Will Durant---The Philosophy of Aristotle

Aristotle and Greek science the historical background Aristotle was born at stage IRA a Macedonian city some 200 miles to the north of Athens in the year 384 BC his father was friend in physician to a mintus king of Macedon and grandfather of Alexander Aristotle himself seems to become a member of the great medical fraternity of Asclepius he was brought up in the odour of medicine as many later philosophers were brought up in the odour 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 is squandering his patrimony and riotous living joining the army to avoid starvation returning to stage IRA to practice medicine and going to Athens at the age of 30 to study philosophy under Plato a more dignified story takes in to Athens at the age of 18 and puts him at once under the tutelage of the great master but even in this likelier account there is sufficient echo of a reckless and irregular youth living rapidly the scandalized reader may console' 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 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 incomparable teacher walking like Greek lovers in the gardens of philosophy but they were both geniuses and it is notorious that geniuses accord with one another as harmoniously as dynamite with fire almost half a century separated them it was difficult for understanding to bridge the gap of years and cancel the incompatibility of souls Plato recognised the greatness of this strange new pupil from the supposedly barbarian north and spoke of him once as the news of the Academy as if to say intelligence personified Aristotle had spent money lavishly in the collection of books that is in those prin Liss days manuscripts he was the first after Euripides to gather together a library and the foundation of the principles of library classification was among his many contributions to scholarship therefore Plato's spoke of Aristotle's helm 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 warmish ness in aristotle a more authentic quarrel seems to have arisen towards the end of plato's life our ambitious youth apparently developed an Oedipus complex against his spiritual father for the favors and affections of philosophy and began to hint that wisdom would not die with Plato while the old sage spoke of his pupil as a fool that kicks his mother after draining her dry the learnand cellar in 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 flame the other incidents of this Athenian period are still more problematical some biographers tell us that Aristotle founded a school of oratory to rival I Socrates and that he had among his pupils in this school the wealthy Hermia's who was soon to become autocrat of the city-state of ATAR Gnaeus after reaching this elevation Hermia's invited Aristotle to his court and in the year 344 BC 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 hastened 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 Philip was determined that his son should have every educational advantage for he had made for him illimitable designs his conquest of Thrace in 356 BC givin 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 of Greece Philip had no sympathy with the individualism that had foster the art and intellect of Greece but had at the same time disintegrated her social order in all these little capitals he saw not the exhilarating culture and the unsurpassable art but the commercial corruption and the political chaos he saw insatiable merchants and bankers absorbing the vital resources of the nation incompetent politicians and clever orators misleading a busy populace into disastrous plots and Wars factions 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 upon 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 Upham Ananda's and now with courage as boundless as his ambition he bettered the instruction in 338 BC he defeated the Athenians at Chaeronea and saw at last a greece united though with Chains and then as he stood upon his 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 13 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 saying that though he had received life from the one the other had taught him the art of living life's as 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 any 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 ancestral 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 than 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 conquest 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 too chaotic worlds setting out to conquer Asia Alexander left behind him in the cities of Greece governments favourable to him but populations resolutely hostile the long tradition of a free and once Imperial Athens made subjection even to a brilliant world conquering despot intolerable and the bitter eloquence of demosthenes kept the assembly always on the edge of revolt against the Macedonian party that held the reins of city power now an Aristotle after another period of travel returned to Athens in the year 334 BC 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 coordinating 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 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 53rd year of his age Aristotle established his school the Lyceum so many students flocked to him that it became necessary to make complicated regulations 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 the walk was called parapet O's 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-like house 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 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 wealth of material he was enabled to establish the first great zoological garden that the world had seen we can hardly exaggerate the influence of this collection upon his science and his philosophy where did Aristotle derive the funds to finance these undertakings he was himself by this time a man of spacious income and he had married into the fortune of one of the most powerful public men in Greece atthenes no doubt with some exaggeration relates that Alexander gave Aristotle for physical and biological equipment and research the of 800 talents in modern purchasing power some four million dollars it was at Aristotle's suggestion something that Alexander sent a costly expedition to explore the sources of the Nile and discover the causes of its periodical overflow the expedition reported that the inundations were due to the melting of the snow on the mountains of Abyssinia such works as the digests of 158 political constitutions drawn up for Aristotle indicate a considerable core 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 support 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 unprecedented resources and facilities he was compelled 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 instruments he possessed only the rule and compass together with the most imperfect substitutes of some few others chemical analysis correct measurements and 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 undiscovered see here how inventions make history for lack of a telescope Aristotle's astronomy is a tissue of childish romance for lack of a microscope his biology wanders endlessly astray indeed it was an industrial and technical invention that Greece fell farthest below the general standard of its unparalleled achievements the Greek disdain of manual work kept everybody