I.

Within the last twelve years several books, both large and small, have appeared, dealing either with the philosophy of Aristotle as a whole, or with the general principles on which it is constructed. The Berlin edition of Aristotle’s collected works was supplemented in 1870 by the publication of a magnificent index, filling nearly nine hundred quarto pages, for which we have to thank the learning and industry of Bonitz.161 Then came the unfinished treatise of George Grote, planned on so vast a scale that it would, if completely carried out, have rivalled the author’s History of Greece in bulk, and perhaps exceeded the authentic remains of the Stagirite himself. As it is, we have a full account, expository and critical, of the Organon, a chapter on the De Anima, and some fragments on other Aristotelian writings, all marked by Grote’s wonderful sagacity and good sense. In 1879 a new and greatly enlarged edition brought that portion of Zeller’s work on Greek Philosophy which deals with Aristotle and the Peripatetics162 fully up to the level of its companion volumes; and we are glad to see that, like them, it is shortly to appear in an English dress. The older work of Brandis163 goes over the same ground, and, though much behind the present state of knowledge, may still be consulted with advantage, on account of its copious and clear analyses of the Aristotelian texts.276 Together with these ponderous tomes, we have to mention the little work of Sir Alexander Grant,164 which, although intended primarily for the unlearned, is a real contribution to Aristotelian scholarship, and, probably as such, received the honours of a German translation almost immediately after its first publication. Mr. Edwin Wallace’s Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle165 is of a different and much less popular character. Originally designed for the use of the author’s own pupils, it does for Aristotle’s entire system what Trendelenburg has done for his logic, and Ritter and Preller for all Greek philosophy—that is to say, it brings together the most important texts, and accompanies them with a remarkably lucid and interesting interpretation. Finally we have M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire’s Introduction to his translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, republished in a pocket volume.166 We can safely recommend it to those who wish to acquire a knowledge of the subject with the least possible expenditure of trouble. The style is delightfully simple, and that the author should write from the standpoint of the French spiritualistic school is not altogether a disadvantage, for that school is partly of Aristotelian origin, and its adherents are, therefore, most likely to reproduce the master’s theories with sympathetic appreciation.

In view of such extensive labours, we might almost imagine ourselves transported back to the times when Chaucer could describe a student as being made perfectly happy by having
‘At his beddes hed
Twenty bookes clothed in blake or red
Of Aristotle and his philosophie.’

It seems as if we were witnessing a revival of Mediaevalism277 under another form; as if, after neo-Gothic architecture, pre-Raphaelitism, and ritualism, we were threatened with a return to the scholastic philosophy which the great scientific reformers of the seventeenth century were supposed to have irrevocably destroyed. And, however chimerical may seem the hopes of such a restoration, we are bound to admit that they do actually exist. One of the most cultivated champions of Ultramontanism in this country, Prof. St. George Mivart, not long ago informed us, at the close of his work on Contemporary Evolution, that, ‘if metaphysics are possible, there is not, and never was or will be, more than one philosophy which, properly understood, unites all truths and eliminates all errors—the Philosophy of the Philosopher—Aristotle.’ It may be mentioned also, as a symptom of the same movement, that Leo XIII. has recently directed the works of St. Thomas Aquinas to be reprinted for use in Catholic colleges; having, according to the newspapers, laid aside 300,000 lire for that purpose—a large sum, considering his present necessities; but not too much for the republication of eighteen folio volumes. Now, it is well known that the philosophy of Aquinas is simply the philosophy of Aristotle, with such omissions and modifications as were necessary in order to piece it on to Christian theology. Hence, in giving his sanction to the teaching of the Angelic Doctor, Leo XIII. indirectly gives it to the source from which so much of that teaching is derived.

It may, perhaps, be considered natural that obsolete authorities should command the assent of a Church whose boast is to maintain the traditions of eighteen centuries intact. But the Aristotelian reaction extends to some who stand altogether aloof from Catholicism. M. Saint-Hilaire speaks in his preface of theology with dislike and suspicion; he has recently held office in a bitterly anti-clerical Government; yet his acceptance of Aristotle’s metaphysics is almost unreserved. The same tone is common to all official teaching278 in France; and any departure from the strict Peripatetic standard has to be apologised for as if it were a dangerous heresy. On turning to our own country, we find, indeed, a marked change since the time when, according to Mr. Matthew Arnold, Oxford tutors regarded the Ethics as absolutely infallible. The great place given to Plato in public instruction, and the rapidly increasing ascendency of evolutionary ideas, are at present enough to hold any rival authority in check; still, not only are the once neglected portions of Aristotle’s system beginning to attract fresh attention—which is an altogether commendable movement—but we also find the eminent Oxford teacher, whose work on the subject has been already referred to, expressing himself as follows:—

