This part, whatever it
may be, whether intellect (?
may be, whether intellect (?
Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals by Thomas Davidson
The education of the lowest class after childhood the
State leaves to take care of itself, persuaded that appetite will always
find means for its own satisfaction. The nobler natures it continues to
educate, without any break, until they reach the age of twenty. And this
education is distinctly a military training. As time goes on, the
gymnastic exercises become more violent, more complex, and more
sustained, but always have for their subject the soul, rather than the
body, and never degenerate into mere athletic brutality. Special
attention is directed to the musical and literary exercises, as the
means whereby the soul is directly trained and harmonized. Plato holds
that no change can be made in the "music" of a State, without a
corresponding change in the whole organization; in other words, that the
social and political condition of a people is determined by the
literature and music which it produces and enjoys. He virtually says,
Let me make the songs of a people, and he who will may make their laws.
Of the character of the music which he recommends we have already
spoken. From literature he would exclude all that we are in the habit of
calling by that name, all that is mimetic, poetic, or creative, and
confine the term to what is scientific, didactic, and edifying. He sends
the poets out of the State with mock-reverent politeness, as creatures
too divine for human use. He is particularly severe upon the dramatists,
not sparing even the sublime AEschylus. In fact, he would banish from his
State all art not directly edifying. The literature which he recommends
is plainly of the nature of AEsop's _Fables_, the Pythagorean _Golden
Words_, and the Parmenidean or Heraclitean work _On Nature_. If we
wished to express his intent in strictly modern language, we should have
to say that he desired to replace literary training by ethical and
scientific, and the poetical mode of presenting ideals by the prosaic.
The true music, he held, is in the human being. "If we find," he says,
"a man who perfectly combines gymnastics with music, and in exact
proportion applies them to the soul, we shall be entirely justified in
calling him the perfect musician and the perfect trainer, far superior
to the man who arranges strings alongside each other. "
There are many matters of detail in Plato's scheme of military training
that well deserve consideration, but cannot be even touched upon here.
Before we leave it, however, we may give the dates at which the
different branches of education are to begin. Care of the body begins at
birth, story-telling with the third year, gymnastics with the seventh,
writing and reading with the tenth, letters and music with the
fourteenth, mathematics with the sixteenth, military drill, which for
the time supplants all other training, with the eighteenth. When the
young people reach the age of twenty, those who show no great capacity
for science, but are manly and courageous, are assigned to the soldier
class, and start on a course of higher education in military training,
while those who evince great intellectual ability become novices in the
ruling class, and begin a curriculum in science, which lasts till the
close of their thirtieth year. This course includes arithmetic,
geometry, and astronomy, the only sciences at that time cultivated, and
aims at impressing upon the youthful mind the unity and harmony of the
physical or phenomenal universe. At the age of thirty, those students
who do not show any particular aptitude for higher studies are drafted
off into the lower public offices, while those who do, pass five years
in the study of dialectics, whereby they rise to pure ideas. They are
then, from their thirty-fifth to their fiftieth year, made to fill the
higher public offices, in which they take their orders directly from the
sages. During this period they put their acquirements to a practical
test, and so come really and fully into possession of them. At the end
of their fiftieth year, after half a century of continuous education of
body, mind, and will, they are reckoned to have reached the vision of
the supreme good, and therefore to be fit to enter the contemplative
ruling class. They are now free men; they have reached the goal of
existence; their life is hidden with God; they are free from the prison
of the body, and only remain in it voluntarily, and out of gratitude to
the State which has educated them, in order to direct it, in accordance
with absolute truth and right, toward the Supreme Good.
Such, in its outlines, is Plato's theory of education, as set forth in
the _Republic_. It is easy to point out its defects and its errors,
which are neither small nor few, but fundamental and all-pervasive. But
it is equally easy to see how it came to have these defects and errors,
since they are simply those of every aesthetic social scheme which
ignores the nature of the material with which it presumes to deal, and
takes no account of the actual history of social institutions or of the
forces by which they are evolved. It is emphatically the product of a
youthful intellect, carried away by an artistic ideal. It was, however,
the intellect of a Plato, who, when he became more mature, saw, without
"irreverence for the dreams of youth," the feebleness of ideas for the
conflict with human frailties, and strove to correct his exaggerated
estimate of their power.
This he did in the _Laws_, whose very title suggests, in a way almost
obtrusive, the change of attitude and allegiance. While in the
_Republic_ the State is governed by sages, almost entirely without laws,
in the later work, the sages almost disappear and the laws assume an
all-important place. In writing the _Laws_, moreover, he exchanges
allegiance to Socrates and ideas for allegiance to Pythagoras and the
gods. In saying this, I have marked the fundamental difference between
the _Republic_ and the _Laws_. While in the former Plato finds the moral
sanctions, in the last resort, in the ideas of the pure intellect,
trained in mathematics, astronomy, and dialectics, in the latter he
derives them from the content of the popular consciousness, with its
gods, its ethical notions, its traditions. In these, as embodied in
institutions, he finds the most serviceable, if not the most exalted,
revelation of divine truth. Trusting to this, he no longer seeks to
abolish the family and private property, but merely to have them
regulated; he no longer banishes strangers and poets from his State, but
merely subjects them to State supervision; he no longer demands a
philosophical training for the rulers, but only practical insight; he no
longer divides his citizens into sages, soldiers, and wealth-producers,
but into freemen (corresponding to his previous military class) and
slaves. His government is no longer an aristocracy of intellect, but a
compound of aristocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, representing,
respectively, worth, wealth, and will. His plan of education is modified
to suit these altered conditions. The children, as in Sparta, do not
begin the State course of education until about their seventh year,
after which their training is very much the same as that demanded in the
_Republic_, with the omission, of course, of dialectics. Though women
are no longer to be relieved of their home duties, they are still to
share in the education and occupations of men, an arrangement which is
facilitated by the law ordaining that both men and women shall eat at
public tables. In making these changes, Plato believed that he was
falling from a lofty, but unrealizable, ideal, and making concessions to
human weakness; in reality, he was approaching truth and right.
BOOK III
ARISTOTLE (B. C. 384-322)
CHAPTER I
ARISTOTLE--LIFE AND WORKS
Aristotle, in my opinion, stands almost alone in
philosophy. --Cicero.
Aristotle, Nature's private secretary, dipping his pen in
intellect. --Eusebius.
Wherever the divine wisdom of Aristotle has opened its mouth, the
wisdom of others, it seems to me, is to be disregarded. --Dante.
I could soon get over Aristotle's _prestige_, if I could only get
over his reasons. --Lessing.
If, now in my quiet days, I had youthful faculties at my command, I
should devote myself to Greek, in spite of 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. To
be sure he was sometimes hasty in his explanations; but are we not
so, even to the present day? --Goethe (at 78).
If the proper earnestness prevailed in philosophy, nothing would be
more worthy of establishing than a foundation for a special
lectureship on Aristotle; for he is, of all the ancients, the most
worthy of study. --Hegel.
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, Phaestis, 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 encyclopaedic
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 _Nymphaeum_. 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
Nymphaeum, 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 Chaeronea, 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.
It was during his second residence in Athens, in the twelve years from
B. C. 335 to 323, that Aristotle composed most of those great works in
which he sought to sum up, in an encyclopaedic way, the results of a
life of all-embracing study and thought. He had been in no haste to put
himself on record, and it was not until he had reached a consistent view
of the world that he ventured to treat, in a definitive way, any aspect
of it. Thus it was that each of his treatises formed part of one great
whole of thought. Had he succeeded in completing his plan, he would have
left to the world a body of science such as, even in our own day, would
look in vain for a peer among the works of any one man. Unfortunately,
his plan was not completed, and even of the works which he did write
only a portion has come down to us. But that portion is sufficient to
place their author at the head of all scientific men. Some of his works,
for example, his _Logic_, _Metaphysics_, _Ethics_, and _Politics_, still
occupy the first place in the literature of these subjects. How a single
man could have done all that he did, and in so many different
departments, is almost inconceivable. No doubt he had helpers, in the
shape of secretaries, learned slaves, and disciples; and it is certain
that he received from his royal pupil munificent aid, which enabled him
to do much, especially in the directions of physical and political
research, that would have been impossible for a poor man; but, after all
allowances have been made, his achievement still seems almost
miraculous.
