Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals

by Thomas Davidson

Aristotle was one of the richest and most comprehensive geniuses that ever appeared—a man beside whom no age has an equal to place.—Id.

Physical philosophy occupies itself with the general qualities of matter. It is an abstraction from the dynamic manifestations of the different kinds of matter; and even where its foundations were first laid, in the eight books of Aristotle's Physical Lectures, all the phenomena of nature are represented as the motive vital activity of a universal world-force.—Alexander von Humboldt.

It was characteristic of this extraordinary genius to work at both ends of the scientific process. He was alike a devotee to facts and a master of the highest abstractions.—Alexander Bain.

Aristotle is the Father of the Inductive Method, and he is so for two reasons: First, he theoretically recognized its essential principles with a clearness, and exhibited them with a conviction, which strike the modern man with amazement; and then he made the first comprehensive attempt to apply them to all the science of the Greeks.—Wilhelm Oncken.

Aristotle, for whose political philosophy our admiration rises, the more we consider the work of his successors, is less guided by imagination than Plato, examines reality more carefully, and recognizes more acutely, the needs of man.—Bluntschli.

It appears to me that there can be no question, that Aristotle stands forth, not only as the greatest figure in antiquity, but as the greatest intellect that has ever appeared upon the face of this earth.—George J. Romanes.

Aristotle, with all the wisdom of Plato before him, which he was well able to appropriate, could find no better definition of the true good of man than the full exercise or realization of the soul's faculties in accordance with its proper excellence, which was excellence of thought, speculative and practical.—Thomas Hill Green.

It is pretty definitely settled, among men competent to form a judgment, that Aristotle was the best educated man that ever walked on the surface of this earth. He is still, as he was in Dante's time, the "master of those that know." It is, therefore, not without reason that we look to him, not only as the best exponent of ancient education, but as one of the worthiest guides and ensamples in education generally. That we may not lose the advantage of his example, it will be well, before we consider his educational theories, to cast a glance at his life, the process of his development, and his work.

Aristotle was born about b.c. 384, in the Greek colony of Stagira in Thrace, near the borders of Macedonia. His father, Nicomachus, was a physician of good standing, the author of several medical works, and the trusted friend of Amyntas, the Macedonian King. His mother, Phæstis, was descended from the early settlers of the place. It was doubtless under his father's guidance that the boy Aristotle first became interested in those physical studies in which he was destined to do such wonderful work. Losing, however, both his parents at an early age, he came under the charge of Proxenus, of Atarneus, who appears to have done his duty by him. At the age of eighteen he came to Athens for his higher education, and entered the school of Plato in the Academy. Here he remained for nearly twenty years, listening to Plato, and acquiring those vast stores of information which in later life he worked up into lectures and scientific treatises. Nothing escaped him, neither art, science, religion, philosophy, nor politics. He seems, being well off, to have begun early to collect a library, and to aim at encyclopædic knowledge. About his methods of study we know very little; but we hear that at times he assisted Plato in his work and was very careful of his own attire. It is clear that, in course of time, he rose in thought above the teachings of his master, and even rejected the most fundamental of them, the doctrine of self-existent ideas. But he never lost respect for that master, and when the latter died, he retired with Xenocrates, son of the new head of the Academy, to Atarneus, the home of his old guardian Proxenus, and of his fellow-Academic, Hermias, now king or tyrant of the place. Here he remained for three years, in the closest intimacy with his friend, until the latter was treacherously murdered by the Persians. He then crossed over to Mytilene, taking with him Pythias, Hermias' sister or niece, whom he had married, and to whom he was deeply devoted. He erected in Delphi a statue to his dead friend, and dedicated to him a poem, of which we shall hear more in the sequel. About b.c. 343, when he was over forty years old, he was called to Macedonia, as tutor to Alexander, the thirteen-year-old son of King Philip, and grandson of his own father's old patron, Amyntas. This office he filled for about three years with distinguished success, and it may be safely said that never had so great a tutor so great a pupil. During the latter part of the time, at least, Aristotle and Alexander seem to have lived at Stagira. This town had been captured and destroyed by Philip, and its inhabitants scattered. With the permission of the conqueror, Aristotle reassembled the inhabitants, rebuilt the town, drew up its laws, and laid out near it, at Mieza, in imitation of the Academy, a gymnasium and park, which he called the Nymphæum. Hither he appears to have retired with his royal pupil and several other youths who were receiving education along with him, among them Theophrastus and the ill-fated Callisthenes. It was probably here that Aristotle adopted the habit of walking while imparting instruction, a habit which afterwards gave the name to his school. When Alexander, at sixteen, entered his father's army, Aristotle still continued to teach in the Nymphæum, which existed even in Plutarch's time, more than four hundred years afterwards. But this lasted only for about five years; for in 335, when Alexander, who in the previous year had succeeded his murdered father, was preparing to invade Persia, Aristotle moved to Athens. Finding that his old friend, Xenocrates, was director of the school in the Academy, he established himself, as a public teacher or professor, in the Lyceum, the Periclean gymnasium, used chiefly, it should seem, by the lower classes and by foreign residents, of whom he himself was one. As an alien, as the friend of the victorious Macedonians, who three years before had broken the power of Greece at Chæronea, and taken away her autonomy forever, as a rival of the Platonists, and as a wealthy, well-dressed gentleman, he had many enemies and detractors; but his conduct seems to have been so unobjectionable that no formal charge could be brought against him. His very numerous pupils were mostly foreigners, a fact not without its influence on the subsequent course of thought. He divided his days between writing and teaching, taking his physical exercise while engaged in the latter occupation. In the mornings he gave lectures to a narrow circle, in a strictly formal and scientific way, upon the higher branches of science; while in the afternoons he conducted conversations upon more popular themes with a less select audience. The former were called his esoteric, the latter his exoteric, discourses.