but the listless slave direct acquaintance with the processes of production 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 conquered the Mediterranean Sea and Greek philosophy conquered the Mediterranean mind Greek science straggled and Greek industry remained almost where Aegean industry had been when the invading Greeks had come down upon it at gnosis at tier ins and Mycenae a thousand years before no doubt we have here the reason why Aristotle so seldom appeals to experiment the mechanisms of experiment had not yet been made and the best he could do was to achieve an almost universal and continuous observation nevertheless the vast body of data gathered by him and his assistants became the groundwork of the progress of science the textbook 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 refutation these works were collected and edited by the later peripatetic sunder the general title of Aristotle's organ on that is the organ or instrument of correct thinking secondly there are the scientific works physics on the heavens growth and decay meteorology natural history on the soul the parts of animals the movement 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 politic and metaphysics this is the chronological order so far as known our discussion will follow this order except in the case of the metaphysics here evidently is the Encyclopedia Britannica of Greece every problem under the Sun and about it finds a place no wonder there are more errors and absurdities in Aristotle than in any other philosopher who ever wrote here 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 the philosophy is the quest of unity Aristotle deserves the high name that twenty centuries gave him eally philosophers the Philosopher's naturally in a mind of such scientific turn Posey was lacking we must not expect a varus thatíll such literary brilliance as floods the pages of the dramatist philosopher Plato instead of giving us great literature in which philosophy is embodied and obscured in myth and imagery Aristotle gives us science technical abstract concentrated if we go to him for entertainment we shall sue for the return of our money instead of giving terms to literature as Plato did he built 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 and principle form these indispensable coins of philosophic thought were minted in his mind and perhaps this passage from delightful dialogue to precise scientific treatise was a necessary 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 expression Aristotle too wrote literary dialogues is highly reputed in their day as Plato's but they are lost just as the scientific treatise as a Plato have perished probably time has preserved of each man the better part finally it is possible that the writings attributed to Aristotle were not his but were largely the compilations of students and followers who hadn't bombed the unadorned substance of his lectures in their notes it does not appear that Aristotle published in his lifetime any technical 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 executor x' 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 their rage is a sort of Homeric question of almost epic scope into which the busy reader will not care to go and on which a modest student will not undertake to judge we may at all events be sure that Aristotle is the spiritual author of all these books that bear his name that the hand maybe in some cases another's hand but that the head and the heart are his 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 Renault's speaks of the ill training of every mind that is not directly or indirectly come under greek discipline but in truth the Greek intellect itself was undisciplined and chaotic till the ruthless formulas 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 to 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 darkness found again the leisure and ability for speculation it was Aristotle's Organon of logic translated by Boethius 472 525 ad 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 intellect of adolescent Europe to reasoning and subtlety constructed the terminology of modern science and laid the basis of that same maturity of mind which was to outgrow and overthrow the very system and methods which had given it birth and sustenance 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 correct thinking can be reduced 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 instrument to effortless harmonies nothing is so dull as logic and nothing is so in there was a hint of this new science in Socrates's maddening insistence on definitions and in plato's constant refining of every concept 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 paragraph 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 important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition it is difficult and ruthlessly tests the mind but once done it is half of any task 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 whose general characteristics are also its own so man is first of all an animal and secondly it indicates where in the object differs from all the other members in its class so man in the Aristotelian system is a rational animal his specific difference is that unlike all other animals he is rational here is the origin of a pretty legend Aristotle drops an object into the ocean of its class then takes it out all dripping 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 that resemble it so much and are so different passing out from this rear line of logic we come into the great battlefield on which Aristotle 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 ringed with the clash of realists and nominalist s' 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 our universals but these universals are subjective notions tangibly objective realities they are nomina names not race re s 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 reality now Aristotle understands Plato to have held that universals have objective existence and indeed Plato had said that the universal is incomparably more lasting and important and substantial than the individual the latter being but a little wavelet in a ceaseless surf men come and go but man goes on forever Aristotle's is a matter-of-fact mind as William James would say a tough not a tender mind he sees the root of endless mysticism 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 said ma G Sam Iike Veritas dere is Plato but dearer still is truth a hostile commentator might remark that Aristotle like Nietzsche criticizes Plato so keenly because he is conscious of having borrowed from him generously 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 objective present while Plato is absorbed in a subjective future there was in the Socratic platonic demand for definitions a tendency 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 things to the unwitnessed ii 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 condemned as only similars can be profitably contrasted so only similar people quarrel and 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 the Christians of Europe broke into hostile camps there was no quarter for even the court Lea Stowe Aristotle is so ruthless with Plato because there is so much of Plato in him he too remains a lover of abstractions and generalities repeatedly betraying the simple fact for some speciously