's indecisiveness and
Quixote's impulsiveness is self-control.51
"Right," then, in ethics or conduct, is not dif-
ferent from "right" in mathematics or engineer-
ing; it means correct, fit, what works best to
the best result. The golden mean, however, is
not like the mathematical mean, an exact aver-
age of two precisely calculable extremes; it
fluctuates with the collateral circumstances of
each situation, and discovers itself only to ma-
50The word excellence is probably the fittest trans-
lation of the Greek arete, usually mistranslated
virtue. The reader will avoid misunderstanding
Plato and Aristotle if, where translators write
virtue, he will substitute excellence, ability, or ca-
pacity. The Greek arete is the Roman virtus; both
imply a masculine sort of excellence (Ares, god of
war; vir, a male). Classical antiquity conceived
virtue in terms of man, just as medieval Chris-
tianity conceived it in terms of woman.
6xEthics, i, 7.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 41
ture and flexible reason. Excellence is an art
won by training and habituation: we do not act
rightly because we have virtue or excellence,
but we rather have these because we have
acted rightly; "these virtues are formed in
man by his doing the actions'';52 we are what
we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an
act but a habit: "the good of man is a working
of the soul in the way of excellence in a com-
plete life: . . . for as it is not one swallow or
one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not
one day or a short time that makes a man
blessed and happy/'53
Youth is the age of extremes: "if the young
commit a fault it is always on the side of ex-
cess and exaggeration." The great difficulty
of youth (and of many of youth's elders) is to
get out of one extreme without falling into its
opposite. For one extreme easily passes into
the other, whether through "over-correction" or
elsewise: insincerity doth protest too much,
and humility hovers on the precipice of con-
ceit.54 Those who are consciously at one ex-
treme will give the name of virtue not to the
mean but to the opposite extreme. Sometimes
this is well; for if we are conscious of erring
in one extreme "we should aim at the other,
and so we may reach the middle position, . . .
as men do in straightening bent timber."55 But
unconscious extremists look upon the golden
mean as the greatest vice; they "expel towards
each other the man in the middle position; the
brave man is called rash by the coward, and
cowardly by the rash man, and in other cases
^Ethics, ii, 4.
**md, i, 7.
M"The vanity of Antisthenes" (the Cynic), said
Plato, "peeps out through the holes in his cloak."
^Ethics, ii, 9,
42 THE STORY OF
accordingly";*6 so in modern politics the "lib-
eral" is called "conservative" and "radical" by
the radical and the conservative.
It is obvious that this doctrine of the mean
is the formulation of a characteristic attitude
which appears in almost every system of Greek
philosophy. Plato had had it in mind when he
called virtue harmonious action; Socrates when
he identified virtue with knowledge. The Seven
Wise Men had established the tradition by en-
graving, on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the
motto meclen agan, — nothing in excess. Per-
haps, as Nietzsche claims,07 all these were at-
tempts of the Greeks to check their own vio-
lence and impulsiveness of character; more
truly, they reflected the Greek feeling that pas-
sions are not of themselves vices, but the raw
material of both vice and virtue, according as
they function in excess and disproportion, or
in measure and harmony.58
But the golden mean, says our matter-of-fact
philosopher, is not all of the secret of happi-
ness. We must have, too, a fair degree of
worldly goods: poverty makes one stingy and
grasping; while possessions give one that free-
dom from care and greed which is the source
of aristocratic ease and charm. The noblest of
these external aids to happiness is friendship.
Indeed, friendship is more necessary to the
happy than to the unhappy; for happiness is
™Ethics, ii, 8.
*~The Birth of Tragedy.
68Cf. a sociological formulation of the same idea:
"Values are never absolute, but only relative. . . .
A certain quality it ought to be ; therefore we place
a value upon it, and . . . encourage and culti-
vate it. As a result of this valuation we call it a
virtue ; but if the same quality should become super-
abundant we should call it a vice and try to repress
it." — Carver, Essays in Social Justice.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 43
multiplied by being shared. It is more imr
portant than justice: for "when men are
friends, justice is unnecessary; but when men
are just, friendship is still a boon." "A friend
is one soul in two bodies." Yet friendship im-
plies few friends rather than many; "he who
has many friends has no friend"; and "to be
a friend to many people in the way of perfect
friendship is impossible.,, Fine friendship re-
quires duration rather than fitful intensity;
and this implies stability of character; it is to
altered character that we must attribute the
dissolving kaleidoscope of friendship. And
friendship requires equality; for gratitude
gives it at best a slippery basis. Benefactors
are commonly held to have more friendship for
the objects of their kindness than these for
them.
