ARISTOTLE
This great philosopher was born at Stagira, or Stageira, in Macedonia, 384 B. C. His father, physician to Amyntas II., king of Macedonia, commenced the education of his son, intending to prepare him for his own profession; and the studies pursued by the latter with this object, doubtless laid the foundation for that lore of natural history, which he displayed through life, and which he cultivated with such success.
Aristotle lost both his parents while he was still young. After their death, he was brought up under Proxenes, a citizen of Mysia, in Asia Minor, who had settled in Stagira. Aristotle testified his gratitude to Proxenes and his wife, by directing, in his will, that statues of them should be executed at his expense and set up as his parents. He also educated their son Nicanor, to whom he gave his daughter Pythias in marriage.
In his eighteenth year, Aristotle left Stagira and went to Athens, the centre of letters and learning in Greece – doubtless attracted thither by the fame of the philosopher, Plato. It appears, however, that during the three first years of his residence there, Plato was absent on a visit to Sicily. There can be no doubt that Aristotle paid particular attention to anatomy and medicine, as appears both from his circumstances in youth, and what we know of his best writings. It is also probable, as is indicated by some statements of ancient writers, that for a space he practised, like Locke, the healing art; he must, however, from an early age, have devoted his whole time to the study of philosophy and the investigation of nature, and have abandoned all thoughts of an exclusively professional career.
His eagerness for the acquisition of knowledge, and his extraordinary acuteness and sagacity, doubtless attracted Plato's attention at an early period; thus we are told that his master called him "the Intellect of the school," and his house, the "House of the reader;" that he said Aristotle required the curb, while Zenocrates, a fellow-disciple, required the spur; some of which traditions are probably true. We are likewise informed that when reading he used to hold a brazen ball in his hand over a basin, in order that, if he fell asleep, he might be awaked by the noise which it would make in falling. Although Aristotle did not during Plato's life, set up any school in opposition to him, as some writers have stated, he taught publicly in the art of rhetoric, and by this means became the rival of the celebrated Isocrates, whom he appears, notwithstanding his very advanced age, to have attacked with considerable violence, and to have treated with much contempt.
Aristotle remained at Athens till Plato's death, 347 B. C., having at that time reached his thirty-seventh year. Many stories are preserved by the ancient compilers of anecdotes, respecting the enmity between Plato and Aristotle, caused by the ingratitude of the disciple, as well as by certain peculiarities of his character which were displeasing to the master. But these rumors appear to have no other foundation than the known variance between the opinions and the mental habits of the two philosophers; and particularly the opposition which Aristotle made to Plato's characteristic doctrine of ideas; whence it was inferred that there must have been an interruption of their friendly relations. The probability, however, is, that Aristotle, at whatever time he may have formed his philosophical opinions, had not published them in an authoritative shape, or entered into any public controversy, before his master's death. In his Nicomachean Ethics, moreover, which was probably one of his latest works, he says "that it is painful to him to refute the doctrine of ideas, as it had been introduced by persons who were his friends: nevertheless, that it is his duty to disregard such private feelings; for both philosophers and truth being dear to him, it is right to give the preference to truth." He is, likewise, stated to have erected an altar to his master inscribing on it that he was a man "whom the wicked ought not even to praise."
After the death of Plato, Aristotle left Athens and went to live at the court of Hermeias, prince of Atarneus. He had resided here but three years, when Hermeias, falling into the hands of the Persians, was put to death. Aristotle took refuge in Mytilene, the chief city of Lesbos. Here he married Pythias, sister of Hermeias, and who, being exposed to persecution from the Persians, now coming into power there, he saved by a rapid flight. For the patriotic and philosophical prince Hermeias, Aristotle entertained a fervent and deep affection, and he dedicated to his memory a beautiful poem, which is still extant. On account of the admiration he expresses of his friend, he was afterwards absurdly charged with impiety in deifying a mortal.
