It was through the help of Proxenus that Aristotle was enabled to go to Athens and attend the School of Oratory, of which Plato was dean.
The fine, receptive spirit of this slender youth evidently brought out from Plato's heart the best that was packed away there.
Aristotle was soon the star scholar. To get much out of school you have to take much with you when you go there. In one particular, especially, Aristotle, the country boy from Macedonia, brought much to Plato—and this was the scientific spirit. Plato's bent was philosophy, poetry, rhetoric—he was an artist in expression.
"Know thyself," said Socrates, the teacher of Plato.
"Be thyself," said Plato. "Know the world of Nature, of which you are a part," said Aristotle; "and you will be yourself and know yourself without thought or effort. The things you see, you are."
Twenty-three years Aristotle and Plato were together, and when they separated it was on the relative value of science and poetry. "Science is vital," said Aristotle; "but poetry and rhetoric are incidental." It was a little like the classic argument still carried on in all publishing-houses, as to which is the greater: the man who writes the text or the man who illustrates it.
One is almost tempted to think that Plato's finest product was Aristotle, just as Sir Humphry Davy's greatest discovery was Michael Faraday. One fine, earnest, receptive pupil is about all any teacher should expect in a lifetime, but Plato had at least two, Aristotle and Theophrastus. And Theophrastus dated his birth from the day he met Aristotle.
Theo-Phrastus means God's speech, or one who speaks divinely. The boy's real name was Ferguson. But the name given by Aristotle, who always had a passion for naming things, stuck, and the world knows this superbly great man as Theophrastus.
Botany dates from Theophrastus. And Theophrastus it was who wrote that greatest of acknowledgments, when, in dedicating one of his books, he expressed his indebtedness in these words: "To Aristotle, the inspirer of all I am or hope to be."
