VIII
CRITICISM AND SUMMARY OF ARISTOTLE'S TEACHING
If finally we ask what are the limitations of Aristotle, we find none save the limitations of the age and city in which he lived. He lived in a city-state where thirty thousand full male citizens, with some seventy thousand women and children dependent upon them, were supported by the labour of some hundred thousand slaves. The rights of man as such, whether native or alien, male or female, free or slave, had not yet been affirmed. That crowning proclamation of universal emancipation was reserved for Christianity three centuries and a half later. Without this Christian element no principle of personality is complete. Not until the city-state of Plato and Aristotle is widened to include the humblest man, the lowliest woman, the most defenceless little child, does their doctrine become final and universal. Yet with this single limitation of its range, the form of Aristotle's teaching is complete and ultimate. Deeper, saner, stronger, wiser statement of the principles of personality the world has never heard.
His teaching may be summed up in the following:—
TEN ARISTOTELIAN COMMANDMENTS
Thou shalt devote thy utmost powers to some section of our common social welfare.
Thou shalt hold this end above all lesser goods, such as pleasure, money, honour.
Thou shalt hold the instruments essential to the service of this end second only to the end itself.
Thou shalt ponder and revere the universal laws that bind ends and means together in the ordered universe.
Thou shalt master and obey the specific laws that govern the relation of means to thy chosen end.
Thou shalt use just so much of the materials and tools of life as the service of thy end requires.