BOOK Son of the physician and friend of the king of Macedon, who preceded Philip - his birth-place LITERARY Stagira-he went to Athens at the age of seventeen, HISTORY OF and attended for three years to the conversations of ENGLAND. Socrates. Imbibing a strong affection for Plato, he studied twenty years under this superior man, and became the most intellectual disciple of his school." After Plato's death, he resided a few years with the tyrannus, or little king of Atarnæ, and then returned to Macedonia. Philip there committed to him the education of his son Alexander, at the age of fifteen. This task completed, he settled himself at Athens, on its earnest invitation,28 and was for thirteen years the head of the Lyceum, which he established in that celebrated city. Accused there by one of its Hierophants, of impiety, for some difference of opinion on the prevailing superstitions, he exclaimed, as he saw the Athenians favoring the impeachment, and remembered the fate of Socrates, "I will not suffer you to sin twice against philosophy," and withdrew to Chalcis.29 Proceeding to Macedonia, he accompanied Alexander into India, and returned with him to Persia.30 On his untimely death, he revisited Greece, 27 Diog. Laert. Vit. 1. Buhle's Arist. p. 3. Ammon. Vita. ib. p. 44. Such was his regard for Plato, that he even dedicated an altar to him with this inscription : Aristotle has built this altar to Plato; A man whom it is sacrilege for the bad to praise. Amm. p. 46. 28 On the death of Speusippus, the Athenians sent an embassy to invite him to their city, where he, at his Lyceum, and Xenocrates, in the Academy, established their philosophical schools. Amm. p. 47. 29 Amm. ib. 48. Diog. Laert. ib. 6. He often censured the Athenians. He once said they had found out two things-Wheat and laws-but with this difference; their wheat they made use of, but their laws never. Diog. Laert. 16. 30 On this journey he composed his political work; having examined the polity of two hundred and fifty-five governments. Amm. ib. He has been accused of poisoning Alexander. See Buhle 1. p. 99; but the Diary OF THE and is stated to have died from hemlock, at the age CHAP. of sixty-three," in the same year that Demosthenes XI. perished. Stammering, bald, of low stature, and thin HISTORY legged, with small eyes, he distinguished his per- SCHOLASson at one time by a shaven beard, and by a showy dress and rings,32 but he was extremely moderate in his habits,33 and mild and polished in his manners.3 34 His Ode to Virtue displays the true energy of a wise and moral mind,35 and he gave his thoughts as of this King's fatal illness, preserved by Plutarch, is sufficient evidence that he perished in a fever caused by his own intemperance. 3 Diog. Laert. ib. Phaverinus ascribes his death to this poison, and the epitaph on him implies the same end. See it in Buhle, p. 9. He died twenty-three years after Plato. Amm. ib. 50. 32 Diog. Laert. 3. Arist. Amm. Buhle, p. 67. 33 Arist. Vit, ex Vel. Transl. Buhle, p. 57. A Greek anonymous author of his life, after calling him a wretched versifier, brands him as a 'vorax,' and' inter scorta degens;' but as he adds epithets, the two first of which we can ourselves see from Aristotle's works to be false, he cannot claim our belief of the rest of his calumniation. Insanus, stultus, rudis, superbus, loquax.' Buhle, p. 67. Timous also abuses him, but in terms which convict themselves of slander, as they are quoted by Suidas, voc. Arist. 34 Amm. Vit, ib. 49. 35 This ode, from its subject, and as a poem of Aristotle's, deserves a literal translation.-How applicable now to Greece! O much toiling VIRTUE! To the human race For thy beauties, O virgin! Is the emulating lot of Greece; Never wearied! Thou plantest in the mind A never-dying fruit, Better than gold or ancestry, Jove-born Hercules And the youths of Leda Endured great things, Pursuing thy power in their works. TIC PHI LOSOPHY. For BOOK he advanced in years, a direction, which for many VI. centuries had a greater and more extensive dominion LITERARY: Over mankind, than any other production of the huHISTORY OF man genius has attained. ENGLAND. None of the ancient philosophers composed so much to benefit as well as to exercise the mind of man. His works on poetry, rhetoric, government, ethics, natural history and philosophy, are superior to any that the ancient world produced, on the topics which they