During all the years in which Aristotle was thus engaged, his position
at Athens was becoming more and more insecure. The anti-Macedonian party
were waiting for the first opportunity to rid the city of him, and were
prevented from open attempts at this only by dread of Alexander's
displeasure. Even when it was known that Aristotle had incurred disfavor
with his old pupil, they did not venture to attack him; but in 323, when
the news of Alexander's sudden death made all Greece feel that now the
time had come to get rid forever of the hated Macedonians, and recover
its liberty, they at once gave vent to their long-cherished hatred. How
hard it was to find matter for an accusation against him, is shown by
the fact that they had to go back to his old poem on _Worth_, written in
memory of Hermias (see p. 4), and to base thereon a charge of impiety--a
charge always easily made, and always sure to arouse strong popular
prejudice. According to Athenian law, the defendant in any such case
might, if he chose, escape punishment by leaving the city any time
before the trial; and Aristotle, not being, like Socrates, a citizen,
could have no ground for refusing to take advantage of this liberty.
Accordingly, with the remark that he would not voluntarily allow the
Athenians to sin a second time against philosophy, he withdrew to his
country residence at Chalcis in Euboea, the old home of his mother's
family, to wait till affairs should take another turn, as, indeed, they
soon afterwards did, when Athens had to open her gates to Antipater.
But, ere that happened, Aristotle was in his grave, having died in 322,
shortly before Demosthenes, of disease of the stomach, from which he had
long suffered. His remains are said to have been carried to Stagira,
where the grateful inhabitants erected an altar over them and paid
divine honors to his memory. His library and the manuscripts of his
works he left in the hands of Theophrastus, who succeeded him in the
Lyceum. His will, the text of which has come down to us, bears
testimony, along with all else that we know of him, to the nobility,
kindliness, and justice of his nature.
CHAPTER II
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY
Platon revait; Aristote pensait. --Alfred de Musset.
Are God and Nature then at strife
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
--Tennyson.
There are three Essences. Two of these are sensible; one being
eternal, and the other perishable. The latter is admitted by all, in
the form, for example, of plants and animals; in regard to the
former, or eternal one, we shall have to consider its elements, and
see whether they be one or many. The third is immutable [and,
therefore, inaccessible to sense], and this some thinkers hold to be
transcendent. --Aristotle.
The vision of the divine is what is sweetest and best; and if God
always enjoys that vision as we sometimes do, it is wonderful, and
if he does so in a yet higher degree, it is more wonderful still.
And so even it is. And life belongs to him; for the
self-determination of thought is life, and he is self-determination.
And his absolute self-determination is the supreme and eternal life.
And we call God a living being, eternal, best; so that life and
duration, uniform and eternal, belong to God; for this is
God. --_Id. _
We must consider in what way the system of the universe contains the
good and the best, whether as something transcendent and
self-determined, or as order. Surely in both ways at once, as in any
army, for which the good is in order, and is the general, and the
latter more than the former. For the general is not due to the
order, but the order to the general. --_Id. _
The thought of Aristotle differs from that of Plato both in its method
and in its results. Plato, reared in the school of Pythagoras,
Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Socrates, had, naturally enough, come to
look for truth in the supersensual region of mind, and thought he found
it in ideas attainable by a process of dialectic within the individual
consciousness. He thus came to put forward a doctrine which, despite its
ostensible purpose to cement the bonds of society, in reality tended to
withdraw men from society altogether and increase the very individualism
it was intended to cure. Aristotle, while still in Plato's school, had
turned away from this doctrine, and in after-life he never lost an
opportunity of combating it. He could point to Plato's _Republic_ as a
warning example of its logical consequences. But, in doing this, he was
prepared to put another doctrine in its place, and he did so on the
basis of a profound study of the whole course of Greek thought,
mythological and philosophical.
Instead of appealing, like Plato, to the individual consciousness, and
trying to discover ultimate truth by bringing its data into harmony
among themselves, Aristotle appeals to the historic consciousness, and
endeavors to find truth by harmonizing and complementing its data
through a further appeal to the outer world, in which these data are
realized. He maintains that the truths reached by the dialectic process
are merely formal, and therefore empty,--useless in practice, until they
have been filled by experience from the storehouse of nature. In
consequence of this changed attitude, he sets aside the dialectic
process, and substitutes for it the _Method of Induction_, which he was
the first man in the world to comprehend, expound, and apply, becoming
thus the father of all true science. And he makes a more extensive use
of induction than any other man since his time, applying it in a field
in which even now it is hardly supposed to yield any results, the field
of the common consciousness. Indeed, he everywhere begins his search for
concrete truth by examining the historic consciousness, and, having, by
a process of induction, discovered and generalized its contents, he
turns with these to nature and, by a second induction, corrects,
completes, and harmonizes them. We might express this in modern
language, by saying that his whole endeavor is to correct and supplement
the imperfect human consciousness by a continual appeal to the divine
consciousness, _as manifested in the world_. It is the error of modern
investigators that they employ only one-half of the inductive method,
the objective, and either omit altogether the subjective, or else, like
Plato, apply it only to the individual consciousness. Hence come the
widely divergent results which still meet us in so many of the sciences,
in Politics, Psychology, etc. , hence the fact that a great deal of
science, instead of correcting, widening, and harmonizing the common
consciousness, stands altogether apart from it, or even in direct
opposition to it. The man who writes a treatise on Psychology, or on the
Soul, without troubling himself to discover what "Soul" means in the
general consciousness of mankind, and perhaps setting out with an
altogether individual notion of it, can hardly look for any other
result. Aristotle, true to his method of induction, devotes one entire
book of his _Psychology_ to finding out what "Soul" means in the
historic consciousness, unreflective as well as reflective. Then, with
this meaning, he goes to nature, seeks by induction to discover what
she has to say about it, and abides by her reply. Hence it is that his
thought has laid hold upon the world, and influenced it in practical
ways, as no other man's thought has ever done. Hence it is that, of all
ancient men, he is the one before whom the modern scientist bows with
respect.
If we now ask ourselves what was the underlying thought that shaped
Aristotle's theory of induction, what was his _Weltanschauung_, we shall
find it to be this: The divine intelligence reveals itself subjectively
in an historic process in the human consciousness, and objectively[4] in
a natural process in the outer world. Truth for man is the harmony of
the two revelations. It follows directly from this that the scientist
must take impartial account of both. So, for example, if he finds gods
in the historical consciousness, and laws or forces in nature, he has no
right, like the theologian, to merge the latter in the former, or, like
the physicist, to replace the former by the latter. He must retain both
till he can bring them into harmony. Only then does he know either.
Such a philosophy as this, instead of drawing men away from the world of
nature and history, and confining them to the narrow circle of their own
consciousness, of necessity sent them back to that world, as the only
means by which any human well-being could be reached. It is for this
reason that it has so powerfully affected both social life and science.