bad eyes and theory and compelled to a continuous struggle to conquer his philosophic passion for exploring the empyrion there is a heavy trace of this in the most characteristic and original of Aristotle's contributions 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 to the major and minor premises eg 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 the 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 cancelling from both premises their common term a so in our syllogism the conclusion is reached by cancelling from both premises their common term man and combining what remains the difficulty as logicians have pointed out from the days of Pierrot 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 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 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 rationality 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 like the many other items of the organon has its value Aristotle has discovered and formulated every Canon of theoretical consistency and every artifice of dialectical debate with an industry and acuteness which cannot be too highly extolled and his Labor's in this direction have perhaps contributed more than any other single writer to the intellectual stimulation of after ages 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 bravest philosopher would sing to a book of logic underneath the bow one always feels toward logic as Virgil bad Dante field towards those who have been damned because of their colourless neutrality non Rajan and allure Magua apasa let us think no more about them but look once and pass on the organization of science Greek science before Aristotle Socrates says run all gave philosophy to mankind and Aristotle gave it to science there was philosophy before Socrates and science before Aristotle and since Socrates and since Aristotle philosophy and science have made immense advances but all has been built upon the foundation which they laid before Aristotle science was an 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 cuneiform 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 supernatural agency everywhere there were gods apparently 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 particular incidents and in philosophy and natural theory of the whole filiz 642 550 BC the father of philosophy was primarily an astronomer who astonished the natives of Meletis by informing them that the Sun and stars which they were want to worship as gods were merely balls of fire his pupil Anaximander 610 to 540 BC the first Greek to make astronomical and geographical charts believed that the universe had begun as an undifferentiated mass from which all things had arisen by the separation of opposites that astronomic history periodically repeated itself in the evolution and dissolution of an infinite number of worlds that the earth was at rest in space by a balance of internal impulsion x' like buried all's ass that all our planets had once been fluid but had been evaporated by the Sun that life had first been formed in the sea but had been driven upon the land by the subsidence of the water that of these stranded animals some had developed the capacity to breathe air and had so become the progenitors 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 in adolescence as in these later days he could not possibly have survived an examinees another my lesion who flourished around 450 BC 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 everywhere annex a giris 502 428 BC teacher of Pericles seems to have given a correct explanation 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 four limbs were freed from the tasks of locomotion slowly in these men knowledge grew into science Heraclitus 532 470 BC 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 concerns all things forever flow and change he said even in the stillest matter there is unseen 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 stripes as 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 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 be empedocles who flourished around 445 BC and sicily developed 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 meets environmental needs the organism survives and perpetuates it's like 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 Lu sippers who flourished around 445 BC and Democritus for 60 to 360 BC master and pupil in Thracian Abdera we get the last stage of pre Aristotelian science materialistic deterministic atomism everything said loose if us is driven by necessity in reality said Democritus there are only atoms and the void perception is due to the expulsion of atoms from the object upon the sense organ there is 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 industry under the Incubus of slavery prevented the full development of these magnificent beginnings and the rapid complication of political life in Athens turned the Sophists and Socrates and play away from physical and biological research into the paths of ethical and political theory it is 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 development in the pre-socratic Greeks carried on their work with more resolute detail and more varied observation and brought together all the accumulated results in a magnificent body of organized science Aristotle as a naturalist if we begin here chronologically with his physics we shall be disappointed for we find that this treatise is really a metaphysics an abstruse analysis of matter emotion space-time infinity cos and other such ultimate concepts one of the more lively passages is an attack on democritus's void there can be no void or vacuum in nature says Aristotle for in a vacuum all bodies would fall with equal velocity 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 and his tendency 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 and annihilating refutation Aristotle after the Ottoman manner says bacon thought he could not reign secure without putting all his brethren to death but to this fratricidal mania we owe much of our knowledge of pre-socratic thought for reasons already given Aristotle's astronomy represents very little advance upon his predecessors he rejects the view of Pythagoras 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 full of brilliant observations and even it's speculations strike illuminating fire this is a cyclic world says our philosopher the Sun forever evaporates the sea rise 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 a change goes on imperceptibly but effectively Egypt is the work of the Nile the product of its deposits 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 continents disappear and all the face of the world is changed and re-change din a great systole and diastole of growth and dissolution sometimes these vast effects occur suddenly and destroy the geological and material basis of civilization and even of life great catastrophes have periodically 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 the COPO its upward travail hence the almost eternal recurrence in civilization after civilization of the same inventions and discoveries the same Dark Ages of slow economic and cultural accumulation 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 the foundation of biology as Aristotle walked wandering through his great zoological garden he became convinced that the infinite variety