The account of the matter which satisfies
most persons is that the one are debtors and
the other creditors, . . . and the debtors wish
their creditors out of the way, while the cred-
itors are anxious that their debtors should be
preserved. Aristotle rejects this interpreta-
tion; he prefers to believe that the greater
tenderness of the benefactor is to be explained
on the analogy of the artist's affection for his
work, or the mother's for her child. We love
that which we have made.69
And yet, though external goods and relation-
ships are necessary to happiness, its essence
remains within us, in rounded knowledge and
clarity of soul. Surely sense pleasure is not
the way: that road is a circle; as Socrates
phrased the coarser Epicurean idea, we scratch
that we may itch, and itch that we may scratch.
Nor can a political career be the way; for
therein we walk subject to the whims of the
^Ethics, viii and ix.
44 THE STORY OF
people; and nothing is so fickle as the crowd.
No, happiness must be a pleasure of the mind;
and we may trust it only when it comes from*
the pursuit or the capture of truth. "The opera-
tion of the intellect . . . aims at no end be-
yond itself, and finds in itself the pleasure
which stimulates it to further operation; and
since the attributes of self-sufficiency, un-
weariedness, and capacity for rest, . . . plainly
belong to this occupation, in it must lie perfect
happiness."60
Aristotle's ideal man, however, is no mere
metaphysician. "He does not expose himself
needlessly to danger, since there are few things
for which he cares sufficiently; but he is will-
ing, in great crises, to give even his life, —
knowing that under certain conditions it is not
worth while to live. He is of a disposition to
do men service, though he is ashamed to have
a service done to him. To confer a kindness is
a mark of superiority; to receive one is a mark
of subordination . . . He does not take part in
public displays ... He is open in his dislikes
and preferences; he talks and acts frankly, be-
cause of his contempt for men and things . . .
He is never fired with admiration, since there
is nothing great in his eyes. He cannot live in
complaisance with others, except it be a friend;
complaisance is the characteristic of a slave
. . . He never feels malice, and always forgets
and passes over injuries . . . He is not fond of
talking . . . It is no concern of his that he
should be praised, or that others should be
blamed. He does not speak evil of others, even
of his enemies, unless it be to themselves. His
carriage is sedate, his voice deep, his speech
measured; he is not given to hurry, for he is
concerned about only a few things; he is not
^Ethics, x, 7.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY
prone to vehemence, for he thinks nothing very
important. A shrill voice and hasty steps come
to a man through care . . . He bears the acci-
dents of life with dignity and grace, making
the best of his circumstances, like a skillful
general who marshals his limited forces with
all the strategy of war . . . He is his own best
friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas
the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst
enemy, and is afraid of solitude." x
Such is the Superman of Aristotle.
VIII. POLITICS
1. COMMUNISM AND CONSERVATISM
To so aristocratic an ethic there naturally
follows (or was the sequence the other way?)
a severely aristocratic political philosophy. It
was not to be expected that the tutor of an
emperor and the husband of a princess would
have any exaggerated attachment to the com-
mon people, or even to the mercantile bour-
geoisie; our philosophy is where our treasure
lies. But further, Aristotle was honestly con-
servative because of the turmoil and disaster
that had come out of Athenian democracy; like
a typical scholar he longed for order, secur-
ity, and peace; this, he felt, was no time for
political extravaganzas. Radicalism is a luxury
of stability; we may dare to change things only
when things lie steady under our hands. And
in .general, says Aristotle, "the habit of lightly
changing the laws is an evil; and when the
advantage of change is small, some defects
whether in the law or in the ruler had better
be met with philosophic toleration. The citizen
will gain less by the change than he will lose
by acquiring the habit of disobedience."62 The
^Ethics, iv, 3. 62Politics, ii, 8.
46 THE STORY OF
power of the law to secure observance, and
therefore to maintain political stability, rests
very largely on custom; and "to pass lightly
from old laws to new ones is a certain means
of weakening the inmost essence of all law
whatever."63 "Let us not disregard the experi-
ence of ages: surely, in the multitude of years,
these things, if they were good, would not
have remained unknown/'64
"These things" of course, means chiefly
Plato's communistic republic. Aristotle fights
the realism of Plato about universals, and the
idealism of Plato about government. He finds
many dark spots in the picture painted by the
Master. He does not relish the barrack-like
continuity of contact to which Plato apparently
condemned his guardian philosophers; con-
servative though he is, Aristotle values indi-
vidual quality, privacy, and liberty above social
efficiency and power. He would not care to
call every contemporary brother or sister, nor
every elder person father or mother; if all are
your brothers, none is; and "how much better
it is to be the real cousin of somebody than to
be a son after Plato's fashion!"05 In a state
having women and children in common, "love
will be watery. ... Of the two qualities which
chiefly inspire regard and affection — that a
thing is your own, and that it awakens real
love in you — neither can exist in such a state"
as Plato's.66
Perhaps there was, in the dim past, a com-
munistic society, when the family was the only
state, and pasturage or simple tillage the only
form of life. But "in a more divided state of
society," where the division of labor into un-
equally important functions elicits and en-
^Politics, v, 8. ^Politics, ii, 3.