Nevertheless, we should err greatly, if we supposed that, in
Aristotle's view, the divine is nothing more than an immanent idea,
working as a force-form in nature, and as a thought-form in mind. He
does, indeed, believe that the divine is all this, but not that this is
all the divine there is. Over and above the divine which is determined
in nature and in man, there is the transcendent Mind, or God,
determining himself through himself, and bearing the same relation to
the divine that the sun bears to light, the human mind to human thought,
the general to the order of his army. Here we are far away from
Pantheism, and, though we have not yet risen to a clear conception of
personality, we have at the "helm of the universe" a conscious being,
the source of law and order. And man, rising above the thought whereby
he knows himself through nature, and nature through himself, may enter
into the consciousness of God and become a partaker in that life which
is "sweetest and best. " These are the features of Aristotle's thought
which in the thirteenth century made it acceptable to the Christian
Church in her struggle against Pantheism, and which paved the way for
that higher mysticism of which Thomas Aquinas is the most distinguished
exponent--a mysticism which does not, like that of the Neoplatonists and
Buddhists, dispense with thought to lose itself in vacancy, but which,
rising upon a broad basis of knowledge, pierces the clouds of sense, to
find itself in the presence of the most concrete Reality, the
inexhaustible source of all thought and all things.
CHAPTER III
ARISTOTLE'S THEORY OF THE STATE
First, then, let us try to enumerate whatever worthy utterances have
proceeded from men of the past upon any aspect of the subject, and
then, referring to our collections of _Constitutional Histories_,
let us seek to arrive at a theory as to what sorts of things
preserve and destroy each particular form of government, and see for
what reasons some are well, some ill, managed. Succeeding in this,
we may, perhaps, the better learn both what is the best form of
government, and what arrangements, laws, and customs are best suited
to each form. --Aristotle.
Man is a political animal. --_Id. _
The State is prior to the individual. --_Id. _
Without friends no one would choose to live, although he possessed
all other blessings. --_Id. _
If happiness be self-determination in accordance with worth, we must
conclude that it will be in accordance with the supreme worth, which
will be the worth of the noblest part of us.
This part, whatever it
may be, whether intellect (? ? ? ? ) or something else, that which by
nature evidently rules and guides us and has insight into things
beautiful and divine, whether it be itself divine, or the divinest
part of us, is that whose self-determination, in accordance with its
proper worth, will be the perfect happiness. That this consists in
the vision of divine things has already been said. . . . This, indeed,
is the supreme self-determination, for the reason that intellect is
the highest part of us, and that with which it deals is the highest
of the knowable. . . . But a life of this sort would be something
higher than the human; for he who lived it would not be living as
man, but as the subject of something divine. . . . If, then, intellect
is something divine in relation to man, the life lived according to
it must be divine in relation to human life. Instead, then, of
following those who advise us, as being human, to set our thoughts
upon human things, and, as being mortals, to set them on mortal
things, it is our duty, as far as may be, to act as immortal beings,
and do all we can to live in accordance with the supreme part of
us. --Aristotle.
Man alone, among all beings, occupies a middle place between things
corruptible and things incorruptible. . . . Two ends, therefore,
Ineffable Providence has ordained for man: Blessedness in this life,
which consists in the exercise of native faculty, and is figured by
the Earthly Paradise, and blessedness in the eternal life, which
consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God, a thing not to be
achieved by any native faculty, unless aided by divine light, and
which is to be understood by the Heavenly Paradise. . . . These ends
and means would be disregarded by human passion, if men were not
restrained in their course by bit and bridle. . . . For this reason man
required a double directive, corresponding to this double end. He
required the Supreme Pontiff to guide the human race to life
eternal, and the Emperor to guide the human race to temporal
felicity, in accordance with the teachings of philosophy. . . . The
truth with regard to the question whether the authority of the
Emperor is derived directly from God or from another, must not be
taken so strictly as to mean that the Roman Prince is not, in some
respects, subject to the Roman Pontiff, the fact being that this
mortal felicity of ours is, in some sense, ordained with a view to
immortal felicity. Let Caesar, therefore, display that reverence for
Peter which the first-born son ought to display for his father, so
that, being illuminated by his father's grace, he may with greater
virtue enlighten the world, which he has been called to govern by
Him who is governor of all things, spiritual and temporal. --Dante.
O Grace abounding, whence I did presume
To fix my gaze upon the eternal light
So far that I consumed my sight therein!
Within its deeps I saw internalized
Into one volume, bound with love,
That which is outered in the universe;--
Substance and accident, and all their modes,
As 'twere, together merged in such a sort
That what I mean is but a simple light.
The universal form of this same knot
I think I saw, because, when thus I speak,
I feel that I rejoice with larger joy. --_Id. _
Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him
forever. --_Westminster Shorter Catechism_.
Plato's chief purpose, in writing upon education, had been to suggest a
remedy for the social and moral conditions of his native Athens.
Aristotle has no such purpose. He is, in a very deep sense, a
cosmopolitan, and writes in the interest of science and universal
utility. His range of vision is not confined to Athens, or even to
Greece (though he is very proud of being a Greek), but ranges over the
whole known world in time and space. Unlike Plato, too, who had been
familiar mainly with institutions of the past in Egypt and Greece,
Aristotle is deeply affected by the tendencies of the future, and,
though no one lays greater stress than he upon the necessity of a
knowledge of the past for him who would construct a sound social theory,
he nevertheless declares that the whole of the past is shaped by
something which is in the future, by the ultimate realization. This view
comes out in a paradoxical way in his famous saying that "the State is
prior to the individual," by which he means that it is man's political
nature working in him that makes him an individual, and at the same time
realizes itself in a State. And this brings us to Aristotle's conception
of the State, which we must consider before taking up his theory of
education, for the reason that to him, as to all the ancient world,
education is a function of the State, and is conducted, primarily at
least, for the ends of the State.
Before venturing upon a theory of the State, Aristotle, true to his
inductive principles, wrote the Constitutional Histories of over two
hundred and fifty different states. One of these, the _Constitutional
History of Athens_, has recently been discovered and published (see p.
96). He held that it was only by means of a broad induction, thus
rendered possible, that he could discover the idea of the State, that
is, its self-realizing form. Employing this method, then, he came to the
conclusion that the State is that highest social institution which
secures the highest good or happiness of man. Having, in a previous
treatise, satisfied himself that this good is Worth (? ? ? ? ? ), and worth
being in every case the full exercise of characteristic or
differentiating faculty, he concludes that, since man's distinguishing
faculty is reason, the State is the institution which secures to man the
fullest and freest exercise of this. It follows directly that the State
is, simply and solely, the supreme educational institution, the
university to which all other institutions are but preparatory. And two
more conclusions follow: (1) that states will differ in constitution
with the different educational needs of the peoples among whom they
exist, and (2) that, since all education is but a preparation for some
worthy activity, political education, the life of man as a citizen, is
but a preparation for the highest activity, which, because it is
highest, must necessarily be an end in itself. This activity, Aristotle
argues, can be none other than contemplation, the Vision of the Divine
(? ? ? ? ? ? ).
Results which have moved the world followed logically from this
doctrine. Whereas Plato had made provision for a small and select body
of super-civic men, and so paved the way for religious monasticism and
asceticism, Aristotle maintains that in every civilized man, as such,
there is a super-civic part, in fact, a superhuman and divine part, for
the complete realization of which all the other parts, and the State
wherein they find expression, are but means. Here we have, in embryo,
the whole of Dante's theory of the relation of Church and State, a
theory which lies at the basis of all modern political effort, however
little the fact may be recognized. Here, indeed, we have the whole
framework of the _Divine Comedy_; here too we have the doctrine of the
Beatific Vision, which for ages shaped and, to a large extent, still
shapes, the life of Christendom. Well might Dante claim Aristotle as his
master (see p. 153)! Well might the great doctors of the Church speak of
him as "_The_ Philosopher," and as the "Forerunner of Christ in Things
Natural. " In vain did Peter Ramus and Luther and Bruno and Bacon
depreciate or anathematize him! He is more powerful to-day in thought
and life than at any time for the last twenty-two centuries.
