posteriori, i. e. from an investigation into the nature of human wants and feelings.

By thus reducing the Republic to its theoretical formula, we are doubtless viewing it in its most unfavorable light. Its value, and its interest, do not consist in its political ideas, but in its collateral suggestions on education, religion, and morals. But these are beside our present purpose.*

Willingly would we discourse upon this remarkable book at greater length; but, although we have only touched on a few points connected with Plato, we have already exhausted the space we could afford, and must close here this imperfect account of one of the greatest minds of antiquity. If we have assigned him his due position in the history of human development-if we have in some sort presented the reader with a clue, whereby he may traverse the labyrinth of that celebrated but much misrepresented writer-if we have succeeded in conveying some impression of the man, more consonant with truth than that usually accredited, we have performed our task.

* In the Laws, many of the political and social notions are modified; but the general theory is the same.

SEVENTH EPOCH.

PHILOSOPHY AGAIN REDUCED TO A SYSTEM: CLOSE OF THE SOCRATIC MOVEMENT.-ARISTOTLE.

CHAPTER I.

ARISTOTLE.

§ I. LIFE OF ARISTOTLE.

WHEN Plato was leaving Athens for the journey into Sicily, of which we have spoken, and which occupied him three years or more, Aristotle appeared in that active city, a restless youth of seventeen; rich both in money and in knowledge, eager, impetuous, truth-loving, and insatiable in his thirst for philosophy. Tidings of the wondrous men who made that city illustrious, and whose fame still sheds a halo round its ruins, had reached him in his native land; tidings of the great thinkers and the crowded schools had lured him, though so young, to Athens.

Aristotle was born at Stagira, a colony in Thrace, Olympiad 99 (B. c. 384.) His father, Nicomachus, was an eminent physician, who had written several works on medicine and natural history; so that Aristotle's love of such subjects may be called hereditary. And this hereditary love so conspicuous in the marvellous results of the two treatises on the History of Animals and the Parts of Animals-works which modern science is daily enabling us to appreciate better-may have been fostered by the opportunities Stagira offered him in his boyhood. It was a town on the western side of the Strymonic Gulf, just where the general

line of coast takes a southerly direction. Immediately south, a promontory ran out towards the east, effectually screening the town and its little harbor Capros (formed by the island of the same name), from the violence of the squalls coming up the Egean. "In the terraced windings too, by which the visitor climbs through the orange groves of Sorento, he may without any great violence imagine the narrow and steep paths by which an ancient historian and chorographer describes those who crossed the mountains out of Macedonia, as descending into the valley of Arethusa, where was seen the tomb of Euripides and the town of Stagira."*

Aristotle, losing his parents at an early age, was consigned to the care of a certain Proxenus, who had him instructed in all the physical knowledge of the time. Proxenus died, and Aristotle then fulfilled his desire of seeing Athens.

During the three years of Plato's absence Aristotle was not idle. He prepared himself to be a worthy pupil. His wealth enabled him to purchase those costly luxuries, Books-there was no cheap Literature in those days-and in them he studied the speculations of the early thinkers, with a zeal and intelligence of which his own writings bear ample evidence. There were also some friends and followers of Socrates and Plato still at Athens: men who had listened to the entrancing conversation of the "old man eloquent," who could still remember with a smile his keen and playful irony; and others who were acquainted with some of the deep thoughts brooding in the melancholy soul of Plato. These Aristotle eagerly questioned, and from them prepared himself to receive the lessons of his future teacher.

Plato returned. His school was opened, and Aristotle joined the crowd of his disciples, amongst whom the penetrating glance of the master soon detected the immortal pupil. Plato saw that the impetuous youth needed the curb; but there was promise of greatness in that very need. His restless activity was charac

Blakesley's Life of Aristotle, p. 12.

terized by Plato in an epithet: "Aristotle is the Mind of my school."

Aristotle continued to listen to Plato for seventeen years; that is, till the death of the latter. But he did not confine himself to the Platonic Philosophy: nor did he entirely agree with it. And from this disagreement has arisen the vulgar notion of a personal disagreement between Master and Pupil: a notion, to be sure, propped up with pretended anecdotes, and refuted by others. equally authentic. Much has been written on this quarrel, and on what people call Aristotle's ingratitude. We place no reliance on it. The same thing was said of Plato with respect to Socrates; and we have excellent reasons for treating that as calumny. In his writings Aristotle doubtless combats the opinion of Plato; but he always mentions him with respect, sometimes with tenderness. If that be ingratitude, it is such as all pupils have manifested who have not been slavish followers.*

It was a wise thought of Macedonian Philip to give his son. Alexander such a preceptor as Aristotle. For four years was the illustrious pupil instructed by the illustrious master in poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy; and, when Alexander departed on his Indian expedition, a scholar of Aristotle's, one Calisthenes, attended him. Both from Philip and from Alexander, the Stagirite received munificent assistance in all his undertakings: especially in the collection of natural curiosities, which were selected from captured provinces, to form the materials of the History of Animals.

"The conqueror is said, in Athenæus, to have presented his master with the sum of eight hundred talents (about two hundred thousand pounds sterling) to meet the expenses of his History of Animals, and, enormous as the sum is, it is only in pro

* The question is discussed with ability by Mr. Blakesley in his Life of Aristotle, pp. 24-28. See also Stahr's article on Aristotle in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.

The story that Aristotle himself accompanied Alexander is now universally discredited.

portion to the accounts we have of the vast wealth acquired by the plunder of the Persian treasures. Pliny also relates that some thousands of men were placed at his disposal for the purpose of procuring zoological specimens, which served as materials for this celebrated treatise."* However he acquired his materials, it is becoming daily more evident that his work was based on direct knowledge, on actual inspection and dissection, not, as in Pliny's case, on what others reported. Several of the most astonishing discoveries of modern naturalists are found to have been distinctly known to Aristotle; and even on such subtle questions as the affinities of animals, we are sometimes forced to come round to his classification. "Thus, in the end," says Professor Forbes, in summing up his discussion on the classification of Acalephs, "we revert curiously enough to the views of the affinities of these Animals proposed by Aristotle, who plainly included under the designation of axaλpn, both Actinia and Medusæ not from any vague guess, or in compliance with the popular recognition of their resemblance, but from a careful study of their structure and habits, as the varied notices preserved to us in the first, fourth, and fifth, eighth, and ninth books of the History of Animals prove beyond question."t

After a long interval Aristotle returned to Athens and opened a school in the Lyceum: a school which eclipsed all the others both in numbers and importance. It is curiously illustrative of his restless vivacious temperament that he could not stand still and lecture, but delivered his opinions whilst walking up and down the shady paths of the Lyceum, attended by his eager followers. Hence his disciples were called the Walking Philosophers-Peripatetics.

Mr. Blakesley thinks that it was Aristotle's delicate health which, combined with the wish to economize time, induced him

*Blakesley, p. 68.

+ Forbes, Monograph of the Naked-Eyed Medusa, p. 88. On the subject of Aristotle's zoological knowledge generally, see Meyer, Aristotelis Thierkunde, 1855, and De Blainville, Histoire des Sciences de l'Organisation, 1845.