In the year 356 B. C., Philip of Macedon wrote a famous letter to Aristotle, as follows: "King Philip of Macedon, to Aristotle, greeting. Know that a son has been born to me. I thank the gods, not so much that they have given him to me, as that they have permitted him to be born in the time of Aristotle. I hope that thou wilt form him to be a king worthy to succeed me, and to rule the Macedonians."
In the year 342 B. C., Aristotle was invited by Philip to take charge of the education of his son, Alexander, then fourteen years old. This charge was accepted, and Alexander was under his care three or four years. The particulars of his method of instruction are not known to us; but when we see the greatness of mind that Alexander displayed in the first years of his reign, – his command of his passions till flattery had corrupted him, and his regard for the arts and sciences, – we cannot but think that his education was judiciously conducted. It may be objected that Aristotle neglected to guard his pupil against ambition and the love of conquest; but it must be recollected that he was a Greek, and of course a natural enemy to the Persian kings; his hatred had been deepened by the fate of his friend Hermeias; and, finally, the conquest of Persia had, for a long time, been the wish of all Greece. It was, therefore, natural that Aristotle should exert all his talents to form his pupil with the disposition and qualifications necessary for the accomplishment of this object.
Both father and son sought to show their gratitude for the services of such a teacher. Philip rebuilt Stagira, and established a school there for Aristotle. The Stagirites, in gratitude for this service, appointed a yearly festival, called Aristotelia. The philosopher continued at Alexander's court a year after his accession to the throne, and is said to have then repaired to Athens. Ammonius, the Eclectic, says that he followed his pupil in a part of his campaigns; and this seems very probable; for it is hardly possible that so many animals as the philosopher describes could have been sent to Athens, or that he could have given so accurate a description of them without having personally dissected and examined them. We may conjecture that he accompanied Alexander as far as Egypt, and returned to Athens about 331 B. C., provided with the materials for his excellent History of Animals.
Aristotle, after parting with Alexander, returned to Athens, where he resolved to open a school, and chose a house, which, from its vicinity to the temple of Apollo Lyceus, was called the Lyceum. Attached to this building was a garden, with walks, in Greek peripatoi, where Aristotle used to deliver his instructions to his disciples; whence his school obtained the name of peripatetic. It appears that his habit was to give one lecture in the early part of the day on the abstruser parts of his philosophy, to his more advanced scholars, which was called the morning walk, and lasted till the hour when people dressed and anointed themselves; and another lecture, called the evening walk, on more popular subjects, to a less select class.
It was probably during the thirteen years of his second residence at Athens, that Aristotle composed or completed the greater part of his works which have descended to our days. The foundation of most of them was, doubtless, laid at an early period of his life; but they appear to have been gradually formed, and to have received continual additions and corrections. Among the works which especially belong to this period of his life, are his treatises on Natural History; which, as has been correctly observed by a late writer on this subject, are not to be considered as the result of his own observations only, but as a collection of all that had been observed by others, as well as by himself.
It is stated by Pliny, that "Alexander the Great, being smitten with the desire of knowing the natures of animals, ordered several thousand persons, over the whole of Asia and Greece, who lived by hunting, bird-catching and fishing, or who had the care of parks, herds, hives, seines, and aviaries, to furnish Aristotle with materials for a work on animals." We are likewise informed that Aristotle received from Alexander the enormous sum of eight hundred talents, – nearly a million of dollars, to prosecute his researches in natural history, – a circumstance which did not escape the malice of his traducers, who censured him for receiving gifts from princes. Seneca, who states that Philip furnished Aristotle with large sums of money for his history of animals, had, doubtless, confounded the father and son.
Callisthenes, a relation of Aristotle, by his recommendation, attended Alexander in his expedition to Asia, and sent from Babylon to the philosopher, in compliance with his previous injunctions, the astronomical observations which were preserved in that ancient city, and which, according to the statement of Porphyrius, reached back as far as 1903 years before the time of Alexander the Great; that is, 2234 years before the Christian era.