It may be asked how far, and in what form, Aristotle conceives the
divine life to be possible for man on earth. He answers that, though it
cannot be perfectly or continuously realized here, it is in some degree
and for certain times attainable (see p. 161). In so far as it is a
social life, it is the life of friendship or spiritual love (? ? ? ? ? ), to
which he has devoted almost two books of his _Ethics_, books which give
us a loftier idea of his personal purity and worth than any other of his
extant writings. He insists that friendship is the supreme blessing (see
p. 166), and that "whatever a man's being is, or whatever he chooses to
live for, in that he wishes to spend his life in the company of his
friends. " It is even said that Aristotle, while teaching in the Lyceum,
gathered about him a knot of noble youths and earnest students, and
formed them into a kind of community, with a view to leading a truly
spiritual social life.
CHAPTER IV
ARISTOTLE'S PEDAGOGICAL STATE
Nature is the beginning of everything. --Aristotle.
Life is more than meat, and the body than raiment. --Jesus.
The forces of the human passions in us, when completely repressed,
become more vehement; but when they are called into action for short
time and in the right degree, they enjoy a measured delight, are
soothed, and, thence being purged away, cease in a kindly, instead
of a violent, way. For this reason, in tragedy and comedy, through
being spectators of the passions of others, we still our own
passions, render them more moderate, and purge them away; and so,
likewise, in the temples, by seeing and hearing base things, we are
freed from the injury that would come from the actual practice of
them. --Jamblichus.
Care for the body must precede care for the soul; next to care for
the body must come care for the appetites; and, last of all, care
for the intelligence. We train the appetites for the sake of the
intelligence, and the body for the sake of the soul. --Aristotle.
The practice of abortion was one to which few persons in antiquity
attached any deep feeling of condemnation. . . . The physiological
theory that the foetus did not become a living creature till the hour
of birth had some influence on the judgments passed upon this
practice. The death of an unborn child does not appeal very
powerfully to the feeling of compassion, and men who had not yet
attained any strong sense of the sanctity of human life, who
believed that they might regulate their conduct on these matters by
utilitarian views, according to the general interest of the
community, might very readily conclude that prevention of birth was
in many cases an act of mercy. In Greece, Aristotle not only
countenanced the practice, but even desired that it should be
enforced by law, when population had exceeded certain assigned
limits. No law in Greece, or in the Roman Republic, or during the
greater part of the Empire, condemned it. . . . The language of the
Christians from the very beginning was very different. With
unwavering consistency and with the strongest emphasis, they
denounced the practice, not simply as inhuman, but as definitely
murder. --Lecky, _European Morals_.
Aristotle clearly saw that the strong tendency of the human race to
increase, unless corrected by strict and positive laws, was
absolutely fatal to every system founded on equality of property;
and there cannot surely be a stronger argument against any system of
this kind than the necessity of such laws as Aristotle himself
proposes. . . . He seems to be fully aware that to encourage the birth
of children, without providing properly for their support, is to
obtain a very small accession to the population of a country, at the
expense of a very great accession of misery. --Malthus, _Essay on
Population_.
Considering Aristotle's views with regard to man, his end, and the
function of the State, we can have little difficulty in divining the
character and method of his educational system. Man is a being endowed
with reason; his end is the full realization of this, his sovereign and
distinguishing faculty; the State is the means whereby this is
accomplished.
Readers of Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_ will remember the description, in
the second part, of the Pedagogical Province. Now, Aristotle's State
might with entire propriety be called a Pedagogical Province. In trying
to describe this State, and the manner in which it discharges its
function, it is difficult to know where to begin, for the reason that,
taken as a whole, the State is both teacher and pupil. It arranges the
whole scheme of education, and is therefore related to it as cause; it
is built up by this scheme, and is therefore related to it as effect. It
comes, accordingly, both at the beginning and at the end. It is a
university which arranges the entire scheme of education, and is itself
its highest grade. I shall try to surmount this difficulty by
distinguishing what the State is from what it does, beginning with the
former, and ending with the latter.
With regard to what the State is, we have to consider (1) its natural,
(2) its social, conditions. The former are climate, and extent, nature,
and situation of territory; the latter, number and character of
inhabitants, property regulations, distinction of classes, city
architecture, mode of life, government, and relations to other states.
Aristotle demands for his State a temperate climate, on the ground that
a cold one renders men strong and bold, but dull and stupid, while a hot
one renders them intellectual but effeminate. The best climate is one
that makes them at once brave and intelligent. The territory must be
extensive enough, and fertile enough, to supply its inhabitants with all
the material conditions of life in answer to labor which shall rouse,
without exhausting, their energies. It must face east or south, and be
healthy, well-watered, accessible from land and sea, and easily
defensible.
As to the social conditions, Aristotle finds the most important to be
the number of citizens. And here two things must be carefully borne in
mind. (1) He means by "State" a city with a small territory. This is
not, as has been erroneously supposed, his highest social unity. He
recognizes clearly the nation (? ? ? ? ? ) and the confederacy (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? );
but he holds that they exist merely for material ends, whereas the end
of the State is spiritual. (2) He means by "citizen" a politician. A man
is a citizen, not because he is born or domiciled in a State, but
because he is a sharer in its functions. A State made up of mechanics,
no matter how great their number, would be a small State, and one
composed of slaves would be no State at all. Thus, in estimating the
size of a State, we are to consider the character of its inhabitants,
their fitness for political functions, rather than their number. Little
Athens was a much larger State than gigantic Persia on the field of
Marathon. Aristotle lays down that the number of citizens must be large
enough to insure independence, this being essential to a Culture-State,
and not too large to be manageable. Besides the citizens, there will
necessarily be in the State a very large number of other human beings,
slaves, agriculturists, mechanics, sailors--for all these he excludes
from citizenship on the ground that they do not make virtue, that is,
the realization of reason, the end of their lives. Women, in a sense,
are citizens, if they belong to the families of citizens; but their
sphere is the family.
With regard to property, Aristotle begins by considering what things it
is necessary for. These he finds to be six, three private and three
public. The former are food (including clothing and shelter),
instruments of production, and arms; the latter are public enterprises
(civil and military), religion, and law. These are the "necessaries"
(? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) of a State, for which it must duly provide. The most
important of all is religion, on which he everywhere lays great stress.
As to the distribution of property, he propounds a scheme which is half
socialistic. All the land is to belong to the State, that is, to the
body of the free citizens. It is to be divided into two equal portions,
and one set apart for public, the other for private, uses. The revenue
from the public part is to go for the support of religion (and law? ) and
of the public tables, from which no citizen is excluded by poverty. The
private part is to be so divided that each citizen shall have one lot
near the city, and one near the frontier. This will give him an interest
in defending the whole territory. Both parts are to be cultivated by
serfs or slaves, part of whom will necessarily belong to the State, and
part to private individuals. Land-owning is to be a condition of
citizenship, and all citizens are to be forbidden to exercise any form
of productive industry. This last rule, it is hoped, will prevent
grievous inequalities of wealth, and the evils that flow from them. A
modest competency, derived from his estate, is all that any citizen
should aim at. Only degraded people, incapable of virtue, will crave for
more.
Upon the distinction of classes some light has been already thrown. They
are two; the ruling and the ruled. Aristotle holds that this distinction
runs through the whole of nature and spirit, that it is fundamental in
being itself. It holds between God and the universe, form and matter,
soul and body, object and subject, husband and wife, parent and child,
master and slave, etc. , etc. The ruling class again is sub-divided into
two parts, one that thinks and determines (legislators and judges), and
one that executes (officials, officers, soldiers); while the ruled is
sub-divided into husbandmen, mechanics, and seamen (sailors, fishermen,
etc. ). All the members of the ruled class are serfs or public slaves,
working, not for themselves, but for their masters. Aristotle holds that
they ought to be barbarians of different races, and not Greeks.
The architecture of the city will in some degree correspond to this
social division. It will naturally fall into three divisions, military,
religious, and civil.
