MASTER NEGATIVE NO. 91-80364 MICROFILMED 1991 COLLMBIA UNIVERSITY LIE R.\RrES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundaiioui of Western Civilization Preservation Project • * Funded by the ATIONAL ENDOWiVlENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia Universit}^ Library^ COPYRIGHT STATETvffiNT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reser\^es the right to refuse to accept a cop> order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: GRANT, ALEXANDER, SIR TITLE: ARISTOTLE PLA CE : EDINBURGH, DA TE : 1877 COLUMIUA r \!\'!-R'^TTY T.TBKARTES ] ' R i ^h 1 ' R\' A 11 i, ' A DEPARTMENT yiHLiOCRM'HK \ 1 1 ( R O FORM I ARGET Master Negative U Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record ' 88Ar51 BG rv «4 ntn« Rest net ions on Use: 1. Aristoteles. Ubrary of Congress PA3000.A6A7 ta36bli I, K"^ tj -'J TECTINICAT MICROFORM DATA [•iLM SIZH: _^S- iMACKPLACl'MENT; lA ^gs on Wood. 6s. TxTTionniTnTfiRV TFXT-BOOK OF ZOOLOGY, FOR the ^^l!l°c^y.*i™cll A New Edition, revised and enlarged. wHl, 15. Engravings. 3s. TEXT-BOOKS OF GEOLOGY AND PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. By DAVID PAGE, LL.D., «tc, ,.,..r«,or cr Oeolasy in .he Dur-an, Vni.^ CoUes:e o, Physical Sde.ec. Neweastl. .. ,r.xTnfn TFVTKOOK OF GEOLOGY, Descriptive Siith Edition, revised and fularsied. .^ M. , TMTROmTCTORY TEXT-BOOK OF GEOLOGY. With ^^™iS-u Woil. aid Glossarial Index. Tenth Mit.on^ .s. *1. THE CRUST OF THE EARTH ; A Handy Outline <.v fu-nioov Sixth Edition. Is. ^^-r» . titt\' ADvInCED TEXT-BOOK of physical GEOGRAPHY With Engravings. Second E.litioa Ss. „„„„Tr.4T rVO \ 1 ( -«« WTLLIAM BI.ACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London. ^ W | Ancient Classics for English Readers EDfrED BY THE REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. {SUPPLEMENTARY SERIES.) AKISTOTLE The Volumes published of this Series contain HOMER : THE ILIAD, by the Editor. HOMER : THE ODYSSEY, by the Same. HERODOTUS, by George C. Swayne, M.A. C.-ESAR, BY Anthony Tkollope. VIRGIL, BY THE Editor. HORACE, BY Theodore Martin. ^SCHYLUS, BY Reginald S. Copleston, M.A. XENOPHON, BY Sir Alex. Grant, Bart., LL.D. CICERO, BY THE Editor. SOPHOCLES, BY Clifton \V. Collins, M.A. PLINY, BY A. Church, M.A., and W. J. Brodribb, M.A. EURIPIDES, BY William Bodham Donne. JUVENAL, BY Edward Walford, M.A. ARISTOPHANES, by the Editor. HESIOD AND THEOGNIS, by James Davies, M.A. PLAUTUS AND TERENCE, by the Editor. TACITUS, BY William Bodham Donne. LUCIAN, BY the Editor. PLATO, BY Clifton W. Collins. THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, by Lord Neavls. SUPPLEMENTARY SERIES. The Volumes no^i.u published contain 1. LIVY, by the Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M.A. 2. OVID, BY THE Rev. A. Church, M.A. 3. CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, & PROPERTIUS, by the Rev. James Davies, M.A. 4. DEMOSTHENES, by the Rev. W. J. Brodribb, M.A. Other Volumes are in preparation. I \ i \ f^ ARISTOTLE BY SIR ALEXANDER GRANT, BART., LL.D. PRINCIPAL OF THE LMVERSITY OF EDINBURGH y CGI..CO.LL N WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXVII CONTENTS. CHAr. 1. THE LIFE OF ARISTOTLE, II II. THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE, II "^ III. THE *0IIGAN0N' OF ARISTOTLE, . II IV. Aristotle's ' rhetoric ' and * art of POETRY,' V. Aristotle's * ethics,' ^vi. Aristotle's * politics,' It VII. THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE, n V^III. THE BIOLOGY OF AllISTOTLE, il^ IX. THE METAPHYSICS OF ARISTOTLE, •I X. ARISTOTLE SINCE THE CHRISTIAN ERA, II ti P.VGE 1 30 50 77 100 117 130 146 161' 179 4 11620 ( V } -.roT.T,. AEISTOTLE. ,Si I. \ \ >■ \ V. APPEARS AS A NOMINALIST. nothing is reaUy good or beautiful in the world of sense, but what we caU good or beautiful things are those which have a faint semblance to the Idea of the good or the beautiful, and thus bring back to our souls the remembrance of those Ideas, which we once saw in our ante - natal condition ; that the Ideas or Forms are archetypes, in accordance with which the Creator framed this world ; that they are not only the cause of qualities and attributes in things, such as good- ness, justice, equality, and the like, but also they are heads of classes or universals, and that they alone have complete reality, while the individuals, constitut- ing the classes at the head of which they stand, only " participate '* to a certain extent in real existence. Such were some of the features of Plato's celebrated doctrine of Ideas. That he did not himself hold very strongly or dogmatically to its details, may be judged from the fact that in two of his dialogues (* Par- menides ' and ' Sophist ') he himself points out, and does not remove, many difficulties which attach to them. But the main gist of the doctrine was to assert what is called Realism ; and this, under one form or another, Plato always maintained. When Aristotle attacked the doctrine of Ideas, there was the first begin- ning of that controversy between the Eealists and the Nominalists, which so much excited the minds of men in the middle ages. Realism, making reason indepen- dent of the senses, asserts that the universal is more real than the particular, — that, for instance, the universal