949 E (‘Now a state’ ...)
–951 C (... ‘is ill-conducted.’)
(2) The Burial of the Dead.
958 C (‘Thus a man is born’ ...)
–960 A (... ‘a fitting penalty.’...)
CHAPTER VIII
ARISTOTLE (384–322 B. C.)
Aristotle in the Academy and Lyceum. Many notable pupils gathered around Plato during his mastership of more than forty years. Plato’s nephew, Speusippus, succeeded him as leader of the Academy, and for the next three hundred and fifty years the Academy is called by various names. It is the Older Academy under Speusippus and later; then it is known as the Middle Academy; and then, about 120 B. C., it is known as the New Academy. The history of the Academy is, however, a part of the Hellenic-Roman Period. It is sufficient to say here that the leaders succeeding Plato in the Academy added but little to philosophical speculation, although much to empirical research. The important fact is that the sceptre in philosophy passed from the Academy when Plato died and his greatest pupil Aristotle left it. Just as Plato stood among the pupils of Socrates as Socrates’ most discriminating interpreter, so among the pupils of Plato there was one preëminent pupil,—Aristotle. Aristotle was too great a man to be subordinated to the leadership of Speusippus. Upon the death of Plato he left the Academy, and fourteen years later he returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum, which became under his mastership the most influential Athenian school. The Lyceum was an inclosed space of ground, like the Academy. It was situated just outside the walls of Athens, on the right bank of the Ilissus. Itwas dedicated to Apollo, decorated with fountains, gardens, and buildings, and contained one of the great gymnasia of Athens. It was frequented by philosophers, and is known to have been the favorite walk of Aristotle and his pupils, whence they got their name of Peripatetics. Theophrastus, the most eminent pupil of Aristotle, bought a property near the grove and bequeathed it to the school. It was a religious foundation, like the Academy. The method of choosing the scholarchs varied at different times. The name Lyceum is from the same root as Lycian, and was given to Aristotle’s school from the fact that the grove was dedicated to the Lycian Apollo.
Here, in the Lyceum, Greek philosophy was brought to its most complete expression. Here all the threads of Greek cosmological and anthropological undertakings were finally woven together. Here an adjustment was accomplished between Aristotle’s two great predecessors, Plato and Democritus; and materialistic and idealistic realism crystallized in a theory of development. The great form of Aristotle rises to speak the final word of pure Greek civilization, at a time when the custody of Greece had passed from the hands of the Athenians, the Spartans, the Thebans in succession to the Macedonians. He was the most influential thinker that history had seen. In his formative power upon human thought he has scarcely a peer. Dante called him “the master of those who know.” “In my opinion,” said Cicero, “Aristotle stands almost alone in philosophy.” Eusebius said of him, “Aristotle, nature’s private secretary, dipped his pen in thought.” Goethe remarked, “If now in my quiet days I had youthful faculties at my command, I should devote myself to Greek, in spiteof all the difficulties I know. Nature and Aristotle should be my sole study. It is beyond all conception what that man espied, saw, beheld, remarked, observed.”
The portrait that we draw of Aristotle is very different from that of Plato. Instead of the deeply poetic temper, the man who sees all things in an ideal unity of infiniteness and vastness, we have before us now the scientist in search of facts, the accurate man of good sense, whose imagination does not soar above the clouds, but at the same time has extraordinary fertility in historical and scientific theoretical explanations. His was a life filled with the love of truth. His learning took up into itself the entire range of human knowledge in such a way as to include its earlier development. And what is more, he showed an equal interest in all departments. Aristotle was more of a scientist than Plato, for the theoretical rather than the ethical interest was fundamental in his work. He is the personification and completion of pure Greek learning.
Biography of Aristotle, 384–322 B. C.
Brief Chronological Sketch of Aristotle’s Life.