discuss. He maintained that vice was sufficient for infelicity, even if the external and bodily comforts were abundantly possessed." He reasoned, that the Deity was incorporeal, and was either intellect itself, or something paramount to intellect;3 and that his providence extended to heavenly things, and that earthly ones were administered according to a sympathy with these.38 He maintained that the soul also was incorporeal; having a fitness and power to receive impressions upon it, as melted brass that of a man, or wax that of a Mercury; but having life in itself, and therefore distinct from the physical and organic body.". Hence, tho a dead man has the same form and figure of body that he had before, yet he is not therefore a man." He said a wise man could not be without passions, but he would take care to let them very moderately affect him." He loved a 40 XI. OF THE LOSOPHY. contemplative life, and preferred it to one either of CHAP. business or pleasure. He repeated with approbation what he called an old saying, which he said had been HISTORY handed down from our ancestors to mankind, That SCHOLASall things were framed by God and consist in him, TIC PHIand that no nature can be sufficient for its own safety, which has its preservation intrusted to its own care only, without God; 43 and he taught, that whoever would attain to a blessed and happy life, must partake of the Deity from its very beginning. In all physical things he is described as the greatest causeseeker of all men, and a most laborious inquirer.45 He searched into the causes of every thing, and complained of the earlier physiologists, that they considered only the material elements of things, without attending to the two great sources of causation : the principle of motivity, and the intelligence which aimed at ends.46 He maintained, that there was more of purpose and good in the works of nature than in those of art.47 Besides these sound general principles, he is described as having an ardent love of truth, and a proportionable dislike to all imposition on the mind, and to the mercenary and vain-glorious sophistry which was pervading the Grecian world. To these feelings we seem to owe his logical and metaphysical treatises. He considered logic to be the investigation of the probable and the true; he assigned dialectics and rhetoric to the probable, but directed his analytical and philosophical works to the elucidation of the true; meaning to omit nothing which could tend to its 42 Diog. Laert. 27. 46 1 Cudworth, 357. 43 De Mundo, c. 11. HISTORY OF BOOK discovery, judgment or use. With this object in view, VI. he delivers in his Topica and Methodica many proLITERARY positions for the discovery of truth, from which probable arguments on every problem might be deduced. To the judgment on truth his Analytics refer; in the prior ones the propositions assumed are judged of; in the posterior, their composition is investigated. To the use of what was true belong his Agonistica, his De Sophisticis Elenchis, and some others. In these he shews that the sense is the criterion of truth in the things worked out by the fancy; but the mind, in what concerns ethics, a family or a state. With a noble spirit, he makes one end to all studies and pursuits; the use of virtue in a perfect life.48 Such is the brief summary of the objects of his writings, as transmitted to us by Diogenes Laertius, which were so appreciated by Ammonius, that he asserts that Aristotle, in his philosophy, has even transcended the usual bounds of humanity; 40 an extravagant encomium, as the Stagirite has rather shewn us what he wished and aimed to accomplish, than what he has actually effected. 49 He has been praised for adding a fifth essence or element to the four that were commonly assumed as composing all nature. These, before our modern chemistry multiplied them, were, air, earth, water and fire. Aristotle contended that there was yet another, from which ethereal things were composed, and that its motion was different from the rest.50 That the 48 Diog. Laert. 24, 25. Diogenes gives a long list of his multifarious works, 19-24.; and Buhle has, with great industry, collected a most copious Elenchus of their remaining MSS. 157-201, and printed editions, 202-274. 49 Amm. p. 49. Vet. Transl. 59. Perhaps the best Life of Aristotle is that of Buhle's, Per annos digesta,' in his first volume, p. 80-104. 50 Diog. L. p. 27. |