idea of " man " in general is more real, and can be grasped by the mind with greater certainty, than the concep- If 10 ''TRUTH IS DEARER TUAN PLATO." tion of any individual man. Nominalism, on the con- trary, asserts the superior reality of individual objects, and turns the universal into a mere name. Now it was quite natural for Aristotle, with his tendency to- wards physical science and experiment, and the amass- ing of particular facts, to take the Nominalist view, : so^'far as to assert the reality of individual objects. But there is reason for doubting that he ever be- came a thorough and consistent Nominalist. For the present it is sufficient to note that at the outset of his philosophical career he appears to have made an on- slaught, in several dialogues which he wrote for the purpose, on Plato's doctrine of Ideas. In three pas- sages of his extant works (^ Eth.^ I. vL ; * Met.' I. vi?, XII. iv.), he gives summaries of his arguments on the subject. He couches those arguments in courteous lan^age, and in one place introduces them with words whi^ch have been Latinised into the weU-kno^vn phrase —Amicus Plato, sed magis arnica Veritas, Yet the arguments themselves appear somewhat captious. And there may have been a youthful vehemence in the mode in which he first urged them. Here probably first appeared "the Httle rift withm the lute;" this was the beginning of that divergence of mind and attitude which, growing wider, rendered it ultimately impossi- ble that Aristotle should be chosen to succeed Plato, as inheritor of his method, and head of the Academic school. In another set of circumstances, tradition affords us indications of the independence and self-confidence of Aristotle having been manifested during the lifetime of THE SCHOOL OF ISOCRATES. 11 Plato. In his extant writings, Plato speaks so disparag- ingly of the art of Khetoric, that we can hardly fancy his giving any encouragement to the study of it among his disciples. Eut none the less Aristotle appears to have diligently laboured in this, as in every other intellectual province that he found open. Plato would not separate Rhetoric from the rhetorical spirit; he regarded the whole thing as a procedure for tickling the ears, for flattering crowds, for subordinating truth to effect. Aristotle, in the analytical way which be-( came one of his chief characteristics, separated the' method of Rhetoric from the uses to which it might be applied. He saw that success in Rhetoric depended on general principles and laws of the human mind, and that it would be worth while to draw these out and frame them into a science, especially as many of his countrymen had already essayed to do the same, though imperfectly. He maintained that the study ' of the methods of Rhetoric was desirable and even necessary to a free citizen, for self-defence, for the exposure of sophistry, and in the interests of truth itself. Now, the greatest school of Rhetoric in all Greece was at this period held in Athens by the re- nowned Isocrates, who, when Aristotle arrived at Athens, was at the zenith of his reputation. He was now nearly seventy years old, but continued to teach and to compose with almost unabated vigour for twenty- eight years more. Isocrates had been the follower of Socrates, and several leading Sophists of the latter part of the fifth century b.c. — Protagoras, Prodicus, Gorgias, and Theramenes — are named as having been 12 THE SCHOOL OF ISOCRATES. ARISTOTLE'S RIVAL SCHOOL. 13 his teachers * He was a dignified old man, full of the most elevated sentiments. The style of his oratory had been formed after the florid Sicilian school of Gorgias, but was more severe and artistic than the earUer models of that school. He professed to in- culcate what he caUed " phHosophy," but which was reaUy a kind of thought standing half-way between pure speculative search for truth, like that of Plato, and the merely worldly and practical aims of the Sophists. It was a manly wisdom dealing with politics and morality, analogous to the reflections on such subjects in which Cicero afterwards indulged. The rhetorical school of Isocrates drew pupils from all parts of Greece, from Sicdy, and even from Pontus. In it, says Cicero, '' the eloquence of aU Greece was trained and perfected." The pupils remained in it sometimes three or four years; they paid a fee of 1000 drachmae each ( = 1000 francs, or £iO); and thus in his long life the master became one of the most opulent citizens of Athens. " Isocrates," says Dionysus, " had the educating of the best of the youth of Greece," and so many of his scholars became afterwards distin- guished in various ways— as orators, statesmen, gen- erals, historians, or philosophers— that a list of them was drawn up by Hermippus. Among the number was Speusippus, nephew to Plato, and afterwards his successor in the headship of the Academy. And yet it may readily be believed that there was small sym- pathy between the Academy and the school of Isocrates, * See Professor Jebb's 'Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos,' ii. 5. / the aims of the two being so very diff'erent. Plato and his followers looked down with more or less con- tempt on the half-phUosophising of Isocrates. And at last the youthful Aristotle