    We are still anxious to know whether our perception of a real world comes to us by an exercise of thought, or by a simple impression of sense—whether it is the universal that gives the individual reality, or the individual that shapes itself, by some process not explained, into a universal—whether bodily movements are the causal antecedents of mental functions, or mind rather the reality which gives truth to body—whether the highest life is a life of thought or a life of action—whether intellectual also involves moral progress—whether the state is a mere combination for the preservation of goods and property, or a moral organism developing the idea of right. And about these and such like questions Aristotle has still much to tell us.... His theory of a creative reason, fragmentary as that theory is left, is the answer to all materialistic theories of the universe. To Aristotle, as to a subtle Scottish preacher [Principal Caird] ‘the real pre-supposition of all knowledge, or the thought which is the prius of all things, is not the individual’s consciousness of himself as individual, but a thought or self-consciousness which is beyond all individual selves, which is the unity of all individual selves and their objects, of all thinkers and all objects of all thought.’167

Our critics are not content with bringing up Aristotle as an authority on the metaphysical controversies of the present day, and reading into him theories of which he never dreamed:279 they proceed to credit him with modern opinions which he would have emphatically repudiated, and modern methods which directly reverse his scientific teaching. Thus Sir A. Grant takes advantage of an ambiguity in the word Matter, as used respectively by Aristotle and by contemporary writers, to claim his support for the peculiar theories of Prof. Ferrier; although the Stagirite has recorded his belief in the reality and independence of material objects (if not of what he called matter) with a positiveness which one would have thought left no possibility of misunderstanding him.168 And Mr. Wallace says that Aristotle ‘recognises the genesis of things by evolution and development;’ a statement which, standing where it does, and with no more qualifications than are added to it, would make any reader not versed in the subject think of the Stagirite rather as a forerunner of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, than as the intellectual ancestor of their opponents; while, on a subsequent occasion, he quotes a passage about the variations of plants under domestication, from a work considered to be un-Aristotelian by the best critics, apparently with no other object than that of finding a piece of Darwinism in his author.169

In Germany, Neo-Aristotelianism has already lived out the appointed term of all such movements; having, we believe, been brought into fashion by Trendelenburg about forty years ago. Since then, the Aristotelian system in all its branches has been studied with such profound scholarship that any illusions respecting its value for our present needs must, by this time, have been completely dissipated; while the Hegelian dialectic, which it was originally intended to combat, no longer requires a counterbalance, having been entirely driven from German university teaching. Moreover, Lange’s famous History of Materialism has dealt a staggering blow to the reputation of Aristotle, not merely in itself, but relatively to the services of early Greek thought; although280 Lange goes too far into the opposite extreme when exalting Democritus at his expense.170 We have to complain, however, that Zeller and other historians of Greek philosophy start with an invariable prejudice in favour of the later speculators as against the earlier, and especially in favour of Aristotle as against all his predecessors, even Plato included, which leads them to slur over his weak points, and to bring out his excellencies into disproportionate relief.171

It is evident, then, that Aristotle cannot be approached with the same perfect dispassionateness as the other great thinkers of antiquity. He is, if not a living force, still a force which must be reckoned with in contemporary controversy. His admirers persist in making an authority of him, or at least of quoting him in behalf of their own favourite convictions. We are, therefore, bound to sift his claims with a severity which would not be altogether gracious in a purely historical review. At the same time it is hoped that historical justice will not lose, but gain, by such a procedure. We shall be the better able to understand what Aristotle was, after first showing what he neither was nor could be. And the utility of our investigations will be still further enhanced if we can show that he represents a fixed type regularly recurring in the revolutions of thought.
II.

Personally, we know more about Aristotle than about any other Greek philosopher of the classic period; but what we know does not amount to much. It is little more than the skeleton of a life, a bald enumeration of names and dates and places, with a few more or less doubtful anecdotes interspersed. These we shall now relate, together with whatever inferences the facts seem to warrant. Aristotle was born 384 B.C., at Stageira, a Greek colony in Thrace. It is remarkable that every single Greek thinker of note, Socrates and Plato alone281 excepted, came from the confines of Hellenedom and barbarism. It has been conjectured by Auguste Comte, we know not with how much reason, that religious traditions were weaker in the colonies than in the parent states, and thus allowed freer play to independent speculation. Perhaps, also, the accumulation of wealth was more rapid, thus affording greater leisure for thought; while the pettiness of political life liberated a fund of intellectual energy, which in more powerful communities might have been devoted to the service of the State. Left an orphan in early youth, Aristotle was brought up by one Proxenus, to whose son, Nicanor, he afterwards repaid the debt of gratitude. In his eighteenth year he settled at Athens, and attended the school of Plato until the death of that philosopher twenty years afterwards. It is not clear whether the younger thinker was quite conscious of his vast intellectual debt to the elder, and he continually emphasises the points on which they differ; but personally his feeling towards the master was one of deep reverence and affection. In some beautiful lines, still extant, he speaks of ‘an altar of solemn friendship dedicated to one of whom the bad should not speak even in praise; who alone, or who first among mortals, proved by his own life and by his system, that goodness and happiness go hand in hand;’ and it is generally agreed that the reference can only be to Plato. Again, in his Ethics, Aristotle expresses reluctance to criticise the ideal theory, because it was held by dear friends of his own; adding the memorable declaration, that to a philosopher truth should be dearer still. What opinion Plato formed of his most illustrious pupil is less certain. According to one tradition, he surnamed Aristotle the Nous of his school. It could, indeed, hardly escape so penetrating an observer that the omnivorous appetite for knowledge, which he regarded as most especially characteristic of the philosophic temperament, possessed this young learner to a degree never before paralleled among the sons of men. He may,282 however, have considered that the Stagirite’s method of acquiring knowledge was unfavourable to its fresh and vivid apprehension. An expression has been preserved which can hardly be other than genuine, so distinguished is it by that delicate mixture of compliment and satire in which Plato particularly excelled. He is said to have called Aristotle’s house the ‘house of the reader.’ The author of the Phaedrus, himself a tolerably voluminous writer, was, like Carlyle, not an admirer of literature. Probably it occurred to him that a philosophical student, who had the privilege of listening to his own lectures, might do better than shut himself up with a heap of manuscripts, away from the human inspiration of social intercourse, and the divine inspiration of solitary thought. We moderns have no reason to regret a habit which has made Aristotle’s writings a storehouse of ancient speculations; but from a scientific, no less than from an artistic point of view, those works are overloaded with criticisms of earlier opinions, some of them quite undeserving of serious discussion.

