The dates of the chief events in the life of Aristotle, extracted from the ‘Chronology’ of Apollodorus (140 b.c.), have been handed down to us by Diogenes Laertius in his ‘Lives of the Philosophers;’ and from various other sources it is possible to fill in the outline thus afforded, if not with certain facts, at all events with reasonable probabilities. Aristotle’s own writings are almost entirely devoid of personal references, yet in them we can trace, to some extent, the progress and development of his mind. On the whole, we know quite as much about him, personally, as about most of the ancient Greek writers.
Aristotle was born in the year 384 b.c., at Stageira, a Grecian colony and seaport town on the Strymonic Gulf in Thrace, not far from Mount Athos—and, what is more important, not far from the frontier of Macedonia, and from Pella, the residence of the Macedonian King Amyntas. To Stageira, his birth-place, he owed the world-famous appellation of “the Stagirite,” given to him by scholiasts and schoolmen in later days. It was fancied by Wilhelm von Humboldt that Aristotle exhibits certain un-Greek characteristics in his neglect of form and grace in writing, and that this is attributable to his having been born and brought up in Thrace. But, on the other hand, Aristotle’s family were purely Hellenic, and probably the colonists of Stageira lived in strict conformity with Greek ideas, and not without contempt for the surrounding “barbarians.” Even the court of Macedonia, in the neighbourhood, were phil-Hellenic in their tastes, and entertained Greek artists and men of letters. And Aristotle shows no trace in his writings of ever having known any language beside Greek. Probably the mere locality of his birth produced but little influence upon him, except so far as it led to his subsequent connection with the court of Macedon. His father, Nicomachus, was physician to King Amyntas, and it is possible that the youthful Aristotle was taken at times to the court, and thus made the acquaintance of his future patron, Philip of Macedon, who was about his own age. But all through the time of Aristotle’s boyhood, affairs in Macedonia were troubled and unprosperous. Amyntas was an unsuccessful ruler, and brought his country to the verge of extinction in a war with the Illyrians. Aristotle, as a youth, cannot have had any inducement to take an interest in Macedonian politics. Up to the time when he left his native city, there had appeared no indication of that which afterwards occurred,—that Macedonia would conquer the East, and become the mistress of the entire liberties of Greece.
But there is one significant tradition about Aristotle which suggests circumstances likely to have produced in early life a considerable influence upon his habits and pursuits. His father is said to have been an “Asclepiad,”—that is, he belonged to that distinguished caste who claimed to be the descendants of Esculapius. Now we have it, on the authority of Galen,[1] that “it was the custom in Asclepiad families for the boys to be trained by their father in the practice of dissection, just as regularly as boys in other families learn to read and write.” If Aristotle had really been trained from boyhood in the manner thus described, we can understand how great an impulse he would have received to those physiological researches which formed so important a part of his subsequent achievements. But in one place of his writings (‘On the Parts of Animals,’ I. v. 7), he speaks of the “extreme repugnance” with which one necessarily sees “veins, and flesh, and other suchlike parts,” in the human subject. This does not show the hardihood of a practised dissector. But Aristotle’s youthful dissections, if made at all, were doubtless made on the lower animals. At all events, we may perhaps safely conclude about him, that he received from his father an hereditary tendency towards physiological study. But in addition to this tendency, Aristotle must doubtless have early manifested an interest in, and capacity for, abstract philosophy.
We now come to the second epoch in his life. About the year 367 B.C., when he was seventeen years old, his father having recently died, he was sent by his guardian, Proxenus of Atarneus, to complete his studies at Athens, “the metropolis of wisdom.”[2] There he continued to reside for twenty years, during the greater part of which time he attended the school of philosophy which Plato had founded in the olive-groves of Academus, on the banks of the Cephisus. He had probably inherited from his father means sufficient for his support, so that he could live without care for the acquirement of anything save knowledge. But in the acquisition of this he manifested a zeal unsurpassed in the annals of study. Among his fellow-pupils in the Academe, he is said to have got the sobriquet of “the Reader;” while Plato himself called him “the Mind of the School,” in recognition of his quick and powerful intelligence. In order to win time, even from sleep, Aristotle is said to have invented the plan of sleeping with a ball in his hand, so held over a brazen dish, that whenever his grasp relaxed the ball would descend with a clang, and arouse him to the resumption of his labours.