came forward as a champion, chaUenging and attacking the highly-reputed veteran. Aristotle is said to have parodied on this occasion a liue of Euripides — " What ! must I In silence leave barbarians to speak ? Never ! " and to have taken for his motto the words— "What? mustl In silence leave Isocrates to speak ? " The acrimony of the allusion suggests to us the spirit in which he opened the controversy. He seems to have assailed the matter of the discourses of Iso- crates, as being of a superficial and merely oratorical character, and also his theory of the art of rhetoric, and his mode of teaching it. The strictures of Aris- totle were answered by Cephisodorus, one of the pupils of Isocrates, who wrote a defence of his master in four books. Both attack and reply have completely perished. Aristotle appears to have followed up his theoretical denunciation of Isocrates by the practical step of opening a school of Rhetoric in rivahy to his. What the success of this enterprise may have been is not recorded. There is no reason for supposing that the young Stagirite at all succeeded in impressing the Athenians at that time with his superior insight into the laws of Ehetoric. The real value and scientific / 14 THE DEATH OF PLATO. pre-eminence of his views came out in the immortal treatise on Rhetoric, which many years later he com- posed. But it is remarkable that that treatise, while full of references to Isocrates, bears no traces of any ill- feeling towards him. In fact, it would seem that time must have worked a certain change in the character of Aristotle, for almost the only glimpses which we have of him during his earlier residence at Athens show him somewhat petulantly attacking both Plato and Isocrates; whereas his works which we possess, and which were written later, are calmly impersonal and devoid of all petulance of spirit. Plato died in the year 347 b.c., and we find that in that year Aristotle, together with his feUow-disciple Xenocrates, left Athens, and went to reside at Atameus, a town of Asia !Minor. This migration was doubt- less caused by the choice of Speusippus, Plato's nephew, to be Leader of the Academy. However natural it may have been that Aristotle should be held disquali- fied by incompatibility of opinions for becoming the representative of Plato, still it may have been unpleas- ant to him to see another preferred to himself, and especially one so inferior to himself in intellect as Speu- sippus. And Xenocrates may have felt something of the same kind on his o^vn account. Accordingly, the two left Athens together. Aristotle had more than one reason for selecting Atameus as his new place of abode. It was the home of Proxenus, his guardian, of whom mention has already been made ; and it was nded over by Hermeias, an enlightened prince, with whom both Aristotle and Xenocrates had had the opportunity of ARISTOTLE AT THE COURT OF HERMEIAS, 15 fonning a philosophic friendship. The history of Her- meias was remarkable : he had been the slave of Eu- bulus, the former despot of Atameus. As happens not uncommonly in the East, he had sprung from being slave to be vizier, and thence to be ruler himself. He govemed beneficently; and, his mind not being devoid of philosophical impulses, he had come to Athens and attended the lectures of Plato. He now hospitably received the two emigrants from Plato's school, and entertained them at his court for three years, during which time he bestowed the hand of Pythias, his niece, upon Aristotle in marriage. This may be conceived to have been a happy period of Aristotle's life, but it was cut short by the death of his benefactor, who was treacherously kidnapped by a Greek ofi&cer in the ser- vice of the Persians, and put to death. Aristotle afterwards recorded his admiration for Hermeias, in a hymn or paean which he wrote in his honour, and in which he likened him to Hercules and the Dioscuri, and other heroes of noble endurance. He also perhaps alludes to him in a weUTkno-svn passage* in which he says that " a good man does not become a friend to one who is in a superior station to himself, unless that su- periority of station be justified by superiority of merit." If Aristotle had Hermeias, his own former friend, in his mind when he wrote this passage, he must have generously attributed to him moral qualities superior to his own. On fl}^g from Atameus, as they were now obliged to do, Xenocrates returned to Athens, and Aristotle * 'Ethics,' VIII. vi. 6. v- 16 BECOMES THE TUTOR OF ALEXANDER. took up his abode with his wife at Mitylene, where he lived two or three years, until he was invited by Philip of Macedon to become the tutor of Alexander, then a boy of the age of thirteen. That Aristotle, the prince of philosophers and supreme master of the sphere of knowledge, should be called upon to train the mind of Alexander, the conqueror of the world, seems a com- bination so romantic, that it has come to be thought that it must have been the mere uivention of some sophist or rhetorician. This, however, is an unneces- sary scepticism, for antiquity is unanimous in accepting the tradition, and there are no circumstances that we know of which are inconsistent with it. Aristotle's famUy connection with the royal famUy of Macedon made it