of life could be arranged 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 minut gradations and progressions from the lowest organisms to the highest at the bottom of the scale we can scarcely divide the living from the dead nature makes so gradual a transition from the inanimate to the animate kingdom 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 differences is as remarkable as the diversity of functions and forms but in the midst of this bewildering richness of structures certain things stand out convincingly but life has grown steadily in complexity and in power that intelligence has progressed in correlation with complexity of structure and mobility of form that there has been an increasing specialization of function and a continuous centralization of physiological control slowly life created for 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 as doctrine that all organs and organisms are a survival of the fittest and an ex Agora sees idea that man became intelligent by using his hands for manipulation rather than for movement Aristotle thinks on the contrary that man so used his hands because he had become intelligent indeed Aristotle makes as many mistakes as possible for 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 parthenogenesis that the essential function of the sperm is not so much to fertilize the ovum as to provide the embryo with the heritable qualities of the male parent and so permit the offspring to be a vigorous variant a new admixture of two ancestral lines as human dissection was not practiced in his time he is particularly fertile in physiological errors he knows nothing of muscles not even of their eggs stance he does not distinguish arteries from veins he thinks the brain is an organ for cooling the blood he believes forgive ibly that man has more sutures in the skull than women he believes less forgivable II that man has only eight ribs on each side he believes incredibly and unforgivably that woman has fewer teeth than man apparently his relations with women were of the most amicable 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 quadrupeds are mammals he remarks that the soul in infancy is scarcely distinguishable from the soul of animals he makes the illuminating observation that diet often determines the mode of life for of beasts some are drag arias and other solitary they live in the way which is best adapted to obtain the food of their choice he anticipates font bears 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 and he reaches out across 2,000 years to anticipate Spencer's generalization that individuation varies inversely as Genesis that is that the more highly developed and specialized a species or an individual happens to be the smaller will be the number of its offspring he notices and explains reversion to type the tendency of a prominent variation like genius to be diluted in mating and lost in successive generations he makes many zoological observations which temporarily rejected by later biologists have been confirmed by modern research of fishes that make nests for example and sharks that boast of a placenta and finally he establishes the science of embryology he who sees things grow from their beginning he writes will have the finest view of them Hippocrates born 460 BC greatest of Greek physicians had given a fine example of the experimental method by breaking a hens eggs at various stages of incubation and it applied the results of these studies in his treatise on the origin of the child Aristotle followed this lead and performed experiments that enabled him to give a description of the development of the chick which even today arouses the admiration of embryologists he must have performed some novel experiments in genetics for he disapproves the theory that the sex of the child depends on what tests his supplies the reproductive fluid by quoting a case where the right tests of the father had been tied and yet the children had been of different sexes he raises some very modern problems of heredity a woman of Ellis had married a Negro her children were all whites but in the next generation Negroes reappeared we're asks Aristotle was the blackness hidden in the middle generation there was but a step from such a vital and intelligent query to the epical experiments of Gregor Mendel 1822 to 1882 prudence Christ eodum idiom she NT I to know what to ask is already to know have surely despite the errors that Mar these biological 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 lifetime and would have given immortality but Aristotle had only begun 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 it's 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 it's 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 matter would be no thing for everything has a form matter in its widest sense is the possibility of form 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 specific 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 by form the constant progression and victory of life everything in the world moves naturally to a specific fulfillment of the varied causes which determine an event the final cause which determines the purpose is the most decisive and important the mistakes and futilities of nature are due to the inertia of matter resisting the forming force of purpose hence the abortions and monsters that Mar the panorama of life development is not haphazard or accidental how else could we explain the almost universal appearance and transmission of useful organs everything is guided in a certain direction from within by its nature and structure and entelechy entelechy a-- having echo its purpose t loss within n toss one of those magnificent Aristotelian terms which gather up into themselves a whole philosophy the egg of the hen is internally designed or destined to become not a duck but a chick the Acorn becomes not a willow but an oak this does not mean for Aristotle 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 coincides completely for Aristotle with the operation of natural causes yet there is a God though not perhaps the simple and human God conceived by the forgivable 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 possibility that motion is as beginningless as he conceives 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 plunged really into an infinite regress putting back our problems step by step endlessly we must posit a prime mover unmoved Prima Mobile a emotive a being incorporeal indivisible spaceless sexless passionless changeless perfect 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 he is the final cause of nature the drive and purpose of things the form of the world the principle 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 the scholastic Octus Palouse activity per se perhaps the mystic force of modern and philosophy he is not so much a person as a magnetic power yet with his usual inconsistency Aristotle represents God as self-conscious spirit a rather 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 nothing his only occupation is to contemplate the essence of things and since he himself is the essence of all things the form of all forms his sole employment is the contemplation of himself for Aristotelian God he is a wife na all 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 withdrawn to his ivory tower from the strife and strain of things all the world