"Ibid, ii, 5. MIbid., ii, 4.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 4 7
larges the natural inequality of men, com-
munism breaks down because it provides no
adequate incentive for the exertion of superior
abilities. The stimulus of gain is necessary to
arduous work; and the stimulus of ownership
is necessary to proper industry, husbandry and
care. When everybody owns everything no-
body will take care of anything. ''That which
is common to the greatest number has the least
attention bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks
chiefly of his own, hardly ever of the public,
interest."67 And "there is always a difficulty in
living together, or having things in common,
but especially in having common property. The
partnerships of fellow-travelers" (to say noth-
ing of the arduous communism of marriage),
"are an example to the point: for they gen-
erally fall out by the way, and quarrel about
any trifle that turns up."08
"Men readily listen" to Utopias, "and are
easily induced to believe that in some wonder-
ful manner everybody will become everybody's
friend, especially wiien someone is heard de-
nouncing the evils now existing, . . . which
are said to arise out of the possession of pri-
vate property. These evils, however, arise from
quite another source — the wickedness of hu-
man nature."99 "Political science does not make
men, but must take them as they come from
nature."70
And human nature, the human average, is
^Politics, ii, 3.
™IMd., ii, 5.
*9Ibid. Note that conservatives are pessimists,
and radicals are optimists, about human nature,
which is probably neither so good nor so bad as
they would like to believe, and may be not so much
nature as early training and environment.
™Ibid.f i, 10.
48 THE STORY OF
nearer to the beast than to the god. The great
majority of men are natural dunces and slug-
gards; in any system whatever these men will
sink to the bottom; and to help them with
state subsidies is "like pouring water into a
leaking cask." Such people must be ruled in
politics and directed in industry; with their
consent if possible, without it if necessary.
"From the hour of their birth some are marked
out for subjection, and others for command."71
"For he who can foresee with his mind is by
nature intended to be lord and master; and he
who can work only with his body is by nature
a slave."72 The slave is to the master what the
body is to the mind; and as the body should
be subject to the mind, so "it is better for all
inferiors that they should be under the rule of
a master."73 "The slave is a tool with life in
it, the tool is a lifeless slave." And then our
hard-hearted philosopher, with a glimmer of
possibilities which the Industrial Revolution
has opened to our hands, writes for a moment
with wistful hope: "If every instrument would
accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipat-
ing the will of others, ... if the shuttle would
weave, or the plectrum touch the lyre, without
a hand to guide them, then chief workmen
would not need assistants nor masters slaves."7*
This philosophy typifies the Greek disdain
^Politics, i, 5.
^Ibid.. i, 2. Perhaps slave is too harsh a ren-
dering of doulos; the word was merely a frank
recognition of a brutal fact which in our day is
perfumed with talk about the dignity of labor and
the brotherhood of man ; in nothing do we so far
surpass the ancients as in making phrases.
™Ibid„ i, 5.
"Ibid., i, 4.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 49
for manual labor. Such work in Athens had not
become so complicated as it is today, when the
intelligence demanded in many manual trades
is at times much greater than that required
for the operations of the lower middle class,
and even a college professor may look upon an
automobile mechanic (in certain exigencies) as
a very god; manual work was then merely
manual, and Aristotle leoked down upon it,
from the heights of philosophy, as belonging to
men without minds, as only fit for slaves, and
fitting men only for slavery. Manual labor, he
believes, dulls and deteriorates the mind, and
leaves neither time nor energy for political in-
telligence; it seems to Aristotle a reasonable
corollary that only persons of some leisure
should have a voice in government.75 "The best
form of state will not admit mechanics to
citizenship. ... At Thebes there was a law
that no man could hold office who had not re-
tired from business ten years before/'76 Even
merchants and financiers are classed by Aris-
totle among slaves. "Retail trade is unnatural,
. . . and a mode by which men gain from one
another. The most hated sort of such exchange
is . . . usury, which makes a gain out of
money itself, and not from its natural use. For
money was intended as an instrument of ex-
change, and as the mother of interest. This
usury (tokos), which means the birth of money
from money, ... is of all models of gain the
most unnatural."77 Money should not breed.