Philosophy was no sooner domiciled at Athens than its professors came in for their full share of the scurrilous personalities which seem to have formed the staple of conversation in that enlightened capital. Aristotle, himself a trenchant and sometimes a bitterly scornful controversialist, did not escape; and some of the censures passed on him were, rightly or wrongly, attributed to Plato. The Stagirite, who had been brought up at or near the Macedonian Court, and had inherited considerable means, was, if report speaks truly, somewhat foppish in his dress, and luxurious, if not dissipated in his habits. It would not be surprising if one who was left his own master at so early an age had at first exceeded the limits of that moderation which he afterwards inculcated as the golden rule of morals; but the charge of extravagance was such a stock accusation at Athens, where the continued influence of country life seems to have bred a prejudice in favour283 of parsimony, that it may be taken almost as an exoneration from graver imputations; and, perhaps, an admonition from Plato, if any was needed, sufficed to check his disciple’s ambition for figuring as a man of fashion.

We cannot tell to what extent the divergences which afterwards made Plato and Aristotle pass for types of the most extreme intellectual opposition were already manifested during their personal intercourse.172 The tradition is that the teacher compared his pupil to a foal that kicks his mother after draining her dry. There is a certain rough truth as well as rough wit about the remark; but the author of the Parmenides could hardly have been much affected by criticisms on the ideal theory which he had himself reasoned out with equal candour and acuteness; and if, as we sometimes feel tempted to conjecture, those criticisms were first suggested to him by Aristotle in conversation, it will be still more evident that they were received without offence.173

In some respects, Aristotle began not only as a disciple but as a champion of Platonism. On the popular side, that doctrine was distinguished by its essentially religious character, and by its opposition to the rhetorical training then in vogue. Now, Aristotle’s dialogues, of which only a few fragments have been preserved, contained elegant arguments in favour of a creative First Cause, and of human immortality; although in the writings which embody his maturer views, the first of these theories is considerably modified, and the second is absolutely rejected. Further, we are informed that Aristotle expressed himself in terms of rather violent contempt for Isocrates, the greatest living professor of declamation; and284 opened an opposition school of his own. This step has, curiously enough, been adduced as a further proof of disagreement with Plato, who, it is said, objected to all rhetorical teaching whatever. It seems to us that what he condemned was rather the method and aim of the then fashionable rhetoric; and a considerable portion of his Phaedrus is devoted to proving how much more effectually persuasion might be produced by the combined application of dialectics and psychology to oratory. Now, this is precisely what Aristotle afterwards attempted to work out in the treatise on Rhetoric still preserved among his writings; and we may safely assume that his earlier lectures at Athens were composed on the same principle.

In 347 Plato died, leaving his nephew Speusippus to succeed him in the headship of the Academy. Aristotle then left Athens, accompanied by another Platonist, Xenocrates, a circumstance tending to prove that his relations with the school continued to be of a cordial character. The two settled in Atarneus, at the invitation of its tyrant Hermeias, an old fellow-student from the Academy. Hermeias was a eunuch who had risen from the position of a slave to that of vizier, and then, after his master’s death, to the possession of supreme power. Three years subsequently a still more abrupt turn of fortune brought his adventurous career to a close. Like Polycrates, he was treacherously seized and crucified by order of the Persian Government. Aristotle, who had married Pythias, his deceased patron’s niece, fled with her to Mitylênê. Always grateful, and singularly enthusiastic in his attachments, he celebrated the memory of Hermeias in a manner which gave great offence to the religious sentiment of Hellas, by dedicating a statue to him at Delphi, and composing an elegy, still extant, in which he compares the eunuch-despot to Heracles, the Dioscuri, Achilles, and Ajax; and promises him immortality from the Muses in honour of Xenian Zeus.