away from the philosopher kings of Plato or from the Stern flesh-and-blood reality of yaver or the gentle and solicitous fatherhood of the Christian God psychology and the nature of art Aristotle's psychology is marred with similar obscurity and vacillation there are many interesting passages the power of habit is emphasized and is for the first time called second nature and the laws of Association they're not developed find here a definite formulation but both the crucial problems of philosophical psychology the freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul are left in Hayes 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 should mould us so we are free in the sense that we mold our own characters by our choice of friends books occupations and amusements he does not anticipate the determinists ready reply that these formative choices are themselves determined by our antecedent character and this at last by unchosen heredity and early environment he presses the point that our persistent use of praise and blame presupposes moral responsibility and free will it does not occur to him that the determinist might reach from the same premises a precisely opposite conclusion the praise and blame are given that they may be part of the factors determining subsequent 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 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 Quicksilver inserted by Daedalus into the images of Venus to make stand-ups of them a personal in particular soul can exist only in its own body nevertheless the soul is not material as Democritus would have it nor does all died 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 untouched with decay the active reason is the universal as distinguished from the individual element in man what survives is not the personality with its transitory affections and desires but mind in its most abstract and impersonal form in short darris tatl destroys the soul in order to give it immortality the immortal 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 wanders sometimes whether this metaphysical eating of one's cake and keeping it is not Aristotle's subtle 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 aesthetics 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 mirror up to nature there is in man a pleasure in imitation apparently missing in lower animals yet the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things but their inward significance for this and not the external mannerism and detail is their reality there may be more human Verity in the sternly classic moderation of the Oedipus Rex than in all the realistic tears of the 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 a 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 eg should have unity of action there should be no confusing subplot nor any digressive episodes but above all the function of artists catharsis purification 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 harmless form of theatrical excitement so tragedy through pity and fear effects the proper purgation of these emotions Aristotle misses certain features of tragedy eg 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 mystic power of art it is an illuminating instance of his ability to enter every field of speculation and to adorn whatever he touches ethics and the nature of happiness and yet as Aristotle developed and young men crowded about him to be taught and 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 his life's supreme good what is virtue how shall we find happiness and fulfillment he is realistically simple in his ethics his scientific training keeps him from the preachment 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 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 where in man differs from other beings and by presuming that man's happiness will lie in the full functioning of his 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 development will give him fulfillment and happiness the chief condition of happiness then barring certain physical prerequisites is the life of reason the specific glory and power of man virtue or rather excellence will depend on clear judgment self-control symmetry of desire artistry of means it is not the possession of the simple man nor the gift of innocent intent but the achievement of experience in the developed man the word excellence is probably the fittest translation of the Greek a rate a usually mistranslated virtue the reader will avoid misunderstanding Plato and Aristotle if we're translators right virtue he will substitute excellence ability or capacity the Greek arrete is the Roman virtuse both imply a masculine sort of excellence our ace or Ares God of War vir a male classical antiquity conceived virtue in terms of man just as medieval Christianity conceived it in terms of woman 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 of virtue or an excellence so between cowardice and rashness is courage between stin genus and extravagances liberality between sloth and greed is ambition between humility and pride is modesty between secrecy and loquacity honesty between moroseness and buffoonery good humour between quarrelsome nests and flattery friendship between Hamlet's indecisiveness and Quixote z' impulsiveness is self-control right then in ethics or conduct is not different from right in mathematics or engineering it means correct fit what works best to the best result the golden mean however is not like the mathematical mean and exact average of to precisely calculate extremes it fluctuates with the collateral circumstances of each situation and discovers itself only to mature 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 we are what we were oddly due 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 complete 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 youth is the age of extremes if the young commits a fault it is always on the side of excess and exaggeration the great difficulty of youth and of many of youths elders is to get out of one extreme without falling into its opposite for one extreme easily passes into the other whether through overcorrection or elsewise in sincerity doth protest too much and humility hovers on the precipice of conceit those who are consciously at one extreme 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 earing in one extreme we should aim at the other and so we may reach the middle position as men do in straightening bent timber but unconscious extremists look upon the golden mean is the greatest vice they expelled 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 accordingly so in modern politics the liberal 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 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 engraving on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi the motto made in agon nothing in excess perhaps says nietzsche claims all these were attempts of the greeks to check their own violence and impulsiveness of character more truly they reflected the Greek feeling that passions 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 but the golden mean says our matter-of-fact philosopher is not all of the secret of happiness we must have to a fair degree of worldly goods poverty makes one stingy and grasping while possessions give on that freedom 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 multiplied by