When asked, what is a friend? he replied, "One soul animating two bodies." "How," said one to him, "ought we to act to our friends?" "As we would have them to act toward us," replied Aristotle. He used frequently to exclaim, "Ah! my friends, there is not a friend in the world!"
He was one day asked, "How it comes that we prefer beautiful women to those who are ugly?" "You now ask a blind man's question," returned Aristotle.
He was asked what advantage he had derived from philosophy? "To do voluntarily," replied he, "what others do through fear of the laws."
It is said that during his stay at Athens he was intimate with an able Jew, by whom he was accurately instructed in the science and religion of the Egyptians, for the acquisition of which everyone at that time used to go to Egypt itself.
Having taught in the Lyceum for thirteen years with great reputation, Aristotle was accused of impiety by Eurimedon, priest of Ceres. He was so overwhelmed with the recollection of what Socrates had suffered that he hastily left Athens and retired to Chalcis in Eubœa. It is said by some that he there died of vexation because he could not discover the cause of the flux and reflux of the Euripus. By others it is added that he threw himself into that sea, and when falling said, "Let the Euripus receive me since I cannot comprehend it." And lastly, it is affirmed by others that he died of a colic in the sixty-third year of his age, two years after the death of his pupil, Alexander the Great.
By the Stagirites, altars were erected to him as a god.
Aristotle made a will, of which Antipater was appointed the executor. He left a son called Nicomachus, and a daughter who was married to a grandson of Demaratus, king of Lacedæmonia.[Back to Contents]
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By John Timbs, F.S.A.
(287-212 B.C.)