Hence "the discussion of the theory of finance
is not unworthy of philosophy; but to be en-
'5Pohtics, ill, 3 ; vii, 8.
™Ibid., iii, 5.
^Ibid., i, 10. This view influenced the medie-
val prohibition of interest.
50 THE STORY OF
gaged in finance, or in money-making, is un-
worthy of a free man."78
2. MARRIAGE AND EDUCATION
"Woman is to man as the slave to the master,
the manual to the mental worker, the bar-
barian to the Greek. Woman is an unfinished
man, left standing on a lower step in the scale
of development.79 The male is by nature su-
perior, and the female inferior; the one rules
and the other is ruled; and this principle ex-
tends, of necessity, to all mankind." Woman
is weak of will, and therefore incapable of in-
dependence of character or position; her best
condition is a quiet home life in which, while
ruled by the man in her external relations, she
may be in domestic affairs supreme. Women
should not be made more like men, as in
Plato's republic; rather the dissimilarity should
be increased; nothing is so attractive as the
different. "The courage of a man and that of
a woman are not, as Socrates supposed, the
same: the courage of a man is shown in com-
manding; that of a woman in obeying. ... As
the poet says, 'Silence is a woman's glory/ ,,8°
'^Politics, i, 11. Aristotle adds that philosophers
could succeed in such fields if they cared to de-
scend into them ; and he proudly points to Thales,
who, foreseeing a good harvest, bought up all the
reapers in his city, and then, at harvest time, sold
them at his own sweet price ; whereupon Aristotle
observes that the universal secret of great riches
is the creation of a monopoly.
"De Gen. Animalium, ii, 3; Hist. Animalium, viii,
1 ; Pol., i, 5. Cf. Weininger ; and Meredith's
"Woman will be the last thing civilized by man"
(Ordeal of Richard Fever el y p. 1). It appears,
however, that man was, (or will be) the last thing
civilized by woman ; for the great civilizing agen-
cies are the family and a settled economic life ;
and both of these are the creations of woman.
so Politics, i, 13.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 51
Aristotle seems to suspect that this ideal
enslavement of woman is a rare achievement
for man, and that as often as not the scepter
is with the tongue rather than with the arm.
As if to give the male an indispensable advan-
tage, he advises him to defer marriage till the
vicinity of thirty-seven, and then' to marry a
lass of some twenty years. A girl who is
rounding the twenties is usually the equal of
a man of thirty, but may perhaps be managed
by a seasoned warrior of thirty-seven. What
attracts Aristotle to this matrimonial mathe-
matics is the consideration that two such dis-
parate persons will lose their reproductive
power and passions at approximately the same
time. "If the man is still able to beget chil-
dren while the woman is unable to bear them,
or vice versa, quarrels and differences will
arise. . . . Since the time of generation is
commonly limited wTithin the age of seventy
years in the man, and fifty in the woman, the
commencement of their union should conform
to these periods. The union of male and fe-
male when too young is bad for the creation
of children; in all animals the offspring of the
young are small and ill-developed, and gen-
erally female." Health is more important than
love. Further, "it conduces to temperance not
to marry too soon; for women who marry early
are apt to be wanton; and in men too the
bodily frame is stunted if they marry while
they are growing."81 These matters should not
be left to youthful caprice, they should be
under state supervision and control: the state
should determine the minimum and maximum
^Politics, vii, 16. It is apparent that Aristotle
has in mind only the temperance of women ; the
moral effect of deferred marriage upon men does
not seem to agitate him.
52 THE STORY OF
ages of marriages for each sex, the best sea-
sons for conception, and the rate of increase in
population. If the natural rate of increase is
too high, the cruel practice of infanticide may-
be replaced by abortion; and "let abortion be
procured before sense and life have begun."82
There is an ideal number of population for
every state, varying with its position and re-
sources. "A state when composed of too few
is not, as a state should be, self-sufficing; while
if it has too many ... it becomes a nation
and not a state, and is almost incapable of
constitutional government,"53 or of ethnic or
political unity. Probably anything in excess of
a population of 10,000 is undesirable.
Education, too, should be in the hands of the
state. "That which most contributes to the
permanence of constitutions is the adaptation
of education to the form of government. . . .
The citizen should be moulded to the form of
government under which he lives."84 By state
control of schools we might divert men from
industry and trade to agriculture; and we
might train men, while keeping property pri-
vate, to open their possessions to discriminated
common use. "Among good men, with respect
to the use of property, the proverb will hold,
that 'friends should have all things in com-
mon/ ,,S5 But above all the growing citizen
must be taught obedience to law else a state is
impossible. "It has been well said that 'he
who has never learned to obey cannot be a
good commander.' . . . The good citizen should
be capable of both." And only a state system
of schools can achieve social unity amid ethnic
heterogeneity; the state is a plurality which
must be made into a unity and a community by
S2Politics. **Ibid., v. 9 ; viii, 1.