Plato’s philosophy was absolutely pre-eminent in Greece at this time. It embodied within itself all that was best in the doctrine and the spirit of Socrates, and beyond it there was nothing, except the mystical theories of the Pythagoreans (the best elements in which Plato had assimilated), and the materialistic theories of the Atomists, which Plato, and afterwards Aristotle, controverted. The writings of Aristotle are quite consistent with the tradition that he was for twenty years a pupil of the Academic school. They show a long list of thoughts and expressions borrowed from the works of Plato, and also not unfrequently refer to the oral teaching of Plato. They contain a logical, ethical, political, and metaphysical philosophy, which is evidently, with some modifications, the organisation and development of rich materials often rather suggested than worked out in the Platonic dialogues. Aristotle thus, in constructing a system of knowledge which was destined immensely to influence the thoughts of mankind, became, in the first place, the disciple of Plato and the intellectual heir of Socrates; and summed up all the best that had been arrived at by the previous philosophers of Greece.
The personal relationships which arose between Aristotle and his master Plato have furnished matter for uncertain traditions and for much discussion. There seems, however, to be no ground for sustaining the charge of “ingratitude” against Aristotle. The truth was probably somewhat as follows: Aristotle, while engaged in imbibing deeply the philosophical thoughts of Plato, gradually developed also his own individuality and independence of mind. And the natural bias of his intellect was certainly in a different direction from that of Plato. It has been said that “every man is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian;” and it would be very fortunate if that were literally true, for then every man would be born with a noble type of intellect. But it is no doubt correct to say that the Platonic and the Aristotelian type of intellect are distinct and divergent. They have in common the keen and unwearied pressure after truth, but they seek the truth under different aspects. Plato was ever aspiring to intuitions of a truth which in this world could never be wholly revealed,—a truth of which glimpses only could be obtained, partly by the most abstract powers of thought, partly by the imagination. While richly endowed with humour and the dramatic faculty, and the most trenchant insight into the fallacies of mankind, Plato was not content with aiming at those demonstrations which could be stated once for all, but he rather sought analogies and hints of a truth which can never be definitely expressed. Eternity, the life of the gods, the supra-sensible world of “pure ideas,” were of more reality and importance to him than the affairs of this life. While he was the greatest and most original of metaphysical philosophers, he never ceased to be a poet, and, to some extent, a mystic.
The intellectual characteristics of Aristotle, as known to us from his works, present a great contrast to all this. He was too much in earnest, and at the same time too matter-of-fact, to allow poetry and the imagination any share in the quest for truth. He had no taste for half-lights; and with regard to such great questions as the immortality of the soul, the nature of God, the operation of Providence, and the like, it is evident that so far from preferring these, he rather kept aloof from them, and only gave cautious and grudging utterances upon them. His passion was for definite knowledge, especially knowledge so methodised that it could be stated in the form of a general principle, or law. He thought that to obtain a general principle in which knowledge was summed up, on any subject, was of the utmost importance;[3] that such a principle was a possession for all future time, that future generations would apply to it and work it out in detail, and thus that it would form the nucleus of a science. And this was the daring aim of Aristotle—no less than the foundation of all the sciences. We shall have occasion to point out subsequently the imperfections of Aristotle’s method in physical science when compared with that of modern times. But for all that, his spirit was essentially scientific, and for the sake of science and the naked truth he discarded all beauty and grace of style. Plato on the other hand was an artist, and clothed all his thoughts in beauty; and if there be (as there surely is)[4] a truth which is above the truth of scientific knowledge, that was the truth after which Plato aspired. Aristotle’s aspirations were for methodised experience and the definite.