When we next hear of Aristotle he is at the Macedonian285 Court,174 acting as tutor to Alexander, the future conqueror of Asia, who remained under his charge between the ages of thirteen and sixteen years. The philosopher is more likely to have obtained this appointment by Court interest—his father was Court-physician to Alexander’s grandfather, Amyntas—than by his reputation, which could hardly have been made until several years afterwards. Much has been made of a connexion which, although it did not last very long, appeals strongly to the imagination, and opens a large field for surmise. The greatest speculative and the greatest practical genius of that age—some might say of all ages—could not, one would think, come into such close contact without leaving a deep impression on each other. Accordingly, the philosopher is supposed to have prepared the hero for his future destinies. Milton has told us how Aristotle ‘bred great Alexander to subdue the world.’ Hegel tells us that this was done by giving him the consciousness of himself, the full assurance of his own powers; for which purpose, it seems, the infinite daring of thought was required; and he observes that the result is a refutation of the silly talk about the practical inutility of philosophy.175 It would be unfortunate if philosophy had no better testimonial to show for herself than the character of Alexander. It is not the least merit of Grote’s History to have brought out in full relief the savage traits by which his conduct was marked from first to last. Arrogant, drunken, cruel, vindictive, and grossly superstitious, he united the vices of a Highland chieftain to the frenzy of an Oriental despot. No man ever stood further from the gravity, the gentleness, the moderation—in a word, the S?phrosynê of a true Hellenic hero. The time came when Aristotle himself would have run the most imminent personal risk had he been within the tyrant’s immediate grasp. His286 nephew, Callisthenes, had incurred deep displeasure by protesting against the servile adulation, or rather idolatry, which Alexander exacted from his attendants. A charge of conspiracy was trumped up against him, and even the exculpatory evidence, taken under torture, of his alleged accomplices did not save him. ‘I will punish the sophist,’ wrote Alexander, ‘and those who sent him out.’ It was understood that his old tutor was included in the threat. Fortunately, as Grote observes, Aristotle was not at Ecbatana but at Athens; he therefore escaped the fate of Callisthenes, who suffered death in circumstances, according to some accounts, of great atrocity.

Zeller finds several good qualities in Alexander—precocious statesmanship, zeal for the extension of Hellenic civilisation, long-continued self-restraint under almost irresistible temptation, and through all his subsequent aberrations a nobility, a moral purity, a humanity, and a culture, which raise him above every other great conqueror; and these he attributes, in no small degree, to the fostering care of Aristotle;176 yet, with the exception of moral purity, which was probably an affair of temperament, and has been remarked to an equal extent in other men of the same general character, he was surpassed, in all these respects, by Julius Caesar; while the ruthless vindictiveness, which was his worst passion, exhibited itself at the very beginning of his reign by the destruction of Thebes. A varnish of literary culture he undoubtedly had, and for this Aristotle may be thanked; but any ordinary sophist would probably have effected as much. As to the Hellenising of Western Asia, this, according to Grote, was the work, not of Alexander, but of the Diadochi after him.

The profit reaped by Aristotle from the connexion seems equally doubtful. Tradition tells us that enormous sums of money were spent in aid of his scientific researches, and a whole army of crown servants deputed to collect information287 bearing on his zoological studies. Modern explorations, however, have proved that the conquests of Alexander, at least, did not, as has been pretended, supply him with any new specimens; nor does the knowledge contained in his extant treatises exceed what could be obtained either by his own observations or by private enquiries. At the same time we may suppose that his services were handsomely rewarded, and that his official position at the Macedonian Court gave him numerous opportunities for conversing with the grooms, huntsmen, shepherds, fishermen, and others, from whom most of what he tells us about the habits of animals was learned. In connexion with the favour enjoyed by Aristotle, it must be mentioned as a fresh proof of his amiable character, that he obtained the restoration of Stageira, which had been ruthlessly destroyed by Philip, together with the other Greek cities of the Chalcidic peninsula.

Two passages in Aristotle’s writings have been supposed to give evidence of his admiration for Alexander. One is the description of the magnanimous man in the Ethics. The other is a reference in the Politics to an ideal hero, whose virtue raises him so high above the common run of mortals that their duty is to obey him as if he were a god. But the magnanimous man embodies a grave and stately type of character quite unlike the chivalrous, impulsive theatrical nature of Alexander,177 while probably not unfrequent among real Hellenes; and the god-like statesman of the Politics is spoken of rather as an unattainable ideal than as a contemporary fact. On the whole, then, we must conclude that the intercourse between these two extraordinary spirits has left no distinct trace on the actions of the one or on the thoughts of the other.