being shared it is more important 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 implies 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 requires 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 our debtors and the others creditors and that the debtors wish their creditors out of the way while the creditors are anxious that their debtors should be preserved Aristotle rejects this interpretation he prefers to believe that the greater tenderness of the benefactor is to be explained on the analogy of the artists affection for his work or the mother's for her child we love that which we have made and yet though external Goods and relationships 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 raised 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 people and nothing is so is 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 operation of the intellect aims at no end beyond itself and finds in itself the pleasure which simulates it to further operation and since the attributes of self-sufficiency unworried nests and capacity for rest plainly belong to this occupation in it must lie perfect happiness Aristotle's ideal man however is no mere metaphysician he does not expose himself needlessly to danger since there are a few things for which he cares sufficiently but he is willing in great crises to give even his life knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile 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 because 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 complacence with others except it be a friend complacence 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 now 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 prone to vehemence for he thinks nothing very important a shrill voice and hasty steps come to a man through care he bears the accidents 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 such is the Superman of Aristotle politics communism and conservatism from so aristocratic and 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 common people or even to the mercantile bourgeoisie our philosophy is where our treasure lies but further Aristotle was honestly conservative because of the turmoil and disaster that had come out of Athenian democracy like a typical scholar he longed for order security 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 lies 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 the 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 let us not disregard the experience of Ages surely in the multitude of years these things if they were good would not have remained unknown these things of course means chiefly Plato's communistic Republic Aristotle fights the realism of Plato about universals and 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 conservative though he is Aristotle values individual 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 but even to be a Sun after Plato's fashion 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 lovin you neither can exist in such a state as Plato's perhaps there was in the dim past a communistic 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 labour into unequally important functions elicits and enlarges the natural inequality of men communism 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 nobody 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 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 nothing of the arduous communism of marriage are an example to the point for they generally fall out by the way and quarrel about any trifle that turns up men readily listen to utopias and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend especially when someone is heard denouncing the evils now existing which are said to arise out of the possession of private property these evils however arise from quite another source the wickedness of human nature political science does not make men but must take them as they come from nature and human nature the human average is nearer to the beast than to the god the great majority of men are natural dunces and sluggards 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 politic 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 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 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 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 rights for a moment with wistful hope if every instrument would accomplish its own work obeying or anticipating the will of others if the shuttle would weave or the plectrum touched the lyre without a hand to guide them then chief workman would not need assistance nor masters slaves this philosophy typifies the Greek disdain 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 then was merely manual and Aristotle looked down upon it from the heights of philosophy as belonging to men without Minds is only fit for slaves and only fitting men for slavery manual labor he believes dolls and deteriorates the mind and leaves neither time nor energy for political intelligence it seems to Aristotle a reasonable corollary that only persons of some leisure should have a voice in government the best form of state will not admit mechanics to citizenship if Thebes there was a law that no man could hold office who had not retired from business ten years before even merchants and financiers are classed by Aristotle among slaves retail trade is unnatural and a mode by which men gain from one another the most hated sort of 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 exchange and not as the mother of interest this usury to--'cause which means the birth of money from money is of all modes have gained the most unnatural money should not breed hence the discussion of the theory of finance is not unworthy of philosophy but to be engaged in finance or in money-making is unworthy of a free man Aristotle adds that philosophers could succeed in such fields if they cared to descend into them and he proudly points to Thalys who for seeing a good harvest bought up all the Reapers in his city and then at harvest time sold the metas own sweet price whereupon Aristotle observes that the universal secret of great riches is the creation of a monopoly marriage and education woman is to man as the slave to the master the manual to the mental worker the Barbarian to the Greek woman is an unfinished man left standing on a lower step in the scale of development the male is by nature superior and the female inferior the one rules and the other is ruled and this principle extends of necessity to all mankind woman is weak of will and therefore incapable of independence 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 woman 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 there Socrates supposed the same the courage of a man is shown in commanding that of a woman in obeying as the poet says silence is a woman's glory Aristotle seems to suspect that this ideal enslavement of woman is a rare achievement from 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 advantage he advises him to defer marriage till the vicinity of 37 and then to marry a lass of some 20 years a girl who is rounding the twenties is usually the equal of a man of 30 but may perhaps be managed by a seasoned warrior of 37 what attracts Aristotle to this matrimonial mathematics is the consideration that two such disparate persons will lose their reproductive