It is easy to understand, or imagine, how two great minds with such divergent tendencies would be unable to continue for ever to stand to each other in the relation of pupil to teacher. For a time, no doubt, the divergence would not be discovered. Aristotle at first would appear only as “the mind” of Plato’s school. And his first attempts at philosophical writing appear to have been made in the form of dialogues in somewhat feeble imitation of the masterpieces of Plato. We shall speak hereafter of this early and lighter class of Aristotle’s writings. He may have adhered for several years to this mode of composition. But all the while his powers, his knowledge, and his methods of thought were maturing, and he was working his way to the conception of a quite different mode of setting forth philosophy. Gradually, as he grasped, or thought he had grasped, all that Plato had to impart, his mind would tend to dwell more on those aspects of Plato’s thought with which he did not sympathise. He would especially feel a sort of impatience at the licence allowed to the imagination to intrude itself into the treatment of philosophic questions,—at the substitution of gorgeous myths and symbolical figures for plain exact answers of the understanding. This feeling of impatience broke out in a polemic against that doctrine of the eternal “Ideas” or Forms of Things, which appears somewhat variously set forth in Plato’s dialogues, especially in ‘Timæus,’ ‘Phædrus,’ and ‘Republic,’ and which doubtless formed a prominent topic in Plato’s discourses to his school. We are told by Proclus[5] that Aristotle “proclaimed loudly in his dialogues that he was unable to sympathise with the doctrine of Ideas, even though his opposition to it should be attributed to a factious spirit.” The import of that doctrine was to disparage the world of sensible objects. It represented that when we, by means of our senses, apprehend, or think that we apprehend, particular objects, we are like men sitting in a dimly-lighted subterraneous cavern, and staring at shadows on the wall; that the world of sense is a world of shadows, but that a true world exists,—a world of Ideas; that nothing is really good or beautiful in the world of sense, but what we call good or beautiful things are those which have a faint semblance to the Idea of the good or the beautiful, and thus bring back to our souls the remembrance of those Ideas, which we once saw in our ante-natal condition; that the Ideas or Forms are archetypes, in accordance with which the Creator framed this world; that they are not only the cause of qualities and attributes in things, such as goodness, justice, equality, and the like, but also they are heads of classes or universals, and that they alone have complete reality, while the individuals, constituting the classes at the head of which they stand, only “participate” to a certain extent in real existence. Such were some of the features of Plato’s celebrated doctrine of Ideas. That he did not himself hold very strongly or dogmatically to its details, may be judged from the fact that in two of his dialogues (‘Parmenides’ and ‘Sophist’) he himself points out, and does not remove, many difficulties which attach to them. But the main gist of the doctrine was to assert what is called Realism; and this, under one form or another, Plato always maintained. When Aristotle attacked the doctrine of Ideas, there was the first beginning of that controversy between the Realists and the Nominalists, which so much excited the minds of men in the middle ages. Realism, making reason independent of the senses, asserts that the universal is more real than the particular,—that, for instance, the universal idea of “man” in general is more real, and can be grasped by the mind with greater certainty, than the conception of any individual man. Nominalism, on the contrary, asserts the superior reality of individual objects, and turns the universal into a mere name. Now it was quite natural for Aristotle, with his tendency towards physical science and experiment, and the amassing of particular facts, to take the Nominalist view, so far as to assert the reality of individual objects. But there is reason for doubting that he ever became a thorough and consistent Nominalist. For the present it is sufficient to note that at the outset of his philosophical career he appears to have made an onslaught, in several dialogues which he wrote for the purpose, on Plato’s doctrine of Ideas. In three passages of his extant works (‘Eth.’ I. vi.; ‘Met.’ I. vi., XII. iv.), he gives summaries of his arguments on the subject. He couches those arguments in courteous language, and in one place introduces them with words which have been Latinised into the well-known phrase—Amicus Plato, sed magis amica Veritas. Yet the arguments themselves appear somewhat captious. And there may have been a youthful vehemence in the mode in which he first urged them. Here probably first appeared “the little rift within the lute;” this was the beginning of that divergence of mind and attitude which, growing wider, rendered it ultimately impossible that Aristotle should be chosen to succeed Plato, as inheritor of his method, and head of the Academic school.
In another set of circumstances, tradition affords us indications of the independence and self-confidence of Aristotle having been manifested during the lifetime of Plato. In his extant writings, Plato speaks so disparagingly of the art of Rhetoric, that we can hardly fancy his giving any encouragement to the study of it among his disciples. But none the less Aristotle appears to have diligently laboured in this, as in every other intellectual province that he found open. Plato would not separate Rhetoric from the rhetorical spirit; he regarded the whole thing as a procedure for tickling the ears, for flattering crowds, for subordinating truth to effect. Aristotle, in the analytical way which became one of his chief characteristics, separated the method of Rhetoric from the uses to which it might be applied. He saw that success in Rhetoric depended on general principles and laws of the human mind, and that it would be worth while to draw these out and frame them into a science, especially as many of his countrymen had already essayed to do the same, though imperfectly. He maintained that the study of the methods of Rhetoric was desirable and even necessary to a free citizen, for self-defence, for the exposure of sophistry, and in the interests of truth itself. Now, the greatest school of Rhetoric in all Greece was at this period held in Athens by the renowned Isocrates, who, when Aristotle arrived at Athens, was at the zenith of his reputation. He was now nearly seventy years old, but continued to teach and to compose with almost unabated vigour for twenty-eight years more. Isocrates had been the follower of Socrates, and several leading Sophists of the latter part of the fifth century B.C.