State leaves to take care of itself, persuaded that appetite will always
find means for its own satisfaction. The nobler natures it continues to
educate, without any break, until they reach the age of twenty. And this
education is distinctly a military training. As time goes on, the
gymnastic exercises become more violent, more complex, and more
sustained, but always have for their subject the soul, rather than the
body, and never degenerate into mere athletic brutality. Special
attention is directed to the musical and literary exercises, as the
means whereby the soul is directly trained and harmonized. Plato holds
that no change can be made in the "music" of a State, without a
corresponding change in the whole organization; in other words, that the
social and political condition of a people is determined by the
literature and music which it produces and enjoys. He virtually says,
Let me make the songs of a people, and he who will may make their laws.
Of the character of the music which he recommends we have already
spoken. From literature he would exclude all that we are in the habit of
calling by that name, all that is mimetic, poetic, or creative, and
confine the term to what is scientific, didactic, and edifying. He sends
the poets out of the State with mock-reverent politeness, as creatures
too divine for human use. He is particularly severe upon the dramatists,
not sparing even the sublime AEschylus. In fact, he would banish from his
State all art not directly edifying. The literature which he recommends
is plainly of the nature of AEsop's _Fables_, the Pythagorean _Golden
Words_, and the Parmenidean or Heraclitean work _On Nature_. If we
wished to express his intent in strictly modern language, we should have
to say that he desired to replace literary training by ethical and
scientific, and the poetical mode of presenting ideals by the prosaic.
The true music, he held, is in the human being. "If we find," he says,
"a man who perfectly combines gymnastics with music, and in exact
proportion applies them to the soul, we shall be entirely justified in
calling him the perfect musician and the perfect trainer, far superior
to the man who arranges strings alongside each other. "
There are many matters of detail in Plato's scheme of military training
that well deserve consideration, but cannot be even touched upon here.
Before we leave it, however, we may give the dates at which the
different branches of education are to begin. Care of the body begins at
birth, story-telling with the third year, gymnastics with the seventh,
writing and reading with the tenth, letters and music with the
fourteenth, mathematics with the sixteenth, military drill, which for
the time supplants all other training, with the eighteenth. When the
young people reach the age of twenty, those who show no great capacity
for science, but are manly and courageous, are assigned to the soldier
class, and start on a course of higher education in military training,
while those who evince great intellectual ability become novices in the
ruling class, and begin a curriculum in science, which lasts till the
close of their thirtieth year. This course includes arithmetic,
geometry, and astronomy, the only sciences at that time cultivated, and
aims at impressing upon the youthful mind the unity and harmony of the
physical or phenomenal universe. At the age of thirty, those students
who do not show any particular aptitude for higher studies are drafted
off into the lower public offices, while those who do, pass five years
in the study of dialectics, whereby they rise to pure ideas. They are
then, from their thirty-fifth to their fiftieth year, made to fill the
higher public offices, in which they take their orders directly from the
sages. During this period they put their acquirements to a practical
test, and so come really and fully into possession of them. At the end
of their fiftieth year, after half a century of continuous education of
body, mind, and will, they are reckoned to have reached the vision of
the supreme good, and therefore to be fit to enter the contemplative
ruling class. They are now free men; they have reached the goal of
existence; their life is hidden with God; they are free from the prison
of the body, and only remain in it voluntarily, and out of gratitude to
the State which has educated them, in order to direct it, in accordance
with absolute truth and right, toward the Supreme Good.
Such, in its outlines, is Plato's theory of education, as set forth in
the _Republic_. It is easy to point out its defects and its errors,
which are neither small nor few, but fundamental and all-pervasive. But
it is equally easy to see how it came to have these defects and errors,
since they are simply those of every aesthetic social scheme which
ignores the nature of the material with which it presumes to deal, and
takes no account of the actual history of social institutions or of the
forces by which they are evolved. It is emphatically the product of a
youthful intellect, carried away by an artistic ideal. It was, however,
the intellect of a Plato, who, when he became more mature, saw, without
"irreverence for the dreams of youth," the feebleness of ideas for the
conflict with human frailties, and strove to correct his exaggerated
estimate of their power.
This he did in the _Laws_, whose very title suggests, in a way almost
obtrusive, the change of attitude and allegiance. While in the
_Republic_ the State is governed by sages, almost entirely without laws,
in the later work, the sages almost disappear and the laws assume an
all-important place. In writing the _Laws_, moreover, he exchanges
allegiance to Socrates and ideas for allegiance to Pythagoras and the
gods. In saying this, I have marked the fundamental difference between
the _Republic_ and the _Laws_. While in the former Plato finds the moral
sanctions, in the last resort, in the ideas of the pure intellect,
trained in mathematics, astronomy, and dialectics, in the latter he
derives them from the content of the popular consciousness, with its
gods, its ethical notions, its traditions. In these, as embodied in
institutions, he finds the most serviceable, if not the most exalted,
revelation of divine truth. Trusting to this, he no longer seeks to
abolish the family and private property, but merely to have them
regulated; he no longer banishes strangers and poets from his State, but
merely subjects them to State supervision; he no longer demands a
philosophical training for the rulers, but only practical insight; he no
longer divides his citizens into sages, soldiers, and wealth-producers,
but into freemen (corresponding to his previous military class) and
slaves. His government is no longer an aristocracy of intellect, but a
compound of aristocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, representing,
respectively, worth, wealth, and will. His plan of education is modified
to suit these altered conditions. The children, as in Sparta, do not
begin the State course of education until about their seventh year,
after which their training is very much the same as that demanded in the
_Republic_, with the omission, of course, of dialectics. Though women
are no longer to be relieved of their home duties, they are still to
share in the education and occupations of men, an arrangement which is
facilitated by the law ordaining that both men and women shall eat at
public tables. In making these changes, Plato believed that he was
falling from a lofty, but unrealizable, ideal, and making concessions to
human weakness; in reality, he was approaching truth and right.
BOOK III
ARISTOTLE (B. C. 384-322)
CHAPTER I
ARISTOTLE--LIFE AND WORKS
Aristotle, in my opinion, stands almost alone in
philosophy. --Cicero.
Aristotle, Nature's private secretary, dipping his pen in
intellect. --Eusebius.
Wherever the divine wisdom of Aristotle has opened its mouth, the
wisdom of others, it seems to me, is to be disregarded. --Dante.
I could soon get over Aristotle's _prestige_, if I could only get
over his reasons. --Lessing.
If, now in my quiet days, I had youthful faculties at my command, I
should devote myself to Greek, in spite of 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. To
be sure he was sometimes hasty in his explanations; but are we not
so, even to the present day? --Goethe (at 78).
If the proper earnestness prevailed in philosophy, nothing would be
more worthy of establishing than a foundation for a special
lectureship on Aristotle; for he is, of all the ancients, the most
worthy of study. --Hegel.
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, Phaestis, 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 encyclopaedic
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 _Nymphaeum_. 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
Nymphaeum, 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 Chaeronea, 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.
It was during his second residence in Athens, in the twelve years from
B. C. 335 to 323, that Aristotle composed most of those great works in
which he sought to sum up, in an encyclopaedic way, the results of a
life of all-embracing study and thought. He had been in no haste to put
himself on record, and it was not until he had reached a consistent view
of the world that he ventured to treat, in a definitive way, any aspect
of it. Thus it was that each of his treatises formed part of one great
whole of thought. Had he succeeded in completing his plan, he would have
left to the world a body of science such as, even in our own day, would
look in vain for a peer among the works of any one man. Unfortunately,
his plan was not completed, and even of the works which he did write
only a portion has come down to us. But that portion is sufficient to
place their author at the head of all scientific men. Some of his works,
for example, his _Logic_, _Metaphysics_, _Ethics_, and _Politics_, still
occupy the first place in the literature of these subjects. How a single
man could have done all that he did, and in so many different
departments, is almost inconceivable. No doubt he had helpers, in the
shape of secretaries, learned slaves, and disciples; and it is certain
that he received from his royal pupil munificent aid, which enabled him
to do much, especially in the directions of physical and political
research, that would have been impossible for a poor man; but, after all
allowances have been made, his achievement still seems almost
miraculous.
