"Plato, of all authors," says DR. A. C. KENDRICK, [Footnote: Article "Plato," in Appleton's American Cyclipoedia.] "is the one to whom the least justice can be done by any formal analysis. In the spirit which pervades his writings, in their untiring freshness, in their purity, love of truth and of virtue, their perpetual aspiring to the loftiest height of knowledge and of excellence, much more than in their positive doctrines, lies the secret of their charm and of their unfailing power. Plato is often styled an idealist. But this is true of the spirit rather than of the form of his doctrine; for strictly he is an intense realist, and differs from his great pupil, Aristotle, far less in his mere philosophical method than in his lofty moral and religious aspirations, which were perpetually winging his spirit toward the beautiful and the good. His formal errors are abundant; but even in his errors the truth is often deeper than the error; and when that has been discredited, the language adjusts itself to the deeper truth of which it was rather an inadequate expression than a direct contradiction." Concerning the style of Plato's writings, a distinguished English scholar and translator observes as follows: "Nor is the language in which his thoughts are conveyed less remarkable than the thoughts themselves. In his more elevated passages he rises, like his own Prometheus, to heaven, and brings down from thence the noblest of all thefts, [Footnote: See the story of Prometheus.] Wisdom with Fire; but, in general, calm, pure, and unaffected, his style flows like a stream which gurgles its own music as it runs; and his works rise, like the great fabric of Grecian literature, of which they are the best model, in calm and noiseless majesty." [Footnote: Thomas Mitchell.]
Plato died at the advanced age of eighty-one, his mental powers unimpaired, and he was buried in the Academe. On his tomb was placed the following inscription:
Here, first of all men for pure justice famed,
Aris'tocles, the moral teacher, lies:
[Footnote: The proper name of Plato was Aristocles:
but in his youth he was surnamed Plato by his companions
in the gymnasium, on account of his broad shoulders.
(From the Greek word platus, "broad.")]
And if there ere has lived one truly wise,
This man was wiser still: too great for envy.
ARISTOTLE.
Aristotle was born in 384 B.C., at Stagi'ra, in Macedonia. Hence he is frequently called the "Stag'i-rite;" as POPE calls him in the following tribute found in his Temple of Fame:
Here, in a shrine that cast a dazzing light,
Sat, fixed in thought, the mighty Stagirite;
His sacred head a radiant zodiac crowned,
And various animals his sides surround;
His piercing eyes, erect, appear to view
Superior worlds, and look all nature through.
He repaired to Athens at the age of seventeen, and soon after became a pupil of Plato. His uncommon acuteness of apprehension, and his indefatigable industry, early won the notice and applause of his master, who called him the "mind" of the school, and said, when he was absent, "Intellect is not here." On the death of Plato, Aristotle left Athens, and in 343 he repaired to Macedonia, on the invitation of Philip, and became the instructor of the young prince Alexander. In after years Alexander aided him in his scientific pursuits by sending to him many objects of natural history, and giving him large sums of money, estimated in all at two millions of dollars.
In the year 335 Aristotle returned to Athens, and opened his school in the Lyce'um. He walked with his scholars up and down the shady avenues, conversing on philosophy, and hence his school was called the peripatetic. Aristotle nowhere exhibits the merits of Plato in the service of metaphysics, yet he was the most learned and most productive of the writers of Greece. He had neither the poetical imagination nor the genius of his teacher, but he mastered the whole philosophical and historical science of his age, and, more than Plato, his intellect has influenced the course of modern civilization. He was eminently a practical philosopher—a cold inquirer, whose mind did not reach the high and lofty teaching of Plato, concerning Deity and the destiny of mankind. We find the following just estimate of him in BROWNE'S Greek Classical Literature: "One cannot set too high a value on the practical nature of Aristotle's mind. He never forgot the bearing of all philosophy upon the happiness of man, and he never lost sight of man's wants and requirements. He saw the inadequacy of all knowledge, unless he could trace in it a visible practical tendency. But, beyond this one single point, he falls grievously short of his great master, Plato. All his ideas of man's good are limited to the consideration of this life alone. It is impossible to trace in his writings any belief in a future state or immortality."
For many centuries succeeding the Middle Ages, especially from the eleventh to the fifteenth, the metaphysical teachings of Aristotle held a tyrannic sway over the public mind; but they have been gradually yielding to the more lofty and sublime teachings of Plato. His investigations in natural science, however, and his work as a logician and political philosopher, constitute his greatness, and create the enormous influence that he has wielded in the world. "Science owes to him its earliest impulse," says MR. LAWRENCE. "He perfected and brought into form," says DR. WILLIAM SMITH, "those elements of the dialectic art which had been struck out by Socrates and Plato, and wrought them by his additions into so complete a system that he may be regarded as at once the founder and perfecter of logic as an art." Says MAHAFFY, "He has built his politics upon so sound a philosophic basis, and upon the evidence of so large and varied a political experience, that his lessons on the rise and fall of governments will never grow old, and will be perpetually receiving fresh corroborations, so long as human nature remains the same." Aristotle was a friend of the Macedonians, and, on the death of Alexander, he fled, from Athens to Chal'cis, in Euboea, to escape a trial for impiety. There he died in 322 B.C. In the lives of the three great philosophers of Greece—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—is embraced what is commonly called "The Philosophical Era of Athens." To this era MILTON has beautifully alluded in his well-known description of the famous city; and for the Academe, or Academia, the beautiful garden that was the resort of the philosophers, EDWIN ARNOLD expresses these sentiments of veneration:
Pleasanter than the hills of Thessaly,
Nearer and dearer to the poet's heart
Than the blue ripple belting Salamis,
Or long grass waving over Marathon,
Fair Academe, most holy Academe,
Thou art, and hast been, and shalt ever be.
I would be numbered now with things that were,
Changing the wasting fever of to-day
For the dear quietness of yesterday:
I would be ashes, underneath the grass,
So I had wandered in thy platane walks
One happy summer twilight—even one.
Was it not grand, and beautiful, and rare,
The music and the wisdom and the shade,
The music of the pebble-paven rills,
And olive boughs, and bowered nightingales,
Chorusing joyously the joyous things
Told by the gray Silenus of the grove,
Low-fronted and large-hearted Socrates!
Oh, to have seen under the olive blossoms
But once—only once in a mortal life,
The marble majesties of ancient gods!
And to have watched the ring of listeners—
The Grecian boys gone mad for love of truth,
The Grecian girls gone pale for love of him
Who taught the truth, who battled for the truth;
And girls and boys, women and bearded men,
Crowding to hear and treasure in their hearts
Matter to make their lives a happiness,
And death a happy ending.