—Protagoras, Prodicus, Gorgias, and Theramenes—are named as having been his teachers.[6] He was a dignified old man, full of the most elevated sentiments. The style of his oratory had been formed after the florid Sicilian school of Gorgias, but was more severe and artistic than the earlier models of that school. He professed to inculcate what he called “philosophy,” but which was really a kind of thought standing half-way between pure speculative search for truth, like that of Plato, and the merely worldly and practical aims of the Sophists. It was a manly wisdom dealing with politics and morality, analogous to the reflections on such subjects in which Cicero afterwards indulged. The rhetorical school of Isocrates drew pupils from all parts of Greece, from Sicily, and even from Pontus. In it, says Cicero, “the eloquence of all Greece was trained and perfected.” The pupils remained in it sometimes three or four years; they paid a fee of 1000 drachme each (=1000 francs, or £40); and thus in his long life the master became one of the most opulent citizens of Athens. “Isocrates,” says Dionysus, “had the educating of the best of the youth of Greece,” and so many of his scholars became afterwards distinguished in various ways—as orators, statesmen, generals, historians, or philosophers—that a list of them was drawn up by Hermippus. Among the number was Speusippus, nephew to Plato, and afterwards his successor in the headship of the Academy. And yet it may readily be believed that there was small sympathy between the Academy and the school of Isocrates, the aims of the two being so very different. Plato and his followers looked down with more or less contempt on the half-philosophising of Isocrates. And at last the youthful Aristotle came forward as a champion, challenging and attacking the highly-reputed veteran. Aristotle is said to have parodied on this occasion a line of Euripides—
In silence leave barbarians to speak?
Never!”
and to have taken for his motto the words—
In silence leave Isocrates to speak?”
The acrimony of the allusion suggests to us the spirit in which he opened the controversy. He seems to have assailed the matter of the discourses of Isocrates, as being of a superficial and merely oratorical character, and also his theory of the art of rhetoric, and his mode of teaching it. The strictures of Aristotle were answered by Cephisodorus, one of the pupils of Isocrates, who wrote a defence of his master in four books. Both attack and reply have completely perished. Aristotle appears to have followed up his theoretical denunciation of Isocrates by the practical step of opening a school of Rhetoric in rivalry to his. What the success of this enterprise may have been is not recorded. There is no reason for supposing that the young Stagirite at all succeeded in impressing the Athenians at that time with his superior insight into the laws of Rhetoric. The real value and scientific pre-eminence of his views came out in the immortal treatise on Rhetoric, which many years later he composed. But it is remarkable that that treatise, while full of references to Isocrates, bears no traces of any ill-feeling towards him. In fact, it would seem that time must have worked a certain change in the character of Aristotle, for almost the only glimpses which we have of him during his earlier residence at Athens show him somewhat petulantly attacking both Plato and Isocrates; whereas his works which we possess, and which were written later, are calmly impersonal and devoid of all petulance of spirit.
Plato died in the year 347 B.C., and we find that in that year Aristotle, together with his fellow-disciple Xenocrates, left Athens, and went to reside at Atarneus, a town of Asia Minor. This migration was doubtless caused by the choice of Speusippus, Plato’s nephew, to be Leader of the Academy. However natural it may have been that Aristotle should be held disqualified by incompatibility of opinions for becoming the representative of Plato, still it may have been unpleasant to him to see another preferred to himself, and especially one so inferior to himself in intellect as Speusippus. And Xenocrates may have felt something of the same kind on his own account. Accordingly, the two left Athens together. Aristotle had more than one reason for selecting Atarneus as his new place of abode. It was the home of Proxenus, his guardian, of whom mention has already been made; and it was ruled over by Hermeias, an enlightened prince, with whom both Aristotle and Xenocrates had had the opportunity of forming a philosophic friendship. The history of Hermeias was remarkable: he had been the slave of Eubulus, the former despot of Atarneus. As happens not uncommonly in the East, he had sprung from being slave to be vizier, and thence to be ruler himself. He governed beneficently; and, his mind not being devoid of philosophical impulses, he had come to Athens and attended the lectures of Plato. He now hospitably received the two emigrants from Plato’s school, and entertained them at his court for three years, during which time he bestowed the hand of Pythias, his niece, upon Aristotle in marriage. This may be conceived to have been a happy period of Aristotle’s life, but it was cut short by the death of his benefactor, who was treacherously kidnapped by a Greek officer in the service of the Persians, and put to death. Aristotle afterwards recorded his admiration for Hermeias, in a hymn or pæan which he wrote in his honour, and in which he likened him to Hercules and the Dioscuri, and other heroes of noble endurance. He also perhaps alludes to him in a well-known passage[7] in which he says that “a good man does not become a friend to one who is in a superior station to himself, unless that superiority of station be justified by superiority of merit.” If Aristotle had Hermeias, his own former friend, in his mind when he wrote this passage, he must have generously attributed to him moral qualities superior to his own.