"Ibid., vii. 4. *~»Ibid.t vi, 4 ; u, 5.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 53
education.88 Let youth be taught, too, the
great boon it has in the state, the unappreci-
ated security which comes of social organiza-
tion, the freedom that comes of law. "Man,
when perfected, is the best of animals; but
when isolated he is the worst of all; for injus-
tice is more dangerous when armed, and man
is equipped at birth with the weapon of intelli-
gence, and with qualities of character which
he may use for the vilest ends. Wherefore if
he have not virtue he is the most unholy and
savage of animals, full of gluttony and lust."
And only social control can give him virtue.
Through speech man evolved society; through
society, intelligence; through intelligence, or-
der; and through order, civilization. Ir. such
an ordered state the individual has a thousand
opportunities and avenues of development open
to him which a solitary life would never give.
"To live alone," then, "one must be either an
animal or a god/'87
Hence revolution is almost always unwise; it
may achieve some good, but at the cost of
many evils, the chief of which is the disturb-
ance, and perhaps the dissolution, of that social
order and structure on which every political
good depends. The direct consequences of
revolutionary innovations may be calculable
and salutary; but the indirect are generally
incalculable, and not seldom disastrous. "They
who take only a few points into account find it
easy to pronounce judgment"; and a man can
make up his mind quickly if he has only a little
to make up. "Young men are easily deceived,
for they are quick to hope." The suppression
^Politics, iii, 4 ; ii, 5.
flIbid., i, 2. "Or," adds Nietzsche, who takes
nearly all of his political philosophy from Aristotle,
"one must be both — that is, a philosopher."
54 THE STORY OF
of long-established habits brings the overthrow
of innovating government because the old
habits persist among the people; characters
are not as easily changed as laws. If a consti-
tution is to be permanent, all the parts of a
society must desire it to be maintained. There-
fore a ruler who would avoid revolution should
prevent extremes of poverty and wealth, — "a
condition which is most often the result of
war"; he should (like the English) encourage
colonization as an outlet for a dangerously con-
gested population; and he should foster and
practice religion. An autocratic ruler particu-
larly "should appear to be earnest in the wor-
ship of the gods; for if men think that a ruler
is religious and reveres the gods, they are less
afraid of suffering injustice at his hands, and
are less disposed to conspire against him, since
they believe that the gods themselves are fight-
ing on his side."88
3. DEMOCRACY AND ARISTOCRACY
Wi*h such safeguards in religion, in educa-
tion, and in the ordering of family life, almost
any of the traditional forms of government will
serve. All forms have good and bad com-
mingled in them, and are severally adapted to
various conditions. Theoretically, the ideal
form of government would be the centraliza-
tion of all political power in the one best man.
Homer is right: "Bad is the lordship of many;
let one be your ruler and master." For such a
man law would be rather an instrument than
a limit: "for men of eminent ability there is
no law — they are themselves a law. Anyone
would be ridiculous who should attempt to
make laws for them; they would probably re-
tort what, in the fable of AntiSthenes, the lions
^Politics, iv, 5 ; ii, 9 ; v, 7 ; ii, 11.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 55
said to the hares when, in the council of
beasts, the latter began haranguing and claim-
ing equality for all — "Where are your claws?"89
But in practice monarchy is usually the worst
form of government, for great strength and
great virtue are not near allied. Hence the
best practicable polity is aristocracy, the rule
of the informed and capable few. Government
is too complex a thing to have its issues de-
cided by number, when lesser issues are re-
served for knowledge and ability. "As the
physician ought to be judged by the physician,
so ought men in general to be judged by their
peers. . . . Now does not this same principle
apply to elections? For a right election can
only be made by those who have knowledge: a
geometrician, e.g., will choose rightly in mat-
ters of geometry; or a pilot in matters of
navigation. . . . 9a So that neither the election
of magistrates nor the calling of them to ac-
count should be entrusted to the many."
The difficulty with hereditary aristocracy is
that it has no permanent economic base; the
eternal recurrence of the nouveaux riches puts
political office sooner or later at the disposal
of the highest bidder. "It is surely a bad thing
that the greatest offices . . . should be bought.
The law which permits this abuse makes
wealth of more account than ability, and the
w7hole state becomes avaricious. For whenever
the chiefs of the state deem anything honor-
able, the other citizens are sure to follow their
hsPolitics, iii, 13. Aristotle probably had Alex-
ander or Philip in mind while writing this passage,
just as Nietzsche seems to have been influenced
towards similar conclusions by the alluring career
of Napoleon.