During all the years in which Aristotle was thus engaged, his position
at Athens was becoming more and more insecure. The anti-Macedonian party
were waiting for the first opportunity to rid the city of him, and were
prevented from open attempts at this only by dread of Alexander's
displeasure. Even when it was known that Aristotle had incurred disfavor
with his old pupil, they did not venture to attack him; but in 323, when
the news of Alexander's sudden death made all Greece feel that now the
time had come to get rid forever of the hated Macedonians, and recover
its liberty, they at once gave vent to their long-cherished hatred. How
hard it was to find matter for an accusation against him, is shown by
the fact that they had to go back to his old poem on _Worth_, written in
memory of Hermias (see p. 4), and to base thereon a charge of impiety--a
charge always easily made, and always sure to arouse strong popular
prejudice. According to Athenian law, the defendant in any such case
might, if he chose, escape punishment by leaving the city any time
before the trial; and Aristotle, not being, like Socrates, a citizen,
could have no ground for refusing to take advantage of this liberty.
Accordingly, with the remark that he would not voluntarily allow the
Athenians to sin a second time against philosophy, he withdrew to his
country residence at Chalcis in Euboea, the old home of his mother's
family, to wait till affairs should take another turn, as, indeed, they
soon afterwards did, when Athens had to open her gates to Antipater.
But, ere that happened, Aristotle was in his grave, having died in 322,
shortly before Demosthenes, of disease of the stomach, from which he had
long suffered. His remains are said to have been carried to Stagira,
where the grateful inhabitants erected an altar over them and paid
divine honors to his memory. His library and the manuscripts of his
works he left in the hands of Theophrastus, who succeeded him in the
Lyceum. His will, the text of which has come down to us, bears
testimony, along with all else that we know of him, to the nobility,
kindliness, and justice of his nature.
CHAPTER II
ARISTOTLE'S PHILOSOPHY
Platon revait; Aristote pensait. --Alfred de Musset.
Are God and Nature then at strife
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
--Tennyson.
There are three Essences. Two of these are sensible; one being
eternal, and the other perishable. The latter is admitted by all, in
the form, for example, of plants and animals; in regard to the
former, or eternal one, we shall have to consider its elements, and
see whether they be one or many. The third is immutable [and,
therefore, inaccessible to sense], and this some thinkers hold to be
transcendent. --Aristotle.
The vision of the divine is what is sweetest and best; and if God
always enjoys that vision as we sometimes do, it is wonderful, and
if he does so in a yet higher degree, it is more wonderful still.
And so even it is. And life belongs to him; for the
self-determination of thought is life, and he is self-determination.
And his absolute self-determination is the supreme and eternal life.
And we call God a living being, eternal, best; so that life and
duration, uniform and eternal, belong to God; for this is
God. --_Id. _
We must consider in what way the system of the universe contains the
good and the best, whether as something transcendent and
self-determined, or as order. Surely in both ways at once, as in any
army, for which the good is in order, and is the general, and the
latter more than the former. For the general is not due to the
order, but the order to the general. --_Id. _
The thought of Aristotle differs from that of Plato both in its method
and in its results. Plato, reared in the school of Pythagoras,
Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Socrates, had, naturally enough, come to
look for truth in the supersensual region of mind, and thought he found
it in ideas attainable by a process of dialectic within the individual
consciousness. He thus came to put forward a doctrine which, despite its
ostensible purpose to cement the bonds of society, in reality tended to
withdraw men from society altogether and increase the very individualism
it was intended to cure. Aristotle, while still in Plato's school, had
turned away from this doctrine, and in after-life he never lost an
opportunity of combating it. He could point to Plato's _Republic_ as a
warning example of its logical consequences. But, in doing this, he was
prepared to put another doctrine in its place, and he did so on the
basis of a profound study of the whole course of Greek thought,
mythological and philosophical.
Instead of appealing, like Plato, to the individual consciousness, and
trying to discover ultimate truth by bringing its data into harmony
among themselves, Aristotle appeals to the historic consciousness, and
endeavors to find truth by harmonizing and complementing its data
through a further appeal to the outer world, in which these data are
realized. He maintains that the truths reached by the dialectic process
are merely formal, and therefore empty,--useless in practice, until they
have been filled by experience from the storehouse of nature. In
consequence of this changed attitude, he sets aside the dialectic
process, and substitutes for it the _Method of Induction_, which he was
the first man in the world to comprehend, expound, and apply, becoming
thus the father of all true science. And he makes a more extensive use
of induction than any other man since his time, applying it in a field
in which even now it is hardly supposed to yield any results, the field
of the common consciousness. Indeed, he everywhere begins his search for
concrete truth by examining the historic consciousness, and, having, by
a process of induction, discovered and generalized its contents, he
turns with these to nature and, by a second induction, corrects,
completes, and harmonizes them. We might express this in modern
language, by saying that his whole endeavor is to correct and supplement
the imperfect human consciousness by a continual appeal to the divine
consciousness, _as manifested in the world_. It is the error of modern
investigators that they employ only one-half of the inductive method,
the objective, and either omit altogether the subjective, or else, like
Plato, apply it only to the individual consciousness. Hence come the
widely divergent results which still meet us in so many of the sciences,
in Politics, Psychology, etc. , hence the fact that a great deal of
science, instead of correcting, widening, and harmonizing the common
consciousness, stands altogether apart from it, or even in direct
opposition to it. The man who writes a treatise on Psychology, or on the
Soul, without troubling himself to discover what "Soul" means in the
general consciousness of mankind, and perhaps setting out with an
altogether individual notion of it, can hardly look for any other
result. Aristotle, true to his method of induction, devotes one entire
book of his _Psychology_ to finding out what "Soul" means in the
historic consciousness, unreflective as well as reflective. Then, with
this meaning, he goes to nature, seeks by induction to discover what
she has to say about it, and abides by her reply. Hence it is that his
thought has laid hold upon the world, and influenced it in practical
ways, as no other man's thought has ever done. Hence it is that, of all
ancient men, he is the one before whom the modern scientist bows with
respect.
If we now ask ourselves what was the underlying thought that shaped
Aristotle's theory of induction, what was his _Weltanschauung_, we shall
find it to be this: The divine intelligence reveals itself subjectively
in an historic process in the human consciousness, and objectively[4] in
a natural process in the outer world. Truth for man is the harmony of
the two revelations. It follows directly from this that the scientist
must take impartial account of both. So, for example, if he finds gods
in the historical consciousness, and laws or forces in nature, he has no
right, like the theologian, to merge the latter in the former, or, like
the physicist, to replace the former by the latter. He must retain both
till he can bring them into harmony. Only then does he know either.
Such a philosophy as this, instead of drawing men away from the world of
nature and history, and confining them to the narrow circle of their own
consciousness, of necessity sent them back to that world, as the only
means by which any human well-being could be reached. It is for this
reason that it has so powerfully affected both social life and science.