On flying from Atarneus, as they were now obliged to do, Xenocrates returned to Athens, and Aristotle took up his abode with his wife at Mitylene, where he lived two or three years, until he was invited by Philip of Macedon to become the tutor of Alexander, then a boy of the age of thirteen. That Aristotle, the prince of philosophers and supreme master of the sphere of knowledge, should be called upon to train the mind of Alexander, the conqueror of the world, seems a combination so romantic, that it has come to be thought that it must have been the mere invention of some sophist or rhetorician. This, however, is an unnecessary scepticism, for antiquity is unanimous in accepting the tradition, and there are no circumstances that we know of which are inconsistent with it. Aristotle’s family connection with the royal family of Macedon made it natural that now, when he had acquired a certain reputation in Greece, he should be offered this charge. Unfortunately no information has been handed down to us as to the way in which he performed its duties. History is silent on the subject, and we cannot even gather from any of Aristotle’s own writings his views as to the education of a prince; the treatise on education, which was to have formed part of his ‘Politics,’ has reached us as an incomplete or mutilated fragment. Nothing that is recorded of Alexander tends to throw any light on his early training, except, perhaps, his interest in Homer and in the Attic tragedians, and his power of addressing audiences in Greek, which was, of course, to a Macedonian an acquired language. It is reasonable to suppose that Aristotle instructed him in rhetoric, and imbued him with Greek literature, and took him through a course of mathematics, Whether he attempted anything beyond this “secondary instruction” we know not. But it would be vain to look for traces of a personal and intellectual influence having been produced by the teacher on the mind of his pupil. Alexander’s was a genius of that first-rate order that grows independently of, or soon outgrows, all education. His mind was not framed to be greatly interested in science or philosophy; he was, as the First Napoleon said of himself, tout à fait un être politique; and even during part of the period of Aristotle’s tutelage, he was associated with his father in the business of the State. On the whole, we might almost imagine that Aristotle’s functions at the court of Macedonia were light, and that he was allowed considerable leisure for the quiet prosecution of his own great undertakings. He seems, however, to have enjoyed the full confidence and favour of his patrons,[8] and to have retained his appointment altogether about five years, until Philip was assassinated in the year 336 B.C., and Alexander became King of Macedonia.
For a year after the death of Philip, Aristotle still remained, residing either at Pella or at Stageira; but of course no longer as preceptor to Alexander, whose mind was now totally absorbed by imperial business and plans for the subjugation of all the peoples of the East,—while his own mind was meditating plans different in kind, but no less vast, for the subjugation of all the various realms of knowledge. In 335 B.C., the preparations for Alexander’s oriental campaigns were commenced in earnest, and Aristotle then again betook himself, after a twelve years’ absence, to Athens, whither he returned with all the prestige which could be derived from the most marked indications of the favour of Alexander, who ordered a statue of him to be set up at Athens, and who is said also to have furnished him with ample funds for the prosecution of physical and zoological investigations. Athensæus computes the total sum given to Aristotle in that way at 800 talents (nearly £200,000); and, if this had been the actual fact, it would have been, perhaps, the greatest instance on record of the “endowment of research.” But we can only treat the statement as at best mere hearsay. We know how amounts of this kind are invariably exaggerated; and, indeed, the whole story may have arisen from the imagination of later Greek writers dwelling on the relationship between the philosopher and the king. The same may be said of Pliny’s assertion, that “thousands of men” in Alexander’s army were put at the orders of Aristotle for the purposes of scientific inquiry and collection. Had this been true, Aristotle, though far from being able to make the use which now would be made of such an opportunity, would have been in a position which many a biologist of the present day might envy. Even discounting all such statements as uncertain and questionable, we must still admit that Aristotle, in his 50th year, was enabled, under the most favourable auspices, to commence building up the great fabric of philosophy and science for which he had been, all his life long, making the plans and gathering the materials.