*>lbid., iii, 11. Cf. the modern argument for
"occupational representation."
56 THE STORY OP
example" (the "prestige imitation" of modern
social psychology); "and where ability has not
the first place there is no real aristocracy."91
Democracy is usually the result of a revolu-
tion against plutocracy. "Love of gain in the
ruling classes tends constantly to diminish
their number" (Marx's "elimination of the mid-
dle class"), "and so to strengthen the masses,
who in the end set upon their masters and
establish democracies." This "rule by the poor"
has some advantages. "The people, though in-
dividually they may be worse judges than those
who have special knowledge, are collectively as
good. Moreover, there are some artists whose
works are best jjudged not by themselves alone,
but by those who do not possess the art; e.g.,
the user or master of a house will be a better
judge of it than the builder; . . . and the guest
will be a better judge of a feast than the
cook."92 And "the many are more incorruptible
than the few; they are like the greater quan-
tity of water which is less easily spoiled than
a little. The individual is liable to be overcome
by anger, or by some other passion, and then
his judgment is necessarily perverted; but it
is hardly to be supposed that a great number
of persons would all get into a passion and go
wrong at the same moment."93
^Politics, ii, 11.
92Ibid., iii, 15, 8, 11. In these passages we
have a fair outline of a desirable amendment to
democracy ; administration • by experts democrati-
cally chosen by occupational ballot, and pursuing
ends determined by the whole community.
^Ibid., iii, 15. Tarde, Le Bon and other social
psychologists assert precisely the contrary ; and
though they exaggerate the vices of the crowd,
they might find better support than Aristotle in
the behavior of the Athenian Assembly 430-330
B. C.
ARISTOT-LE'S PHILOSOPHY 5T
Yet democracy is on the whole inferior to
aristocracy.94 For it is based on a false assump-
tion of equality; it "arises out of the notion
that those who are equal in one respect (e.g.,
in respect of the law) are equal in all respects;
because men are equally free they claim %p be
absolutely equal." The upshot is that ability is
sacrificed to number, while numbers are
manipulated by trickery. Because the people
are so easily misled, and so fickle in their
views, the ballot should be limited to the in-
telligent. What we need is a combination of
aristocracy and democracy.
Constitutional government offers this happy
union. It is not the best conceivable govern-
ment — that would be an aristocracy of educa-
tion— but it is the best possible state. "We
must ask what is the best constitution for most
states, and the best life for most men; neither
assuming a standard of excellence which will
be above ordinary persons, nor an education
exceptionally favored by nature or circum-
stance, nor yet an ideal state which will be
only an inspiration; but having in mind such a
life as the majority will be able to share, and
a form of government to which states in gen-
eral can attain." "It is necessary to begin by
assuming a principle of general application,
namely, that that part of the state which de-
sires the continuance of the government must
be stronger than that which does not";95 and
strength consists neither in number alone, nor
in property alone, nor in military or political
ability alone, but in a combination of these, so
that regard has to be taken of "freedom, wealth,
culture and noble birth, as well as of mere
numerical superiority." Now where shall we
^Politics, ii, 9. *Ibid., iv, 11, 10.
58 THE STORY OP
find such an economic majority to support our
constitutional government? Perhaps best in
the middle class: here again we have the golden
mean, just as constitutional government itself
would be a mean between democracy and
aristocracy. Our state will be sufficiently
democratic if the road to every office is open
to all; and sufficiently aristocratic if the
offices themselves are closed except to those
who have traveled the road and arrived fully
prepared. From whatever angle we approach
our eternal political problem we monotonously
reach the same conclusion: that the community
should determine the ends to be pursued, but
that only experts should select and apply the
means; that choice should be democratically
spread, but that office should be rigidly re-
served for the equipped and winnowed best.
IX. CRITICISM
What shall we say of this philosophy? Per-
haps nothing rapturous. It is difficult to be
enthusiastic about Aristotle, because it was dif-
ficult for him to be enthusiastic about any-
thing; and si vis me flere, primum tibi
-flendum,™ His motto is nil admirari — to admire
or marvel at nothing; and we hesitate to vio-
late his motto in his case. We miss in him the
reforming zeal of Plato, the angry love of
humanity which made the great idealist de-
nounce his fellow-men. We miss the daring
originality of his teacher, the lofty imagination,
the capacity for generous delusion. And yet,
after reading Plato, nothing could be so salu-
tary for us as Aristotle's skeptic calm.