power and passions at approximately the same time if the man is still able to beget children while the woman is unable to bear them or vice versa quarrels and differences will arise since the time of generation is commonly limited within 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 female went to young is bad for the creation of children in all animals the offspring of the young are small and ill developed generally female health is more important than love further it conduces to temperance not to Mary too soon for women who marry early are apt to be wanton and in men to the bodily frame is stunted if they marry while they are growing these matters should not be left a youthful Caprice they should be under state supervision and control the state should determine the minimum and maximum ages of marriage for each sex the best seasons 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 there is an ideal number of population for every state varying with its position and resources a state when composed of too few is not as a state should be self-sufficient while if it has too many it becomes a nation and not a state and is almost incapable of constitutional government or of ethnic or political unity 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 molded to the form of government under which he lives by state control of schools we might divert men from industry and trade to agriculture and we might train men while keeping property private to open their possessions to discriminately common use among good men with respect to the use of property the proverb will hold that friends shall have all things in common but above all the growing citizen must be taught obedience to law else estate 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 in the community by education let youth be taught to the great boon in the state the unappreciated security which comes of social organization the freedom that comes of law man when perfected is the best of animals but when isolated he is the worst of all for injustice is more dangerous when armed and man is equipped at birth with the weapon of intelligence 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 order and through order civilization in 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 hence revolution is almost always unwise it may achieve some good but at the cost of many evils the chief of which is the disturbance 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 the 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 of long-established habits brings the overthrow of innovating governments because the old habits persist among the people characters are not so easily changed as laws if a constitution is to be permanent all the parts of a society must desire it to be maintained therefore 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 congested population and he should foster and practice religion an autocratic ruler particularly should appear to be earnest in the worship of the gods for if men think that a ruler is religious and Revere 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 fighting on his side democracy and aristocracy with such safeguards in religion in education and in the ordering of family life almost any of the traditional forms of government will serve all forms have good and bad commingled in them and are severally adapted to various conditions theoretically the ideal form of government would be the centralization 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 any one would be ridiculous who should attempt to make laws for them they would probably retort what in the fable of antis tonie's the lions said to the hares when in the council of beasts the latter began her hanging and claiming equality for all where are your claws 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 decided by number when lesser issues are reserved for knowledge and ability as the physician ought to be judged by the physicians so ought men in general to be judged by their peers now does not the same principle apply to elections for a right election can only be made by those who have knowledge a geometric eg will choose rightly in matters of geometry or a pilot in matters of navigation so that neither the election of magistrates nor the calling of them to account should be entrusted to the many the difficulty with hereditary aristocracy is that it has no permanent economic base the eternal recurrence of the nouveau riche 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 whole state becomes a parishes for whenever the Chiefs of the state deem anything honorable the other citizens are sure to follow their example the prestige imitation of modern social psychology and wearability has not the first place there is no real aristocracy democracy is usually the result of a revolution against plutocracy love of gain in the ruling classes tends constantly to diminish their number Marx's elimination of the middle class and so to strengthen the masses who in the end set upon their masters and established democracies this rule by the poor has some advantages the people though individually they may be worse judges than those who have special knowledge are collectively as good moreover there are some artists whose works are best judged not by themselves alone but by those who do not possess the art eg 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 and the many are more incorruptible than the few they are like the greater quantity 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 yet democracy is on the whole inferior to aristocracy for it is based on a false assumption of equality it arises out of the notion that those who are equal in one respect eg in respect of the law are equal in all respects because men are equally free they claim to be absolutely equal the upshot is that ability is sacrificed a 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 intelligent what we need is a combination of aristocracy and democracy constitutional government offers this happy union it is not the best conceivable government that would be an aristocracy of education but it is the best possible state we must ask what is the best institution 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 circumstance nor yet an ideal state which will be only an aspiration but having in mind such a life as the majority will be able to share and a form of government to which states in general can attain it is necessary to begin by assuming a principle of general application namely that that part of the state which desires the continuance of the government must be stronger than that which does not 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 should we 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 travelled the road and arrived fully prepared from whatever angle we approach our eternal political problem we monotonous Li 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 reserved for the equipped and winnowed best criticism what shall we say of this philosophy perhaps nothing rapturous it is difficult to be enthusiastic about Aristotle because it was difficult for him to be enthusiastic about anything and see beasts may flare a premium tea beef lending if you wish me to weep you must weep first Horace two actors and writers his motto is nil at murari to admire or marvel at nothing and we hesitate to violate his motto in his case we miss in him