natural that now, when he had acquired a cer- tam reputation in Greece, he should be offered this charge. Unfortunately no information has been handed down to us as to the way in which he performed its duties. History is silent on the subject, and we can- not even gather from any of Aristotle's own writings his views as to the education of a prince ; the treatise on education, which was to have formed part of his < Politics,' has reached us as an incomplete or mutilated fragment. Nothing that is recorded of Alexander tends to throw any light on his early training, except, per- haps, his interest in Homer and in the Attic trage- dians, and his power of addressing audiences in Greek, which was, of course, to a Macedonian an acquired language. It is reasonable to suppose that Aristotle instructed him in rhetoric, and imbued him with Greek literature, and took him tlirough a course of mathe- ■( f RESIDES AT THE COURT OF MACEDON. 17 I \ ^ 8«,T i( \k I matics. Whether he attempted anything beyond this "secondary instruction'* we know not. But it would be vain to look for traces of a personal and intellectual influence having been produced by the teacher on the mind of his pupil. Alexander's was a genius of that first-rate order that grows independently of, or soon outgrows, all education. His mind was not framed to be greatly interested in science or philosophy; he was, as the First JN'apoleon said of himself, tout a fait un etre politique ; and even during part of the period of Aristotle's tutelage, he was associated with his father in the business of the State. On the whole, we might almost imagine that Aristotle's functions at the court of Macedonia were light, and that he was allowed con- siderable leisure for the quiet prosecution of his own great undertakings. He seems, however, to have en- joyed the full confidence and favour of his patrons,* and to have retained his appointment altogether about five years, until Philip was assassinated in the year 336 B.C., and Alexander became King of Macedonia. For a year after the death of Philip, Aristotle still remained, residing either at Pella or at Stageira ; but of course no longer as preceptor to Alexander, whose mind was now totally absorbed by imperial business and plans for the subjugation of aU the peoples of the * Aristotle at this time obtained the permission of Philip to rebuild and resettle his native city, Stageira, "which had been sacked and ruined in the Olynthian war (349-347 B.C.) He col- lected the citizens, who had been scattered abroad, invited new comers, and made laws for the community. In memory ot these services an annual festival was afterwards held in his honour at Stageira. A.C.S.S. vol V. B 18 RETURNS TO ATHENS. East,— wlule his o\vn mind was meditating plans differ- ent in kind, but no less vast, for the subjugation of all the various reahns of knowledge. In 335 b.c., the preparations for Alexander's oriental campaigns were commenced in earnest, and Aristotle then again betook himself, after a twelve years' absence, to Athens, whither he returned with all the prestige which could be derived from the most marked indications of the favour of Alexander, who ordered a statue of liim to be set up at Athens, and who is said also to have fur- nished him with ample funds for the prosecution of physical and zoological investigations. AthenaeuB com- putes the total sum given to Aristotle in that way at 800 talents (nearly £200,000) ; and, if this had been the actual fact, it would liave been, perhaps, the greatest instance on record of the "endo^vment of research." But we can only treat the statement as at best mere hearsay. We know how amounts of this kind are invariably exaggerated; and, indeed, the whole story may have arisen from the imagination of later Greek writers dwelling on the relationship between the phdosopher and the king. The same may be said of Pliny's assertion, that '' thousands of men " in Alexan- der's army were put at the orders of Aristotle for the purposes of scientific inquiry and collection. Had this been true, Aristotle, though far from being able to make the use which now would be made of such an oppor- tunity, would have been in a position which many a biologist of the present day might envy. Even dis- counting all such statements as uncertain and question- able, we must stiU admit that Aristotle, in his 50th i 1. 1' SETS UP A SCHOOL IN THE LYCEUM. 19 year, was enabled, under the most favourable auspices, to commence building up the great fabric of philosophy and science for which he had been, aU his life long, making the plans and gathering the materials. Aristotle, on his return, found Speusippus dead, and Xenocrates installed as leader of the Platonic school of Philosophy, which was held, as we have said, in the groves of Academe, on the west of the city of Athens. He immediately opened a rival school on the eastern side, in the grounds attached to the Temple of the Lyceian ApoUo. From his using the covered walks (j^eripatoi) in these grounds for lecturing to, and inter- course with, his pupils, the name of "Peripatetics" came to be given to his scholars, and to the Aristotelian sect in general. His object being research, and the bringing into methodised form the results of investiga- tions, — it