Aristotle had, at this time, reached the most prosperous period of his life. The founder and leader of the principal school of Greece, and the undisputed head of Grecian philosophy, surrounded by his numerous disciples and admirers, protected by the conqueror of Asia, and by him furnished with the means of following his favorite pursuits, and of gratifying his universal spirit of inquiry, he had, probably, little to desire in order to fill up the measure of a philosopher's ambition. But he did not continue to enjoy the favor of Alexander till the end. Callisthenes, by his free-spoken censures and uncourtly habits, had offended his master, and had been executed, on a charge of having conspired with some Macedonians to take away his life; and the king's wrath appears to have extended to his kinsman, Aristotle, as being the person who had originally recommended him. It is not, however, probable that this circumstance caused any active enmity between the royal pupil and his master; even if we did not know that Alexander died a natural death, there would be no reason for listening to the absurd calumny that Aristotle was concerned in poisoning him. Aristotle indeed appears to have been considered, to the last, as a partisan of Alexander, and an opponent of the democratic interest.
When the anti-Macedonian party obtained the superiority at Athens in consequence of Alexander's death, an accusation against Aristotle was immediately prepared, and the pretext selected, was, as in the case of Socrates, impiety, or blasphemy. He was charged by Eurymedon, the priest, and a man named Demophilus, probably a leader of the popular party, with paying divine honors to Hermeias, and perhaps with teaching certain irreligious doctrines. In order to escape this danger, and to prevent the Athenians, as he said, in allusion to the death of Socrates, from "sinning twice against philosophy," he quitted Athens in the beginning of the year 322 B. C., and took refuge at Chalcis, in Eubœa, an island then under the Macedonian influence – leaving Theophrastus his successor in the Lyceum. There he died, of a disease of the stomach, in the autumn of the same year, being in the sixty-third year of his age. His frame is said to have been slender and weakly, and his health had given way in the latter part of his life, having probably been impaired by his unwearied studies and the intense application of his mind. The story of his having drowned himself in the Euripus of Eubœa, is fabulous.
The characteristic of Aristotle's philosophy, as compared with that of Plato, is, that while the latter gave free scope to his imagination, and, by his doctrine that we have ideas independent of the objects which they represent, opened a wide door to the dreams of mysticism – the latter was a close and strict observer of both mental and physical phenomena, avoiding all the seductions of the fancy, and following a severe, methodical, and strictly scientific course of inquiry, founded on data ascertained by experience. The truly philosophical character of his mind, and his calm and singularly dispassionate manner of writing, are not more remarkable than the vast extent both of his reading and of his original researches. His writings appear to have embraced nearly the whole circle of the theoretical and practical knowledge of his time, comprising treatises on logical, metaphysical, rhetorical, poetical, ethical, political, economical, physical, mechanical, and medical science. He likewise wrote on some parts of the mathematics; and, besides a collection of the constitutions of all the states known in his age, both Grecian and barbarian he made chronological compilations relating to the political and dramatic history of Greece.
His works, however, though embracing so large an extent of subjects, were not a mere encyclopædia, or digest of existing knowledge; some of the sciences which he treated of were created by himself, and the others were enriched by fresh inquiries, and methodized by his systematic diligence. To the former belong his works on analytics and dialectics, or, as it is now called, logic; to the invention of which science he distinctly lays claim, stating that "before his time nothing whatever had been done in it." Nearly the same remark applies to his metaphysical treatise. "But of all the sciences," says Cuvier, "there is none which owes more to Aristotle, than the natural history of animals. Not only was he acquainted with a great number of species, but he has studied and described them on a luminous and comprehensive plan, to which, perhaps, none of his successors has approached; classing the facts not according to the species, but according to the organs and functions, the only method of establishing comparative results. Thus it may be said that he is not only the most ancient author of comparative anatomy, whose works have come down to us, but that he is one of those who have treated this branch of natural history with the most genius, and that he best deserves to be taken for a model. The principal divisions which naturalists still follow in the animal kingdom, are due to Aristotle; and he had already pointed out several which have recently been again adopted, after having once been improperly abandoned. If the foundations of these great labors are examined, it will be seen that they all rest on the same method. Everywhere Aristotle observes the facts with attention; he compares them with sagacity, and endeavors to rise to the qualities which they have in common."