On Alexander’s departure for the East, Aristotle returned to Athens, where he now placed himself at the head of a new philosophical school. The ensuing period of thirteen years288 was fully occupied by the delivery of public lectures, and by the composition of those encyclopaedic writings which will preserve his memory for ever, along, perhaps, with many others which have not survived. Like Anaxagoras, he was not allowed to end his days in the city of his adoption. His youthful attacks on Isocrates had probably made him many enemies among that rhetor’s pupils. It is supposed by Grote, but warmly disputed by Zeller, that his trenchant criticisms on Plato had excited a similar animosity among the sectaries of the Academy.178 Anyhow, circumstances had unavoidably associated him with the detested Macedonian party, although his position, as a metic, or resident alien, debarred him from taking any active part in politics. With Alexander’s death the storm broke loose. A charge was trumped up against Aristotle, on the strength of his unlucky poem in honour of Hermeias, which was described as an insult to religion. That such an accusation should be chosen is characteristic of Athenian bigotry, even should there be no truth in the story that certain philosophical opinions of his were likewise singled out for prosecution. Before the case came on for trial, Aristotle availed himself of the usual privilege allowed on such occasions, and withdrew to Chalcis, in order, as he said, that the Athenians need not sin a second time against philosophy. But his constitution, naturally a feeble one, was nearly worn out. A year afterwards he succumbed to a stomach complaint, aggravated, if not produced, by incessant mental application. His contemporary, Demosthenes, perished about the same time, and at the same age, sixty-two. Within little more than a twelvemonth the world had lost its three greatest men; and after three centuries of uninterrupted glory, Hellas was left unrepresented by a single individual of commanding genius.

We are told that when his end began to approach, the dying philosopher was pressed to choose a successor in the headship of the School. The manner in which he did this is289 characteristic of his singular gentleness and unwillingness to give offence. It was understood that the choice must lie between his two most distinguished pupils, Theophrastus of Lesbos, and Eudêmus of Rhodes. Aristotle asked for specimens of the wine grown in those islands. He first essayed the Rhodian vintage, and praised it highly, but remarked after tasting the other, ‘The Lesbian is sweeter,’ thus revealing his preference for Theophrastus, who accordingly reigned over the Lyceum in his stead.179

A document purporting to be Aristotle’s will has been preserved by Diogenes Laertius, and although some objections to its authenticity have been raised by Sir A. Grant, they have, in our opinion, been successfully rebutted by Zeller.180 The philosopher’s testamentary dispositions give one more proof of his thoughtful consideration for the welfare of those about him, and his devotion to the memory of departed friends. Careful provision is made for the guardianship of his youthful children, and for the comfort of his second wife, Herpyllis, who, he says, had ‘been good to’ him. Certain slaves, specified by name, are to be emancipated, and to receive legacies. None of the young slaves who waited on him are to be sold, and on growing up they are to be set free ‘if they deserve it.’ The bones of his first wife, Pythias, are, as she herself desired, to be laid by his. Monuments are to be erected in memory of his mother, and of certain friends, particularly Proxenus, who had been Aristotle’s guardian, and his family.

In person Aristotle resembled the delicate student of modern times rather than the athletic figures of his predecessors. He was not a soldier like Socrates, nor a gymnast like Plato. To judge from several allusions in his works, he put great faith in walking as a preservative of health—even when lecturing he liked to pace up and down a shady avenue. And, probably, a constitutional was the severest exercise that290 he ever took. He spoke with a sort of lisp, and the expression of his mouth is said to have been sarcastic; but the traits preserved to us in marble tell only of meditation, and perhaps of pain. A free-spoken and fearless critic, he was not over-sensitive on his own account. When told that somebody had been abusing him in his absence, the philosopher replied, ‘He may beat me, too, if he likes—in my absence.’ He might be abused, even in his own presence, without departing from the same attitude of calm disdain, much to the disappointment of his petulant assailants. His equanimity was but slightly disturbed by more public and substantial affronts. When certain honorary distinctions, conferred on him by a popular vote at Delphi, were withdrawn, probably on the occasion of his flight from Athens, he remarked with his usual studied moderation, that, while not entirely indifferent, he did not feel very deeply concerned; a trait which illustrates the character of the ‘magnanimous man’ far better than anything related of Alexander. Two other sayings have an almost Christian tone; when asked how we should treat our friends, he replied, ‘As we should wish them to treat us;’ and on being reproached with wasting his bounty on an unworthy object, he observed, ‘it was not the person, but the human being that I pitied.’181

Still, taking it altogether, the life of Aristotle gives one the impression of something rather desultory and dependent, not proudly self-determined, like the lives of the thinkers who went before him. We are reminded of the fresh starts and the appeals to authority so frequent in his writings. He is first detained at Athens twenty years by the attraction of Plato; and no sooner is Plato gone, than he falls under the influence of an entirely different character—Hermeias. Even when his services are no longer needed he lingers near the Macedonian Court, until Alexander’s departure leaves him once more without a patron. The most dignified period of291 his whole career is that during which he presided over the Peripatetic School; but he owes this position to foreign influence, and loses it with the temporary revival of Greek liberty. A longer life would probably have seen him return to Athens in the train of his last patron Antipater, whom, as it was, he appointed executor to his will. This was just the sort of character to lay great stress on the evidentiary value of sensation and popular opinion. It was also the character of a conservative who was likely to believe that things had always been very much what they were in his time, and would continue to remain so ever afterwards. Aristotle was not the man to imagine that the present order of nature had sprung out of a widely different order in the remote past, nor to encourage such speculations when they were offered to him by others. He would not readily believe that phenomena, as he knew them, rested on a reality which could neither be seen nor felt. Nor, finally, could he divine the movements which were slowly undermining the society in which he lived, still less construct an ideal polity for its reorganisation on a higher and broader basis. And here we at once become conscious of the chief difference separating him from his master, Plato.
III.