Nevertheless, we should err greatly, if we supposed that, in
Aristotle's view, the divine is nothing more than an immanent idea,
working as a force-form in nature, and as a thought-form in mind. He
does, indeed, believe that the divine is all this, but not that this is
all the divine there is. Over and above the divine which is determined
in nature and in man, there is the transcendent Mind, or God,
determining himself through himself, and bearing the same relation to
the divine that the sun bears to light, the human mind to human thought,
the general to the order of his army. Here we are far away from
Pantheism, and, though we have not yet risen to a clear conception of
personality, we have at the "helm of the universe" a conscious being,
the source of law and order. And man, rising above the thought whereby
he knows himself through nature, and nature through himself, may enter
into the consciousness of God and become a partaker in that life which
is "sweetest and best. " These are the features of Aristotle's thought
which in the thirteenth century made it acceptable to the Christian
Church in her struggle against Pantheism, and which paved the way for
that higher mysticism of which Thomas Aquinas is the most distinguished
exponent--a mysticism which does not, like that of the Neoplatonists and
Buddhists, dispense with thought to lose itself in vacancy, but which,
rising upon a broad basis of knowledge, pierces the clouds of sense, to
find itself in the presence of the most concrete Reality, the
inexhaustible source of all thought and all things.
CHAPTER III
ARISTOTLE'S THEORY OF THE STATE
First, then, let us try to enumerate whatever worthy utterances have
proceeded from men of the past upon any aspect of the subject, and
then, referring to our collections of _Constitutional Histories_,
let us seek to arrive at a theory as to what sorts of things
preserve and destroy each particular form of government, and see for
what reasons some are well, some ill, managed. Succeeding in this,
we may, perhaps, the better learn both what is the best form of
government, and what arrangements, laws, and customs are best suited
to each form. --Aristotle.
Man is a political animal. --_Id. _
The State is prior to the individual. --_Id. _
Without friends no one would choose to live, although he possessed
all other blessings. --_Id. _
If happiness be self-determination in accordance with worth, we must
conclude that it will be in accordance with the supreme worth, which
will be the worth of the noblest part of us.
This part, whatever it
may be, whether intellect (? ? ? ? ) or something else, that which by
nature evidently rules and guides us and has insight into things
beautiful and divine, whether it be itself divine, or the divinest
part of us, is that whose self-determination, in accordance with its
proper worth, will be the perfect happiness. That this consists in
the vision of divine things has already been said. . . . This, indeed,
is the supreme self-determination, for the reason that intellect is
the highest part of us, and that with which it deals is the highest
of the knowable. . . . But a life of this sort would be something
higher than the human; for he who lived it would not be living as
man, but as the subject of something divine. . . . If, then, intellect
is something divine in relation to man, the life lived according to
it must be divine in relation to human life. Instead, then, of
following those who advise us, as being human, to set our thoughts
upon human things, and, as being mortals, to set them on mortal
things, it is our duty, as far as may be, to act as immortal beings,
and do all we can to live in accordance with the supreme part of
us. --Aristotle.
Man alone, among all beings, occupies a middle place between things
corruptible and things incorruptible. . . . Two ends, therefore,
Ineffable Providence has ordained for man: Blessedness in this life,
which consists in the exercise of native faculty, and is figured by
the Earthly Paradise, and blessedness in the eternal life, which
consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God, a thing not to be
achieved by any native faculty, unless aided by divine light, and
which is to be understood by the Heavenly Paradise. . . . These ends
and means would be disregarded by human passion, if men were not
restrained in their course by bit and bridle. . . . For this reason man
required a double directive, corresponding to this double end. He
required the Supreme Pontiff to guide the human race to life
eternal, and the Emperor to guide the human race to temporal
felicity, in accordance with the teachings of philosophy. . . . The
truth with regard to the question whether the authority of the
Emperor is derived directly from God or from another, must not be
taken so strictly as to mean that the Roman Prince is not, in some
respects, subject to the Roman Pontiff, the fact being that this
mortal felicity of ours is, in some sense, ordained with a view to
immortal felicity. Let Caesar, therefore, display that reverence for
Peter which the first-born son ought to display for his father, so
that, being illuminated by his father's grace, he may with greater
virtue enlighten the world, which he has been called to govern by
Him who is governor of all things, spiritual and temporal. --Dante.
O Grace abounding, whence I did presume
To fix my gaze upon the eternal light
So far that I consumed my sight therein!
Within its deeps I saw internalized
Into one volume, bound with love,
That which is outered in the universe;--
Substance and accident, and all their modes,
As 'twere, together merged in such a sort
That what I mean is but a simple light.
The universal form of this same knot
I think I saw, because, when thus I speak,
I feel that I rejoice with larger joy. --_Id. _
Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him
forever. --_Westminster Shorter Catechism_.
Plato's chief purpose, in writing upon education, had been to suggest a
remedy for the social and moral conditions of his native Athens.
Aristotle has no such purpose. He is, in a very deep sense, a
cosmopolitan, and writes in the interest of science and universal
utility. His range of vision is not confined to Athens, or even to
Greece (though he is very proud of being a Greek), but ranges over the
whole known world in time and space. Unlike Plato, too, who had been
familiar mainly with institutions of the past in Egypt and Greece,
Aristotle is deeply affected by the tendencies of the future, and,
though no one lays greater stress than he upon the necessity of a
knowledge of the past for him who would construct a sound social theory,
he nevertheless declares that the whole of the past is shaped by
something which is in the future, by the ultimate realization. This view
comes out in a paradoxical way in his famous saying that "the State is
prior to the individual," by which he means that it is man's political
nature working in him that makes him an individual, and at the same time
realizes itself in a State. And this brings us to Aristotle's conception
of the State, which we must consider before taking up his theory of
education, for the reason that to him, as to all the ancient world,
education is a function of the State, and is conducted, primarily at
least, for the ends of the State.
Before venturing upon a theory of the State, Aristotle, true to his
inductive principles, wrote the Constitutional Histories of over two
hundred and fifty different states. One of these, the _Constitutional
History of Athens_, has recently been discovered and published (see p.
96). He held that it was only by means of a broad induction, thus
rendered possible, that he could discover the idea of the State, that
is, its self-realizing form. Employing this method, then, he came to the
conclusion that the State is that highest social institution which
secures the highest good or happiness of man. Having, in a previous
treatise, satisfied himself that this good is Worth (? ? ? ? ? ), and worth
being in every case the full exercise of characteristic or
differentiating faculty, he concludes that, since man's distinguishing
faculty is reason, the State is the institution which secures to man the
fullest and freest exercise of this. It follows directly that the State
is, simply and solely, the supreme educational institution, the
university to which all other institutions are but preparatory. And two
more conclusions follow: (1) that states will differ in constitution
with the different educational needs of the peoples among whom they
exist, and (2) that, since all education is but a preparation for some
worthy activity, political education, the life of man as a citizen, is
but a preparation for the highest activity, which, because it is
highest, must necessarily be an end in itself. This activity, Aristotle
argues, can be none other than contemplation, the Vision of the Divine
(? ? ? ? ? ? ).
Results which have moved the world followed logically from this
doctrine. Whereas Plato had made provision for a small and select body
of super-civic men, and so paved the way for religious monasticism and
asceticism, Aristotle maintains that in every civilized man, as such,
there is a super-civic part, in fact, a superhuman and divine part, for
the complete realization of which all the other parts, and the State
wherein they find expression, are but means. Here we have, in embryo,
the whole of Dante's theory of the relation of Church and State, a
theory which lies at the basis of all modern political effort, however
little the fact may be recognized. Here, indeed, we have the whole
framework of the _Divine Comedy_; here too we have the doctrine of the
Beatific Vision, which for ages shaped and, to a large extent, still
shapes, the life of Christendom. Well might Dante claim Aristotle as his
master (see p. 153)! Well might the great doctors of the Church speak of
him as "_The_ Philosopher," and as the "Forerunner of Christ in Things
Natural. " In vain did Peter Ramus and Luther and Bruno and Bacon
depreciate or anathematize him! He is more powerful to-day in thought
and life than at any time for the last twenty-two centuries.