may be asked why he should have opened a school ? Partly, this was necessitated by a regard for liis 6\^ reputation and fame, — it was a method of publication suitable before the days of printing. And also in many ways it could be made to further his views. Teaching a philosophical school was a very different thing from teaching the rudiments. It was more like the work of a German professor, who often does not condescend to impart anything to his class, except his o^vn latest discoveries. The very practice of imparting to an auditory reasoned-out conclusions is a stimulus to their production, and at the same time a test of their correctness. Thus, Aristotle, in his writ- ings, frequently uses the term "teaching" merely to indicate "demonstration;" and as there is reason to ill 20 COMPOSES UIS ENCYCLOPEDIA. believe that all his great works were witten at tHs time, we may conceive, with great likelihood, that all the "demonstrations" they contain had at one time the form of '' teachings "—that is to say, that they went through the process of being read to his school. But there was another special way in which Aristotle was able not only to benefit his scholars, but also to make use of them as subordinate labourers in his work. We must remember what he was aiming at : it was to produce what wo should caU an encyclopa^lia of aU the sciences. Such a book, nowadays, is done by many different hands, and the different articles in it do not aim at being original, but at compiling the latest re- sults of the best authorities in each department. But Aristotle sought to construct an encyclopaedia with his own hand, in which each science should appear brand- new, originally created or quite reconstructed by him- self.' He began from the very beginning, and framed his own philosophical or scientific nomenclature; he traced out the laws on which human reasoning pro- ceeds, and was the first to reduce these to science, and to produce a Logic. He wrote anew ^Metaphysics,' * Ethics,' ' Politics,' ' Rhetoric,' and ' The Art of Poetry;' and while these were still on the stocks, he was en- gaged in foimding, on the largest scale, the physical and natural sciences, especially natural philosophy, physi- ology under various aspects (such as histology and ana'tomy, embryology, psychology, the philosophy of the senses, &c.), and, above aU, natural history. Much of this work, especially its more abstract part, was the slowly-ripened fruit of his entire previous life. But if JS ASSISTED BY HIS SCHOLARS. 21 I * » though he had great stores ready that only required to be arranged and put forth, he never ceased pushing out inquiries in all directions, and collecting fresh ma- terials. He had quite the Baconian zeal for experientia tahulata, for lists and memoranda of all kinds of facts, historical, political, psychological, or naturalistic. He loved to note problems to be solved and difficulties to be answered. Thus a boundless field of subordinate labour was opened, in which his pupils might be em- ployed. The absence of any efi'ort after artistic beauty in his writings made it easier to incorporate here and there the contributions of his apprentices. And his works, as we have them, exhibit some traces of co- operative work. The Peripatetic school, after his death, followed the direction which Aristotle had given them, and were noted for their monographs on small particu- lar points. Aristotle was not a citizen of Athens, but only a "metic," or foreign resident, so he took no part in public affairs. His whole time during the thirteen years of his second residence in the city — a period co- eval with the astonishing career of Alexander in the East — must have been devoted to labours within his school, especially in connection with the composition of his works. From the enthusiastic passages in which he speaks of the joys of the philosopher, we may con- ceive how highly the privileges of this period— so calm and yet so intensely active — were appreciated by him. But few traditions bearing upon this part of his life have been handed down. These chiefly point to his relations with Alexander, with whom, as well as with I ^ 1 i 22 IS IDENTIFIED WITH ALEXANDER. Antipater, who was acting as viceroy in Macedonia, he is represented as having maintained a friendly corre- spondence. Cassander, the son of Antipater, appears to have attended his school. As time went on, the char- acter of Alexander became corrupted * by unchecked success, Asiatic influences, and the all but universal servility which he encountered. His mind became alienated from those Greek citizens around him who showed any independence of spirit. He quarrelled with Antipater, who was faithfully acting for him at home. On a frivolous charge he cruelly put to death Callisthencs, a young orator whom, on the recommen- dation of Aristotle, he had taken in his retinue. On this and other occasions he is said to have broken out into bitter expressions against "the sophistries" of Aristotle, — that is to say, his free and reasonable political principles. The East, conquered physically by Alex- ander, had conquered and changed the mind of its con- queror. And he had now fallen quite out of sympathy with his ancient preceptor and friend. But the Athen- ians