It is an often-quoted observation of Friedrich Schlegel’s that every man is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. If we narrow the remark to the only class which, perhaps, its author recognised as human beings, namely, all thinking men, it will be found to contain a certain amount of truth, though probably not what Schlegel intended; at any rate something requiring to be supplemented by other truths before its full meaning can be understood. The common opinion seems to be that Plato was a transcendentalist, while Aristotle was an experientialist; and that this constitutes the most typical distinction between them. It would, however, be a mistake to292 suppose that the à priori and à posteriori methods were marked off with such definiteness in Plato’s time as to render possible a choice between them. The opposition was not between general propositions and particular facts, but between the most comprehensive and the most limited notions. It was as if the question were now to be raised whether we should begin to teach physiology by at once dividing the organic from the inorganic world, or by directing the learner’s attention to some one vital act. Now, we are expressly told that Plato hesitated between these two methods; and in his Dialogues, at least, we find the easier and more popular one employed by preference. It is true that he often appeals to wide principles which do not rest on an adequate basis of experimental evidence; but Aristotle does so also, more frequently even, and, as the event proved, with more fatal injury to the advance of knowledge. In his Rhetoric he even goes beyond Plato, constructing the entire art from the general principles of dialectics, psychology, and ethics, without any reference, except for the sake of illustration, to existing models of eloquence.

According to Sir A. Grant, it is by the mystical and poetical side of his nature that Plato differs from Aristotle. The one ‘aspired to a truth above the truth of scientific knowledge’; the other to ‘methodised experience and the definite.’182 Now, setting aside the question whether there is any truth above the truth of scientific knowledge, we doubt very much whether Plato believed in its existence. He held that the most valuable truth was that which could be imparted to others by a process even more rigorous than mathematical reasoning; and there was no reality, however transcendent, that he did not hope to bring within the grasp of a dialectic without which even the meanest could not be understood. He did, indeed, believe that, so far, the best and wisest of mankind had owed much more to a divinely implanted instinct than to any conscious chain of reflection; but he distinctly293 asserted the inferiority of such guidance to the light of scientific knowledge, if this could be obtained, as he hoped that it could. On the other hand, Aristotle was probably superior to Plato as a poet; and in speaking about the highest realities he uses language which, though less rich and ornate than his master’s, is not inferior to it in force and fervour; while his metaphysical theories contain a large element of what would now be considered mysticism, that is, he often sees evidence of purpose and animation where they do not really exist. His advantage in definiteness is, of course, indisputable, but this was, perhaps, because he came after Plato and profited by his lessons.

Yet there was a difference between them, marking off each as the head of a whole School much wider than the Academy or the Lyceum; a difference which we can best express by saying that Plato was pre-eminently a practical, Aristotle pre-eminently a speculative genius. The object of the one was to reorganise all human life, that of the other to reorganise all human knowledge. Had the one lived earlier, he would more probably have been a great statesman or a great general than a great writer; the other would at no time have been anything but a philosopher, a mathematician, or a historian. Even from birth they seemed to be respectively marked out for an active and for a contemplative life: the one, a citizen of the foremost State in Hellas, sprung from a family in which political ambition was hereditary, himself strong, beautiful, fascinating, eloquent, and gifted with the keenest insight into men’s capacities and motives; the other a Stagirite and an Asclepiad, that is to say, without opportunities for a public career, and possessing a hereditary aptitude for anatomy and natural history, fitted by his insignificant person and delicate constitution for sedentary pursuits, and better able to acquire a knowledge even of human nature from books than from a living converse with men and affairs. Of course, we are not for a moment denying to Plato a fore294most place among the masters of those who know; he embraced all the science of his age, and to a great extent marked out the course which the science of future ages was to pursue; nevertheless, for him, knowledge was not so much an end in itself as a means for the attainment of other ends, among which the preservation of the State seems to have been, in his eyes, the most important.M Aristotle, on the other hand, after declaring happiness to be the supreme end, defines it as an energising of man’s highest nature, which again he identifies with the reasoning process or cognition in its purest form.

The same fundamental difference comes out strongly in their respective theologies. Plato starts with the conception that God is good, and being good wishes everything to resemble himself; an assumption from which the divine origin and providential government of the world are deduced. Aristotle thinks of God as exclusively occupied in self-contemplation, and only acting on Nature through the love which his perfection inspires. If, further, we consider in what relation the two philosophies stand to ethics, we shall find that, to Plato, its problems were the most pressing of any, that they haunted him through his whole life, and that he made contributions of extraordinary value towards their solution; while to Aristotle, it was merely a branch of natural history, a study of the different types of character to be met with in Greek society, without the faintest perception that conduct required to be set on a wider and firmer basis than the conventional standards of his age. Hence it is that, in reading Plato, we are perpetually reminded of the controversies still raging among ourselves. He gives us an exposition, to which nothing has ever been added, of the theory now known as Egoistic Hedonism; he afterwards abandons that theory, and passes on to the social side of conduct, the necessity of justice, the relation of private to public interest, the bearing of religion, education, and social institutions on morality, along with other kindred topics, which need not be further specified, as295 they have been discussed with sufficient fulness in the preceding chapter. Aristotle, on the contrary, takes us back into old Greek life as it was before the days of Socrates, noticing the theories of that great reformer only that he may reject them in favour of a narrow, common-sense standard. Virtuous conduct, he tells us, consists in choosing a mean between two extremes. If we ask how the proper mean is to be discovered, he refers us to a faculty called φρ?νησι?, or practical reason; but on further enquiry it turns out that this faculty is possessed by none who are not already virtuous. To the question, How are men made moral? he answers, By acquiring moral habits; which amounts to little more than a restatement of the problem, or, at any rate, suggests another more difficult question—How are good habits acquired?