Among the sciences which he found partly cultivated, but which he greatly advanced, the most prominent are those of rhetoric, ethics, and politics. Of rhetoric he defined the province, and analyzed all the parts with admirable skill and sagacity. His treatise on the passions, in this short but comprehensive work, has never been surpassed, if it has ever been equalled, by writers on what may be termed descriptive moral philosophy. His ethical writings contain an excellent practical code of morality, chiefly founded on the maxim that virtues are in the middle, between two opposite vices; as courage between cowardice and fool-hardiness, liberality between niggardliness and prodigality, &c. His remarks on friendship are also deserving of special notice; a subject much discussed by the ancients, but which has less occupied the attention of philosophers, since love has played a more prominent part, in consequence of the influence of the Germans, and the introduction of the manners of chivalry in western Europe. His treatise on politics is not, like Plato's Republic, and the works of many later speculators on government, a mere inquiry after a perfect state, but contains an account of the nature of government, of the various forms of which it is susceptible, and the institutions best adapted to the societies in which these forms are established; with an essay, though unhappily an imperfect one, on education. This treatise is valuable, not only for its theoretical results, but also for the large amount of information which it contains, on the governments of Greece and other neighboring countries. Throughout these last-mentioned works, the knowledge of the world and of human nature displayed by Aristotle, is very observable; and, although his mind appears to have preferred the investigations of physical and metaphysical science, yet he holds a very high place in the highest rank of moral and political philosophers. Aristotle, it will be remembered, did not lead the life of a recluse; but, as the friend of Hermeias, the teacher of Alexander, and the head of a philosophical school, he was brought into contact with a great variety of persons, and learned by practice to know life under many different forms, and in many different relations.
Of all the philosophers of antiquity, Aristotle has produced the most lasting and extensive effect on mankind. His philosophical works, many centuries after his death, obtained a prodigious influence, not only in Europe, but even in Asia; they were translated into Arabic, and from thence an abstract of his logical system passed into the language of Persia. In Europe they acquired an immense ascendency in the middle ages, and were considered as an authority without appeal, and only second to that of Scripture; we are even informed that in a part of Germany his ethics were read in the churches on Sunday, in the place of the Gospels. Parts of his philosophy, which are the most worthless, as his Physics, were much cultivated; and his logical writings were, in many cases, abused so as to lead to vain subtleties, and captious contests about words. The connection between some of his tenets and the Roman Catholic theology, tended much to uphold his authority, which the Reformation lowered in a corresponding degree. His doctrines were in general strongly opposed by the early reformers. In 1518 Luther sustained a thesis at Heidelberg, affirming that "he who wishes to philosophize in Aristotle, must be first stultified in Christ." Luther, however, gave way afterwards, and did not oppose Aristotle, as to human learning. Melanchthon, who was one of the mildest of the reformers, was a great supporter of Aristotle. Many of his doctrines were in the same century zealously attacked by the French philosopher, Pierre Ramus. Bacon, afterwards, with others of his followers, added the weight of their arguments and authority against him. Aristotle's philosophy accordingly fell into undeserved neglect during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth century. Of late, however, the true worth of his writings has been more fully appreciated, and the study of his best treatises has much revived.
The most valuable of Aristotle's lost works, and indeed the most valuable of all the lost works of Greek prose, is his collection of One Hundred and Fifty-eight Constitutions, both of Grecian and Barbarian States, the Democratic, Oligarchical, Aristocratical, and Tyrannical, being treated separately, containing an account of the manners, customs, and institutions of each country. The loss of his works on Colonies, on Nobility, and on Royal Government; of his Chronological Collections, and of his Epistles to Philip, Alexander, Antipater, and others, is also much to be regretted. He likewise revised a copy of the Iliad, which Alexander carried with him during his campaigns, in a precious casket; hence this recension, called the casket copy, passed into the Alexandrine library, and was used by the Alexandrine critics. His entire works, according to Diogenes Laertius, occupied in the Greek manuscripts 445,270 lines.