It may be asked how far, and in what form, Aristotle conceives the
divine life to be possible for man on earth. He answers that, though it
cannot be perfectly or continuously realized here, it is in some degree
and for certain times attainable (see p. 161). In so far as it is a
social life, it is the life of friendship or spiritual love (? ? ? ? ? ), to
which he has devoted almost two books of his _Ethics_, books which give
us a loftier idea of his personal purity and worth than any other of his
extant writings. He insists that friendship is the supreme blessing (see
p. 166), and that "whatever a man's being is, or whatever he chooses to
live for, in that he wishes to spend his life in the company of his
friends. " It is even said that Aristotle, while teaching in the Lyceum,
gathered about him a knot of noble youths and earnest students, and
formed them into a kind of community, with a view to leading a truly
spiritual social life.
CHAPTER IV
ARISTOTLE'S PEDAGOGICAL STATE
Nature is the beginning of everything. --Aristotle.
Life is more than meat, and the body than raiment. --Jesus.
The forces of the human passions in us, when completely repressed,
become more vehement; but when they are called into action for short
time and in the right degree, they enjoy a measured delight, are
soothed, and, thence being purged away, cease in a kindly, instead
of a violent, way. For this reason, in tragedy and comedy, through
being spectators of the passions of others, we still our own
passions, render them more moderate, and purge them away; and so,
likewise, in the temples, by seeing and hearing base things, we are
freed from the injury that would come from the actual practice of
them. --Jamblichus.
Care for the body must precede care for the soul; next to care for
the body must come care for the appetites; and, last of all, care
for the intelligence. We train the appetites for the sake of the
intelligence, and the body for the sake of the soul. --Aristotle.
The practice of abortion was one to which few persons in antiquity
attached any deep feeling of condemnation. . . . The physiological
theory that the foetus did not become a living creature till the hour
of birth had some influence on the judgments passed upon this
practice. The death of an unborn child does not appeal very
powerfully to the feeling of compassion, and men who had not yet
attained any strong sense of the sanctity of human life, who
believed that they might regulate their conduct on these matters by
utilitarian views, according to the general interest of the
community, might very readily conclude that prevention of birth was
in many cases an act of mercy. In Greece, Aristotle not only
countenanced the practice, but even desired that it should be
enforced by law, when population had exceeded certain assigned
limits. No law in Greece, or in the Roman Republic, or during the
greater part of the Empire, condemned it. . . . The language of the
Christians from the very beginning was very different. With
unwavering consistency and with the strongest emphasis, they
denounced the practice, not simply as inhuman, but as definitely
murder. --Lecky, _European Morals_.
Aristotle clearly saw that the strong tendency of the human race to
increase, unless corrected by strict and positive laws, was
absolutely fatal to every system founded on equality of property;
and there cannot surely be a stronger argument against any system of
this kind than the necessity of such laws as Aristotle himself
proposes. . . . He seems to be fully aware that to encourage the birth
of children, without providing properly for their support, is to
obtain a very small accession to the population of a country, at the
expense of a very great accession of misery. --Malthus, _Essay on
Population_.
Considering Aristotle's views with regard to man, his end, and the
function of the State, we can have little difficulty in divining the
character and method of his educational system. Man is a being endowed
with reason; his end is the full realization of this, his sovereign and
distinguishing faculty; the State is the means whereby this is
accomplished.
Readers of Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_ will remember the description, in
the second part, of the Pedagogical Province. Now, Aristotle's State
might with entire propriety be called a Pedagogical Province. In trying
to describe this State, and the manner in which it discharges its
function, it is difficult to know where to begin, for the reason that,
taken as a whole, the State is both teacher and pupil. It arranges the
whole scheme of education, and is therefore related to it as cause; it
is built up by this scheme, and is therefore related to it as effect. It
comes, accordingly, both at the beginning and at the end. It is a
university which arranges the entire scheme of education, and is itself
its highest grade. I shall try to surmount this difficulty by
distinguishing what the State is from what it does, beginning with the
former, and ending with the latter.
With regard to what the State is, we have to consider (1) its natural,
(2) its social, conditions. The former are climate, and extent, nature,
and situation of territory; the latter, number and character of
inhabitants, property regulations, distinction of classes, city
architecture, mode of life, government, and relations to other states.
Aristotle demands for his State a temperate climate, on the ground that
a cold one renders men strong and bold, but dull and stupid, while a hot
one renders them intellectual but effeminate. The best climate is one
that makes them at once brave and intelligent. The territory must be
extensive enough, and fertile enough, to supply its inhabitants with all
the material conditions of life in answer to labor which shall rouse,
without exhausting, their energies. It must face east or south, and be
healthy, well-watered, accessible from land and sea, and easily
defensible.
As to the social conditions, Aristotle finds the most important to be
the number of citizens. And here two things must be carefully borne in
mind. (1) He means by "State" a city with a small territory. This is
not, as has been erroneously supposed, his highest social unity. He
recognizes clearly the nation (? ? ? ? ? ) and the confederacy (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? );
but he holds that they exist merely for material ends, whereas the end
of the State is spiritual. (2) He means by "citizen" a politician. A man
is a citizen, not because he is born or domiciled in a State, but
because he is a sharer in its functions. A State made up of mechanics,
no matter how great their number, would be a small State, and one
composed of slaves would be no State at all. Thus, in estimating the
size of a State, we are to consider the character of its inhabitants,
their fitness for political functions, rather than their number. Little
Athens was a much larger State than gigantic Persia on the field of
Marathon. Aristotle lays down that the number of citizens must be large
enough to insure independence, this being essential to a Culture-State,
and not too large to be manageable. Besides the citizens, there will
necessarily be in the State a very large number of other human beings,
slaves, agriculturists, mechanics, sailors--for all these he excludes
from citizenship on the ground that they do not make virtue, that is,
the realization of reason, the end of their lives. Women, in a sense,
are citizens, if they belong to the families of citizens; but their
sphere is the family.
With regard to property, Aristotle begins by considering what things it
is necessary for. These he finds to be six, three private and three
public. The former are food (including clothing and shelter),
instruments of production, and arms; the latter are public enterprises
(civil and military), religion, and law. These are the "necessaries"
(? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ) of a State, for which it must duly provide. The most
important of all is religion, on which he everywhere lays great stress.
As to the distribution of property, he propounds a scheme which is half
socialistic. All the land is to belong to the State, that is, to the
body of the free citizens. It is to be divided into two equal portions,
and one set apart for public, the other for private, uses. The revenue
from the public part is to go for the support of religion (and law? ) and
of the public tables, from which no citizen is excluded by poverty. The
private part is to be so divided that each citizen shall have one lot
near the city, and one near the frontier. This will give him an interest
in defending the whole territory. Both parts are to be cultivated by
serfs or slaves, part of whom will necessarily belong to the State, and
part to private individuals. Land-owning is to be a condition of
citizenship, and all citizens are to be forbidden to exercise any form
of productive industry. This last rule, it is hoped, will prevent
grievous inequalities of wealth, and the evils that flow from them. A
modest competency, derived from his estate, is all that any citizen
should aim at. Only degraded people, incapable of virtue, will crave for
more.
Upon the distinction of classes some light has been already thrown. They
are two; the ruling and the ruled. Aristotle holds that this distinction
runs through the whole of nature and spirit, that it is fundamental in
being itself. It holds between God and the universe, form and matter,
soul and body, object and subject, husband and wife, parent and child,
master and slave, etc. , etc. The ruling class again is sub-divided into
two parts, one that thinks and determines (legislators and judges), and
one that executes (officials, officers, soldiers); while the ruled is
sub-divided into husbandmen, mechanics, and seamen (sailors, fishermen,
etc. ). All the members of the ruled class are serfs or public slaves,
working, not for themselves, but for their masters. Aristotle holds that
they ought to be barbarians of different races, and not Greeks.
The architecture of the city will in some degree correspond to this
social division. It will naturally fall into three divisions, military,
religious, and civil.