seem to have been unconscious of any such change. Aristotle had come to Athens as the avowed favourite and protege of Alexander, and that, too, at a moment when Alexander (335 B.C.), by sacking the city of Thebes, and by compelling Athens with the threat of a similar fate to exile some of her anti-Macedonian statesmen, had made himself the object of sullen dread and covert dislike to the majority of the Athenian citi- zens. Some portion of this feeling was doubtless re- flected upon Aristotle, but during the life of Alexander ♦ See Grote's 'History of Greece,' xii. 291, 301, 341. DEATH OF ALEXANDER, 23 ill W any manifestation of it was checked, the affairs of Athens being administered for the time by the " Mace- donian " party. Of this party Aristotle was naturally regarded as a pronounced adherent, and he came even to be identified with those arbitrary and tyrannical acts of Alexander, which must in reality have been most repugnant to him. This was especially the case in 324 B.C., when Alexander thought fit to insult the Hellenic cities, by sending a proclamation to be read by a herald at the Olympic Games, ordering them to recall all citizens who were under sentence of banish- ment, and threatening with instant invasion any city which should hesitate to obey this command. The officer charged with bearing this offensive proclamation, so galling to the self-respect of the Grecian communi- ties, turned out to be none other than Nicanor of Stageira, son of Proxenus the guardian of Aristotle, and now the ward and destined son-in-law of Aristotle himself. This unfortunate circumstance could not fail to draw upon the philosopher, without any fault of his o^vn, the animosity of the Athenian people. In the summer of the next year (323 b.c.), the eyes of all Greece were stiU anxiously fixed upon the movements of Alexander, when of a sudden the startling news thrilled through every city that the life of the great conqueror had been cut short by a violent fever at Babylon. The news caused a sensation throughout the states of Greece analogous to what would have been felt throughout Europe had Napoleon been suddenly cut off, say in the year 1810. By the death of Alexander the position of Aristotle 24 ARISTOTLE IS IXDICTED. I'H i at Athens was profoundly affected. The anti-Mace- donian party at once, for the moment, regained power ; the statesmen who had hitherto protected him were forced to fly from the city, and the spirit of reaction included him also in its attacks. It now became clear that Aristotle had a host of enemies in Athens. There were three classes of persons from whom especially these hostile ranks would natiu-ally be recruited : 1st, The numerous friends of the orator Isocrates, with whom Aristotle in earlier life had put himself in com- petition ; 2d, The Platonists, who resented Aristotle's divergence from their master and his polemic against certain points of the Platonic system; 3d, The anti- Macedonian party, who indiscriminately visited on Aristotle the political acts of Alexander. Feelings that had been long repressed and kept concealed, while Aristotle was strong in political support, were now licensed by the changed circimistances to come forth into act. His enemies seized on the moment to do him a mischief. An indictment, charging him with "impiety," was drawn up by Eurymedon, the chief priest of the Eleusmian Ceres, aided by a son of Ephorus, the historian, who had been one of the pupils of Isocrates. ^Matter for this accusation was obtained partly from Aristotle's poem "WTitten in honour of Hermeias, and which equalled him to the demi-gods, partly from the fact that Aristotle had placed a statue of Hermeias in the temple at Delphi, partly also from some passages in his published ^vritings which were pointed to as inconsistent with the national religion. A philosopher's view must necessarily dijffer from the HE RETIRES TO CH ALOIS. 25 ill I I popular view of the topics of religion. Yet in his extant works Aristotle is always tender and reverent in dealing with popular beliefs; indeed, in modern times, these works have been regarded as a bulwark of ecclesiastical feeling. The whole charge, if taken on its real merits, must be considered utterly frivolous ; yet those who would have to try the case — a large jury- taken from the general mass of the citizens — could not be depended on for discrimination in such a question. They would be too subject to the currents of envy, political, personal, and anti-philosophical, setting in from various quarters ; they would be too readily im- bued with the odium iheologicum. Kothing but a very general popularity would have been an effectual protection at such a moment, and this it is not likely that Aristotle ever possessed in Athens. While capable of devoted and generous friendship, he may easily have been cold and reserved towards general society. He was absorbed in study, and probably lived confined within the narroAV scientific circle of his owti school. He may even have exhibited some of those proud characteristics which he attributes in his ' Ethics ' to the " great-souled " man, " who claims great things for himself because he is worthy of them," and "who cannot bear to associate with any one except a friend." However this may have been, he was probably right on the present occasion to decline submitting his life and opinions to the judgment of the populace of Athens. He availed himself of the law which gave to any accused person the option of quitting the city before the day of trial, and he retired to Chalcis in Euboea, 26 DEATH OF ARISTOTLE. 