Aristotle, on his return, found Speusippus dead, and Xenocrates installed as leader of the Platonic school of Philosophy, which was held, as we have said, in the groves of Academe, on the west of the city of Athens. He immediately opened a rival school on the eastern side, in the grounds attached to the Temple of the Lyceian Apollo. From his using the covered walks (peripatoi) in these grounds for lecturing to, and intercourse with, his pupils, the name of “Peripatetics” came to be given to his scholars, and to the Aristotelian sect in general. His object being research, and the bringing into methodised form the results of investigations, — it may be asked why he should have opened a school? Partly, this was necessitated by a regard for his own reputation and fame, — it was a method of publication suitable before the days of printing. And also in many ways it could be made to further his views. Teaching a philosophical school was a very different thing from teaching the rudiments. It was more like the work of a German professor, who often does not condescend to impart anything to his class, except his own latest discoveries. The very practice of imparting to an auditory reasoned-out conclusions is a stimulus to their production, and at the same time a test of their correctness. Thus, Aristotle, in his writings, frequently uses the term “teaching” merely to indicate “demonstration;” and as there is reason to believe that all his great works were written at this time, we may conceive, with great likelihood, that all the “demonstrations” they contain had at one time the form of “teachings” — that is to say, that they went through the process of being read to his school. But there was another special way in which Aristotle was able not only to benefit his scholars, but also to make use of them as subordinate labourers in his work. We must remember what he was aiming at: it was to produce what we should call an encyclopædia of all the sciences. Such a book, nowadays, is done by many different hands, and the different articles in it do not aim at being original, but at compiling the latest results of the best authorities in each department. But Aristotle sought to construct an encyclopædia with his own hand, in which each science should appear brand-new, originally created or quite reconstructed by himself. He began from the very beginning, and framed his own philosophical or scientific nomenclature; he traced out the laws on which human reasoning proceeds, and was the first to reduce these to science, and to produce a Logic. He wrote anew ‘Metaphysics,’ ‘Ethics,’ ‘Politics,’ ‘Rhetoric,’ and ‘The Art of Poetry;’ and while these were still on the stocks, he was engaged in founding, on the largest scale, the physical and natural sciences, especially natural philosophy, physiology under various aspects (such as histology and anatomy, embryology, psychology, the philosophy of the senses, &c.), and, above all, natural history. Much of this work, especially its more abstract part, was the slowly-ripened fruit of his entire previous life. But though he had great stores ready that only required to be arranged and put forth, he never ceased pushing out inquiries in all directions, and collecting fresh materials. He had quite the Baconian zeal for experientia tabulata, for lists and memoranda of all kinds of facts, historical, political, psychological, or naturalistic. He loved to note problems to be solved and difficulties to be answered. Thus a boundless field of subordinate labour was opened, in which his pupils might be employed. The absence of any effort after artistic beauty in his writings made it easier to incorporate here and there the contributions of his apprentices. And his works, as we have them, exhibit some traces of cooperative work. The Peripatetic school, after his death, followed the direction which Aristotle had given them, and were noted for their monographs on small particular points.
Aristotle was not a citizen of Athens, but only a “metic,” or foreign resident, so he took no part in public affairs. His whole time during the thirteen years of his second residence in the city — a period coeval with the astonishing career of Alexander in the East — must have been devoted to labours within his school, especially in connection with the composition of his works. From the enthusiastic passages in which he speaks of the joys of the philosopher, we may conceive how highly the privileges of this period — so calm and yet so intensely active — were appreciated by him. But few traditions bearing upon this part of his life have been handed down. These chiefly point to his relations with Alexander, with whom, as well as with Antipater, who was acting as viceroy in Macedonia, he is represented as having maintained a friendly correspondence. Cassander, the son of Antipater, appears to have attended his school. As time went on, the character of Alexander became corrupted[9] by unchecked success, Asiatic influences, and the all but universal servility which he encountered. His mind became alienated from those Greek citizens around him who showed any independence of spirit. He quarrelled with Antipater, who was faithfully acting for him at home. On a frivolous charge he cruelly put to death Callisthenes, a young orator whom, on the recommendation of Aristotle, he had taken in his retinue. On this and other occasions he is said to have broken out into bitter expressions against “the sophistries” of Aristotle,—that is to say, his free and reasonable political principles. The East, conquered physically by Alexander, had conquered and changed the mind of its conqueror. And he had now fallen quite out of sympathy with his ancient preceptor and friend. But the Athenians seem to have been unconscious of any such change. Aristotle had come to Athens as the avowed favourite and protégé of Alexander, and that, too, at a moment when Alexander (335 B.C.), by sacking the city of Thebes, and by compelling Athens with the threat of a similar fate to exile some of her anti-Macedonian statesmen, had made himself the object of sullen dread and covert dislike to the majority of the Athenian citizens. Some portion of this feeling was doubtless reflected upon Aristotle, but during the life of Alexander any manifestation of it was checked, the affairs of Athens being administered for the time by the “Macedonian” party. Of this party Aristotle was naturally regarded as a pronounced adherent, and he came even to be identified with those arbitrary and tyrannical acts of Alexander, which must in reality have been most repugnant to him. This was especially the case in 324 B.C., when Alexander thought fit to insult the Hellenic cities, by sending a proclamation to be read by a herald at the Olympic Games, ordering them to recall all citizens who were under sentence of banishment, and threatening with instant invasion any city which should hesitate to obey this command. The officer charged with bearing this offensive proclamation, so galling to the self-respect of the Grecian communities, turned out to be none other than Nicanor of Stageira, son of Proxenus the guardian of Aristotle, and now the ward and destined son-in-law of Aristotle himself. This unfortunate circumstance could not fail to draw upon the philosopher, without any fault of his own, the animosity of the Athenian people. In the summer of the next year (323 B.C.), the eyes of all Greece were still anxiously fixed upon the movements of Alexander, when of a sudden the startling news thrilled through every city that the life of the great conqueror had been cut short by a violent fever at Babylon. The news caused a sensation throughout the states of Greece analogous to what would have been felt throughout Europe had Napoleon been suddenly cut off, say in the year 1810.