An answer might conceivably have been supplied, had Aristotle been enable to complete that sketch of an ideal State which was originally intended to form part of his Politics. But the philosopher evidently found that to do so was beyond his powers. If the seventh and eighth books of that treatise, which contain the fragmentary attempt in question, had originally occupied the place where they now stand in our manuscripts, it might have been supposed that Aristotle’s labours were interrupted by death. Modern criticism has shown, however, that they should follow immediately after the first three books, and that the author broke off, almost at the beginning of his ideal polity, to take up the much more congenial task of analysing and criticising the actually existing Hellenic constitutions. But the little that he has done proves him to have been profoundly unfitted for the task of a practical reformer. What few actual recommendations it contains are a compromise—somewhat in the spirit of Plato’s Laws—between the Republic and real life. The rest is what he never fails to give us—a mass of details about matters of fact, and a summary of his speculative ethics, along with counsels of moderation in the spirit of his practical ethics; but not one296 practical principle of any value, not one remark to show that he understood what direction history was taking, or that he had mastered the elements of social reform as set forth in Plato’s works. The progressive specialisation of political functions; the necessity of a spiritual power; the formation of a trained standing army; the admission of women to public employments; the elevation of the whole race by artificial selection; the radical reform of religion; the reconstitution of education, both literary and scientific, the redistribution of property; the enactment of a new code; the use of public opinion as an instrument of moralisation;—these are the ideas which still agitate the minds of men, and they are also the ideas of the Republic, the Statesman, and the Laws. Aristotle, on the other hand, occupies himself chiefly with discussing how far a city should be built from the sea, whether it should be fortified; how its citizens should not be employed; when people should not marry; what children should not be permitted to see; and what music they should not be taught. Apart from his enthusiasm for philosophy, there is nothing generous, nothing large-minded, nothing inspiring. The territory of the city is to be self-sufficing, that it may be isolated from other States; the citizens are to keep aloof from all industrial occupations; science is put out of relation to the material well-being of mankind. It was, in short, to be a city where every gentleman should hold an idle fellowship; a city where Aristotle could live without molestation, and in the enjoyment of congenial friendships; just as the God of his system was a still higher Aristotle, perpetually engaged in the study of formal logic.

Even in his much-admired criticisms on the actually existing types of government our philosopher shows practical weakness and vacillation of character. There is a good word for them all—for monarchy, for aristocracy, for middle-class rule, and even for pure democracy.183 The fifth book, treating of297 political revolutions, is unquestionably the ablest and most interesting in the whole work; but when Aristotle quits the domain of natural history for that of practical suggestions, with a view to obviate the dangers pointed out, he can think of nothing better than the old advice—to be moderate, even where the constitutions which moderation is to preserve are by their very nature so excessive that their readjustment and equilibration would be equivalent to their destruction. And in fact, Aristotle’s proposals amount to this—that government by the middle class should be established wherever the ideal aristocracy of education is impracticable; or else a government in which the class interests of rich and poor should be so nicely balanced as to obviate the danger of oligarchic or democratic injustice. His error lay in not perceiving that the only possible means of securing such a happy mean was to break through the narrow circle of Greek city life; to continue the process which had united families into villages, and villages into towns; to confederate groups of cities into larger298 states; and so, by striking an average of different inequalities, to minimise the risk of those incessant revolutions which had hitherto secured the temporary triumph of alternate factions at the expense of their common interest. And, in fact, the spontaneous process of aggregation, which Aristotle did not foresee, has alone sufficed to remedy the evils which he saw, but could not devise any effectual means of curing, and at the same time has bred new evils of which his diagnosis naturally took no account.