'M HIS WILL. 27 *' in order," as he is repoiied to have said, " that the Athenians might not have another opportunity of shi- ning against philosophy, as they had akeady done once in the person of Socrates." ^ Chalcis was the original home of the ancestry of Aristotle, and he appears to have had some property there ; but it was especially a safe place of refuge for him, as being occupied at this time by a Macedonian garrison. He probably intended only to make a short sojourn there, till circumstances should be changed. He must have fully foreseen that in a short space of time the ^Macedonian arms would prevail, and restore at Athens the government which had hitherto protected him. He left his school and library in charge of Theo- phrastus, doubtless looking forward to a speedy return to them and to the resumption of those labours which had already consummated so much. And all this would have happened but that, within a year's time, in 322 B.C., he was seized with illness, and died some- what suddenly at Chalcis, in the sixty-third year of his age. The story that he had taken poison may be dismissed as fabulous. A more trustworthy account speaks of his having suffered from impaired digestion, the natural result of his habits of application, and this may very likely have been the cause of his death. The will of Aristotle, or what professes to be such, has been preserved amongst a heap of very question- able traditions, by Diogenes Laertius. If not genuine it is cleverly invented, and is the work of a romancer who wished to credit the Stagirite with evidences of a generous and just disposition. The property to be dis- I I I posed of seems considerable, analogous perhaps to an estate of .£50,000 in the present day. The chief bene- ficiary under the will is Nicanor (before mentioned), whom Aristotle appoints to marry P}i:hias, — his daughter by the niece of Hermeias, — so soon as she shall be of marriageable age. Aristotle's first wife had died, and he had subsequently married Herpyllis of Stageu^, who became the mother of his son Mcoma- chus. The will places Nicomachus under the care of ISiicanor, and makes liberal provision for Herpyllis, who is mentioned in terms of affection and gratitude. Several of the slaves are thought of, and are to be pre- sented with money and set at liberty ; all the young slaves are to be freed, " if they deserve it," as soon as they are grown up. Nicanor is charged to transfer the bones of Aristotle's first wife Pythias to his oa\ti place of interment, to provide and dedicate suitable busts of various members of Aristotle's family, and to fulfil a vow formerly made by himseK of four marble figures of animals to Zeus the Preserver and Athene the Pre- server. This last clause throws suspicion on the gen- uineness of the document, for it looks like a mere imitation of the dying injunction of Socrates : " We owe a cock to -(Esculapius ; pay the debt and do not fail." Other points also suggest doubt : for instance, Antipater is named as chief executor, and this detail has the appearance of being the work of a forger avail- ing himself of a weU-known name ; again, there is a difficulty about Pythias the daughter of Aristotle being too young for marriage at the time of her father's death,— he had married her mother some twenty-three r// 28 PERSONAL CHARGES AGAINST HIM. GENERAL IMPRESSION OF HIS LIFE. 29 years previously, and had been subsequently married. The terms of the will would imply that Nicomachus was a mere child when his father died, which is inconsistent with other considerations. These and other points of criticism which might be urged do not absolutely prove the will to have been a forgery, they only leave us in doubt about it. And, as has been said, even if re- garded as a mere fabrication, it is still a tribute of antiquity to the virtue of Aristotle. On the other hand, this great name did not escape without incurring its full share of carping and detrac- tation. And the gossip-mongers of the later Eoman empire, including Fathers of the Church, have handed on some of the hearsay reports, smart sayings of epigram- matists, and attacks of hostile schools of philosophy, which had been levelled against Aristotle. After all they come to very little : — that he had small eyes, and thin legs, and a lisping utterance; that he passed a wild and spendthrift youth ; that he was showy and affected in his attire, and habitually luxurious in his table ; that he chose to live at the Macedonian court for the sake of the flesh-pots to be obtained by so do- ing ; and that he was ungrateful to Plato, — these make up the sum of the charges against him. Perhaps if we knew all the facts, we might find that a contradictory, or at all events a different, statement would be more correct under each of the several heads. As it is, we may fairly deal with these imputations as we should with similar aspersions on the personal history of any great