Let us summarize our disagreement. We are
bothered, at the outset, with his insistence on
*c"If you wish me to weep you must weep first" —
Horace (Ars Poetica) to actors and writers.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 59
logic. We want him to describe his ideal, and
he describes a perfect syllogism; not content
with that he makes his syllogism judge of our
ideals. He thinks the syllogism a description
of man's way of reasoning, whereas it merely
describes man's way of dressing up his reason-
ing for the persuasion of another mind; he sup-
poses that thought begins with premises and
seeks their conclusions, when actually thought
begins with hypothetical conclusions and seeks
their justifying premises, — and seeks them best
by the observation of particular events under
the controlled and isolated conditions of ex-
periment. Yet how foolish we should be to
forget tha't two thousand years have changed
merely the incidentals of Aristotle's logic, that
Occam and Bacon and Whewell and Mill and a
hundred others have but found spots in his sun,
and that Aristotle's creation of this new disci-
pline of thought, and his firm establishment of
its essential lines, remain among the lasting
achievements of the human mind.
It is again the absence of experiment and
fruitful hypothesis that leaves Aristotle's
natural science a mass of undigested observa-
tions. His specialty is the collection and classi-
fication of data; in every field he wields his
categories and produces catalogues. But side
by side with this bent and talent for observa-
tion goes a Platonic addiction to metaphysics;
this trips him up in every science, and inveigles
him into the wildest presuppositions. Here in-
deed was the great defect of the Greek mind:
it was not disciplined; it -lacked limiting and
steadying traditions; it moved freely in an un-
charted field, and ran too readily to theories
and conclusions. So Greek philosophy leaped
on to heights yet unreached again, while Greek
science limped behind. Our modern danger is
precisely opposite; inductive data fall upon us
60 THE STORY OF
from all sides like the lava of Vesuvius; we
suffocate with uncoordinated facts; our minds
are overwhelmed with sciences breeding and
multiplying into specialistic chaos for want of
synthetic thought and a unifying philosophy.
We are all mere fragments of what a man
might be.
Aristotle's ethics is a branch of his logic: the
ideal life is like a proper syllogism. He gives
us a handbook of propriety rather than a
stimulus to improvement. An ancient critic
spoke of him as "moderate to excess." An
extremist might call the Ethics the champion
collection of platitudes in all literature; and an
Anglophobe would be consoled with the thought
that Englishmen in their youth had done ad-
vance penance for the imperialistic sins of their
adult years, since both at Cambridge and at
Oxford they had been compelled to read every
word of the Nicomachean Ethics. One longs to
mingle fresh green Leaves of Grass with these
drier pages, to add Whitman's exhilarating
justification of sense joy to Aristotle's exalta-
tion of a purely intellectual happiness. One
wonders if this Aristotelian ideal of immoder-
ate moderation has had anything to do with the
colorless virtue, the starched perfection, the ex-
pressionless good form, of the British aristoc-
racy. Matthew Arnold tells us that in his
time Oxford tutors looked upon the Ethics as
infallible. For three hundred years this book
and the Politics have formed the ruling British,
mind, perhaps to great and noble achievements,
but certainly to a hard and cold efficiency: one
wonders what the result would have been if the
masters of the greatest of empires had been
nurtured, instead, on the holy fervor and the
constructive passion of the Republic.
After all, Aristotle was not quite Greek; he
had been settled and formed before coming to
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 61
Athens; there was nothing Athenian about him,
nothing of the hasty and inspiriting experi-
mentalism which made Athens throb with
political clan and at last helped to subject her
to a unifying despot. He realized too com-
pletely, the Delphic command to avoid excess:
he is so anxious to pare away extremes that at
last nothing is left. He is so fearful of dis-
order that he forgets to be fearful of slavery;
he is so timid of uncertain change that he pre-
fers a certain changelessness that near re-
sembles death. He lacks that Heraclitean sense
of flux which justifies the conservative in be-
lieving that all permanent change is gradual,
but justifies the radical in believing that no
changelessness is permanent. He forgets that
Plato's communism was meant only for the
elite, the unselfish and ungreedy few; and he
comes deviously to a Platonic result when he
says that though property should be private its
use should be as far as possible common. He
does not see (and perhaps he could not be
expected in his early day to see) that private
control of the means of production was stimu-
lating and salutary only when these means
were so simple as to be purchasable by any
man; and that their increasing complexity and
cost lead to a dangerous centralization of own-
ership and power, and to an artificial and
finally disruptive inequality.