By the death of Alexander the position of Aristotle at Athens was profoundly affected. The anti-Macedonian party at once, for the moment, regained power; the statesmen who had hitherto protected him were forced to fly from the city, and the spirit of reaction included him also in its attacks. It now became clear that Aristotle had a host of enemies in Athens. There were three classes of persons from whom especially these hostile ranks would naturally be recruited: 1st, The numerous friends of the orator Isocrates, with whom Aristotle in earlier life had put himself in competition; 2d, The Platonists, who resented Aristotle’s divergence from their master and his polemic against certain points of the Platonic system; 3d, The anti-Macedonian party, who indiscriminately visited on Aristotle the political acts of Alexander. Feelings that had been long repressed and kept concealed, while Aristotle was strong in political support, were now licensed by the changed circumstances to come forth into act. His enemies seized on the moment to do him a mischief. An indictment, charging him with “impiety,” was drawn up by Eurymedon, the chief priest of the Eleusinian Ceres, aided by a son of Ephorus, the historian, who had been one of the pupils of Isocrates. Matter for this accusation was obtained partly from Aristotle’s poem written in honour of Hermeias, and which equalled him to the demi-gods, partly from the fact that Aristotle had placed a statue of Hermeias in the temple at Delphi, partly also from some passages in his published writings which were pointed to as inconsistent with the national religion. A philosopher’s view must necessarily differ from the popular view of the topics of religion. Yet in his extant works Aristotle is always tender and reverent in dealing with popular beliefs; indeed, in modern times, these works have been regarded as a bulwark of ecclesiastical feeling. The whole charge, if taken on its real merits, must be considered utterly frivolous; yet those who would have to try the case—a large jury taken from the general mass of the citizens—could not be depended on for discrimination in such a question. They would be too subject to the currents of envy, political, personal, and anti-philosophical, setting in from various quarters; they would be too readily imbued with the odium theologicum. Nothing but a very general popularity would have been an effectual protection at such a moment, and this it is not likely that Aristotle ever possessed in Athens. While capable of devoted and generous friendship, he may easily have been cold and reserved towards general society. He was absorbed in study, and probably lived confined within the narrow scientific circle of his own school. He may even have exhibited some of those proud characteristics which he attributes in his ‘Ethics’ to the “great-souled” man, “who claims great things for himself because he is worthy of them,” and “who cannot bear to associate with any one except a friend.” However this may have been, he was probably right on the present occasion to decline submitting his life and opinions to the judgment of the populace of Athens. He availed himself of the law which gave to any accused person the option of quitting the city before the day of trial, and he retired to Chalcis in Eubœa, “in order,” as he is reported to have said, “that the Athenians might not have another opportunity of sinning against philosophy, as they had already done once in the person of Socrates.”
Chalcis was the original home of the ancestry of Aristotle, and he appears to have had some property there; but it was especially a safe place of refuge for him, as being occupied at this time by a Macedonian garrison. He probably intended only to make a short sojourn there, till circumstances should be changed. He must have fully foreseen that in a short space of time the Macedonian arms would prevail, and restore at Athens the government which had hitherto protected him. He left his school and library in charge of Theophrastus, doubtless looking forward to a speedy return to them and to the resumption of those labours which had already consummated so much. And all this would have happened but that, within a year’s time, in 322 B.C., he was seized with illness, and died somewhat suddenly at Chalcis, in the sixty-third year of his age. The story that he had taken poison may be dismissed as fabulous. A more trustworthy account speaks of his having suffered from impaired digestion, the natural result of his habits of application, and this may very likely have been the cause of his death.
