form of reality and differs from scientific knowledge in the ordinary sense in its greater abstruseness, exactness, thoroughness, and disinterestedness. These two points of view are reconciled with one another by noting that while philosophy is distinguished from mathematical and physical science in being concerned with the eternal and self-contained, we are not to suppose that the "things" with which it is concerned form a class by themselves. Philosophy is concerned with the reality that underlies the world about us, not with any metaphysical realities beyond it. It is therefore not so much a separate science, with a particular field of its own, as a particular way of treating that world of reality which is the object of all science.

It is quite true that Aristotle sometimes speaks of God and human reason in its highest form as realities "separable" from the rest of the world, and in a passage we have already considered he seems to regard the stars of heaven as in a special sense the objects of "philosophy." But we must be careful how we take such passages. Without entangling ourselves in the metaphysical difficulties they suggest, it may be pointed out that Aristotle has no doubt in his own mind that the nature of the ultimate realities which we call God and Reason is discoverable only by the analysis of the particular forms of reality which we see about us, and, secondly, that the stars of heaven have the place of pre-eminence assigned to them as objects of philosophical thought just because they are conceived of by Aristotle, in common with Plato, as representing in a special sense

the source of the reason and intelligence which is the ultimate principle of reality in the world.*

Returning to the passage before us, the reader will now be prepared to understand that while it is the narrower sense of the term which is probably here uppermost in Aristotle's mind, it would be a mistake so to interpret it as to exclude all reference to thought and science in general.

§ 2. Apparent Exaggeration in Aristotle's Doctrine.

Even in the light of this wider interpretation of the term, however, these sections strike us at first as somewhat paradoxical and exaggerated in the importance they assign to science and philosophy as a source of happiness. We have hitherto followed the argument without much difficulty. Happiness, we have seen, consists in the excellent discharge of human function. This excellence, we have further seen, has two sides, according as we consider it to consist in a habitual attitude of the will to the calls of life, or in insight into the meaning of life. In the one aspect we call it moral: in the other, intellectual virtue. Uniting them, we define true happiness as that of the intelligent citizen who loyally accepts the responsibilities of his station and lives to the honour of his country.

But here is something which it is more difficult to bring into line with ordinary moral conceptions. The spirit of sobriety with which the argument has hitherto *See Grant, op. cit. i. p. 286.

been conducted seems to be abandoned, and we are asked to recognize a still higher kind of happiness in a life which is the opposite of that just described in every essential particular. In the first place, it is exclusive. Not only is it a life that implies special endowments and considerable leisure, but it is one of comparative isolation, in which even friendship plays an insignificant part, and the truly happy man seems to be he who "stands most alone." Secondly, it is unrelated to the ordinary business and calls of life, which are conceived of rather as a disturbance than as opportunities for the realization of happiness. Thirdly, instead of giving us a deeper hold of mortal life, and putting us in closer touch with humanity, it consists in the endeavour to put off our mortality through the development of the faculty of reason, which is apparently conceived of as something super

human.

It is true that this paradox does not originate with Aristotle, having been inherited by him from Plato, who had already given a somewhat mystical character to the highest happiness. But there is a tone of sobriety in all that Plato says in this connexion, which for the nonce we seem to miss in Aristotle. Aristotle," says Grant,* " is less delicate and reverent than Plato in his mode of speaking of human happiness, especially as attained by the philosopher. In Plato there seems often, if not always, present a sense of the weakness of the individual as contrasted > with the eternal and the divine. If Plato requires

Op. cit. i. p. 215.

philosophy to make morality, he also always infuses morality into philosophy. The philosopher in his pictures does not triumph over the world, but rather is glad to seize on 'some tradition,' 'like a stray plank,' to prevent his being lost; he feels that his philosophy on earth is a 'knowing in part.' Aristotle, on the contrary, rather over-represents the strength of philosophy. And in his picture of the happiness of the philosopher we cannot but feel that there is over-much elation, and something that requires toning down." Yet all the art of Plato cannot conceal the gap between the life of the ordinary citizen and of the philosopher, and Aristotle's bluntness only makes explicit what we have already half realized in Plato.

§ 3. Explanations.

The difficulty which these sections thus suggest has been met by commentators in different ways. Professor Stewart takes the heroic course of denying its existence. We must not suppose, he says, in commenting on c. vii. §§ 4-7, that the copós, or wise man, as described here, exists as an individual to bear away the prize of actual happiness from the Sikatos, or just man. The contemplative life is not a separate life co-ordinate with the political, but a spirit which penetrates and ennobles the latter. Philosophy, according to this view, does not separate the philosopher from practical life, but merely prevents him from being absorbed in its details. Similarly, the "leisure"

that is spoken of must be taken to consist, not in "an impossible immunity from the 'interruptions' of practical life," but in "the quiet of a well-regulated mind." Professor Stewart admits that there are passages in which the contemplative and the practical life are contrasted as those of the student or savant and the public man respectively, but he maintains that in these sections Aristotle wishes to call attention to the immaterial essence of life—of man's life as a whole as distinguished from its concrete manifestations in individuals.

Attractive as this explanation is, the language in these sections, as in other descriptions of the "theoretic life," seems to prove that the writer has in view a special kind of life rather than a spirit which should permeate the whole of life. Both in Plato and Aristotle there is an unmistakable note of dissatisfaction with the scope and opportunities of the practical life, leading on to an attempt to mark out a higher field of exercise for the human reason, in which the discords and limitations that meet us in the lower have disappeared. So far from desiring to ignore this feature of their philosophy, or put a gloss upon it, I should wish to emphasize it as a proof of their greatness. There is a narrowness in the ideal of the practical life as commonly conceived which renders it unfit to be taken as coterminous with complete human happiness. Man, it is true, is a "political animal." He is a dweller in cities, and has elective affinities with his neighbours at every point of his life. When there is any danger of cutting him off from