Thales lived to be an old man, but neither age nor infirmities lessened his zeal for learning, and
it is said that once he was led out of his house by an old woman for the purpose of observing the stars, and he fell into a ditch and bewailed himself, on which the old woman said to him: "Do you, O Thales, who cannot see what is under your feet, think that you shall understand what is in heaven?"[[18]]
Pythagoras of Samos lived later in the sixth century than Thales. He was a great traveller and seems to have visited not only the mainland of Greece, but also Egypt and Crete, where he had many rare experiences going into the innermost parts of temples where as a rule no strangers were admitted. He also went to Italy where he founded a school, and gathered about three hundred pupils round him.
Though it was not believed by the world at large until nearly two thousand years later, Pythagoras taught that the world was round, and, as far as is known, he was the first thinker who made this discovery. It was Pythagoras who laid the foundations for later mathematical knowledge, especially in geometry and arithmetic, and who taught that there was a science of numbers apart from their use as a practical means of calculation.
In the fifth century B.C., Athens had become an Empire and the "school of Hellas," and the centre of Greek learning was found there and no longer in Ionia. The story of Socrates has already been told.[[19]] This great teacher did not write anything himself because he believed that it was a greater thing for a man to live well than to write well, and that his particular way of teaching and constant intercourse with his fellow-men was the best way of teaching those truths in which he believed. The account of his life and teaching, however, was written down and given to the world by his pupil Plato, who carried on his master's work. Plato was about twenty-eight years old when Socrates was put to death, and for twelve years after that time he travelled. Then he returned to Athens, bought a house and garden (unlike Socrates he was well-off), and spent the next forty years of his life teaching in the Academy. Plato was an idealist, and in addition to his writings about Socrates, he has left us the Republic, the picture of what he thought an ideal state should be, and some other works in which he discusses at great length what things it is most worth while that men should pursue in life, and why they should pursue them. He taught that goodness was worth being sought after for its own sake and not for any material reward that comes from pursuing it. In all his teaching he emphasizes the fact that the greatest things in life and those which are eternal are not always the things that can be seen, and that the soul of man does not live on material things but on wisdom, beauty, truth and love. The importance of Plato in this teaching was that he was the forerunner of the great Christian writers who believed with St. Paul that "the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."[[20]]
As a young man, Plato had seen in Athens under the rule of the Thirty, the lawlessness and confusion that arose from a tyrannously ordered state, and the Republic was an attempt to show what he thought life in an ideal state might be. His vision is not a very practical one, but Plato was not a practical statesman. The great value of the Republic to the world to-day is that just because its ideals could never be wholly carried out, the questions which all statesmen in all ages have had to settle, could be and were fearlessly discussed, unhampered by the compromises and conventions which beset modern politics.
Plato could write of other things besides politics and ideals. He had a gift for poetry which comes out in many a fairy-tale that he introduces here and there into his writings, knowing that sometimes a great truth can be more easily driven home in such a form. Socrates and a friend were once walking by the stream Ilissus. It was a hot summer's day, and as they were barefoot, they cooled their feet in the water and then sat down under the shade of a plane-tree to rest and talk. And as they rested, Socrates told his friend the legend of the grasshoppers. They were said to have been
human beings in an age before the Muses. And when the Muses came and song appeared they were ravished with delight; and singing always, never thought of eating and drinking, until at last in their forgetfulness they died. And now they live again in the grasshoppers; and this is the return which the Muses make to them: they neither hunger nor thirst, but from the hour of their birth they are always singing, and never eating or drinking; and when they die they go and inform the Muses in heaven who honours them on earth.[[21]]
When Philip of Macedon wanted the best Greek teacher known as a tutor for his son Alexander, he sent for Aristotle. We know very little about the life of Aristotle. He had been a pupil of Plato at the Academy for twenty years and had learnt the best of all that great philosopher could teach him. On his return from Macedonia, he founded a school of his own at Athens, the Lyceum, where he spent the rest of his life teaching and studying. He died in 322 B.C., one year after his pupil Alexander. But if little is known of the details of his life, we know something of his character from things that Alexander said about him, and the esteem in which he held him, and something of the kindliness of his nature from his will which has been preserved. He made provision for all who had faithfully served him and gave many of his slaves their freedom. He had been twice married, and his second wife "who behaved so well towards me," was so provided for that she could marry again, and he made arrangements for the marriage of his daughter. In reading of the life of the Athenian man and the Athenian woman, their ways seem to lie far apart and the wife to have had very little share in the interests of her husband. In his will Aristotle gives us a glimpse of the place which the wife sometimes, at least, held. He left directions that the bones of his first wife, the wife of his youth, were to be taken from their resting-place and buried with his, and this was to be done "as she herself charged."
The work of Aristotle is amazing, for he not only wrote on every conceivable subject, but wrote as a master. For more than a thousand years after his death, the books he wrote were studied in schools and universities, and formed the foundation of all education. He wrote on astronomy, mathematics, biology, botany and many other subjects, and he has not only been called the Father of Natural Science, but his writings remained the standard authority on many scientific subjects for centuries after his death. Aristotle was more practical than Plato, though less inspiring as a writer. As we have already seen, he, too, wrote about an ideal state in his Politics.[[22]] Aristotle believed that the life of a state was like that of an individual; that the aim of both should be noble living, and that peace and justice between states was just as important as between individuals. But he did more than describe an ideal state; he described the education which such a state should give to its youth, the result of which should be not that a man should boast that his state was great and glorious, but that, being the citizen of such a state, in all that he did he should strive to be worthy of her.