man, if they could neither be proved nor dis- proved, and set them aside as beneath consideration. "We cannot expect to know more than the outline of Aristotle's life, but all we know gives us the impression of a life that, morally speaking, was singularly honour- able and blameless. And it was the life of one who by his intellectual achievements placed himself at the very head of ancient thought, and won the admiration and allegiance of many centuries. What those intel- lectual achievements were we have now to endeavour to set forth. I l/fi li ■ CHAPTER II. THE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE. A CATALOGUE of the works of Aristotle has been handed down to lis, which was made by the librarian of the great Library at Alexandria about the year 220 B.c. — that is to say, a century after the death of the philo- sopher — and which gives the titles of aU the books, contained in the Library, which were attributed to the authorship of Aristotle. These titles amount to 146 in number, but it is at first sight a most astonishing circumstance that they do not in the least answer to the writings which we now possess under the name of the " works of Aristotle." All the books mentioned in the Alexandrian catalogue are now lost ; only a few frag- ments of them have been preserved in the shape of ex- tracts and quotations from them made by other writers ; but everything tends to show that they were quite a different set, and different altogether in character, from the forty treatises which stand collectively on our book- shelves labelled * Aristotelis Opera.' Under the circimi- stances it would be natural to conjecture that so (com- paratively speaking) short a time after the death of Aristotle, the learned keepers of the Alexandrian Library THREE PERIODS OF HIS LIFE. 31 i: u I » 'I must have known what he really wrote, and therefore that in losing the books mentioned in the Alexandrian catalogue we have lost the true works of Aristotle, as they existed 100 years after his death, and that what has come down to us under his name, be it w^hat it may, cannot be the genuine article. Other facts, how^- ever, and criticism of the whole question, show that this natural supposition is incorrect, and that some- thing like the contradictory of it is true. It is a curious story, and needs some little explanation. The life of Aristotle after his boyhood fell, as Ave have seen, into three broad divisions — namely, his first residence at Athens, from his eighteenth to his thirty -eighth year; his residence away from Athens, at Atarneus, Mitylene, Pella, and Stageira, from his thirty-eighth to his fiftieth year ; and his second resi- dence at Athens, from his fiftieth to his sixty -third year. During the first period, after studying under Plato, he commenced authorship by writing dialogue-s, which appear to have been published at the time. They differed from the Platonic dialogues in not being dramatic, but merely expository, like the dialogues of Bishop Berkeley, the principal role in each being assigned to Aristotle himself. They were somewhat rhetorical in style, and quite adapted for popular read- ing. In them Aristotle attacked Plato's doctrine of Ideas, and set forth views on philosophy, the chief good, the arts of government, moral virtue, and other topics. Then came the second period of his life, w^hen he had definitely bioken with the school of Plato, and was away from aU the schools of Athens, enjoying much >i I 32 THE FRUIT-TIME OF HIS GENIUS. leisure and positions of dignity. In this period it is probable that he not only prosecuted his researches and independent speculations in many branches of thought and science, but that he learned to know his o^vn mission in the world, which was to stick to the matter of knowledge, abandoning all regard for the artistic adornment of truth. During this period we may believe that he thoroughly developed the individual character of his own mind in relation to philosophy, so that when he came back to Athens he had quite established his own peculiar style of writing, crabbed indeed and inelegant, but full of an exact phraseology which he had himself constructed, and on the whole not unsuited as a vehicle for the exposition of science. We are not able, however, to say for certain whether in his second period he actually composed any works, though he must constantly have been compiling notes and memoranda, to serve either as the materials or the ground-plans for future treatises. The third period of Aristotle's life was the rich fruit-time of his genius. We have already mentioned how he set himself to the construction of an entire encyclopajdia of science and philosophy. What we possess as his works contain the unfinished, but much advanced, working out of that project. There is every reason to believe that the great bulk of this series of wTitings was composed by Aristotle during the last thirteen years of his life. He was doubtless assisted by his school, and he must have had many treatises on hand at one time, or rather he had them all in his head, and when anything caused him to drop one for a time he could go on with an- THE FATE OF HIS MSS. 33 other. Hardly any of the treatises are finished, stiU less is there any trace of careful revision and