But after all, these are quite inessential
criticisms of what remains the most marvelous
and influential system of thought ever put to-
gether by any single mind. It may be doubted
if any other thinker has contributed so much
to the enlightenment of the world. Every
later age has drawn upon Aristotle, and stood
upon his shoulders to see the truth. The varied
and magnificent culture of Alexandria found its
62 THE STORY OF
scientific inspiration in him. His Organon
played a central role in shaping the minds of
the medieval barbarians into disciplined and
consistent thought. The other works, trans-
lated by Nestorian Christians into Syriac in the
fifth century A. D., and thence into Arabic and
Hebrew in the tenth century, and thence into
Latin towards 1225, turned scholasticism from
its eloquent beginnings in Abelard to encyclo-
pedic completion in Thomas Aquinas (1227-
1274). The Crusaders brought back more ac-
curate Greek copies of the philosopher's texts;
and the Greek scholars of Constantinople
brought further Aristotelian treasures with
them when, after 1453, they fled from the be-
sieging Turks. The works of Aristotle came to
be for European philosophy what the Bible was
for theology — an almost infallible text, with
solutions for every problem. In 1215 the Papal
legate at Paris forbade teachers to lecture on
his works; in 1231 Gregory IX appointed a
commission to expurgate him; by 1260 he was
de rigueur in every Christian school, and
ecclesiastical assemblies penalized deviations
from his views. Chaucer describes his student
as happy by having
At his beddes hed
Twenty bookes clothed in blake or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie j97
and in the first circles of Hell, says Dante,
I saw the Master there of those who know,
Amid the philosophic family,
By all admired, and by all reverenced ;
There Plato too I saw, and Socrates,
Who stood beside him closer than the rest.98
Such lines give us some inkling of the honor
•7Quoted by Benn, i, 276.
wInferno, iv, 13 If.
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY 63
which a thousand years offered to the Stagirite.
Not till new instruments, accumulated observa-
tions, and patient experiments remade science
and gave irresistible weapons to Occam and
Ramus, to Roger and Francis Bacon, was the
reign of Aristotle ended. No other mind had
for so long a time ruled the intellect of man-
kind.
X. LATER LIFE AND DEATH
Meanwhile life had become unmanageably
complicated for our philosopher. He found him-
self on the one hand embroiled with Alexander
for protesting against the execution of Cal-
listhenes (a nephew of Aristotle), who had re-
fused to worship Alexander as a god; and
Alexander had answered the protest by hinting
that it was quite within his omnipotence to
put even philosophers to death. At the same
time Aristotle was busy defending Alexander
among the Athenians. He preferred Greek
solidarity to city patriotism, and thought cul-
ture and science would flourish better when
petty sovereignties and disputes were ended;
and he saw in Alexander what Goethe was to
see in Napoleon — the philosophic unity of a
chaotic and intolerably manifold world. The
Athenians, hungering for liberty, growled at
Aristotle, and became bitter when Alexander
had a statue of the philosopher put up in the
heart of the hostile city. In his turmoil we get
an impression of Aristotle quite contrary to
that left upon us by his Ethics: here is a man
not cold and inhumanly calm, but a fighter,
pursuing his Titanic work in a circle of ene-
mies on every side. The successors of Plato at
the Academy, the oratorical school of Isocrates.
and the angry crowds that hung on Demos-
thenes' acid eloquence, intrigued and clamored
for his exile or his death.
64 ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY
And then, suddenly (323 B. C), Alexander
died. Athens went wild with patriotic joy;
the Macedonian party was overthrown, and
Athenian independence was proclaimed. An-
tipater, successor of Alexander and intimate
friend of Aristotle, marched upon the rebellious
city. Most of the Macedonian party fled.
Eurymedon, a chief priest, brought in an in-
dictment against Aristotle, charging him with
having taught that prayer and sacrifice were
of no avail. Aristotle saw himself fated to be
tried by juries and crowds incomparably more
hostile than those that had murdered Socrates.
Very wisely, he left the city, saying that he
would not give Athens a chance to sin a sec-
ond time against philosophy. There was no
cowardice in this; an accused person at Athens
had always the option of preferring exile."
Arrived at Chalcis, Aristotle fell ill; Diogenes
Laertius tells us that the old philosopher, in
utter disappointment with the turn of all things
against him, committed suicide by drinking
hemlock.100 However induced, his illness proved
fatal; and a few months after leaving Athens
(322 B. C.) the lonely Aristotle died.
In the same year, and at the same age, sixty-
two, Demosthenes, greatest of Alexander's
enemies, drank poison. Within twelve months
Greece had lost her greatest ruler, her greatest
orator, and her greatest philosopher. The glory
that had been Greece faded now in the dawn of
the Roman sun; and the grandeur that was
Rome was the pomp of power rather than the
light of thought. And then that grandeur too
decayed, that little light went almost out. For
a thousand years darkness brooded over the
face of Europe. All the world awaited the
resurrection of philosophy.
^Grote, 20. 100Grote, 22; Zeller, i, 37 note.