But, if this be so, it follows that Mr. Edwin Wallace’s appeal to Aristotle as an authority worth consulting on our present social difficulties cannot be upheld. Take the question quoted by Mr. Wallace himself: ‘Whether the State is a mere combination for the preservation of goods and property, or a moral organism developing the idea of right?’ Aristotle certainly held very strong opinions in favour of State interference with education and private morality, if that is what the second alternative implies; but does it follow that he would agree with those who advocate a similar supervision at the present day? By no means; because experience has shown that in enormous industrial societies like ours, protection is attended with difficulties and dangers which he could no more foresee than he could foresee the discoveries on which our physical science is based. Or, returning for a moment to ethics, let us take another of Mr. Wallace’s problems: ‘Whether intellectual also involves moral progress?’ What possible light can be thrown on it by Aristotle’s exposure of the powerlessness of right knowledge to make an individual virtuous, when writers like Buckle have transferred the whole question from a particular to a general ground; from the conduct of individuals to the conduct of men acting in large masses, and over vast periods of time? Or, finally, take the question which forms a point of junction between Aristotle’s ethics and his politics: ‘Whether the highest life is a life of thought or a life of action?’ Of what importance is his299 decision to us, who attend far more to the social than to the individual consequences of actions; who have learned to take into account the emotional element of happiness, which Aristotle neglected; who are uninfluenced by his appeal to the blissful theorising of gods in whom we do not believe; for whom, finally, experience has altogether broken down the antithesis between knowledge and practice, by showing that speculative ideas may revolutionise the whole of life? Aristotle is an interesting historical study; but we are as far beyond him in social as in physical science.
IV.

On turning to Aristotle’s Rhetoric we find that, from a practical point of view, his failure here is, if possible, still more complete. This treatise contains, as we have already observed, an immense mass of more or less valuable information on the subject of psychology, ethics, and dialectic, but gives exceedingly little advice about the very essence of rhetoric as an art, which is to say whatever you have to say in the most telling manner, by the arrangement of topics and arguments, by the use of illustrations, and by the choice of language; and that little is to be found in the third book, the genuineness of which is open to very grave suspicion. It may be doubted whether any orator or critic of oratory was ever benefited in the slightest degree by the study of Aristotle’s rules. His collections of scientific data add nothing to our knowledge, but only throw common experience into abstract formulas; and even as a body of memoranda they would be useless, for no memory could contain them, or if any man could remember them he would have intellect enough not to require them.184 The professional teachers whom300 Aristotle so heartily despised seem to have followed a much more effectual method than his; they gave their pupils ready-made speeches to analyse and learn by heart, rightly trusting to the imitative instinct to do the rest. He compares them to a master who should teach his apprentices how to make shoes by supplying them with a great variety of ready-made pairs. But this would be a much better plan than to give them an elaborate lecture on the anatomy of the foot, with a full enumeration of its bones, muscles, tendons, nerves, and blood-vessels, which is the most appropriate parallel to his system of instruction.

The Poetics of Aristotle contains some hints on the subject of composition which entitle it to be mentioned in the present connexion. The deficiencies, even from a purely theoretical point of view, of this work, once pronounced infallible, have at last become so obvious that elaborate hypotheses have been constructed, according to which the recension handed down to us is a mere mutilated extract from the original treatise. Enough, however, remains to convince us that poetry was not, any more than eloquence, a subject with which Aristotle was fitted to cope. He begins by defining it, in common with all other art, as an imitation. Here, we at once recognise the spirit of a philosophy, the whole power and interest of which lay in knowledge; and, in fact, he tells us that the love of art is derived from the love of knowledge. But the truth seems to be that aesthetic enjoyment is due to an ideal exercise of our faculties, among which the power of perceiving identities is sometimes, though not always, included. That the materials of which every artistic creation is composed are taken from the world of our experience makes no difference; for it is by the new forms in which they are arranged that we are interested, not because we remember having met them in301 some natural combination already. Aristotle could not help seeing that this was true in the case of music at least; and he can only save his principle by treating musical effects as representations of passions in the soul. To say, however, that musical pleasure arises from a perception of resemblance between certain sounds and the emotions with which they are associated, would be an extremely forced interpretation; the pleasure is due rather to a sympathetic participation in the emotion itself. And when Aristotle goes on to tell us that the characters imitated in epic and dramatic poetry may be either better or worse than in ordinary life, he is obviously admitting other aesthetic motives not accounted for by his general theory. If, on the other hand, we start with ideal energising as the secret of aesthetic emotion, we can easily understand how an imaginary exaltation of our faculties is yielded by the spectacle of something either rising above, or falling below, the level on which we stand. In the one case we become momentarily invested with the strength put into action before our eyes; in the other, the consciousness of our own superiority amounts to a fund of reserve power, which not being put into action, is entirely available for ideal enjoyment. And, if this be the correct view, it will follow that Aristotle was quite wrong when he declared the plot to be more important than the characters of a drama. The reason given for his preference is, even on the principles of his own philosophy, a bad one. He says that there can be plot without character-drawing, but never character-drawing without plot. Yet he has taught us elsewhere that the human soul is of more value than the physical organism on which its existence depends. This very parallel suggests itself to him in his Poetics; but, by an almost inconceivable misjudgment, it is the plot which he likens to the soul of the piece, whereas in truth it should be compared to the body. The practice and preference of his own time may have helped to mislead him, for he argues (rather inconsistently, by the way) that plot302 must be more indispensable, as young writers are able to construct good stories before they are able to portray character; and more artistic, as it was developed much later in the historical evolution of tragedy. Fortunately for us, the Alexandrian critics were guided by other canons of taste, or the structurally faulty pieces of Aeschylus might have been neglected, and the ingeniously constructed p............