The will of Aristotle, or what professes to be such, has been preserved amongst a heap of very questionable traditions, by Diogenes Laertius. If not genuine it is cleverly invented, and is the work of a romancer who wished to credit the Stagirite with evidences of a generous and just disposition. The property to be disposed of seems considerable, analogous perhaps to an estate of £50,000 in the present day. The chief beneficiary under the will is Nicanor (before mentioned), whom Aristotle appoints to marry Pythias,—his daughter by the niece of Hermeias,—so soon as she shall be of marriageable age. Aristotle’s first wife had died, and he had subsequently married Herpyllis of Stageira, who became the mother of his son Nicomachus. The will places Nicomachus under the care of Nicanor, and makes liberal provision for Herpyllis, who is mentioned in terms of affection and gratitude. Several of the slaves are thought of, and are to be presented with money and set at liberty; all the young slaves are to be freed, “if they deserve it,” as soon as they are grown up. Nicanor is charged to transfer the bones of Aristotle’s first wife Pythias to his own place of interment, to provide and dedicate suitable busts of various members of Aristotle’s family, and to fulfil a vow formerly made by himself of four marble figures of animals to Zeus the Preserver and Athene the Preserver. This last clause throws suspicion on the genuineness of the document, for it looks like a mere imitation of the dying injunction of Socrates: “We owe a cock to Asculapius; pay the debt and do not fail.” Other points also suggest doubt: for instance, Antipater is named as chief executor, and this detail has the appearance of being the work of a forger availing himself of a well-known name; again, there is a difficulty about Pythias the daughter of Aristotle being too young for marriage at the time of her father’s death,—he had married her mother some twenty-three years previously, and had been subsequently married. The terms of the will would imply that Nicomachus was a mere child when his father died, which is inconsistent with other considerations. These and other points of criticism which might be urged do not absolutely prove the will to have been a forgery, they only leave us in doubt about it. And, as has been said, even if regarded as a mere fabrication, it is still a tribute of antiquity to the virtue of Aristotle.
On the other hand, this great name did not escape without incurring its full share of carping and detractation. And the gossip-mongers of the later Roman empire, including Fathers of the Church, have handed on some of the hearsay reports, smart sayings of epigrammatists, and attacks of hostile schools of philosophy, which had been levelled against Aristotle. After all they come to very little:—that he had small eyes, and thin legs, and a lisping utterance; that he passed a wild and spendthrift youth; that he was showy and affected in his attire, and habitually luxurious in his table; that he chose to live at the Macedonian court for the sake of the flesh-pots to be obtained by so doing; and that he was ungrateful to Plato,—these make up the sum of the charges against him. Perhaps if we knew all the facts, we might find that a contradictory, or at all events a different, statement would be more correct under each of the several heads. As it is, we may fairly deal with these imputations as we should with similar aspersions on the personal history of any great man, if they could neither be proved nor disproved, and set them aside as beneath consideration. We cannot expect to know more than the outline of Aristotle’s life, but all we know gives us the impression of a life that, morally speaking, was singularly honourable and blameless. And it was the life of one who by his intellectual achievements placed himself at the very head of ancient thought, and won the admiration and allegiance of many centuries. What those intellectual achievements were we have now to endeavour to set forth.
- ↑ Quoted by Grote, ‘Aristotle,’ i. 4.
- ↑ Plato, ‘Protagoras,’ p. 337. Professor Jowett’s translation.
- ↑ See ‘Soph. Elench.’ xxxii. 13; ‘Eth.’ I. vii. 17-21.
- ↑ See Lotze’s ‘Microcosmus,’ Einleitung.
- ↑ Quoted by Philoponus, ii. 2.
- ↑ See Professor Jebb’s ‘Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isæos,’ ii. 5.
- ↑ ‘Ethics,’ VIII. vi. 6.
- ↑ Aristotle at this time obtained the permission of Philip to rebuild and resettle his native city, Stageira, which had been sacked and ruined in the Olynthian war (349-347 B.C.) He collected the citizens, who had been scattered abroad, invited new comers, and made laws for the community. In memory of these services an annual festival was afterwards held in his honour at Stageira.
- ↑ See Grote’s ‘History of Greece,’ xii. 291,301, 341.