the reforming zeal of Plato the angry love of humanity which made the great idealist denounce 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 salutary for us as Aristotle's skeptic calm let us summarize our disagreement we are bothered at the outset with his insistence on logic he thinks the syllogism a description of man's way of reasoning whereas it merely describes man's way of dressing up his reasoning for the persuasion of another mind he supposes 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 experiment yet how foolish we should be to forget the 2000 years have changed merely the incidentals of Aristotle's logic that akhom and bacon and hewel and mill and a hundred others have but found spots in his son and that Aristotle's creation of this new discipline 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 observations his specialty is the collection and classification of data in every field he wields his categories and produces catalogues but side by side with this bent and talent for observation goes a platonic addiction to metaphysics this trips him up in every science and inveigled him into the eldest presuppositions here indeed was the great defect of the Greek mind it was not disciplined it lacked limiting and steadying traditions it moved freely in an uncharted field and ran too readily to theories and conclusions so Greek philosophy leaped on to Heights unreached again while Greek science limped behind our modern danger is precisely opposite inductive data fall upon us from all sides like the lava of Vesuvius we suffocate with uncoordinated facts our minds are overwhelmed with science breeding and multiplying into specialists to Kaos for want of synthetic thought in the 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 Anglo phob would be consoled with the thought that Englishmen in their youth had done advanced 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 we long to mingle fresh green leaves of grass with these drier pages to add Whitman's exhilarating justification of sense joy to Aristotle's exaltation of a purely intellectual happiness we wonder if this Aristotelian ideal of a moderate moderation has had anything to do with the colourless virtue the starched perfection the expressionless good form of the British aristocracy matthew arnold tells us that in his time oxford tutors looked upon the ethics as infallible for 300 years this book and the politics have formed the ruling british mind perhaps too great and Noble achievements but certainly to a hard and cold efficiency what would the result 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 Athens there was nothing Athene and about him nothing of the hasty and inspiriting experimentalism which made athens throb with political a long and at last helped to subject her to a unifying despot he realized too completely 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 disorder that he forgets to be fearful of slavery the ax so timid of uncertain change that he prefers a certain changelessness that near resembles death he lacks that Heraklion sense of flux which justifies the conservative in believing that all permanent changes gradual and 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 done greedy 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 individual control of the means of production was stimulating 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 ownership and power and to an artificial and finally disruptive inequality but after all these are quite an essential criticisms of what remains the most marvelous and influential system of thought ever put together 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 is drawn upon Aristotle and stood upon his shoulders to see the truth the varied and magnificent culture of Alexandria found its 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 translated by historian Christians into Syriac in the 5th century AD and thence into Arabic and Hebrew in the 10th century and thence into Latin towards 1225 turned scholasticism from its eloquent beginnings in Abelar to encyclopedic completion in thomas aquinas the Crusaders brought back more accurate Greek copies of the philosophers text and the Greek scholars of Constantinople brought further Aristotelian treasures with them when after 1453 they fled from the besieging 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 Leggett at Paris for bad teachers to lecture on his works in 1231 Gregory the ninth 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 bed's head 20 books clothed in black or red the verus tatl and his philosophy 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 - I saw and Socrates who stood beside him closer than the rest such lines give us some inkling of the honor which a thousand years offered to the stage I write not til new instruments accumulated observations and patient experiments remade science and gave irresistible weapons to Ockham and Ramos to Roger and Francis Bacon was the reign of Aristotle ended no other mind had for so long a time ruled the intellect of mankind later life and death meanwhile life had become unmanageable complicated for our philosopher he found himself on the one hand embroiled with Alexander for protesting against the execution of callous tonie's a nephew of aristotle who would refuse 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 culture and science would flourish better when petty sovereignties and disputes were ended and he saw an Alexander what Goethe was to see in Napoleon the philosophic unity of a chaotic and intolerably manifold world the Athenians hungering for Liberty growled their estoppel and became bitter when Alexander had a statue of the philosopher put up in the heart of the hostile City in this 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 enemies on every side the successors of Plato at the academy the oratorical School of Isocrates and the angry crowds that hung on demosthenes 'as acid eloquence intrigued and clamored for his exile or his death and then suddenly 323 BC Alexander died Athens went wild with patriotic joy the Macedonian party was overthrown and Athenian Independence was proclaimed and tippet ur successor of Alexander and intimate friend of Aristotle marched upon the rebellious City most of the Macedonian party fled Yuri Madonna chief priests brought in an indictment 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 second time against philosophy there was no cowardice in this an accused person at Athens had always the option of during exile arriving at couses Aristotle fell ill diogenes laërtius tells us that the old philosopher in utter disappointment with the turn of all things against him committed suicide by drinking hemlock however induced his illness proved fatal and a few months after leaving Athens 322 BC the lonely Aristotle died in the same year and at the same age 62 demosthenes greatest of Alexander's enemies drank poison within 12 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 when the grandeur that was Rome was the pomp of power rather than the light of thought then that grandeur to 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

Channel: Rocky C

Views: 210,452

Rating: 4.760736 out of 5

Keywords: Aristotle (Author), Philosophy (Field Of Study), Will Durant

Id: Yn89Jdp4mc0

Length: 102min 3sec (6123 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 09 2014